“You could divorce Giles and let him take the boy. It would save the much more unpleasant way. And what difference would it make to you? You’d be able to marry Hadley Rikers, and—”
She whirled about on the sand beside me and that frightening wildness was upon her again. “I can have Hadley without marriage. And I’ll never let Giles go—never!”
“Then he’ll have to take steps to force your hand.”
“So that you can have him, little cousin? Oh, no! He belongs to me and that’s the way it’s going to be, whether he likes it or not.”
I saw something in her face then—saw the truth. She had no affection for him. She would not try to make him a good wife, but she meant to hold him somehow, no matter how hurtfully, and at whatever cost. She had never been able to give up anything once possessed. All the ruthlessness that was part of her nature reached out toward him with a relentless grasp. The only way Giles could win would be if he were as ruthless as she—and I was not sure he would ever reach that point. There was always Richard to be considered. That was where she could defeat Giles, because if it was to her interest she would not trouble to think of the boy.
“Well—you’ve had your talk,” she said. “And it’s been a waste of time, hasn’t it? Except that now you know a little better how I feel. You lost Giles a long time ago, my foolish little cousin, and there’s nothing left for you to do but accept the fact—as you should have done years earlier.”
“I don’t accept anything that is harmful to my son,” I told her.
She gave me a quick look in which there was a certain disbelieving surprise. “I suppose that’s true, isn’t it? You really are trying to think of Richard first. Even though mistakenly. Richard is fine, and he loves me dearly. He loves me as he loves no one else—not even his father.”
“A child’s love changes easily,” I said. “If his circumstances were changed, he would quickly—”
Elise broke in on my words. “I know a lovely thing I could do!” She reached out to touch me lightly on the arm, to draw her fingers along my skin from wrist to elbow in a way that made my flesh crawl. “I could tell Richard the truth about who he is. I could tell him that he’s not my son, but yours. I could tell him the trick his father has played upon him, with your help.”
“You’d never do that!” I cried. “You’d never risk—”
“Oh, yes, I would. Think about it, darling. Use that clever little mind of yours. Look at the ramifications. If you press me too closely, if you force my hand—that is exactly what I will do.”
She turned from me and ran up the beach toward the wooden steps that led toward the house. I walked along the sand slowly in her wake, my mind coming fully alive to the dreadful possibilities of the thing she threatened.
It would be the cruelest of acts to Richard to tell him that the mother he adored was not his real mother at all. To tell him that his real mother was a woman he did not even like. And I knew that Elise would tell him in a way that would hurt him most, that would make him think the truth was too terrible to be borne. She was right about his being a sensitive, intelligent boy. To see his father in this new light, to give up every right to the woman he believed to be his mother, would be to set loose destructive forces in his nature that might never be mended. The damage would grow worse as he grew older. In today’s world bastardy might not matter as much as it had in the past—except to the bastard. With the years, Richard’s knowledge that he was illegitimate and not the true heir of the island through Elise, would become more and more painful to realize. He might well learn to hate his father, and he would easily hate me. That he might hate Elise as well was a risk she was clearly willing to take. Basically, to Elise, Richard was a tool to be used. As her son, as her heir to the island, she would hold him to her. But if there was a greater gain to be made by telling him the truth, she would snatch at that gain ruthlessly. It might even be that he would not hate her because of the way she would handle the telling. She might so win his sympathy that she would come out of this as the one person who could still hold his love. She could play the role of the misused to perfection, I was sure, and she might very well bind Richard to her.
If she chose that course, there was nothing I could do. Nothing Giles could do. The damage to the boy would be deadly and disastrous.
I crossed the sand toward the rocky barrier and followed the stepping-stones. I felt shaken, desperate—and completely helpless.
9
For Sunday noon Elise had planned a picnic. There were not enough horses to go around, but those who had mounts were to follow the trail to the ruins of Bellevue, the old slave hospital which had served the island more than a hundred years ago. The others would go by car. Paul Courtney kept a horse at The Bitterns, so he and Floria went with Elise and Amalie. Giles rode, and so did Richard on his pony, but Charles no longer kept a horse, so he took his car, and I went with him.
I had no heart for the camaraderie of a picnic, but I knew I must go. I was the watcher now. I was the frightened observer on the sidelines. My nerves, my emotions, had been tightened to high tension, but there seemed nothing helpful I could do to lessen the strain of these new fears.
The riders were to go on ahead, and Charles and I watched them mount. Floria had dressed herself in the Western clothes she affected for riding—a fringed jacket and tight yellow riding pants that flared at the ankles. Paul, a quiet contrast in gray riding clothes, did not seem to mind Floria’s giddy love for color.
Elise and Amalie both looked marvelous on horseback in their different ways. Aunt Amalie wore beige-colored jodhpurs, short boots and a proper riding coat of a darker beige than her trousers, while Elise was informal in jeans and a short-sleeved blouse and sweater. The two of them sat their horses well, straight in the saddle—a handsome pair. I watched Elise and ached with despair. She was so thoroughly in command. She always had been. Without conscience, or rules she needed to abide by, she could go her own dangerous way.
