The Opal-Eyed Fan Page 8

  but Askra was far different from anyone she had ever met.

  Now the Indian woman stretched forth a hand which was clawlike as to fingers, even the nails, dull and dirty, taking on the semblance of the talons of some unwholesome bird such as the vultures Persis had seen once or twice in the past.

  “You find—ghost—thing—” The words were voiced protestingly, almost as if forced one by one with great effort from under the overhang of that beak of a nose.

  Persis nearly snatched away her own hands to hide behind her back in denial. Then her stubbornness and independence strengthened her.

  “I found this—out there under a stone.” She pointed to the back door, tried to keep her voice as even and emphatic as always. There were no such things as witches—ghosts. She knew enough to be sure of that. And she was not going to let herself be stampeded into believing otherwise.

  “Ghost thing–bad–”

  Persis knew now what Molly had meant when she said that Askra’s intent gaze did make one feel that the hag could summon powers beyond the comprehension of ordinary people. Only she was not going to give in to any such foolish idea!

  The Indian woman stretched her hand out farther, extending her fingers as if to grasp the box. Now her eyes changed, were veiled as her wrinkled lids fell. She made, however, no move to pick up the box. It was just as if it radiated some form of heat which her hand could feel.

  “Not of—” She no longer spoke English but rather a gabble of words totally unknown to the girl. “Bloody–it has been—it will be again. You take it.”

  Now using her fingertips, Askra pushed the box toward Persis.

  “It is for you—a gift.”

  “A gift?” Persis echoed.

  “A gift of blood. To your hand only will it go. And in your hand it will bring life—and death. She wishes it so.”

  “She–?”

  Askra was already shuffling toward the outer door. She did not answer and in a moment was outside, the still unopened box left lying on the table. Persis was torn by two almost equal emotions. One demanded that she return the thing to where she had found it, scratch broken shells and earth over it. But she found that she could not do that. It had suddenly become so important that she know—She had to know!

  The Indian woman had been obviously trying to frighten her; that was it. Molly said that most of the islanders held Askra in such awe that they gave her what she wanted and kept carefully out of her way thereafter.

  Slowly the girl picked up a knife, inserted its point into the edge age had sealed shut, and began to pry. This had been a pirate stronghold once. The thought of some treasure crossed her mind but she forgot her uneasiness as she worked to loosen the leaden band around its side which apparently locked it closed. Loosening the end of one strip, she peeled that loose in a single piece. And once that band was gone, it was easy to raise the lid.

  There was a mass of age-rotted fiber there. That she drew out carefully. Then a single object, well wrapped in what could only be a strip of oiled silk (gone crackly with age and giving forth a disagreeable smell) appeared.

  Persis plucked gingerly at that, not liking the feel of it against her fingers. It unrolled slowly and she found she had uncovered a closed fan. But—

  This was the one Lydia had shown her, with such a fantastic history! There was no mistaking the opal-eyed cats staring banefully up at her from the heavily carved end sticks. Except when she tried to open it, there was no spread. The thing was made to look like a fan, yes, but a second close observation showed no folds. It was a solid, heavy copy of the closed fan Lydia had displayed—even grooves along the top to suggest the edges of real folds.

  And, she hated it!

  Persis prided herself on her sensible approach to life. She certainly discounted Lydia’s relished ghost story. This could not be Lydia’s fan, of course, though it was so closely a duplicate, except that it must remain furled. Persis found that she shrank from touching it at all.

  Instead, using the flaking, oiled silk to cover her fingers, she recovered it quickly, to fit it back into its coffin. Why did the word coffin seem to fit so well, asked one portion of her mind? But that was what it was—encoffined.

  Hurriedly she piled the disintegrating fiber over it and slammed the lid back on the box. As best she could, she retwisted the lead strip, sealing it around the sides. Though, she was sure, not well enough to keep the sea damp from reaching the contents. But that did not matter. This was an instrument of evil!

