This section two hundred years ago had been the site of Jacobus Kip’s farm, ‘a goodly estate covering one hundred and fifty acres, and comprising meadow, woodland and stream.’ The section now was a chaos of squatter shanties, goats, and an occasional block of brownstone tenements, interspersed with a few dilapidated farmhouses left over from the eighteen-forties, when gentlemen like Horace Greeley and Francis Winthrop had here their country estates. The little brick cottage was as shabby as everything else, but it had been built in 1800 of honest Haverstraw brick, its lines were still pure and its color mellowed to a rosy tan. There was half an acre of weeds around it, two chestnut trees, and a syringa bush enclosed by the rusted and twisted iron fence; but it was not the unexpected trees or the bush or even the decayed picturesqueness of the little house which surprised Fey. It was its location not fifty yards from the glinting and majestic East River. Sea-gulls circled by the roof uttering their lonely mewing cries and returned to a clump of rocks on the shore, while behind the gulls a side-wheeler and a sloop, both battling the tide, glided softly toward Blackwell’s Island against Brooklyn’s backdrop of church spires.
The air smelled sharply salt, and the March sun glittered off the ruffled wavelets.
‘I didn’t know there was any place like this in New York!’ cried Fey, standing in the mud of the road and breathing in the air.
Rachel snorted. ‘There are a great many things you don’t know about New York, child.’ But she was pleased. It would be good for them all to be here; perhaps with the help of the river, they might at last get perspective on the black insoluble problems.
There were five rooms. Downstairs a big, old-fashioned kitchen, with Dutch oven and set-in cookstove; a low-ceilinged parlor whose gay French paper was stained and peeling a little, and the furnishing consisted of a rickety sofa, two Windsor chairs, an excellent Sheraton desk, and straw matting on the floor—nothing else. But the two unshaded windows looked directly onto the river so that the room appeared to be filled with moving water and light.
Upstairs there were three small bedrooms, each with a bed, washstand, and chair. That was all, except a lean-to backhouse connected with the kitchen porch. ‘Hardly what you’re accustomed to, Fey,’ said Rachel, thinking of the silver tubs and the central heating of the house they had just left. They were all shivering, for the unaired cottage was damp and chilly, and she watched Fey carefully, wondering how deep the decay of luxury had eaten.
‘For the first eighteen years of my life, I had no such comfort as this,’ replied Fey, looking out the parlor window at Lucita, who had run down to the water’s edge and was talking to the startled gulls. But the transition back to hard work and sparseness was not so easily accomplished.
Molly remained only three days, during which time she grumbled incessantly. The brick cottage was too much like home; she had no use for the ‘ ’orrid damp river air, and I ’ad me fill o’ lugging in narsty coals and pumping every drop of water back in Stepney——’ So she disappeared on the second afternoon, and, having found a new job, left them the next day.
‘And just as well,’ said Rachel. ‘We really couldn’t afford her.’
This problem of money was the minor but equally baffling one with which Fey had begun to wrestle, as her soft pampered hands struggled through a dozen long-unfamiliar chores. For they were dependent on Rachel’s own modest income.
Each night, exhausted by work, Fey slept a few hours on the lumpy mattress, then awoke as the gray dawn light sifted through the coarse muslin curtains from the river, and lay listening to Lucita’s breathing from the little room next door. Each morning, as the narcotic shock-born haze of the first weeks lifted, she awoke to a more hopeless anxiety. Again and again her brain reeled off those moments in the library. She saw the figure on the floor with its foolish, surprised smile, she saw Simeon behind the desk holding the little gun as one might hold a glove, heard him say, ‘Is he dead? You better find out if he’s dead?’
But the voice was thin and tinny, the figures had no more reality than if they had flashed on a stereopticon. The scene had no essence or inner meaning, nor did the concept of Simeon in the Tombs. In this concept, too, there was confusion and uncertainty. He refused to see her; she had twice applied through the police and been told of his violent refusal. The relief this had given she had instantly suppressed. And, after all, what could she do?—he had competent counsel, they told her; the case would not come to trial for months probably, and until she heard further from the district attorney’s office or the defense lawyers, there was nothing to do but wait.
