_Return to Gone-Away_
_Elizabeth Enright_
_Illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush_
HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, INC., NEW YORK
_1961 by Elizabeth Enright_
_All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any mechanical means, including mimeograph
and tape recorder, without permission in writing from the
publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-6113
Printed in the United States of America First edition_
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_Gone-Away Lake_
(published by Harcourt, Brace & World)
_The Four-Story Mistake_
_The Melendy Family_
(containing _The Saturdays_, _The Four-Story Mistake_,
and _Then There Were Five_)
_The Saturdays_
_Spiderweb for Two_
_Then There Were Five_
_Thimble Summer_
_The Sea Is All Around_
(published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston)
_For Peter Montgomery Benton and his sister Gata_
_Contents_
1 _A Wish Come True_
2 _Return to Gone-Away_
3 _The House_
4 _The Victors_
5 _The Sheep-Lady's Secret_
6 _The House of Astonishment_
7 _Another Beginning_
8 _Gone-Away Housekeeping_
9 _The Attic_
10 _The Rescue Shell_
11 _The Hot Spell_
12 _The Plan_
13 _The Night of the Full Moon_
14 _Advice to Librans_
15 _The Safe_
16 _A New Old Name_
_Return to Gone-Away_
1
_A Wish Come True_
"You mean really? You mean honestly? Daddy, you mean you really,
really, really _did_?" cried Portia Blake, hugging her father around
the middle and at the same time jumping.
"You mean cross-your-heart truly?" demanded her brother Foster,
grabbing his father's arm with both hands and at the same time jumping.
Their dog Gulliver, a boxer, added to the general pandemonium by
barking emphatically, and also, of course, jumping.
"Down, everybody, down!" protested Mr. Blake. "Your joy is too
athletic; it jars my bones. Yes, I do mean really, I do mean honestly.
Your mother and I signed the papers today, and the Villa Caprice is
ours!"
"We'll have to think of a new name for that house right away," said
Mrs. Blake.
"Ours! Ours! Ours!" yelped Portia, still jumping, but releasing her
father. She was eleven and a half years old; her brother Foster was
seven. The thing they wished for most in all the world had just
happened, and this can be an unsettling experience. Portia now
launched into a sort of swooping waltz; then she stopped abruptly and
said: "I dibs the round room! May I, Mother? The little round room in
the turret? Please?"
"I don't see why not," her mother said satisfactorily. "Daddy and I
will have the big one with the fireplace. Think of all those rooms! We
could each have two apiece if we wanted." She paused, looking rather
dreamy and preoccupied. "Yellow, I think," she remarked. "Yellow, or a
pale, pale green."
"Yellow what?" asked Foster.
"She means curtains," said Portia, who understood her mother very well.
The Villa Caprice, which was the cause of all their rejoicing, was
a large elderly house a hundred miles away in the country, not far
from the heavenly spot that Portia and her cousin, Julian Jarman, had
discovered the summer before. This spot was called Gone-Away Lake, and
as its name implied, a live lake that had once sparkled there had long
ago simply disappeared, vanished mysteriously into the earth, leaving
in its place a great stretch of swamp and bog. This was fascinating for
exploring purposes: there were turtles to be found there, and curious
mosses and wild orchids; there was a quaking bog that you could jump
on, and another bog, a dangerous one, safely bridged now, called the
Gulper, where Foster had nearly lost his life the summer before. There
was the island Craneycrow, towered with evergreens and hiding a little
house; but best of all, at the edge of the reedy, whispery expanse
of swamp, was the settlement of fancy old ramshackle houses that the
summer people had built there long, long ago when Gone-Away was a true
lake. Nearly all the houses were broken and abandoned; only two people
lived there now: old Mrs. Minnehaha Cheever and her distinguished
brother, Mr. Pindar Payton, who had returned, after many years, to live
out their lives in the place they had loved as children. They were
an interesting, eccentric pair who liked and enjoyed children, and
children in turn liked and enjoyed them.
The Villa Caprice, the Blakes' new possession, was set a short distance
beyond Gone-Away, surrounded by woods and a tangle of vine-woven
hedges. It had belonged, many years before, to a strong-minded lady of
wealth named Mrs. Brace-Gideon, who had perished in the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906. She had left no survivors, no one had ever claimed
the house, and until the summer before, when the children had crept
in to explore it, nobody had entered it in more than fifty years!
Everything in the house, except for the velvet shawls of dust that
covered every surface, was just exactly as Mrs. Brace-Gideon had left
it. Rooms and rooms to be explored! Cupboards and cupboards to look
into! Hundreds of books to be examined! And all of this now belonged to
the Blakes. No wonder they were overjoyed.
"Of course it's as ugly as a horned toad," said Mrs. Blake. "But so
solidly built and so comfortable; and I'll simply force it to be pretty
inside!"
"And think of the grounds," her husband said. "The old orchard, the
fine trees--"
"Oh, I can't _wait_," cried Portia, beginning to swoop again.
"Yikes, and that suit of armor on the landing," said Foster,
remembering. "When I get there, I'm going to try it on." Then he said:
"But I think we should get another dog for that house; it's too big for
just one. And maybe a cat? And maybe a horse, or two horses?"
"And maybe a wallaby and maybe an anteater," his father said. "First
things first, Foster; wait till we move in."
"Oh, there's such an enormous amount to be _done_," moaned Mrs. Blake.
"It's staggering to contemplate." But though she moaned, she looked as
happy as a lark; interested and alert, the way women usually look when
they are thinking of fixing up a house. "Perhaps red," she said.
"Curtains?" Foster asked.
