She replaced the shell on the bureau and went to the door of a small closet that had evidently been a modern addition to the room.
“Perhaps you won’t need much space for these few days,” she said, emphasizing again the expected brevity of my stay. When she opened the door to look inside she once more found something she did not approve, for she drew out a pale green negligee with a quick gesture of distaste, sniffing at the sweetish flower scent that clung to the silk. As she did so, something dropped from a pocket and skittered across the floor in my direction.
I bent to pick it up and found in my hand a curious golden locket on a chain of fine gold links. So unusual was the locket that I could not resist looking at it before I gave it back. It was made in the form of a small shell, perhaps an inch and a half long, its spires and whorls and ridges all clearly marked in the gold.
“How lovely,” I said as I gave chain and locket to Edith Stair.
The woman dropped the negligee on a chair and took the golden bauble from me. “This is a real shell—unusually large for a columbella. Quite rare, since they’re tiny shells as a rule. Of course it has been gilded over to make the locket. Catherine is careless with her possessions. I’ll take care of this.”
Her fingers clasped convulsively about the shell, as though she might like to crush it. Again she glanced about the room.
“Do you think you have everything you’ll need? There’s a bathroom just across the hall. I suppose you know about our water shortage in St. Thomas?”
She seemed anxious now to get away and I was equally willing to have her go. I told her that I knew about the water problem, that I had everything I would need for tonight. At the door she paused with her hand on the knob and fixed me with her cool look. Only her hands betrayed an inner perturbation with one of their quick, spasmodic motions as she touched the doorknob, withdrew from it, and touched it again.
“My mother has told me why you are here,” she said. “I consider it only fair to warn you that your time is likely to be wasted. Mother has a tendency to believe she can make happen whatever she wishes, simply by insisting upon it repeatedly. The rest of us—that is, my husband and Mr. Drew and myself—feel that she is wrong in trying to keep Leila at home.”
The omission was obvious. “What does Leila’s mother think?” I asked.
The woman’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “My sister is unpredictable. The rest of us feel that it will be far better if Leila is sent to her aunt in Colorado.”
“Perhaps it will seem that way to me too,” I told her quietly. “But since Mrs. Hampden has asked me to come here, this is something I will have to find out for myself. If I’m able.”
“If you are able,” Mrs. Stair repeated. She opened the door, said “Good night,” and went off abruptly, the shell locket dangling from her fingers. She had obviously made up her mind to distrust me, and there seemed little I could do about the fact.
Once I was alone, the small room closed in about me, yet at the same time it offered scant security. When I examined the door I found that it lacked bolt or key—which of course was common enough practice in a family house. But there were as well two nearly ceiling-high glass doors which opened upon the gallery that ran about this corner room, and these doors were open to the night outside, or to anyone who chose to look in from the hillside.
I am not, as a rule, nervous about such matters, but this house, with its air of long-accustomed arrogance, had seemed hostile to me from my first glimpse of it, and overbearing on its mountaintop. “Fanciful,” I told myself, using my mother’s favorite word for my imaginings, but I could not shake the feeling. It had often seemed to me that old houses took on characteristics, just as the people who lived in them did. This was a house that dated back to long before the United States’ purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark, and I continued to have the feeling that it did not care for upstarts from the States and was inimical to my presence.
Even though I must cut off the breeze, I pulled long bamboo-printed draperies across the French doors and turned on another lamp. On the bureau were the same small glass bowls of candle wax that were in every room at Aunt Janet’s. Even in calm weather the electric power could fail without warning and leave one dependent on candles. But at least I had no need to light these tonight as I went about the unpacking of my suitcase.
I had been wise to bring only a few things with me, leaving the rest at my aunt’s. That I would not stay here long was becoming evident. As I put my things away I noticed the green negligee lying across the chair where Mrs. Stair had let it fall. When I picked it up, the scent of perfume reached me again, familiar, tantalizing—yet an odor I could not place. For some reason I did not care for the soft feeling of the material in my hands and I hung it away on a hook in the closet as far as possible from the few dresses I had brought with me.
