Sea Jade

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  In my turning I nearly stumbled over Laurel, who had come up close behind me. The angry hurt in her eyes alarmed me.

  “Why did Ian call you ‘Mrs. McLean’?” she demanded. “Why did he dare to call my father your husband?”

  I moved toward her, my hand outstretched in a pleading gesture. “I’d like to tell you about it.”

  “Then you are married to him!” Laurel cried. “You lied to me. You said you would never marry him. You said you would go away.”

  There was rising hysteria in her voice and I tried to quiet her, tried to explain as gently as I could.

  “It was the captain’s dying wish that I marry your father. It wasn’t possible to refuse him. His state was so grave that we believed there was nothing else to do but give in. We didn’t mean—”

  The child did not wait to hear me out. Stricken, she darted toward a door in the deck where stairs led below. Before I could call out or stop her, she had disappeared down the open hatch into darkness. I ran to the opening and looked down the steps, but I could see nothing. The scuttling sound of her feet reached me from below. Though I called to her, she paid me no heed and after a moment there was complete silence, as if she had been swallowed into those darksome hollows that existed below decks.

  Behind me I heard the sound of heavy, uneven steps upon the wooden dock and I knew Brock had reached the ship. In a moment he would come up the gangplank and there could be no escaping him. I stood where I was to await the man who was Laurel’s father—and, whether I wanted it or not, husband of the girl who had been Miranda Heath.

  SIX

  In the moments that I waited, I strove to calm my sense of turmoil. I dreaded this face-to-face meeting with Brock McLean—the first since that hurried ceremony last night.

  At least my concern for the child gave me the courage to stand up to him. He set the gangplank swaying as he came up it and a moment later he had vaulted through the opening in the rail to land lightly on the deck. When he saw me waiting for him, close at hand, he displayed his exasperation at once.

  “So this is where you’ve got to? I guessed as much since you’re a captain’s daughter! But after this you might do us the courtesy of letting us know where you’re off to.”

  “I had no idea anyone remembered my existence,” I told him. “When I saw your mother this morning she did not speak to me. And I’m sure you’ve given me scant thought since last night when I served your purpose in an effort to secure your inheritance.”

  What a dark-browed, glowering man he was, I thought, half afraid that he would give way to his temper and reach out to give me a good shaking. If he did, I would fight back, I told myself—and was astonished at such a thought. I had never felt like this before.

  “We’ll not discuss the matter now,” he said roughly. “My mother wants you. Come along to the house at once.”

  I shook my head. “Not until Laurel is safely on deck again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I pointed to the black oblong of the open hatch. “She’s down there in that dark, frightening place, and I don’t mean to budge until you’ve brought her up. Apparently no one troubled to tell her what happened last night. She’s just learned the truth and I’m sure it has been a dreadful shock.”

  He had the grace to look startled and perhaps faintly apologetic. “Then I’ve waited too long. I was trying to find a way to break this to her gently, since she has a great antipathy toward you.”

  “Thanks to your mother, and to you!”

  The hint of apology was gone. “We will discuss this another time. For the moment let the child stay where she is until she is ready to come up. She knows this ship like the inside of her own pocket. There are lanterns down there if she wants a light. She’ll come out when she’s hungry enough.”

  He turned toward the gangplank, clearly expecting me to follow.

  “I’ll go after her myself,” I said.

  In spite of his angry astonishment, I started down the ladder. As I descended I found it was not wholly dark below, for the square of sunlight thrown through the stair opening above showed me an area of cabins fore and aft, an open door to the ship’s galley and other quarters stretching dimly away. For the first time I sensed the curious metamorphosis that was always to occur when I descended into the depths of the Pride. Above decks all was sunny air and gleaming spars and a salt sea wind. Below there was a smell of old rot, of rancid oil and spaces too long airless. Above decks she was a well-kept ship; below she seemed a neglected derelict. I had never before known what claustrophobia meant, but I understood it now. The very timbers seemed to curve in upon me and I had thoughts of sinking ships, of sailors trapped and helpless while water poured in upon them from above.