"Linoleum," replied his mother.
Mr. Blake, however, seemed suddenly rather solemn. "I wonder about the
plumbing," he said thoughtfully. "Great Scott, the pipes are probably
rusted through; we'll have to have all new ones. And of course there's
no electricity. No phone. No refrigeration. Maybe it isn't such a
bargain after all."
"Oh, Paul, we got it for a song!" said Mrs. Blake. "_Even_ with the
pipes, and _even_ with all the cleaning and painting, and ripping off
that awful porch, it will still be a bargain! And the electricity can
wait. We'll do with lamps and candles for the present."
"When can we go and see it, Mother? How soon, now that it's ours?"
begged Portia. "Promise not to go without us the first time, will you?
Please? Please?"
"Please?" echoed Foster.
"We thought we'd all go up together during your spring vacation," their
mother told them. "Aunt Hilda and Uncle Jake said they'd be glad to
have us, and I know they meant it."
"And spring vacation's only two weeks off!" Foster exulted. "Oh, man!
Oh, brother! Oh, hot dog!"
"Oh, I can't _wait_," groaned Portia.
* * * * *
But of course she had to wait, and though the days ground by
deliberately like the cars of a slow freight, they were over at last,
and the Blake family set out on their journey to claim their new old
house.
They went by train, as they did every year (Gulliver was boarded at the
vet's), but never before had they gone so early in the season. It was
only the middle of March, and the trees were leafless. The winter had
been severe; the country that sped by the windows looked chastened and
bare, and the sky was a cold gray; crows speckled it here and there. In
some of the dun-colored fields there were still old rags of snow.
"It's not what I'd call a propitious day," said Mr. Blake.
But nothing could dampen the spirits of the family. To them, train
travel in itself was a kind of festivity, and to Portia and Foster, at
least, food tasted better in a dining car than anywhere else in the
world.
"And it certainly ought to," complained their father, frowning at the
menu. "Great Scott, at these prices we should be ordering stuffed
ortolans, or nightingales' tongues, or braised papyrus roots from the
Nile Delta instead of ham-and-eggs and fried potatoes."
"And a club sandwich for me," Portia reminded him. When it came, she
ate every single thing on the plate, including the pickle, the olive,
the rather wan lettuce leaf, and left only the two frilled toothpicks
that had held the sandwich together. Those Foster put in his pocket.
"I can use them for something sometime, but I don't know what yet," he
explained.
It was not so very long after lunch--an hour or two--before the train
slowed down, coasted on for a bit, and stopped with a clatter at the
Creston Station, where the Jarmans always met them.
And there they were, all of them, smiling and calling: big Uncle Jake
with his big mustache, pretty Aunt Hilda hurrying forward, and Julian,
their son, who was Foster's idol and Portia's best friend, even though
he was her cousin and a boy besides.
There was a commotion of greetings and embraces. "Julian, you've grown
a year's worth," said Mr. Blake.
Julian would soon be thirteen: a tall, skinny boy with orange-red
crew-cut hair, freckles, glasses, and large eager-looking front teeth.
One would not have guessed from his appearance that he was his school's
best athlete, wonderfully coordinated. In addition to his skill at
sports, he was of a scientific turn of mind, and an ardent amateur
naturalist. It was his pursuit of an uncommon butterfly the summer
before that had led him and Portia into the great swamp of Gone-Away,
and indirectly to the battered resort houses where they had first made
the acquaintance of Mrs. Cheever and her brother.
"How are they? Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pin?" was the first question
Portia asked.
"They're O.K., they're fine," Julian said. "You should see Uncle Pin on
ice skates! He's a wizard!"
Uncle Jake, in the lead, drew up beside a blue station wagon and opened
the door.
"You have a new car!" exclaimed Portia accusingly. She had been very
fond of the old one, which she had known since her babyhood.
"We had to," Uncle Jake said. "The other one got arthritis."
"_Car_-thritis, you mean," corrected Julian, who was partial to puns.
"Anyway, it's only new from our point of view, not from the dealer's,"
Uncle Jake said. "It was already three years old when we bought it."
The station wagon proved to be very comfortable and more spacious than
the old car. A pair of ice skates, a box of dog biscuit, one mitten,
and some library books lent a homely air to the interior.
"It _smells_ just like the old one," Foster remarked approvingly. "I
mean it smells exciting."
They drove through Creston and out into open country; then through the
village of Attica, where Uncle Jake's newspaper, _The Attica Eagle_,
was published; and on again through countryside: bare, leafless,
neutral-colored.
"Winter's never going to end." Portia sighed.
"I have news for you: it's ended already," Julian told her. "Tonight
you'll hear the peepers, and you'll know. And down near the brook the
skunk cabbages are poking out their snouts already. Those things don't
just kid around; they mean _spring_!"
The road lay between woods; presently they came to a driveway marked by
the Jarmans' mailbox, and they turned in.
"Almost there!" cried Foster. "I'm hungry." Feeling happy often made
him hungry; he had noticed it before.
"Well, I had a sort of premonition," Aunt Hilda said. "So I made some
peanut-butter cookies and a batch of brownies and an angel cake."
"Man!" said Foster, from his heart.
They rounded a bend in the drive, and there in the midst of its winter
lawns was the Jarmans' pleasant house.
It was wonderful to be there again, the Blakes thought. Indoors, a
fire was snapping in the living-room fireplace. The dog Katy (who
was Gulliver's mother) rushed to greet them, pleasure showing in her
charcoal-colored face. Othello, another of her sons, took the cue from
his mother and demonstrated his enthusiasm by a volley of friendly
barks. Thistle, the family cat, was another story. He came into the
room with a who-cares look on his face, strolled off under the piano,
skirted the bookcase, disappeared under the couch for a while, and
then, only inadvertently it seemed, fetched up by Portia, rubbing his
sides against her legs and beginning to purr.
