Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Amusing seems hardly the right word,” I said tartly.

  He set down the shell that had occupied his hands. “Then, since I can’t warn you away, I might as well join you,” he said. “Perhaps I can help you recover your pupil. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way downtown. Stay here as long as you like, Miss Abbott. Feel yourself at home.”

  This last seemed a sardonic parting shot. When he had gone I returned to the desk and picked up the framed pirate sketch. Had he or had he not been the man I had seen on the beach with Catherine Drew? About one thing I was afraid he might be entirely right. I was into something far beyond my depth, something thoroughly unsettling. And I had had more than enough of being unsettled.

  I was still studying the picture when Edith Stair came into the room carrying a big wooden tray with wet shells scattered across its surface. She paused to glance in my direction, frowning.

  “Oh, here you are. Where is the child?”

  “Leila has gone out with her mother,” I said. “Your husband has been showing me his study and his shell collection.”

  She carried the tray to the long table and set it down next to the untouched schoolbooks. This morning she wore a yellow print dress that seemed too bright for her sallow skin and the artificial auburn of her hair. Over it she had put on a short-sleeved brown cotton smock with yellow sunflowers for pockets. By daylight the bones of her face seemed more prominent, her eyes more deeply hollowed. She looked as though she had slept badly.

  “What have you there?” she asked, noting the framed picture in my hands.

  I gave it to her and she stared at the subtly wicked pirate face. Evidently she had not seen it until now, for she slapped the frame indignantly down on the desk.

  “The girl should be sent away! She’s completely out of control. This is impertinent, wicked!”

  “Your husband seemed amused by it,” I said. “It doesn’t appear to offend him.”

  Her hands made a nervous motion of clasping and unclasping. “Catherine is ruining the girl. She teaches her nothing—except not to listen to Mother or to me. The sooner King sends her to Denver, the better.”

  There was more than spite in her words. I suspected that Edith too was engaged in the tug of war that seemed to be raging about Leila. I liked the thought of it less and less. With such a struggle, something always gave, often with serious hurt to those who participated. Even though my sympathies were increasingly on the side of a young girl caught in this fray, I did not see how I might affect the outcome in any positive way.

  Edith turned to her tray of shells, her hands moving among the array, as though, in these at least, she found something that appealed to her. She saw that I was watching and picked up a grayish-white shell to show me. A wentle-trap, she said, her interest clearly less aesthetic than her husband’s.

  “Sometimes it’s difficult to get the animal out of a shell like this. Alex dislikes the cleaning and preparing, so I take all that off his hands. Shells have more life and gloss when the creature hasn’t been allowed to decay and dry up inside. Beach shells are usually dead shells and they lack the sheen of those we get from underwater ledges, or from deep water by dredging with wire baskets.”

  I had not heard her so voluble before. Interest and animation had come over the woman as she talked about the work of preparing shells for her husband’s collection, and her devotion to the task suggested a possessive devotion to her husband.

  “There’s nothing of importance in this lot, but we can never tell what to expect,” she went on.

  “Does your sister enjoy diving for shells?” I asked, looking for a casual way to draw Catherine’s name into our talk.

  Edith looked at me as if I had said something nerve-shattering.­ Her hands fumbled as she took a soft cloth from a drawer and began to dry a shell, rubbing it to a high gloss, then setting it aside to await her husband’s attention. She seemed to be trying to calm herself, to find words to answer me.

  “Catherine has no interest in Alex’s shells,” she said at last. “No interest at all!”

  I prodded her no further, but moved idly about the room, picking up a shell here and there with no purpose in mind. There was nothing for me to do until my charge returned, and apparently there was no telling when that would be.

  When she had polished the last shell Edith Stair turned to me abruptly. “Mother wants to see you this morning. Since you’re free, we might as well go upstairs to her now. I hope you’ve thought over what I said to you last night.”

  I regarded her curiously. “You mean have I thought about your feeling that any effort I make with Leila is useless? Why do you feel that way?”

