The Bell at Sealey Head

Six

Luck, Gwyneth wrote in her impetuous, untidy hand, was a ship.

It sailed into Sealey Head harbor on a fine spring day when another roof beam had fallen into the middle of Anscom Cauley’s best guest room, when Lord Aislinn received half a dozen stiff and threatening letters from the lawyers of two wine merchants and a boot maker in Landringham, from a certain Mr. Grimm to whom he owed a substantial gambling debt, and a very private, perfumed letter from a woman with whom we need not acquaint ourselves. On a day when Mr. Blair, receiving no word either of his missing ship or the ship sent out to find her, sank deeper into gloom, and in Magnus Sproule’s fields, crows were busy ravening every seed that might possibly have been missed by previous flocks of hungry birds.

The ship, which caused the despondent merchant to sit upright in his chair, was extraordinarily beautiful. It was long and lean, its three tall masts raked back to suggest its speed and power. It was superbly painted in the glossiest of cream, finely trimmed with gold and airy blue. It took the difficult channel into the harbor with a nonchalant roll. A bell sounded as in greeting: a single toll. Mr. Blair was quite relieved to see, as it sailed into the harbor, that it was not armed. Turning his telescope upon it, he was among the first to notice that its crew was most unusual.

Steps pounded up the little stairway: Crispin, she recognized, and glanced out the window. The sun had set already, she saw incredulously; she hadn’t heard the bell except in her story.

A palm thumped against the door. “Gwyneth! Come down. You have the most extraordinary visitors.”

She must, indeed, if Crispin had bothered to come to tea; the twins usually hid at the sight of Raven and Daria. She called back in answer; the footsteps receded. She put her writing away and hurried after them.

Ridley Dow, in a dove gray vest and a plain black coat whose exquisite cut needed no other adornment, had completely captivated Aunt Phoebe and the twins. Gwyneth, watching him chat eagerly and articulately about nothing—the weather, his dogs in Landringham—blinked suddenly at the gleaming black hair and dark, dark eyes, the warm, vivid smile. She touched her own hair vaguely, wondered if she had ink on her face. Then she caught sight of Judd in the shadows, with a cup and a saucer in one hand and a cake in the other, and not sure what to do with either.

She went to him, smiling. The little, wistful look on his face vanished when he saw her.

“Has Mr. Dow solved the mystery of the bell, yet?” she asked.

“Not even close,” Judd answered, glancing around for someplace to put his cup. “He keeps talking about magic.”

“Magic,” she repeated, astonished. She slid a lantern made of the jaws of some toothy fish to one side on a shelf otherwise cluttered with bone bracelets and strands of tiny colored shells. He looked at the raw mahogany doubtfully; she took his saucer, set it down for him. “What does he mean by magic?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Tell me when you do.”

He smiled finally, bit into his tea cake. He looked slightly less careworn than he had in the stationer’s shop, but not much. His coat was neatly patched at one elbow; the glossy polish on his boots didn’t hide the cracks and scars. An image of a roof beam thudding into the guest rooms of her story glanced through her head; she wondered suddenly how close it hit to truth.

“How is your father?” she asked. Never, Aunt Phoebe had told her more than once, ask a personal question at tea for which you are ill prepared to hear the answer. Embarrassment is a distressing sight to others trying to enjoy themselves with cakes and commonplaces. But she and Judd were old friends, and she truly wanted to know which might weigh more heavily on him: his father or his roof.

Not his father, evidently. “He’s very cheerful,” Judd answered composedly. “Very patient, on the whole, except with our dreadful cook, who stays with us out of the goodness of her heart, though I do fervently wish that she would abandon us and flee.”

Gwyneth swallowed tea too quickly, stifled a cough.

“Really? Is she that bad? No wonder she stays: Who else would have her?”

“Exactly.”

“Your poor father.”

“Yes. Her boiled beef makes him miss my mother sorely.” He raised his cup again, still smiling. But the crook of his pale brows, the line above the light, summery blue of his eyes, made her own gaze focus clearly behind her lenses.

She said softly after a moment, “Yes. So do I. Miss my own mother, I mean.” He nodded, vanished behind his cup. “We must have lost them both at the same time. How strange.”

“You were away at school.”

“I was. And missing Sealey Head abominably.”

His eyes appeared again, wide with surprise. “You were among all the delights of the great city. How could you spare us a thought?”

“You’d be amazed what sentiments the smell of the Landringham fish market could summon in me.”

“Really?” He put his cup down abruptly, ignoring the tremulous rattling as he gazed at her. “Does that mean you’ll stay here? But what if your writing makes you famous?”

She opened her mouth, found herself wordless. She could only laugh with delight and longing at the preposterous idea, a sudden, merry peal that brought Dulcie scampering toward her, and, following, Aunt Phoebe.

