This was scarcely what I had intended, but he gave me no chance to protest. Off he went, striding toward the kennel behind the Bascomb house.
What an exasperating man he was! I thought for the hundredth time. I regretted any recognition of that current that could leap the barriers of antipathy and charge me with a feeling that I decried every time it happened. I would not, could not, feel this way about a man I had every reason to fear and hate. Because I wanted to reject the slightest request he might make of me, I did not wait for him, but went up the steps and into the lighthouse. Perhaps he had known very well that this was what I would do.
The door to Ian’s workroom was closed and I knocked upon it, not wanting to interrupt if he was working there alone. There was no answer and I opened the door. The room was empty. As always, the figurehead stood on its platform with its back to the door, leaning slightly out into the room because of the angle at which it was built to follow the curve beneath the bowsprit of a ship. Ian’s tools had been put away and the work area was clear, as he always left it when he was through for the day. But on the floor below the platform were scattered small slivers and splinters of raw wood that had not been swept away.
I walked around the figurehead’s platform and looked up at the Chinese lady in her painted robes. Looked with a shock of horror into the utter devastation that had been wrought across the face that had once represented my own.
Someone had slashed the carved features violently across again and again, slicing, cutting, destroying. The likeness to my own face, or to any human resemblance had vanished. The nose had been splintered with the fury of the blows, the forehead gouged, lips and cheeks and chin were scarred with a crosshatch of cuts that spelled a ruin that could never be repaired. Nothing else had been touched—not the flowing robes or the crossed hands, but only the face. Horror rose in me in wave after sickening wave as that faceless thing that had once been Ian’s work stared at me with ravaged eyes.
FOURTEEN
Far away the black dog howled as if in anguish. Brock had not, after all, gone to quiet Lucifer, or to bring him back. Because he himself had not intended to return? Because he knew very well what I would find when I stepped into this room, and he had not wanted to be in my company when I discovered what had happened?
I remembered sensing his uneasy elation when I looked up at him on the rocks above me. I had felt some mingling in him of angry triumph, of violence suppressed—or was it already spent?
My flesh crept and the realization of my loneliness in this empty room where someone had taken a maddened revenge upon my image came home to me. First the wooden face—next the reality? Laurel’s words swept back to my mind, “Someone wants you to be dead.”
At that moment I gave no thought to the weapon that might have been used to do such harm. I thought only of escaping the horrid sight, of fleeing to some place of greater safety. But what safety was there with that unlocked door between Brock’s room and mine? At least I must not remain here until he came, if that was what he intended.
Released from my shocked trance, I ran out of that haunted place. Before I reached the outside door, however, someone opened it and came whistling into the main room of the museum. It was not Brock, but Ian Pryott, and I stopped in my tracks, staring at him in a mingling of dismay and relief. He had come when I needed him most, but until this moment I had been concerned only with myself, with my fear of the malevolence that must lie behind the attack upon the figurehead. I had been too wrought-up to consider the artist who must now face the destruction of his work.
He smiled at me in greeting, then saw my expression and sobered. “What is it, Miranda? What has happened?”
I could only wave my hand helplessly in the direction of his workroom. He did not stop to question me, but ran toward the open door. I followed, sick at heart for Ian now.
As I had done, he first saw the splintered bits of wood upon the floor and turned to look at the figure. His face was toward me as he stared up at the work he had created with so great a sense of excitement and hope. I saw the sickness in his eyes, saw despair wipe away all else. His hands went limp at his sides and he stood staring, the agony of an artist whose work has been destroyed showing in his face for anyone to read.
When he spoke it was so softly that I hardly caught the words. “I’d never done so fine a thing as this. Perhaps I never will again.”
I forgot the enmity for me that lay behind the deed and tried to find some way to comfort this man of whom I grew increasingly fond.
“Surely you can use a new block of wood,” I said. “I’ll pose for you as long as you wish. You can discard this damaged part and start over. The rest of the figure is intact. Perhaps it will be even better next time.”
