Thunder Heights

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Camilla felt moved by a certain pity for her. If a gay social life was what Aunt Hortense had been brought up to expect, it must have seemed a cruelty to have it taken away so arbitrarily.

  “How did Aunt Letty feel about such a change?” Camilla asked.

  “Letty!” Hortense waved a scornful hand. “She doesn’t know what money is for. She can be happy with her harp and her garden and her cat. Given the choice, she’d probably be foolish enough to continue living under this roof in the same horribly dull way. If Papa has left money and property in her hands, she will never know what to do with it. But I will know. I have plans for myself and of course for Booth. There’s so much I can do for him that Papa would never permit. And now I can laugh at Ross Granger. That young man has been influencing our fortunes for too long a time. The first thing I shall do is discharge him.”

  She was becoming excited to a disturbing degree and there were spots of high color in either cheek. Camilla sought to distract her.

  “Tell me about Booth,” she said.

  This was a subject to which Hortense could warm. There was no mistaking the doting pride and affection that she lavished upon her adopted son.

  “Booth is very talented, you know,” Hortense assured her. “He’s a really gifted artist. If we could live in New York, he might bring great credit to himself. But what chance has he here? Papa always hated his painting and opposed him at every step. He wanted him to go out and work in some business concern. Imagine! A man of Booth’s sensitivity.”

  “Are any of his paintings hung about the house?” Camilla asked. “I’d like to see them.”

  “I have one in my room. Hurry and eat your rice pudding, Camilla, and I’ll show it to you.”

  Her fatuous pride in Booth was evident and Camilla felt a little uncomfortable listening to her. Booth, she suspected, was completely indifferent to his adopted mother and she could not help but be sorry for Hortense.

  Her aunt’s room was on the second floor, across the hall from Camilla’s. It was a big, dim room, heavily curtained. Camilla could feel the prickle of dust in her nostrils as she stepped into it. Hortense’s love of the sumptuous had been given full play, and she had used a lavish hand when it came to velvet, satin, and brocade—all rich materials in faded yellow, or once brilliant green. Dusty materials, gone too long undisturbed.

  Hortense moved about lighting lamps on numerous tables and stands, apparently preferring lamplight to daylight.

  “There!” she cried, waving a hand toward the end wall of the room. “What do you think of it?”

  The painting was a large one, set handsomely in an ornate gilt frame. It was a picture of two mountain wildcats fighting. Their fiercely struggling bodies verged on the rim of a rocky cliff, with rapids frothing at its foot. A storm was breaking overhead, and the artist had painted in tawny yellows and smoky greens and grays. The result was a wild and disturbing picture.

  “Papa detested this painting,” Hortense said. “He didn’t want to look at it day after day, and he told Booth to get it out of his sight.”

  Camilla could well understand that her grandfather would not want to live with such a picture confronting him in his own house. She wondered how Hortense could endure its constant violence here in her room. That Booth had painted it was significant. Camilla had sensed a depth of curbed passion in him that he did not reveal to the casual eye. It had spilled out in this picture, betraying him.

  Hortense ran on eagerly. “When we sell this house and move to New York, I’ll arrange for a showing of his pictures in one of the galleries. I’ve promised him that for a long time, but Papa would never permit it.”

  As she left her aunt, Camilla thought that there was far more relief than sorrow in Hortense over her father’s death. Indeed, the fact of it seemed to have brought all the suppressed longings that she had stored up over the years seething to the surface. Today she was a woman driven by her rising emotions, ready to let nothing stand in her path.

  Letty did not come down to dinner that night, but Hortense said she was feeling better and was sure she would be able to attend the funeral services tomorrow. Ross Granger continued to stay away, and no one seemed to know where he was, or what he was doing.

  “He’s probably over visiting Mrs. Redfern again,” Hortense said.

  “Why not?” Booth said carelessly. “Nora Redfern is an attractive woman.”

