forgotten all about it. And I bet you we'll never find it; she probably
buried it under an apple tree, or sent it out to California, or threw
it in the well, or something. Anyway, come on; let's go outside,"
Portia said. "I'm tired of this old bathroom. I'm tired of indoors; I
want outdoors."
"All right," Julian agreed willingly enough. "We'll keep the
safe-hunting for rainy days. I'm not going to give up, though. Come on,
Fang, come outdoors with us."
"O.K.," said Foster gladly, and all three went pelting down the stairs,
where children had never pelted until now.
* * * * *
It was very early when Portia woke up the next morning; the birds woke
her. Every bird on earth was singing, it seemed. She had never heard
such a jingling and jangling in her life.
Getting up, she went to the window to look out at the flowering, loudly
singing world, and decided to go for a walk in her pajamas.
Everyone else was still asleep, so she tiptoed down the stairs, past
the suit of armor on the landing that looked just as if it had a real
knight inside it, and past the bronze lady who stood poised on the
newel post. The bronze lady was called Miss McCurdy because she bore a
striking resemblance to a live lady of this name who was a cashier at
the Blue Premium Grocery Store in Pork Ferry.
Gulliver came yawning and stretching from the kitchen.
"We're going for a walk," Portia told him.
When she had unbolted and opened the big front door, Gulliver bounded
out and went racing around the lawn in a dance of circles, but Portia
walked slowly down the broad new steps, sniffing the air. M-m-m, lilies
of the valley. She let her nose lead her to where they grew, spread in
a vast green carpet under the apple trees. I was sure they'd all be
gone by now, she thought. Of course then she had to stop and pick a big
wet bunch of them, admiring their crispness and freshness: each little
staff of bells trimmed with two broad leaves, like rabbits' ears.
The air rang with the energetic, joyful clamor of the birds. Only one,
whose song came sweetly through the others, sounded meditative and
solitary: three minor notes ascending. She wondered what it was.
A lively clanking caused her to turn her head: there came Julian along
the drive, his camera, his field glasses, his collecting case, his
lunch box, and a small canteen all draped about his person. No wonder
he clanked more than usual.
"So early?" Portia said, surprised.
"The birds. I'm used to them, but they even woke me up, so I was
positive they'd wake _you_ up. I thought we'd better get started early;
we've got a lot of work to do."
"We have?"
"Why, sure. We have to get the club fixed up, don't we? No one's
cleaned it since September."
"Good," Portia said; that was the one sort of house cleaning she
enjoyed. "And Mother's given us some things from here to decorate it
with!"
"Great. Foster can help carry."
Through the tangles of singing came the one sweet song.
"What's that bird, Jule? That sort of sad one?"
Julian listened. "White-throated sparrow," he told her. Honestly, that
boy knows everything, Portia thought, but she didn't say so.
"I wish it had a prettier name." She sighed. "Hear how pretty it
sounds."
"One's all right, maybe ... yes, it sounds nice, it really does ... but
a bunch of them together can drive you nuts."
There was never more than one, though, all that month, and every day
Portia listened for its song. It meant something special to her,
perhaps because it was the little music of this first lovely morning....
Finally the racket of the birds even got through to Foster, and he woke
up. Hearing conversation just below his window, he hopped up and looked
out to see his sister and his cousin; then he, also in his pajamas, ran
down the stairs and out of doors to join them.
"Hi, Fang!" Julian greeted him. "How are you today?"
"I have scrofulous humours," Foster said.
"You have _what_?"
"Something she read off a bottle," Foster explained, indicating his
sister. "I haven't really got them. I don't think I have."
"I don't think so either."
"Well, I'm going up to dress," Portia said. "My pajama legs are soaked
with dew. Have you had breakfast, Jule?"
"Ye-es." Julian sounded doubtful. "But--"
"But you could eat another one, you mean?"
"If Aunt Barbara wouldn't mind...."
"Oh, she won't mind, she never does. I think I could eat two myself.
And afterwards--you help me with the dishes, Jule--and after that we'll
go to Gone-Away and see about the club. It's probably a perfect mess,"
Portia said contentedly, and went singing into the house.
8
_Gone-Away Housekeeping_
All the length of the drive, until it curved into the woods, Portia
kept turning around and walking backward so she could watch her house.
"Remember last year just about now when Aunt Minnehaha told us about
the Villa Caprice and said it gave her the creeps? And remember how it
gave us the creeps first time we saw it? Well, just look at it now,
Jule. Did you ever see anything so changed in all your life?"
