Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  He had taken a few steps down the veranda, but now he turned and looked at me with a sudden awareness that had not existed in him before. There seemed a certain gentling of his expression and manner.

  “You might as well know that I’ll accept no interference with my plans for Leila. If you come I won’t make things easy for you. I don’t care for anything about Mrs. Hampden’s scheme. At the end of the week, if not before, I’ll expect to send you away gladly. Nevertheless I like courage and I appreciate your willingness—even though I think it’s foolhardiness—to make an attempt at the impossible.”

  Something in me leaped away in alarm from his slight softening toward me. I had no confidence in what he credited as my courage. That quality had gone too long untried in me, and I had no wish for him to guess that I might indeed run like a scared rabbit at my first testing. I did not want him to be kind to me in any way. I could best dislike and distrust his type of man when he remained in character and showed me no gentleness or consideration. It was safer to detest than to be drawn unwittingly into liking.

  Fortunately, Aunt Janet joined us just then to say goodby to me with added instructions about keeping in close touch, and to banter a bit with Kingdon Drew. He responded with teasing, affectionate flattery, and I sensed again his softer side.

  When we left the hotel we walked down the flight of stone steps common to Charlotte Amalie’s steep hills and over to a side street where Kingdon Drew had parked his car. By the time we started up the thousand-foot rise of the mountain, darkness had fallen. Looking back I could see that the waterfront wore its evening necklace of gold and that ships riding at anchor in the harbor were alight like individual gems. Above them Flag Hill, guarding the bay, thrusting its black peak into the sky. The windows of tightly clustered houses were luminous, and once a voice reached me, singing in a garden to the strum of a guitar.

  The streets we followed pitched steeply upward as we rose above the roof tops and began a zigzag course, climbing higher at each angled turn until we reached the skyline drive that ran along the central ridge, linking the string of hills. Up here brush-covered slopes dropped away on either hand and now and then a house appeared, set back from the road.

  For the most part we were silent as we drove, though for me it was a silence of awareness. I was mindful not only of the excitement and beauty of my surroundings, but also of the man beside me, and in this too there was a stirring of excitement. Again I sensed in him an energy held in check, a drive suppressed—a man who rode with a tight rein upon himself. Aunt Janet had succeeded all too well in planting an awareness of him in me, and something long asleep was wakening of its own accord. What would it be like to see such energy released, to have the drive I sensed in him turn in my direction?

  I closed my mind fiercely to my own betraying response. What sort of fool must I be even to glance in so futile a direction?

  As we followed the high drive the furious bleating of a horn pressed hard and steadily sounded suddenly behind us, breaking in upon my unwelcome thoughts. In these islands driving is still on the left-hand side of the road, though most cars have an American drive. From my place on the right I could look back along the center of the road and see the headlights of a car advancing upon us at high speed. The man beside me swore under his breath and turned the car onto the left rim of the road. The top was down on the long white car overtaking us, and as it swept into the path of our own headlights I glimpsed a woman at the wheel, driving intently and skillfully, her long blond hair blowing back from her head. A man sat beside her, and in the back seat were two other figures. Then the car had swooped by with a mocking wave of hands on the part of the three who were not driving.

  I glanced in astonishment at Kingdon Drew. “Is that the way people drive on this road—” I began, and stopped as I saw the tense, furious line of his jaw and the way his hands gripped the wheel as he swung back onto the road. He did not answer and I was silent, aware of the dark anger that possessed him. I knew now that the blond driver of the car must be his wife, Catherine.

  A short distance farther on, a private driveway opened and we turned into it, bouncing over the open rails of a cattle guard, meant, I had learned, to keep roving donkeys off private property. The drive wound up a further rise of hill beneath royal palms and ended in a flat open space at the top, with garages on our left and the great white stone house that commanded the hilltop on our right In this open space was parked a small red convertible, as well as the white car that had passed us on the road. The occupants were not in sight, but I could hear the sound of voices as Kingdon Drew opened the car door for me. An island man came toward us from the garage area, and at Mr. Drew’s gesture he reached into the back seat for my suitcase.

