I

On a ravishing May morning in 1914 - the last spring
that could possibly claim to belong to the age of stability,—
the big windows of classroom six, on the second floor of
Benham Hall at Athenia College stood wide open to the south.
The sun poured richly in, burnishing young <u>bank</u> heads to the
sheen of bird wings. The twelve to one hour had proved
interminable, though Dr. Marian Fleming had given a lecture
on the Canterbury Tales that derived from the latest Oxford
research. When the gong clanged at twelve fifty five, more
than a hundred Freshmen leaped from their seats as at the
call of a magic horn. Hitching up their dusty black sergeant
gowns, which slid easily from their athletic shoulders,
clasping their Chaucers to their breasts, throwing glances
of unconscious hostility at the woman of thirty, on the
platform, whose muse-like face seemed charged with the
secrets of learning, they hurled themselves toward a
narrow door built for more decorous students of the
eighteen eighties. Hot were their hearts, not for books
but for Japanese cherry blossoms, hall lunches and basketball.
Spring had come and the compressed wooden corridors
and crowded stairs of Benham resounded with her footsteps.

One tall, long-legged, sixteen year old from the

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neighborhood of Boston had withdrawn to the open window nearest the platform of room six, with obvious intent to await its emptying. Sabia Howe had startling deep-blue eyes, and their gentian glances flew across the deserted chairs to her professor's golden head. She admired Professor Fleming's poise, actually rather tremulously held together, adored the classic folds of her gown sleeves over perfect crisp white lingerie cuffs, worshipped her rounded chin, admired dipped over her stem-like neck and her pensive deep-set grey eyes, straight nose, and air of feminine mystery. It came to the New England girl suddenly that Miss Fleming resembled a bit the Roman portrait bust called "Clytie" which stood on a pedestal beside Caesar and other Roman worthies in the tiled corridor of Benham's ground floor. Clytie in the original marble was in the third Graeco-Roman room of the British Museum. Sabia planned to look her up next summer when she was to visit England with her parents.

Lead from the blue-stone clock-tower overhead the one o'clock bell began its rangor and Sabia craned her neck out of the window to observe her fellow students cascading in streams from the grey stone clock tower, the buildings of the butressed college WELLES. There was a wind and their ankle-length cotton skirts took funnel and cloud shapes on the gravelled walks of the campus, caught on maple trunks, and tied themselves to twigs of the exquisite dogwood trees

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which made a froth of white along the grey Gothic walls.
Spring beauty pierced Sabia's heart and made its sorrow
poignant.

"Well, Miss Howe - have you a question?" The professor's measured English accent sought out her youngest, dreamiest Freshman, who seemed more in a trance than usual, and much less frisky.

Sabia turned, smiled and began a swift approach to the
platform banging her thin knees as she came through the
yellow chairs with their big flat right arms.

"Might I defer my Chaucer paper?" she asked, her red
cheeks growing redder with shyness. "It's my Grandmother,"
she explained, looking down. "She died this morning. I
have permission from the office to go to the funeral. I
don't understand Death," she confided, looking up with a
sort of tremor into the lovely face on the platform which
now so clearly expressed the voiceless language of sym-
pathy that her own countenance crumpled and she began to
weep.

Dr. Fleming stepped quickly down to her on the floor
and somehow a kiss was exchanged, tender, light and a
comfort to both, though Death remained unaccounted for.

"Please excuse me - you see, I couldn't talk to my
friends. We New England girls are more used to older
women, like you. We have so many aunts. You sort of

-4-

remind me of my Aunt Sabia-Tantine. She's only twenty
eight. She's my very *special* Aunt."

A small, involuntary smile lit her beloved's face, and
by a miracle they walked down the now deserted stairs, arm-
in-arm. Untidy classrooms gaped on the ground floor, tiled
floors lined with busts stretched ahead and as they passed
"Clytie," Sabia noticed that her breasts were bare, and
felt embarrassed to name the faint resemblance.

"What is the subject of your Chaucer paper, Miss Howe?"
Professor Fleming spoke in her professional voice and dropped
her student's pliant arm as they approached the open outside
doors.

"The Wife of Bath's Tale" said the Freshman, innocently
and caught a glint of humor, quickly suppressed. But Miss
Fleming only said, "why not, if you like the ribald Wife?"
and shook her gown sleeves nervously.

"Was the Wife "ribald" for her time or only for *our*
time?" asked the Freshman persistently. She was an honest
 creature and would like to have said that she had chosen the
Wife of Bath because she knew so much about men - a subject
Sabia Howe felt ignorant about. "Bibald" - the girls who
thought Miss Fleming a *precieuse ridicule* would laugh over
that - if she gave them a chance, which she would not do,
naturally.

Lingering on the gravelled walk, with the precocious
and naive Sabia Miss Fleming was agitating her gown sleeves

-5-

wondering if the girl had felt oppressed by the super-
feminism of the compact, self-believing college world -
the "world of women." Would this sensitive, intellectual
product of New England family life ever really join the
ranks of the aggressive modern woman, who was being taught
at Athenia to prepare for a job and to value herself on
equal terms with men?

"Have you missed men at college, Miss Howe?"

Sabia looked surprised, "I do miss Father and my
brother - and - oh well some of the boys I sail with in
Maine, I suppose. Will you please call me 'Sabia!' "Miss
Howe' is that favorite aunt, I'll see her at Grandie's
funeral...Thank you," she said, drinking in the pensive
mystery of her professor's golden-, crowned head, inclined
toward her in a charming, smiling detachment. "Goodbye."

Miss Fleming, with a poignant feeling she/recognised
as maternal, stood and watched her as she slid away along
the flowering pink wigelias. The universe of the Wife of
Bath did not seem fit pasturage for this vulnerable little
Howe girl, who gave her intense childlike love so freely
and still trusted everybody. But all nice girls were like
that. Miss Fleming had been like that herself. She, too,
had been born of the "right people", on the Eastern sea-
board, and hadn't had to worry about money or social
connections. But now she was thirty the underneath aspects
of "nice people" - so carefully concealed from their young -

-6-

looked more Chaucerian than she had believed. married

One of Athenia's most eminent and austere/professors
had declared his love, recently. He had avowed that he did
not believe in divorce, take it or leave it. What was an
erudite femme de trente ans, with all her instincts on the
march, to do about it?

Well, she could take a lonely walk into the filmy
starry
depths of the Hildreth woods, lie on a bed of white
blood-root and think it over - in vain, of course, for the
problem was insoluble - and then come back to dinner in her
little aesthetic flat at the edge of the campus, with moss
marks on her skirt and bark in her hair. And listen for
the telephone.

II

In her parlor-car seat - the Howes always travelled
in Pullmans - in the jiggly New York train, with a table
over her blue serge knees, the Freshman from Boston was
trying to read her Biology text-book. She was taking the
pre-medical course, with a vague thought of studying
medicine later on. The Darcies were doctors or ministers.
The Howes were business-men. To be a Darcy was tempting.
But pink glimpses of apple-blossom, white faintness of
cherry or plum, purple red of Judas, glimpsed through the
car window were putting her into a mood more dream-like
than intellectual. Train-travel, as usual, was releasing
her into a world of her own which was neither the place
she had left nor the place she was going to.

