Time at the Top

by Edward Ormondroyd

  “Anyway,” Robert said at last, “we’re right back where we started. If we’re going to give Mama a little bit at a time we still have to hide the rest somewhere.”

  “All right,” Victoria sighed. “Anywhere but the pond.”

  “Anything but digging another hole, too. What do you think, Sue? — Sue?”

  “Oh, good grief!” Susan said. An idea was struggling to be born in her mind, but how could she think with all this talk going on? She stood up and stretched her aching arms. “I don’t care. How about the stable? Couldn’t we just hide it under the straw?”

  “Hey!” said Robert. “That’s it. Why didn’t I think of—”

  “Well, let’s go then,” Susan said. And then, to make up for the shortness of her tone, she added, “It must be getting awfully late.”

  The Walkers got up groaning. Robert took the shafts of the wheelbarrow in his grip and heaved upward with a terrific grunt.

  “Oh, no! It must weigh a ton — I can hardly budge it.”

  “You take one handle and I’ll take the other,” Susan said. “Then Vicky, when one of us gets tired.”

  They soon discovered that the wheelbarrow was more easily pulled than pushed; but they were worn out, and it was too dark to pick the best way across the field, so that even with two of them pulling they could not proceed more than a hundred feet at a time. It took them nearly an hour to reach the far corner of the field, where there was a gate that opened on Ward Lane.

  “At least,” Robert panted, “it’ll roll easier on the road.”

  It did. Now they could go several hundred feet before stopping to rest and trade off places. But when they had covered only half the distance between the gate and the Walkers’ house, the wheel of the barrow began to chirp. Each chirp grew louder and longer, until the “weeeet weeeet weeeet” was almost continuous.

  “Stop, stop!” Susan cried. “I can’t stand it. It’s worse than fingernails on a blackboard.”

  “That’ll wake up everybody at our house and Hollister’s too,” Robert said. “Why didn’t I think of oiling the—”

  “Listen!”

  They froze. Susan, straining her ears, could hear a faint rhythmic sound far down the lane.

  “We’ve got to hide!” Robert muttered. “That bush —” He ran to a looming shadow by the roadside, rustled about in it, and came hurrying back. “All right — no thorns. Ram the wheelbarrow right into it.”

  “Weeeeeeet!” shrieked the wheel. The bush crackled and snapped like a falling tree. “Get behind!” Robert whispered. “Down! Hug the ground!”

  They lay with their faces pressed into the weeds, scarcely daring to breathe. ‘Good night!’ Susan thought; ‘nobody could have missed hearing that!’ The sound came steadily on toward them, resolving, as it grew louder, into the clopping of hooves, the singing crunch of wheels, the creak of harness. Louder and still louder, until it was upon them, a shadow horse, a shadow buggy, a shadow driver huddled on the seat; the horse whickered softly, the huddled figure snored; and they were past, melting again into the dark, clop clop rumble and creak.

  “Asleep,” Robert breathed. “We’re in luck!”

  “Asleep!” Susan said in a shocked voice.

  “Why not?” said Victoria. “The horse knows the way home.”

  “I’m going to go get an oil can,” Robert said. “If you two stay quiet behind the bush you’ll be all right.”

  “Well …” said Victoria.

  “Has to be done, Vic — we can’t let the wheel make all that noise without waking everybody up.”

  “Oh … all right. But please hurry, Bobbie, and do take care.”

  “Oh, girls!” he grumbled. “You’d think I was going through the enemy lines or something …” His voice faded in the dark.

  Susan edged closer to Victoria, trying to make it appear as if her real intention were to get comfortable. Somehow the night was not as beautiful as it had been. The shadows seemed blacker all of a sudden, and sinister in shape; yet the one they were sitting in did not hide them very well. The pale oval that was Victoria’s face stood out much too clearly …

  At the end of ten minutes Victoria whispered shakily, “Sue? Do you — do you believe in ghosts?”

  “No!” said Susan, much more loudly than she had intended. They both jumped, then cowered with hearts thudding. “No,” she whispered.

