The Four-Story Mistake (15 page)

“Oh, Rush, you
didn't!
And his father's a judge!”

“I know; that's what I thought, too. So I went right to his study and knocked; and when he said ‘Come in,' I said, ‘Judge Laramy, I just socked your son; I socked him pretty hard. I'm sorry but I couldn't help it. So now I want to refund the two dollars you've paid me so far, because Floyd doesn't want to take piano, and I guess I can't teach him.'”

“What did he ever say?”

“He said, ‘Son, I paid more'n a thousand dollars for that piano two years ago. Floyd and Myrtle are going to learn to play it! If socking is included in your technique of education, well, that's none of my business as long as they really learn. You come back here next week. I'll have a little talk with Floyd in the meantime, and you forget about refunding the money.”

“Why, he sounds kind of nice,” said Randy, staggering to her feet. “That cross-looking man, with those eyebrows that look like two live mice! I'm scared of him.”

“He was nice,” Rush agreed, steering her away from a rock. “But I felt awful about it anyway.”

“Yoo-hoo,” came Mona's echoing voice from far ahead among the trees.

“Yoo-hoodle-oodle-oo,” they yodeled in answer, and quickened their gliding.

“It's getting kind of dark,” observed Randy; “maybe we ought to turn around.”

“Oh, pretty soon. And guess what, Ran, a good thing happened, too. I met Mr. Cotton, the Methodist minister, on the street today. He told me Simon Turner's been called into the army. So he's minus an organist. He thought maybe I could take the job.”

“Rush, how marvelous! But you don't know how to play an organ, do you?”

“His is only an old-fashioned melodeon. I've fooled around with the Wheelwrights' plenty and I can play it fine. They told him about me. He says he'll give me five dollars a week.”

“Five dollars!”
exclaimed Randy. “This is going to be a wealthy family.”

High in the pale-green sky the evening star was hanging, solitary and pure. Mona called again, and her voice had the faraway, remembered sound of voices heard at dusk. Rush let go of Randy's arm. “I'm just going on ahead a minute to see where she is. I'll be right back.”

Randy struggled on by herself. Her ankles were so tired and aching that she could hardly keep her balance, and when, in the half-darkness, she collided with a dead branch, her skate caught and she fell hard.

“Ouch,” said Randy out loud.
“Ow-ooo!”

Tears of pain came into her eyes, and she sat up, rocking to and fro, and holding her ankle. “Rush!” wailed Randy. “Oh, Mona, come back, I've hurt myself!”

She kept on calling until Mona came gliding out of the dusk like a ghost in ski pants.

“Now, Randy, not
again!
You can't always be hurting yourself in inconvenient places like this. Stand up. You're all right.”

Randy tried to stand up, but immediately sat down again and began to cry in good earnest. “My ankle,” she wept. “It hurts, hurts, hurts.”

“That's all right, Ran,” said Rush, appearing suddenly at Mona's side. “You just bawl all you want to and pretty soon it'll feel better. And don't worry, we'll get you home somehow.”

“But how?” whispered Mona under cover of Randy's sobs. Aloud she said, “Rush, give me your scarf, it's the largest one. I know a bandage for a sprained ankle. Look, Randy darling, I'm going to take your skate off and do up your ankle and then it'll feel much better.”

The funny thing was that it did. The pain abated almost miraculously as soon as Mona had bound the ankle up snugly in Rush's scarf. Randy's sobs grew less, resolved themselves into an occasional gasp and sniffle, and wiping her tears with her mitten, she smiled gratefully at Mona.

“
I
took first aid if you remember, Rush,” Mona couldn't resist saying.

Her brother nodded sheepishly. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano,” he said.

“Well, we can't leave her here to freeze, and it's getting darker by the minute. If only we didn't have these skates on we could sort of carry her.”

“Maybe I'd better skate back and get Willy,” suggested Rush. “Only how would
he
get her home?”

“Look,” said Randy suddenly, “I see a light!” They turned and stared. Sure enough shining among the branches far back in the woods there was a light.

“It's a house,” Rush said. “I'll go. You stay with Randy.”

