Читать книгу Moon Garden - V. J. Banis - Страница 8

CHAPTER FOUR

“Tell me about the moon garden.”

Aunt Minna was in the act of pouring tea from a little silver teapot. She paused ever so briefly when Ellen spoke those words, and turned her bold eyes on her niece. When she began to pour again, it was with a sort of gusto, as if she wanted to make up for the seconds she had paused.

Ellen had arrived a short time before. She had said goodbye to her mother in Cincinnati, and ironically it had been she who’d had to be strong, to comfort her sobbing parent. She had boarded the plane, and as it lifted into the air, something within her seemed to soar as well. Since she came home from Lawndale, she and her mother had seemed to be walking on eggs in one another’s presence. They were a mutual strain, each upon the other, fondness notwithstanding. Ellen had felt at times as if she might have been happier at Lawndale where they did not look perpetually askance at her, or jumped a foot whenever she touched them.

Now she was on her own, in a way. She had this time of flying, of hanging seemingly motionless among the clouds, and afterward...afterward she hoped things would work out with Aunt Minna.

That horizon was not all rosy. She knew she was not wanted at Aunt Minna’s. She had been even more strongly not wanted with the various other relatives. Everyone had flatly refused, and then when it seemed that no one would take her in, Minna Miles had relented.

Well, it was something, knowing you weren’t really wanted. But it had been important that she get away. Dr. Hanson had thought so too, and she had been willing to swallow a little pride. She had it in mind that she would quickly establish a working relationship with her aunt. She would be as little trouble as possible, as little in the way. When Aunt Minna saw that she wasn’t going to be a nuisance, that she was content to occupy herself and let her aunt do the same, everything would be all right. That, at any rate, was what she hoped for.

They seemed hardly to have been moving at all through the sky, and yet in an astonishingly short time the plane was swooping downward and outside the window the blue had faded into gray, had been punctuated by roofs and utility poles, and finally became concrete, rushing by, slowing, stopping altogether. They were at the terminal. She unfastened the seatbelt she had kept tight across her lap throughout the flight, and let the stream of passengers carry her inside, until the stream had dwindled and vanished in a score of different directions.

She looked about the waiting room, and saw no one that she thought might be looking for her. In fact, she had not been expecting her aunt. Minna had said she would be met. That suggested someone else would come for her, and she had simply taken for granted that they would somehow recognize and find her, but when she had waited for some time she began to wonder if there had been a mix-up.

She stood primly to one side of the doorway that led through to the loading area, her hands clasping her purse in front of her. She tried to be visible without being conspicuous. She had little experience with airports, or with being alone.

When she caught herself thinking wistfully of the sense of security she had known in Lawndale, she shook herself angrily and went to the doors that led outside. There were taxis there, and she got into one, giving the driver her aunt’s address. This, she thought as the cab sped away, was what she should have done anyway. This was what a young woman would ordinarily do, instead of waiting to be met like a helpless child.

She watched the city go by the windows of the cab. It was a modern, busy looking city and yet despite that, there was something of the past about it. One went by an ugly, slab-like factory building, but just beyond it was a lovely old mansion that looked unchanged from a century before.

There were blocks and blocks of row houses and then, almost magically, oak trees and magnolias, and hanging moss. Even more than the physical things, there was something in the air, something she couldn’t define exactly, as if the entire city had held up a fan and blushed behind it.

The Terrace, which was where Aunt Minna lived, was no longer a fashionable part of town. It sat on what had once been the outskirts, but which had since been swallowed up by the spreading industrial section. There was a large bottling plant, and then an open park, not very well tended, and at last a street of once lovely houses, decorated with much ironwork. All occupied one side of the street, all faced the park, but they were not row houses. Each was large, so that six of them took up what would have been elsewhere the length of several city blocks. Most of them had walls or shrubs in front, with the houses peering discreetly out from their shelter.

They were near the river, although Ellen was a little confused as to its exact location. She thought the Terrace looked quite romantically lovely. She ignored the obvious evidence of neglect...broken street lamps, untended lawns, dirty streets.

