Loretta Mason Potts

by Mary Chase

  He saw what looked like smoke. It was mist rising from a little stream and there was a stone bridge across the stream. He put out his hand and touched the stone railing of the bridge! He had to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. It was very cold. Listen! There was that tinkling music again!

  As he crossed the bridge he felt the strangest sensation, a melting, dizzy feeling like a merry-go-round, or like the sudden drop of an elevator in a tall building.

  Suddenly the feeling stopped. And Colin’s eyes popped open at what he saw now. He was over the bridge and looking up at a great lighted house. Before him curved a wide stairway of stone, curving round and round and up and up.

  The staircase looked as if it was striped black and white, like a zebra, but that was because of the lights and shadows which fell across it. There were tall trees planted at the edge of it, and the shadows of the trees fell across the steps, except where the white light of the moon lay between them.

  He crept up those steps, one black step, one white step, and at the top were the warm yellow lights of the rooms inside that big house.

  He saw a great metal door with a lion’s head on it. That was the knocker.

  Now he was looking through the curtains into a richly furnished room. There was a fire burning merrily in a fireplace, soft white rugs on the floors, little gilt tables, sofas and chairs upholstered in rose and blue velvet. But there was not one person in that room.

  The little tables had silver coffeepots and cups and saucers stacked beside them. The room looked as though it were waiting for a party. Sometimes he could hear music. Sometimes he couldn’t.

  Oh! Didn’t that fire look good and that white rug look soft! His feet were so cold and he was shivering in his pajamas and bathrobe. The window was open. So he threw one leg over the sill, felt the warm white rug under one bare foot. With his heart beating he climbed all the way inside. There was no one here! Softly he hurried over to the fireplace and warmed his hands, held out first one foot and then the other, all the time watching the door across the room, a big double door painted in white and gold.

  The music seemed to be coming from there. Whenever it stopped he heard the clapping of many hands. Then it would begin again. He looked up.

  From the ceiling hung crystal chandeliers, sparkling like dewdrops in the sun. In a corner, there was a gold piano.

  “Gee,” he thought, “a gold piano. Who owns this house?”

  But at that moment, he saw the doors opening and he ran quickly and hid behind the velvet drapery at the window. Now many people came pouring into the room. They were all dressed in party clothes. The ladies were wearing lace and satin gowns in many colors. The men were wearing black suits with long tails and white shirt fronts.

  They were all laughing and talking and buzzing like a swarm of bees. One woman in a blue lace dress with a long gold chain went over to the gold piano and began to play. A man in a red and white uniform with gold things at his shoulder went over to turn the pages of the music for her. He had a sword at his side and when he bowed the sword stuck out behind and it looked like a rooster bending down to pick up corn in a barnyard.

  The ladies sat on the little sofas, poured coffee into the cups and handed them gracefully to the gentlemen. It was a big party in a big rich house. But whose house?

  It must be, Colin decided, the house of Mrs. Alfred Van Hummelwhite. He had never seen it but he had heard his mother say it was the richest house in town. His mother had been there to a party once and she had told them there was a fountain and a pool in the middle of a room where fish swam. He would like to see this pool before he left here.

  Just then the lady with the gold chain stopped playing the piano. She stood up and raised one hand. The buzzing noise stopped. The ladies handing the cups, held them in the air. The gentlemen reaching for them stopped with their fingers outstretched—very still.

  “General,” she spoke to the man with the sword, “and ladies and gentlemen. I feel there is a stranger here.”

  The ladies and gentlemen jumped to their feet. A murmur of voices rose. “A stranger here—where?”

  The man with the sword—the General—now raised his hand.

  “Please,” he said. Then he pulled the glittering sword from its sheath. “The Countess must be informed immediately. The ladies will kindly withdraw. The gentlemen will follow me.”

