After New Year’s a strange and fascinating life began for Mona. One day she went to New York with Cuffy, wearing her best dress, her charm bracelet, and some new shoes with the beginnings of heels. Randy hugged her and said, “I know you’ll be wonderful!” Rush said, “You go ahead and knock ’em cold, Mona; I’ve got my fingers crossed.” Oliver didn’t say anything: he hung back and looked at her as if she were a stranger, and then, suddenly, just as she was leaving he smiled at her: his new, guileless smile with two teeth missing in the front. Mona hugged them all, feeling grateful and loving.
All the way in on the train she kept thinking about them. I must do well, she thought; I want them to be proud of me.
Cuffy was the only one who had stage fright. Her face was pink, and her breath came fast. She kept looking at her watch, putting on and taking off her gloves, and when they arrived at the vast New York office building which was their destination she gave the taxi driver five dollars and would have gone off without the change if Mona hadn’t reminded her.
“Don’t feel sick or anything, do you?” Cuffy demanded anxiously as they went up in the elevator. “Wouldn’t like some spirits of ammonia, would you? There’s nothing to be nervous about, you know.”
“I’m not nervous, Cuffy,” Mona said, smiling at her.
At the twenty-seventh floor they entered the office of a Mr. Gage Protheroe; an important gentleman to judge from the number of stenographers, messenger boys, and unexplained people with papers in their hands who were hovering about him. Mona remembered him from the day of the show.
“Ah, yes, little lady!” Mr. Protheroe exclaimed, breaking away from the knot of people. “Come right along, come right along. This is Mr. Niles Carrington, the director of The Penfold People. Niles, this little lady, we hope, is to take June Palfrey’s place as Polly Penfold.”
Mr. Carrington had a flap of heavy hair on his brow; and his shirt was open at the collar. He looked at Mona exactly as he might have looked at a pair of shoes he was thinking of buying.
“She seems sort of young,” he said at last. “June is sixteen, after all. Think this one can handle it?”
My, was Cuffy ever mad! She positively crackled with indignation. “She can handle anything!” said Cuffy. “I never saw such a young one for acting. You’ll find out.”
Mr. Carrington smiled at that. “Okay, I’ll find out. By the way, what’s her name?”
“Mona Melendy,” volunteered Mona, tired of being referred to as though she weren’t there.
“That’s a pretty good name,” Mr. Carrington decided. “Distinctive. We won’t have to change it to Jennifer This or Sandra That. It’s a pretty good name.”
“Thank you,” said Mona.
All this time they had been walking down a long corridor, and now Mr. Protheroe held open a door and they all went into a broadcasting studio. It was a small, electrically lighted room with a microphone in the middle of it, and some hard chairs, and a piano. Set in the wall was a large plate-glass window which revealed various mysterious instruments, and a pale-faced man wearing spectacles who looked solemnly out at them like a fish in an aquarium.
“All right, little lady,” said Mr. Protheroe. “Here’s a script. Let’s see what you can do with it. Stand close to the mike.”
Mona read the script aloud. It required everything of her. It required her to be happy, to be sad, to laugh, cry, scream with terror, and moan with pain; but she didn’t feel that it was too severe a test. She was sustained by the familiar sense of belief in her own power which always accompanied her acting.
“Now again,” commanded Mr. Carrington, when she had finished.
All in all she read the script four times. Other people were called in to listen and confer; and at the end of it Mr. Protheroe said, “All right, little lady. I think you’ll do.” And she overheard Mr. Carrington saying to Cuffy, “I guess you’re right. She seems to be able to handle almost anything.”
On Tuesdays and Fridays she was to go to town with Cuffy: an hour of rehearsal with the other actors first, and then the performance itself at four o’clock. She had special permission to miss half a day at school twice a week, though she would have to make it up later.
On the day of her first performance Father took a day off and went to the broadcasting studio with Mona. The rest of the family listened in at home.
