He’s a lovely boy, Jessie. Do bring him around more often. Let’s get out the silver tea set and the Souchong. Boys like a touch of graciousness, you know. Of course he’ll think me quaint and old-fashioned, but perhaps you two young people will bear with me, for all that.
Of course they thought her nothing of the kind. They said she was too young to be my mother, while I grew older by the moment and did exactly what Leila had done there on the gallery, when Catherine had put on her red dress. No—not ever again! I would not live it again. I too had loved my mother. But sometimes I had hated her as well. Leila had not yet come to that and when she did it might be too late, as it had been for me. I could not involve myself in this emotional morass Maud Hampden had spread before me. I must tell her at once that I would not stay—not even for a week.
But when I tried to put the thought into words I saw Leila again in my mind’s eye, whirling in her flame-colored dress, her face bright with happiness, sure for the moment of her own youth and beauty. And I saw her as she looked moments later suffering at Catherine’s practiced hands. The words died on my tongue and I could not speak them.
“Will you stay?” Maud asked. “Will you try to help me?”
“For a week,” I said feebly. “Only for a week!”—and fled her presence like the rabbit I was, running along the gallery and into the house, into my room to fling myself upon the bed and wait for quiet to come to me. A quiet that I knew would be out of my reach as long as I stayed in this house.
6
The rest of that morning passed uneventfully. Catherine spirited Leila off right after lunch and again I had no pupil.
During the afternoon Aunt Janet phoned me and I managed to be evasive. There was time enough to tell her my reactions when I ran to her in retreat, and I did not want her arguing with me over the phone. She had, she said, been invited to the buffet party next week, but she was busy at the hotel and probably would not come. By that time I would be free of Hampden House and its problems, and I too would be absent from the party.
Not until the sunset hour just before dinner did the house come to life, with everyone returned and gathered in one place. The little maid, Noreen, summoned me to join the family. I put on a candy-pink cotton that Aunt Janet had bought for me since I’d come to the island, and which I knew my mother would not have liked. I could almost hear her: “Honey, pink is my color—not yours. It fades you out completely. It’s not for anyone with your skin and dark hair.”
I put it on defiantly and looked in my mirror. There was nothing wrong with the color. If I appeared lackluster, this was not due to the dress—it was due to me, to the confusion and irresolution that stirred through my mind and would not let me be. At least I could brush my thick brown hair to a shine, and I could recall that Leila liked the way I wore it. Who was helping whom? I wondered wryly.
They were all out on the terrace when I joined them, sitting about with tall, cool glasses in their hands, conversing politely. All, that is, except Kingdon Drew, whom I looked for at once. Faintly disappointed yet somehow relieved at his absence, I went to the low retaining wall, built of the local blue stone, and stood with my back to the others, hardly noticed by them.
That lovely pink sheen I had seen before in the sky above St. Thomas shimmered over everything. While the sun set over the western hills of the island, the glow was reflected to this side from puffs of cloud, and the candy pink of sky and water matched my dress. Even the gray stone tower of Bluebeard’s Castle, standing out on its own lower hill near the harbor, looked pink under that shimmering sky.
As I stood watching I heard the voices behind me. Alex Stair was asking Leila if she had found what she wanted in the shop today. One of the clerks had told him of the purchase of two red dresses.
Leila answered hesitantly, “I picked the wrong dress. I’m going to change it for something else, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, darling!” Catherine’s tone was mock-plaintive. “I wanted us to look alike. And that red is such a wonderful color!”
“You’re brave to risk that sort of competition, Columbella,” Alex said, faintly mocking.
I turned my head in surprise and saw that the others watched him too.
He smiled around at them, clinking the ice in his glass. “Don’t you see what’s happening in our midst?” He toasted Leila and drank. “We’ve a beauty growing up among us. Catherine will have to look to her laurels before long.”
Leila squirmed uncomfortably and cast an apologetic glance at her mother. “He doesn’t mean it, Cathy. He likes to tease me.”
“This is not teasing but a matter of obvious fact,” Alex said, his voice as cruelly soft as before—a pirate voice, reminding me of Leila’s sketch.
Catherine’s laughter rang high and light, and I did not like the sound of it. She was dressed decorously enough for dinner in blue silk shantung that changed its shading to green when she moved, and in the rosy glow from the sky she looked smoothly young and vibrant and hardly to be rivaled by an awkward young daughter. Yet Alex had baited her, and I wondered why uneasily. Such tactics—for Leila’s sake—were dangerous. I could imagine how much harder Catherine might work to undermine any budding confidence if she saw her daughter as a rival to herself. This too I knew of old and something in me winced in painful anticipation. Once more I could not bear to watch or listen.
Since I was no real part of the group, I slipped away alone. At one side of the terrace a dirt path opened onto the hillside and I followed it idly into the tropical grove I had seen the night before from the gallery. It ran with much twisting through the thick growth that had looked so dark and secret by moonlight. Now, by early evening light, I found it equally ominous. Tall trees shut me away so quickly, and the terrace was so quickly lost to view that I seemed isolated in some faraway place. All about me crowded a tropical jungle—so varied and strange in its assortment of trees and plants that they could only have been set here by deliberate plan.
