The Countess was smiling as she stepped through the gold and white doors of her ballroom into her drawing room.
It was a beautiful party. Now she would order the supper. She was halfway across the room before she saw the awful thing. It was part of a monster! It was a great leg and foot thrust through her front door! It was lying across the rug in the hallway!
The leg was pink and the shoe on the foot was red, red satin with red satin straps tied across the great ankle. The tip of the red satin shoe was on a level with a small table in the hallway where the Countess kept a silver salver for calling cards.
The Countess was so horrified, so angry, that for a moment she could not speak.
“How dare they? How could they? How could any large creature get over the bridge?”
Then she screamed, “Get out! Get out of my house!”
Servants came running into the hall from the kitchen, a cook in a white cap, and three waiters. They looked and ran back in terror.
“Cowards, cowards!” She stamped her foot. “Come back here. Throw it out. Close my door. Call the General.”
He ran into the room. He unsheathed his sword. “Stand back,” he called, “everybody stand back. I will slay the beast.”
He placed one hand on his hip, lunged forward, ran his sword into the great foot. He pulled out the sword and looked at the shining blade.
“No blood!” He was amazed. “You see, my dear, absolutely not one drop of blood.”
“Attack again!” she cried. “Again! Again!”
Again the General lunged and attacked, this time through the calf of the leg. Again he withdrew the sword and examined it. No blood! He stepped closer to examine the wound. There was a small hole in the leg like a puncture in a tire. He bowed low.
“Countess, if I may say something?”
“Anything, anything,” she kept screaming. “Say anything, do anything, get it out of here.”
“This creature is not alive.”
“What? What did you say?” She held up the skirts of her ball gown and came closer to it. “Not alive?” Closing her eyes and turning her head away, she put forth her hand fearfully to touch it. But first she asked, “General, you’re sure it’s not alive?”
“Positive,” he answered. “It was for knowing such things I received these,” and he flipped the medals on his chest.
She touched the big leg, lightly at first, with one finger. She looked at the finger. “You are right, General,” she nodded slowly. “This leg is made of hard rubber or some similar material. It is definitely not alive.”
They tiptoed to the window and looked outside. They saw a great creature in a yellow dress sitting on top of the bridge, one foot stretched across the stairs and into the door of the house, another across the stream. One arm rested on the roof and her great head with yellow hair was on a level with the chimneys.
A giant, a blond giant, on their bridge, her clumsy limb thrust rudely into the house. Her glassy eyes looked up at the night. The coarse creature was wearing a garish yellow dancing dress.
“Oh, the atrocious taste of her! Come on.” The Countess took the General’s arm. “There is nothing to be learned unless we climb up on her as one climbs a mountain. Keep your sword ready, just in case.”
With the General assisting her, the Countess jumped up onto Irene Irene’s leg and walked up it. It was like walking up a large, round log. She almost lost her balance several times, but the General caught her.
Once, as they walked through the stiff tulle of the dancing skirt, the Countess had to reach out and grab a handful to keep from falling.
“I’m falling,” she gasped.
“Me, too,” said the General.
But the Countess now seized hold of the sash around Irene Irene’s waist, and the General seized hold of her and the two of them teetered for a moment while the General cried out, “Hold on, my dear, hold on tight.”
“I’m holding on, you idiot!” she told him. “Do something, say something—sensible!”
They looked rather odd, standing there on Irene’s dancing skirt, clinging to the yellow sash around her middle.
“What if it rips?” the General gasped.
“A stupid remark,” the Countess answered. “If it rips, we fall into the stream.”
So for a moment they said nothing, but hung on.
The General spoke first. “The creature is definitely not alive. No live female would endure this. We are tearing her dress. Let us climb up or climb down.”
Then from the sky they heard a great voice booming through the night air. The Countess was so startled she let go of Irene’s sash.
“Help me,” she screamed. “I’m falling! Ooh—” And she fell into the stream with a splash!
The next splash was the General’s.
The booming voice went on. The Countess staggered through the water to the bank.
“Judgment Day, General. It’s the Judgment Day!”
“My sword,” he wailed as he waded in the water. “I’ve lost my sword.”
But he stood still and listened as the voice boomed on. The Countess climbed out of the stream and sat gasping on the bank, her clothes soaking wet, her hair damp, her eyes frightened.
Just as suddenly as it began, the voice stopped.
