“You look fine, Mama.”
“Mama,” said Constance, “at the station Mrs. Lansing kissed Roger. Everybody in town was there.”
“Your old room’s ready for you,” said Beata.
“Let me look around first.”
The sitting room with the pieces of furniture that Sophia had collected one by one, all a little worn and scratched, but gleaming; the dining room with its long table and two sideboards bristling with cruets and casters and tureens—very “boarding-house.” They lit a lantern and visited the chickenhouse with its incubator, Violet the cow, the little shed that Porky had built for the ducks. They visited the Rainy Day House and studied the marks their father had made to record their heights annually: Lily, two years old in 1886 to her eighteenth year in 1902; Roger, one year old in 1886 to his seventeenth year in 1902; and so on. They visited the oak trees their father had planted in 1888; they gazed at them in hushed wonder. All Ashleys, save one, were interested in growth and progress and planning.
Beata, as so often, had urged Porky to join them for supper. He had never once sat down with the family in the front rooms. It was his custom to eat in the kitchen. Tonight he was absent from the house. The conversation at table avoided touching upon any serious matters. All seemed to be awaiting the inevitable discussion that Roger would have with his mother—the two alone—in the sitting room later, on that subject that was never referred to: the future. Were the girls ever to continue their education? Would their mother ever emerge from the gate of “The Elms”? Were they ever to have any friends? Roger showed some new photographs of Lily and the wonderful baby. He brought Lily’s expressions of regret that she could not be with them. She was leaving for New York on the twenty-eighth, after having sung in four performances of The Messiah, the two in Chicago and two in Milwaukee. He talked of his work. Only Constance’s questions prevented the conversation from falling into stagnant shallows. Sophia spoke not a word. When they rose from the table the girls started toward the kitchen.
Roger asked, “Mama, can the dishes wait half an hour?”
“Yes, dear. What did you want?”
“Later I’m coming into the sitting room to sit with you, but I’d like to take Sophia for a walk before it gets too late and too cold. I’ll take a walk with you tomorrow night, Connie. Oldest first.”
“Yes, of course, Roger. Sophia, wrap yourself up well.”
They walked hand in hand, which was not an Ashley practice. Avoiding the main street, they followed the old towpath. The Kangaheela flowed by them in silence under the thickening ice.
“Sophie, I’ve got something to tell you. I was going to tell you on Christmas morning, but I want to tell it to you right now. You and Porky are coming to Chicago to visit me at Easter. I’m going to take Porky to a place where he can get a brace fitted for his ankle, but I’m going to take you somewhere that’s more interesting still. I know a lady who’s head of a school for nurses. She liked that piece I wrote in the paper about you. She asked me to come and see her and I told her all about you. I showed her some parts of your letters where you described what Mama had been teaching you and Connie at home. She said that she’d enroll you at midterm when you’re seventeen and a half—that’s a year and three weeks from today. She’s sent you some books for you to study every now and then, to get ready.”
Sophia was silent.
“Don’t you like the idea?”
“Roger.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t go.”
“Why not?”
“The . . . ? the boardinghouse.”
“You started it. It’s the greatest thing a girl of fourteen ever did. But you wrote me that it’s going well now. Mama and Mrs. Swenson can run it and they can get another hired girl when you and Connie go to school in the fall.”
Sophia was silent and did not raise her eyes.
“You mean all that shopping, and sacks of flour and things? And keeping the accounts?—Well, do you know one of the reasons why I came down to Coaltown? It was to persuade Mama to go out into the town. You can show her how to do those things. Mama’s bright, and she’s a very good housekeeper.—Besides, I’ll tell you something else. There’s only going to be one more year of the boardinghouse. Lily and I are going to make enough money so that you and Mama won’t have to work. Now, Sophia, you listen to what I say: you’re going to enter Miss Wills’s school for nurses in January, 1906, or I’m a Chinaman. And probably the boardinghouse will close its door about six months later.”
