Then There Were Five (21 page)

“Run along now, Randy,” said Father, who was beginning to be embarrassed by the friendly volubility of his children.

As Randy left he turned again to Mrs. Golding. “Now as I was saying, in regard to the boy's education—”

At this moment Isaac and John Doe burst into the study, ran rapidly around it twice with their tongues hanging out, and departed, leaving the rugs all up in lumps.

Father sighed, “Well, as I was
saying
—”

But Mrs. Golding closed her notebook and dropped it into her briefcase.

“Never mind,” she said. “I know already everything I need to know about Mark's future home. But I would just like to have a look at the boy himself.”

“Of course,” said Father. “There he goes now.” He pointed to the window. Mark was wobbling along the drive on a pair of stilts. Rush was close beside him on another pair. They had made them yesterday afternoon, when it was raining.

“Pretty soon I'm going to tie the tops of these things tight to my waist, and see if I can walk without holding onto them,” Mark told Rush.

“That's the way circus clowns do,” agreed Rush, suddenly collapsing on the gravel.

“I'll call Mark,” said Father, standing up. But Mrs. Golding said, “No, after all, don't bother. He looks as if he were having a thoroughly good time, and,” she added, smiling, “something tells me he's going to go on having it. He's an extremely lucky boy.”

“We're an extremely lucky family,” Father told her. “Mark is a fine person.”

They went out the front door where Oliver was cleaning his fish on a copy of the Carthage
Post-Clarion.

“If you're considering a legal adoption, of course, you'll have to take it up with the surrogate's court,” said Mrs. Golding.

“We'll let Mark decide that.”

“Sorrow gate's Court, Sorrow gate's Court,” sang Oliver mournfully to himself, fish scales flying about him. “I'll never go back to the Sorrow gate's Court. Never, oh never, oh never, oh never, back to the Sorrow gate's Court!”

When Mrs. Golding's capable-looking little blue coupé had disappeared around the bend of the drive, Randy stuck her head out the upstairs window.

“What did she say, Father? Is he really ours now?”

Father looked up and smiled. “If he wants to be.”

“Gee whiz!” cried Randy, and an instant later she galloped down the stairs, shot out the door past Father and across the lawn to where the boys were stiltwalking. Her impulsive hug flung Mark from his stilts, but fortunately he was not seriously hurt. Mona and Oliver followed Randy at almost the same pace, and Rush leaped from his stilts and began clapping Mark on the back so hard that he made him cough.

“We all belong to the same family now! The same family!” shrieked Randy, dancing around them.

Mark escaped from them finally, and crossed the lawn to where Father was standing.

“Are you
sure
that you want me, Mr. Melendy?”

“We're sure, Mark. Are you?”

“Me?” said Mark. “Oh, boy!”

He looked, Rush said afterward, as if he had swallowed a lighthouse.

As all this coincided with Oliver's birthday, Mona made a suggestion.

“Let's have a double celebration! And let's have it a picnic party instead of just a plain dining-room party,” she said. “We'll take Oliver's presents with us, and the cake too. We can eat the ice cream when we get home.”

There was some discussion as to where they should go until Rush remembered the cave of which Mark had once spoken.

“Could we go there? With all the baskets and stuff?”

“Sure, we can ride part of the way, and then it's just a short walk through the woods.”

It was a warm, golden September day. Cuffy and Mona and Father and Willy went in the carriage with all the dishes and presents and food, and the birthday cake carefully shut up in a hatbox of Cuffy's that had the name La Petite Yvette written on the side of it in dashing green handwriting. Everybody else went on bicycles, even Mark, for Mona had lent him hers. He was rather a wobbly rider still, but getting better. Isaac and John Doe licketed along beside the bicycles, and Lorna Doone stepped gaily.

Mark led them along an unfamiliar byroad, and after they had traversed it for a mile or two, he halted them and said they must walk the rest of the way. They tied Lorna Doone to a tree with plenty of grass around it, ambushed the bicycles, and each with his load struck off into the woods.

“Thought you said it wasn't a long walk,” grumbled Rush, under a burden of baskets, blankets, and thermos jug.

