The others were leaving too. “Rupert, I could brain you for roping in those Chisoms,” said Miss Tennyson, as the Major took her by the arm.
“I thought they’d be the answer to her prayers, poor little woman. And Clint jotted the list of ’em down for me just the day he took off for New Orleans. In case she needed ’em.”
“And she did,” said Miss Adele.
“I still can’t believe it!” the Major loudly said, as the Bullocks helped each other toward the old Chrysler. “Can’t believe we’ve all come off and left him in the ground!”
“Rupert,” said Miss Tennyson, “now listen to me. Believe it. Now you get busy and believe it. Do you hear what I say? Poor Clinton’s in Heaven right now.”
Miss Adele took a step toward the kitchen, and then Missouri clinked some glasses back there. Miss Adele lifted her empty hands for a moment, and dropped them.
Laurel touched her own to one of hers, and watched her go.
Three
1
LAUREL, KNEELING, worked among the iris that still held a ragged line along the back of the house up to the kitchen door. She’d found the dark-blue slacks and the blue cardigan in her suitcase—she’d packed them as automatically as she’d packed her sketchbook. She felt the spring sun gently stinging the back of her neck and she listened to other people talk. Her callers sat behind her and over to the side, in the open sunshine.
“Well, we got her out of the house,” Miss Tennyson Bullock said. “Fay’s gone!”
“Don’t brag too soon,” said old Mrs. Pease.
These four elderly ladies were all at home in the McKelva backyard. Cardinals, flying down from low branches of the dogwood tree, were feeding here and there at the ladies’ crossed feet. At the top of the tree, a mockingbird stood silent over them like a sentinel.
“I used to waste good time feeling sorry for Clint. But he’s in Heaven now. And if she’s in Texas, I can just sit here in sunshine and be glad for our sakes,” Miss Tennyson said. She had the ancient deck chair, which engulfed her like a hammock. “Of course, Major daily expects her back.”
“Oh, but not to stay, do you think? In Mount Salus without a husband?” asked Mrs. Bolt, the minister’s wife. She promptly reassured herself. “No, she won’t last long. She’ll go away.”
“I wouldn’t count on it if I were you,” said old Mrs. Pease. “You got a peep at her origins.”
“Ask yourself what other roof than this she’d rather have over her head, and you’ve got your answer,” said Miss Tennyson.
“What did she do with herself while he was here?” exclaimed Mrs. Bolt.
“Nothing but sit-and-eat,” said Miss Tennyson. “And keep straight on looking like a sparrow.”
“She had to eat. Had nothing else to do to occupy her hands,” said Mrs. Pease, holding up a perfectly enormous afghan she was knitting as if by the porcelain light of the dogwood tree.
“Oh, surely you know she was occupied enough with this great big house to care for.” Miss Adele tilted up her face at it. The faint note of mockery that belonged in her voice had come back today.
“The house was not exactly a sight. Yes it was,” said Miss Tennyson. “The way they set off and left it to come back to—I won’t describe the way Adele and I found it.”
“Their bed wasn’t made,” suggested the minister’s wife.
“Well, if she made him happy. You’ve never caught me guilty yet of saying any more than that,” said Miss Tennyson.
The wild phlox was blue as a lake behind Miss Adele Courtland as she said, “Oh, indeed he doted on her.”
“Doted. You’ve hit on it. That’s the word,” said Miss Tennyson.
Laurel went on pulling weeds. Her mother’s voice came back with each weed she reached for, and its name with it. “Ironweed.” “Just chickweed.” “Here comes that miserable old vine!”
“It couldn’t be for her bridge game, if dote he did. Beggar-my-neighbor was more in her line of accomplishment,” said old Mrs. Pease grimly.
“Oh, he doted on her, exactly like a man will. I’d only wish to ask your precious father one question, if I could have him back just long enough for that, Laurel,” said Miss Tennyson, and with effort she leaned forward and asked it hoarsely: “What happened to his judgment?”
“He wasn’t as old as all that,” agreed Mrs. Pease. “I’m older. By a trifle.”
