Lost Island

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  This was a boy’s room—not particularly tidy, but apparently enjoyed and well occupied. On a ledge near the window was spread a collection of sand dollars—some of them brown as they came from the beach, and some whitened by later bleaching. So he collected them, as I would have liked to do, except that in my time they had to be paid as tribute to Floria Hampton in her Merlin’s cap.

  A bookcase was packed with books and I recognized many of the titles as those I had sent him over the years. He had kept them all, and the worn jackets gave evidence of loving reading. I had to blink hard against the tears that came into my eyes. I knew so little about my son.

  Over the mantelpiece was a painting, and I went to stand before it. The artist had done a water color of a sunny day and a sunny-haired boy in a boat on a creek. The scene touched me. It might have been something from the days of my own childhood visits to the island—yet this boy who lazed so pleasantly upon his oars was my own flesh. Once I had held him in my arms, as I could never hold him again. Because of me he had that boat, with the lapping waters of the creek beneath it. He had this room with its books and seashells. I had given him all this richness. I must not forget that or indulge myself. I must not suffer longings that would take all this away from him.

  A step in the doorway made me turn guiltily. Elise was there, watching me.

  “A sentimental visit?” she asked lightly. “I’m glad you’re seeing the room when it looks better than usual. Believe me, Lacey, being the mother of a son is not an unmitigated blessing. Richard has a slightly wild streak in him that makes him do strange, unpredictable things. There’ve been occasions when every book in that case was tumbled frantically about, with the bed torn up as well, and the cushions out of the chairs and tossed about the room. All to get himself attention—to make himself the center of focus.”

  “Doesn’t he get enough attention?” I asked quietly.

  Elise laughed. “As much as is good for him. And those are only tantrums. At other times he’s very sweet and wants to follow me around and smother me with affection.”

  I could see what she was doing. She was letting me know how thoroughly the boy was hers, and how completely she played the mother to him.

  “I had a visit with him this morning when he brought me the snapshot you sent me.” I said. “He seems a happy child.”

  “Happy? Of course he’s happy. He loves the island, loves everything about his life here. Someday it will all be his. Someday Sea Oaks will be his. As it’s really mine now, since Charles does little about it. Richard is being raised for that heritage.”

  Elise had always been possessive of the island. Floria cared nothing about it, so Aunt Amalie had always planned that it should be held for her younger daughter. That was what Judge Hampton had wanted too. Even as a young girl, Elise had played at being, not only Guinevere, but queen of Hampton Island as well. Now, apparently, Richard was being groomed as crown prince, which might account for that faintly imperious manner which I found distasteful in him.

  Elise moved about the room, touching an ornament here, a fold of curtain there. “Sometimes I’ve wondered about you, Lacey. I’ve wondered how well you made your adjustment.” Her violet eyes flashed me a curious look that might be malicious. “You’re not really the mothering sort, are you?”

  I caught my breath. “I don’t know whether I am or not.”

  “Oh, I think you’re not,” she said. “To give him up so easily.”

  Easily? I thought, and turned toward the door. I did not want to be swept into remembering.

  “I’ll take the manuscript to my room and start reading it,” I told her.

  “At least you’ve kept your bargain well,” she said.

  There was anger deep inside me. She had no business talking of these things. She had no business stirring up old wounds. Perhaps she never knew the meaning of mercy.

  “I’ll keep my bargain as long as you keep yours,” I said.

  “Mine has been kept.” She moved her hands to encompass the room. “He has everything. You can see that.”

  “Has he a mother?” I asked.

  She laughed as though I delighted her, and there was cruelty in the sound. “Ask Richard. He dotes on me. He’d never ask for any other woman for mother. But don’t let me hurry you off to your room, Lacey. Stay here for a while, if you like.”

