The Four-Story Mistake (4 page)

“Want some?” said Willy.

“Oh, no, thanks Willy,” said Rush faintly. “My own breakfast will be ready in a few minutes.”

“Aw, come on,” said Willy, and gave him an enormous plateful. “Want some coffee?”

“Well—uh. I never had any. I mean black like that.”

“Oh, it won't hurt ya. I drank black coffee when I was eight years old. Time I was your age I chewed tobacca. Never hurt
me
none.”

Rush took the hot tin cup in his hands. The first swallow was so hot he could feel wrinkles on his tongue after he had taken it. And the black bitter taste of it didn't please him much, but he couldn't be less of a man at thirteen than Willy had been at eight, so he drank two cups, smacking his lips.

“Next time I'll teach ya to chew,” Willy called as Rush reeled dizzily back to the house.

“Rush
Melendy!
” said Cuffy. “Why are you only wearing your pajama pants? Don't you know this is the middle of October?”

“I've been swimming,” Rush explained.

“Swimming!”
said Cuffy outraged; and
“Swimming,”
said Randy incredulously as she came into the kitchen, “swimming in
what?
”

“There's a brook,” Rush said. “I discovered it. We've got a brook on our property.”

Randy started for the door, but Cuffy caught her by her overall straps.

“No, you don't, my duck. Not till you've eaten every bit of breakfast. Here, Rush, here's your sweater. Put it on and eat your breakfast while it's hot. You can dress later.”

There was no help for it. Rush had to sit down and eat breakfast all over again: every mouthful. Oatmeal and eggs and bacon and toast and milk. Cuffy watched him like an eagle at meals nowadays, because she thought he was too thin. Rush chewed until his jaws ached and his eyes watered; he might as well have been eating sawdust. But at last it was over, and he started up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily; weighted down with breakfast.

He met Mona on the stairs.

“For goodness' sake, Rush,” she said. “Why do you look so funny?”

“Born that way,” Rush replied glumly.

“No, I mean why are you holding your stomach? Have you got a pain?”

Rush paused wearily, like an actor playing Hamlet. “Mona,” he said, “it might interest you to know that I'm carrying a heavy burden. For breakfast today I was forced by circumstance to consume four eggs: two fried, two boiled. Also nine pieces of bacon. Nine. Also one bowl of oatmeal, man-size. Also one piece of toast as big as a barn door, with marmalade on it. Also one glass of milk, and two large cups of black coffee. Now do you understand?”

“What is it, a contest or something?
Coffee!
You mean Cuffy let you?”

“Shh. No, silly. Today I attended two breakfasts. At Willy's coffee was served. Then in order to avoid complications I ate a second one at Cuffy's request!”

“How revolting,” said Mona, continuing downstairs. It had been her favorite word for some time now.

After everyone had had breakfast and every dish was washed and every bed made, Father took them up to the third floor to see the new Office.

“I'm going to let you do the organizing and arranging yourselves,” he told them. “I had the carpenter put up some shelves, and the moving men dumped the furniture anywhere. It's up to you, now.”

The room was really an attic, large, oblong, with deep dormer windows on three sides, and a drum-shaped coal stove attached to the brick chimney mass by a round black pipe. The old carpet lay in a long roll, and in the middle of the bare floor the familiar Office furniture was lumped together in a huddle: the sofa with busted springs, the battered rocking horse, the blackboard, the ancient chairs, the boxes of books. In the midst of the confusion stood Rush's piano, tall and dignified, like Florence Nightingale among the wounded.

“Why, look at the walls!” cried Oliver. “There's pictures and writing all over them!”

It was true. From the ceiling to the floor the sloping walls were covered with pages of pictures and stories cut out of old papers and magazines. They were yellowish brown with age, and here and there were dark stains where the rain had leaked in, but on the whole they were remarkably well preserved, for at the tops of some of the pages there were dates. April 17, 1881, said one of them. September 19, 1879, said another.