“My heart’s thumping like anything,” Randy said, swallowing. “And the palms of my hands are wet. I feel just like I did the day of the show.”
“You can count on it Mona’s not feeling like that, though.” Cuffy shook her head admiringly. “When I took her up for the audition I was trembling like a blancmange, but she was just as cool as a cucumber.”
A silvery peal sounded from the radio. “It’s four o’clock!” said Rush excitedly. “She’ll be coming on in a minute. Listen!”
There was a moment of stillness, then a faint sound like a sigh, and a man’s voice began to speak. It was a rich, velvety voice: you could almost hear the nap on it, Rush thought. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” it said. “Do you suffer from indigestion? Are you a victim of heartburn, nausea, irritation after eating? Do you look longingly at foods you dare not touch? Toss feverishly all night after a hearty dinner? Ladies and gentlemen, there is an answer, a remedy for your problems. It is an old one, a reliable one: and in all probability one which your mother, yes, even your grandmother, used with beneficial results. What is its name? Aqualixir! Just ask for the little green package at any drugstore.”
“Mona Melendy, the Princess of the Pancreas,” said Rush. But the voice was continuing.
“This afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we present another chapter in the lives of the fascinating Penfold family. Added to today’s performance is a surprise in the form of a new little lady who is to play the part of Polly Penfold, fourteen-year-old sister of Diana, Bob, and Jimmy. She is little Miss Mona Melendy, blonde, blue-eyed, pretty as a picture. I just wish you could see her, ladies and gentlemen; I know you would give her a great big hand. And now, THE PENFOLD PEOPLE!”
“Boy, she’ll never be the same again,” said Rush, but Cuffy sh-h-h-ed him indignantly, and the play began. There was a lot of talk at first between some young lady and a man who seemed to want to marry her.
“Sister Diana and a swain, I guess,” said Rush sourly. “All this love stuff gives me a pain.”
“Oh, Barry. I—I just wish you’d stop talking about it,” pleaded the young woman tearfully. “You know there’s no one else to take care of them now that Daddy’s gone away. They need me so.”
“Now, Diana [It was Mona’s voice], you know that’s all nonsense. We can look after ourselves perfectly well.”
“Polly! You’ve been eavesdropping! Where were you?”
“Oh, I was just sitting under the piano sort of thinking.”
And so it went; a whole half hour of it.
“Gee, she sounded swell,” Rush pronounced at the end. “It’s a pretty hammy program, I’d say, but she’s good. I just hope she doesn’t get stuck up, that’s all.”
“She won’t. Mona’s wonderful!” said Randy fervently.
Cuffy was so overcome that they actually caught her in the act of mopping her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Why, Cuffy!” cried Randy. I never knew you were so sentimental.”
The days went by. Mona’s broadcast became an accepted part of the routine of their lives. Her picture appeared in newspapers every now and then, and after a week or two she even began getting fan letters! Randy and Rush (especially Rush) watched her like hawks for the first sign of temperament. But apparently there was no temperament. Mona was blissfully happy and kept her word to Father: she darned Rush’s socks, ate spinach, went out for basketball, and performed with grace all the duties which were loathsome to her.
On the contrary, toward the end of January, it was Rush who seemed to be indulging in fits of temperament. After school he lurked about indoors and snapped at anyone who suggested going out. When his music went wrong, he crashed his fists down on the keys and slammed the piano lid shut. He wouldn’t eat enough, and spent useless hours lying on the floor listening to the radio.
“Come on out, Rush,” begged Randy one day after school. “It’s a wonderful day and Isaac needs a good run; he’s getting as fat as a pig.”
“I don’t feel like it,” replied Rush ungraciously.
“Ah, please! Mona’s still at school, making up for Tuesday, and Oliver’s got to stay in on account of his cold. I don’t feel like playing all alone.”
“So what? I don’t feel like going out.”
“I wish you would. We could go for a ride on our bikes. And you ought to: you look like a potato sprout from moping indoors all the time.”