  She slipped past me out the door, her lips still smiling spitefully. I turned back to the room, held there in my quivering rage, yet knowing that I must not give in to her baiting. It was like Elise to prod when she was in the mood. At another time she might have treated me with gentle consideration, and there was never any telling which to expect. Her shifts from one extreme to another had always tormented me, and I wondered what effect they had upon Richard. It was good that he had his grandmother’s love, and her watchful eye upon him. His grandmother and his father could surely fill his life, even if his mother fell somewhat short in what she should be doing for him.

  Richard found me there in his room, coming unexpectedly through the door and stopping to stare at me.

  “Hello,” I said, feeling awkward and caught out of bounds. “I wanted to see your room. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind.” He came past me, holding something in his hands that he had wrapped in a handkerchief. Almost secretively he went to his bureau, opened a top drawer and tucked the small parcel in among his things. Then he closed the drawer and turned to face me.

  “Is there something special you wanted to see?” he asked me, with a certain polite defiance in his voice. He did not really like my being here among his things, and there was something he had hidden from me quickly in his bureau drawer.

  I was at a disadvantage, but I took a step toward the bookcase. “I was looking at your books. I see you’ve kept a number of those I’ve sent you over the years.”

  He relaxed a little. “I’ve kept them all, Cousin Lacey. I love to read and you’ve sent me some awfully good stories.”

  “I’ve enjoyed picking them out for you.” I said lamely.

  This interchange was painful. I wanted to be comfortable and natural with him. I wanted to know him better, and have him see me as a person and like me. None of which could be quickly managed.

  I turned once more toward the door. “Elise has asked me to read a manuscript written by Mr. Rikers, so I suppose I had better go and get started.”

  He went back to the tall bureau, opened the top drawer again and reached in his hand as if to make sure of the parcel he had hidden away. Then he turned to look at me.

  “I’d like to have a job like yours—where I could read books all the time. Read them before they were even published.”

  “It’s not always fun,” I said. “A lot of them come from beginning writers and they’re not very interesting. Besides, reading keeps you indoors a lot, and I remember when I used to come to Hampton Island the thing I liked best was to be outdoors.”

  “I have plenty of time for that,” he said. “It’s my island and I’ve explored nearly every bit of it.”

  There was the princely tone again, and I had to challenge it. “Your island? I thought it belonged to your Grandmother Amalie.”

  He shrugged carelessly. “Oh, it’s hers for now. But someday it will belong to me. So I wouldn’t have time for reading every day anyway, would I?”

  “No,” I said dryly. “I expect you’d be very busy.”

  We left it at that, and I went across the hall to my room, lest I wear out my welcome with Richard. Once there, with the door closed, I opened the manuscript box and took out a sheaf of paper. I might as well commence my bread-and-butter chore. I sat near a window and began to read, but it was hard to get started because the small, bright face of a boy kept coming between me and the words.

  Not only the boy himself, but his relationship to those about him troubled me. My publishing firm had specialized in books on child guidance, and while I’ve had nothing official to do with their publication, I had read them fervently, and
a little furtively. I knew something of what the best minds in the country had to say about the development of the young. I had flattered myself that I was knowledgeable. I knew all the right terms and phrases—until I met my son! Now, confronted by the real boy, the books did me very little good. I could not apply those pat phrases to the child before me. This was something I had to play by ear and by instinct. My own good intentions, my own longings got in the way of an easy relationship with my son.

  I felt the thick pages of manuscript beneath my hands and tried to give them my attention. I must not think of Richard now. Long schooling in concentration came to my aid, and in a little while I was able to attend to the words and their meaning.

  Hadley Riker’s style was vigorous, but a bit on the amateurish side. What I liked least was the way the character of the man came through in the writing. His ego was supreme. Perhaps that was a matter of necessity for a man in his line of work, where confidence was so vital. But whether he wrote about cars or women—the latter seemed to take up a good deal of his attention—he was completely sure of himself, of his own intelligence, his own charm, his own skill. I disliked him intensely, yet read on, unhappily fascinated. It would be especially dreadful if Elise were interested in this man instead of Giles.

  I found my thoughts straying again. How did Giles feel about Elise? How much of the old attraction existed between them? If it was true that their marriage was not going well, how much suffering was involved for Giles? I did not want to see him desperately unhappy over Elise.