“Judgment Day!” the Countess was breathing hard and feeling her ear lobes for her diamond earrings. “It is the Judgment Day.”
The General had found his sword. He was wearing his high, black leather boots. His feet were dry. He was taking the whole thing much better than the Countess.
“Judgment Day?” The water splashed as he waded toward her. “Perhaps, but the words were not highly inspiring. I had thought to hear better on Judgment Day.”
“The words?” The Countess had been so frightened she had not tried to hear the words.
But the General, despite his fright had listened. “Military training, my dear,” he explained. “A cool head in a crisis.”
“My head is cool, too,” snapped the Countess. “It is sopping wet and I have lost my diamond earrings, so don’t be dull. What did the voice say?”
The General told her as he helped her to her feet. “It announced that the boy was standing on the burning deck, eating peanuts by the peck.”
“Oh, no,” the Countess was shocked. “Not that stupid old rhyme. ‘His mother called him but he would not go because he loved his peanuts so?”’
The General nodded. “That’s the one. Will you take my arm?”
The Countess pushed him away. “You mean I have been humiliated like this,” she looked at her torn wet stockings, her sopping wet dress, “for a thing like that?” She stamped her foot.
“It’s too much, oh it’s much too much. And this,” she pointed to Irene Irene, “coarse vulgar monster! Call everyone, we must get her foot out of my hallway and her arm off my roof.”
The General was a brave soldier. But now he had something to do which he dreaded far more than he had ever feared a duel. He helped the Countess through the library window and guided her over to the fireplace.
“Stand there,” he said. “Get warm.”
For one second he stood in the door of the library. He listened to the music in the ballroom and the slush, slush, creaking sound of many feet moving in time to the music across the dance floor.
“Poor souls,” he thought, “let them dance a while longer.” Then he closed the door.
He looked at the Countess. He had never seen her like this before. Her dress was ruined. She stood in her stocking feet and her hair hung like a wet mop. He poured her a glass of wine, handed it to her. She lifted it to her lips. Then she saw that the General had not touched his glass. He was watching her. What she saw in his eyes made her put down the glass at once.
“General, that look on your face. You feel this trouble is that serious?”
Now he had to do it. He took her hand, “My dear, we are not in trouble.”
“No?”
“No.” He shook his head. “We are finished. We are undone.”
“You mean?” She was puzzled.
“I mean that by now Loretta has learned our secret and has gone back to get them. The bridge was our only protection and now the bridge is occupied.”
He looked around the room, at the polished wood on the walls, the beautiful rug, the tables, the books, the exquisite paintings. He waved his hand.
“One kick from one foot of one of Them—and all of this—pouf! Smashed!”
The Countess turned white.
“Oh,” the General picked up his wine glass, “at first they will come out of curiosity, to see the tiny world as they would call it. And they will laugh.”
“Laugh?” the Countess’s voice was shocked. “Laugh at us? But how dare they?”
The General went on. “They will kneel down and peer through our windows as they would look into one of their children’s dollhouses. Then one of them will reach a great hand through and seize you by the middle; and perhaps set you up on the roof while he examines you more closely.”
“No, no. Oh, stop, stop!” The Countess had her hands at her ears. “General, I would never allow such a thing. Never!”
“And then,” he went on, “they will put us into their pockets and take us over there. And that, my dear Countess, you would find most humiliating of all. You and I and all of our friends would be put into cages like birds. They would invite their friends to come in and stare at us.
“I can see it all now.” He twirled his mustache. “Those great eyes peering in at me through the bars of a cage. Those great fingers poking me to make me move. Those great shouts of laughter.”
The Countess laid a hand on his arm. “Stop, General, I can bear no more. Is there nothing we can do?”
This was the moment he was waiting for. “Yes.” He stood up straight. “We can outwit them, in one way. We can all walk into the stream together and walk up a short distance where the water is over our heads.”
The Countess did not speak. The General turned his head away. But she was every inch a Countess. He heard a sound. Ah, poor thing, she was weeping. No wonder! But no, she was holding up her glass and she was smiling at him.
“To you, General. It’s been such fun knowing you!”
“To you, my dear, you have never looked lovelier.” Then he sighed. “I would never have said it before, but now I can tell you. I have always cared deeply for you.”
The Countess dropped her head. “I have suspected that.”
“But you,” he took her hand in his, “have only loved children. If I had been six when we met, things might have been so different.”