Rush turned on her furiously. “Will you please, for Pete’s sake, get out of here and mind your own business? If I want to mope, I’ll mope, and neither you nor anybody else can do a thing about it. This is one country that’s still free.”
“What’s the matter with you, Rush?” Randy was almost in tears. “For two weeks now you’ve been just as cross as a bear. You snap at everybody all the time. Gee whiz, you never used to be like that; I mean we quarreled sometimes, everybody does, but mostly you were always swell.”
Rush glowered and kicked the piano stool. He hated like poison to apologize for things, but he knew just as well as anybody else what a beast he was being, and Randy was a good kid. She deserved an explanation.
“Well, I guess it’s like this, Ran.” Rush cleared his throat, pushed his hands into his pockets, and clenched his fists. “It’s kind of hard to say. I mean it’s about Mona, and you’ll think I’m a heel. It’s not that I’m jealous, exactly. Or maybe I am in a way, but not just because of all the glory she’s getting. No. I mean, gee, here I am a guy thirteen years old: the eldest son of the Melendy family, et cetera, and what am I doing to help swell finances? Nothing, that’s what. And here my sister, only a year and a half older, is able to buy Defense Stamps like chewing gum, and add to the family exchequer besides. If I could just do something!”
“But why can’t you?” Randy said.
“Tell me what! I’ve been racking my brains, of course, what do you suppose? But I can’t think of a thing. Grover Pettybone has the Carthage paper route, and he’s so old I wouldn’t want to give him any competition. I could sell magazine subscriptions, maybe, but look at the population of Carthage! I’d be lucky if I sold a dozen, including the ones Father and Cuffy’d think they’d have to buy. I could shovel off snow, or mow lawns, or work in gardens, but this is the sticks, and most everybody lives on his own land and uses his own family instead of hired hands. No, I tell you it’s a problem!”
“I can think of something,” Randy said slowly. “But you won’t like it.”
“What is it? Why not?”
“You could give piano lessons,” said Randy firmly.
“Wh-a-a-t? You’re nuts!”
“Now don’t be like that, Rush. You know as well as I do that there hasn’t been a music teacher for miles around, ever since the last one got married and moved to Hartford. Mrs. Wheelwright told you that the same time she told me. And she told us that Judge Laramy was mad as hops ’cause she’d talked him into buying a piano so Floyd and Myrtle could learn to play. And then right after he got it, she went and eloped.”
“Well, what’s that—”
“Now wait. I know of three other families that have pianos just standing around going sour. And the one in the school gym. Nobody ever plays that except Melva Jenks, and all she ever plays is ‘My Rosary.’ I bet you could get more pupils than you could take care of in no time at all. You’re good too. You know you are. Remember how you outgrew that teacher in New York, and how even Mr. Dohansky said you were a project—progeny, or whatever it is.”
“Prodigy,” Rush corrected her. “Well, sure. But if you think I’m going to waste my youth trying to pound music into a goon like Floyd Laramy, you’re crazy.”
“All right,” said Randy, sweeping out of the room. “I thought you really wanted a job. But I guess it was just talk as usual, that’s all.”
“Listen, you stop being Cuffy,” Rush called after her; but left alone, he went over to the piano. Standing, he touched the keys with his left hand: a warm chord came to life and hung, slowly, diminishing on the air. Yes, he was good, all right. I’d be a dope if I didn’t know that, he thought. He sat down on the piano bench, and under his fingers the music began to grow, up and out, tall and wide: a tree of sound, springing from strong, orderly roots.
Maybe she’s right, thought Rush against the music. I guess I could do it. The picture of Floyd Laramy’s broad, unsmiling face floated across his mind. Floyd Laramy who enjoyed two things, eating and fighting, and who thought Rush was a sissy because he knew about music and liked mathematics. Rush sighed and closed the piano lid. “I guess I could do it. But, boy, at what a cost.”