  Then she was astounded by her own thoughts. How could any object convey to her such a sense of heightened evil which this held? It was not natural in these enlightened days. She knew that witches and curses, and all the like, were only a part of such old romances silly schoolgirls traded and read in order to have the pleasure of shivering over impossible horrors.

  Taking up the box once more she determinedly went out the rear door. This was going right back where she found it. And Askra’s comments, or warnings, whichever those had been, were only the meandering of a half-crazed old woman who fed upon the awe and fear she aroused in the superstitious.

  Persis found the hole from which she had freed the box and worked that back into its former resting place, pushing in shells and earth, tramping back and forth with stolid determination over the spot that it might stay safely hidden and buried.

  It was not until she was back in the house again, washing her earth-stained hands that Persis felt comfortable. Nobody was going to find that again. Still, she had to fight down a small stir of curiosity. A fan which was not a fan—what had been its purpose? She was sure that the design on the end sticks had been exactly the same—the staring, enigmatic cats with their opal eyes giving them almost the look of life. She had just hung up the towel when she heard a stir in the silent house for the first time. Mrs. Pryor came in, her usual calm expression gone. Even several strands of hair had loosened at the back of her neck in a way which made her look more abandoned even than if she had allowed the whole mass (which Persis was sure was neatly pinned over a roll of padding) to stream free.

  “The Captain—” She hesitated just within the door, her fingers twisting together over the sample spread of her apron, her face less pink than usual. “Signals from the ship—the Captain has been injured!”

  “Captain Leverett? Are they bringing him ashore?”

  “Yes, yes—we must be ready—”

  Persis was already on her way. “Into his own room,” she said firmly. “I will move my things. If you do not mind I can use Uncle Augustin’s chamber.”

  “Of course,” but Mrs. Pryor seemed hardly to hear her. She had unslung the ring of keys which she wore at her waist as her badge of office and was heading toward a tall cupboard on the left. “Hammond has gone for Dr. Veering—Hurt—never before—” But Persis judged that she was talking to herself now.

  She herself sped down the hall and up the stairs. Once in the chamber she caught armloads of clothing Molly had labored to freshen and carried them across the hall, to dump them on the bed there. Her trunk—they would have to bring that later. She grabbed at brush, comb, mirror, and a bottle of toilet water which had miraculously ridden through the ordeal of the Arrow wrapped in three petticoats. Uncle Augustin’s watch from the bedside table–Just as she looked around to be sure she had forgotten nothing, Sukie came in, her arms laded with fresh bed linen and, behind her, Lydia. It was a much subdued Lydia, lacking that light malice which so often marked her face to give her such a discontented expression.

  “I can’t believe it—Crewe—!” she burst out. “If it’s bad—” She bit her lip. “Crewe isn’t one to take chances—ever—and—Not Crewe!” She gave a short wail, but as she did so Mrs. Pryor stalked in, behind her a second maid carried a pile of torn linen suitable for bandages, and small pots with oiled paper tied over their tops for lids.

  “Don’t you take on, Miss Lydia!” she said sharply. “Dr. Veering is on his way.”

  “Crewe—” Lydia was shaking throughout h
er body, and Persis, seeing how she might help, put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and drew her across the hall to that place of greater confusion where she had dumped all her possessions without thought.

  “You have to have faith,” Persis said. “And he’s an excellent seaman, you know that.” It was awkward for her to find words and she began embarrassedly to fold up underlinen.

  Lydia’s hand went out to smooth the full skirt of a tumbled dress. She did not look up.

  “Crewe’s always just—just been there,” she said with a catch in her voice. “I could depend on Crewe.”

  “And you will continue to do so,” returned Persis briskly, with a confidence she was not sure of.

