Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (11 page)

"You can tell how he makes them, from that one," Joe said, excited. "Fritz tried to tell me, but I couldn't see what he meant. The hermit showed him how. See—each scallop and its opposite scallop will make one link for the chain. When the wood's all cut out, the links are free—see how they'll be?—yet all fastened together."

She didn't see, really, but she didn't say so.

"Why, I'll bet I can make one of those," Joe said.

Then they explored down the hill. There were cunning steps cut into the slope all the way down and set with flat stones. Moss had grown over the edges, and they were all tucked in with grass. They led to a tiny stone house, invisible from every direction. Only its steep roof could be seen from above. It had a tight little door about four feet high.

Joe began to open it right away, and Marly said, "Joe—do you think you should?"

He gave her a look. "What do you think's in there—witches?" he asked. "He won't care. Fritz knows him. Besides he's away, and we won't touch a thing."

It was a springhouse, just the kind you read about pioneers having before there were such things as iceboxes or refrigerators. There was a dipper hanging on the wall, made from a gourd, and around a deep dark pool of water were set those same flat stones. The opening where water was dipped up was no bigger than one bucket on its side. All around the edges on clean damp stones were honeycombs and lovely neat, round light-yellow cheeses! There was a big flat pan of milk, too, with a cheesecloth stretched over the top and held down at the sides with stones.

It was like looking at long ago. Marly stooped down and dipped up a dipperful of water. It was clear and cold. Suddenly, just as she was going to drink it, they heard somebody coming down the steps.

"Joe!" Marly's hand trembled and the water spilled all down her front, over her shoes. "What if that's
him?
And here we—"

He gave her his strongest for-heaven's-sake-shut-up look. And she did. They stood absolutely still, and water went drip-drip, and the steps came nearer. The rocks clicked as if whoever it was had huge nails in his shoes. Marly wished she could shrink away like Alice did in Wonderland so she could hide behind one of those cheeses or behind a stone. Anywhere—

The footsteps stopped. Absolute stillness. Marly held her breath and noticed Joe's deep, steady breathing close beside her. A squirrel ran past the door, which stood half open, then came back and glanced in, and ran off again.

After a long time Marly whispered, "Where did he go? Did he go away?"

She saw Joe swallow. The steps coming were not nearly as bad as the silence since they stopped. Joe looked up as if searching for a window or a crack in the walls, but there weren't any. The only light came from the door. Marly knew why he looked. He felt as she did, as if they were being watched. They waited again. Nothing! Then Joe whispered, "I'll look..." and moved carefully to the door.

He jumped back. She had never seen that look on Joe's face before. "He's standing there, watching. He knows we're here," he said. For once Joe was whispering.

It wasn't at all like Joe not to just walk out and say something. He talked to policemen and bus-drivers and everybody. Marly felt as if her blood had stopped running in her veins. She was shivering all over and still held the dipper in her hand.

"The thing to do is just slip out—and then—"

"What?"

"Then
run.
Marly, he's got a huge cane." He looked at her. "Can you really run fast for once?"

She wasn't even sure she could move, let alone run. But she nodded. What else could she do? "Oh, Joe, we shouldn't have come and looked like this..." she whispered.

Joe slid toward the door again, beckoning for her to follow. "Now I'll jump out and start down the hill and you come on after, as fast as you can. Don't look up the steps, or anywhere. Just run," he said.

She felt paralyzed. But she found that she could move. She slid after Joe along the cold drippy stone wall, so close she touched him. He got to the door, and she heard him take a deep breath.

Then he leaped out into the sun and ran. She went after him, stumbling and running and half falling down the next steps, which went to a little dam, and then streaking over the meadow.

The hermit shouted after them. At the bottom of the meadow they went under the wire fence. For the first time, then, Marly dared to glance back. There he was, a tall thin bearded man. He was halfway down the steps. He was waving his arms, and he had the strangest thing she ever saw over his shoulders—a kind of yoke, with a bucket hanging on each end. He looked like a gigantic eagle with its wings spread. In one hand was a cane.

"He was going after water and heard us in there, I guess," Joe said. "Come on!"

On their own road, Joe said he hadn't really been scared. It was only that you couldn't tell about people like that. "You hear such queer things. In the newspapers there are all those awful stories, like that old man who went into that trailer in New Mexico." He kept glancing back. "If I'd been alone, I'd have just talked to him. Fritz says he's a queer old man but nice when you know him." He stopped in the road. "Maybe we shouldn't have run like that," he said.

"Joe, we couldn't just stay and have him come in after us. We couldn't!"

"It didn't seem like we could, did it?" Joe looked awfully bothered. "Until after, I didn't think of anything else we could do. But now..." He stood still. "I'm about to go back, Marly. That was a dumb thing to do—just running like that. I was thinking about you." His voice accused her. "Why do you always have to follow along?"

"You would too have run! You were just as scared as I was, and you know it! Besides, it was all your fault, going around looking at everything the way you did. Why, maybe he was right there in his house when you kept looking in!"

"That note on the box said he was gone," Joe said.

"It didn't say what day he was gone, did it? And it didn't say when he was coming back."

He looked at her angrily. "Why didn't you think of that before?" He didn't like the idea of himself peering through that screen, practically right into the face of the hermit himself.

"I'm going back and apologize," he said.

"Joe! Now? By yourself?"

"Well, you don't need to come!"

"I didn't mean I wanted to. I only thought maybe you'd better go back with Fritz or somebody. Joe—the thing to do is to get
introduced—
"

He looked uncertain. But then he started walking toward home again. "Maybe so," he said.

