Her eyes held an urgency as she spoke, talked on, trying to reach him with her words. Leo listened, knowing they were meaningful things she was trying to express, but he felt uncomfortable nevertheless. Even while they sat beside the water the dusk was gathering around them, and as she talked her face grew pale in the purple light, the wrinkles in her skin more pronounced.
She changed her position to bring herself closer to him, forcing him to attend more closely to her words. “What I am trying to say is that you have displayed your talents to me on two different occasions. Both times things were amiss and the performance was interrupted, but that fact takes nothing away from your God-given abilities. Professor Pinero agrees. Yours is a rare gift, a gift that requires nourishment. It seems to us that if you were given the opportunity to pursue your studies as your mother wanted you to, you could go farther than even she dreamed.” This mention of Emily caused him to drop his head. Using her thumb, Dagmar raised it again. “Leo?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you tell me your mother and father had died in a train accident?”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember?”
He shook his head. “It’s true,” he said. “They did! It’s true!” But even as he spoke he knew she had found out the truth.
“Leo, my dear, listen to me, please,” she went on. “You needn’t be ashamed. I have spoken with Ma. She told me. You mustn’t think I am being a nosy Parker, but I believed you would wish me to know. Isn’t that so? Aren’t these things we should speak of, you and I, if we are to be friends?”
“I suppose so.” He feigned a profound interest in the spider. “But what if someone else finds out?”
“Who? The campers, do you mean? Or Reece? They won’t, never fear.”
But Leo was remembering the village. Suddenly he looked up at her. “Can we talk at the Castle?”
“Why there, please?”
“Because I want to come.”
“And you shall,” she replied. “We’ll have a nice visit before you leave.”
“No. Not a visit. To stay.”
“To stay?”
“Yes. Then you can ask me anything you want. And I’ll play for you. But you must promise to keep me. Forever and ever.”
“Oh, my dear, how can I do that?”
“Tell Mr Poe and Miss Meekum you want me,” he said eagerly. “Say I’m to come and stay with you.”
“That’s a very nice idea. Perhaps you can come for Christmas vacation. But I’m afraid a longer visit would be out of the question.”
“Why?”
“Leo, I am an old woman, I cannot have the responsibility of a boy to look after. What would happen if I became ill-?”
“Augie! Augie will take care of me.”
“Nonsense! That’s ridiculous. Augie is older than I. He’s not well. I wouldn’t think of burdening him.”
She consulted her watch, then stubbed out her cigarette and dropped her Camels into her bag. “My stomach’s rumbling,” she said. “I must get home for supper.” She stood and brushed off her seat, then put out a hand and wiggled her fingers coaxingly. “Come. Augie will drive you back to camp.”
She reached for his arm but he pulled away abruptly.
“I don’t want to.”
“I thought you liked riding in my automobile.”
“No, I don’t want to,” he said again.
She laughed her robust laugh. “What do you want, then?”
“I told you. I want to come with you and live in your castle.”
“But I have explained that is not possible. You must go back, of course.” She smiled encouragement. “Before the summer’s over we’ll play duets again, how will that be?” He stiffened and spoke coldly. “That’s okay. You don’t have to be polite.”
“But I am not being polite. I mean what I say. I want you to come. I hope you will visit me many times in future.” He turned a little away. “I’m liable to be pretty busy.” A faint line of dissatisfaction drew itself between her brows. “Come now, please don’t scowl so. I may be an old woman, but I know what I’m talking about.” She smiled and touched a finger to the back of his hand. “Be a good boy, Leo, won’t you? Aren’t we friends, you and I? I hoped we were…” She tried to force his chin up, but he ducked his head and stubbornly refused to look at her.
She sighed. “I had not thought to find you so ill-mannered. I fear I have mistaken myself in you.” She sighed. “Very well, then, let us part, not as I hoped we would, but as we must. Good-bye.”
He only half-watched her as she marched away, her back stiffened with affront, bits of leaf and straw attached to her skirt. He wanted to run after her and say he was sorry, but his feet wouldn’t obey his brain. He pretended not to notice as Augie helped her into the car, shut the doors, turned the car around, and drove away down the lane. She never even looked around once. Leo felt tears sting his eyes.
“Okay for you,” he said aloud, tossing a pebble into the water, and returned his attention to Elsie, who had labored on without letup. In the end he felt compelled to take her; she was probably the last spider he would add to his exhibit before leaving camp. More happy points for Jeremiah: what a joke that was. He fished out a codfish box from his knapsack, pulled back the lid,'and, using his pen, flicked the creature inside and slid the top home.
It was not until the following morning, after cabin cleanup, while they waited for inspection, that he remembered “Elsie.” The Robert the Bruce spider had passed a supper-less night, and it was with some trepidation that Leo now removed her box from the knapsack to have a look. Elsie lay on her back, her eight legs bent and shriveled up. But when Leo gave the inert form a shake, she miraculously revived; her legs straightened, she flopped onto her belly, and began to scramble frantically around her prison.
“Yikes! It’s alive!” cried Peewee (having “dropped by” as usual), as the spider crawled up the side of the box. Leo tried to contain her by reinserting the panel into its grooves, but he wasn’t fast enough and she escaped, describing an arc through the air to land near Reece’s footlocker, where Tiger sat sewing on the button that had popped off his polo shirt during the last ball game.
“Look out – look out!” shouted Peewee, dancing up and down like a dervish. “It’s on you! It’s on your leg!”
Tiger was frozen in place, staring at the spider clinging to his thigh.
“Don’t worry,” Leo said. “It’s not going to hurt anybody.” Slowly he put out his hand to seize the towel hanging at the end of Eddie’s bunk, and with a quick pass brushed the spider from Tiger’s leg into the box.
“You ought to keep those dumb things out of here,” Phil said darkly as Leo slid the top shut.
“Yeah,” said Dump. “What if he’d got bit? We’ve got a game tomorrow, you know.”
“It wouldn’t matter if he did,” Leo said. “The spiders around here aren’t poisonous.”
“How do you know?” demanded Phil.
“Because there are only two venomous spiders in the whole United States, and neither is indigenous to Connecticut.” “Aw, screw you and your fifty-cent words, Wacko,” Phil sneered. “You think you know everything.”
“I know which spiders are dangerous and which aren’t, and that’s a lot more than you seem to know.”
“Spiders can bite, even if they’re not poisonous,” Monkey argued.
“I think it did,” Tiger said, with a sheepish laugh. As the others crowded around, he indicated a small red mark visible on the inside of his thigh. Leo got down on his knees and inspected the bite.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said finally. “But just to be on the safe side, maybe you should go let Wanda take a look at it.”
“Naw, forget it,” Tiger said, without looking at Leo. “I’ll just put some stuff on it.” He found a half-dollar-size tin of Campho-Phenique and dabbed some on the mark, and let it go at that.
By the next morning, however, the mark had enlarged and turned purple. “Now I go see Wanda,” Tiger announced, and after breakfast off he went to the infirmary, while the other Jeremians waited at the cabin. A scowling Phil let Leo know just where the boys – and their counselor -stood on matters.