Cherry Ames Boxed Set 9-12

by Helen Wells

  “I’m not going to let you girls smell the result yet,” Alan announced. He sealed the bottle and handed it to Lisette to store. “There’ll be a coarse chemical smell for two or three days. The textbook says the flower freshness begins to—ah, Cherry, would you find and read that passage?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Cherry said and read aloud, “‘At the end of a month the perfume will have lost its raw odor, a characteristic fragrance. All perfumes must go through an aging process.’”

  “A month!” Lisette objected. “I’ll expire of curiosity.”

  “Wait, there’s more.” Cherry read, ‘ “A peculiar sweetness and flower freshness will develop after one week.’ So we have to wait a week. Well, that’s not as bad as a month.”

  Alan’s only comment was that he was starving. Mrs. Harrison gave permission for Alan and the two girls to raid the kitchen. Finally the trio parted, sleepy but satisfied they had done their best.

  Now it was purely a matter of waiting.

  Lisette was so restless under the strain that she went through both of Pierre’s notebooks again. The veiled passage in the journal about la cloison, the cubbyhole or enclosure, turned up again to puzzle her. It referred, as best she and Cherry could translate and interpret, to the staircase, the grand main staircase. Cherry suggested they ask Mrs. Harrison about it.

  “Cloison? Near the staircase?” Mrs. Harrison thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean that little triangular storage space under the staircase where the stairs rise at a steep angle?”

  “We don’t know, Aunt Alicia. That area seems to be solid wood.”

  “No, it isn’t, my dears. The people who founded the Jamestown School thought so, too, and never touched it, but I happen to know those panels are doors. It opens into a little space the family used as a catch all, to keep rubbers and umbrellas. Odd, I had completely forgotten it. I had meant to clear it out. Why don’t you look in there if you like? Though you’ll probably find only some cobwebs. Give me until tomorrow to find the key.”

  Neither Cherry nor Lisette had seen a keyhole there. On looking, they found a tiny carved piece of wood at waist level. It resisted budging but finally it slid sideways, disclosing a keyhole beneath.

  Next day the headmistress produced the key. Most of the girls had gone off to Riverton with their instructors for the day, to tour a museum, so Cherry and Lisette were able to explore without interruption.

  On unlocking the triangular panels, a musty smell of wood and age floated out. Cherry felt around inside for an electric light; there was none, so she switched on her flashlight. She and Lisette stooped and stepped in. Dust, a heap of dried-up pairs of rubbers, a forgotten yellowed newspaper, were all they saw.

  “Wait!” Cherry dug underneath the rubbers. “Here’s a book. An old one. Must have been misplaced.”

  She blew the dust off it to see the title: The Book of the Scented Garden. They stepped out of the cubbyhole into the light and air of the entrance hall.

  “What’s the book’s date?” Lisette asked. “It looks old enough for Great grandfather to have used.”

  Cherry handed the book to Lisette, and in doing so, a blue envelope fell out and fluttered to the floor.

  “A letter! What foreign-looking stationery. Cherry, just look at this postmark!”

  The letter, addressed to Pierre Gauthier at the Chateau Larose, was postmarked Paris, France, in the same year he had died. Lisette’s fingers shook so much, Cherry had to slip the letter out of the envelope for her. Its letterhead was engraved with the name of one of the oldest and most famous of parfumeurs.

  “Aunt Alicia! Aunt Alicia!”

  “Mrs. Harrison, we found a letter!”

  The three of them read it together, Lisette translating:

  “My dear M. Gauthier: Our thanks for sending us the sample vial of your perfume creation. You will be pleased to know it reached us in excellent condition. Our head chemists and myself are much interested. You have achieved, it seems to us, a scent truly new and greatly appealing. Our house is actively interested in producing it. Naturally, there are problems of horticulture, chemical method, and costs which, as you yourself wrote to us, we need to discuss together. Would it be possible to meet with you in person? Of course at this first conference we do not expect anything beyond a general preliminary discussion. You can be sure we do not expect you to turn your detailed formula over to us unless and until we can reach an agreement on terms and royalties. We would suggest the month of June as a convenient and pleasant time. Assuring you of our admiration and interest, and with my kindest respects—”

  Mrs. Harrison murmured, “Grandpa died in the month of June. He died on shipboard, on his way to Paris.”

