Pearl in the Mist

  "No he won't. It's wrong to keep him encased in that house like a caterpillar in a cocoon. He needs to meet people . . . especially young women and--"

  "How dare you have the impudence and audacity to suggest what is pod for my cousin and what is not! I will not tolerate another syllable from your lips about him, is that clear? Is it?" she shrilled.

  I looked away, my eyes burning with tears of anger and frustration.

  "Now then," she continued, "now that it is well known on this campus, I'm sure, that you have violated section seventeen of our behavior code, it is appropriate that you be punished. Such a violation carries twenty demerits, which automatically invokes a two-week denial of all social privileges. However, since this is your first real offense and since your teacher bears some of the blame, I will limit the punishment to one week. From today until the end of the sentence, you are to report directly back to your dorm after school hours and to remain there throughout the weekend. If you violate this for so much as one minute, I will have no alternative but to expel you from Greenwood, which I am sure will impact on your poor crippled sister as well," she said.

  Icy tears streamed down my cheeks. My lips quivered and my throat felt as if I had swallowed a lump of coal.

  "You can return to your class now," she concluded, slapping the handbook shut.

  I stood up, my legs wobbly. I wanted to shout back at her, to defy her, to tell her what I really thought of her, but all I could see was Daddy's disappointed face and hear the deep sadness in his voice. This was just what Daphne would like, I thought. It would reaffirm her accusations about me and make life even more difficult for Daddy. So I swallowed back my indignation and pain and left her office.

  For the remainder of the day, I felt numb. It was as if my heart had turned to cold stone. I went through the motions, did my work, took my notes, and walked from class to class with my eyes fixed ahead, not looking from left to right, not interested in any conversations.

  At lunch I told Abby what had happened.

  "I'm so disappointed in Mrs. Penny," I concluded. "She must have been frightened into it," Abby said. "I suppose I can't blame her. The Iron Lady could scare the tail off an alligator."

  Abby laughed.

  "I won't go anywhere this weekend either," she told me. "You don't have to do that: to punish yourself unfairly just because I'm being punished unfairly."

  "I want to. I bet you'd do it for me," she added wisely. I tried to deny it, but she just laughed as if I were speaking gibberish. "Besides, I don't consider spending time with you a punishment," she put in. I smiled, my heart full at making such a good friend so quickly.

  But when I entered the art studio for my last class of the day, I felt as if I had swallowed a cup full of tadpoles. Miss Stevens took one look at me and hurried over to my desk.

  "Don't worry," she whispered. "I'll be all right. Actually, I'm sorrier that I got you in trouble than I am about myself."

  "That's how I feel about you."

  She laughed. "I guess we'll have to take Louis's advice and start painting the lake, since that's on school grounds. Until you get your parents'

  permission to leave, that is."

  "Not for a week," I added.

  "In the meantime, you still have the river picture you've started to complete." She squeezed my hand. "Anyway, artists aren't expected to behave and obey the rules. Artists are impulsive and

  unpredictable. We have to be in order to be creative."

  She made me feel better again, and I didn't think about my punishment and my meeting with Mrs. Ironwood until I returned to the-dorm and saw Mrs. Penny straightening the furniture in the dorm lobby. I pounced on her.

  "I thought we had a deal," I snapped at her. "I thought we agreed."

  "Deal?" She smiled in confusion. "What do you mean, Ruby dear?"

  "I thought you weren't going to tell about me and Miss Stevens going to the river to paint," I said.

  She shook her head. "I didn't tell. I've been worried about it, but I didn't tell. Why?" She pressed her palms to her bosom. "Did Mrs. Ironwood find out?"

  "Yes. I'm confined to the dorm for a week. No social privileges. I'm sure you'll be told about it shortly."

  "Oh dear, oh dear," she said, her hands fluttering from her bosom to her plump cheeks as if they were birds looking for a place to alight. "That means she's going to be calling me to find out why I didn't know and why I didn't tell her when I found out. Oh dear."

  "Just say I snuck out," I said quickly. "Just say you never knew. I'll confirm that if she asks."

  "I don't like lying. See: One falsehood leads to another and another."

  "You didn't lie."

