Magic or Not?

by Edward Eager

  Where the woods had once been, all was bland rolling lawn and paved driveway. And in the driveway were parked not one, not two, but three sports cars. One was a Porsche, one was a Jaguar, and one was a wonderful new kind neither of the boys had ever seen before. They stared at it with the round eyes of utter car-worship.

  "I've got to see this closer," said James. "Pull for the shore, sailor." And Lydia did.

  There was a neat dock, of course, with a diving board. But as the boat drew alongside, a woman in a cap and apron came from the house and ran toward the dock, waving her arms in a fussy and henlike manner.

  "Go away," she said. "No trespassing. This is private property."

  "We're sorry," said Kip pleasantly. "We thought this was a public river."

  "We thought we had riparian rights," added James.

  "None of your big words!" said the woman. "The nerve! Nasty sightseers, coming to spy on Madam in her grief. Morbid, I call it!"

  "We're sorry," said Kip again. "We'll be going, right away."

  At this moment the long-lost heir leaned out of the boat. "Fussy," he said.

  "She certainly is!" said Lydia. "As if we'd hurt her old dock! Let's go."

  But the woman on the dock was staring at the heir. "Master Harold!" she cried. "Found! Found at last! Come to Fussy!" And she held out her arms.

  "Won't," said the long-lost heir, turning away.

  "Wait a minute," said James. "Is this your nurse or something?"

  For answer, the heir made a face and hid behind Lydia.

  The four children hesitated. But the woman did not. She began waving her arms and screaming hys-

  terically. "Kidnapers!" she cried. "McTavish! Call the men! Call the Madam! Set the dogs on them!"

  A man came running with a rake. He gave a whistle and more men appeared, with two great Baskerville-looking hounds. The man with the rake caught the side of the boat and pulled it against the dock.

  "You needn't bother," said Lydia, with frigid dignity. "I can land perfectly well."

  But nobody heard her because quite a crowd had collected by now and everyone was talking (or barking) at once without seeming to make any sense whatever. The word "kidnapers" was frequently heard.

  A richly dressed lady came running from the house and joined the group. She was just about the prettiest lady any of the four children had ever seen. As Kip said afterwards, movie stars weren't in it with her. And the girls agreed that that was putting it mildly.

  But right now her lovely face was distorted with emotion, and sounds of a peacock-like nature issued from her marble throat as she beheld the boat and its contents.

  "What have you done with my baby?" she cried.

  The four children regarded the muddy, damp, leafy, one-shoe-off-and-one-shoe-on heir and had to admit in their minds that they might have returned him in better condition.

  "They stole him!" cried the woman called Fussy before anyone else could answer. "Dirty, common children they are! They stole him while my back was turned!"

  This was too much for Lydia. Dirty she might be, but common never. "The idea!" she said. "We saved him from a den of iniquity, that's all!"

  "And brought him back to his ancestral acres," added Kip.

  "By magical means," put in Laura.

  "Your back must have been turned a good long while," said James. "We were in that drugstore twenty minutes at least and never saw hide nor hair of you."

  "Oh, the horrid fibbers!" cried the Fussy woman. "I may have passed the time of day with a friend, but I wasn't gone thirty seconds."

  At this everyone began talking at once again. The dogs, which as James put it later seemed more basking than Baskerville, added to the confusion by wreathing around people's legs, barking happily.

  A man came up to the group. He was as handsome as the lady was beautiful and as richly dressed. At first his face looked drawn and worried, but as he listened it relaxed, and when he spoke, Laura thought she saw a smile starting at the comers of his eyes.

  "Just a minute," he said. "I suggest we could discuss this better on dry land and indoors. And with only the immediate parties concerned present."

  The child Harold was handed ashore, not without a determined struggle on his part to remain in the boat, and borne off an unwilling prey to the ministrations of the Fussy woman, though Laura thought the Fussy woman looked as if she would rather have stayed. The crowd of men dispersed, taking the dogs (still barking) with them, but first tying the boat to the dock. James and Laura and Kip and Lydia followed the lady and gentleman into the house and through a plant-ridden hall to the living room.

