Dragonwyck (14 page)

But before Nicholas and Miranda had become really conspicuous, in fact at the very moment when Mrs. Stephen Van Rensselaer leaned toward the Widow Mary Livingston and whispered behind her fan, Were it anyone but Nicholas one might almost think—' the Count himself created a diversion.

He had not meant to; his altruism and interest in the young couple would never have included physical discomfort for himself. It was sheer accident.

His plump little legs had been tiring, his steps showed less and less of their habitual bounce until the orchestra, gathering speed for Coryantis' second finale, infused him with new, desperate vim. He seized Harriet firmly around her shrinking waist and pirouetted magnificently into the reverse. One of his tight black pumps shot out from under him, his ankle twined itself around the leg of a near-by chair. The Count and Harriet crashed to the slippery parquet with mingled cries of pain and fright.

Harriet was soon righted with the help of a dozen solicitous hands and retired precipitately to repair alike her dignity and dress. But the Count lay on the floor, resisting all efforts to raise him with floods of hysterical French and a Gallic abandon of cries and groans.

'Un médecin! Un médecin!'
wailed the Countess, wringing her hands and fluttering around her prostrate husband.

"Certainly, Madame,' agreed Nicholas. "Please calm yourself. I'm sending for a doctor. Count, I do think you'd be more comfortable off the floor, whatever the nature of your injury.'

Four footmen slid the protesting Count onto a table top and bore him from the drawing-rooms, while Nicholas directed the procedure and then disappeared with his suffering guest.

The others stood about for a moment discussing the accident then the orchestra struck up a polka and, true to their code of ignoring the unpleasant, they settled back into the proper ballroom decorum. Johanna, who had waddled a few steps toward the scene of the catastrophe, resumed her chair in the farther room, but she caught Miranda's eye and beckoned to her. Miranda obediently walked over to the gilded chair.

'Go and wait in the hall for the doctor,' ordered Johanna. 'The servants are all upset, those who aren't amusing themselves below stairs. When the doctor comes take him up to the Count.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Miranda. She perfectly understood that she was being banished from the dancing, but she did not care in die least. After that dance with Nicholas everything else would be drab anticlimax. As it was she preferred to be alone, to re-create each moment of the last half-hour, the moment he put his arm about her, the pressure of his hand, and the tone of his voice in those two low words—'My dear.'

The hall by the front door was dim and deserted. The sounds from the drawing-rooms were muted here. She sat in a carved black Gothic chair, her chin cupped in her hand, and waited. In twenty minutes there was the thud of galloping hoofs outside, a sharp whinny.

Miranda opened the door and a young man strode in. He was hatless, his gray homespun suit was wrinkled and smelled of horse lather. He was several inches taller than Miranda but heavy-boned so that he looked shorter than he was. He had a great deal of rather untidy sandy hair, a freckled face, and alertly humorous gray eyes.

You can't be the doctor—' said Miranda, who had been prepared for a reproduction of Doctor Lynch at home—silk hat, pointed beard, dignity and maturity at least.

The young man waved the shabby black bag which he clutched in his muscular fist. 'I'm a doctor. Jeff Turner from Hudson. I was tending Tom Wilson's wife. I got word I was wanted here.'

He spoke in a quick, forthright voice. 'Where's the patient?' he went on, examining Miranda coolly. 'One of the fine gentlemen take too much wine? Or one of the elegant ladies get a fit of the vapors?'

'Certainly not,' she retorted, annoyed at the carelessly contemptuous look he cast at the somber magnificence of the great hall. 'One of our guests hurt himself dancing—a French nobleman, the Count de Grenier.'

She had expected to impress him and was sadly disappointed. Jeff Turner snorted, 'No doubt an injury to a count hurts far worse than one to lesser mortals. You're Miss Van Ryn, I suppose, since you say "our guests."'

Miranda blushed. Odious man. 'Miss Van Ryn is six years old,' she answered stiffly. 'I'm Miranda Wells, the patroon's cousin.'

'Oh, to be sure,' said Jeff. He paused and gave her a look of amusement ringed with pity. 'I've heard about you.'

Miranda resented the look in its entirety. 'I'm sure I don't know how you could have.' She lifted her chin with a haughtiness she felt would have done credit to the Widow Mary Livingston.

