Lost Island

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  We went downstairs in silence and saw no one on the way. I kept a firm hold on Richard’s hand, lest he dart away from me, but he gave no sign of interest in making any sort of move. He came with me docilely, his face blank of all emotion.

  “Let’s go over near the marsh,” I said. “Let’s get away from the house.”

  He spoke only once on the way across the burying ground toward the open land near The Bitterns.

  “I won’t let him spank me,” he said.

  “Perhaps he won’t want to, once he understands why you were cutting up Elise’s pictures.”

  We reached the grassy bank just above where the marsh began and I sat on the grass and drew Richard down beside me.

  “This is a good place to come to when you’re feeling stormy,” I said. “Remember the time you found me here?”

  “I don’t feel stormy,” he told me. “I don’t feel anything.”

  I had released his hand, knowing that he would not run away from me now, but I took it again and held it lightly. He did not resist.

  “Sometimes it helps to talk,” I said. “It helps to release all the things that are bothering us. I don’t believe that you aren’t feeling anything. Perhaps it would be better if you could talk to your father—”

  “He’s not my father,” Richard said.

  I kept very still for a few moments, too shocked to speak. What had happened? What damage had Elise done before she died?

  “Why do you say that?” I asked at last. “Of course he’s your father.”

  Richard twined his fingers into a clump of long grass and pulled it out by the roots, flung it down the bank toward the marsh. Then he looked at me in a strange, frightened way, and when he spoke it was not about his father.

  “I killed her, you know. It’s my fault that she fell on those rocks and died.”

  “Oh, Richard,” I said softly, “of course you didn’t kill her. You were nowhere about. You were hiding in the oak tree. It doesn’t help to make up things like that to torment yourself.”

  “I’m not making it up. I was in the oak tree, and I was wishing her dead. I was wishing it as hard as I could. And she fell and died. So it was my fault.”

  I looked into the small white face beside me and saw that his lips were working and his eyes had filled with tears. The blankness had dissolved, but this was a terrible thing he believed, and it was not to be lightly dismissed, however fantastic.

  “Sometimes we all wish injury to someone else when we’re angry and upset. But we don’t really mean it when we’re quiet again. And just wishing has never made it so.”

  He threw me a quick look, as though he wanted to reach for the hope I held out to him. Then he shook his head grimly in disbelief.

  “Perhaps you can tell me about it,” I said.

  Silently he yanked up another handful of grass, and this time he spread the blades out on the ground beside him, as if he sorted them. I watched him at his concentrated, meaningless work. A long time seemed to pass, and then suddenly, in a burst of words which came out so quickly that I was hard put to keep up with them, he began to tell me what had happened.

  After Elise had called him downstairs the night of the ball, and sent him with a message to Hadley Rikers, Richard had found him and told him that Elise was waiting in the trophy room. Then, curious as any small boy, he had slipped outside and gone along the veranda until he could hide himself in the shadows just outside the French door to the room where they were meeting.

  From his words, I could reconstruct what he had seen, as though I had been there. I could look into that small square room with its lighted glass cases, its display of past equestrian triumphs. I could see Hadley come into the room in his hunter’s dress, and take Guinevere in his arms.

  Richard had watched in shock and indignation. He had a sense of propriety toward Elise, and an utter loyalty to his father. When Hadley began to kiss her intimately, Richard had been possessed of a wild, thoroughly male anger. An anger made up in good part, perhaps, of jealousy. He rushed into the room and attacked Hadley with all the strength in his slender body. He punched and kicked fiercely, while Hadley held him off, laughing.

  Elise did not laugh. She was as furious as Richard. She jerked the boy away from his attack and slapped him full across the face. At the moment, I think Richard hardly felt the slap. All his attention was upon Hadley.

  “I’m going to call my father!” he shouted. “He won’t let you kiss my mother!”

  This fully intended threat must have been the last thing Elise wanted. Her angers were uncontrollable, once risen, and she gave full head to her own impulse. She put both hands on Richard’s shoulders and shook him until his head snapped back.

  “You listen to me!” she cried. “I’m not your mother. I never have been. I’m not your mother at all!”

  This time her words penetrated the red haze of his anger. He stood suddenly quiet beneath her hands.

  “What did you say?” he asked her.

  This was not the way she had meant to tell him, but she must have been beyond caring.

  “I’m not your mother,” she repeated. “I was going to tell you the truth tomorrow, but I’ve told you now instead. And I’ll tell you something else you may not like—”

  If he had stayed to listen, perhaps she would have blurted out the truth about me. But Richard had heard enough. He bolted from the room—out the French door and around the veranda to the wide portico at the front of the house. There he climbed into the first hiding place that offered—the low, strong branch of the live oak that overhung the balustrade.

  Hadley came looking for him, and walked up and down the veranda calling to the boy. Richard kept very still in his hidden shelter. Elise did not look for him at all. Perhaps she was still beyond caring about what she had done. Perhaps she was already thinking of what she would say to Giles when she confronted him on the beach. Perhaps she even meant to tell him the truth about Richard that night.

