Family Sabbatical (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Carol Ryrie Brink

  “But certainly, madame, with ze greatest of pleasure.”

  “Then will you please have the bottle sent upstairs to our room in about fifteen minutes on a tray with five glasses?”

  “Certainly, madame,” said the waiter. “Will madame have it iced?”

  “Whatever is customary,” Mother said doubtfully.

  But Father was grinning as if he were beginning to enjoy himself. “Why, naturally,” he said. “We always have our champagne iced. Don’t you remember? Where have you been all these years, Mother?”

  “Why, of course we do,” said Mother, trying to look like one of the experienced persons that she described in her mystery novels.

  “But upstairs?” asked Susan and George. “Why upstairs?”

  “Because,” said Mother, “you are to put on your nightclothes and be all ready to get into bed in case the champagne should do anything dreadful to you.”

  “Goodness!” the children said, quite awed.

  So then they all filed solemnly upstairs to the big bedroom with the three beds. As soon as they were inside the room, however, they were once more overcome by the idea that George had won a bottle of champagne. The three children began to caper and shout and laugh and dance. When they were all in their pajamas they began bouncing and leaping from bed to bed and making a perfect hullaballoo. Even Susan bounced and leaped, and they all threw pillows and had a hilarious time.

  “I never heard of a champagne that took effect before it was drunk, did you?” Mrs. Ridgeway asked her husband anxiously.

  “No,” he replied, “but I’m sure the aftereffect cannot be any worse than this.”

  Just then there was a tap on the door. The riotous children paused in the midst of their fun and drew a long breath. Then they made a dive for their beds. Susan and Dumpling sat up breathless in one bed and George in another. Their eyes were wide and round as the waiter entered, pushing a little cart. On the cart were a tray with five glasses and a small bucket of ice. Out of the bucket of ice stuck the top of George’s bottle.

  “There it is!” said George.

  Professor Ridgeway gave the waiter a tip. The waiter went away with a wink of encouragement to the children.

  “Now,” said Professor Ridgeway, “does anybody know how to open this thing?”

  “Of course,” said Mother. “I’ve described it often enough in my books. You unfasten the wires that hold the cork to the bottle, and I think you’ll hardly need a corkscrew. The cork may fly right up and hit the ceiling.”

  It did indeed, to the great amazement of the children. George had to leap out of bed and retrieve the cork, because he wanted it for a souvenir. Mrs. Ridgeway carefully poured a small amount of the pale yellow sparkling liquid into each glass.

  “Now,” said Father, “before we drink, I should like to propose a toast.”

  “Toast?” said Dumpling. “How can we make toast?”

  “Hush,” said Susan, “this kind of a toast is something you say before you drink.”

  “To America, to France, to the Ridgeways!” said Father.

  Gravely the children repeated, “To America, to France, to the Ridgeways!”

  Then they all lifted their glasses and solemnly drank George’s champagne.

  “I really didn’t think it was very good,” said Dumpling later, as she settled down into bed. “It prickled behind my nose.”

  “Ginger ale is better,” said Susan.

  “No, root beer,” said George.

  “But still and all,” said Susan, “now we can say we’ve seen some of that French nightlife the guidebooks and novels rave about.”

  “Yes,” Mother said, “and now, when my characters drink champagne, I’ll know what it’s like myself.”

  So they all went to sleep as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened to them. But George went to sleep clutching the cork of the champagne bottle in his hand, and in the night he dreamed that it had turned into a rabbit—a very small one, but pleasantly alive and wriggling.

  The Last Castle

  There was only one more castle to visit before they reached Paris.

  “Only one more,” the children said, sighing.

  “But this is a very important one,” Father said. “It will be worth your while. It’s full of dungeons and torture chambers and wonderful oubliettes.”

  “What are oubliettes?” asked Dumpling. “I know omelets and a song about Allouette, but I don’t know oubliettes.”

