by Mary Chase
A voice called out, “How dare you?”
Maureen jumped.
Standing in the hallway were two little girls. One was her size, the other was taller, older. Both were wearing such funny clothes: long dresses, high shoes with buttons. Their hair was long and hung down their backs to their sashes.
The way they were looking at her! She might have been a bug. Such disgust was on their faces. She was startled at this look although she was used to people frowning at her, people who knew her, but she had never seen these girls before.
She got angry. “How dare you?” she shouted.
The little girls didn’t flicker an eyelash. The taller one yawned and covered her mouth politely before she remarked in a cool voice to the younger one, “It talks.”
“It!” They called her “it” as though she were a bug!
She ran toward them with her hand raised high to slap one of them, certainly the smaller one, more her size. But just then two more little girls came and stood next to them, then two more and finally a small one about five years old. Even this one wore a long dress and buttoned shoes.
“Look,” said the tallest one as she waved toward Maureen, “what the wind blew in.”
“You shut up!” Maureen was shouting, and there were angry tears in her eyes because all seven were now looking at her as though she were a bug and an “it.”
They didn’t seem to hear the shouting or see her upraised hand at all. They spoke to each other.
“What odd clothes,” murmured one of them. “What an ugly voice,” said another. “The silly shoes,” said another. The one next to this one answered, as she giggled softly, “Shoes! Those can’t be shoes!”
Then they all giggled, holding their hands over their mouths. Then the tall one stood up straight and took her hand off her mouth.
“Shh! She is coming.”
A woman walked into the room now, followed by the maid. The woman’s hair was piled up high on her head and fastened with two jeweled pins. Her dress fell all the way to the floor. It was some kind of heavy wool in a shade of gray. Earrings were set in her ears, matching a pin near her throat. Her eyes were so soft and kind. She smiled at Maureen.
“Good afternoon, child,” she said as she hurried toward her. “Do you play the piano?”
The maid was frowning. “I told her to wait in the kitchen, ma’am.”
“Never mind, Nora.” The mother’s voice was soft. “She wanted to see the house. Please play for us.”
Then she sat down on the little satin sofa and arranged her skirt neatly around her, and nodded to the seven girls, who lowered themselves into other little sofas and eyed Maureen as though she weren’t there. They were looking through her, or beyond her.
“Please play for us.” The mother was waiting. Nora stood in the hallway.
Maureen didn’t want to play. She wanted to run away from those seven girls who were regarding her now with such amused, cold eyes. But the woman was smiling.
“Please, go ahead,” she said, waving toward the piano. Maureen sat down on the wooden stool and played chopsticks. Then she stopped. She had heard smothered giggles from the girls, who again held hands over their mouths.
“That’s all I know,” she told the woman, who smiled and clapped her hands.
“Very nice,” she told her. “Keep on with your lessons.”
“Mama.” One girl stood up.
“May I play for her. She played for us.”
“How kind!” The mother beamed. “Please do, Lucrece.”
When Maureen heard that name, “Lucreesh,” she wondered how you spelled it. It gave her an odd twinge in her mind to hear it. But this one was nothing at all like the “Lucreaky” she had seen in the painting at the Old Messerman Place. This one was only about eleven years old. She walked primly to the piano, spun the stool higher, sat down, arranged her skirt neatly, and placed her fingers on the keys.
Such music! It seemed to come like soft spring winds and soft summer nights—like a sprinkling, singing rain. It caught you and held you in a spell and you forgot where you were. Then it stopped. The woman leaned back, closing her eyes peacefully. The maid standing in the hallway was smiling, too. Now they all clapped their hands politely. Lucrece sat down on the sofa again, her head lowered modestly.
But the tallest sister glanced over at Maureen. “Don’t you wish you could do that?”
“Shh,” the mother said, frowning. “Someday she shall be able to play like that. Who knows?”
“Who knows?” echoed all the girls. Then they laughed softly as they stood on their feet.
“May we be excused, Mama?”
“Yes,” she said, “but only to get your coats and bonnets and come with me in the carriage. As we drive this child home, we’ll leave soup for old Mrs. Matthews.”
Maureen saw the girls frown. “Again, Mama? We took soup to her last week.”
“People get hungry every day,” their mother reminded them. “Get into your coats and bring a warm shawl for this child. She is half dressed.” They all filed out of the room.
Half dressed! Why did everyone say she was half dressed? She was dressed like all the other girls in her school: brown scuffs, short socks, a cotton dress, and a red sweater. They were dressed silly like old pictures: long dresses and high shoes with buttons! What kind of people were they? But she did like their mother.
The maid was pulling at the sleeve of her sweater. “You come now and wait in the kitchen.” Out there she cried, “Look, now, and I’ve gone and scalded yer milk.” She held out the pan with slimy coating on top. As she poured it into a thick white cup she told her, “Ye’re lucky, ye know. It’s not all of ’em would hitch up the horses and drive ye home on a cold day, after just comin’ in from one outing already.”
