Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  She closed her eyes and turned her head away. “Don’t start that again, Christy. You’ve been so much better. You even look a lot better, so don’t go giving Theo any new handles to hold onto.”

  “All right,” I said, “if you don’t want to talk. But I wish I knew why Theo seems so pleased these days.”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? You wouldn’t look the way you do if you hadn’t done exactly what she wanted and fallen in love with Bruce Parry.”

  “Since I’m not sure of that myself, I don’t see how it can be so obvious.”

  “You’d better be careful. Theo’s only biding her time. When you bring things into the open and tell Joel and Theo what you mean to do, she’ll whip out all her weapons. She’ll let you leave Joel—she wants that. But she’ll never let you take Peter away.”

  “There aren’t any weapons she can use. I’m well now. In fact, I’m getting better every day. I don’t think she could upset me any more, no matter what tricks she might play.”

  “You ought to know her better than that. She and Hal were both destructive. They destroyed anyone they didn’t like.”

  “Just as they destroyed Courtney and Bradley?”

  Fiona pulled herself up in bed and stared at me. “I thought you were through with all that. I thought you were going to let Adam rest in peace.”

  “I’m not through,” I told her quietly. “Bruce went to New York to find out more about those two men. It’s all waiting to be opened up again.”

  “Christy, no—no! If you go on you’ll be in deeper trouble than you’ve ever been.”

  Her face had changed and she looked a little wild. I thought of the earring in my jewel case, but I wasn’t ready to confront her with that yet.

  “If there’s nothing I can get you I’ll run along,” I said.

  She let me go and when I looked around from the door she was lying with her eyes closed and her book had fallen to the floor.

  The days moved along with a pleasant quiet toward the night of Theo’s ball. Quiet, that is, as far as untoward circumstances went. The bustle of pressure as time approached for the ball was enormous. Now and then Theo made use of me to run errands or to spell Fiona on writing letters, but mostly I was apart from what was going on. No threats were made toward me, no tricks were played, and if anyone found my presence undesirable the fact didn’t emerge. Fiona recovered from her cold and no one else was stricken.

  On the day before the ball the house was full of strange faces. Extra help had been brought in, made up, as was the custom, from moonlighting Newporters who were willing to help out at parties.

  Guests who were arriving from New York and from other places appeared and Theo was enjoying herself to the full as hostess for Spindrift. She didn’t need me now, and time hung heavily on my hands.

  That afternoon I found myself wandering idly around the first floor. It was a gray, rainy day, with the ocean sending in long rollers under the slanting rain, and the beeches dripping a steady patter on the leaf-strewn grass. I had run out of paperbacks, so I thought I might have a look at the formal library downstairs and see if I could find something to read.

  The massive mahogany door opened on a vast, empty room, and I was glad to have the place to myself. I had always thought it an attractive room, much too seldom used. The carpets were a soft yellow gold and ran practically wall to wall. The walls themselves echoed the same dull gold, and the draperies that shrouded ceiling-high windows were of golden-brown velvet. Against their panes the rain beat incessantly, blurring the vistas of lawn and garden beyond. Over the white marble mantel with its green veining hung a great mirror, framed in gilt, that rose to a peak of clustered wreaths at the apex. Flanking a square-faced English clock, silver candelabra set with white candles graced each end of the mantel.

  On either side of the fireplace two modern sofas, slip-covered in oyster white, faced each other invitingly, with a round coffee table between them set with a bowl of golden chrysanthemums. At one end of the room stood an oval Chippendale table with chairs ranged about it and magazines strewn across its polished surface. Other parts of the room contained small furniture clusters, conducive to conversation or even to solitary reading, and all around the walls were ranged tall, built-in mahogany cabinets well stocked with rows of books.

