Then There Were Five (25 page)

CHAPTER XV

Opus Three

It was the second of October. For weeks, now, Randy had been talking about having a picnic at the old, wrecked house in the woods. But one Saturday she and Oliver both had colds, and on the next it rained. Finally, however, the perfect day arrived.

Oliver, Mona, Randy, the dogs, and the lunch all went in the surrey. Oliver, with Mona beside him, was allowed to drive. It was a tremendous thing. He sat there quiet and intent, eyes straight ahead, brows frowning. You would have thought he was guiding a heavy cruiser through a fog.

Mark and Rush rode ahead; one on Jess, and one on Damon. They rode bareback, their legs dangling.

“It smells very fally,” said Randy, closing her eyes and sniffing.

“‘When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang,'” quoted Mona. “‘Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

“Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.'”

“By William Shakespeare,” added Oliver, with a loud sigh.

“See, even Oliver's on to you,” giggled Randy. “But it's not cold, it's warm, and there are still lots of leaves on the boughs, though, of course, lots of them are falling, too.”

They kept drifting down with that pensive, aimless flight which is like nothing else in the world. The sunshine seemed to come diminished through a faint film, though there wasn't a cloud anywhere.

It was the season of jays and crows. Their harsh voices pierced the silent air, and from everywhere in the woods came the hollow drilling of woodpeckers, and the dropping of acorns. Small creatures moved about the floor of the woods noisily. In the dry, crackling ocean of leaves the running squirrel sounded like a man, the hopping sparrow like a dog.

The children unharnessed Lorna Doone and put her with Jess and Damon into an open field to graze. The surrey stood, tall and narrow at the roadside; without a horse between its shafts it looked ridiculous and bereft.

Carrying baskets and hampers the children made their way through the woods, scuffling their feet joyfully in the dry leaves. Isaac and John Doe bounded and sniffed and pretended to be real hunting dogs.

At last they came to the remains of the old house. The tall chimney pointed like a finger at the sky. Among the fallen building stones ladies' tobacco had grown tall and flowered in aromatic, pearly bouquets. In the grass beneath the shabby apple trees small hard fruit lay scattered. One old skeleton tree, nothing but silver-grey wooden bones, lifted a single living branch to heaven, crowned with leaves and studded with little fire-red apples, like the pilgrim's staff.

The mourning dove's nest was an abandoned mound of sticks in the lilac bush. The swifts' nests in the chimney were empty, too. Presumably the woodchuck still occupied his tunneled apartment underground. No doubt he was sitting there now, still as a stone, listening to the footsteps overhead with irritation and foreboding.

Rush, Mark, and Randy pointed things out, explaining.

“What a marvelous place!” Mona cried. “Why didn't you ever bring me here before?” She loved all old things: old books, old legends, old wrecks of houses such as this.

“Look, that's the well over there,” Randy said. “Let's go drop a stone in it. It makes a nice lonesome sound.”

They pushed among scratchy blackberry canes and leaned over the side of the well.

“Why, look!” exclaimed Randy. “Something wonderful has happened!”

They peered down the mossy funnel, and there, a few feet below, looking up at them from a cranny between the stones was a clump of fringed gentians.

“Gosh, and they're hard to find,” Mark said. “They're kind of rare around here.”

“And the color of them,” Randy said. “They must be the exact middle of the color of blue.”

She almost forgot about dropping the stone. But Oliver didn't. He picked up a round pebble and held it out over the well. Then he let it fall. The sound it made when it met the water pleased him very much. He leaned down to search for another pebble.

Mona prowled about, exploring. She examined the building stones, looked up the chimney, and ate one of the little apples. She followed the leaves of lily of the valley far into the woods. What a garden to have, thought Mona, tame all spilled over into wild like this. That's what
I'd
like.

Pretend I live here, she thought. Pretend for some reason I'm all alone in the world and have no place to go. All I have is this chimney for a fireplace, and these stones, this well, this apple orchard. I build the stones into some kind of shelter, of course. I eat apples and nuts and berries and things. But what about winter? Oh, well, pretend there isn't any winter. Pretend it's the tropics.

Mona imagined wonderful dresses for herself all made out of mullein leaves stitched together; and jackets made of blue jay feathers, or woven of that very shiny golden kind of grass. All the wild things of the woods would be her friends: deer would eat from her hand, birds perch on her shoulder. A legend would grow up about her, people would speak of her as the Hermit Maid, or something like that. Very seldom would human eyes behold her, just now and then, when a hunter or trapper, or someone, caught a glimpse of her flitting through the forest, or running along the treetops like that girl in
Green Mansions.
They would bring tales back to their villages about her strangely haunting beauty, her solitary ways, her friendship with the woodland creatures.

Mona walked along with her eyes raised to the sky, a faint bemused smile on her lips. She was being the Hermit Maid with every fiber of her being.

A skyward gaze is all very well, but not unless you are walking on a fairly level surface. Mona's foot came into abrupt contact with one of the building stones and she suddenly fell flat on her face. She sat up for a moment, hugging her barked shin and stubbed toe, and rocking back and forth in pain and rage. Then with a deplorable but understandable impulse she stood up and gave the offending stone a furious shove with her foot.

