She looked at him lying beside her, a dim sleeping form in the moonlight, saying to him in her mind: I love you, David; I don’t want us to part, I want to stay with you forever, until we both die of our natural and fulfilled old age. And there has to be a way to make that possible. I was wrong to send the note, but there has to be another way, and I will find it.
19
* * *
IT WAS A WARM and sunny afternoon. The long lawn stretched from the rear of the Hartley house down to the small dock at the edge of the lake. Jennie sat on the large rug laid out on the grass, cradling a glass of white wine in her lap. A white cloth on the rug held the remains of Elizabeth’s picnic: long loaves of bread, plates of boiled eggs, cheese, several varieties of meat. Empty wine bottles beside a bowl of fruit created a luminous green glow in the center of the cloth. Out on the lawn, Elizabeth was playing croquet with three young men and another girl, the white of their clothes—duck trousers and long lacy dresses—making a sun-dazzled pattern against the grass. One of the men was trying to knock Elizabeth’s ball from the course. Laughing, she had placed her foot on it, shielding it beneath her dress. Jennie watched them, envious, too aware of the coming rendezvous tonight to relax and enjoy herself.
David reclined on one elbow at the other end of the rug, talking with Jamie Willis. Tall, with a reddish moustache, Willis was stretched out on the grass, long legs crossed at the ankles. He was eating grapes from a bunch, watching the croquet game. He removed the stem from a grape and popped it into his mouth.
“So you spent a year in Paris, David.”
“Partly in Paris. I spent some time in Amsterdam and the South of France.”
“Admirable, admirable. Your Wanderjahr, so to speak. I made the Grand Tour myself, you know, though I must say I preferred Venice and Rome to Paris. But it was a profitable experience. Did you have an interesting crossing?”
“You might say that. I went by cattle-boat.”
“A novel mode of travel. I shall have to try it some day. And what are your plans now?”
“I’m not really sure. I may go back to Europe.”
“You should come to New York. I could introduce you to some very important people. I move in different circles now, you know, since we saw each other last. I daresay I could be quite a help to you.”
David smiled. “At the moment, the one thing I’m concerned with is putting paint to canvas. I doubt you could help me there, Willis.”
“Oh, but David, you’ll have to learn there’s more to this than talent. Knowing the right people can be important.”
Jennie decided she didn’t like Jamie Willis. She looked away, across the lawn to where another young man was lounging in a hammock, tuning the strings of a mandolin. His girlfriend leaned against the tree at the head of the hammock, playfully dropping petals from a flower on his face. Jennie felt the stirrings of envy again. She got up from the rug and went down the length of lawn to the small dock jutting out over the water.
A faint breeze rustled the leaves of a weeping willow leaning out from the bank beside the dock. The lake stretched away blue and cool far up toward the town, and just out from the shore two swans circled silently under the umbrella of the tree, in deep shade. How she wished she could really be a part of this, without the thought of David’s death, and the need to find some way to avert it, constantly filling her mind. He had said the rendezvous tonight was only to make arrangements, but there was no guarantee that Hubbard would not discover them with Rachel, that what she feared would not happen tonight. And even if it didn’t, how would she be able to manipulate the arrangements to ensure that it did not happen later?
She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Elizabeth approaching along the dock, carrying a chunk of bread for the swans.
“It’s a lovely view, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, I’ve never seen the lake from here before.” She was sure her arriving with David had made their relationship obvious; Elizabeth had been cool toward her all afternoon.
“I hope you’re having a good time,” Elizabeth said. She tossed a bit of bread out onto the water and watched the swans converge on the spot where it fell. “I saw you talking with Edward earlier. He’s quite an admirer of yours, you know.”
“That’s very kind of him.”
Elizabeth examined her face. “That’s a lovely pendant. Was it a gift?”
Jennie fondled the pendant on the chain around her neck—the butterfly Michael had given her, with its multi-colored enameled wings set in a filigree of gold. She knew the implication behind Elizabeth’s question—that it was a gift from David—and wished it was true, that her life was as simple as Elizabeth thought. No one could know the torment she was in—her anxiety about David, or the guilt that had led her to promise Michael she would always wear the pendant with the dress, to do at least this one small thing for him. “Yes,” she said, “it was a gift.”
A leaf from the tree drifted down onto the water. A swan coasted sedately over to the spot, ducked an exploratory beak, moved away. “The season’s nearly over,” Elizabeth said. “I suppose David will be sorry to see you return to New York. Have you known him long?”
“Not long.”
“It’s a shame he’s stayed in Chesapequa. He’s wasting himself here. He should be in New York, or Paris, where he could meet the kind of people essential to his success.” She arched an eyebrow at Jennie. “Am I right in thinking it’s you who’s holding him here?”
“I think David makes his own decisions.”
“Perhaps.” Elizabeth tossed another bit of bread out to the swans. “Why don’t you go away with him?”
Jennie didn’t answer; she was sorry now she had come down here, where Elizabeth could get her alone.
“You’re married, aren’t you?” Elizabeth said.
Jennie flushed.