Chapter Twenty-One
DURING THOSE DAYS at the brick cottage, the three of them—Rachel, Fey, and the child—spoke seldom and only of domestic matters. The inescapable household tasks kept them busy, and to Lucita these were a delightful novelty. For her some of the shadow had lightened, and in consciousness she forgot the reason for their escape to this interesting place. She forgot the cause, but she continued to treat her mother with a nervous constraint which hurt Fey, and would have hurt her bitterly except that no emotion seemed quite to pierce the thin shell which surrounded her.
They all lived in a state of suspension, even Rachel, who was blunted by domestic labor and responsibilities, though she loved these two and never ceased praying for them.
In April her prayers were answered in a most unexpected way.
It had been drizzling for days, the cold, disheartened rain of the dying winter, but it had melted the last patches of snow at the north side of the cottage, and today suddenly spring had come. Sparrows chattered on the branches of the two budding chestnuts, and the strengthening sun drew up the fecund odor of moist black earth. The river water lapped at the warmed rocks, and at four-thirty, when the Boston boat steamed by, her decks swarmed with gay hats and parasols. The ship’s band played on the afterdeck and the enticing strains of ‘The Blue Danube’ floated into the kitchen of the brick cottage where supper preparations were under way.
‘Might I go out, Mama?’ asked Lucita eagerly. ‘I’ve peeled all the carrots——’ She addressed Fey, who was trussing a roasting chicken, but she looked at Rachel.
‘Where do you want to go, darling?’ said Fey, holding the chicken with one hand, but putting the other arm around the child.
Lucita’s sturdy little body did not resist, but Fey sensed the impulse of withdrawal. She put the chicken quickly on the roasting pan.
‘I want to go see Benjie,’ said Lucita. ‘Aunt Rachel knows.’
‘That sick gull she’s nursing down on the rocks,’ explained Rachel. ‘ I made a splint for its leg. Let’s take Mama down and show her Benjie. I smell spring and it won’t hurt this supper to wait.’
Fey nodded, trying to smile. Rachel continually urged the little girl to include her mother in her activities.
‘I’d love to see Benjie,’ said Fey, and all three moved at once for the door.
Neither Fey nor Rachel paused to take off their enveloping aprons; the nearest neighbor was a block away and no one would see them. Fey’s cheeks were flushed from the stove, and the coarse net into which she had bundled the masses of black hair had slipped askew and hung over one shoulder. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and, as they walked toward the path to the rocks, she dabbed at a floury smooch on her thin arm. It is a lovely day, she thought, feeling the sun on her back. Spring again. Again.
And what have I to do with spring? She saw it embodied as a golden globe into which she might look, but not enter, and behind her, where she would not look, was a dark and shapeless chasm.
It was Lucita who heard the thick clops of horses’ hoofs approaching on the muddy road, and she raced back to her mother and Rachel.
‘Look, someone’s coming here in a cab!’
The two women stared at the approaching hackney and then at each other, dismayed. Lawyers, they thought, more police—the approach of trouble, yanking them again from the recent abeyance.
The cab stopped before the rusted iron gate and
a man got out. He was fairly tall and he was muffled in a plaid Inverness cape, a trifle incongruous against the rest of his clothes which were soberly dark.
A stranger, thought Fey. As all the recent callers had been strangers. She started to remove her apron, then let it be. The man opened the gate; but, seeing the two women and child, waited until they came up to him. He doffed his stiff black hat. ‘I’m looking for Mrs. Tower-r.’
‘Yes?’ said Fey, dully resigned, but aware of a thin splinter of surprise. His voice, that slight burring of the ‘r,’ made her think of something.
It was Rachel who gave an exclamation. ‘But surely——’ She frowned, staring at the amiable rugged face, the peculiarly clear gray eyes, the dark stubborn hair. ‘Haven’t we somewhere—?’
He turned his gaze from Fey, whom he had been examining with such intense interest that she was annoyed.
