The Secret of Mirror House

by Jennifer Blake

  What had happened? Why had Nelville sought her out? Just an impulse? Perhaps; she could accept that without too much trouble. He was such an unpredictable man that he could have merely decided to see what she would say to more of his ranting. She tried to remember what was said and found that it had all been inconsequential, except for two things. He no longer wanted her to leave, and regardless of that fact, there was still something they wanted of her in return for her room and board. Further than that she could not go, or would not go for the sake of her peace of mind.

  The sun's rays striking below the tree branches roused her, and conscious once more of the heavy heat, she rose stiffly and walked down the stone steps to the water. Standing on the bottom step, she looked out across the lake and wished for a breeze, even pursing her lips and whistling weakly in the sailor's entreaty for a breath of wind. The wind was not obliging, and after a moment, she knelt on the step and tried to reach the water, nearly overbalancing in her awkward position, for the water level was low with the dry weather.

  Determined to touch the water, so cool looking there under the overhanging shade, she sat down on the next step up and took off her slippers. Then, she eased down to the bottom step again and let her feet down into the water, gathering her skirts above her knees. She splashed self-consciously, glancing about to be sure no one was watching, but gradually the fear of discovery lessened and she gave herself up to enjoyment.

  Her movements caused her skirt to slip from her grasp, and reaching quickly to retrieve it, she found herself suddenly toppling into the water.

  She plunged downward in the murky water, the force of her plunge wrapping her skirts and petticoats like plaster around her arms and face. She fought wildly at the clinging cloth, pushing it away only to have it swoop in on her again. She touched bottom and pushed against it, shooting herself back to the surface where she sucked air into her lungs and coughed, struggling to breathe and stay afloat and keep her arms free of the entangling cloth and see the bank at the same time. It was a physical impossibility even to think about screaming for help. There was no time, no strength, no thought. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the steps and lunged toward them, but she could not reach high enough to get a good grip. She touched the bank that dropped so sharply beneath the steps and dug her fingers into the soft, yielding mud. Using that hold for support, she thrust herself out of the water, finally catching the top of the steps.

  Holding on tightly with her fingertips, she rested her head against the smelly stone, slick with algae, too exhausted to care about the smell or try for more than resting there in some sort of safety. The harsh, rasping sound of her breathing mingled with the thud of her heartbeat pounding in her ears, and the sounds seemed to fill the little pine grove.

  She was gradually regaining her breath when suddenly her wrists were grabbed and her hands pulled away from their hold on the stone! She stared up into Nelville's deep green eyes and froze inside as she hung helplessly in his hard grip. A small eternity passed in which she was aware vaguely of the water dripping with little plops from her hair and falling back into the lake. A faint breeze chilled her and soughed in the pines with a mournful sound that made her shiver.

  "Ready?" Nelville asked gently from where he sat on his heels on the step, without waiting for an answer, pulled her straight up out of the water as he stood, and then set her on her feet beside him. "All right?" he asked, steadying her by holding her shoulders.

  "Yes," she said in breathless relief, and immediately sat down on the steps when he let her go. A tide of exhaustion swept over her, making her muscles ache, her bones feel as if they had melted, and filling her chest with a pain that made her feel as if she would never get her breath, never cease feeling like yawning air into her lungs. She put her face into her hands and leaned over, resting her head against her knees.

  Nelville sat down beside her, quietly waiting, giving her time, and after a while she sat up, forced a smile, and said faintly, "Thank you for helping me. I don't know how I would have gotten out."

  "Doubtless, you would have found a way," he said carelessly.

  "Nevertheless," she went on evenly, watching in fixed fascination the rivulets of water running from her sodden dress down the stone steps and dripping back into the lake, while her clasped hands trembled slightly.

  "Oh, of course," he interrupted, "I accept your gratitude, especially since I expect it galls you to offer it."

  "Do you think I would hold a grudge because … you were disagreeable the last time I saw you."