Julian walked backward, too, for a minute; so did Foster and so did
Davey, who had arrived as soon after breakfast as his mother would let
him.
"And it's not even finished yet," Portia said.
They could see Mr. Caduggan up on a ladder putting a screen on a
window. Joe Baskerville was putting on another. Popeye was sitting down
watching them, and Gulliver was sitting down watching Popeye.
Mr. Ormond Horton had just arrived in his old pickup truck and was
assembling his paint buckets, singing melodiously as he did so.
At the far end of the house, Eli Scaynes was down on his knees,
setting out pansies. His faithful wheelbarrow waited at his side, with
a rake and a shovel sucking out of it.
"I like to see neglected houses getting fixed," Portia said. "Of course
I know houses can't possibly think, but sometimes I have a feeling they
can _feel_. Do you ever, Jule?"
"Nope," said Julian, "I sure as heck don't."
He was no longer alone in his clanking. They all clanked. Everyone had
a lunch box, and Portia in addition had a large basket filled with
donations from the Villa Caprice. Julian had another. As for the two
little boys, they were burdened with buckets and brushes. They were not
carrying these things because they wished to but because that was the
condition under which they had been allowed to come.
Foster permitted himself a grumble or two, but the day was so dazzling,
the air was so ravishing, that the grumbles dried up in spite of him.
Emerging from the woods where everything seemed to be flying and
singing, the four children approached the old houses of Gone-Away from
the rear. In the weedy wastes that had once been gardens or back yards
were relics left from an earlier day: the vine-trapped sleigh behind
the Humboldt house, clothes posts silvered by a thousand weathers, the
slatted skeleton of an old lawn swing. Some of the fences remained,
half lost in weeds, with many of their pickets missing, like giant
combs with broken teeth.
"Look, the barn swallows are nesting in Judge Chater's house again this
year!"
"Swallows hate to change their habits," Julian said. "They're worse
than grownups."
The fork-tailed birds, azure-blue in the sunlight, swooped and curved
in and out of the tottering cupola that crowned the decaying mansion.
They used the air as fishes use a river; they seemed to swing and spin
effortlessly on invisible currents.
"If I had to be a bird, I'd be a swallow," Foster said. "They have the
best time flying. They look as if they do."
"If you were a bird, you'd have to eat bugs," Davey told him. "You'd
have to eat worms. You'd _like_ to eat worms. Oig. If anybody told me I
had to be a bird, I wouldn't."
At the Tuckertown house they set their burdens down on the front
doorstep. They had decided before getting down to work to pay a call
first to Mr. Payton, because his house was nearest, and then to Mrs.
Cheever.
"Because it's the polite thing to do," Julian said, his courteous
Gone-Away manners descending on him like a mantle.
"And anyway because we want to," Foster added.
"Check."
Feeling as light as the swallows, now that their hands were free, the
children ran along the footpath that lay between the Gone-Away houses
and the swamp, connecting Mr. Payton's house at the extreme right to
Mrs. Cheever's house at the extreme left.
As they neared Mr. Payton's house, a faint smell of goat was wafted
toward them, mingling with all the other smells: roses, fresh grass,
swamp water.
"Wind's from the north," Julian commented, not without logic, since Mr.
Payton's house was at the north end of Gone-Away and he kept goats.
They found him busy in his vegetable garden at the far side of his
house. The rows of vegetables, perfectly straight, were stripes of
various greens except for two, which were strangely covered up with
cloth.
"Good morning, good morning!" Mr. Payton called, delighted to see them.
He took off his broad-brimmed hat, waving it in a flourish of welcome.
"Ma-a-a," called Uncle Sam, the billy goat, from his pen near the
woods. Perhaps he meant it as a greeting.
"May I offer anyone a radish? Or a spring onion? Or a very young
carrot? These are all my garden affords at present," Mr. Payton said,
but for once nobody was hungry, not even Julian.
"We had waffles," Foster explained.
"Ah. Entirely understandable."
Near Mr. Payton's garden there was another just like it but without a
fence around it. This was his rabbit or guest garden for animals. There
was food there for any hungry rabbit, woodchuck, field mouse, or deer.
"To say nothing of the scoundrel blackbirds," he said with a frown.
"_Those_ rascals wait until the exact moment when the peas have reached
perfection; then they walk along the rows and slit the pods with their
bills, neat as if they were opening their mail, and there go your peas!
