Woman Without a Past

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “She’s been very kind to me. She’s even moving upstairs into the room next to where Mrs. Landry has put me. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to draw her out while I’m here. Honoria, what am I supposed to be afraid of? Why are some of you trying to protect me?”

  She raised her hands helplessly. “I’ve always seen a dark light around you—though I’ve never understood what it means. Tonight I mean to try a more direct way of finding out.”

  “How? What are you talking about?”

  “Sometimes Nathanial speaks through me without any warning. But I can’t count on that, and there’s been no way for me to ask questions. So now I want to force him to come to me. And I want everyone to be there. I think you’re the reason this will work.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t care for séance spookiness, and I don’t believe in it.”

  “You have the wrong conception, Molly. I’m not going to hold an old-fashioned séance or call in spirits. I’ll just set the scene in a special way, so that he will channel through me if he can. If he comes, then anyone there can ask questions—including you.”

  I still didn’t like the sound of this, but I doubted that Honoria would let me off. “Will you invite Garrett?”

  “Of course—if he cares to come.”

  Honoria began packing our lunch things back into the hamper. “You needn’t come back with me, Molly. Explore a little. Do you see that path over there? It leads to a place that might interest you. Follow it. Perhaps something will come to you there.”

  She sounded as though she wanted to be rid of me, but it didn’t matter. What else did I have to do? The path she indicated led toward a stand of woods, and I walked toward it slowly, lost in my own clouded thoughts. A quiet time for thinking might be just what I needed.

  As it happened, I wasn’t to have that quiet time, after all. Though I had no sense of anticipation as I began my walk through the woods.

  13

  The well-worn path led away from the river through trees left from what must have once been forested land. I walked slowly with a sense of moving toward some destination I wasn’t sure of. Soon, I promised myself, I would turn back to the house and look for Orva Jackson. Somehow I must coax her into helping me.

  As the path climbed, it took a final turn and emerged in a cleared area up a rise of ground. Suddenly I understood its reason for being. Crowning the rise was a low brick wall, beyond which I could see granite headstones. This must be the Mountforts’ private cemetery.

  As I moved toward a gate in the wall, something close by shrieked raucously. The cry was one of terrible pain, and I turned, startled, to find its source.

  A peacock picked his way across a field near the wall, trailing a heavy feather train, its iridescent colors flashing in the sun. The bird seemed unconcerned by my presence, and when he raised his slender, beaked head, his crown of delicate filaments trembled. Again he uttered his frightening cry.

  I had never been so close to a peacock before, and I watched, entranced. Dozens of eyes in the bird’s long train seemed to watch as I approached the closed gate of the cemetery.

  A voice spoke to me from beyond the wall, and I knew immediately that I wouldn’t need to wait to talk with Orva. “He’s gorgeous, isn’t he, Miss Molly? Miss Amelia calls him King Midas. You should see that bird when he’s strutting for one of the peahens and puts up the fan of his tail.”

  Orva came to open the gate for me, and as I entered she waved a hand at a marble marker behind her. “That’s Mr. Simon’s grave right there. I bring him flowers every week.”

  I wondered if she was the only one who remembered.

  The entire closed space had been neatly tended, so someone came often. A few of the stones were very old, their markings worn dim over the years. The most impressive stone belonged to Edward Mountfort, who had built the Hall and first lived here. A small monument topped with an angel marked his grave.

  “Come, Miss Molly. There’s a seat over here where you can rest.”

  Orva indicated a double seat of iron scrollwork, painted white. It was placed near Simon’s grave, and I sat down in the shade of a magnolia tree, its white blooms still lingering overhead and scenting the air. Orva chose a mound of grass for her seat and pulled her knees up to her chin under her flowered skirt.

  This was the chance I’d waited for.

  “Thank you for moving upstairs for a few days,” I told her. “I’ll feel better having you there. I’m just not used to that big house.”

  “It’s no trouble, Miss Molly.” She nodded toward the grave nearby. “You were your daddy’s special baby for that little while before you got taken away. And you were special to me too. I took care of you and loved you like you were my own—you and your sister both.”

  “You said you knew my father when he was young. Can you tell me about him?”

  “Your grandma Laura—she’s over there, not far away—used to teach Mr. Simon and me lessons together before we went to school. She taught me to read and to speak proper, though Katy says it never took too well with me.”

  “When my father died you were the one who found him, weren’t you?”

  She bowed her head silently.

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  She spoke without looking up. “It was a terrible thing, Miss Molly. He’d been playing that beautiful music your mama loved—and then he stopped with a sort of crash. I was working at the other end of the hall, and I had a bad feeling right away. I ran down to the music room—and there he was slumped over the piano bench, with his head turned sideways on the keys.”

  Just where I had rested my head a little while ago.

  Orva continued as though the words were wrenched from her. “I won’t never forget the way he looked.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Scared, Miss Molly. Like something had come into that room and frightened him so bad that he died right there.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  She shook her head, still not looking at me. “If anybody’d come out of that room, I’d have seen who it was. But nobody did.”

  “Then there couldn’t have been anyone there, Orva.”