  As I walked into the room, I saw that a thick book with a modern jacket rested on the coffee table and I picked it up. The name JON PEMBERTON stared at me in black type, larger than that of the title Ganymede. I flipped the book open and glanced at the blurb on the front jacket flap. There was reference to the youth who had been cupbearer to the gods, but I gathered that Pemberton’s hero bore that name in a later, but still swashbuckling time. This was one of his roistering historical novels, I supposed, and I turned the book over to look at the photograph on the back.

  The author’s face was clean-shaven, with a thatch of light, unruly hair above, and a pair of wide-set eyes that had an almost hypnotic effect. The man must be in his fifties, at least, to have written his long string of popular novels, but he looked younger and I suspected great energy there. Perhaps I would read his book, I thought Even though I did not like it, it might give me some clue as to why Joel was taking him on. I returned it to the coffee table for now, and wandered on around the room.

  Hal had been a great reader, so the shelves were lined with novels and nonfiction of distinction from past and present. The feature of the room that most interested me, however, was the balcony.

  The high ceiling had allowed generously for construction of a gallery that began halfway up the wall and could be reached by a curving wrought-iron stairway. Most of the old-fashioned books were kept up there, and there were chairs and a small writing desk, where one could have complete seclusion.

  I climbed the stairs and moved idly along the shelves, pulling out a book here and there. There were volumes of poems by Longfellow, Whittier, the Brownings, Byron, Scott and others. I looked in the flyleaf of Childe Harold and found an ornate bookplate with the Patton-Stuyvesant name. Perhaps most of these books dated back to their day.

  From the room below a sound reached me and I looked over the iron rail to see one of the men who worked about the house come in with a basket of logs. He knelt by the hearth and went to work lighting a fire. Perhaps in preparation for guests who were visiting for the ball. I paid no attention but went back to exploring the shelves. When the fire had caught hold he went away, and I stood for a moment enjoying the way leaping flames lent a reddish glow to the carpet and sent shadows dancing up the walls. Perhaps I’d go down in a little while and read Jon Pemberton’s book beside the fire. Its warmth would be all the more pleasant with gray rain at the windows.

  But for the moment I returned to my study of the shelves. The titles moved on to a later, less literary time and I found books by George Barr McCutcheon, Gene Stratton Porter, Harold Bell Wright and others, now almost forgotten. I was blowing dust from the top of an old edition of John Fox, Jr.’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine when the door of the library opened again and I looked down to see Fiona come purposefully into the room. She wore still another caftan of a pumpkin color, deeper and more orange than the carpet and walls, and she moved gracefully to the fire to warm her hands.

  I debated whether to call out to her, or pretend I hadn’t seen her come in. Probably she was only checking over the room and would go away shortly, so I made no effort to attract her attention and she did not look up to see me.

  When the fire had warmed her, she busied herself lighting the eight candles on the mantel and then seated herself on one of the oyster-white sofas, turning sideways to me, as she drew a handkerchief from the inner folds of her robe. Traces of her cold, I thought, but that wasn’t it. She dabbed at her eyes and began, rather deliberately, it seemed to me, to cry. I was fascinated now and I had no intention of attracting her notice. This entire scene looked like a calculated staging and I wanted to know for whom the performance was intended. Anything Fiona did interested me, and
under the circumstances which existed at Spindrift I had no compunction about spying. I was, however, too easily exposed to anyone in the room below who happened to look up. I sat down on the floor behind the balcony rail, trusting that I was thus lost in its shadow, and waited for whatever was about to happen.

  Fiona had not indulged her tears for more than a moment or two when the door opened again. The end of my balcony blocked it from sight and I couldn’t see at first who had entered. Fiona saw. She looked up, gulped tearfully, dabbed at her eyes and began to cry fresh tears.

  Ferris Thornton walked across the room and stood beside the fire looking down at her. Now I understood. Ferris had always been susceptible to feminine tears. He was a sort of gallant throwback to the last century, when women were weak and tearful—or supposed to be—and men were strong and all prevailing. It was really rather strange that he had been devoted to Theodora for so long when she possessed none of these weaker traits.