Frustrating. Well, I tried everything. Scarecrows never scared them;
I put a dozen pin wheels to a row; but they'd wait till the wind died
down. Smart villains. Finally I struck on the idea of covering the peas
in _my_ garden with mosquito netting, as you see. Worked like a charm.
Those birds can eat their own peas. Perfectly fair. But not mine. And
it's a pleasure to frustrate _them_ for a change!"
Fatly, the cat, came trotting along a furrow with his collar bell
tinkling. He had the sleekness and softness of a healthy country cat.
His eyes looked dazzled in the sunshine.
"I frustrate _him_, too, this time of year," Mr. Payton told them. "I
feed him so handsomely each morning that he has no interest whatever in
catching birds."
By this time, on a common impulse, they had moved away from the garden
and were starting along the path in the direction of Mrs. Cheever's
house. To the right of them, the wall of new reeds rippled and
shivered; to the left, in the old door yards, persistent garden flowers
bloomed again: iris, peonies, poppies, roses.
As they walked, the children remarked on changes in the scene.
"The Delaneys' porch has finally fallen off."
"Look at that big fat wisteria vine on the Vogelharts' barn. I don't
remember that."
"The turret on the Thompsons' house is much more sideways than it was."
Aunt Minnehaha's chickens came trotting, helter-skelter, to meet them;
her duck, stepping on its own feet, waddled out from under its shade of
dock leaves. "Everything is just like last year," Julian said. "Except
it's better."
"I know," Portia agreed. "That's because it's ours now, in a way; or
else because we're its."
No barking sounded from Mrs. Cheever's house. They found her kitchen
empty, but the rustling range and the ticking clock made it seem
occupied.
"She's in her bog-garden, I'll be bound," Mr. Payton surmised, glancing
into the square of looking glass above the sink and smoothing out his
mustache. "Well, come along, Philosophers; we'll go and see."
"Her and Julian are Philosophers--" Foster started to say, but Portia
interrupted him. "_She_ and Julian, you mean, Foster."
"_She_ and Julian are Philosophers, Uncle Pin, but me and Davey--"
"Foster! Davey and _I_," corrected his sister.
"--but Davey and _I_ belong to another club, the Club of the Fang,"
Foster said proudly. "I'm the one that thought it up."
"I see. Very well then, come along Philosophers and Fangs."
So they went out again, by the front door this time, and there, yes,
there beyond the reeds, beyond the water meadow and the dead tree that
marked the entrance to the bog, they spotted Mrs. Cheever's bell-shaped
hat.
"Further I shall not go," Mr. Payton stated. "I do not care for wading
and I've brought no boots. Minnie's busy in her garden, and I'll return
to mine. Farewell, Philosophers. Farewell, Fangs."
"Good-by, Uncle Pin."
Already the children were sitting on the ground, taking off their shoes
and socks. Soon they were squelching cautiously through the forest of
reeds. It was eventful walking. Frogs kept popping out of the way, and
once something slithered and wriggled under Portia's foot.
"Man, can you squeal!" Julian said admiringly. "You sounded like the
noon whistle at Pork Ferry."
"Well, heavens, I'm not in the habit of walking on snakes!"
Now they emerged from the reeds to the water meadow; Tarrigo saw them
and came barking and splashing, sending showers of water sparks into
the air.
Beyond, where water meadow turned to tufted bog, Mrs. Cheever stood
waving to them with her trowel.
"Good morning, children, welcome! You're just in time to see the
arethusas; they've survived another winter, thank fortune."
Great banks of sheep laurel were in bloom, deep rose
color--"beautiful, but poisonous," Mrs. Cheever said. "That's why it
has that name. Sheep have grazed on it and died." Clumps of wild flag
made blue islands in a sea already blue with blue-eyed grass; but the
arethusas were pink, each growing by itself, its flower shaped like a
tiny half-open hand. Portia admired every one of them, and after that
every grass pink, and every pitcher plant. She prowled and stooped and
examined, wading in and out of water. At this time of year, when brooks
and ponds were cold as ice, the bog water, thin and open to the sun,
was as warm as her own skin.
"I love this place," Portia said. "I love the smell of it. It smells
like a jungle near the Orinoco, or someplace."
"Or like a hothouse," Julian said.
Actually it smelled like both those things: steamy, rich, tropical,
healthy. And it had so much to offer! Rare flowers for those who were
interested in them; bog butterflies for people who were lepidopterists,
like Julian; snakes for people who were herpetologists, like his friend
Tom Parks; frogs and turtles for people who were seven years old, like
Foster and Davey.