  When my eyes began to tire, I put the manuscript aside and changed my clothes. It was nearly lunchtime when I was ready, and I went downstairs. In the hallway below, Paul Courtney stood before the glass case that held the pirate goblet. He heard me on the stairs and glanced up.

  “Lacey! How good to see you—it’s been years!” He came toward me with his hands outstretched, kissed my cheek and held me off to look at me.

  He was tall, and still as slender as ever. None of Vinnie’s feeding had ever fattened him, though what with being Giles’s right hand at the plant, he visited Sea Oaks often. His hair was sandy and softly thick, and he wore it rather long behind the ears in a graceful style that became him. His features had a slight delicacy to them, and he was not at all the robust, overwhelming sort of person Floria could be. I had often thought that Paul Courtney would have suited another age better than our own—perhaps an age of courtiers. At least I was happy to see someone I could greet with a natural ease that grew out of old acquaintance, and with warmth that need not be denied.

  “Congratulations, Paul,” I said. “I’ve just learned this morning that you and Floria are to be married.”

  “It’s good news, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “Why are you back, Lacey?”

  The question seemed an odd one. “I’m here for a weekend visit,” I told him. “Elise wanted me to have a look at a manuscript by Hadley Rikers, and meet the author.”

  “I see.” His eyes had a look of remembering. Paul had been around that summer when I was seventeen and my world had been tied up with Giles Severn. He must wonder if a return to Hampton Island might be painful for me. Though he could not know how painful.

  He moved away from the subject of my unaccustomed visit, and gestured toward the glass case he had been examining. “Strange, isn’t it, the disappearance of that old brooch, with never a trace of it turning up over the years?”

  The great jewel-encrusted goblet which, legend had it, had once been the treasure of Stede Bonnet, stood in its place of honor in the case, with the other smaller objects around it. The story was told that the retired-British-army-officer-turned-pirate who had plundered ships along the coasts of Carolina, Virginia and Delaware, had made a rare foray south to the Malvern River, and had hidden treasure ashore on Hampton Island.

  Paul pointed to the place in the case where a small sapphire brooch lay beside the pirate goblet.

  “That’s not the one which should occupy that place, you know. The real Stede Bonnet brooch had a fantastic emerald in it. Priceless because of age as well as size. It was found at the same time and in the same place where the goblet was found. Probably buried there by Stede Bonnet himself. It disappeared years ago, and there was a story—” He broke off and looked at me in some embarrassment. “I’m on dangerous ground. I’d forgotten it was your mother—”

  “That’s all right,” I assured him. “I remember something of the story. Doesn’t it run that Charles gave it to my mother to show his undying love, and that she never gave it back?”

  He nodded. “Something of the sort.”

  “She didn’t have it,” I said. “There was some mystery about it, I think, but it was never found among her things after her death. My father searched for it after Aunt Amalie wrote to him.”

  “I understand that there was quite an uproar here when it was first found missing,” Paul said. “Charles had evidently put the small brooch in its place, and no one noticed for a long time that the Bonnet brooch was gone. He held out through all the commotion and never told anyone what he had done until years later. No one was blamed for the theft, so the guilt was never placed here on Hampton Island, and he could keep his secret without any damage being done to another person. He didn’t tell the truth about it until after his father died. I gather that Charles was always afraid of his parental wrath.”

  Aunt Amalie and Floria came out of the long parlor just then, and found us studying the case. Floria had changed from her slacks to a flowered dress, and tied her hair back with a green ribbon, looking less informal than she had this morning, but still making a gaudy splash of color in the hall.

  “We were talking about the emerald brooch,” Paul said.

  Floria tapped the glass. “That was a dreadful loss. I’ve always thought that Charles never took a properly responsible attitude toward what he had done. But then—Charles was in love, and apparently no one in love is ever responsible.” Her words sounded faintly bitter, but she went on at once. “The chief thing about the old brooch that intrigues me is the legend that it has gained over the years. You remember, Lacey, that the woman who wears it at the Camelot ball assures herself of true love forever! And of course we all believe that fervently. I’d wear it myself if I could lay my hands on it. It’s too bad, Lacey, that you don’t know anything about what happened to that brooch.”