  “My dear,” he said to Fiona, “you mustn’t cry your heart out like this. How can I help you?”

  “I can’t bear what is happening!” Fiona wailed. “I can’t go along with it for another day. Christy is going to be hurt, and Christy is Adam’s daughter.”

  “I appreciate your loyalty to Adam,” Ferris said, dropping to the sofa beside her and patting her gently on the shoulder. “But Adam hasn’t been your real concern for a long time. Nor has Christy.”

  Fiona wept the harder at that and I pondered the fact that any woman could have so complete a personality change as my stepmother had shown since my father’s death.

  Ferris might be touched by feminine tears, but he was also made uncomfortable by them, and there was a slight impatience in the way he continued to pat and soothe.

  “Suppose you tell me exactly what you plan to do,” he said to her.

  “I can’t talk to Theo at all. She won’t listen to me. I thought you might, I can’t go on like this, Ferris. The truth has to come out.”

  “Who will believe anything you say at this late date? And what is the truth anyway? Are you so sure that you know as much as you think you do?”

  She looked up at him with an air of fright that I could discern even from my balcony.

  “Oh, I don’t know everything! You needn’t be afraid of my talking out of turn, if only you and Theo will let Christy off.”

  “I don’t believe you’re really thinking of Christy,” Ferris went on. “What you want to protect is yourself and your own hopes for the future.”

  “I haven’t any hopes! Not any more. Everything is over for me. But I can still stop what is happening.”

  Ferris spoke gently, yet there was an ominous quality in his tone. “No, my dear, you cannot.”

  “There’s still Joel!” she cried. “I can go to Joel!”

  Ferris considered her thoughtfully for a moment, as though what she had said surprised him. “Joel won’t lift a finger. He has his own neck to consider. Have you forgotten that? Haven’t you seen how vulnerable he is? He must protect himself. Because he’s part of the Moreland Empire.”

  “He’s changed too. Since that night. Everything changed the night Adam died.”

  “What you must remember”—Ferris’s voice dropped so that I barely heard his words—“what you must remember is that you know nothing about what happened in the Tower Room that night. Isn’t that true, Fiona?”

  “But I can guess.”

  “Silently,” he said. “Not out loud. You might be guessing wrong.”

  She bent her head and the soft brown pageboy swept her cheeks. “For now I’ll be silent,” she said. “But only for now. Ferris, be kind to me.”

  The appeal seemed to, touch him once more and he bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I want very much to be kind to you. You are Cabot’s widow and important to Theodora. And what is important to Theodora is important to me. We’re moving into a busy time now, and these things have to be kept in abeyance. Afterwards, plans must be made for Christy. We will expect you to help us then.”

  He stood up, looking down at her for a moment, and when she covered her face with her hands and did not answer, he went quietly out of the room. She waited for a moment after he had gone and then wiped her eyes carefully with what must have been a very damp handkerchief. I watched between the rods of the iron railing as she stood up and went to the mantel to blow out the candles. All had obviously been staged for an appeal to Ferris, who was usually sensitive to attractive surroundings. And whatever her purpose, it had all been in vain.

  When the candles had been snuffed and blue smoke drifted upward from the wicks, Fiona spoke into the silence of the room.

  “You can come down now, Christy.”

  Caught and half-embarrassed, I stood up and looked down at her over the railing. “How long have you known I was here?”

  “I saw you in the mirror,” Fiona said. “Ferris was already in the room, and it was too late to do anything about you. Come down here, Christy.”

  She was my stepmother, commanding me as she had sometimes done long ago, and there was nothing tearful about her. I went to the stairs and descended them to the main room, feeling a little cold, so that I wanted to stand by the fire, where its warmth could touch me.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  She looked at me with that calm assurance I had not seen her wear for a long time. Suprisingly, she had again turned into the woman Adam had married—calm, unruffled, self-controlled. And clearly she did not mean to answer my question. It was I who felt awkward and disturbed.

