Uncharted Seas

by Emilie Loring

  “Robinson Crusoe marooned on his desert island,” she said aloud. She paced the platform, watching the smooth road which shot from the dense woods only to plunge into them again a few rods farther on. She looked up at the sky. The weather-man was attempting a welcome if her employer had slipped up. The sun was functioning on an in-and-out program. The air was glorious, washed clean by the recent rain, overstuffed with the spicy scent of pine and balsam and the refreshing smell of wet grass. Diamond drops glittered on twig and leaf. What should she do if no one came? There were no wires to indicate a telephone, no station master. Not another train today. That thought didn’t help. She would walk. In which direction?

  A car coming! A high-powered car if the velvety hum was an indication of its class. Sandra instinctively settled her green hat, clutched her hand-bag a little tighter as a shining black roadster shot from among the dense trees.

  “Enter man Friday,” she said to herself as she noted the solitary driver. A little chill of excitement prickled through her veins. She would have asked Mr. Damon more about the family to which she was going had she not been trained to respect a man’s business time as if every minute were a grain of gold. Perhaps this was “young Newsome.” Must she begin to watch her step at once? Taking one’s first job was thrilling.

  The car purred to a stop. The man pulled his soft cap a little lower over his eyes before he stepped to the platform. His short leather jacket was weather-stained; worn o. d. breeches were tucked into muddy high boots. He crossed to the saddle, settled it under his arm, and started for the car.

  Sandra regarded him incredulously. Of all things! Didn’t he see her or was he ignoring her? As he deposited his burden tenderly in the rumble, she reminded crisply:

  “I’m here.”

  He turned and awkwardly touched the cap pulled so low that only a nose and an inflexible line of mouth were visible.

  “So I see, Miss.”

  That “Miss” placed him. A groom.

  “Weren’t you sent to meet me? I am expected at Mrs. Newsome’s.”

  “Are you, Miss? That’s funny. Seven Chimneys is the next place to where I work. I didn’t see nothing of a car as I come along. Sure you’re expected?”

  The hint of suspicion in the voice was maddening. “Expected. Do you think I would step off a train in this uninhabited spot if I were not? I was engaged by Mr. Damon this morning as a secretary for Mrs. Newsome. I have been waiting for hours and hours.”

  His lips twitched as he glanced at his wrist watch. Sandra qualified:

  “It has seemed like hours anyway. What are you going to do about it?”

  He looked at her bestickered bags, at the rumble of the car from which protruded the saddle. She suggested hurriedly:

  “If you will take me—never mind the bags, Mrs. Newsome will send for them—you needn’t even drive me to the house; leave me at the gate and I will walk the rest of the way.”

  Had he heard what she said? He appeared to be intently concerned as to the safety of a robin swaying on the tip of a pine. His glance came back to the luggage. He motioned toward the car.

  “Get in, Miss. I’ll take you to Seven Chimneys. Guess my boss won’t mind if I’m a bit late getting that saddle home.”

  Without waiting to know if she accepted his offer, he picked up her bags and piled them into the rumble.

  “Ready, Miss.”

  “Your boss has a nice taste in automobiles,” Sandra approved as the roadster slid forward. She had a feeling that this taciturn man would be interesting if he could be made to talk. He had a determined chin and a clean-cut nose, a nose in a thousand. His hands were gloved. Too bad—a man’s hands told so much.

  “It’s a good car,” he agreed shortly.

  The road stretched ahead smooth and black through woods cleared of underbrush. In spite of the light which a sulky sun was turning on and off at its temperamental pleasure, perhaps because of it, the surroundings were gloomy, portentously glooomy. Sandra’s satisfaction at her victory chilled. How long before they would be out of these woods? How like her to leap at a way out of a dilemma, without stopping to think where she might land.

  She cast a furtive glance at the man behind the wheel. He had seemed afraid that she might see his eyes. Perhaps he had stolen the car!

  “We’ll be out of this road soon, Miss, and then you’ll see some of the most handsome scenery in the world.”

