The Secret of Mirror House

by Jennifer Blake

  "It?" Katherine asked, looking at him with wide eyes from across the table. Her fingers played nervously with her water glass, and Amelia noticed her carefully filed and buffed nails with their long slightly feline curves. They seemed a bit out of place with her faded cotton dress and carelessly pinned hair. "I didn't say anything," she protested.

  "Didn't you?" James replied, rising awkwardly. He limped away to the parlor, closing the door behind him.

  "I really don't know what to say," Katherine said appealingly to Amelia. "I think the heat must have gotten to all of us. If you don't mind, I believe I'll tell Bessie she can clear the dishes, and then take that Creole nap I mentioned earlier. You might do the same if you care to, or … oh, anything you please. I realize it isn't very hospitable leaving a guest to entertain herself this way, but after all, you are one of the family now, and I suppose we shall all have to get used to treating you like family." She smiled vaguely and moved off in the general direction of the kitchen. After a moment, Amelia rose too, and went up to her room.

  She took off her dress and petticoats and lay down on the bed in her shift. It was close in the room, and warm, but still several degrees cooler than it was outside. The closed jalousies made it dark compared with the blazing sun that was falling through the slats and making bars of light on the floor through which dust motes lazily turned. Drowzy and dull with the heat, Amelia thought back over dinner. Reba, Nelville, James, Katherine, Sylvestor-they all seemed so strange. Reba seemed so discontented and on edge; James withdrawn, waiting; Nelville sarcastic and yet so controlled; Katherine anxious, strained; and Sylvestor-in contrast-too vague and mild. She mustn't forget the hidden woman, Isabella, with her pretty yet terrible masque, terrible because of what it hid, what it suggested. And last of all, the house itself. Somehow, she didn't feel it was entirely the fault of the sultry heat that there seemed to flow in the air a current of silent desperation, a desperation directed somehow at herself.

  A sound, the soft thud of a closing door followed by footsteps, disturbed her thoughts and she leaned on one elbow, listening. The noise came from the room next to her own, the room attached to hers, however tenuously, by the connecting door. She stared at the door with mingled apprehension and amusement. Surely, there was no real reason for fear, yet … yet Reba and Sylvestor's room was at the far end of the hall and the footsteps had been regular and firm, not at all like James's. Was it Katherine or Nelville, then? Did it really matter who? Somehow it did.

  In a few minutes, the footsteps went out of the room and could be heard on the stairs. After a slight argument with her conscience, Amelia slid out of bed and went to the connecting door, determined to find out who the occupant was, even if she had to search the room. But, that was unnecessary. Slung carelessly over a chair was the shirt Nelville had worn that morning.

  She eased the door shut again and turned back to her room. She felt, prudishly perhaps, that such an arrangement shouldn't be, and as she removed her hand from the lockless door, she shivered in a terrible insecurity. She didn't know how she could change the arrangement, and with the dubious quality of her welcome, she was not at all sure that she should try. Resolutely, she tried to push the situation out of her mind, thinking that she was enlarging too much on a coincidence. Doubtless, she told herself firmly, this was the only livable room, but she wondered in the midst of all her resolution if she would ever manage to spend another peaceful night in the room. Stifled by the heat and the trend of her thoughts, Amelia hurried back into her dress, pinned her hair up, and left the room. She stood outside her door with her hand on the knob, realizing she had nowhere to go. Down the hall, she could hear someone moving about in one of the rooms, and as she listened intently, she thought she heard the soft sound of a woman crying. She waited in a strained silence; then, a slight breeze blew into the hall and the sound came again, just a soft moaning noise made by the wind as it blew around the eaves and into the cavernous hall. She smiled at her imagination. But, she frowned as she remembered suddenly a fragment of speech, something someone had said: "the eaves mourn with shrieks.…" Hurriedly, she crossed the hall and went down the stairs as if pursued by her thoughts. On the porch, she paused self-consciously and looked around. Nothing moved in the sluggish afternoon except another of those vagrant breezes that had disturbed her so foolishly upstairs. It gave an imitation of coolness now and then when it stirred the treetops, such a good imitation that Amelia succumbed to the temptation and moved out into the yard.