Number fourteen was the end house with the thick columns. It was not the largest of the houses, but far from a cottage at that. She had no idea how old it was, but she guessed it had stood there well over a century, perhaps closer to two centuries. Sadly, it was showing its age now. Like a woman who has given up the battle, it no longer seemed to care about looking fresh or lovely. The paint was peeling. The steps up to the front door sagged. A shutter at a window hung lopsidedly from one hinge. The iron railing that led to the front door was rusted.

She paid the driver, tipping him more than she should have because she was excited and nervous, and could not think in terms of a few cents. She stood where she was on the sidewalk while he drove away out of sight. She was putting off the moment of going up the wide steps to number fourteen.

When the cab had completely vanished, she turned toward the house. A light glinted in her eyes although the sun was to her right and behind her. She looked down and saw a little sliver of light dancing on the pavement and knew at once what it was. She remembered as a little girl playing with a mirror and the sun. This was the same sort of light. She looked around, but there were no children in sight.

Then she looked up. Above, protruding from a second floor window, was the end of a telescope. The sun had been reflecting from its lens. Someone had been watching her through it. As she looked up, it turned away, and a second or two later, it disappeared inside.

She went up to the door and rang the bell. It was answered by a square jawed young woman who looked ill at ease. She did not appear to be accustomed to dealing with callers, and asked briskly, “What do you want?”

“Miss Miles, to see Miss Miles,” Ellen said. The use of the same name seemed to confuse the girl, who only stood, studying her doubtfully. While she was trying to make up her mind what to say in reply, Ellen heard a sound within. She looked past the girl, into the cool, dark interior, and saw what might have been only a vision, although a magnificent one.

A woman stood at the top of the stairs. Like the stairs, she was old, there was no question of that, but she was quite striking. She was tall and dignified, and she looked like all the Queens of England. At the precise moment she was adjusting on her head a preposterous feather hat. On her fingers gleamed a lavish display of rings.

Satisfied that the hat was right, she descended the stairs majestically. The hallway, so vast a moment before, seemed actually to shrink in size as she came into it.

“Why isn’t Mrs. Bondage answering the door?” she demanded of the servant, who seemed to have shrunk somewhat too.

“She’s in the basement, ma’am,” the young woman said almost in a whisper, she was so frightened, “having her astrology read.”

The lady of the house...and there could be no doubt that she was...said, “Really?” as if this were the most incredible piece of news she had ever been given. She took a moment to digest it, and then said, “That will do Bertha.”

Bertha was glad to be dismissed. She threw a last, curious look at Ellen, and scurried away, leaving Ellen to the mercy of her wondrous hostess.

The old woman threw the massive front door wider, and smiled at her visitor. It was all Ellen could do to keep from dropping a curtsy.

“Good afternoon,” the older woman said, her voice thick and dark and pungently sweet, like sorghum. “What can I do for you?”

Ellen took a deep breath and said, “I’m your niece, Ellen Miles. You are my Aunt Minna, aren’t you?”

The smile faded. The lines smoothed out of the fine parchment skin and left the features impregnable in their patrician austerity.

“Oh no,” she said, “no indeed, that’s quite impossible. My niece is to arrive tomorrow, by airplane. I’ve made arrangements to have her met.”

Ellen looked a little disconcerted in the face of this. “But I am here,” she said almost apologetically. “And I am your niece.”

Minna took a step closer, and leaned forward a little. She had not worn her glasses down, and could not see very well. What she saw was a pretty face, young, frightened looking, but with a nice upward tilt to the chin.

“Yes,” she said after a minute, sounding oddly disappointed. “You look like your mother. Our side of the family was better looking. You said in your letter you would be arriving tomorrow.”

“I said today. The eighteenth. This is the eighteenth.”

“I know the date. I’m not a fool. You said the nineteenth. Never mind, you’re here. You may as well know, I didn’t want you to come.”

Ellen looked embarrassed. “I got that impression.” She had her hands clasped in front of her again. She looked like a little girl being scolded.

“I suggested your mother write her family.” Aunt Minna regarded her niece as she might some tropical bird or a peculiar flower that had just been delivered to her door. Although her conversation was rude, however, there was something else that caught Ellen’s attention. Her eyes sparkled with an unmistakable gleam of maliciousness, and something like a toss of the head had set the feathers of her hat dancing in the sunlight.

“I believe my mother did write them. I don’t know exactly what was said, but since I am here, and not there, it must be a bit obvious, don’t you think?”