"But I suppose we ought to go and start our house cleaning," Portia
said regretfully.
"I guess so, and anyway the mosquitoes are beginning." Julian gave
himself a vigorous slap.
"We forgot to put on your Anti-Pest Decoction," Portia told Mrs.
Cheever, and slapped _herself_.
"Well, run along then, run along; you'll be devoured!"
"We have to clean our club, too," Foster said importantly. "Come on,
Dave; we haven't got all day."
"Dirt is patient; it will wait," said Mrs. Cheever calmly. "That's
_one_ thing."
* * * * *
After they had filled a bucket with water at Mrs. Cheever's pump,
Portia and Julian returned to Bellemere. They clattered up the stairs
from the plaster-littered wreck of the first floor, to the shabby
melancholy of the second, and then to the cozy attic, which was their
clubhouse.
It was decidedly in need of attention. Dust was everywhere, and dead
spiders dotted the floor. Their old webs hung from the rafters in
deserted swags; seeing them, Portia hastily tied a dustcloth around her
head; then she went to work on them with her broom. Julian attacked the
floor with his.
"Next thing is scrubbing," he said.
"And after that the waxing."
"Yes. And then the windows."
"Oh, there's such an enormous amount to be _done_," Portia moaned,
exactly as her mother had done about the Villa Caprice and sounding
just as happy.
So the morning passed. They really did work hard, but every now and
then, because it was simply impossible not to, they ran down the stairs
and out into the blazing June sunshine; just to breathe and listen and
feel.
At noon they borrowed the great conch shell that hung by Mrs. Cheever's
door, and Julian blew a blast on it to summon Foster and Davey from
their clubhouse on Craneycrow Island. In a moment the little boys
could be heard drumming across the bridge above the Gulper. They had
spent a satisfactory morning, after rapidly abandoning the idea of
house cleaning in favor of more congenial pursuits. They had lain
on their stomachs on the bridge, dropping pebbles and watching the
deadly Gulper suck them in; they had found ten new turtles for their
turtlearium, all of which would soon escape; and they had conducted
a frog hunt. In Foster's lunch box--he had prudently eaten his lunch
early to make room for it--there was a bullfrog the size of a small
puppy. Portia gave one of her noon-whistle squeals when she saw it.
"Listen; he's a very nice, gentle frog," Foster said reproachfully.
"I'm going to keep him and raise him."
"He's already raised," Julian told Foster. "And if you keep him in
captivity, he'll probably die."
"He will?" To their surprise, Foster looked rather relieved. "Well,
O.K. I'll take him back and let him go then. Anyway, I was sort of
afraid he'd scare me if he croaked in the night."
"He would have, too. That kind doesn't just croak; it goes off like a
gun, boom!"
"You'll be all right; I'll let you go pretty soon," Foster told the
frog; then he turned to his cousin. "I've named him already, though,
and I named him after you: Julian Jarman Frog."
"Thanks a lot," Julian said. "I appreciate that a lot."
They ate their lunch lazily in the shade of the Vogelhart willow
tree. Foster was persuaded to partake of a cooky. There was a noonday
stillness on Gone-Away; only the red-winged blackbirds trilled and
clucked, and the frog in the lunch box gave a sudden resounding boom.
"Yeeps!" said Foster. "He would have scared me all right."
After the little boys had departed, Julian and Portia lingered on,
lying on their backs in the warm grass and looking straight into the
sky.
"Not a cloud, not a bird, not a plane. Not a mosquito, even," Portia
mused. "Just blue nothing. It makes you feel--I don't know--peaceful, I
guess."
"M-m-m," Julian murmured noncommittally. It made him feel sleepy. He
lay with his eyes half closed, chewing on a grass stem.
"Millions and trillions of miles of just blue nothing," Portia repeated
dreamily. She liked that phrase.
"There goes a June bug, though. And up, way up, now, there's a hawk.
And even if you can't see them, think of all the other things there are
up there: satellites in orbit, meteors and meteorites, suns, moons,
planets, stars; millions and billions and trillions of those! It
doesn't make me feel peaceful, brother, it makes me feel nervous! 'Blue
nothing,' _nothing_!"
"Honestly," was all Portia could think of to say to that.
Now a tiny plane went purring across the sky, very high, very slow to
eyes grown accustomed to the flight of jets.