-7-

Resting her pointed chin on her thin hand, with her black scolding locks falling down over her eyes, Sabia gave herself richly to contemplation. She had washed her hair yesterday with one of those vague feelings she sometimes got that "something is going to happen." It had, and her Father who was fussy about the looks of his women would take pleasure in noting that every luminous and wiry hair of purple-black was silky and alert for the funeral at Indian Hill. In the man-dominated world of the Howes, conservative to the core, a daughter must be worthy of her heritage and extremely well groomed. It was hard for a Darcy to be interested in grooming. That was one of Mumsie's plagueiest troubles. Darcies were casual, rather than correct.

But the Darcies, so poor in Sabia's childhood and in Grandie's second husband, were fundamentally proud of themselves, the girl reflected, digging her back into her green velvet arm-chair. Their family history was a legend that went down the years. Doctor Sam Darcy who planted the willow trees along the roads that led to his patients in Northern Connecticut. Doctor Jebez Darcy who had his own seat built on a column in the church, like an eagle's eyrie opposite the pulpit. Above all, John Darcy, the missionary who built the old homestead, the mansion of Indian Hill, an elegant example of the Eighteenth century, pre-Revolutionary, New England farmhouse, which generations of ministers and doctors, doing farming on the side, had

-8-

clung to for 175 years. "Just as the English do", the Darcies used to say. The English Methodists, strangely enough, gave John Darcy the money to convert the Housatonic Indians who were skirting about in the bushes when the young Yale scholar came to nourish them with heavenly wisdom and write their Bible in their tongue.

Grandie, of course, was no Darcy save by marriage. She was a dark Rhode Islander, a Beaumont, who had some French, perhaps some touch of Indian blood-notice her nose - as well as plenty of early American. Grandie was a "Captain", as her husband whom Sabia had called Grand, used to say. "My wife is a Captain." She was also a fabulous cook. It was not so easy, since the doctor 'never sent a bill,' to use the old English cookery books in the "Old Kitchen", now the dining room, but still having its great fireplace, with cranes and iron pots. These old lavish recipes started "Take eighteen eggs", ended, "Add a bottle of rum." But Grandie had determined that the tradition that required roast venison with currant jelly, ducks in red wine, damson jam, gooseberry fool, heavy plumcake, 'apple pudding pie' should never quite die in the Darcy mansion.

Sabia here saw in her mind's eye, the panelled room, the Old Kitchen, as it looked on a winter Sunday morning she remembered as a child of what - maybe five? An enormous log fire in the fireplace, one of the old black iron pots full of deep fat hanging over it, and Grandie, with flushed

-9-

cheeks and a triumphant air, dropping the fishballs in,
one at a time, to frizzle and sizzle just so, and then
serving the one piping specimen on the favored plate while
other hungry souls awaited their turns. Grand, quiet for
his wife
once, taking his long-legged ease, teased about her
perfectionism. Grandie's image was tall, significant,
dominating, and the girl who had gone back in her
thoughts, suddenly shivered: how would such a matriarch
look in death - dead in a four-post bed?

"When Mother dies there will be nobody left in the
world who really loves me". Mumsie had written that to
her college girl a day or two ago. Dreadful words, dis-
turbing, which made young Sabia wild to escape from the
awful indiscretions of grief. Darcies are emotional,
Howes clamp down their feelings rigidly. How would she
manage tonight between Mumsie's grief and Father's dis-
comfort? There had always been conflicts, avowed in
slogans, if hardly admitted otherwise: "The Darcies help
people." "The Howes make money". The very wheels of the
train seemed to be grinding out her childish intuitions.

Sabia had come to know her doctor grandfather through
travelling with him in summer in a dusty buggy over a worn,
brown road which had ups and downs and sandy patches.
The horse was a roan, and his shaggy, reddish tail, bushing
out over the dashboard, let fall lumps of yellow manure,
or flicked suddenly over his harness-laden back to swish at
horse-fly.
a bluebonnet. Grand, in the right hand seat, never used

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the whip that rattled in its socket, except to dislodge
a pertinacious fly with the lash from the twitching,
wrinkled back.

Grand knew how to make a little girl in a red checked
shy gingham feel happy but happy. Tall, spare, rather shaggy,
with grey sidewhiskers and very blue eyes, he would point
out the sweet white clematis spraying on the stone walls,
the tall meadow rue, the green feathery ferns, with their
curled pink fronds. He called every one of them by its
Botanical name in its damp retreat. He liked poking along,
letting Dandy nuzzle his nose into black water in a wooden
trough under a tree, and thinking about what he would do
for his patients.

"Learn to help people, little one."

"How can I, Grand?"

"You'll find out if you care enough." (SAXOPAINT
BUGGY
He kept some of Grandie's preserves in
the back of the car and special sterilised milk for sick
babies, in an icebox he'd made. She saw him washing his
hands at a wooden sink in a kitchen, asking grave women for
more hot water and more yellow soap, till it seemed he would
wash the skin off. She had a memory of Grand bending over
a bed with tender care, another of him kneeling down to pray
with the folks. That was through the door of a downstairs
bedroom.

Why had Grandie "married again" not so long after her

-11-

beloved doctor's death? Grand was the one husband surely.
like Grandie
When people die you wonder what they were really like.

"Would you like some tea, Miss?" asked the grizzled,
respectable Negro porter in the stiff white coat bending over
her. Shaking her head firmly, Sabie Howe became aware of round
drops squeezing through closed eyelids. She shook her head
again, heard the porter cough and discretely vanish, as the
train rolled on through New Jersey.

Sabia suddenly saw a long black mourning veil, such as
only French people wore, swirling against the bright red of
cannas. The cannas were set struttingly in a round bed before
the front steps of a cocoa-colored frame house, with an ornate
porch, at the end of a blue concrete drive off Church Street
in Hamilton, a suburb north of Boston, where her parents had
set up housekeeping while Father learned the mill business.
He was still at the very bottom of the ladder when Grand
died and 'Grandie came to live with us.'

Float, float, float, like a white summer cloud from
the oak grove to the dining room where the family were having
breakfast. A little girl with a mother Hubbard apron, bows
on the shoulders, a child full of the warm-cool of a June
morning, and the flicker of new oak leaves which are red-
pink and wooly like fern fronds, burst in, interrupting
something that was going on. All voices abruptly ceased.

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Sabia's fingers, short and stubby, squeezed tighter the white innocents and the very short-stemmed blue violets she had just picked under the oaks. For her heart had contracted. Demure in her blue-striped gingham behind her silver coffee service, a wedding gift from Sabia Howe, Mumsie said:

"Put them in your finger-bowl, dear." Her voice was absent-minded, and she hardly glanced at her little girl. But Grandie opposite, tall and imposing lady-elder to her grandchild of six but after all only 54 - with her snow-white curly hair - once coal black like Mumsie's - piled high like that of a French marquise, her cheeks, with red roses in the middle, so alluring still and her grand manner, smiled at her, made a sign for her to sit up straight.