  Clearly she did not mean to answer. Her lips tightened and she thrust her hands stiffly into the sunflower pockets of her smock as she walked to the door. It was up to me to follow or not, as I pleased.

  5

  For a moment longer I stood looking at the tray of shells. Then I picked up my little olive shell and went out of the room. Edith waited for me at the foot of the stairs and I followed her to the upper hall.

  In a deck chair on the gallery just outside her corner room, Maud Hampden lay motionless, looking like a woman who had spent herself and must now renew her energies. The sun had risen sufficiently so that the overhang of the roof offered an edging of shade and her chair was set well out of the morning glare. On a table beside her a pitcher of fruit juice stood frosty and cool, but the glass nearby was untouched. Maud’s hand, holding a palm-leaf fan, drooped listlessly toward the floor.

  The deck chair faced away from me, so that she did not see me at once, and I paused beside the fanciful wrought-iron railing. A breeze stroked through palm trees in the garden, rustling stiff fronds and stirring the scarlet bloom of a flamboyant that reached its leafy spread over the flagstone terrace.

  This was the first time I had seen the view by daylight from the heights of Hampden House and in spite of my concern, my growing uneasiness, I was once more held. True, I had grown up at the water’s edge, but Lake Michigan stretched flat and unmarked clear to invisible shores, so that my eye was accustomed to flat vistas and gray-blue waters. Here the harbor shone with sunlight, sometimes blue, sometimes emerald green, with the Caribbean beyond a far deeper blue. Beyond the mound of Hassel Island on my right, and Flag Hill’s steep peak on the left, other islands marked the sea, and there was no city murk to obscure their outlines. The air was vibrantly clear, intensifying and brightening already vivid colors. I would never get enough of this, I thought, after long gray Chicago winters.

  Maud Hampden dropped her palm-leaf fan on the floor with an arresting clatter and as I went toward her chair she held out her hand to me in greeting.

  “You’re falling in love with St. Thomas, aren’t you, Jessica? I may call you that? I’ve known your aunt for so long that you’re Jessica to me.”

  Her handclasp was affectionate and somehow reassuring. After the hostility I had met in this house, it was comforting to be greeted with the warmth of genuine liking.

  “Of course to both questions,” I said, and drew a cane chair into the sunlight, having no use for shade.

  Edith hovered uncertainly and her mother gestured her into a chair beside my own. “Do sit down, dear. I want to talk to Jessica, but I want you to hear what I have to say.”

  When her daughter had obeyed, the old lady lay quiet once more, studying me with her fine gray-blue eyes that had somehow retained their memory of youth. Morning light was not kind to her. It yellowed her graying hair and made her skin seem creased and leathery, giving me a glimpse of how Catherine might look in later years when the sun had worked long enough on the golden tan of her skin.

  “Tell me—you’ve had a visit with Leila?” Maud Hampden asked.

  “She brought me a breakfast tray this morning,” I said. “We were beginning to get acquainted when her mother took her away to town.”
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br />   “I know,” Maud said. “I saw them leaving. Did you bring up the subject of her lessons?”

  “Mrs. Drew seems to think that Leila has no special need for tutoring.”

  The old woman picked up the fan and stirred the air before her face in a manner that disposed of Catherine’s opinions. “Pour some fruit juice for Jessica, if you please, Edith. Of course the child needs schoolwork—but later. Lessons are only a subterfuge at present. The important thing is to make friends with my granddaughter, and if possible get her away from her mother’s company whenever you can.”

  I took the frosted glass of juice Edith poured for me and sipped it, savoring the cool sharp tang of lime. “I’m no trained psychologist, you know,” I said. “Even though my father’s subject as a professor was psychology, I am merely a teacher.”

  “Nonsense!” Mrs. Hampden flipped her fan at me. “You’re intelligent and you have an aptitude. Janet says your subject is social studies and that takes in the world, so your view is a broad one. But what I want is mainly someone with a liking for young people, with some experience in dealing with them, and a lot of good common sense. You qualify. Leila can’t fail to like you, and she needs an older friend who isn’t family. Lessons can wait.”