  “Neither do I — in the daytime.”

  “Stop it. It’s all nonsense.”

  “Maggie said she saw her brother once seven months after he was drowned at sea! There was seaweed in his hair and his face was all blue —”

  “Stop it.”

  Five minutes later Victoria whispered, “I wish Bobbie would hurry.”

  “So do I.”

  “What if something happened to him? What if he met a tramp?”

  “Will you please stop that?” Susan whispered.

  “I can’t help it,” Victoria moaned. “He’s been gone much too long, and there are tramps on the road —”

  “Listen!”

  Footsteps were approaching in the dark. Robert — or someone else? They clutched each other, suffocating with terror.

  A light bloomed on the road. Behind it a voice shakily enquired, “Vic? Sue?”

  “Bobbie!” they screamed. They were up and running. The bull’s-eye lantern winked out, and Robert’s white face loomed out of the dark. Susan screamed again and went sprawling.

  “Sue! What’s the matter? Sue?” They fluttered anxiously around her.

  “Ankle,” she sobbed. “Oh, oh …”

  “Which one?” The bull’s-eye winked on again.

  “Left one. Ow! Don’t pinch it!”

  “Oh, Sue, I am sorry.”

  “Think you can stand on it?”

  “No,” she wept. “Can’t even wiggle it.”

  “Wheelbarrow!” Robert said. “It’s all right, Sue, we’ll get you home. Just let me oil the wheel.”

  The barrow was trundled out, its wheel lubricated, and Susan hoisted on board. Victoria and Robert took the handles, struggled a few feet, narrowly avoided a tip-over, and collapsed.

  “Too heavy!” Robert gasped. “We’ll never do it.”

  “One thing after another,” Victoria quavered, wringing her hands. “What’re we going to do?”

  “Dump me off,” said Susan. “I can hide under the bush again. Take the treasure home and then come back for me.”

  “Leave you here alone?” Victoria cried. “Never!”

  “It’s all right, Vicky, I can —”

  “No!”

  “All right, then, we’ll have to leave the treasure here and take me home.”

  There was a glum silence.

  “Well, come on!” she cried. The throbbing of her ankle made her savage. “Me or it. We can’t stand around all night making up our minds.”

  “I know!” Robert said. “We can hide it in the fencerow.” He opened the shutter of his bull’s-eye, went over to the fence, and began to explore along the overgrowth. “Here we are! The blackberry runners make a kind of tunnel. Plenty of dead leaves to bury it under, too.”

  “Don’t forget to keep some out for your Mama,” Susan said.

  Robert and Victoria had an exasperating time of it, struggling with the weight of the gold, and getting ripped by thorns at every move. They were not speaking to each other by the time they were through. Susan, wrapped in her pain, had nothing further to say either. The long journey back seemed more like the retreat of a beaten army than the triumphant homecoming of successful treasure hunters.

  Carrying Susan up to Victoria’s room was out of the question. Robert fetched a blanket, and Susan was bedded down in the stable on the very pile of straw that was to have hidden the treasure.

  She was awakened in the morning by a fly running over her face. She did not open her eyes at once, but lay there for a while, warm, drowsy and comfortable, thinking how nice it was not to have to worry for once about the Genial Host and his screaming audience.
She could loll there until she was ready to get up … Still, she would have to go back today — there was no longer any excuse for staying. Ankle? She wiggled her foot cautiously. Still painful, but much better; she’d be able to hobble on it, anyway.

  No excuse for staying.

  She sighed, and opened her eyes.

  There had been a heavy dew-fall during the night, or perhaps another shower of rain. The weeds and grasses by the stable door were covered with drops, all adazzle in the slanting sun. What she could see of the sky was covered with little quilted clouds. They had a pearly glow as if each bore its own light within it. Hollisters’ chickens clucked and crooned in the distance, other bird voices were raised in various song. A small spot detached itself from the lintel, dropped, paused, hung in mid-air silhouetted against the clouds, dropped and paused again; ‘a spider,’ Susan thought; ‘Charlotte, making Charlotte’s web!’ A swallow shot through the doorway, arced upward as if to burst through the roof, checked, turned, darted out into the sunlight again like a small blue explosion. Charlotte dropped three more inches and waved her legs. Susan’s heart filled; she sucked in her breath. The thought she had been struggling with last night was sharp and clear in her mind.