The grin came back to the old face. Minna knew that the others had refused to take child in. When she had learned of this she had changed her mind, and had extended her own somewhat reluctant invitation. She loathed that other branch of the family, so much so that she had an automatic inclination toward anyone they had rejected. It had been as simple as that.

She was happy now to see that her niece had spunk. She liked that, and warmed to her at once as a result.

“Your mother’s people are Yankees. They made glue out of fish,” she said, in those two remarks judging them, and condemning them for eternity. She extended her hand in a hospitable gesture. “Come in, come in. We’ll have tea. You must be exhausted after your journey. I traveled to Cincinnati once. I’ve forgotten how many days it took. I couldn’t get grits anywhere.”

Ellen was not in the habit of tea in the afternoon and in fact, she much preferred coffee to tea, but one was reluctant to decline this woman’s suggestions. She allowed herself to be wafted by sheer force of character up the stairs and into a sitting room, where she was stationed on a gilt settee.

She was tired, in fact. The trip, the flying, to which she was unaccustomed, the crowds of people...it had all been fun but wearying. She would have liked to sink into a comfortable deep chair, or better still, to lie down somewhere, but she kept her shoulders back and sat solidly on the hard settee. Something about her aunt demanded that she keep her shoulders back. What a contrast to her mother’s softness, sometimes so hard to get hold of.

Tea was already laid on a lace cloth atop a highly polished table, but it was clear that Aunt Minna had already had hers. She put a finger to the little silver teapot, found it cold, and with a gesture of indignation, yanked at a velvet rope by the door.

A maid, not Bertha, but another, middle -aged one, appeared quickly. She was sent off with orders to bring a fresh pot of tea. This, Ellen decided, was Mrs. Bondage. She looked flustered and Ellen hoped that her astrologer had foretold a fortune that was good enough to console her for the berating she was certainly going to receive.

While the tea was being ordered, Ellen had a moment to look about. The room into which she had been ushered was enormous, paneled in dark old wood, and furnished with elaborate period pieces. The wood of the furniture had been polished to a mirror like sheen, but it was crumbling with age. Ellen had an impression of generations of moths rearing their young through childhood, love, and successful parenthood in the threadbare folds of the gold damask draperies at the windows.

The ceiling was embossed and from it hung a huge cut crystal chandelier. There were countless rosewood writing desks and occasional tables, and upon them stood great leather-bound books and boxes, many of them monogrammed and clasped with brass. The walls were thick with gilt-framed ancestry. Ellen thought she recognized her father in one painting, but she could not be certain.

While they waited for the tea, Aunt Minna moved about the room. She unlocked a cupboard to remove a silver biscuit box. She was not in fact so tall as she had seemed at Ellen’s first glance, not much taller than her niece. The hat, with its feathers, and her bearing, gave her an extra foot or so. She stopped fussing with the tea table to observe her guest. She might have been looking over some piece of furniture that she was thinking of buying. Her only comment when she had concluded the inspection was, “You have good bones.”

The fresh tea arrived. Aunt Minna poured it with graceful ease, and offered some surprisingly fresh chocolate cookies from the silver box.

“Now,” she said, “tell me about your mother. “She seemed most anxious to have you away somewhere. I don’t suppose she is conducting a romance?” She smiled to show Ellen this was meant to be preposterous, and Ellen smiled in return.

“I think she was frightened to have me in the house.”

“You don’t look particularly frightening.” Aunt Minna studied her niece again. “You were in an insane asylum?”

“I was in a private hospital.”

“For the insane.”

“For the mentally disturbed.”

Aunt Minna looked at her sharply. She wondered if her niece we’re trying to quarrel with her. She decided it was quite possible.

“Is that what you were, mentally disturbed?”

“No, I was insane.” Ellen smiled to show this was meant to be preposterous.

Aunt Minna gave a deep appreciative chuckle and took a bite out of a chocolate cookie. “How do you know you’re sane now?”

Ellen shrugged. She was enjoying herself. She liked this peculiar old woman who, from some chance of birth, was her aunt. “How do you know you are?”

“You’ve got a point there. A great many people would say I’m not. You may say that yourself when you have been here a time.” She reached for the tea to pour some more. Which was when Ellen said, “Tell me about the moon garden.”