  Edith poured juice for herself, and when she had taken a long, thirsty drink she clicked her tongue disapprovingly against her teeth.

  “This whole plan is ridiculous! No one is going to stop Catherine while Leila is here. You’re grasping at last straws, Mother, and I’m sure Miss Abbott must realize the fact.”

  I smiled faintly. “Last straws and feeble reeds!” I agreed. “But what do you mean? Stop Mrs. Drew from what?”

  Mrs. Hampden fanned a bit too quickly, and her daughter stared at her hands until she could endure the sight of them no longer and thrust them into the sunflower pockets of her brown smock.

  At length the old woman began to speak, musing aloud more gently than I would have expected. “As a child Catherine was gay and charming, even though she was strong-willed. Strong-willed like me. She had a certain dryad quality. A pixy quality that held us all.”

  “I remember my sister!” Edith broke in impatiently. “Catherine was about as pixy as a goblin. She was a wicked little child, really.”

  Maud shook her head. “No child is wicked. She was her father’s beautiful darling—and perhaps that was the trouble.”

  The old woman closed her eyes, remembering, and she did not see the look on the face of her elder daughter—who must never have been anyone’s beautiful darling.

  “You let her grow up believing no one else mattered,” said Edith bitterly. “Now she destroys everything she touches. If only we could send her away!”

  Maud moved in her chair, tapped her fan on its arm. “Please, Edith—let’s leave ourselves a little pride. Jessica will think—”

  “Miss Abbott is hardly an ordinary visitor.” Edith spoke with more spirit than I would have expected. “If she stays here, she’d better know exactly what she’s up against.”

  Maud closed her eyes and let her untidy, windblown gray head fall back against the chair’s cushions. “I keep forgetting that pride is an old-fashioned quality these days—pride of name and family. There was a time when such things mattered to all of us. When I was young.”

  Edith tightened her lips and subsided. She reached for her empty glass and rolled the frosty tube between her hands, as though-she could be still only if she occupied her fingers—or hid them.

  Before I could find anything to say, we heard the sound of a car in the driveway on the far side of the house. Maud and Edith listened intently, then exchanged a look.

  “That’s not Catherine’s car,” Edith said.

  Maud held out a hand and her daughter helped her from the chair. Once on her feet, she seemed more like the determined woman I had met the day before. She walked with certainty around the gallery and Edith and I followed, to stand beside her at the railing that overlooked the garages and open parking areas.

  The same red convertible that I had seen last night had drawn up to the door. As we watched, Mike O’Neill got out and came around the car. Without waiting for him to help her, Leila put out her long slim legs in their blue Bermudas, sliding from the seat.

  “It’s the other boy—Steve—that she has the crush on,” Edith muttered beside me.

  Leila said, “Thanks, Mike,” and gave him a wave of her hand as he got back in the car. As he drove away she turned toward the house, holding a package under one arm, and looked up to see us watching her from the gallery above.

  “Hello, darling!” Maud called. “Did you get your dress for the party?”

  Leila stared at us, her expression quickly wary. I knew how we must look to her—three adults all rushing to the rear of the house at the sound of a car, to watch her, to see who she came home with and how, to challenge and question.

  “Come up and show us, Leila,” her grandmother called with a hint of command in her voice.

  The girl regarded us coolly for a moment before she gave in with a shrug. “All right, Gran,” she said and disappeared into the house.

  We were back in our chairs by the time she joined us, bringing her package with her. “Is Cathy home yet?” she asked at once, as if that were the thing of most interest to her at the moment.

  “No, she’s not,” said Edith. “Why didn’t she bring you home? Where did she go? Where did you meet Mike?”

  “Oh, let me alone!” Leila cried, dropping cross-legged to the floor near her grandmother’s chair. “What is this—a third degree?”

  “Where is Steve?” Maud asked, ignoring Leila’s petulance. “Did Catherine go off with him?”

