Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  She gave me a doubtful look and chose three dresses almost at random. We went into a dressing cubicle and I sat on a corner stool while she put on one after another. All were obviously wrong. An electric fan buzzed overhead, but it was warm in the small dressing room and I began to feel sleepy. I smothered a yawn and closed my eyes until Leila’s voice brought me wide awake.

  “I’m sorry if I’m boring you. I should have brought Cathy along! She looks at something and knows in a minute whether it’s right or wrong.”

  “Right or wrong for her,” I said. “Like that red dress. Maybe you’d better keep the red.”

  She almost flung the dresses at the girl. “All right! There’s a yellow dress out there. What else can I do but try it?”

  The salesgirl had seen me holding it up. She went off at once and brought back the cassia yellow. This time I stood up to help Leila into it.

  “You’ve got more meat on your bones than your mother has,” I told her. “The larger size will give you a chance to make the best of what you have. It’s not your style to be lean and sinuous.”

  I opened the back zipper and turned her away from the mirror. When the dress was over her head, had been pulled into shape and rezipped, I pushed her gently toward the glass—and held my breath. I had not known I could pick so well. Somewhere in my memory a voice seemed to whisper, “No, Jessica—no! That’s not the right color, dearest,” but I found I could turn a deaf ear to the voice and know it was wrong.

  There was no sickly yellow in Leila’s skin, it was a golden tan that had not darkened and weathered as Catherine’s had begun to do. The princess lines of the linen were subtle and set off the rounding of her slim young figure. From a circular neckline the dress curved gently in at the waist and flared to wider gores at the hemline. The yellow was pale as spun gold and here and there throughout the weave yellow petals of the same tone had been embroidered. There was no other decoration.

  Leila stared, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. It—it scares me a little.”

  “That’s because you’re seeing you, instead of Catherine. Your mother couldn’t wear this dress.” I didn’t say that Catherine would fade in it and look too old.

  Leila glanced at me and then back at the mirror. “It’s so plain. Cathy will laugh when she sees it. She’ll tell me I’ve gone back to grade school.”

  I was a little taller than Leila and I stood beside her with my own dark brown head close to her light brown one as brown eyes and gray eyes looked into the mirror together. Cassia yellow was not bad for me either.

  “If you don’t take it, I will,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine in the glass, startled, and I laughed. “Wait! We need another judgment on this.”

  I left her and went to the front of the store looking for Alex Stair. He stood at a counter, arranging a strand of amber beads against saffron-colored Italian silk, his hands moving as though he took a sensuous delight in color and texture.

  “Please come,” I said. “Come and tell us what you think.”

  He came without question and I drew Leila out of the cubicle to where big mirrors gave back her reflection in yellow.

  Alex regarded her for a moment. With a motion of his fingers he made her turn slowly while he studied her from every angle, his glossy beard slightly atilt. When he nodded I breathed again.

  “Yes, it’s right. The fit is perfect, the color flattering. But it needs another touch, I think.”

  He spoke to the Puerto Rican girl and she hurried away, to return in a moment with a string of carved beads and matching earrings of pale coral. When he had clasped the strand around Leila’s throat and clipped on the earrings, he nodded again, approvingly.

  “A gift—to wear for the party,” he said.

  Leila touched the coral in delight as she studied a stranger in the mirror. “Thank you, Uncle Alex. But do you really think the dress is right for me?”

  He scowled at her fiercely, making a pirate face. “Don’t argue with me. And mind you, none of that eye gunk! I don’t like to see a masterpiece distorted. Lipstick, but not too much or too dark. No powder, except a touch for shine, and no rouge.”

  Leila gave him a faintly tremulous smile and went back to the cubicle to change. While the Puerto Rican girl helped her with the dress, I followed Alex toward the front of the shop.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That was a—a good thing to do.”

  His rather thin-lipped mouth smiled without amusement. “‘Good’ is the wrong word. Perhaps ‘malicious’ is a better one.”

  He went back to his display, leaving me troubled because I could guess toward whom his malice might be directed, and baiting Catherine was a dangerous game.

  The girl was dressed in her blouse and swimming-fish skirt again, waiting for her package, when I rejoined her. For once she seemed her age—a healthy, happy fourteen-year-old who was looking forward to a party and a chance to dress up.

  We left the shop, stepping into the windy corridor of the alley, where palm fronds rustled overhead, shading from the sun the little tables down its center. Leila touched my arm, arresting me, and I followed the direction of her glance.

  There at a small table, sipping iced coffee through a straw as she watched the door to the shop, sat Catherine Drew.

  “So you’ve found something, have you, darling?” she said at once. “Something even nicer to wear than our red dresses?”

  Leila moved hesitantly toward the table. “Miss Jessica—uh—Jessica Abbott—helped me to pick out a different dress. I don’t know if you’ll like it or not.”

  I hoped that Leila would not open her parcel then and there, but she dropped into a chair and began fumbling with the string.

  “I’m sure Jessica—uh—Jessica knows exactly what is right for you,” Catherine said. “She has known you for such a long time.”