There was defeat in his eyes, though he answered me gently. “It was carved from a whole piece of wood, Miranda. And such work doesn’t come as easily as that. I don’t often have the feeling of everything going exactly right. It isn’t a thing to be casually repeated.”
I went to him, longing to assuage his grievous wounding, aching within myself because of the hurt to him. “You mustn’t say that! You mustn’t believe it! Other artists have repeated their work over and over. Painters and sculptors, too.”
“Only because the first efforts were never right. When the thing becomes as fine as you can make it—then there’s no use in trying to repeat. Besides, it was your face, Miranda—” He broke off and would have turned away.
My heart went out to him and I put my hands lightly, pleadingly on his shoulders. In a moment his arms were about me, and he was holding me to his heart, shielding me from the ugliness of what had happened in this room; shielding himself as well as me. For a moment I clung to him, feeling that we might support and protect each other, knowing the comfort of so human a clinging. But Ian did not leave it there. His arms tightened and he bent his head to kiss me.
But I could not hide from danger in Ian’s arms, no matter how much he wished to hold me there. However brutally and shockingly it had happened—first with Tom Henderson, now with the figurehead—the cocoon of my childhood had been torn away forever. I no longer wanted to go back. Whatever must be faced and dealt with must be faced and dealt with because I was a woman grown and willing to depend upon myself.
As gently as I could, I withdrew myself from Ian’s embrace. “For us this isn’t possible,” I said.
He let his arms drop from about me, not understanding. “For a moment I’d forgotten who you are. I’d forgotten the name you bear.”
This was not what I had meant. I had myself forgotten the very detail that trapped me here as the wife of Brock McLean. I shook my head angrily, wondering how to make him understand without being cruel. He saw only that I was angry.
“Don’t waste yourself in rage, Miranda,” he counseled me. “If there is a way in which this problem can be solved, then we will find the way and solve it. If it cannot be worked out, then raging will only destroy us. I found that out long ago.”
He had not at all understood that my withdrawal was not because I was the wife of another man, but for more subtle reasons that had to do with my own maturing, my own acceptance of a world of real responsibilities. But I could not now explain.
He turned his back upon the ravaged image and began to search the room with eyes that knew every corner of it.
“I wonder what instrument she used?” he said.
I caught only one word and echoed it: “She?”
“Of course. What else could this be but a woman’s vindictive act? None of my tools seem to have been displaced. And I doubt that such slashes could have been managed with any such tool even if used in a fury.”
“But—but I thought—” I began. “That is—I believe Brock knew this had happened, and—”
Ian turned abruptly from his tool shelf. “Brock? What are you talking about?”
“He knew something,” I told Ian. “He was pleased about something in a queer, savage sort of way. And when I wanted him to come with
me to look at the figurehead, he went off and let me find what had happened by myself. And he hasn’t come back.”
Ian shook his head. “It’s hard to believe that Brock would be involved. Brutality I could expect from him—yes. But it would be open brutality. Not something sly and hidden and vindictive like this.”
I was not sure about Brock. I knew nothing at all of what he might be capable.
“What she do you mean?” I asked.
“The captain’s wife, of course. Lien.”
Yes, I could imagine the woman attempting such a thing. She had wanted her own face represented on Captain Obadiah’s ship, and she did not like me. It was I who had taken a fortune away from her, by her way of thinking. Yet it seemed unlikely that she would wish to hurt Ian by such an act.
“You’ve been kind to her,” I pointed out. “Aside from the captain, you’ve been her one friend in the Bascomb house. Surely she wouldn’t hurt you in this way.”
He made no attempt at denial or evasion, but continued his search of the room. In a corner, dropped behind a roll of tarpaulin, he found what he was seeking and drew it out. I saw again the ugly blade of the Malay cutlass as he turned to me with it in his hands. He ran a careful finger along steel that had been blunted for most of its edge and showed me the tiny slivers, the powdering of wood dust.
