It was warm in the sun, and through the smell of Mrs. Johnson’s pines came the cool sweet smell of the sea. It would be terrible to be in jail. And she had made a mistake. He was an awfully good-looking man when his hair was brushed. Edie relaxed a little. He looked something like Arsène Lupin in that play Father had taken them to.
The harbor itself was dark blue now and the sky orange. Some people had been lucky enough to be able to get to their boats and there were sails up, flapping and drying. How would you like to go to jail, Mr. Arsène Lupin, and never see all this again? Once more she realized that it would be she who would send him there. That good-looking, awfully brave man. He might be a murderer, though!
Edie got up. She couldn’t stand her thoughts any more.
“I’m all right now,” she said, as she went back into the dining room.
“Will you have some dessert, Miss?” said James.
She looked right at him casually. “Yes, please.”
“Ice cream on top of soup,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Well, you had better go right home after dinner.”
With those beautiful words it did not take them long to escape as soon as Mrs. Johnson had had her coffee, but Edie found that the curiosity of her family was beyond anything.
“What happened to you?”
“Did you see a ghost or something?”
“You looked like a piece of cheese.”
“Did Mrs. Johnson get your goat?”
Edie tossed her hair back. “Don’t you wish you knew?” she said.
They went to see if the soldier was still at the bridge. He was, but he was another one. They stood far enough off so that he would not think they were trying to cross and asked questions.
“Did you catch the burglar?” called Edie.
“No, ma’am,” said this soldier, “not yet.”
“That means, I suppose,” said Hubert, “that he’s right here somewhere. Not a pleasant thought, I must say.”
“Be sure and look under your bed, General,” said Theodore.
“Just what I was thinking of doing.”
She held them all in the hollow of her hand, thought Edie, just the way it said in books. Maybe he was a murderer, but she guessed at any rate she wouldn’t tell until morning. He would probably murder fat Mrs. Johnson first anyway. She would look under her own bed, and lock her door too, and maybe not leave her window open for just one night, if she could think of a good excuse for Jane. It would be so absolutely terrible to be put in jail.
CHAPTER SIX
The Jewels
No matter how things may have been inside all the Cares during the first two weeks after the hurricane, outside all was “peace profound and heavenly light” as Theodore remarked. Edie, backing away from the goat who had grown quite a good pair of horns during the summer, had stepped in her own elephant trap and put her knee out of joint. The trap should have been filled up by the mess made by the hurricane and it was, but only with pine needles from the branch that had fallen over it. When that was removed, it was practically as good as ever. Everyone agreed that Mr. Parker had been the hero of the occasion. Even though Edie had screamed and beaten him on the head with her fists when he took hold of her leg, he had somehow given it the right jerk to put it back in place and then ordered her, on pain of jerking it again, to stay there without moving until the doctor came. He had played solitaire with her to while away the time, kept Lou from climbing over her to give her kisses, and ordered Gander to bring out her dinner on a tray while she, like a princess, reclined on all the window-seat cushions that could be collected. Luckily the weather had turned and it was as clear as crystal. More luckily still, the others thought, particularly Mr. Parker, the doctor put Edie on crutches, and everybody could have a rest. Theodore did not have to worry about her taking the P.D.Q., while he was playing golf, in order to go out to the wreck of the white yacht and look for Mrs. Johnson’s jewels. Hubert didn’t have to watch out for fear she would cut the legs off any more of his pants. Jane did not have to keep a lookout that her tennis racquet would be used to keep crabs from getting out of the bait pail, and Mr. Parker could really have a moment’s summer vacation because he knew where she was the livelong day. This, for the most part, was in a chair on the anchored float, fishing. The pier was beyond repair and would have to wait until Aunt Louise came home and decided what to do about it, but the float with the help of the part-time man, Mrs. Johnson’s chauffeur, two boys from the village, Mr. Parker, and Theodore and Hubert had been gotten into the water and made fast to some gigantic stones and a couple of extra anchors that were found in the barn. It would not weather the slightest storm, but it was good enough to swim and fish from and Edie liked fishing. She had tried, but found it impossible to get much of anywhere at the beach on crutches. On the sand they sank in, and on the shell roads they tipped and slid. She was quite certain that to have that pain in her knee once was enough. All the others had to do was get bait for her every day and eat what she caught.
“Eels, too?” asked The Fair Christine.
“Yup,” said Edie.
But Cook refused to have eels in her kitchen, so that was all right, and scup were very good. Once in a while when Edie caught a tautog, that was even better, and it was divided up in small pieces so it would go around.
“I do believe her greatest hope is to catch a horseshoe crab,” said Hubert, “and make us eat that.”
He was wrong, though. Edie had a hope bigger than anyone suspected, that she would be well enough to board Shaw Wells’s sloop before it was taken away. It was still there right at the side veranda door with the bowsprit still looking as if it would like to get in. Two days after the storm some men had come and built a cradle for it, and later a letter came for Theodore that gave him strict instructions. At least he said so, and after that he slept in it every night and locked it up in the daytime. Shaw Wells had been silly enough to get appendicitis right in the middle of the hurricane, and as it had taken a long time to get to the hospital, he had to stay a long time in bed.
