The Quicksilver Pool

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Lora had been pretending to read in the library when Wade came to fetch her. The look on his face as he came in was reassuring.

  “What on earth have you done to Mother?” he asked. “She ate a whopping good dinner in her room and now she’s ready to lick her weight in wildcats. She seems to be spitting mad at you and enjoying life thoroughly.”

  Lora released her breath in a long sigh. “Thank goodness! All I did was give her a good back rub, bully her a little, and tell her if she wanted to run this house her own way she’d have to get up and do it.”

  “Well, she’s up—and you’re in for it,” Wade said. “She wants to talk to you right now. And I’m coming along to watch. But don’t count on any help from me. This is your party.”

  He squeezed her arm lightly as they went down the hall to Mother Tyler’s sitting room and she knew he was not displeased.

  The old lady was once more in her easy chair by the fire, its high wings hiding her face as Lora entered. Her hands lay folded in her lap, atwinkle with the rings Lora had set upon them that afternoon, and she held a lace handkerchief daintily between two fingers.

  “Good evening, Mother,” Lora said. “I’m glad to see you up and looking so well tonight.”

  “Thanks to you, it’s a wonder I’m not in my grave,” the old lady said tartly. “Sit down and stop staring at me.” She looked at Wade. “Nearly froze me to death this afternoon, she did, and tried to break all my bones.”

  “Evidently it’s done you good,” Wade said.

  Lora took the chair opposite her, smiling faintly. Amanda Tyler could no longer frighten or intimidate her. Not since Lora had felt this day the dry, aging flesh beneath her fingers, turned the frail body in bed, treated her like any other bedridden patient. Now she knew the vulnerability of Amanda Tyler’s flesh.

  Wade drew up another chair and waited, like a spectator at a play. The performance, as he must have known, lay between these two women and needed no interference from him.

  “I have been in the dining room,” Mrs. Tyler went on, “and I have seen that ridiculous print you’ve put in place of the excellent game painting which hung there before. I will not have three such simpering ninnies looking down at me from my dining-room wall.”

  Lora said mildly, “It was the best Jemmy and I could find.”

  “Well, it won’t do. On your next shopping trip to New York I shall expect you to get something more suitable in the way of flowers or fruit.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Lora said, her lips twitching.

  “Mind you, that game bird painting is a fine one. My husband paid a large sum for it. It was the sort of thing he liked. But by this time I believe it has earned its worth in service. As a matter of fact, I always detested the thing. But I do not like to see good money wasted.”

  The audience was plainly over, and Mother Tyler turned her attention to a heap of papers on the table beside her.

  “Everything has been neglected, Wade. Everything. I want Mr. Niles here tomorrow without fail. There are a number of matters I wish to discuss with him.”

  She said nothing at all about Jemmy’s dog. Indeed, there was no mention of it then, or at any time in the next few weeks. Mrs. Tyler’s recent illness was ignored by herself and never mentioned by other members of the household. The only difference from the old life was that sometime during each day Lora went down to the old lady’s room and gave her a vigorous alcohol rub. There was little conversation between them during these occasions. Weak flesh surrendered to ministering hands, and for that little while there was no question about who was in control. At all other times, however, Mrs. Tyler was again herself, despotic and demanding. But Lora no longer felt the sting. She had somehow placed herself beyond the reach of Mother Tyler’s whiplash.

  Wade too escaped to some extent these days, being caught up in an active part in Murray Norwood’s plans. He had substituted a cane for a crutch by now and got around with much greater ease. Lora knew he still suffered from his wounds at times, as he probably would all his life. But at least he had an active interest now and there had been no recent retreat into the dark room at the front of the house.

  One April morning Lora awoke to find that a thick bank of fog had moved in from the sea to envelop Staten Island. When she stepped outside after breakfast she found that the day was almost balmy and that a little breeze stirred the mist into drifting shapes along Dogwood Lane. It was so warm that she needed only a shawl for a walk today. She was eager to explore this secret mist-wreathed world and set out briskly.

