Bright sunlight lay in broad beams across the floor, creeping toward her bed like hot spatulate hands. There was a faint line of perspiration on her lip, and the back of her neck was damp against the pillow. She sat up, wiping her face with the sleeve of her gown. How could it be so hot already, she wondered as she dressed. In defense against the heat, she left off a petticoat and swept her hair into a coil on top of her head, securing it with pins in quick jabs. Judging by the sun, it was already late, and she had intended to get up early.
Smiling wryly at her good intentions, she left her room and went out into the hall. Down the hall, the double doors leading to the back stood open to the morning. Realizing she had not really seen the back part of the house, she went toward them and out onto the back gallery. It was not a large gallery, not as large as the one on the front, and looked out over a more cluttered landscape. Fruit trees and bushes and a grassy lane, small outbuildings and clotheslines straggled in disorder. Further away, a stable surrounded by holding pens and corrals of split rails stood with fences of the same material angling from it, marching over a swale and reappearing, only to dwindle in the direction of distant green fields. A horseman, tiny in the distance, rode along the fence toward the house, now and then pausing to watch the progress of the hands in the fields to his right. The hands moved slowly with a steady rhythm down the dark earth paths between double rows of crops that ran like a green sea to the pines spiking the far horizon.
On impulse, Amelia turned and went down the hall through the seemingly empty house, down the stairs and out into the backyard. She stood a moment, and then seeing a path through the buildings, hurried toward it. It took her beneath the clothesline and down beside a small house that smelled of salty woodsmoke and ashes, a smokehouse for curing meat, and through a grove of crepe myrtles just beginning to show feathery pink blooms at the tips of the branches. Beyond the grove, the path reached the fence that curved away from the stock pens and merged with a wagon road that ran beside a row of small empty cabins whose windows hung askew and whose doors were overhung with orange trumpet vine.
Lifting her skirts where the deep grass was still damp with dew, Amelia looked away from the old slave cabins and saw the horseman riding toward her. It was Nelville, his bright hair gleaming in the sun and his white shirt blinding in the intense light that seemed to slide like liquid fire over the man and the great red stallion he rode.
He kicked his horse into a run and lunged toward her. Feeling that he had seen her and was coming to meet her, Amelia stopped and stood waiting nervously, partly for the driving speed of his advance and partly for unnameable reasons. As he came even within the last of the cabins, a figure rushed out-a weird shape of flapping garments and jingling beads, with a grizzled gray head only partly covered by a ragged scarf. A horrible wordless screeching, shrill and demented, came from the creature, and Amelia watched in bewilderment as it ran beneath the stallion's flashing hooves, waving what appeared to be a fistful of dirty white chicken feathers.
The horse shied violently in terror, and the old hag brought out of her draggling skirts a short club like a gnarled walking stick and struck at Nelville! The blow glanced off the horse's neck and he reared, neighing shrilly. Nelville cursed, trying to swing the horse away from his screaming, whirling attacker, his face crimson with rage. Amelia ran forward a few steps, but stopped short in humiliation for her thoughtlessness as he shot a look of pure venom at her, shouting "Keep clear, you silly fool!"
Backing away, she stood helplessly watching as the crazy old woman scuttled beneath the horse's belly, sending him into backing, rearing terror. A purple bruise stained with blood appeared on Nelville's face and Amelia stared at it senselessly, amazed that the old woman could have inflicted it. As his horse pivoted, Nelville leaned from the saddle, and there came the thud of flesh on flesh as the whirling mass of rags sagged to the ground.
As abruptly as it had begun, the skirmish was over, and Nelville dismounted to stand at his horse's head, soothing him and speaking softly to him.
Amelia looked down at the distorted figure on the ground. Her gray old face was crumpled and lined, and her hair had lost its covering, so that it spread in tag ends like thin, dirty sheep's wool, sticking to her face where it was wet and oily with sweat. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth where it swelled, and her jaw hung open showing toothless gums. She was thin and scrawny and from her tatters, scarcely identifiable as a dress, there rose an odor of mold and mildew and something more acrid. Her twisted old hands with their horny nails were loosely grasping the handle of a thick, highly polished stick. Despite the dirt and filth, a queer pity welled up inside Amelia for the woman's thin old bones and rags. She seemed so harmless, lying there. Amelia started to kneel beside her.
