Meet the Austins

by Madeleine L'engle

  Suzy came up to Maggy and looked at her earnestly. Suzy is a full year younger than Maggy, but they’re just exactly the same size, and Suzy looked her right in the eyes. “Maggy, do you remember Wilbur the pig?”

  “Well, sure,” Maggy said. “Why?”

  “And right after that I took the candy from the Jenkins’ store and I didn’t tell Mother or Daddy or anything and when Mother and Daddy asked if I knew anything about the candy I said no and I didn’t tell the truth?”

  Maggy got very pink, but all she said was, “Well, sure I remember.”

  “And I remember you said you never lied.”

  “Well, I never do.”

  “Then please don’t,” Suzy begged. “We know Rob loves to play tricks, and when he’s mad at people he does say ‘Go away,’ but he’d never have left you like that after Vicky told you to stay together in Grandfather’s cove. Please, Maggy, all we want to know is where to look for Rob. You’ve got to help us. Why aren’t you with Rob and why didn’t you stay in Grandfather’s cove?”

  “Well, we were playing hide-and-seek,” Maggy said. “Honestly.”

  “Okay,” John said. “We all believe you were playing hide-and-seek. Then what?”

  “Then—well, then nothing.”

  John suddenly looked terribly old and grownup. “We’ll have to go to Grandfather,” he said.

  Then I had an idea. “Maggy, did you play the trick on Rob? Did you go off and leave him for a joke?”

  Maggy nodded.

  “Then what happened?” John asked. “Maggy, please! You’ve got to tell us right away! Don’t you realize, every minute you pussyfoot around something awful might happen to Rob? He can’t swim very well, and the tide’s coming in.”

  All the pink went out of Maggy’s cheeks and she went very white and the darks of her eyes seemed to get very big. When she spoke it was breathlessly, as though John had hit her in the stomach. “It was just for a joke. It was Rob’s turn to hide, so I climbed up the cliff path and then I walked on down to Dick’s Place and had an ice-cream cone. I had a dime in my pocket.”

  “And you knew if Rob came along you’d have to share it with him!” Suzy said furiously.

  But John shushed her warningly.

  “And when I got back he was gone,” Maggy said. “That’s the honest truth. I thought he’d just grown tired of waiting for me and come back to the stable. So I waded for a few minutes to cool my feet off, and then I went and picked some kind of pink flower for Grandfather—it was blooming all over the path—and then I just came along home.”

  This time we knew she was telling us the truth. John said, “Okay, Maggy, thanks. But we’ve got to tell Grandfather that we don’t know where Rob is. Vicky and I’ve both looked down at the beach and Vicky went to the lighthouse and now we don’t know where he could be and he’s too young to be wandering off somewhere by himself.”

  “The tide’s coming in,” Suzy said again.

  John said, “Suzy, shut up!”

  Then he led the way to Grandfather’s desk.

  Grandfather listened gravely, one hand slowly stroking Colette’s ear. He looked down at Colette, then at us, and then he asked, “Where’s Mr. Rochester?”

  None of us knew where Mr. Rochester was. Maggy said he hadn’t come down to the beach while she and Rob were still playing there. But Grandfather said in his quiet way, “Mr. Rochester must be with Rob now, and we all know that Mr. Rochester will take care of him.” He spoke with such assurance that we couldn’t help feeling better, and yet John and I knew that he was worried, because somehow, without any line or expression in his face being altered, he suddenly looked older. “I’d better make some telephone calls,” he said.

  We stood by while he phoned, first to the people round about that we knew, the Nortons who had the big house down the hill the stable had once belonged to, the Woods who took us out in their boat, everybody Rob might have gone to see; but nobody had seen him. Then Grandfather called in to the village, the post office, the grocer and the butcher and the drugstore, old Mrs. Adams who played the organ at the church, and Reverend Mr. Hanchett, though Rob wasn’t apt to be there, because although we all loved Mr. Hanchett, Mrs. Hanchett was, as Grandfather said, a very peculiar woman more like a hatchet than a Hanchett, and among other things she didn’t like children or dogs, so neither Rob nor Mr. Rochester would have had too warm a welcome there.

