Goody Hall

by Natalie Babbitt

  “Ah!” said Mrs. Tidings with deep satisfaction. “It isn’t what I did, Henry. Not what I did. It’s what she did.”

  “Tell me! Tell me!” said the blacksmith.

  Mrs. Tidings folded her arms. “That woman is beyond shame, Henry. I guarantee you won’t believe it. She’s running off with the fellow in the cloak and scarf.”

  “That fellow Snave?” gasped the blacksmith.

  “The very one,” replied his sister. “It was the queerest thing I ever saw. I heard a noise in the middle of the night and I went out into the hall and there was young Feltwright coming in the front door with a big statue in his arms—a statue of a dog with three heads. I heard him go up the stairs and he went into her bedroom with it and shut the door. After a while I heard laughing and someone said, ‘One head is enough for anyone.’ I went up and knocked on her door. She opened it, not right away, but she opened it, and there they all were, she and Mr. Feltwright and Master Willet and that fellow Snave with that scarf pulled up over his face. And she said to me that she wouldn’t be needing me any longer because they were going away in the morning.”

  The blacksmith sank down on a nail keg and pulled at his beard. “To think she’d leave that house!” he goggled.

  “More than that, Henry, she’s running off and leaving her poor husband all alone in his tomb with no one to look after him. That’s the real scandal, right there.”

  “That’s so, I hadn’t thought of that,” said the blacksmith. “Are you sure about all this, Dora? It seems impossible.”

  “Well, of course I’m sure! They were just about to leave when I came away this morning. I didn’t see Snave, but she was in the kitchen, singing like a lark, making a picnic for breakfast. Imagine her in a kitchen! And a picnic. For breakfast!”

  They stared at each other, torn between astonishment and delight. And then Mrs. Tidings said, “She told me to give a message to that gypsy gardener. She said I was to tell him he should keep the garden for himself. I asked her, I said, ‘What about the house?’ But she only said, ‘Never mind the house.’” Mrs. Tidings shook her head helplessly and sighed.

  “But what about that tutor fellow?” asked the blacksmith. “What’s to become of him?”

  Mrs. Tidings blushed to the roots of her hair. “Henry,” she said, “he kissed me. I was just about to go out the door this morning when there was a terrible rumpus upstairs and then here came Master Willet sliding down the banister. With young Feltwright just behind him. Sliding down the banister, Henry. And he bounced up to me and flung his arms around me and gave me a kiss on the forehead.”

  “He kissed you?” gasped the blacksmith.

  “He did! And he said, ‘Goodbye, Dora, I’m going home.’ And Master Willet said, ‘He’s going to start a school, Mrs. Tidings. Kiss her again, Hercules!’ And he did, Henry. He did!” She blushed again and beamed, caught herself and quickly assumed a very severe expression. “Imagine! Such behavior!”

  “Well,” said the blacksmith faintly, “we knew something was going to happen. We both felt it.”

  Just at that moment someone screamed outside the shop. Instantly, there were shouts and the sound of running feet. Mrs. Tidings and the blacksmith hurried to the door. “Bless my soul!” cried Mrs. Tidings. “Look up there! Isn’t that Millie, the baker’s daughter?” And she pointed to the roof of the church which stood across the street. There, near the steeple, a figure was teetering on the eaves, the slim figure of a girl with her hands pressed to her heart. In the street below, a large crowd was gathering and everyone was shouting and gesturing.

  “Don’t do it, Millie!”

  “Don’t jump, child! No man is worth that, not even a parson!”

  “Do something, somebody!”

  And the girl, in between the shouts of the crowd, was making quite a noise of her own. “If I can’t have the parson,” she shrieked, “I can’t go on living! Goodbye, dear friends! Goodbye!” And at last, as a mighty gasp went up from the crowd, the girl flung up her arms, wailed one last tragic farewell, and leaped out into space. Down she plummeted like a stone, and landed squarely on top of the poor parson, who was hovering below, wringing his hands.

  After a moment of hushed silence, someone yelled, “She’s all right!”

  “But the parson isn’t,” yelled another. “Looks like his leg is broken. Get a doctor, someone!”

  And then, as the crowd ran hither and thither looking for the doctor, a new cry went up from the end of the street and the terrible cracking boom of a shot rang out.

  “Whee-ow!” cried the blacksmith, quite purple with excitement. “It’s Fred Hulser! He’s escaping from jail!”

