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Chapter 6

The door to the nursery remained closed. I accepted Martha's word that the room had been cleared and the windows replaced, but I had no desire to see the inside again. The splintered facing was reminder enough.

The money involved had certainly played a role in my decision to come to Richards Spur, but only a small one. In what now seemed to me to have been unthinking naïveté, I had wanted a family, a home. Those were here, all right, but so was so much more. Now I had to ask myself if I, too, like the last woman who tried to claim the estate, had wanted too much.

A vague dissatisfaction replaced the joy of discovery that had carried me for so many days. I was eager to learn more of what had happened in the past and why I was now here, but I was also terribly afraid.

Gradually the lower rooms of the house took shape, and the neatly marked and taped movers' boxes were emptied and disposed of. Gradually the stacks of draped furniture from the upper halls were diminished as chairs and sofas and tables found their way to what I hoped were their proper places. But for the while, at least, there were no more memories.

We found a beautiful Steinway grand piano stored in an upper bedroom, and the workmen carried it down to the drawing room. I thought briefly of my childhood dream of learning to play the piano, but as I ran my finders over the out-of-tune keys, I knew that was a dream that would still have to be postponed. At least for a while.

Even the discovery of a door that had been hidden behind a pile of storage didn't lift my dissatisfaction. Martha was obviously excited as we tried the keys, and I tried to make her believe that I was, too, but I think she knew my smile was only for her benefit.

The door opened onto a narrow, curving stairwell leading upward to a circular room, cedar-lined and sweet-smelling in spite of the dust. Long rods hung suspended from the ceiling as in an enormous closet, shrouded and ghostly in the dim light of the lamp Martha held. I took the lamp from her, and she lifted one of the dustcovers.

"Draperies," she cried. "Oh, look, Elizabeth. Can they still be any good?"

Now she was the one who dug excitedly through treasures; I, the one who stood by watching. She found a sweep of delicate white lace with small embroidered roses. "These have to be the ones for your room."

"Those are the undercurtains. There ought to be some old-rose draperies," I said without thinking.

She freed the sheers and continued searching, but I could read in her eyes the silent questions my words had raised.

"Here they are," she said finally. She didn't ask me about my careless comment. To be honest, I don't think she wanted to know. I set the lamp on the floor and helped her free the heavy draperies.

We were laden with our discoveries and leaving the room when I saw the other stairs. On impulse I followed them upward, and Martha came with me. When I opened the door at the top, light flooded the stairwell, blinding me for a moment with its brightness.

As my eyes adjusted, I realized that we were on top of the southeast tower, directly above my bedroom. The view was awesome. I found the row of pines with its scattered green outcroppings leading down the hill and the dull green of another pine standing in solitary splendor among the winter bare oaks on the southern slope. Behind me was the hilltop, now overgrown and wild, and all around was the lush river valley, surrounded in the distance by what seemed to be an unbroken wall of mountains. The squalor that was Richards Spur was too close to the hill to be seen from this height.

"Can you imagine what it must have been like when that was all Richards land?" I asked, a little humbled at the thought of how much effort it had taken to clear and claim the valley.

"It still is," Martha told me, and in her voice I thought I heard the same touch of bitterness I had detected in Mack's.

"But surely it was broken up when he died?"

"It was." There was no mistaking the inflection. Martha was bitter.

"John Richards," she went on. "He's put it all back together. Any way he could. The only thing he doesn't own around here is this hill."

"There's Mack's place," I began, but she turned to me.

"I thought you knew," she said. "I supposed that somehow you knew that, too. His orchard is on the hill. It's been in his mother's family for years. The colonel deeded it to the MacDougals before he died."

"The MacDougals."

"William MacDougal and his wife Jane, Marie LeFlore's mother." And another piece of confirmation clicked firmly into place. The gentle Scotsman had married Jane and stayed.

I apparently gave no outward sign that Martha's words meant more to me than they should have. If I did, Martha didn't notice. She pointed to a field bordering the river where some slow-moving black cattle grazed. "The house is gone, but that used to be our place."

"You told me about the place you were renting when your husband died, but I had no idea it was so close."