“So you remember that, do you?”

“Only that there was something called that. Mother said it was haunted, but she declined to tell me much more than that.”

“She would.” Aunt Minna made a little sniffing sound. “Your mother has always been timid.” She made of that word a scornful dismissal. Ellen could not imagine anything more removed from Aunt Minna’s own character than timidity.

There was a discreet clearing of a throat from the door. Ellen’s back was to it, so that she could not see who had come into the room. Whoever it was had apparently paused just inside the door, uncertain whether to come in or to go away. Perhaps they were surprised by her presence.

Since they did not come forward, and she could hardly turn on her seat to see who it was, she went on with her conversation as if they were not there.

“How did it get such an odd name? The moon garden. Surely it’s pre-astronaut, isn’t it?”

A man’s voice said, “No one uses the moon garden now, it’s been shut up for ages.”

Aunt Minna rose, saying, “Come in, Dawson, come in, don’t hover. I want you to meet my niece, Ellen Miles. Ellen, this is Dawson Elliott.”

Ellen remained where she was, a pink and gilt china cup in her hand. She had a strange, fleeting sense of herself, as if she had floated upward and could look down upon that nervous creature sitting on the hard settee in that high, paneled room which even the overcrowding of the furniture did not diminish to moderate proportions.

It passed. The man had come into the room, about the settee, and greeted her. Her first impression was of a man too good looking to be true. They shook hands and some bit of insight told her he was not really so sure of himself as he would like to appear, nor quite so young as she had thought at first glimpse. Although it was an old fashioned word, mountebank came to mind. He was a little more pleased to make her acquaintance then ought to be possible at such short notice and his face crinkled too quickly into those pre-arranged lines of charm that good looking people assume so easily.

“Mr. Elliott is a writer,” Aunt Minna said. “He’s doing a book on old homes of the south, and naturally he wanted to include this one.”

“It’s quite a treasure,” he said.

Ellen had placed him. Small time writer of large books. Old ladies darling. Star of the tea party circuit. His young face was etched over with lines caused by expressing too often thoughts that were not his own. But he had charm, and he looked genuinely happy to see Ellen. She thought he probably welcomed having someone of roughly his own generation to talk to.

“We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow,” he said.

“She said in her letter she was coming the nineteenth,” Aunt Minna said. “Look, it’s right here.”

She went to one of the rosewood writing tables and rummaging through some papers on its surface, picked up a sheet of paper. From where she sat, Ellen could see at once that it was her letter, but Aunt Minna’s eyes scanned it quickly and she put it aside.

“Now I can’t find the letter,” she said, turning away from the desk. “Dawson, ring for Bondage and tell her you want some tea.”

“No need for her to run up and down the steps,” he said. “I’ll slip down and tell her. Excuse me, ladies.”

He was gone, literally seeming to slip out of the room.

“Mr. Eliot is staying in the house,” Aunt Minna said, as if she thought some explanation was needed.

“I see, “Ellen said. She did not know what to think of that. She thought finally it was probably none of her business, and she had better refrain from commenting upon it.

Dawson Elliott was back in a moment, followed by Mrs. Bondage with a second teapot. Dawson himself carried a China plate of petit-fours which he started to set on the table before Ellen. Aunt Minna countered with a magniloquent, “These are the best,” and whipping the lid off her silver box, planted it down before Ellen with such sudden recklessness that Dawson had to snatch his own offering to safety.

They had more tea, although Ellen was feeling saturated by now. Finally, Aunt Minna rose and put out her hand toward her niece. “Come along, my dear, and see your room. Did you bring your luggage?”

“It’s at the airport,” Ellen said, remembering it for the first time.

“Never mind, Pomfret can get it later. Come along now.”

“I feel like I’m imposing. If I had known you already had company....”

“Nonsense.” Minna threw open the door. “I shall like to have you. And Dawson isn’t company, he’s only a writer.” There was the faintest twinkle in her eye as she said this, as though she were up to some mischief, the nature of which eluded Ellen.

They went up the wide stairway to the third floor and arrived at the room that was to be hers. It had a canopied four-poster, garlanded ivory walls, with a lovely view from the window of the river and some green trees, spread out like a tapestry.

