Double Spell (2 page)

The house looked enormous and unfriendly. The dark sky hung over it. The lake loomed behind. The rain poured heavily all around it.

Jane began to hold back. “Do you think we should?” she asked nervously, “after all, Aunt Alice didn’t invite us.”

Elizabeth wasn’t so sure any more either, but she wasn’t going to let Jane know that. “Are you scared?” she asked.

“No.” Jane marched up to the front door, lifted the heavy iron knocker, and pounded it hard.

They waited a nervous moment or two. The door opened and there was Aunt Alice.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve come for tea.”

“We were uptown and we just thought maybe you’d like to see us,” said Elizabeth carelessly, as though she often dropped in on people who lived at the other end of the city. “We’ve brought something to show you.”

“Good,” said Aunt Alice. “Come in. Or do you want tea in the rain?”

The twins giggled and felt better even as they dripped rainwater all over Aunt Alice’s front hall carpet.

Inside, the house wasn’t nearly as forbidding as out. It was quite inviting. After they had taken off their raincoats and boots in the wide front hall, Aunt Alice led them through into her little sitting room at the back. From the window the twins could see the lake heaving in the storm, but inside there was a fire in the red brick fireplace. The walls of the sitting room had red and yellow flowered paper, which made it even cozier, and a deep red couch along one side of the fireplace. On the other side was an old high-backed rocker
(just like the one in the Dolls Mended shop,
thought Elizabeth) that had Aunt Alice’s book lying face down on it. The twins noticed it there and politely sat, side-by-side, on the couch.

Aunt Alice was as good as they remembered. There were no tiresome questions about being out on a day like this, how colds are caught, or anything. She did tell them how much they looked alike, but in such a way that it was funnier than it was uncomfortable, picking them apart (they decided later) as though they were verbs and nouns and things.

“Uncle Oliver’s small ears,” she murmured. “Marvel’s chestnut hair and fair skin. Armitage nose and mouth.” She put her hand up to her own long thin nose and rather wide mouth. “No sign of the Cunningham black hair or eyes, that’s …”

“That’s what Joe is,” interrupted Elizabeth. Joe was a trial and torment to them both. “Miserable black eyes,” she added, “and he has a long nose too.”

“Always poking it into other people’s business,” muttered Jane.

“Pat has hair like ours,” Elizabeth continued. Pat was their fifteen-year-old brother. “But William has golden hair.” She sighed enviously. “Mama says he looks like her grandmother.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Alice, “Mother had golden hair.” She smiled. “But not freckles. Must get those from your father. Didn’t have those eyes either.” Aunt Alice examined them carefully, as though she were memorizing them. “No,” she said, “never seen eyes that shape – beech leaves.” She smiled again. “Your turn now.”

The twins looked at her, surprised.

“Come,” said Aunt Alice. “What do you say? Tall, skinny, ski nose, ski face, wrinkles, faded blue eyes – and a blob of cotton on top.”

The twins couldn’t help laughing. Aunt Alice’s description of herself wasn’t that wrong. Her face was long and thin (and her nose), although maybe not as thin as a ski, and it had a blob of white cotton on top.
No, not a blob,
thought Elizabeth,
more like a cream puff – nice.
Her face had wrinkles, lots of them, but they were good wrinkles that looked like fun. And Aunt Alice’s eyes were bright blue like the doll’s, not faded.

Embarrassed by all this close inspection of each other, Jane changed the subject. “I like your house,” she said.

“Yes,” Aunt Alice agreed, “good house. Always been my house. Grew up here. So did your grandmother and Uncle
Arthur. Family always lived here. Good place to live.”

She paused. “Better for you than me,” she added. Elizabeth thought of the tight-packed little bungalow in Spring View Acres and sighed. She thought of the walk-in cupboard she and Jane shared as a bedroom in the little house and sighed again.

“It’s beautiful,” said Jane.

“Well then,” Aunt Alice said, leaning forward in her chair, “show me what you’ve brought. Then look around my house. Then tea. How’s that?”

