While they were all eating, Cousin Alden brought up the subject of the boxes. What he wanted to know was whether anyone had any objection to letting him watch the opening of the boxes. “I would have known better than to even think of asking if Aunt Adelaide was still in charge,” he told them, “since I’m only a Weatherby by marriage. But under the present circumstances . . .” He grinned at Harleigh and Uncle Edgar. “Okay?” he asked. “If I promise not to steal anything? Not even some ideas for my next novel?”
So Harleigh gave him permission, and then, because she’d obviously heard the whole discussion and must be curious, he asked Matilda if she’d like to come too. Everyone seemed surprised, particularly Matilda. But when Harleigh asked her again, she grinned and nodded, took off her apron, and followed the procession to the library—and the opening of the boxes.
It took a long time even after Uncle Edgar produced a bolt cutter that was able to cut through the rusty padlocks. Several of the boxes were full of different kinds of certificates printed in fancy, old-fashioned lettering—things that Uncle Edgar said might, or might not, be very valuable. But then came a more interesting find. One of the heaviest boxes was packed with leather sacks full of coins. Some of the coins seemed to be of nickel and silver, but some others were obviously solid gold. That really caused some excitement.
After that were a couple of boxes that held stacks of paper money. American paper money, dated in the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, and looking like nothing Harleigh had ever seen before.
Before the last box was opened, several hours had gone by. Matilda, who had seemed very interested for a while, excused herself and left to start dinner. She wasn’t the only one. Harleigh, too, found himself losing interest now and then. Especially after he happened to rub his head, and the sore spot reminded him of another important question. The one concerning whether he really was growing—or not. So he left the box-opening operation briefly while he went to measure himself under the portrait of Harleigh the First.
Sure enough, he could no longer stand below the picture in the spot where he use to measure himself to see how much he would have to grow to reach the frame of Harleigh the First’s portrait. Back then there had always been an inch or two to spare, but now the sharp gilded edge of the frame was exactly level with his sore spot. The sore spot that was halfway up the back of his head. He was grinning as he went back to join the group.
There were also a couple of other times when the discoveries were a bit of a letdown, and Harleigh, who’d had a rough day and not much sleep the night before, came close to dozing off. For instance, one whole box was packed full of letters that seemed to be either to or from lawyers—Harleigh the First’s lawyers as well as a bunch from lawyers for other people.
But at last the final box was opened and inspected and everyone got up to go. “So,” Harleigh asked Uncle Edgar. “Are we rich? Will it be enough to . . .”
“To what? What did you have in mind?”
Harleigh thought of mentioning the tumbled turrets, the cracked windows, or even the ancient bathrooms, but he found he was just too tired to give it any serious thought. Mumbling something, he headed for the kitchen and a meal he was almost too tired to eat.
It wasn’t until he was getting ready for bed that night that he put his hand into his pants pocket and felt something soft and filmy tangle around his fingers. Puzzled, he pulled it out and smoothed it flat on his knee before he realized it was the piece of Allegra’s dress that had torn off when he was trying to keep her from running away to the place where she—but not Harleigh—could fly over the wall. There wasn’t much to it. He sat there on the edge of his bed for a while looking at the soft, almost sheer, scrap of pale, silvery material and wondering. Wondering, first of all, how she happened to be in Weatherby House when Junior started chasing him. Did that mean she’d found a way to get back into the house whenever she wanted to? And if so, how and where?
She’d said something about doors that were unlocked. And something else about doors that were locked now that didn’t use to be. Like maybe the door to his room in the Aerie?
Remembering the times he’d thought he’d heard someone on the stairs and even trying the latch on his door, Harleigh went on wondering, but not for very long. It had been a long, hard day.
Chapter Twenty-six
The next few days were busy and interesting most of the time, and even when they weren’t particularly busy, they were certainly different. One of the biggest changes was because of Aunt Adelaide. Her silence alone took some getting used to. After a day or two she did start coming to meals in the kitchen again, at least part of the time, but the fact that she didn’t have anything to say about Cousin Alden being there too, eating Matilda’s cooking, was a large difference all by itself.
According to Cousin Josephine, Aunt Adelaide continued to shake her head when she was asked if she wanted to see her doctor, but when she still wasn’t talking on the third day, Cousin Josephine called him anyway. So the doctor came, and afterward Cousin Josephine said he seemed to be baffled too, but he thought it might have been a stroke.
“A stroke of luck,” Cousin Alden said, which Cousin Josephine said was heartless. However, she didn’t argue when he suggested that since Aunt Adelaide obviously wasn’t going to object, maybe they could all stop with the ridiculous family titles now. So they stopped the Aunt, Uncle, Cousin business, which everybody agreed was a relief.
The one title that stuck, at least partially, was Aunt Adelaide’s. Somehow no one seemed to be able to manage just plain Adelaide, so it became simply Aunt. But at least it should be Aunt with a capital A, Josephine said, and her husband said he thought he could go that far. “So the next time you hear me saying Aunt,” he told Harleigh, “be sure you listen for the capital A.”
But it didn’t seem to Harleigh that Aunt was unhappy. She still came to the kitchen for most of her meals, but if some of the recent changes—like the people who now ate there—made her angry, it didn’t show.
