Part 9 (1/2)

”I suppose I am glad to have learned something of my ident.i.ty at last,” he said. ”But my mother and grandmother are dead, and if my father is still living I have no way of tracing him. As for my mother's uncle, he has apparently known for twenty-seven years where I am and has shown no interest in making himself known to me. I have done very well without him and can continue to do so for a week or two longer until he dies.”

”Oh, Joel.” She sighed and relaxed into a woman again. She leaned back on the sofa. ”You are hurting very badly. And you are trying to harden yourself against the pain and even deny it is there. You will feel a great deal better if you admit it.”

”And this is a pearl of wisdom from someone who knows?” he said.

Color flooded her cheeks and he was immediately contrite. Was he now going to lash out at the very person he had sought out for comfort? She had given it with unstinting generosity. ”Yes, that is exactly right,” she said. ”It feels a bit shameful to be suffering, does it not? As though one must have done something to deserve it. Or as if one were admitting to some weakness of character at being unable to shake off the hurt. But hiding it can turn one to marble with nothing but hollowness inside-and an unacknowledged pain. Do you believe Mr. c.o.x-Phillips was exaggerating when he told you he had only a week or two left to live?”

”No,” he said. ”It was clearly what his physician had told him and what he believed. And he looks far from well. He is eighty-five years old and looks a hundred. He is tired of living. He has outlasted everyone who has ever meant anything to him and probably everything too.”

”Did he try to persuade you not to leave?” she asked. ”Did he ask you to visit again?”

”No to both questions,” he said. ”He invited me out there purely on a rather malicious whim, Camille. I refused to play a part in his game when he had probably expected that I would leap at the chance of inheriting whatever fortune he has. That was the end of the matter. There was no grand sentiment on either side when he told me who I was. He did not clasp me to his bosom as his long-lost grand-nephew. But then, I was never lost, was I? Only unclaimed, unwanted baggage. He made not the smallest pretense of feeling for me any of the sentiment he claimed his sister felt. Yes, it was a bit upsetting to learn the truth about myself so abruptly and unexpectedly and dispa.s.sionately. I cannot deny it. My head and every emotion were in a whirl after I had left him. I know I wandered the streets here for hours, though I would not be able to tell you exactly where I went. When I burst in upon you, I behaved like a madman and dragged you here when it was probably the last thing you wanted to do after a day of teaching. But you are wrong when you say I am still hurting. I am not, and I have you to thank for that. You have been kindness itself. I will not keep you any longer, though. I will walk you back home.”

”Joel, you are speaking absolute nonsense.” The grim schoolmistress had returned to confront him from the sofa. ”You are going to have to go back. You must realize that.”

”Back?” he said. ”Up there? To c.o.x-Phillips's, do you mean? Absolutely not. For what purpose? I have nothing more to say to him and I am of no further use as far as he is concerned. He will have to find someone else to whom to leave his money if he really hates his relatives so much. That is his concern, not mine. Let me walk you home.” Edgar and Marvin would be back from work soon and it might be more difficult then to smuggle her out unseen.

She did not move, and now she was the Amazon as well as the schoolmistress. She really was a disconcerting female. ”He is your last surviving link with your mother,” she said. ”While he is alive he can tell you more, but it does not sound as if he will be alive for long. Did he tell you her name?”

He looked at her with open hostility before turning away to stare out through the window. She was not going to let this thing go, was she? He might have known it. ”Cunningham,” he said.

He heard her cluck her tongue. ”Her first name,” she said.

”What does it matter?” he asked her. ”A boy does not call his mother by her first name anyway.”

”But he knows it,” she said. ”And you have never called her anything else either, have you? There was never anyone to call Mama.”

No. He was surprised by the shaft of pain that knifed through him. There never had been. Perhaps that was one of the worst things about growing up an orphan. There was no Mama-or Papa either. And by G.o.d, there was going to be no self-pity. No more of it, anyway. Already, after a few hours of wallowing in it, he was sick of it.

”Was she dark haired and dark eyed like you?” she asked. ”Or was she blond and blue eyed, perhaps? Or-”

”If she had had dark coloring,” he said, ”c.o.x-Phillips would not have been so sure that it was the Italian who fathered me.”

”What was his name?” she asked.

”Something long and unp.r.o.nounceable that ended in vowels,” he said. ”He does not remember it. He probably never tried to learn it. To a man like c.o.x-Phillips all foreigners are inferior beings to be despised.”

”Did your mother see you before she died?” she asked. ”Was she the one who named you Joel? Why that particular name?”

He turned on her, angry now, even though he owed her everything but anger. ”Do you imagine,” he asked her, ”that that crusty old man in his mansion up on the hill would know the answers to such questions? Do you imagine he cares? Do you imagine I care?”

”Yes to the last question,” she said. ”I think you do care or that you will care-perhaps when it is too late to get any answers at all. Just a couple of weeks ago I believe I would have said that nothing could be worse than what had happened to me-and to Abigail and Harry. But something could, I realize now. If our mother had known early on that she was not legally married, she might have left my father, and it is altogether possible we might have ended up at an orphanage, perhaps even three separate ones, and been told nothing about ourselves except our names. Perhaps not even those. Our father was not a good man. I understand now that he was incapable of loving me no matter how hard I tried. He loved only himself. But at least I know who he was. I knew and I know my mother and my brother and sister. I know who I am. I do not yet know who I will become because my circ.u.mstances have changed so drastically, but I know where I came from, and I think I realize now fully for the first time how important that is.” She paused. ”I am sorry your suffering has made this clear to me.”