“Ah, I thought so.” Elizabeth smiled triumphantly. “This is not a resort frequented by unattached young women. There have already been rumors, you know, speculation about you. To be quite frank, there is something of a scandal brewing. Jamie tells me Pamela’s father is very displeased with David for taking up with someone else so soon. The scandal will force him to leave, you know. And when he leaves, I’ll go with him.”
“You’ll go with him?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth seemed very self-confident. “David and I were in love long before he met Pamela. Now she’s gone, we’ll be together again. Maybe you think he loves you, but I assure you you’re wrong. You’re only a summer fling, because you resemble Pamela. You didn’t know that, did you? You’re not the first married woman to have this experience in a summer resort. I’ve seen it happen here before—when the season ends, the romance is over.”
With difficulty, Jennie controlled her anger. “This time you could be wrong.”
“Oh, no. I’ll wager your husband is a banker or something else of that sort. You’ll never leave that security to live in an artist’s flat. I know your kind. You’ll enjoy your little romance while you’re here, and when the season’s over you’ll go back to your husband. You’re too proper. I’d never let propriety stand in my way.”
“Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Oh, you mustn’t think me unfriendly. In a way I admire you—you manage to have the best of both worlds. There’s no reason we can’t be friends. Perhaps I’ll call on you at the hotel soon. The Hudson, wasn’t it?”
And with that, she turned and went back up the lawn toward the others, leaving Jennie angry and anxious. She wanted to believe that Elizabeth, confident of her eventual victory, really did feel a sort of perverse sistership between them; but those final words, the implicit threat of revealing to Jennie’s supposed husband her relationship with David, gave the lie to that. Perhaps I’ll call on you at the hotel soon. A sentence even more threatening than Elizabeth could have intended. If she did come to the hotel, she would discover that Jennie wasn’t even registered there—and how could that be expla
ined to David? Jennie started back toward the group, mustering an air of calm she did not feel. Elizabeth embodied now a fear she had long been trying to suppress—a fear that somehow something would make her tenuous existence in 1899 impossible before she could find some way to save David’s life.
When darkness fell they left the party, which had moved indoors, and set out toward the McIver place. The buggy rocked gently through the soft and quiet darkness, the road a dull silver in the moonlight. There were no houses here, only the dark hedgerows and the sense of fields stretching away on either side. Jennie nestled against David’s side, trying to tell herself that her fear was all out of proportion to the danger they faced, but there was beyond the calculable danger some deeper fear, some mysterious sense that she was involved in something already foretold, that the events to come had already happened and would happen and could not be changed by her, and it left her feeling helplessly in the grip of history. But she could not allow herself to believe that, would not allow herself to believe that. They passed a farm, and a dog barked somewhere far up through the trees, near the lights of the house, and she started, wondering now whether the McIvers had a dog. But surely David would have thought of that. They crested a hill and started down in a gradual sweeping turn back toward the lake, and then she sensed the lake itself again, a vast black void off to the left, beyond the fields. Then they passed another house, closer to the road this time, light showing in windows beyond a wide veranda, the yard looking dark and mysterious under the moonlit trees.
When the house had receded out of sight behind them, David slowly brought the buggy to a halt.
“They’re there,” he said.
“That was it?”
“The McIver place. The Hubbard buggy was in the drive. They’re there, but there’s no telling what they’re doing or if Rachel will have a chance to slip away.”
She shivered with retroactive fear, wondering if someone had seen them from the windows.
“There’s a lane here somewhere,” David said, and clucked to the horse, starting the buggy forward at a slow walk. After a few yards they found the lane, leading away into the darkness; David backed the buggy in far enough to be invisible from the road and pulled it off into the ditch, beneath a tree.
He took her hand, and together they crossed the moon-silvered road and made their way along the dark hedgerow to the edge of the McIver yard. Overhead, the moon burned coldly through the frayed and yellowed edge of a cloud. Beyond two trees standing in pools of shadow from the moon she saw the vague outline of the Hubbard buggy in the drive, the moon-white porch front, the windows dim with oil-lamp light from inside. She was uneasily aware of Matthew Hubbard’s presence, scant yards away, beyond those thin walls.
“Does she know where we will be?” she whispered.
“The note said she would try to slip out the back of the house, but nothing definite. There’s a dock back at the edge of the lake. That would be a good place to wait.”
The yard extended back along the side of the house, separated by another hedge from the field on the other side. Holding to David’s hand, Jennie followed stealthily along the hedgerow till they reached the lake and worked their way along the water’s edge to the small dock directly to the rear of the house. There was no one there. A small boat was snubbed up to a pillar of the dock; moonlight rippled on the black water. There were more trees in the back yard, casting eerie shadows and making it difficult to see through to the area around the back porch. David snapped open a pocket watch, tilting it in the moonlight to read the time.
“There’s a boathouse farther along here,” he said. “She could be there. Wait here while I look.”
