Читать книгу The Shadow on the Dial - Augusta Huiell Seaman - Страница 8

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“Who’d have thought last Saturday,” mused Enid, shying a chip over the rail, “that anything so strange and ... and unpleasant could happen ... in seven days! What do you think of those two young Speers staying on with us, Naomi?”

“The boy’s all right; he is an interesting youngster. But I can’t understand the girl.”

“I detest her!” cried Enid. “And it’s easy to see she despises us.”

“I’m sorry for her ... for them both,” replied Naomi. “The boy’s a good little sort, but he’s awfully delicate. You can see his father just worships him; he’s the apple of that man’s eye. The girl could be real pleasant ... if she tried ... and she has pretty eyes. But she’s so pleased with herself, so conceited, and ... and busy looking down on those who haven’t as much money as the Speers, that she hasn’t time to be agreeable. And she’s missing a whole lot of fun in life. Sometimes I think she half suspects it!”

“I don’t think she liked it very much when her father proposed to Grandma that she keep Leila and Ronny here to board while he got things settled up about the Pettigrew place,” said Enid. “Leila told me she had wanted to spend the time in a hotel in Savannah so she could shop and go to the movies and all that. She was downright mad!”

“I know she was mad,” agreed Naomi. “I heard her arguing it all out with her father, and he told her the outdoor life here was fine for Ronny and the food was good and wholesome and he liked Grandma and us. She said things were like camping out, here, after what they’d been used to, and she couldn’t stand the hardship. And he just laughed and said it would do her good and that’s all there was about it and she was to quit scolding and just see that Ronny didn’t take cold and kept out in the sun. She’s hardly spoken to any one since.”

“I don’t mind their being here so much; it’s kind of interesting,” sighed Enid, “but I ... I just can’t bear to think of what he’s going to do to Pettigrew’s Folly. I ... I can’t sleep nights, thinking about it. What will our life be ... without that place? And then, too, there’s the other thing about it—”

“Yes, I know,” Naomi hastily interrupted. “I’m worried almost sick over it, too. Perhaps if he understood—But what’s the use? He probably wouldn’t. You can’t explain things like that to a ... a Shoe King!”

“Whoo-ee!” called a voice from the top of the rise that sloped down to the foot-bridge. And, looking up, they beheld the Shoe King’s son, in golf knickers and a flannel shirt, waving to them amiably and signifying a wish to join them.

“Come on!” they called back in response and he ran down the bluff and across the bridge, puffing and gasping.

“Gee! but I wish I didn’t get so out of breath!” he wheezed. “It’s the asthma. Dad says it’ll be good for that ... here. Hope he’s right. Say, I gotta favor to ask of you girls. I’m sick and tired of hanging around with that sister of mine. She’s one awful grouch, ’specially right now. Acts like a wounded bear ’cause Dad won’t let us go and hang out in Savannah at some stuffy old hotel and go to the movies all day long. She says I’m the cause of it all, and I’m just about fed up on her working her grouch off on me.

“What I want to know is, will you folks let me hang around with you once in a while?” he went on. “I’m so dead lonesome, ’specially when you go trotting off on those ponies. And is there any place around here where I can hire or buy one for myself? Dad’ll stand for it; the doctor said last year riding would be fine for me, and I learned then.” He hung over the rail while he made this speech and at the end gazed up into their faces in so comically appealing a manner that their hearts were won on the instant.

“I ’clare, we’d just enjoy having you go round with us,” cried Naomi, heartily, “but I don’t know where we could find another pony. There’s not another one in the town. These were sent down to us by a friend of Grandma’s who lives in New Jersey. He spent part of a winter here, two years ago, and sent us down these ponies after he went back. They had belonged to his children, who are grown up now and going to college, so they don’t use them any more. That’s how we got them.”

“Tell you what!” cried Enid, inspired with a sudden idea. “There’s that old white mare of Mr. Tripp’s. She’s a funny-looking old thing and spends most of her time eating her head off in the pasture. But she’ll go! I know it, ’cause I used to ride her before the ponies came. And Mr. Tripp has an old saddle, too. Let’s go and see him about it right now. And if he’s willing to hire her out, I’ll ride her because I’m used to her, and Ronny can ride Beauty.”

“ ’Deed you won’t!” exclaimed Ronny. “I’m equal to any old white mare on four legs! Come on and let’s make the dicker with Mr. Tripp!”

That very afternoon the two girls on their ponies and Ronny on the white mare—a raw-boned, hammer-headed piece of horse-flesh which Ronny had promptly christened “Hannah”—started off for a ride. Leila Speer, seated on the porch with a depleted box of bonbons beside her, watched them go, and with a scornful sniff turned back to her movie magazine, to face a lonely afternoon.

“Where would you like to go?” asked Naomi, politely, as they cantered off down the lane and were about to turn into the public highway. “It’s a pleasant ride out to Berkley Ferry or over on the Hardeeville Road.”

“If you don’t mind,” replied Ronny, bouncing up and down rather breathlessly on Hannah’s bony spine, “I’d like to ride over to that place Dad’s aiming to buy. We traveled all over this region in the car, and I like that best of all. And, say, d’you mind going slow ... till I get used to the paces of this nag?”

While they walked their animals along the white road through the pine barrens, the girls learned that Ronny’s mother had died when he was a baby and that a sister of his father’s had helped take care of the two children; that Ronny had never been very strong, and that the Shoe King had come South to find a climate that would agree with the boy and hoped great things from the present healthful surroundings. Ronny, on the other hand, learned that the two girls, though of South Carolina parentage, had been born in Philadelphia and had lived there till a few years before, as their father’s business had been located there. Since then business had taken him abroad for the greater part of each year. And as this past year their mother had elected to accompany him, they were staying with their grandmother in the little coast town of Burton and immensely enjoying the experience. This brought Ronny to another matter, which had evidently been on his mind.

