CHAPTER XXIV

Real Magic

Judy was glad when Helen Riker slipped into the seat Penny had left. She was just in time to hear the magician’s announcement that it would be real magic if he could make all the children’s wishes come true.

“Penny has wished for her father and now she sees a man exactly like him. Is that right?”

“Oh, yes!” Penny said. “I closed my eyes, and when I opened them there was my daddy again—”

“You see?” he interrupted. “If I’m not her real daddy, I must be his twin brother. At any rate, the little lady trusts me. Now watch as I make her disappear.”

Penny climbed up on the long table in front of the magician and waved good-bye to the audience. Her mother was watching as if she really expected a miracle. Turning to Judy, she said, “He isn’t going to use a screen. I’ve seen this trick before, but Paul would be different. He _is_ like Philip—so like him it’s almost uncanny.”

“Penny’s gone!” cried Judy, but nobody heard her because at the same time exclamations of surprise went up from everyone else in the audience. The table top was empty. The magician had made the little girl vanish right before their eyes.

“That,” he announced, “was a trick which Penny herself will explain to you as soon as I bring her back. I have to say a few magic words first. They may be familiar to someone in the audience.”

And he began to chant, “Rama! Rama! Sita! Rama! Arise, daughter of Sita as lovely as a rose.”

Holding his wand over a large, empty vase that stood on the table, he continued to chant mystic phrases as first a bouquet of roses and then Penny herself came up, smiling through the roses.

“A real girl and real roses!”

“And a real daddy,” she chirped. “Isn’t that real magic?”

Clapping hands answered her as the magician began throwing the roses. Helen Riker caught one, and held it in her hand.

“It will make up for everything I lost, unless—Judy!” she asked suddenly. “Who were those boys who came in with him? I saw them together in the store, too. He’s not married, is he? I couldn’t—”

Judy told her the Dran family were only caretakers for young Uncle Paul as her family had been caretakers for old Uncle Paul.

“He said he likes children around him,” Judy finished.

“I can see that. Oh, I’m so happy. We don’t need those little idols, Judy. We’re going to have each other.”

“See, Mommy!” Penny announced, returning to her chair and cuddling into her mother’s lap. “Didn’t I tell you he could make wishes come true?”

Soon after that, the curtain was drawn and the magician did not appear again in spite of all the clapping. Now the club members gathered around Penny. She began to explain in a mysterious voice just the way she had rehearsed the disappearing trick. “There’s a hiding place under the stage. You remember how thick the table top was? Well, there’s a sliding panel of thin wood—see! And when the panel slid out from under me, I dropped right into the table and disappeared.”

“How did you get inside the vase?” several voices questioned.

Penny laughed.

“That was easy. I slid through the table leg. It was hollow and went down like a tunnel under the stage.”

“I was there,” Wally spoke up proudly. “I pushed up Penny and the roses through the table and through the bottom of the vase. It was a neat trick. I only wish—”

“What?” everybody asked when he paused.

“I wish my father’s pocketknife would turn up like Penny did,” he said ruefully. “Pop’s mad at me. I borrowed it to play with, and dropped it in the hay in your barn, Judy.”

“You did?” Judy asked. “When was this?”

“Saturday morning,” he replied. “I was going to look for it, but Ricky chased me out of there. We’d had a fight. He said, ‘Don’t look for it!’ I was going to come back and hunt around later, but he kept chasing me out, and yelling, ‘Run!’ and I was scared. He can throw knives, that Ricky! He’s—”

“Wait a minute,” Judy stopped him. “He has a knife, but have you ever seen him throw it?”

“N-no,” Wally admitted. “He can throw a lasso, though.”

“We know that.” Judy smiled at Peter, and from the way he smiled back she knew that he too had guessed the solution of the mystery of the talking tree. It had been Ricky’s voice all the time, but he hadn’t even known it himself.

The curtain suddenly parted and there stood Helen Riker and the magician on the stage together.

Running up on the stage, Judy whispered something to the magician and then turned to the audience.

“Weather permitting,” she announced, “a play will be given in our grove the day after Thanksgiving. I hope you will all be there to see it. The magician will direct it. I can’t promise for certain, but I believe he will accomplish the amazing feat of making a tree talk.”

She had no dinner to prepare the following day, as there would be a family gathering around her parents’ table. The Rikers were invited but politely refused.

