As long as she was questioning, who was more likely to be meeting Reba in the grove than Nelville? If he were in love with Reba, he certainly wouldn't be interested in marrying anyone else, would he? That explained his reluctance, but it didn't explain why he should insist on exposing the marriage plot in the first place.
Drunk with the endless questions that went spinning through her head together with an ever changing view of who was telling the truth about the marriage plan, she sat down in the chair, too deep in thought to crawl into bed, unable to sleep if she did. Finally, she roused and rose from her chair. She glanced out of the window as she started toward the bed, but nothing disturbed the peaceful night. Dull with fatigue, she threw back the spread and top sheet and slid into the bed. As she began to stretch out, her foot encountered something cold and scaley and damp, and as it wriggled, she recoiled with a small sound of horror.
She threw the sheet away from her as she scrambled out of bed, exposing a long, black shadow on the white of the sheet that writhed and squirmed back into the cover as she screamed!
The lamp on the table might have given some reassurance, but there was nothing to light it with. Her dressing gown lay somewhere in the tangle of bedclothes at the foot of the bed. Deserting both, she skirted the bed by a wide margin and started toward the door.
Behind her, the door connecting her bedroom to Nelville's opened and she turned to see him standing there with a lamp in his hand that cast weird shadows into the room. "What is it?" he asked, his eyes flickering over her in her thin voile summer gown and then resting on her white face.
"A snake," she said pointing toward the bed, her voice edged with relief and a strange urge to laugh hysterically.
Nelville crossed to her in quick strides, pushed the lamp into her nerveless hands, and returned to his room. He came back with a pistol, took the lamp from her, set it on the table, and ordered her brusquely out into the hall. She obeyed him and stood helplessly outside the door, more aware of being in her nightgown than of anything else.
As scuffling, thumping sounds emerged from the room, Katherine came into the hall. "What is going on?" she asked, tying her robe with quick, impatient jerks as Reba and Sylvestor, followed by a tousle-headed James, appeared from their rooms down the hall.
Unreasonably irritated by the commotion, and still jerky with fright, Amelia was silent. Reba, dressed in a flowing robe of green edged with lace, arched an inquiring eyebrow and sent a searching look over Amelia that made her flush painfully in her near-undressed state.
James, after hesitating a moment, went into Amelia's room, while Sylvestor, whose clothes exuded the sickly sweet smell of smoke, looked about vaguely, as though he could see only faintly through pupils that were dilated, obscuring the iris of his eyes.
Amelia started to tell an amused Reba and a rigid Katherine what had happened when Nelville appeared in the door, holding a small, dull green snake by the tail. "Your monster," he said with a mocking smile. "I didn't have the heart to shoot it."
A shudder of revulsion swept over Amelia, even as she recognized it.
"A harmless grass snake," Reba said dryly.
"Thank goodness," Katherine said quietly.
"Yes, thank goodness," James echoed, then frowned, "but how did it get into your room?"
"Probably climbed up the wisteria vine outside the window," Nelville said, turning into the room and crossing to the open window where he threw the snake out.
"We'll have to cut it back," Katherine said abstractedly.
"Or, the next time it may be a water moccasin from the lake," Reba said with an impassive face. "They are good climbers too."
Katherine glanced sharply at Reba, but said nothing, while the others moved in the uncertain shifting of a group about to break up. Then, there came the tinkling of a bell behind them. Katherine started visibly; then, her face turned the red of extreme anger and her mouth tightened. James moved uncertainly while Reba stood perfectly still and Sylvestor, moving away already, continued to his room as if he had heard nothing.
"Who is that?" Amelia asked quietly, knowing the answer, but wanting to force an admission from someone.
"The ghost of your grandmother, of course," Reba said maliciously, her eyes hard with spite, going from Katherine to Amelia.
"Isabella Maria Theresa De Galvez Harveston," Nelville said politely. Then, murmuring his excuses, he stepped around them and went to the door. He knocked softly, it opened to him, and he stepped through.