  “They’re holes where they used to drop people in and forget about them, aren’t they, Daddy?” asked Susan.

  “In the good old days,” put in Mother.

  “Yes, Susan,” said Father, “I’m pleased to see that you’re learning a great deal about castles. You see, they had ordinary dungeons for ordinary prisoners, but when they really wanted to put someone away and not be bothered with him anymore, they put him in an oubliette. The oubliette was a deeper hole in the floor of the dungeon or it was a small dark cell in the wall of the castle. The very name oubliette means ‘little forgetting place,’ and prisoners who were unfortunate enough to be put into oubliettes rarely saw the light of day again.”

  “How did they eat?” asked George practically.

  “Why, every day,” said Father, “or at least whenever he remembered it, the jailer would lower a basket of bread and a jug of water down into the hole and the poor fellow would live on that.”

  “Weren’t there any doors or windows?” asked Dumpling.

  “No,” said Father, “the prisoners were let down by ropes from above. When the rope was drawn up again, there was no way of escape.”

  “Had these people done something so awful, Daddy?” Susan asked.

  “No,” Professor Ridgeway said. “Often the prisoner’s only fault was that he had offended or displeased the lord of the castle. But in those days the lord of the castle had the power of life and death over anyone in his realm.”

  “I don’t think it was very nice of him, Daddy,” Dumpling said.

  “No, no,” Father said, “not nice at all. We live in better days today—I hope. Still, I find this glimpse of the past very interesting, don’t you?”

  Up to a certain point all the Ridgeways did, even Dumpling. But Dumpling’s legs were short, and after a while her interest flagged.

  Nevertheless, this was a splendid castle. The wind was sharp, but the sun was shining as they climbed up to it. Clouds in a deep blue sky sailed over the towers and battlements and were reflected in the water of the moat. They stopped on the drawbridge over the moat, and two white swans came swimming toward them.

  “We should have saved some bread from breakfast to feed them,” Mother said.

  “I did,” said George, beginning to disentangle some pieces of bread from the many other things in his pockets.

  “How did you know we would see swans, George?” asked Susan.

  “Be prepared,” said George, who was a Boy Scout back in Midwest City.

  The swans seemed grateful for George’s foresight, and very soon all the bread was gone. Then the swans turned their backs on the Ridgeways and sailed away on the dark green water.

  “The swan on still Saint Mary’s lake float double, swan and shadow!” said Mother, which was probably something she had read in a book of poetry.

  “Come now,” said Father, “or we won’t have time for the tour of the castle.”

  There was quite a crowd of French people already assembled under the portcullis of the castle, waiting for the guide to show them around. These many old castles, which used to belong to the haughty and cruel lords, now belong to the people of France. They are cared for by the state, and the French people enjoy going to look at them and remembering the past.

  So the Ridgeways joined the end of the procession. But the guide was very helpful and friendly. When he saw that they were Americans and that Dumpling, especially, was quite small, he made the other people stand aside and let the Ridgeways come first.

  “So,” he explained, “ze leetle o
ne shall see all, and ze discourse which I give shall be made plain to you.”

  The other French people approved of this, and they smiled and nodded and patted Dumpling on the head.

  “Thank you very much,” Mother and Father said.

  There was only one disadvantage in being at the head of the procession. You could never lag behind, but must stand quietly and listen to everything the guide had to say, first in French and then in English. Soon Father began to ask a few intelligent questions, and the guide was so pleased to find someone who knew history that he talked and talked.

  First they went through many great empty rooms with enormous fireplaces of carved stone and with colored designs painted on the walls. Father and the guide together told how these rooms had once been furnished and who had been born or crowned or murdered in each one.

  They climbed little winding staircases into towers, and walked out on battlements where the defenders of the castle had poured down boiling oil.

  Dumpling began to yawn, and she said to Irene, “Never mind, dearie. Pretty soon we’ll get back to the hotel and I’ll put you to bed in a nice big bed with covers up to your chin.”

