Half Magic (12 page)

"It's good for a growing boy, having a man around the house," said Mark.

"I've always wished I had a father," said Martha.

Jane began to storm. "Do you really think he could ever take Father's place? Him and his old beard! Don't you know what stepfathers always turn out to be like, once the fatal deed is done? Don't you remember Mr. Murdstone? Oh!" she cried, glaring round at them all. "It's no use! You don't understand! I wish..."

She broke off in alarm, remembering the charm. Then, a prey to utter recklessness, she plunged her hand into her pocket, grasped the charm firmly, and went on. "Yes, I do! I wish I belonged to some other family! I wish it twice!"

Mark and Katharine and Martha gasped. This was the worst thing that had happened yet. They hardly dared look at Jane, for fear she might start turning into someone else before their eyes.

But when they did look, there stood the same brown-haired, blue-eyed, snub-nosed Jane they had grown to know and love through the years. Nothing seemed to have happened. Maybe nothing had. Mark decided to find out.

"Look here, old Jane-ice," he said, putting his hand on her arm and using a pet name that was reserved for unusual serious moments. "You didn't mean it, did you?"

"You let me go, you bully!" remarked a prim, lady-like voice none of the children had ever heard before in their lives. "You horrid big boy! I don't like boys! And I don't like
you!
"

"Oh!" cried Martha, turning pale. "She doesn't know us!"

"Of course she does," said Katharine. "You know
me,
don't you, dear? Kathie, that you've been through thick and thin with?"

"No. I don't know you and I don't wish to. Your frock is soiled," said the voice that, to their horror, seemed to be coming out of Jane. "My mama told me never to play with strange children."

Martha began to sniff.

"What an insanitary little girl," said the voice. "Tell her to use a handkerchief. She'll give me a germ."

"Oh, what's the matter with her?" Martha's voice rose to a wail.

"It's not her fault," Katharine said, trying to be reassuring for Martha's sake. "It's the way she's been brought up, I suppose. By that other family she belongs to, now. It
does
show what a good influence we've been, doesn't it? She was lots nicer under our tender care."

"I don't believe it," said Mark. "She's just trying to fool us, aren't you, Jane-ice?"

"Don't call me that," said the voice. "That's not my name."

"All right, then," said Mark, turning on her suddenly. "If that isn't your name, what is?"

The strange girl who looked like Jane, yet was Jane no longer, seemed startled for a moment, as if she weren't quite sure of the answer. Then her face cleared.

"My mother calls me her Little Comfort," she said.

Mark made a gagging noise.

Katharine looked disgusted. "To think one of us should have come to this!" she mourned.

"It would be an errand of mercy to put the poor thing out of her misery," Mark agreed.

She-who-was-no-longer-Jane was staring around the room.

"I don't like this house," she said. "The furnishings are in poor taste. It is gaudy." Her lower lip began to tremble. "I want to go home."

"Oh, you do, do you?" said Mark. "Well, I can fix that. No sooner said than done." And he made a dive for the pocket where he knew the charm lay concealed.

But She (who was no longer Jane) pulled away, and gave him a surprisingly hard slap for such a miminy-piminy, ladylike type.

"Take that!" she cried. "You are a thief, as well as a bully!" She glared round at them all. "You are a lot of badly-brought-up children. You kidnapped me, and then tried to rob me. I'm going to tell my mother!"

And with these words, she flounced out into the hall and started down the stairs. By the time the others had recovered from their shock and dashed after her, she was in the act of mincing out the front door.

Mark and Katharine took the stairs three at a time. Martha used the banister. But in the lower hall Miss Bick leaped forth and barred the way.

"No, you don't!" she said. "Not a soul leaves this house until the table's set for lunch!"

There was nothing the children could do about this, and nothing that they felt prepared to say. They didn't even point out that Jane had already left. As Katharine said afterwards, the way Jane was acting, right then she probably didn't
have
a soul!

But never was table set with such wild abandon, never did silver fly through the air with such great ease as it then flew. Hardly more than one precious minute had been wasted in idle drudgery before Mark and Katharine and Martha rushed out the front door and down the steps onto the sidewalk, and stood scanning the offing in all directions.

