House of Masques (6 page)

She felt a repugnance, an actual crawling of her skin. This was the man who had killed her brother. Kathleen wanted to run but she knew she must not. She examined him instead with the same mixture of distaste and fascination she had known as a child when she moved a wet and rotting timber behind the barn and watched the black insects scurry away from the unaccustomed light.

He looked older than Josiah's guess of twenty-six or twenty-seven, she decided, and not at all handsome or dashing. Tall certainly, no question of that, probably six feet or more, and his slenderness accentuated his height. His hair was straight and jet-black, and his face was without beard or mustache, though dark from not having shaved. The angular face reminded Kathleen of a photograph she had seen of Lincoln as a young lawyer, even to the sadness lurking in his eyes and in the hollows around them.

Captain Worthington escorted them into the large room and listened while Edward Allen told a jumbled story of their capture, the drive to the cabin, and the fire. The Captain strode into the fire-blackened bedroom, and when he returned he knelt before Kathleen with one knee on the floor like the picture in her book of fairy tales of the prince proposing marriage. What offering was this he held toward her? Ah yes, her shoe. She stretched her leg forward and he slipped the shoe onto her foot and clumsily fastened the buttons.

He smiled, the quick grin of a boy, and for a moment the sadness was gone and she saw why others might find him attractive. The smile vanished as quickly as it had come and the Captain rose and bowed to her and was gone. Only after he left did she realize neither of them had spoken.

She and Clarissa waited in front of the cabin while a short distance away Edward Allen talked to the man who had been posted to protect them. From time to time the quiet of the night was broken by the calls of Captain Worthington's men searching the woods for the kidnappers.

“Will Captain Worthington take us to the Estate?” Kathleen asked.

“I'm sure he will. Where else? Edward Allen says it's only a few miles from here and we wouldn't be able to find another lodging place at this hour of the morning in this forsaken country. Being allowed to stay any length of time at the Estate, though, is another matter.”

“I hope we can find—” Kathleen began when Captain Worthington rode into the clearing and swung down from his horse.

“They got away,” he said, “at least for now.” He led his horse to the two women. “One of you will have to ride with me.” He held his hand to Clarissa, she moved to him and he grasped her about the waist and lifted her easily onto the blanket behind the saddle.

Kathleen felt a pang of disappointment. Why had she expected him to choose her? She looked at Clarissa sitting sidesaddle, her hair swept back from her face, her delicate features calm. There was a detachment about her, as though some inner Clarissa always remained concealed. Would a man be tempted to try to pierce her outward serenity? And what would he discover within?

Yet Captain Worthington could not be interested, Kathleen decided. He must be paying deference to her age. Still, no matter how she explained away his choice and no matter how ridiculous she realized she was, Kathleen felt slighted and hurt.

One of the men helped Kathleen mount and they left the cabin, single file, Kathleen holding the saddle horn while the man walked ahead leading the horse. They came out of the woods and ahead of them the pine trees on the mountains formed a jagged border between earth and sky. The ride seemed to her a succession of fragments, interrelated yet separated, like the recollection of a dream broken by restless awakenings: the dark shapes of the riders in front of her, the horses behind, tired, walking with slow funereal steps, hooves muffled. From far away she heard a dog bark three times; she waited for him to bark again but he did not. They moved in another world, the world of night, a world she seldom visited and now she wondered why as she saw and felt its eerie beauty.

The luminescent glow of the moonlight surrounded them, muting and blurring harsh day shapes into strange and alien designs. The moon rode high, a half-moon sliding silently behind clouds and, a few minutes later, emerging to throw mottled leaf shadows on the road. Mist lay in the hollows and curled wraithlike along the ground and through the tall grass. Drifting, Insubstantial mist, yet cold and real.

A horseman trotted by. “We're almost there,” he called to her. The Worthington Estate. Almost there. Worthington. The words echoed in her mind to the rhythm of the clip-clop of the horses' hooves. Almost there. Worthington. Almost there. Worthington.