  And nobody had seen him.

  Grandfather sat with his hand over the receiver of the phone as though he was terribly, terribly tired. Then he phoned the Coast Guard.

  We just stood there, and then we realized that Maggy must have slipped out, and Suzy went out to the kitchen to look for her, and John looked in all the stalls, and I went up to the loft, and she was lying face down on her bed, not moving, just lying there.

  I hated myself, I hated Maggy, though I was no longer ready to send her to the lions, and I was so full of panic that I was shivering all over. I stood there and looked at her until I could make myself speak, and then I said, “Maggy, let’s all go down to the Coast Guard headquarters and wait.”

  Grandfather said we might go, but he would stay by the phone in case Rob turned up at somebody’s house or something.

  We hurried along, not speaking, until John said, “I had to get out, I had to do something, I couldn’t just sit there and wait. But one of us should have stayed with Grandfather. We shouldn’t have left him to wait there all alone.”

  “If it’s bad news, maybe he’d rather be alone,” Suzy said in a gritty sort of voice.

  “Mr. Rochester’s with Rob!” I cried. “You know Mr. Rochester wouldn’t let anything happen to Rob!”

  “How do you know he’s with Rob?”

  “Where else would he be? Mr. Rochester never goes off by himself. He’s always with one of us if he isn’t at home.”

  At the Coast Guard office they spoke to us kindly. “Why don’t you go down and look everywhere in the village, kids?”

  “But Grandfather called everywhere,” John said.

  “I know, but your little brother just might turn up, and if you find him, you call us right away.”

  So we went on down to the village. We asked in every house, even the houses where we didn’t know the people, and one woman slammed the door in our faces, but everybody else was very nice to us, and some of them were too nice and I almost started to cry. John saw that I was almost crying after we’d been talking to one lady who asked us lots of questions and then called us “poor little things,” and he grabbed my arm and pressed it so hard that it hurt and he whispered fiercely, “Vicky, don’t! You can’t!” And I didn’t.

  At the drugstore the druggist asked us, “Did you go down to the dock? You know how crazy your little brother is about that boat.”

  “No,” John said. “Why didn’t we think of it! And Grandfather didn’t phone there!”

  Mr. Ross picked up his phone and asked if anybody at the dock had seen a small boy wandering about by himself, but nobody had.

  Then it was almost worse than before. When Mr. Ross mentioned the dock I was suddenly sure that that was where Rob had gone, and then to be disappointed like that made me feel all hollow with fear. But I said, “Let’s go down to the dock anyhow. Let’s just look around. They mightn’t have noticed him. You know how Rob can sit off in a corner and just watch, quiet as a little mouse.”

  So we went down to the dock. We didn’t have much hope, but it gave us one more thing to do, and we didn’t want to go back to the Coast Guard office too soon.

  Suzy said with her horrible insistence on realism, “The Sister Anne went out an hour ago at least. He wouldn’t still be there.”

  “But he might be,” I persisted. “The dockhands are always doing something down around the dock that he’d like to watch.”

  There were a couple of dockhands lounging outside the big white rickety-looking ferry terminal, but they didn’t stop us or ask us what we were doing when we went inside. There wasn’t another boat com
ing to the island that day; there’s only the one that gets in about three in the afternoon and gets back to the mainland around six, so there weren’t many people around. We went through the big building and out onto the slip where the Sister Anne comes in, and there, sitting on his haunches and looking out to sea, was Mr. Rochester!

  How we rushed at him! How we hugged him! But he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t tell us where Rob was or why he was just sitting there. He greeted us happily, wagging his whole body and giving us big wet kisses, and I cried, “It’s all right! He wouldn’t be glad to see us if anything awful had happened to Rob!”

  We asked everybody we could find, but they all said they hadn’t seen any little boy wandering about alone.

  “We’ll go back to the Coast Guard,” John said, “and tell them we’ve found Rochester.”