  Led by the woman in the blue dress the ladies ran across the room and through the double white doors. The gentlemen lined up behind the General, and Colin saw them all walk to the velvet draperies of a window across the room. He saw the General place one white-gloved hand on one hip and hold the sword low. He heard him cry out as he faced the velvet curtain, “Rascal! Come forth on the count of three. One—two—three—en garde!”

  Then he lunged forward, plunged the sword into the velvet drapery and withdrew it and held it high and glittering. “What! No blood! He is not there!”

  Then he went to the next window and did and said the same things at the next drapery.

  Colin’s heart pounded in excitement as he watched. And he felt a little wave of disappointment each time the General held forth the gleaming sword and cried, “No blood.”

  The procession moved around the room. It was not until they were only three windows away from him that Colin realized they were looking for him!

  He wanted to run out of the draperies and cry out, “Stop! I’m Colin Mason and my mother knows Mrs. Van Hummelwhite. So put up your sword.” But he found he could not move. His legs might have been made of lead. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and his backbone felt like water. They were so close now he could see the little wrinkles around the General’s fierce blue eyes and he could even see the faces on the medals he wore on his chest. He could hear him breathe and hear his knees creak as he lunged forward. And just as Colin thought that he would be run through with the sword surely, he saw the General stop moving. The heads of the gentlemen turned. Colin heard a clang, clang noise outside and saw the ladies running in excitement out of the ballroom, their silk dresses rustling.

  “She,” said the General, “is at the door. Our tunnel is a successful piece of engineering. Bravo!”

  Then Colin saw the most surprising sight he had seen in this long night of surprises. He saw his sister, Loretta Mason Potts, walk into the room in her nightgown and her old sweater with the torn sleeve and at the sight of her he saw the most radiant smiles come over the faces of all the grand and beautiful people in this rich and beautiful room. The women cried out in joy and the gentlemen bowed from the waist. The General sheathed his sword.

  “It’s Loretta,” they cried and rushed forward. “Tell the Countess it’s Loretta.”

  They all crowded around her with excited little cries. The ladies patted her shoulders. The gentlemen beamed and smiled at her tenderly. For a moment there was such a crowd around her Colin could not see her. Then he saw her push her way rudely through them.

  “Stop pawing,” she said, “and go get lost.”

  Colin felt ashamed. How ashamed his mother would be if she could see one of her children talking so rudely at Mrs. Van Hummelwhite’s party! He waited to see the faces frown and the smiles fade.

  To his surprise they all laughed in great delight. “How refreshing,” they cried. “Get lost! But how utterly, utterly amusing!”

  The General bowed over Loretta’s hand. “You are never dull,” he said. “Let me escort you to a chair.”

  And he took her by the hand as though she had been a great and beautiful lady, wearing satin, and not a long white nightgown and an old sweater with a hole in the elbow, and he led her to the prettiest sofa of all, close to the fireplace, and sat her beside the table which had the most silver trays with the fanciest cakes.

  As he saw Loretta reach forth a grubby hand for one of the cakes, Colin sighed with relief. Bad as she was, she had managed to save him. They had stopped the search. But he sighed too soon. The lady in the blue dress with the gold chain spoke again. “General, I st
ill feel there is a stranger here.” But the General did not hear her.

  “My friends,” and he drew himself up very straight, “the Countess approaches.”

  Everybody got to their feet—even his sister, Loretta Mason Potts.

  The big double doors were flung open and the music played softly as into the room walked, very slowly, the most beautiful creature Colin had ever seen. She did not walk but seemed to float. And you knew when you watched her that nothing in the world could make her hurry—not even a flame of fire pursuing her.

  Her hair was gold and glistened under the chandeliers, first dull gold, then bright gold. Her dress was red satin, made of so many tiny ruffles that between steps it looked smooth and when she moved again it broke into little ripples like the tiny ripples on a pond. On her feet were red satin slippers with diamond buckles and her face— her face was so beautiful—it looked among all of the other faces like a bright star dropped from the heavens, sparkling on dull, brown earth.