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  Chapter Five

  INSTANTLY ANY ILLUSION she might have had about the temperature was dispelled, but having started she went doggedly on down the brick path and along the drive where it curved around the house.

  The gravel crunched in the dirt, sending little spurts of dust to coat the hem of her dress-dust the stiff, brittle grass brushed off in little clouds when she left the drive.

  On the back side of the house, a grape arbor, a vine-thatched pavilion with a great center concord grape and four corner posts also entwined with their vines, beckoned with a dense shade, and she made for it. As she stepped under it, she noted the yellowed leaves that had fallen from the vines and the shriveled, dry-weather raisins among the turning grapes that hung in clusters among the leaves. She picked a few of the more purple ones and popped them into her mouth as she settled gracefully to the ground with her skirts billowing around her and her back conveniently near the great stalk of the grape vine for a back rest. It was hot under the arbor, but nice. The dappled leaf shade made moving patterns on her skirt and honeybees droned lazily to and fro, bumping their mouths against the ripening grapes. Now and then a whisper of breeze murmured by and lifted the damp tendrils of hair around her face and then stirred the dry leathery leaves of a nearby red oak tree, making a rustling sound enough like falling rain to be soothing. She felt her inner tension dissolve slowly in a mindless drifting content, enjoying the present, despite worries and fears of the past or future.

  She closed her eyes, just for a moment, to rest them against the sun glare, and when she awoke, Nelville stood leaning against one of the iron supports of the arbor, looking down at her with a brooding expression.

  "Pity," he said as she opened her eyes and stared up at him, "I had in mind a Sleeping Beauty reenactment."

  "Did you?" she asked with the composure found in her present contentment.

  "Did I?" he asked in a strange tone that might have meant did he have it in mind or did he do it?

  "Very wiley," she said in irritation, stung by his casual rejoinder, "like a fox."

  "A fox?" he asked with an expression of startled interest.

  "You remind me," she said evenly, shutting her eyes against the picture of him standing there in a dusty shirt, pants, and boots, his fox-pelt hair damp and curling with perspiration. "You remind me," she said deliberately, in memory of his high handed treatment and his mockery on several occasions, "of a moth-eaten stuffed fox our landlady used to keep. It was all teeth and bushy tail."

  A choked exclamation escaped him and then he laughed, rattling the grape leaves where he hung on the arbor post for support. On a final chuckle, he said, "Congratulations, calm, devious Amelia, but at least I never called you anything so uncomplimentary!"

  "Didn't you now? What about a blackbird with claws?"

  "Did I call you that? No, a myna bird, I believe it was."

  "Close enough," Amelia said, discomfitted by his lack of anger at her scoring.

  "Close enough," he agreed, "so long as you remember the family."

  "I also remember what you told me then," she said, staring up at him in determined accusation.

  "Yes?" he answered, returning her steady gaze with disconcertingly serious frankness.

  "You said," she began with the curious feeling that she was casting off from a safe shore, "that I was not safe here. That I should leave."

  "I don't believe I ever said just that," he denied firmly.

  She stared at him in d
isbelief a moment, then conceded, "Well, perhaps not in those words exactly, but you did imply it."

  "If I did, it was before I knew how much … we need you. How much you need us. Before I realized how self-sufficient a young woman can be. You are self-sufficient, aren't you?"

  She looked away from those probing green eyes, knowing that somehow she had lost the initiative. "Am I?" she asked quietly.

  "Masterly," he said mockingly, "even wiley. Admit nothing, reveal nothing, subscribe to no causes, support no factions. No one is as important as the individual I."

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "I am as ready to believe that as anything, aren't you? Or, are you ready to immolate yourself in the name of family pride, honor, and continuity?" Before she could frame an answer, he went on, his face bleak in the bright light, "Well, are you? Security is so enticing, isn't it?"

  She sat up straight and opened her mouth to deny it, but before a sound came out he ordered, "No, don't tell me. You see, I have an interest in your reply. If you go, I will have to give up my roan. Shocking, isn't it, how trivial the things that hang in the balance? I never give anything up easily, however trivial."