"No. That's the one we used to own." She turned abruptly and started down the stairs, and not knowing what to say, I followed her.

Martha's habit was to go into Richards Spur each morning, to check the post office for mail, to pick up what few things we needed from the store, and occasionally to visit with Joannie. I usually didn't accompany her, but the next morning I felt a need to talk with Marie LeFlore. Martha parked in front of the store and went about her errands.

Marie was sitting in her rocking chair, but there was a marked change in her appearance. Her eyes seemed sunken and, for the first time since I had met her, lifeless. I drew up a stool and sat beside her.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

Her voice was cracked and lacked her customary authority. "It's just age, Eliza. I was only waiting for you. Now I can go."

I took her frail hand in mine. "I found your doll," I told her, at last able to speak about it. "Red Feather."

"No. Not my doll. His," she said, glancing listlessly about the room. "My doll is in the ground. Under the magnolia. Such a sweet doll he was."

"Marie, why didn't you tell me?" But she didn't answer. She seemed lost in a faraway thought. I released her hand, smoothed a tendril of hair from her forehead, and rose to leave.

Martha had come into the store and stood by the door holding a letter in her hand. I recognized McCollum's letterhead. Martha's eyes were moist.

"What has he done now?" I asked her.

Martha shook her head and handed the letter to me. "Thank you, Elizabeth. I didn't know how we were going to make it."

It was the check I had demanded for her.

"I'm going to Fairview," she said. "No. No, I'm going to Fort Smith and buy a carload of groceries, and some linens for the house, and—"

I stopped her. A thought was forming—one I didn't like. Had I been so wrapped up in myself that I hadn't even considered what now seemed obvious?

"Martha, have you been supporting me?"

"Everyone knows you can't spend any money or you lose the house."

What had I been thinking of, not to realize before that moment just whose money was being spent? "I can't spend any of my money, but the trust is supposed to provide for me. You didn't have to. If you hadn't been there, or if I hadn't been so inconsiderate . . ."

I broke off in midsentence and reached for the telephone. "We're going shopping," I told her, "but not with that check. That's for you."

I dialed the number and stood impatiently tapping my foot. As before, Louise Rustin suddenly decided to clean the front of the store and busied herself nearby. As before, McCollum's secretary did not want to put my call through. But this time, she did.

"Mr. McCollum," I told him as soon as he was on the line. "I appreciate that you have finally sent Martha Wilson her salary, but we seem to have an additional problem. In spite of the fact that you do not like me, and that your fondest wish is to see me gone, I do have to eat. Martha has to eat. We require a certain amount of cleaning supplies and a few amenities, such as towels, sheets, that sort of thing. And I'm relatively certain that David Richards did not intend for anyone to have to live here without the basic necessities for life. What is the provision for an allowance?"

After a moment of intense silence, I heard his voice, if possible even more condescending than before, and his face wavered through my memory, superimposed now on the body and the self-indulgence of Eliza's father. "Miss Richards, you seem inordinately concerned about dollar figures which are not at this point any of your business. When—if—you inherit, all of that information will be placed at your disposal. Not until then."

I couldn't speak to him for more than a minute without wanting to rage at him, but I held on to my temper as best I could. "I am concerned about eating. I am concerned about maintaining not a luxurious but at least a moderate standard of living. And the more I think about it, I'm concerned about the way you have been handling the trust. In fact, I wonder if an audit isn't necessary. But that can wait, because what I am most concerned about right this minute is gaining access to a reasonable amount of the allowance. And I expect that no later than Friday."

I hung up on him. He couldn't know that I was trembling inside, and I refused to let Louise Rustin see how shaken I was.

"I used to see him," Marie said absently.

"Who, Marie? The child?" I asked, kneeling beside her.

"No. The colonel. I'd go to the top of the hill. I'd go to the graves. I'd see him in the tower window. Watching. Just watching. And waiting. I know he can't really be there, that he's in that box, but I'd see him."

As I looked at her, I knew that she wouldn't be alive much longer. I bent to her and kissed her withered cheek before I took Martha's arm and hurried her from the store. I didn't want Louise Rustin to see me crying.