  I could only watch while Leila stubbornly fought the string and took the lid off the box. Tissue paper crackled as she opened it, and the neatly folded front of the cassia-yellow frock was displayed to her mother’s view. Catherine stared at it for a moment. Then she caught up the dress from the box and shook it out scornfully. When she had turned it about once or twice in her hands, she flung it indifferently back in the box.

  Leila sat in quiet dejection, while yellow linen spilled out of the box and over her hands.

  “You don’t like it, do you, Cathy?” she said miserably.

  Catherine sipped her coffee. “You didn’t really expect me to, did you? Yellow! But we mustn’t be rude to your captive teacher, must we?”

  She threw me an upward glance from beneath thick lashes. It was once more a promising look and I remembered the sound of a belt slapping across the palm of her hand. But there was no reason to fear what she might do here in public in broad daylight.

  “You can’t judge how Leila will look in the dress until you see her in it,” I said, knowing there was too much of an edge to my voice.

  “I’m sure she’ll look very nice in it, if you say so,” Catherine drawled. And then to Leila, “Do put it away for now. The color makes me slightly bilious.”

  Leila had the petal-soft skin of a young girl, sensitive skin that could flush too easily. It had mottled, and she was breathing quickly, close to tears. I had to stop this cruelty. I had to strike out, somehow, against Catherine Drew.

  “We called in a third judgment,” I told her. “Mr. Stair came to look when Leila had put the dress on and he feels it’s exactly right for her. He even added a gift of coral earrings and beads. I rather think we can trust Mr. Stair’s taste.”

  There was a ruthlessness in the look Catherine turned on me. She would stop at very little now, but I was beyond caring what I said to her.

  “So Mr. Stair approves?” Catherine mused. “Though he really has no business meddling with my plans for Leila, has he? Mr. Stair is—s
hall we say—in a rather vulnerable position. Perhaps more so than he knows. I believe I’ll have to arrange a little talk with Mr. Stair.”

  She seemed to shrug me off as she turned back to her daughter.

  “Never mind. The real test will come tonight, won’t it, darling? When I’m in the red and you’re in the yellow. But you needn’t ask me to switch with you later. I rather think my red will do.”

  Hurriedly Leila began to cram the dress into its box, forcing on the lid. I took box and dress from her hands and made a neater task of fitting the two together.

  Catherine paid for her coffee and then smiled coaxingly at Leila, easily winning her back.

  “I’ve got my car parked not far away. I’ll drive you home if you like—you and Miss Jessica-Jessica. But first I have to look up Steve on the waterfront. He has brought over a new batch of shells for Alex, and I’ll need to get them to Edith right away.”

  Leila nodded dispiritedly and an arrangement was made for me to go with her while she returned her library books. Then we would wait for Catherine behind the library on Back Street.

  Catherine went off with a light flick of her fingers for her daughter, ignoring me. On the way to Dronningens Gade I carried the dress box, half afraid that Leila might leave it somewhere or do something to damage the yellow frock. We had nothing to say to each other on the way to the library. A cunning and cruel sort of hurt had been done to Leila’s pleasure in the dress and I had the feeling that no matter how lovely she might look in it tonight, she would never believe in that fact or have any confidence in her appearance.

  More than ever I was coming to understand the anger that churned constantly beneath the surface in Kingdon Drew. He must get away—and soon, before something frightful happened. Each new thing Catherine did must feed the fire of the anger that drove him. If she would go to such trouble over so small a matter as Leila’s dress, what might she be capable of where she really cared? I could guess by now that Kingdon Drew was one man whom she had never owned, one man who had turned away from her—and that she could not bear. I knew now that she would never stop until she destroyed him completely. Using Leila was her best means, and I could look forward with nothing but dread to the supper party.

  11

  Leaving the bustle of Dronningens Gade, we went through a stone tunnel which opened at the far end upon a large paved courtyard surrounded by high stone walls. Within the enclosure grew a surprising variety of colorful shrubs, as well as a few flowering trees. In the Islands even the plants were as bright as flowers, their leaves streaked and speckled with shadings of brilliant yellow and red.

  The building that housed the library was a massive stone structure, very wide and three high-ceilinged floors tall. To my eye it looked like a public building, but it had once been a rather grand private residence. Behind it the old part of town went up the steep hills in tier after tier of small houses, as brightly colored as the very shrubbery.

  Just as Leila and I started toward the flight of stone steps that led from the courtyard to the second floor, Kingdon Drew came through a gate from Back Street, intent on business of his own.

  We had of course seen each other a good many times since that day in St. Croix, but always in the company of others. He had carefully avoided any meeting where we might be alone, though I kept hoping there would be some chance for him to tell me his further plans for leaving St. Thomas. When this did not happen I began to be afraid that he had changed his mind. Something in me continued to twist with hurt when I saw him and none of the futile yearnings that had begun in me had died down in the least.

  It was to Leila that he spoke, his eyes avoiding mine. “I phoned the house and heard that you’d come downtown to get a dress for tonight. Did you find what you want?”

  Leila stared off at some distant place beyond her father’s head, as if she had not heard him speak.

  “I think the dress will be fine,” I said with too great assurance.

  Leila came to life. “Cathy doesn’t think so.”