  Beside me now, my son huddled on the grass, rocking himself back and forth with his arms clasped about his knees. Before us, stretching endlessly along the river, the marshes lay dreaming in the sun, and a heron waded where the water was shallow.

  Richard went on again, his voice low, with no longer any hurry in it. “She wasn’t my mother at all. She only pretended to be my mother. Ever since I was a baby she pretended.”

  I spoke softly. “And because of that, for a little while you hated her?”

  He nodded, ducking his head. “I wished she was dead. I wished she could be punished for fooling me.”

  “Feeling like that is understandable,” I said. “But now you don’t have to go on hating her. And you have to realize that whatever you thought you were wishing at the time, your thoughts couldn’t hurt her. She fell because she tripped on her dress. Or because a stone was loose in the wall. Only because of something like that.”

  He looked at me with bleak hope, and I knew I must give him whatever I could.

  “You have to remember that when she told you this, she was angry too. Like you, she said and thought things she didn’t mean. But she raised you from the time when you were a baby. She loved you and you loved her. Which is what being a mother and son really means. Now that you’re not angry any more, you can go on loving her.”

  There was a film of tears in his eyes, but he blinked it away before they could fall. “If she wasn’t really my mother, then he isn’t my father either. He—”

  “That’s not true,” I said quickly. “That’s not true at all. You have only to look at your own face in the mirror to know that you are Giles Severn’s son. You’ve got his eyes—the very same green color. And you look alike around the mouth. Even your hair grows back in the same way, though yours is a different color.”

  This time the tears spilled over, and I let him cry. He sat looking away from me across the marsh, with tears s
treaming down his face, and now and then a small sob punctuating his weeping. After a time, I found a clean handkerchief in my slacks pocket and handed it to him.

  He took it with a strange politeness. “Thank you, Cousin Lacey.”

  I wished that I could tell him to stop being grown up and brave. I wished I could hold out my arms to him, so that he would come into them and cry himself out. But he did not know me well enough. It had to be sufficient for me that I had offered him comfort, that I had been able to break through that cold, deadly guard he had held against the world to conceal not only his terrible hurt, but what he regarded as his own blame.

  When there were only a few tears left, I stood up. “You must talk to your grandmother about this,” I said. “She will help you to understand.”

  Once more he shook his head. “She isn’t my grandmother. She is her mother—so she’s not my grandmother at all.”

  “You mustn’t look at it that way,” I told him firmly. “My Aunt Amalie is as much your grandmother as a real grandmother could be. You know how much she loves you. You mustn’t hurt her by saying things like that.”

  Again he seemed to take comfort from my words. He stood up beside me, the tear streaks drying on his cheeks, and we began to walk slowly back toward the burying ground. Under our feet the sandy soil was brown with puffy seed balls from the sweet gums, and the loblolly pines whispered high over our heads.

  When we neared the old tombs, Richard seemed to come to himself, and to make an effort. “I haven’t looked for the pirate brooch for a long time. Wait for me, Cousin Lacey, and I’ll go down there now.”

  I waited in a place where sunlight fell through the trees and warmed me. My nerves felt as though they had been pulled as tight as racket strings. I didn’t know how I would ever loosen them again. But at least I had given my son what little I could. I seemed to have stopped wanting so much so greedily. What I wanted now was Richard’s well-being. What I wanted was to see him grow up without the strains that Elise had put upon him.

  “Cousin Lacey! Cousin Lacey!” Richard came running up into sunlight from the black cave of the big tomb. In his hands he held the box that had once harbored the brooch. “Cousin Lacey, the pirate brooch is here! Someone has put it back!”

  He opened the box for me to see, and there upon crumbling, yellowed tissue lay a great winking green gem. Sunlight splintered in its faceted sides and shone from the gleaming gold in which it was set. All around the central stone smaller diamonds glittered, but the emerald held sway.

  “Someone put it back,” Richard repeated: “I must show Grandfather Charles right away. Come with me, Cousin Lacey.”

  I could have blessed the stone and whoever had slipped it back into its hiding place. This was the final touch to make Richard himself again. He would not be free from the pain of losing Elise, but now he could permit himself to be distracted from pain, as a child should be.

  When I would have started toward the house, however, he drew back, suddenly hesitant, as though he had something further on his mind.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He looked at me almost shyly. “I’m sorry about that time at the house.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I admitted.

  “My moth—she wanted me to do it to upset you. So I hid that other brooch in your things. I—I wouldn’t do it now, Cousin Lacey.”

  I gave him a quick hug. “I know you wouldn’t. But thank you for telling me, Richard.”

  His smile had a certain sweetness in it, and we walked back to the house in comradely fashion. We were friends.

  As we hurried up one curving flight of steps and went inside, Floria met us at the foot of the stairs. Her expression was stiff with disapproval, but a lifetime of released emotion had intervened with Richard since his Aunt Floria had shaken him a little while ago. For the moment he had forgotten what had happened.

  “Look!” he cried, and held out the box to her. “Someone has put back the pirate brooch.”

