Lost Island

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I feel that way, too,” I said. “It was good to hear.”

  “It’s better to play it out than to bottle it up,” she said. And then, with her usual abrupt change of topics: “How much longer are you going to stay here and torment yourself?”

  “Why should you want me gone?” I countered.

  She swiveled about on the piano stool. “No one likes to look at what’s happening to you. You’re being punished on every hand, and unless you’re masochistic, I can’t see what good it’s doing you.”

  “I came closer to making friends with Richard the other night,” I said. “When we climbed the tower together he accepted me for a little while.”

  “Why should you care so much about Richard?”

  “He’s Giles’s son.”

  “And if there’s a divorce he’ll be your responsibility—is that it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But there won’t be a divorce. Haven’t you convinced yourself of that as yet? Haven’t you seen how cleverly Elise will oppose that at every turn? Oh, Lacey, give up and go away.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “It isn’t finished. Your mother may help me yet.”

  “Against Elise? Never. You’re tearing Mother up too, and I wish you wouldn’t. She has her Charles now—even though to my mind he’s no great catch—and she was beginning to be happy before you came. Let her be. She can’t persuade Elise to divorce Giles.”

  “No one can do that!” said a laughing voice from the doorway, and I swung about in dismay to see Elise standing there. We had not heard her come up the steps because of the rain sounds, but she had come through the doorway in time to hear Floria’s words.

  She wore a dripping rain cape, bulging over something she carried beneath it, and Floria flew to unsnap the cape at her neck and carry it to the hall to hang it up.

  “You needn’t slop all over the parlor,” Floria said.

  Elise paid no attention. “I’ve brought your Merlin costume—all but the hat. You have that over here, haven’t you? Let me see you try it all on. Here’s the beard I bought for you in Malvern. I’m tired of that substitute Spanish moss you always wear.” Elise ran on as though the snatches of conversation she had overheard did not matter to her at all.

  Floria came back into the room and picked up the black cape with its applique decorations of white crescents and stars. “Why should I try it on? It’s the same old thing. You wanted to come over and see what Lacey was up to, didn’t you?”

  “As if it matters what Lacey is up to,” Elise said. “Here—what I really want is to see you in the beard. Put on the hat first.”

  Grumbling, Floria flung the cape about her shoulders and hooked it at the throat. From a chair in the corner of the room she picked up a tall black cone of a hat, pasted with more crescents and stars, and put it on. Then she took the gray strands Elise held out and stepped before a mirror, pressing the adhesive onto her chin. When she turned around I saw Merlin again, as I had not since childhood. Floria sucked in her cheeks mockingly, to make them look hollow, just as she’d done as a girl, and her eyes seemed dark and sunken under the narrow black brim of the hat. The gray beard gave her the look of an elderly wizard, and only her unruly red hair spoiled the picture.

  “You’ll have to stuff your hair under the hat,” Elise said. “Merlin may have worn his hair long, but yours is the wrong color. I’ll count on you to be properly spooky for our guests.”

  Floria unhooked the cape, snatched off the beard and hat, and flung them aside on top of the piano. “That’s a fanciful version of Merlin, anyway. We never grow up on Hampton Island, do we? You’d think we’d have more serious matters to attend to this year than one more Camelot ball.”

  “But I love our balls!” Elise cried. “And everyone looks forward to them. I’m glad we’re getting this storm out of the way ahead of time. The radio promises good weather tomorrow. Well, I won’t keep you two from your fascinating talk about me and Giles.”

  She swung toward the hallway, and then paused for a look over her shoulder at me. “Do you remember our walk on the beach? Don’t forget what I said to you, Lacey. Don’t forget what I promised.”

  She picked up her wet cape and threw it about her. In a moment she had run down the steps and was gone into the rain. “What was that all about?” Floria said.

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell you. I don’t want to tell you.”

  “Could it have something to do with Richard’s being your son and not Elise’s?” Floria said.

  I could only stare at her, shocked.

  She laughed disagreeably. “You needn’t look so surprised. You don’t think a secret like that could be kept forever, do you?”

  Who had told her? I could not imagine Elise doing so, and certainly Aunt Amalie was far too discreet to trust such a secret with her elder daughter. But there was no one else who knew. Certainly not Giles.

  Floria grinned at me and tossed her red hair. “You’ve forgotten Vinnie. She’s been carrying this on her conscience for years. She knew what I never knew—that Elise couldn’t have a child. So Vinnie got the truth out of my darling sister back in the beginning. Now Vinnie’s worry about Richard has got the best of her and she had to talk to someone. She knew it couldn’t be Elise, and she wouldn’t bring it up with Mother. So the other day she unburdened herself to me. What a good job you’ve done of fooling everyone, Lacey—including Giles. And what a mess you’ll weave if you try to do anything about it at this late date. That’s why I say you’d better go away and not stir up any more trouble. Richard can’t mean anything to you now.”

  “What’s being done to him means a great deal to me,” I said.

  Floria stood beside the piano, plucking at a pasted crescent on her Merlin hat. There was little sympathy or sentiment in her for me, but that was Floria’s way. She had grown up a little hard, and not at all given to weeping for others.

