The Four-Story Mistake (10 page)

“A ghost, I saw a ghost!” she was gasping. “I knew there'd be a ghost, and there was!”

Oliver began to cry.

“No, no, kids. Come back!” called Rush. “It's only a picture! That's all it is. Honest. Just a big picture. Come on back and see.”

Reluctantly they went back into the room. As for Oliver, he just peeked around the edge of the door until he was sure.

It was a picture, all right. Life-size, too, and set in the heaviest, fanciest, dustiest gold frame any of them had ever seen. It was a portrait of a young girl, almost a child, she might have been anywhere from twelve to sixteen, though her clothes were grown-up, old-fashioned clothes. She wore a dark-red dress with a tiny waist and a long full skirt, and lots of buttons, and loops, and fringes all over it. The artist hadn't missed a single one. Her head was bent slightly to one side, cheek resting on one finger in a sentimental attitude. Her great mane of dark ringlets fell sideways, too, like heavy tassels on a curtain, and in her half-opened, curly little mouth each tooth was painted carefully, white and gleaming as a pearl. In her right hand she held a rose about the size of a head of Boston lettuce, with a big tear of dew clinging to its petals. Below her left hand (the one that supported her cheek), her elbow was poised upon a marble balustrade. She was painted against a classic background, with what appeared to be a mighty thunderstorm sweeping across the sky.

“Who is she?” whispered Randy, in awe.

“Why's she standing in the middle of a cemetery?” said Oliver.

“That's not a cemetery, Fatso,” Rush explained. “That's just a lot of ruined Greek columns in the background.”

“Why're they ruined? Did a bomb drop?”

“No, they're just old; they fell to pieces.”

“Oh. Well, why's she standing in the middle of all those busted columns?”

“Search me. In those days people were always painting people beside temples and ruins and stuff.”

“Look,” said Mona. She leaned down. Attached to the frame at the bottom of the picture was a small gold plate with something engraved on it. Mona dusted it off with the tip of her finger.

“‘Clarinda,'” she read aloud. “That's her name, I suppose. Just ‘Clarinda,' and then a number, or a date I guess it is: 1869.”

“Clarinda, 1869,” said Rush thoughtfully. “Who was she, do you think? I bet she was a Cassidy! Clarinda Cassidy; very euphonious. It goes with all those curls. She looks kind of nice, though, doesn't she? I wonder how she could ever bend over without snapping right in half. Her waist looks about as big around as a doughnut.”

“Why do you suppose she was ever nailed up in this room all by herself,” said Randy, “all these years and years?”

That was a mystery no one could explain. They stood there in a little silent cluster staring at that tilted head, that narrow waist, that pearly smile. It had been a pretty exciting day altogether. First a hidden door; and then a secret room which had been closed for seventy years, and now an imprisoned maiden in a golden frame. Clarinda, 1869. What more could you ask on a wet Sunday?

A piercing blast from the kitchen shattered the stillness. Cuffy's police whistle. That meant it was time for Oliver's supper; time for Randy to set the table, and for Mona to clean the Office, since it was her week. Hurriedly, they left the secret room, closed the door, and shoved the piano back in place. Like conspirators, they separated in the directions of their various tasks. Rush's pockets were full of rusty nails that had to be disposed of; Mona remained in the Office with the lights on, hurriedly pasting back torn strips of paper so old that they kept crumbling like ashes in her fingers.

“My,” said Cuffy at suppertime. “What in the world was you doing all afternoon? I thought I heard furniture being pushed around, and then everything quiet for hours, and then a lot of squeals and a kind of stampede. Some new kind of game?”

“Sort of, Cuffy,” Randy said uncomfortably, with her fingers crossed under the table. It was true in a way, wasn't it?

Rush seemed to have developed a sudden consuming interest in the Cassidy family.

“Fourteen children you said, didn't you, Father? I wonder what happened to them all!”

“Somebody or other told me about one of them who's still alive. A rich old gentleman out west someplace: hasn't been back in forty years,” said Father. “There may be others scattered about, and doubtless many descendants.”

“Why didn't they hang onto this swell place, I wonder?” Rush said. “I should think they'd have wanted to keep it in the family.”