  She had the intelligence to sense the change in him, and she did not mention his destructive actions of a little while before. She took the box and stared as I had stared at the fabulous green stone in the brooch. Then she gave the box back to him.

  “Your grandfather and grandmother will be pleased. Let’s go show it to them right away.”

  Aunt Amalie was upstairs, lying down. Her bedroom door was open, and Charles was standing near a window. Richard ran into the room, exclaiming in his excitement as he carried the box to his grandfather.

  Charles turned from the window as Floria and I watched, and took the brooch carefully from the box, the smile breaking slowly across his face. He carried the brooch to Amalie and held it out to her.

  “Look what Richard has brought us,” he said.

  Aunt Amalie turned her head listlessly upon the pillow. She looked at the brooch without interest and closed her eyes.

  Charles seemed to understand. “Oh, I know it can’t matter a great deal to you now, my dear. But it matters to me. Not merely because of its value, but because it is a symbol of the island and both our families. Besides, finding it clears the air. It doesn’t matter who put it back, so long as it has been returned.”

  “I haven’t looked out there for several days,” Richard put in eagerly. “I just remembered this afternoon—and there it was.”

  Aunt Amalie was more interested in the boy than in the brooch. She held out her hand to him. “You’re feeling better, aren’t you, darling?”

  He threw me a quick look. “I—I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  I understood his look. There was a pleading in it. He did not want to face the emotional strain of telling his grandmother what he had told me. She would make over him, undoubtedly, and perhaps she would weaken his hard-won courage. The hurt and strain of readjustment still lay ahead of him, and he would need all the help he could get. I would talk to her myself. I would try to pave the way for the understanding and love that must now be given him by those he loved. It must not be an overwhelming, smothering affection, but a warmth that would both enfold him and leave him free. What was more, before I left the island tomorrow I must tell Giles what I had gone to the beach to tell him the night of the ball. I must tell him soon. I would tell him tonight. The things Richard had said had released me, as well.

  Aunt Amalie accepted Richard’s words without argument. Now that all the things which had been required of her were done, she had fallen into apathy. She, too, must be given time to recover.

  Floria spoke from the doorway behind me, her interest still upon the emerald brooch. “Who could have put it back in that box? Who could have taken it in the first place—and why?”

  “As I say, it doesn’t matter so long as we’ve recovered it,” Charles told her with a slight impatience in his tone.

  “Elise put it back,” Aunt Amalie said wearily from the bed.

  We turned to stare at her, and she went on, her eyes closed again, as though she could barely summon strength to tell us what she knew.

  “It was Elise who found the brooch in the first place,” she went on in the same dry-as-dust voice. “She was keeping it for the night of the ball, though I didn’t know she had it until she was in her costume. She wore it beneath the bodice of her gown. I saw it when she showed it to me. She told me that she would wear it for an hour and then put it back in the tomb and leave it for Richard to find. That’s what she must have done. It wasn’t on her later, and I haven’t thought about it again till now.”

  “But—but why—?” Charles said blankly.

  It was Floria who answered. “It’s easy to guess that. She wanted it because of the legend. She always laughed at the story, but underneath she was superstitious enough. Don’t you remember, Charles? Whoever wears that brooch secretly at the Camelot ball is supposed to be assured forever of her true love’s love. Goodness knows who Elise wanted.
Giles? Hadley? Someone else?”

  “Please, Floria!” Aunt Amalie roused herself. “Remember the boy.”

  Richard had been listening and watching in silence, his eyes wide with too avid an interest.

  “She didn’t want my father,” he told them in a voice as dry as his grandmother’s, and I knew remembrance was upon him. He was thinking of Hadley Rikers holding Elise in his arms. I put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Charles put in smoothly. “What I don’t understand is how Elise could have found the brooch in the first place, without some clue. Richard might find such a spot by accident, but it’s unlikely—”

  Aunt Amalie broke in on his words and for once there was a note of impatience in her voice as she spoke to her husband.

  “You’ve forgotten, Charles. You can be such an innocent. You told me where it might be hidden.”

  For an instant something like resentment flashed in Charles’s eyes. Then he was his benign self again.

  “I remember very well that I told only you what Lacey had said about the mailing place where Kitty might have left the brooch. I told only you that it was in the tomb and that Lacey and I meant to search for it the next morning.”

  Aunt Amalie sighed wearily. “And I told Elise. Later I suspected that she must have the brooch, but she only laughed at me when I asked her, and I didn’t know for sure until the night of the ball.”

  “I see,” Charles said. “Not that it wasn’t your right to tell whom you pleased, since the brooch belongs to both our families. But I would have hoped—”

  “I’m sorry,” Amalie said. “It’s too late, but I’m sorry.”

  “Much good it did her—wearing the brooch!” said Floria with scorn in her voice.

  Charles looked at Richard. “Will you come and help me? I’m going to put the brooch back in its place of honor downstairs.”

  Again Richard was able to accept distraction, and he went willingly out the door with his grandfather.