  Handsome scenery! That was too obvious, it was out of character with his voice and face. The man wasn’t a groom. He was acting a part. Why? She would play up to him. She wasn’t such a bad actress herself. She agreed cordially:

  “I have heard that it was beautiful. It is a great horse country, isn’t it? Lots of breeding and racing and hunting?”

  At last she had made him really look at her. She had but a momentary glimpse of the clearest gray eyes she had ever seen, before he was gazing straight ahead again.

  “Yes, Miss. Your boss, Mrs. Newsome, has one of the finest stables in the country.”

  “So Mr. Damon told me. Ever since I heard her name this morning I have been tormented by a hazy memory. ‘Newsome? Newsome? What have I heard about a Mrs. Newsome?’ Every time I think I have the connection it dodges round the corner of a brain cell—if brain cells have corners. Oh-o-o, you didn’t say enough for it! It is beautiful!”

  They had shot into open country. Rolling fields, green as jade, swept off to woods which ridged darkly. Billow on billow of smoky hills shadowed with purple valleys, lightly hooded with thinning clouds, added a touch of grandeur to the horizon. In the foreground spooned a river, so glittering and still that it might have been a silver sash dropped by a giantess in flight.

  “Look! A rainbow! See the reflection in the water! I never see an arc of gorgeous color like that without visualizing the finale of Das Rheingold—that’s an opera by Wagner; Wagner was a great musician—” She couldn’t resist the patronizing explanation, he deserved it for trying to deceive her. “A rainbow bridge spans the valley, and as the gods stride across it to Walhalla illumined by the setting sun, harps and strings unite in shimmering loveliness, and from below rises the song of the Rhine Daughters.” She sang in a low, husky, voice:

  “ ‘Rheingold!

  Reines Gold!

  O leucktete noch

  In der Tiefe dein laut’rer Tand!’ ”

  “That’s pretty. It must be great to know so much about the world, Miss.”

  Sandra disciplined a laugh. He was going strong. She confided:

  “I am just foolish enough to take the rainbow as a good omen for myself. One end has disappeared into that old vine-covered stone house which looks as if it might have been picked up in Sussex and dropped here. Oh, I wonder—”

  “What, Miss?” The question was curt.

  “Nothing but an absurd feeling that I had seen it before. You have felt that way haven’t you, about a place you know you never have seen?”

  “Sure. Perhaps the rainbow’s a good omen for the house too, Miss. Don’t the Bible say, ‘I do set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth?’ Excuse me, Miss, it just slipped out. When I was a boy my folks made me learn a verse of the Bible a day. What’s so funny about that, Miss?”

  Sandra caught back a laugh. Why spoil his belief in his impersonation? She hastened to reassure:

  “Nothing. Sometimes, when I’m—I’m much interested, I draw in my breath like that. Who lives in that old stone house?”

  “A man named Hoyt.”

  Hoyt had been the name of one of her father’s boy pals. Better not let this taciturn man know that she was interested. “Does he appreciate that adorable place? Is he a horse—a gentleman fond of horses?”

  “He is, Miss. He keeps a few Thoroughbreds. I work for him.”

  The last statement was curt. Sandra regarded the man’s profile. His jaw was set; his eyes looked straight ahead; he was as redly bronze as an Indian; she could see the pulse throbbing in his throat above
his low collar. She would hate to clash wills with him, he would be so—so undentable. Perhaps he had owned horses himself and had lost them in the unstable world of the race track.

  “Tell me about the old house. It looks as if it were drenched in history.”

  “It is. It has an underground passage.”

  It was as she had suspected, the house about which her father had told her. “Really? They have just unearthed something like that in Virginia; they think that it must have been a secret exit for the king’s rulers in pre-revolutionary days.”

  “Is that so, Miss? This old house has a ghost too.”

  “Marvelous! I wonder—I wonder if some day I may see it, the house, I’m not keen about the ghost. Perhaps Mrs. Newsome will take me there.”

  “Mrs. Newsome won’t!”

  The words flashed between them like a shining blade. Their bitterness widened Sandra’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry. Evidently I’ve made a social blunder. You see, I forget that I am merely a secretary.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Nice job, secretary. Always thought I’d like to be one, but, of course, I ain’t got the education.”

