ROSEMARY’S DIARY
That first week on Sunset Island was a busy one for all of us. In
fact, there was so much to do that Syd and I didn’t have any time to
worry about the possibility of the _Myra’s_ not returning to pick
us up two months later. And besides, as I said before, we didn’t
actually _know_ anything had happened to her, and as long as we weren’t
sure--and couldn’t be sure--there was no earthly sense in wasting all
that beautiful stay on the Island we’d looked forward to so, in being
miserable.
And Uncle Joe evidently felt the same way about it, for he had more
plans mapped out for every hour of the day than you’d believe could be
crowded into it.
He declared that the first step was to organize us for work, and he
appointed Aunt Mollie captain of the indoors team, with the privilege
of choosing two assistants. She chose Andrée, and--after a little
discussion--Reddy; because she knew I was awfully keen to be on the
outdoors team, and Reddy could be very useful drying dishes and running
errands up and downstairs. He could even dust quite nicely, if you gave
him plenty of time, and didn’t let him do bric-a-brac or high shelves.
Andrée was a real housewife by nature, and could make beds, hang
curtains and oil hardwood floors as well as Aunt Mollie herself. She
was very neat about everything she did, and very exact. The indoors
team, then, agreed to put the house in its former order and repair
inside, as far as possible, and keep it so during our visit to the
Island.
Uncle Joe was captain of the outdoors team, which of course included
all the rest of us, though he sub-divided us into two smaller
committees which had to report progress to him.
Uncle Charles and Dan were gradually--without over-taxing Uncle
Charles’ returning strength--to get the old paths and the Planter’s
Road to the beach cleared for comfortable walking. And Sydney and I
were to be a committee on gardens.
I say _gardens_, because, though Uncle Joe only stipulated that we must
have lots of vegetables, I was set on cultivating some of the profusion
of tropical flowers that grew wild all over the place.
I could see how simply gorgeous the grounds must have been once upon a
time, and how, with a little work, we could have them looking the same
way, or nearly as lovely again.
“It’s like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty--under a spell,” I said to
Uncle Joe, a little shyly for fear he’d laugh. “I want to wake it all
up and make it beautiful again, as it used to be.”
He laughed, but not in the way I’d have minded. Just a nice,
understanding jolly kind of laugh that made me grin with him.
“I’m afraid you’re a romantic young lady,” he warned me. “But, after
all, I find I like beauty as well as the next man, and a tropic island
certainly does call for a flower garden. If you can persuade Syd to
undertake the extra work, go to it, my child!”
After I’d argued with him for a few minutes, Syd saw it from my point
of view, and we decided we’d have both vegetable and flower gardens,
as big as we two could take care of by ourselves, though Uncle Joe
promised to lend a hand whenever we needed extra help.
That was to be his job for the present anyhow: to supervise all the
different phases of work, and help each team out with his experience
and his strong arms whenever and wherever they were most needed.
The first two or three days were taken up with making plans and getting
tools and materials and things ready. But by the fourth day, we were
all up early and hard at work the minute breakfast was over.
Syd and I had discovered traces of a garden back of the house--pretty
jungly and overgrown, of course, but still showing some faint
indications of what it had once been, and that encouraged us to begin
there and see what we could make of it again.
Let me tell everybody right here that if they ever feel the need of
exercise, the kind of exercise that makes your back ache till it feels
ready to break in two, and your knees tremble from sheer exhaustion,
they can’t do anything more effective than grub up weeds that’ve been
growing unchecked for five years in a garden in the tropics. My! but
Syd and I were two weary, _weary_ laborers that first evening.
“I feel as if somebody’d been beating me with a hundred clubs,” Syd
groaned. And I wasn’t much better off.
But we went right at it again the next morning and by afternoon, though
we were tired enough, the stiff, achey feeling had begun to wear off,
and by the third evening we were regular veterans.
The garden was showing the results, too, of all our hard work. The
weeds were gone, and in their places were nice rich patches of earth
which our spades had turned up, all fresh-smelling and sweet.
This had been a flower bed, and quite a number of blossoms I didn’t
know the names of, but evidently annuals--and hardy ones at that, to
withstand all the choking pressure of those weeds--were blooming today
as proud and utterly gorgeous as they ever could have looked when the
first gardener planted them.
Uncle Joe had offered to start clearing a big patch for the vegetable
seeds we’d brought South with us, while we were working on the other
bed, which helped a lot.
I wondered a little whether he was so specially anxious about getting a
big vegetable crop because he was afraid the _Myra_ was never going to
sail in through the opening in the reef again. In that case we’d need
all the food we could raise, though it was comforting to remember that
I’d heard, or read somewhere, that no one ever starved in the tropics,
because things grew so easily and fast. I certainly hoped that was true.
In the meantime, Aunt Mollie and her team had accomplished real wonders
inside the house, and Dan and Uncle Charles had several paths cleared,
which made a most surprising difference in the homelike appearance of
the place.