  I called to Laurel and my voice echoed hollowly along the passageway. Now I could make out still another opening to the lower hold. As I moved reluctantly toward it, light flickered below. Laurel must have lighted a lantern and gone down still another level. I did not wait to see if the man above intended to follow me, but started down a second, steeper ladder.

  By the time my feet touched the boards of the lower passage in the very belly of the ship, the light had been extinguished and here the darkness was complete. I had no knowledge of which way to turn. The blackness of a pit hemmed me in and there was that queer-smelling airlessness in which the odors of wood and dust and a lingering aura of whale oil intermingled. I called to Laurel again, but she did not answer.

  Then, to my relief, a light moved above me and I saw that Brock was swinging down the ladder with a storm lantern in his hand. The shadows leaped away to gather in far corners and for the first time I could see what lay immediately about me. Huge, curving timbers reinforced the bulging sides of the ship, like the bare ribs of a whale rising about me. A wooden catwalk formed a foot passage on either side of the center structure. Everywhere else the bottom of the ship was filled with broken rock for ballast, in absence of any cargo. Forward stood a row of casks, empty now, but perhaps once the redolent containers of oil. Even with the coming of light the sense of menacing oppression lay heavily upon me.

  Brock came down the last steps and stood behind me, holding his lantern high. On a pile of umber-colored rocks nearby lay whitened bones—the skull bones of a small whale. I longed for the clean sea air above. But first Laurel must be found.

  Her father shouted for her, setting the echoes crashing eerily about us. Forward in the prow of the ship a scrabbling sound reached us as the child tried to crawl farther away over the ballast stones. At once her father swung the lantern in the direction of the sound and we could see her curled up against the very timbers of the ship’s side, her knees drawn into a huddle, her face hidden against them. I knew her father meant to shout at her again, and I ran forward along the walk and called to her more softly.

  “Laurel, come with us now. We need to talk to you in a more comfortable place. It’s too dank and dusty and dreadful smelling down here. Come along, dear—let’s go back to the deck.”

  She raised her head and blinked in the glare of the lantern. “I don’t want to go back! I won’t have you for my mother! I’m going to stay here until—until I turn into bones like that whale!”

  Her father snorted impatiently. “That will take a long while and I’m not going to stay down here and turn to bones with you. Get along above now and no more nonsense. Why aren’t you at your lessons?”

  I whirled about on the narrow walk to face the man behind me. “Will you stop shouting! You’re only frightening the child. Be quiet a moment, please, and let me talk to her.”

  He looked as if one of the timbers had rebuked him, and was surprised enough to fall silent.

  “Please come,” I said to Laurel, holding out my hand.

  “If I come he’ll beat me,” the child said.

  “I’ve never beaten her in my life!” Brock shouted, angrily. “Get out of there now or I’ll come after you.”

  I blocked his way with determination. “He shan’t beat
you and he shan’t punish you,” I assured the little girl, angry enough to be bold about my promises. “If I am to be a part of your family—which is something I never asked to be—then I’m going to have a voice in what happens from now on. If I’m to be your stepmother, then I’ll have some say about you. Do come out, Laurel dear. Come home with me.”

  I think she did not really want to remain in this oppressive, stale-smelling place. She waited a moment longer to see if her father would contradict my words. When he merely breathed heavily behind me, sputtering under his breath, she crawled toward me over the rough stones and pulled herself upright on the walk. Then she ignored my outstretched hand and ran past us, edging around her father, and scrambling up the ladder as fast as she could go. By the time we had climbed after her and stood on deck again, she was far away, racing toward the bluff with torn petticoats flying. I filled my lungs with air, glad to be above decks again.

  Brock watched the child go, scowling. “A fine influence you’re going to have,” he said to me. “Encouraging her in disobedience! Don’t take too much upon yourself—Mrs. McLean.”