The room was not quite ready, the bedclothes in a stack on the bare mattress. Minna was furious. “Ring for Mrs. Bondage,” she said, indicating the bell pull, “and tell her to get this in order at once. We were expecting you tomorrow of course, but still....”

“There’s no need to make a fuss over me,” Ellen said. “I can make the bed of myself. It’s easier, actually.”

“Oh well, easier,” Aunt Minna said disdainfully. “It’s easier to lie down then to stand up. The easiest thing of all is to be a vegetable, so far as that goes.”

Ellen rang the bell as she was asked. Aunt Minna had gone to the window, and Ellen followed.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

“Yes. That’s the Savannah River. Down there, though you can’t see it from here for the trees, we have our own little inlet and dock, so we have ocean access still, by the river. Not many houses can boast that. And from the other side, from the window in the hall, you can see the whole Terrace. It used to be so much nicer I’m afraid.”

Ellen leaned forward a little, out the window. Off to the left, through the trees, she could see a yellow house, a cottage. As she looked in that direction, she thought a curtain moved, as if it had been held aside and then, as she looked, allowed to fall.

“Who lives there?” she asked.

Aunt Minna followed her glance. “Oh, there. It’s the Creighton’s guest cottage, but they’ve let it. That’s what has happened to the terrace, people letting houses to any riff-raff that comes along.”

“They have rented to somebody unsavory, have they?” Ellen was amused at her aunt’s rigid social sense.

“That’s exactly what they’ve done. The man’s a writer.”

“Isn’t Dawson Elliott a writer?”

“Yes. But this man writes romances. I have no doubt what kind of romances, either. And he’s a northerner. His name is, let me see, Parker. Yes, Mr. Kenneth Parker. I looked in the Who’s Who, but there are no writers listed by that name. You won’t want to mix with him, dear. Ah, here’s Bondage.”

* * * *

Dawson Elliott smoked a cigarette, pacing the length of the sitting room and then, since Minna had not yet returned, smoked a second cigarette. A window was open upon the street, and he went to it. On the table by it was the old telescope she used to spy on people. Thank god for it, he thought. He’d had more than one occasion to use it himself.

Minna entered from the hall, sniffing the air disapprovingly. He not put out his cigarette, but he did stay by the window so that the gentle breeze caught the wisps of smoke and carried them away.

“Well?” he asked.

She seemed to be completely unconcerned with their real problem. While he was worrying, she looked downright happy.

“Bondage is making the bed for her,” she said, which had nothing to do with what was worrying him. “She’ll be comfortable there, I’m certain.”

“What brought her a day early?” he asked, determined not to be put off in that way she had. “You don’t suppose that she...?”

Minna’s dark eyes flashed. She knew perfectly well what was bothering him. “Don’t be ignorant,” she snapped. “The girl has been ill. We must make little allowances. She got her dates mixed up. I myself would have been more accurate, but as I say, she’s been ill. Who left the lid off that box?” She snatched up the lid for the little silver cookie box and clapped it into place.

“It’s most inconvenient.” He tossed his cigarette outside. “Having her here tonight.”

She stood for a moment in thoughtful silence, staring at the silver box but seeing, he was sure, something quite different.

“She’s very tired,” she said on a note of finality. “I expect she’ll sleep very soundly tonight.”

I hope so, he thought, but he did not voice the thought aloud. He wondered if there was an innuendo in her statement, something to be read between the lines. Did she mean to ensure that the girl slept very soundly? There was no telling, and no use asking.

Asking in fact might be very bad. He had made one grave mistake already, when he had strongly opposed having that girl here at all. He knew, without ever being told, that his resistance to the idea had helped her decide to have her niece come. If she once thought you were trying to make her do something, she was determined at any cost to do the opposite. And the girl was put in the role of an underdog. The old woman loved a loser.

It occured to him to wonder if that was why she had taken to him, but he did not like that thought.

She was watching him. He was expected to go now. In her mind the matter was settled.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll go to my own room.”

“Dawson,” she said as he was going out the door, “I don’t think Ellen will interfere.”

When she said it, she could not see what Dawson saw, Ellen approaching down the hall, close enough to hear that remark.

“Interfere with what?” she asked, from the door.

Dawson looked perturbed, but Minna, without batting a lash, said, “Why, with Dawson’s book, darling.”

Dawson fled.