I think Giles had no heart for a picnic that day, any more than I had, but he was keeping up an appearance, and at least he and Richard rode together comfortably as father and son. So far Elise had said nothing to the boy, and I tried to tell myself that she never would. She had wanted to torment and frighten me, but it was unlikely that she would do anything so drastic unless she regarded the situation as desperate. Which meant that I must keep it from becoming desperate—at whatever cost to Giles and me.
Charles and I watched the riders on their way, and then got into his car. Giles’s father had seemed somewhat subdued for the last day or two, and I knew that he was disappointed because his plan for recovering the pirate brooch had not worked. The metal box rested in its hiding place, and every day at the appointed time Richard went to look inside the big tomb. But so far the box remained empty and no move had been made to return the brooch.
The car followed a dirt road that wound off through the island toward Bellevue, and was a longer way around than the course the horses would take. We drove slowly because in places the road was overgrown with vegetation, and once or twice there were dead saplings that had fallen across our path and had to be dragged to the side of the road. Charles complained over the way much of the island was returning to the wilds—which was the way Elise liked it. I gathered there had been some controversy between them over what Elise called his “manicuring efforts.” Nevertheless, we reached the old ruins well ahead of the others.
I had not seen this place since I was a child, and I got out of the car with a sense of nostalgia flooding through me. Long ago, on happier days, we had come here for picnics. I could remember a time when I had adored both Elise and Giles, and when it was a joy to go on any outing that included them. Now I dreaded the afternoon in Elise’s company, and found it difficult to know how to behave in her presence. It was necessary to dissemble so that no one would suspect that a crisis had been reached between us, but that was hard to do when I despised
her so thoroughly. She would know how I felt, and she would laugh secretly and enjoy all the more the power she held over me.
Charles said, “I’ll stay in the car until the others arrive. No use making myself uncomfortable until I have to. But you can get out and explore, if you like, Lacey. I know this place must have memories for you.”
I took him at his word and slipped out of the car. He had parked a little way off from the ruin, and I walked around its high, crumbling walls and was quickly out of sight.
Bellevue had a proud, humanitarian history. If anything in slavery could be called humanitarian. It had been a proper hospital for the Hampton Island people in its day, with a visiting doctor who made the rounds regularly. Three of its outer walls were partially standing. They no longer reached two stories high, as they had once done, but they marked the boundaries of the lower floor of the building. Within these three walls window shapes stood open to the weather, and in the center wall an immense fireplace gave evidence of a once warm hearth, its chimney pushing steeply into the sky. At the upper level a second fireplace was still visible.
The front wall that had housed the main door had crumbled to something no more than waist high, with the door space left open where it had originally been. Inside, tabby foundations marked where dividing walls had once stood, separating the structure into two large downstairs rooms. Once there had been two more such rooms upstairs, forming wards for the patients. I stepped through the broken doorway and found that the spell of the old place was upon me, just as it had been when I was a child.
Grass and vegetation had been reasonably trimmed here, and it was possible to walk about the two rooms and think of the days that had been. Dorothy Hampton, mistress of The Bitterns at that time, had been a kind and selfless woman. History had it that she had hated the slavery her husband enforced and that she had built the hospital to care for the people who worked for him in raising Sea Island cotton.
But for me, I remembered more recent days—the time when I was a little girl. I walked beside one wall and found a chunk of fallen tabby masonry that made a seat. Watching out for snakes, I sat down on its top, resting in the shade of a tall pine tree that had grown inside the ruins of the hospital. I tried to conjure up in my mind the memory of a former picnic here, when I had been happy with my secret love for Giles, asking nothing more than that he look at me kindly now and then, and accept with pleasure the small gifts I brought him.
But I could not think of these things for long because Elise’s face interposed itself as I had seen her yesterday, walking beside me along the beach. A face alive with a recklessness of purpose which threatened everything that mattered to me in life—threatened the destruction of those I loved. What was I to do? What move was I to make?
Aunt Amalie was no good to me now. She had already pitted herself against Elise when it came to Hadley Rikers, and she had apparently lost. She would be frantic now, if she knew of her daughter’s threat against Richard, yet she would be as helpless as Giles or I to control Elise in whatever she chose to do.
I heard the riders when they arrived—heard the neighing of the horses, and the stomping of hoofs, the voices calling to Charles. I heard Richard’s tones, high with pleased excitement, but I did not go out to meet them. Somehow I had to steady myself first, brace myself for each new encounter with Elise.
As I sat there, something flashed past the opening to the ruined building—perhaps someone on horseback. I caught no more than a streak of movement from the corner of my eye, and I paid no attention, lost in my unhappy thoughts. I rested my arms upon my knees and my head upon my arms—and was thus mercilessly exposed to what happened next.
There was a sound over my head, but I looked upward too late for my own safety. The falling block of tabby struck me on the side of the head—and then I saw nothing at all.
How long I lay unconscious before Giles found me, I don’t know. It seemed that his voice came to me from a great distance and that I heard him calling my name before I felt his arms raising me, pulling me back to consciousness.
