“What is the trouble between the two families?” Camilla asked.
“Mrs. Landry, Nora’s mother, and your grandfather had a quarrel years ago. Naturally we took Papa’s side and we haven’t been friendly with her since.”
“But all that can’t be Nora’s fault. Ross seems to like her.” Sometimes, indeed, Camilla had wondered just how much Ross liked the attractive young widow.
“We’ve all regretted that,” Letty said. “Papa never approved of the way Ross made friends with the Redferns. Under the circumstances, it was inexcusable.”
Never before had Camilla heard Letty sound so uncharitable. Her attitude seemed more like what might be expected from Hortense.
“I’ll be sorry to go against your wishes,” Camilla said gently, “but I’d like very much to accept this invitation.”
For a moment Letty looked as though she might offer further objection. Then she sighed and began to gather up her papers and notes and thrust them back into their box.
“Wait,” Camilla said, “—we must talk about your book.”
Letty shook her head. “I’m not in the mood now, dear. Some other time, perhaps.” She looked sad again and increasingly troubled.
“A few moments ago you thought the idea a good one,” Camilla said. “Why have you changed your mind. Surely not because I’m going to see Nora Redfern?”
Letty pushed the last batch of clippings into the box and fastened the lid. Then she looked up at Camilla.
“You know what they whisper about me, don’t you? They say I’ve tried to poison people. If I were to do a book on the subject of herbs, all the whispers would spring up again.”
She looked so forlorn that for the moment pity thrust doubt from Camilla’s mind. Aunt Letty had burden enough to carry with her crippled arm.
“I think we must pay no attention to such gossip,” she said. “It’s too ridiculous to heed.”
Letty’s smile was tremulous. “Thank you, my dear.” But she pushed the box resolutely into place under her bed, and Camilla knew that for the moment at least the subject was closed.
When she returned to her room, she sat down at her mother’s desk to answer Nora Redfern’s note. But her thoughts would not at once relinquish the thought of Letty. One part of her—more heart than mind—wanted to trust in her wholeheartedly. That day when Camilla had talked to her grandfather he had said, “Watch Letty.” Surely he had meant to take care of Letty, to watch out for her. But something more questioning in Camilla held back and reserved judgment.
Resolutely she put these disturbing thoughts aside and picked up her pen to write an answer to Nora Redfern. She wrote her note rapidly, accepting the invitation. It would be good to escape from Thunder Heights and visit Blue Beeches next week.
That evening Booth told her that it was hopeless to continue with his painting. Something had thrown him off his course and it would be better to stop for a while. If Camilla were still agreeable, he would accept her offer of a trip to New York for himself and his mother, and they would leave as soon as Hortense could get ready. It was a plan Camilla readily encouraged.
A day later, on the morning they were to leave, Grace tapped on Camilla’s door. Mr. Booth, she said, requested a moment of her time in the library.
Camilla hurried downstairs and found him pacing restlessly about the room. He turned with something like relief when she entered.
“Good! I wanted to see you for a moment, Cousin, before Mother comes down.”
He stepped to the door and closed it after her. Camilla watched him, puzzled. He looked handsomer than ever this morning, and more than ever the gentleman of fashion. He wore a black coat, gray checked trousers, and gray spats. His gray gloves and top hat lay upon the table.
“We’ll get to work on the picture again as soon as I return,” he said. “It isn’t just because I’m out of the mood for painting that I’m making this trip. It’s because of my mother.”
“I hope the change will do her good,” Camilla said politely, still wondering what lay behind his words.
“She’s not going to New York for the change,” Booth said. “She’s going for the sole purpose of trying to upset Grandfather Orrin’s will. I thought you ought to know. She means to see a lawyer of greater eminence than Mr. Pompton and learn what steps she might be able to take.”
Camilla nodded gravely. “She’s entirely within her rights, of course. I really can’t blame her.”