Far down Maplewood Avenue they could just make out a genteel figure in Jane's dress, picking its way along and toeing out in a way that the real Jane would have scorned to be seen doing in public. As they watched, the figure turned to the right, into Virginia Street.

And as they started to dash after it, a car drove up before the house, and Mr. Smith got out and held the door open for their mother.

"Company for lunch!" tl^eir mother called, blushing pink and looking embarrassed and pretty. "Where's Jane?"

The three children looked at each other and then quickly looked away again.

"We don't know,
exactly
," said Katharine.

"We think she's visiting somebody over on Virginia Street," said Mark, hoping that he spoke the truth, and that She (who was all that was left of Jane) had not strayed farther.

"Well, go and get her," said their mother, taking some interesting-looking packages from the car. "This is a party."

The three children looked at the ground, hopelessly.

"Or wait," their mother went on, not noticing. "You all go in the car and pick her up; that'll be quicker. I'll be breaking the news to Miss Bick about the party." And she started toward the house, her arms loaded with packages.

Mark and Katharine and Martha waited till she was safely inside. Then they turned to Mr. Smith and all started to speak at once. Then they stopped and looked at each other again.

"Shall we tell him?" Katharine asked.

"Yes." Mark nodded decisively. "There comes a time in the affairs of men, and this is it."

"I
said
we ought to, all along," said Martha. "I said he'd know what to do. This'll prove it."

And she and Mark and Katharine all piled into the front seat of the car and began telling Mr. Smith about the dread events of the morning. They didn't go into the reason for Jane's upset, though, or the way she felt about stepfathers, out of consideration for his feelings.

And Mr. Smith didn't waste time in unnecessary questions. ("Which proves," said Mark to Katharine, afterward, "that he would make an ideal step, and not Murdstone at all!") He started the motor, and the car shot down Maplewood and turned into Virginia Street.

She-who-was-no-longer-Jane was no longer to be seen.

"She must be in this block somewhere," said Katharine. "She hasn't had time to walk any farther."

"What do we do now?" said Martha.

"The question is moot," said Mark. "She could be in any one of these houses."

"We could holler 'Fire!' and everyone would come running out," suggested Katharine.

"Let's not have any more fires or running." Martha shuddered, remembering certain past experiences. "Let's knock at all the doors and ask them if they want to subscribe to the
Literary Digest.
"

"That's no good," said Mark, who had done this one summer to try to earn spending money. "All they ever say is 'No,' and shut the door."

Martha turned to Mr. Smith. "It's up to you," she said trustingly.

Mr. Smith looked pleased and touched. He also looked a little nervous, as though he were hoping he might live up to their trust. He cleared his throat.

"Well," he said, "first of all, does any of these houses look like the kind of house the family of that kind of girl would live in?"

Mark and Katharine and Martha stared up and down the block. Luckily it was a short one, with only eight houses in it, four on each side of the street. Almost all the houses looked very much like their own—comfortable, slightly shabby, family sort of houses, with an easy-to-get-along-with, lived-in look.

All but one.

The eighth house was made of cold-looking gray stone, and sat primly on an impossibly neat emerald lawn that was shut off from the street by a forbidding hedge of evergreens. A small sign on the lawn said "Please." The walk to the front door was of bright blue gravel, edged with some boring plants that looked as though they had never blossomed and didn't intend to. There were no croquet wickets on the lawn and no bicycles or kiddy-cars sitting around, the way there were in front of most of the other houses.

"That's the one." Mark was positive. "It has to be. It looks just like her."

He and Katharine and Martha and Mr. Smith got out of the car and advanced stealthily up the street till they stood confronting the gray stone house. No one was in sight. From within came the sound of someone practicing a difficult piece upon the piano.

"That couldn't be Jane," said Martha. "She hates practice."

"I bet she doesn't now," said Mark.

"We'd better not let her see
us
" said Katharine. She doesn't seem to like us very well any more."

"If her new family's anything like her, I don't think
they'll
like us either," said Mark. He turned to Mr. Smith. "I guess it's still up to you, sir."