  The living room Was long and low and furnished in the finest chromium, with decorative pieces of driftwood sitting on all the tables.

  "Sit down," said the father of the heir. "Begin at the beginning."

  And Laura did, beginning farther back than James wished she would. She told all about the magic and the adventures so far and how they planned to spend all the rest of the summer doing good turns to everybody.

  "Very interesting," said the man. "But if bringing my son home was your next good deed, may I point out that you might have done it with a little more dispatch? He has been missing for eight hours!"

  "Oh dear," said Laura. "Has he?"

  "Good grief!" said James. He turned to Kip. "And tonight's the night we're all due at your house for dinner! We'll be late."

  "That," said the man, "can be arranged. But not yet. Go on. Tell me more."

  "We've been just frantic!" said the lady, before James could. "We had the police out and the Volunteer Fire Brigade and everything!"

  "We thought we heard sirens," said James, "but we were too busy to take much notice."

  "You were too busy," said the man. "I see. Go on."

  "It was even broadcast on the radio!" the woman interrupted again.

  "And one interesting clue turned up," said the man. "A woman phoned us that she had given a lift to some children with a little boy. They said he was their little brother." And he looked at the four children.

  "We let her think that," said Laura, "to save time."

  "To save time," repeated the man. "Interesting. And what did you save the time for? What were you too busy doing? If I may ask." His tone was grim, but Laura did not think he was really very angry.

  "We were tracking the river to its source," said James. "I guess we went to sleep for a while, too. And that's quite a climb along by the waterfall. It's a tough trip."

  "Poor little baby!" said the mother of the heir. "He was just exhausted."

  "Ahem," said her husband. "As to that, I cannot see that my son has suffered any irreparable harm. In fact, he seems to have enjoyed the whole thing thoroughly. I've no doubt a few more tough trips and a little less Fussiness (and here Laura could have sworn he winked at them) would do him a great deal of good. However"—and here his face became stern again—"I suggest that when you do your next good deed, you finish it before starting some other adventure. And when in doubt, ask a policeman." He relaxed. "And now, since the long-lost heir is at last returned to his sorrowing family, I should think a celebration is in order. What would you like?"

  "We didn't do it for a reward," said James. "Not mainly."

  "We did it for the glory of it," beamed Laura. "And to test the magic."

  "But if you do want to do anything for us," said James, "a ride in that car would be dandy."

  "Not the Jag or the Porsche but the other one," said Kip. "You could take us home and kill two birds with one stone."

  "That," said the gentleman, "I was meaning to do anyway. However. We shall see. In the meantime, come along." He grinned at them.

  The lady, too, managed a smile, but it was a pale and wan one and her heart was not in it. You could see that she was thinking of their muddy feet on her good rugs (except that the floors were not carpeted, being all of glossy imported imitation-marble tiling).

  As for the boat, Kip said he thought he could bribe the older boy next door to pick it u
p after dinner that night in his family's station wagon; so all loose ends were taken care of.

  The strange and wonderful sports car proved to be all that James or Kip could have desired. You would not have thought that all four children and the man could fit in, but somehow, what with laps and squashing, this was managed. And luckily part of the road home was straight and broad and un-trafficky and the man could really let it out. The entire undertaking was not much of a reward to Laura, but she shut her eyes and bore it.

  James was thoughtful as they walked up the path to Kip's house (after saying good-bye to the man and his car). "I don't know," he said. "It seems to me the magic could have done better. If there is magic."

  "We're not going to start all that again, are we?" said Laura. "Of course there's magic. It took us right there to the heir's home, didn't it?"

  "It took us there," said James. "But right there you couldn't say. As far as I can see, all we did was make the long-lost heir lost longer. He'd have been rescued ages ago if we'd let well enough alone."