"Don't touch her!" Nelville rapped out from behind her. "Let her own kind take care of her."
"Are you just going to let her lie there?" she asked without thinking, and her heart thudded with dread at the look of cold calculated scorn her question brought her.
"Why not?" he asked indifferently. "She would be more than happy to change places with me."
There were splotches of blood on his shirt, and Amelia looked from them to the bruise on his cheek where an angry cut oozed steadily. Hesitantly, she said, "Your face, you're bleeding."
"Must you point out the obvious and drip with maudlin sympathy?" he asked and started to walk away, leading the red stallion.
Not wanting to be left alone, Amelia caught up with him. "Why did she do it?" she asked, half running to stay up with him.
"Who knows?" he answered irritably. "Crazy, wild, I may have fired her darkling child, or she may have seen me briefly as a snake in her path. Does it matter?"
"Of course, it matters! An old woman attacked you and you may have killed her. You can't ignore it."
"Or change it by yammering endlessly and bothering myself with incessant whys. Perhaps, I should feel less guilty about doing the convenient thing instead of the gentlemanly thing if I explained it with sweet sad sighs. But, I don't really care, so why should I trouble deaf heaven with my impenitent remorse." So saying, he took the left hand path to the stables with a brief stopping look that dared her to follow.
Amelia, who had never thought that he should not have hit the old woman, stood staring after him. She had thought him incapable of moral concern and unlikely to have second thoughts after his actions. He was not, she saw, merely whimsical and harsh. What was he then? A fascinating, contradictory man. She stared down at her hands to see them trembling slightly, and she slowly became aware that her trembling was not just in her hands, but all over her body. Why? Why, she wondered. She whirled and hurried back toward the house.
Under the clothesline, she met Katherine who stared past her saying anxiously, "What happened? I saw something from a window …"
"An old Negro woman tried to hit Nelville with her walking stick. She's lying out there on the ground where he knocked her down. Shouldn't we do something?"
"Never mind. Nelville will take care of her. He'll send someone," Katherine answered in a dismissing tone of voice. Then, she continued, "You shouldn't be out here without a head covering of some kind. We will have to find you a sun bonnet." There was censure in her voice that was all the more objectionable because it was offhand; almost an afterthought, the surface offering of a mind moving more deeply on other things.
"Thank you," Amelia said curtly.
"I wouldn't want you to get sunstroke," Katherine apologized with her lightning smile and a flash of her bright blue eyes.
Reba stood in the shadow of the open door, watching as they moved back toward the house. "Old Grannie nearly got you," she said as she moved back to let them pass. It was dark in the house after the bright sunlight outside, so that her face was a pale blur and her dark brown head merged with the shadows. Amelia would have passed on without comment except that Katherine took Reba up sharply, "Nonsense! Nelville was perfectly in command of the situation."
"Cer
tainly, when he arrived. But, don't tell me Grannie would hurt Nelville unless he got in her way. She always treated him as the dear of her heart. Being a little crazy wouldn't change that."
"Wouldn't it? Why else would she attack him."
"I don't think she did."
"Are you seriously suggesting that Amelia could have been in danger? How ridiculous!" Katherine laughed in gentle amusement.
"Is it? She is the stranger." Reba stood gracefully, a mocking smile curving her lips as she confronted Katherine who was becoming angry. They both seemed to attach some significance to their quarrel that Amelia could not see.
Katherine raised a pale eyebrow at Reba, and with a cold stare, began to speak slowly and evenly as if she couldn't conceive of anyone refuting her logic. "I admit that, but if Grannie is crazy enough to attack anyone, I don't see why you should think her more likely to choose Amelia than Nelville. Living in the woods, eating a concoction of leaves and berries and roots instead of nourishing food, practicing her godless, sinful religion instead of acting like the baptized Christian she is, pretending all these years to have some special power, so that every Negro on the place is afraid of her-why shouldn't she get a little queer?"