  "There. That's better," he said, "a little more color in the cheeks, even if it is mad red. But, to answer your question, it has been known to happen with the female of the species."

  Because he dismissed her near drowning and now sat there speaking to her in that patronizing tone, she wanted to get back at him, make him feel some of her agitation, so she said bitingly, "And has it also been known for the male of the species to push people into the lake for asking obvious questions?"

  He was silent, still, suddenly immobile with the almost visible quickness of his thoughts behind his eyes. "Come now," he said slowly, finally, "not a sacrifice on a stepping stone, an offering to the water god?"

  "If you must put it like that," she answered defiantly as she lifted her head and began to push her hands through her hair that had come down in the water. It was already beginning to dry in the hot air. "I was sitting on that bottom step and the next thing I knew I was drowning."

  "Well, not very convincingly," he said, laughing.

  She compressed her lips and said nothing, realizing he did not mean to be serious.

  "Don't puff up like an adder," he said, "it isn't becoming to delicate features. Besides, here is what happened to you." He reached down with one boot clad foot and pressed the edge of the stone step below them. With only the faintest scraping sound, it tilted forward, and then settled back when he released the pressure.

  "These steps have been here more than forty years, and you should know to watch your step on something that old. This one is perfectly steady as long as you stay in the middle of it, but either edge can shift if you step carelessly. The underground springs that feed the lake come from beneath this bank. That's why it is so deep here as well."

  "But, that's so dangerous," she said with outrage in her voice. "And Katherine kept insisting I come here, without giving me so much as a word of warning."

  "Determined to make an incident? I never realized you had such a craving for attention," Nelville drawled slowly, a watchfulness mixed with his mockery.

  "No-no," Amelia stammered in surprise at the attack, "but I do think somebody could have said something!"

  "Do you?" he sighed. "Well, I suppose you're right." But, Amelia felt that behind the agreement there was still a laugh.

  He stood suddenly and offered his hand. "Cool as they no doubt are, I guess you should get out of your wet clothes," he said with a smile.

  She put her hand in his and stood, though there was no resilience in her muscles. If he noted how hard it was for her to stand, he gave no sign. She climbed the steps before him, keeping carefully to the exact center of them and came out of the pine grove into the, for a change, welcome sun. She glanced up the hill at the house on its rise. Her tiredness was reflected on her face as she contemplated the climb, but she kept on, kicking her water-heavy skirts away from her feet. She looked at her hands, which were muddy with mud imbedded under her fingernails, and then she wiped her face on her damp sleeve, feeling a blush of humiliation as she realized how dirt streaked, muddy, and bedraggled she must be.

  "Like a dirty little urchin," he said unfeelingly. "Smudged, draggle tailed, and infinitely appealing," he added in an almost inaudible tone.

  She glanced up at him quickly, but before she could ask him to repeat what he had said, he scooped her up and carried her quickly up the hardest part of the ascent to the house. Amelia stiffened momentarily, but as his arms tightened warningly she relaxed, saying quietly, "Put m
e down."

  "Gallantry forbids," he answered in an explanatory tone and she surrendered gracefully while she could. "Thank you," she said in the driest tone she could manage in her miserable state.

  After a few steps, she discovered it was much more comfortable as well as more natural to put her arm, which was pinned between their bodies, around his neck. She also discovered that having him carry her made her feel just as weak as the walk would have done. She was so close to him that she could see how the hair began to curl as it grew low on his neck and the almost Oriental way his brows arched across the ridge of his forehead in individual wiry hairs. The line of his nose and the molding of his mouth intrigued her, and startled by her own intense interest, she dropped her eyes and noticed the spreading wetness of his shirt where she lay against his chest.

  He climbed the steps to the porch and set her on her feet at the door. Katherine met them as they entered the hall. "My dear!" she exclaimed, "what ever happened?"

  "I fell into the lake," Amelia answered with a wry smile.

  "The step turned with her," Nelville said in a hard tone.