“The sword came with her from China,” he said. “It is the instrument she would use.”
I stared at the pirate blade in revulsion. It was as if I could feel the cold slash of it upon my person—as if I were to be next after the carven image.
Ian started for the door, carrying the cutlass with him and I cried out in alarm, for he did not look like the gentle man I knew. “What are you going to do with that?”
“I shall return the lady’s property,” he said and went out of the room, leaving me there with the ruined figurehead.
There was nothing I could do to interfere. Ian must deal with this matter in his own way. I did not believe he would hurt Lien, in spite of the destruction she had wrought, yet I could not feel easy in my mind as I followed him from the lighthouse.
I saw him moving quickly ahead of me as I walked more slowly through the gray and lowering afternoon. I had forgotten Brock’s promise to return and join me until I saw the dog and his master coming toward me from behind the Bascomb house. Lucifer threatened to leap at me as they drew near and Brock held him back with a strong, rough grasp.
“Down, you brute! The lady doesn’t care for your attentions.” Lucifer obeyed and stood quivering beside his master, his eyes fixed burningly upon me. “Well?” Brock said. “I suppose you’ve found out by now?”
“So you did know,” I accused. “And you knew I wouldn’t wait for you, that I’d find it myself. I thought you were pleased about something. I suppose you have no idea of how much work and heart Ian has put into that figurehead. I suppose you are incapable of appreciating what a fine piece of work it was.”
He laughed at me, and the dog snarled at the derisive sound. “I could see well enough. I’ve been following the thing through its entire blasted progress.”
“You knew, yet you left me to find it alone! Didn’t it occur to you that the experience might be terrifying?” Even as I spoke I knew that such words would have no effect upon him. I could expect no kindly treatment from Brock McLean.
“I wanted to speak to my mother,” he told me. “And I expected you to come to no harm. But I found her shut into her room again with one of her headaches. There was nothing I could do for her, so I came back.”
“Ian knows, too,” I said, having no concern for his mother. “We’ve found the instrument that was used—that Malay cutlass of the captain’s. Ian has gone to talk to Lien.”
“Lien?” There was a curious inflection in the way he spoke her name, as though he found it difficult to connect the Chinese woman with this act.
“It must have been Lien who did this,” I told him. “She wanted to pose for the figurehead herself, and she has many reasons to dislike me.”
There was a long moment of silence between us. In spite of the evidence, Brock seemed unconvinced that Lien had committed the act of destruction. For the first time I saw the significance of his hurrying home to talk to his mother. Sybil McLean was surely of the temper to perform such a deed. And she liked me no better than did Lien. Perhaps she had even more reason to destroy a replica of the Sea Jade figurehead. In Sybil McLean old hatreds blended venomously with new.
We had turned and were walking slowly toward the house, the black dog pacing his steps to his master’s gait. At least it seemed that my first wild suspicion of Brock himself had been foolish, though I did not know whether I felt relieved by this, or disappointed. It would please me to think as ill of him as possible. As if by thinking ill I might somehow protect myself—from myself. I glanced up at the man as I walked beside him, seeing once more the craggy carving of his profile, the strong muscles of neck and jaw.
“When did you discover what had been done to the figurehead?” I asked.
“Just before I came out upon the cliffs and saw you and Laurel on the rocks below. I was shocked at first, for all that you think me insensitive. I wanted to get away and clear my wits before I took any action.”
“You were pleased too,” I reminded him. “I could feel elation in you.”
He offered no denial. “I’ve disliked this sculpture of Ian’s from the first. It seemed an insult that it should be growing to completion on Bascomb property—forcing old injury down our throats. I can feel sympathy, as well as concern, for the unhappy creature who felt driven to destroy it.”
“I thought you might have done it,” I told him boldly.
He gave me a look of such contempt that I felt quickly ashamed, and turned away from me, hauling on the dog’s chain. Without further word the two went off along the sea cliffs as they were wont to do when the master was perturbed and restlessly driven.
