Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Peter and I took the back stairs and when we reached the balcony where musicians had once played, all the color and sound and scent of that crystal and crimson room rose to envelop us. The band Theo had hired was already playing romantic tunes on the floor below, though dancing had not yet begun, and Theo was reigning with Ferris beside her, as she stood beneath a reproduction of Sargent’s famous portrait of “Madame X.” Her sleek black satin gown with brilliants for shoulder straps, her piled-up red hair, with the scarlet flower over one ear, and Diana’s diamond crescent shining above her forehead, were true to the portrait, and she carried off the costume as though she had been a great beauty, even a young beauty, so that one almost believed these things were so. Only her green eyes were not the eyes of the painting, but belonged exclusively to Theodora Moreland.

  I could not look down upon this room, however, without remembering. The last time it had been bright with lights and music was the night my father had died. The pang of loss stabbed through me once more, familiar, yet never wholly expected. Before he had gone upstairs to his death, Adam had danced with me once that night. It almost seemed that my searching gaze ought to be able to find him among the throng below. There would always be a sense of unreality about what had happened.

  The ballroom was not crowded as yet, but more and more people were coming through the double doors at the far end and the great chandeliers above their heads shone down on color and warmth, and lent a certain vibrancy to the gay scene. Theo had done well, I thought, to use no decorations in the beautiful room. The gilded ceiling and painted wall panels, the crimson window draperies, the quilted satin benches around the walls, were enough in themselves to give the great room beauty and dignity. Below the balcony the musicians played old tunes that had worn well, and though they belonged to a later day than the room itself, added to the romanticism of the scene. Theo was hardly a romantic person, but she liked the dramatic, and it was mainly Fiona who had influenced her.

  Dresses of the late nineties were more flattering than present day and the women who stood about the floor talking, or gathered around Theo, were beautiful and glamorous. No restrictions had been placed upon the men and they wore everything from white tie to the more decorative dinner jackets of the present, with frilled shirt fronts and cuffs.

  Beside me, Peter’s eyes glowed with excitement at the brilliant scene. “I’ll watch when you dance, Mother,” he whispered. “I think you’ll be the most beautiful of all.”

  I hugged him to me. “I won’t be that, but thank you anyway. Don’t stay up too late, darling. If you like, I’ll come up here after a while and see you to bed.”

  Bed did not interest him, but he nodded vaguely. “Crawford wanted to come and stay here with me, but I coaxed Theo to tell her not to. She’d spoil everything.”

  There was a faint murmur in the crowd below us as it parted near the far doors to let an impressive figure come into the room. Jon Pemberton had arrived dramatically in top hat and tails, with a gleaming diamond-studded shirt front—the only man in the room who had dressed for the Sargent era and the great days of Newport. A scarlet-lined cape swung gracefully from his shoulders and he had chosen not to surrender cape, hat or cane to the cloakroom attendants. He was a bit of a peacock himself, apparently, but good-humoredly so, and he seemed to thrive on being the center of feminine admirers as he moved about the room. I saw Theo eye him skeptically, and she gave him a slightly mocking greeting when he came her way, but I suspected that he was not one to be disparaged even by Theodora Moreland. Like Bruce, he would always be his own man.

  More than once I saw him glance up at Zenia’s portrait, and more than once his eyes searched the room, so that I wondered if he were looking for me, to match me with the picture. I would go down in a little while and dance with him, if he wished. In a way, I would feel safer tonight with Jon Pemberton, who was an outsider, than with either Joel or Bruce who would tear at my emotions.

  So far, neither of these two had appeared, and I was surprised at Joel’s being late. Nor had Lady Macbeth joined the throng, and I wondered if Fiona might choose not to come at all. Perhaps I should have looked in on her before coming down here.

  There was a break in the music, and then a new start. Theo and Ferris had moved out onto the floor and others joined them so that the great room was soon filled with decorously waltzing couples following Theo’s lead. As I watched, Peter nudged me.

  “There’s Dad. He’s just come in.” Peter moved away from me down the rail, the better to see his father.