There was another big change in Aunt’s life, and that was TV. In the past Aunt Adelaide had never allowed a television set anywhere near Weatherby House. But then Josephine, with Ralph’s help, installed one in the recital hall, and Aunt soon became addicted. Josephine sometimes worried that watching that much TV was abnormal, but Alden said he thought a quietly watching Aunt seemed a lot less abnormal than the previous one had ever been.
There were other changes too, most of which grew out of the existence of the treasure. It did turn out to be worth a lot of money, or would be eventually, when Edgar finished sorting it out. Of course the gold coins were very valuable, and some of the certificates and deeds with the fancy printing could be converted into cash, but it was a long, involved process. A lot of the paper money was too old to be worth much except to people who collected such things, but it would take a while to find the right buyers.
When Edgar began to complain that he was swamped by all the paperwork, Harleigh remembered that Sheila had been a secretary and suggested that maybe she could help. When he asked her, she seemed delighted. So much so that her eyebrows tilted at an entirely new angle and pretty much stayed that way, which gave her a more agreeable appearance. She did turn out to be good at all the things secretaries are supposed to do. And being so busy with typing and phoning and mailing left less time for weeping and wailing, which made her a lot more popular with her neighbors in the west wing.
There were other people who started being involved in sorting out the treasure. People such as A. J., who still hadn’t passed his bar exam after more than twenty years of trying, but who nevertheless knew quite a bit about the law and was able to help keep everything legal.
But in spite of how much it helped to have a secretary and a lawyer, Edgar was still terribly busy, and Harleigh’s lessons began to be a lot shorter, if they happened at all. And when they did happen, they tended to be mostly discussions instead of planned study sessions. Harleigh didn’t mind, really, especially when the subjects
discussed turned out to be things that mattered to him. Like the day that they talked all morning about Harleigh’s famous ancestor, Harleigh J. Weatherby the First.
It was a subject they’d covered many times before and never agreed on. It had always seemed to Harleigh that it was all very well to criticize someone if you were just as rich and famous as they were—or in this case, had been. But when poor, old, lazy, overweight Edgar did it . . . well, there was such a thing as sour grapes. But then Edgar showed Harleigh the box full of letters from lawyers.
Of course Harleigh didn’t read all of them, but Edgar said the ones he’d picked out were pretty representative. Some of the letters to Harleigh the First’s lawyers were from other lawyers who were working for people who had been kicked off their property because Harleigh J. Weatherby decided he wanted it. Several of the victims were other businessmen, but there were also quite a few letters from people like widows and orphans.
One of the letters that Edgar seemed especially eager for Harleigh to read said:
Dear Mr. Weatherby,
As the minister of the Riverbend First Presbyterian Church where Mrs. McIntyre and her family are members, I am writing to inform you that due to the death of Mrs. McIntyre’s husband and her own serious illness, she will not be able to pay her December rent on time. She has asked me to petition you to allow her to put off payment for the time being. Her two oldest children have quit school and have found work in the Weatherby Garment Factory, and she is hoping that their earnings will make it possible for her to repay her debts in the near future.
—Rev G. H. Smithson
The answering letter was from one of Harleigh the First’s lawyers, and all it said was: “Please inform Mrs. McIntyre that her request is denied. She will be given two weeks to vacate the premises.”
And then there were the letters from H. J. Weatherby’s lawyers. Those were the really nasty ones full of threats about what the Weatherby company would do to people who didn’t just shut up and get out of Mr. Weatherby’s way. By the time Harleigh Four had finished reading, he found that when he looked up at the portrait of his famous ancestor, it was from a slightly different point of view.
Just a day or two after Harleigh Four read the lawyers’ letters, his father showed up, as unexpectedly and unannounced as usual. The news about the treasure and the situation with Aunt Adelaide had finally reached him in Australia, and he had, he said, headed for home immediately, stopping off only once to examine an unusual building in San Francisco. And then there he was, in the midst of all the changes.
At first Edgar had to spend a lot of time filling him in on all the money the Weatherby family now had, and for a while he seemed to be paying close attention. For a few days he even got involved in choosing a contractor to repair the fallen turrets, and in drawing up some plans for the new bathrooms. But a few days later he lost interest and took off on a trip to study the Taj Mahal.
The first Monday morning after the Wednesday that changed everything, Harleigh went back to the tree house. Allegra wasn’t there, but she had been there recently, either on Saturday or Sunday. Harleigh knew her visit had been recent because there had been rain on Friday, and the note he found in the cracked teacup was not smudged or damp. The note said:
Dear Harleigh,
I have to go away now. I’ll come back someday, but I don’t know when.
—Allegra
Harleigh took the note home and put it away in a special hiding place at the back of one of the Aerie’s cabinets, where he kept the scrap of her tattered dress. The next few weeks were a busy and exciting time for Harleigh Four. But no matter how busy he was with all the things that were happening at Weatherby House, he went back to the black walnut tree every Monday and Wednesday morning and waited for at least an hour. But Allegra never came.
