“Didn’t your father mind what she did with you?”
Lora saw the twitch of a nerve near the corner of Wade’s mouth. “I was ill a great deal as a child. I wasn’t my father’s sort, much as I’d have liked to be. He should have had a boisterous, active child, and since I was neither he lost interest in me. I lived inside my own head too much to suit him.”
He was quiet for a little while and the only sound was the chinking fall of embers in the grate, the only movement the rosy play of firelight on walls and ceiling. Lora sat very still, not wanting to break the spell of these memories.
As he took up the thread again, she could see the slender, handsome boy he must have been, eagerly absorbing the colorful life of the docks. But when he came home to his mother, it was not the business end he wanted to talk about. He had no interest in the size of a cargo, or the details of a bill of lading. His head was awhirl with visions of China and the Indies, his nose atingle with the scents of spices and tea. The dock workers were to him not merely employees of his mother’s concern; the function of sailors was not solely to bring her ships safely to port. He saw each in an aura of his own and in terms of glamour and adventure. Words swirled excitingly through his mind and he tried vainly to capture all this magic on paper. He was forever “wasting” his time scribbling down impressions of the things he saw. All of which must have angered and disturbed his mother.
Lora could see her—that younger version of Amanda Tyler, straight-backed and strong of will, turning from the husband she should never have married to spend all her emotional strength on the son she loved so fiercely and possessively. As she listened, Lora began to understand something else that twisted her heart a little.
Though his mother had loved him, she had, as Wade grew older and continued to disappoint her, lost all belief in him. She never gave up trying to make him what she wanted him to be, but she could not suppress a contempt for what she regarded as weakness and failure.
“Virginia gave me back my belief in myself,” Wade said.
He fell silent and Lora reached out with cool fingers to stroke the place between his eyes that sometimes throbbed with pain.
“I see her everywhere,” he murmured. “But she always eludes me, slips away from me.”
“This isn’t a good place for you to live,” Lora said, suddenly urgent. “Let’s take Jemmy and go away from her. Let’s be free of shadows.”
He moved his head from side to side. “Such a move would kill my mother.”
“It would not,” said Lora firmly. “She is not made of stuff that dies easily. You and Jemmy are more important.”
But he would not listen. “There’s no place where I can escape. I will always see Virginia’s eyes, reproaching me.”
“Reproaching you for what? I’ve heard enough about her to know how good she must have been. She wanted your happiness. So why should that be changed now?”
Again he would not be persuaded. “You don’t understand,” he said, and turned his face away from her.
She knew there was no use now in urging him further. She continued to stroke his forehead and after a moment he caught her hand drowsily and kissed the back of it.
“Be like this always,” he murmured. “Be the way she was.”
For just an instant she wanted to snatch her hand away, but she controlled the impulse. She sat quietly beside him until he fell asleep. Then she tucked the covers about him and returned to her own long thoughts as she sat beside the dying fire. There she fell into a doze herself, with her head back against the cushion of a chair, and woke with a crick in her neck when Ellie came to call them for supper.
Wade awoke rested and more cheerful than she had seen him since they had left Pineville. A release into words had apparently helped.
It was a relief to find that Sunday supper was not a repetition of the gloomy midday meal. Apparently the stern Sabbath rules were somewhat relaxed with the coming of evening and even Mrs. Tyler seemed in a less bitter mood. It was likely, Lora suspected, that she considered everything to be settled to her own satisfaction, with the rebels in her house properly subdued.
No reference was made to the way in which Lora and Jemmy had slipped from grace, and Lora strove for an outward show of meekness that she knew was hypocritical, but which she was willing to don to gain what was now her first purpose.
Wade had risen from his nap in a gay and charming mood that made him very attractive. He had been like this sometimes during his convalescence and she had been drawn by his courage, his effort to make nothing of physical pain.
