“Aha.”
“Artificial flowers!”
“Ditto.”
“Loud music. Stale crackers. Cursing. Complaining.”
He laughed.
“You’ll be relieved to know that I won’t ask you such a silly question,” she said. “I’d much rather ask you something else.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“What were your parents like?”
He poured his own coffee and handed her a dish of pears.
“My mother was a beautiful woman with a loving spirit. She could also be obstinate, strict, and cold at times, but, usually, only toward my father, who was
always
obstinate, strict, and cold.” He looked at her with a wry smile.
“My mother was a Baptist, the granddaughter of a great Mississippi preacher. She was well-read in the Scriptures, had a mind of her own and an arresting wit, into the bargain. When I was an infant, she gave me to the Lord, as Hannah gave Samuel.
“She raised me on Scripture, and the extraordinary thing is, she caused me to love it. Some who’re raised that way end up reviling it, because it’s taught in the wrong spirit. But who could not love what my mother taught? She was adored by everyone. Everyone except, I regret to say, my father.”
His guest stirred cream into her coffee, listening intently.
“My mother, brimming with passion, with love for God and for people—my father, remote, arrogant, handsome, disliked. I remember what my Uncle Gus once said: ‘A highfalutin’, half-frozen Episcopalian and a hidebound, Bibletotin’ Baptist. The North Pole and the South Pole, under the same roof!’ Why did they marry? I believe my mother saw in him something tender and felt she could change him.”
“Oh, dear,” said Cynthia, with feeling.
“At the age of ten or so, I had learned one of the most crucial verses on marriage.” He laughed, remembering his mother’s frequent allusion to it. “ ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers . . . for what communion hath light with darkness?’ My father did have a dark spirit, and her brightness seemed to drive him even further into the darkness.
“The church was a terrific issue for years. Mother attended Father’s church until, as she liked to say, she was overcome by frostbite. Finally, he quit the church entirely, and Mother returned to her Baptist roots. With me in tow.”
He took a sip of coffee from the Haviland cup. His guest, who was herself a storyteller, seemed transfixed. “What did you think of that?” she wanted to know.
“I liked it. It was like drawing your chair up to the hearth. Church suppers, hymn sings, a sense of family. A great sense of family. I found there something I never found with my father: a kind of unconditional love. But unconditional love with salt, for there was a real honor of God’s bottom line. Walnut Grove was a simple church, and it caused me to treasure simplicity. It was also where I very likely developed my early desire to be a pastor.
“I never wanted to rise to bishop. I only wanted to pastor a small congregation, and to weave myself into the life of a parish in . . . in an intimate way.”
“I see that you’ve done that, with wonderful results.”
“I don’t know. I very often don’t know.”
“Well, of course, you don’t! That’s not unusual. I very often don’t know if a watercolor is right. I wish I had someone to run to, to say look at this, what do you think? That’s terrific, they might say, keep doing it. Or, haven’t you made all the heads too big?”
He laughed.
“These pears,” she said, “are ravishing, to put it plainly.”
He laughed. “One of the qualities I like in you is that you put things plainly.”
“What else do you like about me?” she asked, unashamedly licking the sauce off her spoon.
“Now, Cynthia . . .” He felt a mild panic.
“Oh, just say! And then I’ll tell you what I like about you.”
To think that he might have been sitting here in perfect peace, in his burgundy dressing gown and old slippers, reading or dozing. . . . “Well, then. Are the rules complete candor? Or shall we shade the truth and flatter one another?”
“Complete truth!”
“ ‘These are the things that ye shall do,’ ” he quoted from the book of Zechariah. “‘Speak every man truth to his neighbor.’ ”
“You see!” she said, laughing.
He sat back on the old sofa with the haphazard slipcover. “One of the things I like about you is that you are . . .” He relished a very long pause, as her eyes grew wide with mock expectancy. “. . . fun,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, lovely!”
“One of the things I like about you,” he continued, warming to his subject, “is . . . your enthusiasm.”
“Really?”
“Yet another thing I like about you is your courage.”
“My courage?”