  When they had been to the tops of all the towers, they began to go down other winding stairs into the dungeons.

  “Didn’t they ever have elevators?” George asked Susan, and Susan said, “L’ascenseur ne marche pas, Shorsh.”

  Dumpling didn’t say anything, but after a while she got tired of carrying Irene in her arms, so she just held onto the doll’s hand and dangled her along beside her.

  But Father didn’t even notice that anyone was tired, because now they were coming to the oubliettes, and he was very eager to hear everything that the guide had to say. Mother was interested, too, but she remembered the children, and she said, “Now look out, children. Keep far enough away from the holes so you don’t fall in. I’d hate to have to stick around here for the rest of my life, letting down baskets of bread and water to you.”

  But there wasn’t any real danger, of course, because modern people had put guard rails around the edges of all the oubliettes. In fact, you could go and lean against the railing and look down, down, down, into the darkness and imagine what it would be like to be imprisoned there.

  “Ugh!” Susan said. “Horrible! I’ll bet there were rats.”

  “Well,” said George, “rats might be company for you if you had to spend the rest of your life down there. They say rats are smart. I bet I could train them if I was shut in with them. Maybe I could even train them to climb up the walls and bring me down a rope. I’d save some of my bread for them every day. After a while they’d get to trust me. First I’d start teaching them to—”

  But how George would begin to train his rats no one ever heard, for just then the air was rent by a piercing scream. A scream is a scream in any place or time, but it is particularly bloodcurdling when you are in a dungeon, with a torture chamber on one side of you, and a couple of oubliettes yawning on the other. Everybody looked around, and one or two impressionable ladies cried out in sympathy.

  “What is the matter?” cried the guide. “What is it that there is?”

  But Susan knew at once that the trouble was with Dumpling. Dumpling was usually very quiet and calm, but whenever she got into serious trouble, she let go with a howl that made the hair rise up and stand on end.

  “My child! My child!” shrieked Dumpling.

  “What is the matter? What is the matter?” cried all the French people. French people are very excitable, and also very sympathetic. They crowded around Dumpling with anxious looks.

  “Is it a pain in the interior which makes this child cry out?”

  “Perhaps it is a fear of the dark.”

  “Has someone a little bottle of smelling salts to offer her?”

  “Alas! Some terrible calamity must have arrived!”

  “My child! My child!” cried Dumpling between sobs. Tears streamed down her face.

  “Darling,” said Mother, “what has happened to you? What in the world is the matter?”

  “I think she has lost Irene,” said Susan.

  “Irene?” said Father. “Great heavens, this is a calamity!”

  “Speak, Dumpling darling,” said Mother. “Have you lost Irene?”

  Dumpling could only nod her head between sobs.

  “But she can’t be far from here,” Mother said. “You probably dropped her in the last corridor. We’ll go right back and see.”

  Dumpling only shook her head and sobbed afresh.

  Mother knelt down and put her arms about Dumpling. “Then where, dear? Where did you lose her?”

  “There,” sobbed Dumpling, pointing to the oubliette.

  “But how?” asked all the Ridgeways together.

  “I was holding her by the hand,” said Dumpling, sobbing, “and looking down the hole—and somebody joggled me—and she’s gone—”

  Some of the French people did not understand this conversation in English, and, believing that all Americans are very rich, they were soon convinced that a diamond ring or a pearl necklace had been lost. They began to scold the guide for not doing something quickly to put an end to the suffering of this darling little girl. Everybody talked or scolded or exclaimed at once.

  Father had a hard time explaining in French that it was only a doll that had been lost, but that it was a very particular and special doll. He explained that for many years Irene and Dumpling had never been separated, and he didn’t know if Dumpling could go on alone without Irene or not.

  The guide took his flashlight and cast its beam down into the dark depths of the oubliette. The little spot of light went around and around over the dark stones of the floor, and finally it lit up a bit of blue cloth, which was Irene’s dress. But she was very far down, out of everyone’s reach.