"Oh, you old fraud," Portia scolded, and she picked up the big warm cat
and cuddled him in her arms. "Oh, you old faker. Listen to him purr,
Mother," she said. "He sounds just like the Frigidaire at home."
Foster was hopping first on one foot, then on the other, in front of
Aunt Hilda. It was his peculiar way of reminding her about the cookies
and brownies; more polite, he thought, than asking right out loud. It
worked, too.
"Yes, of course," said Aunt Hilda, standing up. "Come along, everyone
who's hungry. Refreshments in the kitchen!"
Portia, lagging behind the others, said to Julian: "Do you think it's
too late to go and see them?"
"Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pin? No, it's still a long way off till
supper. Let's just eat a little something to keep our strength up, and
then we'll go."
Julian's idea of a little something to keep his strength up was as
many brownies and cookies as he could put away before his mother said
"No!" Portia was nearly as bad. But the process did not take very long
after all, and soon, well-muffled against the raw March wind, they were
trudging along the familiar route to Gone-Away.
2
_Return to Gone-Away_
As they came up over the ridge in the woods, they had their first
glimpse of Gone-Away Lake; Portia's first glimpse since September.
"Half a year!" she exclaimed. "Jule, do you realize it's _half a year_
since I've been here?"
The place looked different, too. In the great swamp the old reeds had
died down; just visible among them were the new ones rising: millions
of little light green spears. But Craneycrow Island appeared the same,
with its somber evergreens, and across the swamp the battered resort
houses with their tipsy porches and tottering turrets seemed no more
damaged than they had in the fall. The strange scene, which some people
might have found desolate, was to Portia and Julian the most welcome
sight in the world.
"And look, there's the dear, beautiful, glorious Machine!" cried Portia.
The Machine, lofty and narrow, was an ancient Franklin automobile,
far older than Portia and Julian; quite a lot older even than their
parents. It had large staring headlights that gave it an expression
of alarm, a roof like the roof of a carriage, and a great deal of
ornamental brass, highly polished. This strange vehicle was Mr. Pindar
Payton's pride and joy, and to ride in it, as it rattled and snorted
and jiggled and chugged, was a most exhilarating experience, as the
children knew. Now, however, it stood haughty and silent in Mr.
Payton's front yard.
"And there's Uncle Pin coming out of the house!" shouted Portia,
breaking into a gallop. "Uncle _Pin_! Uncle _Pin_! Here I am back
again!"
She leaped like an antelope down the slope and then along the curving
path that circled the swamp and at last, breathless, flung herself
into Mr. Payton's outstretched arms. Behind her came Julian, rattling
and clanking. He always clanked when he ran, being prudently equipped
on any outing with a camera, field glasses, a collecting case (and
sometimes a canteen and a lunch box), all hung around his neck on
straps. "Because you never know," he said. "This might be the one time
I'd see a prothonotary warbler or find a rare specimen of something or
other."
When Portia kissed Mr. Payton, it was like kissing a basket because of
his beard.
"Let me look at you, my dear," he said, putting his hands on her
shoulders and holding her a little away, to see her better. "By
Jupiter, you're a sight for sore eyes!"
"So are you, Uncle Pin," Portia said. She loved the way he looked: his
blue eyes under strong black brows, his snow-white beard and mustache;
his shabby but distinguished clothes, especially the broad-brimmed hat
he always wore. She thought it had a dashing air.
"Well, by Jove!" Mr. Payton exclaimed. "This calls for a celebration
indeed. Let us go at once to my sister's house and see what she can
provide in the way of celebration material."
He led the way. Portia skipped behind him along the narrow well-known
path, and Julian, clanking faintly, brought up the rear. To the right
lay the broad swamp, shorn by winter of its reeds; to the left stood
the old houses in their neglected yards. They were a tatterdemalion
lot, with shutters hanging from hinges, front steps skewed crooked,
porches sagging: the Delaney house, the Vogelhart house, the Tuckertown
house (where the children had a clubroom in the attic), and all the
others, including the one that had ceased even to be a house. The
Castle Castle, named for the family who had built it, had collapsed
years before in a bad storm and lay now in a great heap of rubble, all
scrawled over with a withered vine.
"Oh, it's so beautiful here!" Portia sighed. "It's so heavenly and
beautiful to be back."
At the extreme end of the raggedy row was the house Mrs. Cheever had
chosen to live in, somewhat more respectable looking than the others.
As they approached it, there was a sound of barking from within. Portia
knew that must be Tarrigo, still another of Katy's children.
The door flew open and out came Mrs. Cheever, so delighted that she
almost danced as she hurried forward on the path to meet them. Tarrigo
bounced about her, barking.
"How happy I am to see you!" exclaimed the old lady, embracing Portia.
"How wonderful to have you back!"
She looked as though she had stepped straight out of a much earlier
era, for she wore only those clothes that had been stored in her
family's house--the Big House, as they called it--when they had left it
more than fifty years before. "Why buy new ones?" she had said. "The
material is superior, and I never got fat, thank fortune, so everything
still fits: my clothes, my mother's, my sisters--why, I have enough to
last me till I die!" For this reason Mrs. Cheever's dresses were always
long and sweeping, all her hats were large and queer, and her blouses
had high collars made of lace, with little stiffenings of bone.