The stone turned over on its side and disclosed a black rectangle of damp earth, frantic with centipedes. In the very center of this damp rectangle lay a blue glass bead, half buried.

The bead was large, about the size of a marble, and made of a thick azure glass with bubbles in it. Mona picked it up, wiped it off with the palm of her hand. She couldn't believe her good fortune. The pain, forgotten, departed from her toe and shin.

“It's a sign,” she murmured to herself. “It definitely is. Here it's been lying here all these years, maybe fifty or a hundred, and now I find it! I'll keep it for a lucky piece.

“Hey, look! Look, kids!” shouted the Hermit Maid, suddenly leaping like a she-goat over the stones and brambles. “Look what I found! I found a lucky piece!”

Oliver was still dropping pebbles into the well. He was lying on top of the round wall which encircled it, and he had a little pile of pebbles beside him. The autumn sun was warm upon his back, and a cool, deep breath came upward from the well. He would drop a stone; listen to its musical plop, and watch the dark circles spread away upon the water and dash in tiny waves against the wall. Each time he could see his reflection break to pieces, and then come together crazily, wavering and undulating, at first rapidly, then more and more slowly. When the reflection was quite still and whole again, he would drop the next pebble.

Finally he ran out of pebbles, but he was too lazy to climb down off the wall and look for more, and besides he was almost bored with the game. He stared down at the stone walls. They were richly furred with moss, and he could see little sprays of maidenhair fern sticking out of the cracks, and a cluster of brown, pointed toadstools. And the beautiful gentians, of course.

Oliver gazed at them covetously. They aren't so far down, he thought. I bet if I just leaned over—carefully, of course—way, w-a-a-y over—like this—and then
reached
—

And the next thing he knew he was wham-banging against the green walls, too fast to be hurt, and there was a noise somewhere like air squealing out of a balloon and then the ice-dark water closed over his head.

The squealing noise, of course, had been made by himself. The other children, building the fire, unpacking the baskets, had heard it with a sense of terror. Then had come the sound of an enormous splash. No one needed to be told what had happened. Instantly they were beside the well, looking over.

There, far below, they saw Oliver's round, wet head. He had just grabbed hold of a projecting stone, and was preparing to open his mouth and let go of a good howl when he looked up, face all crumpled, and saw them.

“Hello,” said Oliver, quickly trying to straighten out his face.

The other children's voices came back to them.

“Oh, Oliver darling, are you sure you aren't dead?” cried Randy idiotically.

“Are you hurt?” “Isn't it cold?” “Can you hang on?” They all spoke at once.

Oliver said he didn't know if he was hurt or not, his shoulder felt sort of blank. And, yes, it was cold, it was awful cold, and that he thought he could hold on for a little while.

“But what'll we do? How'll we ever get him out?” yelped Randy, jumping up and down. “We haven't any ropes or chains to pull him up with.”

“
I
know,” said Mona, suddenly inspired. “Mark, you can run quickest, you run down to the surrey and get Lorna Doone's reins! They ought to reach. And, Mark, wait, bring the blanket too!”

The rustle of Mark's flying feet could be heard for a long time. The dogs thought he was playing, and went bounding after him, barking blissfully.

“Are you okay, Fatso,” inquired Rush, anxiously.

“Y-yes, I g-guesso,” replied Oliver in a hollow voice, his teeth chattering. “Listen, Rush, do you think there's any sn-snakes down here?”

“You must be nuts!” said Rush heartily. “Of course there aren't. How do you think they'd get down and up? Fly?”

It seemed hours before Mark's returning rustlings were heard.

“I'm very cold, Mona,” Oliver complained, beginning to cry at last. “I can't feel my feet even, and my fingers ache awful.” The only warm thing he could feel was his own tears. Hot, they rolled down his cheek, and he caught each one on his tongue.

“Never mind, dearest. Just hold on a minute more. He'll be here right away. Honestly he will, darling,” comforted Mona.

Randy was crying in sympathy and fear. She was never much good in a crisis, and this time all the mean things she had ever done to Oliver came back to her. The times she had said, “No, you can't come with us, you're too little.” The times she had put things over on him, played tricks, laughed behind his back, because he was too young to know the difference.

“Don't you cry, Oliver,” sobbed Randy. “When we get home I'm going to give you my whole box of pastels that Mrs. Oliphant gave me. And I'll let you use my best paintbox whenever it rains.”

But Oliver, between crying and shivering, was past replying.

Luckily Mark came up gasping with the reins just then.

Unbuckled, they were long enough to reach Oliver. Mark and Rush and Mona hung far over the well, directing and encouraging.

“Loop the end around your middle, Oliver. Tie it good and tight, don't mind if it squeezes.”

“I can't,” came the hollow, reverberating wail from down the well. “My fingers won't work.”

“They've
got
to work,” shouted Rush. “You make 'em. You just make 'em!”

Randy couldn't bear to watch or listen. She held her hands over her ears, shut her eyes, hopped on one foot. “
Get
him up!
Get
him up!
Get
him up!” she kept whispering under her breath.

And in the end, miraculously, with a great deal of yelping, sweating, hauling, and a lot of banging and scraping for Oliver, they did get him up. Dragged him onto the wall, blue with cold, teeth chattering, knees and knuckles bleeding.