“Yes, General, but you were already pushing—thirty-five.”
He held out his arms. “Nevertheless, before we go in and tell the others, may I have the next waltz in here?”
She stepped into his arms. “I think, General, you mean —the last waltz.”
They had waltzed twice around the library, when the General heard the noise outside. He gripped the Countess’s hand. “Steady, my dear, this is it.”
They looked through the window.
Loretta was running up the stone staircase, taking two steps at a time. Behind her raced Sharon and Jerry. Kathy walked slowly.
“Countess, Countess, where are you?” Loretta’s voice was loud and excited. “Where’s the General?”
Now they could hear her frantically climbing over Irene Irene’s leg, calling to the others following her, “Come on, come on, let’s find the Countess.”
The General opened the library door softly. “They must not see that we are frightened, remember.”
Loretta ran past him. “Countess, Countess!” She was panting and out of breath. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you, your room, the snow room.”
The Countess instantly straightened up like a knife. “You have not been back across the bridge—to tell anyone—anything?”
Loretta did not hear her. “Something terrible happened. Look out there! Irene Irene Lavene. Something happened to her. She swelled up like that just in one second. She’s not a doll any more. She turned into a giant when I was bringing her across the bridge. I had to climb over her to get here.”
“Me, too,” said Kathy, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“So did we,” said Jerry. “And me and Sharon almost fell in the stream.”
“Look,” Loretta cried out again, “look at her—see!”
The General was smiling a little crooked smile as he regarded the terrified children. “Who?” he asked. “What? Where?”
“See out there,” Kathy sobbed. “Look—out there!”
When the Countess spoke her voice sounded so innocent.
“See—what? Oh, do calm down, children.”
The General sauntered over to the window. He yawned. “There does seem to be something out there, Countess. Look!”
The Countess pretended at first she could not see anything.
“Where? I see nothing. What would you have me look at General, the moon?” She smiled at the wide-eyed, frightened children. “The dear fellow is so romantic.”
The General pretended to be patient. “You are looking in the wrong direction, Countess. Stand here. Now look there.”
“You mean the sky, General? The trees, the big black night?”
Jerry yelled and jumped up and down. “The bridge— the bridge. Look on the bridge!”
The General leaned out of the window. He chuckled as he pulled his head back inside. “By Jove, Countess, this is a bit of a do, I must say.”
Loretta took hold of the Countess’s hand and pulled at her. “The doorway. Come and look at what’s in your doorway!”
“Humor the child,” the General urged her. “Let’s have a look in the doorway.”
Loretta ran ahead of them calling, “Come on—hurry. Look!”
Hand in hand, the General and the Countess sauntered after her toward the leg. But the General stopped now by a vase of flowers.
“I’ll join you in a minute, my dear, but first I must have a boutonniere.”
The Countess gazed calmly at the leg and the big foot with the red satin shoe. “How odd,” she murmured. “I wonder, is this anyone I know?”
Loretta was getting more and more impatient. Jerry and Sharon were so surprised. Kathy still sobbed quietly.
“It’s Irene!” Loretta shouted. “Irene Irene Lavene, Kathy’s doll. I stole her tonight. Then she turned into a big thing as I was crossing the bridge with her.”
The Countess was tapping lightly with her fingers on the red satin toe. “A doll—not really! Do come and look, General. This is rather amazing.”
“One moment,” he called to her and he went right on examining the vase of roses to find just the right size for his buttonhole. He made a great pretense of humming and did not turn his eyes away from the flowers.
“Let’s see here,” he was talking to himself. “Perhaps this natty little yellow one. Ah, yes—I will have you.”
The Countess whispered to the wide-eyed children. “It takes a great deal to amaze the General. He is so widely traveled. Do forgive him.”
Sharon ran to him and pulled his arm. “Look, General, can’t you even look and see what’s happened to Irene Irene?”
The General adjusted his monocle as he stood before the leg. Then he removed the monocle, tapped it lightly on the back of his hand. “Large woman,” he announced, “and she seems to have one foot in the door.” Then he laughed and slapped the leg.
Kathy moaned in anguish. Her face was stained with tears. “She’s a doll—a doll. She was the most beautiful doll in the whole world and then tonight—out there—she turned from a doll and turned into a—giant.”
None of the children saw that the General and the Countess were smiling at each other.
Loretta stood very still, her eyes wide with wonder. “I know,” she nodded slowly, “I know what happened.”