The years had made a difference in Rachel as they had in him. Her hair was now entirely white, and all youth had left the bigboned face, also the last time he had seen her she had been chastely resplendent in dove-gray satin under soft lights. But suddenly he smiled, the quick crooked smile which she remembered. ‘Why, it’s the Infirmary doctor! I’ve not forgot our conversation in the elegant Misses Carys’ drawing-room.’
‘MacDonald!’ cried Rachel, recovering the name. ‘I’m glad to see you again, Mr. MacDonald. But whatever brought you out here?’
‘My cousin,’ said Ewen, indicating Fey gravely.
‘I don’t understand,’ snapped Fey, certain that this was one more trick, a new way of prying, of making her talk. She turned around and started through the gate to the house.
Rachel gave a troubled smile which indicated apology for Fey’s behavior. ‘ I don’t understand either. But please come in.’
‘I will,’ said Ewen, and he paid off the cabdriver. Lucita had been watching round-eyed. Now she stepped forward from behind Rachel. ‘Would you like to see my sick sea-gull?’ she said.
At once he bent toward the child and gave the question due consideration. ‘I would, bairnie, and I will. But first I must talk to——’ He indicated the house where Fey had disappeared. ‘It is your mother, is it not?’
Lucita caught her underlip with her little white teeth, and her pupils dilated. She nodded without speaking.
‘You and she have naught to fear from me,’ he said, answering her expression. ‘I’m your kinsman. Do you know what that means? ’
The child shook her head.
Ewen smiled. ‘We’ll teach you then soon.’ He fished in his pocket and brought out a soggy little package wrapped in brown paper. ‘Here’s a bit o’ Dundee cake I brought all the way from Glasgow. Maybe your sea-gull’d relish it, if he’s convalescent, and you could share it with him.’
‘Oh, Benjie’d love it.’ The child smiled, and Rachel, who had been listening, thought how seldom Lucita smiled. Her initial liking for MacDonald increased. But she was profoundly puzzled.
Rachel led the way in to the parlor, left MacDonald seated on the slippery horsehair sofa, and went to find Fey, who was in the kitchen rubbing lard into the chicken, her burned, reddened fingers moving in nervous stabs.
‘Has he gone?’ she said, pushing the loosened hair out of her eyes with the back of her arm.
‘No. He wants to see you. Lord ’a’ mercy, child'—he’s a very nice man. Don’t act like that. Aren’t you curious to find out what he means? I am—— Why, I’m just beginning to remember—the story he told—that day at the Carys’——’Rachel stopped. She took the roasting pan from Fey and put it decisively in the oven. ‘Tidy yourself up, child, and come down to the parlor.’
When Rachel spoke in that tone, people obeyed, and Fey left the kitchen and went upstairs, half-ashamed of the reluctance she felt to seeing the stranger again. She took off her apron, rolled down her sleeves, unpinned her hair and brushed it, and each homely act was sheathed in hostility. She braided and rolled her hair into its enormous coil, then leaned toward the tiny fly-specked mirror. ‘ Let me alone! ’ she said, out loud, and for a moment she looked deep into her own eyes. The other, in the mirror, struck back at her like a snake. She lowered her head, flung the brush and comb into the drawer and banged it shut.
She went downstairs, placing her foot softly and carefully on each step. She entered the parlor with the same careful tread, her head high, her face expressionless, and Ewen, rising, thought, She’s a true Cameron except for that heather-white skin and that she’s smaller than our women.
She sat down on one of the Windsor chairs. Rachel already had the other.
‘I’ll clear the mystery at once,’ said Ewen, smiling at Fey. ‘My mother was a Cameron, your grandfather, Old Sir James’s, youngest sister. I searched for you once, ten years ago, and did not find you. I have found you now, and I’ve come to help.’
Rachel leaned forward, her voice ringing with astonishment. ‘But she was with me —that night, when you told me of your search, if I’d only known—— Fey, if you’d only come with me—— So near a thing——’
Rachel stopped, overcome by the blind frustration of chance. Ewen, though very much startled, kept his eyes on Fey, puzzled by her immobility and the guarded enmity he saw in the gray eyes so like his own.
‘Yes, I was with Simeon,’ she said. Her voice was a small flat stone dropped into a waiting pool. The concentric ripples reached the edge of the room, then vanished into silence. Compressing her lips, she turned her head and looked out at the river.