  7

  But Crewe Leverett was not all right, nor was he a good patient. Where Uncle Augustin had withdrawn into a silent world of endurance without vocal complaint after his seizure, always polite, but remoter than ever to those who cared for his bodily needs (as if he himself had disowned that body at times), the Captain proved impatient and demanding. And his injuries were not light ones. He had a broken shoulder, two cracked ribs, and a slight case of concussion, gained during his efforts to save a Dutch brig piled up not far from where the Arrow had met its fate earlier. Dr. Veering was able to keep him under the influence of opiates for the first hours after the shoulder was strapped and the ribs set. But even in his drugged sleep his voice would ring out suddenly in some sharp order. It was plain though he lay in his bed he was back in spirit on the brig. They had not been able to save the ship as they had the Arrow, though his men, under the mate, Lan Harvery, had managed to secure half the crew (those who had not been swept overboard at the first crash) and perhaps a third of the cargo, which was now piled below on the same wharf which had earlier held that taken from the Arrow.

  Lydia provided no help in the sick room. Apparently the fact that Crewe was liable to the same dangers met by other wreckers came as a shock to his sister. And, Persis, remembering her own confusion and dismay when Uncle Augustin had suddenly changed from the dominate head of the household to an invalid, thought she knew how the other girl felt.

  Save that he had not indulged Lydia’s desire to travel it was plain that Crewe had done all he could to make his sister’s life pleasant and without care. If she had learned any household duties in her Charleston school, such skills had long since vanished from her mind. So she proved awkwardly inept in the sick room. Somehow, without any discussion about the matter, it was Persis and Molly who backed Mrs. Pryor in the care of the Captain.

  And, once he had regained consciousness, he was the most difficult of charges, demanding that, since Veering would not allow him out of bed, various of his crew and the islanders he employed be summoned to receive their orders. Until Dr. Veering rebelled and said that Crewe Leverett might command at sea, but the sick room was his quarterdeck and he would have no more of this going in and out.

  That the Captain was running a fever Persis knew from her own observation whenever she came to bring Mrs. Pryor, who seldom left his side, some draft or herbal medication she had asked for. His face was so flushed that the red showed even beneath the brown weathering the sea had given his skin, and his eyes were far too bright. He seemed to wear a perpetual scowl of outrage, as if he could not yet believe that this had happened to him. And he only was quiet when under drugs, which worried Dr. Veering.

  “It is the head wound,” Persis heard him tell Mrs. Pryor. “This continued excitability may have been caused by that. I have never known Crewe to be so unreasonable before. There may have been a slight fracture of the skull. But we must keep him quiet—that above all. Nothing to arouse him further.”

  They divided their time so there was always one at watch in the room. Molly reported twice he had aroused and demanded to know—with words she would not repeat—what a strange female was doing by his bedside. And before she could answer he slipped away from consciousness again.

  It was the early morning of the second day that Persis took her place in the chair which faced the bed, dismissing Molly and Mrs. Pryor to get the rest they needed. A single candle burned as the day without was still only the faintest gray streak across the sky. And, though the netting veiled him somewhat, she found herself studying his face, hoping that she was right in her guess that he was sleeping more naturally and that the fever was going down.

  He was wedged in with pillows so that he could not inadvertently roll onto his injured side. But now and then his head turned on the higher pillow behind him as if he could so shake off some fragment of an unpleasant dream, and that scowl seemed to have permanently creased his forehead.

  There was a bristle of pale stubble across his chin, cheeks, and upper lip, but he slept with his mouth closed. And, in spite of his scowl, Persis began to realize that Crewe Leverett might be termed a fine figure of a man. The stiffness of their last interview had left him; he looked younger, less foreboding.

  His head turned again and she saw his tongue tip travel over his lips. Quietly she arose and went to the bed table. As she had seen Mrs. Pryor do many times the last two days, she dipped the edge of a small linen towel into a basin of water and, parting the netting, she stooped to wipe his face with the damp cloth. Not once but several times. He sighed and half-opened his eyes.

  There was a feeding cup with a spout, another of Mrs. Pryor’s sick-room aids. Persis used that to give him a drink, and he swallowed thirstily. She dared to touch the skin on his forehead—it was damp and not, she thought, entirely from the toweling. Perhaps the fever was breaking! Then she discovered that his eyes were fully open and he was gazing up at her, the scowl gone, just puzzlement mirrored in them now.