Father shrugged his shoulders; that was a question. “Perhaps they thought it was a funny old place; aesthetically it's sort of a freak, you know. I bought it through the agents of the estate of the two daughters who owned the property: two old spinsters they were; lived here till they died a few years back.”

“What were their names, Father?” Rush put down his fork. So did Mona. So did Randy.

“The old ladies'? Well, let's see. One was named Minnie, or Lizzie. Lizzie, I believe, and the other—”

“Not Clarinda, by any chance?” Rush demanded.

“Clarinda? No, it was Christabelle. I remember because the contrast of the two names seemed so marked. Why on earth should it have been Clarinda?” Father wanted to know.

“Oh, I—I just read the name someplace,” Rush said lamely. “It's an old-fashioned name and I just thought—” But he didn't have to cross his fingers under the table, for it was the simple truth.

That night the children dreamed all night about Clarinda and the secret room. Mona and Randy and Rush, that is. Oliver dreamed that he was driving a Greyhound bus full of policemen across the Brooklyn Bridge.

CHAPTER VII

The Show

It was queer the way the children kept disappearing nowadays. Cuffy couldn't understand it. Right in the house, too; she never saw them go out. She would hear them, noisy as usual, playing in the Office and then all of a sudden absolute stillness. When she went up to see what was going on there would be nobody. Nobody at all. Funny, did she only imagine that she heard a smothered whisper, the ghost of a giggle somewhere near by? But where? The cupboards were empty (or rather, they were full of everything under the sun except children); there was nobody under the tables, or behind the piano, which Rush had moved out from the wall a little, because he said it gave a better light, or even up in the cupola.

Sometimes there would be one child left in the Office. Oliver usually. But when she asked him where the others were he simply looked surprised and answered truthfully: “The others? Why, they were here a little while ago.”

Cuffy just gave up.

The truth, as you have guessed, is that they spent a lot of time closeted in Clarinda's room. In the first place, they had to clean it, and that had taken two rainy afternoons after school and the better part of the next Saturday. Randy and Mona scrubbed the floor, and Rush, at the risk of breaking his neck, washed all the windows, sitting outside on the sills and leaning back against nothing like a professional window cleaner. Whenever he saw anybody, Willy, Cuffy, Father, or
anybody
innocently chopping wood or hanging out clothes, or something, he would drop into the room, crouch on the floor and hiss, “Sh-h. They mustn't see! They mustn't guess!”

Oliver was given a dustcloth and told to dust. This he did in his own fashion, which meant that Mona followed him with another dustcloth and did it all over again. Everybody helped with the walls and ceiling, brushing away the immemorial cobwebs and soft dust with brooms and mops wrapped in cheesecloth. But when it came to waxing the floor Cuffy got suspicious and they had to wax the whole Office floor as well, just to put her off the track. Oh, how their backs ached that night. Oliver fell asleep over his supper, and to Mona's drowsy mind the sentences in her French grammar were as indecipherable as Aramaic symbols. But the reward was worth the labor. The room was beautiful in the daylight, with its faded, still-gay wallpaper, its five sparkling windows and shining floor; and Clarinda, properly dusted, glowing in her golden frame and ruby dress. The room appeared even lovelier than it was because they themselves had discovered and restored it.

“But it needs furniture,” Mona said. The morning sunlight flooded the room; it was a dazzle of light, a wonderfully cozy place to sit in. But what to sit on? They couldn't remove any of the Office furniture without Cuffy discovering it, and half or at least a quarter of the room's charm was its secrecy. The best they could do was to smuggle in two orange crates and a footstool to be used as chairs; but these did nothing to offset the elegance of Clarinda or the shining room. “One of these days,” Randy decided, “we'll have to tell Father and Cuffy and see what can be done.”

In the meantime they used it as a meeting place: a sort of clubhouse. “Sh-sh,” Rush would warn, as though it were a matter of the gravest danger. “Oliver, stand guard at the head of the stairs, will you? Come on, Mona, help me with the piano.” Then the door would be opened quietly and they would tiptoe into the room. Their wonderful, secret room.