Sophia murmured, “The chickens and the ducks and the cow.”
“I’ll ask Porky to give me the name of some boy you can trust. I’ll pay him to take care of the chickens and the ducks.”
He talked to her about the Great Subject. After Lily, she had been the first with whom he had shared his conviction that, somewhere on the earth, their father would hear of Scolastica and Berwyn Ashley. They would receive a letter written in ambiguous terms which only they could decipher. It would say, “Please write me about my dear friend who takes care of all sick animals,” or “If you know anyone who has a name that means wisdom in Greek, give that person my love.” He would give an address where they could write to him. They would all go and have their photographs taken for Papa.
Roger became aware that she was scarcely listening to him. He could not know that in Sophia the faculty of hope—like a clock that had outworn its service—had broken down. She was no longer able to believe that the boardinghouse would ever come to an end, that she would ever see her father, that she would ever tend the sick, or live close—day by day—to anyone she loved.
Early in the walk Sophia had taken her hand from his. He now became aware that she was trembling.
“Roger,” she said softly.
“Yes, Sophie?”
“I think . . . ? I ought to get back to the house.”
“Are you tired?”
“Just a little.”
Suddenly he remembered that she had been ill six months before—had been two weeks at the Bell Farm, where Dr. Gillies had forbidden her to receive any callers but Porky. Roger reproached himself for not having given enough attention to the report. The young tend to assume that the young are always well—a cold now and then, a twisted ankle. A vague dread awoke in him now.
“Do you eat good, Sophie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you sleep good?”
“Oh, yes . . . ? But I’ll eat better . . . ? and sleep better, now that you’re back . . . ? in your room.”
“We’ll go in by the back door. The kitchen’s warmest.”
His dread was heightened by some words said to him by the Maestro a few weeks before.
Of the Maestro’s six gifted children, all except his favorite daughter, Bice, were clamorous, demanding, and self-assertive. She assisted her mother in running the house; she served as her father’s secretary; she asked nothing for herself. She was tireless, watchful, shielding. Family life among the Italians—as among the Irish, though with less virulence—is punctuated by grand liberating quarrels, blood-warming rhetorical baths, complete with denunciations, slamming of doors, and last words fortissimo. These, in turn, are followed by reconciliations of an operatic beauty—tears, embraces, kneeling on the floor, protestations of penitence, humility, and undying love. These storms were greatly enjoyed by all except Bice, who, on each occasion, believed that they were real. She suffered. She alone in the family was pale and subject to migraine. During the summer of 1905 she was no longer able to conceal from her parents that she was coughing blood. Her father took her to a sanatorium in Minnesota. His character changed.
One evening after dinner he sat alone with Roger in his studio surrounded by those works of art (that is: of power diminished to beauty) that could afford him no comfort, and said:
“Mr. Frazier, family life is like that of nations: each member battles for his measure of air and light, of nourishment and territory, and particularly for that measure of admiration and attention
which is called ‘glory.’ It is like a forest; each tree must fight for its sunlight; under the ground the roots engage in a death struggle for moisture. We are told that some even exude an acidity that is noxious to all except themselves. Mr. Frazier, in every lively healthy family there is one who must pay.”
Sophia outlived them all. When, down the years, Roger and his sisters called on her she did not recognize them. Lily would sing her favorite songs to her softly. “I had a sister who sang that song.” She was under the impression that she was in Goshen. When Roger called on her she explained that many people regarded Goshen with fear and even shame, but that he could see for himself that it was delightful in every way—there were trees and lawns and birds and squirrels. She received these visitors with grave courtesy, but at the end of half an hour she informed them that she was busy, her patients required her attention. She pointed to a dozen dolls, all bedridden but convalescent. Her attendants told them that she dressed each morning with great care in expectation of her father’s visit and each night she exacted a promise that she be awakened early the next morning for a certain reason. There was one visitor from whom she fled and who was not encouraged to return. Sophia detested the odor of lavender.