“A man can feel compunction for a child like Fay and still not have to carry it that far,” said Miss Tennyson. She called, “Laurel, do you know that when he brought her here to your house, she had very little idea of how to separate an egg?”
“And neither did he,” said Miss Adele.
“ ‘Frying pan’ was the one name she could give you of all the things your mother had in that kitchen, Laurel. Things like that get over town in a hurry, you know. I hate to tell you the upshot,” said Miss Tennyson, “but on Sundays, when no power on earth could bring Missouri, they walked from church and took their Sunday dinner in the Iona Hotel, in that dining room.”
On top of the tree, the mockingbird threw out his chest and let fall a cascade of song.
“Oh, it’s been the most saddening exhibition within my memory,” said old Mrs. Pease, crablike over her wool.
“Major and I just happen to walk that way too, when we go home from church. Sunday after Sunday we saw ’em through the dirty plate-glass window,” said Miss Tennyson. “Billing and cooing. No tablecloth.”
“A good thing you reminded me!” said Mrs. Bolt. “My husband hasn’t yet rehearsed his Sunday sermon to me, and he’s got just today and tomorrow.” She took her leave.
“Shocked her, but that service of her husband’s wasn’t up to Clinton, either,” said Miss Tennyson, settling back in the big old chair. “At the time, I didn’t object—the catch came in thinking it over later.”
“The whole day left something to be desired, if you want to hear me come right out with it,” said old Mrs. Pease.
“Go ahead. I know you’re blaming Major,” said Miss Tennyson. “Why he had to get so carried away as to round up those Chisoms, I’ll never know, myself. He said they were nothing but just good old Anglo-Saxons. But I said—”
“You can’t curb a Baptist,” Mrs. Pease said. “Let them in and you can’t keep ’em down, when somebody dies. When the whole bunch of Chisoms got to going in concert, I thought the only safe way to get through the business alive was not say a word, just sit as still as a mouse.”
“I, though, consider that the Chisoms did every bit as well as we did,” said Miss Adele. “If we’re going to dare mention behavior.”
“Adele has the schoolteacher’s low opinion of everybody,” said Miss Tennyson.
“It’s true they were a trifle more inelegant,” said Miss Adele. “But only a trifle.”
“The pitiful thing was, Fay didn’t know any better than the rest of ’em. She just supposed she did,” said Miss Tennyson.
“Did you hear her snub her sister? Refused to cry on her,” said old Mrs. Pease.
“Well, we all knew exactly what the sort of thing was that Fay’d be good for,” said Miss Tennyson. “Didn’t make it go any quicker when it came. That slap I gave her took the starch out of me.”
“Strangely enough,” said Miss Adele, “I think that carrying-on was Fay’s idea of giving a sad occasion its due. She was rising to it, splendidly.—By her lights!” she interrupted herself before the others could do it for her. “She wanted nothing but the best for her husband’s funeral, only the most expensive casket, the most choice cemetery plot—”
“Choice! It looked right out on the Interstate! Those horrible trucks made so much whine, not a thing Dr. Bolt was saying could be heard. Even from our good seats,” said Miss Tennyson.
“—and,” continued Miss Adele, “the most brokenhearted, most distraught behavior she could manage on the part of the widow.”
Singing over her words, the mockingbird poured out his voice without stopping.
“I could
have broken her neck,” said Miss Tennyson.
“Well, you couldn’t expect her to stop being a Baptist,” said old Mrs. Pease.
“Well, of course I’m a Baptist,” said Miss Adele, the dimple coming into her cheek.
“Adele, you didn’t care for Fay’s behavior any more than the rest of us did,” said Miss Tennyson.
“I saw you have to sit down,” said old Mrs. Pease shrewdly.
“I give myself as bad a mark as anybody. Never fear,” said Miss Adele.
“Well, I’m not ashamed of anything I did,” said Miss Tennyson. “And I felt still more ashamed for Fay when she upped and told us goodbye and went off with the rest of the Chisoms. I reckon she thought we might not let her go. But we didn’t beg her any too hard to stay, did we?” Miss Tennyson sank back deeper into the old chair.