Portia lay thinking about the club. When they were through with the
cleaning, and they almost were, they would decorate it with the things
from the Villa Caprice: the painting of a starchily dressed young lady
swinging on a crescent moon; the Tiffany glass lamp shade (they had no
lamp in the club, but if they turned the shade upside down, it would
look like a vase, and it was a beautiful thing: all the colors of the
rainbow, melted). They also had been given the cast-iron pug-dog with
which Mrs. Brace-Gideon had felled the burglar, and the procession of
teakwood elephants, and many other treasures. When everything was in
place, Portia would go out and pick a big bouquet of roses and iris,
and that would be the finishing touch.
The distant plane made a peaceful, soothing sound. Very, very
soothing....
Portia sat up abruptly and looked at her cousin.
"Jule, don't you _dare_ go to sleep!" She began to tickle him
mercilessly. "Wake up, wake up; we haven't finished working yet! Wake
up this minute, Julian Jarman Frog!"
9
_The Attic_
Fine weather can't last forever. One morning, about a week later,
Julian woke to a steady sound of rain.
"A good day to look for safes," he thought. He had spent the night at
the Villa Caprice, as he would often do that summer. There were so many
rooms in the house that there was also one for him.
"You must consider it your very own," his aunt had said, and this he
was glad to do without a moment's hesitation.
It was a solemn, manly room with an enormous black bureau, an enormous
black bed, an enormous black chair scratchily covered with horsehair.
On the wall there was a steel engraving of the Roman Forum. Julian sat
up and looked at his stately room. Othello, who had also spent the
night, was lying on the oval rug before the fireplace. He suited the
room admirably; he was a very solemn-looking dog, particularly when he
was asleep.
Beyond the window the rain fell, straight down; all that could be seen
through it was the deepened green of leaves.
Julian jumped out of bed and picked his clothes up from the floor;
they had skidded off the horsehair chair, where he had tossed them the
night before.
Othello woke up, too, and greeted him with a wide pink yawn.
"Maybe we'll find a fortune today," Julian told him.
His room also had a paneled wainscoting of dark wood. He had, of
course, lost no time in tapping each panel, hoping to find one that
sounded hollow, but none of them did, or at least not hollow enough. He
tapped them again now, though, just to be on the safe side.
"Nope, no good. Come on, Thel; let's go."
Foster was sliding down the banisters slowly, because he didn't wish
to bang into Miss McCurdy on the newel post. He had done this once,
and Miss McCurdy's dancing foot, daintily raised, had met the back of
his head with the force of a hammer; he could still feel the lump. But
sliding down slowly was better than not sliding down at all.
"It's _raining_, it's _pouring_, the old man is _snoring_!" sang Foster
lustily, as if this were an anthem of great wit and originality. When
he dismounted at the end of the banister, he said: "Today I'm going to
get into that suit of armor. I'm going to try to. Will you help me,
Jule?"
"I might. After I've hunted for the safe."
But Portia was not interested in hunting for the safe. She was sure
it would never be found, and anyway she wanted to explore the attic
storeroom.
"All those trunks, Jule, all those boxes! Why, we might find
_anything_. And it's just the day for it!"
"It's just the day to hunt for a safe."
"Why don't you compromise?" Mrs. Blake suggested. "Portia can explore
the trunks while Julian searches the attic. My great-uncle Grover
_always_ kept his safe in the attic."
So after breakfast and their household chores were done, Portia and
Julian repaired to the top of the house.
It was nice up there. It had a good dry attic smell, and there was
coziness and comfort in the sound of rain on the roof. The storeroom
seemed larger now; nearly all of the old furniture had been removed:
some of it sold to meet expenses, some--most of it--moved downstairs to
beautify the house. All that was left were some chairs without seats
and a secretary that had lost its two left legs and leaned like the
Tower of Pisa.
The trunks were grouped together in a surrounding of pitchers and
basins and other oddments. The dressmaker's dummy stood sentry-duty at
one side.
While Portia clattered and clanged, arranging a path amongst the
crockery, Julian snooped about under the eaves, opening the doors of
washstands. He had to help Portia open the first trunk, and when it was
opened, it was a disappointment: nothing but old clothes and a strong
smell of camphor. The clothes were petticoats mainly, dozens and dozens
of massive petticoats, embroidered and ruffled and ribboned and ruched.
There were many vast nightgowns, too, with real lace collars and real
lace cuffs; there were pairs and pairs of stockings with embroidered
clocks, and pairs and pairs of gloves with pearl buttons, folded in
tissue paper. Altogether a very boring trunk, Portia thought. She put
all the things back neatly, though. This had been a condition laid down
firmly by her mother.