Mr. Smith cleared his throat nervously again. "All right," he said. "I'll try."

So Mark and Katharine and Martha hid behind the evergreen hedge, and Mr. Smith, after checking to make sure that no telltale parts of them were exposed to the public gaze, squared his shoulders and marched bravely up the blue gravel walk and knocked on the front door with the imitation antique brass knocker.

When She-who-was-no-longer-Jane turned out of Maplewood into Virginia Street, she went straight to the gray stone house and up the blue gravel walk, and in at the front door. After all, this was her house and she belonged to this family now.

She went in at the front door and up the front stairs to what was now her room. There were handwoven curtains of a cold gray at the windows, and the walls were painted in the same colorless tint. There were no colored pictures on the walls, only sepia prints of Sir Galahad and a lady called Hope. The bookshelves were full of heavy, instructive-looking books, and no toys or games, only a few sets of the helpful kind that show you how to weave linen and tool leather in six easy lessons.

She-who-was-no-longer-Jane sat down on an uncomfortable imitation antique chair and began looking at one of the instructive books. She did this as though it were perfectly natural and as though she'd been doing nothing else for years, but all the same, deep down inside her, she felt strangely empty and uncomfortable, as though she didn't belong in this prim gray room at all.

After a bit, deciding she didn't feel like being instructed just now, she put down the book and took a round, shining object from her pocket. She sat staring at it for a long while. In a dim way her mind connected it with the empty, uncomfortable feeling that seemed to hang over her, but she couldn't remember why the shiny thing made her feel lonely and unhappy.

Of course the trouble was that when she wished to belong to another family, she hadn't said a thing about not being Jane any longer. And so she had become the girl Jane would have been if she had been brought up in this cold, gray house. But down inside her somewhere, the real Jane was still struggling to exist. This is called heredity versus environment, and it is quite a struggle.

After she had been sitting by herself (or by her two selves) for a few minutes, a lady appeared in the door. She was dressed in a gown of sober gray wool.

"Why, here you are!" she cried. "Mother has been worried. She couldn't find her Little Comfort anywhere!"

"I was playing," said She-who-was-now-part-Jane and-part-Mother's-Little-Comfort (only from now on I think it will save time if we just think of her as She).

"Where were you playing?" said the gray lady. "You weren't in the solarium and you weren't in the patio!"

"I was around the corner. I was playing with some children."

"But we don't know anyone around the corner," said the gray lady in alarm. "Mother wants you to have fresh air and exercise, of course, but one can't be too careful about speaking to strangers! Were they nice children?"

She hesitated. "
You
wouldn't like them," She said, finally, hanging her head and looking closer at the round shining thing in her hand.

"Really, Comfort, you are not behaving like yourself today!" said the lady, reproachfully.

"I know it," said She, unhappily.

"Haven't I told you always to look at me when I am speaking to you?" the lady went on. "What is that you have in your hand?"

"I don't know. I found it."

"Let me see," said the lady. She took the shining thing in her own hand. "But this is very interesting! It seems to be some kind of ancient talisman. See, there is writing on it, but I don't recognize the language. It is not Greek or Latin. Probably it is Sanskrit. Father will translate it for us when he comes home. And now how would you like to take a nice nap until dinnertime?"

Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha had all scorned naps for years, and the small remnant of Jane that was still there somewhere, buried under layers, of Little Comfort, rose to the surface. "I wouldn't like it at all," She said.

"But you always have a nap at this hour!" cried the lady.

"Do I?" said She, her heart sinking. "Couldn't I dig some worms and go fishing instead?"

The lady looked shocked. "Why, Comfort! You know fishing is cruel, except when necessary to provide food, and we are all vegetarians here!"

"Build a block fort and have a war with toy soldiers?" suggested She, faintly.

"Why, Comfort!" cried the lady again. "There are no toy soldiers in this house! They are symbols of world militarism, and not suitable playthings! I can't think what has come over you today! It must be the influence of those bad children! No, let us go down to the drawing room and put this ancient talisman in the curio cabinet, and then you can practice your new piece till Father comes."