“Jeems? But why?” her brother protested.
“Well, yesterday when I was down by the levee he was coming in and I knew that Mr. Creighton was here and I told him. So,” she colored faintly, “then he took me across the bayou and I got some of those big swamp lilies that I’ve always wanted. And we had a long talk. Val, Jeems knows the most wonderful things about the swamps. Do you know that they still have voodoo meetings sometimes—way back in there, “.she swept her hand southward. “And the fur trappers live on houseboats, renting their hunting rights. But Jeems owns his own land. Now some northerners are prospecting for oil. They have a queer sort of .car which can travel either on land or water. And Pere Armand has church records that date back to the middle of the eighteenth century. And—”
“So that’s where you were from four until almost six,” Val laughed. “I don’t know that I approve of this riotous living. Will Jeems take me to pick the lilies too?”
“Maybe. He wanted to know why you always moved so carefully. And I told him about the accident. Then he said the oddest thing—“ She was staring past Val at the oaks.
“He said that to fly was worth being smashed up for and that he envied you.”
“Then he’s a fool!” her brother said promptly. “Nothing is worth—“ Val stopped abruptly. Five months before he had made a bargain with himself; he was not going to break it now.
“Do you know,” Ricky said to Charity, “if you really need Jeems this morning, I think I can get him for you. He told me yesterday how to find his cabin.
“But why—“ The objection came almost at once from Charity. Val thought she was more than a little surprised that Jeems, who had steadfastly refused to give her the same information, had supplied it so readily to Ricky whom he hardly knew at all.
“I don’t know,” answered Ricky frankly. “He was rather queer about it. Kept saying that the time might come when I would need help, and things like that.”
“Charity,” Val was putting her brushes straight, “I learned long ago that nothing can be kept from Ricky. Sooner or later out spills out his secrets.”
“Except Rupert!” Ricky aired her old grievance.
“Perhaps Rupert,” her brother agreed.
“Anyway, I do know where Jeems lives. Do you want me to get him for you. Charity?”
“Certainly not, child! Do you think mat I’d let you go into the swamp? Why, even men who know something of woodcraft think twice before attempting such a trip without a guide. Of course you’re not going! I think,” she put her paint-stained hand to her head, “that I’m going to have one of my sick headaches. I’ll have to go home and lie down for an hour or two.”
“I’m sorry.” Ricky’s sympathy was quick and warm. “Is there anything I can do?”
Charity shook her head with a rueful smile. “Time is the only medicine for one of these. I’ll see you later.”
“Just the same,” Ricky stood looking after her, “I’d like to know just what is going on in the swamp right now.”
“Why?” Val asked lightly.
“Because—well, just because,” was her provoking answer. “Jeems was so odd yesterday. He talked as if—as if there were some threat to us or him. I wonder if there is something wrong.” She frowned.
“Of course not!” her brother made prompt answer.
“He’s merely gone off on one of those mysterious trips of his.”
“Just the same, what if there were something wrong? We might go and see.”
“Nonsense!” Val snapped. “You heard what Charity said about going into the swamp alone. And there is nothing to worry about anyway. Come on, let’s change. And then I have something to show you.”
“What?” she demanded.
“Wait and see.” His ruse had succeeded. She was no longer looking swampward with that gleam of purpose in her eye.
“Come on then,” she said, prodding him into action.
Val changed slowly. If one didn’t care about mucking around in the garden, as Ricky seemed to delight in doing, there was so little in the way of occupation. He thought of the days as they spread before him. A little riding, a great amount of casual reading and—what else? Was the South “getting” him as the tropics are supposed to “get” the Northerners?
That unlucky meeting with a mountaintop had effectively despoiled him of his one ambition. Soldiers with game legs are not wanted. He couldn’t paint like Charity, he couldn’t spin yams like Rupert, he possessed a mind too inaccurate to cope with the intricacies of any science.
And as a business man he would probably be a good street cleaner.
What was left? Well, the surprise he had promised Ricky might cover the problem. As he reached for a certain black note-book, someone knocked on his door.
“Mistuh Val, wheah’s Miss ‘Chanda? She ain’t here, an’ Ah wants to—”
Lucy stood in the hall. The light from the round window was reflected from every corrugated wave of her painfully marcelled hair. Her vast flowered dress had been thriftily covered with a dull-green bib-apron and she had changed her smart slippers for the shapeless gray relics she wore indoors. Just now she looked warm and tired. After all, running two households was something of a task even for Lucy.
“Why, she should be in her room. We came up to change. Miss Chanty’s gone home with a headache. What was it you wanted her for?”
“Mistuh Val”—she thrust a mound of snowy and beruffled white stuff at him—“These curtains has got to be hung. An’ does Miss ‘Chanda want ‘em in her room or not?”
“Better put them up. I’ll tell her about it. Here wait, let me open that door.”
Val looked into Ricky’s room. As usual, it appeared as though a whirlwind, a small whirlwind but a thorough one, had passed through it. Her discarded costume lay tumbled across the bed and her slippers lay on the floor, one upside down. He stooped to set them straight.
“It do beat all,” Lucky said frankly as she put her burden down on a chair, “how dat chile make a mess. Now yo’, Mistuh Val, jest put everythin’ jest so. But Miss ‘Chanda leave hers which way afore Sunday! Looka dat now.” She pointed to the half-opened door of the closet.
A slip lay on the floor. Ricky must have been in a hurry; that was a little too untidy even for her.
A sudden suspicion sent Val into the closet to investigate.
Ricky’s wardrobe was not so extensive that he did not know every dress and article in it very well. It did not take him more than a moment to see what was missing.
“Did Ricky go riding?” Val asked. “Her habit is gone.”
“She ain’ gone ‘cross de bayo’ fo’ de hoss,” answered Lucky, reaching for the curtain rod. “Anyway, Sam took dat critter to be shoed.”
“Then where—“ But Val knew his Ricky only too well.
She had a certain stubborn will of her own. Sometimes opposition merely drove her into doing the forbidden thing.
And the swamp had been forbidden. But could even Ricky be such a fool? Certain memories of the past testified, mat she could. But how? Unless she had taken Sam’s boat— Without a word of explanation to Lucy, he dashed out of the room and downstairs at his best pace. As he left the house Val broke into a stumbling run. There was just a chance that she had not yet left the plantation.
But the bayou levee was deserted. And the post where Sam’s boat was usually moored was bare of rope; the boat was gone. Of course Sam Two might have taken it across the stream to the farm.
That hope was extinguished as the small brown boy came out of the bushes along the stream side.
“Sam, have you seen Miss ‘Chanda?” Val demanded.
“Yessuh.”
“Where?” Carrying on a conversation with Sam Two was like prying diamonds out of a rock. He possessed a rooted distaste for talking.
“Heah, suh.”
“When?”
“Jest a li’l while ago.”
“Where did she go?”
Sam pointed downstream.
“Did she take the boat?”
“Yessuh.” And men for the first time since Val had known him Sam volunteered a piece of information. “She say she a-goin’ in de swamp.”
Val leaned back against the bole of one of the willows.
Then she had done it! And what could he do? If he had any idea of her path, he could follow her while Sam aroused Rupert and the house.
“If I only knew where—“ he mused aloud.
“She a-goin’ to see dat swamper Jeems,” Sam continued.
“Heh, hen,” a sudden cackle of laughter rippled across his lips. “Dat ole swamper think he so sma’t. Think no one find his house—”
“Sam!” Val rounded upon him. “Do you know where Jeems lives?”