  "I didn't do what I was supposed to do. Oh dear." She walked away in a daze.

  It wasn't until later in the evening, when I had a chance to speak to Gisselle alone in her room, that I realized what had really happened.

  "You hate it here now, don't you?" she asked me after I had told her about my meeting with Mrs. Ironwood. "Now maybe you'll tell Daddy we should leave and return to our own school." Her smile turned oily and evil. "I still want to leave, even though the Iron Lady likes me more than she likes you. Why, we're almost pals," she added with a laugh.

  And then it came to me: why she had been pretending to be a good student, why she had been behaving. She had ingratiated herself with Mrs. Ironwood and then she had told on me and Miss Stevens.

  "You're the one who ratted, aren't you, Gisselle? You got me and Miss Stevens in trouble."

  "Why would I do that?" she asked, shifting her eyes away.

  "Just so I would be punished and be unhappy and you could pressure me to ask Daddy to get us out of here. And because of your constant jealousy of me," I told her.

  "Me? Jealous of you?" She laughed. "Hardly. Even though I'm in this wheelchair, I'm still head and shoulders above you. You've got years and years of swamp life to overcome. You and your Cajun family," she said contemptuously. "Now, are you going to call Daddy or not?"

  "No," I said. "I won't break his heart and hand Daphne another victory over us."

  "Oh, you and your stupid competition with Daphne. Why don't you want to get back to our school where there's no Iron Lady and none of these stupid rules, where we have boyfriends and fun?" she whined.

  Unable to hold back, I flared. "From what I can see," I said, "you're having loads of fun here--and at my expense or someone else's every single day."

  Samantha stepped into the room but hesitated when she saw my face and heard my loud voice.

  "Oh, I'm sorry. Did you two want to be alone?"

  "Hardly," I said, my face on fire. "And if I were you and your friends, I'd be very careful about what I said and did around here from now on."

  "What? Why?" Samantha asked.

  I gazed with fury upon my twin sister. "Things have a way of getting back to Mrs. Ironwood," I said, and pivoted to march out of the room.

  But Gisselle almost had the victory she wanted when Beau phoned that night. He was very excited about his upcoming trip to Greenwood to see me on Saturday. I had forgotten for the moment because of all the trouble. My heart was breaking; the tears came pouring down my face as I told him.

  "Oh Beau, you can't come this weekend. I can't see you. I've been punished and confined to my dorm."

  "What? Why?"

  Shuddering through my gasps and cries, I told him what had happened.

  "Oh no," he said. "We've got an away game the following weekend. I won't be able to come for at least two more weeks then."

  "I'm sorry, Beau. You have every right to forget me, to find yourself someone else," I said.

  "I won't do that, Ruby," he promised. "I have your picture in the top pocket of my shirt every day, close to my heart. I take it out and gaze at it every now and then in school. Sometimes," he confessed, "I even talk to you through your picture."

  "Oh Beau, I miss you?'

  "Maybe if I come up, you can sneak out and--"

  "No, that's just wha
t she wants, Beau. Besides, Gisselle would love to reveal it even if no one else knew, just so she could get me expelled."

  "I'm with Gisselle."

  "I know, but it would break my father's heart and cause all sorts of new problems at home. Somehow, Daphne would find an even worse situation for me and for Gisselle. And that would be terrible, even though Gisselle deserves it," I added angrily.

  Beau laughed. "All right," he said. "I'm going to call you then and I'm going to plead with Father Time to hurry along."

  After I had hung up, I stood there sobbing. Mrs. Penny saw me and came hurrying down the corridor.

  "What is it now, Ruby dear?" she asked.

  "Everything, Mrs. Penny." I ground the tears from my eyes with my small fists and sighed. "Mostly, my boyfriend. He was coming to see me this weekend and I just had to tell him I can't see him."

  "Oh. Oh!" she added, wide-eyed. "You spoke to him on the phone?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  She looked up and down the corridor and shook her head.

  "You can't do that, Ruby. You're not permitted to use the phone for social calls for a week. Mrs. Ironwood has made that perfectly clear."

  "What? I can't even use the phone?"

