Читать книгу The Shadow on the Dial - Augusta Huiell Seaman - Страница 4

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“Oh, let’s stay just a little longer! It can’t be time for the mail yet, and we want to get that on the way back. It’s heavenly here this afternoon, Naomi!”

“Well, I reckon a few moments longer won’t matter.” And Naomi Fletcher settled back in her comfortable seat among the roots of a great live-oak tree and turned her attention once more to the book in her lap. Her younger sister, Enid, continued her parade up and down the long avenue that led to the steps ascending to the house—a curious little figure draped in great strands of gray Spanish moss that hung from her head clear to her feet. She was also decorated with a wreath of red japonica blossoms stuck in the moss that surrounded her brows.

“Whatever are you playing at, Enid?” called Naomi, with lazy interest, as she snuggled more deeply into the heap of moss she had piled up against the tree for a cushion. Her book had temporarily ceased to interest her and her sister’s actions certainly were peculiar, for Enid was gesticulating and murmuring to herself in a way that suggested an escaped lunatic more than anything else. But Naomi always found Enid’s play-acting worth inquiring into.

“Huh! Can’t you see I’m Queen Titania in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’? And I do wish you’d come and be Oberon or something. I’m tired of doing it all by myself.”

“I don’t feel like acting anything to-day; and besides, it’s too late now,” Naomi answered. “And I’m tired of acting Shakspere, anyhow. Tell you what! Let’s come here to-morrow and hunt up some old clothes in the attic and play Sherman’s army is coming and the mansion is going to be attacked.”

“Hurrah! All right. You be the beautiful Mrs. Harvey Pettigrew defending her home and we’ll get old Coosaw and Missouri to be the faithful slaves that help you. And I’ll be old Sherman! We’ll have a heap of fun.” Enid was all enthusiasm and interest. She discarded the japonica blossoms and Spanish moss and went to sit by her sister under the live-oak. “I never get tired of playing that,” she added, “and the setting is so wonderful!”

They both glanced back at the stately old mansion at the end of the broad avenue of live-oaks which led to the veranda steps. These steps were of brick, ascending in a gracious sweep to a wide portico running the length of the house front. The roof of the mansion was steeply “hipped,” and without the customary dormer-windows on the third floor. Great curved wings flanked each end of the main building, and long, many-paned windows, innocent of glass, stared like sightless eyes. Neglect and decay had touched the place with blighting fingers, and only two gorgeously blossoming japonica bushes flanking the steps suggested that life had ever been vivid, gracious, or beautiful in this lonely wilderness.

“It must have been wonderful, before the war!” sighed Naomi. “Too bad that they should have called it ‘Pettigrew’s Folly.’ It seems too stately a place for that name. I wish they hadn’t changed it! I’ve heard Grandma say it was originally called Cotesworth Hall, years and years ago when old Judge Cotesworth built it. It wasn’t so big as this then—only that old part in the back and some that was torn down afterward. But when Mr. Pettigrew of Charleston married the judge’s niece, Lucilla Stepney, he started to make it into a regular mansion, as beautiful as any in Charleston. He tore down some of the old part and built all this new front and the wings, and that gorgeous hall inside with the curving stairs. Every one, they say, told him he was kind of crazy to begin it, for it was eighteen-sixty, and the war was threatening. But he had plenty of money and he didn’t think the trouble would last long, so he only laughed at them and went ahead. The war came, though, before he got it finished, and he went right into it and was killed the second year. So they always called it ‘Pettigrew’s Folly’ after that.”

At that moment, Enid caught sight of an infirm old colored man hobbling out from the back of the house, an ax under his arm, evidently bound to replenish the woodpile.

“There’s old Coosaw!” she exclaimed. “Let’s get him to come over and tell us again about how they hid the silver when they heard the Yankees were coming, and how Mrs. Harvey Pettigrew stood on the steps and met them, and what happened to the sun-dial, and all that. I never get tired of hearing him tell it. He gets so excited.”

“No,” decided Naomi, “we mustn’t stay another minute. The sun’s going down and Grandma will be worried. You gather up our books while I go and find Beauty and Spot.”