  It wasn’t only that her eyes were so big and blue and the lashes so long and black or her skin so soft and white, it was that her whole face seemed to say something. No matter what words came out of her mouth, you didn’t hear them because always her face said the same thing. It said, “How wonderful you are! How long I have waited for you!” And it said this to Colin, hiding behind the velvet curtains.

  He wanted to run out and cry, “Here I am. It’s me. Look! Look!”

  Surely the toymaker who had made Irene Irene Lavene had seen this face in a dream and tried to copy it. But he had failed.

  The Countess was much more beautiful than Irene Irene Lavene. And now she was floating ever so gracefully over to where Loretta stood. She put out a white hand and smoothed Loretta’s new page-boy bob.

  “My dear child,” she said and smiled tenderly, “how I have missed you! You have not been here since night before last.” Then she took Loretta’s hand and led her to another sofa, just big enough for two, and Colin wished she had taken his hand. She smoothed a place beside her on the sofa for Loretta to sit and Colin wished she had been smoothing this place for him. Then she waved the lacy little fan in her hand around Loretta’s head gently, gently, and she drew her head onto her own shoulder and said, “There, there there.”

  Loretta laid her head on the Countess’s shoulder, and for the first time Colin saw his sister look happy.

  The General spoke. “We greeted her, Countess, and she said, ‘Stop pawing me. Get lost.”’

  The Countess threw back her head and laughed a silvery, tinkling laugh. “How very amusing!” She waved her little fan. “How utterly, utterly refreshing!”

  And all of them laughed gaily again as Loretta grinned and kicked her feet back and forth.

  Then the Countess made a little signal and the ladies sat down as close to Loretta and the Countess as they could get. The gentlemen stood.

  “Tell us,” said the Countess, “about these strange people who tried to steal you away from us and our castle on the hill.”

  “Well,” began Loretta, “there are four of them. Colin and Kathy and Jerry and Sharon.”

  “Write down those names, General,” ordered the Countess, and the General took a little pad from his pocket and with a little gold pencil he wrote down the names.

  “The first one again, please?”

  “The oldest boy is named Colin,” said Loretta, “and he gets A in everything.”

  The Countess fanned herself. “How dull,” she said. Dull? Colin felt a wave of shame pass over him.

  “The next one,” continued Loretta, as she munched a cake, “is Kathy, short for Kathleen, and she hangs up her clothes every night and she’s quite a little lady.”

  The Countess yawned, “What a bore!”

  “The next one,” said Loretta, “is Jerry, and he plays with guns all the time.”

  The Countess sat upright. “He does.” Her eyes sparkled. “How fascinating!”

  “Oh, they’re not real guns. They’re only play guns,” Loretta explained.

  The General bristled. “Not real guns!” His face grew red, “Surely, Countess, you do not insist I write the name of this—this impostor in my personal book.”

  “Of course not, General,” the Countess laughed, “Don’t be absurd. Go on.”

  “The youngest is named Sharon and when she met me she said, ‘If you sock me—I’ll sock you.”’

  “Delightful,” said the Countess. “Do put that name in your book, General. I like it.”

  “Now who else?” she asked Loretta. “Isn’t there someone else?”

  “No,” said Loretta. “That’s all.”

  The Countess took her hand. “I seem to feel there is someone else.”

  Loretta dropped her eyes. “Well, there’s Mother.”

  “Yes,” the Countess exchanged a look with the others, and then she put her hand under Loretta’s chin, “and what about her?”

  “Well,” Loretta finally spoke, but her voice was low and she had trouble getting out the words. “She looks after the children—and well—that’s all I guess.”

  “Oh, no,” and the Countess smoothed Loretta’s hair again, “I feel there is something more to it.”

  “Well,” and here Loretta sat upright, “she said I couldn’t play with that doll. That I could never play with that doll.”

  The Countess yawned. “How ordinary of her! How very dull!”

  “She said,” and here Loretta seemed to be arguing with herself, “that she’d promised Kathy and people should always keep promises.”