Stiffly, Katherine swept away, as though she could not trust herself to speak, and Reba followed indolently, glancing back over her shoulder with her look of bright spite in place.
Amelia went in and closed the door of her room. The place was torn up beyond belief for such a small incident, and moving carefully she stepped around the piled bed clothes on the floor. She began to remake the bed, glad of something to occupy her hands, while she thought, while the question of accident, or prank struggled to the top of her consciousness. But, when she climbed back into bed, she was no nearer to a satisfactory answer, because she could not think, but kept remembering Reba's spiteful eyes, Katherine's anger over a tinkling bell, and last of all Nelville, still dressed in field clothes at that time of night and so quick to appear, as if he had been waiting. As if he had been waiting, or not long returned from outside, from a lover's meeting. She shook her head to dislodge the memories and turned her face into the pillow. Quietly, without asking herself why, she began to cry.
Later in the night, or in the morning rather, for she could see by the lightening sky beyond the windows that it was morning, still sleepless, she slipped out of bed to prove something to herself. She felt that the house was not asleep, and somehow she knew who it was that watched through the night. She crept to the door of the room connecting with her's and pushed it open, a little at a time in case it squeaked.
There was little to see. The door out of that room stood ajar, so that a draft stirred the curtains at the windows, and the large, white bed stood unused. She was beginning to think the room was empty when the scent of cigar smoke assailed her nose and she saw the ruby red glow of the coal as someone drew on the cigar.
"Go back to bed, Amelia," Nelville said softly from his post near a window.
"I can't sleep," she answered.
"Go back to bed," he repeated tonelessly.
"But, I—"
"What do you expect of me, lullabies and a rocking chair? If you value your sweet young innocence, you will go away like a good girl." His voice came harshly out of the darkness.
She shut the door with a little slam, but she wasn't angry. She smiled as she turned toward the bed, for it was worth something to know that he was not entirely indifferent to her. But, as the old questions rushed back, she did not know whether to be comforted or frightened by his vigilance, and it seemed irrational to be both.
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Chapter Seven
SHE WAS STILL restless the next morning, so she dressed early, and as she started to leave her room, she met Bessie.
"There now, you're awake already," Bessie said with a smile in her soft voice. "I was bringing you your morning wake up coffee."
Amelia thanked her, and smiling, turned back into her room, the thought of Bessie's kindness making the day seem better. Bessie put the tray down on the bedside table, but did not go. "I special wanted to talk to you this morning, Miss 'Melia," she said with great dignity as she clasped her hands over her plump stomach. "Old Grannie Salome said to tell you she didn't mean to scare you the other day. Seems like she didn't know who you was and somebody done told her you was out to bring trouble to the old Miss. Long years ago she belong to her, and she always got a soft spot for her, see. Thought like she'd scare you away from the house, is all."
"Grannie Salome, the old woman out in the field?"
"That's her. Now she knowns you the old Miss' own grandchild and wouldn't think to harm you. Said to say she was mighty sorry about it and give you this."
Bessie reached into her apron pocket and brought forth a little packet which she thrust at Amelia with hasty fingers and a sidelong glance.
"What is it?" Amelia asked, accepting it automatically.
"It's a charm, she say. You wear it and it keep you safe and bring you luck, and if you want it to, it'll get you a man. Wear it inside your dress." Having completed her message, she swung around to the door.
"Wait!" Amelia said urgently. "Is Grannie Salome …" she stumbled over the strange name … "is she all right?"
"She's fine. She lives in the woods, but we all take care of her. She be fine."
"You said somebody told her I was going to bring Isabella harm? Who would do that?"
The woman's eyes slid away from Amelia. "I don't know. Just what Grannie say, but she ain't just right in the head. Sometime she hears voices. I got to go now. Miss Katherine find me up here she be powerful mad, I'm not supposed to be talking to you, but I promised Grannie. 'Sides, I don't have to take no orders I don't want to." And with a stiff back she went on out.