Much of the growth was unfamiliar to me. There were trees with limbs like twisted lianas, a banyanlike tree with a broad, ridged base, rain trees whose leaves shimmered in the faint pink light that sifted through from above. I saw a few acacias with their spiked tufts of yellow blossom sweetly scented, and there were the usual palms and banana plants.
As I ventured deeper the trees grew taller, meeting thickly overhead, closing me into dark seclusion. The very air seemed quiet within the grove, except for the twittering of birds as they settled themselves for the night. Behind me, the house, the very hillside, had vanished. As the path turned again I rounded the protruding bole of a black wattle tree like one in the garden of Aunt Janet’s hotel, and came abruptly upon a small clearing in the tangle.
Here a circle of scrubby grass opened upon the verge of a hill. Across it grew a giant mango tree, perhaps forty or fifty feet high, its slender, dark green leaves spreading thickly to roof a part of this open space. From every branch hung long stems as thick as a finger, suspending clusters of heavy green fruit that would later turn golden.
At the point of lookout above the hillside a rustic wooden railing had been set as a guard, with a low marble bench nearby. I went to the rail and looked out upon the scene. Beginning at a sharp drop immediately below, an enormous spread of stone pitched down the hill. It was almost as large as a city block, and had been entirely paved with great flat slabs of rock. In only two places was the flat expanse broken. About a third of the way down blue-black rocks thrust their heads into two jagged, protruding mounds that stood above the rest. Apparently the builders had decided to let these natural mounds of rock have their way and had built the catchment around them.
That it was a catchment for water, I knew. When I had first arrived in St. Thomas my eye had been continually jarred by the sight of huge bare patches that scarred the hillsides wherever one looked. Aunt Janet had explained that these were a part of the constant effort to preserve every drop of wa
ter that fell upon the land. At the foot of each spread—of rock, or cement, or corrugated iron—were underground cisterns into which the rain water poured through gutters and pipes, to be safely held for human usage. St. Thomas houses had no usable basements, since cisterns must be placed beneath every house, with numerous drains to conduct all possible rainfall into them.
I had not been as close as this to a catchment before and I examined it with interest. The rocky expanse looked pink in the sunset glow. I could gaze out over it in every direction, since so wide and clear a sweep of hillside made a perfect spot for a lookout post. The view, the loneliness, began to quiet me, and I rested my hands on the wooden railing, emptying my mind, my very body of its weariness, letting go of futile struggle. To be alone and quiet—that was all I wanted. To have nothing asked of me! This was the nourishment I sought.
I did not have it for long. Because the earth of the path was soft and powdery dry, I did not hear the sound of steps behind me. I did not know anyone was near until Kingdon Drew spoke.
“Good evening, Jessica Abbott.”
I swung about, startled, and the moment I faced him all my old alarums began to ring. I was on guard, up in arms, hostile—and more than a little drawn to the very cause of my alarm. I knew very well that I must be wary, that here was a greater threat than Catherine to the peace I wanted so badly. I must post myself in opposition to all that overwhelmed me about this man. It was a ridiculous reaction, yet there I was, tilting my chin, frowning at him, wholly on the defensive. My nerves remembered too well the betraying sympathy, the softness I could feel toward him, and now I had more reason than ever to be on guard against myself.
“So you’ve found Mrs. Hampden’s garden,” he said mildly enough. “It didn’t originate with Maud, but she continued the planting of it years ago when she used to come here on visits from St. Croix as a young bride. Earlier Hampdens acquired it as a sort of town house close to Charlotte Amalie, and the garden was started by Maud’s mother-in-law. Now we think of it as belonging to Maud.”
This was a safe enough topic and I looked about with renewed interest.
The man beside me gestured. “That old mango tree you see there was the beginning of the idea. The elder Mrs. Hampden thought it looked lonely and misplaced all by itself, so she started a miniature jungle to keep it company. Since that time Maud has brought in as many tree species from the Caribbean islands as she could gather here, and with the help of a few gardeners over the years, she’s managed to make them grow. Lately the place has gone neglected because she hasn’t been well. You can see how quickly the wild undergrowth can take over. Still, it’s a spot we all enjoy.”
The warnings that had begun their ridiculous clamor in me quieted a little at this innocuous opening. Perhaps this was what he intended, sensing in me a tendency to alarm and flight—though that thought did not comfort me either. I fixed my gaze upon the unruly ridge of dark hair above his right temple, not wanting to meet his eyes.
“What a wonderful place to be alone,” I said.
He seemed mildly curious. “Do you want so much to be alone?”
That was my affair and I met the question in silence, waiting for him to go on to more dangerous topics, as he was sure to do. I knew why I was uncomfortable with this man. It was because a current seemed to spring into being between us when we were together—a strangely disturbing current composed of a mixture of antagonism and attraction, perhaps in equal parts, so that I did not truly know which force was the stronger.
