The Sundial (14 page)

_____

“Mother?”

“What is it, Belle?”

“Julia's out in the summer house with the captain again.”

“I know it.”

“You know what I bet they're doing?”

“Yes, I know what you bet they're doing. But they're not. It's
my
guess they're planning to run for it.”

“You mean Julia's going to leave this house? With the captain?”

“I think so.”

“That's not
fair
. There are
only
two men in the house, after
all
, and the other one is Essex. You
can't
let him leave.”

“I don't know how I could stop them.”

“Well, it's not
fair.
You've
always
liked her better than me.”

_____

“Aunt Fanny, they're there again. Out in the summer house. Whispering in each other's faces.”

Aunt Fanny smiled obscurely. Miss Ogilvie peered through the curtains of the little sitting room where she and Aunt Fanny spent their mornings sewing. “Sitting close together,” Miss Ogilvie said.

“I hope they will not be too disappointed,” Aunt Fanny murmured.

“Well, they certainly don't
look
like they might be disappointed. I think Mrs. Halloran ought to put a stop to it. It's not healthy for Fancy, having things like that going on right in public.”

“I believe their paths will not always run side by side,” Aunt Fanny said. “For the present, perhaps, but the briefest consideration of the future, Miss Ogilvie, should point out to you their differing roles.”

“Well, of course I know what the captain is for,” said Miss Ogilvie, and blushed. “That is,” she explained, “I never really thought about it particularly, not for
myself,
that is. But I mean, why can't Julia . . .”

“Miss Ogilvie, in this finer world of ours you do not suppose that we, you and I, will work with our hands? Surely you appreciate the need for a . . . what shall I call it? . . . a servant class? Who, after all, are to be the hewers of wood and the fetchers of water?”

“How nice,” said Miss Ogilvie, and blushed again.

“My instructions from my father,” said Aunt Fanny mysteriously, “have been far more detailed than many of you realize.”

_____

“Fancy, bring Mama her chocolates, will you?”

“I can't, I'm busy.”

“Do you want your poor sick Mama to have to get up and get them herself?”

“I'll do it in a minute.”

“You're a sweet baby, Fancy. Maybe in a little while you'll run and ask the captain to come and read to me.”

“He's out in the summer house with that Julia, talking and talking.”

“I'm sure he won't mind leaving
her
to comfort me a little when I'm not well.”

“I'll ask him. But I bet he doesn't come.”

“You better tell your granny about how the captain and Julia are always hanging together.”

_____

“‘It happened one day about noon,'” the nurse read flatly, “‘going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me; I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther. I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other impression but that one.'”

“My dear Julia,” said Mrs. Halloran, deeply shocked, “is it your impression that you are being kept here as a prisoner?”

“I just want to leave, is all,” Julia said sullenly. “The captain and I . . . we want to get the hell out of here.”

“By all means.” Mrs. Halloran shook her head. “I could hardly condemn you to stay. My own opinions would not, certainly, encourage
me
to leave, but I have no reason to suspect that you take your opinions from mine. That is, I feel that you are miserably mistaken, but since you do not share my belief, any attempt on my part to prevent you from leaving would be ridiculous, and, I suspect, wholly wasted.”

“I just want to get out of here,” Julia said. “
With
the captain.”

“Yes.
With
the captain. Since you have taken on the burden of announcing your joint intentions I conclude that the captain does not possess quite the dashing military bravado Aunt Fanny found in him; do not be alarmed, child . . . you may leave, and your captain may leave, any time you choose. I am only disturbed that there should have been any question in your mind . . . beyond, of course, the great final question which occupies the rest of us so entirely.”

Julia stared. “You're not going to try to stop us?”

“Am I an ogre? Is this castle of mine guarded? Patrolled by dragons or leopards? Do we live under a spell, as in the City of Brass, or an evil enchantment, as madmen flung down upon their faces when they step outside their gates; can you believe that . . .”

“I'll tell the captain,” Julia said. “And, Mrs. Halloran . . . thanks.”

“Not at all, child. Remember that you will require your mother's consent as well as mine.”

“She won't care if I go or stay.”

“Transportation to the city may be a difficulty for you. I regret that I have at present no one whom I can spare to drive you there, but I know of a fellow from the village who may be available. I will arrange it, of course. I suppose you are anxious to be on your way as quickly as possible?”

“We certainly are.”

“Then I will not trouble you to wait until tomorrow. The car will be waiting at the main gates, at nine this evening.”

“That will be fine,” Julia said, her eyes shining. “We can be in the city tonight.”

“Considering the short, the painfully short, amount of time left you to enjoy the pleasures of the world, I cannot criticize your haste.”

“Look,” Julia said, “one reason I'm leaving, and the captain too . . . we don't believe that crap, any of it.”