Feeling rather brave he hobbled off on his skates in the direction of the light. It was nearly dark, now, but fortunately the snow gave a sort of radiance to the earth so that he could see where he was going fairly well. It was very uncomfortable to be walking on skate blades over rough ground. Rush fell once or twice himself, and thought, all we need is for me to sprain my ankle now. The woods were full of shadows, and ominous stillness, and the light was farther away than it had seemed. But at last he came to a clearing and there in the middle of it sat a low, wooden house.

It was comfortably settled between bare lilac bushes as high as the roof, and the winter skeleton of a vine clung to its grey clapboards in a pattern like feather stitching. The encroaching woods were kept at bay by a narrow picket fence, and a vast tidy bulwark of stacked logs. Smoke was rising out of the chimney on the evening air, Rush could smell it, and in one window a light was burning: an old-fashioned kerosene lamp with a cracked green shade. Beyond the lamp somebody was moving to and fro.

Rush went up to the door, knocked, and listened. He could hear an old voice saying, “Go see who 'tis, Will, and don't let Spooky get out.”

There was a shuffle, shuffle, shuffle and the door opened releasing a smell of cooking that Rush even in his haste and anxiety took note of. A tall old man with a beard was looking down at him.

“What's matter, sonny? You lost?”

Rush explained.

“Why, I'll come down and help you. We'll bring her back here and you can phone your folks. Say-rah,” he called, and a spare old lady appeared in the door. “I'm going out a minnit. Little girl down to the crick, sprained her ankle skating. Where's my boots?”

In a minute he and Rush (wearing borrowed boots) were making their way among the trees, the old man carrying a lantern.

“This is awfully kind of you, sir,” Rush said in his best manner; the one that nobody but strangers ever heard.

“Oh, 'tain't nothing, sonny. What's your name? I'm Will Pepper.”

Before Rush had a chance to reply they had reached the brook. Mona and Randy looked up at them, blinking like two little owls in the light.

“Well, well, sister, ya sure fixed yerself up this time, didn't you? Take the lantern, will you, sonny? Now. Easy does it.
There
we are.” And he had picked Randy up in his arms and was starting back toward the house.

“Isn't she too heavy for you, sir?” said Rush.

“Heavy? Why, she don't weigh no more than a kitten, do you, sister? Must be most frozen, ain't ya? When we get up to the house, my wife will give you a cup of tea to cheer you up.”

Rush led the way with the lantern, and Mona brought up the rear, tottering on her skate blades like a Manchu lady with bound feet. When they came to the house the skates and Rush's borrowed boots were left outside and they entered quietly, padding in woolen socks.

Mrs. Pepper was tiny, bent with age and rheumatism, and her knuckles were gnarled and swollen; but yet her step was light, almost tripping, and quick as a girl's. She fussed over Randy, and gave them all big cups of strong tea. The Melendys sipped the forbidden adult drink with a sort of guilty relish.

Randy lay on a little hard couch with Spooky the cat beside her and a multicolored crocheted afghan over her. She looked about the room. It was bare and scrubbed and clean; the walls were white, and lined with long cracks like wrinkles of character in an old face. She liked the huge black stove that dominated the place; and the pots and pans all hanging neatly from their hooks, and the shelves of blue willowware. On the table was a red-checked cloth that had been darned often, and on the wall there was a very nice picture of a little girl trying on a pair of spectacles. Underneath the picture it said: “Now they'll think I'm Gwandma!”

The telephone bloomed out of the wall like a kind of robot morning-glory. When Rush picked up the receiver he heard a voice in the middle of a conversation “—she was over to the Social last night. I didn't think she looked very good. After all she ain't sixteen years old anymore, and pale-pink taffeta with ruffles don't look so good—”

Rush hung up hastily. “There's someone on the line.”

“That's Harriet Widdicorn,” remarked Mrs. Pepper. “This is a party line, but there's nobody else gets a chance at it. Harriet's an awful busy talker. Makes a lifework of it, you might say. We never pick up the receiver that her voice isn't inside of it, buzzing away, buzzing away, just like a hornet.”

