The Trespassers (7 page)

“It’s the dust,” Neely said. She poked him. “See, I told you so. It’s just a dusty old nursery. Nothing mysterious at all—and no bones.”

Grub nodded and started gasping. In between gasps he managed to say, “I never said...there’d be...bones,” before he sneezed again and went on sneezing. When he finally stopped he sniffed, wiped his eyes, and gave Neely one of his supergorgeous smiles. “Let’s dust it, Neely,” he said.

“Dust it?” Neely was astonished. It was a thought that for some reason caused a crawling sensation up the back of her neck. To clean a floor where no human foot had stepped for many long lonely years and to dust—she stopped to look around—to dust a toy soldier that no hands had held since...

Her shoulders twitched in a sharp shiver. A shiver that seemed a little bit about fear—but mostly about a bunch of excited questions that were spinning through her mind. Questions about whose hands had last held the toy, and what the owners of the hands would think if they knew that she and Grub were there in their room. And if it were possible that they did know...

She shook her head sharply, and came back to Grub’s suggestion—and to the surprising thought that there really wasn’t any reason why they shouldn’t clean the room a little if they wanted to. It wasn’t as if Reuben might discover what they’d done when he came in to clean, because he obviously never did. Not in this room anyway. It was very obvious that no one had been in this room for many, many years.

What she was careful not to think about was why they should
want
to clean a room they weren’t going to be in for much longer—and after today not ever again.

“I know where there’s a bunch of cleaning stuff,” Grub said. “In the closet next to that butler’s pantry. There’s a broom and a feather duster and a dustpan and all kinds of stuff.”

Neely looked around the room again, at the enormous dollhouse against the far wall, at the toys piled and crowded together on the shelves—old-fashioned windup toys made of tin—and at the enormous stuffed animals: a bear, a rabbit, a tiger. Then smaller animals made of all sorts of other materials: glass swans and unicorns, china pigs and dogs, and other animals made of everything from plaster to what seemed to be tarnished silver. There were also the soldiers: armies of tiny soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms carrying swords and muskets and flags. And on the top shelf what looked like enough equipment for a small orchestra: drums and horns and tambourines and even a violin and a small-size accordion.

“Okay,” she said. “Come on.” And taking hold of Grub’s arm she headed for the door and the closet next to the butler’s pantry.

They began by opening the windows. Neely would have liked to take down the heavy drapes, but since they had no ladder they settled for brushing them down with the broom. There were lots of spiderwebs and the dust was awful. They both sneezed continuously until Neely thought of making dust masks by pulling the necks of their T-shirts up to just below their eyes like the veils worn by Arabian women.

After the drapes they did the shelves. They dusted the soldiers with the feather duster, shook the stuffed animals out the window, and polished the toy musical instruments. Their progress was slowed by the temptation to stop and play, or at least to explore the possibilities—like how many of the windup toys still worked and what sorts of sounds could be made with the musical instruments. The furniture came next and then the floor, a slow job complicated by a clutter of train tracks, forts, and barnyards.

Much to Neely’s surprise Grub worked fast and efficiently. Not that he was usually opposed to work. He always started any chore Mom gave him to do without much complaining. It was just that he tended to lose track of what he was doing and wander off in a daydream long before the job was finished. But cleaning up the old nursery seemed to hold his attention better than ordinary work. And as he swept and dusted, from behind his T-shirt mask there came the familiar sound of humming.

In fact it was Neely who had a hard time keeping her mind on what she was doing. While Grub hummed and dusted without pausing, she found herself stopping now and then—bent over the broom, or with one hand lifted to dust—not to daydream but to listen and imagine. To listen for the voices and laughter that had once echoed from the faded wallpapered walls, and to imagine the slightest echo of warmth left by the fingers that long ago held the silver elephant that now lay in the palm of her hand.

