Half Magic (13 page)

The remnant of Jane that still existed didn't like seeing the round shining thing go out of her possession at all, and she didn't much want to practice a new piece either. And she had her doubts about a house in which naps were taken and bright colors were shunned, and things that were ordinary and fun were made to seem ugly and wicked. But She dejectedly followed the gray lady out of the room and down the stairway into the drawing room, which was large and cold and grey, and took her seat on the piano stool.

And it turned out that practicing on the piano, which was always sheer torment to Jane in the past, was a mere cinch now. She played away primly and perfectly, while the gray lady sat in a stiff chair of carved oak, and looked at a magazine called
The Outlook.

This went on for what seemed like years, and the last trace of Jane was just beginning to think it might as well die away forever when there was an interruption. Someone knocked at the front door.

"Who could that be?" said the lady. "Father would use his key, and we never have visitors here."

"I bet you don't!" thought the small spark of Jane, with a last flicker of life.

The lady went to the front door and opened it. A rather small gentleman stood outside. He wore a pointed beard and a nervous expression.

"Good afternoon, madam," he said, putting one hand behind his back as though he were crossing his fingers (which he was). "I am writing a book on child psychology, and I hear you have a very intelligent daughter. I wonder if I might interview her?"

"How interesting!" cried the lady. "I have made a life study of child psychology myself!"

"You have?" said the small gentleman, looking more nervous.

"Yes. What method do you follow, the Schwartz-Metterklume or the Brontossori?"

The small gentleman looked as if he wished he were somewhere else. "I have my own method," he said. "You wouldn't have heard of it."

"But how interesting!" cried the lady. "You must come in and tell me all about it." And she led the small gentleman through the gray hall into the gray drawing room.

Outside, Katharine leaned out from her evergreen hiding place. "Psst," she said.

"Come on," said Mark, from behind his.

And followed by Martha, they crossed the emerald lawn and mounted the front steps of the house. The lady had left the front door ajar in her excitement, and standing in the hallway the children could hear everything that happened in the drawing room perfectly.

"Of course we wouldn't want any publicity," the lady was saying. "You won't use her real name in the book, will you?"

"Naturally not," said the voice of Mr. Smith (for of course the small gentleman was he). "I shall call her chapter The Jane Case."

Mark and Katharine and Martha heard a gasp, as though the name had meant something to someone in the room.

"Unless of course that is her name?" Mr. Smith's voice went on.

"Oh, no," said the voice of the lady. "We call her Comfort, but her name is Iphigenia."

"If a what?" said Katharine to Mairk, in the front doorway.

"Shush," said Mark to Katharine.

"I see," came the voice of Mr. Smith, from the drawing room. "How do you do, Iphigenia? Do you believe in magic?"

"Oh no," came the voice of the lady, before She could answer. "I'm afraid your method is a bit old-fashioned. Iphigenia has never believed in magic, or anything else untrue."

"How sad for her," said the voice of Mr. Smith. "However, what
are
her interests? Does she collect anything, perhaps?"

"Why, yes," said the lady, before She could answer again. "She collects objects of art. Only this afternoon she brought home a rare old talisman!"

In the doorway Martha pinched Katharine. "The charm!" she hissed.

"Shush," Katharine hissed back.

"You don't say?" Mr. Smith's voice sounded excited. "I wonder if I might see if for a moment?"

"I don't see why not," came the voice of the lady. Her footsteps could be heard, crossing the room, and the suspense was more than Mark and Katharine and Martha could bear. They moved across the hall to see what was happening.

The floor of the hall was highly polished and there were some little gray hand-hooked rugs scattered about on it. Martha tripped on one of the rugs, slipped on the floor, and fell into the drawing room with a crash, just as the lady was turning from the curio cabinet with the charm in her hand and Mr. Smith was reaching out his own eager hand to take it. Mark and Katharine followed Martha into the room.

"Hello," said She, smiling at them. After half an hour in the gray house, She liked their looks better than she had at their last meeting. She turned to the gray lady. "These are the children I was playing with this afternoon."

"Well, I'm afraid they are very rude children," said the lady, recovering from her surprise. She looked at Mark and Katharine and Martha sternly. "In this house we don't walk in the front door without being asked. I think you had better go home at once. Iphigenia doesn't want to see you."

"Oh yes, she does, if she only knew it!" said Mark bravely, advancing into the room. "Let me take that charm a minute and I'll prove it. It belongs to us anyway!"

"If you mean this rare old Sanskrit talisman," said the lady, "it certainly does not. It belongs to my Iphigenia."

"She's not yours; she's ours," said Martha, getting up from the floor.

"Her name isn't what you said; it's Jane," said Katharine.

"She doesn't live here; she lives over on Maplewood," said Mark.

"Not another word," said the lady. "Such awful fibbing I never heard! You are either the worst-brought-up children I have ever seen or you are all mentally unbalanced! I'm afraid I shall have to telephone your parents!"

"No, don't do that!" said Mr. Smith, coming forward anxiously. "I'm afraid this is all my fault. I'm afraid I asked these children to come. Just a little experiment, you know. All part of my method."

"Then I don't think much of it," said the lady, getting really cross. "I don't believe you are a child psychologist at all, or if you are, you shouldn't be allowed to be! I shall write to the
Psychology Journal
and complain!"

"Very well. You're right. I'm not," said Mr. Smith, giving up. "But don't be alarmed; I can explain everything. Only it's a long story; so if you'd just let me have that charm..."

"So that's it!" cried the lady. "I see it all now! It's a plot! Coming here pretending to be writing a book, and all the time trying to steal our art treasures! For shame, taking advantage of these unfortunate children!"