  "Not for social calls. I'm sorry. All I need is for one more thing to happen that gets Mrs. Ironwood angry at me, and she might give me my discharge," she said sadly. "I'll post that restriction on the bulletin board so all the other girls will know not to call you to the phone. I'm sorry. If you get any social calls, I'll have to talk to the person and explain. I'll give you any messages, however."

  I shook my head and then lowered it. Maybe Gisselle was right. Maybe we were better off fleeing from Greenwood and taking our chances with Daphne. My heart felt torn in two: One side was crying for Daddy and what would happen and the other crying for Beau and what had happened.

  I returned to my room to bury my sobs in my pillow and do what Beau had said he would do: pray to Father Time and ask him to rush the minutes, the hours, and the days.

  .

  I plodded through the remainder of the week, preparing myself for a weekend of what amounted to house arrest, when the second unexpected event occurred. On Friday night after dinner, after most of the other girls in the dorm had gone to the auditorium to see a movie, Mrs. Penny came to my room. Abby and I were amusing ourselves with a game of Scrabble and listening to music. There was a light knocking on the door and I raised my eyes to see our housemother looking rather confused and troubled.

  "You had a phone call," she announced. I imagined it had been Beau again. When Mrs. Penny didn't continue but instead wrung her hands and bit on her lower lip nervously, I glanced quizzically at Abby and then turned back to her.

  "Yes?"

  "It was Mrs. Clairborne's grandson, Louis."

  "Louis! What did he want?"

  "He wanted to speak to you. I told him why you couldn't come to the phone and he became very . ."

  "Very what, Mrs. Penny?"

  "Nasty," she said, with obvious amazement. "I tried to explain how I had no control over the situation, how it wasn't in my power to change things, but he . ."

  "But he what?"

  "He just started to scream at me and accuse me of being part of some conspiracy headed by Mrs. Ironwood. Honestly," she declared, shaking her head, "1 never heard such talk. Then he slammed the phone down on me. It's given me the shakes," she said, embracing herself.

  "I wouldn't worry about it, Mrs. Penny. As you said, you don't have any say in the matter."

  "Of course, I've never heard him speak before. I. . ."

  "Just forget about it, Mrs. Penny. After my period of punishment, I'll try to reach him and see what it was he wanted."

  "Yes," she said, nodding. "Yes. Such anger. I feel . . . so shaken," she concluded and walked off.

  "What do you suppose he wanted from you?" Abby asked.

  I shook my head. "I can understand why he feels it's all a conspiracy. His grandmother and the Iron Lady control every moment of his life, especially whom he sees. Mrs. Ironwood made it clear to me she wasn't happy that I went up there for dinner," I said.

  But whatever control Mrs. Clairborne and Mrs. Ironwood had enjoyed over Louis seemed to be weakening, for early the next morning, Mrs. Penny returned to my room to announce a new turn of events. She was obviously very impressed and excited about it. Abby and I had barely finished dressing for breakfast when she was at our door.

  "Good morning," she said. "I had to come right down to tell you."

  "Tell me what, Mrs. Penny?"

  "Mrs. Ironwood has called me directly to tell me you will be permitted to go out for two hours this morning."

  "Go out? Go where?" I asked.

  "To the Clairborne plantation house," she said, her eyes wide.

  "She will let me go out and she will let me go to the plantation?" I looked at Abby, who seemed just as amazed as I was. "But why?"

  "Louis," Mrs. Penny replied. "I imagine he's insisting on seeing you today."

  "But maybe I don't want to see him," I said, and Mrs. Penny's mouth dropped. "I could never get permission to see my boyfriend, who won't be able to come up here now for two weeks and who would have had to drive for hours, but I can be permitted to go up to the plantation house. These Clairbornes play pretty fast and loose with other people's feelings--picking people up and putting them back down again as though we're only pieces on their personal

  chessboards." I complained and sat back on my bed.

  Mrs. Penny wrung her hands and shook her head. "But . . . but this must be very important if Mrs. Ironwood is willing to bend the punishment somewhat. How can you not want to go? It will only make everyone even angrier at you, I'm sure," she threatened. "They might even blame it on me."

  "Oh, Mrs. Penny, they can't blame anything on you."