She set off toward a near-by field where two shaggy ponies were grazing, and came back leading each by its bridle. Ten minutes later, the two girls were cantering along the white oyster-shell road through the sweet-scented South Carolina pine barrens, toward the little village of Burton, two miles away. Between the tall trunks and undergrowth of scrub palmetto and swamp-cypress, the girls could catch fleeting glimpses of the sunset sky and a beautiful river winding between its marsh islands. Swamp-maples stood decked in crimson-tasseled blossoms, and in the air there was an odor of budding jessamine. Naomi, in the dignity of her sixteen years, rode along sedately, with only an occasional remark to her pony, “Spot.” But Enid, three years younger, sang or whistled as the fancy took her and urged her mount through every brown runlet of swamp water that skirted the route. Presently they turned into the head of the main village street, cantered down its length toward the river, and drew up at the door of the tiny box of a post-office, where Enid dismounted and ran in for the mail.

She came out with empty hands, but her dark eyes were snapping with excitement and news.

“No letters ... but Mr. Collins says there’s company over at our house. We’d better hurry back. Strangers, he says. Some people that came in here and wanted to know where they could find a place to stay for the night. Mrs. Taunton’s boarding-house is full up with salesmen, so he sent them over to Grandma. She’ll probably want us to help, so we’d better rush!”

In a breathless hurry, Enid mounted her pony and they galloped away. Crossing Fletcher’s Cove over the narrow wooden bridge, they arrived somewhat winded at their own back door.

Grandma Fletcher—white-haired, tiny, but amazingly active—came out, dusting her hands together energetically in a way she had when excited.

“You-all come right in here and get busy!” she called to them gaily. “Company’s here ... strangers ... and Hagar is rushing to get her biscuits into the oven and I’ve been fixing the rooms. Enid, you set the table; and Naomi, you run over to Mrs. Gervais and see if she can’t give you some jonquils and japonicas for it. I hate a table without flowers, and none of ours are out yet. Hurry, all of you; you hear?”

Grandma Fletcher’s gay energy was always infectious and the girls found themselves rushing to do her bidding, not even giving themselves time to inquire who the company might be. It was not till supper was at last on the table, and Grandma had tinkled the little silver bell, that their curiosity could be satisfied. Out from one room emerged a stout, heavy, red-faced man accompanied by a boy of about fifteen who was as thin, pale, and delicate in appearance as his companion was the opposite. Out from the other room came a young girl of Naomi’s age, apparently, very up-to-date in dress, whose slightly supercilious expression was belied by a pair of beautiful and appealing brown eyes.

“Mr. Speer, from Bridgeport, Connecticut,” Grandma Fletcher introduced them, “and his daughter, Miss Leila, and his son Ronald. They came out here from Savannah to-day. Mr. Speer’s thinking of buying some property in Burton.” There was a murmur of desultory remarks and they all sat down to the table, Grandma Fletcher supplying most of the chat and Mr. Speer replying in brief monosyllables. The young people contributed nothing to the conversation. Naomi and Enid felt very much in the dark about the status of these guests till Grandma Fletcher whispered to them in the kitchen after supper:

“That’s the Speer—the ‘Shoe King,’ they call him. You know—Speer’s Shoes. He’s rolling in wealth, they say. Going to buy up some big property around Burton and make it his winter home. Mr. Tripp told me Speer was all around here in his big car last week, looking up places. He likes the coast here ... thinks the hunting and fishing are good ... and wants his son to stay here a while ’cause he’s kind of delicate.”

“What place does he think of buying?” queried Naomi.

“Don’t know yet ... or, at least, he hasn’t decided, I reckon. A good many of those plantations are for sale. Heard he was over at the Stickneys’ across the river, among others.” And Grandma turned her attention to domestic matters.

The girls saw no more of the visitors that night, as the new-comers retired to their respective rooms directly after supper. Nor were they up next morning when Naomi and Enid ate their breakfast and hurried away to school. When they returned to dinner, at noon, they caught a brief glimpse of the strangers, but the three were nowhere about when the girls got back at three o’clock. Grandma Fletcher explained, however, that they were intending to remain another day at least, and had gone off somewhere in their car.

“Well, they’re nothing to us!” sighed Enid, who had, however, been secretly hoping they might become acquainted with the young folks. “Let’s go and do what we planned yesterday, Naomi.”

They saddled the ponies and galloped off after consuming a hasty snack of gingersnaps and jam in the kitchen, and taking along a liberal supply as a bribe to carry to old Coosaw and his wife, Missouri, that the two negroes might lend their assistance in the play the girls intended to stage that afternoon.