As the meal progressed, he entertained them with an amusing story of the company cook and of the ingenious way in which that inventive Irishman could eke out rations when the larder was low. And he told a story of a young drummer boy and how he had saved them all from danger early one morning when the enemy had tried a surprise attack.
The latter story appealed to Jemmy and he watched his father wide-eyed and without the look of veiled resentment which he usually turned upon him. There was even a grudging admiration in the boy’s eyes and, observing him, Lora knew the truth with a sudden stab.
Jemmy’s attitude toward his father was a shell of self-protection and nothing else. At the moment his small person betrayed his secret for anyone to read. But only Lora’s attention was upon him; only Lora recognized that here was a small boy who longed to love and admire his father and to be loved and admired by him in return.
When there was a pause in the talk and they were still smiling over Wade’s antic account, Lora drew a breath and plunged into the matter nearest her heart.
“What are we going to do about Christmas?” she asked. “It’s only two weeks off and Jemmy and I have some plans.”
Jemmy’s eyes sparkled. “Papa, do you suppose we could have a Christmas tree the way Aunt Serena always does?”
“What nonsense,” said Mrs. Tyler before Wade could speak. “I see no point in going to such fuss and bother. That is too worldly a way to celebrate Christ’s birthday.”
Wade put out his hand and covered his mother’s. “I can remember how much fun we used to have at Mama Hume’s Christmas parties before the old house burned down. When I was Jemmy’s age I thought a Christmas tree was the most wonderful thing in the world.”
“Oh, please, let’s have one!” Lora cried.
Mrs. Tyler shrugged, but her sense of well-being held and she seemed not to regard this as a major rebellion. “I can see you’re all against me. Very well, if Peter can find a tree, I will offer no objection. But understand—there is to be no mess about the house either before or afterwards.”
“I’ll clean up everything,” Jemmy promised.
Lora winked at him secretly. “I have some ideas about presents. Let’s go in the library after dinner and shut everyone out, Jemmy.”
When supper was over they did just that, and the boy seemed more like the happy, energetic children Lora remembered from home. He helped her find paper and ink, and then rummaged in the cellar for the broken comb and old toothbrush she requested. A quick trip outside with a lantern enabled them to pick up several dry leaves, unbroken and clear of pattern.
Then, first spreading old papers carefully around on the library table, they sat down to the making of spatterwork bookmarks. Jemmy showed a surprising ingenuity and natural sense of artistry in creating designs. Lora made a special effort to praise the results he achieved and he wriggled all over in delight at her approval. He was a fine little boy, she thought. Somehow, somehow she must get him that puppy for Christmas. She would ask Wade about it very soon.
They worked in the library until Jemmy’s bedtime, and then Lora went upstairs with him. She could hear Wade and his mother talking in the rear sitting room, but she had no desire to join them.
At Jemmy’s door she paused, holding her candle high. “Call me when you’re ready and I’ll come tuck you in,” she said matter-of-factly.
The solemn look came into his eyes, turning them midnight blue in the dim li
ght. For just an instant she thought he was going to move away from her as he had the night she had come to this house. But she was his friend now and all day long he had been accepting her in small ways. If it was the memory of his mother kissing him good night, tucking him beneath the covers, that made his eyes darken, he did not at least hold this against Lora now.
“All right,” he said briefly, and vanished into his room.
She went into her own room across the hall and released her breath in a long sigh. What a strange day this had been, with its moments of rebellion and of happiness too. She had a feeling that Jemmy already considered her an ally and was beginning to like her.
His voice reached her thinly through the door she had left ajar and she hurried across the hall to find him snug in his narrow bed. With little patting gestures she made a great thing of pulling up the quilt and tucking it securely in about the sides so that no chill draft could reach him.
“Toes warm?” she asked.
Just his nose stuck out over the edge of the quilt. “Warm as toast. Lorie, do you think we can really get a tree?”