“As a matter of fact,” said Miss Adele, “Fay stuck to her guns longer than the rest of us, the ones who knew Judge McKelva better, and knew everything better. Major Bullock got outright tipsy, and everybody that opened their mouths said as near the wrong thing as they could possibly manage.”
“Adele! You just dearly love to punish yourself. You hate what you’re saying, just as much as we do,” declared Miss Tennyson.
“But I believe it.”
“Well, I’m going right on blaming the Chisoms,” said old Mrs. Pease. “They ought to have stayed home in the first place. All of ’em.”
“I further believe Fay thought she was rising in the estimation of Mount Salus, there in front of all his lifelong friends,” said Miss Adele. “And on what she thought was the prime occasion for doing it.”
“Well, she needed somebody to tell her how to act,” said Miss Tennyson flatly.
“I gathered from the evidence we were given that Fay was emulating her own mother,” said Miss Adele, while the mockingbird sang.
“Why, Fay declared right in front of old Mrs. Chisom and all that she wished her mother hadn’t come!” said Miss Tennyson.
“Nevertheless, that’s who she emulated,” said Miss Adele. “We can’t find fault with doing that, can we, Laurel?”
Laurel, who had worked her way as far as the kitchen door, sat on the back step and gazed at the ladies, all four.
“I got the notion if Fay hadn’t turned around quick, they might’ve just settled in here with her,” said old Mrs. Pease. “When old Mrs. What’s-her-name stepped off the reach of the front porch, I had an anxious moment, I can tell you.”
“Are we all going to have to feel sorry for her?” asked Miss Tennyson.
“If there’s nothing else to do, there’s no help for it,” said Miss Adele. “Is there, Laurel?”
“Well, answer!” exclaimed Miss Tennyson. “Are you prepared now to pity her, Laurel?”
“Cat’s got her tongue,” said old Mrs. Pease.
“I hope I never see her again,” said Laurel.
“There, girlie, you got it out,” said Miss Tennyson. “She’s a trial to us all and nothing else. Why don’t you stay on here, and help us with her?”
“Why not indeed?” said Miss Adele. “Laurel has no other life.”
“Of course I must get back to work,” said Laurel.
“Back to work.” Miss Tennyson pointed her finger at Laurel and told the others, “That girl’s had more now than she can say grace over. And she’s going back to that life of labor when she could just as easily give it up. Clint’s left her a grand hunk of money.”
“Once you leave after this, you’ll always come back as a visitor,” Mrs. Pease warned Laurel. “Feel free, of course—but it was always my opinion that people don’t really want visitors.”
“I mean it. Why track back up to the North Pole?” asked Miss Tennyson. “Who’s going to kill you if you don’t draw those pictures? As I was saying to Tish, ‘Tish, if Laurel would stay home and Adele would retire, we could have as tough a bridge foursome as we had when Becky was playing.’ ”
“Are you figuring on running me out, then? Or what?” asked old Mrs. Pease, who had tottered to her feet.
“No, play on as you’re playing now,” said Miss Adele, smiling. “Nate’s adorable French wife in New Orleans would agree with Laurel perfectly: there’s not enough Mount Salus has to offer a brilliant mind.”
“There!” exclaimed Miss Tennyson. “I’d begun to despair that we could ever make Laurel McKelva laugh on this trip at all.”
“I’ve got my passage,” Laurel said. “The afternoon flight from Jackson on Monday.”
“And she’ll make it, too. Oh, Laurel can do anything. If it’s been made hard enough for her,” said Miss Adele. “Of course she can give up Mount Salus and say goodbye to this house and to us, and the past, and go on back to Chicago day after tomorrow, flying a jet. And take up one more time where she left off.”
Laurel stood up and kissed the mischievous, wrinkled cheek.
“Laurel, look yonder. You still might change your mind if you could see the roses bloom, see Becky’s Climber come out,” said Miss Tennyson softly.
“I can imagine it, in Chicago.”
“But you can’t smell it,” Miss Tennyson argued.
All of them wandered toward the rose bed, where every hybrid tea stood low with branches cut staggered. They were hiding themselves in an opalescent growth of leaf. Behind them—Laurel took a few steps farther—the climbers rose: Mermaid, solid as a thicket, on the Pease side, and Banksia in its first feathery bloom on the Courtland side, and between them the width of bare fence where Becky’s Climber belonged. Judge McKelva had recalled himself at Becky’s Climber.