This is a day of sacrifices, Rush told himself. In wartime everybody makes sacrifices. But that was just a lot of words: he might as well have been saying one, two, three, the cat ran up the tree. All he knew was that he wanted to do something. He wanted to help: his family and, in a way, his country. “Let’s see if I’ve got a little gold halo shining around my head,” Rush said aloud and went and looked in a mirror. But he hadn’t.
That is how it came to pass that on the bulletin board at school the next day there was a little card saying: “Piano lessons. 50 cents an hour. Rush Melendy.”
Mr. Coughing, the principal, helped. He spoke to Judge Laramy who spoke (firmly) to Floyd and Myrtle. He also mentioned the matter to the half dozen other parents who had pianos as well as children, and in a week’s time Rush had eight pupils: one every day after school and three on Saturdays. Each day, besides his schoolbooks, he carried a briefcase with music in it, and finger exercises, and lined music paper.
February was very cold. There was what Willy (who really knew nothing about it) called a “black frost.” The brook froze over solid. Even the little cascade was covered with a deep, ruffly collar of ice, although underneath it you could still hear the water tinkling and rushing. After school each day they tried out Mrs. Oliphant’s ice skates. They could hardly wait to get back in the afternoons, flinging their books down on the hall table, searching for their skates, not even removing their mittens as they snatched a quick cookie from the jar in the pantry. For the next hour or two, until it was really dark, their part of the valley was filled with the sound of voices, bumps, outcries, and the peculiar ringing strokes of blades on ice.
Mona and Rush had had the most practice. They spiraled about on the glossy surface, falling very seldom. Randy fell a lot. She would seem to be getting the hang of it, to be skimming like a bird over the cold, black mirror, and then, slam, just as she was breathing naturally and trying not to wave her arms, down she would go! In a sitting position most frequently, but often on her face, her side, the back of her head. All the places where her bones met in corners, like knees and elbows, were bruised and sore. But the cold held, the ice became even stronger, and her persistence triumphed; at last she was almost as good as Mona herself.
Oliver just walked on his skates, taking each one completely off the ice before he set it down again. He walked with a strange, jerky gait, keeping close to the banks, his arms flapping like wings, and his mittened fists grasping at twigs, branches, passers-by, and anything to balance himself; he fell on an average of once every three minutes. He didn’t smile or speak; his eyes were set in a stare of glassy intensity, his tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth, and from time to time he made a small grunting sound of effort. Oliver took skating hard, and refused to be helped.
One Friday when the brook had been frozen for more than a week, Rush said, “We’re all pretty good now. What do you say we go exploring down the brook and see where it takes us? When we come to rough places or holes or open water, we can make our way along the banks.”
“Why, you know perfectly well we’ll just end up in Carthage,” Mona said.
“The other way, then, why not? We’ve never gone very far in that direction, even walking, the woods are so thick,” Randy suggested.
“All right. You want to come along, Oliver?”
“Huh?” said Oliver, who hadn’t heard a word. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m busy working.” Which was true. Nobody could have called Oliver’s method of skating a pleasure.
They had to walk down the banks at the side of the frozen cascade, and then they took to the brook again. It was dangerous and eventful skating: boulders kept rearing up from the ice, and there were twigs and snags of dead branches sticking out like antlers to trip one, and live twigs and branches reaching down from above to slap one’s face and pull one’s hair. Expertly Mona curved and dipped and dodged. Randy toiled along painfully in the rear, and Rush, bless him, would skim ahead and then come swooping back with words of comfort and encouragement.
“Come on, Sonja Henie,” he’d call cheerfully. “Look out for that air hole. You’re doing swell.”
It was all woods on both sides. Thick, thick, noiseless woods. I wish I could look at ’em, thought Randy, eyes glued to the ice under her feet. This way I’ll never know where I’ve been.
“Want to rest awhile?” asked Rush, returning. “Whew, I’m hot, and you’re brick-red yourself.”
