The Ebony Swan

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Where is Theresa, Gracie? I’d like her to stay with Miss Alex for a little while.”

  Gracie hesitated. “She’s left—gone with Mr. Eric, to be married, I guess. She left a letter on the hall table. I’ll stay with Miss Alex, if you want.”

  If the news about Theresa and Eric meant anything to Peter he made no comment, and Alex seemed not to hear.

  “That’s even better, Gracie. Will you help Miss Alex to her room, please? I think she’ll want to lie down.” He kissed Alex’s cheek and gently released her hand from his arm. “I’ll look in on you soon, Alex. Let Gracie help you now.”

  Alex gave him a shaky smile and allowed Gracie to lead her away.

  “Why shouldn’t I stay with my grandmother?” Susan asked.

  “Because I’d like you to do something for me—if you’re willing, Susan. I’ve been turning this over and over in my mind and I think the time has come.”

  It was as though some inner alarm alerted her. Peter seemed grave and remote, and she felt suddenly afraid. She wanted only to resist whatever he had in mind.

  “Let’s go in here,” he said and led the way into the long room that had once been a double parlor.

  There was no longer any way to stop what was about to happen. She allowed him to lower her onto the couch, where he pushed her back gently, so that she stretched out full-length. He put a cushion under her head and pulled over a chair in order to sit beside her. She closed her eyes, knowing what he meant to do. Perhaps he was right, and the time to go back had arrived.

  If only she didn’t feel so nervous and uncooperative. Whatever had been buried in her memory for so long had been too terrible to recall, and she wasn’t sure she could bear to remember now. At the same time she could no longer stop what was about to surface, whether Peter helped her or not.

  Ever since she had come to Virginia, flashes had appeared in her mind. Sometimes she’d been aware of voices shouting angrily, though she could catch no words. Sometimes there were brief, terrifying explosions of color, with red predominating. Most of all there had been a sense of some terrible evil—something that might have come out of one of her mother’s own dark fairy tales.

  Peter began to speak soothing words meant to relax her, but this was not the way and she stopped him. Almost as though she sleep-walked she left the couch, pushing past his hands as she went into the hall. There she stood very still, focusing on a dim inner world of shadow and sound that belonged to very young memory.

  “I must go back,” she told Peter. “I think I can now, in my own way. I must go back to where it happened.”

  He nodded, understanding.

  She put a hand on the banister and began to climb slowly—because the steps were high for six-year-old legs. The room where her grandfather sat helpless in his wheelchair, because of something called a stroke, was on her left. Down the hall on the opposite side was her own playroom. She went to the door and stepped inside, envisioning with an inner eye. Theresa’s worktable and a few remaining eggshells were not what she saw. Instead, she was aware of her own small pieces of furniture and her playthings. No lights were on, but the room lighted itself in the mists of memory. Her mother sat in a big wing chair, reading aloud a fairy story she had written. Susan sat at a play table painting in watercolor, wholly concentrated.

  Her grandfather’s voice called out from his room. Though the sound was faint, it made her mother drop her pages and jump up. “That’s your grandfather!” she cried and ran to the door. Susan knew that he had trouble speaking, so it was surprising that he could call out. She started to follow her mother but was pushed back at once.

  “Go on with your painting, honey,” her mother directed. “It’s nothing.”

  Susan sat down again, but now she felt frightened. It was not nothing. Her grandfather was making angry, startled noises. She could hear him as he struggled from his chair, and she could hear her mother protesting. More than anything Susan wanted to shut out the upsetting sounds. She didn’t want her grandfather to be mad at her mother, and she tried to pay attention to the watercolor that had turned very messy. She was painting it for Grandma Alex, and now it had been spoiled.

  When she heard her mother scream, she knocked over the water glass where she’d dipped her brush, and ran into the hall. Her grandfather had pushed himself up from his chair and for a moment she stood staring at him. He was holding some sort of carving and he put out his other hand to her. Then a terrible look came over his face, and while she watched, frozen, he fell full-length near the top of the stairs.

  That was when she looked down and saw that her mother lay at the bottom of the steep flight, not moving. A terrible wetness of red seeped about her head. A red stronger than anything in Susan’s paintbox.

  She almost fell down the stairs herself in her hurry to reach her mother. A mother who didn’t answer or move, even when her small daughter began to scream.

  It must have been only a little while after that her grandmother came home and found them there. Only a little later Theresa came home too. But Susan couldn’t tell them about the awful thing that had happened. She hadn’t really seen her mother fall, but the way her grandfather had looked—she was afraid that he had pushed her down the stairs. Though she never told anyone that, and she never would.

  The mists cleared and the years fled past to the present. The grownup Susan sat on the bottom step of the stairs, with Peter’s arm about her. She leaned into his shoulder crying softly. That day Susan’s father had come in from outside with his friend Gilbert Townsend. But she didn’t want to remember any more. All the rest was too painful, and she wanted only to forget.