Of course we were all fairly on pins and needles with curiosity to
explore the Island, but beyond a few short walks, Uncle Joe wouldn’t
hear of our doing anything that would interfere with the tasks he’d
assigned to each of us.
“Finish the planting of the garden, children, and get the house
shipshape and livable,” he would tell us, shaking his grey head. “Then
we’ll go treasure-hunting to your hearts’ content.”
And we had to be satisfied with that promise.
It was not until our vegetable garden was spaded up, and planted in
neat rows, and our reclaimed flowers were blooming beautifully, while
waiting for the seeds we’d put in to come up and join them, that Andrée
made a discovery indoors which was to go a great way toward making our
stay on the Island more exciting even than we’d expected.
It happened at about the end of our third week on Sunset Island. Syd
and I were grubbing weeds in the yam patch, for in the tropics you
can’t give the weeds--or yourself--a breathing spell, unless you want
all the original hard work to do over again.
I had my back to the house, but I saw Syd straighten up suddenly, and
whistle.
“Hey, look at Andy!” he said in a surprised voice. “Something’s
happened to get her excited good and plenty. She’s running, and she’s
forgotten to put on her hat.”
We had teased Andrée a lot about her hat. No matter what hour of the
day, early morning when it was still cool, midday or sunset, she had
never once since we landed on the Island, ventured outside the house
without her big Panama shade hat.
Of course the boys pretended she was afraid of freckles and sunburn
for her complexion, but I think she was really afraid of sunstroke. It
seems some silly person at home had warned her of the terrible things
the sun did to you in the tropics, and the poor kid was half scared to
death, though I only found that out much later. So when Syd said she’d
forgotten her hat, I turned around in a hurry.
Andrée flung herself down on the grass at the edge of the garden and
panted. Her blue eyes were shining and she had the loveliest color in
her cheeks that matched exactly one of the climbing roses in the garden.
“Mother and I have been cleaning out the storeroom--not the one where
we put the provisions, but the big one in the wing, where the old
furniture and the trunks are,” she announced breathlessly. “And way
back in a corner--I found an old chest with the most wonderful clothes
in it. Silks and brocades and velvets--my _stars_!” Andrée breathed
ecstatically, clasping her hands. “You never saw such things, Gay!
Mother says that they’re what is called _Empire_, the style of dress
the Empress Josephine introduced. Come and look at them. I wanted to
get you before we went down deeper than the top layer. They’ll be grand
for dressing up.”
Of course I dropped my trowel and jumped to my feet double-quick. Even
Syd decided he’d come, too; not, as he explained carefully, that he
cared for clothes, no matter how ancient or fine they were; but because
there might be other interesting discoveries in the chest.
Neither Andrée nor I had thought of that, but we saw at once
the possibility, and scurried back to the house in a flutter of
anticipation.
We found Aunt Mollie and Red still in the storeroom, before the chest,
which was of some dark, very hard wood that looked like ebony, and had
brass hasps and lock.
Andrée had been right. I’d never even dreamed of anything as lovely as
those old, high-waisted gowns with their narrow skirts and short puffed
sleeves. There was one blue and silver brocade that almost took my
breath away it was so exquisite.
It had a knot of blue forget-me-nots and tiny pink roses, made of
velvet, on the bodice, and there was a blue feather fan with ivory
sticks lying near it, and the wee-est blue slippers without heels and
laced with silver ribbons.
Andrée looked at the whole collection longingly, and sighed.
“She--whoever owned these things, I mean--must have been little like
you, Gay,” she said. “I couldn’t get into that dress in a thousand
years.”
I lifted it out of the chest very, very carefully, and as I did so
something small and flat, rolled up in a big white silk kerchief,
slipped out of its folds and fell to the floor.
Syd picked it up and unwrapped a little book, bound in ribbed white
silk that had grown frayed and yellow with time. It was tied with a
white silk cord that had tiny yellow-white rosebuds for tassels, and on
the cover were the words in gold, old-fashioned curly-cue lettering:
Rosemary Carreau--Her Diary
and under them the date: “1804.”
“My stars!” said Andrée again, breathlessly. “She must have been Mr.
Jean Carreau’s grandmother.”
“His great-grandmother more likely,” I corrected her. “Look at the
date--over a hundred and twenty years ago!”
“Maybe it was his great-great,” suggested Syd, grinning. “Don’t scrap,
you girls. Let’s sit down and read it out loud. It may tell us all
kinds of things we’d like to know about our island.”
Aunt Mollie looked sort of troubled.
“But I’m not sure we ought to read it, children,” she objected. “A
diary’s a private matter, and it seems to me only one of Rosemary’s
descendants ought to open it. Sometimes there are--well, family secrets
in a diary, you know. Perhaps Mr. Jean Carreau wouldn’t like our doing
it.”
“Then he ought to have taken it away with him,” I argued, in a
disappointed tone. If Aunt Mollie said we mustn’t, it was going to be
simply _fearful_ to go on living in the house with all those thrilling
secrets of the past locked up in that little white book, and us not
having a peep at them. Besides, wasn’t it Sunset Island history and
wasn’t the Island our very own now? Or at least our very own uncle’s
very own.