The broken windows were replaced. The curtains and draperies were hung. A matching old-rose bedspread covered the bed. The tower room had been thoroughly cleaned but I couldn't bear the thought of anything but cleaning being done to it. Not yet. Except for the one bright spot on the wall, the room was complete.

The workmen had finished with the lower floor and moved upstairs. We could walk through the halls now without scraping our shins or tripping. The rooms downstairs, though showing their age, showed it gracefully. I knew that I had never seen a lovelier house, and I began holding my head a little higher and my back a little straighter because it was mine.

And when the electricity was restored and the pump once again working, I reveled in the luxury of soaking chin deep in the enormous tub in the marble-walled bath adjoining my room, of wandering in my robe to the delicately carved mantel, of knowing that the room, the house, and the hill were meant for me.

Each day when Martha returned from Richards Spur, I met her with two questions. Each day the answers were the same: Marie wasn't any better, and no, the allowance hadn't arrived. Friday came and I knew I would have to confront McCollum again. I was dressing for the trip to Fairview when Martha came into my room.

"He's here," she said in the voice she reserved for speaking about John.

I felt my heart give a strange tug, my throat become dry and tight. I pushed the unwanted, unneeded feelings of anticipation aside. What could he want? He hadn't been back since the episode in the—a picture of the nursery flashed through my mind; I pushed that aside also—since the episode of the timber thieves.

He waited in the drawing room, standing at the Steinway, picking out a melody with his left hand. He must have heard my step, for he began banging out a discordant version of chopsticks. Then he turned, smiling, and his attitude was that of a genial host welcoming a guest to his house.

Raising one dark brow, he inspected me. "You ought to wear that shade of blue more often," he said. "It's extremely flattering."

Even after the debacle of our last meeting, I was susceptible to the attraction I had felt for him, to his glib compliment, and I hated that.

"Mr. Richards, I am quite busy this morning. Would you please tell me why you're here?"

"Mr. Richards? I believe you must be as cold as this house today." He turned to the fire and prodded it. "I thought I remembered a furnace in this place."

"It isn't working yet, but even if it were, it would have no effect on my attitude. Martha and I are planning to do some shopping in Fort Smith today, and I've just learned that I have to make a trip to Fairview first. So let's make this visit as brief as possible. Why are you here?"

A smile worked at the corners of his lips, and somewhere within me, I swear something fluttered. Anger. I told myself that was what it had to be, although I had never felt it so intensely before. I drew on that, straightening to my full height and summoning my iciest voice. "I'm afraid I must ask you to leave."

He walked over and stood looking down at me. "Why, Cousin, would you be so rude when I've driven all this way just to save you a trip to Fairview?"

Why, indeed? When looking at him brought to life memories of all that had been lost, and why. But John couldn't, mustn't know that. I focused instead on the last part of his statement. "What do you mean?"

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a small package. I knew what it was but not how to battle the defeat I felt.

"I mean, I've brought you your checkbook."

"Does Stanley McCollum always ask you before he does anything?"

He smiled grimly but didn't answer my question. "Martha?" he said.

She stepped from the hallway into the room.

"Get Miss Richards's coat," he told her. "I'm taking her into Fort Smith."

"Wait a minute, Martha. Mr. Richards is not taking me anywhere."

He made a slight movement of his head, and then I heard her steps going down the hall.

His face relaxed into a smile. "Come on, Elizabeth. This is my way of making amends."

There was no fighting him, not when I needed so much of my strength to fight my reaction to him.

Martha returned with my coat. "Martha goes, too," I managed to say. He nodded, and while she went for her coat, he helped me into mine.

"And I promise," he said quietly, "that the past will stay in the past unless you bring it forward."

He ushered us outside to a silver Continental. He held the front door for me, opened a rear door for Martha, and drove down the hill before I had found an appropriate retort.

 

Martha had been preparing her list for a week. When John asked and she told him what we needed, his laugh rang out. "You never would have been able to get all that in your toy car, Cousin."