  We called Rochester to come along with us, but he wouldn’t move. He wagged, but when we tried to get him to follow us, he just sat down again and looked out to sea.

  So we left him and ran all the way to the Coast Guard headquarters. I got a terrible stitch in my side, but I kept on running, and I thought that probably the others had stitches, too, and Maggy was panting horribly, and John kept having to push his glasses back up his nose, but we just kept on running till we got there.

  “There isn’t any news, kids,” they told us. “You’d better go home and wait with your grandfather.” Their voices were serious and kind.

  “But Mr. Rochester’s sitting down at the boat slip waiting!”

  We all started to talk at once.

  “Okay, now, one at a time,” the man who seemed to be in charge said to us; we found out later he was Commander Rodney. “You tell me what this is about, son.” He spoke to John. “Who is this mister whoever he is?”

  “Mr. Rochester is our Great Dane,” John said. “He’s a very reliable dog. And he disappeared about the same time Rob did, so we knew he must be with Rob. And Rob is crazy about the Sister Anne, so we went down to the dock and onto the slip and Mr. Rochester was sitting there, looking out to sea. He was glad to see us but he wouldn’t come with us, he just insisted on staying there looking out after where the Sister Anne must have gone.”

  The Commander said, “A stowaway, maybe? Hold on.” He reached for his telephone and called the dock, but they told him the same thing they had told Mr. Ross when he called from the drugstore and that they had told us when we asked: they hadn’t seen any little boy wandering around loose. But they did go look and they said that a large dog was still sitting there at the edge of the slip, but, although he wagged his tail, he wouldn’t let anybody near him.

  The Commander said, “Okay, kids, wait here. I’m going to go speak to my telegraph officer.” He went off and while he was gone another man came in and gave us all Cokes. We drank them to be polite, and we were thirsty and dry from all the running we’d done, and under any other circumstances a Coke would have tasted wonderful, but we couldn’t really enjoy it.

  The Commander was gone for what seemed like forever. The nice man who brought us the Cokes joked with us and asked questions and I guess he was trying to get our minds off things, but they wouldn’t get off. I kept pressing my knuckles up against my lips to try to keep from showing how they were trembling and how frightened I was, and John answered all the questions in a rigid sort of voice that didn’t sound like John at all, and Suzy kept stalking to the window and looking out as though she thought maybe she could find Rob that way, and Maggy just sat there with her fists clenched and didn’t say a word.

  The Commander came back in and he was grinning and he said, “Well, kids, your Mr. What’s-his-name knew the score. Your little brother is on the Sister Anne.”

  Maggy dashed to him and flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, crying out, “Oh, you’re just wonderful. I just love you!”

  John said, “Could we call Grandfather?”

  Suzy said, “I want to buy Rochester the biggest steak on the island.”

  I couldn’t say anything at all because I was trying so hard not to cry with relief and happiness.

  “Lieutenant Andrews is calling your grandfather,” the Commander said.

  “But how did Rob get on the Sister Anne?” Suzy asked.

  The Commander laughed. “There was a family with seven children getting on, and he just attached himself to them and nobody even noticed him, not even the parents. As the father of only four children, I can see how this would be perfectly possible! He was playing quite happily with the children up on deck and everybody thought he belonged to somebody else.”

  “Well, how is he going to get off the Sister Anne?” Suzy asked. “She doesn’t come back till tomorrow afternoon.”

  The Commander ran his fingers through his grizzly, graying hair. I guess all fathers of four or more children have graying hair. “We’re sending a cutter out for him. And then I would suggest that he be spanked hard and put to bed without dinner.”

  He said it kindly and with a twinkle, but I felt I should explain that it was my fault, so I tried to. Then Maggy said it was her fault, and finally the Commander shooed us off and said we’d better get back to Grandfather.