No one spoke. Everybody listened.
“It’s my fault,” Loretta went on slowly, “I stole her away and I got punished. You get punished when you steal things, Mother says. Poor Kathy, she was your best doll.”
Then Loretta burst into loud sobs. She ran to a sofa, threw herself down on it, sobbed and kicked her feet. One of her shoes came off.
The Countess stroked her and said soothing things. “Now Loretta, dear Loretta, don’t cry, Loretta.”
But Kathy said, “Let her cry. It’s all her fault.”
Jerry said, “Wait till Mother hears.”
Sharon said, “Shame on you, Loretta, shame, shame, double shame.”
But all the while the Countess was smiling at the General, and he was smiling at her. They were safe. The stupid children did not realize that Irene had not changed at all. It was they who became ten inches high as they crossed over the bridge.
“I’m going home.” Kathy walked slowly to the door.
“So am I,” said Jerry, “but I’m going to wade across the stream. I almost fell in when I climbed over her before.”
“So did I,” said Sharon, “I will wade across the stream, too.”
“No, no,” cried the Countess quickly. They all turned.
“What I mean is, you must not wade the stream or you will all get wet.”
“Never,” the General echoed. “It would never do for you to get wet.”
Jerry was astonished and so was Sharon. “Afraid to get wet? Who’s afraid to get wet. I like to get wet. Come on, Sharon.” Then he started to run.
The Countess stepped in his path. “Oh, please.” She smoothed his hair, smiled at Sharon and put her arm around Kathy. “Don’t go yet. I have been counting on a little chat with all of you—in the library over a dish of ice cream.”
“Don’t be a boor,” the General slapped Jerry on the back, “and never disappoint a lady. It’s not done, you know.”
“Okay,” said Jerry.
“What kind of ice cream?” asked Sharon.
“I don’t want any,” said Kathy.
“Please,” begged the Countess, “for me?”
So the General held the library door. The Countess gently pulled the weeping Loretta from the sofa and took her by the hand.
“Oh, Countess,” Loretta threw her arms around her, “nobody loves me but you.”
“And who else,” the Countess smiled, “do you need?”
The children seated themselves stiffly in the chairs in the library.
“Wait here, please.” The General bowed. “While we order the refreshments.” He closed the shutters at the window. “Bit of a draft.”
He beckoned the Countess outside and then closed the door, locking it quickly.
“We must set fire at once to the creature on the bridge.”
The Countess nodded. “A fitting end for her and anyone else who would speak that atrocious piece.”
They hurried away quickly.
Jerry had heard the lock on the door click. He tried it.
“Hey,” he turned to the others, “we’re locked in. The General locked us in.”
“Pooh,” Loretta answered. “He did not. The General is nice.” Then she tried the door. It was locked.
“I want to get out,” cried Sharon. “I don’t want to be locked in.”
“Hush,” said Loretta, “we can get out. I’ll show you.” Then she went to another door in the room, opened it and stood still in amazement. It was a closet door. And inside was a great gold watch with a black strap. On the back of the watch was engraved the name “Colin.”
“Hey,” Jerry pulled it out with both hands onto the carpet, “that’s a watch like Colin’s watch—only lots bigger.”
But Loretta was looking at something else. She was holding the end of a big white tablecloth with the name “Loretta” embroidered in red thread at one corner. “My handkerchief,” her tone was hushed.
“Your handkerchief!” Kathy’s voice was scornful. “A big thing like that! How could that be a handkerchief?”
“It is,” Loretta’s voice was full of wonder. “I don’t know how, but it is. I spilled ink on my handkerchief, green ink, and here it is. Look, there is the green ink.”
Suddenly she understood.
“We’re little,” she told them, “that’s what happens in the middle of the bridge. We get little. This is all—little!”
“What a pity,” someone said, and then they turned slowly around. They had not heard the door open. They had not heard him come in. But there he was, the General, standing with a tray of dishes of ice cream. His eyes now were as cold as the ice cream and his lips were as straight as a ruler. He was looking beyond them to the wrist watch and the handkerchief.
“A great, great pity.” Then he sighed. “The cat is out of the bag and the bloom is off the rose. Ladies and gentlemen, be seated. I suggest you find a comfortable chair, because now, you will remain here with us—forever.”
Then he clicked his heels and bowed, walked through the door, closed it, locked it, taking the ice cream with him!