What, then, was their astonishment, on entering the unkempt grounds about “Pettigrew’s Folly,” to behold a big dark-blue limousine parked before the front steps. And to spy further old Coosaw and Missouri bowing and curtsying to a bulky figure just emerging from the door, on to the portico. At the same instant, from around toward the back of the mansion, there strolled the boy and girl who had spent the night before in the Fletcher home.

“Hullo! What you doing here?” called Ronald Speer, who from the first had seemed more inclined to be friendly than either of the other strangers.

“Be quiet, Ronny! That’s no affair of yours,” admonished the girl, languidly, in tones the two could perfectly hear as their ponies ambled up the drive.

“Oh, we often come here—nearly every day, in fact,” answered Enid, conversationally, as their ponies came to a stop near the car. “We’ve always liked the old place, it’s so picturesque, and we ride over here to study and read and ... and ... do lots of things. The place belonged to a relative of ours once and we ... sort of ... love it.”

“It’s horridly tumble-down,” offered Miss Leila Speer, her supercilious expression intensified to the nth degree.

“Yes, it is,” acknowledged Naomi, “but we love it just the same, in spite of that. I think it’s all the more interesting for being old, especially if you know its history.”

“I’ll say it is!” agreed Ronny, a glow of color coming into his pale cheeks. “I think an old place like this is the cat’s mittens, all right, and the more tumble-down it is, the better I like it. Gee! Just look at those big chimneys up there and that corkscrew staircase ... or whatever you call it ... inside. It’s like the things you read about. And I’ll bet it has some history, too!”

His slang somewhat took the girls’ breath away. While they were trying to think of a suitable response, Mr. Speer came down the steps and entered his car, nodding to Enid and Naomi.

“I’m going over to the next plantation,” he told his children. “You were there yesterday, so you probably won’t care to come. Stay here for a while and talk to these young folks. I’ll be back later.” And he had started the engine and driven away before they could reply.

“Come over by that big tree on the river bank,” suggested Enid to the rest, “and we’ll gather some Spanish moss and sit down and be comfortable.” She turned the ponies loose as she spoke, and gathered up a great armful of moss from the lawn and led the others to the roots of the immense live-oak under which Naomi had sat the day before. Here, spreading the moss for a cushion, they all sat down around the gnarled trunk, Leila lowering herself very gingerly, lest she damage her pale fawn-colored sports-suit. It was obvious that she was bored to extinction.

“Now, tell us all about the place!” demanded Ronny, curling his thin legs under him in the moss. “Gee! but that river is blue, though! Ain’t it different from that copper-colored old Savannah! And what’s that big old white stone lying right over there? Looks like a piece of marble. Queer place for it—right on the river bank.”

“That’s a sun-dial,” Naomi enlightened him. “It used to stand there in the middle of the lawn, before the war—the war between the States, I mean. It was a beautiful piece of white marble on a fluted pillar, with a broad marble base. They say it was sent here from England, when the house was built. Then, one night during the war something happened to it ... nobody knows quite what, but it was found next morning lying where it is now, with the top, the dial part, gone, and no one has ever found it since.”

“Well, doesn’t that beat the Dutch!” marveled Ronny. “Did the Yankees come along and knock spots out of the old ranch, too?”

Enid answered by giving him a little account of the history of the place and was just about to launch into a description of what happened as Sherman’s army was approaching, when the snort of a car was heard and Mr. Speer’s limousine once more entered the battered gate at the end of the driveway. Two minutes later, T. G. Speer, the Shoe King, stood before them, a smile of rather grim satisfaction on his usually impassive countenance.

“Well, I’ve done it!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands and glancing at his boy. “Do you like this place, son?”

“Sure I like it!” cried Ronny. “I told you I thought it was a crackerjack!”

“Can’t see what you like about it, myself. To my mind it ain’t a patch on the Stickney place ... house gone all to pieces that way. But you’re the one to be suited, son. I’ll go in to Savannah and buy this here Pettigrew place to-morrow morning. But I warn you, I gotta tear down that old rat-trap and build a new house ... and it may take all summer.”

For reasons quite unknown to the Shoe King, his announcement sent a pang of utmost dismay to the hearts of at least two of his audience.