"No, no," said Mr. Smith, becoming agitated. "This is all a mistake. That little girl isn't who you think she is at all."

"You wouldn't like her if you got to know her," put in Katharine earnestly. "You would find her a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"She's my sister, only she has what-d'you-call-'ems," said Mark.

"Hallucinations," explained Mr. Smith.

"We want to take her where they'll be kind to her," said Martha. "Jane, Jane, come on home out of this cold, slippery house!"

The remnant of Jane, down in the heart of Iphigenia, heard Martha's call. She thought how much happier she felt with Martha and Mark and Katharine, yes, and Mr. Smith, too, than she did with the gray lady. She remembered her own home and her own family, and wished she belonged to them again. She yearned to answer Martha. And she made a great effort, and forced her way to the surface and started to speak.

But before she could there was an interruption. A thin, gray gentleman appeared in the drawing room.

"Yarworth! Here you are at last!" cried the gray lady. "This criminal, aided by these delinquent children, was trying to rob our Iphigenia!"

"Dear me," said the gray gentleman, retreating slightly. "Are you sure?"

"Don't just stand there!" cried the lady. "Defend us! What will Iphigenia think of her father?"

What Iphigenia would have thought of her father will probably never be known. For at that moment Mr. Smith, having had quite enough of both Iphigenia and her parents, decided to act.

"I'm sorry to appear rude, madam, but you'll be glad of it afterwards," he said. "At least I hope so."

And he snatched the charm from the lady's hand, took a deep breath, and wished that Jane might be twice as much Jane as she ever was.

Jane, finding herself suddenly herself again, gave a glad cry and ran, much to the surprise of Mark and Katharine and Martha, straight to Mr. Smith.

"You were wonderful," she said. "Part of me was here all along, hoping you'd save me, and you did! You were wonderful!"

"It was nothing," said Mr. Smith, modestly.

"We told you so," said Mark and Katharine to Jane.

They had run to Mr. Smith, too, and so had Martha, and now the five of them stood united, looking defiantly at the gray lady and the gray gentleman.

The lady was blinking her eyes. The gentleman was rubbing his. They looked rather like two people who have just awakened from a nightmare.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" demanded the gray lady. "What are you doing in our house? Go away at once!"

"This isn't your little girl, then?" asked Mr. Smith, with his arm around Jane.

The lady looked at Jane with distaste. "I never saw the horrid little thing before in my life!"

"You don't even
have
a little girl, perhaps?" went on Mr. Smith.

"Certainly not," the lady said thankfully. "So noisy and tiresome and such a strain!"

"Then if we take her away with us, it will be quite all right with you?"

"If you don't all leave this house at once, my husband will take steps! Won't you, Yarworth?" said the gray lady.

The gray gentleman took a step backwards in alarm. He did not reply.

"Thank you, madam. That's all I wanted to know," said Mr. Smith. And bowing politely, he touched the charm and made another wish.

Of course if he had asked the four children's advice, they could have told him how to word his second wish much better.

As it was, being new to magic, he didn't put in any of the things experience had taught them, like not being gone too long, and arriving back in a normal way, and their mother's not noticing anything out of the ordinary. He just wished they were twice as far as home again.

And so, a split second later, when the children's mother came into the living room and it was empty, and then suddenly Mr. Smith and the four children were all sitting around it in chairs, she was more than a bit surprised.

"How funny!" she said. "I didn't see you sitting there. I didn't hear a car drive up, either."

She glanced out of the window, and it was then that Mr. Smith remembered that his car was still sitting back on Virginia Street, where he'd parked it, what seemed like ages ago.

He touched the charm in his pocket, and made a quick wish, but not quick enough. When the children's mother looked from the window, first she saw the empty street, then suddenly the car was sitting there.

She put her hand to her head and sat down suddenly.

"I really must go to the doctor about my eyes," she said. "I keep thinking I see the strangest things!"

"It's the sun," said Mr. Smith. "It's awfully strong today."

"
I
've been thinking I saw some awfully strange things this morning, too. Over on Virginia Street," said Mark, daringly, with a wink at Mr. Smith and Jane.

Martha giggled.

"Luncheon is served," said Miss Bick sourly from the doorway, and they all trooped in to where the festive board groaned.

The luncheon party was a great success with the four children, but their mother seemed a bit worried and preoccupied, and kept putting her hand to her forehead as if she were trying to puzzle something out, and this seemed to make Mr. Smith a bit worried, too.

The spirits of the children were so very high, however, that their mother couldn't stay upset for long. And the behavior of Jane, in particular, was enough to warm any mother's faltering heart.

She was so unselfish about second helpings, so eager to pass things without being asked, so tireless in her efforts not to accept the last extra butterscotch tart, lying luscious under its whipped cream, but to bestow it on a friend or relation, so anxious generally to show how much she loved this family above all others, that no one could believe it was the usual good old hasty hot-tempered Jane who sat there among them.

"That charm certainly does improve people, once they've been through the mill of it," Katharine whispered to Mark.

"Whispers at the table shall breakfast in the stable," said their mother.

"Kath was only saying Jane certainly was full of charm this morning," said Mark, with another daring wink at the others.

"Yes, you'd almost think she were a different person!" said Katharine, equally daring.

Martha giggled. So, I regret to say, did Mr. Smith.

"What's the joke?" said the children's mother.

"Oh, nothing," said the four children.

"I'm just feeling happy," said Mr. Smith. "This is a treat for me. I live all alone, you know, and it's years since I've been to a family party like this."