While I finished my unpacking, remembrance of my arrival returned disturbingly to mind. I thought of how the girl, Leila, had looked when she stood blank and withdrawn, stiff with resistance to what was happening around her. I recalled with distress the anger in Kingdon Drew as he crossed the terrace to swing Catherine away from the blond young man she had kissed, and his following look of defeat that had seemed to me a shattering thing in such a man. I remembered all too clearly Catherine Drew’s triangular little cat face, with its pointed chin and greenish eyes that seemed so familiar to me, though I had been unable to place where I had seen her.
I unzipped the blue linen sheath which Mrs. Hampden had approved, stepped out of it, and got ready for bed. I was anything but sleepy, and I decided to sit up for a while and read the book I had brought along. Yet when I settled into a chair, with the lamp adjusted to light my pages, I saw nothing of the scene described in print. The face of Catherine Drew came persistently between the page and my eyes and I saw only her tilted chin and the insolent green mockery of her look.
Quite suddenly I knew where and under what circumstances I had seen Leila’s mother before. The recollection was no more reassuring than anything else I had met in this house to which Maud Hampden had summoned me, and to which Kingdon Drew had so reluctantly brought me.
I could no longer endure being shut in this small room. I slipped into my robe and came outside, to steal along the gallery to this place overlooking garden and hillside and harbor. Here I could stand thinking back over that strange glimpse I’d had of Catherine Drew. Already the house and its occupants had set themselves against me and I had been made to feel utterly alone and on guard. Through no choice of my own, Leila’s mother was already my enemy. There was every reason for the moonlight to seem chill.
3
The harbor of St. Thomas is well sheltered on one side by the reaching arm of Flag Hill, and on the other by the long mound of Hassel Island. There is a narrow channel between Hassel and St. Thomas which opens into further water space between Hassel and Water Island beyond. It was on Water Island that I had first seen Catherine Drew.
During my early days in Charlotte Amalie, Aunt Janet had sent me via taxi, ferry, and bus on a visit to friends at the Water Isle Hotel. I took my bathing suit and swam dutifully in Honeymoon Bay. I ate the buffet lunch served hot on the beach and I suppose I talked to those who tried to be kind to me. But all the while I had my eye on that part of the beach that stretched in a long empty curve around the bay. As soon as I could escape after lunch I had set off by myself, wading through shallow water or leaving my footprints in clean wet sand. I had felt comfortably vacant, empty of emotion, as sun-somnolent as I wanted to be. I had in mind going a long way off from swimmers and voices, to cover myself with lotion and lie in a place where I would be wholly alone, where only sand and sun and sea would keep me company.
Following on my right hand as I splashed through ripples, of water were gnarled sea-grape trees rimming the beach, their huge triangular leaves clustered to throw patches of shade. Beyond rose the steep, wooded hillside. I was alone q
uickly enough and I liked it that way. Not until I was nearly ready to choose my stretch of sand for sun bathing did I hear voices again. I can remember feeling faintly annoyed, as though the beach belonged to me. Now I would have to go farther along to find a place that would be wholly mine.
I glanced toward the sea grapes in mild annoyance and caught a glimpse of scarlet amidst the green. A man and woman were there, the woman in a swimsuit of red denim briefs and bra, the man in dark navy trunks. The man’s back was toward me, and I hardly noticed him because it was the woman who caught my eye. I could not see her hair, hidden beneath a tight-fitting white cap that cupped her face with its strap. But I saw clearly enough a small triangle of face that reminded me of a cat, with green cat’s eyes focused on the man before her. I made no attempt to conceal my presence and as I drew near, the man pulled her to him. In that instant she looked past his shoulder and saw me. At once she stepped back, arresting him with a hand upon his arm, whispering something. Warning him perhaps not to look around.