  “Giles will explode in all directions when he finds out,” she said.

  “It may be that he will never find out,” I told her miserably.

  She gave me a long, cool stare. “Seemingly, it’s not to Elise’s advantage to tell him. But you can never tell about Elise. There are times when she would rather damage someone else than save herself.”

  “I know that,” I said, thinking of our walk on the beach. In any event I did not want to stay here and talk this over with Floria. I needed to talk to someone who could help me, but Floria was not that person. I needed someone who could be more objective, and who felt a little kindness toward me. Aunt Amalie’s affection for me was diluted by her fondness for Elise—in many ways she was as confused as I as to what could be done in the present situation.

  “I’m going back to Sea Oaks,” I said, and went into the hall.

  Floria came with me, her look somber and disapproving. “Stay for the ball, and then leave,” she warned me. “It’s the only way.”

  “While I’m still alive?” I said mockingly. “Before someone succeeds in what they tried to do at Bellevue?”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Floria spoke quietly. “Don’t underestimate my sister.”

  I caught her up at once. “So you guessed what happened there?”

  She regarded me with an odd blankness in her look. “A chunk of tabby fell off a wall and knocked you out.”

  There was no use expecting real corroboration from her. I got into my rain things. Outside, the downpour had lessened.

  “Floria,” I pleaded, “don’t talk about what Vinnie told you. Don’t let it go on from you to anyone else.”

  “I’m not likely to.” Her eyes were suddenly bright with venom. “What a scandal it would make if it all came out! Not that I’d care a great deal. But it will be safer if you just go away. Except for Mother, not one of us wants you here. Not even Giles. You must be nothing but an embarrassment to him.”

  “Just so you don’t talk,” I said, and went out the door.

  The trees were dripping heavily. I pulled my rai
n bonnet over my head and walked along quickly.

  At Sea Oaks Elise and Aunt Amalie were directing the rearrangement of furniture in the double parlor. I left them to it and went across the hall to the library. Charles was there, and I dropped into a chair near his. He smiled at me and laid his book face down on his knees.

  “Don’t stop reading,” I said. “I just want to be somewhere quiet.” Floria’s music had washed the tempest out of me. I felt disturbed and uneasy, but no longer stormy.

  Charles said nothing, though he did not pick up his book again. As I sat there, I began to think about him. Was he the person I might confide in? He always seemed a little removed from what was happening around him. Might I count on his objectivity? Could he see what those of us who were too close to the center of the storm could not see? Or would any perception on Charles’s part be too ineffectual, too uninvolved to help me? His mother had been living when I used to visit the island, and I remembered her as a rather dynamic and commanding figure, far less gentle than her son. She had managed him utterly, though she had never managed Giles’s grandfather. In turn, Charles’s wife, Marian, had taken his mother’s place, and perhaps this was the sort of woman he needed. Aunt Amalie was like neither his mother nor his first wife, but she was not helplessly yielding either. Completely feminine, and very much in love with Charles, she would never rule him with a high hand. Yet he would listen to her counsel, I thought, and depend on her in many ways. My mother would have made him a very different sort of wife. She would have been the dependent one, and I wondered if that would have suited Charles, or if it might have changed him.

  When our silence grew too long, he spoke to me. “I wish we could see you happier, Lacey. I wish events had turned out differently for you. And for Giles.”

  There was nothing I could say without blurting out the truth.

  “I never wanted to see him married to Elise,” Charles went on. “But then—I would not have wanted to see him married to you, either.”

  I gave him a quick look, startled and uncertain of what he meant.

  He smiled ruefully. “Oh, that’s all in the past, my dear. There have been times when I felt rather bitter about you, though I hope I always concealed the fact.”

  “Bitter? About me?”

  “Why not?” He closed his book and laid it aside. “Your mother should have stayed here and married me. You should have been my daughter—not the child of another man.”

  I could only listen in surprised silence.

  “I’ll admit now that there was a good deal of jealousy and resentment in me toward you for a long while. Of course none of this was your fault, and I could not let such instinctive feelings rule me. I went out of my way to make friends with you, as I remember. I grew used to swallowing my hurt.”

  “You had Marian,” I said.

  He smiled at me benignly. “Yes, and now I have Amalie. I’ve been a fortunate man. But I think it can be known just between the two of us that in spite of the fact that I came to resent her mightily, I never got over loving your mother. Perhaps even now I’m not wholly recovered from old resentments and old loves. Perhaps one never recovers.”

  No, I thought, I could tell him nothing. Charles was not so uninvolved as I had believed. All these years he had watched me growing up, watched me falling in love with his son, and behind that quiet, benign manner, these disquieting thoughts were going on. I wondered suddenly if Aunt Amalie knew him as well as she thought she did, and I hoped he would not hurt her.

  He seemed unaware that his words had disturbed me. “Memories of your mother have been with me a great deal lately,” he went on. “That’s because your resemblance to her when she was young is so great. She was a pretty thing, with so much life throbbing in her that it was exhilarating to be near her. You’re quieter, and your unhappiness subdues you, but there is the same passionate love for life in you as well. I can sense it sometimes when you don’t even know that it’s showing. You want so much that it’s a little frightening to watch you at times. One wonders where the breaking point is and what will happen when you reach it.”