“You’re more than generous, Camilla. I hope you know that this is none of my doing. Frankly, I think she has no chance of success, and I’ve urged against the step. But she won’t listen to me.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Camilla said.
He held out his hand, and when she put her own into it, he did not release it at once. It was a relief when Hortense came sailing into the room, flinging the door open with an air of indignation at finding it closed.
She was elaborately gowned for travel. Her skirt was of mauve broadcloth, and she wore an elbow-length cape of black broadcloth, with a high, satin-trimmed collar and huge buttons. The straw hat that tilted over her forehead was wreathed in violets and bound in violet ribbon that clashed with her red hair. An exotic Parisian perfume floated generously about her person.
“I hope you’ll have a fine time in New York,” Camilla told the impressive figure.
From high piled violets to mauve skirt hem, Hortense seemed aquiver with energy this morning. She ignored Camilla’s good wishes and nodded to Booth.
“The carriage has just pulled up to the door. We’d better be going if we’re not to miss the boat.”
Booth picked up his hat and gloves, but Hortense did not move at once from the doorway.
“I know this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for,” she said to Camilla. “You may as well make good use of your time while I’m away.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Camilla said.
“I mean that this is your chance to prove what a housekeeper you are. Matilda and Toby are going upriver to visit Matilda’s sister. The scullery maid has the day off, and Letty is turning out the linen shelves upstairs, with Grace’s help. So you may do exactly what you like with the rest of the house.”
Hortense spoke with the air of a great lady conferring a favor, but Camilla could only stare at her in bewilderment. As she well knew, it was Letty who quietly kept things running, in spite of Hortense’s high-handed gestures. Certainly she had no intention of trying to take these duties out of Letty’s competent hands.
“I don’t want to interfere with the regular routine,” she said mildly.
“I’ve thought from the first that your education has been neglected in household matters,” Hortense said, sniffing a little. “I doubt if you can so much as bake a decent loaf of bread. However, the house is yours for the moment—if you choose to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“Thank you, Aunt Hortense,” Camilla said and suppressed a desire to smile.
Her aunt swept toward the door. Booth arched a dark eyebrow at Camilla and followed his mother without comment. Camilla went to the door and watched him help his mother into the rig.
“Have a pleasant trip,” she called as the carriage pulled away.
Hortense said nothing, but Booth turned his head and waved. Camilla stood for a moment looking thoughtfully after them. It was a little ironic that she was paying for this trip to New York so that they might seek legal advice on taking everything away from her. Not that the fact disturbed her. If she lost all this, she would only be back where she was before she came here. She would have lost nothing. There was a twinge of bitterness in the thought.
She walked a few steps across the drive and looked up at the front of the house. It stood gray and strong against the mountain. There was no sign of dilapidation now, no worn, unpainted surfaces, no broken shutters. It was still a house of secrets, a brooding house, but this was part of its character. There was an impressive grandeur about it, now that it was no longer
falling into disrepair and apologetic in its ruin.
Was it true that she would not mind if Thunder Heights were taken from her?
She went up the steps and into the antehall. As usual the marble hands reached out to her, but now their gesture seemed almost a welcome. It was as if the house was ready at last to give itself into her hands.
The malevolent influence, whatever it was, had been lifted. With only Letty upstairs, there seemed no longer any resistance to her presence. When Hortense had said the house could be Camilla’s for a time, she had spoken more truly than she knew.
A sudden feeling of release and freedom swept through her. Today was truly her own to use as she pleased. There would be no suspicious eyes watching her, no hand turned against her, whatever she chose to do. Why shouldn’t she pick up Hortense’s challenge and prove that she could bake a loaf as well as the next woman?
The bread box was nearly empty—she had noticed it this morning. By now she had watched Matilda several times at her baking, and she believed she had the hang of it. It would be fun to fill that box and fling Hortense’s words back at her.