“I said earlier that I did not ask you to believe anything. I am only wishing you godspeed, into the world and out of it.”

“Well,” Julia said uncertainly, “you've been nicer about it than I expected. I will say that for you. I never thought we'd be able to talk you into it. Anyway, thanks.”

“If you will now send the captain to me, I should like to say goodbye to him. I see the question on your face, Julia, and I will answer it: yes, I do intend to give him money, because I feel indebted to you both . . . not choosing to share our new world, you have been thoughtful enough to withdraw from it without attempting to jeopardize the chances of the rest of us. Now run along and pack all your prettiest clothes; it is already after seven, so I will have a dinner tray sent to your room, in order not to interrupt your preparations.”

“Mrs. Halloran,” Julia said, hesitating in the doorway, “look . . . thanks again.”

“You are certainly welcome, child, for anything I may have done.”

_____

“Julia said you wanted me, Mrs. Halloran.”

Mrs. Halloran turned from her desk, smiling. “Captain,” she said, amused, “what are you so afraid of? I have invited you to come here to say goodbye.”

“We thought, Julia and I, that you were going to be sore at us.”

“Not at all. I explained to Julia that there was nothing in any of our plans which justified keeping people here against their wills. You
do
want to leave?”

“I sure do.” The captain sat, awkwardly, and stared at his feet. “I wouldn't go, you know—you've been pretty nice to me, after all—if I really figured I was . . . well . . . leaving you in the lurch, as it was. I mean, in all this stuff about being the only people left in the world, and so on, what Julia thought was . . .” he stopped, red. “I mean,” he went on in a rush, “if you need
men.
”

Mrs. Halloran laughed. “Any Utopian community has need of both sexes, surely,” she agreed. “And I believe the Shakers, who live together as brother and sister only, are dying out with all the rapidity one would expect; a basic regard for reproduction of the species—and how could such a regard
not
be basic, I wonder?—cannot be excluded from any of our plans, even Aunt Fanny's. That does not mean, Captain, that we must capture our men, like a pack of lunatic priestesses feeding on their mates. I have every hope, in short, of replacing you amiably and very likely without even the use of force.”

“Mrs. Halloran,” the captain said, looking up earnestly and speaking with great care, “you
do
believe this, don't you? That is, you do honestly and in your heart believe that everything is going to go and you people here in the house will be the only ones left?”

“Worse still,” Mrs. Halloran said gently, “I believe that you and Julia are going willfully out into a dying world and that you will have perhaps only a few weeks of life before you are . . . persuaded . . . that my beliefs are correct. I am sickened to think of your state of mind when you learn, at last, that you were mistaken.”

“I don't get it.” The captain shook his head. “I don't figure you're crazy or anything,” he said, reassuringly, “I don't for a minute want you to think I'm criticizing you. But I just don't see how any person with any sense can
go
for that stuff. How can the
world
end? There's no
sense
to it. Besides,” he went on ruefully, “one thing I know—nothing like that happens in
my
lifetime. I mean, why should I figure
I
'm so special, the world is going to end while I'm around?”

“I am sure you will be around,” Mrs. Halloran said, “and certainly a number of amazing things have already happened during your lifetime, and not the least of them is that you should be alive at all. But this is a time-wasting debate. I know that you and Julia are eager to be off, and I feel poignantly that you have so little time that I am unwilling to diminish it by so much as an hour. I have arranged with Julia that a car from the village will be waiting by the main gate at nine tonight, and by eleven you should be in the city, drinking deeply, I hope, of its gaieties.”

“Yes,” the captain said. “The sooner the better.”

Mrs. Halloran turned to her desk and her checkbook. “I will not stop to put this gracefully,” she said. “I have explained to Julia that I am eager to smooth your remaining path; I suspect that you are both expensive people, and so I have made out a check for you.” She tore the check from the checkbook and handed it to the captain, who hesitated, tried to seem indifferent, and then looked at the check.

“Listen,” the captain said, pale, “this is a damn nasty joke.”

“Not at all,” Mrs. Halloran said. “I am not above spiteful gestures, surely, but at least this time my intentions are perfectly aboveboard. I spoke to the president of the bank in the city not half an hour ago; poor man, I took him away from a dinner party, and he will not enjoy dinner parties for long. The check will be freely honored.”

“But—” said the captain. He waved the check helplessly. “You did make a mistake,” he said at last.

“No mistake,” Mrs. Halloran said gently. “That is the maximum sum I am able to command on short notice. The president of the bank was easily as astonished as yourself, but he is accustomed to doing what I tell him. That check—which, I agree with you, is enormous—will be honored upon your presentation of it.”

“But
why?
”

“We are not going to need it,” Mrs. Halloran said. “Please try to understand, Captain—we are not going to need it any more.”