It was crowded in the carriage. Four of the girls sat on one side, facing Maureen, the mother, and three others. Maureen, enveloped in a thick red shawl, was in a corner next to the mother. It was fun to hear the clop-clopping of the horses and feel the sway of the carriage itself, swinging gently back and forth, with a lullaby kind of movement, as though you were being rocked in a cradle by a gentle hand. How surprised her family would be when they saw the horses stop by the curb of the house on Beach Street. She hoped Henry and Diane would watch as she got out. She knew they would ask her all sorts of questions. Maybe Delbert Moody would see her, too, being handed out by the coachman who had handed her in. Maybe Junior Boggs and Baby would be watching from their windows, too. This thought made her happy. She leaned back and smiled and studied the faces of the sisters sitting across from her.
But she waited until they were not looking at her. Each wore a long woolen coat, buttoned all the way up to the chin. Each had her hands inside a little fur muff which matched the fur at the collar of her coat. Each wore a bonnet with a brim which curved. The brims were faced underneath with fluted silk which matched the linings of their coats. They still pretended to look past Maureen as though the corner of the swinging carriage were empty. Then she stopped looking at them and watched out the peephole kind of window of the carriage, through which she could see just by turning her head. The buildings looked so strange. None were tall. They all looked flat and squat.
There was a sign before one which said, “Feed and Grain.” Another with a sign which read, “Thread and Notions.” Another sign read, “Livery Stable.” Another, “Saloon.”
How strange it all was. She had never, never been in this part of her town before. The lamps on the street corners had odd shapes. Little bluish flames flickered inside the octagonal-shaped glass held with black iron bands. The way the people were dressed. All the women wore long skirts, the men high hats and some had coats with fur collars. Where had she got to on the way home from school in the rain?
Three times the horses stopped, and the man jumped off the back and went inside of a building to ask where Beach Street was. Three times he came back, shaking his head.
“They never heard of it here. It could be in the n
ext town.”
“How far did you come, child, do you remember?” the mother asked Maureen gently, for the tenth time.
She answered again the same way. “Just a few blocks. I was on my way home from school.”
Did she see Lucrece now smile secretly at the tall sister sitting next to her? The smile they exchanged seemed to say, “We know something we won’t tell.”
They drove back to the big house.
—
Later, as Maureen was sitting on one of the satin chairs in the big room with the fireplace and the piano, she heard the mother say to someone in the hallway, “It’s as though she had dropped out of the sky from some far-off place.”
A big man wearing a coat with a fur collar came into the room and smiled at her. “Don’t worry, young lady,” he told her. “We’ll get you home safely.”
Then he turned to the mother. “Her parents are probably at the station house now looking for her.”
No, thought Maureen, her parents never went to a station house. What was a station house? But they would be looking for her, calling all over the neighborhood, “Maureen! Maureen! Where are you?”
If they didn’t find her, they would look for her in her bed and her dad would get out the car. What would those nasty girls think when they saw her dad driving up to those steps in a new blue Plymouth? Then she hoped it wouldn’t happen because he would be so cross at her. Those girls would like that. No, she would find her own way home.
And now dinner would be served in ten minutes. Nora came in and told them and then took Maureen upstairs to a crazy kind of bathroom. The tub was a wooden box, lined with tin. The washbowl was gray marble, standing on iron legs. The john had a box above it, high against the wall. A chain with a wooden spool-like thing hung down from the side. You pulled this to flush it. There was no tile anywhere. The walls were wood and painted gray. The soap in the dish was yellow like a pumpkin. The bathroom at the Swansons’ house was pink tile and the soap was perfumed. What if those girls could see that!
She was washing her hands and face as the knock came at the door and Nora handed in a long woolen dress. “Put this on.”
Put that on! She would not. Oh, well, maybe just for fun, to try, but she wouldn’t wear a heavy blue old thing like that. But she felt so grown-up and so different as she slid her arms into the long, wrist-length sleeves and buttoned the long dress. She felt cozy in it. It was chilly in the halls of this big house. And somehow it was like being in a school play. There was the sound of a bell outside—like chimes in a steeple.
“Dinner is served, miss,” she heard Nora’s voice call outside the door. Dinner is served, miss! She felt so big. They called her miss.
—
The dining room was beautiful. The candles flickered in the tall sticks. The wood on the walls glistened. The seven sisters sat all around the table, their hair combed neatly, brushed back from their foreheads and held with tiny black velvet ribbons across the head. The mother sat at one end. There was a vacant chair at the other end.
“Do we wait for the Mister?” Nora asked her.
“No. He will be late. He will dine when he returns and he asked us not to wait. Mr. Messerman has gone down to the station house.”
“Mr. Messerman!” Maureen echoed, so surprised. “We live near the Old Messerman Place.”
“The old Messerman Place!” Now it was the mother’s turn to be surprised. “How strange! I had supposed we were the only family in town with that name. Where do you say this is?”
Maureen laid down her fork. “It’s on my way home from school,” she answered, noticing even then that the mother looked at her and listened, but the seven sisters seemed to pay no attention, their heads lowered over plates, their forks moving up and down. “It’s full of weeds and it’s all boarded up and nobody lives there, except—”
The seven heads were now lifted and seven pairs of eyes were staring at her intently across the snowy linen cloth. The mother lifted a little brass bell. It went “tinkle-tinkle.” Nora came through the swinging door from the kitchen, picked up a plate off the table, and carried it out.