He was gone before she could protest, receding into the darkness. Alone now, she was more frightened than before. The vast sky arched overhead, a bed of stars and shredded clouds from horizon to horizon. The sounds of crickets rang in the night as if in a giant amphitheater. Against that constant sound, she heard the occasional croak of a frog in the reeds along the shore, the bump of the boat against the dock, the hoot of an owl somewhere off in the fields. The night, which with David near had seemed safely silent, now seemed filled with mysterious sounds, and she was newly aware of a dozen shadowy shapes about the yard, dense areas of darkness in which anyone could be hiding. She heard a sudden noise along the water’s edge and turned, relieved to see David reappearing out of the dark.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’d better signal. She may be out somewhere and uncertain where to look for us.” He took a match from his waistcoat pocket and, before she could protest, raked it along the heel of his boot.
The striking of the match seemed very loud. The flame flared up, a sudden circle of light surrounding them. She saw the planks of the dock they were standing on, the edge of grass where it joined the bank, the eerily pale undersides of the tree branches nearby, but beyond the light the darkness seemed even more impenetrable than before. He lifted the match above his head, and the circle of light seemed to leap out around them. She had to restrain an urge to snatch it out, fearing it would bring Hubbard upon them at any moment. Then it did go out, flickered briefly in a breeze and shrank down into itself and winked out, and she heard footsteps whispering quickly across the grass. For an instant she was still blind from the light, then her eyes adjusted to the dark again in time to see Rachel emerge out of the night, holding her skirts up with both hands, running cautiously from the direction of the house.
Rachel embraced David. “I was so worried. I couldn’t see you anywhere.”
“This is Mrs. Logan,” David said. “She knows about everything.” He smiled. “She wouldn’t let me come alone. I think I’ve told her too many scary stories about your father.”
“Oh, Papa scares everyone,” Rachel said.
Jennie endured Rachel’s quick examination and was relieved to see that she seemed to approve, that she sensed their relationship and was glad, for David’s sake.
“I hope you don’t mind my coming,” Jennie said.
“I think it’s a fine idea,” Rachel said. “If David agreed to it, you must be having a good effect on him.” Impulsively, she embraced him again. “I’m so happy to see you, David. It’s been so long. I was hoping Charles would be here. When he came to the house, I thought perhaps—”
“He meant to come,” David said. “It was all arranged, but he had to return to the Point.” Quickly, he explained about the wire and his decision to keep the rendezvous in Charles’ stead. “Your father’s acquainted with his commander at the Point. Evidently he arranged to have the wire sent. Charles was very disappointed. He had arranged to get special leave when his letters began coming back unopened.”
“Oh, that’s Papa’s doing, too. All the post is put on Papa’s desk when it arrives, and Ames says there have been letters from Charles. But I never saw them, so I knew he was doing something with them. Oh, David, he’s so changed since Pamela died. It’s awful to watch. He’s become so bitter.”
“So I gathered.”
“Did—did Charles leave a message? Something for me?”
“Yes,” David said, “he did. He was planning tonight to ask you to elope.”
“To elope?”
“I told him I’d get you away if you agreed and send you on the train. There’s a couple you can stay with at the Point, but the idea is to be married immediately.”
Rachel was suddenly subdued. In the unexpected silence, Jennie searched the surrounding darkness, straining to hear the faintest unusual sound. If Hubbard were to discover them, this would be the likeliest time, with Rachel missing from the house.
“David, what should I do?” Rachel said. “How can I do that to Papa, running away?”
“You have to leave him some day. And he’ll never agree to let you go, you know that.”
“But to decide now, without even—oh, if I could only talk to Charles.”
“There may not be much time. Charles mentioned something about a threat to send you to Virginia.”
�
��Yes, Papa did threaten that, the last time he found out I’d seen Charles. If he found out about this—”
“If he finds out about this, it may be too late. You’ve been a good daughter to him, Rachel. Now you have to think about yourself. He has Mrs. Trapp to look after him. The only way you’ll ever be free is to run away, you know that. And there’s no reason I can see to wait for another time.”
“Yes,” Rachel said, “you’re right. It’s the only thing.” She smiled now, as if following the relief at having made the decision came eagerness to put it into effect. “And I know just when we can do it. Papa said we’ll be going out again Thursday evening. That’s the day after tomorrow. I’ll need only a day to get my things together. Oh, David, you were right, it is the right thing to do, I can feel it.”
“Hush,” David said. “Where is he taking you, did he say?”
“No, he’s become very secretive. I’m sure now this is the reason. He fears just such a plot as this one. I won’t know till Thursday evening. And I’ll have a valise, too. That will have to be gotten away from the house.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. If you can send Ames out to the gate with the valise, I’ll meet her there just after sunset. She can tell me where you’ll be. I can take the valise with me.”
“Oh, no, David, that’s much too dangerous. Papa’s full of hatred for you. If he discovered you anywhere near the house, there’s no telling what he might do.”
“There’s no other way.”
“There is another way,” Jennie said. “I can do it.”
“Jennie,” David said.
“It’s too dangerous for you, David. It wouldn’t be dangerous for me. Rachel’s father saw me only once, in the dark. He wouldn’t recognize me.”
Second Sight Page 16