  Colin saw everybody throw back their heads and laugh. He saw his sister look odd for a moment and then she laughed, too. The Countess stopped laughing.

  “Promises,” she said, “when one wants to play with a doll! How boring. Do tell us something amusing, dear child.”

  Loretta was thinking hard.

  “Yesterday in school, the teacher put me in the closet for throwing spitballs. And when I was in there I ate her lunch. She was going to expel me.”

  There was instantly a loud roar of laughter.

  The Countess was laughing so hard she placed a white hand at her red satin side. The General was guffawing so loudly he had to hold onto a table. Loretta grinned. The Countess kissed her on the forehead.

  “You are so amusing. You are never dull. You are adorable.” And she hugged her tight. “We all adore you.”

  Loretta stopped chewing on her cake. Then she turned her head and looked at the Countess. “Nobody likes me but you and your friends. Mr. and Mrs. Potts didn’t like me. My brothers and sisters don’t like me. And my mother didn’t like me—not after Colin and Kathy came.”

  To his great surprise, Colin saw a tear fall from Loretta’s eyes and drop onto her nightgown.

  The Countess drew her arm away. She yawned.

  “Don’t be dull, child,” she said, and she frowned. When she frowned all of the others turned aside and frowned and the General put his white-gloved hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn.

  “A bit of a bore, all this,” he murmured.

  Loretta quickly dashed the tear from her eye.

  “I’ll get that doll,” she said. “I’ll lie and scheme and do anything. But I’ll get that doll.”

  The Countess stopped yawning and put her arm back around Loretta. The General slapped his thigh and the peals of laughter again rose in the room.

  The General came over and bowed over her hand, “May I have the next waltz?”

  “No,” said Loretta, her eyes on the Countess, “go drown yourself.”

  And then how they all laughed!

  “And now,” said the Countess as she buttoned the buttons on Loretta’s sweater, “you must go back through our tunnel or you might be missed and they must never, never, never find out about us or that would spoil the fun.”

  And here there was a warning, icy note in the Countess’s voice as she said the words “find out about us.”

  Colin felt the ice fill the entire room and reach out even to him
and freeze him as he hid behind the draperies.

  “I have never told anyone,” Loretta said, “and I never will. Not since that very first day I met you when I came with my mother to the Potts farm to buy milk.”

  “My friends,” the Countess turned to the others and said, “do you remember that first day when we saw this adorable child playing in the forest and we stole out from behind the trees to play with her and we whispered to her—‘come back—always come back—to us’?”

  The General nodded. “She grows more and more amusing in that dull world of dull people she lives in, and who knows what delightful pranks and stories she will have to tell us the next time?”

  Here he twisted his little mustache and beamed fondly at Loretta, and bowed from the waist.

  “Oh, drop dead,” said Loretta.

  He bowed again. As he raised himself he smiled. “I was afraid she might say something like ‘thank you,’ but she is never ordinary. Drop dead! How amusing! How refreshing!”

  “Utterly, utterly,” agreed the Countess and she whispered something into Loretta’s ear.

  Colin saw Loretta turn and run out of the door, waving good-bye to them, as they all stood and waved goodbye to her—adoring her. Laughing, they began to move back to the ballroom when Gold Chain again reminded them, “General, you did not finish the search!” But the General was bending toward the Countess and she was smiling up at him as they moved across the floor. They did not hear.

  Colin waited until he saw the two big white doors of the ballroom close behind the last gentlemen. Then he came out from behind the draperies and threw one leg over the sill of the window. He heard a noise. He held his breath. He had knocked one of the china cups off the coffee table nearby.

  Quickly, he picked up the two pieces of the broken cup, put them into his bathrobe pocket, got over the window sill and ran fast as the wind down the steps and over the little bridge.

  Again, as he was running over the bridge, he felt that dizzy merry-go-round feeling in the pit of his stomach. He ran through the trees, found the lighted entrance of the tunnel at the side of the hill, and just before entering it he looked back. He could not see the house!