  Leila bent her head and began to unwrap the parcel she carried. “I suppose he was around somewhere,” she said carelessly—too carelessly. “He usually is—when he’s not out in his boat. I ran into Mike downtown and he said he’d bring me home. Cathy had something she wanted to do. She didn’t say what.”

  It was all a little rushed and glib, as if she might have rehearsed it ahead of time. Nevertheless, I hoped the other two would not challenge her openly in front of me.

  Perhaps Edith meant to, but some sense of reason halted Maud Hampden and she let one attack go for another that was safer.

  “You know I want no one from this house going downtown dressed in those—those pants!” she said. “If you’re off to the beach, or out in a boat, that’s different. But in the stores—I won’t have it!” She turned to me. “We continentals, as they like to call us, are here on sufferance, really. Local Virgin Islanders have standards and it’s our obligation to meet them. They should be our standards too. This is one I approve. Back in the States daytime dress has become entirely too lax.”

  Leila cheered up a little at this familiar turn of criticism, paying no attention to it as she displayed the contents of her parcel. In either hand she held up a dress—each a duplicate of the other. At sight of flame color as bright as the flamboyant blossoms, Maud gasped.

  “Cathy thought it would be fun if we dressed alike for your buffet party next week, Aunt Edith. It’s a darling dress, really. Cathy tried hers on and it looked wonderful. I hope mine looks all right on me—I think I can still get into the same size she wears. Shall I put it on for you—have a dress rehearsal?”

  Waiting for no invitation, she sprang up and dropped the bright frock over her blouse and shorts, wriggling ingenuously into it. Over her other clothes it was a doubly tight squeeze, but she managed it. Then she came to me to be zipped up the back. The dress was of fine imported cotton, with a sheen of silk in the weave. Sleeveless, it began at a demurely rounded neck and clung in a slim sheath that emphasized the promise of Leila’s young figure, even over the bunchy middy beneath. At the bottom it flared into bands of deep ruffles just at the knee.

  Delighted with herself, feeling undoubtedly as spectacular as she looked,
Leila whirled herself about the gallery, her ruffles swishing, wholly pleased with herself, unaware of the detracting inch or two of Bermuda shorts showing beneath.

  “Doesn’t Cathy have a marvelous taste in clothes?” she challenged us.

  I could sense stormy disapproval gathering in Maud and Edith, and I tried quickly to counter it.

  “But is it your taste?” I asked.

  Leila faltered in her whirling and came to a halt in front of me. The smooth cap of her brown hair had blown into feathers on the drive up the bill, and her ruffled bangs fluffed baby-fine across her forehead. She ran her fingers through their brown fringe and fixed me with a defiant look.

  “Why don’t you say what you mean? Do you mean that the dress doesn’t become me?”

  “It becomes you,” I said softly. “You look beautiful in it. But you look like someone else.”

  She relaxed a little and gave me a disarmingly sweet smile. “I want to look like someone else,” she said and returned to her whirling.

  I knew how she felt. I knew so very well how she felt, having always wanted to look like someone else myself. Maud cleared her throat, about to express obvious exasperation, and I leaned toward her.

  “Please don’t,” I whispered. “Just don’t say anything right now.”

  Edith snorted rudely, but it was not Edith who worried me. Leila was undoubtedly accustomed to disapproval from her aunt and would not mind. I sensed that it was her grandmother whose opinion mattered, even though the old woman and the young girl were in conflict much of the time.

  Once more an uneasy moment was halted by the sound of a car coming up the hill to the driveway, followed shortly by the slam of a door.

  “That’s Cathy now!” Leila cried. I saw her face briefly before she dashed around the gallery to call to her mother—saw the look of relief in it, of happiness. Because of Steve? Because Catherine had not stayed longer with Steve?

  We heard her calling, “Look at me, look at me!” and then she came back to us, keyed to an excitement that seemed out of proportion to the mere fact of her mother’s coming home.