  We all went to meet Rob as he came in off the cutter. They brought him in at the Sister Anne’s slip instead of the Coast Guard headquarters because of Mr. Rochester. They were really very understanding people. Mr. Rochester practically knocked Rob down with his welcome, and then he tried to thank the Coast Guard men by putting his feet on their shoulders and kissing their faces, and Grandfather had to call him down. The Commander was there and he drove us home, and he tried to scold Rob, but he didn’t sound cross at all, and Rob was so excited about his ride in the cutter he didn’t even know he was being scolded.

  When we got back to the stable and after we’d all finished thanking the Commander, Grandfather took Rob into the stall that is his study and sent the rest of us into the kitchen to get dinner. I made Sloppy Joe because that’s quick and everybody likes it, and we had some hamburger in the refrigerator, and Suzy and Maggy set the table, and John filled and trimmed the lamps. Then Grandfather and Rob came out, hand in hand, Rob not saying anything at all, and we went in to dinner.

  We held hands around the table for our family grace, and then Grandfather said in a voice loud and glad:

  “O come, let us sing unto the Lord,

  Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

  Let us come before His presence with Thanksgiving,

  And make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms.”

  And then suddenly the week was over and we were back down at the slip waiting for Mother and Daddy to come in on the Sister Anne. Rob was the first one to spot the boat, and there it was, just a far-off speck at first, and then coming closer and whiter and bigger until we could see the black specks of people on deck and leaning at the railings; and then there she was, coming into the slip, and we could see Mother and Daddy, and with them, oh, lovely surprise, was Uncle Douglas!

  It had only been a week since we’d seen Mother and Daddy but we’d never been away from them for so long before, and it seemed as though it had been months and months. Then the glorious moment came when they were off the boat and there was a tangle of arms and suitcases and everybody hugging and jumping up and down, and then two of the sailors came looking for Rob and took him off to see the captain, and Mother and Daddy and Uncle Douglas had to be told all about his trip on the Sister Anne and how terrified we had been till we found out where he was. And then at last we were all in the station wagon on the way back to Grandfather’s stable and everybody was talking at once and it was all loud and noisy and happy and right.

  When we got back to Grandfather’s the Woods were waiting for us to take us out for one last ride on their boat, and instead of taking us right home afterward they said they had an order from Grandfather to pick up something he wanted for dinner, and they took us to the part of the island called Johnson’s Neck where the fishermen’s boats come in, and bought lobsters right
off the boat.

  At dinner Mother and Daddy told us all about their time in New York. They’d gone to concerts and plays but, of course, the main thing we wanted to know about was Maggy. We could tell from their faces that it was all right, that she wasn’t going to be thrown to the lions, so we could relax and listen while Mother and Daddy and Uncle Douglas told us all about their conferences with Mr. Ten Eyck. The luckiest thing, I guess, was that Mr. Ten Eyck was very enthusiastic about Uncle Douglas’s portrait of Maggy’s mother. And Uncle Douglas said he’d surprised himself, because he liked the portrait, too, even though he doesn’t like painting that way, from photographs, especially knowing so much was at stake.

  Uncle Douglas had suggested that both Mr. Ten Eyck, as Maggy’s closest of kin, and Aunt Elena, to fulfill Maggy’s father’s wish, be made legal guardians, and Mr. Ten Eyck consented to this and so did the judge at the probate court. They all went down there to talk with the judge and everything was arranged; the judge decided that it was best for Maggy not to be brought into court, since everybody agreed about her and he thought she’d been through enough already. It all turned out to be much more informal than they’d been afraid it might.

  Of course, Maggy, being Maggy, said, “But I’d like to have gone to court. I’ve never been in court and talked to a judge.”

  “The judge was little and skinny and I don’t think he’d have impressed you at all,” Uncle Douglas told her.

  “And am I going to stay with you?” Maggy demanded of Daddy. “I know Aunt Elena can’t keep me and I don’t want to live with Grandpa. I want to stay with you because you’re my family now.”

  “Yes, Maggy,” Daddy told her. “You’re to continue to live with us, just as you’ve been doing.”

  “Well, that’s okay, then,” Maggy said. “May Suzy and I be excused now?”