The twins thought it a fine plan. Elizabeth took the box she had been hugging tightly all the way from the Antiques, Dolls Mended shop and set it on her lap, lifted the lid, and brought out the little doll. In the comfortable surroundings of Aunt Alice’s old house, the doll seemed quite at home. Elizabeth smoothed the faded cloth of its dress lovingly. “It’s called Amelia,” she said, handing it to Aunt Alice.

“Isn’t that funny,” said Jane, “that’s the name I was thinking.”

Aunt Alice looked from Jane to Elizabeth. “Twins. Happen often?”

“I guess so,” said Jane. Elizabeth said nothing. They both hated twin questions.

Aunt Alice didn’t notice. She was already busy inspecting the doll.

“It’s old. Don’t really know about dolls, toys, and things. Can tell it’s old though. Might be valuable. Interesting to
find out. Good face even with the broken nose.” She smiled and handed the doll back to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth sat looking at its carved arms and legs while Aunt Alice talked in her short quick sentences about fixing it up and restoring it to its original state. She could picture it as clearly as though she had seen it new, in a bright red wool dress with a tiny white shawl, its bonnet fresh and new and its velvet boots soft and rich. Its face had a cheerful smile painted on it, a little carved nose that turned up at the end, and delicately drawn eyebrows and eyelashes for its bright blue eyes. Aunt Alice’s voice saying, “Come along, show you your grandmother’s house,” cut off the vision of Amelia, new and shiny. Reluctantly Elizabeth put the doll back into the box, but she carried the box with her when she got up.

It was a wonderful house – but funny. It looked as though it had been put together not all at one time but like a house a small child makes out of blocks, adding pieces on here and there just because she likes their shapes. The back of the house had the little study where the twins and Aunt Alice had been sitting, divided by a small hall from the kitchen beside it. Beyond that there was the dining room – a round room at the bottom of a short tower, invisible from the front, that stuck up at the back. There were steps up from the kitchen to the long hall that led to the front door, with three more steps down on one side to the living room and on the other to a big spare room (“Used to be dining room. Never use it,” said Aunt Alice).
Off the living room was another door opening into the first floor of the tall eight-sided tower.

Upstairs the hall was round like the hub of a wheel, and all the rooms attached to the ends of the short hallways that were the wheel’s spokes. It seemed to Jane and Elizabeth as though Aunt Alice opened and closed at least fifty doors. There was one hall longer than the rest that ended with three steps down to another little hall, which led either into a small room at the back of the house or down the kitchen stairs.

“Attic,” Aunt Alice said, but didn’t open its door.

In order to get to the second-storey room of the back tower they had to go down the back stairs, through the kitchen, and into the dining room, where another set of stairs went up to the tower bedroom.

“I could be Rapunzel,” Elizabeth whispered ecstatically. Jane hadn’t any longing to be Rapunzel but she did love the round room with all its windows and their deep window seats. They could see the lake clearly, the deserted beach, and the garden just below, sodden in the rain. Off to one side there was an old garage.

“Coach house,” Aunt Alice explained. “My father kept a horse and carriage.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be marvelous.” Right away Elizabeth imagined herself in the carriage. She thought of the little doll and its old fashioned dress. She pictured herself in a dress like that. For a moment she could really see it – not the coach house, strangely enough – but an open-fronted shed in the bright sunshine of a spring day,
a horse and cart standing outside, herself in a long blue dress just getting in. She leaned forward. The picture was gone, washed away, and she was looking at the old coach house under the rain.

“There’s the attic,” Aunt Alice was pointing down to the square back of the house where a little roof peak ended just below the level of the tower window.

“Funny attic,” Elizabeth said. “It’s lower than this tower.”

“Older part of the house,” Aunt Alice answered. “Haven’t been in it for years. Always found it depressing. Odd,” she frowned. “Window’s open.”

Down the stairs, back through the dining room, up the back stairs again, the twins followed Aunt Alice. “Shut the window,” she said. “Can’t understand it open at all.”