  “Alone?” Cherry asked.

  “Yes, alone. So near to seeing his dream fulfilled, and then to die! Poor man! I never knew about this letter. None of the family knew. He never told us. We thought he took the trip for his health, and to visit some cousins.”

  “He never told you because you all teased him about his perfume making,” Lisette chided gently. “How in the world, with practically all of his regular equipment plastered over, did Great grandfather manage to make up a sample vial of perfume to send to France?”

  “He must have made a superhuman effort.” Mrs. Harrison shut her eyes for a moment, as if in pain. “Perhaps it’s not too late for you two girls to right the wrong—a quite unintentional wrong—that was done to him.”

  “Well, the letter gives us reason to hope.” Cherry brightened. “Why, this letter is powerful proof that Pierre’s formula is valuable.”

  But whether they had recaptured his secret from the notes scattered in his two journals, or whether his secret had died with him, only the bottle waiting on the shelf upstairs would be able to reveal.

  CHAPTER XIII

  A Rare Perfume

  THE TELEPHONE RANG A FEW MINUTES BEFORE CHERRY was to meet Alan.

  “Miss Cherry Ames, please.” The voice sounded so dignified and far away that Cherry replied, “This is Miss Ames,” and then realized she was being formal with her own mother.

  “Cherry dear, do you think Charlie would enjoy turkey at home, or shall we go to Grandma’s this year?”

  “Wha-a-at?” Her mother, and her brother Charlie, too, spoke a family shorthand which was intelligible only if Cherry were at home to hear the earlier part of the conversation. “Please start at the beginning, Mother.”

  “Thanksgiving. It’s next week. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten! You’ll be home for Thanksgiving, won’t you?”

  “Well, I suppose so. If Mrs. Harrison—”

  “I’ll write to Alicia,” Cherry’s mother said, disposing of that. “Besides, Dr. Joe wants to talk with you.”

  “What about? Please don’t keep me in suspense.”

  Her mother in Hilton laughed. “Dr. Joe is being mysterious, but I told him you’d surely come home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Of course I will, Mother. How are you and Dad?”

  They talked a little longer, then Cherry hung up. As the telephone clicked, she heard Alan’s car stop in the driveway.

  Leaping Lena had been washed and polished for the occasion, and Alan’s handsome face shone, too. It may have been due to the nippy air, or to pleasure in his companion. Cherry settled down in the front seat and opened the window wide.

  “Where to?”

  “Let’s just ride,” Cherry said. “And talk. How fast can this car go?” she asked to please him.

  “Sixty easy. Seventy if I urge her. When Lena was younger, I got her up to ninety. Want to try it? This road’s empty.”

  “No, thanks! I’m no speed demon. But Leaping Lena is a good girl.”

  “So are you. One of the best. Why don’t we see each other oftener? Work, work, work!”

  Cherry smiled and again said, “Let’s just ride.”

  She and Alan were good enough friends by now to enjoy a comfortable silence together. They liked the same things—the sight of a red barn against the bright bl
ue sky, the wind whipping in their faces, seeing a deer suddenly dart across the road and vanish among trees.

  Cherry was grateful to him for taking her away from the chateau for a few hours. The tension of waiting out the balance of the seven days, while the perfume ripened, was difficult to put out of her mind. The perfume’s outcome weighed on Alan, too. Both of them were making an effort to avoid talking about it, but when they stopped for a hot drink, the subject popped up.

  “Have you and Lisette decided on a name for it? Or did old Pierre name it?”

  “No, he didn’t. I suppose the manufacturer will choose a name—that is, if it turns out well enough to interest your Mr. Clary or someone like him.”

  “Why not call it Bride’s Bouquet?” Alan looked at her intently, across the booth table. “You know, Cherry, you’re one of the prettiest girls I ever saw.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And one of the very best nurses I ever worked with.”

  “Oh, thank you! I hope you mean that, Alan.”