"Well, thank you for bringing it," Amelia said to the closing door. A puzzled frown was on her face as she hefted the small, white bag in her hand. A light, sweet fragrance came from it and it crackled pleasantly, feeling as though it might be filled with leaves and herbs. "Not supposed to talk to me," she said softly to herself and the trapped, closed-in feeling swept over her more strongly than before, and she shook her head distractedly. She put the charm on a silver chain that had been her mother's and dropped it down the front of her dress. Then, smiling wryly, she turned to go downstairs. She felt, somehow, that she could use all the luck charms she could get … and let the rest of the potion work if it would.
Just the exertion of leaving her room and going downstairs to the breakfast table surrounded her with delicious fragrance brought forth from the charm by the humid heat of the morning and the warmth of her body. Reba and Katherine sat at the table talking in low voices that ceased as she came toward them. Katherine smiled and wished her good morning and told her to help herself to the dishes that were laid out. Reba did not even look up.
After an uncomfortable moment, Katherine took up where she had obviously left off in her lecture. "Really, Reba, it seems to me to be a wife's duty to prevent her husband from deliberately destroying himself. You could hide the tobacco, couldn't you?"
"What if I did?" Reba said impatiently, toying with her biscuit and the ham on her plate. "What is it going to solve?"
"Perhaps, Sylvestor would come out of his dream world and help the rest of us make a living!" Katherine answered indignantly.
"Do you really think he would? I don't. He doesn't like the rest of us. He stayed home taking care of our precious home while boys like Nelville and men like his father rode off to become heros, and what did he get? Nothing. Not even a thank you. And he is never going to get a thank you from you, Katherine, much less the pleasure of being head of this household."
"You don't understand, Reba. He's wasting his life. He is an old man at forty-five, killing himself with that heathenish tobacco that sends him off into his heathenish dream world. I think it's your responsibility to see that he stops using it."
"Let him alone, Katherine. He escapes you and this house and everybody in it when he smokes his "heathenish" tobacco, as you call it. Let him have his peace. It's more than anybody else has." Her mouth was petulant and sullen, but her eyes were defiant.
"Are you going to stand by and let him kill himself?"
"If that is what he wants."
"If you loved him-"
"Love!" Reba said scornfully. "It's because I love him that I'm willing to concede him the right to live his own life as he wants. He's a man, not a child. I might be able to badger and push and talk him into doing and being what I want, but what good is that?"
"This is something you must do for his own good."
"You are mistaken!" Reba said, her eyes flashing angrily as she got to her feet. "There is nothing I must do. I'm not a child either. I'm a woman, something you should remember, Katherine, and I won't be pushed any further than I care to go!" With an emphatic gesture that made the dishes rattle, she pushed her chair under the table and strode away, her riding skirts flapping around her ankles.
"You don't want him to come out of his dreams! He might see you as you really are!" Katherine called after her spitefully.
"Which is?" Reba asked, stopping and looking around with a softly inquiring gaze; but, Katherine pretended not to hear, her eyes on her plate as she fussed with her food, and her back straight with anger, and Reba turned and went on out the door.
James put his head out the door of the front parlor. "Is it safe to come out?" he asked with a grin, then came toward the table with his limp and his self-consciousness that made Amelia want to spare his pride and look in some other direction until he was seated.
"It isn't a joking matter," Katherine said severely.
"Oh, come, Katherine," he answered, "don't you think you are exaggerating just a little. Leave Reba alone, why don't you. She can't help Sylvestor. He's my brother and I'm as concerned as you are, but you know he hasn't been himself in years. Why pretend he can be any more?" There was a boyish earnestness in his voice, but he reached for a biscuit with an almost callous disregard that went against his words.
"Are you suggesting we give him up?"
"Why not? He did, years ago. If you want to help someone, help Reba. For her, he's not just given up and gone his way, he has never been there."
"Don't be ridiculous. Why did he ever marry her, then?"