Roger returned Sophia to the kitchen and recommended a glass of hot milk. He joined his mother in the sitting room.
“Mama, I’m going to stay in Chicago one more year and then I’m going to New York. Could you run the boardinghouse one more year—or one more year and a half—and then come to New York?”
“Oh, Roger! I shall never leave ‘The Elms.’ Oh, no. Oh, no, Roger.”
“But the boardinghouse—”
“I like the boardinghouse.”
“Next fall Sophia must go away to school.”
“Oh, I shan’t leave Coaltown.”
“I think by that time Lily or I will have a letter from Papa.”
She was silent a moment, then said in a low voice, “If that is so, of course I shall do what your father thinks best.—I like the boardinghouse. It brings in some money. I like to think that that money will be useful to your father someday.”
Roger leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Mama, will you call with me on Mrs. Lansing on Christmas Day?”
She raised her eyes from her sewing and looked at him directly. “Roger, until your father returns I shall never leave the grounds of ‘The Elms.’”
“You hate Coaltown?”
“Oh, no.”
“Why is it, then?”
“I have nothing to say to these people. They have nothing to say to me that would interest me. All the best of my life has been passed within these walls.”
“And the worst of your life, Mama.”
“I don’t remember that.—A happiness such as I had lasts. It’s with me every day. I don’t want things to break into it—to trouble it.”
Seven years later Mrs. Wickersham on her terrace in Manantiales read—or rather was read to, for her eyesight was failing—that the American diva Madame Scolastica Ashley, then singing at Covent Garden, was the daughter of the unjustly convicted John Ashley of Coaltown, Illinois. The item in the San Francisco paper reminded the readers that the real murderer had confessed his crime, but that no information had ever come to light as to the whereabouts of the fugitive. After some deliberation Mrs. Wickersham dictated a long letter—the task required the larger part of four mornings—to Madame Ashley in London. It concluded: “I am certain that if your dear father were still alive after the summer of 1905 he would have written me!” The letter was signed in a shaky hand “Ada Wickersham.”
Not long after reading this letter Beata closed “The Elms” and moved to Los Angeles. She bought and repaired a dilapidated mansion on a low but steep hill near the center of the city. She put up a sign, BUENA VISTA ROOMS AND BOARD. The very ground on which the house stood was falling away in small landslides; the neighborhood was deteriorating. Such boarders as presented themselves were an assorted lot—some office girls, rheumatic widows, asthmatic widowers, derelicts. The table she set acquired a small reputation; some business men formed a luncheon club and climbed the two long flights of uneven cement steps five times a week. Beata did not wish to run a public restaurant and only the permanent boarders sat down to dinner in the evening. Three of her children combined to offer her an income and the gift of a house in Pasadena, but Beata was resolutely independent; she accepted nothing. For half a year, in 1913, Constance and her husband—touring the hemisphere on one of their crusades—left their small half-Japanese son with her. Her happiness cannot be described. When the boy departed the separation was painful on both sides. From time to time one or other of her boarders absconded with or without some bed linen and table silver. One couple disappeared leaving a broken suitcase and a three-year-old son. Beata put the boy through deaf-and-dumb school, herself learned the manual alphabet, and adopted him. It seems that Beata came into the world to be a grandmother. Jamie helped her with the house, remained with her to her death. He and his children inherited her small savings.
Several times a year a newspaper reporter would enter “Buena Vista” as far as the front hall. “Is it true, Mrs. Ashley, that you are the mother of Madame Scolastica Ashley, and Berwyn Ashley?” “Thank you very much for your visit, but I’m very busy today.” “And Constance Ashley–Nishimura?” “Good morning. Thank you for calling.” “Have you had any message from your husband, Mrs. Ashley?” “We’re cleaning the downstairs rooms this morning. I’m sorry. I’ll have to ask you to leave.” “But, Mrs. Ashley, I have to get a story or I’ll be fired.” “I’m sorry—good morning, good morning.”