"Sabby, sit up straight, don't scrunch your shoulders so," said the tall young man at the foot of the table rather sharply. She squirmed, unscrunched them, and watched the blue violets rise till they lay flat on the top of the water, watched dirt from the Innocent roots cloud the glass bowl. Her father, however, rattled his big red coffee cup on its saucer, a signal to Grandie to pass it to Mumsie. But the Grandmother, who never forgot the presence of a man, summoned all her femininity to meet it, was for once not alert to her son-in-law's mood, was looking into a rosy distance, some place where a hungry heart might find sustenance.

"Mother", whispered Stella.

But the taut and touchy fair young man rose abruptly darted around the table to spank down the cup himself beside the pot, with a fearsome tinkle.

-13-

"Oh do excuse me Bob," said Grandie in her deep voice.
She sounded contrite, which was rare. Mumsie's hand quivered
as she poured coffee, and the child felt under her apron
a sharp, wasp-like sting, which she suppressed at once.
<u>Everything must be allright.</u>

The door-bell tinkled and the child slid off the
dictionary with a sense of relief. Behind the screen door
Mr. Topham, their neighbor who lived with his old mother next
door, stood with a bunch of red roses in his hand. Bowing
and smiling, removing his stiff, ridged white straw hat
from his still young but bald and perspiring head, Jim
presented the roses with a Pickwickian bow. Grandie had
called their attention to the resemblance of their neighbor
to Mr. Pickwick as he was depicted by Cruikshank in the old
Dickenses, with the ravelled blue bindings. Though scarcely
over thirty his belly was round, his waist a bit indefinite,
and everything about him twinkled with good nature and blithe-
ness.

"Coming along to the eight fifteen, Bob?" he called,
glimpsing the family at the table. "When do you expect Phil?"

"When is it, Mrs. Darcy - oh about four I guess,"
answered Papa in a crusty voice. "But you never know. No,
Jim, go ahead. I probably won't catch the eight-fifteen today."

"Darned if I'll go on the train with a man who walks

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through the cars, distributing roses to strangers," Papa said
XX sotto voce to Mumsie.

"Do drink up your milk, dear," said Mumsie hastily.
They still gave her the thick white cup with the grey cat
handle and the black mouse at the bottom. "You know Grand
said you had to drink your milk." She sighed and kicked at
her long cambric skirt.

"Why can't I have my silver cup? This is just a baby cup.. or a barber cup.."

Nobody paid any attention. Mumsie was wishing Papa
would take the eight fifteen, she could see. Mumsie's mouth
turned down at the corners when she was worried. The misery
that was being spoken in words when Sabby came in to break-
fast was back again.

Papa was now standing folding his napkin into its
silver ring, glancing at his watch, speaking his suppressed
cross words.

"If Phil had any real desire to make good in business and
help his Mother he would never have gone off to Mexico to make
his fortune. "Did he say it or did his little girl just
imagine it? She could see him, plain as plain, waxing his
golden moustache before the hall mirror where his irate face
looked back, and taking his straw hat from the wooden hat rack
with a swing of his right arm that revaled his stiff, starched
greyblue cuff.

-15-

"Coming back without a penny -- twenty five already - why didn't he get a job in Texas, instead of coming back to Boston where college educations are required... where I have to find him something?"

"Phil needs to see his Mother" gasped Grandie, "seven years... hardly any letters..." She had risen, dropped her napkin, followed her son-in-law into the narrow hall with her

aggressive Pugnacity had replaced sweetness and mellowness with a pugnacious face, her Captain's face, confronting him. In the past, he had fled, child's heart two antagonists were poised for battle, and she shivered. In spirit her Grandie was no man's dependent, she knew, and suddenly the tall, proud, imposing woman burst into spasmodic sobbing, covering her eyes with her handkerchief.

"Mother," pleaded Stella, "Bob" she pleaded and wailed. The little girl ran and clutched her round the waist and hid her eyes. Uncle Phil was part of Grandie, so was Mumsie yet she was Papa's wife.

Papa's dander was up, he did not care how many women cried. His gleaming blue eyes lit on an antique chair, a Darcy chair which stood in his front hall. Grandie had brought it with her when she came to live with her married daughter, along with other sacred family antiques which more or less excused her own presence to herself. The young couple could not afford beautiful furniture, at least not fine antiques.

"Stella" said her husband in his choking voice of anger which scared them all to death, - he had taken hold of the Darcy chair with its fading eighteenth century paint and fraying silk brocade seat "oblige me by removing this broken down relic

-16-

of your family to the attic. I'll buy something decent for
That was to wound Grandie: Maine's was Boston's cheap furniture
my front hall at Maine's today", he ended vindictively. / He
slammed on his hat, askew, and ran out the door and down the
steps. He had not kissed Mumsie goodbye.
store.

The little girl her elder self now saw so clearly ran
after him past the cannas, overtook him as he crossed Church
Street to walk to the station along the stone wall that edged
the big estate where daisies and buttercups bloomed in the
tall grass.

"Papa" she called "wait for me. I'm going to walk to
the corner with you." Her voice was wobbly, out of breathish,
and he waited, looking sombre yet triumphant. He helped her
onto the stone wall without a word, then took her left hand as
they did every morning. Occasionally her right hand snatched
at a daisy head - and once Papa paused while she put two in
his right hand buttonhole. He was whistling by now and gave
her a big kiss when she had arranged the daisies just so.

Papa dressed beautifully because he was the son of a
rich mill-owner and would inherit the business. He liked nice
grey tweed suits, cloth imported from England and made to
order on Beacon Hill. He hadn't got over buying them though
he and Mumsie and Sabia lived in an unfashionable suburb where
rents were low. They had only an Irish servant girl, and
Mumsie cried every month about the housekeeping bills. Ham-
ilton was in easy reach of both Boston where the office was,
and Lowell where the mills were.

-17-

with an Indian Name

There was a river, a plenty of trees and woods, also other
young couples who had organised a tennis and canoe club.

"Swing me down". Papa turned to do so and noticed her
with a frown that her ankle ties were stubbed at the toes.
Another shoe bill soon.

"Tell Mumsie not to buy meat - I'll bring a fine steak
back from the Boston Market in honor of your Uncle's return.
Now run home quick before she calls the Economy Market..."
He stopped to kiss her, tickling her with his moustache,
then ran swiftly down the station hill. The eight fifteen
was just pulling in, but Papa had long legs. At Harvard he
did the big jumps and raced in a shell with the Varsity crew.
He stepped easily onto the rear platform of the smoking car
just as the train pulled out. Tall, thin, debonnair he
stood there and waved his hat at his little girl.

He can forget us all pretty quickly, she guessed astutely,
as she walked home dragging her ankle ties on the concrete walk.
He would find Jim Topham and play a game of chess when the roses
had been handed out to the ladies. June roses. In fifteen
minutes he would be at the North Station and a businessman again.