She went to get the starter dough from the ice chest. Then she collected her ingredients, and the bowls and utensils she would need. She would not, she decided, work in the kitchen. She liked the larder downstairs where Letty often worked. It was a cool, pleasant room, and there was a ledge with a marble slab that made a good working surface. She went downstairs with a feeling that this was a morning to sing at whatever she did.
Yesterday Aunt Letty had been down here making the green herbal soap that Camilla had found such a luxury in her room, but now everything was neat as a whistle, the way Letty always left it. Camilla set out her things and started happily to work. Into the bowl went her lump of starter dough, sifted flour, and milk. When she had stirred the whole sufficiently with a long-handled wooden spoon, she covered the yellow crockery bowl with a cloth, as she had seen Matilda do. Now it must rise before she could have the fun of kneading it.
Feeling pleased and successful, she wandered idly about the room, studying the neat labels Letty had lettered so carefully, sometimes taking down a bottle to sniff the contents and replace it. On the shelf that stretched behind the door, she saw that the jar which had contained a mixture of marjoram and mint leaves had been refilled, and she took it down to smell the pleasant minty scent. Further along the shelf there had been an empty space the other day, and it had now been filled by a bottle containing a pale liquid of some sort.
The label on the bottle read Tansy Juice—a name that had a pleasantly old-fashioned ring. Perhaps she had read about tansy in a book, Camilla thought. She took down the bottle and removed the stopper. The odor was sharp, with a faintly resinous quality, and at once she was reminded of the odor of the tea Letty had brought her a few days ago. She would not forget that odor readily—it had reminded her of daisies, as this odor did too. Perhaps Letty had added tansy to the tea that day, since she liked to experiment with unusual flavors.
Camilla put the bottle back and wandered upstairs to see how the linen-sorting was progressing. Grace was standing on a stepladder, while Aunt Letty handed stacks of pillowslips up to her to be set on a high shelf. She looked at Camilla and smiled.
“Did Hortense and Booth get off all right?”
Camilla nodded. “Booth told me the real purpose of their trip to New York.”
Letty glanced at Grace. “I know. But don’t worry, dear. I doubt that a thing can be done. I tried to argue against it, but I’m afraid my sister seldom listens to me. What are you doing with yourself today?”
Camilla did not want to admit to her breadmaking until she had something to show for it.
“I’ve been wandering around. I was down looking at your herbs for a while. What is tansy used for, Aunt Letty?”
“I have a wonderful recipe for tansy pudding,” Letty said. “I believe you were looking at it the other day.”
“I noticed a bottle of liquid labeled ‘tansy,’” Camilla said, “and I was curious.”
“Yes. I crush a few leaves for juice now and then. When the oils are used for perfume, the leaves have to be distilled, but for cooking we just use their juice. Or sometimes the dried leaves.”
A remembrance of that faintly unpleasant scent had stayed with Camilla. “Is tansy anything you might use in a tea mixture?”
“Yes.” Letty nodded. “I often put in a pinch of leaves, or a few drops of the juice.”
Camilla watched the work for a little while, but another pair of hands was not needed, and she wandered downstairs and outside to the river front. Across the river a train rumbled along the water’s edge and she watched it out of sight around a bend up the Hudson.
It was a shame both sides of the river had been scarred by steel rails. How pleasant it must have been when everything was open country, or dreamy little towns, and all the transport followed the water itself.
Thinking of transport made her think of Ross and his notions about a bridge. More than once lately he had returned to the subject, and it had become a sore point between them. A bridge, she thought, her eyes upon the river, would not leave the scar of a railroad track. A bridge might be a thing of beauty, as a railroad bed could never be. Nevertheless, she would not give in to him. She would not become involved.
