THE RUINS STILL smoked, and the rain still fell in a fine mist like a veil of tears, as they sat in the dilapidated carriage, waiting, ready to leave. Amelia stared at the charred timbers, still feeling like crying for the man she had thought James to be.
Behind them, a shout was heard and the sound of horses hooves, and the wagon carrying Sylvestor and Reba, with Katherine huddled, suddenly old, beside them under the protecting tarp on the narrow seat, pulled out and went around their carriage on the drive. The dark bulk of the wrapped hatrack blocked the windows for a few minutes as they passed, causing Mary Louise to smile behind her masque. "Just like Katherine to save something. You did not see her offering it to anyone else, either."
"Somehow she has lost more than anyone else. I don't mind," Amelia answered gravely.
"Well, no one else would want the thing anyway, but that is not the point. It does not belong to her."
"She feels as if it does."
"It is her feeling that way which brought all her troubles," Mary Louise said shortly.
They were silent, looking out at the brick walk leading up to the blackened boards and debris that was all that was left of Mirror House, thinking of the new grave in the family cemetery, with its new, pine headboard. They waited morosely as Nelville said good-by to the sheriff sitting on his horse beside the carriage. "Terrible accident, just plain terrible," they heard the squat, friendly sheriff say. "Well, you people know where home is, you're always welcome back." Then, the creak of saddle leather as he reached up to shake hands with Nelville on the box and his horse's hooves pounding away down the drive. They looked at each other and then away, the word accident unspoken between them, but there, nonetheless. There had been an understanding that the public and the law would be told it was all an accident. It was a family affair, no business of the public, or of the law, for that matter.
Above them on the box, Nelville cracked the whip and yelled to the horses. The carriage started with a lurch. Rain ran along the ill-fitting windows and poured in at the warped old door, but after glancing at it briefly they did not comment. It did not matter. It would only be for a little while. They planned to trade, the carriage for a wagon, if possible, and buy supplies in Natchitoches with the help of the securities and gold Mary Louise had in the bank. Then, it was just a matter of miles to the Texas border and a new beginning. The far reaches of home, Nelville called it. Pray that the dream came true, sometime, somewhere, somehow.
As they came to the fork in the road, Mary Louise leaned out the window, straining to see in the direction of Harvest Hall, and suddenly, as she brought her head in and looked at Amelia and tried to smile, her fine old eyes filled with tears. "I am an-old fool," she said in apology, "but it hurts to see the land go for repayment of the loan. It was the only place I was ever happy, the only home I ever knew, my only …" She hesitated, then said quietly, "It meant a great deal to me."
After a minute, she continued thoughtfully. "I have tried to blame my Juan Philippe for what happened. Perhaps, I am being overly sentimental, but I cannot quite make myself believe it was all his fault. None of it would have happened if he had divided his land more evenly, more satisfactory, but it was his land and he was as possessive in his way as Katherine is in hers. This was all his estate and he saw no reason to cut it up for his brother and his children, even if he had allowed them to live with the pretense that he would divide it, until it became a firm assumption. After that, everything else was an accident, or nearly so."
"An accident?" Amelia asked in surprise, remembering the twisted, smoke-blackened face of James as he had laughed after pushing Nelville off the gallery.
"Yes. You have to understand that James's mother died when he was young and Katherine raised him in her narrow, critical grasping manner. Not that it mattered, I suppose, since Katherine is just like her mother was, except that Katherine, being younger, had not the tolerance to understand, even a little, what she had never experienced herself. She also had great expectations for Mirror House becoming theirs, since she, unlike her mother, had less knowledge of the situation. She felt, and taught James to feel, that the house was their due, at the same time that she allowed him boundless freedom as befitted the son of the manor, so that he was an indulged and temperamental boy with a grudge against Harvest Hall inhabitants. Naturally, they were upset when it seemed they would lose everything."
"James acted violently, without thinking, and the result was disaster. Two people were dead because of him. Guilt does strange things. He retreated into a fantasy world where the badly burned leg he received at the Harvest Hall fire became a war wound and he a hero, by grace of the commendation given to his father, Lieutenant Charles Harveston, though he never wore a uniform he stayed a boy of fourteen, a disturbed spoiled child, hiding behind Katherine's skirts and fearing Grannie Salome, whom he associated with the time of the fire and the flames and madness, and because she, of all those who knew the truth, was not kin to him and had not gained by what had happened. Katherine and Sylvestor gained. They were almost equally guilty because they ran away without seeing or caring whether the fire James started was a serious one. They could never admit their guilt or allow themselves to think of it, so they turned inward as you found them, so unhappy."