It was Rachel who asked the questions which explained Ewen’s arrival there that day.
He told of the cable long ago from Simeon Tower, of his answering letter, and Simeon’s final reply, giving neither Fey’s name nor address, and making it clear that he wished no further connection with Scotland. Ewen had retained a great liking for the United States, and subscribed to a New York Sunday paper. There, from time to time, he had seen mention of the Towers. There, too, he had read of Simeon’s financial ruin, but the tragedy and Simeon’s arrest had been cabled abroad and he had seen it first in a Glasgow paper. ‘I knew she needed help,’ he said. ‘And that’s a kinsman’s duty, moreover, my conscience has given me no rest for having failed to find her before Sir James died. I dislike loose ends.’
They both glanced at Fey, who had bent her head to rest her chin on her hand, which half-concealed her face. She seemed not to be listening, but they knew that she was, and that, too, she was engulfed in a peremptory inner turmoil, which neither of them understood.
‘How did you find us now?’ asked Rachel, thankfully, for no matter what Fey’s reactions, Rachel felt the first relief she had known since the day she had discovered Fey and Lucita deserted in the Fifth Avenue mansion.
‘Well,’ answered Ewen, ‘when I read the paragraph in the paper—I wound up my affairs as best I could—I’m a barrister, you know—— Last Tuesday week, I caught the Anglia from Glasgow, we docked this morning. I knew that the police would have Mrs. Tower’s whereabouts. After I convinced them of my respectability, they gave me this address, and here I am.’
‘And I thank God for it,’ said Rachel. ‘For we badly need advice, there has been nobody.’
Ewen made a sympathetic sound, then grew grave. His eyes became shrewd and attentive. When he was not smiling—the quick sideways grin which had in it an endearing touch of selfridicule—he looked older than his thirty-three years. The furrows across his forehead were deeply cut, and in his black hair there was some gray, mingled in like coarse white threads.
Not a handsome man, thought Rachel, but an attractive one, strong, intelligent, wiry, virile, perhaps a little like one of his own Scotch Airedales. He would be a tenacious fighter, and he would be infallibly loyal. He had more than that, though. She felt a sensitive intuition, and in his behavior to Lucita and now to Fey, who was certainly as ungracious and inexplicable as possible, he showed extraordinary tact.
‘Tell me the whole story from the beginning,’ he said, crossing his lean legs. ‘T
hat is what I’ve come for.’
‘Yes,’ answered Rachel. ‘But it’s Fey’s story. And it is she who must tell it.’
They both saw Fey stiffen and a tremor run across her averted back. They waited.
Suddenly she jerked around and looked at them. ‘No!’ she cried violently. ‘I won’t go through that again. Let it alone. What’s done is done. What difference how or why!’
There was a silence.
Fey got up, groping for the chair-arm. ‘Tell him what you like,’ she said to Rachel, and walked rapidly out of the room. They heard her steps ascend the stairs.
‘So,’ said Ewen, after a moment, ‘she’s hiding something?’
‘Perhaps,’ answered Rachel, ‘ but I think not so much from us—from herself. I don’t know exactly what it is.’
Ewen accepted this and dismissed it for the time being. Then he began to question Rachel, who told all that she knew.
Ewen had ample time for thought as he walked back to his hotel that evening, and the next day, when he translated these thoughts into action, he was dismayed at the results of his investigation. He had a stiff, uncomfortable interview with old John Williams, who resented inquiry and indicated that a Scotch barrister could not hope to understand American law. To this Ewen agreed, but he refused to be dismissed and continued his cool questions until he understood the situation. Williams and Day had no intention of defending their unfortunate client themselves, and Thaddeus Webster, whom they had requested to take the case, had not definitely done so. He had been away, his health was precarious, he was still ‘considering.’
‘In short,’ said Ewen, puffing on his briar pipe, ‘he’s afraid he won’t be paid, and he’s afraid he can’t win.’
Williams shrugged his skinny shoulders and looked at the ceiling.
‘There are other barristers—criminal lawyers in New York,’ said Ewen.