For what seemed an age they stood frozen there within the green arms of the sea grapes. I had no real interest in them. Having no man of my own to walk a beach with me and kiss me in the warmth of a Caribbean sun, I walked carelessly by and put the two as quickly from my mind as possible. I found my patch of lonely sand where I lay so long in the sun that a friend of my aunt’s came to counsel me against such exposure. When I walked back along the beach the two by the sea grapes were gone, and I gave them not another thought—until that moment when I saw Catherine Drew on the terrace a Hampden House. Her face was the one I had glimpsed over the shoulder of the man on the beach.
The realization had added to my increasing sense of disquiet. I knew the man with her had not been Kingdon Drew but someone of a slighter, less sturdy build. Nor had he been as young as Steve or Mike. There had been a touch of gray in his hair, I seemed to remember. In any event, I told myself, it was not my affair. It was even possible that I had misunderstood that moment on the sand and there had really been any loverlike gesture between them. Nevertheless, Catherine, in that brief moment when she had seen me on the terrace, had remembered my face, had recognized me before I had placed her, and had shown her hostility clearly.
As I stood tonight on the gallery looking out upon moonlight and indigo shadows, an enveloping loneliness crept upon me—such loneliness as I had been holding off ever since my mother’s death. By keeping myself remote from all the true reasons for living, by emptying my mind, numbing myself, refusing to feel because I knew that to feel was to live, I had held off the truth I could hold away no longer. No one needed me for anything. My mother, who had depended on me for more than she had ever realized or accepted, was gone. My bondage to her had not been entirely unwilling, as I must admit if I was honest. Having no one upon whom I might spend my love, I had given it to a woman who was physically helpless and could not do without me. I had given it to the young girls in my school. Not always to the healthy, well balanced, cheerful girls—but more often to the misfits, the uncertain ones, those who lacked a goal and were filled with fears. Like myself? Like myself when everything else was taken from me?
I turned my back on that lush tropical view—so different from my more austere view of Lake Michigan at home—and stole back to my room. There I sat for a long while, trying to face myself, and what I had been willing to do to myself. It must not be like that. It must not be too late!
A sound from the upper hallway outside my room roused me from this tasting of dregs and brought me to my door, to listen with my ear against the panel. It was late, but I had heard a voice spoken in challenge—a voice that spoke Catherine’s name. I opened the door a thin crack, to find that a lamp burned on a table across the hall, so that Edith’s tall figure was clearly visible where she stood near the head of the stairs. She wore a long, shapeless cotton wrapper and her reddish hair was done up in plastic rollers, her face shiny with cream. All of her attention was fixed upon someone coming toward her up the stairs and, as I watched, Catherine ran up into my range of vision. She had changed from her swimsuit, but she was dressed for evening, not for bed. Near the top of the steps she paused breathlessly, looking at her sister, keyed up and tense, as if she expected some outburst from Edith—perhaps even asked for it.
It came almost at once, but low-voiced now, so that sleepers would not be wakened. I could not have heard the words had I not been so close and the house so silent.
“I can go to King with this at any time,” Edith said. “I have only to tell him what you are up to and—”
“And there will be a lovely explosion,” Catherine whispered. “You will be blown sky-high along with the rest of us. Besides—you needn’t be afraid. I told you I’d leave him alone.”
“I don’t trust you,” Edith said. “You’re a cheat and a liar and you always have been.”
Catherine’s back was toward me and I could not see her face, but I could see the yellowish pallor of Edith’s as she looked down at her sister, and I caught the faint tremor of excitement that seemed to lift Catherine’s shoulders in an exquisite shiver.
“In a day or two I’m going to Caprice,” Catherine said. “And you know what that means, Edith. You do know, don’t you, dear?”
The woman on the top step caught at the newel post. “Oh, when will you stop—when?”
