He hadn’t seen her. He was strolling toward one of the cars, valise in one hand, cigar in the other. He wouldn’t see her if … There was a shout from the other end of the platform where men were handling the baggage. Mr. Sweeney’s head began to turn. She doubled over and began to fiddle with her shoe. It was a buttoned one — she couldn’t pretend to be tying it. Well, she was checking the buttons, then … Good grief, she wouldn’t be able to straighten up again until the train was gone. Mr. Sweeney might happen to sit down by a window just opposite her … She was having trouble breathing.
“Daddy!” she whispered.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Daddy, stand in front of me! Bend over and look at my shoe.”
“What’s the —?”
“Please!” she hissed. She heard him grunt, and his puzzled face came level with hers. “Between me and the train!” she said. “Pretend you’re looking at something that I’m showing you on my shoe.” Her eyes darted right and left under her lowered lids. She could no longer see Mr. Sweeney. Her father’s troubled gaze searched her face. “What’s all this about?” he murmured.
“It’s Mr. Sweeney! Come closer. Keep looking down at my shoe — pretend there’s a hole in it or something.”
“Who?”
“That fortune-hunter who was after Mrs. Walker! The one we scared away!”
“Oh! Hey, my back’s getting tired, can I —?”
“Don’t move! Not till the train goes.”
“But why? What can he do if he does see you?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out!”
At last the cry of “ ’Board!” sounded, the bell began to ring, the engine huffed, wheels skreeked; and the Shaws straightened up, gasping for air like swimmers who have surfaced just in time.
5. Plotting
… got to Hollisters’ all right. We had lunch and Daddy took a nap. I went out and “met” Vicky and Bobbie, and we tried to make plans. The big problem was how to get Daddy and Mrs. Walker to meet a second time. Vicky decided she would have to do something improper and desperate …
“Woulda been here sooner,” Jim Perkins said, “but I had to see a feller.” He lowered his voice. “Business praposition,” he confided. The Shaws recoiled from a strong smell of beer.
“We’re vacationing in the country,” Susan said. “Do you know anyone nearby that offers room and board?”
“Eee-yep. Know a place that will meet your requirements in every par-tickler. Cool breezy location, a view equalled by no other in these parts, and —” he paused to worry at a twist of tobacco “— victuals of the highest class. Hollisters’. Where’s yer baggage?”
There was a moment’s pause. “Uh, it’s coming later,” Susan said.
“Mix-up at the other end,” Mr. Shaw added. And to prevent any further discussion he thrust two quarters at Jim Perkins, said, “Up you go, my dear,” handed Susan into the surrey, and got in himself.
Jim Perkins projected a stream of tobacco juice over the left front wheel, tilted the remains of a top hat forward at a desperate angle over his forehead, hunched over as if to meet the onslaught of a heavy wind, and flicked the reins. The horse broke into a creaking amble. The Shaws leaned back with a sigh.
Mrs. Hollister, a faded, shy woman, said yes, she guessed they could have two rooms upstairs.
“Reckon I could pick up yer baggage when it gets in,” Jim Perkins said.
“Ah — no,” Mr. Shaw said, “Thank you, but it’s taken care of.”
“Wouldn’t be no trouble —”
“Can we see our rooms, please?” Susan said. “Thank you, Mr. Perkins, goodbye,” and they made their escape into the house.
The rooms were small and untidy and needed dusting. ‘Wouldn’t Mrs. Clutchett love to give this place a going over!’ Susan thought. At the sight of his bed, Mr. Shaw yawned and remarked that he didn’t know which he wanted more, lunch or a nap. “How about both?” Susan suggested. Mrs. Hollister produced cold chicken and bread and butter, which they fell upon like wolves. Then Mr. Shaw went to his room, laid himself down with a groan, and fell asleep.
Susan was too keyed up even to consider a nap. A rickety little writing desk by one of the windows in her room reminded her of something. She sat down and brought her diary up to date, scribbling fast to get everything in, and glancing outside every few minutes to see if Victoria or Robert were about.