"Don't you know? Don't you remember, Katherine? Or, don't you want to remember? You wanted him to. You thought it would be the very thing for us all." He stared at her coldly over the biscuit he was buttering.
She turned a deep, mottled red and put her hand to her heart while her lips went white. "James, I never …"
"Leave it, Katherine, just leave it. I didn't intend to quarrel with you this morning, and I'm sure Amelia is tired of our family squabbles, interesting though they may be to us."
Surprised to see Katherine fall silent, Amelia stared at James. Before he had always seemed gay and smiling. It was a little disconcerting to find that he could be hard. She smiled nervously in answer to his smile of gentle commiseration, but she said nothing.
After breakfast, Amelia wandered out into the backyard. The sun beamed down, bathing everything in its rich, blinding white light, but it was cool in the shade of the lane of crepe myrtles. Drawn by the winding beaten path that neatly divided the lane, Amelia walked down it, feeling the coolness of the dew-damp earth through her slippers.
So on edge were her nerves, and so quietly did he overtake her, that she whipped around with wide eyes when Nelville spoke up behind her. "Rested, breakfasted, and none the worse for last night?" he asked with a trace of laughter beneath his voice.
She smiled warily. Would he say something cutting and embarrassing about the night before and change from friendliness to what she referred to in her thoughts as his wild fox look? "Yes, thank you," she answered.
"You never did really see the fields before, did you?" he continued in a companionable way, falling into step beside her. "Care to walk that way now?"
She nodded, still wary, but he had already taken her acceptance for granted. Soon they stood in the wagon track beyond the tumble-down slave cabins, and he waved a hand out over the fields green with row after row of cotton. "Another week and all that will be in bloom if it rains, if I can find enough hands to pick it, a million ifs and we will be back on the road to prosperity. Cotton is still king. We have proved that here in the South."
"Does that mean you will be rich again?"
He laughed. "Hardly that. We may be able to pay for the seed and fertilizer, pay off the taxes and clean up the place a little. With luck and a good market, we might buy back some of the furniture that had to go."
"Even that much is wonderful," she said enthusiastically.
"That all depend
s on the rain. I try not to think about it much because this drought seems to go on and on, and it begins to look as if we will be lucky to get enough out of this dried up field to pay the interest on the loan I didn't have any right to make. Then, we begin again next year by mortgaging the house, instead of just the acreage, in order to plant another crop. The prospects are bleak, wouldn't you say."
But, Amelia was not paying attention, for her thoughts had stopped on part of his words. "What do you mean 'a loan you didn't have the right to make'?"
His eyes slid over her face and a bland look came into his face. "It gets complicated," he evaded.
"Did you mean because Mirror House doesn't belong to you?"
He stared at her sharply. "Why so interested?"
"Something Reba said about Sylvestor never owning it," she said, determined not to be made nervous by his intense gaze.
He laughed shortly and walked on without answering. After a moment, Amelia followed with anger fighting amusement at his incomprehensible ways. Some people have a habit of cracking their knuckles; Nelville was mysterious. She watched him as he walked beside her, kicking at the soil to judge the need for rain and frowning blackly at the dust that spurted up from the sun-hot earth. "You must love all this very much," she said conversationally.
"Love? I think I hate it." His voice was calm and dispassionate.
"But, why?" she asked, emboldened by her new formed view of his character to ignore his forbidding gaze.
"Love … hate. You sound as if you think it matters. It doesn't, except in that it effects your peace of mind." He stopped to pull up a weed and stood stripping it idly through his long fingers-with the fine red hairs on them gleaming in the sun. He half turned to flip the weed back toward and house towering behind them. "It has never been, what you might call, a house of love. By the house, I guess, I really mean the whole thing, the entire plantation. When old Juan Phillipe built the house for his brother, he didn't build it that way. Did you ever notice that houses have to be built with love to be happy homes? No, forget I asked that. It was only an idea."
The Secret of Mirror House Page 10