Loretta Mason Potts Page 13

  “Those are the terms,” she told him. “All of the Masons for your countess.”

  “Done,” said the general, and he let go of Mother. “But Colin hands down the Countess first. Then I open the door for all of you to return across the bridge. My word of honor.”

  Mother was worried. “How do we know we can trust you?”

  “You don’t.” His lip curled. “You must take my word of honor, as a soldier and a gentleman.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Newby, “that has a nice sound to it. What do you think, Mrs. Mason?”

  Mother looked at the iron ring on the floor and then at the General’s face. Both looked hard and cold.

  “He may have a sense of honor,” she decided. “Such things were fashionable once. We’ll take the chance.”

  She ran outside and called up to Colin. “Colin, Colin.” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Put her down. Bring her back.”

  The Countess was coming to now and she stood upon the roof and stamped her tiny foot.

  “Boor,” she cried, “how dare you! Put me down— this instant.”

  Colin put his hand around her waist and gently lifted her off the roof. She squirmed and kicked like a small animal in his hand.

  He sat her down at the top of the stone stairway. He saw her lift her head and sweep haughtily into the house, followed by Mother. Then he waited.

  The Countess, as she passed Mother, said, “I will never forgive him, never, so it’s no good your pleading for him.”

  The General hurried to her side. “Are you quite all right, my dear?” She nodded and walked to the fireplace to arrange her hair.

  The General told her the agreement. She turned pale.

  “Let them return! Now that they know? No one has ever learned our secret—and returned.”

  “I gave my word,” he reminded her, “and my word is my life.”

  “Very well,” she answered. “Let those who wish to go—go. Let those who wish to remain—remain.”

  The General took hold of the ring, pulled up the trap door, and the children, blinking from the darkness, climbed slowly up into the room. Jerry was first, then Sharon, then Kathy, and finally Loretta.

  Jerry and Sharon and Kathy rushed to Mother and crowded around her like chicks around a hen. Loretta stood to one side, her face turned away.

  “My darlings!” Mother hugged them so tight.

  “Mother! Mother!” they cried out as they hugged her.

  “Please,” yawned the Countess, “do spare me this sentimental slush. I despise that word mother.”

  The children grew quiet. They did not look at the Countess now.

  “Mother, we want to go home,” they whispered.

  “Come,” and Mother took hold of Loretta’s arm.

  The Countess held her arms out to Loretta. “Loretta! Don’t go. Not you. Don’t leave me. Let me have one child of my own.”

  But Mother held Loretta. “Loretta, come with me.”

  “Why?” Loretta asked.

  “Because I love you,” said Mother.

  “She loves me, too.” Loretta pointed at the Countess. “And she will let me stay here and not send me back to the Pottses.”

  “That wicked creature,” Mother looked at the Countess. “She stole you from me in the first place or you would never have left home at all. Yes, I understand it all now. And she has been trying to steal the others, too. It was not you, Loretta. It was she. Encouraging them to be naughty, just as she encouraged you. So please come with me now.”

  Now the Countess put her arms around Loretta.

  “Don’t go back over the bridge, dear child. Over there are many tears. Here there is always fun and laughter and music and dancing.”

  “Yes,” Mother nodded, “there are tears over that bridge, but there are wonderful things, too. Remember, Loretta, how exciting it can be and how unexpected? Here everything is the same all the time. There, it is changing from sun to rain, rain to snow. One never knows what will happen next.”

  Loretta nodded. “Like the time Mr. Potts was hiding behind the door and popped me over the head with a rolled up Saturday Evening Post.”

  The Countess laughed. “Dear Loretta! She is never dull.”

  Loretta leaned against her. The Countess stroked her hair.

  “I will stay with you always,” she said, “and laugh and dance and listen to your music.”

  “She has made her choice.” The Countess smiled. “And now take your brood and go.”

  “No, no,” Mother cried. “I love you, Loretta, please come home with me.”

  “We love you too, Loretta,” cried Sharon and Jerry. “At first we didn’t but now we do. Please come home with us.”