  “You know very well how we feel about her,” Hortense said. “And why. Ross only does this to spite us. Never mind—he won’t be around much longer, I can promise you that.”

  The meal was a quiet one, and Camilla slipped away when they left the table, avoiding the stiff coffee hour in the overfurnished parlor, and went upstairs to her room. In one sense she could hardly wait to be free of this house and away from it for good. Yet in another she felt that when she left she would be more frighteningly alone than ever before in her life. The thought depressed and saddened her.

  She had brought a book by Washington Irving upstairs from the library, but though she got into Althea’s comfortable bed and set a lamp nearby on the bedside table, she could not concentrate on the pages before her. Tonight there was no escaping her own life through words in a book.

  Loneliness was a specter that sat at the foot of the bed peering at her grimly. In desperation she tried to argue it away. Being alone was no new experience for Camilla King. As a child she had often been lonely, with few children her own age to play with. And since her father’s death she had been more solitary than ever. That was one reason she had sought a position as a governess who would live in the midst of someone else’s family. With children needing her every moment, she had hoped to lose the feeling of belonging nowhere.

  Yet none of her previous experience of loneliness had been as devastating as this. Always before there had been the secret knowledge of her family up the Hudson to dream about—a family to which she belonged through ties of blood. No matter how stern her grandfather had been to her mother, he was still her grandfather, and she had stored away the reassuring thought that the time would eventually come when she might go to him. Now Grandfather Orrin was dead, and while Letty and Hortense were her blood relatives, the fact gave her little comfort. She was not wanted here by Hortense, and Letty was a vague, sweet dreamer who could not help her. The secret hope which had long supported her was gone, and there was left in its place only a soreness and an aching. Not only must she fail in whatever it was her grandfather had wanted of her, but she must also forsake a comforting hope for the future when she left this house.

  She turned out the lamp and lay in the dark, thinking again of the strange things Orrin Judd had said to her. Perhaps he had felt in his last hours that an injustice had been done to Althea and wished that he could make up for it through her daughter. But no legacy could assuage this feeling she was lost to tonight. It was her grandfather’s presence she wanted and the developing affection which had been promised between them.

  She sighed and turned restlessly in bed. Somehow she must forget the problems of this strange household. But tears came instead of sleep, and she wept bitterly into her pillow. Wept for her grandfather and because of her disappointment in a family that did not want her here—when she had so longed to belong to her own family. Wept too for her father’s gentle wisdom which might have guided her now. And most of all she wept for her mother, so tragically, irretrievably lost.

  Tonight she could not even summon to mind her mother’s gay image to comfort her. In this room she had lost her doubly, for the room was strange and did not know her. With her spirits at the lowest ebb she could remember, she had a gloomy presentiment that she would never know a real home anywhere.

  SEVEN

  The sunlight of early afternoon rayed through the stained glass window of the little church as the organist played a solemn hymn. The mourners sat with their heads bowed in prayer for the dead, and Letty, in the family pew beside Camilla, pressed her arm gently.

  “We used to come here often bef
ore my sister Althea died,” she whispered. “Papa gave the church that stained glass window behind the altar as a commemoration for Althea, but he stopped coming here when he lost her.”

  From beyond Camilla, Hortense threw the whisperer a reproving look and Letty fell silent. Booth sat beside his mother, but Ross had not been invited to occupy the family pew. Once when Camilla turned her head, she saw him a row or two back, sitting beside a pretty, brown-eyed woman—probably Nora Redfern.

  The minister was a young man, and when he rose to give the eulogy for the dead, Camilla suspected that he could not have known Orrin Judd very well. His words were earnest and well-meaning, but they seemed to have little relation to the man Camilla remembered as her grandfather.

  Though the church was well filled, Letty had told her earlier that many would come out of curiosity and perhaps resentment of the Judds, rather than because of any real love for her grandfather. People hereabout considered him a hard man, grown too powerful, so that he had lost his human identification with the humble who had been his friends when he was young.