  And it was. Down the street a snorting horse came galloping at a great rate, and on its back clung a thin, desperate figure brandishing a pistol.

  “Stop him!” everyone yelled, scattering to make room for the speeding horse. “Stop him! Cow thief!”

  “No, no!” cried one lone voice. “Let him go! Run, Fred! Run, son!”

  “It’s his father! It’s Alf!” someone shouted. “Go to it, Alf!”

  The blacksmith was jumping up and down, beside himself, and Mrs. Tidings had rushed out into the street in order to see better. The village was in turmoil. “Hurry, everyone!” a commanding voice called. “After him! After him!”

  And then, just as the crowd was organizing to rush after poor Fred Hulser, a new and final cry went up. “Look! Look! Smoke! Back that way!”

  “Hurray!” bellowed the blacksmith, hoarse with joy. “It’s Pooley’s barn, right on schedule!”

  Millie, the parson, Fred Hulser, all were forgotten in an instant. The crowd swung around, and away they all ran, Mrs. Tidings and the blacksmith with the rest. “It’s Pooley’s barn, Dora!” cried the blacksmith to his sister. “It’s burning down again, five years almost to the minute!” He pounded along, his mouth hanging open in a loose and gasping grin.

  “What a day!” puffed Mrs. Tidings, bouncing and leaping beside him. “What a day!”

  Down the road they ran pell-mell, toward the billowing black smoke that rolled up above the trees and hung in the sky, filling the air with the sharp, rich smell of scorching wood. Now and then a shower of sparks shot up and, whenever this happened, a delighted yell rose from the crowd and they ran even faster.

  And then they slowed, faltered, came to a halt. They had arrived at Pooley’s barn. It stood there calm and peaceful and intact beside the road. A curious pig emerged from its cool interior and regarded them with interest. There wasn’t so much as an ember in sight.

  “Good heavens!” cried Mrs. Tidings suddenly. “If it isn’t Pooley’s barn, then it must be…oh, it couldn’t be, could it?”

  But it could. Oh yes, it could. They began to run again, past Pooley’s barn and on down the road for another mile, around a sudden bend where one short week ago a baggy young man had strolled, swinging his battered satchel and singing. And here, like him, they stopped. There before them, on its dewy square of barbered lawn, Goody Hall rose up like a giant torch, engulfed in flames. The heat was immense. As they watched in shock and amazement, one peaking turret began to topple. Down it crashed in a roar of sparks and smoke. And soon the entire roof began to sag, to buckle. Slowly, tantalizingly, it sank inward and collapsed.

  “Is there anyone in there?” someone asked in an awed voice.

  “No, dearie,” came the answer from a round little woman with a gold tooth. Alfreida Rom leaned on the gate and watched as Goody Hall blazed away into ashes, and her voice was gentle with finality and satisfaction. “No, dearie,” she said, “there’s no one in there. They’ve all gone away.”

  “But where did they go?” asked someone else.

  Alfreida smiled. “They went back,” she answered. “And on. To better things.”

  Gofish

  Questions for the Author

  What did you want to be when you grew up?

  When I was a preschooler, I wanted to be a pirate, and then when I started school, I wanted
to be a librarian. But in the fourth grade, I got my copy of Alice in Wonderland / Alice Through the Looking-Glass and decided once and for all that I wanted to be an illustrator of stories for children.

  When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

  I didn’t even think about writing. My husband wrote the story for the first book. But then he didn’t want to do it anymore, so I had to start writing my own stories. After all, you can’t make pictures for stories unless you have stories to make pictures for.

  What’s your first childhood memory?

  I have a lot of preschool memories, all from when we lived in a little town just south of Columbus, Ohio. I kind of remember sitting in a high chair. And when I was a little older, I remember seeing Jack Frost looking in through the kitchen window. That was pretty surprising.

  What’s your most embarrassing childhood memory?

  I don’t remember any. I’m probably just suppressing them all.

  What’s your favorite childhood memory?

  I think I liked best the times when my sister and I would curl up next to our mother while she read aloud to us.

  As a young person, who did you look up to most?

  No question: my mother.

  What was your worst subject in school?

  Arithmetic. I think you call it math now.

  What was your best subject in school?

  Art. And after that, English.

  What was your first job?

  It was when I was a teenager. I worked in what we called the College Shop in a big downtown Cleveland (Ohio) department store called Higbee’s. But after that, I mostly worked in the pricing department of a washing machine factory.