“Look, here's a whole story pasted up; illustrations and everything. Pretty nifty, too,” said Rush. “It's called ‘Pursued by Siberian Wolves!' Oh, boy, look at that; a whole sleighful of men, all wearing mustaches and fur hats, and the wolves right behind with their tongues hanging out!”

“Here's another,” said Mona. “Only it's called ‘Dimple Sunshine and the Bad Buttercup.' You should see the picture of Dimple Sunshine: she looks about four years old but I think she's wearing a corset. High button shoes, too. How revolting. Imagine.”

“There's a very int'resting one down here,” piped Oliver, who was just learning to read. “It has good pictures, and it's called ‘Tribble Customs in the Sudden.' What does that mean?”

“Tribble Customs in the—Here let me see,” Rush bent down beside Oliver. “Oh, I get it. ‘
Tri
bal Customs in the
Su
dan.'”

“Well, when I was hunting for a house in the country I knew I'd have to find one that had an Office as good as the one at home,” Father was saying. “When I saw this I was satisfied.”

“It's swell,” agreed Rush and Mona in a single voice. As for Oliver, he had practically forgotten the other house already. But Randy was silent, torn between enthusiasm for this new Office and homesick loyalty for the old one.

“Look, Randy,” Father said. “See those little stairs? They go up to the cupola. Let's explore it, shall we?”

Rush had climbed over the furniture and reached his beloved piano: now he had the lid up, and standing before it he plunged into the Brahms Rhapsody he had been learning. He played it much too loud and much too fast on purpose because he was happy. It sounded like a team of runaway fire horses. Mona and Oliver were sitting side by side on the floor studying the “Tribble Customs,” so Randy was the first of the children to see the cupola. She followed her father up the steep, narrow steps. Almost as good as a ladder, she thought to herself. At the top Father opened the door and there they were, standing in a tiny room that seemed to be nothing but windows. The tower of the enchanted princess, Randy thought. All around is nothing but sea. Once a day a slave in a rowboat comes bringing a basket of food. The princess pulls it up on a long silken cord. She also catches fish from the window. She—but Father was speaking.

“Poor Mr. Cassidy,” he was saying. “This cupola is another part of the mistake. You see, a cupola is supposed to be built in a place which commands a splendid view: something impressive like a city in the distance, or an ocean, or a chain of mountains. Look, toward the east all you can see is the brook and the woods on the hill. Toward the west all you can see is the road winding back over another hill, through more woods. Toward the south all you can see is spruce branches and the weather vane on the stable roof. But toward the north, yes, there
is
a view. The only long one.”

Yes, there was. Randy looked out the north window, and far, far away up the valley, which was shallow and wide; dotted with trees, and crossed with stone fences, and seamed with the brown brook that was partly theirs. At the very end of the valley she thought she saw a village: rooftops, and white walls, and smoke coming up blue into the autumn air.

“That's Carthage, three miles away,” Father told her.

“There's a window for each child,” Randy remarked.

“So there is,” said Father, and after a minute he said, “And now that I think about it, Randy, I believe that each of these windows belongs to one of you in a particular way. This one, the north one, for instance, that looks so far up the valley. It must belong to Oliver because he's always looking ahead: always straining toward tomorrow. The east one is Rush's. The view from it is all moving and changeable: the wind stirs the trees, the water dashes and foams in the brook. And the south one. See how the dark spruce branches beyond the glass make a sort of mirror of the window. That's Mona's: she's at the age where she loves her own reflection.”

“And the west window?” Randy said.

“The west window belongs to you, Randy. From it you can look back all day along the road you traveled yesterday.”

Randy thought she understood what Father meant. “Well, I like today too,” she said. “I like
now.
And this house. I think it's a wonderful house. Only I loved the other one, too.”

“We all did,” agreed Father. “But sometimes it would be nice if you and Oliver changed windows. In fact, it would be a good thing if all of you exchanged views once in a while.” He gave Randy's untidy mop of curls an affectionate tug. “Well, that's over. How do you like this tower, anyway? I thought you kids might enjoy it. As a sort of retreat, you know.”

“You mean it's ours?” said Randy. “Just for us children? Like part of the Office, you mean?”