He could be charming. He proved that. By the time we reached the interstate highway which looped around Fort Smith, even Martha seemed to have thawed toward him. He knew all the shops she wanted to visit and acted as though his sole purpose was to see that she found everything on her list. During lunch, she even relaxed enough to laugh at one of his stories. And I? I wondered at his motives, and at my own for enjoying the day in spite of myself, but I said no more than necessary to maintain polite conversation.

We were on our way home, driving through the center of town on the wide main street, past unfamiliar buildings, when John suddenly made a right turn and stopped in front of a building under construction.

"I know I said I'd keep the past in the past," he said, "but this is a hard city to do that in." He seemed to be inspecting the building the way he had me. "We almost didn't get started on that. This used to be a freight yard, and you would have thought I was tearing down the Confederate soldier on the courthouse lawn when I decided to put an office building here."

"Freight yard?" I asked, looking around for some landmark.

"Before the railroad," he said, noticing my search. "Over a hundred years ago. I don't understand it, but this whole area has become some sort of shrine. In the residential section between here and the river, half of the houses aren't fit to live in, and the other half are either antique shops or shrines to the past. The whole area is desperately in need of new life—but don't try to infringe on the integrity of the neighborhood by constructing a decent building."

"Could we—" I knew, without knowing how I knew, that there was something here for me to learn. Oh, Lord, could it possibly be? "Could we drive through the area?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" John put the car in gear and drove slowly through the neighborhood. He was right. Most of the houses looked as though only a bulldozer could help them, but many of them stood proudly in their restoration paint. I had never been here before; how could I possibly recognize anything? And then I saw it.

"Stop," I said, and John did.

It was a small house, just four rooms and an attic, with wide porches wrapping around it and massive brick chimneys at each end. It gleamed with its fresh paint and new brick sidewalk, and I was glad that it did. A small sign stood near the coach step.

"Are antiques on your list?" John asked.

I shook my head. "But I'd like to look."

The inside of the house gleamed, too, from the pegged floors to the hardware on the doors, even to the bricks in the fireplaces. I leaned against the mantel in the parlor while a woman in costume explained the restoration of the house and the extent of its former disrepair. I didn't correct her when she said that the family parlor had been in one place and the dining room in another. I didn't question John as to why he was watching me so intently, watching as though he expected me to say or do something completely outrageous at any moment. The memories, good and bad, were coming so fast I couldn't sort them. Martha walked to where I stood and touched the cupid carved on the mantel.

"It's pretty," she said, "but nothing like what we have at home."

"Are you folks from around here?" the shopkeeper asked.

"Across the river," Martha said.

"Then you might be interested in this part of the history of the house," the woman went on. "Legend has it that one of the wealthy Indian planters from across the river kept his mistress in this house."

"Legend?" I asked, feeling myself growing cold. "Don't you mean gossip?"

John turned his head to one side as though he meant to shake it. A negative gesture? For me? For what? He stopped himself, walked to my side, and began studying the mantel.

The woman was oblivious to anything but the enjoyment of telling her story. "Oh, no. It isn't gossip. The widow of one of our founding ministers told all about it in her memoirs—without names, of course. It seems that after the death of her husband, she was forced to find work, and she was hired as a housekeeper in this house. You can imagine how she must have felt when she realized what the situation was."

"Yes," I said, feeling the coldness creeping into my voice. "I can imagine."

"She was really quite distraught about it. She said that she fought with her conscience for a long time until she found that she really had no choice."

I clutched at the mantel. What had she done? I didn't want to hear more, but I couldn't stop her.

"She wrote the woman's husband and told him what his wife was doing, pleading with him to save his wife from the life of sin she was leading."

I was like ice, frozen, unable to think or feel.

"Of course, by today's standards it might not be the right thing to do, but I think that back then her motives were honorable."

I broke the spell. "I think her motives were vicious. Let's go." And I walked from the house, not waiting for the others.

They joined me in the car, and John again looked at me strangely. "What's the matter, Cousin?" he asked softly so that Martha couldn't hear. "You acted as though she was talking about our King David and his Bathsheba."

What a short time it had taken to make the trip to Fort Smith. Now it seemed as if it would take as long to go home as it had by wagon all those years before.

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