“We’ll be having our own Thanksgiving at Paul’s house,” Helen Riker said, and added impulsively, “Oh, Judy! Aren’t you happy for us?”

“I certainly am,” Judy said warmly, and meant it.

“Rama has rescued me,” Helen said, “as he rescued Sita in the ‘Ramayana.’ Friday you shall see it.”

Judy did see it. The story was all that she had hoped it would be—and more. Old Uncle Paul was there to watch it. He had been cleared of the charge of arson when Peter and the police caught the three men who had stolen Sita from Helen. The thieves also admitted having set fire to the house by accident when they went back to search for the jade.

The magician, taking the part of Rama, was also the narrator. Evil, according to the ancient story, reigned supreme until the god of life, Vishnu, and his wife were born as Rama and Sita. Prince and princess, they were fated to meet and marry.

Helen Riker, in a green dress, was beautiful as Sita. The children took the parts of the monkeys who rescued her, but the strangest character in the whole play was the demon Ravana. The part of the many-headed monster was taken by the talking tree! When Sita was kidnaped, she sat in its lower branches chanting her mystic “Rama! Rama! Rama! I seek thee within me and my senses are sealed.”

After the rescue, the magician, as Rama, was supposed to slay the monster and restore the powers of virtue to the earth. Each time he pierced the tree with his arrow, Judy, hiding in the barn to be the voice of Ravana, called out, “Too late!” But the last time she spoke the ancient words of wisdom, “Learn by my example! Do selfless deeds at once!”

And almost at once she was back in the grove presenting old Uncle Paul with his two precious jade statues. He took them both, fondled them a moment and then, with tear-moist eyes, said, “They complete the Riker collection. Put it in the museum, Paul. Let other people look at it. Let them learn by my example.”

“Never,” Judy told Peter later, “have I felt so sorry for anyone. He’s an old man and an unhappy man in spite of his wealth. He can’t have very many more years to live.”

“Be thankful,” Peter said, “that he has lived long enough to do this one generous act. People will remember him for his jade collection long after they have forgotten even his monument. Someone—if I were Horace I could quote him exactly—said, ‘The best thing to do with a life is to spend it for something which outlasts it.’ And whether he intended it that way or not, that’s what Paul Riker has done.”

“I see,” Judy whispered. “Does love outlast it?”

Peter’s answer was a kiss. They both knew it did. They were quiet, sharing a wonderful moment together. Then Peter broke the spell by suggesting that Judy go with him to the barn.

“Honey’s still here. We must show her how the tree talked if Horace hasn’t already told her. It works just like the pipes in that statue, doesn’t it?”

After much persuasion, Honey consented to stand beside the hollow tree while they showed her how it had all happened.

“Don’t be scared,” Judy told her. “We may sound a little spooky.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she replied.

When they had climbed to the hayloft they stood directly under the little window that looked out over the grove. The hollow branch just outside it acted like a speaking tube and carried their voices out through the hole in the tree as they chanted:

“_You’re standing beside the talking tree, But the voices you hear are Peter and me-ee!_”

Judy knew how hollow their voices must sound to Honey. A moment later she was racing toward the barn.

“So that’s it!” she charged. “You two spooks can haunt the grove whenever you want to by hiding in the hayloft and talking out that little window.”

Now she was convinced that the superstition had started when someone in the barn had accidentally frightened Horace.

“He’s so silly,” she said fondly, “but I can’t help loving him for it. And isn’t it wonderful how things have turned out for Mrs. Riker and the magician?”

“It certainly is,” agreed Judy. “He gave her a ring just the way Rama did in the story. But, best of all, the collection is saved for future Ramas and Sitas. It’s nice to know what’s expected of the ideal man and woman, isn’t it? Peter,” she asked abruptly, “am I your ideal?”

“You’re my Judy,” he replied, “and that’s even better. What was it you said about every day beginning a new mystery?”

“It’s the way I feel about life,” Judy explained to Honey. “It’s my philosophy, my Judyana, or whatever you want to call it. Go down to the grove and the talking tree will tell you.”

“No, thanks,” Honey said with a laugh. “I’ve been meditating the matter, and my Honeyana tells me I’ve had enough. The next time I letter a sign, Judy, it will be for Dean Studios, not for anyone like you.”

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Trail of the Green Doll, by Margaret Sutton