Magic or Not?

by Edward Eager

"What are we waiting for?" said James. "Let's go take a look."

  "Sure," said Gordy. "There's just one thing. Mom."

  "You mean she still doesn't like us," said Lydia.

  "I wouldn't say that," said Gordy. "I've told her what swell kids you are. But I think we ought to let her get used to the idea awhile. I don't think she ought to actually see you just yet. Whaddaya say we wait till the coast is clear? Whaddaya say?"

  Everyone agreed to approach Mrs. Witherspoon's house with utter caution.

  But as they came stealthily around the last curve of the driveway a few minutes later, a loud voice and an uppity one were heard from the direction of the rock garden.

  "It's all right," said Gordy. "She's showing that Miss Chippenhepple her creeping palsy, or whatever the latest plant is."

  "Crawling rabbitbane," said Laura to Lydia.

  "'Manypeeplia Upsidownia,'" said Kip.

  Everybody giggled.

  "Shush," said James.

  They entered the house in silence and followed Gordy into a room on the right of the hall that was the Antiques Room, he told them.

  It certainly lived up to its name. It looked more like part of a museum than a room people were supposed to live in. Highboys and lowboys and Dutch cupboards and hutch cupboards lined its walls. Little tables of all sorts were dotted about its middle. There were chairs here and there, but most of these had velvet ropes strung from arm to arm; so that no one would forget himself and sit in one of them.

  The four children paid small heed to any of these, because there against the far wall was the desk, sitting by itself in a cleared space as though it were on display. They went up to it.

  "Hurry!" said Laura, who was nervous in Mrs. Witherspoon's house. "Let's borrow the key and go see if it fits the lock of the other desk now."

  Maybe if they had done that, the story might have ended differently.

  But "No," said James. "I think we're supposed to look in the secret drawer first. Otherwise, why did the magic show it to us?"

  Everyone thought he knew just where the secret drawer had been. As before, four hands reached out. This time Gordy's hand reached out, too, for who could resist trying to be the one who finds and presses the spring?

  Five minutes later everyone was still trying. The drawer still remained stubbornly concealed. Tempers were getting cross and voices were getting louder.

  "My hand was on this panel before," said Lydia, "and I think it kind of slid."

  "I just closed this drawer," said Kip, "and I think that did it."

  "Get out of the way," said James succinctly (and rudely), pushing his hand between theirs to shove at a bit of ornamental carving.

  The delicate desk fairly vibrated under their combined probing.

  With part of her mind Laura thought she heard the sound of a car driving away. But she was too busy twisting at the knob of one of the drawers to let the impression sink in. She was sure this was what she'd been doing before.

  Still, maybe it was the memory of what she had half heard that made her look up a moment later and glance at the doorway.

  The others looked up only a second after Laura did. Their voices broke off. Mrs. Gordon T. Witherspoon was standing in the entrance of the room regarding them.

  At first Laura didn't think she looked so cross as usual. But then she wondered how she could have thought this, for now Mrs. Witherspoon was frowning in awful majesty and her voice, when she spoke, was terrible.

  "Gordy!" was all she said. It was enough.

  "Hi, Mom," said Gordy sheepishly. "You know everybody here, don't you?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Witherspoon, not sounding a bit glad of it, "I do. Gordy, what are you thinking of?" she went on. "You know you are never to play in this room! The idea, mistreating my lovely new early Victorian desk! Tell your friends good-bye this minute. Outdoors," she added threateningly.

  The four children slunk past Mrs. Witherspoon and out the front door. Laura did not dare to ask now if they might borrow the key.

  But once in the front yard Gordy appeared quite cheerful.

  "Sorry," he said. "She still isn't used to the idea of you yet."

  "We noticed," said Lydia.

  "It'll be all right, though," said Gordy. "I think she's going out to dinner tonight. I'll phone you when it's safe to come back."

  "Better not make it too late," said James dubiously. "We can't always get away after dark."

  "Oh, do you let them order you around?" said Gordy. "I never do."