At the foot of the hill, beyond the tracks, a spit of land cut out into the river. It, at least, had the edge of the water to itself. She had never been down there, and she began a descent of the steep bank, digging her heels in, so that she wouldn’t slip in loose earth and dry leaves, holding onto branches to let herself down slowly. In a few moments she had reached the tracks and was out of sight of the house. The shining rails stretched away toward Westcliff in one direction, and out of sight around the foot of Thunder Mountain in the other. She crossed the ties and in a moment was in the stiff grass of the lower spit of land. Here she could walk out beneath a huge willow tree to a place where at high tide Hudson waters lapped a small stony beach. Here there was the ruin of an old wooden dock, and a small boathouse, its roof long ago caved in. The salty smell of the mud flats when the tide was out reached her on the breeze from the river.
She scrambled onto the broken dock and then skirted the crumbling boathouse, exploring. Down here shrubbery grew thick to the very edge of a narrow, pebbled beach, and the wild growth had almost engulfed what men had built upon the river’s edge.
Her foot slipped in a muddy spot, and she caught at a thick bush to keep herself from sliding. As she pulled herself to drier ground, her eye was caught by an object deep in the forked branches of brush. Curiously, she pushed the scrub aside and reached in. To her surprise she pulled out a flexible stick a foot or so in length with a blackened silver head attached to it.
Though the silver was tarnished and dented, she could make out an embossing in the form of tiny chrysanthemums. The wood of the stick was black and strong, and propped there above the earth, it had resisted the effects of rot, though it had been scratched and scarred by long weathering. A leather thong, rotted through, hung from one end.
She realized suddenly that the sorry object she held in her hands was a woman’s riding crop. To whom had it belonged, and how had it been lost in so odd a place? At any rate, she would carry her find home, clean it up and polish the silver. Then if it didn’t look too bad perhaps she could carry it when she went riding. Undoubtedly someone at the house would know to whom it had belonged. Her mother, perhaps? She could imagine Althea carrying such a crop when it had been polished and beautiful.
FOURTEEN
After she had taken the crop to her room and tucked it into a drawer, she went downstairs to the larder. Removing the cloth, she looked at the dough and found it a sodden, inert mass in the bottom of the bowl. By now it should have puffed considerably, but it had not risen at all. In fact, it looked sticky and wet and incapable of rising. Probably it needed more flour. She scooped it out on the marble slab and added flour, kneading it in. But now the mass turned dry an
d crumbly, so she dribbled in a little water and kneaded again. There seemed no way to get it right.
Her hands were sticky with wet flour, and her confidence began to ebb. She had the horrid presentiment that this lump of grayish dough was never going to rise at all. Her dream of triumphantly producing a delectable loaf at dinner was just that—a dream, and discouragement seized her. There was more to breadmaking than met the eye, and undoubtedly Hortense Judd was right about her household talents.
The cellar seemed suddenly a lonely and depressing place. How still it was down here. How empty. She could hear no fall of footsteps from upstairs, no sound of voices, and the chill of stone walls seemed more damp than pleasantly cool. Before her in the bowl lay the grayish lump—and for all that it had not risen, there was a great deal more of it than she had intended in the beginning.
What on earth was she to do with this mess? She could imagine Matilda’s annoyance if she found that her kitchen had been invaded and perfectly good ingredients wasted—to this end. Undoubtedly she would report the matter to Aunt Hortense, and Camilla could imagine Hortense’s scorn and Booth’s amusement. There was nothing to do but dispose of her clandestine efforts where they would not be discovered.
Quickly she transferred the inert weight of dough to the cloth with which she had covered the bowl, and turned up the corners, wrapping it well. Then she took one of Aunt Letty’s garden trowels from the tool room and marched resolutely up the stairs and outside.
Through the herb garden she ran toward the woods, where Aunt Letty had planted white narcissus in a winding border at the edge of the trees. She followed the path she had taken back from Blue Beeches that first day when she had met Ross Granger and he had come home with her. Now she knew the perfect hiding place for her unpleasant burden. When she had climbed the rocky eminence and reached the weeping beech tree, she found she was still within sight of the house, but she knew the thick, drooping branches would hide her from view. Smiling, she slipped between them into the shadowy seclusion of the open space around the blue-black trunk of the tree.
Thunder Heights Page 16