  "Oh!" Katherine said, "I'm so sorry. I should have warned you, but I just didn't think. How stupid of me. But, you must come out of those clothes. Here we stand talking while I'm sure you want nothing more than to do just that. Run on up, why don't you. Don't stand on ceremony with us now, we are just family," and she smiled fondly at Amelia as she began to climb the stairs.

  "You're forgetting these," Nelville said, and Amelia turned back to see him taking her slippers out of his pocket. She took them, thanking him with a fleeting smile, and dropping them on the stairs, slipped them on and went on up with two pink spots of annoyance on her high cheekbones.

  She stepped down on a tiny rock in her shoe as she turned the corner around the banister and into the hall. Holding onto the banister, she stopped and pulled off the slipper to shake it out, when she heard Katherine speaking out of sight below her.

  "I must congratulate you, Nelville, on a piece of brilliant strategy. Pulling her out of the lake was a master stroke … I'm supposing you did?"

  "Someone had to," Nelville answered in a colorless voice.

  "Oh, certainly, but although I rather had that role in mind for James, I can still admire you for being Johnny-on-the-spot." There was indulgent amusement in Katherine's voice.

  "And where was James, then, if he was supposed to perform the rescue?" Amelia heard Nelville ask, but she did not wait to hear the answer. She snatched off her other slipper and on bare and silent feet ran into her room and shut the door.

  Slowly, she moved into the room, dropped her shoes, and began to undress. Johnny-on-the-spot, she thought and laughed a hollow little laugh. "What did you expect?" she asked herself silently, "what did you expect?"

  That night the dust cloud that had been on the horizon blew in and sent sand sifting around the closed windows and doors, covering the floors and furniture with a layer of incredibly fine dirt. It gave work for every member of the household and for days the women cleaned, chasing dirt with soap, water, rags, brushes, and energy. Then, it was gone and the days that followed its passing were relatively calm, orderly, and peaceful, a blessing for which Amelia was grateful.

  One day slid into another, different only in that each successive day seemed hotter and drier than the one before. As weeks passed in an unvarying routine of rising, eating, light housework, noon meal, Creole nap, a strained supper, and even more strained gathering after supper in the front parlor, Amelia found that time and familiarity lulled her until it seemed impossible to think of herself as living anywhere else. And if sometimes her thoughts strayed to uncomfortable suspicions, it was easy to draw them back and scold herself for being over imaginative, for the truth was that she was beginning to feel a part of the family of Mirror House and she liked the feeling and could not, for her own peace of mind, allow herself to acknowledge the fears that crowded her brain.

  Now and then, a disquieting incident would disturb her peace for a day or two, such as the day she went into the front parlor to clean.

  She had cleared the ashes from the fireplace and carried them out to the flower beds for fertilizer, pushed the heavy furniture into a more comfortable arrangement, and beat the dust out of it. She begged a potted plant from Bessie who kept an array of plants, potted mostly in chamber pots, on the back gallery, and put it in the empty fireplace for a cool look of greenery. Then, she swept and opened the windows for the fresh air to push out the stale smell.

  "What have you done?" a furious voice accosted her as she leaned on her broom, surveying the changed appearance of the room. It was James, his thin face red with outrage, who shuffled into the room and went straight to the desk in what everyone, including Amelia, had come to think of as his corner. He jiggled the drawer of the desk in and out, as if to see that it was still locked, and when he saw that it was, he took the key that hung in the lock and put it deliberately in his pocket. Then, with his frown fading, he said, "I didn't mean to startle you. I apologize." He smiled winningly. "But, I can't stand the thought of anyone seeing my book just yet. I know it is silly, but to me that book is like a butterfly. If somebody tears the butterfly out of the cocoon before it's ready, it shrivels and dies, and I'm afraid my book may be the same way. If unsympathetic eyes see it before it is finished, the words may shrivel in my mind and I may not be able to find the heart to finish it."

