The Sundial (17 page)

“I am not wholly convinced yet, Essex.”

“You let the library go.”

Mrs. Halloran laughed. “Perhaps I am an instinctive book-burner.”

“I think you had a reason for encouraging Aunt Fanny to burn the books.”

“Surely, Essex, Aunt Fanny is not so young as she was; I can hardly refuse her these small pleasures. In any case, opposition to Aunt Fanny is not part of my general plan; in our better, cleaner world I will come to grips with Aunt Fanny.”

“The captain and Julia have been whispering together in corners,” Essex said. “Mrs. Willow is always watching them.”

“We cannot afford to lose the captain,” Mrs. Halloran said. “If Aunt Fanny is right, Essex, your own tasks would without the captain approach the superhuman.”

“You forget,” Essex said. “I am to be the huntsman.”

After a minute Mrs. Halloran said, “That did not please me. I am beginning to dislike that girl, Gloria. And I suspect her visions.”

“You can easily assure yourself of her truthfulness, however; I have a small scar on my left thigh.”

_____

“Does the old lady keep much cash around the house?” The captain’s voice was soft, and Julia only nodded. They were sitting in the summer house, from which they could see into the secret garden behind and down the long lawn ahead of them; far away Mrs. Halloran and Essex bent over the sundial.

“I don’t know how much longer I can stand it,” the captain said.

“My mother keeps watching us,” Julia said.

The captain laughed. “I don’t mind your mother,” he said. “She’s not as bad as the rest; even the old party in the corner . . .”

“Miss Ogilvie.”

“Miss Ogilvie. She’s not too bad. But the crazy one . . . Aunt Fanny, I mean . . . she was around knocking on my door last night when everyone was asleep; ‘Captain,’ she says, ‘let me in, let me in, I’m only forty-eight years old.’ God.” He shivered. “I was going to shove all the furniture in the room against the door and lean on it.”

Julia laughed. “One of these nights you’ll forget to lock your door.”

“Not
me;
catch me taking a chance like that. How can we get away? The gates are locked, and she sent me and Essex to make sure no one could climb over the wall.”

“Worse than that, we’d have to have some kind of a car. We can’t walk all the way to the village and even if we get to the village there’s only two fool busses each day. They’d catch us in half an hour.”

“What makes you so sure they
want
to catch us?”

Julia grinned wickedly. “Not
me,
” she said. “It’s not
me
they want. They’d let me go and gladly, even my mother.
I
am not the father of future generations.”

“My God,” the captain said. “Can we try for it today?”

“We’re not in prison,” Julia said, “and I’m not going to be treated as though we were . . . you know, trying to sneak out in a delivery truck or something like that. I wonder if we could just
tell
her we want to leave?”

“Not
me,
” said the captain. “I personally wouldn’t be surprised if they had a dungeon in the cellar.”

_____

“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.’”

9

“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.