Kathleen wished she could turn back time, could be once more in Ohio with life as it had been before Michael enlisted. Or, if that were not possible, as her life had been before the letters came. The letters. The first arrived two months after the social notice informing them of Michael's death, one month after the Colonel of the regiment wrote praising her brother's services “for God and country”. A strange document, that first letter, replete with whereas's and unsigned except for the carefully printed words,
The Committee
.

She tried to remember the words, and some came back to her.
Whereas on the tenth day of October in the year eighteen hundred and seventy in the attack on a Cheyenne encampment near the upper Arkansas River, one Captain Charles Worthington, U.S.A., did with malice aforethought and without provocation shoot one Corporal Michael Donley, U.S.A., while Corporal Donley was engaged in the performance of his duty dispersing an armed band of Cheyenne warriors who through their depredations had held the Kansas Territory in a state of unrest and grievous fear, and Whereas Corporal Donley died of his wounds on the eleventh of October, and Whereas…

Kathleen had been both puzzled and curious, half-believing and half-disbelieving. Even after the second letter announced the arrest of Captain Worthington and his imminent court-martial she had withheld judgment. She talked to Mrs. Horobin and sought the old woman's advice, but she had not acted.

The third letter from the Committee, or more likely the accompanying newspaper clipping, convinced her. The clipping was from a St. Louis paper.
Unusual Occurrence at Fort Leavenworth
the smeared black type of the headline proclaimed. She read the subheading:
Captain Acquitted at Court-martial. Officer Accused in Slaying of Enlisted Man. Contradictory Testimony of Fellow Officers.
A skeptical, damning article followed.
I must find Captain Worthington
, she had decided,
before Michael will rest in peace.

Stone pillars flanked the entrance to the Estate, and in the moonlight she saw two guards saluting as the horsemen passed. The driveway looped beside a stone gatehouse and through a grove of maples. Beyond the trees she saw the road circle in front of the old house, a vast sweep of stone and wood with countless windows, sloping roofs, and tall brick chimneys. On either side the wings of the house extended into the darkness and appeared to merge into the surrounding woods.

A cold fear crept up the backs of her legs as though the mist had followed and was now enveloping her. She tightened her hold on the saddle horn. Her eyes returned to the windows, windows seemingly placed at random, round windows, square windows, oval and rectangular windows.
They are watching me
, Kathleen thought.
Judging me. And waiting.

Captain Worthington stopped at the front of the house, held his arm aloft, and the riders began to dismount and lead their horses away. The Captain lifted Clarissa and then Kathleen to the ground. The glow of gaslight from inside the window beside the door fell softly across the porch onto the pillars on either side of the steps and the bushes next to the drive.

“What's that?” One of the men ran to the porch and Kathleen heard a muttered oath. The Captain and the others followed and stood grouped next to the paneled door.

Kathleen hurried up the steps and the men stepped aside to let her pass. On both sides she heard the questions “What?” “How?” “When?” One man laughed in a high-pitched voice. Others shifted their weight from foot to foot or folded their arms across their chests as though they felt a cold wind.

The coffin leaned against the house to the right of the door. It stood almost as high as the door, built for a large man, crafted of a dark and richly grained wood.

One of the men held his lantern in front of the coffin. Kathleen saw the glint of metal and came closer and found a small, professionally lettered plaque on a level with her eyes.

She felt a tingle along her spine. A chill, a premonition. Like someone walking on a grave, she thought.

CAPTAIN CHARLES WORTHINGTON
, she read. Below the name were the dates
1845—1871
. Under the dates was a one-word epitaph:

TRAITOR.

Chapter Six

Kathleen woke from a dreamless sleep and turned onto her back, rubbed her eyes, and sank deeper into the softness of the bed. Over her head she saw a canopy, blue tassels dangling from its scalloped sides, covering the top of the four-poster. Very pretty, she thought, and nothing but a dust catcher. She frowned.
Stop thinking like a girl who works
, she told herself.
I'm a guest, not a maid.