It wasn’t until she began cleaning the dollhouse that she forgot to watch and listen. She’d saved it till last because it was so wonderful. Unfortunately it was completely empty, but even with no furniture or people it was fascinating—its many rooms were beautifully finished with tiny plaster fireplaces, windows of real glass, painted rugs, and a grand curving stairway leading from floor to floor. She was working on the living room, clearing out the cobwebs and dusting the floor, when Grub called to her.

“Neely.” He sounded excited. “Come here. See what I found.”

When Neely came out from behind the dollhouse she saw that Grub was kneeling in front of a large trunk. She had noticed it before when she’d been sweeping the corner of the room where it sat against the wall. She particularly noticed its large size, the dome-shaped lid of stamped metal reinforced with bent wood slats, and the fact that it seemed to be full of something heavy. She had also checked carefully and found that it was
locked
. But now the domed lid was wide open.

A
S NEELY STARTED ACROSS
the room she said, “Hey, what are you doing? That trunk was locked, Grub.”

Grub’s blue eyes in their frame of fuzzy lashes were wide and innocent. “I know,” he said. “But I just jiggled it a little. See, like this...and it went click and came open.”

“Jiggled it? What do you mean you... Neely began and then fizzled out as she stared down into the trunk. The top level of the trunk was a deep tray and it was full of the most beautiful dollhouse furniture she had ever seen. Tables, chairs, beds, dressers, lamps, and cabinets all carefully and intricately fashioned of shiny dark hardwood. There were upholstered chairs, beds complete with tiny quilts and blankets, and cabinets with doors that really opened and held sets of dishes and silverware. Neely was still opening tiny drawers and cupboards when Grub lifted one end of the tray by its leather handle and peeked under. “There’s a doll down there,” he said. “A big one.”

There was a doll, an old china-headed doll with stiff brown curls, a body of soft leather, and eyes that opened and shut. She was dressed in a blue-and-white plaid dress with a middy blouse collar and her black shoes were shiny patent leather.

The rest of the trunk held other toys. Lots and lots of horses, for one thing. Horses of all shapes and sizes, made of everything from plaster to tarnished silver.

And then there were dolls. Boy and girl and baby dolls, and a great deal of doll clothing of various sizes. In a separate box there were a number of little dolls that had obviously been the occupants of the beautiful dollhouse—an entire family including children and servants. Tiny dolls, with jointed arms and legs, elegantly dressed in old-fashioned clothing—the women in long dresses, the little boy in short pants, and the girl in a ruffled pinafore.

Beneath the layer of dolls there were sets of doll dishes, and at the bottom, under several large envelopes full of elaborate old-fashioned paper dolls, there was a half-finished sampler still stretched on a wooden embroidery frame.

The top half of the sampler consisted of a picture of a house, a tree, and a girl in a sunbonnet. Below the picture was an alphabet and around the outer edge there was a border of vines and flowers. The house and the tree were finished in tiny cross-stitch in many bright colors and each of the letters of the alphabet was done in a different shade. There were reds, blues, greens, yellows, and men a half-finished lavender letter
K
. The embroidered work ended there.

Just below the
K
a needle was still pinned into the cloth—a needle still threaded with lavender embroidery cotton. The colors of the embroidery thread were still bright and clear but the inked pattern on the unfinished part of the sampler had faded almost away. The printed letters from
L
to
Z
were barely legible.

“Look.” Grub was pointing to some very faint lettering at the bottom of the sampler. “It says something else after the alphabet. Something that starts with an
M
.”

“Yes, it’s an
M
,” Neely said. “And maybe an
A
next, but the rest of it is all faded. But on the other side it’s clearer. See, it looks like it was supposed to say
Age 10
.”

Grub picked up me sampler and stared at it for a long time. “That was when she disappeared,” he said, “when she was ten. While she was working on the
K
.” He looked around the room. “And then they took all her things and put them in this trunk. Because the others were afraid to touch her things ever again.”

“Or because there weren’t any other girls in the family,” Neely said. “They probably just stored away all the girl toys because there weren’t any other girls in the family to play with them.”

“Umm.” Grub nodded, but then he pointed to the horses and said, “How about those? Boys could play with horses.” He nodded some more before he said, “I think they were afraid.”