  Joel looked handsome in black tie, contrasting with his usual slightly careless attire. I felt a stab of the old tenderness. I remembered helping him with that tie in the past, and noted that it was badly done. But that was no longer my affair, I reminded myself. I was still watching for Bruce. When I saw him I would go down the balcony stairs.

  “Do you remember the last party?” a low voice said behind me.

  I swung around to find Fiona there. She looked dramatically in character in the role of Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth, the metallic blue of her gown glittering in the light from the chandeliers, the long green sleeves shining. On her hair she wore a gilded coronet and there was a golden girdle about her waist. She held her head proudly, like a queen, but her face was unnaturally white and strained, and she had touched her lips with no color, so that she looked like a pale ghost of herself. Perhaps that was the way the Lady herself had looked on a certain fateful night.

  “I remember,” I told her. “Last New Year’s Eve I danced with Adam down there.”

  “I didn’t.” Her tone was expressionless. “We were angry with each other and I wouldn’t dance with him. He didn’t stay down there long anyway. He said he had something important to do and he went upstairs.”

  “I feel as though I ought to be able to find him down there if I look enough,” I said. “There are still so many times when I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  As she stood beside me she spoke in a low voice which Peter, at the far end of the balcony, could not hear.

  “Christy, you remember the time when Theo made you believe you’d had a lapse of memory? It wasn’t true. I helped her with that—and with other things. I came to your room that first night you were here and touched you, and I put those things out on the carpet of your room. Because I wanted you to go away, Christy. For your own good. That was all I wanted.”

  “I’ve been sure of this,” I said. “But did you wear my father’s jacket and lead me downstairs that night?”

  “No—no. I never did that. I don’t know who it was.”

  “Why did you hide Ferris’s gun?”

  She hesitated. “I—I didn’t want to see it used. I’ve been afraid, Christy. Ever since Adam died, I’ve been afraid.”

  “Do you know that gun is gone from where you put it?”

  “Yes, I checked. But there’s nothing more I can do.”

  “Why are you telling me all this now?”

  “Because I’m not going to help her any longer, Christy, no matter what she does to me.” She stepped to the balcony rail and gripped it tightly with both hands, as if to steady herself. “I can’t bear it,” she said. “I hate all this—the music, the lights, the laughter. It’s all completely phony. How can Theo do this? When Adam—”

  I didn’t think she was acting now, as she’d done that time with Ferris in the library. All she was telling me had the ring of truth.

  “Then tell me the rest, Fiona. Tell me about Adam.”

  She gave me a long look in which I sensed doubt and uncertainty. “It’s too late. Theo has seen us. Ferris is coming over. There’s no escaping now.”

  Peter thumped back to my side on his crutches as Ferris mounted the balcony stairs. “You have to go down and dance with Dad,” Peter whispered. “Tell him I’m up here watching.”

  His words brought the renewal of pain over what I must do to him.

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. But I didn’t want to dance with Joel. I would remember too we
ll the last time I had danced with him on this floor in another lifetime, when I had been another, gentler woman.

  “Theo wants you, Christy,” Ferris said as he reached the balcony. “She wants to show you off under Zenia’s portrait.”

  I nodded. “I’ll go down. Have fun, Peter. Don’t get too tired. There are a couple of chairs over there if you want to sit on one and rest your cast on the other.”

  Ferris and Fiona went ahead of me down the stairs and when they reached the floor he drew her into his arms. They moved out among the dancers, and I saw in Ferris’s eyes a look that startled me. Was it an affection for Fiona? Or something else? If he hated Theo, how did he feel about Fiona?

  As I followed slowly down the stairs, still carrying my pink geranium blossoms, I saw Bruce come into the room from the opposite end. He saw me halfway down from the balcony, just as I saw him, and he stood still watching me, his eyes hardly wavering. It had been he who had said I must dress like Zenia. I wanted him to be pleased. In his evening dress he was the handsomest man in the room. Jon Pemberton was merely striking.