Through the home screen door, when she reached it, she
saw, by pressing her nose against the wire that Mumsie was
arranging Jim's red roses in a green glass vase. Her sweet
face looked all blotched and teary.

"Mumsie?"

"Yes, dear."

-18-

"Here I am. What shall I do now?"

"Did Papa catch the eight-fifteen?"

"Yes, he jumped on. Where's Grandie. Where's the
Darcy chair?" she asked anxiously, for now there was no chair
at all in the front hall.

"Grandie took it down cellar," said Mumsie woefully.

"It's not such a good place as the attic but she just insisted."

The cellar stairs were under the front stairs. The
door to the cellar opened just in front of the dining room door.
It was closed now but Sabia stood by it and listened.

"Grandie's chopping wood," she said in a startled tone.

"What?" Her young Mother opened the door and hand-in-hand, both listened. Sabia's mother was a tiny, dainty young woman, dark and gypsy-like with/ruddy color and her Mother's black melting eyes, ~~her~~ XXXX Roman nose in miniature. Her hair was curly black. Sabia looked up to her, admiring the sparkle in them, inspired though it was by alarm, she knew.

"Mother," called Stella in an urgent tone. "Stop that
chopping - Bob will do what's needed tonight if we have a fire
in the parlor - you don't have to chop kindling - remember
your heart.."

A few loud, splitting, rending sounds were the answer.

By now the two of them were running down the cellar
stairs, dark stairs too, Mumsie calling "Mother-Mother-Mother.."

When they got down they faced the furnace. Behind it,
still hidden was the woodpile and the big wood block where Bob
chopped his kindling. Racing around the furnace, Mumsie and

-19-

her little Sabia came upon a tall angry woman, full breasted as Demeter,
with a pair of eyeglasses swinging from her neck on a black ribbon. Her
tortoise shell hairpins had fallen out and were scattered as far as the
furnace and the woodpile. Her crisp wavy white hair, no longer confined
in a pompadour had flared, like a fishwife's around her furious face,
and swirled in her neck. Her right sleeve of black and white checked
cambric was ripped from the shoulder. Her black eyes were flashing like
forest fires. On the cellar floor lay the pathetic fragments of an an-
tique chair, a Darcy heirloom, cherished by generations of ministers'
and doctors' wives.

"Here endeth the First Lesson" muttered Grandie.

III

Sabia had wired her Father her hour of arrival, five, and Pullman
car number, 733, but he and his son Varne, a tall boy of fifteen, had
arrived at the "new" Pennsylvania Station by four-thirty. Bob Howe
wasted time in no way except in being over-prompt, an annoying trait to
his wife, Stella, who liked catching life by the very end of the tail
so to speak. But as his wife's mother, Mrs. Davis, had died at four A.M.
the business man of forty-one could flatter himself that his talent for
margins had come in handy, on this spring-like April day. He and Verne
had caught the eight o'clock from Boston, arrived at 42nd St. at two,
to lunch richly if briefly with his sister Sabia at the Hotel Belmont.
There was still time to have proper black mourning bands put on his
and his son's left overcoat and suit sleeves, at a good Madison Avenue
tailor, to pick up his sister's Daimler at the garage, and
get to the monumental Pennsylvania

-20-

Station - built by the distinguished architects of the Boston
Library - in very good season.

Like most Bostonians, Mr. Howe looked at the sights of
New York with a somewhat superior if not jaundiced eye. But
it was true, Father and son agreed, in crisp Bostonian speech,
as they rolled slowly along through heavy traffic on Seventh
Avenue, that McKim, Mead and White had produced a work of
genius in this monumental building, inspired by Roman archi-
tecture with its great central edifice, and colonnaded wings.
Daimler
After looking over the ground, the Howes parked the XK40K in
the north end pavilion where vehicles entered the station, and
Verne, to his annoyance was left in it till his sister should
arrive. This would save minutes, and they had a long way to go
before full night: all the way to the far corner of northwester-
ly Connecticut where the Housatonic River flows and three
states - Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts fit into a
triangler corner. In this region, where a band of the Housatonic
heathen Indians still lurked in the bushes in 1739, drinking
rum furnished by the unscrupulous, John Darcy the missionary
строoped to build his substantial mansion.

Strolling critically down the barrel-vaulted arcade of
Station
the PENNYVALLEY, lined with shops, running spryly down over
the marble steps into the main hall, which he knew to be a copy
of the tepidarium of a Roman bath, the well set-up, confident
Massachusetts mill owner was reflecting, on another level of
thought, on the future material fate of the old Darcy mansion.

-22-

would so be best served. All this suffrage stuff, this
matriarchal stuff, this medical career stuff was unfeminine.
Thinking, crossly, that his child had been pulled off
the right track by mother and grandmother, Bob Howe confronted
Sabia with a sxxxthingxfacex a criss-cross, meagre look, instead of
a tender smile.

"Goodness," Sabie thought, clinging to his shoulder and
kissing him hard, "Father's in a mood." No doubt Death had
done it.

"Where's 'Verne'? She inquired eagerly, patting the black
sleeve-band, "do we take a train?"

"Trains don't fit," He gravely explained the situation
as they turned upstairs to the car. Their long legs took the
same strides in harmonious rhythm. The fat little porter could
hardly trail them.

"Tontine is shopping for mourning for you and Mumsie," he
said, giving a vexed look at her new blue serge spring suit,
and brown straw hat trimmed with daisies, wheat and poppies.

"Oh mourning -? I am to wear mourning - at college too?"

"Naturally, it's suitable for a few months."

As he talked about "arrangements," Death seemed to the
college girl to become a formal occasion, like going to
church. She wished to see it his way, but could not fit her
deeper insights into the pattern of decorum. What about the
triumph of the soul? Did it just sail away, leaving decay of
physiological matter to be dealt with by a form? She had been
dissecting rabbits in her Biology course and knew from her
pre-medical classmates that "cadavers" were a budding doctor's

-23-

daily pabulum. It would horrify her Father if she thought of
Grandie asa 'dead body' yet he did not seem to realise that it
hurt her feelings dreadfully, for her Mother and herself, that
he did not try, as they hurried along to the car, to express
some emotion about their spiritual loss. There had been time
between the platform and the Daimler to say something, but he
simply didn't. Just went on being matter-of-fact.

Bob Howesaw that something was wrong, at least noticed
that the confidences between Father and daughter did not flow
forth. He put her in front with himself, liked feeling her
shoulder against his, as he drove the car adroitly through
what he liked to call the dirty bumptious city of New York.
But there was a secret alienation. He put down another black
mark against Athenia and got cross hunting for the Boston Post
Road in the snarl of the Bronx.

Verne, too was annoying, hanging over the front seat to talk
to his sister, laying his fourteen-year-old cheek on shoulder
and looking at her with adoring eyes. Verne the Fair and Sabia
the Dark, (as Mumsie called them) were a pair of fond companions-
Sabia
she had mothered and raised him to a considerable extent, and it
sometimes seemed she preferred him to his Father.