  When the ceremony was over the family followed the casket down the aisle and out of the church. From her place in one of the carriages that would drive them to the cemetery, Camilla looked about for Ross in the crowd, but she did not see him again until they reached her grandfather’s grave.

  The cemetery lay beneath the sheltering shade of a forest that rimmed its far edge on the upper hillside. Only a few of those at the church had followed the hearse the short distance for the final burial. Letty grew tense now, and as the casket was placed beside the grave, she burst into tears and clung brokenly to Camilla. Hortense bowed her head, the conventional figure of a daughter mourning her father, but Camilla suspected that there were no tears behind her black veil. Booth had been a pallbearer, along with Orrin’s doctor, the lawyer Mr. Pompton, and others, and he looked grave, if not deeply grieved. Ross, for all that he had apparently been close to Orrin Judd in life, had not been asked by the family to serve at his funeral.

  Camilla saw him standing a little apart, with Mrs. Redfern at his side. His expression was guarded, betraying little, perhaps because he did not want to reveal his feeling. How much did the young widow, Nora Redfern, mean to him, she wondered, that he was with her so often?

  The day was gray and cool, with more rain threatening. Camilla stood in silence beside Letty and Hortense and watched gray clouds swirl overhead with the wind at their heels. She felt no surging of grief for her grandfather now. What was being lowered into the ground had little connection with the fierce old man she had known so briefly. The eagle had long since flown its bonds.

  When she looked at the earth again, it was to study the names on gravestones nearby. There, with a tall granite shaft guarding it, was her grandmother’s grave. Next to that was the headstone for Althea Judd King. It was the first time Camilla had seen her mother’s grave, and the tears she could not shed for her grandfather sprang into her eyes. How much her father had wanted to keep his Althea from being buried here. But Orrin Judd had had his way, and she lay in the family plot with others of her kin around her. Now Orrin, who had lost her so completely in life, would sleep nearby his dearest daughter in all the time ahead.

  Near the cemetery gate, she saw Ross and Mrs. Redfern speaking to Mr. Pompton.

  Letty, still weeping gently, put her hand on Camilla’s arm. “Pretend not to see her, dear. Just move quickly by. Our families don’t speak.”

  Camilla would have obeyed, but Mrs. Redfern stepped forward and held out her hand in a warm gesture of friendliness.

  “I’m Nora Redfern, Miss King. If you are going to be here for a while, do come over to see me. We ought to know each other—our mothers were best friends.”

  Nora was tall, with soft brown hair curling beneath her tilted hat. She looked like a woman who enjoyed the out-of-doors, and the clasp of her hand was strong and direct.

  Camilla thanked her and explained that she would be leaving tomorrow. She could understand why Ross spent so much time with this woman, and she watched with regret as he helped her into her carriage. Hortense had seen the interchange, and her color was high with disapproval. She whispered to Booth and his look followed Mrs. Redfern with a speculative interest. What was wrong here? And how did it happen that Ross associated with Mrs. Redfern, when the rest of the Judd household did not?

  When Hortense and Booth and Mr. Pompton were settled in one carriage, and Letty and Camilla in another, Ross came over to join them, a little to Camilla’s surprise. Apparently he was coming back to Thunder Heights with them.

  Letty still wanted to talk on the drive home, needing to pour out thoughts that were troubling her.

  “Papa was always just,” she told Camilla. “He always tried to protect me, even if he didn’t care much for girls who were sickly.”

  “He cared about you,” Ross assured her gently. “You mustn’t doubt that.”

  “He was unhappy these last years,” Letty said. “And that was my fault. So much of it was my fault.”

  “I think you blame yourself needlessly,” Ross told her. “How could you be responsible for his unhappiness?”

  Letty shook her head and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “You don’t know,” she said darkly. “There are so many things you don’t know.”

  Ross did not seem to take this seriously. “Perhaps it will comfort you a little, Miss Letty, if you realize that nothing could ever have made him happy again. He would never have found a way to start anew.”

