Dragonwyck (17 page)

'Oh—' she said. 'I see.' How clever Nicholas was!

He gave the coachman instructions, turned back to her. 'I'm going to see Mayor Curtis and the sheriff. There's been more trouble in collecting the rents. I'll order this ridiculous business settled once for all. Then I'll meet you at the Hudson House at two.'

He got out of the carriage, stood hat in hand until the horses started. She watched his tall figure—made even taller by the high beaver hat—walk rapidly down the street. People stared, whispering. Once he uncovered his head and bowed to an old lady in gray and his wavy hair shone black in the sunlight.

The carriage turned down Union and she could no longer see him. It stopped at a low brick cottage on Front Street near the river. A tin sign nailed on the whitewashed door said 'Jefferson Turner, M.D.'

Miranda sighed. 'Come, Katrine. This is the doctor's.'

The child, hugging Cristabel, obediently followed. As Miranda lifted the brass knocker she was astonished to hear a confusion of voices from inside, and a male one louder than the rest shouting, 'Blast them, 'tis no time for half measures, I tell ye!'

Miranda's knock produced a dead silence. Someone said 'Hush!' She waited five impatient minutes before the door was opened by Jeff himself. His sandy hair was tousled, his shirt sleeves rolled up, disclosing heavily muscled arms with freckles and red hairs on them.

The girl's lip curled. She drew up her green skirts and lifted her chin. 'Miss Van Ryn has a sore finger,' she said haughtily, putting her hand on Katrine's shoulder. 'The patroon desires that you look at it.'

Jeff continued to stare. His sharp gray eyes looked past the two on his step to the waiting Van Ryn barouche with the coat-of-arms blazoned on its door. He looked again at the annoyed girl, then he threw back his head and emitted a guffaw. 'Well, I'll be damned!' he said. 'Come in, madam—I'm most extraordinarily honored.'

Miranda threw him a furious glance and swept past him. The cottage had but four small rooms besides the kitchen in back. The front room and surgery were full of men, a dozen at least, and one weeping woman who hastily wiped her eyes when she saw Miranda.

'Look what I found at my door!' cried Jeff, still chuckling. 'Miss Van Ryn, no less—' he made a sweeping bow to the bewildered Katrine, who put her finger in her mouth and clung to Miranda's skirts.

'—And—' continued Jeff with even greater impressiveness, 'the exquisite Miss Wells. She too is tinged with royalty, folks, for she is the patroon's cousin.'

A murmur ran round the room. A small, slight man with mouse-colored whiskers pulled at Jeff's arm and whispered something.

The woman stood up, her threadbare gray shawl falling off her thin shoulders. 'Aye,' she said bitterly. 'The Van Ryns can mince in silks and velvets while I and my children go hungry.' She sidled past Miranda, who stood her ground, her heart beating fast. The woman went out the front door.

'We'll meet later, men,' said Jeff. 'It's maybe wise to make new plans in view of this.' He motioned toward the Van Ryn carriage. There were exchanged looks of understanding. Several nodded. They filed silently from the room, leaving only the small slight man and Jeff.

Miranda found her tongue. 'That was a down-rent meeting!' she cried indignantly.

The two men looked at her accusing face and Jeff laughed. 'It was indeed, Princess. Allow me to introduce Doctor Smith Boughton.'

The small man bowed coldly.

Smith Boughton, she thought. Fenimore Cooper's words at the banquet came back to her. 'Tuppenny little doctor, skulks about preaching rebellion and defiance of the law.' This, then, must be the one who was organizing the farmers.

'I should think you'd be ashamed,' she said to him hotly, 'stirring up trouble, telling people to do wrong. They were happy enough on the manors until you came along.'

The two doctors exchanged glances. Though Boughton was the older they had both been medical students at Castleton, Vermont. Always they had been friends. Since Boughton, burning with fervor and the true crusader's spirit, had come to Columbia County, Jeff had done what he could to help the cause. But Jeff had balance and a sense of humor, which the other did not. Now the little doctor stepped up to Miranda, his eyes blazing. She saw that he was neither mousy nor meek.

'You parrot words you've heard,' he shouted at her. 'The farmers have never been happy on the manors. My own people were Rensselaer tenants and I know. You feather-brained girl, d'ye realize why your forefathers left the old country? It was to find freedom and be quit of tyranny. All the length and breadth of this great land white men are free, except here on these manors. I tell you 'tis a black and rotten spot here. A stinking survival from the past!' He clenched his fist and Miranda stepped back. Katrine, wide-eyed, peeked around the edge of her skirt.