  She stared at him, only half hearing the last words. "But, what have I do to with your horse?" she whispered, then, more loudly, "What difference does it make if I go?"

  Seeing the glint of amusement rising unaccountably in his eyes, she quickly headed him off. "And you needn't laugh and pass it off either, I intend to know."

  "Do you? Well then, you must ask Katherine, because I cannot tell you, and would not, just now, even if I could."

  "Why?" she asked, repressing the impulse to put all the baffled resentment and anger she was feeling into the question.

  "My reasons are mixed, and not, I think, entirely without a coloring of feeling. It isn't a pleasant thing to discover."

  "What?" she asked in confusion as he stopped and looked away.

  "To discover that I am vulnerable to rainbows at midnight," he said cryptically.

  "Oh, but-" she began half in anger, half in reluctant admiration for his oblique change of course; but, he broke in.

  "Have done," he said abruptly, with a chopping motion of the flat of his hand. "Women never quite know when to call a halt. Are you as young and gullible as you seem, or don't you realize you never get something for nothing? You came to Mirror House prepared to accept our unlimited hospitality, never asking yourself the price, didn't you? Why should you assume there was none? Faith and trust and an unbounded belief in the goodness of human nature? Don't believe it. So now, when someone hints that something might be expected of you in return, you screw up your mouth and cry 'woe is me.' Well, human nature is decent only in direct proportion to self-interest, and for God's sake, next time someone offers you a list of goods, ask the price!"

  He stood staring down at her with an expression of such fierceness that Amelia dropped her gaze to her hands which were clenched involuntarily in her lap, while her whirling brain searched for a rebuttal. When she made no answer, his footsteps rustled in the falling leaves, and when she looked up quickly, she saw only his retreating back.

  She sat a few minutes while her heartbeat quieted and her thoughts flew here and there, looking for what she had said that was so wrong and wondering if Katherine and James and all of the rest saw her as an unwanted, but possibly useful guest. It might explain their reaction to her. She wondered, too, how she had dared ask Nelville what she had. Perhaps, it was because he appeared something of an outsider, like herself, and she had made the mistake of thinking that they had something in common because of it. Though the step from "having something in common" to being allies was a large one, she had made it impulsively and been put in her place for her pains.

  She finally got to her feet and was brushing the trash from her skirt when she was startled by Katherine. "I thought I heard voices down here," Katherine said, moving around the vines that had screened her approach. "Was that Nelville I saw stalking off in high dudgeon? I hope he hasn't upset you?" she finished on a questioning note.

  "No," Amelia denied instinctively, though more to save herself embarrassment and stave off further questioning than to shield Nelville.

  "Good. Heaven knows he can be, upsetting that is, when he sets his mind to it. He is a very loyal and hardworking man, though, for all his faults, a big asset to the plantation. But, I'll be the first to admit that he isn't exactly a comfortable person to live with all the time." She paused expectantly, but when Amelia returned no answer, she was silent, looking around at the grapes with a sharp inspecting glance, not too pleased by what she saw.

  After a minute, she continued amiably, "It is so hot here. Wouldn't you like to walk down by the lake to see if a breeze is stirring there, or lie down in your room? I don't mean to be managing, but I do know what is best for this kind of weather here."

  "Yes, it is hot," Amelia said absently, her mind on her own problems. Then, as Katherine turned back toward the house, she fell into step beside her, saying hesitantly, "Katherine, who has the room beside mine?"

  Katherine glanced up at her curiously, then returned her gaze to the uneven ground they were covering. "You mean the room next door to yours?" she asked cautiously.

  Remembering that the door across the hall from hers held a person who might be called a family secret, Amelia rushed into the explanation that seemed necessary. "Yes, the one that opens into mine by the connecting door."

  "Oh, that room. No one uses it. It was once a virgin's room, you know. I always considered that old Creole custom interesting; do you know it? The daughters of the house slept in a room accessible only by going through their parents' bedroom. It was a form of protection from all the male company that used to stay-young cousins, their brothers' friends. This sort of young company used to stay for weeks on end, and as was only natural in the circumstances, the young people would become interested in one another. This arrangement kept the attachments from becoming too intimate. I never slept there myself, since Father, being English, wasn't quite so strict or suspicious. I used to have friends along the river road, though, who slept nowhere else but in the virgin's room until they were married."