  There had been little rain and the road was dry and rutted. Lora walked aimlessly, ready to follow any whim. There was a lift to her steps in response to the feeling in the air that anything might happen—a feeling that was part of the coming of spring.

  These days everything was so much better at the Tyler house than she had ever thought it could be. Lately Wade had even returned to his writing in the library, and it was good to see him busy and occupied. If her own place in his life was a quiet one which required little of her, she was all the more grateful to have it so. If they could be friends and comrades, that was enough and she served some purpose in life.

  The troublesome thoughts that had haunted her for a while after Jemmy’s revelation had faded to the background of her mind. Such matters which belonged to the past were better forgotten. Understanding them could not change what had gone before. Let old wounds heal and old griefs die. The important thing was not to prod the wounds anew.

  A sea breeze parted drifting mist along the road and a tall black skeleton chimney emerged from the new-budding branches around it. The old Hume place. Lora had always wanted to explore it—and when could there be a more suitable time than now when it was touched by soft fog fingers of mystery? Always before the place had been too cold or too damp for such exploration. Today was perfect.

  Lora had worn her old brown dress without the restraint of hoops, and now she gathered up her skirts and hopped across the ditch that separated road from ruin. Once there had been a carriage drive bridging the ditch, but water running down the hill had worn a channel through.

  Traces of the old driveway were still to be seen beneath encroaching grass and the rank overgrowth of weeds. Lora picked her way between a bush that would burst into white snowball blooms and a hydrangea, unbeautiful now with its lack of blossoms, and tripped over something hidden beneath the grass. As she bent to see what it was, a faint shiver ran through her. Once an iron fence had stood here. There were still rusting portions which had fallen flat and lost themselves in the undergrowth. Immediately beneath her foot lay a spike of iron. The picture Serena had drawn for her of the happenings at her fifteenth birthday party flashed back and Lora pulled her foot away and went on hastily.

  A flight of five steps mounted upward, with a graceful arch of doorway above them. Steps which led nowhere, a doorway into emptiness. At either side stretched the remains of crumbling, blackened walls. Even nearby objects wavered in the mist, their colors deadened in the gray light, changing their outlines even as she looked. Beyond the empty doorway where mist rolled in billows there was nothing—as though you might step from doorway into empty space.

  For just a moment Lora experienced a feeling she’d had sometimes as a child. One shivered at the unknown, yet enjoyed the shiver, aware that it was only imagination which formed strange shapes and figures, at the same time half believing they were real. Lora went up the steps and paused beneath the arch. There was a little platform of brick here, and then a dropping away into what was now a grass-grown interior. She felt for the ground with one foot and then slipped down into the cup of mist gathered among the ruins. Here the new grass, bright with the upsurge of spring, was like velvet beneath her feet as she began to trace her way through the outlines of what once had been rooms.

  There were only heaps of rubble, a few charred timbers where interior walls had stood, but she could still make out the shape of rooms, the doorway openings. Where a blackened chimney rose, still firm and
strong, a hearth lay open to mist and wind, with the broken marble of a mantle above it. The sight was somehow more lonely than all else.

  Long ago a family had lived here. They had laughed and loved, quarreled, died. Wade as a little boy had spent hours between these walls. So must Morgan and Virginia. Serena and Adam had lived here. Perhaps if she listened intently she could hear the echo of old laughter, old tears. She might even hear Wade’s cry as he fell from the fence that dreadful day. For this, surely, was a haunted place.

  But only the distant sound of foghorns and whistles from the harbor broke the listening silence and the ruin lay hushed and quiet about her.

  On a warm and sunny day unhaunted by mist, this might be a place to come with Jemmy if she wanted to get him back into the pleasant habit of reading aloud outdoors. They could bring an old quilt and spread it in the shadow of the chimney, have this wild, lonely place to themselves, read to their heart’s content. Reading aloud had been so much a pleasure of her own childhood that she wanted to share it again with another child. Perhaps such a sharing would bring about a closer understanding between herself and Jemmy.