  “Do you think, as Floria does, that I should go away? Give up?”

  “You must eventually, mustn’t you?”

  I got up restlessly. There was no point in talking to him any longer. He was right about one thing. I wanted too much. I wanted greedily what I could not have. If I was honest with myself, what I was seeking now was some imaginary counselor who would show me the way to find what I wanted. I did not want someone who would tell me to go away. I no longer trusted Charles. What he had said about holding my mother’s actions against me left me shaken.

  “Yes,” I said, “I must eventually leave. But I’m not ready to make that move yet.”

  “Do you ever feel frightened?” he asked surprisingly.

  “Frightened? Of whom?” I was wary now. I dared not admit how frightened I had been lately.

  He looked as though he had said too much, and knew it. Yet now he had to say a little more. “Elise can be ruthless. Unscrupulous. Being sure that Giles cares about you, she will stop at very little to break up whatever exists between you.”

  I knew all this. It was all embodied in Elise’s plan concerning Richard.

  Charles left his chair and crossed the room to where I stood beside a window. He took my two hands into his own and held them gently.

  “I am concerned for you,” he said.

  He was also concerned for his son, and he had said he would not like to see me marry Giles.

  I took my hands as gently away. “Thank you,” I said. I left the library and hurried upstairs to my room.

  I no longer felt that I must have a counselor who would urge me along some road I already wanted to take. Talking to Charles had at least made me face my own feelings more directly. It was true that I must talk to someone about what Elise threatened to do, but there was only one person to whom I could turn. Only one person whom I could wholly trust. Yet the moment had not yet come when I could go to Giles and tell him the truth.

  The hours that carried us toward the time of the ball passed swiftly. The following evening was fair and a full moon lighted the sky. A breeze rustled gently through the palm trees, but the rain was over and there was no great wind blowing across the island tonight. I stood at my window, dressed to go downstairs, and looked out at the night.

  In one sense I would be sorry to see the ball over. Preparations for it had so occupied Elise that she had forgotten about me, ignored me. Once the affair was over, she could give me her full attention again. Yet at the same time an uneasiness pervaded me. The last two or three times I had come upon Elise about the house, she had seemed possessed by that high excitement which seemed to border on some sort of explosion. As if a pressure were building up inside her—something that would be forced to vent itself in action that was likely to be destructive. I was aware that the others had taken to watching her warily, and I knew that Aunt Amalie had tried several times to calm her, to bring down the building pressure. Floria glowered at her sister watchfully, Paul kept out of her way, and Giles was guarded when he spoke to her. Charles seemed to watch her from a distance that kept him unengaged, but aware, and only Richard put himself constantly in her path, demanding attention, as though her very excitement drew him like a magnet. She treated him with little patience, her focus elsewhere.

  By this time of the evening, everyone but me was downstairs, and the guests had begun to arrive, driving across the causeway, over from the mainland. It was after nine o’clock, and I could hear the sound of music.

  I left the window and went to stand briefly before the long mirror on my closet door. Vinnie had worked skillfully to fit Elise’s white gown to my figure, and now it flattered me subtly, contrasting with my dark hair. The neckline was square, the sleeves long and tight, ending in points at my wrists. I wore a jeweled girdle about my waist and a jeweled circlet in my hair. When I moved, the long lines of the gown flowed about me gracefully.

  But the woman w
ho looked at me out of the mirror seemed a stranger, and I took no great satisfaction in her appearance. The evening ahead of me seemed an ordeal to be endured, to be somehow lived through and submitted to. There would be many people at Sea Oaks tonight whom I had known in the past, but there would also be strangers. I could not help but be aware of how they would look at me, wondering about Elise, wondering about Giles. I had no desire to face the eyes of Elise’s guests, or meet their unspoken questions, but the minutes were speeding by and I must go down.

  When I stepped into the upper hall, the sound of the band grew louder, and I knew that the dancing had begun. As was the custom, King Arthur would have led Queen Guinevere out upon the floor to open the ball, and other couples would have followed. I could imagine Giles’s reluctance to dance with Elise, and I could imagine how boldly and triumphantly she would circle the floor in his arms, perhaps taunting him under her breath, daring him to object to whatever unpleasant surprises she might have planned for this occasion.

  I found Richard in his pajamas sitting at the head of the stairs, and paused beside him to watch the colorful, patterned motion of the throng below. Tonight the great hall had the look of another time. It had been hung with banners of scarlet and gold, while crossed lances stood on either side of the front door, the small triangular pennants fastened to their tips ready to flutter on the breeze as mounted knights carried them upright toward the place of the lists.

  I looked down at Richard and saw that a book lay open upon his knees. It was the copy of Idylls of the King that I had sent him long ago.

  At the sound of my step, he glanced up at me. “You look beautiful, Cousin Lacey,” he said without guile.

  If my son thought I was beautiful, the dress was worthwhile. I turned gravely before him, lifting my arms so that he could admire the sleeves.

  “I remember that dress when Mother wore it a few years ago,” he said. “It looks different on you, but very nice.”