  “You might as well see what you’re in for,” Kingdon Drew said to me, and started off around the side of the house.

  I hurried to keep up with him, my heart thumping, both because of his fury and because the madly reckless driver who had passed us on the road must surely be his wife.

  My host flung open an ornate iron gate and went angrily through without waiting for me. He halted at the edge of a huge flagstone terrace that stretched almost the width of the house. On the hillside curve ran a low stone wall, along which beach torches had been placed. Tall metal staves with their heads alive and flaming illumined the entire terrace in a wavering dance of light and shadow. But it was the actors who held my attention.

  The four from the car could now be identified, though their backs were to me. The central figure was the woman with shoulder-length blond hair who had driven the white car. She was enveloped in a curious sand-colored beach robe rather like the burnoose of some Arab tribesman. It covered her to her bare, thong-sandaled feet, and its hood fell back upon her shoulders beneath the flow of hair.

  The two young men wore wet swim trunks and sweat shirts. Their muscled, tanned legs were bare, their feet in sneakers. The older was perhaps twenty-four and fair-haired. The dark-haired younger boy could be no more than seventeen or eighteen and was slighter in build than the other. The fourth person was a young girl—undoubtedly my charge, Leila—though I had no time to study her at that moment because all attention was focused upon the woman.

  With a careless gesture she dropped the enveloping robe to the terrace, revealing the briefest of ruffled green swimsuits, wet and glistening in the torchlight. Her body had the firm, supple beauty of carefully sustained youth, her tanned skin smooth and glowing. Her thick, pale hair was held back from her face by a green bandeau. I had never seen anyone so arrestingly alive, though I had yet to see her face.

  She ended her advance very close to the fair-haired man, and with a tantalizing gesture she marched her two forefingers up his chest to his chin, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him swiftly and lightly on the mouth.

  “Thanks for taking us to the beach, Steve darling,” she said.

  He laughed aloud, not at all abashed by her action, and I turned with a feeling of distress to look at the girl. She was watching every move the two made with a sort of worshiping attention that alerted and warned me. I had been told to watch for a problem. A “mother problem” had seemed to indicate conflict, but this child was regarding her mother with admiration and affection. For the young man she had the dazzled look of a teen-age crush, though he paid her no attention. While Leila’s eyes shone with excitement, there was, as well, something about her that seemed young and awkward and touchingly lacking in confidence. She wore a terry-cloth beach coat that left her long young legs bare, but she huddled into the garment self-consciously, clutching it tightly at the throat.

  The sight moved me to unwanted memory and an unexpected twinge of hurt. Just so could I remember standing by in my early teens while my mother—so utterly pretty and sure of herself, so greatly adored—reduced me to clumsiness by sheer weight of comparison.

  At the woman’s tantalizing gesture, the younger, dark-haired boy made a sound of disapproval,
and she threw him a laughing glance.

  “Don’t growl, Mike. Don’t be cross with me! Steve and I understand each other. You should be more like your brother.”

  Kingdon Drew had halted just in front of me, watching the scene in restrained fury. Now he strode across the terrace. The woman heard him and turned, so that I saw her strange little cat’s face for the first time. An immediate, uneasy recognition seized me. Her forehead was broad and from it her face tapered to the point of an inverted triangle made by the tip of her chin. Even by torchlight I could catch the greenish glint of her eyes, the shine of perfect teeth as she smiled in mockery at the man who came toward her across the terrace.

  Where or under what circumstances I had seen her before I could not remember, but I sensed strongly that she had made some unfavorable impression upon me then, as now.

  There was no time to search my memory, for Kingdon Drew swung her about with a grip upon her bare shoulder that must have hurt.

  “I’ve said there was to be no more after-dark swimming down at Magens Bay,” he told her angrily. “If you go down there, you’re to be home before dark.”