One day Mona called a meeting there. A special meeting, for she had an important suggestion to make. Usually the business at hand was nothing that couldn't have been discussed anywhere; and in any case it was always rapidly abandoned and forgotten in favor of games or irrelevant conversation. But this was an exception.

“Sit down, all of you,” commanded Mona regally, taking the footstool for herself. “Oliver, you'd better sit on the floor beside Isaac. Everybody comfortable? Okay. Now. I've called this meeting because I have a plan to propose. I think a very timely and important plan. A—a sort of campaign, in fact.”

“Listen to the president of the D.A.R,” said Rush. He couldn't help teasing her; her imitation of a chairwoman was so unconscious and so perfect. All she needed, he thought, was a bunch of orchids, and some eyeglasses, and a big hat.

“Now, Rush,” objected Mona, but her composure wasn't in the least disturbed. “Look, this is the thing. We all know there's a war, don't we?”

Yes, they all knew that!

“And we want to do something about it, don't we? To help, I mean.”

Naturally. But what could they do?

“I have it all planned,” said Mona excitedly, forgetting to be a club president as she sprang to her feet and upset the footstool. “This is my campaign. First of all
paper.
We must collect
tons
of paper. The government needs it.”

“What for?” inquired Oliver.

“Oh, I don't know. They just need it, that's all. Randy, you can be in charge of the paper campaign. And then metal. Tin cans and toothpaste tubes and—and, well, metal. Rush can be in charge of that. Oliver can collect tinfoil. And besides that—” Mona looked at them sternly “—if you want to be really patriotic you must all let me practice my first aid on you.”

“Ah, a real sacrifice,” moaned Rush.

“I'll be in charge of the knitting too,” continued Mona imperturbably. “All of you must learn.”

“Me?” cried Rush. “Knit?”

“Why not?” said Mona. “This is war. And bonds. We must all buy lots of Defense Bonds.”

“Bonds!” said Rush. “Where do you get that? My allowance has to be stretched to the breaking point in order to buy even a Defense Stamp once a week.”

Mona's eyes began to shine. She was getting to the best part of the plan.

“I've thought it all out. And I've decided we should have a show!”

“Charge admission, you mean?” Randy looked a little shocked. “We never did before.”

“Of course charge admission, silly. That's the whole point. So we can buy a Defense Bond.”

Randy saw that that made a difference. “You can do a dance or two,” Mona told her, “and Rush can play the piano, and Oliver—”

“I can turn somersaults,” Oliver suggested hopefully. “I can almost do a cartwheel, sometimes.”

“No, you can be in the play I'm writing,” said Mona, genius burning.

“Only I don't want to be the queen's baby like last time,” said Oliver uncompromisingly.

“You won't have to be. You can be a soldier or a robber or something. Yes, I think a robber.”

“Boy!” agreed Oliver wholeheartedly.

Everybody was pleased with the idea. It had been too long since they had had a show.

“And Randy can design the costumes; Cuffy and I'll help make them. She can design the sets, too, and Rush and Willy can make those. Rush, you can plan the musical background. We'll get Willy to change the records when we need them.”

“The trouble is we're always limited to only four characters when we have plays,” Rush said.

“What's the matter with four? You can use the same person twice, if you know how.”

“You used me three times in the last play,” Randy remembered. “I was the nurse, and the beggarwoman, and the detective.”

“What's this opus going to be called?” Rush wanted to know.

“It's a fantasy,” Mona told him. “It combines all the best features of Hans Andersen, Grimms'
Fairy Tales, The Arabian Nights,
and Superman. It's called
The Princess and the Parsnip.
”

“And who, if I may ask, is to have the part of the princess?” inquired Rush wickedly.

“Well—uh. Why, I thought I—I mean—” Mona floundered.

“Skip it. I was only kidding. Of course you'll be the princess. Who else? You're the only one in the bunch who can act. You're good, and we all know it,” said Rush graciously.

“When will we have it?” asked Randy, with an excited bounce.

“How about the week before Christmas? Maybe the Saturday before. It'll be holidays then and we'll have plenty of time.”

All that now remained was to ask the co-operation of Father and Cuffy and Willy. And that was gladly granted, as they had known it would be.