“He doesn’t want anyone tampering with the sloop,” Theodore reported.
“I don’t believe it,” Edie had said. “You’re just being mean.”
“All right,” said Theodore, “you can go and get the letter if you like; it’s in the right-hand drawer of my bureau. If you make a mess of my ties, I’ll carve up Widgy and feed him to the fishes.”
When she came back with the letter, he folded it up so that she could see only two lines. “And whatever you do,” it said, “keep that young sister of yours out. Mine’s nosy enough, but yours takes the cake.”
“Satisfied?” said Theodore.
Then she had hurt her knee and could only keep willing, while she fished, that Shaw Wells’s appendix would be worse than her dislocation, as Mr. Parker called it, and that she would get well first and find a way.
There was another thing she had to think about too. Her search for Mrs. Johnson’s jewels had been interrupted. If she was not going to tell on James and get him sent to jail, then she distinctly felt she ought to find the jewels. It had not seemed at first a very hard thing to do; she had been so sure they must be right around somewhere—probably scattered through the blue- and bayberry bushes beside the barn where she had seen him disappear, and so she had spent hours with Widgy on her hands and knees crawling through the underbrush. Some days she had been able to persuade Hubert to help, but no man could stand such a thing for long, and he had said pretty soon that he would rather keep his eyes in his head than have them hung on a blueberry bush and what did he care about Mrs. Johnson’s jewels.
“Anybody’d think the guy had told you what he did with them,” he said through the stems. “Ouch! Will you stop slapping branches in my face?”
“Excuse me,” said Edie. “Why don’t you hunt in your own place instead of following me?”
“I just want to see you pick an emerald and a string of pearls out of a snake hole,” said Hubert. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You mean there are snakes here?”
“Snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.” He made snarling noises at Widgy, so that he went into barking hysterics. He really wasn’t much good.
Also there were ticks, and they got them just like the dogs. They had to detick each other every time before they could go back into the house. Sometimes they had not been thorough enough, and ticks were found on other people. Hood complained that The Fair Christine and Lou were being poisoned.
“Give it up, kid,” said Hubert. “I’m weak from loss of blood myself.”
She gave up the blue- and bayberry bushes, but she crawled under the barn, examined the mulberry tree for holes, looked in the leaves of the half-grown cabbages in the vegetable garden, and dug up her own fifty-cent piece at the corner of the boathouse. If she had thought that a good place, why shouldn’t James if he had had time?
That he’d had hardly any time at all she found out through Lou, who was liable to put anything she liked the look of into her mouth. Edie found her sitting in the canvas swing one morning sucking something so big she had to give it her whole attention.
“What have you got in your mouth, Lou?” Edie had asked. They all had to keep asking her every so often because Hood was quite sure she would never live to grow up, but be choked with a stone.
“Nothing,” said Lou.
So Edie had had to extract it, and it turned out to be one of Mrs. Johnson’s sapphire rings, which meant, it was easy to see, that it had been dropped because somebody was in such a hurry.
Theodore had thought that after that it would be a cinch. Lou could simply take them to where she had found it, but he should have known better. Everyone tried to get her to tell them, separately and together, but Lou said she didn’t know and kept on saying it and wouldn’t take them anywhere.
“You give me back my candy,” was all she would say.
“She’s mad at you,” said Chris. “I can tell.”
It had become quite clear to Edie that the jewels could not be very far away. Lou never went anywhere. Edie had planned to search the house from cellar to attic, but she had not had time.
Now, naturally, without anyone on the watch James could come back and get the jewels and take them whenever he felt like it. On his day off he would get rid of them. There were lots of people living in Aunt Louise’s, but there were lots of days too when everybody was somewhere else and it would be easy enough for him to grab them from their hiding place and get away. This, of course, was why he was still staying at Mrs. Johnson’s. She knew he was there because every now and then she could see him from the float. He would come out as calm as day and shake his duster or just stand admiring the view. She hoped one morning as she was putting a piece of clam on her hook and James had stood on Mrs. Johnson’s terrace longer than usual that he was not also wondering whether he could get her as well as the jewels. She didn’t think he knew, but he might. After this thought she was glad that her knee kept her where she could be seen by somebody almost all the time. When it began to get better and she could walk a little, she kept herself in sight so persistently that it began to be noticed.
“Goodness gracious, Miss Edith,” said Hood on the beach one day, “haven’t you anything better to do than disturb these children?”
“I was only showing them how to collect a little seaweed,” said Edie.
“And get themselves drownded,” said Hood, who thought she would get “drownded” herself if she was in an inch of water.
“Let me do it, let me do it, Mith-thes,” said Lou, taking a step into the water.
“That’s what she means,” said The Fair Christine.
Edie hobbled back to the house and the big window seat. Gander was always moving around there somewhere. She would give up hunting for a while and read every book in Aunt Louise’s big chests until she was well. In the meantime, she could keep an eye on the sloop. Maybe Theodore would make one little mistake sometime and forget to lock up, and pretty soon she would be able to climb the cradle.