"Stop chattering children-help me a bit - watch the map" Bob
snapped. Silence fell instantly, with a bang, for it was no
secret in the family that Father was a nervous if effective
driver. Verne settled back and began to examine his sister's
college books. Biology was rejected, Chaucer chosen. Pelham,

-24

New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, Port Chester rolled by, then Verne
opened up again:

"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

"The droght of March hath perced to the roote...

"what does 'shoures soote' mean, Sab?"

"Sweet onslaughts - like that cherry tree on the green hill,
See?" She began to repeat the opening of the Prologue to the
Canterbury Tales explaining the hard words and illustrating
the pronunciation. Verne was utterly fascinated by the 'tender
croppes,' and the 'yonge sonne' and the 'smale foules' who
'maken melodye'.

"Bookworms" grumbled Father, his nose out of joint. His
son wasso like himself in color and contour that he was always
taking a fall over the Darcy that came through all the same.
He wanted a boy to inherit the business as he had done, and
what was he getting - a poet?

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Sabia dear." They were speeding surely north now from
Stamford's country roads. Some day we'll turn north towards Stamford

"How long was Grandie a widow before she married Professor
Davis?"

"Three years - wasn't it?"

"Did you like having her with us? Wasn't it hard for a
young husband?"

Bob Howe turned his head quickly to look at one who had
suddenly grown up to awkward questions.

"It was," he said briefly.

-25-

"Why did you do it, then?"

"Well - your Grandie had no money - nothing but the house,
really, after your Grand died. Out of repair. Had to let it
to summer people, you remember. Besides your Mumsie wanted
her. In theory. In fact, she couldn't run her own house
when such a dominant, witty, interesting Mother was there.
Mumsie was very shy, then. Her Mother stole the honors, some-
how. She was a bit overbearing - no, I don't mean that..."

"But why did you agree, Daddy? To have her with you ..."

There was a long pause as night started to come on. Then
the Father said, plaintively as to an understanding woman, not
a girl: "Didn't want to hurt their feelings - now could I"?
He gave her a pleading glance over a thin cheek that had
reddened, and got the kiss he had been waiting for.

"Were you startled, Daddy, when Grandie married Professor
Davis?" asked Sabia after a while. Her rich young voice
trailed off drowsily.

"Well, not exactly.. I don't know that women often marry
the unrequited bachelor at the fireside-the one who didn't
make the grade in youth. But Davis wore well and the doctor
had always encouraged his wife in having him at Indian Hill.
That brown smoking jacket of his hung in the hall closet, -
remember?"

"It matched his leathery brown skin."

Both of them saw a small slightly deprecatory figure, a
short silent kind man, with velvet-black tender eyes, and a
small goatee which changed from shiny-black to grey with the

-25 a -

years. The doctor had been extremely fond of him and his
classical lore, and his violin. Everything was welcome but
his money. Davis was never allowed to present a roof, a
reaper, or a piano to the Darcies.

"It was galling to Grandie to have no money, Daddy - she used to mind so taking that little old black purse out of her petticoat pocket. We would look an it, together, when she wanted to send me to buy thread or something - and all there would be would be pennies or nickels.."

"Oh Sabby - was that my fault? I was poor myself. She used to lord it over your Mother and me so. But the Davis money came in handy at the end and if your Grandie does not leave the old house to your Mumsie I'll be damned."

"Why?"

"Well, she's the eldest. Besides, what did Phil and Connie ever do for their Mother?"

-26-

VII

Tonight Mrs. Davis's housekeeper at Indian Hill had placed an old-fashioned kerosene lantern on the huge granite doorstone, to guide the travellers' steps over the damp, slippery flagstones of the path. For some hours it cast its yellow glow chiefly on startled crocuses and budding blue scylla, in the border. A piece of an old stout apple-tree trunk was made visible, a few white pickets in the fence were light-struck, bits of sharp green grassblade sprang from the shadow. Moths drawn by the glow had battered against the oily glass, till they lay around the lantern as tattered beetle fodder. This bit of land facing South had been fenced as a dooryard from earliest days, and was a safe warm corner at all seasons, with a wide view of hayfields and orchards sloping to the Housatonic.

Any woman who lived here in the sturdy old house, pulling her shades or raising them, sitting close to a front window as light faded, to darn or read to a child, was in touch with the River, as the forgotten Indians had been, and pleasantly aware - for who wants security more than a woman of the shelter of a high wooded hill which rose steeply behind the house and the old barns and corneribs. Mrs. Howe, through the long day of her Mother's death, had many times gone to stand at the window of the chamber where she lay, to look towards the silver windings in the meadows below. The shades were drawn now, a faint pinkish light showed to one who looked up from the yard. She had been listening for hours, it seemed, to hear her husband

-27-

braking the Daimler for the steep descent from the woods.
At last the rumble came, and leaving the undertaker with her
brother Phil at the bedside, she rushed downstairs to meet her
family at the door.

From their sorry eyes she knew her face had suffered a sea-
change. She was now the eldest Darcy, though only 39. Cheeks
cold from the spring night pressed against hers, tired warm
arms enclosed her. But timor mortis rose in her and she
clung to her husband's shoulder.

The children stole away. Father's crisp Bostonian voice
was blurry for once, Sabia saw her Mother put her Father's hand
to the streak of white hair that sprang from her left temple.
Her blue black hair had started turning when she was twenty-
five. Bob used to cuss and pull the white hairs out with
tweezers.

"Tell the children to leave yours and Verne's bags in the car - you will have to stay at the Inn - the Darcies have to have the bedrooms," He acquiesced, who would not, to one who spoke authoritatively with her Mother's voice. But he was used to a tentative wife.

Stella went into the room on the right of the hall, the
Best Room, square and panelled, seated herself in her Mother's
wing chair on the right of the fireplace. Build for capacious
women or for the plump little old ladies in black with white
frilly caps, who ate the cakes made with the eighteen eggs, it
did not fit her own slender back. Still she belonged in it,
and as she sat there beside a crackling hickory fire with no
lamps lit, candles on the mantelpiece, she felt contained as a

-28-

kernel in a nut. Candles were kind to sorrow. The newness
of the Professor's restorations vanished into the shadowy
corners, - you might as well tie a velvet cord across the
door and stay out, she had wickedly whispered to Sabia when
the Sheraton and Heppelwhite had first been refurbished. In
this dimness, she could remember the room as it was in her
childhood. Classic sofas sagging under the weight of
medical journals, puppies and kittens rolling on the floor,
a backgammon board by the fire and Mother's Solitaire game
spread out on her small square table. When nervous, puzzled
or frustrated Mother sat dealing and changing the cards.

Returning from the garage with his boy and girl, still in
dust coats and goggles, and with Sabia's bags, Bob Howe en-
countered Stella's brother at the foot of the stairs. Stella
watched them meet with deep misgiving. Phil still nursed
such rankling inferiority at Bob's assured place in the world
that he had hurriedly attended to all the funeral details
before his brother-in-law arrived. Yet these two boys she
loved met kindly, for once, lingered in their handshake,
speaking together in low tones. It was only when Phil hugged
his pretty, shy, tall niece, and gave her a warm kiss on the
lips that her husband's face had quivered and his cheeks begun
to flush. Bob's son held out a hand with due New England
caution and a wary expression that to her said "no kissing".
But Verne was kissed, Spanishly, on both cheeks, and his Uncle
said, clinging to his slim paw:

-29-

"I didn't arrive in time to say good-bye to my darling Mother! Never leave your Mother, Vernie..." He turned away and used his checked handkerchief.

