“Having an ill-trained servant is more trouble than having no servant at all,” Cousin Jane said.
A flush came over Mrs. Walker’s cheeks, and her mouth tightened; but before she could answer, Victoria and Robert came rushing back into the room. Victoria began to sop up the spilt tea and pile the broken china on the tray. Robert, with a shaking hand, thrust a tiny unstoppered vial under Maggie’s nose.
“All right!” Mrs. Walker said, attempting a cheerful air. “We’ll have her around in no time now,” and she rubbed briskly away at Maggie’s left wrist, while Susan, who had never done this before and was only imitating her, did the same on the right. “Maggie? Maggie? There’s a dear!”
Maggie stirred, and her eyelids fluttered. “Oh, Mum,” she muttered in a hoarse undertone, “am I still alive, then?”
“Of course you are, silly!”
Maggie’s eyes opened. She looked at Mrs. Walker with a puzzled, apologetic expression. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mum. I thought it was the last minute of me mortal life.”
“What was it, Maggie? You frightened us all half to death!”
“Frightened, is it? Sure, Mum, I saw a sign that would make the very flesh of you melt away from your bones with fright.”
Cousin Jane sniffed.
“Sit up, Maggie dear, it’s all right now. How could you see any such thing right here in our own parlor?”
Maggie struggled into a sitting position. “Our own parlor or not, Mum, me second sight sees what it sees. I jist lifts me eyes from me tray and turns me head —” She demonstrated, with the result that she now saw Susan for the first time.
Her eyes widened with horror. She uttered a dying scream and fell backwards. Mrs. Walker seized her just in time to prevent her head form banging on the floor.
Susan dropped the wrist she had been rubbing, and fell back on her heels in bewilderment. Mrs. Walker cried, “Maggie! What is the matter?” Robert began to wave the smelling salts again. Victoria scurried across the floor on her hands and knees and began to rub Maggie’s cheeks. Mr. Shaw jumped up, stepping on his hat and crushing it, and cried, “Let’s get her into a chair!”
Cousin Jane was the only one who was paying no attention to Maggie. Her eyes were fastened on Mr. Shaw, and they glittered with suspicion.
“Mr. Shaw!” she said like the crack of a whip. Everyone fell silent and turned to look at her. “This is a most peculiar circumstance, is it not?”
“It certainly is! I never saw anything like —”
“Perhaps you are prepared to offer some explanation.”
“Who, me?” Mr. Shaw cried. “I have no more idea —”
“Were you acquainted with this unfortunate woman?”
“No! I never saw her before in my life.”
“In-deed? I had the distinct impression that she was made insensible by the shock of seeing and recognizing you. I was going to overlook that impression. However, the sight of your daughter has had the same unhappy effect on her. The coincidence seems to me too pointed to be ignored. It was my hope that you could enlighten me.”
The coincidence was not only pointed, it was dumbfounding. Mr. Shaw and Susan gaped at Cousin Jane, and at Maggie, and at each other. “I — I don’t know what to say,” Mr. Shaw finally stammered.
Cousin Jane compressed her lips and turned to Mrs. Walker. “Isabelle, in view of the fact that Mr. Shaw and Miss Shaw have such an unsettling effect on Maggie, do you not think it would be wise if they were elsewhere when she comes to?”
Mrs. Walker flushed, and raised her eyes to Mr. Shaw with an agonized look.
“Mrs. Walker,” he said, “I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t know why we have such an effect on Maggie, but since we do, we had better go. Thank you for your hospitality, and …”
“Oh, Mr. Shaw, I — I am devastated.” Mrs. Walker made a helpless little gesture. “I’m sorrier than I can say that things have — Let us hope that we can meet again under happier circumstances.”
Cousin Jane stood, and stared at Susan while she scrambled to her feet and joined her father. Then she advanced on them, making them fall back toward the door. Everyone was murmuring “Goodbye, goodbye.” Susan and Robert and Victoria exchanged despairing looks. “Good day, good day, most regrettable,” Cousin Jane said. A gleam of malice shone briefly behind her glasses as she held the door for the Shaws. It closed after them with a thump.
