Free Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes

small leather satchel, examines the contents, then seals and stows it beneath the bed. In it she has arranged a comb and looking glass, a small pair of scissors for Pudding’s nails, a photograph of their father, the perfumed silk sachet that Elsa bought her, a bundle of chalk and crayons fastened with blue ribbon, a pair of binoculars, the silver candy bowl from Edward’s sitting room (which she scrambles to position on the dresser each time before Edward is permitted to enter their cabin—“Not yet!” she cries as he lingers in the doorway, sure to keep his palms held firmly over his eyes), and, despite Elsa’s insistence that she would have no need for it, a German-English dictionary—the same item Alice watched Elsa pack the first time she left home.
    Of course, the longest, most arduous part of the voyage is still ahead. Tropical climates, strange languages, peoples of unknown dispositions. The potential for danger is, Elsa knows, quite real. But wasn’t there danger in England? The whole business of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, their endless articles and proposals, the bill they tried to slip through Parliament to mandate institutionalization—it terrified her. Her father, in his last months, had posted three letters to the
Daily Telegraph
decrying
The Journal of the Eugenics Education Society
and their claims that sterilization could prevent the spread of idiocy. “Spread!” he coughed from his bed, hurling the journal to the floor. “Do they think this is smallpox?” Even more unsettling was one of the names on the masthead of the
Eugenics Review
—Dr. William Chapple—the man they had turned to years before to diagnose Alice’s condition.
    When Elsa and Edward were clearing her father’s office, in her father’s desk drawer she found the last few volumes of the
Review.
Why, she wondered, did he hold on to them? Did he think that in his drawer he might control their contents? How typical of Father to assume his constant obsession, his ten-page letters, would solve the problem. Never was he guilty of indolence, never of surrender. His hard work, however, could be so misdirected. Textiles—a serious investment, but dreadfully ill-advised. Looking around at the dusty books, the boxes of papers—the bulk of her inheritance—Elsa thought: I am penniless. It would take more than her vigilance to make sure Alice didn’t find herself in the hands of maniacal doctors. Elsa pulled the volumes from the drawer and scanned the clutter for a waste-basket.
    “Please, Miss Pendleton,” said Edward from across the room. “Do have a rest. I’d be pleased to deal with this untidiness. This sort of thing is always trying on one’s feelings.”
    “I’m fine, Professor Beazley,” she said, the coolness in her voice obviously startling him out of his tender moment. He seemed disconcerted by her lack of bereavement, by the calm she had shown at the funeral. Why did Edward and everybody else expect she would be consumed by emotion? If she hadn’t so many other concerns, she might have been. “I’m merely looking for a place to dispose of this idiotic rubbish.” Elsa glanced around; everything, actually, looked like a trash bin—suitcases and crates stuffed with papers, books, and broadsides. Finally Elsa tore up one volume at a time and let the pieces tumble to the floor. “There. Now I won’t mistake them for anything worth saving.”
    “I understand your irritation. The Eugenics Education Society. An awful business.”
    “Father no doubt told you all about it.”
    “Some. Yes.” Edward shook his head. “It is an outrage, really. This is what Britain’s medical experts concoct? Not a cure, not a remedy, not even an attempt to ease the discomforts of those who are troubled. But isolation? Imprisonment? Sterilization?” His hands flew up. “Good God.”
    This sudden passion surprised Elsa—Edward had been silent through the morning as they filled the crates. But