She nodded, her tone disparaging. “He’s in his upstairs office.”
“Good. I’ve brought our swords along in the car—so this is the time for some practice. I’ll go look for him. You’ll be in good hands with my mother, Molly.”
Mrs. Landry stood looking after her son, her eyebrows quizzical, as though she didn’t altogether approve of his breezy ways. Then she made an effort to relax, and her smile was warmer, accepting me.
“Let’s go on with our tour, Molly. May I call you that?”
“Of course,” I said, and followed her into the adjoining dining room.
A Hepplewhite table, with matching shield-back chairs, had been set for six, though it would seat many more. Woven grass mats held elegant Royal Crown Derby china, and the silver looked old and heavy.
Mrs. Landry explained. “The table would have been laid with linen in the days before the War, when there were slaves to take care of all the washing and ironing. The silver was made here on the plantation by slaves who were skilled artisans, and during the War it was successfully hidden from possible looters. Of course, these chandeliers are the original Waterford. The house was never burned to the ground, as so many others were.”
She spoke with the authority and knowledge of one who had taken guests through this house a great many times, and she caught my unspoken question.
“I’ve trained a few docents in my day—Honoria Phelps among them, before she was married to Porter. Sometimes, if no one else is available, I still take a tour through myself.”
The library across the hall came next, and then the music room. Mrs. Landry allowed me to look briefly into each in turn. The library was a dark room, paneled in West Indian mahogany, rather than the pine more commonly used in early houses. Its burgundy rug showed patches of wear, as did dark green leather armchairs, networked with thin cracks.
The music room was brighter, with sun coming through long Palladian windows set in deep walls. However, except for the piano, the furniture remained shrouded in sheets, and unused. Mrs. Landry stood in the doorway without entering, and I experienced a strange sense of uneasiness, as though this were a haunted place.
“We don’t show this room on our tours anymore.” I caught a note of restraint in her voice that made me curious.
“Why not?”
Her glance rested for a moment on the piano and then she looked away. “Mrs. Phelps prefers to keep this room closed.”
This was evasion, and I knew she meant to tell me nothing about the music room. Secrets, I wondered, my writer’s sense alerted. While I made no written notes as we moved about the house, I was constantly observing, registering, storing away, I had no strong feeling of connection with any of this, but as a writer I found it all wonderful background material.
Again we followed the wide central hallway to where a staircase curved gracefully up along one wall. Mrs. Landry gestured upward.
“These days the family stays on the upper floors when they come out, and we never take visitors up there on the tours. Though, of course, when there’s a party, the downstairs rooms are used, as they have always been. Amelia’s wedding to my son will be held there.”
“When is that to be?” I asked.
“In September,” she said as she led the way up the staircase.
Each of the downstairs rooms had displayed handsome oriental rugs on the floors—from China and old Persia. The stairs, however, were uncarpeted, covered in dark varnish, while the walls were a pale, pearly gray.
The upstairs sitting room was less formal than the rooms below, and had been furnished with comfortable modern pieces. There was evidence here of people living their lives. A woven basket held someone’s knitting. Books and magazines lay on the coffee table. At one end an arched doorway opened on what must have been the family dining room, smaller than the formal room downstairs. Another Waterford chandelier hung from a plaster rosette in the ceiling, and cornices were elaborately carved with a pattern of dogwood blossoms that ran all the way around the room.
Mrs. Landry caught the direction of my interest and spoke with pride. “It took great skill to create all that plaster ornamentation. The carving had to be done very quickly while the plaster was wet, and then not disturbed until it had time to set.”
I felt like a stranger, visiting Mountfort Hall as any tourist might have done. Nothing tugged at me from the past to make me feel that I belonged. I would have no trouble going home when the time came. The events I felt driven to learn about had happened back in Charleston, and out here I was only stirred now and then as anyone might be who read a tragic and romantic tale.
Just once did I sit to jot down a few impressions and some information in my notebook—details I might not remember.
Mrs. Landry watched me with interest. “Do you put real people into your books, as well as real settings?”
I shook my head. “I work out my characters carefully in detail, but they’re born in my own imagination.”
“Of course, Garrett Burke is already writing about Mountfort Hall,” she added. “But I suppose fiction writing is very different.”
I assured her that it was, and watched as she stopped before an album bound in leather that lay open on a table in the sitting room.
“I found this for you before you came,” she said. “Has anyone shown you a picture of your father?”
My sense of shock was sudden and unexpected. I was no longer uninvolved and untouched. I shook my head.
“Simon Mountfort,” Mrs. Landry said, placing a finger on one small snapshot. “Though of course these don’t do him justice. You must ask your sister to show you the splendid portrait that hangs in the South Battery house.”
No physical sense of recognition came to me as I studied the tiny picture of a tall man who seemed to possess an air of authority about him. What I experienced was more like a sensing—something I couldn’t put into words—a feeling of conviction that this was my father. A far stronger feeling than anything I’d felt for Valerie Mountfort’s flesh and blood. This was nothing I wanted to share with Charles’s mother, however.