Stunned, they walked down the path to Ward Lane. There Mr. Shaw suddenly hurled his ruined hat into the dust and kicked it. “Good night!” he ground out through his teeth. “What a poisonous woman!”
Susan looked back at the house where her hopes lay in shambles, and choked down her tears.
There seemed to be no point in going back to the Hollisters’ merely to sit around. They began to trudge down the lane.
“Well,” Mr. Shaw said after a while, “Looks like we’re not going to get to the elevator until tonight. But tonight is it. We’re going to stay up and watch until it’s safe to go, and go.”
“All right,” she said dully.
“Listen, what was that business with Maggie, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we look like somebody else that she — I don’t know.”
“Somebody else who scares the living daylights out of her, then. Was anybody threatening her or anything?”
“No … Oh! Vicky did say that she’s been talking about ‘signs’ or something like that. She’s awfully superstitious. Maybe we look like somebody she used to know who died, and she thinks we’re ghosts.”
“Hmm … Wish we could throw that kind of scare into that cousin of theirs! Poor Isabelle!”
“Oh, Daddy!” she said, turning to him with desperate appeal. “Isn’t it awful? We can’t go away without doing something to help her out.”
“Right!” he said, nodding his head. “Absolutely right.”
Her heart leaped up. “Oh, Daddy, it would just solve everything if you —”
“Come on, Susie,” he broke in with a short laugh. “Will you just drop that idea, please? I’m sure we can help her out and still go back to the twentieth century. Let me think a bit …”
But hope, that tiny, stubborn flame, was alight in her heart once more. There was still the rest of the day left … And he had called her by name — not “poor Mrs. Walker,” but “poor Isabelle!” Surely that meant something; some change of attitude that he might not even be aware of himself yet. And she, Mrs. Walker, had actually said, “I hope we meet again under happier circumstances.” Well, there was still the rest of the day to get them together again somehow. She and Victoria and Robert would have to have a council of war as soon as possible. The main problem now was how to get around Cousin Jane … She shivered. No wonder the Walkers had shown such gloom at the mere mention of her name! But still, dragon though she was, she couldn’t be everywhere at once, could she …?
Thus preoccupied with their thoughts, they walked almost as far as the stream where they had napped yesterday morning, then turned around and went back.
Mrs. Hollister met them at the door. She murmured, “Oh, Mr. Shaw,” and began to writhe.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s,” Mrs. Hollister gasped. “I mean — she’s —” She signalled toward the parlor with her eyes, twisted her hands, and fled to the shelter of the kitchen.
“Mr. Shaw!” snapped a familiar voice.
There, in the doorway of the parlor, bonneted and clasping a tightly-furled black umbrella, stood Cousin Jane.
Mr. Shaw’s nostrils turned white. “Ah,” he said in a stiff voice.
“My business is brief,” Cousin Jane said. Her eyes glittered at them. “I shall detain you no more than a minute. Mrs. Walker’s servant has revived, and I have been questioning her very closely.”
She paused to see what effect this announcement had on them, and seemed disappointed that it had none. She continued:
“I do not know what to make of her story. One must consider that she is ignorant and filled wi
th superstitions; on the other hand, her sincerity is beyond question. She claims she fainted because she believed you to be supernatural figures, a ‘sign’ or some such rubbish—apparently she is given to hysterical notions of that sort. But I cannot lightly dismiss her reasons for so believing. She has an unshakable conviction that at midnight of the night before last, she saw the two of you, surrounded by a ghostly glow — in the hallway of the Walkers’ house.”
Susan hoped that she was successful in suppressing her gasp. That was it! She stared hard at a highlight flashing from one lens of Cousin Jane’s pince-nez, and tried to keep her face expressionless.
“Ridiculous!” Mr. Shaw said in a convincing tone.
“Indeed?” Cousin Jane sniffed. “Perhaps. It is not for me to say without further evidence whether the woman’s ‘vision’ was the product of her feverish imagination, or something more, shall we say, substantial.”
Cousin Jane paused, and compressed her lips.
“Now look here!” Mr. Shaw said. “Are you implying something?”