“Never
seemed
long before,” Mark said, sweating under a similar burden. “Course I never took it with a load before.”

Cuffy brought up the rear, carrying the birthday cake in its hatbox. She walked slowly, turning her head away from twigs and leaves with a look of loathing. Cuffy liked nature to be confined: mowed, tied back, and kept neat, as in a backyard. She had no use for the unmannerly tendrils, undergrowth, insects, and general inconveniences of untamed woods.

The last straw was a short, steep, struggling climb up a sharp, densely wooded hill. They slid, clutched, panted, and groaned as they went up it. The paper cups were jolted out of Mona's basket and rolled all the way down again, to her disgust. Willy grasping at vines desperately said, “Sure hope none of these is poison ivy!” And Cuffy, her neat grey hair caught up in selflocks, gasped, “Sure hope it's worth it when we get there!”

They reached the top of the hill, descended a little way and found themselves standing upon a broad sandstone ledge.

“This is it,” Mark said.

And after all it was worth it. On this side the hill fell away abruptly, down and down into a ravine. There were birch tops at their very feet, and the vermilion berry clusters of mountain ash. As far as the eye could see were folded, wooded valleys, one opening into the next, endlessly and harmoniously. Above in the blue sky were mighty cumulus clouds; great weightless continents hanging motionless in the air.

“Jeepers!” said Randy, and Rush gave a long, low whistle. Cuffy sat down hard on a rock, fanned herself with a paper plate, and remarked that she was real fond of views.

“But where's the cave?” demanded Oliver, turning to Mark.

“Look,” Mark told him, “turn around.”

Oliver turned. Close against the cliff grew a dense blue hedge of juniper.

“I don't see anything except just big bushes.”

“It's sort of prickly,” Mark said. “But follow me.”

He pushed right in among the junipers, and Oliver followed, saying “Ouch!”

“Mark? Where are you, Mark?” he called suddenly, but Mark had disappeared. He pushed on a little farther, the prickly branches snapped together behind him, and he found himself standing in a natural doorway in the rock. It was dark in there, a dark secret place.

“Mark?” said Oliver doubtfully.

“Come on in,” whispered Mark, out of the shadows.

Oliver stepped in. It was instantly much cooler and stiller, and there was a very dark, damp, thousand-year-old smell. The junipers made a blue screen that cut out much of the daylight.

“Let's startle 'em a little,” whispered Mark. “Yell your own name good and loud and see what happens.”

Oliver opened his mouth wide and yelled his name. Instantly echoes woke up all over the cave. “Oliver Oliver-ver-ver!”

“Now yell ‘help!'”

Oliver bawled obediently.

“Help-elp-elp-elp-elp!”

There was a crashing and an ouching outside. Rush's face stared in at them without seeing.

“You in here?”

“Come on in and yell,” invited Oliver. “It's much better than the tunnel in Central Park.”

Mona and Randy appeared after that, and the cave rang with war whoops and strange greetings.

“Hello-o-o. You-oo-oo. Goon-oon-oon!”

Isaac and John Doe contributed to the eerie pandemonium by a great deal of amplified barking. Father and Willy finally pushed their way through the junipers to see what was going on, but Cuffy stayed where she was. She had no use for caves. “Nasty damp places,” she said. “Why don't they just go down and holler in the cellar? Can't see the difference.”

Father and Willy had brought their flashlights. The turning circles of light revealed the rough rock walls and the sandy floor of the cave, which was littered with nutshells, cherry pits, bits of dry bone, and feathers. There were paw prints here and there, and some long sweeping marks that Mark said had been made by snakes. Isaac and John Doe stepped about eagerly, noses to the ground and tails quivering with excitement. A great deal had gone on in this cave.

Father said, “How did you ever find the place, Mark? It's so concealed.”

“One time I got caught up here in a storm, Mr. Melendy. It was a real bad storm, the sky just split wide open and let go with everything it had. Hail, too. And it was big hail, and it hurt just like stones would hurt. So I squeezed in under the juniper bushes, but gee it was so scratchy I kept on pushing back and back, hoping maybe there'd be a kind of a little pocket between the bushes and the rocks. First thing I knew I'd pushed myself right into the cave. Boy, was I ever surprised!”

