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 disbelief 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.
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 me 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.