  All the fight went out of me abruptly. How little I could aid the child, when I could do nothing to aid myself. I bent to brush tawny dust from my mantle and then walked toward the gangplank. He reached the rail ahead of me and held out his hand. I did not look at him as he helped me to the dock. Nevertheless, I was acutely aware of him and I withdrew my hand as quickly as possible from his touch. I would have hurried ahead, had I not become aware of the labored effort he must make because of his leg. It was only considerate to slow my steps, whether I wished his company or not. However, as I was to learn later, Brock McLean was more than sensitive toward any effort by others to accommodate to his slower gait. He could hurry when he chose, but he did not often choose.

  “Go ahead,” he said roughly. “My mother is waiting for you in her room. I’ve something to do down here.”

  I left him in relief and returned to the house by way of the path up the bluff. When I neared the top I paused for breath in my headlong flight and looked below me. Brock stood near the water’s edge, his back to the cliff, looking out toward the harbor’s entrance and the ocean. There seemed to be something of defiance in his pose—as though he were a man beaten down, yet not wholly bested by fate. There was nothing I could do about his problems and I had enough of my own. Having recovered my breath, I hurried on to the Bascomb house.

  There I went first to my room to fling off my things. Next I knocked on Laurel’s door and when there was no answer, I looked inside. The child was not there and I could take no time to search for her. I only hoped she would not hide herself away in some other strange place before I had been able to talk with her sensibly. I had begun to fancy myself in the light of Laurel’s champion—the defender of a mistreated child; someone to stand between her and a cruel parent.

  But now I must present myself to Mrs. McLean and I went reluctantly along the hall to her room at the front of the house. The moment she called to me to come in and I stepped into her presence, I could sense her bitter resentment toward me. She stood beside a bed on which several black dresses had been laid. She herself was already gowned in full mourning and the unrelieved black made her skin seem sallow, and her pale eyes more washed of color than ever. Behind her a small fire burned in the grate, lending a secret whispering to the otherwise silent room.

  I was aware of wallpaper printed with some prickly purple bloom that seemed a fitting background for the woman herself. Then the portrait that hung above the mantel caught my eye and I saw nothing else. This, I knew, must be Andrew McLean.

  The artist had not painted his subject in the role of sea captain, for he wore the garments a gentleman might wear at home. His black jacket had wide lapels of velvet, and his collar stood high above a wide black tie. There were pearl studs down his shirt front and double strands of gold chain looped across his vest. But it was the man’s face that arrested my attention.

  He was an older Brock, with thick, rather curly black hair combed carelessly back from a broad forehead. The eyes look piercingly into mine and the mouth was set in a stern line above a square, cleft chin. On a table before the seated figure drawings for parts of a ship had been spread, and he held a pencil in his hand. It was as if he had just looked up from his work to question the observer’s purpose with him. He looked like a man who would be strong-willed and easily angered—again like his son. I found myself wondering what Sybil McLean had been like when she had married this man so many years ago.

  Now, as I stared at the portrait of her husband, fascinated by its lifelike quality, she waited in watchful silence.

  “My father admired him tremendously,” I said. “He spoke often of Andrew McLean’s genius in the designing of ships.”

  The woman who had been Andrew’s wife looked at me with her strange pale eyes in which no fire burned—though sensed that fire was there, banked and hidden, burning somewhere deep within her. There was a volcanic hint of it in her voice when she spoke, contradicting my words.

  “Nathaniel Heath hated my husband. He was wickedly jealous of his talents. If Nathaniel ever said anything good of Andrew in his later years, it must have been to subdue the accusations of his own conscience.”

  There was nothing I could say in the face of such bitterness. I wondered if the woman were a little mad. Every word she spoke to me, every gesture she made in my direction seemed to hint at fury restrained behind her cold, pale stare.