  “There’s a place I didn’t think to look before I ran off to get help. Just off one end of the music room there’s a small office Mr. Simon used. A long time ago it was where the mistress of the house sat to write her letters and keep her accounts. Somebody hid there until I went for help.”

  “Did you tell anyone about this, Orva?”

  “Once I tried to talk to Mr. Porter, but he said that a heart attack could pretty much scare anybody into looking the way Mr. Simon did when I found him. Only it wasn’t like that. Miss Molly, I think he saw something outside his own self—or heard something. And it scared him so bad his poor heart couldn’t take the shock.”

  “Who might have frightened him like that, Orva?”

  She was quiet for a moment, and then she raised her head and looked straight at me with wide eyes. “Miss Molly, it don’t matter anymore. It’s too late. Sometimes I get the feeling that all the ground around us is as quivery as a swamp. Mr. Porter told me not to let my imagination run wild, but one misstep and I don’t know what could happen. It’s better if you don’t talk about this when we go back to the house.”

  This analogy to a swamp had been haunting me ever since I came. “Did you ever discuss what happened with Katy?”

  “She was a young girl when your daddy died, and we haven’t talked about it much since she grew up. Better not to. Better leave all that swamp water be.”

  “I’ve been trying to find my father ever since I came here—just to get to know him a little. I feel that how he died stands in the way. It’s as though I’ll never know him until I find out what really happened.”

  “He was a good man, Miss Molly. You can believe that.”

  “But
he believed that he was responsible for something terrible.”

  “Never mind, Miss Molly. Never mind! Look over yonder in the far corner of this place. That’s Mr. Nathanial’s grave—sort of all by itself, wouldn’t you say? It seems maybe his family was connected to the Mountforts, but nobody wanted to bury him too close.”

  I called her back to the subject that interested me. “Orva, do you remember who was in the house when my father died?”

  “Sure, I remember. All the time there was parties going on, and the house was full. All of your folks and their friends came out from the city.”

  Just as had been the case when Nathanial died. But before I could push her further for answers, she stood up, moving with agility. “I better get to work now, Miss Molly. Miss Honoria’s going to stay upstairs too, instead of in the main bedroom on the second floor, so I need to get a room ready for her. Now you’ll have double company, and I reckon that’s a good idea. I’m going along back, but you stay here, Miss Molly, and talk to your daddy for a while. Could be, he can tell you what you want to know. Miss Honoria thinks that can happen, and maybe I do too.”

  I could think of nothing to say to Simon Mountfort right now, but I wanted another chance with Orva. She had started along the wooded path, and I called after her.

  “Wait for me a minute, Orva. Please! Then we can walk back together.”

  She couldn’t very well refuse me, and she waited. I went into the corner where Nathanial Amory’s small headstone stood a little apart. No flowers had been left here, but I suspected that Garrett visited this place regularly. In my mind I formed words with an intensity that surprised me: Help me to find the way. Help me to help your son—to help all of us.

  Nothing came to me as a sign. Or if I was given a sign, I lacked the sensitivity to interpret it. Beyond the wall, the peacock shrieked again, and I hurried to join Orva.

  We walked through the woods in silence until the house came into view. My thoughts scurried, seeking some way to get her to talk to me—to tell me whatever she knew, or suspected. Nothing emerged, and I asked another question as we neared the house.

  “Has Mrs. Phelps told you about her plans for this evening?”

  Orva began to walk more quickly, perhaps eager to be away from me and my uncomfortable questions. “Miss Honoria mentioned something about that to me, but there’s no way I want to be part of what she’s got it in mind to do. Calling in spirits can stir up more dead things than she thinks. Let them rest quiet, I say. Don’t you mess with any of this neither, Miss Molly.”

  “I can’t stay out of it,” I said. “I don’t want to mess with it, but I have to.”

  She stopped abruptly on the path. “Then I’ll come too. Maybe I have a little good magic, Miss Molly.”

  “Do you mean that Honoria’s magic isn’t good?”

  “No, oh no! It’s okay, but she don’t know what the power is that she calls in. So I’ll be there, Miss Molly.”

  Orva led the way around to the river side of the house. I noticed a door I hadn’t seen before and I asked her about it.

  “Maybe you’d like to see what’s down there in the basement, Miss Molly. It’s a real big surprise to most people.”

  Even though it had been the main approach in the days of river travel, the façade that faced the river was less impressive than the Palladian portico on the land side. Steps rose to a simpler entrance leading up from the water, and a carriage road circled around to meet the grander land approach. The steps to the doorway on the river side were built of decorative gray stone. Underneath, a door had been set into the stone at ground level, with two arched windows on either side. The arrangement reminded me uncomfortably of the entrance to the Old Exchange Building.

  Orva opened the lower door for me and I stepped into a cool, shadowy, high-ceilinged space that seemed, astonishingly, to be the entrance to a Greek temple.

  Orva chuckled softly. “It sure comes as a surprise, don’t it, Miss Molly? That old Mr. Edward must’ve had fun with all this.”