  The woman gave a cry of pain as she wrenched her shoulder from his grasp. Yet mockery did not leave her eyes or her lips. “I’ll do as I please,” she said. “You know I love to swim at night. And it’s not the dark you object to—is it?”

  Kingdon Drew turned on the man. “You’d better go,” he said. And then to the younger boy, “You too!”

  Mike, however, was paying no attention. His grave look had focused wholly upon the young girl, and for the first time I gave her my full attention.

  Her short hair, a soft light brown, had blown into untidy wisps about her face. Her excitement had evaporated and she stood very still, staring at nothing, her expression blank. It was as if, unable to bear what was happening, she had withdrawn from the scene and hidden inside herself, closing all her outer windows against the world. The younger boy went to her, paying no attention to King’s order to leave. He took her gently by the arm and shook her once or twice.

  “Snap out of it, Leila,” he said. “Don’t do that!”

  The girl came painfully to life. She flung a look of deep dislike at her father as she ran up the terrace steps and into the house, the bang of a screen door echoing behind her. The older boy had already walked toward the gate near which I stood, and Mike followed him, grim and unsmiling. Clearly Steve was eager to be away and he paid no attention to me as he went past. Mike saw me, however, as he followed his brother, and something lighted in his eyes—as if he knew who I was and why I was there, even though he did not pause to speak. A moment later I heard a car door slam and knew they must be leaving in the red convertible.

  For the first time Catherine Drew saw me. She turned to stare at me directly and there was quick recognition in her eyes. I had been right. I had seen her before and she had remembered too. She claimed no acquaintance, but turned on me a flash of warning so clear that it was as if she had spoken aloud, as if she had said, “Go away. Mind your own business. Say nothing.” Yet I could not remember where I had seen her. When she was sure she had impressed her meaning upon me, she picked up the burnoose from the flagstones and flung it about her.

  “Don’t ever touch me like that again,” she said to her husband, and went unhurriedly across the terrace and into the house.

  He stood looking after her—a man somehow drained and left impotent to act. Unexpectedly, and with a rush of feeling, I found myself allied on his side. The fact that he had lost his temper and behaved badly, perhaps unreasonably, made no difference, for the truth of what I had seen had rushed home to me. There was something wholly wrong about the woman who was his wife. Even the child’s look of dislike for her father stemmed from an outer source—the mother—and I knew there was wrong there, too, passed from mother to daughter. Here was a man driven into a corner and all my natural instincts to aid, to support, to defend, had come awake and involved me. Whether İ liked it or not I had stepped across my own carefully ruled lines and taken sides. Whether I liked it or not I was more than a little drawn to this man.

  Kingdon Drew had forgotten me. By an effort he pulled himself together, suppressing the last vestige of his anger before he followed his wife into the house. The very set of his shoulders bespoke defeat—a painful sight in a strong man, and one I knew he would not willingly reveal if he had remembered I was there.

  I stood uncertainly near the gate gazing at the lighted windows of the house, seeing for the first time at close hand the long galleries framed in lacy wrought-iron arches that ran all across the house and around two sides, hinting more of Spain than of Denmark. In their semicircle about the empty terrace torch flames flared wildly in the breeze, their myriad images dancing in the glass of French doors beyond the galleries. It was a beautiful house and it withheld itself from me with a certain disdain that made me know more than ever that I was not welcome.

  Before I could wonder what I must do to make my presence known, a woman came out through double doors and stood at the head of the terrace steps looking down at me. She was taller than Catherine Drew, and older, but the family resemblance was clear. She was perhaps in her early forties, and rather large of bone, so that the silk of her pongee frock stretched wide over her hips. As I moved toward her across the flagstones I saw that her hair was a dull auburn, unconvincing in color and worn too tightly curled about her head. Her eyes were a blue that lacked warmth, and as I neared her they regarded me without welcome.

  “I am Edith Stair,” she said and came down the steps toward me. “Good evening, Miss Abbott. I’m sorry no one has taken care of you. My mother isn’t feeling well this evening and she has gone to bed early.”