After Rush had tried three times and the voice was still talking, Mr. Pepper strode across the room, took the receiver from his hand and spoke into the phone. “That's enough, Harriet, you ought to keep something back for later. We've got an emergency down here; little girl's had an accident on ice skates.”

“She loves accidents,” whispered Mrs. Pepper. “Talk and other folks' bad luck is all she lives for.”

Rush finally got Father on the telephone; repeated to him the directions Mr. Pepper gave him, and Father said he'd come right over in the Motor.

“So you're from over't the Four-Story Mistake, are you?” Mr. Pepper inquired. “The old Cassidy house, eh? Why, I know that place real well. Used to play cowboys and Indians all over the grounds with the Cassidy boys fifty-sixty years ago.”

“You say you knew the Cassidy family, Mr. Pepper?” Mona set her teacup down abruptly.

“Sure did. Knew 'em real well. We both did, didn't we, Say-rah? Went to school with some of 'em. They was a real big family. Lively, too.”

“Was one of the daughters named Clarinda, by any chance?”

“Clarinda? Yes, indeed. I remember her real good, though she was quite some older than the rest of us. She didn't live there so long, either.”

“What happened to her? Did she get married?”

“Her? No, at least not when we knew her. She ran away from home. She had a lot of spunk.”

The Melendys' ears pricked up like rabbits'. “Ran away? Whatever for?”

“Well, seems she wanted to go on the stage, or some such. I don't just recall.”

“Pshaw, I do,” said Mrs. Pepper, closing the oven door smartly. “She wanted to be a dancer. One of them fancy dancers, you know. And what's more she got to be one, too, and was real famous in her day.”

Randy sat up suddenly.

“A dancer? Please tell about it,” she begged.

“Well, near's I recall she was about sixteen or seventeen when the family moved here. That was back—let's see, Will, when was that?”

“Oh, '73 or '74, I guess. Mighty long ago anyways.”

“1871,” said Mona firmly. It sounded just as distant as 1492 to her.

“That's right, 'bout then. Before that they'd been living in Europe. Paris, France, and Rome, Italy, and places like that. Clarinda she was the oldest girl and her papa's pet and all, so she got to go to operas and theayters and places where she saw them ballet dancers. Nothing would satisfy her but she must learn to dance. Nobody approved of it, but her papa was awful fond of her and finally she wore him down and he got a dancing teacher to come to the hotel every day and give her lessons. A couple of years that went on; but when she let on she'd like to make a career of it her papa hit the ceiling and told her she was never, never to dance again. I guess that's really why they packed up and came home even before they intended to.”

“Did you ever see her dance?”

“Just once, and I never forgot it. She danced for me and another little girl named Ottilie Schmidt. She took us up to her room one day; seems to me it was way up in the attic somewheres. On account of the builder leaving off a floor, and all, they had to use what space they had.”

The Melendys exchanged a significant glance.

“Well, so she locked the door and she says to Ottilie and me, ‘Don't you dare tell Papa, cross your hearts. He hates for me to dance.' And we crossed our hearts and promised. So then she got a pair of dancing slippers out of a box under her bed and she took off her heavy skirt and danced in her petticoat. My, she was graceful! Right up on the tips of her toes, she went; to and fro and to and fro, twirling around and jumping way up in the air, and coming down so light the pitcher didn't even rattle in the washbasin. Ottilie and me, we just sat there with our mouths open, and our thick-soled boots out on the floor in front of us, feeling as slow and heavy as two little heifers.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was a real handsome young lady,” Mr. Pepper volunteered. “Lots of dark curly hair, and the littlest waist!”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“One night she disappeared. Just disappeared. The next morning they found a rope made out of sheets a-hanging from her winda; and there was a note on her pilla saying she was gone forever. Gone to be a dancer, the note said.”

“Oh, her papa was wild, poor man. He raised heaven and earth to get her back. But she wouldn't come back, and there wasn't nobody could find her. She'd just disappeared. At least Clarinda Cassidy had disappeared: a new young lady with a furrin name rose up in her place and got to be a real famous ballet dancer.”