Chapter Twenty-seven
And then it was September, and with it came cooler weather and some serious discussions about what was going to be done about Harleigh Four’s education. The thing was, it just wasn’t happening anymore with Edgar. He and Harleigh did have some lengthy sessions now and then, but they were mostly spent deciding things about the House and the money.
Harleigh could see that it would be too much to expect Edgar to go back to being his tutor and still go on investing, controlling, and arranging to spend all that money. It would be too much work even for someone a lot younger and more energetic than Edgar.
“So what are we going to do?” he asked Harleigh. “It looks like it won’t be too long before you are going to have to take over being responsible for not only all the Weatherby assets, but also the lives of quite a few direct, and not so direct, Weatherby descendants. And to handle all that you’re going to need to know your way around this complicated world.”
Harleigh more or less agreed—at least he had begun to, rather recently. He also realized that only a few weeks ago he might not have agreed at all. In thinking back over the recent past, he remembered feeling that he already knew just about everything he needed to know, along with exactly where he wanted to go with his life. But somehow, he didn’t know exactly how or why, he was now a little less sure of—of what? Of what he ought to do about a lot of the people who lived in Weatherby House, for one thing, along with what he might want to do with all the money that old Harleigh the First had squeezed out of all sorts of people and then stashed away under the stage in his grand recital hall.
At any rate, for whatever reason, and partly against his will, he found himself thinking that he still had a lot to learn. But where? That was the big question.
One thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to be sent to the Hardacre Military Academy that Aunt had been so crazy about. And it seemed that the only other choice would be to go back to the Riverbend schools; at this point probably to seventh or eighth grade at the junior high. At least that was what Edgar seemed to think. When Edgar brought up that possibility, Harleigh nodded reluctantly and sighed.
“As bad as all that? Here. Tell me about it.” Edgar patted the chair next to his. They were in the library at the time, where they had just finished going over stacks of letters and notebooks that kept track of what was being done with the money. So Harleigh sat down again and told him.
“Well, some of them, boys mostly, but a few girls, too, thought it was really funny that I was so—so short. And then someone started calling me Hardly instead of Harleigh. They’d even call me Hardly in front of the teachers, and then they’d just pretend that they had mispronounced my name by accident. And besides that—”
Edgar patted his shoulder and said he got the picture. “But things are quite different now,” he said. “For one thing, you’re bigger now. You know you really have been growing lately, don’t you?”
Harleigh nodded. He knew now that it was true. Ever since the day he’d cracked his head on the picture frame, he’d been measuring himself at least once a day, and there was no doubt about it. He really was growing, and fast. “But I’m still not as big as a lot of them are,” he said.
“True.” Edgar nodded. “But physically you’re probably already as big as some of them, and in a lot of other areas you’re definitely on your way toward being at the top of the heap. Take my word for it, Harleigh. You’re growing in more ways than one.”
But when Harleigh still didn’t seem too pleased with the idea of returning to Riverbend, Edgar had some more advice to offer. “Believe me, Harleigh,” he said. “I understand the problem. Remember, I was one of the ‘lucky’ boys who got sent off to Hardacre as a teenager. A slightly rebellious, and already more than slightly chubby, teenager.” He shrugged and curved his wide lips into a sour smile before he went on. “I spent a couple of pretty miserable months. But then I discovered a trick that helped a lot.”
“Oh, yeah?” Harleigh asked. “So what trick was that?”
“The trick was—to make all the other boys believe that I didn’t care. That I didn’t care what any of them did or said. It didn’t happen immediately, and at
first I definitely was putting on an act. But after I’d worked at it for a while, I found out that it really was true. As soon as I really didn’t care what they did, they stopped doing it. Kind of spoiled the fun, I guess.”
At the time Harleigh enjoyed Edgar’s story about his “trick,” but he didn’t take it too seriously. However, when the semester started there they were again—all the same old teasers and tormentors who remembered him from fifth grade and hadn’t forgotten how much fun they’d had calling him Hardly and some other insulting names. But after a while he began to see some changes.
For one thing, a new and different problem had cropped up at Weatherby House. One that Harleigh had to help solve. Actually, he’d learned about it a couple of weeks before school started when the Farleys, two of the elderly descendants who lived in the west wing, came to talk to Harleigh and Edgar about their grandson.
It seemed this grandson, whose name was Tyler, was about to become homeless. That is, his mother, who was a single parent, was going to have to be in the hospital for a long time, and there wasn’t any place for Tyler to live. Unless it could be with his Weatherby grandparents.
“Of course,” John Farley, the elderly husband, said, “we would never have even considered asking Aunt Adelaide if Tyler could come to stay with us. We knew how strict her rules were about allowing any children on the premises.” The old man paused to glance at Harleigh and then went on, “At least children who weren’t direct descendants. But recently we’ve begun to wonder if . . .”
Edgar looked at Harleigh for a long, thoughtful moment before he said, “What do you think, Harleigh? We need a decision here, and I guess it’s up to you to make it. Any ideas?”
Afterward Harleigh wasn’t entirely sure who came up with the solution, but he knew he’d had a hand in it. The solution was that people who were going to be closest to a problem ought to be involved in deciding what to do about it.
The Treasures of Weatherby Page 13