“Sure is a lot of bats hangin' up there,” observed Willy, whose flashlight was trained upon the ceiling. They all looked up. What had at a first glance appeared to be a thick growth of moss or fungus now proved to be a community of bats. Here and there among them were little motions: the shifting of a claw, the stretching of a wing, the turning of a small, eared head. And now that everyone was silent, little sounds could be heard as well: the faintest rustle, and a tiny nickering.

“How revolting!” shrieked Mona suddenly, and plunged for the door. Randy, shrieking too, close at her heels.

“Girls!” remarked Rush, with patient boredom. “They probably look just as bad to the bats. Say, Mark, have you ever found anything here? Like Indian relics, or human bones, or counterfeit money, or anything like that? Or maybe old weapons, or a secret map, or something? In books people always discover stuff like that in caves.”

“Yes, that's what I always thought, too. But all I ever found was an old cowbell.”

“Maybe you didn't look hard enough,” Rush persisted. “A place like this is too good a hideout for
somebody
not to use. Maybe we ought to dig up some of the sand. No harm in trying. Why, if I were a robber I'd be sure to bury stolen goods in a cave like this.”

“Well, you kids search, if you want to,” said Father. “You can have my flashlight, but not too long, I don't want the battery worn out.”

He and Willy pushed through the juniper screen again. Oliver went with them. He did not care much for bats himself.

Mark and Rush searched the cave diligently. Then they went to work with sticks, scraping away at the sandy floor.

“I tell you what!” cried Rush. “We ought to use this for a hideout ourselves. We could keep things here, you know. We could keep cans of food, and crackers in a tin box, and bottles of ginger ale, and stuff. Sometimes you and I could camp out and stay here all night!”

“Not a bad idea,” agreed Mark excitedly. “We'll make it into a real camp. We can gather lots of dead wood and stack it in here. Then we'll always have firewood. And we can bring some books and comics, in case we feel like reading.”

“Yes, and some candles, and a knife to protect ourselves with—”

The time flew, and great plans were laid. Sticks scraped fruitlessly in the sand, and overhead the bats stirred and twittered restlessly in the unaccustomed yellow light.

“Come and
get
it!” shouted Randy, in the midst of it.

Out of doors a fire had been lighted on the ledge; the plates and cups were all set out, and Randy and Mona and Father were roasting hot dogs over the flames.

The party was a great success. The birthday candles dipped in the air, and Oliver liked all his presents. He was particularly fond of the creel Father had given him; the large supply of peanut-butter fudge contributed by Mr. Titus, and the set of willow whistles, all different sizes, made by Mark. And the Melendys' old friend, Mrs. Oliphant, had sent him a big, gorgeously illustrated book on moths.

Oliver, as usual on such occasions, grew pale and could not eat, but happiness was nourishment enough.

They stayed until the sun went down. And then a spooky thing happened. The bats began coming out of the cave. By dozens, in a steady stream, they dodged out between the juniper twigs, fluttered and swooped above the fire, circled and zigzagged in the twilight, with tiny, sharp squeaks. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and they flew close, close about the people on the ledge. They could feel the air fanned against their faces.

Mona threw herself flat on the ground and covered her head with her arms. Randy flung herself against Father and buried her face in his coat. Oliver flung himself against Cuffy, and Cuffy grabbed the first thing she saw, which happened to be a picnic basket, and put it on her head, with the handle under her chin.

“They never really do get into people's hair, Cuffy,” Father said. “It's just a superstition.”

But Cuffy refused to remove the basket. She sat there proudly with it on her head, one arm around Oliver, like some strange African tribeswoman or priestess. Only after every bat had disappeared would she take it off.

They had quite a time going down the hill in the dark. The lurching light of the flashlights made everything appear larger than before; and there was a great deal of slipping and stumbling. The tin cups and forks clattered in the picnic baskets, and Oliver got the hiccups. Everyone was relieved when they at last reached the road where Lorna Doone and the bicycles were waiting patiently.

But there was still more to Oliver's birthday. When they came home, they ate the ice cream. Then he said good night. Shortly afterward he came flying down the stairs in his underwear.