  “You are not—Lydia—” His voice was a harsh whisper.

  “I am Persis Rooke,” she returned and allowed her fingers to slide down to cover his mouth. “I was on the Arrow. Now rest, Captain Leverett, you have been hurt and have a fever.”

  But he did not close his eyes she noticed as she turned away from setting the feeder back on the table, and drew again the bed net. His eyes, dark as they had seemed earlier, were really blue, not the light, more shallow blue of Lydia’s—rather like the blue of the deep ocean he had set himself to master.

  A thought struck her. “Do you want Lydia?”

  For the first time his lips shaped a shadow of a smile. And even as faint as that was, the change in his face startled Persis. She had seen him angry as he had been on board the Arrow, she had seen him handle what must have been a daunting duty when he officiated at the burial of Uncle Augustin, but she had never seen the least hint of lightness or youthfulness in his expression before.

  “Lydia,” his voice still was hardly above that whisper, “is not well versed in sick-room attendance.”

  “She probably has never had to face it before,” Persis returned tactfully.

  “And you have?”

  “My uncle was ill for many weeks before we left New York,” she answered composedly. “Molly, Shubal, and I were all he had to depend upon.”

  “Molly—” Once more he looked puzzled. “Oh, the one who pours a draft down you whether or no. She reminds—me—of—my old nurse—”

  His eyelids were drooping, his voice slurred away into the even breathing of a sleeper. Just then Mrs. Pryor came in, carrying a tray piled with various bowls, napkins, and armed with such an air of purpose that Persis did not go back to her chair.

  “I think his fever has broken,” she reported.

  Mrs. Pryor made her own examination. “Praise the Lord, and it has! Did he wake?”

  “Only for a moment or two. I gave him a drink of water.”

  “Good enough. We shall get some broth into him today.” The housekeeper bustled about, changing the things on the night table for those she had brought with her. Persis offered to take the discarded bowls and cloths away.

  “Kind of you, Miss Rooke. Then I suggest you lie down. You look a little peaked.” It was plain that Mrs. Pryor had already dismissed her.

  Per
sis put the tray on a table in the upper hall, to be picked up by Sukie later, and went to what was now her chamber. She found Molly there and also two cans of water, one hot, one cool, waiting.

  “He’s better. The fever broke–”

  Molly nodded. “He’s a fighter that one, just like Mr. Augustin. Only he doesn’t have the weight of years on him to hold him down. Miss Persis, you look worn out. Take a nice sponge bath now and get to bed. I’ll bring you up some toast and tea and then you just sleep and–”

  She had been folding aside garments in the lower drawer of the chest apparently hunting a fresh night rail. Now she straightened up, something else in her hands.

  “Miss Persis, whatever in the world is this? I’ve never seen it before!”

  Persis took one long look and could not believe her own eyes. The fan—the opal-eyed fan!

  “Open it,” she demanded.

  Molly shook her head. “It doesn’t open. The sticks seem all stuck together like—”

  Then it was the fan she had found—the one she reburied! There could not be two such around. Was she haunted by the thing?

  “It isn’t mine, Molly,” she forced calm into her voice. “Put it back in the bottom drawer. Someone must have forgotten and left it there. I’ll ask Miss Lydia about it.”

  But all the time she sponged her tired, hot body, put on the night rail Molly had laid out for her, and then crawled into bed, she was seeing that fan as Molly had held it. Who had known that she found it—only that Indian Askra. And why would she dig it up again and hide it in Persis’ room? The girl was afraid, afraid enough to wish that Molly would hurry back with the tea and toast she had promised. She wanted to ask Molly to stay with her. But what reason could she give? She had no proof except her own word that she had indeed found the fan in the sealed box (she wondered what had become of that) and reburied it again, because just to hold it made her frightened of it.

  Settled back against her pillows she kept her eyes on the drawer into which Molly had dropped the fan—if it were a fan at all. She almost expected to see that drawer inch open, the black carving with the staring eyes of the opal rise into her sight again.