“There’s a lot of questions I’ve been wanting to ask about this old Pettigrew place,” he said, as they turned into the beautiful but unkempt old driveway under the trailing strands of Spanish moss. “You said, that time we were here before, that it belonged to somebody connected with you and had a queer history. But Dad came up before you got a chance to tell me about it and I saw the queerest look on both your faces when he said he was going to buy it. Now, I somehow got a hunch that there’s a lot about this place you know and most other folks don’t. D’you mind telling a little bit of it to me? I’m so plumb curious about it I could hardly wait to ask. But you needn’t say a thing if you don’t want to.” This he added as he caught a fleeting glance of surprise and indecision that passed between the two girls. It was Enid who constituted herself the spokesman.

“It’s easy to see you’re a pretty observant person,” she commented admiringly. “There evidently isn’t much that gets by without your noticing it. Yes, Naomi and I were upset the other day, especially when your father said he was going to tear down this house. There’s a ... well ... a very special reason why that would be an awful pity. Nobody knows about it, around here, but ourselves, and we found it out quite by accident. Coosaw could tell us a little bit, because he was a slave here before the war, of course. But he didn’t know the real ins and outs of it—nobody does as far as we can see. But a queer thing happened at this house once, and until the mystery is cleared up and ... and something is found ... it oughtn’t to be sold or ... or be torn down, anyway.”

They stopped the ponies short at the foot of the steps and Ronny threw his leg over the white mare’s back and slid to the ground to help the others dismount. His eyes were snapping and his manner almost comically earnest.

“Will you tell me about it?” he demanded. “I’ve got a terrific pull with Dad. Perhaps I can do something. He’s buying this place for my benefit, anyhow. Let me in on the big idea, won’t you?”

Again the girls took counsel together, with their eyes, and Naomi voiced their unspoken agreement:

“I reckon we’d better do it, though Enid and I had promised each other we’d never tell about it; it seemed such fun to have it for a secret. And we couldn’t have a better place to tell you than right here, where it all happened. Come along with us and we’ll show you all about it.”

They turned the ponies loose to graze in a pasture and went around to the back of the mansion, to the cabin of old Coosaw and Missouri, who had once been slaves on the estate and for many years past had been the unofficial caretakers of the deserted place. Their cabin was the nearest of the number that once constituted the slave quarters, others being inhabited by their numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Naomi got the key from Coosaw and the three went around to the front and swung open the great double doors to let in the sunlight and air.

“Gee!” exclaimed Ronny, in a subdued voice, “this hall is great, ain’t it!—two stories high, that way, with the rooms opening on a gallery round the second floor, and the stairs curving around three sides like that. It takes your breath away. And look at all the beautiful carved woodwork. It’d be a crime to pull it down.”

“Yes, it’s lovely,” replied Naomi, absently, “but come with us now, and we’ll show you something that will surprise you.” She led the way up the winding, decrepit old staircase to the second floor, walked part-way around the balcony on which opened a number of large bedrooms, and entered a door directly at the back that led through a passage into the rear portion of the house. Here the construction was markedly different from that of the front.

“This is the old tabby part of the house,” explained Enid. “You see, it’s made of entirely different material—a mixture of lime and oyster-shells that they used to call ‘tabby’—and the walls are very thick. This part was built ’way back soon after the Revolution. Come this way.”

They led Ronny into a great bare, low-ceilinged room, containing nothing but a stone fireplace which occupied a large space at one side. Naomi drew him over to the fireplace, then took one of his fingers and laid the tip in an inconspicuous crack between two of the stones.

“Press there,” she said, “and see what happens.”

Ronny did as she had directed, and, to his intense astonishment, a portion of the wooden wainscoting near the chimney turned inward, as on a pivot, and revealed a narrow, shoulder-high passageway.

“Now, duck your head and crawl in!” Naomi commanded, climbing through the opening. Followed by Enid, she led the way through the passage and into a room beyond, scarcely bigger than a large closet. There was no real window in the room—only a long, narrow horizontal slit up toward the ceiling, that let in a little daylight. The room contained nothing save a great nail-studded iron-bound chest that stood in the center of the floor space.

Ronny stood upright and looked about him curiously, then pursed his lips in a low whistle.

“Suffering Simpson! what you got here, anyway?” he queried at last, turning expectantly to the girls, who stood silent, watching his astonishment.

“I thought it would interest you,” smiled Naomi. “This is something we discovered ourselves, quite by accident, a long time ago,—several years, I reckon,—because, you know, we used to come down from Philadelphia and visit Grandma for months every year, before we came to stay with her as long as we are staying now. We’ve had this secret all that time. We were always fond of acting out things we’d learned in history and things from Shakspere’s plays that Daddy often read to us. One day we were playing, in that room outside, that we were the two poor little English princes shut up in the Tower of London, and we pretended we were trying to find a way to make our escape. I was feeling along the wall around the fireplace, and crying, ‘Oh, let us out! Let us out! We’ll starve and die here!’ All of a sudden my finger touched something right in the crack, and that panel began to slide open with a sort of squeaky sound.”

“We were downright scared for a minute or two,” said Enid, “and pretty nearly decided to run away and leave it, but we were too curious to do that. We waited around to see if anything else would happen. And then, as nothing did, we screwed up our courage and crawled in here and found this, just as you see it now.”

“But what’s in that old chest?” demanded Ronny. “Is it locked?”

For answer, Naomi walked over to the chest, threw back the massive lid, and beckoned Ronny to come and look in.