  “Sure I mean it. I mean it so much that I’ve been thinking—uh—maybe you and I could work more together. I mean, spend more time together—”

  “Working?”

  He was embarrassed but determined. His jaw stuck out. “Doctors and nurses make awfully good husband and wife teams, too, you know.” Then he just sat and looked at her and waited.

  It was Cherry’s turn to be flustered. “Why, Alan Wilcox! I never dreamed you liked me—er—seriously, I mean.”

  “Well, why do you think I monkeyed around making perfume? To please little Lisette? Or because I’m a great boy for perfume?”

  They both burst out laughing.

  “Oh, Alan, Alan, I’ve been dense.” Cherry laughed at herself. “But I wish you hadn’t dropped this bombshell on me. Do you realize how little we’re really acquainted? How little time we’ve spent together?”

  “We’ll correct that,” he said. “Now you tell me something. I have a suspicion that you’re not going to spend the rest of your life in a school infirmary. Right?”

  “Even if I should leave the school, I probably wouldn’t be going very far. Only to my home town, Hilton, on the other side of the state. We’d see each other.”

  “For sure? Often? Is that a promise?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  Alan came to the school again on the eighth day. He could stay only a few minutes this time, he told Cherry, but it would not take long to learn whether their perfume had succeeded or failed. Lisette was trying to be very busy tidying up the now repaired closet, on pins and needles until Mrs. Harrison came in. Then, without a word to one another they clustered at the shelf, before the all important bottle.

  “I can’t stand the suspense,” Mrs. Harrison gasped, laughing, and brushed back a strand of golden hair.

  “And you were the doubter, Aunt Alicia!”

  “Of course Alan’s heart isn’t really in this,” Cherry teased.

  “It is, too,” he said gruffly. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Now just a moment, my dears,” said Mrs. Harrison. “I don’t want any of you to be too terribly disappointed in case the experiment has not worked out. You did your very best, and that’s the most anyone can do. When one follows a dream—”

  “Here’s where we wake up, one way or another.” Alan reached for the bottle and, without further ceremony, broke the seal. “There’s something powerful in here, good or bad. Lisette, you deserve to try it first.”

  Lisette carefully held the bottle in both hands, her dark head bent. She touched a drop to her wrist, inhaled, but only seemed puzzled. Mrs. Harrison extended her wrist for a drop; body warmth would bring out the full scent. They were all sniffing now.

  “How funny,” Lisette said shakily. “It doesn’t smell anything like I thought it would. It doesn’t even smell much like it did when we were making it.”

  “The textbook said that would happen,” Cherry reminded her. “It’s nothing to be discouraged about. The silver lace comes through delicate and true.”

  “Yes, it does,” Mrs. Harrison said. “The blended roses form a kind of background for it.”

  “But the perfume is raw,” Lisette cried. “Crude!”

  Alan had said nothing so far. “Of course it’s raw, silly. It takes a month, at least, for perfume to ripen and we’ve allowed only a week. Try it again and try to imagine the essential scent without the rawness.”

  All four of them applied a bit to their wrists, and sniffed earnestly.

  “Ah! It’s emerging!” Mrs. Harrison exclaimed. “Mine has been warmed through by now and—well—it’s magical! Oh, Lisette, this is an exquisite odor!”

  “Or it’s going to be when it’s ripe,” Cherry amended. “We have to remember our method of making it is awfully amateurish. A real perfumer would refine it and bring it to perfection. Mmm!”

  She took a deep breath of the scent, and it seemed that the rarest flowers of France bloomed together in harmony. Something odd and poignant vibrated in Pierre’s perfume. Probably it was the silver lace, the key to the perfume; somehow it touched the emotions as well as delighted one’s senses.

  Lisette was still afraid to believe what was becoming more and more unmistakable.

  “It is rather unusual and—nice,” she said.

  The other three simply laughed at her. The most exciting thing was that the bottle held a genuinely different, distinctive perfume. Cherry ran through in her memory the various perfumes which she, her mother, and her friends had used, all lovely. But none like this!