  “Is there no way of getting into this oubliette?” asked Father. Of course, he should have known there wasn’t, after all the books he had read on the subject, but still, one can always hope.

  “No, monsieur,” said the guide. “None.”

  There was an old French gentleman among the other sightseers, and he said in a calm voice, “Attendez un moment” which, as almost anyone might imagine, means “Wait a moment.” Old French gentlemen are very fond of fishing, and now this one took out of his pocket a reel of fishline with a hook on the end of it. “We shall see now what we shall see,” he said.

  Everyone stood back hopefully to watch, and even Dumpling stopped sobbing to watch, too. The guide flashed the light on the blue of Irene’s dress and the old gentleman dropped the fishhook over the railing and began to let out the line. Down it went, down it went, down it went. Now the hook had almost reached the bottom of the oubliette, but suddenly there was no more line to let out.

  “Alas,” said the old gentleman, “the line lacks length!”

  Everybody sighed deeply, and then the talking began again. Dumpling’s tears flowed afresh.

  “Wait,” said George. “Attendez un moment.”

  He drew out the assorted contents of one of his pockets, and there, among breadcrumbs and many other things, was a tangle of string. Amid cries of hope and encouragement, the string was untangled and tied to the end of the fishline, and now they were able to reach the bottom of the oubliette.

  “Courage!” cried the French people. “All is not yet lost.”

  “Kindly allow me a little elbow room,” the old fisherman said. Now began the delicate attempt to snag Irene’s dress with the fishhook.

  “Hush, hush!” said the people. “This is a matter of grave importance.”

  But there is this difference between a fish and a doll: a fish will swim up and swallow a hook, but a doll will only lie there and do nothing to help. The old gentleman tried and tried to catch Irene. Then other people tried, including the guide and George and Professor Ridgeway. The hook would hover directly over Irene’s dress, but no one could make it catch.

  Gradually people began to lose interest and wander away. The
old gentleman wound his fishline back on the reel. When he put it back in his pocket, he found a small hard candy wrapped in silver paper there, and he gave the candy to Dumpling.

  “Thank you,” Dumpling said.

  And now the guide could not wait any longer. “I regret, monsieur,” said the guide, “but I must finish the tour of the castle. Is it not possible to buy this little girl another doll?”

  Father explained that there was no other doll like Irene anywhere in the world. She had been made of cloth by Grandma Ridgeway many years ago.

  “Then, monsieur,” said the guide, “this Grand Mahraja, he must make once more another doll for you.”

  “But the pattern was lost,” said Susan, and Dumpling sobbed, “And anyway, it wouldn’t be Irene.”

  “Listen, monsieur,” said Mother to the guide. “Do you never clean house in this place? I mean, do you never let someone down to dust and clean it out? Surely you clean house once a year.”

  “Ah,” said the guide thoughtfully, “yes, madame has reason. Indeed it is so. Once in a long time there is a man let down to clean the oubliette. At that time there are ladders and ropes. At that time one could easily rescue the doll of the small mademoiselle.”

  “How soon will that be?” asked Father.

  “Monsieur, I regret I cannot tell you,” said the guide sadly. “But, if you will give me the little one’s name and address, I will make a note of it. One day in the future, perhaps, we shall be able to return the doll to the unfortunate little mother.”

  The guide took a card from his pocket and wrote Dumpling’s name on it. Father spelled it for him very carefully, and gave him the address of the American Express Company, which forwarded their mail to them no matter where they were traveling.

  Dumpling stood by, looking pale and wan. She was not crying, but she was very sad. “Daddy,” she said, “are we going to leave her down there?”

  “Honey,” Father said, “I don’t know what else we can do.”

  “As soon as they can, they’ll send her to you, Dumpling,” Susan said.

  “If I had a real long ladder—” George said. “Or if I’d had a chance to train a rat—”