“I know so little about him,” I said. “What was his profession?”
“I suppose the family will tell you about him gradually. Perhaps I can save them the pain. His profession was the law. Twelve years before he died, he became a judge. Porter Phelps has always believed that you were stolen by someone whom Judge Mountfort sent to prison. Someone who wanted revenge.”
“But wouldn’t they have found such a person?”
“Of course certain leads were followed through, but no real clues ever surfaced.”
I turned away from the album, experiencing for the first time the pain that Simon Mountfort and his wife Valerie must have suffered over the loss of their baby.
“This must be difficult for you,” Mrs. Landry said. “And terribly confusing. Would you like to take a little time for yourself—perhaps go outdoors and walk down to the river?”
Before either of us could move to implement this, I heard someone running lightly up the stairs, calling my name as she came.
“Molly? Molly, where are you?”
“That’s Honoria Phelps,” Mrs. Landry said. “You needn’t stay and talk to her, unless you want to.” Her tone indicated that she wasn’t happy about Honoria’s appearance.
I didn’t accept the offer of escape, but thanked her and called out a response to Honoria. She came running into the sitting room, to greet me warmly.
Today she wore a long, engulfing garment of dark yellow and indigo batik—somehow entirely right for her small person. Along one arm she carried—wore—a small gray-and-white cat, like a decoration. The little creature stared at me with bright amber eyes, the vertical irises narrowed.
“Hello, Molly,” she greeted me. “Hi, Evaline. I suppose you’ve already given Molly the grand tour? I can take over now, if you like.”
>
As Porter’s wife, Honoria was still mistress of Mountfort Hall, and Evaline its housekeeper. Losing none of her dignity in spite of the abrupt dismissal, Mrs. Landry said she would see us when luncheon was served, and went out of the room.
Honoria sighed. “There! I’ve done it again. I never mean to act as though I own the house—I certainly don’t. But Evaline and I disagree on a number of things, and I let that surface more often than she does. This is Miss Kitty, Molly. She lives in Charleston with Valerie and Amelia, but she’s my special friend, and she loves to come out here whenever I can bring her.”
Gray markings on white fur were distinctive, attractive, and Miss Kitty’s small face was a perfect triangle, with pink nose and pointed pink ears alert. She seemed to be sniffing the air as though some tantalizing scent had reached her—something she recognized.
“Miss Kitty is psychic,” Honoria said. “She probably knows that you are one of the family.”
I let that pass, scratched the little cat’s ears, and was rewarded with a purr.
The photograph album still lay open on the table, and Honoria’s attention was caught. “Evaline’s been showing you pictures of your father, I suppose? Poor Simon. If only he could have believed that you would return. I always told him you’d be found. It was such a misfortune that he had to suffer a heart attack. He died in the music room of this house—right at the piano. I’ve always wondered why.”
“What do you mean—why?”
“Nothing, really, it’s only a feeling I have. Perhaps you will be the one to bring us answers. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
She’d hinted at something of this sort before, and I wanted none of if. “I need to find answers—not give them.”
“You won’t be able to help yourself,” she went on. “The moment will come—before long, I think—when you will have to decide.”
“If you mean about staying—permanently—I don’t belong here. The past that built all this isn’t mine. I’m not even in sympathy with it.”
Honoria smiled gently. “You need time to get used to us. I shouldn’t have startled you the way I did. Sometimes words come out of my mouth that I don’t expect. Anyway, when the time is right we will both be shown.”
I stroked the cat without answering. Miss Kitty stirred and looked at me with increasingly focused interest, her long tail thumping on Honoria’s arm.
Honoria spoke briskly. “I want to show you the room I like best in this house. For me it has a special fascination. Come along, Molly.”
I followed her, still intent on my own questions that no one so far had been able to answer. Since I now knew where Simon Mountfort had died, and that Honoria had some sort of doubt about the reason for his heart attack, it occurred to me that answers might exist under the roof of Mountfort Hall, as well as in Charleston.
Before she reached the door, I stopped her. “You told me you had a letter for me. Who is it from?”
“Why—from your father, of course. Didn’t I mention that? But I don’t have it with me here. I hid it a long time ago in a very safe place. Fortunately, I can remember where. Let’s have no more talk about the letter now, Molly. And don’t tell anyone else about it.”
5
Honoria flitted ahead of me into the hall, the thin stuff of her batik rippling as she moved. The cat climbed onto her shoulder and looked back at me with intense interest, though I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or dismayed.
Honoria’s words about a letter from my father had electrified me. I wanted to ask questions, yet I had the feeling that she would tell me nothing until she was ready. My tingling anticipation—partly excitement and new longing, partly pure anxiety—would have to be contained until we were back in Charleston.
We paused before a closed door. “This is where Garrett Burke works,” Honoria indicated. “But the next room is the one I want you to see—and experience.”
A strange word, since the room we entered seemed small and unnotable. It was obvious that it had been closed for a time, and she hurried to open windows that looked toward the river. When she put the cat down, it settled on its haunches, still watching me with fixed interest.