  Peter held her, and now he was saying all the things she wanted most to hear. That he loved her. That he wanted to keep her safe and never let anything terrible happen to her ever again. She turned her face for his kiss, and then pushed herself away. Because it wasn’t over. She knew very well that there was more to come.

  “I don’t believe in what I thought happened,” she told him. “My grandfather would never have hurt his daughter. He was trying to save her. I know that! Somehow I know, even though I didn’t understand anything at the time.”

  “You’ve remembered something more, haven’t you, Susan?”

  “It’s more a feeling than something I saw. A sort of whoosh down the hall toward the upper stairs. As though someone rushed away.”

  “Someone else was there?”

  “I have a strong feeling that I heard someone. All I could think of at the time was my mother lying there—and the horror of what I thought I’d seen. That my grandfather had pushed her. So I had to put it all away from me. I had to shut it out and forget in order to protect myself. But the terror has always been there deep down inside me, sometimes stirring about in my dreams. I’ve had an awful feeling that it was my fault, that I could have saved her.”

  “You know better now.”

  “Yes. And I know there’s more.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to bring back that other something that hovered just out of sight. But it was all a blur. The blur of someone rushing away down the hall, making that whoosh of sound. Someone who knew about the outside stairs from the tower and could escape easily.

  “I’m sure someone else was there. But what can I do about it?”

  “When your grandmother is feeling better we must tell her,” Peter said.

  “Tell her what? That part of me believes that Juan Gabriel pushed my mother down the stairs? Even while I deny that, I’m afraid it might be true.”

  “Alex must be given a chance to think about this. The contradictory feeling that someone else was in the house may give her new hope.”

  Peter’s arm tightened about her, and Susan tried to let everything else go.

  14

  Alex managed to smile at Gracie. “Don’t worry about me. I’m perfectly all right. I’m not going to bed and I don’t wa
nt to be fussed over. Visiting Tangier Island wasn’t easy, and I need some time alone to think about it.”

  What Gracie might have known or guessed had never been apparent, but she knew when to retreat. Once more she slipped away, keeping her own counsel.

  When she was alone, Alex took off the turquoise jacket—a totally unsuitable choice for the trip!—and tossed it over a chair. Vanity had gotten the better of her because she’d wanted to look as well as it was possible for an old woman to look. Of course that had hardly proved to be important. After all, her only purpose in going to the island was to allow John to meet his granddaughter.

  Nevertheless, it had mattered to look her best. She had felt as tremulous as a young girl when she’d stepped into that room and John had risen to greet her. He had looked at her in the old way and told her she was beautiful—so that for an instant she had felt young again.

  She put on a dressing gown and went to stand before a pier glass in a corner of the room, trying to see what John had seen. But now she felt even older than when she had gone to Tangier and listened to what Emily had told her.

  That was what she could hardly bear to face. In the glass Drina still looked out of eyes that had hollowed over the years, and somehow she recognized a comforting truth. She could recall John Gower’s face in every detail, recall everything about him. But she was not remembering the old man she had just seen on the island. So that was probably the way he would think of her too—as that young girl only a few years removed from Drina. Only those who grew old together took the changes for granted and forgot the look of youth.

  Since she would never see John Gower again, his memory would remain bright and young. Or that was the way it might have been if she had never gone to Tangier. But how could her memories remain untarnished after what Emily had told her? The frightful truth was what she had been trying to hold away because it was impossible to accept.

  She sat down heavily in an armchair and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. She had never known, never suspected what had happened all those years before. In a sense, her entire life had been a sham, and how was she to live with that knowledge now?

  Emily had told her, speaking quietly at first. They’d sat near each other on the porch almost companionably, while Emily destroyed the very fabric of her life. She could still hear her voice clearly—that older voice of a stranger.

  “You never knew, did you, Alex, you never knew that your husband came here to the island to see John?”

  Alex had looked off at the sunbaked, marshy brown stretches, visible where houses were sparse. She’d said nothing, suddenly tense.

  Emily’s smile was hardly friendly. “Did you really think that your husband would never guess? He must have taken one look at you and known you for a young woman in love. And not with him. I doubt that you ever looked at him the way you must have looked at John. I remember there was a glow about you in those days that could only come from being in love. I wasn’t close to John then and I didn’t know who the look was for.”

  Alex couldn’t bear to see the expression on Emily’s face, and she closed her eyes.

  “Mr. Montoro must have known that he needed to act to save his marriage. So he came to see John. Of course I knew about none of this until after John and I were married. I’m glad he could trust me enough to tell me.”

  John’s trust had to be given to his wife, and the wound Alex felt was unjustified. The hurtful voice went on. “Your husband wasn’t young then, but John was afraid of him. He knew about the rumors—that Mr. Montoro had killed a man in Peru. He brought a gun with him when he came to meet John—a Spanish gun with silver mountings. Perhaps the same one he’d used before? You would recognize it, wouldn’t you, Alex? Of course, John was younger and stronger and swifter. He managed to take the pistol away from your husband. Mr. Montoro was a brave man, and an angry one. He stood his ground, even though he was disarmed. He told John never to see you again, or Juan Gabriel Montoro would kill him. John knew he spoke the truth. That fancy pistol is still on a shelf in our parlor, where John put it—though I’ve always wanted it out of the house.”