  "But we had the fun of doing it," said Laura. "Anyway, maybe that drugstore is a thieves' den. Maybe something awful would have happened to him if he'd stayed there another minute."

  "Or maybe the magic put him there in the first place," said Kip, "to teach us a moral lesson."

  "Ugh!" said James.

  "Anyway, you got your ride in your old sports car," pointed out Lydia.

  "That's true," said James. "There is that."

  Lydia was coming to dinner at Kip's house, too. It was Kip's mother's idea that all the families should get acquainted. Lydia's grandmother had been asked, but had declined.

  And yet when the four children entered the living room, there was old Mrs. Green with the others. There seemed to be an air of excitement in the room, and all the parents and guardians were looking at the children in rather an odd way, as if they wondered what they would do next.

  "Where have you been?" said Kip's mother. "We've been waiting and waiting. I suppose you've heard the news?"

  "Oh, did you hear about it, too?" said Kip. "On the radio, I suppose. And the fire engines and all. Well, don't worry. It all ended fine."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Kip's mother. "I meant about the sidewalk art show."

  "What?" said Laura, remembering something.

  And it turned out that her guess was right, because what she had done that morning when she ran across the street and pretended to straighten a picture was enter Lydia's drawing in the show, and it turned out that the judges had been very impressed by it and had given Lydia a special award for the most promising work by a student.

  Lydia's first reaction when she heard was one of fury, which was typical.

  She turned on Laura. "How dare you put that in without telling me?"

  But Laura had known Lydia long enough now to be undisturbed by her wrath. "I just thought I would," she said airily. "I knew you never would yourself. You'd rather feel unappreciated and that nobody cares. But it's nice when you find out that you aren't and they do. Isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Lydia after a minute. "I guess it is." But she still looked stunned. "They can't mean it," she said. "It was just doodling."

  "Would," said her grandmother, "that I could doodle as well. Why didn't you ever tell me you could draw?"

  "I didn't know I could," said Lydia. "If I can."

  "You can," said old Mrs. Green. "Not that you don't have a lot to learn still. I suppose if I'd paid more attention, I might have guessed you had it in you. I'm a selfish old woman. Still, I suppose it's too late to change."

  "Are you sure you won't stay for dinner?" said Kip's mother.

  Old Mrs. Green looked for a minute as if she would almost like to. Then she shook her head. "I haven't dined out in years. No point in starting now. Thanks just the same. I'm a cantankerous curmudgeon and let's leave it at that." And she stumped away, looking more wild-haired and witchlike than ever.

  Laura looked after her. It seemed to her that Lydia and her grandmother had a lot in common. Still, it was wonderful how the magic had brought Lydia out. Maybe if it got a chance, it could bring old Mrs. Green out, too, and smooth her down and brighten her up. Maybe it would be worthwhile giving it a chance and letting it try.

  She came to herself to find everyone looking at her and laughing.

  "What is it?" she said.

  "Dinner is served," James told her. "Kip's mother just told you for the third time. Where've you been? Come on down to earth and let's eat."

  And they did.

  6. The Mob-led Queen

  It was the next afternoon, as the four children were sitting by the wishing well planning what good deeds to perpetrate next, that James and Kip suddenly pricked up their ears ("just like a couple of old pointer dogs," as Lydia put it) at the magic sound of sports car upon the breeze. And the father of the long-lost heir came speeding round the bend and stopped at the gate in the picket fence.

  "The rest of the reward," he told them, grinning, as they clustered round the car. And he handed out four small packages and wouldn't take no for an answer, but zoomed away before even Lydia could get her outside wrapping undone.

  The four packages contained a gold wristwatch each, and the four children were suitably grateful. Moreover, they got the point.

  After that, whenever they encountered the father of the heir in town, he would sing out, "What time is it?" and the four children always knew. But when he would go on to ask how the magic was coming, and when on another occasion they met Mr. Hiram Bundy and he asked the same thing, there was less to report.