The room was a bedroom, simply furnished, with a narrow single bed, two armchairs, a desk with a straight chair set before it, and a small round table with a drop leaf. The fireplace had been screened, no longer in use with the coming of central heating. No ornaments or personal belongings indicated occupancy, so this was not a room also used by Garrett. An unfamiliar scent that might be coming from the river was replacing mustiness in the room. I chose one of the two armchairs and sat down, still brimming with questions I wasn’t sure how to ask.
Miss Kitty made up her mind. She came over to me, looking up with a tiny mew that showed her open pink mouth.
“She’s not a talker,” Honoria said. “But she’s asking.”
I understood the request: Make a lap. I uncrossed my knees. At once the cat sprang onto them and arranged herself carefully, resting her head in the crook of my arm. I stroked her, feeling ridiculously flattered.
“I think I’m in love,” I said.
Honoria smiled. “I do believe she connects you with Amelia. She doesn’t usually accept strangers. I suspect she already knows a lot more about you than you dream.”
“Aren’t you reading a good deal into her intentions?”
Honoria answered me earnestly. “Humans are much too arrogant when it comes to animals. We think that without words there can be no thought. But it’s possible to think in images, pictures. Perhaps that’s what the more intelligent animals do. You can watch them figuring something out. Though I don’t know about chickens.”
I stroked Miss Kitty’s fine, soft fur—never coarsened by outdoor living. “I think she must be one of T. S. Eliot’s ‘amiable Jellicle cats.’”
“Maybe. Just don’t take her good nature for granted. She has a mind of her own, like most cats.”
Somehow, holding the little cat, who was purring contentedly now, had quieted and soothed me. I spoke to her softly. “What a good kitty. What a nice kitty.” Silly baby talk, but she opened her eyes and looked up at me, approving. I blinked and she blinked back at me, clearly feeling safe and unchallenged. I hoped that our friendship had been established.
“Miss Kitty is the only one who can see Nathanial,” Honoria went on. “He was the children’s tutor and lived here at the time when I was a docent. This was his bedroom, so this is where he sometimes appears.” She looked about the room dreamily, and then went on, surprising me. “We were very much in love, Molly. Of course, this was long before I married Porter. That’s why Nathanial channels through me.”
I continued to stroke the cat, not looking at Honoria, trying to find some footing in this nebulous atmosphere she created wherever she went.
Something I’d been told returned to me. “Nathanial drowned in a boating accident, didn’t he?”
“Yes. People whispered that he killed himself. A lie! He was murdered. He has told me so himself—the first time he came back to speak through me.”
I tried to hold on to what I knew of “reality.” “Has he told you who murdered him?”
“He doesn’t know, Molly. That’s the terrible part. Someone damaged his boat before he took it out, and it sank when he was in the middle of the river—out there way beyond the landing. Everyone knew he couldn’t swim, yet he loved to fish.”
Honoria went to a door leading onto a small balcony. She opened it and stepped outside. I followed her, carrying Miss Kitty. The river flowed past below the steep rise on which the house was built. A grass-grown road originally intended for carriages wound to the landing, with a brick footpath running down more directly.
“It’s not possible for Nathanial to go on to the next plane”—Honoria spoke sadly—“until his murderer has been exposed. He has told me that you will be the instrumen
t to help him, Molly.”
I could understand that Honoria, in her long-ago unhappiness, had built up this fantasy in her mind. But she had been married to Porter Phelps for years, and I wondered that a past tragedy should be kept alive in this eerie way. Nor did I want to take part in her make-believe.
“Please,” I said, “don’t put anything like that on me!”
Miss Kitty began to squirm in my arms, and a squirming cat can never be held. I carried her back inside and let her go. She flew into the center of the room and began leaping and shadow-boxing with her front paws. It was as though she followed some moving presence invisible to us, though I told myself she was simply chasing dust motes in a sunbeam that streaked into the room.
“We’ve evoked Nathanial,” Honoria said softly, fondly. “If only I could see him—as Miss Kitty does. Let’s be very quiet, Molly, and try to communicate with him. Perhaps he has something to tell us, now that you are here.”
I still wanted no part of this, but before I could walk out of the room, she spoke again in that deeper voice I had heard from her yesterday.
It is time to give her the letter. The words came haltingly, as though human vocal cords were strange to the speaker.
Honoria answered quickly in her own voice. “I know. It will be done today. But tell us now how we can help you, Nathanial.”
The uncanny conversation Honoria was having with herself went on in that deeper voice. She will find the way. Then—I can—go at last. The voice was growing fainter.
“Wait! Please, Nathanial—”
Whatever had happened in this room was now over. Miss Kitty lost interest in her sunbeam and sat down to lick a forepaw and wash behind an ear. Honoria dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. I waited helplessly, not knowing how to deal with any of this. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this spirit world Honoria believed in and took for granted.
When she lowered her hands and opened her eyes, she had clearly come to some decision. “It’s settled,” she told me. “We’ll take care of the letter as soon as we get back to Charleston.”
Woman Without a Past Page 8