  Amelia smiled her understanding and then said, "How do you like the room now?"

  "Much nicer," he said, standing against the desk for support of his injured leg. "It looks cooler," he continued, smiling wryly, "though I realize it's an illusion."

  "I'm beginning to wonder if cooler weather isn't a delusion we all had," Amelia said in sympathy.

  Quiet fell for a minute as they stood in awkward silence. Then, James said, "I promised to show you my commendation from General Lee, didn't I?" and swung, not ungracefully, around to the desk. He unlocked the drawer and pulled out a rolled sheet of foolscap and motioning her nearer to the light at the window, unrolled the sheet and let her read.

  "You should be very proud," she said simply when she had read the faultless copperplate of some Army clerk commending Lieutenant Harveston for bravery in action, and signed with Lee's flowing script.

  James made no answer for a few minutes, only staring expectantly at her as if waiting for her to continue, and when she did not, he turned abruptly and pushed the paper back into the drawer, locked it, and returned the key carefully to his pocket.

  Amelia stood by, miserably aware that he considered her praise inadequate, but she had never been able to effuse and exclaim. It was just not in her. With a small apologetic smile, she picked up her dust cloth and broom and left the room, feeling James's eyes on her back and wondering what he was thinking. Such an incident, disturbing as it was in the daily run of her life, did not destroy her peace. But, something else did.

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  Chapter Six

  IT WAS LATE in the afternoon some days later when a rumbling sound pulled Amelia from a drifting, uneasy nap. She opened her eyes slowly, feeling heavy and vague and sore, with a cottony taste in her mouth and a dull ache at the back of her neck from sleeping on the lumpy mattress. Perspiration had dampened her clothes, and her legs felt heavy as she swung them off the bed and sat up. Going to the commode, she wrung out a cloth in the tepid water in the basin and patted her face and neck with it for the illusion of coolness it gave. The sun no longer came through the jalousied windows and she sensed that it had swung around toward its descent, leaving evening behind. Then, the rumbling sound that had wakened her came again. Thunder!

  In her excitement, she hurried out of the room and out on the front gallery, wrinkling her nose as he passed through the hall at some sweet, oddly smoky smell. She leaned over the railing around the gallery, breathing deeply of the storm-tinged air and looking for the rain clouds. There was a mass of gray in the western sky and the sun was hidden,
making the air seem fresher and cooler outside than it was inside, and faint thunder grumbled out of the clouds.

  "The Indians thought that when the sun disappeared the god of the sun was angry."

  Amelia turned slowly, though her nerves jangled with a startled reaction as she recognized the voice. Nelville sat in one of the wicker chairs, his feet propped on the railing, very much at his ease. "Silly of them," he continued, cocking an eyebrow in her direction as she took the wicker chair beside him, "but no sillier than everybody thinking God takes a personal interest in all their mundane little affairs. A form of conceit."

  When she smiled at his look of comic seriousness, he said, "I hope you don't mind. Storms bring out the philosopher in me … even abortive storms. This one is running away from us."

  "You don't think it's going to rain?" she asked, watching a flicker of lightning just above the treetops that looked like jagged teeth on the horizon.

  "Not today. Watch the clouds. They're moving around us."

  They were, indeed, moving steadily, if slowly, away, leaving a tiny crack of clearing sky beneath the lifting gray, and taking with them the dying breeze.

  "Didn't the Indians believe that God was in everything, even the clouds?" Amelia asked in mock seriousness as she stared at the retreating rain clouds, "and if that was so how could God-The-Clouds hide the face of God-The-Sun?"

  "You have a point there-unless you think of the clouds as the arm of God and the sun as His face," he answered irreverently. "Or, perhaps I had the sun-worshiping Aztecs in mind, I don't know." He closed his eyes, leaning back in complete relaxation. The fan back of the peacock chair he was sitting in had an almost absurd dignity behind him as he sprawled in unmannered insolence.