From the light filling the room and the heat which seemed to press in upon her, Kathleen knew the sun was already high. She threw back the coverlet and sat on the edge of the bed, saw herself reflected in the mirror on the wardrobe. Such a huge room. The elegance of the flowered wallpaper. The softness of the thick pile of the blue carpet bordered with a gold fringe. White curtains drifted inward from the three windows, but the breeze brought no coolness.

Kathleen stretched both arms above her head. A guest. She was a guest on the Worthington Estate, and this was a new day. And she had only five days left. She remembered her night fears of a few hours before and shuddered, thinking of the fog and the casket.
Don't think, be active. Get up.
She walked about the room, trying to push the panic from her mind.
After all
, she thought,
I have accomplished a great deal. I
am
in the Worthington house. I do have Clarissa and Edward Allen to help me. I will succeed. I will, I
will
!

A light tapping on the door. “Good morning, Miss Stuart.” Clarissa came into the bedroom dressed in a loose white gown gathered at the waist by a sash the color of her hair. “You'll never guess what the Worthingtons have,” she said. Kathleen looked puzzled. “An indoor bathroom. It's new and on this very floor.”

“Indoors. I've never seen one before.”

“And,” Clarissa added as Kathleen walked by her, “they use store-boughten soap.”

When Kathleen returned to the bedroom, still in nightgown and robe, she found Clarissa rocking beside one of the windows. The room was on the second story, and through the window Kathleen saw an elm reaching skyward like a giant fountain. Beyond the elm, the mountainside rose in a series of wooded ridges to the summit.

A maid stood by the bed with a tray and Kathleen smelled ham and coffee. Breakfast in bed, she thought, sliding back under the sheets and beginning to eat.
I've never known such luxury.

“How do you feel this morning?” Clarissa asked when Kathleen had finished. Kathleen lifted the tray onto the night table and lay back on the piled pillows.

“A little sore. My knee and my wrist.”

“You must have gotten a lot of smoke in your lungs from the fire. Does your chest hurt?”

Kathleen took a deep breath. “No, not at all.”

“Well, we'll see what the doctor has to say.”

“A doctor? For me? What in heaven's name for?”

“If we're to stay here at the Estate, we need a reason, and Josiah suggested illness as a good excuse. What would be more natural than to have a doctor forbid you to travel? Edward Allen has gone to fetch him.”

“Clarissa, there's nothing the matter with me. The doctor will only—” Kathleen began to protest.

Clarissa walked to the bed. “Let me tell you about the doctor,” she said. “He's—” A knock at the door interrupted her. “Oh, the maid. Come in.”

It was not the maid, but a short, middle-aged woman instead, plump and smiling. “I'm Alice Lewis,” she said. “Mrs. Lewis,” she added as she inspected the room, shaking her head in disapproval. “The help you get nowadays. Some of them, like old Mrs. Ehrman, are nothing but drones. I don't know how we'll ever be ready for the ball on Saturday night. Times have certainly changed. Why, when I first came to work for the Worthingtons we had nowhere near as much help, and still we got as much work done. You wouldn't believe me,” she said coyly, “if I ever told you how many years ago that was.”

Mrs. Lewis sat by the bed. “Mr. Charles asked me to see how you were feeling this morning,” she told Kathleen. Mr. Charles. Of course, she must mean Captain Worthington.

Clarissa held the window curtains aside and then let them fall into place. She walked to the door and glanced at Kathleen and began to speak, hesitated, finally made up her mind. “Captain Worthington offered to show me the Estate,” she said. “Will you be all right if I leave you for a while?”

Kathleen sat up in surprise. Her first impulse was to say, “No, don't go!” She bit her lip, confused. “Yes, I'll be all right,” she whispered at last. Clarissa closed the door softly behind her.

“La,” Mrs. Lewis said, “your aunt's a very handsome woman.” Kathleen did not comment. “You poor dear,” the older woman went on, “kidnapped and manhandled by those horrible men, and as if that weren't enough, to come here and find the casket on the porch.” She lowered her voice. “With Mr. Charles's name and the dates, as though he's to die this very year. ‘Traitor.' What could that mean? Such troubled times we've had, ever since the gypsies.”