“Except who?” the tallest girl prompted her.
“What?” asked Maureen. She had been watching Nora. When her mother cleared the table she picked up two dishes at one time.
“You said somebody lived—someplace,” the tall girl repeated. “Where? Who?”
Maureen decided not to answer her. She looked at the mother and pointed to the walls of the room. “There’s pictures like those. Castles and bridges and lots of girls with sheep. Only they’re all dirty and when you hit them hard—does the dust ever fly—whew!”
“This tapestry was woven especially for us, we thought.” The mother was eyeing the walls. Then she shrugged. “Apparently someone else ordered it also.”
“There’s a big thing like that.” Maureen pointed across the hall toward the chandelier with the candles flickering. It looked like a birthday cake suspended from the ceiling. “But it’s all hanging down now. Somebody swung on it, maybe.”
Nora came back in and picked up another plate. She was carrying it out when Maureen said, “There’s crazy pictures in the hall upstairs, pictures of ladies in long silk dresses.”
The mother smiled fondly at her daughters. “Someday we plan to have our daughters’ portraits painted.”
Maureen didn’t seem to hear her. “When they moved, they took out all the furniture except those seven pictures.”
“Seven?—there?” The mother was so surprised again. “We have seven little ladies here,” and she smiled at her daughters. “This is beginning to sound strange. Who are these people, I wonder?”
“Nobody,” said the girl who played the piano. “She is making it up, Mama—to tease us.”
“Please, Lucrece.” And even though the mother looked at her fondly, she said firmly, “We must not be rude to our little guest.”
Maureen was indignant. “I am not making it up. There’s pictures of seven ladies in the upstairs hall of the Old Messerman Place. There’s Cleo and there’s Constance and there’s Maude—”
Nobody was eating now. The mother wasn’t even smiling. Her eyes were fixed on Maureen, her fork was in midair, halfway to her mouth. But the seven sisters were all smiling. The tallest one spoke softly, “And Sylvia and Lucrece and Mavis and Ingrid.”
“How did you know?” asked Maureen, after she had found her breath.
“Those are our names, silly.” She smiled at her mother. “Mama, don’t you see? She is making it up.”
The mother hadn’t moved her eyes from Maureen’s face. And she wasn’t smiling now. She looked frightened. She nodded. “Yes, Ingrid, I am afraid she is.”
Maureen started to shout, but there was the sound outside of carriage wheels, voices raised, and then the thump-thump of somebody stamping snow off shoes. The big front door was flung open and the father came in, his cheeks red from the cold.
“Papa!” The seven daughters waved to him as he stood in the hall and handed his hat and gloves to Nora. The mother hurried to his side. Maureen heard him speaking in a low voice, but she couldn’t hear what he said.
He waved at her, and smiled cheerfully. “Don’t worry, child. Everything will be all right—tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” She couldn’t stay here till tomorrow.
She wiggled out of the big carved dining-room chair and ran toward the door, grabbing the knob.
“I got to go home.” She was excited now. “They’ll be looking for me.”
But the father gently pulled her back. “You can’t go out in that storm.” His voice was kind, but firm. “I’d never forgive myself, little girl.” Here he smoothed her hair with a big hand. “You must live in a neighboring town. Nobody at the station house ever heard of Beach Street.”
“Papa.” Ingrid was stroking the sleeve of his coat. “She knows where she lives and she knows how to get home, don’t you?”
Maureen stepped closer to the big man as she saw the seven sisters m
oving toward her, smiling, not looking at her now as though she were a bug but as though they had known her before and disliked her. Then she heard it. It was a voice which seemed to come from somewhere upstairs. It was pitched low. It said, over and over, “Give me my bracelet. Give me my bracelet.”
“Look!” The mother hurried to her side and took hold of her hand. “She is frightened at something, poor child.”
The voice stopped. The lips of the seven sisters were curved in sweet smiles.
The father spoke. “Take her upstairs and put her to bed. The child is exhausted.”
“Come with us.” The tallest girl extended her hand.
“How sweet they are tonight!” Maureen heard the father’s voice so full of happiness as he stood arm in arm with the mother and they beamed so proudly at the seven girls now moving toward Maureen.
“No! No!” she heard herself shouting. “No! No!”
Nora ran to her and took her hand.
“Let her come with me and the cook—up the back stairs. Sure she’ll be fine there with us.”
—
On the third floor, the rooms were small but cozy. They had low ceilings and they seemed to be snuggled in under the gables where the roof went slanting down. In the corner of the one where Nora took Maureen, there was a small pot-bellied stove with a bright fire inside. Through a window you could look in and see the flames. This window was not glass because glass would crack.
“It’s what they call isinglass,” Nora explained. “A special kind of thing that won’t crack and melt like window glass.”
Then she stopped buttoning the long white flannel nightgown with the long sleeves she had found for Maureen.
“Sure now, don’t yez have a stove like that in your house?”
Maureen shook her head.
“Then how do yez keep warm on cold nights?”
“We have a big furnace in the basement. It’s gas—I think.”