But when Neely asked him what they were afraid of he only shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t you know, Neely?”

She didn’t know, of course, and she really didn’t believe it. Right at that moment it made her a little nervous even to think about why people might have been afraid to touch the toys in the old chest.

For several minutes after Grub went away to play with the toy train she sat on the floor in front of the giant chest trying not to think about why all the girl-type toys were locked away. It wasn’t until she picked up the first piece of furniture—a beautiful lady’s dressing table—carried it to the dollhouse, and found just the right spot for it in one of the bedrooms, that she began to forget about being nervous.

I
T WAS QUITE LATE WHEN NEELY AND GRUB GOT HOME
that day. They were still washing their faces in the laundry tub on the back porch when the kitchen door opened and Mom came out. She was clutching a wooden spoon and smelled of marmalade.

“There you are,” she said. “Where have you been? I was beginning to worry.”

“But we told you we were going to the grove,” Neely said. “We always stay a while when we go there.”

“A while yes, but this was”—Mom looked at her watch—” more like four hours. And look at yourselves. You’re filthy. What on earth were you doing?”

Grub tried to brush off his T-shirt. “Not filthy,” he said. “Just dusty.”

“Dusty?” Mom asked. “What were you doing that was so dusty?”

Neely bit her lip, but she needn’t have worried. Grub only said, “We were just playing. It was a very dusty game.”

“It must have been,” Mom said. “Just look at your clothes. You weren’t digging in the grove, were you? You know that’s private land and you actually haven’t any right to be there at all. And you certainly haven’t the right to—” She stopped, sniffed, and said, “Oh, dear, my marmalade.”

While Mom rushed back to the stove to rescue the marmalade, Neely and Grub managed to escape to their rooms. By the time they emerged, cleaned and changed, Mom was too busy sealing the jars of marmalade with hot paraffin to worry about a little dust.

During the next few days Neely thought a lot about the nursery and the girl whose name had apparently started with an
M
. Thought—and dreamed. Sitting on the front steps, or in the window seat, or curled up on her bed, Neely became “
M
.” Instead of Beth March or Joan of Arc or the little mermaid, or any of her other recent favorites, she became the pretty girl in the portrait at Halcyon House. A rich girl who lived in fabulous yachts and palaces all over the world, visited all kinds of exciting places like the pyramids and the Tower of London, and then came back every summer to stay at Halcyon. Came back to sleep in the room with the sleigh-shaped bed—and play in the nursery with the beautiful dollhouse and the other fantastic old toys.

And probably, since it certainly seemed that she had loved horses, to keep her own horse in the Halcyon House stable. A snow-white Arabian mare, Neely decided. And to ride alone up into the mountains or down to the coast where she would race the waves along the beach. That was the scene Neely came back to most often—galloping through the ocean foam with her long blond hair mingling with the flowing white mane of her own Arabian mare.

Usually she ended the story there, but sometimes it went on to the tragic ending. On to the unfinished sampler and to what happened after the lavender
K
. To why the work on the sampler had ended and it was stored away, along with all her other toys, in the trunk with the domed lid.

In Neely’s imaginings the tragic ending of the story was never quite the same. Sometimes, as she had told Grub, it was a sudden disappearance, but other times it was a terrible disease. A mysterious disease like the ones people died from in old books, like consumption, or wasting, or simply from a broken heart. Before and after and in between the daydreams Neely also spent quite a lot of time trying to remember exactly what it was she had heard Greta say about the Hutchinson girl who died young—but it had been a long time ago and the memory was blurry.

The more she thought about it the less sure she became just how much she’d really overheard. She wasn’t sure, for instance, how much of what she’d told Grub, there on the bench in the rose garden, had been what Greta actually said, and how much had just been one of the “new parts” that Grub liked to have added to stories.

But Grub seemed to believe it was true. At least he seemed to be quite certain that something very strange and mysterious had happened to the little girl who died at Halcyon. And that explained why he thought there was some weird reason that those particular toys were locked away in the dome-topped trunk.