The captain sat down abruptly. “You
mean
this?” he demanded. “You are really going to sit there and nod at me and hand me more money than I ever dreamed of in all my life, just for nothing? Why, I've only been here three weeks—I couldn't
steal
this much.” He waved his hands wildly. “This kind of money is something I never even
heard
of, they don't make that much, it isn't
real,
and you just sit there and
give
it to me—lady, maybe I was wrong about you not being crazy.”

Mrs. Halloran laughed again. “Maybe you were,” she said. “My own belief is that there will not be time for even you to spend it all.”

“It'll take some spending, I admit,” the captain said, looking at the check again. “Now look, I'm not aiming to quarrel with someone who just handed me a lousy fortune, but I'm
not
crazy, and I got to figure there's some string attached. Something's going to happen to me.”

“Please believe that I am crazy, if you like, but not that I am dishonest.”

“I ought to grab this thing and get up and run and not stop running till I get to that bank and I make sure it's true. But I don't like not understanding what goes on, and I like to make sure that young Harry—Harry's my real name,” he explained.

“Indeed? I shall continue to call you Captain.”

“Anyway, that young Harry doesn't get left out in the cold. You really believe—now let me get this absolutely straight one last time—you really believe that you can give me this money because it's not going to be any more good to you? Right now this check is worth exactly what it says but in a few weeks it's not going to matter what money I have because I won't be there and the bank won't be there and the money won't be there and there won't be any place to spend it anyway?”

“Exactly as I would have put it,” Mrs. Halloran said.

“Then take it back,” said the captain. He rose and set the check down softly on Mrs. Halloran's desk. “I never took odds like that in my life,” the captain said. “I know a lot about you by now, and if you're ready to put that kind of money on the line, I figure Harry goes along with you. I stay.”

“Think carefully, Captain. We have so little time; you may not have another opportunity of changing your mind.”

“I don't have to think,” the captain said. “I know when I'm beat.”

“Then you had best get right down to dinner. I will see that Julia is notified, and will join you shortly at the table.”

_____

After dinner Mrs. Halloran hesitated at the table for a minute, after the others were gone, to speak to Mrs. Willow. “I imagine that Julia is well on her way,” Mrs. Halloran said.

“I just hope she is,” Mrs. Willow said viciously. “Damn selfish unnatural child.”

“You will be more pleased with her, perhaps,” Mrs. Halloran said, “when I tell you that before she left she took the liberty of helping herself to the money on my dressing table.”

“How much?” said Mrs. Willow, and then: “I suppose you left it there accidentally?”

“Not at all. I hardly liked seeing Julia go off with no adequate financial resources.”

“How much?”

“I am embarrassed,” Mrs. Halloran said. “I feel like Aunt Norris. I could not put my hands onto more than about seventy dollars. Seventy-four dollars, to be exact, and eighty-nine cents. She took the silver, naturally.”

“Julia is not above carrying small change,” Mrs. Willow said.

“We will miss her,” Mrs. Halloran said vaguely, and continued on into the drawing room, and her shawl, and her evening walk with Essex.

_____

Julia, her suitcase on the ground beside her, stood in the warm dark evening by the main gates of the house. There was only a single light over the gates, and it showed more than anything else the elaborate scrolled H which centered each half of the gates; far away, beyond the long reaches of the drive, she could see an occasional dim flicker which must be the lights from the house, and she smiled. She felt almost pity for her mother and sister, trapped in the monumental lunatic asylum, and a growing excitement at the thought of being, tonight, in the city with the captain, with money and laughter and noise. She was pleased at having slipped soundlessly into Mrs. Halloran's room, to take the money the careless old woman had left lying around, she was deeply amused at the thought of herself and the captain, wandering luxuriously—perhaps to the Orient, perhaps to Spain—while her mother and her sister waited cruelly in the big house for a magnificent destruction which never came about; she was even glad that she had said thank-you to Mrs. Halloran, since some day she might choose to come back here, furred and jewelled, to smile pityingly upon her older sister, grown weak and silly waiting for a new world.

When a car pulled up beside her she was startled for a minute, and then, looking more closely, annoyed. Mrs. Halloran had not been above a petty revenge: the car was old and shabby, and the driver looked like a ruffian.

“You the party going to the city?” he asked, leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer at her.

“I'm going to the city, yes. Did Mrs. Halloran send for you?”

“Right. Pick up a lady at the gates, nine o'clock.”

“There's a gentleman coming, too.”

“Not now, there ain't.” The driver laughed richly. “No gentleman coming
this
trip, lessen you mean
me.
”

“You are mistaken. I am waiting for a gentleman who is going to the city with me.”

“Not the way
I
hear it. Mrs. Halloran, she says to me on the telephone, you go at nine o'clock tonight to the main gates, you get a lady there, take her to the city. She will be going quite alone, Mrs. Halloran she says, quite
quite
alone.”