'But it's the law!' said Miranda weakly. She felt force in the little man's oratory, but she was not in the least convinced.

'The law is wrong,' said Boughton more temperately. 'And it shall be changed.'

'Without violence,' put in Jeff on a warning note, adding directly to his friend, 'Our cause will suffer if there's violence.'

The other nodded and sighed. 'See you later,' he said to Jeff. He bowed curtly to Miranda and went out.

'Now, young lady,' said Jeff, smiling at Katrine, 'let's see the finger that brought you here at this interesting moment.' He took the child's hand and led her gently to the surgery. It was a small room with a red drugget carpet. Besides the scrubbed oak bench on which lay iron forceps and a couple of scalpels, there was only a cabinet filled with bottles and pill-boxes, a stone mortar and pestle, some medical books, a table and two chairs. A beam of sunlight fell through the single uncurtained window.

Miranda reluctantly admired the deftness with which Jeff's blunt fingers unwound the bandage, and the reassuring way he spoke to Katrine. But she found nothing else to admire. She loathed his thick-set, aggressively masculine body, his boorish manners—and above all his treacherous alliance with the down-renters. She chafed to be gone and tell Nicholas. She consulted the surgery clock. Already it was past one-thirty.

'There's nothing wrong with this finger,' said Jeff, raising his head after a careful examination.

'No,' she answered, 'I didn't think there was.'

Jeff straightened and folded his arms. 'I find that most interesting. Dare I hope, then, that I've aroused a secret passion in your maiden breast? Can it be that it was solely from the hope of seeing me again that you came today? This condescension overcomes—'

'Fiddlesticks!' Miranda burst out, and was immediately horrified. Well-brought-up young ladies did not shout 'fiddlesticks'; that was a deplorable lapse into her childhood. And now the insufferable man was laughing again.

She pulled up her yellow gloves and straightened her bonnet. 'We came today, Doctor Turner, because Nicholas—' she corrected herself instantly—'the patroon wished it. I now bid you good day.'

Her little slip and the tone of her voice as she had said 'Nicholas' sobered Jeff. He scrutinized her sharply. Her fragile gold-and-white beauty did not appeal to him. He preferred a buxom bosom and high spirits along the lines of Faith Folger, who flouted her Quaker background with rosy cheeks and hearty laughter, and a passion for wearing cherry-colored ribbons in her dark curls.

Miranda, with her little pretensions, had irritated him as much as he had her. Moreover, knowing her to be a farm girl of simple upbringing he thought her a traitor to her class. The girl's head had been turned by luxury. But, he now thought, perhaps it was deeper than that. It would be a pity if the little goose fancied herself in love with Van Ryn, who was undoubtedly a handsome and romantic-looking fellow. There would be no solution to that situation, except heartbreak for the girl. Worse yet, suppose Van Ryn seduced her. Even as the idea occurred to him he rejected it. Whatever the man's faults, a desire for shoddy intrigue was not one of them. Jeff was as sure of that as he was sure of his own name.

'Did Van Ryn come with you to Hudson today?' he asked abruptly.

'Yes,' said Miranda.
'Mr.
Van Ryn escorted us.' Her eyes flew to the clock with transparent longing. She moved definitely toward the door.

Jeff on impulse put his hand on her arm. 'Miss Wells,' he said earnestly, 'why do you stay at Dragonwyck? Don't you miss your home and your family?'

Miranda colored angrily. 'You're impertinent, sir!' she said, throwing off his hand; and sweeping up Katrine she made a grand exit.

Jeff, shrugging his broad shoulders, watched her glide into the waiting barouche. He stayed frowning at the window until a knock on his door aroused him. A frowzy old woman stumbled in.

'Oh, doctor,' she whined. 'My pains're back again. I need more of the medicine.'

'Come to the surgery, then, Mrs. Potts,' he said kindly. 'Maybe we can get to the root of the trouble this time.' And in examining the aching body and searching for illuminating symptoms, he forgot everything else, as he always did.

The newly rebuilt Hudson House on Warren Street provided the Van Ryn party with an excellent dinner. Their table was set in a corner of the white-pillared dining-room, and the watchful proprietor saw to it that no lesser mortals approached the patroon. Except, of course, three anxiously hovering waiters.