  The misty air was brighter now, and there was a luminous glow touching it from above. Soon the sun would dispel the mist and this would no longer be a place of memories and mystery.

  Still exploring, she started through a broken doorway, her skirts brushing over bright new grass, catching on the reaching branch of a sassafras bush which had sprung up in this once forbidden area. She bent to release her skirt from the reaching twig and felt the hard little nubs of bursting life against the dry wood.

  Her fingers moved along the nubby twig, her imagination already envisoning the full blooming of spring that lay only a little while ahead. She must watch for it this year. She must be conscious with all her senses of the tiny unfurling of leaves, of the delicate tracery of color that would burst into lush growth in so short a time. This was a magic not to be taken casually for granted as it had been in the past. Perhaps it was this sudden awareness of the awakening life about her that made her catch the tiny flash of gold beneath the bush which had snatched at her skirt.

  She knelt and reached beneath the branches. Some small piece of metal it was. Perhaps a forgotten possession of those who had lived in this house before the fire. She held the circlet on her palm and turntd toward a gleam of sunlight slanting through the fading mist. It was a hoop of gold hung from a small gold hub, with fine gold wires which had fastened into a pierced ear lobe. A gold hoop earring. She recognized it at once—she had seen a pair such as this and remembered them well. This was Rebecca’s earring.

  But how had it come to this place? At some time in the weeks since Lora had last seen Rebecca with this very ring swinging against her brown cheek, she must have come to this ruin. The ring must have slipped from her ear without her knowing it, so that she had come away without it. But why had she been here in the first place?

  Lora moved out of the ruins and back to the road where mist still rolled before the breeze, thinning now, preparing to lift altogether. Still pondering the puzzle of the earring, she walked slowly up the road toward the woods path that led uphill to Morgan’s house. Perhaps she would climb the hill and return this hoop to Rebecca. Providing, of course, that it could be managed without Morgan’s knowledge. Somehow, Lora suspected that Morgan would not approve of the girl’s mooning about in old ruins. Yet why should Rebecca not do just as Lora herself had done, if the spirit moved her—wander in the woods, explore? What else had she to do with her spare time?

  There was a sound of footsteps on the road and Lora looked up from the bit of jewelry in her hand. Her fingers closed over the earring to hide it and she walked more briskly, as if there were real purpose behind her steps.

  Out of the mist before her a man loomed suddenly, and of the two, he was the more startled. His skin, darker than Rebecca’s, bespoke his blood, and he wore the rough clothes of a workman from the docks. There was anxiety in the look he turned upon Lora, though he dropped his gaze quickly and touched his finger to his cap in greeting.

  “’Morning, ma’am,” he said, and went quickly by while her answering good morning followed him. She glanced at the gold earring and then thoughtfully after the tall figure disappearing into the mist. Had Rebecca a friend after all? Had there perhaps been rendezvous held in the ruins of the old Hume house? But she must jump to no hasty conclusions. The man’s presence on the road very likely meant no more than some mission to the Lords’ or the Channings’. Nevertheless, the look in the man’s eyes, so hastily hidden, remained to be considered. Lora turned onto the path, her decision made, and hurried uphill through the woods.

  XX

  Lora emerged upon the high curve of the lane where sunshine glowed bright and golden on the sea of mist below. The tall columns of the Channing house made white exclamation points of grace in the shimmering light.

  Hamlin’s mother barked as Lora approached and John Ambrose came out the door of the cottage by the gate. He smiled when he saw her.

  “Good morning, Lora. A fine day it’s going to be, now that the mist is burning off. If you’ve come to see Mrs. Channing, I’m afraid she’s still abed. But I can send Rebecca—”

  Lora shook her head. “It’s not Mrs. Channing I’ve come to see, but you, John. I’m what my father used to call busting with curiosity. There are so many things I want to know about.”

