XXVIII

“Yes, the rooms are lovely and big⁠—but so little closet space! Lovely high ceilings⁠—they must make it a very hard house to heat, don’t they? See, Homer, it would have to be painted all over⁠—see, it’s all chipping off here, it comes off wherever I touch it. See? Everywhere. Careful, dear, the stairs are rather steep.”

“Here’s the kitchen,” said Maggie severely.

“Hmm. Nice and big, isn’t it? It would take a good many steps to get around this kitchen, wouldn’t it? Not much like the way they’re building them now. No electric light, have you, or even gas? Where do you get hired girls who’ll take care of lamps nowadays? Look out, Homer, the floor’s uneven, don’t trip.”

“Here’s the river porch.”

“Oh, yes. I guess the view must be very pretty when there isn’t quite such a glare.”

“Now I’ll show you the garden.”

“Want to see the garden, Homer? We might as well. What do you call those pink and awrnge flowers? Oh, yes, snapdragons! Remember the beautiful snapdragons we saw at Mrs. Proudie’s, dear? They were simply enormous! Oh, yes, there’s your little pool. Have you ever seen Mr. Beswick’s water garden, over near Kennett Square? Fountains and everything, and the goldfish in it are this big!”

And then she was saying, “Well, thank you, I’m afraid it’s a little big, but we’ll let you know if we⁠—ah⁠—” They were buttoning up their linen dust coats, he was pulling on his gauntlets and settling his goggles and she was tying yards and yards of chiffon veil over her visored cap, and their Royal Tourist was coughing and jerking out of the drive.

“Such people!” said Maggie. She felt faint with the torture of showing the place to so many, listening to their criticisms, torn between the hope of her mind that it would be bought and the hope of her heart that it wouldn’t.

And then it was sold. The Maples sold! The rich Bayard Spears bought the place. “Of course, you must consider your lovely, lovely garden just as much yours as ever,” Violet Spear told the Campions.

Maggie and Lily were clearing out the box-room, getting ready to move.

“What are those big things done up in newspaper? Our old bustles! I guess no one will want them again. Here’s Cousin Jennie Blodgett’s ‘God Bless Our Home’ motto that Victor spoiled when she was making it here⁠—don’t you recollect; he was just a little fellow, and he fell off the footboard of the bed into her lap? She cried, and we were so scared⁠—see, it’s all broken⁠—why do you suppose we’ve kept it so long? Look, Lily, these old hats! Did you ever see anything so ridiculous, and yet we thought they were lovely⁠—look at this one the size of a butterplate trimmed with a wreath of white clover and a seagull⁠—and yet May looked as pretty as a picture in it! And look at this teeny, weeny muff⁠—it looks like a mouse’s muff⁠—and it’s full of moths⁠—I guess we’d better throw them all away⁠—”

“Shall we keep this lampshade pattern, Maggie?”

“That isn’t a lampshade, that’s Miss Snaith’s pattern for circular drawers.”

“Oh, is it? I guess that’s why I had such a hard time making that yellow lampshade from it. Here’s Victor’s old silver mug⁠—how did that get up here? And Mamma’s Wardian case⁠—”

“The Wardian case! Remember how we used to get ferns in the woods for it? And the woods are all cut down and built over now.”

“Look, Maggie, Mamma’s beadwork! Recollect how we would string the beads for her? And she let us have enough for necklaces for all the dolls⁠—oh, dear, of course, I had to spill them!”

Mothballs rattled to the floor and rolled into corners with the rolling beads, as Maggie pulled out Grandfather’s old shawl. And here were rolls of wall paper, Mamma’s moss rosebuds, the buff lozenges of the bedroom they had slept in as little girls, a diamond pattern of crossed mauve ribbons that Maggie just remembered in the parlor. Here was a box full of crêpe veils, calling up visions of sadness.

“Oh⁠—”

“What is it?”

“It’s Victor’s old autograph album⁠—look, don’t you remember, May copied that dove with the banner in its mouth for him. ‘Please do not tear out any leaves. Victor Campion. The Maples,’ ‘Remember our school days at Rugby. Very truly, Your friend, J. W Harris.’ Who was he, one of the teachers?”

“No, he was a little boy who came out for over Sunday once, don’t you remember, he and Victor got a bag of black walnuts and got walnut stain over everything? And he was homesick and cried after they went to bed.”