“The gypsies?”

“Yes, they came this April as they do every year in their long wagons with black canvas tops. Came to the Estate and asked to camp like they always do and Mr. Blasingame, him what's in charge of the Estate, says no, not this year with the Captain home and feeling poorly. I was there in the driveway when they argued, the dark men and the women with hoops of gold in their ears and chains and bangles and short, looped-up skirts.”

Kathleen started to speak and Mrs. Lewis held out her hand.

“Wait, I know what you're going to say. Yes, they do steal, a few eggs maybe, or some milk, but, oh, the bad fortune if you turn them away like Mr. B. did. Their chief stood on the seat of his wagon, I can see him now with his arms spread wide, and he cursed us in his heathen tongue, cursed this place and everyone living here, and not a week later the troubles began. Now, not two days ago, they came back, not to the Estate, but they're camped less than a mile away.”

“We had gypsies in Ohio,” Kathleen said, “and they never harmed anyone.”

“Well, of course there are gypsies and
gypsies
. I've nothing against them or their fortune telling and I don't believe all the things I hear. I just know what I know: children have disappeared after the gypsies were in the neighborhood never to be seen again. Like little Chancy Ross in the song. It's just lucky we have no children living on the Estate, that's all I have to say, or else there might have been worse trouble than we've already had.”

“What kind of trouble? Do you mean like the coffin on the porch last night?”

“Yes, for one thing. Nothing you can really put your finger on and explain, and that's what frightens me. Mr. Charles, he shrugs and says it doesn't bother him, but I know he's worried, poor man, and he's got enough on his mind without this, too. What he really needs is someone to look after him. You asked me what troubles we've had. Threats Mr. Charles has gotten, and last week the fire on the lawn at the back of the house.” She motioned toward the windows.

“Did you see the fire?” Kathleen asked.

“The flames and the shouting woke me in the night and I thought the house must be burning. I'm always afraid of fire in these great old houses, and especially now with the woods so dry. Not the house, though, it wasn't. Boards piled on the lawn, stacked upright, like one of those Indian houses, what do you call them?”

“Tepees.”

“Yes, like a tepee on the lawn, with the flames shooting toward the sky and the men running to the well for water and throwing bucketfuls on the flames, afraid they were the fire would spread.”

A tepee, Kathleen thought. Indians. She shuddered as she remembered her dream and the near-naked Indian standing over her. What had happened on the Kansas plains that the evil had spread like a malignancy through all their lives? Michael could never tell her. Would Captain Worthington?

“…never had a bad fire here, thank the Lord,” Mrs. Lewis was saying. “Luckily, when old Jared Worthington built the house, the one we're in now, not the first house which was built by
his
father, he used stone from the quarry as well as wood. Jared was Mr. Charles's grandfather, you know, and invented the Worthington Stove. Before my time, he was, but they say—”

A knock at the door. This time it was the maid, accompanied by a man of medium height, clean-shaven, with gray-black hair. The black bag in his hand told Kathleen he was the doctor.

“Dr. Samuel Gunn, delighted to make your acquaintance.” He walked to the bedside. “Your man, Edgar something-or-other, found me in the village. He was journeying to Newburgh to seek a physician when he chanced to stop in the taproom of the local inn and through a chance remark discovered I was visiting in the vicinity. Well, how's my patient this morning?”

“I don't really believe there's much wrong with her,” Mrs. Lewis said. “She seems to be completely recovered.”

“Hrrrp,” the doctor cleared his throat. “We'll see, we'll see. An experienced practitioner often discovers symptoms overlooked by the layman, no matter how discerning she may be. After four years at the Philadelphia School of Medicine, and having written several modest essays for the
Medical-Surgical Journal
, and lately having devoted myself to research for a medical volume for home use, I consider myself well-qualified in the science of diagnosis.”

