The optimist, safely outside our own environs, prescribes the old
formulas: “Look Around You and Write; Look Within the Human Heart—”
“But, dear sir, where is the story?” Usually it is a “Sir,” and this
time it was Felmer Prince. “Look Around You!”
I mocked: “I defy you to find anything more stirring than old Sam Peters,
driving a moth-eaten mule to the mill.”
“And you and I,” supplemented Felmer. “The human heart—”
But I retreated behind the gate and barred it upon the “human heart,”
retorting that if the organ disturbed me as it did some people I should
confine my conversation to “Yes” and “No.”
“You are sufficiently expert in the use of the negative,” said Felmer,
switching at a dead brier, and I proceeded: “As for ‘looking within,’
when Martha and I reach the homicidal point I take a walk.”
“How many subscriptions have you gotten for that confounded thing, Enid?”
he asked, abruptly. I temporized.
“One can live on very little after the habit is formed.”
Felmer shook the gate fiercely. “I wish that you would listen to
reason!”
“I do, to my own. I’m thinking of selling—”
“Not the place!” he broke in. I asked him, as a man and a neighbor, if
he thought that any sane tenant would invest in a left-over colonial,
with roof leaking, paint off, shutters hanging; populated by generations
of bats, and with a frog pond beside which Poe’s Raven was a pæan of joy?
“A place with no remaining virtue—”
“Except beauty,” he added. I clung to the gate’s bars, my brow upon my
hands, and pain shaking my heart.
“And I’m a fool about it!” I said, miserably. “Every mossy old
flagstone, and the very wizardry of its black woods against the sky,
means me. It is psychic with inherited memories.”
“Miss E-enid! Are your shoes dry?” screamed Martha from the back door.
“To sell?” prodded Prince, relentlessly.
“The ivory Buddha and the Mercury, at the Collectors’ International
Exposition opened up in town. Now is my chance.” He nodded.
“But be wary, Enid. You women—”
I reminded him that the vice president was Cary Penwick, a cousin of my
own, the fear and fascination of childhood’s idolatry. Prince said
rather gloomily that he had never heard me mention this cousin, which was
not surprising; the last time I saw Cary Penwick he was a wild boy of
fourteen, with hair in his eves and a brain full of adventurous mischief.
I was an imaginative child of eight years, and memory’s tenderest
association with Cary was a mutual and unappeased hunger.
“We roasted corn at the field’s edge and climbed the roof to steal bricks
out of the chimney, to build the oven.” I marched on, with Cary borne
banner-like before, to relate how the poor boy’s father had been the
family skeleton, grandma’s black sheep son, smirched with disgrace, who
died in Paris. Finally, Cary’s mother’s family had sent him off to
school, from which he consistently ran away, and we never saw him again.
He had vowed that one day he would return— At Prince’s laugh, I ended
haughtily: “To get even with me for kicking him, when he carried me
dripping from the frog pond. I remember that he slapped me. Now, the
papers call him a famous collector, and I am sure Cary will help me
dispose of the things to advantage.”
Prince dug wells in the mud with his stick. “Of course, Enid, being a
relative—but it is safer always to have the opinion of more than one
before coming to a settlement.”
And, according to history’s human law, I laughed his caution to the
winds.
* * * * *
“Are your feet dry, Miss Enid?”
This being her perennial, I stuck them on the fender and drank tea, while
Martha hovered, hen-like and solicitous. “Did you get any, miss?”
As on preceding afternoons, I explained that “The World at Home” did not
drag subscribers in with a seine.
“You know that I got one last week, Martha, but the people look for me
now. Poor Mr. Petty was at the gate with a flaming sword. I mean, the
shovel.”
“Then he wasn’t sober, miss.”
“Obviously not. I let sleeping Pettys lie, since he put me out of the
house as ‘them agents.’”
“Eight sticks, some fence rails and three barrels,” chanted Martha, to
the wood-basket on the hearth.
“And the last timber sold for the mortgage,” I ruminated. “How’s the
caravansary: the food, O faithful Achates? I can eat less.”
“For the land’s sake, don’t, Miss Enid! You don’t weigh more’n a sparrow
now. It’s a long road that’s got no turnin’, but joy cometh in the
mornin’, as the hymn says.” Martha stood over me, her hands under her
apron, her little shawl crossed and tied behind. “There’s some corn meal
left—”
“Too fattening.”
“A quart of vinegar—”
“Ah, now we are arriving! Socrates and the hemlock!”
“No, miss, vinegar. Half a ham, some rice—”
“And you call it low rations!” I rebuked. “I’ll bet my hard-earned
subscription that your grandfather wasn’t a highwayman, Martha.”
“My soul, no, miss! There wasn’t nothin’ of the kind in our family. He
was a elder.”
“I feared so. There is nothing of the pirate concealed about you, else
you’d not be toasting starvation with half a ham and a pound of rice in
reserve. You and Dr. Prince could do ensemble work as star pessimists.
Now, nature contrived me in a perverse and whimsical mood. Give me a
black night and a star’s twinkle, and I’ll dig for doubloons; a red
sunset and a dark woods converts me into a doughty knight, ready to hew
his way through the thorny hedge of the world! Eight sticks and half a
ham! Woman, we’re good for flood or barricade.”
But Martha, hardened to a lifetime of like panegyrics, was not to be
diverted.
“Yes, miss. So I say. We must do something.”
“The telephone! It shall go at the end of the month.”
“And there’s that there Duchess, Miss Enid, sittin’ in there in a gold
frame, not doin’ no good to nobody. The collector gentleman said it
would bring its price, miss.”
I came to earth with a thud, and retrod the battlefield peopled by ghosts
of past encounters. The Fierienti Duchess, my grandmother’s
great-great-grandmother, had been the family mascot for generations.
Cary Penwick alone, as grandma’s last surviving male relative, should
have the responsibility of the Laughing Duchess.
“But, don’t forget it’s yours, Miss,” Martha held on. “Your grandma
says, ‘Martha,’ she says, ‘take care of her always, and keep the Duchess
dusted!’ ‘I will, ma’am,’ says I, ‘long as there’s breath in my veins!’
says I. ‘Tenny rate, Miss Enid, there’s that there Chinese idol settin’
on his heels, lookin’ enough like Wung Loo at the laundry to be his
brother—”
This of thee, O shade of Buddha!
“—And that boy with wings on his feet, ’stead of skates—”
And thou, immortal Mercury!
“—You could get as high as two hundred for ’em, maybe.”
I admitted the possibility, but was determined to submit the Fierienti
only to the first authority among collectors.
And, at that moment, with the ringing of the telephone, the unexpected
stepped in as stage manager, and gave me a protracted performance for
twenty-four hours.
“I guess Dr. Prince’s ringin’ to see if we’re all right for the night,”
speculated Martha, who invariably gambled upon a letter before opening
it.
“Suppose you go up to town tomorrow, Enid, and consult Penwick,” came
Prince’s kind voice. “We are instructed to catch opportunity by the
forelock. And, if you want me to go along—”