“ ‘Tell me not in mournful numbers
Flirting is an empty theme,
For all school boys have their pleasures
When the girls upon them beam.
Your friend, Emmie Holly.
Did you have a nice time hunting the pump that night?’

“Well, for pity’s sake! Emmie Holly!”

“Oh, Maggie⁠—”

“What?”

“Here’s Edward⁠—‘Ever your friend, Edward Post.’ ”

“I didn’t know Victor had this book so long ago.”

“Here’s poor Aunt Priscilla⁠—‘The night is’ something⁠—a big blot⁠—‘that never finds a day.’ ”

“ ‘In sailing down the stream of life
In your little canoe
May you have a pleasant voyage
And room enough for two.
Your friend, Bessie Schmalsweiden.’

“Bessie Schmalsweiden! What a name! Who’s she? I never heard of her in my life! Here’s another:

“ ‘You may dream of poetical fame
But your wishes may chance to miscarry,
The best way of sending one’s name,
To posterity, Victor, is to marry.
M. C.’

“Who’s M. C.? Lily!

“ ‘Remembrance is all I ask,
And if remembrance prove a task
Forget me!
You true friend, Lucy Hawthorn.’ ”

“Here’s another book⁠—shall I give it to Jake for the children?”

“Look and see if there isn’t a picture of a little girl, carrying her baby brother across stepping stones over a brook and trying to hold on to a bunch of wild flowers⁠—yes, there it is! Why did that picture always make me feel so happy? We better keep all these old songs of Mamma’s.”

She turned over the yellow sheets of music. “All That’s Bright Must Fade.” “Where Is My Lover?” “Withered Geranium.”

“ ‘Home of youth! all thy pleasures
Are impressed on my heart⁠—
Ere they fade from my mem’ry
Life itself must depart⁠—’ ”

“ ’S Maggie! ’S Maggie!”

“I told Lossie to yell up when it was lunch time, but it can’t be yet. What is it, Lossie?”

“Dey aint nothin’ fo’ lunch, scusin’ some pohk chops Ah give Jake.”

“I guess fried tomatoes’ll have to do. I’ll run out and get some, and you be looking through this trimming box, Lily⁠—there’s a lot that’s not worth moving that Lossie’d love to have⁠—those jet buckles are kind of pretty, though.”

Coming in from the truck patch with the tomatoes, she saw a butterfly that had lighted on the bricks by the kitchen steps and was slowly opening and closing its quivering wings, blue in the sunshine, black in shadow. She stood gazing at it, lost.

“Goodness! I haven’t any time to stand looking at butterflies!”

But what did it make her think of? What was it? And then she was back through the years, back under the pear tree with Edward, watching another butterfly. The tomatoes fell to the ground and burst.

After all it was a relief when they were finally in the new house. It was a plain little place, and they couldn’t see the river; but there was a sunny bay-window for Maggie’s geraniums, and the card dish was full of calling-cards, with the grandest surreptitiously put on top by Lily. And just having a clean empty kitchen to go into was luxury. To know there wouldn’t be a slimy mass of tea-leaves and orange seeds and bits of string to be picked out of the sink drain, or a tipped-over bottle of sticky black “tonic” oozing among the tea-towels: to be able to relax from the mental pushing and shoving at the dark sisters of that long procession that strolled through the kitchen of The Maples while the Campions were keeping boarders.

The Maples was being remodelled. Maggie never went on that bit of road, but people told her about it.

It wouldn’t have been as hard if the Spears hadn’t been making the place so much more beautiful. The new walled garden; the long-spurred columbine from England; the tea-roses with their melting colors of sunsets and peaches and cream; the little lead boys holding a sundial on their heads, far older than the great trees that feathered the sky above the house; Mrs. Spear’s tool-house like a little stone house in the woods in a German fairy tale, with all the tools Maggie had always wanted, with their handles painted moss-green, and the shelter-seat under the pear trees, whose petals fell on butler and footman spreading the lace cloth, bringing out silver tea-things and plates of paper-thin bread and butter or hot crumpets melting with butter and tenderness. It would have been easier to bear, if the Spears had gone in for peanut brittle stone walls and round beds of cannas, like Mrs. Detweiler.

Mrs. Spear was always sweet about giving the Campions the credit when people praised her garden, but to her friends she said:

“Well, of course, my dear, it was a sweet old place; but really and truly, the condition it was in⁠—! Did you ever see it before we bought it?”