  “How can you change like that?” I cried. “How can you weep at one moment and then be perfectly calm the next?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Because I’m a chameleon. I always have been. I am what the moment requires.”

  “Not always,” I denied. “You’ve been a very frightened woman several times lately, and I don’t think that has been faked.”

  “I’m still frightened,” she said, “but I’m tired of letting go and wallowing.”

  “What did you hope to accomplish with Ferris?”

  “Respite,” Fiona said without hesitation. “A break for you.”

  “That’s an about-face,” I told her. “You haven’t been offering me much in the way of respite before this. Besides, how could you hope to win Ferris away from any plans Theo might want him to carry out? We all know that famous story of his lost love, and how he has devoted himself to her ever after.”

  “He doesn’t love Theo,” Fiona said. “He detests her,”

  I was startled. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. He’s caught, as all the rest of us are caught in Theo’s webs. The Moreland webs. He’s part of the Empire too—and has been for all his life. You’re not free of them yet, and neither am I, nor anyone else in this house.”

  “Bruce is free. I don’t think he’s ever been fully caught.”

  “All the worse for him. If you care about him, Christy, you’d better make him see how dangerous his position is if he defies Theo.”

  “Dangerous? That’s a strong word.”

  “Is it? Adam defied her.”

  “Is that why he died?”

  Fiona took a quick turn about the room, her yellow caftan seeming to float with her long strides. “Do you think I’d answer that—even if I could?”

  “So we’re back where we were—with you denying any knowledge of anything. Isn’t it time you stopped playing that game, Fiona, and gave me something to go on?”

  Her assumed calm was cracking a little around the edges. “That’s the last thing I’d do. Because you don’t know how to buckle under, any more than Adam did. I’m the worm in all this—but I’m going right on being a worm for as long as I can. It’s safer that way.”

  “But someone tried to injure Theo. Someone must be standing up to her.”

  She gave me a long, thoughtful look. “If she was injured by anything but a fall. We don’t really know that.”

  “I suppose you’re r
ight. Besides, if she really was injured by someone, why would she ignore it? Why would she claim nothing happened and make no effort to expose or punish whoever it was?”

  “How do you know that she hasn’t?”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “Let’s not talk about it any more, Fiona. We go around in circles and run into our own arguments coming and going.”

  “There’s only one argument I’ve ever been interested in,” Fiona said. “The one that would persuade you to leave this house and stay as far away from Theo as possible. The less you know, the safer you are.”

  “Then I’m very safe, because I don’t really know anything.”

  “That would be lovely, if true. But you already know more than you think you do and you’ve read some of what was written in those pages of Adam’s.”

  “Yes. There was some sort of plot to discredit and destroy those two men, wasn’t there—Courtney and Bradley?”

  “And how many others who displeased Hal Moreland?”

  “My father would have exposed the whole thing.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know anything.”

  “I don’t know as much as you do, and you appear to be safe enough.”

  “I’m Cabot’s wife, in Theo’s eyes, and therefore sacred and untouchable.”

  “I don’t think you believe that either. Fiona, I found something the other day in the Tower Room. A single diamond earclip. You were wearing them both when I saw you earlier that New Year’s Eve. But later, after we found Adam, you wore only one.”

  She stared at me and one hand flew to her left ear and touched the pearl she wore—as though she expected the lobe to be bare.

  “You were there earlier that night, weren’t you, Fiona?”

  Already she was recovering herself. “Why shouldn’t I be? Adam was my husband.”

  “But you saw something, didn’t you? You know who came into that room after you left.”

  She threw me a look that was a little wild and stalked out of the room. But she had denied nothing.

  I dropped onto a sofa by the fire and sat watching the flames. I no longer wanted to read. I only wanted to ponder the things I had seen and heard—some of them old and few of them startling, except for Fiona’s claim that Ferris Thornton had no love for Theodora Moreland. That was something to think about, though I couldn’t see what good it would do me.