  “Fine, then,” he said. “Let’s have a talk right now, if you don’t mind coming into my small place.”

  He led the way up the steps of the stone cottage where he evidently had his living quarters separate from the big house. Lora stepped into a bright, cozy room where a fire burned in the big stone fireplace and light poured in at every window. The furnishings were plain, with no woman-touches to be seen. A long deal table without cloth, where breakfast dishes still waited, stood in the middle of the floor. There were several straight wooden chairs, and two somewhat battered rockers, one of which John Ambrose pulled toward the hearth for Lora. Under a window stood a wooden sink with a pump beside it. Simple enough quarters, but comfortable for a man who lived alone. Strange, nevertheless, when he was the father of the woman who lived so comfortably in the great empty house at the hilltop.

  Perhaps he read her thoughts as he added a log to the fire. “I could have rooms up there if I liked,” he said. “But for me this is more what I’m used to, more comfortable. I dress as I like, come and go as I please, and there’s none to bother or fuss because I wear no long tails or high hat.”

  Lonely though, Lora could not help but think. And surely not what Virginia would have wanted for him. Where had he and his wife lived when Virginia was first married? she wondered.

  She rocked comfortably for a few moments, the earring still hidden in her hand. Ambrose began clearing the table, carrying dishes to the sink. She was glad that he chose to keep busy while she sat there sorting her thoughts.

  “You’ve done a lot for the Tyler household,” he said, pumping water into a pan. “Jemmy tells me you’ve even got her sitting up again running things.”

  Lora nodded. “Was Mrs. Tyler always like this? I mean so domineering and—and sometimes unreasonable?”

  “She has a lot of her pa in her,” Ambrose said, rubbing a cloth over a big homemade cake of brown soap. “Old Jason Cowles was all iron and nails and I guess she took after him pretty much. Too bad she couldn’t have taken after him still more—they’d have both of ’em liked that. I mean if she’d been a boy.”

  “I know. I’m surprised sometimes at the way she thinks like a man about business and the war and outside affairs. It’s a wonder she ever married. And yet she can also behave like a spoiled, petulant woman.”

  Ambrose paused with a big white coffee cup in his hands and looked out the window absently. “There was always plenty of woman in her, in spite of the way her pa tried to stamp it out and make her all man. Those rings she wears and the way she keeps her hands so nice. But mostly the woman part got buried wher
e you couldn’t see it so easy.”

  “Was she unattractive as a girl?”

  “Well—maybe to some. She got the idea in her head that she was too plain for any man to like, and anyway her pa kept ’em all away from her. Maybe that’s how she came to fall so hard for the first fellow who came along after he died.”

  “I saw her husband’s picture in the parlor,” Lora mused. “He looked like a handsome, reckless sort of person. I’ve wondered what he saw in her and she in him, when they were so different.”

  Ambrose snorted and began rescouring the cup. “What would he see—a fellow like that!—except all the money behind her? And she an innocent about men’s ways, for all that she was in her thirties and knew shipping and banks inside out.”

  “I believe you like her,” Lora said softly.

  He looked around at her then, his eyes as sharply blue as Jemmy’s beneath grizzled brows. “I have liked her for a good many years, ma’am,” he said simply, humbly.

  Oddly shamed, Lora turned from his direct gaze and began studying a rough bookshelf set up beside the fireplace. There were several well-worn volumes on it and she read their titles curiously. Something by Benjamin Franklin, a collection of Emerson’s essays, a volume by Matthew Arnold, and some titles by Sir Walter Scott. She knew now where Jemmy must hold his visits with his grandfather—here in this very room with its books and serene atmosphere. She was beginning to understand the keynote of this man to which she had responded from the first. It was a quiet response that had nothing of despair or defeat in it, which refused to become overwrought by any contact with the tempests of the world. Undoubtedly John Ambrose had sailed stormy seas before he had reached this haven of quiet where the hurricane could no longer rock him.