To her fury Jeff burst out laughing. 'What a little goose you are!' he said, not unkindly. 'The humble people do occasionally dare to gossip about dieir superiors, you know. Now be a good girl and show me to the ailing Count.'

Miranda, seeking a withering retort, couldn't find one sufficiently devastating. As she led the way upstairs, even her preoccupation with Nicholas was banished by anger at this officious young country doctor. Why shouldn't she say 'our guests,' why shouldn't she try to show him his place? And he was the first person she had met who seemed to have no respect for the Van Ryn standing.

Nicholas, as hospitality demanded, had remained at the Counts bedside. He rose when Miranda and the doctor entered. The Countess continued to pat her husband's pillow and give vent to little shrieks.

Jeff did not greet the patroon. He gently pushed aside die Countess and made a swift concentrated examination.

'Sprained ankle, nothing more,' he said, addressing no one in particular. 'Bring me linen bandages.'

Nicholas gave a brief order to a hovering maid, then turned back to the bed. 'Are you quite sure the leg isn't broken?'

Jeff straightened up and leaning against the ornately carved bedpost answered quietly, 'I'm quite sure, Mr. Van Ryn.'

The two men looked across the bed at each other for a moment of steady appraisal. At last Nicholas nodded, satisfied. 'I've faith in your ability, and I've heard about you from my bailiff. It's fortunate that you happened to be on my lands tonight.'

A hot rejoinder rose to Jeff's lips, but he checked it. Though he had never before met the patroon he had always despised him, considering him as a contemptible oppressor living in fantastic opulence and denying to his tenants not only independence but the simplest justice. Were it not that this sudden call to Dragonwyck had been represented as acute emergency, he would have angrily refused to come because a tragic sequel to trie rent ceremony this morning had still further inflamed him against Nicholas. But now having met him he found some of his hostility evaporating. For in that instant of mutual stock-taking Teff received an unexpected impression—Here is a lonely man and a very unhappy one.

While he deftly wound linen strips about the Count's swollen ankle Jeff made the rejoinder that he had started to, but he made it without heat. These would not be your lands if justice were done, Mr. Van Ryn.'

Miranda gasped and sent the young doctor an angry look, but Nicholas merely said, 'Indeed?—I'm sorry to hear you're an anti-renter.'

'Pour l'amour ie Dieu!'
cried the Count suddenly from his pillow, where he had been quiet during Jeff's ministrations. 'Do not, I beg of you, have the argument over my bed! I am suffering, I am exhausted, and forgive me, messieurs, but this rent business I do not understand. I do not wish to understand it!'

Jeff grinned in spite of himself. 'No, they do these things better in France, where they'd simply have a revolution and settle everything.' He turned to Nicholas and his eyes hardened. 'But maybe your tenant farmers aren't so different from the French, Mr. Van Ryn.'

'And maybe you're being a trifle melodramatic?' answered Nicholas. 'Come, Doctor, this subject is boring my guest. If you've finished here, I hope you'll join me in a glass of wine downstairs.'

Jeff straightened his coat and snapped shut his black bag. That would be charming, I'm sure, except that I'm busy. Tom Wilson's wife is critically ill with consumption, and Klaas Beecker, whom you turned out of house and home this morning, had an unfortunate accident with his scythe. It cut—' said Jeff with cold emphasis, 'the veins in both his wrists. I doubt he'll pull through.'

There was a pause. Nicholas' eyes flickered. 'Didn't he get the money I told Duyckman to give him?'

Jeff gave a brief laugh. 'I believe he did, but three gold pieces don't necessarily prevent—unfortunate accidents.'

Nicholas' mouth tightened. 'I direct you to do everything possible to hasten Klaas' recovery. Spare no expense.'

Jeff walked to the door and turned on the threshold. 'This is exceedingly kind of you,' he said in an expressionless voice which deliberately mimicked Nicholas' last speech, 'but I would do everything possible for Klaas without your gracious authorization.'

He made a dignified exit into the hall, thinking: Lord, that was a bit pompous of me, it's my red-haired temper again. He descended the stairs ahead of Miranda and Nicholas, preparing to let himself unobtrusively out the front door. He was a trifle ashamed of his rudeness, anxious to be gone from this oppressive palace back to the farmers whose way of life he understood, and to whose cause he was passionately dedicated.