"Granted. But, what I said was that she never meant to hurt Nelville until he interfered with her aim, which was to remove the stranger, Amelia. Don't you think Nelville was in a big hurry to rush to Amelia's side? I think he saw something we didn't. What do you think, Amelia?" She turned a gaze of polite inquiry on Amelia, but her lips were curved in a malicious smile.
"It doesn't matter. She did no harm to anyone except herself," Amelia said to end the contest of wills. Then, she turned, walked down the hall, and mounted the stairs.
"Aren't you forgetting Nelville? He was hurt …" Reba's voice followed her.
"Dinner in an hour," Katherine said. "I'll call you!"
Amelia nodded and continued up the stairs. She felt depressed, bombarded with impressions of people, whose feelings and reasoning ran counter to the calm orderly life she had lived with her mother, a life without stress and strange incidents and crossed emotions. Had that crazy old woman been trying to hurt her? She didn't think so, but it was possible, she supposed, just as it had been possible for James and Reba to scare her the night before. And Isabella. Why had no one mentioned her? Why did she keep out of sight? Her love of privacy? Her pride?
Why was Nelville so surly, almost angry, unlike James who seemed to welcome her company. But, then James had betrayed that friendliness, she reminded herself. Nelville's extravagance of speech hadn't been caused by drink, as they had implied, not unless he had been drunk ever since she arrived. Which brought new questions. What had he meant when he called her a "lamb for the sacrifice, infinitely dear, but painfully unlucky" and advised her to leave? She shivered, torn between her fears and her need to belong.
Though she straightened her room and closed the dark green jalousies against the heat that would come when the evening sun beat on that side of the house, when the call for dinner came, she was no nearer to a real answer than she had been before.
She went out of the room and down the stairs and was surprised and not particularly pleased to find James waiting for her at the bottom. He blocked her way effectively by standing in front of her, and she stopped, looking coldly, questioningly at him.
He smiled winningly, a warm smile on his thin ascetic face, but Amelia could not feel friendly. His desertion and his and Reba's joking comments at her fright were too fresh in her memory.
"You're not angry with me, are you?" he asked softly.
"Should I be?" she asked, staring straight at him.
"Perhaps, you have a right, but couldn't you forgive me. It was a thoughtless joke. In bad taste, I will admit. It was Reba's idea."
She frowned at the transfer of blame to Reba. That it was true, she had no doubt from what she had overheard, but still it seemed a schoolboy apology.
"I thought you would be a little frightened and then we would all have a big laugh, but you didn't play fair," he said with an uneasy laugh. "I'm really very sorry and I promise it won't happen again. My word as a gentleman."
He was looking more serious and hangdog by the minute and he seemed, in his way, to be as persistent as his sister. There was little to make her doubt that it had been a joke, and the fear and indignity she had felt had receded with the coming of daylight. She could hardly go on feuding with her new family, she thought. It was uncomfortable enough without that.
Seeing the beginning of a stiff smile on her face, James caught Amelia's hand. "Forgiven?" he asked earnestly.
"Forgiven," she said, smiling at his anxious expression. He offered his arm and as she took it they walked around the end of the staircase and turned toward the dining table at the end of the long hall.
"I hear you had an adventure this morning," he said, smiling at her and putting his hand over hers on his arm.
"It didn't amount to much," she replied.
"I must say you look better than Nelville." As she raised her eyebrows inquiringly, he went on. "Nelville looks none too well."
"His face?" she asked, only vaguely aware of the others grouped around the eating table at the end of the great hall.
"My face will survive," Nelville replied shortly from his position at the head of the table, "if I am allowed to feed it."
"Pay no attention to him," Katherine said. "In my opinion, men should be fed separately, like children-first, of course-since they are the breadwinners, but separately."