“Yes. You haven’t told me any stories of your valor, but it’s something I sense, nonetheless. Of course, the thing I like most about you is that you’re far too kind to make me continue this list. That is, until I get to know you better.”
“Done!” she said, scraping the last of the sauce from the bottom of her dish and licking the spoon a final time. She set the dish on the coffee table and pushed up her sleeves. “Now, to you.”
“Do be kind,” he implored.
Cynthia made herself comfortable in the corner of the sofa. “One of the things I like about you is . . . you’re romantic.”
He felt his face flush. “I dare say I’ve never once thought of myself as romantic.”
“But how could you escape thinking it? It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Look at the way you love the old writers, especially Wordsworth. And your roses, and the gardens at Lord’s Chapel. And the way you set a table with family china and attend to the needs of your friends . . . and, oh, and go without a car for years on end!”
“That’s romantic?” he asked, perplexed.
“Terribly!”
Certainly this sort of evening beat dining at the country club. Why, he might have been talked into playing a rubber of bridge by now, which he utterly despised, or, worse yet, doing the fox-trot with Hessie Mayhew. There was, however, a price to pay for an evening with Cynthia Coppersmith: He found that he kept feeling his collar grow tighter.
“I could go on,” she announced, tilting her head and gazing at him.
“Please don’t!” he said. Please do, he thought.
“Why don’t we take a walk, then?” His neighbor got up and fluffed her silk dress, which he found to be the color of raspberries crushed in a bowl of cream. “What a splendid dinner! I’m fairly stupefied.”
He grinned. “That’s one way to put it.”
They strolled toward the monument, feeling a light chill in the air. He couldn’t avoid seeing the reward posters in every shopwindow they passed, with Cynthia’s bold likeness of Barnabas staring dolefully toward the street.
As they went around the monument and walked by the Porter place, he saw that Miss Rose and Uncle Billy had come out and settled themselves in the chrome dinette chairs that held a permanent position at the edge of their neglected lawn. “Well, looky here, Rose, it’s th’ preacher!”
“I can plainly see that,” snapped Miss Rose, who was attired in rubber overshoes, a chenille robe, a cotton housedress, pajama pants, and a golf hat. Father Tim was frankly amazed at the style she could bring to such odd apparel.
“Miss Rose, Uncle Billy, I believe you know my neighbor.”
“Cynthia Coppersmith!” said Cynthia, extending her hand. “We’ve met at church. So nice to see you again. I admire your home.”
“Don’t try to buy it,” warned Miss Rose, darkly.
“Preacher, why don’t you ’uns come in? Come in an’ have a sip of tea Rose made today. You’ve never seen our place.”
“
My
place,” said Miss Rose, jabbing him sharply with her elbow.
“Rose, don’t act up, now. We got comp’ny.”
“Uncle Billy, I don’t believe . . .”
“Aw, Preacher, come on and visit a spell. It’d be a blessin’.”
The rector looked at his neighbor, who nodded with enthusiasm. “Let’s do it! I love old houses.”
As they walked up the broken flagstones in the dark, he took Cynthia’s arm and whispered: “You might be careful of the refreshments.”
She laughed with delight. He knew instinctively that she considered this a grand adventure. How exciting, after all, to go where one must be careful of the refreshments.
Uncle Billy turned on the hall light as they entered the front door, and a great chandelier shone weakly through a layer of grime and dust. “Missin’ some bulbs,” said their host apologetically.
He heard Cynthia’s astonished murmur. They were in a broad foyer with a ceiling that soared two stories high and was ornamented on either side by staircases that, even in the ghostly light, were clearly extraordinary in their design. Faded murals swept up the walls, depicting elaborate gardens and statuary, exotic birds and urns overflowing with fruit. Carved balustrades were missing, with several appearing to lie on the floor where they’d fallen.
In an odd sense, it was a privilege to be in the Porter place, as few had ever been invited and hardly anyone, of late, wished to be asked.
“This is the front hall,” Miss Rose said, glowering at her guests.
“Glorious!” said Cynthia. “Absolutely glorious. Who built your home?”