No matter what changes they made, Maggie thought, she could keep The Maples unchanged in her heart. When her home had been hers, she had never been able to hold it⁠—the leaves fell, sunsets faded, darkness drank up the river, everything changed and passed like flowing water. But now that she had lost it it was hers forever, immortal.

Lily wanted dreadfully to go to the housewarming the Spears gave, when all the changes had been made. “It would hurt their feelings so if none of us came,” she thought. And she did want to see what they had done to the house, and then there were sure to be wonderful refreshments. Of course, if she went she wouldn’t mention it to Maggie, who would rather die than go, she knew, and who couldn’t stand the Spears just because they had bought The Maples.

“If I go⁠—” Lily said to herself, up to the time when she put on her hat and her new dotted veil⁠—goodness, how stiff and scratchy! And then with her heart thumping she crept downstairs and out of doors, while Maggie, with her head tied up in a dustcloth and her mouth full of tacks, was covering the old schoolroom sofa with a pair of the parlor curtains, too busy to notice what anyone else was doing.

They had taken away the fountain with its iron calla-lilies⁠—how queer! All it needed was a little paint, and one broken lily fixed. But there was another fountain, a new one, in the garden, white against the hemlock hedge, a slender column splintering into rainbows, veiling itself in thin crystal.

Sunlight drenched through the trees, the red tulips were sun-filled cups⁠—Holy Grails at a garden party. She had a new hat, bought secretly in Wilmington. “It’s my own money!” she told herself, but she knew she ought to save it for the dentist. It was a sort of peach-basket, only it had grapes on it instead of peaches. She had tried on almost every hat in the shop before she found it, and her mild deliberation nearly drove the shopgirl mad. “You’ve got to remember you have a stout face, dear,” she said, plunging hat after hat on Lily’s head, bending down an ear. “That’s why you don’t think they look good on you, but the hats themselves are really lovely; I wouldn’t tell you so if they weren’t.” But Lily loved this one⁠—white grapes that looked good enough to eat. Their light tapping cheered her now, she put up her hand from time to time to feel them. But even with the new hat, even though she had enlivened her old brown silk dress with pectoral fins of brown chiffon, and cleaned her white gloves, among the other women in their frilly flower-colored organdies and muslins, she felt like a hop-toad in a petunia bed. She almost wished she hadn’t come⁠—but the café frappé was delicious, and an orchestra, under a striped red and white awning over near the beech tree, was playing that lovely new waltz from “The Merry Widow” that Victor was always whistling. And then everyone was being so kind.

“Sweet of you to come,” Mrs. Spear murmured, her eyes wandering absently while she clung to Lily’s hand. “Do you like our little changes? Of course, really you did the whole thing⁠—aren’t the tulips heavenly, if I do say so myself? You know my little Dorothy, don’t you? Just think, Dotty, Miss Lily used to live here when she was a little girl like you, and maybe some day she’ll tell you all about what she used to do then⁠—won’t that be exciting?”

“Would you like to hear all about what I did when I was a little girl like you, darling?” Lily asked in a voice dripping with honey.

“No-o.”

“Dorothy! If you can’t speak politely to Mother’s friends, you can go up to Fraulein! Now stop kicking the grass with your pretty new slippers⁠—Dorothy⁠—and take Miss Lily’s hand and show her where the refreshments are, that’s Mother’s big girl!”

So Lily had some more café frappé. And while she was eating it she gave such a jump that she spilled a spoonful down her front. There was Victor! She was pretty sure he didn’t want her to see him; she knew she didn’t want him to see her. And it made her sad to see him there, a guest in the home that should have been his own.

She puffed off to the house as fast as she could go. People were swarming like bees in a hive. “Just poke around,” urged Mrs. Spear, hurrying past. “See what we’ve done upstairs⁠—”

She didn’t want to look into the bathroom, but something pushed her, pulled her. How changed⁠—it was a blue and silver fairy tale of a bathroom now! The crackling copper-lined tub was gone, and a white porcelain one was in its place. And here was the room where she and Maggie and May used to sleep when they were small. The place where Victor did the decalcomania goose, upside down to make it funnier, all the dark brown wood, was painted over, the walls and soft chairs were pink, the bed and dressing table were all pink ruffles. She was like a bee in the heart of a rose. How changed⁠—

The white fur rugs, the pink walls, blurred and faded. Three little girls in round combs and striped stockings played together in the pool of yellow sunlight on the floor. Her mouth jerked, she fumbled for her handkerchief, but they did not look at her as she stood in the doorway.