  She gave me a boneless handshake, very different from her mother’s, and led me into the house. The central room was spacious—actually a wide hall that ran straight through, with rooms opening upon it on either side. At this end double glass doors gave on the terrace, while at the other a front door opened on the driveway.

  It was a room of austere beauty, comfortably but sparsely furnished to effect that cool, uncluttered look so necessary in the tropics. The ceiling was lofty, giving one a sense of space and grandeur. From the center of an elaborate plaster rosette hung a crystal chandelier, while carved plaster cornices decorated the far reaches of the ceiling. In contrast to white over head, the golden-brown parquetry of the floor gleamed warm in lamplight, and I could imagine the room as one in which great balls might once have been held. Yet it did not look to be a loved and warmly lived-in room.

  Most of the furniture had that simplicity of design which belongs to the countries of Scandinavia, fluid of line, and built of smooth, light woods. There were several framed pictures on the walls, and near the foot of curving stairs in one corner of the room hung a Chagall print of red poppies and green leaves in a tall vase looking as if its blooms had just been brought in from out-of-doors.

  “This is a large house,” Edith Stair said as we climbed to the landing, “but the rooms are large too, so we sometimes find ourselves room poor. Here and there we’ve partitioned them into something smaller. My husband and I had our own house in St. Croix, where I much prefer to live. But it has been necessary for us to move here so I could take over management of the house, due to my mother’s poor health.”

  Aunt Janet had said something of the same sort and I could not resist a question. “Mrs. Drew is too busy, I imagine?”

  “Catherine!” There was so much suppressed feeling in the way Edith Stair spoke her sister’s name that I was startled. Perhaps sensing her own self-betrayal, she went on quickly, “Since Alex and I now live here, the house is more crowded, so I must apologize for the small space we can give you. Perhaps you won’t be too uncomfortable for the week of your visit.”

  The week of my visit? It could easily be that she was right. The scene I had just witnessed on the terrace and my own intense and partis
an reaction to it had left me shaken and more doubtful than ever. Where was the cool objectivity I had meant to retain in order to be of real use?

  The upstairs hallway was narrower than the great main hall below, and heavily dark with mahogany. When my guide pushed ajar the door of a room near the head of the stairs, I saw that it must once have been part of a larger room which had been partitioned.

  “Leila is next to you,” Mrs. Stair said. “This little room is sometimes used by my sister Catherine. As a child it belonged to her when she visited here, and she still fancies it. We’ve had little time to get ready for you, so if you don’t mind I’ll come in and see if everything is right.” She made a small fluttering movement with her hands that seemed in contrast to her manner of authority.

  The floor was dark and well polished, with a large circular straw rug of lacy design in its center. There was a single bed and a comfortable armchair, with a reading lamp beside it on a small table. My suitcase awaited me near the foot of the bed.

  Looking about her with the eye of an accustomed housekeeper, Mrs. Stair at once saw something she did not like. With a purposeful movement she went to a high chest of drawers, took something from its top and turned about to hold out an object to me in some annoyance. On her palm, more than covering it, rested a large, grotesque seashell. It was bigger than a man’s fist and completely mailed in prickly spikes. The tip of its nose at the apex was pink, shading back in creamy, star-pointed whorls for an inch or two. After that the whorls sprouted into sharp black spikes that covered the rest of the body, thickening into longer spikes as they ran out to an upcurling tail. Cutting between the rows of spikes ran circular black and white and brown bands, while within its aperture the shell was oyster-white. It was arresting, rather beautiful, yet somehow ugly at the same time.

  “A fine specimen of the murex family,” Mrs. Stair said in admiration. “But it doesn’t belong here. My husband collects shells, you know. He is an expert and I often help him in his work. I can’t think why Catherine should have this murex here. Alex doesn’t like his shells scattered around the house. But no matter—I’ll ask about it tomorrow.”