  Amalie shook her head at her daughter. “You mustn’t blame Charles. Kitty never should have taken the brooch away with her, probably to misplace it, but once she had done so, what could Charles do?”

  Vinnie came into the hall just then to ring the Chinese gong for lunch, and we let the subject go. Elise and her racing driver came in from out of doors. Richard ran down from upstairs, and Charles came out of the library and went at once to greet Amalie. Giles was the last person to come downstairs.

  As we gathered in the dining room there was one small movement that caught my eye. Elise, coming through the doorway, brushed against Paul in passing, and paused to make an apology. She touched his arm, looked into his eyes, and then went on. It was the slightest of gestures, but I saw the dark look on Paul’s face, saw that Elise had in some way disturbed him. She knew it too, for she smiled as she went about seating us at the table. I threw a quick look at Floria and saw the purposely blank expression she wore. She had seen too, and was hiding what she felt. Elise’s act had been cruel, deliberate mischief, and I wondered if it meant that Paul was still susceptible to Elise’s old appeal.

  As she seated us Elise was all the charming hostess. She took her place at one end of the table, with Giles at the other. I was seated at Giles’s right hand, and as he pulled out my chair I did not look at him. My memory of what had happened on the beach was still too vivid in my mind.

  The beautiful old room, with its chandelier and intricately carved plaster rosette, its shining, mellow furniture, its linen and crystal and silver, reached out quite calmly to possess my spirit. I breathed the fragrance of lilacs from the centerpiece, and surrender
ed to beauty and graciousness. This was at least something I had given to Richard. This was what I wanted him to have.

  Elise was an integral part of the picture. She sat at her end of the table, beautifully at ease, cool in her white frock, with its touches of ice blue at the throat and down the front. Before it fell into its usual page-boy at the back, her hair had been brushed in an upward sweep at each side of a central part, giving the faint effect of pricked ears, reminding me of a fox’s mask. Her eyes seemed a little sleepy-looking, as though she was pleased with her inner thoughts, pleased with the disquiet she had roused in Paul.

  Even as I was enjoying the room, a quick, ugly happening wiped away all its bright charm. As I unfolded my napkin something sprang from the folds and flew out upon the table. I reached out automatically to pick up the sand dollar that fell at my place. Quite suddenly I was a child again, freezing in horror as I held the brittle thing in my fingers.

  Elise gave a little cry. “Throw it over your left shoulder, Lacey! Remember—that was what we always did to wipe out Floria’s spells.”

  I did not hesitate to make the gesture. I flung the brown shell over my shoulder and heard it crack against the hearthstones of the fireplace.

  Elise laughed softly at the sound. “Someone meant to frighten you, Lacey dear. Are you frightened? Are you having prickles up and down your spine?”

  “It was a childish trick to play,” I said, and glanced quickly from face to face around the table.

  Giles clearly found the incident distasteful, and he was frowning at Elise. Richard sat next to me on the other side, his eyes sparkling, his expression alert, as if he enjoyed the moment’s excitement. Beyond him, Aunt Amalie looked mildly surprised, but less concerned than those of us who had played this unpleasant little game as children. Paul had gone quite pale, his lips pressed together in a tight line, his eyes on Floria. But Floria seemed undisturbed. Perhaps she was faintly amused that someone had chosen to use her old method of trying to frighten me. Charles Severn seemed uneasy, while Hadley Riker’s bearded face looked merely bewildered. At Elise’s left, Vinnie was helping her husband George at the table by serving the duchesse potatoes, and her expression was a complete blank—a little too blank, I thought, for innocence. I had the sudden feeling that Vinnie might know who had tucked that ominous little shell into the folds of my napkin, and that she would never tell what she knew, even though she might disapprove.