  “Please come home with us,” said Kathy, “you are our very own big sister and I will let you play sometimes with Irene Irene Lavene.”

  Then she remembered. “Irene Irene!” and Kathy ran to the window and looked out at the bridge. “She’s gone. She’s gone. Where’s Irene?”

  Loretta ran to the window. “She’s gone. Where is Irene Irene, Countess?”

  The Countess was embarrassed. “I could not help it. I had to dispose of her. She was blocking our bridge. We set fire to her last night and swept the ashes into the stream this morning.”

  Before anyone could stop her, Loretta let out a cry of rage and made a grab for the Countess’s hair. The Countess screamed but Loretta’s hands were yanking her yellow curls and Loretta was screaming, “You burned Irene. You burned Irene. I hate you!”

  “Help,” cried the Countess to Mother. “Take her. Stop her. She’s your child.”

  Mother had to take Loretta’s arms and fasten them behind her back as she smiled at the Countess. “Loretta is never dull—remember?”

  Then Mother pulled her to the door and Jerry and Sharon and Kathy followed.

  There was a piercing sad cry from the Countess.

  “Children! Children! Oh, why do you always leave me?” And she turned away her beautiful face and laid it on her arms in grief. The General bowed his head, in shame, and his sword hung limply from his side.

  How sad and lonely they both looked!

  No one said a word as they tiptoed out and hurried over the bridge as fast as they could.

  For one second they all stood by the bank of the stream and looked across.

  There it lay, dreaming in the sunlight, the little castle with the stone staircase, the little stone chimneys and the tiny door with the iron knocker in the shape of a lion’s head.

  It was a dear little thing!

  From the bottom of the hill there came the sound of the cows mooing on the Potts farm.

  The children said nothing. They knew they would never see the little castle again. Only Mrs. Newby spoke.

  “If they had asked me to stay, I would have,” she sighed. “All my life I have wanted to live in a dollhouse.”

  When they got back into the house again, Mother called the carpenter before she took off her hat.

  “Come and board up a wall with strong wooden beams so nobody can ever get through it again.”

  Loretta was still crying. But she said nothing at all as the carpenter came and put nails into boards at the back of the closet.

  Kathy looked at Irene Irene Lavene’s little chair.

  “Once, I had the most beautiful doll in the whole world.”

  “Me, too,” said Loretta. “She was mine, too.”

  “She wasn’t,” said Kathy.

  “She’s gone forever,” said Loretta. “And so she can be mine, too.”

  “Loretta is right,” said Mother. “And it is sad about Irene Irene Lavene. But we had to pay for all of this some way. And we are all safe and we are all home. So let’s be thankful.”

  Kathy said, “We will put a wreath of flowers on her little rocking chair and nobody will ever sit in that chair again.”

  Loretta and Kathy and Jerry and Sharon went out to get the flowers. But Colin stayed in the room and watched his mother as she went about the ho
use singing and straightening things up. There was something he could not understand and would never understand.

  Back there when he was so big and she was so small, he could have broken her in two with one hand. Yet, when she called him, his neck got hot and that same feeling came into the pit of his stomach. Size, he decided, had nothing to do with any of it.

  And just to be sure, Mother often went into Kathy’s old room—Loretta’s room—and looked at the boards at the back of the closet. Once she held her ear down close to the wall and thought to herself, maybe it was all a dream anyway. But soon she jumped back. There was the faint sound of an orchestra playing dance music.

  The Countess was giving a party over there!

  Mother never listened at that wall again!

  MARY COYLE CHASE (1907–1981) was born in Denver, Colorado, and lived there all her life. She worked for various Denver papers as a journalist, began to write plays, and in 1944 had a huge success with Harvey, which won the Pulitzer Prize and was later made into a movie starring Jimmy Stewart.

  HAROLD BERSON (1926–1986) was born in Los Angeles and studied art in Paris. Loretta Mason Potts, originally published in 1958, was the first book he illustrated, but he would go on to draw pictures for more than ninety books, including many that he also wrote.