  “You’ve seen her downtown?” King’s attention was arrested.

  “Of course,” Leila said. “She’s driving us home. We’re meeting her in a little while out in back.”

  King looked as if he wanted to say something more, but I caught his eye and shook my head slightly. He gave me a remote look and went up the broad flight of upper stairs that led to the offices on the top floor.

  Outside the library I sat on a veranda couch and waited until Leila came to tell me there would be a delay about finding the book her uncle had asked her to look up for him. Would I, she requested, go down to the back gate of the library courtyard and explain to Cathy?

  “She hates to be kept waiting,” Leila said. “Just tell her I can’t help it and I’ll be there the minute I can.”

  Leila’s concern for her mother was always too anxious, too intense, but I did not argue. I returned to the warm dazzle of the courtyard and found the stone and iron gateway to the narrow Back Street that had once been more interestingly known as Wimmelskafts Gade.

  Here traffic was again one-way, moving in the opposite direction from the parallel of Dronningens Gade. Stone walls and an adjacent building came together in a wedge just out of the direct line of traffic, with a sign on the wall reserving the angled space for library parking. It was empty at the moment and offered a place for me to stand while I waited.

  Overhead the usual puffs of cloud sailed across a blue Virgin Islands sky. Sometimes such clouds turned fiercely black and filled with rain, but seldom did they drop their burden on St. Thomas, even in a shower. Although this was the hurricane season, no real storms had blown up since my coming. The weather report on the radio every morning was always the same: “Variable cloudiness and scattered showers.” But even when it showered, as I had seen it do furiously once or twice, the rain was quickly over, wet bricks dried in a hurry, and puddles quickly vanished.

  Staring at the sky, I tried to relax for this brief, snatched moment. A spurt of traffic went by, leaving the street empty behind except for a white car that turned into view several blocks away. It was Catherine’s car, and when I saw that she was driving too fast for this part of town with its busy cross streets, I had my first flash of misgiving. True, this was broad daylight, and I was in a public place—but how would that help me if Catherine took advantage of a chance opportunity? I stepped as far back into my wedge of space as possible, so that my back was against the wall. Here I offered her no safe target, in case her cunning mind seized on the idea.

  The car bore down on me so swiftly that I thought for a moment, having seen me alone, she meant to go past without stopping. Then, to my horror, the nose of the car turned deliberately in my direction, coming straight at me. There was no other place for me to move to save myself. I pressed my back flat against the wall and crossed my arms before me in a futile gesture of protection. It wasn’t possible that she would take such a chance—but the car hurled itself at me with what seemed full intent to crush and kill, even at the cost of damage to herself.

  I could only close my eyes and pray. With a screech of brakes, the white car came to a jarring halt inches away from me, and as I opened my eyes Catherine switched off the motor and slid across to the passenger’s side. I saw her smile and the look was as frightening as what had nearly happened to me.

  “What’s the matter, Jessica-Jessica?” she called. “Did I really give you another fright?”

  Through my thin blouse I could feel the hot stones of the wall behind me, burning my skin. My straw handbag lay in the dust where I had dropped it, and the box containing Leila’s dress, but I could not move to pick them up. In the distance I heard the sound of someone dashing down a flight of stone stairs, heard running feet across the paved courtyard. A moment later King burst through the gate, flinging it open with a clatter. A quick, searching look seemed to tell him that I was unharmed, and he turned at once to Catherine.r />
  “Get out of the car!” he said. “Get out and into the back seat.”

  For a moment she stared at him as if she did not mean to obey. He reached toward her in no uncertain manner and she drew swiftly back, clearly afraid of his touch. Moving as slowly as she dared, she got out on the street side and slid into the back seat, her manner insolent, defiant.

  King turned back to me. “Are you all right? Did she hurt you, graze you?”

  I shook my head. A reaction had set in and I found that I was shaking, that I could not speak. Gently he took my arm, helped me into the front seat, and then retrieved the dress box and my handbag from the dust. All the while I was aware of the bright malevolence of Catherine’s unwinking stare.

  “I’ll drive you home,” King said to me. “I was keeping an eye on matters from the top floor back there, and I came down as fast as I could get here.”

  He went around the car to get into the driver’s seat just as Leila hurried through the gate to regard us in surprise.

  “What’s the matter? You look sort of funny. How come you’re driving Cathy’s car, Dad?”

  “Get in back, if you please, Leila,” King directed. “Miss Abbott has just had a fright. Your mother nearly injured her.”

  Catherine was no longer afraid of his touching her, as she had been a moment before. “Don’t be an idiot! You know very well that I can handle this car. I stopped exactly where I meant to stop.”

  King said nothing. As he turned the wheel and entered the traffic flow along the street, I knew that he was dangerously close to a total loss of control. He moved the wheel too sharply, touching the horn with violence. Once I flicked my gaze toward the rear-view mirror and caught a glimpse of Catherine’s face. She looked as if she might be purring.

  As we drove up the mountain I closed my eyes to shut out the color and movement beyond the car. I suspected that Catherine would not have been sorry if she had pinned me to the wall. Now I knew the full extent of her malevolent intention to be rid of me, one way or another.