Bob's expression as he stood there, watching Phil cry, was peculiar. Of course he, to whom the "right people" and the "right ideas" were all-in-all, could not understand why a Darcy should go Southwest, marry a mellow simple girl of Spanish origins, make himself a rancher, befriend the Pueblo Indians, wear silver and turquoise rings, and yellow-brown tweed suits and stamped leather accoutrements. Phil's haberdashery was especially repellant to one who had his shirts and ties made to order - ~~Phil~~ ran to red checks and silk neckerchiefs, half cowboy affairs. Phil had even come East once in a purple velvet shirt. If he tried to put on an Eastern veneer, the primitive pioneer stuff showed through.

But to his sister Stella, there was something about her Brother Phil's stout, dark, commodious person, his complexly wrinkled shrewd tanned face, his snapping dark eyes that made her happy, even though his shoes were dusty, his pants wrinkled, his paunch full, his hair half grey, wiry, shaggy and neglected. He was dynamic and knew how to make his own life real, full of values. His wife had died in childbirth, he had no other children, and lived alone on his ranch on the edge of the Jemez Mountains, with his wife's old Mother, a Spanish woman with a long, brown, mournful madonna face, shadowed black eyes and white hair, who wore a black shawl to market and church. She fed him exclusively, Stella believed, on sheep stew, grilled goat, frijoles and chili, acid coffee or sweet chocolate to which

-30-

coffee had been added, tasteless custards and, of course, venison, partridge game and brook trout in season. Phil who had the Doctor not died so early, would have managed some sort of training as a but he mining engineer, had made out fairly successfully as a cowman. He lived in the saddle, hunted and Botanised, sang Mexican to perfection - he had a fine voice - haunted the cliff dwelling sites in the mountains near his home, the ruined cities dwelt in only by birds and archaeologists and lived humanly with the dark-skinned folk who surrounded him. He did look out of place under the spiral staircase remodelled by his stepfather, the clacissist, but Stella with her disturbing intuition had a pretty good hunch that her Mother had left him the old Darcy mansion.

"This house is too Puritan for me, too damn quiet!" Phil muttered, sinking down on the lowest step of the stairs and sobbing while his brother-in-law roved up and down. Bob was fireside sticking it out, man to man, his wife perceived from her wing corner that the children had taken their seats on the sofa and were holding hands, looking very miserable and dazed.

"When Maria died her cousins and aunts filled our house, and they laid her out with candles around her and wailed-'keened'- all night long. They pulled the heartbreak right out of me, made the sound of it roar on the mountain tops. That does you good,"/cried to the lot of them. "I want to yell now, roll on the floor like an animal, howl my emptiness for Mother - and all I'm doing in your eyes is make a fool of myself," he blubbered. "Undignified."

(Shace)

-31-

Stella Howe took her daughter by the hand at midnight, and led her into the cold South chamber. The windows were open and there was a smell of fruitblossoms. On the four-under a poster, dimity canopy, an old woman was laid out under a red-violet-yellow striped blanket, ~~shaded byaxrings~~ dimity, which Phil's wife had spun and woven for his Mother, The form was outlined in hourglass shape like a mummy, but on a grandiose scale. Mrs. Davis had been nearly six feet tall.

Sabia, clasping and unclasping her Mother's hand, looked Grandie's face, handsome, strongly marked always, was now almost masculine in its contours, almost like that of an Indian on a coin, and wore an expression of happy stern surprise, which took away her granddaughter's breath.

Mrs. Howe, answering the unspoken, said:" It's as if she had just discovered what life is all about and were telling it to Father."

Both of them seemed to have forgotten Mr. Davis. He was episodic, but "Grand was legendary. Grand had the Red Faces behind him and all the doctors who had driven over Wintry Berkshire hills.

In the South Room Sabia and her Mother climbed into the opposite sides, of another fourposter. The bed, vast and high, seemed not too ready to admit two women who must reveal their feelings in the heart of a New England night. Couples had lain here, tied more closely against woe. It felt strange to

-32-

sleep with Mumsie after many years. The child no longer knew
the feel of this small, sturdy, yet slight body which had
caved in to grief. She felt embarrassed at first, to embrace
it, touch the tired, slim limbs, pat the wet cheeks. Mumsie
just broke down, turned her way and clung to her child.

"I'm only thirty-nine, yet there's no one left who really
loves me and understands." She barely articulated the words.

"I'll try," said the child, with terror, and kept on
soothing gently, murmuring softly, stroking tenderly. Flesh
of herself and another became real to her, and she was of it
and in it. But in the spiritual realm she still felt aloof,
and ashamed to be so. Yet she was two, one a timid undeveloped
child, suffering from a desire to escape the excruciating
and death
revelations of life/and the other braver and stronger than
herself, knowing all, even how to console and comfort the
bereaved, in a sort of priestly way.

It seemed as if they did not sleep at all, but they did half
sleep, talking now and then. Once Mrs. Howe felt moved to tell
Sabia something she had never heard:

"The day after Father died, Sabby, Mother sent Constance
and met out of the house - we were both just married, Phil was
gone to Mexico. Mother wanted to be alone with your Grand for
the last time...She sat with him in this very chamber, where
she died herself, and where her babies had been born, and she
just held his hand or else got up and walked the floor, like an
animal pacing. She cried all the time. Perhaps sobbed, as she
told him aloud all he'd been to her. It was as if he heard,

-33-

his soul seemed near. His face was beautiful and wise in
death, his patients who were to see it next day would not be
disappointed she knew."

"But the sense of parting had become poignant to the
point where she felt she would die of it or lose her mind.
She felt ready to cry out or shriek her sorrow in a mad
agony of rebellion. Mother knew herself a rebellious woman.
And suddenly the sun was shining, on the floor, the clock was
ticking, the wind blowing - she heard a noble rhythmic music,
like a tremendous choir invisible. No singing but a symphony
of mighty sound. She knew it for the music of the spheres,
as if God had told her. It filled the room, the Universe.
It was always there, but not usually accessible to the human
ear. So she figured, at least, and told her children. She
said, without it she could not have gone on living and doing
her duty."

"Do you believe it, Mumsie?"

"I do" whispered her Mother in the dark.

-34-

The trampling of feet went on and on. The family,
sitting close together on undertaker chairs in the Best Room,
with the door open a small crack, were by this insistant,
restless sound made to know how many neighbors grand or humble,
how many friends, true or false were assembling to pay their
last worship to Mrs. Davis, the matriarch of Indian Hill.
Curiously enough, Mrs. Darcy, the doctor's wife was NOT a
Captain but Mrs. Davis/was a matriarch. It is sad, almost
unbearably so, to lay a matriarch in a coffin and close the
lid. In this case the outside of the coffin was dove-gray,
and covered with sprays of fruit blossoms from the orchards.
But, inside the coffin, the great rigid woman was wrapped in
a soft warm garment of blanket, striped in faded turquoise,
green, red, purple, yellow, violet. Sabia, who had helped
tuck her in, felt comforted by this.