  The others treated this idle boasting with the silent contempt it deserved. The thought of not letting yourself be ordered around by Mrs. Witherspoon was too absurd to contemplate.

  "No peeking inside," warned James sternly, "till we're all here."

  "Scout's honor," promised Gordy solemnly. Then he went in.

  This solution wasn't very satisfactory to the four children. Still, no other seemed to offer itself; so they all trailed back to James and Laura's house and waited to see what would develop.

  They waited and waited, through lunch and all afternoon.

  Lydia and Kip hung about long after James and Laura's father came home and dinner noises began in the kitchen and politeness counseled them to leave. And then finally they did leave and were late getting home to their own dinners, and still there was no word from Gordy. The telephone had kept ringing all afternoon, but always it was for James and Laura's mother.

  After dinner it started getting dark fast, for the days were beginning to close in. James and Laura sat looking out as dusk turned to night and the moon shone down.

  It was nearly nine o'clock when the call came at last. James got to the telephone first, but he held the receiver out so Laura could hear, too.

  "It's okay," came the voice of Gordy. "Hurry up. Hoot like an owl four times and wait till the lone wolf howls."

  "We'll try," said James doubtfully.

  But to their surprise, their parents made no objection when they asked if they could walk down to Gordy's house.

  "After all, it's a moonlight night," said their father.

  "Don't be too late," said their mother.

  It was the same at Kip's house.

  As for Lydia's grandmother, of course she hardly knew whether Lydia came or went when she was painting a picture or planning the next one, which was what she was doing now.

  The four children met in the road. Kip had brought along a flashlight, but Lydia made him turn it off; so it would be more mysterious. The moon just then chose to go behind a cloud and Lydia repented. But wild horses would not have made her say so.

  Even when the moon came out again, the road looked strange, as country roads do at night. Near things seemed nearer and far things farther. The bushes that screened Mrs. Witherspoon's grounds were spooky. When Kip hooted like an owl, it did not make them seem any less so. Laura and Lydia huddled close together.

  But the lone-wolf howl that followed sounded so exactly like Gordy in its rather bleating tones that the delicious terror evaporated and everybody laughed. It was a friendly laugh, though. Good old Gordy, it said.

  Good old Gordy was waiting for them in the open front door as they came up to the house. They all turned right into the Antiques Room. This time there was no pushing and jostling. Under James's direction, all five children took hold of the lid of the desk at once and opened it carefully.

  And this time there was no vain search for the secret drawer. The secret drawer was already ajar. In the crack that showed, an edge of whitish paper could be seen.

  "Somebody must have touched the spring after all, before," said Kip.

  The drawer still seemed to be stuck and wouldn't come out any farther, but James was able to catch hold of the edge of the paper and drew it out gently, for it was old and stiff and the edges were yellowed and crumbly.

  Then he seemed to stop and think. "You read it," he said, and handed it to Gordy. That was to make up for a lot of things.

  Gordy seemed fully sensible of the honor. Lydia thought th
at he blushed. He opened the paper's crackly folds and looked. Then, "It's all faded," he said. "I can't make it out. You read it." And he handed it back. Let James be the leader. He was content to follow.

  James looked at the paper and its faded, old-fashioned copperplate handwriting. "It says 'Eternal Friendship,'" he said, "with a kind of garland around it. And a date, '1850.' And then there're two signatures. 'Mehitabel Anne King. Anne Mehitabel King.'"

  "M.A.," breathed Laura triumphantly, "and A.M.! Like on the two desks," she added, as if anyone needed to be told.

  "King," said Kip. "Any relation to Miss Isabella, I wonder?"

  "And then down below there's another date," said James. "Eighteen ninety-one. Forty years later. And a kind of poem." His eye traveled down the page. "I don't think it's very good."

  "Never mind that," commanded Lydia. "Read on. Out loud. No skipping ahead."

  James read the poem.

  "'Alas, that one of two should roam

  Afar from friendship's childhood home!

  Let him who finds, in friendship's name,

  Restore the truant whence it came.