As soon as she was through, she ran outside. For the first time since her adventures had begun she could appear in full sight of the Walkers’ house without worrying about being seen. She hurried toward the hedge that separated the two properties, muttering to herself, “Come on, you two, we’re supposed to—oops!” She slowed down, remembering that she and the Walker children were “meeting” for the first time.
Ah, here they were!
She gave them a grave look over the privet, and said in Deportment Class tones, “How do you do? What a lovely house you live in!”
“Why, thank you,” Victoria answered in similar tones. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. Are you taking the air in this vicinity?”
Robert’s face was twitching. Susan and Victoria, despite heroic efforts, burst into giggles.
“It’s totus dexter,” Robert laughed. “No one’s watching. Come on over, Sue — we’ve met now. There’s a place up here where you can go through the hedge.”
“Let’s sit in the swing,” Victoria said.
In the Walkers’ back yard, under a weeping willow’s cascade of foliage, was a wooden swing — the kind with two facing seats and a floor, suspended in a frame. Susan was enchanted by it. She sat opposite the Walkers and watched dragonflies quartering the pond nearby. Robert pushed on the floor and started them swinging.
“Did everything go all right?” Victoria asked.
“Oh, yes, we got Daddy a jazzy suit — oh, pardon me, I guess I mean nobby — and he looks just marvelous, and then we went to the station and oh my goodness! I thought I’d faint — there was Mr. Sweeney!”
They looked at her with startled faces.
“Oh, it’s all right, he didn’t see me. I ducked down and Daddy stood in front of me. But I wanted to go right through the floor.”
“But it’s been —” Robert ticked off his fingers “— gosh! It’s been four days since we chased him away. I wonder why he stayed in town so long?”
“He was getting on the train, anyway,” Susan said. “If he’d been getting off we might have something to worry about. Now we know he’s really gone … Well! Daddy’s taking a nap. I’m kind of worried about him. He has this funny look as though he doesn’t believe anything that’s happening. Or as though it’s happening to somebody else … He’s in a better mood now, but he’s just not involved yet. How’re things at your end?”
“Oh, Mama’s involved, all right,” Robert said, frowning. “That’s our trouble — she believes everything that’s happened. It’s fixed in her mind that we’re ruined.”
“She’s going through her papers and making lists of things that have to be done,” Victoria added. “She’s really wonderful, you know — so brave and — and resolute. But I declare, she’s carrying it too far. Maggie isn’t making anything easier, either; she’s looking glum and muttering about how her second sight is bothering her. Only she won’t say how.”
“Second sight?”
“Yes. She claims that she sees — oh, visions. Remember I told you that once she saw her brother seven months after he’d been drowned? Anyway, she’s hinting that something dreadful is going to happen soon. She says,” Victoria lowered her voice, “she says that she’s seen a sign.”
“What kind of sign?”
“She won’t tell us. All she says is, ‘I wouldn’t be wantin’ to make your flesh creep!’ ”
“Oh, foo!” Susan said, trying to ignore the little shiver that had run down her spine.
“Something dreadful is going to happen,” Robert said. “You don’t need second sight to know i
t, either. Cousin Jane arrives tomorrow on the one-thirty-seven.”
They all sighed.
“Well,” Susan said, “we’ll just have to get Daddy and your Mama together as many times as we can before that. Now, what I’m going to do in a little while is this: when Daddy wakes up, we’re going for a walk and I’m going to show him the treasure —”
“We really ought to move the treasure to a safer place,” Robert interrupted.
“We will, when there’s time. But I want to show him now — it might jolt a little belief into him. And anyway, we need some more money for current expenses. Then we’ll walk back by your house. Can you bring your Mama out then?”
“We’ll try,” Victoria said. “It would be easier if she weren’t so busy and preoccupied.”
“Trust us, Sue,” Robert said. “We’ll have her out if we have to dragoon her into it.”
“Fine! Now, just in case they need a little more encouragement, how can we get them together this evening?”
Victoria gave her a worried look. “That’s the trouble, Sue. It will be up to your Papa to make the next move, but it would be much too hasty of him to call that soon.”