"Now the day is over,
"Night is drawing nigh,
"Shadows of the evening
"Move across the sky..."

sang the Congregational choir. It did not seem real. Uncle
Phil, who had a black country-looking suit, which he might
have dug up in his Mother's attic stirred rebelliously, just
as Grandie would have done had she been burying her son.

Now the minister began to talk:

"Our neighbor and friend, Mrs. Davis," he started, "
"nobody was more beloved in this region: she made no distinc-
tion of class or circumstance, in meeting human beings. All
had their deep validity and humanity, in her eyes. A Beaumont,
native of Rhode Island with some French inheritance, born in

-35-

1850, before the Civil War, handsome, dark, potent, valkyrie-like, noble, she met her first husband, Dr. Darcy, when he was attending Brown University in Providence. They were married in 1870. She was just out of the higher "academies" of the time, and aiming to be a teacher. This destiny, in fact, attended her through her first marriage, which lasted till 1903 - 33 years. Her first teaching was in a Boston Public School, where she gave instruction in Latin, - which she managed to perfect - thus helping her husband through Harvard Medical School. Dr. Darcy, son of a Congregational minister, was greatgreat grandson of the missionary contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, who built this rare old New England home. The doctor had, among his forebears, women who used their minds, were great readers, contributors to life religious and human, as well as wives and mothers. Sometimes he would say that his own wife, with all her dignity, and fine presence was wasted on his humdrum days, should have been an ambassador to the Court of St. James. But he was proud that she not only devoted herself to her own children but also had a little nursery boarding school here, in this very house. Financially it did no more than earn money to buy the children's clothes and mend the roof, but as the doctor rarely sent a bill and his wife liked him that way, it mattered as well as keeping Mrs. Darcy on the qui vive. In this far-off corner-especially far-off then-children came from Boston and New York who were delicate or needed special handling and mingled with the little Darcies. There were three. As the summer people moved into these hills of ours, Mrs. Darcy would take their children, too, for summer morning lessons, or bird walks or gardening.

-36-

The Darcies' three, whom we have with us today, were just leaving
the nest when their Father died, - leaving this remarkable woman
with little but a big house, a historical monument really - sadly
out of repair.

"Now I wish to say that Mrs. Darcy had always been a very
religious woman, as the doctor also was. Religious, not in a
doctrinal way, mind you. She just knew that God must be our
guide, especially when manifest in her own heart. When one of
the many problems that beset married women, wives, mothers,
doctors' wives assailed her, she sought the answer by a kind of
inward pondering or prayer. She said there was something within
that knew better than she did. You might call her mystical,
despite her temper, which I mention because she always did so
herself. Her husband was her ideal because he seemed to her so
much better than herself. When this selfless husband, companion,
lover died, beloved in all our homes for his deeds of cure and
mercy, she felt like an anchorless boat, she put it to me,
thinking in terms of seas and waters because of her early life,
Were I privileged to do so I would tell you of a mystical exper-
ience she had at this time. I must not."

At this point Sabia saw her Father in front of her moving
his knees uncomfortably. When he twisted around to look at her
his long, fine face was full of apprehension. He was wondering
if she know about the 'music of the spheres.' She composed her
own face, bent her head, put her hands over her eyes. The
minister's voice had gone on and she had missed a piece:

"As you all know, after several happy years with her elder
daughter, helping with her first baby and the rest, Mrs. Darcy

-37-

married the Professor, as we called him - the kind of classicist
who improved and restored the house and the place and gave his
wife five more years of happy companionship suited to their years.
Then poor Mrs. Davis lost her second husband, and for three years
has been again alone.

"During this time, she has done much to make rare and beauti-
ful and productive her fields, gardens and orchards, working in
them like a peasant woman almost, on her knees, in old clothes
muddy or dusty or even in her best if she saw fit and perceived
something to be done. She died of a heart attack at 64, brought
completely and actively
on by living daily to the end. It is my belief, from her
wondrous expression of countenance, that she heard some heavenly
music as she died. Be that as it may, she passed away having
experienced life so fully that she understood it as few do. Once
recently she said to me: "the real meaning of life is to under-
stand life..." He ended with a prayer and the request that
those nearest to the departed would stay behind, and join in the
ceremony at the grave in the family burying ground, on the Indian
Hill.

People began to tramp and rustle their way out the front
door. In the Best Room, the family rose, Sabia with them. Somehow,
the Darcies, her little Mumsie, her Chicago Aunt Constance,
plain, spare and tall and a bit remote and scraggy, as Grand had
been, her stout, earth-bound Uncle Phil stood weeping together,
in a clump, their hearts open to grief's demands. They had not
drawn her in nor did they seem to miss her. Her Father, Verne,
worldly, golden
and Tantine, her father's/sister had edged away into a corner,
as if to leave the Darcys free to cry. They did not miss her either.

-38-

But where do I belong asked Sabia, of herself, where do kids who
begin to grow up belong? She smoothed her mourning dress, so
smart and correct, looked toward her very special Aunt, alluring
and mysterious and fair. Where was the hand of the comforter?
She felt enveloped by a rising wave of emotion, something tidal
and overwhelming and fainted dead away hitting her head as she
fell on one of the undertaker's chairs.

-39-

CHAPTER VIII

The day was of the very essence of June, in the green
Massachusetts country - hot in the sun, cool in the elmy embowered
shade. Michael Hoyl, Mr. Howe's young red-headed Irish farmer,
was walking along a lane leading from a vegetable and fruit garden
to a woodsy dirt road carrying a basket of strawberries. As he
started to cross the road the Howe's house, sunk in its hollow
under drooping elms, showed through the ornamental wooden fence
that edged the "place". The fence was pale buff and white. The
house rambling not compact, deeper buff. The smaller older part
was of the revolutionary time, and the newer, larger part had been
built to conform, in general, to the old style. Michael was
inclined to agree with Mr. Howe, whom he much admired, that the
bedroom windows were too tiny for summer comfort. But the ladies
were satisfied, Michael knew from his new "master", and the ladies
had much to say in this establishment.

Michael was looking for two of them now, and made his way with
long strides of blue jeaned brisk legs, whistling under his breath,
toward the tennis court on the left, which was screened off from
green lawns and flower beds by privet hedges and at its ends by
high ornamental fence. From the strawberry bed, across the way,
he had seen the white tennis balls flying and had had a bold,
happy idea. How would it be received? When he reached the deep
green privet where the white blossoms were beginning to give forth
their sweetish-peppery odor, Mike drew a long breath, mopped his
face, and cautiously peered.