(“I’d give a pretty to know what exactly that rose is!” Laurel’s mother would say every spring when it opened its first translucent flowers of the true rose color. “It’s an old one, with an old fragrance, and has every right to its own name, but nobody in Mount Salus is interested in giving it to me. All I had to do was uncover it and give it the room it asked for. Look at it! It’s on its own roots, of course, utterly strong. That old root there may be a hundred years old!”
“Or older,” Judge McKelva had said, giving her, from the deck chair, his saturnine smile. “Strong as an old apple tree.”)
Sienna-bright leaves and thorns like spurts of match-flame had pierced through the severely cut-back trunk. If it didn’t bloom this year, it would next: “That’s how gardeners must learn to look at it,” her mother would say.
Memory returned like spring, Laurel thought. Memory had the character of spring. In some cases, it was the old wood that did the blooming.
“So we’ve settled Laurel. But has anybody but Tennyson settled Fay? I don’t see how we can think so,” said Miss Adele, with the excruciated dimple making a shadow in her cheek. “When we really lack the first idea of knowing what to do with Clinton’s little minx, whom he’s left on our hands in such utter disregard for our feelings.” She was doing her best, getting back into her form today.
“Short of crowning her over the head with a good solid piece of something,” agreed Miss Tennyson. “She’ll live forever and a day. She’ll be right here when we’re gone. Why do all the men think they need to protect her?”
“Major just slobbers over her,” old Mrs. Pease agreed.
“But he wasn’t the prime idiot. Wouldn’t Clint be amazed if he suddenly had ears again and could hear us right now?” said Miss Tennyson with relish. “You know, I marvel at men.”
“Laurel is who should have saved him from that nonsense. Laurel shouldn’t have married a naval officer in wartime. Laurel should have stayed home after Becky died. He needed him somebody in that house, girl,” said old Mrs. Pease.
“But that didn’t have to mean Fay,” said Miss Tennyson. “Drat her!”
“She’s never done anybody any harm,” Miss Adele remarked. “Rather, she gave a lonely old man something to live for.”
“I’d rather not consider how,” interrupted Miss Tennyson primly.
“We just resent her, poor little waif,” said Miss Adele. “And she can’t he
lp but know it. She’s got more resentment than we have. Resentment born.”
“If I’d just known Clint was casting around for somebody to take Becky’s place, I could’ve found him one a whole lot better than Fay. And right here in Mount Salus,” Miss Tennyson was stung to say. “I could name one now that would have leaped—”
“He didn’t find Becky in Mount Salus,” Miss Adele reminded them, silencing all but the mockingbird.
“And of course that’s one of the peculiarities Laurel inherited from him. She didn’t look at home to find Philip Hand,” said Miss Tennyson.
Laurel stood up.
“Laurel’s ready for us to go,” said Miss Adele, rising herself. “We’ve kept her out of the house long enough.”
“No, don’t ask us in, we’ll leave you to struggle through the rest without us,” said Miss Tennyson indulgently. She waved her way out toward the street. Old Mrs. Pease walked slowly away, folding her afghan, and turned through the gate that opened into her untrespassed garden.
As Laurel walked with Miss Adele toward her own opening in the hedge, there could be heard a softer sound than the singing from the dogwood tree. It was rhythmic but faint, as from the shaking of a tambourine.
“Little mischiefs! Will you look at them showing off,” said Miss Adele.
A cardinal took his dipping flight into the fig tree and brushed wings with a bird-frightener, and it crashed faintly. Another cardinal followed, then a small band of them. Those thin shimmering discs were polished, rain-bright, and the redbirds, all rival cocks, were flying at their tantalizing reflections. At the tiny crash the birds would cut a figure in the air and tilt in again, then again.
“Oh, it’s a game, isn’t it, nothing but a game!” Miss Adele said, stepping gracefully into her own backyard.
2
LAUREL faced the library. This was where, after his retirement and marriage, her father had moved everything he wanted around him from his office in the Mount Salus Bank Building on the Square.