  He was getting better and better, fairly eating up his part.

  “What did you mean? Is this place small-town enough to harbor feuds and family quarrels?”

  “Oh, these rich folks don’t have enough to do to keep ’em out of mischief, so they get to fighting among themselves.”

  “You think then that virtue walks hand in hand with flivver incomes and vice with Rolls Royce affluence—or words to that effect?”

  “Poking fun at me, aren’t you, Miss? I’m on. There are family quarrels here, all right. Look to the left. There is Seven Chimneys.”

  “How charming! Modernized colonial. Is that old too?”

  “No. One of the sons of the family that owned Stone House built that thirty odd years ago when he made a fortune. You’ll get a better view after we enter the drive.”

  “But we won’t enter the drive. Leave me at the gate with the luggage. I will walk to the house and send some one for the bags. If your boss and Mrs. Newsome are enemies, Mr. Hoyt might not like it.”

  “He would like letting a lady walk less than having one of his hands enter the Newsome place, Miss.” He turned the car between elaborate iron grilles. “Now you can see the house.”

  Mr. Damon had not exaggerated. Seven Chimneys was palatial, Sandra agreed. It loomed at the end of the tree-bordered drive in which silver pools left by the late rain glinted like magic mirrors in the filtered sunshine. The top of the impressive porch had a lacy iron railing which enclosed a balcony from which opened a beautiful Palladian window. Moving clouds cast purple shadows on the roof; the house was of stone and clapboard, overgrown with vines, gay with window-boxes. She counted the chimneys. Seven.

  The car drew up under the porte cochère. The driver jumped out and set her bags on the steps. Sandra opened her purse. For fear that he might see the gleam of laughter in her eyes, she kept them on the bill she offered.

  “Thanks heaps. Please take this for smokes or talkies.”

  From under her lashes she could see his face darken with color.

  “It won’t bite.”

  “Won’t it, Miss? Then I’ll take it.” He touched his cap. “Thank you, Miss. It will be smokes. Better not let Mrs. Newsome know that Mr. Hoyt’s trainer brought you here.” He touched his cap again, stepped into the roadster, and sent it humming back along the way they had come.

  A trainer! That explained the unyielding line of the man’s mouth, explained his attempt at deception. It was abundantly evident that he was a one-time horse owner down on his luck and super-sensitive about his change of fortune. She shouldn’t have tipped him, but hadn’t he deserved it for thinking her too dumb to recognize a gentleman when she met one?

  She looked up at the spreading fan-light above the door with its tracery of leading, delicate as fairy lace. Curious things doors, one never knew what lay behind them, she thought, as she had thought once before that day, and pressed the bell.

  Gorgeous country. She had the feeling of being on top of the world. The turquoise sky, clotted with what looked like aqueous cream whips, seemed so near that one might reach up and touch it. The sun, no longer sulking, was turning the countryside to gold—a countryside patched with lush fields, striped with miles of bridle paths. Nearby, emerald lawns, dotted with clumps of mammoth trees which suggested Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, sloped to the river which mirrored the ghostly white birches on its shore; beyond it, dusky woods splotched with whirls of pearly mist stretched to loping purple hills. Toward the east were stables, long, low, white, a tanbark fairway at their backs.

  The end of the rainbow appeared still to touch the roof of the old stone house which seemed near enough to Seven Chimneys to suggest a dower-house. Against the now limpid blue heavens a golden weathercock on its barn glinted and spun indecisively as if considering whether to broadcast a cloudy or a fair tomorrow; a track circled behind the building.

  Sandra’s eyes followed the horizon, the arc of color. The sweep, the glory, the majesty of her surroundings swept over her spirit like mighty fingers on the strings of a harp. She felt as if she had emerged from a thunderous cloud into light and beauty. Rainbow splendor! She would accept it as an omen that the dark, tragic days of this last year never would be repeated. No matter what lay beyond, she was glad that she had come to the town which once had been her father’s home, if only to feel this sense of a beckoning future.