“I imply nothing, Mr. Shaw, that a clear conscience would find offensive. Let me continue. I discovered almost as soon as I arrived this morning that you and your daughter had succeeded within a very short space of time in exerting a peculiar influence over Robert and Victoria. I discovered that you had exerted that influence in order to scrape an acquaintance with their mother. Now I have just discovered from Mrs. Hollister that you came here, and are staying here, without baggage. You travel light, Mr. Shaw — for a person ‘in finance.’ One cannot help wondering what kind of ‘finance’ you actually deal in.”
Mr. Shaw clenched his fists and said, “What are you getting at?”
“Very well, Mr. Shaw, I will not mince words with you. I find everything about you irregular — highly irregular. I have no option under the circumstances but to forbid you to see or speak to my kinswoman, Mrs. Walker, any further. As for you, Miss Shaw, I forbid you to have any further connection whatsoever with Robert or Victoria.”
Mr. Shaw took two steps forward, and said, “Who the devil are you to go around saying who we can or can’t see?”
“I believe you to be a thoroughgoing scoundrel, sir! I warn you that if you give me the slightest pretext, I shall report you to the nearest police station!”
“You can report me wherever and whenever you like. And if it’s the pretext you’re waiting for” — Mr. Shaw snapped his fingers an inch from Cousin Jane’s nose — “I hope that will serve!”
She fell back a step. Her face went crimson, and her pince-nez dropped off her nose. Half raising her umbrella, she said in a voice that shook with fury, “Do not press me too far, my man! I have said what I came to say, and I am now leaving. Stand aside!”
“Go around, blast you!” he roared.
They stood their ground for perhaps a quarter of a minute, glaring at each other. Then Cousin Jane stabbed the tip of her umbrella into the floor, and, uttering little huffs and groans of rage, walked around Mr. Shaw and stamped out of the house.
10. Susan at the End of her Rope
… no more hope for getting Daddy and Mrs. Walker together, as far as I could see. Daddy didn’t seem to mind so much but I was sick. He meant it about helping her, though. He had figured out a plan while we were walking. We started to carry it out and ran smack into another disaster …
“By George!” Mr. Shaw gasped. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. His face was white, and his hands shook. “Whew! Boy oh boy, how I’d love to—!” He clenched his teeth and rubbed his hands together as though demolishing a noxious insect. “Hey, chick, what’s the matter? Come on, it’s all right; it’s all over now.”
“We won’t — we won’t get to see — Mrs. Walker — again — will we?” she wept.
“Anh-h-h! I’ve got half a mind to go over there right now just to show that flaming rhinoceros that she can’t forbid me anything! If I didn’t think she’d make ever more trouble for poor Isabelle, I’d — oh lord, I don’t know what! We have to get the Walkers out from under before we go — and I think I know how to do it.”
He led her over to a moth-eaten purple plush sofa, and they sat down.
“It’s nothing new,” he went on. “It’s just a way to get Isa — Mrs. Walker to accept the treasure. When you were telling me about your adventures here, didn’t you mention a lawyer who was handling Mrs. Walker’s investments?”
“Mr. Branscomb,” she said in a dull voice.
“That was it — Branscomb. Wait here a sec — I have to talk to Mrs. H.”
His voice and Mrs. Hollister’s murmur sounded for a while in the kitchen. Then he was back.
“All right. She doesn’t know his address, but he’s in town and I’ll find him. What we’ll do is put the money in a bank under Branscomb’s charge. He can tell Mrs. Walker that she hasn’t lost everything, as they previously thought — one or two of her investments are rallying again. It’s as simple as that. And of course, when she’s on her feet again, she can send Cousin Jane back to wherever she came from.
“Now, Mrs. H. says there’s a farmer named Knutsen near here who can give us a ride, so I’m going to go and arrange for one. While I’m doing that, you get a sack from the stable and bring back as much gold as you can carry by yourself. Whatever you can bring we’ll take into town in Knutsen’s buggy, and use it to set up the bank account. We can bring a trunk or chest back with us, and tonight before we leave we’ll put the rest of the money in it. Branscomb will have instructions to pick it up here tomorrow and deposit it. Okay?”