Today she wore a skirt of scarlet wool and a blouse with leg-of-mutton
sleeves.
"You have no coat, Aunt Minnehaha; you'll catch cold!" Portia said.
"Nonsense. People don't catch cold when they are happy, and I am very,
very happy. Yes, indeed I am. Silence, Tarrigo, silence!"
Tarrigo kept right on barking. He was in a cheerful frame of mind and
thought the world should know about it.
"Well, he's really just a puppy still," Mrs. Cheever explained
indulgently. "I'm sure he'll learn in time. Silence, Tarry dear."
Tarrigo barked with renewed vigor.
"QUIET, SIR!" roared Mr. Payton in a fearful voice, and Tarrigo with a
reproachful glance stopped in mid-bark and was still.
"Firmness is what is required," said Mr. Payton firmly, but as they
entered Mrs. Cheever's house, Portia saw him bend to pat the dog. "No
hard feelings, eh, old fellow?" Tarrigo's stump of a tail wagged in
reply.
Mrs. Cheever owned a splendid parlor, heavily infested with furniture
and objects, but her true living room--the one where everything took
place--was her kitchen, and it was into this that she led them now.
It was a spacious room with white walls, a huge grandmotherly kitchen
range that cackled and purred with the fire that was in it, two
comfortably cushioned rocking chairs, several other plain sitting
chairs, many shining pots and pans, and a shelf holding a row of
ancient dolls, all neatly dressed, that Mrs. Cheever had rescued from
the Tuckertowns' house, Bellemere. They had belonged to her childhood
friend, Baby-Belle Tuckertown, who, like Portia, had never really cared
for dolls.
"They are company for me," Mrs. Cheever said. "I enjoy their little
faces."
"Minnie, my dear, what have we on the premises in the way of a
celebration collation?" Mr. Payton inquired, stroking his mustache,
once to the right, once to the left.
"How I wish you would not call me Minnie!" his sister objected.
"Though why I should still mind after more than seventy years, I do not
know. Indeed I do not."
"It's the same with me." Portia sighed. "I hate being called 'Porsh,'
but still they call me it. And I guess they always will."
"Well, I never shall," Mrs. Cheever assured her, and she went into the
larder to see what she could provide in the way of refreshment.
In the end she returned with a bottle of cherry mead (to which her
brother was partial), a loaf of fresh bread, and a jar of blackberry
jam.
"And the kettle is just on the boil," she said. "Whoever cares for tea
shall have it."
Portia had a cup of cambric tea and that was all. She stared as Julian
wolfed down bread and jam.
"I don't see how you do it," she remarked in some indignation. "You ate
about a hundred and fifty-three cookies and brownies less than an hour
ago. Why aren't you fat?"
"I never get fat," Julian said comfortably. "It all turns into gristle.
Gristle and muscle. Look at that." He flexed his arm and the biceps
humped up obediently.
"Then why don't you get indigestion?" Portia persisted. "You _ought_
to."
"Never get indigestion," said Julian complacently. "My stomach knows
who's boss."
"We were the same when we were boys," Mr. Payton said. "Tarquin
Tuckertown and I. We had a griddlecake eating contest once, I
recollect. I managed to eat twenty-two. But Tark, Tark _Tuckertown_ ate
thirty! Strange," he said, taking out his pipe to fill it. "I have
never, since that day, been tempted by a griddlecake."
Mrs. Cheever thought it might be nice to change the subject. "How is
Foster, the dear little chap?" she asked.
"He's worried because he isn't losing any teeth," Portia told her.
"Well, there's a new wrinkle!" said Mr. Payton, tamping down tobacco
with his thumb. "People's problems differ, for a fact."
They watched the ritual of getting the pipe to start. Mr. Payton kept
drawing on it, sucking in his cheeks, then putt-putting with his
lips, as he held first one match flame, then another, to the bowl. At
last a red glow curled and crinkled the tobacco grains. A comfortable
fragrance of smoke was added to the other fragrances of the kitchen.
Julian loosened his belt one notch and sighed with satisfaction.
"Aunt Minnehaha, that was suave," he said. "Suave" was a word he had
picked up during the winter. It performed the same service as his other
words of approval, "keen," "neat," and "nifty," and was in frequent use.
"You ought to be able to make it to suppertime, now," Portia commented
loftily.
"Listen to you; you sound about forty-five," Julian said, unperturbed
and grinning.
It was cozy in the warm, well-ordered kitchen. The wind sounded
like distant surf; the stove purred. Just outside the window that
faced south, Mrs. Cheever had a bird-feeding stand. "Minnie's avian
snack-bar," Mr. Payton called it. Birds were busy there: nuthatches
shaped like little torpedoes; chickadees with black skullcaps.
"And when the cardinal comes, scarlet, with his stylish crest, I feel
as if a prince had been to visit," Mrs. Cheever said.
"When are you going to see your new house?" asked Mr. Payton.
"Tomorrow morning," Portia told him. "They thought it was too late
today."
"It _is_ late, too," Julian said, looking at Mrs. Cheever's peaceful
clock. "Come on, Porsh; we'd better get cracking."
"I shall run you home in the Machine," Mr. Payton decided.
"Oh, no, sir, that won't be necessary," Julian said. Portia had
often noticed that Mr. Payton and his sister had what she called "a
politening effect" on Julian. On her, too, for that matter.
"But yes it is necessary, Jule!" she cried now. "Oh, yes, please, Uncle
Pin! I haven't had a ride in the Machine since last September!"
"By all means, then, by all means," said Mr. Payton, rising. "I'll just
go and fetch my ulster; you two can come along with me, and then we'll
be off. Do you wish to come, Min?"