  A butler opened the door—a somewhat sloppy butler if the spots on his waistcoat were an indication; he was not in character with the perfection of the house and grounds. His skin was ruddy with especial emphasis on his nose; his deepset eyes were black, his thinning hair iron-gray.

  “The new secretary?” he inquired.

  He might yesterday have left the British Isles if his pompous voice and enunciation were the criterion, but his manner was late-American.

  “Yes. Please tell Mrs. Newsome that Miss Duval is here.” Her memory picked up the name. Resumed its chant. “Newsome? Newsome? What have I heard about Mrs. Pat Newsome?”

  The butler scowled at the bags on the steps. “Don’t that chauffeur know better than to leave them in front?” He attempted a placating smile. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Madame is expecting you. This way.”

  Sandra followed him along a hall, rugless, tiled. He was noiseless; the click of her heels resounded through the stillness. Some one was dreaming on a violin. Cascades of scales, minor chords like the croon of a lonely spirit set her heart throbbing like a muted drum, brought back the bewildering sense of the uncertainty of what lay ahead, she thought she had broken free from forever.

  Reflected in a priceless Chippendale mirror above a console in the hall was the fair head of the musician bent over a deep reddish-brown violin against the background of a mimosa tree. Beyond a beautifully wrought iron door she could see a terrace, gay with white bamboo and scarlet, a loggia at one side with what seemed to be a lodge at the end. They bordered a hedged garden alight with gold-shot haze that, in turn, surrounded a pool the parapet of which was patched with cushions.

  On the threshold of a library the butler paused as if expecting to find someone within. The music, nearer now, made a soft accompaniment to Sandra’s impressions. It was a room of magnificent distances—for a room. Light through tall, beautifully designed windows cast arabesques of color on the velvet rug. Two walls, book-lined to the beamed ceiling, were provided with sliding steps. Against another was a built-in desk, intricately carved, with a profusion of doors and drawers. A beautiful cabinet of red Chinese lacquer made a spot of brilliant color. On a table near a window was a half completed picture puzzle with a mass of unconnected pieces. Against the dark panels above the mantel hung a painting of a woman in a gauzy ballet costume. The flesh tones were crude and violent.

  The picture was a false note in the room, besides being too small for the space where it hun
g. Was the mistress of the house responsible for placing it there? The flicker of flames in the fireplace cast fantastic shadows on the long ottoman in front of it, transforming the figure of the dancer from a thing of paint and canvas to a living, breathing personality.

  Sandra’s heart quickened its beat. Something about the room was depressing. The vines brushing against the windows became an eerie tapping. One felt that there might be eyes peering from the doors which opened on the richly hung musicians gallery, muffled footsteps on the stairs which wound up to it.

  The violin soared into a passionate finale. A woman’s voice, its stridency and impatience intensified by contrast to the music, complained:

  “Why do you play like that, as if you were frightfully unhappy? Have I given you the best violin teachers to be had, or haven’t I? Did I send you to Berlin for six months, or didn’t I? Haven’t I given you a generous allowance? Yes or no? And do you care what I feel or think or do?”

  Sandra resisted a childish impulse to clap her hands over her ears. Was Mrs. Newsome talking? There was the sound of wood flung on wood, a low furious exclamation, and a man came through the doorway connecting the two rooms—a short, slim young man in riding clothes. The musician whom she had seen in the mirror!

  He stopped as he saw her; the two police dogs with him stood motionless except for the slight bristling of hair along their backs, the cocking of their ears. His face, which had been livid, went brick-red. His hair was so fair as to seem white; his mouth under a golden wisp of mustache was crimson as if rouged; his intensely blue eyes, above which his brows met in a straight line, were set in little sunbursts of wrinkles at the corners.

  Possibly he was in the late twenties, but he seemed too boyish for that age, Sandra decided. Evidently he was a gentleman of uncertain temper. One would do well to cross to the other side of the street when one suspected he was irritated, as unquestionably he was now. Who wouldn’t be after being the object of the tirade she had just overheard? She wasn’t mistaken this time; this must be “young Newsome,” heir to his mother’s rages as well as to her fortune—but a musician to his sensitive finger-tips.