He gazed at her for a few moments, realizing that she had just come to a sort of epiphany of her own. She was all haughty aristocrat and stern schoolmistress and stubborn Amazon and . . . Camille. He went striding off without a word to his studio, where he grabbed a sketchbook and a piece of charcoal and went back into the living room to sit on the chair from which he had risen a few minutes ago. Without looking at her he drew the swift, rough outline of a woman with slightly untidy hair and a look of pa.s.sionate intensity on her face. It was what he thought of as the Camille part of her.

”Is this always your answer to something you do not wish to talk about?” she asked. ”Is this your escape from reality?”

He kept on sketching for a while. ”Perhaps,” he said, ”it is my way of marshaling my thoughts. Perhaps it is my escape into reality. Or perhaps it is my way of filling in time until you allow me to walk you home.”

”You think you want to be rid of me,” she said, seemingly uncowed by the petty insult. ”But it is your own troubling thoughts of which you want to be rid. You know you will forever regret it if you do not go back.”

”Do you realize how incredibly fascinating you are, Camille?” he asked. And how irritating?

”Nonsense,” she said. ”I have never cultivated either beauty or charm, much less womanly wiles. I have cultivated only the will to do what I believe to be right in all circ.u.mstances.”

He glanced up at her and smiled. She was looking prunish. ”You will realize your own fascination,” he said, ”after I have painted you.”

”Then your painting will be worthless,” she told him. ”I thought you refused to flatter your subjects. Why would you make an exception of me?”

He continued looking at her for a few moments so that he would get her eyebrows right. They would look rather too heavy on most women, but they were actually just right with her dark hair and strong features. He had not noticed that before. Strangely, he was not always an observant person when he looked merely with his eyes. He often did not see people clearly unless and until he started to sketch and paint them and draw upon what his intuition had sensed about them.

”You of all people will not be painted with flattery,” he a.s.sured her before looking back down at his sketch. ”You will be painted as who you are when all the poses and defenses and masks have been stripped away.”

But would he ever know her completely? Or understand her fully? One never did, did one? One never knew even oneself to the deepest depths. How could one be expected to know another human being, then? It was an uncomfortable realization when he prided himself upon understanding the subjects of his portraits.

”I am horribly alarmed,” she told him curtly without looking alarmed at all. ”You are very adroit at changing a subject.”

”Was there one to change?” he asked, smiling at her again.

”You have to go back,” she said. ”You have to talk to Mr. c.o.x-Phillips and find out all you can about yourself. You will forever regret it if you do not. It is true that your grandmother treated you badly, Joel, but it is equally true that she treated you very well. It is all a matter of perspective. You must find out more so that you can understand better. You must find out all you can about your mother. Had she lived, everything might have been different. Perhaps she is someone you need to love even though you will never know her in person. At least you can find out all you can.”

”Sentimental drivel,” he said. ”He would conclude I had changed my mind about being in his will and had come crawling back there to ingratiate myself with him. He would a.s.sume avarice had caught up with me.”

”Then tell him he is wrong,” she said. ”You must go. I shall go with you.”

Joel set aside his sketch pad-he could not get her stubborn chin right anyway without making her look like a caricature-and leaned back in the chair. He crossed his arms over his chest and rested one booted ankle across the other knee. He ought to have gone to Edwina. Or to Miss Ford. Or come back here to brood alone. His first impression of Miss Camille Westcott had been the right one. She was overbearing and obnoxious.

”To hold my hand, I suppose,” he said. ”To prod me forward with a sharp finger at my back. To prompt me with the questions I need to ask. To scold the old man if he makes me cry.”

Her lips virtually disappeared. She sat up straight and was doing the perfect-posture thing again. Her spine presumably did not need the support of the back of the sofa. It was made of steel.

”I thought to offer moral support,” she said. ”You clearly do not need it. Just as I do not need your escort back to the orphanage, Mr. Cunningham. I daresay I will not be accosted more than four or five times as I walk alone, and doubtless my screams will bring gentlemen running to my rescue. You will do as you please with regards to Mr. c.o.x-Phillips. I have learned that you are stubborn to a fault. It does not matter to me the snap of my fingers what you do.”

She got to her feet and Joel jumped to his. He was between her and the hallway, so she stood where she was, holding his gaze, her jaw like granite. The Amazon in a belligerent mood. If she had had a spear in her hand . . .

”I made some soup yesterday,” he said. ”I ate some last night and did not poison myself. Let me warm it up. I bought some bread at the bakery early this morning too. Stay and eat with me.”

”To hold your hand?” she asked.

”I need one hand to hold the bowl and the other to spoon up the soup,” he told her. ”I apologize for what I said. You have been remarkably kind in coming here and listening to my ravings. Alas, I have repaid your goodness with bad temper. Stay? Please?”

It had been a purely impulsive invitation. Whatever would they talk about if she agreed? And what were the chances that Edgar or Marvin would knock on his door for some reason or other? Or that one or both of them would see or hear her leave later? But he did not want to be alone yet.

What if the soup had thickened to such a degree that it would need to be chiseled with a sharp-edged knife? He was not the world's best cook.

”What kind of soup?” she asked.