"No thank you, Pin. I do not care to tear about the countryside."
(The Franklin's maximum speed was twenty miles an hour.)
They said good-by to Mrs. Cheever and Tarrigo, and stepped outdoors.
Already, because of the clouded sky the day was darkening. The houses
by the path looked gaunt and lonely; wind sounded in their gaping halls
and porches, so that they reminded one of a collection of gigantic
blackened sea shells. It was spooky, it really was, and Portia, last in
single file, kept so close to Julian that she stepped the shoe off his
heel.
"Ow," Julian said. "What's the matter? Scared?"
"A little bit," Portia admitted.
"Well, you can go ahead of me, then, if you want," Julian offered
magnanimously, and Portia was glad to accept.
Mr. Payton's house did not look spooky. Though it was shabby, it was
neatly mended here and there, and a tidy doormat lay on the front step.
The striped cat, Fatly, was sitting in a window, looking out, and
Portia, of course, had to go in and pay her respects to him. These he
acknowledged gracefully by turning on his purr.
Mr. Payton draped himself in his ulster, returned the dashing hat to
his head, and threw open the door.
"Avaunt, then, Philosophers," he said. (This was a name he often called
them, since the club they maintained in the Tuckertowns' old attic was
known officially as the Philosophers' Club.)
Outside in the gathering twilight, the Machine stood waiting proudly.
Portia, from habit, climbed into the back seat, while Mr. Payton and
Julian took turns winding the crank. The Machine was sometimes stubborn
about starting, but today it decided to be kind, and after a cough
and a snort, the motor came to life and the whole ancient automobile
began shuddering and syncopating noisily. Mr. Payton and Julian leaped
into the front seat, Mr. Payton gave a loud trumpet blast on the horn
because he felt like it, and off they went.
Portia, jouncing about on the slippery back seat, was perfectly happy:
riding high, with the wind snapping through her hair, and all the world
going by in a jiggle. Nobody talked because in order to talk above the
motor you had to yell, and nobody felt like yelling.
All too soon they were turning in at the Jarmans' drive and all too
soon standing on the Jarmans' doorstep waving good-by as the old
Machine, a figure of skin and bones, went dancing spryly off toward
Gone-Away.
* * * * *
"You know what I wish, Mother?" Portia said, later that evening. "I
just wish we could stay here all through the spring till summertime,
and never have to go back to the city or to school until the fall."
"Darling, it won't be for very long," her mother told her. "Only a few
weeks, really. And we still have nine days here ahead of us, remember."
"I know," Portia said. She appreciated her mother's talent for making
things look better and gave her a hug to show it.
Before she went to bed that night, Portia opened the window wide. Cold
damp air came in, bringing a smell of old soaked leaves, of soaked
earth. There was a sound of wind in branches, and another sound, too:
the spangled, silver-noted calling of the peepers, the first sweet
jingling bell notes of the spring.
3
_The House_
The first one up, next morning, was Foster Blake. He had slept
industriously for eleven hours and woke up all of a piece without any
lingering or yawning.
In his blue-striped pajamas he swung himself down from the top deck
of the double-decker bed--he refused to sleep in the lower one--went
over to the door and listened. Not a sound. It must be very early, he
thought. His hair from having been slept on hard was all pressed up
in a one-sided crest, and his cheek on that side was redder than the
other. Opening the door, he leaned out into the hall and listened some
more. All he could hear was the thump, thump of a dog scratching.
Foster liked to be the first one up. It made him feel he knew something
about the day that no one else did. He got dressed quickly and quietly,
all except his shoes, and ignoring the thought of his toothbrush,
tiptoed along the hall and down the stairs. Katy and Othello got up to
greet him, snuffling quietly and wagging. They were warm from their
sleep.
"Come on, you guys, I'll let you out," Foster told them in a loud
whisper. He unlocked the front door and opened it. The smell of a
cold morning came in; Katy and Othello raced out and Thistle entered,
looking irritated.
The dogs went tearing about the lawn. Foster watched them for a minute,
but it was chilly; his breathing made smoke in the air. He closed
the door and tiptoed to the kitchen; he had decided to have a little
practice breakfast before his real breakfast.
The kitchen was clean and quiet; the clock ticked. Thistle, drinking
from his water dish, made a little slipping sound. Foster knew where
everything was: the box of corn flakes, the brown sugar, and the milk.
He had made a satisfactory arrangement of these things in a bowl and
was eating his way through it when something darkened the window
above the kitchen table. Looking up, Foster dropped his spoon with a
splatter, and the sound that came out of him was a squeak. What he saw
in the window was the face of a monster: green, wrinkled, with dreadful
fangs and a ghastly scowl! For an instant he stared in perfect horror.
"Hi, Foss," called the monster in a friendly voice.
Only then did Foster notice the pink and innocent protruding ears and
the upstanding cowlick of his good friend David Gayson.
"Hi," he called back, chagrined at having been so taken in. He went to
the kitchen door, unlocked and opened it. Davey came up the back steps
wearing his own face. The rubber mask dangled under his chin like a
hideous bib.
"Who did you think you were scaring?" Foster greeted him pleasantly.
"You, man," said Davey. "I saw you drop the spoon and slop the milk all
over. I scared _you_. How've you been?"
"O.K. You didn't scare me. You just surprised me." Curiosity got the
better of Foster. "But how did you get up so high? You're not tall
enough to reach the window."
"There's a good old garbage pail. Two good old garbage pails. I climbed
up on one, _quiet_ as anything--"
"How'd you know I was in here?"