  She wanted to live here.

  Well?

  No excuse for staying; she had to go back. And yet … And yet …

  She was still deep in thought an hour later when Victoria burst in.

  “Sue! How’s your poor ankle?”

  “Hi, Vicky. Still hurts, but I think I can walk on it.”

  “Good! I’m so glad! Wasn’t it a nightmare last night? They never tell you about these things in stories — the people find the gold and live happily ever after — no mention of having to hide from people and being frightened out of your wits and spraining ankles. Or being so stiff you can hardly move next day.”

  “Oh, well, everything’s all right now.”

  “I wish I could think so! You know, Bobbie and I simply didn’t have the strength to go back after the treasure last night. It’s still in the brambles!”

  “Oh? Well, it’s hidden, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s hidden all right — leaves all over it and brambles in front of the leaves. But I’m not going to feel safe until we get it home.”

  “You did remember to take some for your Mama, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Bobbie’s got it, twelve eagles. But we can’t do anything until we have the note. So could you please?” And Victoria drew a sheet of note paper and a pencil from her pocket.

  Susan had not cared much last night for the idea of dashing tears from cheeks and making smiles bloom; and now, before Victoria could mention them again, she scribbled, “Do not despair. From a Well-Wisher. More to follow.”

  “There!” she said. “Now, I have to go back.”

  Victoria’s face fell. “Oh, Sue —”

  “Now wait a minute. I’ve got one more trip here, and I’ve — well, I’ve been thinking …” Suddenly the enormity of what she had been thinking struck her, and she broke off, chewing her knuckle and staring at Victoria’s waiting face. “Well,” she went on lamely, “it’s probably crazy …”

  “Nothing you think of is crazy. Please tell me!”

  Susan, with some hesitation, told her.

  “Oh!” Victoria breathed. “How romantic! Oh, Sue!”

  “It’s going to take some doing …”

  “You can do anything! Are you going right now?”

  “Yes, if you can keep them all away from the elevator for a while.”

  “All right! Let’s see. I know, I’ll pretend I just found the money and the note on the front doorstep. Mama usually goes into the sun parlor when there’s a crisis, and I can have Bobbie bring Maggie in, and then I’ll wave my handkerchief — come here, I’ll show you.”

  She pulled Susan to her feet and supported her while she limped to the door.

  “Can you manage?”

  “It’s all right. It just twinges when I put my weight on it.”

  “Don’t go out! Just put your head around the door. There, do you see that row of windows? That’s it. I’ll wave my handkerchief out of the one to the far left.”

  “Got it. Oh! The picture.”

  “That’s right, I forgot. How about a locket?”

  “Perfect!”

  “All right. I’ll leave it on the table across from the elevator. Anything else?”

  “No, I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Well … good luck, Sue.”

  “It isn’t luck so much,” said Susan, “as management.”

  “I know.”

  They exchanged a secret smile. Victoria squeezed Susan’s hands and left her. Susan, her mind churning, her heart pounding, her stomach quivering with excitement, waited … waited … waited … Ah! There was the signal! She hobbled from the stable as fast as she could for the back door, the elevator, and the twentieth century.

  14. Mr. Shaw Humors his Daughter

  There was a long silence when Susan finished recounting her adventures. Mr. Shaw’s expression was one of incredulity, bafflement, concern, and even fear. He stared at her, twisting his hands slowly in his lap.

  “I knew you’d find it hard to believe,” she sighed.

  “Fantastic!” he murmured. “Fantastic!”

  “Well, I know it sounds that way, Daddy, but it’s all true just the same.”

  “I don’t know, chick, I don’t know. You.”

  “I what?”