  "I never knew that," Amelia said, smiling.

  "No, I don't suppose you would," Katherine answered with her undertone of unconscious disparagement, "since you were never a part of the plantation society until now."

  "But, the room," Amelia brought the subject back, "I thought I heard someone moving around in there."

  "Did you? Well, I wouldn't think so. It has an outside door, true enough. At one time, a door was let into the hall so the room could be used for company, but it is such a small room, with only the one window, that no one in the family uses it."

  "Are you sure?" Amelia asked in surprise, staring sidewise at Katherine's calm, pale face and pulled-back hair.

  "I'm positive," Katherine answered dryly with a sharp upward glance.

  "Oh, but I could have sworn-" Amelia began, barely stopping short of admitting to snooping into the room.

  "Well," Katherine said, looking doubtful, "the room isn't locked, of course, so I suppose anyone could use it at anytime. But, it is highly unlikely."

  "It doesn't matter," Amelia said hurriedly. "I'm just nervous of doors that don't lock, I suppose. That is what comes of living in a boardinghouse among strangers all my life. Mother couldn't sleep without knowing the doors were locked."

  "I know how you must feel, but don't let it bother you while you are here with us. There isn't anybody in the house, but the family. Forget all about it," Katherine said soothingly as they paused at the back doorstep. "I'm going into the house where it's cooler, well, comparatively. Coming?"

  "I don't think so, if you don't mind," Amelia replied, eyeing the shadowy dimness beyond the door. "I believe I'll walk down to the lake and look for that breeze you mentioned earlier. That is, unless there is something I could help you with?"

  "No, no, you go on if that's what you want. There's
no need to lend a hand just now. As a matter of fact, I don't think I'll stir a hand for the rest of the afternoon," Katherine said airily as she stepped onto the porch and walked across it and into the house without looking back.

  Amelia could hear her footsteps clacking on the bare plank flooring, and then the sound faded and left her with her thoughts and her reluctance to go back into the house. Outside it was hot with the oppressive, invading heat of a dry high summer, while inside it was reasonably bearable in the high-ceilinged, thick-walled rooms. Why did she prefer the outside? Perhaps, it had something to do with never being allowed to play outside much as a child. The street was no place for a young lady to play, her mother had always said. And now the freedom, the outdoors, the woodsy air was intoxicating. How much of her dislike for the inside was caused by the unexplained presence of Nelville's bloodstained shirt in the room next to her's was a question she skirted in her mind, stepping gingerly around it as around a mental pit trap.

  She picked up a stick beside the steps and swung it at the tall grass as she walked along, as if swatting the grass would help her thrash out her own problems. Rounding the house, she started down toward the lake, deep in what one old lady at the boardinghouse used to call a "case of the gray nags."

  The sun was leaning toward the west in the hottest part of the evening and just walking down to the water raised a dew of perspiration on her face and arms. The water looked hot, ready to boil, and the willows that edged into the water here and there drooped, wilting with the sun's glare. A reddish haze hung around the sun, reminding her of tales of dust storms some old buffalo hunter had told around the fireplace one winter night. Though they never had anything like a dust storm in that part of the country, Amelia had seen dust clouds occasionally during a dry summer, rolling in from off the plowed prairie lands, from the moving buffalo far to the west. The haze looked like something of that sort.

  She cut across the yard down the hill to the pine grove and stepped into its shade with a sigh of pleasure. The stone seats in the little temple were inviting, and she sat down a moment and leaned back against a stone pillar, appreciating its coolness and stability. Looking up through the pine needles, she could see arrows of sun like the multicolored rays of a prism darting toward her, and she smiled and closed her eyes, casting off her troubles, and momentarily at least, regaining the peace she had found so unexpectedly in the grape arbor. But, it did not last long. Soon what had happened in the arbor came creeping into her consciousness.