“It’s from holding my breath,” explained Randy, sinking gratefully down on the cushion of dry snow and dead leaves that covered the bank. Rush sat down beside her and took off his knitted cap. His curly hair was damp from heat, but his breath came out in a little white frosty cloud.
“Boy, have I ever had a day,” said he.
“My ankles hurt,” said Randy. “Why? What happened to you?”
“Well, you know Floyd Laramy?”
“Yes, worse luck. What’s he done now?”
“Today was his lesson day. Gee, Randy, it’s been tough. Everybody else, all the other kids, are swell. I think they like studying with me because I’m a kid myself. Some of them are kind of dumb, but they’re all swell, and Steve Ladislas is even going to be pretty good someday if he works. But that Laramy guy! You know what he does? He pretends he’s deaf, and whenever I tell him anything he says ‘I beg your pardon? I didn’t quite catch it.’ And kind of grins in a nasty way. He’s had five lessons now and he still doesn’t know an eighth note from his own shoe, and he can hardly play the C major scale. So today I went in right after school. Boy, is that piano a beauty, you could play Chopsticks on it and it would sound like the Chromatic Fantasy, but it’s just being wasted. First thing that happened was that I sat on the bench by Floyd and he slammed the piano lid down on my knuckles. Look.” Rush took off a mitten and showed Randy his bruised fingers.
“The pig!” said Randy warmly. “What did you do?”
“Oh, he pretended it was an accident, said he was sorry and all that. But I saw through him. Next thing he kept knocking the music off the rack, and I kept picking it up, like a dope, and saying ‘Now look, Floyd. This is a whole note. See? It’s round like a doughnut.’ And so on, and so on. And then I say, ‘Now play me the G major scale very slowly.’ And what does he do? He lies down, just lies down on the floor and says, ‘Ho hum, am I ever fatigued. Doesn’t this beastly grind get you down, old boy?’ He’s making me look like a sissy, see, because I’m giving music lessons. So I say, ‘Cut the comedy, drip, and play me the G major scale;’ and he gets up and says, ‘Make me,’ and so I say, ‘Okay, I’ll make you,’ and, uh, I-uh, well, Ran, I socked him.”
“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.”
“What was her name?”
“I was worried you was going to ask me that. Anastasia was the first name, wasn’t it, Will? But what was the last?”
“Well, ’twasn’t Bulova, ’cause that’s the watch. And ’twasn’t Popova, ’cause that’s the muffin. ’Twas something kinda like ’em, though.”
“Did she ever come back here?”
“No. Years later when she wanted to come home for a visit her papa wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t have anything to do with her by that time. They say he even boarded up her room, and that he burned up the portrait he’d had painted of her over in Europe.”
“But he didn’t burn it up!” cried Randy, and stopped aghast. The blood vow!
“What’s that? He didn’t? How do you know?”
Just then, thank heaven, Father knocked on the door, and Rush flew to open it.
Randy told Oliver the whole story the next morning. “Just think,” she said at the end, “I found the room, I discovered Clarinda in a way, and now it turns out that she wanted to be a great dancer, just like me, and what’s more she became one. Why, it’s like some kind of magic sign!”
That afternoon they had a meeting in Clarinda’s room. Rush presided.
“I think you’ll agree,” he said, “that the time has come for this place to stop being a secret. Father and Cuffy and Willy and people like Mr. and Mrs. Pepper really have a right to know. What do you think?”
They all agreed wholeheartedly. The secrecy was beginning to weigh on their consciences.
“And besides, now maybe we’ll get some real chairs to sit on,” observed Oliver realistically from the orange crate. “And Clarinda will have a nice room to live in again.”
They all looked at Clarinda, with her rose, her columns, her red dress; and each of them admired her for a different reason.
Mona admired her because she had become famous in spite of everything.
Rush admired her because she had had courage, and because from the beginning she had known and pursued her destiny.
Randy admired her because she had triumphed as a dancer even in that difficult and ancient day.
And Oliver admired her because she had dared to descend from a third-story window on a ladder made entirely out of sheets.