  "Yes, they can. I'm the one who didn't tell them that you had left the campus in the first place, remember?" she reminded me. "That's what started all this," she wailed.

  The cloud of fear under which everyone at Greenwood lived disgusted me. "All right," I relented. "When am I supposed to go?"

  "After breakfast," she said, relieved. "Buck will have the car out front"

  Still unhappy and annoyed, I changed into something more appropriate and went to breakfast with Abby. When Gisselle heard where I was going after breakfast, she threw one of her temper tantrums at the table, stopping all other conversation and drawing everyone's attention to us.

  "No matter where you go or what you do, you become Little Miss Special. Even the Iron Lady makes special rules for you and not for everyone else," she complained.

  "I don't think Mrs. Ironwood is doing anything for me or is very happy about it anyway," I replied, but Gisselle only saw one thing: I was being permitted to break out of my imprisonment. _

  "Well, if any of us get punished, we're going to remind her about this," she threatened, firing her angry gaze at everyone around the table.

  After breakfast I left the dorm and got into the car. Buck said very little, except to mutter about how his repair work kept getting interrupted. Apparently no one was happy about my command appearance at the Clairborne plantation. Mrs. Clairborne didn't even appear to greet me. It was Otis who led me through the long corridor to the music studio, where Louis waited at his piano.

  "Mademoiselle Dumas," the butler announced, and left us.

  Louis, dressed in a gray silk smoking jacket, white cotton shirt, and dark gray flannel slacks, raised his head. "Please, come in," he said, realizing that I was still standing in the doorway.

  "What is it, Louis?" I asked, not disguising the note of annoyance in my voice. "Why did you ask that I be brought back here?"

  "I know you're angry with me," he said. "I treated you rather shabbily and you have every right to be mad. I embarrassed you and then ran out on you. I wanted you to come up here so I could apologize to you face to face. Even though I can't see you," he added with a tiny smile.

  "It's all right. I wa
sn't angry at you."

  "I know. You felt sorry for me, and I guess I deserve that too. I'm pitiful. No," he said when I started to protest. "It's all right. I understand and accept it. I am to be pitied. I remain here, wallowing in my own self-pity, so why shouldn't someone else look at me pathetically and not want to have anything much to do with me?

  "It's just that. . I felt something about you that drew me a little closer to you, made me less afraid of being laughed at or ridiculed--so it was something I know most girls your age would do, especially Grandmother's precious Greenwood girls."

  "They wouldn't laugh at you, Louis. Even the creme de la creme, the direct descendants of the Filles a la Cassette," I said with ridicule. He widened his smile.

  "That's what I mean," he said. "You think like I do. You are different. I feel I can trust you. I'm sorry I made you feel as if you were summoned to appear in court," he added quickly.

  "Well, it's not that, so much as I was punished and . ."

  "Yes. Why were you punished? I hope it was something very naughty," he added.

  "I'm afraid it's not." I told him about my painting trip off campus and he smirked.

  "That was it?"

  I wanted to tell him more--how his cousin Mrs. Ironwood had it in for me for meeting him--but I decided not to add fuel to the fire. He looked relieved.

  "So I pulled a little rank, so what? My cousin will get over it. I've never asked her for anything before. Grandmother wasn't overjoyed, of course."

  "I bet you did more than pull a little rank," I said, stepping closer to the piano. "I bet you pulled a little tantrum of your own."

  He laughed. "Just a little." He was silent a moment, and then he handed me a few pages of notes. "Here," he said. "It's your song."

  At the top of the page was the title "Ruby."

  "Oh. Thank you." I put it into my purse.

  "Would you like to take a walk through the gardens?" he asked. "Or rather, I should say, take me for a walk?"

  "Yes, I would."

  He stood up and offered me his hand.

  "Just go through the patio doors and turn right," he directed. He scooped his arm through mine and I led him along. It was a warm, partly cloudy morning, with just a small breeze. With amazing accuracy, he described the fountains, the hanging fern and philodendron plants, the oaks and bamboo trees and the trellises erupting with purple wisteria. He identified everything because of their scents, whether it be camellias or magnolias. He had the surroundings memorized according to aromas and knew just when we had reached a set of patio doors on the west side of the house that, he said, opened to his room.