“My brother, Willard,” said Miss Rose, in whom the ice suddenly began to melt. “My brother, Willard James Porter. There’s his picture.” She pointed up the stairs on the right, where a large, wide-framed portrait hung. Even in the dim light, Father Tim recognized the strikingly handsome face of the intense young man in Miss Sadie’s silver frame.
“Terribly good-looking!” said his neighbor.
In a surprising burst of cordiality, Miss Rose asked if they’d like a piece of pound cake.
“I love pound cake!” said Cynthia.
Now we’re in for it, he thought.
“You ’uns go on ahead through th’ dinin’ room,” said Uncle Billy, opening the French doors on their right. “Rose an’ me’ll bring up th’ rear.”
Father Tim peered into a vast, dark room with a narrow pathway bordered on either side by towering mounds of musty newspapers.
“You go first,” said Cynthia.
He took his neighbor’s hand and plunged into the darkness toward a light shining under a distant door.
He saw that she ate the pound cake as if she hadn’t had a bite all evening, and did so without inspecting her plate or her fork. As for himself, he broke an infinitesimal piece from the corner of the thin slice and covered the remainder with his napkin. It was one thing to blindly exercise good manners, he observed, and quite another to exercise reasonable caution.
He saw that the vast kitchen was large enough for an entire studio apartment, especially since it led down a hall to a bathroom. With considerable fixing up, it would make as fine a home as anyone could want.
“My brother,” Miss Rose was saying in a loud voice to Cynthia, “nearly married, you know.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. It would have been the most dreadful thing he ever did, of course.”
“I see.”
“Caused an uproar.”
“Umm.”
“Made a fine mess!”
“Oh, dear.”
“Nearly broke his faith.”
“Oh, no!”
“Set the backbiters on us.”
“My, my.” Cynthia looked around for help from the rector.
“You ’uns want t’ see th’ rest of th’ place?” Uncle Billy asked.
“We do!” cried Cynthia, jumping up so quickly she nearly upset the table.
His neighbor held on to his hand throughout much of the tour. There were, after all, stacks of newspapers in every room, old pictures, broken furniture, a mirror that had fallen off the wall and scattered glass across the carpet, and even a dozen silver candelabra, black with neglect, sitting squarely in the middle of the floor of an otherwise empty room where the wallpaper was peeling off in sheets.
The young Willard Porter had surely walked through these rooms, admiring their high ceilings and elaborate millwork, the stained glass in every bathroom, the carved balustrades and hardwood floors. He was beginning to wish they hadn’t come in to witness the morbid decline of his showplace.
At the end of an upstairs hallway, Cynthia made a discovery. “What is this?” she cried, pointing to a blue door. It was a very small door that appeared to have been put there for children.
“That’s my playroom!” said Miss Rose, who had taken off one rubber overshoe because it hurt her corn and was limping down the hall. “My dear brother put that little room up here for his baby sister. Not another living soul could go in there but me.”
“Has anyone else
ever
been in there?”
Miss Rose looked fiercely at Uncle Billy. “Bill Watson, have you ever?”
“Nossir, I ain’t,” declared her stricken husband. “Nossiree, Bob!”
“Well, we’ll just see. I could tell in a heartbeat if anybody’s stepped foot in my playroom.”
“You ain’t stepped foot in there yourself in a hundred years!”
Miss Rose bent down and found a small, rusty key under a broken flowerpot by the door and inserted it into the lock.
The rector heard a soft click, and the little blue door swung open easily.
“You have to get on your hands and knees,” instructed Miss Rose, dropping down on all fours, “and crawl in.” Cynthia did as she was told.
“Cynthia,” said the rector, “are you going in there?”
“Why, of course, I’m going in there! How could I not?”
How could she not, indeed, when it appeared to be a small, black hole in the wall, devoid of any ventilation or light.
“There!” said a satisfied Miss Rose, who reached inside and pulled a chain, illuminating the small space with surprising warmth. “Let’s go.”
Without any regard for her silk dress, Cynthia wriggled through the little doorway and disappeared.
“Jist foller that overshoe and that stockin’ foot,” called Uncle Billy.
There were screeches of pleasure, endless sneezes, and uproarious giggles from inside the wall. “Timothy, if I meet the White Rabbit, please take good care of Violet!”