  On each side of the entry stood a marble column, rising in Doric simplicity to the high ceiling. Or, at least, each was a portion of a column. Only one was topped by a finished capital of the sort that would have supported a roof. There were other columns standing about—broken, incomplete, yet impressive in their graceful ruin. Ahead, deeper into the gloom, rose several broken marble steps, topped by what looked like the remains of a hilltop temple straight out of Greece—two partial columns with a lintel piece resting overhead between them.

  Since none of this was rooted in the earth, but seemed precariously balanced, the whole had a surrealistic look, as though painted by Dali. These gleaming white pieces of marble must, indeed, have come from Greece at a time when that country’s ruins had been plundered.

  “Do you know why Edward Mountfort built this?” I asked Orva.

  “Nobody knows for sure. Mr. Porter hopes Mr. Garrett will find old diaries or account books somewhere to give him an answer. Lots of bits and pieces were left over from marble used on the house—so maybe Mr. Edward just wanted to build his own little temple. It’s all kind of spooky down here, and not too safe, they say, so nobody comes here much. Of course, Mr. Edward liked it, he even had himself painted in front of Greek columns in that picture upstairs. I thought you’d be interested to see what’s here.”

  Even by daylight that came in through two windows, the place was certainly creepy, and I could imagine how eerie the illusion would be when moonlight found its way into this “temple” of ancient marble.

  Orva led the way around steps that led nowhere, to a wide space of basement beyond, where the floor was paved in large gray stones—more ship’s ballast, probably.

  Sunlight reached through windows at the far end of a wide central hall, and Orva showed me where the servants’ quarters were located. Before the Civil War, of course, there had been slaves housed in cottages—cabins—away from the main house. Afterward, when the years of poverty were past, servants lived down here.

  There had been a huge open fireplace where cooking had been done, but now a modern kitchen had been put in for the staff, with a long table where meals could be eaten. Orva showed me her comfortable sitting room and bedroom, and her own small bath.

  “I always stayed out here at the plantation when I grew up, Miss Molly. This is where I was born. I don’t like the city much, though Katy’s always after me to move in with her. Maybe even the ghosts keep me company out here—the ones I feel comfortable with.”

  “Which ones are they?”

  She only smiled. “If you’ll wait a minute, Miss Molly, I’ll pack some things so I can move upstairs next door to you. Then I’ll fix Miss Honoria’s room. Someday we’ll have an elevator in this big old place. Mr. Charles says it’s one of the first things he’ll put in after he gets married to Miss Amelia. Of course, the main kitchen is upstairs, so it’s not like when meals had to be carried up in the old days.”

  “Were Charles and my sister planning to live at Mountfort Hall after they married?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am. Mr. Charles loves it out here.”

  We left the basement and started to climb to the top. At the first-floor level, Daphne Phelps called to me from down the hall.

  “Hi, Molly. I’ve been looking for you. We need to talk.”

  Everyone wanted to talk!

  I thanked Orva and she went on upstairs as Daphne led the way into the formal drawing room and turned on a ceiling fan—a modern anachronism spaced between the great chandeliers. She seemed distraught, unlike her usual calm and collected self. We sat together on a green damask sofa, and I grew increasingly aware of her edginess.

  “No bookstore today?” I asked.

  “I have a good assistant. There were things I needed to do out here. I’ve talked with your mother and she’s pretty remorseful about her behavior last night. I brought her out here this afternoon,
and I think she wants to apologize to you—and explain. She even cried a little when we talked, so I hope you’ll give her a chance.”

  The last thing I wanted was another session with Valerie Mountfort, and I suspected that what was worrying Daphne had nothing to do with my mother.

  “I don’t think I have anything to discuss with her,” I said. “And I don’t trust her tears and repentance.”

  “You’re probably right to be cautious, but you’d better give in for now. You’ll all be together for this performance Honoria is putting on tonight and I suspect it could be pretty enlightening. Valerie and Amelia are at Evaline’s now, talking wedding plans, and I know your mama hopes to see you.”

  “What is really upsetting you, Daphne?”

  She jumped up and moved to a window, turning her back.

  “I have the funniest feeling about tonight, Molly. In some ways Honoria is an innocent. I don’t think she dreams of what she could release—something that might damage us all.”

  Orva had hinted at the same thing.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in Honoria’s powers.”

  “It’s not her powers I’m afraid of. It’s other things, like the human element that may get frightened enough to become dangerous at a time like this.”

  “What human element? What are you talking about?”

  “That’s the trouble—I’m not sure. But I’ve told Dad what Honoria plans—she didn’t tell him! And I hope he’ll come out here and stop the whole thing. It’s no parlor game she’s proposing. I don’t plan to attend, and I don’t think you should either, Molly. Dad has never understood that he married a woman who was in love with a ghost. My father can be pretty arrogant when he chooses, and he has a whole set of beliefs of his own. To accept Honoria as she really is would be impossible for Porter Phelps. So he prefers to be amused and humor her. In his eyes she’s a little doll who can do no wrong. He fools himself first of all. I just wanted to warn you, Molly, and keep you out of this. Games are games, but this could be destructive.”