  The next few days were ordinary ones, as will sometimes happen in even the most magical of vacations. No further lost people were found, and no strangers came tapping at the door except a woman who wanted to know where the Butterworths lived and a boy who was working his way through college selling subscriptions to The Saturday Evening Post.

  Laura was sure these might be more visitors from another world in disguise and wanted to follow them and see where the trail might lead, but James counseled against it.

  "We don't want to start overreaching again," he said, "the way we sort of did last time. Let the magic take its course from now on. It'll let us know when it's ready."

  But as the year turned on and July got to be August, Laura grew more impatient. The four children sat on the sun-warmed rocks at the foot of Kip's mother's rock garden one afternoon and discussed the situation.

  "Don't worry," said Kip. "It's probably just building up to something big. This is probably just the calm before the storm."

  "We want to keep on our toes, though," said Laura. "You never can tell when it'll strike. Look at that art show!"

  "Honestly!" said James. "You give the magic all the credit! You wouldn't think maybe a little talent had something to do with it?"

  "It took the magic to bring it out," insisted Laura. "Didn't it?" She turned to Lydia.

  Lydia was a changed person these days. Wherever she went, she had a pencil in her hand and a drawing before her. If no pencil was handy, she used whatever was. Now she was tracing a design in the earth with a pointed stick.

  "It's the knowing there's some point to it. That's the thing," she said after a minute. "In school, before, the kids always said, 'Why d'you draw such crazy pictures?' And the teacher was always telling me to paint from nature!"

  "I know," said Kip sympathetically. "It's like when I try to write stories and they tell me to write what I know about! If I knew about it, what would be the point of writing it?" He broke off, as voices were heard from the garden above. "Oh glory!" he muttered. "I forgot. Mother has to show Mrs. Witherspoon the garden today. I meant to escape."

  "Mrs. Gordon T. Witherspoon?" said Lydia. "Help!"

  "Who's she?" said James.

  "She's president of the Garden Club," said Kip, "and she's horrible."

  "Ghastly," agreed Lydia.

  "Why's she called Mrs. Gordon T. Witherspoon?" said Laura. "How many Mrs. Gordon
Witherspoons are there?"

  "One," said Kip, "is enough."

  And as James and Laura peered up through greenery at Kip's mother's guest, they had to agree in their minds that one of her would be ample.

  "My dear," Mrs. Gordon T. Witherspoon was saying, eyeing an inoffensive-looking plant with disfavor, "you don't grow that, do you? It's nothing but a pest!" And transfixing the plant with the point of her shooting stick, she dragged it from the earth, roots and all, and cast it upon the path.

  Kip's mother's face grew pink and she pressed her lips together, but said nothing.

  Mrs. Witherspoon went on stalking about the garden and criticizing its contents in a forthright and unabashed manner, while the four children scrooched down and hoped to escape notice. Either they did, or Mrs. Witherspoon was the type who thinks children shouldn't be heard or seen either, for she treated their presence with a marble disdain.

  "Now maybe she'll go," whispered Kip, when Mrs. Witherspoon had disparaged the entire garden.

  But she didn't. She settled down on a garden seat as though she proposed remaining there for some time. "And now my dear," she said, "as to the real reason I wanted to speak to you. It's about next week's town meeting. We property owners must band together and block that new school!"

  Kip's mother's face grew pink and she pressed her lips together again. But "What do you mean?" was all she said.

  "Why, my dear," said Mrs. Witherspoon, "hadn't you heard? The town wants to build a great big new school right here on this road! And you know what that will mean! Children running over the lawns all hours of the day; we won't have a minute's peace. Think of the traffic! Those noisy buses. And real estate values"—here her voice took on the important tone of one who deals with a sacred subject—"will go down!"

  Kip's mother was looking really angry now. But "I think we need a new school," was all she said.