I let myself in through the white gate of the Bascomb house and started upstairs. I was wondering how Ian fared with Lien, and so lost was I in troubled thoughts, that I did not note that Sybil McLean’s door had opened as I mounted the stairs. Not until I reached the second floor and turned down the corridor to my room, did I realize that she stood opposite in her own doorway, where she could watch my approach from the floor below. I must have started when I saw her there, for her tight lips quivered into a rather dreadful smile. Her hair was disheveled and she wore a wrapper of some drab, mustard-colored material, drawn loosely about her. She spoke to me not at all, but stood transfixed in her doorway, staring into my face for every step of my way along the corridor. Her deepset, colorless eyes did not so much as flicker and her silence was deadly with unspoken triumph.
I suppose the moment of my passing was short indeed, but it seemed to take me forever to reach the haven of my own door. I was nearly running by that time, which must have added to her perverse pleasure at so frightening me. Frightened I was. I had the hideous feeling that at any moment she might snatch at me with the same hands that had wielded the cutlass and that if she chose to put them to my throat, I would be no match for her in strength.
Then I was through the door and had closed it behind me. There was no key anywhere in this room. No bolt I could slide across—as there had been in the little room in which my mother had died. Why, I wondered, my cheek against the door panel as I held my breath listening, had there been a bolt in that other room? Had the captain put it there to protect my mother from the hatred of this woman?
Across the hall there was silence. No sound of a door closing reached me, nor was there the fall of a foot in the hall to indicate that she might have crossed to my own door. Simply that blank silence. I felt almost impelled to open the door a crack to see what she was doing. But I did not need to. I knew very well. Mrs. McLean was standing where I had seen her, with that fixed smile on her lips, that blank expression in her eyes—simply standing, without the movement of an eyelid, looking straight through the panel of
my own door to the quivering spectacle of fear I was making of myself.
I found a chair with a strong back and propped it beneath the doorknob, thus bolting it after a fashion. Across the room Brock’s door stood closed as always, but I had no chair to prop against that. If she chose to enter his room from the hall …? I fled to the window and stood beside it, where I could at least fling it open and scream if there should be need.
From that vantage point I could look out and see that Brock had turned away from the cliffs and was coming home after all. I drew back from the window and went to fling myself across the bed. There I lay with my heart pounding and my thoughts making no sense at all because I was, at that moment, so thoroughly ruled by fear that I could not think.
From across the hall came the whisper-soft closing of a door, followed by the sound of footsteps across the bedroom floor beyond. Mrs. McLean’s vigil, at least, had ended. I lay cheek down upon my pillow, with my heart pounding, waiting for some disaster to fall.
And nothing happened. Nothing at all.
The time was not yet ripe. The slashing of the figurehead’s face was only a rumble of distant thunder. The storm was brewing, but though the winds of tension had begun to rise, the breaking point had not yet come.
The time was not yet ripe.
FIFTEEN
Nothing of further note occurred until after supper. Since I wished for neither the company of Brock nor his mother at the evening meal, I invited myself to dine early with Laurel and we had a moderately amusing time in the kitchen, for all that Mrs. Crawford’s disapproving presence set some blight upon us.
Laurel did not yet know about the figurehead, and I made no effort to enlighten her. Perhaps it would have been easier for her if I had. But the child had seemed so much improved in the last few days that I did not want to bring up a matter so disturbing. I would deal with it in the morning.
Not until later that evening did I see Ian again. After supper, when Laurel had gone to bed, I sought the library as the one cheerful room in the house and lighted a fire there. I sat toasting my toes at the hearth, trying to concentrate on a romantic novel by Sir Walter Scott. Usually Scott’s tales of noble highland lords and ladies enthralled me, but of late such romancing appealed to me less and less. The events of my immediate life loomed to a menacing degree, claiming all my waking attention. So, though the fire burned cheerily on the hearth, and print on white pages lay ready to invite my eye, I felt neither involved nor interested. The printed story would not take hold.
Sea Jade Page 21