The younger woman laughed softly and ran past her sister and on toward a room at the front of the house. Edith Stair stood aside and let her go. But when she turned I saw her face—and something more; something frightening. There was no mistaking the hatred Edith felt toward her younger sister.
I closed my door softly, turned out my lamp, and went to bed.
For a time I lay awake, puzzling over the scene I’d just witnessed, unable to find an answer to its meaning. Catherine had some hold over her sister, but I knew too little to guess what it might be. I had only an increasing sense of something evil loose in this house, reaching out wickedly to touch all our lives. Mine too, if I remained.
When I fell asleep at last, it was to toss restlessly, to dream and rouse and dream again. Near morning I went soundly asleep, and awakened late, to find myself more rested than I had any right to expect.
Bright sunlight blazed beyond the printed bamboo fronds of my draperies and the morning was already warm. I got out of bed to fling the draperies wide and let in the daylight and the view. One of my gallery doors looked north over the driveway area and beyond to Magens Bay on the Atlantic Ocean shore of the island. Again I could see small islands and the shore line, with a bright emerald-green trim wherever there were shallows, shading into deep blue beyond where the ocean took over. The indented oblong of the bay looked inviting with its rim of white beach—lonely and surrounded by thick forest.
The second door of my corner room opened upon that ridge of hills that extended to the east until they ended in a steep drop to an inland valley where bright, small houses clustered in a village at its heart.
Though I felt a great deal better with morning warmth and light to give me new courage, the night’s events had left their mark on me and I could not remain the uninvolved young woman whom Maud Hampden had interviewed yesterday. There was in me a new eagerness to see Kingdon Drew again, as well as a queerly anticipatory feeling about confronting his wife. If I had not known myself so well, I might have thought this feeling a desire for battle. But I had never thought of myself as the battling sort, and I could not understand my own reactions. True, I had been disturbed by Catherine Drew’s behavior on the terrace last night, and by her treatment of her sister later on the stairs, but such matters were not my problem, nor in any sense what I had been brought here to solve. They were not my business, that beach scene notwithstanding.
When I crossed the hall to the bathroom I saw no one, and no one when I returned from a shower that trickled cautiously, trained to no abandoned waste of water. No one had told me about meals or when I might be expected for bre
akfast, but just as I finished dressing, there was a firm rap upon my door and a voice called, “Hurry up and open, please!”
I ran to obey, and Leila Drew came brightly into the room, carrying a large breakfast tray. “Do clear off the table,” she said breezily. “This is heavy. Our cook had a look at you last night. She says you’re too thin and we must fatten you up.”
Again I hurried to do her bidding, both pleased and astonished by this transformation. Gone was the frozen girl of the terrace—the awkward, self-conscious, worshiping girl. Here was a long-legged, graceful teen-ager in blue Bermudas and a nautical white middy with a blue tie that matched her shorts. I watched in delighted discovery as she set down the tray and busied herself pouring my coffee, pausing to pilfer a slice of banana, unwrapping the hot toast from its protective napkin.
This girl looked not at all like her mother. The stamp of her father was in her face—the wide cheekbones and wide-set brown eyes—and that very fact drew me to her. Though there was a touch of the triangle to her face, the chin rounded, blunting the point, lessening the possible look of Catherine. The smile on her softly turned lips was a little shy, for all her breezy manner and the efficient way she was managing my breakfast. One thing I liked especially was the way she wore her shining brown hair. Last night it had been all ends. But this morning it was brushed in a smooth cap that shaped her head and left the tips of her ears exposed. Across her forehead a few bangs slanted diagonally, well above her eyes. Here was a fresh grace and sweetness that one day might turn to beauty. I warmed to Leila Drew.
As I drank coffee that had been perfectly brewed and bit into hot buttered toast, Leila moved about the room, sometimes talking to me over her shoulder, sometimes poking unselfconsciously into my belongings with the engaging manner of a child. This was what it was to be fourteen—sometimes older and sometimes younger than one’s chronological age.
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