“That's it,” said Father.

“Oh, Father, it
is
swell!” cried Randy, giving him a hug that knocked the breath out of him. “It
is
swell, and I love it. And I'll spend half an hour looking out of Oliver's window every time I come up here, just so I'll deserve it!”

CHAPTER III

Ali-Baba Oliver

There was no way in which the Melendy children could go to school until Mrs. Oliphant's station wagon arrived. The Carthage public school was three miles away, and though Rush liked to picture himself swinging along the country road in the morning like Abraham Lincoln, the thought of returning by the same lengthy route had less glamour. Willy's friend, Mr. Purvis, the garbage collector, said he'd be glad to take two of the children to town each morning, but there'd be no room for the other two except in back with the garbage. Oliver couldn't see why this wasn't a practical arrangement. Still they hadn't so long to wait. They had arrived on Friday evening, and the station wagon was due to appear on the following Thursday.

In the interval they unpacked, and explored, and had picnics every day in a different place. Their range seemed almost unlimited, for there were thirty acres of land that went with the house, and a sample of everything delightful, short of an active volcano and an ocean, that one could want on his own territory: brook, woods, stable, hollow tree, and summerhouse. Each of the children had found something that belonged particularly to him by right of discovery. Rush had found the brook, of course, and Mona discovered the orchard: it was full of warped old trees covered with suckers, and the apples that had fallen in the grass tasted half wild and bitter sweet. Randy found a little cave, and a swampy place where fringed gentians were in blossom, but her important discovery was to come later.

Oliver found the cellar.

Of course they all knew that there was a cellar but nobody, except Willy, had ever been down to look at it, and even he had looked at nothing but the furnace. It remained for Oliver, on the third day, to open an inconspicuous door off the kitchen and find the dusty stone steps going downward into darkness. A rank, delicious smell of cold stone and damp filled Oliver's nostrils. Prudently and quietly he closed the door; this was to be his own personal voyage of discovery, and no one was going to be allowed to assist or interfere.

He tiptoed up the back stairs to borrow Rush's flashlight, without mentioning his intention to Rush who was conveniently practicing in the Office. Then he tiptoed down again, through the kitchen, and past Cuffy's broad, preoccupied back at the stove. Once again he opened the inconspicuous door, stepped in, and closed it quietly behind him. The flashlight led him down the steps by its circle of light.

The floor of the cellar was concrete, and its walls were the stone foundations of the house. The air of the place was dank and still, like the air of a medieval dungeon; Oliver breathed it deeply. Overhead dangled a fixture with no bulb in it, but he saw that there were windows, small windows flush with the ceiling. They glowed with a filtered, greenish light, being almost entirely smothered by grass stems, weeds, and clinging tentacles of Virginia creeper. He switched off the flashlight, enjoying the mysterious gloom. A second later he switched it on again, his heart pounding in his chest, and saw that what he had taken in the dimness to be an indescribable monster was nothing but a large coal furnace. Something like the one at home only bigger and more complicated, with great brawny pipes and tubes, and a grate in its lower door that looked like teeth in an iron mouth.

“Hello, furnace,” Oliver said placatingly. He opened the door with the grate and stuck his head in, and sniffed the smell of dead ashes. He turned the flashlight into it, too, but saw nothing except some very old cinders, so he closed the door and went on with his exploring. The only other things in the furnace room were a stack of dry logs that crackled from time to time as though full of mice, and a bin with coal in it. Oliver went into the bin and climbed up and down the slipping mountain of coal; he fell once or twice but that only added to his pleasure and the damage of his clothes. He pretended he was climbing a crater in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. At the end of fifteen minutes, when he emerged, he was black as a Cardiff coal miner and extremely happy.

From the furnace room two other chambers opened out. In the first one Oliver found an old bedspring, an empty barrel, and a Mason jar high up on the windowsill containing nothing but a large, hairy spider which he did not disturb. The spider's web was laced across the window, and was hung with dried fragments of moth wings, and the husks of beetles and houseflies.