"I saw you let the dogs out when I was coming, and I thought I'd scare
you. I knew you'd probably be in the kitchen. Could I have some corn
flakes, too? No one's up at my house."
"No one's up here, either. Sure," Foster said, and went to find another
bowl and spoon.
They sat eating and chattering, happy to resume their friendship. From
time to time Davey would extract from his pocket some object he had
brought to show Foster; first it was a compass, then a cap-pistol, then
a small flashlight.
"Christmas stuff," he said. "Stocking stuff."
Next he brought out a pillbox with an elastic band around it. This he
opened with tender care; inside, on a nest of cotton, lay his two front
teeth.
"Those are worth fifty cents," he told Foster. "A quarter apiece, man!
They're my first ones; that's why. I'll only get a dime for the others.
You lost any yet?"
Foster felt humiliated by his teeth.
"Not exactly _lost_ them," he admitted. "But they're so loose, I can
kind of wave them with my tongue."
"I got new ones coming in already," Davey boasted, stretching his mouth
so Foster could have the experience of viewing two tiny scallopings of
white just showing at the gum.
Foster felt betrayed not only by his teeth but also by his pockets:
they were entirely empty because he had put on the newly laundered
jeans his mother had laid out for him. By evening, though, he knew
those pockets would have tenants.
The next things Davey produced were a sort of lariat made of rubber
bands, a long chain made of paper clips, a penny that had been run
over by a train, a paper puncher, and last of all, carefully folded, a
drawing, which he spread out on the table. It was large and brightly
colored. "How's that for a moon rocket!" demanded Davey with pride. "I
drew it in school."
"Wow," Foster said politely. Actually he did not think much of it and
was certain he had often drawn better ones himself. But he had not seen
his friend in a long time.
There began to be sounds of people stirring overhead. The two boys
looked up.
"Soon it will be breakfast," Foster said. "And after breakfast, you
know what? We're going to go and see the house we bought. We bought a
house, Dave, you know that? It's the old one you saw with the suit of
armor in it!"
"Oh, I know _that_," Davey said. "Your aunt told me. She told me about
a hundred years ago already."
So far it had definitely been Davey's morning.
* * * * *
The breakfast, which Davey was quite easily persuaded to share and
which both little boys ate with appetites that had hardly been dimmed
by the practice breakfast, was magnificent: fresh orange juice, hot
buckwheat cakes with butter and apple jelly, and bacon. Aunt Hilda's
breakfasts were famous: varied and original, not just an ordinary
plodding through of cereal and eggs and toast.
Everyone ate a lot. Mr. Blake groaned. "Great Scott, Hilda, a few more
breakfasts like this and I'll begin to waddle!"
"Never mind, Paul," Uncle Jake told him. "We need our strength; we have
men's work cut out for us. The Lord knows how long it will take to
get that back door open. We never did get the front one open, if you
recall."
"Hurry, everyone, to work, to work!" Aunt Hilda cried. "As soon as the
chores are done, we'll all set out for the Villa Caprice!"
"We _must_ get a new name for that house," said Mrs. Blake.
Upstairs, Portia made her bed with lightning speed and then, perched
precariously on the ladder of the double-decker, made Foster's still
more swiftly. "It looks like a relief map," she admitted to Julian, who
had come looking for her. "All mountain ranges."
"The kid won't know the difference," Julian assured her. "You know
perfectly well he'd sleep like a log if the mattress was stuffed
with potatoes. Come on, Porsh; I want to show you how my plant eats
hamburger."
Portia leaped down with a thud.
"How your what eats _what_?" she demanded, unable to believe her ears.
"My plant. It's a Venus's-flytrap. I sent away for it. It eats flies
when it can get them, but there aren't any in winter, so I feed it
little crumbs of hamburger."
Julian's room was a sight to behold: a museum of sorts, for Julian was
a collector. He collected everything from stones to snakeskins; from
fossils to butterflies; from cocoons to birds' nests. The walls were
encrusted with his findings; the shelves were burdened with them. It
was a fascinating place, but no one could have called it tidy.
On the window sill, between a terrarium and a tank containing a live
crawfish, was the curious plant. Each of its broad leaves was tipped
with a pair of flat rosy discs like a pair of queer little clam shells,
fringed with crimson whiskers.
"Now watch this," Julian said. He lifted a speck of hamburger from the
saucer he held and dropped it expertly into the center of a pair of
gaping shells, which closed instantly, locking the fringes together.
"Oh, let me feed one, Jule, please!" Portia begged.
There was only time for one, because now Uncle Jake was calling them
and they were eager to go. It took a while to get started since Foster
and Davey had chosen this moment to disappear, and no one thought of
looking in the cellar. Finally the repeated shouting of their own names
reached the boys' attention and brought them clattering up the wooden
stairs. Next Uncle Jake couldn't find the car keys, and _those_ had to
be hunted for. In the end they turned up, for a reason no one could
fathom, on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. Then the telephone
rang and it was a lady who wanted to talk (and talk and talk) to Aunt
Hilda. But at last, at last, they were on their way, all eight of them,
because of course Davey went, too.
They drove as far as Gone-Away, where they stopped for a moment to chat
with Mrs. Cheever and Mr. Payton; then they went the rest of the way on
foot, for the road leading to Mrs. Brace-Gideon's old driveway had long
been taken over by the woods.
