The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  When he reached the gatehouse, I saw Nan outside, watering plants near the house. John gave her a gay salute as we swept through and I looked back to see her staring after us, unsmiling.

  “You must be thoroughly tired of The Shingles by this time,” he said as we drove through the lanes in the direction of town.

  “I don’t know whether ‘tired’ is the word,” I said. “I’ve felt disturbed by the house and the family, perhaps. Especially after yesterday.”

  “Where I’m taking you, we’ll have a chance to talk,” he told me. “Peacefully.”

  “That will be fine. I’d like to know what you meant about my stopping Stacia.”

  He didn’t answer as we turned down Main Street and drove beneath elm trees to a place where he pulled up to the curb and parked.

  “Here we are,” he said and waved his hand.

  Away from us across the road the grassy embankment dipped to the foot of a sloping hill where gravestones and monuments climbed to the crest. We had come to the Old South Burying Ground.

  “It’s a good place to be alone,” John said, “and there’s a certain sobering influence. Besides, I want to show you something.”

  Again he took my hand with natural, friendly ease and we crossed the road and climbed the slope of hill to the place where a stile led over a fence that enclosed the cemetery. For a time we wandered inside idly, silently, no longer hand-in-hand, but still comfortable together. I was glad to be with him, to know him a little away from the house. Just as a friend. I mustn’t think about who he might be.

  Now and then I bent to read dates and inscriptions, finding that some of the stones went back to the 1600s, while some had worn so badly that the markings had been long effaced. Old trees hung their limbs protectively above the graves, and there had been plantings of cedar and yew. Yew to prevail against the powers of evil. I had read that somewhere.

  “Our town prize,” John said as he led me toward a large tomb on which rested the stone effigy of an armored knight—a tomb which bore the name of the first Lion Gardiner of Gardiner’s Island, and which had been placed here two centuries after his death. But we didn’t linger, as John had another goal. The stone we came upon was of granite and handsomely engraved with the name of ETHAN RHODES.

  I glanced at John in swift questioning and he smiled at me. “You’ve been seeing the worst side of the Rhodes, Courtney. But Ethan was the good side, and I wanted you to see that once he really existed.”

  As I studied the inscription with long-ago dates, the blockage in me seemed to melt a little and unexpected tears came into my eyes. I blinked rapidly, not wanting John to see, wishing that I could have found this place for the first time when I was alone. I’d had no sense of relationship to Grandfather Lawrence, who was closer to me in years, but I felt that something had come down to me from old Captain Ethan. To him I could belong. My great-great-grandfather.

  “I thought you’d like to see it,” John said quietly.

  I couldn’t meet his eyes, still blinking away the tears in my own, not sure of his meaning. “Are other Rhodes buried here?” I asked.

  “Only Ethan’s wife, Hesther. Hers is the grave beside her husband’s.”

  Because of the sailing-ship named for her, because of that figurehead in the sand below The Shingles, I felt acquainted with her. And because of the unicorn.

  “This old graveyard hasn’t been used for a long time,” John went on. “It’s only historic now.”

  A little way from where Ethan and Hesther lay, a green aisle ran between the stones, and I found a place in the sun and sat carefully down upon the grass, favoring my bruise.

  “Do you mind?” I asked John. “I’d like to stay here for a little while. Just stay here and be quiet.”

  He nodded, but his own barely suppressed drive took him wandering among the stones, and I was glad he had the perception to let me stay alone. Now I could give myself over to emotion—as though, strangely, I had at last come home.

  There was no one about. What traffic there was moved past on either side of this graveyard island and seemed remote from its peace and quiet. At one end the hill sloped down to the town pond, still in sunlight, its waters shining. A gull’s feather lay on the grass near me and I picked it up to brush it softly through my fingers. Sitting here in this quiet, lonely spot, I began to feel calmer and less disturbed than at any time since I had come to The Shingles, so that I was grateful to John for bringing me here. I could even think of him now, think of what he might mean to me.

  I had no feeling at all about my mother, but was it possible that I had found a father? Did I dare to think that? No!—I must be careful, I must leap to no conclusions. Nothing at all was certain except the fact that my golden unicorn had come from the Rhodes.

  His step was soundless on the soft cushion of grass and I didn’t hear him come back until he stood beside me. Now I could look up without tears and meet his blue, sardonic gaze. If John was my father there would be no sentimentality about the kinship, and that fact I would have to accept.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” he asked.

  “Please.” I nodded to the space of grass beside me.

  He dropped down and sat cross-legged, relaxed now, and at ease, not looking at me, but staring off toward the treetops where a redbird was singing. Unobserved, I could study the fine carving of his profile, the thick sweep of silvering hair—but could I find a resemblance? Did I really want to?

  “Tell me why you think I might help Judith to stop Stacia,” I asked him again.

  He turned his head for a quick look at me and again his smile was faintly mocking. “Have you any doubt as to who drove that car that struck you down yesterday?”

  Perhaps I hadn’t any doubt, really, and I had said as much to Stacia, but I had no real proof that it had been she at the wheel of the car.

