An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [80]
"It's all right," he said softly, "it's all right. Get her some water, somebody. In God's name, Emily, I've been looking all over for you all morning. And then someone just came up to me yelling for a doctor and I came to help. I didn't know it was you. My God, what happened?"
I started to cry then, and they were hard put to stop me. His voice did it. And his eyes. And the way his hands touched the lump on my head and picked up my hurt wrist. I had hoped never to see him again. "Oh," I sobbed, "I've made a mess of everything."
"You sure have," Robert agreed, "but we won't talk about it now."
I sat there blubbering while he bound up my wrist. "I want my cat," I sobbed. "Where's my basket with my cat? If I lose Ulysses, I'll die."
The girl who claimed I saved her life ran and got my basket. Ulysses was crying fretfully. "He needs some water," I told Robert. So Robert gave him some.
Then Robert made sure Elvira was all right. Her teacher insisted we exchange names. Robert gave her mine. And Uncle Valentine's address. "It's where Emily lives," he said; "it's her home. Come and see her."
22. How Can I Explain This?
"IT ISN'T WHERE I live," I told Robert. "It isn't my home. And you had no right to invite them to come and see me there."
He was guiding the chaise away from the crowds and the traffic. He had all he could do to manage this and was not listening to me.
I waited until we were away from the push of people and carriages and finally on a side street. "My train, at this very moment, might be coming into the station. My seat is waiting for me. Paid for. I have to get out of this chaise!"
He did not answer.
"You have to stop," I said. "I have to get out. Stop the horse now, I say! Robert!"
We were on a side street now, the crowds were thinning, the horse clip-clopped at a steady pace, its mane streaming out, the cobblestone street whizzing by under its feet, making me dizzy. I started to stand up. He pushed me back down.
"Stop, please, I'm going to throw up."
"Then do it and get it over with."
"How can you be so mean? Robert, stop now, I say, or I'll jump out."
"Then do it. I'll not pander to you further."
"Pander? Pander? What does that mean?"
"Everyone's pandered to you since you first got to your uncle's house. And look how you repay him."
"How? How do I repay him?"
"By setting the police on him."
"Police?" The breeze was blowing his hair about. And I noticed he was growing a mustache. "What are you talking about?" I felt a sense of dread in my bones. "What happened?"
We were driving past a park now. He slowed the horse down. "Do you care what happened?"
Myra, I thought dismally. She went and told her father about the dead bodies in the laboratory. "Yes," I said.
"Your uncle's work was near ruined. If I hadn't gotten rid of the evidence before the police arrived at the college with the reporters, it would have been. And he might now be in jail. Just because you and your silly friends had to go on a lark. Couldn't you have thought of something else to do? Gone to the Soldiers' Home, maybe, where you could have laughed at the veterans who are half blind and can't walk anymore?"
"Stop it, Robert, it wasn't like that."
"What was it like, then? I want to know how a bunch of silly schoolgirls can get the notion to ruin the lifetime work of one of the finest doctors we have today in Washington."
Oh, dear God, I thought, how can I explain this? But I had to try. So I told him. The words sounded so lame, so inept, the reasoning so selfish. But I told my whole sad tale, starting from the party at school for Myra and ending up with how we ran from the courtyard.
"And you never gave a thought to what this little Myra witch would do when she got home. Because you were busy thinking of yourself. And your own shocked little sensibilities. Am I right?"
Tears crowded my eyes and my throat. "No," I said. "My feminine scruples."
He said nothing to that. But he was angry. He had every right to be, yes, but he was missing something here, overlooking something. What