“Oh. Well, how about tomorrow morning?”
Victoria began to twist her hands. “Well, you see, Sue, it’s not that Mama is stuffy, because she isn’t; but she does believe in propriety, and — well, the proper time for making a call is between two and five in the afternoon.”
“Oh, good grief, Vick! We don’t have time to be proper!”
“I know, Sue. But on the other hand, if we allow your Papa to commit social blunders, Mama will be put off — and then we’ll lose even more time.”
“I’ve got it!” Robert said. “Maybe we can arrange an accidental meeting. Or an emergency. Nobody bothers about what’s proper in an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” Susan asked.
“Something dangerous that would throw them together. Something dire.”
“Mmmm!” Victoria said. A dreamy smile came across her face. “Oh, wouldn’t it be splendid if we were picnicking somewhere and a dreadful tempest suddenly sprang up and flood waters were rising by the minute and your Papa dashed up on a wild-eyed steed crying ‘By the Heavens, Madame, there is not a second to spare!’ and swept Mama up in his —”
“Vi-ick!” Robert protested.
“And what would be wrong with that, you unfeeling brute?”
“Come on,” Susan said. “It has to be something that can really happen. That we can make happen. Think!”
They thought.
But nothing seemed workable. An accidental meeting could only happen if Mrs. Walker were out-of-doors for some reason. Victoria and Robert agreed that tearing her away from her work once would be hard enough; twice would be impossible without some compelling excuse. Such as? Well … After a long silence Robert suggested a fire in the stable. The girls shuddered—much too dangerous. Victoria came back to her wild-eyed steed; it was hard to discard something so attractive. In novels, the hero and heroine were frequently brought together by a runaway horse. Imagine Mr. Shaw being thrown from his panic-stricken mount right in front of the house, and Mama rushing out to kneel by his insensible form—“Daddy doesn’t know how to ride, he wouldn’t even get on a horse,” Susan said. Another long silence. Then Robert offered himself as a sacrificial victim. He could fall out of a tree. Mr. Shaw, who would just happen to be passing by at that moment, could carry him into the house.
“That would be pretty good, actually.” Susan said. “If you didn’t hurt yourself.”
“Oh, I’d have to hurt myself, Sue. Then your Papa could call as often as he liked, to see how I was mending.”
“No,” Victoria said, “that would just be too hard on poor Mama, to have you hurt on top of everything else.”
Once again, a long silence, broken only by a little crunching noise each time the swing passed a certain spot.
At last Victoria said, with an expression of desperate resolve, “I — I believe it is going to be up to me.”
“What? What?” Susan and Robert asked.
“I’m going to force Mama’s hand during the first meeting. I’m going to suggest that we invite you and your Papa this evening for — oh, I don’t know what, I’ll think of something. I’ll suggest it while we’re all talking together, so it will be very awkward for Mama to say no. Too awkward, I hope … You’ll have to second me, Bobbie.”
Robert nodded with a troubled look. “Totus dexter. But there’ll probably be a blowup afterwards.”
“I know,” Victoria said, shivering. “It is a dreadfully ill-bred thing to do, and she’ll be so vexed … I wouldn’t do it under any other circumstances in the world!”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Susan said, chewing her knuckle.
Victoria threw up her hands. “Oh, goodness!” she cried. “I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll all have to fall out of a tree!”
6. Meeting
… we went to see the treasure. And then came the Big Event. It was terrible — he looked at her and she looked at him and — nothing! They were going to say goodbye again almost right away, but Vicky forced Mrs. Walker’s hand and I had to force Daddy’s so we could get them together again next morning. I thought the situation was saved, only it wasn’t …
Susan waited, fidgeting, for her father to wake up. He lay on his back, breathing tranquilly, his hands folded over the gold buttons of his waistcoat. He looked as though he could sleep that way for hours. She knew he needed it; but on the other hand, here was the afternoon wearing away, and the great encounter — the whole point of being here, after all — hadn’t happened yet … Finally she could stand it no longer, and shook him awake.
