For the first time Persis allowed herself to admit that. Dull, dull, dull! The word repeated itself in her mind as she went up the inner stairs of the house. She had accepted that dullness because then she had nothing to compare with it. Now—
“So there you are!”
Startled so quickly out of her own thoughts, Persis saw Lydia waiting at the top of the stairs. The other girl was not wearing her usual finery. Rather she had pulled about her a wrapper of heavy Indian muslin, while behind her was Sukie, laden down with a big sponge, several towels, and a small basket in which there was both soap and a bottle of toilet water.
“The storm filled the bathing pool well.” Lydia pulled her wrapper tighter about her. “We can have the use of it to cool ourselves.”
That darksome hole below the kitchen floor! Persis looked at her in startled amazement. Did Lydia mean go down there!
“Didn’t Mrs. Pryor tell you? It’s just right now.”
“The turtles—” Persis said the first thing at the fore of her mind.
Lydia laughed. “Lord, they’re penned up near the canal; we don’t go near that part. But it’s good to splash about in all this heat.”
Persis considered the suggestion carefully. She had a good idea that Lydia was not speaking of something which she herself did not consider perfectly ordinary. And since the sea wind had died, Persis’ walk to the shore had left her feeling unpleasantly hot. The sponge baths which suited a lady might perhaps not be all one needed in such a climate as this.
“Wear an old shift,” Lydia advised her. “And don’t worry about towels and such; Sukie has plenty.”
There was a note of challenge in Lydia’s words. And Persis decided that she was going to accept the invitation. If there was any danger, she was sure that it would never have been issued.
“I’ll hurry.” She passed Lydia and began to unbutton and untie almost before she closed the door of her room. This was a new form of excitement, a new part of this life which was not dull.
She dropped the petticoats which were so hot and dragged so, at once; unlaced the stays which chafed her. She had an old shift, and there was her wrapper, her slippers. She stopped only to snatch that ridiculous bow out of her hair, Molly’s attempt to enliven her appearance, and then she did join Lydia who was waiting, openly impatient.
The trapdoor in the kitchen had been flung open and the light of a lantern gleamed up from below. Persis could not hesitate with Lydia already setting foot on the ladder to descend matter-of-factly.
So she followed her hostess down rungs which were damp with memory of the storm, to step out on a platform of wet stone where two lanterns gave a measure of light.
Lydia gestured to the right. “That’s the cistern. It’s both rain and spring fed. We dip in over here—”
“Over here” was to the left where there were water-washed steps leading down into the flood. Lydia handed Sukie her wrapper and kicked off her slippers. But, Persis noticed, she used caution as she went down the steps where the water washed first her ankles and then her knees, and then to her waist. She took those steps one at a time and held on to a soaked rope which served here as a banister.
When she halted, she was breast high. Then she looked up to Persis.
“It is no deeper in this part—unless the storm has raised the water level. Sukie, give me the soap.” She deftly caught that as the maid tossed it down to her and fell to lathering her hands and arms. Gingerly, Persis began the same descent. The water was chill, or seemed so at first, in here shut away from the sun and the air. And the smell was strongly that of the sea. But it was good to feel it against her skin, cooling as it rose up about her body.
Reassured by Lydia’s unconcern, she joined the other girl.
“One can swim out to the canal—even out to sea that way.” Lydia held out the cake of scented soap and pointed with her chin toward the left where the lantern light failed to show any sign of wall. “Crewe opened it up in case of Indian attack. Other houses have cisterns and pools, but this is the only one with an escape way.”
She scooped up handsful of the water and splashed her face.
“Cool—it is so good to be cool!” Then she ducked down until the water ringed her neck. “Crewe swims, but he won’t teach me—or at least he’s never home long enough to take the trouble. There’s another rope under the water—you hold that and pull yourself out if you have to. Ahhh—” She closed her eyes blissfully.
Persis used the soap. It had the clean tang of herbs against the stronger scent of the sea, and the water was like the softest of linen enfolding her body.
“Miss Persis!”
She edged around to face the water-covered steps down which she had come so cautiously. Molly had elbowed aside the island maid and stood with a distinct frown of disapproval on her face.
“Miss Persis,” now she spoke as she had when she had taken over Persis’ childhood welfare and entertainment, “you come straight out of there—no tellin’ what kind of nasty fish or thing can be swimming around waiting to get at you!”
“There’s a net across the sea entrance,” Lydia said, glancing from Persis to Molly and then back again with a rather sly set of eyes, as if she wanted to see just how much Persis was ruled by Molly’s disapproval.
“I am perfectly all right,” Persis summoned up confidence. “You need not worry, Molly.”
At least the maid did not voice the rest of the arguments Persis had no doubt were burning on her tongue. But she became an embodiment of complete disapproval until Persis, having asserted her independence and knowing that she still had her duty of watching Captain Leverett, haltingly climbed the steps once again.
With a distinct sniff, Molly flung around the girl the large towel she had taken from Sukie.
9
Persis had asserted her independence but, she discovered, she had not won Molly to acknowledge that in turn. The maid was ominously silent as she escorted her mistress back upstairs to her own chamber. So much so, Persis was piqued into speech.
“You should try bathing so, Molly. It’s wonderful to be so cool in this weather!”
The maid sniffed.
“There’s worse things than bein’ hot, Miss Persis. If Miss Lydia wants to go rampagin’ around so, you need have no reason to join her. A sorry sight you make now, both of you!” Her tongue held a sharp edge Persis knew of old. Molly was really upset.
“But-they all do it,” the girl pointed out. “And when the weather is so hot it is wonderful to find a cool spot—”
“Miss Persis, you was raised a lady. And a lady don’t go around bathin’ out in the open like that. I think you’d be ashamed.”
Molly set her lips tight together, as she could on occasion, and Persis sighed inwardly. There was nothing one could do when the maid was in this mood of righteous indignation.
Under Molly’s eye she dressed, submitted to a none-too-gentle repiling of her hair. And she noticed in the mirror, as she watched Molly work at the edifice the maid thought due a lady for a public appearance, that the other’s pursed mouth did not relax. Persis began to guess that perhaps more than her indulgence in the swimming pool irked Molly, and that feeling grew on her until she at last asked:
“Molly—what is the matter with you? There is something behind all this—”
“Miss Persis, I was brought up to speak my mind when it was necessary, and right now—” For the first time her air of indignation was disturbed and she hesitated as if lost for words, before she continued briskly:
“Miss Persis, you went down to the beach to meet that Captain Grillon. Don’t you know that the Captain who’s lying right across there on his bed, a sick man, has said that that Grillon is no better than a pirate and has ordered him off the island? Now that Captain Leverett isn’t able to take care of him, the fellow comes sneakin’ back and you meet with him as bold as—as—”
“Brass?” Persis suppled the last word of one of Molly’s favorite expressions. “All right.” She swung around sideways on the stool before the mirror, hardly giving the maid the chance to anchor the last hairpin securely. “Yes, I met with Ralph Grillon. He sent me that note you brought me saying he had news—important news—for me. And it was important, Molly. Captain Grillon sails out of the Bahamas, and he knows what is going on there. I may have no right to anything Madam Rooke left Uncle Augustin in her will. It seems that her husband’s son left a child—and, if so, the will can be challenged.”