-40-

He had timed things right: for two young ladies, one very young
and dark, the other a bit older and blonde as a golden queen, were
lying back luxuriously in smart green-and-white striped canvas
steamer chairs, with their polished racquets beside them. They
were drinking from tall, clinking glasses, on which the sun gleamed
brightly, and he could see their throats rejoice in the cold stream
as it ran down. Both young ladies were tall, with long slim legs
clad in soft grey lisle stockings, and perfectly whitened tennis
shoes. It was not indiscreet to look at their legs, for long
summer skirts moulded them. Young Miss Sabia's cotton was of
strawberry pink - for she need not mourn while she sported, - and
her elegant aunt's of pale blue linen from the old country - Mike
was sure of that since he had smuggled in a few bolts for a cousin
in East Boston, when he came over in the steerage not long since.

There was no indiscretion? Yet his eyes could not quit looking
at the way a head, golden or black would suddenly spring up from
the taut canvas, turn, twist on its fine supple neck to confront
the second face and express some intimate comment. Or the way the
pairs of eyes, deep gentian blue and sea-grey, would sparkle and
swim heavenward. When his followed them Mike, too, beheld a depth
of clearest cerulean, on which the changing piles of white cloud,-
castle slowly drifted. In such a palace the fair queen belonged.

"Did you want something Michael?" inquired a thoroughly prac-
tical voice. Then with a gesture toward his red curls, that hid
under them a whole row of watery drops, the young farmer blushed
and walked to them to offer his strawberries. With a freckled
sandy hand he set them down on the green iron table received
thanks, a sweet smile and a quip from Miss Sabia, and a droop of
creamy eyelids from the princess. How he longed to drop at her

-41-

feet and lean his hot forehead against her repelling hand.

"The sprinkler should be moved to a new place Michael,"
suggested Miss Howe, in a directive tone. Was it her business,
he asked himself bitterly, as he stepped away, passing the rose
bed, where bees hummed and white petals dripped to the black rich
earth. Miss Howe was only a guest. Yet it was really for her the
cold, the untouchable one, that he had picked the great double
berries rich and ripe, and laid them between green leaves. The
cook would scold him at the servants' lunch. Meanwhile he dragged
the heavy garden horse-pipe closer to the tennis court - to the
place where he could espy a hand dark or fair stealing into the
red mound in the basket, to select its treasure, and a red mouth
avidly sucking the fruit from the green calyx.

Left to themselves the two young ladies smiled at one another;
idly and drifted off into their own thoughts. Young Sabia was
apt to be silent from preference, when/she was receiving
impressions from the natural sensuous world. She enjoyed the feel
of life as it flowed along - savoured it. Being at home again
brought out many old savors that were dear to her heart. The visit
of Tantine, always in June, was a savor, almost a taste of Fairy-
land till this year.

"Will you stay till I have to go back to Indian Hill for the
division of the things," she asked pleadingly. Phil Darcy who
inherited the house had, to the dismay of all, decided to endow
the mansion as a home for underprivileged children.

Tantine, though unruffled, looked enigmatic. Everyone thought
it was time that this beautiful woman who laid the men out in rows
should be settling herself matrimonially, but somehow, she never did.

"Won't you tell me?" begged Sabia. "Then I won't tell you either,"
she hinted, blushing vividly.

-42-

"You mean?" asked her aunt alert at once.

"Well I'm going to tell you. I had a letter from Cousin Max Pons, in Paris." She hesitated and reenforced her voice. "He is getting married. Her name is - Marthe something-or-other. She is rich. Max says he is giving up the Pons Bank which he hates, and taking up historical writing and research as he told me last summer when he visited us at Mount Desert, after his stage at Morgan's, he wanted to do."

Miss Howe rose straight up from her chair, staring down at
this youngster who had had the letter she had wanted.

"You still hear from Max" she asked like an angry goddess.
Clyte's langorous look had vanished.

"Course I do - but he meant this news for all of us."

"I'm going in to take my shower," said Miss Howe, shaking
out her creased blue linen skirt and looking at it with annoy-
ance." Max did you harm, dear, you lost interest in boys your
own age after he left. Now you see how foolish it was." Crisply
she floated off.

Sabia looked after her with a queer feeling. They had always
been so close. Was it because she had seemed such a child, some-
thing to be trained and protected? Tantine was critical of her
more independent college self, - her ink-spotted ginghams, her
stubby fingers torn by hammering scenery, for the Freshman Show.
And her forgetting her trunk keys. And her mental rebellions, such
as the fight to get an intelligent Negro girl admitted into next
year's entering class. Tantine and her Father were always teasing
her, too, about "the intellectual, anglicised Athenia stoop."

-44-

"Miss Sabia, luncheon is served." Jennie the waitress had come all the way to the middle of the lawn, in pink uniform and white cap to signal her with a crackling white apron.

"Coming" she bellowed, getting out of her chair with reluctance. Slowly, slowly she walked toward the house, over the thick resilient green turf, avoiding delicately with her nimble feet the wet patches the sprinkler had made, bending to smell a white rose, and tangling her scolding locks in thorns. She was too messy for lunch at home—probably there were guests for Tantine, and she hadn't even bothered to get freshened up after tennis.

"Hurry, darling!" her Mother was calling now. She had come out and stood on the flat doorstone of the front door, looking pretty and slim and young in her crisp white linen with its black Belt, for Grandie. "I have a letter from Madame Boncoeur. She will take you to her home in Finistère, while your Father and I go to Scotland for the fishing. There are boats with red sails, and a long fine beach where you can swim after undressing in the _cabines naturelles des rochers_." Mumsie giggled at the idea of a rock being a bathhouse, that was French indeed. But Sabby looked at her with a long desolate face.

"Can't I go southwest with Uncle Phil? I'd rather see the Grand Canyon." she begged in a strange, urgent tone.

Her Mother now gave her a serious questioning look.

"Max is married, Mumsie. _Il m'a crevé le coeur_" she whispered as she clung to her Mother's shoulder.

"That's just life, dear..." said Stella, in a matter-of-fact tone.

-45-

"But Mumsie-everything comes together! I had such a bad dream about Grandie. In the first part she was The Wife of Bath - that shocked me but she really was. She was in bed with someone, - maybe the Professor and she was very angry, biting and fighting as when she chopped up the Darcy chair out of hate for Father... Then in the next part her voice told me to go into the yard at Indian Hill and wait for her...I did, and pretty soon she swept out of the front door, terrifically tall and black. Her face was hidden by black wispy veilings, her arms and hands were hidden by trailing black sleeves but they were holding up her long black skirts, revealing her legs in black kid boots buttoned to the knee. I just sort of retreated from her she scared me so. But she followed and willed to me hold out my right hand. She took it and what I felt was not flesh but bone-hard cold hurting bone."

"That isn't a bad dream", said Mumsie briskly. "The Wife of Bath part is silly but the rest is fact. "She just wanted you to know she was dead and gone. Since you had to faint and could not see her lowered into her grave, you didn't quite know she was in spite of feeling I could not live without her actually dead. She is. And/I am more alive because she is gone - that's awful but it's real," said Mumsie truthfully. Sabia was a child who, so far as she was concerned, had to know the truth.