  And he who makes these twain be one,

  If it be done by light of sun,

  I wish him joy upon the well

  From joyless Anne Mehitabel.

  But if it be by shine of moon,

  Then he may gain a special boon:

  My ghost shall grant his wish entire

  And he shall have his heart's desire.'"

  "Clear as mud," said Lydia.

  "What does it mean?" said Kip.

  "It's very simple," said James. "There were these two girls and they had these two desks. Then I guess one of them moved away and took her desk with her. Then afterwards I guess she was sorry."

  "And her ghost goes on worrying about an old desk?" said Lydia. "Before I'd be so paltry if I were a ghost!"

  "I think there's more to it than that," said Laura. "I think it's a kind of symbol. It says about the wishing well, too! It all goes right on connecting!"

  "What are we supposed to do next?" said Kip.

  "Take this desk back to the other one, of course," said James. "'Restore the truant whence it came,' it says."

  "How do we know it came from there?" said Lydia. "If this desk's been sold around a lot of places, the other one could have been, too."

  "I don't think that matters," said James. "'Make these twain be one,' it says. That's the important thing. So we move this desk down to the house in the woods. Then we get a wish."

  "Better than that," said Lydia. "It's moonlight out," she reminded them. "'But if it be by shine of moon...!' Our 'heart's desire,' it says!"

  "Gee," muttered Kip. "I wonder what my heart's desire is. I never thought."

  "But we can't just take Mrs. Witherspoon's desk," said Laura. "It would be stealing."

  "Oh, that," said Gordy. "That's all right. I'll explain to Mom. She'll understand."

  Laura wondered if she would. It didn't seem very like her.

  "How'll we get it there?" said Kip.

  "There's my horse," said Lydia. "Does anyone have a buggy?"

  Nobody had.

  "Deborah's wagon!" James cried suddenly. All agreed that this was an inspiration.

  James went out the door with Kip after him. Neither one gave a thought to the spookiness of the road this time. They had too much on their minds. James's only concern was whether his parents would hear him taking the wagon from the garage.

  But he needn't have worried. "Home already, dear?" his mother called from a window.

  "We just want to borrow Deborah's wagon for a minute," James said, wondering what he'd say when his mother asked him why.

  But "Very well, dear," was all she said. James couldn't understand it, unless the magic were beginning to operate already.

  The two boys felt silly, pulling a kid's wagon down the road in the moonlight, but they felt even sillier on the second lap of the trip. Gordy and the girls had moved the desk onto the front stoop, and to get it from there to the wagon was the work of but a moment. And no faithful servants heard and came to the defense of Mrs. Witherspoon's property, either.

  But the desk was too big to fit in the wagon and had to be turned on its side (carefully out of regard for its fragile antiquity) and lashed in place with some rope Gordy found in the basement.

  This made rather a top-heavy wagon to pull, and someone had to keep running along on each side of it and bending over to steady it from tipping, which was difficult enough on Silvermine Road, but on the trafficky route to Wilton it was maddening. Kind grown-ups kept stopping to ask what they were doing and if they needed any help, and rude teenagers made jeering remarks.

  All in all it was a relief when they came to the spot where the short cut turned off through the woods. Only now they had to abandon the wagon and edge the desk along by hand. The boys spelled each other at this, two hauling while the third went ahead to clear the way of clutching branches. Beech branches were the worst. The procession moved slowly uphill, stumbling over rocks and stones and trees. Luckily the desk escaped serious mishap.

  Luckily too Kip still had his flashlight and Lydia played this upon the scene. But as they drew near

  the house in the woods, Laura made her switch it off. The poem had specified moonlight and Laura felt that it should be unadulterated.

  And now all idle chatter broke off, and they covered the last climb in silvered silence. Kip and James and Gordy maneuvered the desk through the narrow doorway. Inside it was darker, for the small old-fashioned windows of the house let in only a few random moonbeams. The five children stopped for a minute to rest and catch their breaths. There was a new feeling in the air, a kind of solemnity.