He sat beside the bed and felt Kathleen's pulse, and his hazel eyes peered with interest into her mouth, eyes, and ears. “I had a patient only last year,” he said with a sideways glance at Mrs. Lewis, “a young bride who, not wanting to forego her wedding entertainments, ignored an inflammation of the throat, and three weeks later passed to the great beyond. Most unfortunate. The bridegroom was quite overcome with grief, as you can well imagine. He's since remarried, however, and this time he chose a home-loving, though plain, girl.”

“I knew a similar circumstance some years ago at the Krom Place,” Mrs. Lewis began. “One of the young Krom sisters—”

“Yes, I'm sure,” the doctor said. “Quite common these days.” He removed a stethoscope from his bag and inserted the earpieces. “Remove the robe, please,” he told her. Kathleen sat up and Mrs. Lewis took the garment from her and laid it across a chair. “Lay on your back,” he instructed Kathleen.

“Hmmmm,” the doctor said. The instrument was cold on her chest, and she flinched away. “Breathe deeply. Again. Yes, I was afraid so.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Lewis asked. Kathleen began to feel the gnaw of worry. Was something really the matter? Had she inhaled too much smoke after all?

“Genteel,” the doctor said. “That's the problem. Too genteel to perform physical exercise to ward off the onset of disease. Girls and women who should know better, beautiful girls like this young lady, from vanity go thinly dressed, coming out of warm rooms into inclement weather, neck and arms bare, clothed in thin muslin or fancy dresses. Who can expect anything else from such a course of conduct but sore throats, pleurisy, rheumatism, and a variety of other diseases which may suddenly destroy life or injure the general health?”

Mrs. Lewis began to answer, but the doctor did not pause. “Take the daily life of the wives and daughters of our men of wealth. From morning to night the same listless, sluggish, stagnating existence, with no physical exercise more invigorating than a walk up and down the street. With no mental employment more inspiring than the reading of a few indifferent novels, or the making of idle morning calls, or spending evenings at balls where late hours, thin dresses, excessive dancing, and improper food do more injury than you can imagine.”

The doctor nodded his head as he spoke, and by the time he finished Mrs. Lewis was also nodding vigorously. So much talk, Kathleen thought. Dr. Thompson, back in Ohio, had been terse and to the point. But what had the doctor found, she wondered. “Wh-what's the matter with me?” she asked.

“Inflammation of the lungs. A relatively mild case. You were very fortunate to seek out a physician before the disease could establish a foothold and make dangerous headway.”

“My father once had inflammation of the lungs,” Mrs. Lewis said. “We sliced an onion in two and let sugar seep in, and then squeezed the juice for him to drink.”

“An old-fashioned remedy,” the doctor said, “which will make the patient no worse. I advise letting Miss Stuart sit for a half hour with her feet and legs in warm water, and have her drink some warm sweating teas with bloodroot or sage added. Then, place a blanket about her shoulders, after removing her clothes, and boil a quantity of bitter herbs in a large pot or kettle. The blanket confines the steam rising from the herbs and hot water and allows it to come in contact with the body as high as the neck. Continue this treatment for another half hour, occasionally throwing into the vessel a hot brick or rock to raise the steam.”

“Should we use a mustard plaster?” Mrs. Lewis wanted to know.

“Only if she shows no improvement. If you do, place the compress on her chest for as long as the young lady can bear it. And keep her warm with hot bricks about the body while she's in bed, or put boiled corn in her ears.”

The doctor snapped his bag shut. “This is a mild case,” he said. “Miss Stuart, if she feels well enough, can get out of bed tomorrow. But in no case is she to travel during the next week.”

Kathleen sighed with relief. The doctor was prescribing exactly what Clarissa had hoped. Could Edward Allen have persuaded him? If so, how had he accomplished it?

“Quite an inconvenience to me, my coming here,” the doctor said to Mrs. Lewis. “In these cases I charge double my usual fee. That will be one dollar,” he added in a low, apologetic voice. Mrs. Lewis brought forth a purse and handed him a bill.

“And,” the doctor said from the doorway, “if either of you charming ladies should chance upon the March 1869 issue of the
Medical-Surgical Journal
, pages thirty-eight through forty-five, you might be interested in perusing my article on the salubrious effects of railroad travel.”