“Come on, Daddy. I want to show you something. Remember I told you you were going to be rich? Now I’m going to prove it!”
For the second time that day they set off down the road — but this time in the opposite direction.
“Now we can see the Walkers’ house from the front,” she said. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Don’t you love these iron stags in the yard?”
“Mmm,” he said. “Pretty impressive. When do I meet Mrs. Walker?”
She glanced at him to see how he meant this. There was no eagerness in his face—he just wanted to know. She sighed and said, “Soon now. Bobbie and Vicky are going to bring her out when they see us coming back.”
They walked on.
“Daddy,” she said after a while, “if you happened to be going along this road by yourself, would it ever occur to you that there was a treasure hidden somewhere along here?”
“Nope.”
“Here, stop. Look around, now. If you did suspect a treasure, would you know where to look? Do you see anything unusual?”
“Can’t say that I do,” Mr. Shaw said after a close scrutiny of both sides of the road. “Looks to me like plain ordinary bushes along a fence.”
She smiled with relief. “It’s safe as a bank!” she said. “I don’t know what Bobbie’s so worried about. See that dead stick with the fork at the end? That’s the mark.” She glanced up and down the road to make sure it was deserted, and said, “Are you seeking your fortune, Mr. Shaw? Try looking here.”
They crept on their hands and knees under a tunnel of arching canes. Here it was — she could tell by the feel. “Look!” she said. She brushed away a carpet of dead leaves to reveal the coarse weave of gunny sacking, and pulled aside a fold of the cloth.
“Holy smoke!” Mr. Shaw said.
“Feel it! Isn’t it a marvelous sensation?”
They lifted handfuls of gold coins and let them slither through their fingers.
“Good night!” Mr. Shaw murmured. “It this real?”
“Oh, Daddy, you’re enough to drive me to distraction! Can’t you feel what’s real?”
“Okay, chick, don’t bite my head off. I handle thousands of dollars in a week, you know — only it’s all pieces of paper and numbers. This—Is it really ours?”
“Yes. Yo
urs. Here, put these in your pocket for—for whatever we might need them for.”
She covered up the hoard again, and they backed out of the tunnel.
“All right! Or ‘totus dexter’, as Bobbie says. Now to meet Mrs. Walker! Ready?”
“I guess.”
She brushed a few bits of leaf from his coat, and straightened his cravat. “Remember, you’re wearing a hat,” she warned. “You’re supposed to lift it when you’re introduced.”
“Right.” He practiced a few times. “What am I supposed to say, anyway?”
“Oh, you’re not supposed to say anything—you’re not speaking lines. You’re just a person meeting another person—all you do is talk together. I’ll help you if you get stuck.”
They dawdled along the whole width of the Walker property without any sign of life from the house. ‘Oh, good grief!’ Susan thought, applying her teeth to her knuckle, ‘something’s gone wrong.’ She steered her father into the Hollisters’ yard, and they sauntered alone the hedge that divided the two properties. ‘Anyway,’ she thought, ‘we can walk back and forth here as much as we want. We’re here to take the air, after all.’
And then, oh relief! — the front door of the Walkers’ house opened, and here came Mrs. Walker at last, being herded across the lawn by her children. ‘Oh,’ Susan thought, her heart beating high, ‘how could Daddy possibly not fall in love with her?’ For Mrs. Walker was even more lovely than she had remembered. She was wearing a simple white muslin dress. Her chestnut hair gleamed in the sunlight. There were shadows under her eyes — no one was sleeping well these days! — but they added to her beauty rather than detracted from it. Susan gave her father a quick glance. Good!—she could see that he was favorably impressed.
“Susan!” Victoria called out. “How nice to see you again so soon!”
“Hello, Victoria, hello, Robert! Papa and I are taking a stroll. Papa, these are the new friends I told you about: Victoria Walker and her brother Robert.”
“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Shaw,” Victoria said, with only a slight touch of Deportment Class. “May I introduce you to our mother? This is Mr. Shaw, Mama.”
All in Good Time Page 4