“We’re certainly going to try,” she assured him. “And I’ll have a surprise for you Christmas morning too. A special surprise from me.” That was true enough. She’d get him something nice even if the dog proved to be impossible.
He wriggled happily. “Will it be something red?”
She shook her head.
“Blue?”
“Time to go to sleep now,” she said, smiling.
“Brown?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure yet. Close your eyes and get sleepy.”
She wished she dared to lean over and kiss him. But she knew better than to rush things. So she said good night and took her candle away, leaving him to dreams she hoped would be happy ones.
She undressed quickly and got into her warm flannel nightgown with the round collar she had edged with lace in one of the few small gestures she had been able to make toward a trousseau. She had not minded that she could not have pretty things. It had never been as if she were marrying Martin. She unpinned her hair and brushed it with long vigorous strokes before plaiting it into a heavy single braid.
When she had turned out her lamp and was about to crawl into bed, she heard Wade’s light tap on her door, and his voice: “May I come in?”
A momentary stiffening ran through her. For just an instant her throat was choked and she could not answer. Then she went to the door and pulled it open. In the light of his candle she could see that he wore a handsome claret-colored dressing gown of patterned silk, looking elegant even now. She stepped back from the doorway and he blew out the candle and closed the door.
She went into his arms and lifted her lips to his, let him hold her close in the darkness. But the old wince of pain went through her because he was not Martin. She was gentle with him, and very tender, but even as his mouth found hers she knew the truth—about him as well as about herself.
She could only be lonely and longing in his arms. She could never for a moment forget that he was not Martin. Nor did she want to. The thought of such pretense would have revolted her. Yet as surely as she knew her own heart and mind, she knew his too, knew that by some dark magic he turned her again into Virginia, and that it was Virginia he held and caressed and loved. She could only pity him and give herself to his need.
Long, long after he had fallen asleep beside her, she lay thinking again about the long day. Pictures flashed through her mind without connection, springing into life of their own accord.
She remembered Adam Hume looking up at her from the drive in front of the house, telling her that it would need someone stronger than she, someone willing to do battle, to face up to Amanda Tyler. Then Jemmy’s hurtful words when he had asked her if she thought he had killed his mother. And in a sudden flash of memory, the strange figure of that colored girl, Rebecca, looking out at them from the woods beyond the pool. Her face had been like a golden-brown mask, the eyes dark and staring without expression.
The vision, however, which pressed beneath her eyelids at the moment of falling asleep was simply the memory of that clear, still pool, shining beneath the golden sun. Virginia had said it was like quicksilver, but there had been no quicksilver movement to it today. It had been calm and quiet and innocent of guilt. Yet in those still depths a woman had struggled and died, and the painful mystery of her death still lay heavily upon this house.
VII
Christmas was only a few days off and today there was no bright sun shining upon the woodsy hillside. A gray sky blended into the waters of the harbor and a sharp wind rustled through dry leaves, whispered in the pines. Wade had said that morning that it looked like snow, but so far no drifting white flakes flecked the sky, though Lora watched for them eagerly. Somehow there had to be snow for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
She had not returned to these forbidden woods since her first climb into them with Jemmy that Sunday afternoon. Wade still did not know of their escapade, and Lora had wondered a little that his mother had not told him. Perhaps Mrs. Tyler was pleased with the new meekness and obedience Lora had managed to exhibit. Or perhaps the old lady was saving the knowledge as a weapon; something to use against her daughter-in-law if the need arose.
In any event, Lora felt that she had behaved so well for so long a time that she could not endure another moment of being a meek wife and daughter in that stifling house. Again Wade was working on his book in the library and Mrs. Tyler was napping. Jemmy was in school, so no one need know where she had gone this afternoon. Perhaps, walking in these woods, she could somehow retrieve something of her own will and spirit and soul.