“Okay …”
“Honey, I’m sorry, but it’s really all I can do.”
“I know.”
They went out on the veranda.
“All right, chick. I’ll see you here in a while. Just bring back what you can carry without a struggle.” He squeezed her shoulders, kissed her on the forehead, and set off.
She lurked along the hedge for a while, waiting to see if Victoria or Robert would manage to slip out. She was going to have to tell them that their plan had failed. She was going to have to say goodbye forever, unless they could think of some desperate last-minute plan to — what, what, what? Her vision blurred with tears.
Victoria and Robert did not come out.
She sighed, and went into the Hollisters’ stable. There was a pile of sacks draped over the frame of the grindstone. She picked one, folded it, and trudged out to the road.
It was another one of those beautiful days: bright blue sky with pillowy clouds, a mild sweet-smelling breeze, birds everywhere, butterflies wavering from flower to flower. She looked at it with anguish in her heart. Goodbye flowers, goodbye fields and woods and singing birds … Oh, if her father would just — A feeling of intense anger suddenly welled up inside her. He was so blind, so stupid, so stick-in-the-mud! Couldn’t even see the fantastic gift that was being laid at his feet! Didn’t want to see it!
She was still muttering to herself when she came to the forked stick, although part of her mind was trying to tell her that it really wasn’t his fault. If nothing happened when he looked at Mrs. Walker — well, nothing happened. And that was that.
She sighed, looked up and down the road to make sure it was clear, and crawled into the thicket.
A burning, copper-tasting sensation clamped down on her tongue. Yesterday she had left dead leaves spread over the sackful of treasure. Now the leaves were all pushed aside, and there was nothing before her eyes but the tunnel’s bare earth floor.
When the sick dizzy feeling cleared from her head, she realized that of course it must have been Robert and Victoria. Robert had been worried about the treasure’s safety. They had probably moved it last evening, intending to tell her this morning; and they had forgotten, in the shock of Cousin Jane’s unexpected arrival.
She trotted back, trying to ignore the pain in her ankle. Good grief, this complicated the situation …! She would have to see them somehow, Cousin Jane or no Cousin Jane, and find out where they’d put it, s
o that her father could—
But how to do it? Disheveled and panting, she stood by the Walkers’ front gate and stared at the house. She couldn’t just wait around for them to come out …
“Meow!” Toby said in the hedge.
She looked. A hand appeared over the top of the foliage, beckoned, and vanished.
Ah! She hurried around through the Hollisters’ gate. Robert and Victoria were huddled under the hedge.
“Sue!” Robert whispered before she could say anything. “Cousin Jane doesn’t know we’ve escaped yet — I hope! We’re not allowed to see you any more. We’re not even allowed out of the house. We have to set up a communication post somewhere, quick.”
“She’s made us start to pack up our clothes and belongings, Sue!” Victoria said. “We only managed to slip away because she’s in Mama’s room. Oh, I hate her! — I don’t care if it is wicked, I hate her! She’s picking out all the furniture to be auctioned off, and poor Mama —”
“Listen,” Susan broke in, “where is it?”
“Where’s what?” Robert asked.
“The treasure, the treasure!” she almost shouted. “Where did you put the treasure?”
Their silence and their puzzled eyes told her that the unimaginable worst had happened.
“Oh,” she moaned.
“What’s the matter, Sue?” Victoria whispered.
“It’s gone,” she choked. “It’s gone!” She collapsed with her head in her arms, sobbing. They patted her back and murmured.
“I ought to be drummed out of the regiment!” Robert muttered after a while. “It’s my fault — I knew it wasn’t safe out there, but I didn’t do anything about it.”
“But how could anyone find it?” Victoria said in a cracked voice. “Who would ever look in a place like that?”
Robert sighed. “Well, boys would, for one — if they were bird’s nesting. Or a tramp’s dog … Oh, thunderation! I can’t bear it when you cry, Sue, please stop.”
“It’s not just the treasure,” she wept. “It’s everything. Our whole plan’s a failure. Daddy won’t fall in love with your Mama and he — he insists on going — back tonight, and it’s all over!”
All in Good Time Page 7