But he reckoned without Nicholas, who walked swiftly around in front to bar the door, at die same time turning on Jeff the full force of his slow, rare smile.

'I beg you to join me in one glass of wine before you go out again into the night. It'll give me very great pleasure.'

'Well—' said Jeff to his own surprise, and found himself ushered into the library. He was puzzled by the intensity of will that he felt behind his host's natural enough invitation. He disliked the arrogance and ruthlessness which emanated from Nicholas in almost tangible waves, he disliked the luxuriant elegance of the patroon's dress, the white rose in his buttonhole; and yet he did not quite dislike the man himself. For Jeff was a good doctor, shrewd and intuitive, and he felt beneath the complex picture which Nicholas presented to the world a quality which one could not diagnose, a divergence from the norm, a cleavage—which inspired a faint, uncomfortable pity.

This impression wore off after Jeff had galloped two miles through the warm July night and once more entered Klaas Beecker's gray farmhouse.

Klaas lay semi-conscious on the corn-husk bed, his arms swathed in blood-soaked rags, his face as pale as the whitewashed walls behind him, while his wife, sobbing hopelessly, crouched on the floor amongst a huddle of chairs, tables, and carpetbags—the household goods which had been gathered for the eviction on the morrow.

FOR THE REST OF THE SUMMER THERE WAS GREAT activity at Dragonwyck, a constant stream of guests with entertainment for them from morning until midnight. There were musicales and soirees, there were elaborate charades played in the rose gardens by the light of flares and twinkling paper lanterns. There were picnics and boating parties on the Hudson. There were even swimming parties, though these were popular with no one but Nicholas, who was an expert swimmer, having learned the art abroad in the waters of the Mediterranean. Very few of his guests could swim, nor did they share with their host the pagan triumph of mastering the elements.

Nicholas, therefore, usually swam alone at sunrise, and one morning Miranda, unable to sleep, slipped out of the house and wandered down to the river. Attracted by the sound of rhythmic splashing, she innocently followed it to its source. She stood frozen on the bank while Nicholas, who had not seen her, started to come out of the water. She saw the tan neck, naked chest and shoulders, before she turned and fled frantically back to the house. In her room she flung herself on her bed. She was shamed and shocked. Stronger than these ran a deeper emotion. That glimpse of him with his head thrown back and his wet hair curling on his forehead—like that statue of the young Apollo beneath the pergola in the willow garden from which all the ladies quickly averted their eyes.

But she thought the statue beautiful, and now Nicholas —she pushed this violently down. But it returned again and again to torment her.

Much tormented her these days. Since the night of the ball he had avoided her. Worse than that, he had ceased to champion her against Johanna, and without his backing Miranda found that she had insensibly slipped into precisely the position which that lady desired. She met few of the guests and then very briefly; she was included in the entertainment only on the rare occasions when Katrine was; she now took most of her meals with the little girl in the school room. That this was a reasonable adjustment and exactly the type of life which she and her parents had expected for her at Dragonwyck, did not prevent her from lapsing into a dull misery. It had been so different at first when, though she had seen little of Nicholas, his attitude had been interested and personal. Only two things sustained her: the intuitive certainty that he was not as unaware as he appeared, and his remembrance of her birthday. She had become nineteen on September thirteenth, and upon returning to her room at noon after teaching Katrine, she had found upon the table a single large rose, ivory white with a golden center; and beneath it a book, "Twice-Told Tales' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Inside the book there was a note. 'The flower is like you, the stories may interest you, both convey my esteem on this memorable occasion.—N. V. R.'

Little enough cause for the uprush of joy which it brought. And though she wore the rose in her bodice until it faded he made no reference to it, nor to the birthday, and her joy soon dimmed.

On a day in early October the Van Ryns and their house guests of the moment, the Beeckmans and Philipses, were invited to dine with the Van Rensselaers at the Manor House in Claverack. Miranda, who had of course not been included in the invitation, disconsolately watched their departure from the window in the upstairs hall.

It was the state coach which had been ordered today, an enormous vehicle painted dark gray and upon its doors the Van Ryn coat-of-arms, three black leopards on a red field. None of the Van Ryn carriages needed any such identification, they were all as well known through the countryside as the matched cream-colored horses that drew them; but in diat era those who possessed heraldic insignia displayed them, not from ostentation, but as the conventional badge of the privileged,