"How could they do it?" Amelia asked wonderingly. How could they go on pretending that nothing had happened, that everything was normal."
"Our minds do marvelous things for us. They have to, to make life livable. They banish our cares and turn black into a faintly colored thing we can live with. Pain becomes a memory and horror and terror slip from us like old clothes. If it did not, we would all kill ourselves to escape the torture of remembered cruelties the world inflicts on us, and drown in tears of remorse for the things we have done to others."
The carriage rolled in silence accented by the tapping of the rain. Amelia broke the quiet with her curiosity. "Reba," she said, "what did she have to do with James? Surely, after all those years of being married to Sylvestor, she should have known what he was like?"
"No, because you see you are confusing what he was like after you came with what he was like before. Before, he had been a rather quiet young man, pursuing his books with, only now and then, a hint of his real nature, such as when he was denied something or someone interfered with him. For months at a time, he could be as sensible and charming as any man, but that changed, or began to change after your arrival. You threatened his security and disturbed his sister, which in turn disturbed him, because he depended on her so to smooth the way for him. Reba felt that James was a nice harmless man, boyish sometimes, that she could flirt with, who would give her the admiration and attention she was not getting from Sylvestor. She never dreamed he would take her seriously, since he was her husband's brother. Rather silly of her, of course.
"I do not think she was aware of the old guilt that made Sylvestor retreat into his pipe dreams, but when she saw that you disturbed him so much that his mild addiction became worse, and that you were really the mistress of what she had always considered her home, she tried to frighten you away. It was Reba who found Grannie Salome and filled her with lies, so that she attacked you, and she put the snake in your bed. It was this trend toward actively getting rid of you, combined with the attack by Grannie Salome, that triggered James into a similar use of violence."
"But, Sylvestor's accident, was it an accident, then?"
"I do not suppose we will ever be sure, but Nelville does not think so. Reba was trying to withdraw gracefully from her involvement with James and he would not have it. Nelville thinks he tried to kill Sylvestor, thinking that Reba would turn to him, I suppose. Reba became frightened when she realized how dangerous he was, and became too violent in her rejection of him, stirring up all the old rage and fear and frustration. Katherine soothed him with the promise that you would marry him instead, and like a child pacified with a new toy, he was satisfied until her promises were shown as lies, or miscalculation, at best. James was thrown adrift in the sea of his conflicting needs and emotions, magnified by his childish brand of madness."
"You make it sound so simple," Amelia said wearily. "You almost sound as if you are sorry he is dead."
"I am, in a way. He was not responsible. Grannie Salome said he had a devil in him. I think that is as accurate a description as any. People are not responsible for their devils.
Amelia smiled at her turn of phrase, grateful to her and in some odd way, eased of the burden of anger toward James and the people who had lived at Mirror House and had tried to use her. Perhaps, no certainly, the future would be brighter.
Suddenly, without warning, in the peculiar way it has of doing in the deep South, the rain increased to a drumming roar on the roof of the carriage. They came to a stop under the spreading limbs of a giant tree that overhung the road, and the sound of the rain diminished to slower, heavier drops. Nelville climbed down from the driver's box and stood outside the carriage door, the rain pouring off his hat brim and running down the back of his waterproof poncho.
"How goes it with you, ladies?" he asked. "Does this sieve leak too much?"
"We are a good deal drier than you," Mary Louise told him with her eyes dancing above her masque and blithely ignoring a steady drip that had splattered them both and made a great wet spot on the seat beside her.
"We're fine," Amelia said, laughing at the undauntable Mary Louise.
"I can't see to drive, and the horses need the protection until it lets up," Nelville said suggestively.
"Come in with us," Amelia said immediately, opening the door and ignoring the snort Mary Louise gave that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
With his usual quickness, he stripped off the poncho and hat and left them on the carriage floor, while he slid on to the seat beside Amelia. She started to slide over to give him more room, but he caught her hand, holding her where she was as he smiled down at her.
In the dimness of the carriage, his green eyes were dark and unreadable, and her hand felt small and cold in his warm grasp; but, she smiled, feeling safe and secure, while the rain fell wet and heavy on the roof.
It was a long way to Texas.