“I don’t like it,” Jane stood in the hall and shivered.

“Unpleasant place. Not the day to go exploring the attic anyway. Cold up here.” Aunt Alice shut the door firmly after her.

And down they went again, single file down the curved stairway to the front hall. And that’s when Elizabeth had the accident. She was in the lead. She got as far as the niche in the wall where a gas lamp had once stood – just by the deepest curve – when she tripped. Frantically she clutched the doll’s box for support and plunged down, over and over and over to the hall below. The leather box flew out of her hands and shot across the floor. Elizabeth lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs. For almost a whole minute all she could think was to reach the box. Then the
pain began with such a rush that when Aunt Alice crouched beside her she didn’t know who she was.

The rest of the day was a whirling kaleidoscope. With a sharp order to Jane not to budge the twin, Aunt Alice phoned her doctor. Then she phoned Mama. Mama’s voice shrilled over the phone, “was going to call the police, phoned all the hospitals, all the neighbors alarmed … oh, Aunt Alice …” Jane remembered William. Aunt Alice looked dangerous. Dr. Lorne came from up the street and said Elizabeth’s leg was broken. Mama and Papa arrived from Spring View Acres. Mama went with Elizabeth and Dr. Lorne to the hospital. Papa took Jane home (without a word all the way) and put her to bed without supper. He went away again to the hospital.

Joe, because he wanted to hear what had happened, brought shredded wheat and a piece of leftover rhubarb pie to the walk-in cupboard. William came too and Patrick, who stood against the door jamb saying nothing. Marble, the cat, came in with William and settled on the bed. Jane looked at Pat and knew how much Mama had worried. Pat was like that. Without saying a word he could make you think more about what you’d done wrong than all Mama and Papa’s scolding could do.

Joe wanted to see the doll. He said it was a pretty silly looking thing to cause all that fuss. William said it looked like Jimmy Macdonald the day he couldn’t find his dog.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard came home with Elizabeth. The boys were sent from the room and Elizabeth settled
into the lower bunk. There was no scolding that night but it was obvious there was going to be the next day.

When they were alone, Jane hung her head over the edge of the upper bunk and told Elizabeth she thought it was awful having a broken leg.

“All the same,” said Elizabeth, “it was a very interesting day.” She tightened her hand around the leather box she had brought to bed with her.

Jane said she supposed so.

It was exactly one week later when Mama came into the living room from answering the telephone with a blank look on her face.

“You won’t believe it,” she said, “but Aunt Alice fell downstairs and broke her hip. She’s going to give us her house.”

Aunt Alice Gets a Sick Basket

I
t was true. Aunt Alice had fallen down her front stairs, queerly enough, just by the niche where Elizabeth had fallen. It was going to take months for her hip to heal and Aunt Alice had decided the big house was going to be too much for her. Her visit with the twins had made her think quite a bit about her own childhood in the big house. After that it hadn’t taken long for her to make up her mind to move out and invite the Hubbards to move in.

Just like that, they were going to move. One day crammed into the little bungalow, the next a three storey house with towers.

“No more walk-in cupboard,” sighed the twins ecstatically.

“No more trumpet practice in the bathroom,” said Joe joyfully.

“No more Vasco da Gama on my shoe,” chortled Papa – he said this because once, when Elizabeth had been
making a plaster of paris map of explorers on the living room floor, Papa had accidentally stepped in it. Jane had had to help build Henry Hudson up all over again and Papa had sworn for weeks that he still had pieces of Vasco da Gama stuck to his shoe.

The new house, or rather Aunt Alice’s old house, had room enough for ten social studies projects to be going on at once; room enough for Joe to practice his trumpet in the attic – and no one bothered but the gulls. There would be dinner in the round dining room with its big windows, and no elbows in each other’s soup. Best of all as far as the twins were concerned, there would be the big tower bedroom where they would actually have to get out of bed to open not one tiny round window, but great tall windows all around the room. There was no question about the tower room being theirs – a tower for two Rapunzels, Papa called it.