The day, no better than the day before, was gray and chill, and as
they passed between the large stone gateposts of the drive, it was
suddenly very quiet. There was no wind, and the trees, draped in great
snarled capes of honeysuckle, seemed to have muffled out the noises of
the world. Silence had fallen on the party, as well. It was too much
for Foster. He suddenly felt called upon to give his ear-splitting
rendition of an Indian war whoop. Davey attempted to outdo him; the
noise startled two crows out of a tree and sent them squawking into the
air. The spell of silence was shattered, and everyone began to talk
again.
All of them were wearing old clothes, because, as Aunt Hilda said,
"There's no sense in dressing up to cope with fifty years of dust."
Uncle Jake was carrying a toolbox. Mr. Blake was carrying a small
stepladder and a crowbar. Julian had two buckets and a mop, while the
women and Portia were armed with brooms, brushes, and dustcloths and
had their heads tied up in bandannas.
"We look like some higgledy-piggledy left-over army," Portia said.
Walking briskly, they came to a turn in the drive, the trees thinned
out, and there before them stood the Villa Caprice.
There it stood among its dead and brambled lawns, with all its windows
boarded up and a big, tough, tangled vine, leafless now, tied round
and round the battlements, the turrets, and the gables like a giant's
wrapping twine. Beyond the house the ragged hedges looked black, and
the queer tree that was called a monkey-puzzle tree looked black, too,
and bristling. The whole scene was shabby and forbidding.
"Oh, _dear_!" wailed Mrs. Blake. "I didn't remember it as being quite
so--quite so--"
"Bleak," Mr. Blake supplied. "And this is what we called a bargain! We
must have been out of our minds!"
Aunt Hilda, who wanted to be comforting, said: "You know, I think when
you've got rid of that ghastly porch and ripped the boards off the
windows, you'll feel very different about it."
But though she tried, she didn't really sound convinced, and Uncle Jake
was seen to shake his head.
"The place looks like a training school for witches," Mr. Blake
remarked in utmost gloom.
The children, however, refused to be disappointed and went running
toward the house with briers snatching at their jeans and Julian
clattering more than usual because of the buckets.
"I think it's suave," he assured Portia, as he jolted along beside her.
"All it needs is fixing up. Heck, it hasn't been fixed _up_ in fifty
years! What do they expect?"
"I don't know," Portia said, feeling grateful to her cousin and
indignant with her other relatives. "I think it's a perfectly wonderful
house!"
"So do I," agreed Foster, dog-trotting behind them, slightly out of
breath. "It's so nice and fancy; that's what I like about it. It's got
so much stuff. I think it's suave."
Portia turned to beam at him. "And you know what you are? You're a
wonderful _boy_," she told him.
"Big deal," Foster said, embarrassed.
They slowed down, for they were near the house. It towered above them,
very large and quiet, very old. The great porch that ran halfway around
it was supported by pillars set with cobblestones that reminded one
of monstrous chunks of peanut brittle. The unpruned vine hung down in
portieres from the eaves of the porch, and on its rotting floor were
drifts of leaves. It was a dark, unfriendly thing, and even Portia
thought she would not miss it when they took it away.
"But what will happen to the owls that used to nest here?" she asked.
"Oh, they'll find another site," Julian said. "If there's one thing you
don't have to worry about, it's owls."
The slow grownups caught up with them at last, armed with their
peaceable weapons.
"We'll try the back door first," Mr. Blake announced. "The front one
might as well be turned to stone. We may have to blast!"
"Why can't we just climb in the window, the way we did last year?"
Foster wanted to know. He would have preferred this course.
"It's boarded up again, too, remember? And anyway we can't just go
flitting in and out of odd openings all the time like--like swallows,"
his father said. "We need a door. Like people."
He led the way, and they all trooped around one corner, then another,
to the back stoop, with its boarded-up back door.
"Nailed fast, of course, and the nails are rusted," Uncle Jake said.
"Well, let's have a go at it."
It took a while. Foster and Davey grew bored and began to roughhouse,
tumbling on the dead grass. The women poked about the shrubbery trying
to identify the bushes and decide which ones were still alive. Portia
sat on one of the buckets, turned upside down, watching and whistling
between her teeth; trying to, anyway; her tooth braces made it nearly
impossible.
Her father and uncle and cousin worked and worked at the barricade, and
finally, as they pried them loose with a crowbar, the nailed boards
were wrenched free, with loud, protesting snarls.
The door they had hidden all these years was painted dark green; just
an old ordinary door with a brown china doorknob, but Portia jumped up
to have a look at it, and everyone else came running.
Uncle Jake waggled the knob uselessly and gave the door a kick or two.
"Locked, of course," he said. "But not bolted inside, I trust. Even
Mrs. Brace-Gideon couldn't depart from a house leaving every door
bolted _inside_."
"Maybe she departed from a window the way we did," Foster suggested,
but no one listened to him.
Uncle Jake brought a jumble of keys from his pocket.
"From Gone-Away: old keys from other old locks," he explained. "Uncle
Pin's idea. He thought that one might fit."
One did, too. Almost the very first one. It turned nicely in the
keyhole, and they could hear the lock give way, but the green door, set
in its ways after half a century asleep, absolutely refused to budge.
Mr. Blake sighed heavily.
"You know, you don't just _buy_ this house," he said. "No. You have to
go to war with it, you have to conquer it! All right, Jake, let's go."
The two big men put their shoulders to the door and gave a tremendous
shove, as Mr. Blake turned the knob. The first try didn't work, nor did
the second, but on the third the door burst open, and they almost fell
in. The others crowded close on their heels, Foster and Davey burrowing
under arms and elbows like a pair of beagles.
A cloud of dust fumed up from the floor. As it cleared, they found
themselves coughing and sneezing in a dim passageway.