  “Well, you’ve always had a vivid imagination. Now don’t misunderstand me! I think imagination is a fine thing, and I’ve always been glad that yours—”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Susan said reproachfully, “you don’t think I’m making it up, do you?”

  “Well, Susie — old women with potatoes! 1881! Buried treasure!” He waved his hands. “Suppose I disappeared for three days and came back with a rigamarole like that, would you believe it? Now, I’m not for a minute implying that you’re deliberately trying to deceive me.”

  “What are you implying, then?”

  “Well,” he said cautiously, “I think you’ve had a — a shock of some kind.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “I don’t know, chick — that’s what I’m trying to find out. You’re the only one who can tell me.”

  “I’ve been telling you, Daddy. I’ve told you every single thing that’s happened to me.”

  Mr. Shaw gently shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s all hallucinations, Susie. I know they can seem very real for a while, until you think them over.”

  “Look at my clothes,” she demanded. “Are they hallucinations? Look,” pulling down her stocking, “yellow jacket stings, two of them! Could I make those up in my head?”

  “Well, the clothes are real enough,” he admitted, “and those certainly look like bites or stings of some kind …”

  “Well?”

  “So there must be some explanation.”

  “Of course there is — what have I been telling you?”

  “No, no, Susie — I mean a real explanation.”

  “Oh, good grief! Here,” she said, taking an eagle out of her pocket. “Is this an hallucination?”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Oh, honestly!” she cried in despair. “Toby, what can we do with him?”

  Toby gazed up from her lap with slitted eyes, and purred.

  “Well, chick,” Mr. Shaw said hesitantly, after turning the coin over in his hands for a time, “this is all … Look, I have an idea. Let’s go and see a doctor. Anyone you want — some nice kind understanding man. Just to talk things over?”

  Tears of vexation spurted to her eyes. “No,” she wept. “What good will talking to anybody else do if my own father won’t believe me?”

  “Oh, Susie,” he said, hugging her tight, “don’t cry, don’t cry. I’m sorry, honey. I don’t want to fight with you. I’d really like to believe you, you know. It’s just that …”

  Suddenl
y she saw the way.

  “Daddy,” she murmured against his vest, “will you promise me something? Just one little easy thing?”

  “Sure, chick. What is it?”

  “Will you go up in the elevator with me? Just once?”

  She felt him stiffen a little. “Why?” he asked cautiously.

  “So you can see for yourself.”

  “But, Susie, we’ve been in the elevator together hundreds of times.”

  “We never went to the top together.”

  “But there’s nothing to see at the top —”

  “Please, Daddy. Just once? Just to humor me?”

  “Oh, all right,” he sighed. “I guess it can’t do any harm.”

  “Promise? Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  “It’s a promise. Want to go now?”

  “No, I want to talk with you about something else first.”

  “All right.” He sat down again, still looking at her a little warily. “Fire away.”

  She chewed her knuckle for a moment, wondering how to begin. “Now this is serious, Daddy, extremely serious. I can’t stand it if you laugh or anything.”

  “I’ll be solemn as a judge! Go on.”

  “Well,” she said, blushing, “it’s just an idea I had. I — I think you ought to get married again.”

  “Oh my!” he cried, throwing up his hands in mock despair. “Do I detect Mrs. Clutchett’s hand in all this?”

  “She’s got nothing to do with it. Why do you mention her?”

  “Because getting me married again has been her constant and unwearying idea for the last year. Whenever she can get me alone she talks of nothing else.”

  “Well, she’s perfectly right, then. Why not?”

  “I know, chick, I know — don’t bite my head off. She is right, I guess. So are you. But … Well, how can I explain it?” He thought for a moment, and continued, “You see, sometimes when a person has loved another person very much, and the other person dies … well, sometimes it’s very hard to get interested in anyone else. Or even to think about it—”

  “Oh,” she interrupted impatiently, “that’s just what Mrs. Walker said. My goodness, why can’t parents be sensible? Look, I loved Mother just as much as you did, but that doesn’t mean I have to — well, just scrooge up inside myself and never love anyone else again. Never even try.”