“My dear,” Phoebe said, amazed, “what can Mr. Cauley have been saying to you?”

“He worried that my literary efforts will make me so famous I might leave Sealey Head and wander about the world like my father.”

“Litterforts!” Dulcie cried, pushing her face gleefully into Gwyneth’s skirt.

“Indeed,” Gwyneth said, swooping the child up into her arms. “Say good day to Mr. Judd Cauley, whom you last met, I believe, when you were a bubbling infant. Most days, I do not believe, Mr. Cauley, that my litterforts will find their ways out from under my bed.”

“Fortunately,” Aunt Phoebe said, her voice abruptly booming like one of the conch shells, “your father will be able to provide for you, in any event, so you needn’t—Ah.” The door opened behind Gwyneth. She watched, amused, as Phoebe’s face rearranged itself into a familiar pleased expression before she remembered the amiable and wealthy Mr. Dow, and her pleasure wavered into sudden confusion.

“The bird,” Dulcie announced briefly, chewing a finger thoughtfully over Gwyneth’s shoulder. Daria’s sprightly laugh preceded them into the company.

Dr. Grantham joined them a little later, on his way back from Aislinn House. Aunt Phoebe summoned her brother and a bottle of sherry, for which the doctor seemed most grateful.

Toland, bypassing commonplaces, asked the question on everyone’s mind: “How is Lady Eglantyne?”

Even Daria was silent, blinking moistly at the doctor. He sipped sherry and sighed.

“This is wonderful. It brings out the sun in your veins, even in a windowless room.”

“The grapes on the tiny island where it is made have nothing to do all day but grow fat with light.”

“Perhaps it might benefit Lady Eglantyne,” Daria suggested, herding them back to the topic.

Dr. Grantham sighed again, put down his glass. “Very little change,” he said bluntly, “and none for the better. She seems content to dream her life away. I have warned the family solicitors that if they don’t send for her heir immediately, I will. An idle threat, since I have no idea where to write. I thought you might know someone, Toland, who knows someone?”

“Indeed I do,” Toland said quickly. He plucked the bottle off the tea tray. “Come with me to the library; I have an address there for someone closely acquainted with the young lady. Quite a glitter she sheds in Landringham society, I’m told. I suspect Sealey Head will be a shock to her.”

The silence he left behind was broken by Daria’s slow, tidal flow of indrawn breath. “Oh,” she cried, trembling with the idea, “we must give a party for her!”

“Surely not on such a sad occasion,” Aunt Phoebe said doubtfully, and Raven nodded shortly.

“Great-aunt dying in her bed and all that,” he murmured.

But their expressions disagreed with them; they were silent again, seeking ways around the unfortunate event.

“A quiet party,” Daria said. “To welcome the newcomer to Sealey Head, acquaint her with her neighbors. You shall all be invited, of course. And Mr. Trent, and all the Trevor boys and everyone else who is agreeable, or with whom she might do business. And you must come, Mr. Dow! Being from Landringham yourself, you must know her.”

“I know of her,” Ridley Dow said, after a tiny, surprising hesitation. He seemed oddly wary, Gwyneth realized, still affable, but choosing his words with care. “As Mr. Blair intimated, she travels in exalted circles, generally unfrequented by dull scholars. Anyway, I am away from the city much of the time.”

“Surely not,” Daria murmured, smiling and surveying him under her eloquent lashes. “Surely never dull.”

“Can you at least tell us her name?” Gwyneth asked. He seemed reluctant to do even that, she saw with sudden, avid interest.

“Miss Beryl,” he answered briefly. “Miranda Beryl.”

“Soon to be Lady Beryl,” Daria breathed, “of Aislinn House. Please tell us you’ve met her!”

“I believe we have met,” Ridley conceded, after a swift, wordless appeal across the room to Judd. “Once. At least once. Very briefly. I doubt she would remember.”

“But you do? Tell us, Mr. Dow, is she very beautiful?”

Something hit the floorboards near the mahogany shelves. Glass splintered. A smell of fish oil pervaded the room. Judd, his face scarlet, bent to rescue the fish jaws, and sent strands of seashells clattering off the shelf with his elbow, then bumped a tall wooden shield balanced against the wall. It rapped him back and landed with a bang in the pool of oil.

“Again!” Dulcie instructed with delight. Gwyneth put her down quickly, went to help the besieged innkeeper.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, shaking with what looked like acute embarrassment or an imminent explosion of laughter.

“Never mind,” Aunt Phoebe said with unexpected gallantry. “Is it the fish-jaw lantern, I hope? Leave it. We can’t stay in here with that dreadful smell. Let’s join Toland in the library. Gwyneth, help me with the tea trays. Pandora, you call Ivy to clear it—Pandora? Where is that child? Always vanishing, the pair of them. Gwyneth, you call Ivy, and Mr. Cauley will help me with the tea things.”