"I suppose this--" Mrs. Blake was starting to say when all at once
Uncle Jake, who was ahead, gave a mighty yell and a leap backward.
"Great Scott!" shouted Mr. Blake at the same instant, and Foster,
whimpering, turned to scramble for his mother.
"There's somebody there! A ghost, a ghost!"
Most of them, shocked, had caught a glimpse of it: a figure standing
in the passage, standing very still, as though it had been waiting for
them.
4
_The Victors_
"Well, this is ridiculous; there can't possibly be anybody there,"
Uncle Jake said, looking both annoyed and sheepish.
"We must be suffering from battle fatigue," Mr. Blake agreed. "Let's
solve this thing right now!" And he whipped out a flashlight.
The two men strode purposefully through the doorway. Julian followed,
looking rather more tentative than purposeful.
"Oh, Paul, be careful," quavered Mrs. Blake, and Aunt Hilda, who was
her sister, quavered: "Jake, don't do anything rash!"
But they had hardly time to say the words before they heard a boom of
laughter. Uncle Jake stuck his head out.
"Come in, all of you, and see the watchdog Mrs. Brace-Gideon left to
guard the door she couldn't bolt!"
Somehow or other Portia managed to be first, and she couldn't help
gasping at the sight before her: the appalling figure dressed in black.
It stood there glaring at her, with eyes that had a reddish shine, and
in its black-gloved hands it held a placard printed with the words:
KEEP OUT!
Of course the thing wasn't real, Portia realized, just some sort of
rigged-up trick, but it wasn't very friendly, either, and she was
thankful she had not come upon it by herself.
"Heavens, I'm glad I didn't run into this character when I was alone!"
her mother said, echoing her thoughts.
On closer inspection the fearsome creature turned out to be built on a
dressmaker's dummy.
"Modeled along the noble lines of Mrs. B.-G. herself," Uncle Jake
surmised, and gave the thing a friendly spank.
It was dressed in a man's cape-sleeved long black overcoat, riddled
with moth holes and furred with dust. Its head was a stuffed stocking
top on which a gruesome face had been devised: eyes made of red-glass
buttons behind a pair of pinned-on spectacles; a guardsman's
mustache cut out of felt; and a dreadful mouth in which white beads
were stitched to look like teeth. On its head it wore a Tyrolean
fedora tipped a bit to one side. This and the mustache gave it an
aristocratic, though shabby, appearance.
"Baron Bloodshed fallen on hard times," Mr. Blake observed.
(Always after that they called the creature Baron Bloodshed, and they
were so delighted with him that later, instead of throwing him away,
they moth-proofed him and put him in the attic, where he went on
scaring people for years, since they kept forgetting he was there.)
"Look, he's even got feet," Foster said; and sure enough, peeping out
beneath the long overcoat, there was a pair of dried-up button boots.
Foster picked one up to have a look but dropped it when he saw the
mouse's nest inside.
"Yikes! I don't think they're living in it, though."
Portia dipped a cautious hand into one of Baron Bloodshed's pockets
and was rewarded by finding a small rusted buttonhook. She dipped into
another and found an Indian-head penny, dated 1883, which she decided
to keep for luck, kindly offering the buttonhook to Foster.
"All right; I don't know what it's for, though," Foster said. "But come
_on_; everybody's gone ahead."
Training their flashlights forward, they started after the others:
through a dark laundry, thronged with tubs and laced with clotheslines
overhead; through the dark kitchen with its dimmed old pots and pans
hanging from hooks and its big rusted range under an iron canopy.
Portia noted the old-fashioned coffee grinder fastened to the wall, the
name of the stove, which was "The Marchioness," a tattered calendar for
the year 1905. Foster noted a small window into the pantry, just the
right size for him to go in and out by quietly and conveniently. Then
they pushed open the screechy swinging door and went into the dining
room, moving through it rather quickly, for in the darkness it looked
gloomy, furnished heavily as it was with carved oak and having walls
that were cordially adorned with crossed swords, crossed halberds,
crossed battle-axes, and crossed spears. Foster thought that he might
enjoy these; but later. Not now.
They followed the sound of voices through the front hall, where on the
newel post of the broad stairway a bronze lady four feet tall stood on
one tiptoe foot, flourishing a gas lamp over her head. And then they
turned left into the large, elaborate room that Mrs. Brace-Gideon had
always called her "drawing room."
Everyone was there, twinkling about with flashlights.
Portia and Foster had only seen the room once before, and they had
forgotten how big it was and how crowded with furniture. There was a
huge piano, red and gold, with stout carved ladies holding up the
keyboard. Near it stood a shrouded harp, and above that, hanging from
the middle of the ceiling, was a great bag like a wasp's nest, and they
knew there was a chandelier inside it.
"Paul, let's get some daylight in the place," Uncle Jake said. "Then
we'll know what we've got here."
The men went out the way they had come, and presently, after a noise of
wrenching and banging, one window opened its eye and the daylight came
in; then another and another.
"Good heavens, look at the dust!" said Mrs. Blake.
"Look at the cobwebs," said Foster.
"Look at the mildew," said Aunt Hilda.
"Look at the stuffing coming out of the chairs," said Portia.
"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Blake.
The place really was a spectacle of decay. At one end of the large room
a curtain made of bamboo beads hung sadly, many of its strands fallen
to the floor in little heaps; and in one corner a deep divan piled with
cushions was tented over with a canopy draped on a pair of spears, and
simply sagging with a weight of dust.
"A Turkish cozy corner!" Aunt Hilda sighed with pleasure. "Great-Aunt
Ida had one exactly like it. I'm sure there's not another left in all
the world."