Miranda told Nicholas at once about the down-rent meeting and Smith Boughton, but he made light of it. 'It's nothing but childish hysteria. I'm surprised that so sensible a man as Turner should have part in it. But it'll soon stop. I've spoken to the sheriff.'

He was in no mood for unpleasant matters. He too was enjoying the day. He had bought Katrine a rag doll and a paint box. There was something for Miranda too. A gold-and-enamel vinaigrette for smelling salts. She and Katrine were both in an ecstasy of gratitude.

The afternoon passed too quickly. Miranda dreaded the hour of return and Nicholas made no move. They wandered to Parade Hill, the promenade terrace at the foot of Warren Street, and walked leisurely about admiring the view of the Hudson and two old schooners, whalers both, which lay beside the docks below. Soon there would be no more whalers, and in a few years trains would come snorting through the peaceful river bank and deluge the terrace with soot and sparks.

But today it was quiet. There were other promenaders—girls in Quaker bonnets and demure fichus, laughing children with hoops which rolled merrily round the central fountain, old gaffers stretching their legs in the crisp sunlight.

Miranda and Nicholas spoke little. A soft contentment held them both. Nicholas, who so often retired into a remote place where she could not follow, was that afternoon all hers, responsive to her interest in the lively waterfront scenes, smiling with her at the children's antics.

And then unpleasantness marred the golden afternoon. They walked past a secluded bench on which sat two old men with pipes and mufflers.

'Ain't that the Van Ryn?' crackled the high-pitched voice of the deaf. 'For sure that's not his lady with him?'

'Indeed 'tis not! His lady's monstrous fat and doesn't go abroad.' The other voice exploded into senile chuckles. 'By hokie-nettie! Perhaps it is his—' Sudden discretion obliterated the last word, but even to Miranda the meaning was clear. Sharp misery shattered her happiness. For hours she had managed to forget Johanna.

Nicholas gave no sign that he also had heard. The red sun dipped behind the Catskills and a chill breeze sprang at them from the river. It whipped the ready color into Miranda's cheeks, fluttered her curls and green bonnet ribbons. She shivered.

He looked down at her. 'We must go home now, Miranda.' He put the faintest emphasis on 'home' and she responded with a bitterness she could not control.

'Dragonwyck's not my home. I'm there only on sufferance, and because you—' she hesitated, 'because you have not yet sent me away.—Johanna doesn't like me,' she finished very low.

They were descending the steps to the street, and though he took her arm it was with so light a touch that she could scarcely feel it. And he was silent for so long that she was frightened. She shouldn't have said that. Perhaps he was annoyed that she had seemed to criticize his wife. Or perhaps he thought her ungrateful and pleading for more of his bounty. That would be dreadful.

He handed her into the waiting barouche, and still he did not speak. She settled miserably into her corner. Katrine yawned and stretched out on the seat opposite them, Cristabel, the new rag doll, and the paint box all hugged tight in her arms. Miranda covered the child with a carriage robe.

She stole a pleading look at Nicholas. In the shadows she could barely see his profile, the thin aquiline nose with flaring nostrils, the full, compressed lips, the planes of his jaw beneath the shadow of dark hair on his cheek. Despite his stillness there was intensity in his attitude, an effect of concealed violence which had no outer manifestation. The day's sympathetic companion had disappeared once more, and she was alone.

Before they again crossed the Stockport Creek it was black night outside. The horses slowed down to a walk. The oil carriage lamps threw a flickering and uncertain light on the fir trees which hemmed the road. They entered a thick wood with underbrush so close that it scratched against the sides of the carriage. Miranda could bear the silence no longer.

'Are you angry with me, Cousin Nicholas?' she asked faintly.

He turned his head, but before he could answer they were both jolted from their separate preoccupations. A weird clamor broke from the quiet forest, war whoops and the tooting of horns. Beneath these the steady beat of a fife and drum, and defiant voices singing to the tune of 'Old Dan Tucker.'

The barouche was surrounded with dozens of masked figures in lurid calico costumes shouting and gesticulating as they waved pitchforks and spears and clubs. The near horse shied violently, and the carriage stopped.

'Batter the coach in!' yelled one of the figures, and a heavy blow from a pitchfork rebounded from the carriage's sturdy roof.

'Stop that; that's not the way!' shouted another man in a blue sheepskin mask. 'Down with the rent, Van Ryn! Get out so we may talk to you.'