  Gently James and Kip moved the desk into the inner room and set it down next to the other.

  Laura stepped forward. She altered the position of the desks a little; so that the moonbeams from the window above fell on both of them. She unlocked Mrs. Witherspoon's desk and opened the lid. Somehow it seemed to be the thing to do. Then she tried the key in the lock of the other. It fitted and turned, just as she had known it would. She opened the second desk and moved away.

  The five children stood looking at the two desks shining in the moonlight.

  There was a step on the stair.

  8. Magic or Not?

  For a long minute no one dared to look.

  Then, slowly, all heads turned.

  The person who stood on the stairway, where it came down into the room, was in darkness, but a slanting ray of moonshine showed her hooped skirt. Her face was in shadow, but the moon glinted on her dark hair.

  James was the first to find his voice.

  "Are you Anne Mehitabel or Mehitabel Anne?" he asked huskily.

  "I am Anne Mehitabel," said the person (if it was a person). Her voice was faint and yet clear, sweet and yet ringing, as one might expect of a ghost.

  "Were you sisters?" said Lydia.

  "Cousins," said the ghost (if it was a ghost), "but brought up together, closer than sisters, for a time."

  "And then something happened," guessed Laura.

  "A misfortune," said the presence (whatever it was). "There was trouble. A quarrel about money."

  "That's always the worst kind of quarrel there is, Pop says," said Kip. "'Specially between relatives."

  "Your father says rightly," said the figure. "It was indeed the very worst kind of quarrel. And then I went away and we never spoke again, though I lived so very near, in the red house with the wishing well."

  "Where we live now," said Laura. "Couldn't you have said you were sorry and made it up?"

  "By the time I was sorry, too long a time had gone by and I was too proud. Once she came to my door and I would not answer. That was the worst thing. And then, sooner than you would believe, we were old. They said I grew queer then. Some shunned me for a witch. But some came to me. They said I had magic power. They believed the things I wished on the well came true. Perhaps it was so. Perhaps I h
elped them. But magic or not, I could never use my power to help myself. The one wish I made over and over again ... that I would forget my pride ... that never came true."

  "The well's still like that," Kip told her. "The wishes we made for ourselves never panned out."

  "It still works fine for good turns, though," said Lydia. "We've been using it all summer."

  "That's how we found the desk," said James, "and got your message."

  "Or maybe you already knew that," said Laura. "Maybe it was you leading us on, all along?"

  "Perhaps it was, in a way," said the voice from the staircase. "Just before I died, I came upon the old drawing of Friendship's Garland that Mehitabel and I had made. And I wrote the rhyme and made my last wish on the well. I wished that in time to come someone new would chance on the power of the well and use its magic until at last the spell of my old selfishness would be broken and the lost would be found and the wrong I did would be undone. And now that it has happened, perhaps Mehitabel Anne's ghost will forgive mine."

  "I still don't understand why you cared about bringing that old desk back," said Lydia. "I don't see where it enters in."

  "Open the secret drawer," said the voice. "All the way."

  "We can't" said Kip. "It's stuck."

  "Force it," said the voice.

  James took hold of the edge of the drawer and pulled. Suddenly it shot forward. The others crowded round to see. There was a packet inside that had got jammed against the roof of the drawer. That was why the drawer wouldn't come all the way out before.

  "Open it when I am gone," said the voice, "and you will know the answer."

  "Is the magic in the well finished now?" said Laura. She couldn't bear to think that it was.

  "The spell I put upon it has run its course," said the voice from the staircase, "but you never can tell with wells. Sometimes they renew themselves. Some of the magic from the good turns you did may have leaked back into it. It might start it up again any day."

  "Like priming a pump." James nodded sagely.

  "What about the last wish?" Gordy spoke for the first time. "It's shine of moon out. What about the heart's desire?"

  Everyone glared at him, to show they thought this was terribly crude and in bad taste. Still, reasoned Laura, why was it? After all, wasn't it what they all were thinking? Gordy might not have much delicacy, but he certainly got to the point.