  I made my way around the edge of the room to reach Theo, who had stopped dancing and stood beside Joel, and though I lost sight of him when I reached the floor level, I suspected that Bruce would be making his way in the same direction.

  Theo nodded her approval as I neared her. “Yes, the costume is a success. Bruce was right—you bear a resemblance to Zenia.”

  “As do you to Madame X,” I said.

  She accepted my tribute as her due, bowing her head slightly, so that Diana’s crescent dipped, as though she had been a tall woman, condescending to my lesser height. It was marvelous the way she could carry off the illusion. The brilliants twinkled on her shoulders, but her green eyes were brighter—emeralds in their own right, though shining with a malice that I could never escape.

  Joel said nothing and he hardly looked at me, nor did he ask me to dance, which gave me a sense of relief. But Bruce was there quickly, impressive in his black jacket, and without words being spoken I was out on the floor in his arms, dancing to a medley of Cole Porter tunes. My foolish geranium glowed pink against the black of his jacket as I held it in my left hand. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I had talked to Joel. I didn’t want to remember what Joel had said. Not tonight. Because of Adam and the last time this room had been lighted and filled with people, pain waited for me at the edge of every thought, and I only wanted to push it back for a little while and be happy in Bruce’s arms. He must have sensed my mood for he held me gently and there was tenderness in his eyes.

  When the music came to a halt, we stood applauding with the other couples on the floor. Bruce nodded repeatedly in recognition of guests whom I knew only from seeing their faces in newspapers or on television. Bruce belonged to that larger world in which Joel, for all that he was a Moreland, had never cared to move.

  “You make a perfect Zenia,” Bruce said in my ear. “I knew you would. There are even secrets in your eyes—the way there are in hers. What do you know, Christy, that you aren’t telling?”

  I glanced up at the portrait over our heads and saw what he meant. Zenia Patton-Stuyvesant had not looked at the artist who was painting her. She gazed off into the distance enigmatically, so that one could not help but wonder what she was thinking. It seemed to me that the look was not a happy one. Was that the way I looked tonight? Unhappy because of all the doubts that beset me? I didn’t want to be like that. I wanted to go to Bruce without pangs for what I must do, without question or hesitance. Yet life itself held me back.

  I tried to rouse myself from disturbing thoughts. “Have you seen Fiona?” I asked. “She’s marvelous as Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth.”

  “I’ve noticed. I saw her dancing with Ferris, looking like death. What’s wrong with her?”

  I shook my head. The music had started up again, but before Bruce could draw me into his arms, there was an interruption. Moving straight across the floor, so that couples stepped out of his imperious path, came Jon Pemberton. He had finally parted with cape, top hat and cane, and his blond hair stood up in an impressive crest, his blue eyes were alight with a wry humor, and his wide smile was entirely for me.

  “Mrs. Patton-Stuyvesant, I believe?” he said, with a bow right out of the Gay Nineties. “Or may I call you Zenia?”

  I had to laugh at him. “You know Bruce Parry, of course?”

  He took his eyes from me for a moment in order to greet Bruce. “Of course. Hello, Bruce. Will you permit me to steal this lady for a while?”

  “Considering that she’s my great-aunt, I can’t imagine stopping you,” Bruce said wryly. “We’ll have another dance later, Christy.”

  Couples were moving about the floor again, but Jon Pemberton did not lead me among them.

  “Don’t expect me to dance, Zenia. I’m foul at that sort of thing and I’d step all over your feet. Besides, there are more important matters to be accomplished tonight. Joel said he was willing to have you introduce me to the house—its special places. First, Zenia’s sitting room. Joel said I must see that—it would characterize her. Will you show it to me? While you are in character? Will you play her part for tonight?”

  His highhanded exuberance could not be resisted, and in a way it was welcome. It furnished distraction and a suppression of pain from the past and from the present.

  “Of course,” I said. “That particular room fascinates me. Somehow I feel at home in it. But Bruce is the one who can tell you more than I.”