"I haven't been up since five, like Nelville," Reba said unsmilingly, "but I for one am just as hungry-or I was until I saw what we were having."
"Field peas and cornbread do not suit your educated palate, my dear?" asked an equally unsmiling Sylvestor at the foot of the table.
"Frankly, no. We once fed such stuff to the stock," Reba said vehemently.
"Really, Reba," Katherine said, "if you won't help plan the menus, I fail to see where you have a say in the matter. Now, doesn't that make sense? Besides, I can remember when peas were most welcome-the summer after Vicksburg, for instance."
"Certainly, certainly, but that was war, and now couldn't we go back to eating like we should, like ladies and gentlemen, instead of field hands."
"Unfortunately, we are neither one nor the other," Sylvestor said mildly, "so we can only do the best we can."
"For heaven's sake, can't we have one meal without bickering?" Katherine asked tightly. "Let us pray!" she said in the same angry voice.
Grace over, the meal began. As Amelia helped herself and passed the bowls, she glanced at Sylvestor. He looked different in the bright light from the way he had in dim lamplight. He was colorless. His hair and brows and eyes were all a pale gray like the very old white shirt he wore. His face was pale, as if he never saw the sun, and had a mildness made melancholy by the downward droop of a gray mustache that followed the lines around his mouth. He looked old, older than his forty-five years.
The front and back doors were open, so that it was reasonably cool in the draft the blew through the hall. A few houseflies buzzed around the food on the table and were waved away.
"I do think," Reba said irritably, "that something could be done about these dratted flies."
"Like what?" James said conversationally.
"I don't know what," she answered in exasperation. "If I did, I would do it."
"Be reasonable then. Ignore what you can't help," James said with a grin.
"Reasonable? I'm tired to death of being reasonable!" Reba said passionately. "I'm tired of flies and the heat and this dusty, dirty old house, and wearing old, made over clothes. But, most of all I'm tired of all of you! I'm sick of your faces and voices-"
"We are all aware of your displeasure," Sylvestor said with a deceptive mildness that cut across the outburst, "since we have heard about it often enough, but you really shouldn't subject your new cousin to it until she has come to know us all better."
"Amelia? I'm tired of consid
ering Amelia, more than a little tired. I think she will know more than she cares to about us before she's through!" She laughed harshly. "Much more!"
"Reba!" Katherine exclaimed in shocked tones.
"Reba," Nelville said quietly, "like all of us, is feeling the heat."
Reba stared at him a, long moment, anger in her dark brown eyes. Then, she smiled wearily. "I guess you're right," she said, looking around the table and out through the open doors. "I think it's going to rain, or storm, or something. Can't you feel it?"
"I believe you're right," Sylvestor said and bent his head over his plate.
Katherine tightened the corners of her mouth in a half frown and said nothing, while James flashed Reba a sympathetic smile, and Nelville acted as though he had not heard. After a long, strained silence, Katherine suggested, "We might as well rest after dinner. The Creoles had the right idea. A body can't exist in this heat without resting through the hottest part of the day."
"Who can sleep in this heat?" Reba said petulantly.
"You needn't sleep …" Katherine began.
Reba looked up, hate blazing in her eyes and color high in her cheeks. "Are you going to start like that again? I can't help being childless, and I won't be reminded every time I turn around."
"I had no intention of reminding you," Katherine said coolly, though there was a splash of red across her cheekbones. "The suggestion was entirely in your own mind."
Nelville suddenly pushed his chair back with a squealing scrape across the floor. "I find myself without appetite," he said, throwing down his napkin and striding down the hall and out the door.
Reba jumped up, looking slightly wild, and then with a hand over her face, she fled the table. They heard her steps on the stairs and, after an undecided moment while they heard running feet cross the floor above them and a door slamming, Sylvestor followed her, murmuring an apology.
"Well," Katherine said uncertainly.
"You seem to have put your foot in it, Sister," James said quietly, leaning back in his chair.
The Secret of Mirror House Page 6