  I did not look at the picture again, but moved toward the dresses on the bed. “Your son said you wished to see me.”

  She clasped her hands before her, the fingers intertwining. “You must be suitably dressed for the funeral this afternoon. I notice that you are not wearing black for your father.”

  “My father hated to see me in black,” I told her.

  She gestured toward the bed. “I have found a few things that you may be able to wear. The style is not the latest, but I think that hardly matters. It is important to show proper respect for Captain Obadiah in public. There will be enough talk about this sudden wedding as it is.”

  I picked up one of the frocks. “I’ll take the dresses to my room and try them on.”

  “Try them on here,” Mrs. McLean ordered. “I want to see how they look on you.”

  I did not want to disrobe before her critical stare, but I began unhooking my waist from the back of the collar down. She did not help me. When the hooks were freed, I slipped my arms from the sleeves, dropped the dress to the floor and stepped out of it in my ribboned corset cover and white petticoats. I disliked revealing the scar on my bare shoulder and I put up my hand to cover its ugliness from her gaze. To my distress, she came toward me at once and snatched my hand away.

  “What is that? What have you done to yourself?”

  “It’s only a birthmark,” I said. That wasn’t true, but I did not want her to think that my aunt had been negligent in her care of me. The accident had occurred when I was very young.

  Mrs. McLean challenged my words at once. “It is not a birthmark. It is obviously the scar from a burn,” she said, and shocked me by reaching out a forefinger to trace the area of the mark with a light touch that sent a shiver through me. It was as if she took some perverse pleasure in her discovery.

  “How ugly it makes you,” she went on. “My son will be repelled. He cannot bear physical marring. The contrast with her will be all the greater.”

  I had jerked away from the touch of her hand with a repugnance of my own. The thought of having Brock McLean see the scar on my naked shoulder left me shaken. I snatched at a word she had spoken to distract her from my distress.

  “Her?” I repeated.

  Again she gestured toward the bed. “Rose. My son’s first wife. These are her gowns, of course. She was rather small, as you are, but plump and well made. She had a perfect little body with the creamiest of skin—not a blotch on her anywhere. I know. I washed her myself after she died.”

  I cau
ght up one of the dresses and pulled it over my head, and in the instant while my face was hidden I struggled to regain my Self-control. This woman wanted to upset me, and I must not let her succeed.

  “She was a good deal larger than I am,” I murmured, wriggling into the sleeves, dropping the fuller skirt of another day over my petticoats.

  Once more Mrs. McLean descended on me. She reached beneath my arms and pulled handfuls of the goods tight on either side, smiling faintly, as if she enjoyed what she was doing.

  “I shall take in the seams for you,” she said. “You’re not as full in the bosom as Rose was. I’m sure it must be distressing to wear her clothes, but I don’t know what else we can manage when there is so little time.”

  “Why should I mind?” I asked. “I never knew her. She means nothing to me.”

  “Do you think Brock won’t remember all he has lost when he sees you in a dress of Rose’s? She had these things made when her father died. Only a year or so before her own death, poor young thing. Of lung fever. It was a great tragedy. They were so perfectly suited to each other, she and Brock. He has been a broken man ever since.”

  I pulled myself from her grasping hands. The woman must indeed be mad to say such things. Why did she hate me so? Whatever the cause, I must make my own feelings clear at once and free myself from any false position. But her behavior had upset me and my voice was not altogether steady when I spoke.

  “Please understand that what has happened in the past does not concern me at all. I am not in love with your son. I had no desire to marry him. His devotion to his first wife is something I can only applaud. I’m sorry if wearing her dresses will remind him of his unhappiness. If you think too much harm will be done, perhaps it would be better for me to wear my own clothes and forget about dressing in black.”

  She did not advance upon me again, but went to a chair beside the fire and seated herself well away from me. She seemed not at all taken aback by my rejection of her words. The sly smile still curved her lips as though the hoped-for prospect of my suffering entertained her mightily.