Last week she had gone to New York with Ellie and shopped right down Mrs. Tyler’s list. After New Year a seamstress would come in and Lora would then be clothed in a more seemly and fashionable wardrobe. Some of the material they had purchased was so beautiful that she’d longed to cut into it at once and make up at least one gown herself. But Mother Tyler would not hear of such a thing. She made it quite plain that she had no confidence in Lora’s way with a needle, or in her knowledge of how a lady should be gowned. Since there was no place to wear lovely frocks anyway, Lora suppressed her eagerness, a little surprised that she was interested at all in such frivolous matters.
They had shopped for Christmas gifts that day too. Games and books for Jemmy, gifts for Mother Tyler and Wade. It had been fun to have ready money in her reticule for the first time she could remember. Now, even if there were no puppy, Jemmy would still be happy with what he received, not dreaming of what she had planned. Among other things she had bought him a little glass paperweight with a tiny snow scene depicted inside. When you turned it over the snowflakes flew for quite a long time, feathering down upon miniature houses and children and snowmen. She had found a leather writing case for Wade and a handsome morning cap for his mother, as well as two beautiful cashmere shawls, expressly ordered by Wade.
The stores had been an exciting experience for Lora—Arnold Constable’s and Lord and Taylor’s, gleaming and expensive-looking, with an astonishing wealth of goods on display. If her shopping companion had been someone less dour than Ellie, the day would have been even more of an adventure.
It was when she returned from her shopping trip that she had asked Wade about the puppy. The shocked look he had given her was far from reassuring.
“Mother detests dogs,” he said. “My father filled the house with them when I was small and she had her fill of their racket and dirt. Later, after my father died, and she was rid of the lot, I wanted just one pet for my own. But she wouldn’t hear of it. No, Lora, I’m sorry, but you must forget this idea of a puppy entirely.”
She had not forgotten it, however. She had not given up. In her imagination a wonderful picture glowed and would not give way to such ugly reality, no matter how much anyone tried to discourage her. She could see Jemmy’s rapt face, his delight when he found the puppy on Christmas morning. The picture was so real and clear that she could
even see his grandmother’s expression as she watched the little boy, see the softness come in to her eyes. With the fact an accomplished matter, not even Mrs. Tyler could be so cruel as to take the dog away from Jemmy.
However, when Lora had broached the subject with Wade again this morning, she had still been unable to gain his agreement and the interchange had left her feeling rebellious. That was why she had run away again to the peace of these woods and the usual release she felt when she indulged in vigorous action. She was a “doer,” as Doc had always said.
When she reached the clearing where the pool hid among the trees, gray today, sightless beneath the gray sky, she was breathing quickly from the energetic climb. It was too cold to linger near the water, though she promised herself that she would come again to visit this beauty in the spring. Except for a sense of mystery, the place was not haunted for her. If Virginia’s spirit hovered here, she felt sure it was a friendly, unvindictive spirit. Virginia had meant harm to no one and she would surely have been glad for the effort Lora was making with Jemmy.
On the other side of the pond the uphill path beckoned, and this time Lora did not hesitate. There was no reason why she should not climb through the woods and have a look at the Channing house that crowned the crest. She had no feud with Mrs. Channing or her household and she saw no reason why she should carry on some quarrel that had its roots in the past and did not concern her in any way. Besides, she was still curious, and as her father had always said, she could never stand wanting to know and not knowing.
The upper path meandered seemingly without purpose, as if it had once been traced by feet that wandered idly. But it opened at length upon the place where Dogwood Lane curved back on its course along the upper hillside and approached the great white house above.
At her first glimpse of the Channing mansion, Lora caught her breath in surprise. This expanse of graceful, gleaming white, with its columns marching across the front, was now a common sight in the South where the Greek revival was in full sway. But she had not expected to find it here. On this crest of Northern hill it became all the more impressive and commanding for the fact that it was unusual. Adam had said that Nicholas Channing had been a Southern planter. Apparently he had wanted to place a bit of his own South here in Staten Island.
The Quicksilver Pool Page 8