Goodness, boys were funny! She didn't blame Joe in the least for being scared—who wouldn't be?—and she didn't mind saying she was scared either. But she knew that if she should mention one word about the way they ran out of that springhouse and down the hill, he would hate her for a week, if not forever. She wanted to tell it, making it as gruesome as she could, but she knew Joe would never forgive her if she so much as mentioned it. For the millionth time, she was glad she wasn't a boy. It was all right for girls to be scared or silly or even ask dumb questions. Everybody just laughed and thought it was funny. But if anybody caught Joe asking a dumb question or even thought he was the littlest bit scared, he went red and purple and white. Daddy was even something like that, as old as he was.

At their own lane she said, "Joe, I don't blame you one little bit for being scared. Honest, I—"

"Just shut up about it, can't you?" he said.

She had to hang on to her tongue so hard it practically ached. She actually had to hold the tip with her teeth to keep from telling, especially when Joe went out to work with Daddy at the weeding, and she and Mother were alone with the dishes. Once she started to say, "This morning Joe and I—" and stopped and bit her tongue.

"Did you see Chrissie this morning? She didn't feel a bit well last night," Mother said.

"No. We didn't." If she told this time, Marly thought, she'd never get to go anywhere with Joe again as long as she lived. It was a relief to finish the dishes and go up to her room and shut the door. She read all afternoon so she wouldn't go down and tell. And when it was time to help with supper, Joe was in the kitchen, washing.

He looked at her, hard. "I'll bet a cow you told Mother all about it," he said.

"I didn't! So!"

"Didn't what?" Daddy asked, coming in.

"What you'll do this time is tell on yourself," Marly said to Joe in a whisper, and giggled.

"I'm going over to see Fritz after supper," Joe said.

But as it turned out, he didn't. And Marly didn't have to worry about telling that story anymore, because the only other person in the world to know it, besides her and Joe, came to call right after supper and told it himself.

You could have "knocked Joe down with a canary feather," as Mr. Chris would say it. When the knock came, Joe happened to answer. He stood there, staring. He actually forgot to say, "Come in." Daddy stood up from his chair and took his pipe out of his mouth and said, "Hello! Come in, come in."

When the hermit came in, the whole room was suddenly absolutely thick with the smell of goats, just like Chrissie said. He didn't look very different from any elderly man, close to, and had a clipped gray beard and his coat buttoned all the way down the front. His hair looked quite combed, and he was tall and thin and carried the same cane he had waved from the steps that morning.

"Good evening," he said.

He sounded polite and special, the way he spoke, not wild in the least, in spite of the wild goat smell all around him. "I went to ask Mr. Chris where the children lived," he said. "I'm afraid I frightened them away." He looked straight at Joe and then at Marly. "I did not know who it was, in my spring-house. I thought it was some bad boys who have come, sometimes, to steal my cheeses. Even, once, they dropped every cheese and poured all my milk into the spring."

Mother and Daddy glanced at each other, and at Joe, and at Marly, questioning.

"In the spring? What did they do that for?" Marly cried. "Why, it's a
lovely
spring—"

"Were you at his place, Joe? You and Marly?" Daddy asked. "I wondered what you two had been up to today."

The hermit spoke again, quickly, and held out a package in his hand, wrapped in newspaper. "Nothing was harmed," he said. "It is all right. I hope they will come again." He was looking at Mother, and Mother moved to him and took the package from his hand.

"I brought some of my own cheese and honey," he said. "Very good. There is no goat cheese like this except in Switzerland, where I came from as a boy."

"Thank you very much," Mother said.

"If the children will come again tomorrow, I will show them how it is I make the cheese," he said.

"And the chains?" Joe spoke for the first time, eagerly, relieved. "Fritz said you showed him how you make those wooden chains."

The hermit laughed. His teeth were long and brown, but his laugh was beautiful, Marly thought. It sounded pleased. "The chains, they are simple!" he said. "If you have wood and a good knife, I will show you now. Tonight."

Mother glanced at Daddy. Marly knew she was wondering whether Daddy would want this goat-man to stay. He used to object to people coming and staying, especially queer old people who talked and talked. Mother knew all sorts of people wherever she went, it seemed, and they often came to call while Daddy was away.

"Please sit down," Daddy said. "Joe, that one knife we sharpened—"

Whoever would have thought that morning of the hermit sitting that very night in their very own kitchen? He took an ordinary stick of kindling from the box and smelled it and said, "Maple. Good!" and proceeded to make a neat little totem pole out of it. He worked quickly with long, stained fingers. Miraculously the first link appeared, and the second, and the third. He kept having Joe do some of the work, to learn. Joe worked slowly, his mouth pursed up.

"It is rough, this, to show you. It should be done carefully," the hermit said. He stayed for four solid hours! Before the chain was finished, Mother made a big pot of coffee. She let it boil and boil, and it drove some of the goat smell out of the house.

When he went away, the hermit said, "Promise to come back soon. The Father and the Mother, too." He looked at Marly. "I have a telescope. Mr. Chris said you will like to see through it. Not stars only. Small things everywhere. From my hill"—he smiled—"I get acquainted with all the ducks on the pond."

Joe said, not looking at Mother or at Daddy, "I'm sorry I looked into your house the way I did. I thought..."

Marly wondered if Joe was going to tell the truth, that he thought the hermit was away. But he didn't. His voice hung in the air, and the hermit said, "When I am not there, come in and make yourself at home. I am sometimes at the barn, in the woods perhaps, or at the hives." He looked at Daddy. "For a time my own son lived with me here on the mountain," he said. "Now he is gone to be a soldier."

As he went off, Joe sat on the step and watched. For a long time he just sat there, swinging the chain in his hand.

"What on earth will we do with this awful cheese?" Mother said. "Phew! It's strong!"