  Alex remembered the gun very well, though she had not seen it since that time when she’d found it in Juan Gabriel’s safe. It had never turned up after his death, and now she knew why.

  Emily was clearly enjoying this moment of malicious pleasure—the spilling of pain that had been contained over the years. “I always thought you ought to know, Alex, but John refused to tell you. He gave you up willingly, you know. But Tangiermen don’t give up, and perhaps he was ashamed.”

  There was a new bleakness in this knowledge, and Alex held to her silence.

  “Of course, no one else knew about any of this except Hallie.” Emily spoke almost casually now. “Even though Hallie is the youngest, she always looked after Gilbert and me, so of course I had to tell her.”

  There’d been nothing to say. Even now, Alex didn’t know how she could have responded to Emily’s words. It had been safer to shrink into herself, to be very still and simply wait for John and Susan to return, so she could be taken home. All she had wanted by that time was to leave Tangier Island forever.

  The one comforting anchor she had clung to for all these years with Juan Gabriel had been her belief that he had never known, never been hurt. How foolish she had been to believe that! Still, she had chosen life with him over running away with John Gower. John had apparently chosen too. He had stayed away from her, rather than risk Juan Gabriel’s anger. At least, her choosing had not been under threat.

  Or had it? Had she carried some deep knowledge in her that if she had gone off with John, Juan Gabriel would have come after them and perhaps neither of them would have lived?

  Yet he had forgiven her silently and continued to love her. Or pretended to love her? He had never let her guess what he had done, except, of course, that he had written The Black Swan and carved that wicked little face in ebony. At times she had been uneasy, wondering, but she had never accepted what he might know. Now the bitter truth left her feeling abandoned, unprotected. There seemed nothing left for her to nurture that was good about their life together.

  How he had felt about Dolores was something else she could never know. Had he only pretended love for the daughter who belonged to another man? Had all his seeming tenderness toward Dolores, who thought him to be her father, been pretense? No! She would never believe that. He had secured his marriage in his own way, and if he had loved her more watchfully, she had never been aware. She had cheated Juan Gabriel of the full devotion she had owed him, even though she’d remained his wife and loved him in a different way.

  No! No one could owe love. Love made its own rules. At least she remembered thankfully that when he was dying she had held his hand and told him over and over how much she loved him. Words that had been true. If he could hear her at all, he must have known that they were true. Their love had grown out of a long life together, had grown from the understanding they had given each other.

  As a young man Juan Gabriel had surely known his own wild and passionate loves, though such experiences would never have made him tolerant toward a woman who belonged to him and was unfaithful. Or was it possible that he had arrived at a state of wisdom where he could forgive? How was she ever to know?

  Confusion left her sadly helpless. Certainly she could never tell Susan the truth. When she had told her daughter that Juan Gabriel was not her father, Dolores had listened in white-lipped silence. Her only immediate response had been to write that terrible little allegory which Alex had not read until after her death. When Dolores had fallen on the stairs Alex had never stopped blaming herself.

  Since Emily had told her, Hallie also knew what Juan Gabriel had done to prevent her from running off with John Gower. Alex could understand why Hallie sometimes looked at her with barely hidden disapproval. Hallie had never liked Dolores because of her own foolish crush on Lawrence Prentice. On
the surface, Hallie had seemed to remain her friend, but who knew what she might have told others?

  It would be necessary to talk to Hallie very soon and bring everything into the open. If she waited, Hallie might take the step Alex feared and tell Susan the truth.

  Weariness of body and spirit swept through her. She longed to let everything float away from her. Now that it was far too late, she must let John Gower go—as she had never really done before.

  When she stretched out on the bed, sleep came—though not dreamlessly. Just out of sight, on the edge of nightmare, something hovered waiting to destroy all that Alex Montoro cared about. Susan’s happiness with Peter was at stake, and she must act to save her. In this half-conscious dreaming state she told herself that when she awoke she would know what to do.

  Alex must have needed the rest because when she opened her eyes the sun had moved down the sky toward its late summer setting. Gracie had known better than to waken her for supper, and she didn’t feel in the least hungry. She knew now what she must do—where she must go to find the help she needed. Somehow she must make peace with her own life, and somehow she must have the wisdom to know what to do about Susan.

  She put on a pair of dark gray slacks, and a light cardigan against the chill she could expect in the place where she intended to go. Susan sat in the parlor, a book face down on her lap unread. At once Alex knew that her granddaughter and Peter had worked something out. That dreaming look on her face was recognizable, and a new happiness for Susan rose above her own pain. Peter was right for her. Susan’s life would take a better turn than her grandmother’s ever had.

  “I’ve had a good rest,” she told Susan, falsely brisk. “Now there’s something I must do. Will you come with me?”

  Susan rose eagerly to put her arms around her. “You’re looking much better. I was worried about you. Something happened on the island—” But she knew better than to ask.