Then I had a bright thought.
“Can’t we leave it to Uncle Joe to decide?” I begged. “After all, it’s
his house, and I guess he bought this chest from Mr. Carreau just as
much as all the rest of the furniture.”
Aunt Mollie finally agreed to that, and Reddy was sent post-haste to
find Uncle Joe.
He came back in about five minutes with not only Uncle Joe, but Dan and
Uncle Charles as well. Reddy had blurted out a confused account of what
we’d found and roused their curiosity to boiling pitch.
After some arguing back and forth, Uncle Joe decided that Mr. Carreau
wouldn’t have left any very private family papers behind, and
that--since no one knew where he was now to ask about it--we might
start reading the little book, but must stop if we came to anything
of a private nature, in which case, he added gravely, we would all,
of course, be on our honor never to repeat what we had stumbled on
inadvertently.
“But I don’t believe there’s anything there he’d mind our knowing,”
he informed us, after he had turned over a number of the pages, and
read a bit here and there. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s all right to go
ahead,” he said, and handed the book to Andrée, since she had been
the first one to discover the old chest. His eyes twinkled at us as
he added, “I caught a glimpse of a sentence or two about old Morgan’s
treasure that’ll probably interest you youngsters. From what I can make
out, this Rosemary Carreau was the wife of the first Carreau to settle
on Sunset Island. She speaks of being half-French and half-English
herself, and living on Martinique before her marriage. Her mother who
went back to England then, appears to have asked her daughter to keep
a diary in her new home, in order not to forget the English tongue.
Judging by stray specimens I’ve noted here and there, Mrs. Rosemary’s
English was quite French, if I’m allowed to be Irish for once.”
We laughed, and Syd put in eagerly: “But what does it say about the
treasure, Uncle Joe? The girls may like wading through all that fine,
scrawly looking writing, but I want to know about the treasure first.”
Uncle Joe reached for the diary and began flipping over the pages.
“It was somewhere toward the end--here it is.” He paused teasingly and
studied our strained and anxious expressions with his grin, that’s as
young as Reddy’s. Then he began to read:
“‘My dear husband, knowing of how my always interest in the legend
concerning the treasure of the great and so-dreadful buccaneer, Sir
Henry Morgan, which is connect with this our Island where we now live,
did give me for _souvenir_ of our wedding day the map he had from the
English sailor on his gallant barque that died at Saint Pierre’--Hold
on,” Uncle Joe gasped, “this is growing complicated with a vengeance.
Was it the ‘gallant barque’ or the ‘English sailor’ who died at Saint
Pierre? Never mind, somebody died and gave a map to the first owner of
Sunset Island, or I suppose I should say he gave it to the owner and
_then_ died. I’m getting as confused as poor Rosemary. Still, the main
point is, there’s, a map, and it was in Rosemary’s possession as a
souvenir--quaint word that--of her wedding day.”
“Oh, _please_ go on!” we shouted in chorus. A map! It was getting more
gorgeous by the minute, this Island of ours.
Uncle Joe obediently resumed his reading.
“‘It is a strange map--very old, very yellow and most _merveilleux_ in
spelling. The English sailor was a very old man when he came to die,
and for cause of favors my dear husband had showed to him, he delivered
into his hands the map--his most treasure possession. It is supposed
to have been made, a copy, by a traitor among the buccaneers following
Sir Henry Morgan. The man meant surely to return and retrieve part of
the treasure, but, _hélas_! Morgan did discover his act, and punished
it by a death most terrible. One buccaneer who acted as guard to the
man condemned was kind to him, and the poor wretch gave to him in
thanks the dangerous map, Morgan never discovering. That guard was the
great-grandfather of the English sailor from whom my husband had, in
turn, the very map. It lies in my lap, as I write. But though of a rare
curiosity to behold, I much fear me--and so does my dear husband--that
the thief-buccaneer was not so accurate in his copying as could be
desire. There is no sign of Morgan’s great treasure--not one little
_moidore_ or golden guinea near the spot it marks. But I keep the map
for a souvenir.’ There’s that word she’s so fond of again, and that’s
all she says about the treasure.”
“Well, but,” I exclaimed, “where _is_ this map? We--we’ve simply got to
find it. Maybe we could read it differently, or maybe--oh, anyway, we
must have it.”
“Perhaps it’s here in the chest somewhere,” Uncle Joe offered
thoughtfully.
But it wasn’t. We took every gown, and wrap, and piece of lace out of
that ebony chest of Rosemary’s; we shook them all out, and felt them
over carefully, inch by inch. But there was no “strange map, very old,
very yellow,” anywhere to be found among them.
We sat back and stared at one another, solemnly, with very woebegone
faces. It was simply maddening to be so near and yet so hopelessly far
from our one and only clue to the secret of Sunset Island.