  “Not necessarily. He remembers her when she was old. You will remind me of her when she was young. I just want you to be—looking as you do now,” he said.

  As he led me from the room, the band broke into one of the cornier old tunes—the “Tennessee Waltz.” That same tune I’d danced to with Joel a thousand years ago—last New Year’s Eve. One of Theo’s tunes. Again the surge of pain was sudden, unexpected. Strange how the senses remembered the old love, even when the new absorbed all one’s being.

  We escaped from the throng and made our way across the Marble Hall to the stairs. Caterers were in charge of the buffet supper that would be served at midnight in the big dining room, and we passed a man carrying a huge tray. With swift audacity Jon pilfered two anchovy rounds and we munched on them, laughing, as we climbed the stairs and walked along the second-floor corridor to Zenia’s wing.

  The sitting room seemed very familiar as I found the switch that lighted the Tiffany lamp. Jon Pemberton sighed with satisfaction, moving about the small, crowded room.

  “It’s wonderful that Theo had the good sense to preserve this,” he said. “It will give me Zenia as little else could. I’ll come back tomorrow and write it all down, but for now I just want to look and absorb. Do you mind if we don’t talk?”

  I wondered why he needed me, and I wanted to get back to Bruce. “Why don’t I leave you here so that you can spend all the time you want finding out about her through her things?”

  “No. Don’t forget that tonight you are Zenia. Go over there and sit at her desk. Be Zenia. Do what she might do. You’re part of the picture.”

  I didn’t mind too much. Even when I was dancing with Bruce I had to remember the things I had yet to tell him, the things Joel had said. Tonight I didn’t want to think. I wanted only to lie fallow and feel nothing. Not old pain or new. Helping Jon Pemberton was an escape at least. Tomorrow I would marshal my forces and try to seek a way out of my dreadful maze. Now I would be Zenia.

  When I had seated myself at Zenia’s elegant rosewood desk, I picked up a tarnished silver penholder and looked at the rusted nib. There was a blackening silver inkwell on the desk and I lifted its lid to find the dried brown crumbs of long-vanished ink in the glass well. Zenia’s book of orders for the day lay on the blotter and I flipped it open to read the names of her servants, notes for the cook, for the head parlor maid, the head gardener. In my imagination I began to identify with her. A real woman, who had sat at this desk—more than a hazy shadow from th
e past. Flesh and blood as I was flesh and blood.

  “That’s it,” Jon Pemberton said. “Absorb yourself in her things. Forget me.”

  He moved about the room, an oversized figure in its intimate smallness, touching Zenia’s possessions with big, careful hands. I returned my attention to the desk. There were numerous pigeonholes, most of them empty. Any important letters or papers would have been taken away long before this. I pulled open drawer after drawer, to find nothing of consequence. In one place, however, there seemed to be a space for a drawer where no drawer existed. I spoke over my shoulder.

  “I do believe I’ve found some sort of hidden compartment. A lovely Victorian secret drawer!”

  Jon Pemberton was beside me at once, leaning past me to examine surfaces, plain and carved. But if there was some point of pressure that might give up the secret, he didn’t find it, and in a little while he went back to his tour of exploration.

  I didn’t want to give up. Since there was nothing else to do, I too pressed and poked and pushed. I opened the top drawer beneath the dropleaf and felt about in its emptiness. Something against the top of the drawer—the bottom of the desk—felt like a lever and I pushed, experiencing a childlike excitement. What secrets might Zenia have hidden away?

  Squeaking a little from long disuse, the wooden side of a compartment on the upper desk began to move. I released the lever and found that I could push open a panel upon a hidden recess. This time I said nothing to the man who was looking dreamily at Zenia’s mixed bag of pictures on her walls. In the recess were two books and I drew out the top one. It was a gold-embossed leather diary, and I felt a stirring of excitement as I opened it to pages of faded script. That same deliberate script that I had seen in Zenia’s morning book.

  Zenia’s name was on the flyleaf. The first date was a little after the turn of the century, but the notes were cryptic and hardly detailed. She had not bothered with dates.