  “Has Stacia admitted it to you?” I asked.

  “She would hardly do that. Nor have I made any accusation. I think I understand her well enough, and perhaps with more sympathy than either Judith or Herndon. After all, I’ve grown up under Rhodes’ suppression too. Not that I condone or excuse what she did—if she did it. But I have tried to understand.”

  “How could something like that possibly be understood?” I demanded.

  “She would have acted on impulse, in passion of anger. That’s in her character, I think. By now, however, she must be a little afraid of you—afraid of what you might do if you chose to accuse her.”

  I could only shake my head. “I don’t think she’s in the least afraid of me, and I have accused her.”

  “Why do you think she tried to run you down?”

  “How can I possibly guess? I can’t even imagine why. She knows I’m going away soon and that none of you will ever see me again.”

  “I wonder if that is already out of your hands?” John said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you wearing the pendant?” he asked softly.

  My hand flew to my throat to touch the clasp of the chain and I found a new uneasiness growing in me. Now I could guess why he had shown me Ethan’s grave and watched for my reaction.

  He held out his hand. “May I see it again?”

  “Again?”

  “Of course. Stacia brought it to me when she took it from your room. She wanted to know what it meant.”

  He was waiting, so I reached up to release the clasp and gave him the chain and unicorn.

  Holding it by the chain, he watched the tiny golden creature swing from his fingers in the sunlight.

  “This had been in the Rhodes family for a very long time, Courtney. May I ask how it came into your possession?”

  There was no point in trying to hold back the truth. “It was around my neck when my adoptive parents received me.”

  “Did they know who your
real parents were?”

  “No. At least I don’t think they knew for sure. They died in a train accident a few months ago, and when I was going through their papers I came on a dipping—a reproduction of Judith’s painting of the unicorn moon. There were words written in pencil in the margin that asked whether this was the unicorn in my life.”

  He gave back the chain and pendant for me to replace about my neck. “So you came here to find out?”

  “That was part of the reason. I am going to write about Judith—I want to very much. But I’ve always wanted to know my own heritage. I thought I might find the answer here.”

  “And have you?”

  “How am I to know? Do you know? Do you think I am Alice’s child?”

  His blue eyes had a bright challenge in them as he studied me for a moment without answering. When he spoke he formed his words carefully, without emotion, though not answering me directly.

  “It’s quite possible that I am your father.”

  My breath was coming raggedly and I felt shaken and more than a little frightened. Always people had said to me, “What if you do find your parents and they reject you?” Was this the moment of possible acceptance—or painful rejection?

  “Don’t look like that,” he said. “We’re guessing, aren’t we? But if I am suddenly to discover that I have a daughter at this late date, I can’t imagine being gifted with one I’d rather have.”

  The words were serious enough in their purport, but his tone was light, and I had the feeling that John Rhodes would hardly sweep me into his arms as a long-lost daughter. Indeed, he might well be afraid of such emotion, and if any sort of relationship grew between us, it would more likely be on a plane of friendship. It was probably too late for me to come into his life as a daughter, and over this I felt a faint twinge of regret. A twinge that was at least kin to feeling, though I knew better than to show any hint of emotion that might embarrass the man beside me, and put him to flight. He wasn’t asking for a daughter at this late date.

  “Why did it happen?” I managed to ask. “If I was the baby who was supposed to be lost at sea, why did Judith take me to New York and give me for adoption? And why wasn’t it found out—what she did?”

  “Lawrence—my father—was still powerful when it all happened, and he managed to take hold, sick as he was. The story of the accident was accepted. Both happenings are still accepted hereabouts—simply as two unfortunate accidents, which occurred close together.”

  My sigh was involuntary. How was I ever to know what had really happened? I only knew that a warmth of sympathy stirred in me for John Rhodes.

  “It must have been a dreadful time for you,” I said.

  “Yes!”

  The word came out with such vehemence that I looked at him quickly and saw in his face the dregs of an old anger, left over from that tragic time. Beneath his gay and sometimes debonair manner, resentment against his father still lingered in John Rhodes. The damage the old man had done reached down through the generations—even to me.

  John wasn’t looking at me now. “I was, I still am, the eldest son,” he said, and though the words came more quietly, I sensed their depth of meaning. Others had said that it was always Herndon old Lawrence had placed first, and at the time of Alice’s death and the supposed death of the child, it was likely that little consideration had been given to John’s loss. Even Herndon, his brother, would have been more concerned with protecting Judith than with his brother’s suffering. And I could believe in that suffering now, no matter what tales Stacia concocted about an affair between him and Judith.

  “You’re still angry with your father, aren’t you?” I said gently.

  He gave me a startled glance and then smiled. “I didn’t realize I was giving my feelings away. Yes, it’s still there, and for a moment you brought it all back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But what happened at the time? Couldn’t you get any of the answers?”

  “My father was only interested in closing ranks and avoiding any hint of scandal that would hurt the precious family name. He didn’t want any of us to dig behind the surface he meant to present to the world. He and I had our last quarrel at the time and I went away. All he wanted was to protect the family name and believe what would best serve that purpose. I didn’t come back to The Shingles until after he died.”