Aunt Louise had a pretty good collection of books, she found. She had had two children and one of them had died, so she had kept all his books in the chest in the wicker chair room. They were moldering away, but perfectly good after you had wiped them a bit. Edie had rather forgotten Gander and everything else by the time she was in the middle of Tom Sawyer. But her eye was attracted by something that moved in the hall. She looked over her book. There was James! He spoke at once.
“You alone, miss?”
“Oh no,” said Edie quickly. “Gander,” she called, “Ga-a-ander.”
“Yes, miss,” said Gander’s voice, almost under their noses. She was in the dining room polishing wood, and she came in with a rag and the polish can. “Here’s Mrs. Johnson’s butler,” said Edie, fixing her eyes on her book again as if it was nothing at all that James had come in the front part of the house without making a sound. It was something to Gander, though.
“Why aren’t you afther ringing the bell, man,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, rag, can, and all. “Is it gentry you’ve gotten to be?”
“Now, Miss O’Hara,” said James, smiling pleasantly, “no offense, please. The madam sent me on an errand, and since I found no one in the back premises and knew the other young ladies and gentlemen were out in the boats, I undertook to deliver it to this young lady here.”
“And what’s your errand, may I ask?”
James did not hesitate a second.
“The madam would like to borrow the Sunday’s paper,” he said, “if you have it on hand. Ours went out to the bin by mistake.”
Gander found it for him on the magazine table and saw him severely out the door. She had no use for butlers at any time. She said they were sheep in wolves’ clothing, and she had not stopped grumbling when she came back through the hall.
“Would you credit the owdacity of that one,” she said, flicking her rag about. “Walking in as proud as you please without a by-your-leave or a knock on the door.”
“Maybe you better lock it,” said Edie.
“And a lot of good would that do with yourselves running backwards and forwards the whole day.”
She finally said she had put a flea in the ear of his honor and went back to work.
Edie was not able to go back to reading Tom Sawyer. In fact, it made her feel terribly uneasy to go on reading it. She was just like Tom, and James was the Indian. She saw perfectly that he had come in hoping they were all out of the way. Her first thought was that she had better tell quickly. Who? Mrs. Johnson wouldn’t believe her and she doubted whether Mr. Parker would either. For some strange reason he believed like Ted that Edith had a wonderful imagination. It was very annoying. Maybe she would tell Jane. But Jane had more imagination than anyone and would get as excited as a horse. The thing to do was to find the jewels first because now she could be perfectly sure they were in the house. Why otherwise had James come in? If they were anywhere outside, he could have gone down the shell drive without a person noticing anything wrong about it. All the servants at the beach went for walks—you might meet a maid or two anywhere. But they didn’t come into people’s houses without knocking, no sir.
The very next day Edie was liberated by the doctor. He put a rubber bandage on her knee and said: “All right, young lady, but favor it, favor it.” Her behavior after this puzzled the others. She seemed to be favoring it more than was necessary. It was hard even to get her to go swimming. They talked her over on the float after she had said she didn’t want to swim today.
“So doesn’t a fish,” Hubert had said rudely, but she just answered that she was favoring her knee.
“Maybe she’s going to turn into a permanent invalid,” he said on the float, forgetting his own decline, “and live in a darkened room. I hope she won’t expect us to read to her on her bed of pain.”
“I hope she doesn’t do it till Madam gets home,” said Jane.
“Nonsense,” said Theodore, giving the water a push with his fo
ot. “She’s just simmering. In a couple of days she’ll go off like a firecracker. I’ve seen it happen before.” He took a dive after a clam shell that he had thrown in ahead of him, and when he came up, tossed it to Mr. Parker. “Don’t look so bleak, old man. It’s not our little sister who’ll get the explosion in the face. It’ll be us. It always is.”
Mr. Parker dived after the clam shell, but not as if he had any pleasure in it, and it got away from him. “I wonder what she’s doing now,” he said after he had pulled himself up on the float.
He would have been surprised but not alarmed at what Edie was doing unless he might have imagined she was the thief herself. As soon as she saw them all safely down by the water, she began examining every nook and cranny in the downstairs part of the house. It got her nowhere and she had to spring back to the couch as she heard them coming. At least she knew the jewels were not on the first floor.
“Will you kindly tell me what you were doing in my room last night,” said Theodore the next day. “Oh yes, I saw you from the Q, so don’t deny it, but I couldn’t see what you were up to.”
“I was just practicing walking,” said Edie.
Hubert and Jane found her practicing walking in odd places and at odd hours too.
“Why not try it outdoors,” said Hubert. “There’s a lot more room.”
“It’s rougher,” said Edie.
She ransacked Mr. Parker’s room when he and the others had all gone for the mail together.
“What are you going to do while we’re gone?” Mr. Parker had asked, looking at her hard.
“Nothing,” said Edie. “Why?”
Terrible, Horrible Edie Page 15