“Are you sure you trust me with them?” Judd asked, wending his way cautiously around a spiky bamboo chair.

“Of course. You would not dare drop my second-best teapot.”

In the library, Dr. Grantham snared Judd to ask about his father; Raven and Daria gravitated toward Toland to question him further about this friend of his who flowed in the bright wake of the heir to Aislinn House. Gwyneth, pouring fresh tea, found herself gazing into Ridley Dow’s parched cup.

She refilled it, aware of his dark, speculative gaze behind his spectacles. She set the teapot down and met it, every bit as curious as he.

“Judd told me you think the bell has to do with magic,” she said. “When he said the word, I realized I had no idea what it means. Outside of a fairy tale, I mean. What might magic be in the prosaic little world of Sealey Head? When a fishing boat sinks into the deep, not a wish or a word will bring it up again. You’d think if magic were around, that’s one of the first things people might do with it.”

He nodded. “Bring the dead to life. Surely that would be an enormously powerful impulse.” He sipped tea, went on slowly, “I tend to believe that there are varying degrees of power.”

“Power.”

“Magical ability. When you learn to read, you begin with very simple words, very short sentences. So, I think, magic is learned. One small word at a time.”

“What word?” she asked, entranced. “Give me an example.”

“Well. For instance, the bell. Suppose it has nothing at all to do with the sea.”

“Oh,” she said, disconcerted, thinking of her latest tale.

“In theory,” he assured her. “In life, anything is possible.

Suppose, in some complex world just beyond our eyesight, the bell is rung by someone very much alive and not at all wet.”

“Oh,” she said again, disappointed now. “But I’ve written such things many times, Mr. Dow. The only true magic is in my pen. You can no more find that world within Sealey Head than you can dive headfirst into a piece of paper.”

He smiled. “I would like to read those stories, Miss Blair.”

“You are changing the subject. Is magic so difficult to define?”

“Perhaps the bell isn’t a good place to start. It is subject to all kinds of explanations, none of which can be proven or disproven.” He took another sip of tea, meditated a moment. “Think of some action you never think about doing, you just do. Lighting a candle. Shutting a door. Putting your cup down on your saucer.”

“Yes,” she said, doing it.

“Suppose you could learn to look at a candle and kindle a fire in your mind that will light the wick across the room.”

“Well, that’s not—How could that be possible?”

“How, indeed? That would be magic.”

He smiled, and she saw the reflection of candle fire in his lenses.

She turned swiftly, nearly spilling her tea. One of a pair of candles on her father’s desk beyond the potted palms burned in the shadows. He had forgotten to extinguish it, she thought, when he was summoned to tea by Aunt Phoebe. But she did not convince herself; her fingers had gone cold. She looked back at Ridley, blinking; he said nothing, his eyes hidden behind the reflection.

Then the fire was gone, and there was Raven at one of her elbows suddenly, and Daria at the other, intent on the stranger who had come to Sealey Head.

“Tell us what you know of Miranda Beryl,” Daria pleaded. “Likes, dislikes, gossip—any scrap at all. We are fascinated. It is the most exciting thing ever to happen in Sealey Head. You will be here for our party, won’t you? Judd said he thought you might be staying for some time.”

“Judd said he hoped you might be,” the innkeeper amended, joining them, and added to Ridley, “I must get back to see to my father, and any stray guests who might have ventured in to alarm Mrs. Quinn.”

“I’ll bid you good evening, too, then,” Ridley said promptly, setting his cup on the table.

“But you were going to tell us tales of Landringham,” Daria exclaimed. “You must stay!”

“Don’t let me take you away from such agreeable company,” Judd protested, at which Ridley cast one of his opaque, light-glazed glances.

“Even I have business to attend to,” he answered amiably. “I like to work in the evenings.”

“Then you must come to supper at Sproule Manor,” Daria said firmly. “Our cook is the second-best along this part of the coast. Our mother will send you an invitation very soon, and you can tell us everything there is to know about life in the city.”

“I look forward to it.” He met Gwyneth’s eyes again. “I hope to explore your thoughts about the bell much further, Miss Blair.”

“Yes,” she said a trifle dazedly. “Though in the light of—ah—your own reflections, mine seem strangely insubstantial.

Good night, Judd. Please come again soon. We forgot to talk about books.”

“Fish oil intruded,” he murmured. He hesitated, wanting to say more, she sensed, and she smiled encouragingly. But Raven spoke first, and suddenly she was watching Judd’s back, accompanying the astonishing Mr. Dow out the door.

Well, she thought, during a little moment of silence while Raven and Daria bit into tea cakes simultaneously. Well, then. I shall just have to borrow a book.