When he saw that I meant to indulge in no idle conversation, his manner stiffened a little and he gestured me toward the marble bench. “Will you sit down, Miss Abbott? I’d like to talk to you for a moment.”
Warily, I seated myself and waited. In a moment I would allay all his fears about me. In a moment I would tell him that I could do nothing for his daughter, that I believed him right in his decision to send her away—and that I myself would like to leave as soon as possible.
“Have you had any further opportunity to be with Leila today?” he asked. “Have you seen enough of the situation to come to the only possible conclusion?”
I spoke quickly, lest I change my mind. “You were right from the first. This is a family matter. There is nothing I can do. I’ll leave tomorrow, if you wish.”
I could no longer fix my attention safely on that dark ridge of hair, for his look had changed. His eyes studied me intently and his straight, rather harsh mouth smiled a bit grimly.
“You astonish me. I expected more of a fight from you. Certainly you’ve been arrayed in battle dress against me from the first, and I thought I might have real trouble in persuading you not to stay. Thank you for a pleasant surprise.”
“There’s no point in attempting the impossible,” I told him with as chill an air as I could manage.
“Exactly. And of course you’re right. Maud is completely mistaken in her notions. Any young woman with good sense would run after one look at what exists in this house. Your reaction, considering your experience with your own mother, is wholly natural.”
My reaction was one of outrage. “My own mother!” I could hear the quiver of indignation in my voice.
He continued to regard me in his cold, judicial way. “It was natural that your aunt should tell Maud about your mother, and of course that Maud in turn should tell me. Rather in detail, you might as well know. She expected this to be a strong selling point on your coming here. I saw it differently.”
“Detail? How could anyone possibly know the details of my life?”
“Isn’t the parallel pretty evident? Of course, this is why Maud saw in you what she mistakenly thought was rescue. She expected you to be so sympathetic toward Leila’s predicament that you’d fly to her aid. I told her you’d be far more likely to fly in the opposite direction and refuse to go through this sort of experience again.”
He had understood my reactions so quickly and clearly that I was taken aback. It was one thing for me to see the reason for my running, and quite another for the world to see. For Kingdon Drew to see.
“My mother was nothing like Mrs. Drew,” I said heatedly. “She was never a sophisticated woman, but quite innocent and well-meaning about everything she did. Mrs. Drew knows very well what she is doing. Which makes the problem a different, and much more difficult one.”
He thrust his fingers into that ruff of thick hair in a gesture that seemed to reveal his anger with his wife. “Yes, she knows what she’s doing. She means to make Leila over in her own image. She’s doing her damnedest at this. And it’s not something I mean to stand by and see happen.”
“She’s doing more than that,” I countered. “She’s breaking down Leila’s self-respect, her hope for the future, her confidence—and all at the most vulnerable time in a young girl’s life.”
“That’s part of it too,” he said. “It’s all the more reason for packing Leila off as soon as possible.”
Without warning I found myself remembering Maud’s shrewd analysis and arguing the other side. “Is that the real solution? Wouldn’t it be better if Leila could do her growing up here and now? Better if she could learn something about herself while she’s still in contact with her mother—instead of running off to carry all her insecurity and her scars with her? Perhaps Maud is right about that much of it.”
When our voices stilled, the evening was quiet. The birds’ drowsy twitter had died away and the insects were just beginning to take over. Below us, down the hill, lights were coming on in the town and around the harbor. The pink glow had faded and the blue-gray sky was repeated in dusky water and darkening hills. Kingdon Drew turned his back on me and stood looking out over the scene, while I sat tensely, cooling my wrists against the marble, waiting for him to answer.
“If this is what you think,” he said, “then why are you running away from Leila’s need?”
I flung out my hands in desperation, hating
to be cornered, but no longer able to hold back the words. “Because what you’ve said about me is true! I have a need too! I’ve been through all this before. I can’t go through it again. All I want is to find myself. I want to be—whatever sort of woman I am! I don’t want to be only a teacher. Or only a daughter.” Suddenly I was close to tears and hating myself for my own engulfing weakness.
He turned toward me and there was that alarming gentleness about him that I had seen before. Neither his anger nor his impatience frightened me as much as this gentling did. I had grown too long unaccustomed to kindness from men. Particularly kindness that seemed personal and all too understanding. There could be a protective quality about this man. He had a way on occasion of looking at me—not as a teacher for his daughter whom he wanted to be rid of but rather as a woman who interested him and made him curious. Probably he was kind to lame kittens and wounded birds too, I told myself impatiently. Now he was sorry for me—and I stiffened against him.
“I understand how you feel,” he said. “I don’t blame you in the least, and I’ll take you back to your aunt’s whenever you want to go. Thank you for coming—even though I’m relieved that you’ve decided not to stay.”
I folded my hands in my lap and stared at them because I could not meet his eyes while so intense an awareness of him filled me. Why couldn’t I have met Kingdon Drew under different circumstances so that I need not fight him, need not humiliate myself before him? Why must I feel drawn to a man who was caught in the trap of a hopeless and impossible marriage?
Columbella Page 9