  “Did you and Alice want a baby?”

  His look seemed far away—as though he searched some distant horizon. “We wanted one a great deal—Alice as much as I. For that little time she was a happy mother. And I was just beginning to feel like a father.”

  Instead, he had lost both his wife and child, and later he had tried, perhaps, to fill in the emptiness with an affection for Stacia. Sympathy stirred in me, but nothing more. He was too distant, too far out of my reach.

  “Stacia seems to have a great affection for you. It comes through each time I talk to her.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve been good for her. I’m too much of an iconoclast.”

  As long as he was still receptive, not rebuffing me, I had to know more. “What about the selling of the house? Do you want this to happen?”

  “Stacia hasn’t consulted me. But perhaps in a good many ways it might be for the best.”

  “What ways do you mean?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “It’s become too much of a shrine—a temple for Judith’s talent. As a painter, it might be a lot better for her to leave here and never come back. She needs to test herself out in the world and stop painting beaches. There are other landscapes that she’s never seen.”

  “Why does she want to stay? Is she afraid of the world outside?”

  “Of course. She can only quiet her fears when she has the protection of the house—or so she thinks.”

  “Fear of what?”

  “Discovery, perhaps. Discovery of herself—to herself. I don’t think she wants to face that.”

  “But she seems so poised, so calm and sure of everything.”

  “As long as she has the house for a shield. I don’t know what will happen if Stacia carries out her plan. But it may be interesting to find out.”

  “What will happen to you?”

  He turned his head to smile at me. “I can drift with the wind if I have to. I’ll make a landing somewhere. I’m still a pretty good designer of boats, you know.”

  “I’ve heard about the Anabel,” I said. “Why was it given that name?”

  “Alice chose it. It didn’t matter to me.”

  “And then she named the baby Anabel. Why was she so attached to that particular name?”

  He regarded me thoughtfully, and when he spoke I had the feeling that he held something back. “It was a name that had some meaning for her, I suppose. A family name. But can you stop being a reporter for a little while, Courtney? This has been quite a quizzing, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry. You’re the only person who has been willing to answer all my questions.”

  “No, not all your questions. Not yet. Shall we go back now? You’ve had your break from the house, and perhaps Judith will be willing to see you again by this time.”

  He stood up, but I stayed where I was on the grass. “You still haven’t told me how you think I might stop Stacia.”

  “Perhaps I’ve changed my mind about that. Perhaps I don’t really think you can—or will.”

  He held out his hand and I let him pull me to my feet.

  “Just one more question,” I said. “When you rescued me after that car struck me, did you know then who I was?”

  He shook his head. “Stacia showed me the pendant just after that.”

  “Thank you for talking to me. And for being a—a friend.”

  His clasp was warm, but his look still mocked me a little—as though he were warning me not to come too close, not to ask for more than he would be ready to give.

>   An awkwardness had grown between us and neither of us had much to say as he drove me back to the house. Outside Nan’s shop two cars were parked as we went through the gates, and she was apparently busy inside with customers.

  “Was Alice close to Nan in the old days?” I asked as we started up the drive. “Were they affectionate sisters?”

  “Not particularly. Nan was the perennial spinster—starved for affection. Sometimes, I think she tried to live Alice’s life.”

  When we reached the house garage, Stacia stood on the front steps above, as though she waited for us.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded of John as we climbed the steps.

  He answered her quietly, undoubtedly long accustomed to her moods. “We went to pay a call on a possible ancestor of Courtney’s—Ethan Rhodes.”

  She stared at him. “So you’ve told her?”

  “Told her what, my dear?”

  “That I showed you the unicorn, of course.” She turned to me. “I hate that cemetery. I don’t want to be reminded that someday I’ll be one of them. Has John been telling you ancient history? What do you think of us—of being related to us?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Though I like what I’ve learned about Ethan.”

  Stacia came down a step or two to slip her hand into the crook of John’s arm. It was the same possessive gesture she had made toward Evan—as though she warned me away from property that belonged to her. If he were really my father, Stacia would not welcome that fact. She would be jealous of all those close to her—John, Evan, perhaps even Judith and Herndon, and she wouldn’t want to share them with me. But that didn’t seem a strong enough reason to make her the driver of that Mercedes yesterday.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said to John. “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

  “Of course,” he agreed. “Thank you for your company, Courtney.” The words were formally courteous, the manner hardly that of a father thanking a daughter.

  I watched as they went down the steps and around the house, then I walked inside and climbed the stairs to my room. I seemed to have no clear reaction to anything that had happened. Rather, I suffered from a state of confusion and uncertainty. For all the questions I had managed to ask, nothing had been resolved, no fundamental, positive truth had emerged, and I was no nearer to discovery than before. That is, emotional discovery. Perhaps all that had happened was that a few more possibilities had surfaced. I had no idea whether Stacia’s words about Judith and John having had an affair were true, or merely one of her flights of fancy, and that was one question I hardly dared to ask John.