Grandmotherly she was, of a German patrician rather than of an American order. All her boarders were aware of her concern for them. The house was spotless and she exacted a large measure of decorum from those who lived in it. She had long talks with addicts of tobacco and alcohol, with the despairing and the light-minded. Behind an appearance of severity she truly “adopted” her boarders: she lent money, she made gifts of garments and dollar watches. Her days were full. Her golden hair turned the color of a dull straw; she long retained her erect carriage. She wore no colors. Like many German women she came in later years to dress with notable distinction. Passers-by on the street stopped short in admiration at the delicate white cuffs and the snowy fichu over the black silk or broadcloth, at the long gold chain and crystal pendant that held a lock of a grandson’s hair. When Lily arrived in town to give a concert, or Roger and Constance to lecture, she let it be known that she wished to sit in the back of the hall. She refused to share a meal with them at a hotel; she invited them to have coffee with her in the sitting room at the “Buena Vista.” These visits would have been difficult but for the fact that she had considerable knowledge of the matters that interested them. But there was something else:
“Mama,” asked Constance one day, “you’re happy, aren’t you?”
“Do you remember Mrs. Wickersham’s description of your father’s life in Chile?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“All Ashleys are happy, because we work. I’d be ashamed if we weren’t.”
Late in life she had acquired a measure of humor. One day Roger climbed the precarious steps to drink coffee with his mother. She told him she and his father had never been married.
They both laughed.
“Mama!” he said.
“I’m proud of that.”
Beata never mentioned to her children that she had joined a church—one of those independent congregations that abound in southern California, combining spiritism, Indian philosophy, and healing: it seemed to her to reflect many ideas, many affirmations, that she had acquired from her lifelong reading in Goethe.
At nine-thirty Roger gave the signal—the hoot of an owl—before Porky’s store and went in. Porky resumed his work by the hot stove.
“Sophie’s not well, Porky.”
Porky wasted no words when a glance could better convey his sense.
“You and she are co
ming up to Chicago to visit me at Easter.” Roger put down on the table some pamphlets illustrating braces for the feet and shins. “You stay four days; she’ll stay a week. If Connie went back to school, would the children behave badly to her?”
“A few. Connie’d be all right.”
“Have you got all this work to do over Christmas?”
“Most of my work I do by mail now. Drummers send me their families’ shoes. Sophie ought to go to the Bell Farm again—right now—day after Christmas.”
“If you say so, I’ll do it. I’ll take her there myself.”
Bang! Bang!
“I met Felicity Lansing on the train. I think she has an idea who killed her father. Could she have?”
Bang. “Might have.”
“Do you have any idea, Porky?” Porky’s glance conveyed nothing. “I’d rather know who rescued my father.”
It was restful to be with Porky and his hammer and his silence. “I feel I ought to be home and have a last word with Sophie. What’s that drawing on the wall?”
“My cousin’s building two more rooms to the store for me.” Bang. Bang. “I’m getting married in March.”
“Sure!” Roger suddenly remembered Porky’s having told him in great confidence, that the young men of the Church of the Covenant on Herkomer’s Knob married at the age of twenty-five. “Do I know your wife?”
“Christiana Rawley.”
Roger’s face lit up. He remembered Christiana at school. “Fine!” he said. They shook hands solemnly.
“I’m teaching her brother Standfast; he’ll help me here. Tell your mother that when I move out of ‘The Elms’ he can take my room there and do the heavy work.”
“I will.”
They exchanged a glance. Friendship is great. It thinks of everything. Imagination.
“My grandfather wants to see you.”
“Yes. Where?”
“At his house.”
No one in Coaltown was ever invited to call on Herkomer’s Knob.
There was something weighty in the air.
“Yes, of course, Porky. When?”
“Could you meet me here tomorrow at four? I’ll have horses.” Porky’s lameness. An able young man could ascend the hill in forty minutes.