  How did you celebrate publishing your first book?

  I don’t think I did anything special. By that time, I was beginning to get over my absolute astonishment at having found my editor in the first place. That was the most wonderful moment of all.

  Where do you write your books?

  I think about them for a long time before I actually start putting words on paper, and I think about them all over the place. Then, when I’m ready, I work at my computer in my workroom. But before, I always wrote them out longhand, sitting on my sofa in the living room. I wrote on a big tablet, and then I typed everything, paragraph by paragraph, on my typewriter, making changes as I went along.

  Where do you find inspiration for your writing?

  I mostly write about all the unanswered questions I still have from when I was in elementary school.

  Which of your characters is most like you?

  The main characters in all of my long stories are like me, but I think Winnie Foster, in Tuck Everlasting, is most like me.

  When you finish a book, who reads it first?

  Always my editor, Michael di Capua. His opinion is the most important one.

  Are you a morning person or a night owl?

  Neither one, really. I’m mostly a middle-of-the-day person.

  What’s your idea of the best meal ever?

  One that someone else cooked. And it has to have something chocolate for dessert.

  Which do you like better: cats or dogs?

  Cats to look at and to watch, but dogs to own.

  What do you value most in your friends?

  Good talk and plenty of laughing.

  Where do you go for peace and quiet?

  Now that my children are grown and gone into lives of their own, I have plenty of peace and quiet just sitting around the house.

  What makes you laugh out loud?

  Words. My father was very funny with words, and I grew up laughing at the things he said.

  What’s your favorite song?

  Too many to mention, but most of them are from the ’30s and ’40s, when songs were to sing, not to shout and wiggle to.

  Who is your favorite fictional character?

  No question: Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass.

  What are you most afraid of?

  I have a fear that is very common when we are little, and I seem to have hung on to it: the fear of being abandoned.

  What time of year do you like best?

  May is my favorite month.

  What is your favorite TV show?

  I don’t watch many shows anymore—just CNN News and old movies.

  If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?

  My husband, Sam.

  If you could travel in time, where would you go?

  Back to Middletown, Ohio, to Lincoln School on Central Avenue, to live through fifth grade again. And again and again.

  What’s the best advice you have ever received about writing?

  No one single thing. Too many good things to list.

  What do you want readers to remember about your books?

  The questions without answers.

  What would you do if you ever stopped writing?

  Spend all my time doing word puzzles and games, and practicing the good old songs on my piano.

  What do you like best about yourself?

  That I can draw, and play the good old songs on my piano.

  What is your worst habit?

  Always expecting things to be perfect.

  What is your best habit?

  Trying to make things as perfect as I can.

  What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

  Right now, it’s a picture for a new book that hasn’t even been published yet. It’s a picture of a man in a washtub, floating on the ocean in a rainstorm. I’m really proud of that picture.

  Where in the world do you feel most at home?

  That’s a hard question. My family moved away from Middletown, Ohio (see the question/answer about time travel), when I was in the middle of sixth grade, and we never went back. Even after all these years, though, Middletown is the place I think of when I think about “home.” I’ve lived in a lot of different places, though, and liked them all, so I don’t feel sorry for myself. It’s just that the word “home” has its own kind of special meaning.

  What do you wish you could do better?

  Everything. Cook, write, play the piano, everything.

  What would your readers be most surprised to learn about you?

  Maybe that I believe that writing books is a long way from being important. The most important thing anyone can do is be a teacher. As for those of us who write books, I often think we should all stop for fifty years. There are so many wonderful books to read, and not enough time to get around to all of them. But we writers just keep cranking them out. All we can hope for is that readers will find at least a little time for them, anyway.

  Books by Natalie Babbitt

  Dick Foote and the Shark

  Phoebe’s Revolt

  The Search for Delicious

  Kneeknock Rise

  The Something

  Goody Hall

  The Devil’s Storybook

  Tuck Everlasting

  The Eyes of the Amaryllis

  Herbert Rowbarge

  The Devil’s Other Storybook

  Nellie: A Cat on Her Own

  Bub, or The Very Best Thing

  Ouch!

  Elsie Times Eight

  An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers

  GOODY HALL. Copyright © 1971 by Natalie Babbitt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC and are used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-149221

  ISBN: 978-0-312-36983-5

  Originally published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux

  www.squarefishbooks.com