The others were all around me. I lay on a stretch of grass well away from the ruins, where he had carried me, and someone was bathing my face with cool water. I opened my eyes and looked up at Aunt Amalie. At once I tried to struggle to a sitting position, but she pressed me back with a firm hand.
“Stay still, Lacey dear. Everything’s all right. You’ve had a bad blow, but you’ll be fine now. Giles thinks a chunk of loose masonry struck you.”
I turned my head slightly and saw Giles looking down at me in anxiety, saw Richard beside him, his expression unexpectedly sympathetic. My son had kindness in him, I thought dreamily. He would not want to see anyone hurt. I pushed Aunt Amalie’s hands away more determinedly and sat up.
“Something fell from the wall,” I said. “It struck me on the head.” I looked from one to another as they watched me.
Floria stood near the broken doorway, holding her horse by the bridle, with Paul beside her. Beyond them, Elise was still mounted, watching with interest, but little sympathy. Charles had apparently decided to ride, and he was on Paul’s horse. He too watched me from the saddle, more anxious than Elise.
“I know that wall is cracked along the top,” Charles said. “I’ve meant to get a man down here to cement it in place, or else break away the loosened portions.”
Giles stepped inside the ruins and picked up a good-sized piece of tabby—the one that must have struck me. If I had not looked up when I did, the impact might have been full on the back of my head, instead of striking me a glancing blow.
“I wonder why it came loose just then?” Giles said.
There was no answer to that and I looked fearfully at the broken walls. There was no wind. I had not touched the tabby. There would seem to have been nothing to jar the piece loose at that particular moment.
Charles got a bit creakily out of the saddle and came over to me. “Can you walk, Lacey? Can you get as far as the car? I’m going to drive you into Malvern to see Dr. Lane. We can’t let a blow like that pass without an examination.”
I tried to say that I was feeling better, that it wasn’t necessary, but Giles added his own plea.
“Do go with him, Lacey. Father is right.”
I still felt a little numb. I was confused and worried and doubtful. It was better to get away from the others and go with Charles. There was a swelling lump near my temple, and my head ached a little.
Charles helped me to the car and I got into the front seat. We were nearly silent on the drive across the island and causeway. Now and then he asked how I was feeling and I murmured that I was all right.
I was not all right. My thoughts were increasingly in a turmoil, swinging back and forth from one pole to the other. I was remembering that moment when something had flashed past the opening to the ruins—something I had not seen clearly. Had it been someone on horseback going around the outer wall? Someone who could easily have reached that loose chunk of tabby from the height of a saddle? But that was fanciful. This was surely a thought that grew out of my fears, and the knowledge of past pranks. If this had been intended, however, it was no prank. It would then be a serious attempt to injure me. Still—loosened stones could fall from a wall for no reason except their own disintegration, and this might have been only that. I mustn’t alarm myself needlessly. Yet all the while my thoughts continued without restraint, following the pendulum swing.
In spite of the painful bruise on my head, I felt a sense of disbelief. It seemed impossible to think that someone hated me so much that my life had been threatened. Elise might torment me in other ways—but would she go this far? I didn’t know. I only knew that I must find the courage and wisdom to solve the insoluble. This time I could not run away. I must stay and see it through, whatever happened. There must still be something I could do besides giving up entirely—giving up my love, and giving up Richard to Elise’s merciless hands.
At the doctor’s office the results were reassuring. An X ray was taken as a matter of precaution, and we were back at Sea Oaks long before the riders returned from their picnic.
The lump on my head subsided in the next few days, but my anxieties did not lessen. Everyone was kind to me. Perhaps a little too kind—and I was distrustful.
The days ran on toward the evening of the Camelot ball, and preparations were well under way. All the chandeliers were washed, and every crystal brought to its shining perfection. The smell of lemon polish pervaded everything, and extra help came over from the mainland to assist the regular servants in the readying of the house.
There had been no further untoward incidents of any kind. Elise treated me as she always had, except for a certain slyness and watchfulness that reminded me of our walk on the beach. For the most part, her attention was given to getting ready for the ball. The occasion had always been enormously important to her, and she gave it her full consideration.
I was not sleeping particularly well at this time, and one night a few days before the ball I was awakened by some sound from the corridor. My small clock told me it was nearly two in the morning. These days I found myself nervous about anything unexplained, and I slipped out of bed, threw a robe about me, and softly opened my door.
Richard stood at the head of the stairs, fully dressed in blue jeans, sweater and sneakers, one hand on the banister, as if he was about to descend. The sound of my door made him turn his head. He frowned in displeasure, raised a finger to his lips, warning me to be silent, and started down the stairs.
I followed him quietly to the hall below. Only the usual night light burned at the foot of the stairs. The other doors showed dark, and there was no one in the library. Now that we were out of hearing of the upper hall, he turned to me angrily.
“Go back to bed,” he said. “Leave me alone.”
I looked at him for a moment and something strange happened to me. It was as if I were a little girl again, remembering my own escapades on this very island. For the first time I could meet him on his own ground.
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