  “That is true,” Letty said wonderingly. “His life was really over, no matter what anyone did. In fact, it has been over for a long, long time, hasn’t it?”

  She seemed to take more cheer from this thought than Ross had expected her to.

  “At least,” he said, “it will be better if you don’t express the way you feel about all this to any reporters who may try to talk to you.”

  “Reporters?” Letty echoed in dismay.

  “Of course. You don’t think a man like Orrin Judd can die without causing a stir, do you? There are some newsmen here already. Pompton had some trouble keeping them out of the church, and I know that Toby chucked two of them off Judd grounds this morning before I could stop him. We’ll have to talk to them, of course. You’ll all fare better with the press if it’s done pleasantly.”

  “Surely no one will want to talk to me,” Camilla said in dismay.

  “Why not?” Ross sounded unsympathetic. “In fact, you’re likely to give them the best copy. Beautiful, disinherited granddaughter! You’d better brace yourself for a siege if they get near you.”

  When they reached the house, she found that he was right. A group of strange young men in bowler hats had gathered near the front door, and Mr. Pompton left the carriage to speak to them, while Booth and Ross hurried the ladies into the house.

  When Camilla would have left the others to go upstairs, Hortense stopped her. “You’re to come to the library at once, please. Mr. Pompton wishes to see us all there. He has agreed to read us Papa’s will at once.”

  Such haste seemed to lack decorum, but Camilla followed her aunts across the antehall where marble hands extended from the walls, and through the door of the library. Grace had set a fire burning against the misty chill of the day, and Hortense seated herself in a deep leather sofa placed at right angles to the hearth. Letty chose a small rocking chair and sank into it with a quick, nervous smile that went unanswered by her sister.

  Since Camilla felt she had no real part in these proceedings, whatever Mr. Pompton might wish, she took a chair in a far corner, withdrawn from the main family gathering. Ross had come into the room, and he too set himself apart from the others. He walked to one of the bookcases that lined two walls and began to study titles as though he had no other interest there.

  The library was heavily paneled in dark walnut that reflected little light and gave a gloomy air to the room. A long walnut table, its legs ornate with carving, occupied the center of the room,
and Booth pushed it back a little in order to give them more space about the fire. Above the mantel, commanding the room, hung a portrait of Orrin Judd.

  The picture had been painted in his strong middle years, and the eagle look had been in his face even then. But only Camilla seemed to regard the portrait openly, and she had a feeling that it made the family uncomfortable.

  Hortense, looking undisguisedly eager now, patted the sofa and beckoned Booth to a place beside her. Mr. Pompton turned his back to the warming fire and spread apart the tails of the dress coat he had worn to the funeral. His scalp glowed rosy in the firelight, and the two clumps of hair above each ear stood up as if they bristled in anticipation of some unpleasantness. He still looked irritated by his encounter with the press.

  Watching them all, Camilla felt herself a spectator at a play. In a physical sense she would remain remote and untouched by whatever happened. When the play was over, she could rise and walk out of the theater, with no more involvement with the players.

  Mr. Pompton cleared his throat and looked somewhat disapprovingly at Hortense. “You understand, Miss Hortense, that it is only because I wish the whole family to be present that we are moving with such unseemly haste.”

  “Yes, yes, we understand all that,” Hortense said, plucking at a black lace frill on the front of her gown with impatient fingers. “Do get on with it. Then perhaps we can return to our sorrow.”

  He threw her a suspicious look and explained that one of the firm instructions Mr. Judd had given was to the effect that there was to be no formal mourning period. He had wanted no one to pretend grief, or to dress in black, or avoid social duties.

  “As you know,” Mr. Pompton continued gruffly, “Mr. Judd sent me to New York a few days ago to find Miss King and ask her to come to Thunder Heights. While I was away on this mission, and without my knowledge or advice, he drew up a new will.”

  Camilla sensed the quickened attention of the room. Hortense glanced at Booth with an air of triumph.