  “We ought to call it Silver Lace,” Lisette’s voice broke in her joy, “Or Fleurs de France.”

  “Or Secret Rose,” said Alan. “It certainly was a secret!”

  “‘What’s in a name?’” Alicia Harrison quoted. “‘That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Ah, Lisette, how happy Grandpa would have been, if he could see us at this moment!”

  “Perhaps he does know in some way,” Lisette said gravely. “Or am I dreaming again?”

  Alan pointed out that a brand new perfume was no dream but a valuable property. What this bottle held was important enough to change their lives. Mr. Clary would surely be interested. There was a chance that the French perfume manufacturer, to whom Pierre had originally offered his creation, might renew his interest. More likely, some business arrangement would be worked out with Mr. Clary, who had contributed advice, raw materials, and encouragement, and then possibly also with the Parisian house. Lisette mentioned an outright sale of the formula, while Alan thought leasing the formula on a royalty basis to a manufacturer might be more profitable in the long run. In any case, Pierre’s perfume was going to earn money for the Gauthiers and be a great help to the school.

  “Aunt Alicia, now you won’t have to worry any more about the mortgage on the school, or the roof—”

  “Wait, wait! The perfume is yours, Lisette, because you had the spirit to find and develop it. Its earnings will go to you and your mother.”

  “Yes, it will make Mother’s life much easier, that’s so. And I’ll be able to go on to college, now. I can even give you back my scholarship, to use for some other girl.”

  Mrs. Harrison said, “Well, we’ll see.”

  Cherry had to smile at Lisette’s independence and pluck.

  “I’m going to attend the Jamestown School for the full four years, because I love this school for its own sake. And I think,” Lisette rushed on, “that Cherry and Alan deserve a share, too.”

  Alan shook his head. “All I want is for you to name it Bride’s Bouquet.” He stole a glance at Cherry. She wouldn’t look back at him, saying to Lisette:

  “Just send me a big, beautiful bottle of it for Christmas, some year.”

  They were so elated they chattered like a flock of birds. Cherry made an observation with which they all wholeheartedly agreed.

  “Perhaps the best part of rescuing the perfume is that Pierre’s devoted labor hasn’t been wasted, and a
lovely thing has been saved for many people to enjoy.”

  After the others had left the infirmary, Cherry noticed Mrs. Harrison had left her purse there. She took it downstairs to her. As she came into the office study, she saw the antique doll propped up on the headmistress’s desk. Mrs. Harrison sat smiling at the wooden manikin in its plum silk dress.

  “Oh, thank you, Cherry, for my handbag. Do you know how old this doll is? She was ‘born’ in 1875, in France. She’s only ten years younger than Pierre would be if he were still alive. I knew her when I was a little girl, and I haven’t seen her until you found her again. You can imagine what it means to me to have her again.”

  “She guarded Pierre Gauthier’s secret well, didn’t she?”

  “Indeed she did. Wedged in that bottom drawer—I never suspected! I’m glad that the previous tenants overlooked the old fruitwood chest. It’s stood down in the cellar since Pierre died, along with some other old furniture, and was so dilapidated that I didn’t want it upstairs, either. That is, not until I ordered extra linens, about the time you came here this fall. Then it seemed to me extra drawer space in the infirmary might be handy, and I remembered the old chest.”

  Mrs. Harrison explained that she had sent Perry down to the cellar to dust off and polish the chest, and clear out its drawers, before bringing it upstairs to stand in the infirmary.

  “Apparently Perry wasn’t too thorough about going through the drawers,” Mrs. Harrison said. “Or at least about the balky bottom drawer.”

  “I’m glad he wasn’t, Mrs. Harrison. He might have thrown away the bundle of rags, and the doll inside!”

  They smiled at each other. The headmistress said:

  “Can you guess where our Lisette is? In the conservatory! I daresay she’s imagining another perfume.”

  Cherry went on to the conservatory. Lisette had donned her blue smock and was cleaning out one of the beds.

  “I’m so excited, I have to do something or I’ll explode,” she told Cherry. “I’ve put in a long distance telephone call to my mother and I’m waiting for it to go through, so I can tell her our wonderful news.”