The Magnificent Spinster (3 page)

By the time the three-tiered Japanese gong had been rung with emphasis by Daisy, the whole clan quickly assembled. Allegra's bunch of delphinium, salpiglossis, and dahlias in a blue Chinese jar was glorious but hardly dominated the huge table on the porch, set for ten. Allegra and James sat opposite each other at either end, the older girls and their beaus facing the bay, Snooker between Jane and Alix, and on the other side Martha, on her father's right.

For a moment there was silence as Daisy laid a platter of swordfish before Mr. Reid and went back to fetch vegetable dishes. Allegra and James exchanged a glance and bowed their heads, and Allegra, unhurried, thought for a second or two before saying:

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”

“Why didn't you say it all, Mamma?” Jane asked.

“I have an idea everyone is rather hungry … and the swordfish is getting cold.”

“It was just right, dear.” James began to cut judiciously and gave Daisy the plates one by one to go down to Allegra for the beans and hashed brown potatoes.

“Martha picked the beans … and don't they look delicious?” Allegra noted, smiling down at her daughter at the other end of the table.

“Now you get your reward,” James said as her plate was set down.

An atmosphere of tender regard was tangible in the way the family treated Martha, and it seemed sometimes as though she floated on the calm sea of family life, entirely happy, entirely accepting of the fact, which must have been hard to accept, that she lacked the beauty and magnetism of her two sisters … Viola so elegant and poised, and Edith so warm and open to life.

Once they were all served, conversation flowered as James turned to Lawrence with a teasing smile to ask him whether the Harvard football team had a chance of beating Yale this year, well aware that Vyvian at Yale might wish to argue the point.

“Ah!” Lawrence turned to Vyvian. “What do you think?”

“I don't think you have a chance!”

“We've got an Italian halfback, Rizzo, who will show Yale a thing or two—wait and see!”

Then Viola reminded her father of the awful thing he had done when she was about nine and they had walked through the Square on the day of the Yale game, she in a blue dress. “He told me everyone would think I was for Yale!” she said, smiling mischievously at Vyvian. “I've never been so humiliated.”

“You burst into tears and your father felt like a criminal,” Pappa chuckled.

“Do you play football, by the way?” Vyvian asked Lawrence.

“No, I'm on the freshman crew.”

“That's something I really envy,” said Vyvian.

“I'm a little better at it than at tennis, anyway.”

Jane observed the two young men from across the table. They seemed so conscious of being in some way superior to any girl. They took it for granted that a stupid conversation like this must be interesting to everyone. Even Pappa went out of his way to make them shine and feel important. And there were Viola and Edith apparently entranced! It was a total mystery.

Luckily the conversation took a turn for the better as Vyvian noticed a purple finch at the feeder that swung from the porch beam, and this led to talk about the birds on the island and gave Jane a chance to describe the fish hawk's nest.

“Do the great horned owl,” Alix begged.

“Oh yes,” Lawrence said. “Please do that!”

“I don't know whether I can.…” Jane had actually seen a great horned owl the summer before apparently trying to get the attention of another great horned owl … an unforgettable sight which had immediately to be imitated for the family when she got home. “I have to get up to do it,” she announced. “I need room.”

So she stood behind her mother's chair and began hunching her shoulders, her arms turning visibly into wings that suddenly flapped while she called out from deep in her chest, a strange repeated hoot. It was a remarkable performance and was greeted with roars of laughter and applause.

“Why is it so funny, Snooker? It's exactly what it was like,” said Jane, a little dismayed by the hilarious effect of her performance.

Snooker herself was laughing so hard it took her a moment to calm down. “You're just so unlike a horned owl and so like one at the same time,” she finally uttered.

“Where's the strawberry shortcake?” Alix asked, greatly disappointed to see a bowl of cut-up oranges being brought in by Daisy.

“We're saving that for Mr. Perkins, tonight,” Mamma explained.

“There are brownies,” Daisy whispered as she went past.

The best time, Jane always thought, was after luncheon, when they sat on, sipping demitasses, reluctant to leave the porch and separate. The best talks took place then. Sometimes they could persuade their mother to tell tales of her childhood in Cambridge, and especially of the autumn when her recently widowed father, the famous novelist, took her, his eldest child, to England and they were invited to several great houses for weekends, for Benjamin Trueblood was then at the height of his glory and received like a prince. How modest life in America had seemed by comparison! The carriages, the horses, the incredible numbers of servants. That is what Jane loved best; her eyes grew dreamy hearing about the wonderful gardens, the fountains, the artificial lakes, and everyone they met being a lord, or so she imagined.

But today Pappa was in a philosophical mood and the talk turned on what a hero is and whether Teddy Roosevelt could be called one. Lawrence felt he could most decidedly and defined a hero as brave and kind. But Vyvian disagreed, “Too full of himself and too brash for my taste.” Viola felt strongly too, and suggested that there was something too undignified.

“Why does a hero have to be dignified?” Edith asked.

“Could a writer be a hero?” Jane broke in, thinking of her grandfather.

“Oh no.” Lawrence was positive. “A hero must act! Must do something heroic, I mean, don't you agree, Mr. Reid?”

Pappa's eyes were twinkling. He enjoyed discussions like this and so did Jane, but Allegra was apt to feel that things might get a little too tense. Jane's passionate outbursts troubled her. And it was she who ended the discussion by rising from the table with one of her smiles, “It's time to think about a nap, James.”

The mail pouch was lying on the dining room table inside and had to be rifled for possible letters. Viola, as usual, had one, and Martha. “I'm furious,” said Edith. “David promised to write as soon as he got to France.”

Snooker went up with Jane and Alix to tuck them in for the required hour's rest after luncheon, and begged them for once to close their eyes and try not to talk. They lay down and closed their eyes, but Jane recited the whole of Francis Thompson's “The Hound of Heaven,” her favorite poem that summer, and Alix followed with a large chunk of “Hiawatha,” after which there was silence for a half-hour. But who could rest with so much going on? And it was dismal to realize after a careful count that there were only thirty days before September tenth, when they would have to take the boat back to Massachusetts and school. “How can we bear it?” whispered Alix, informed of this fact.

“By then maybe Viola will be engaged.”

At three Snooker came back with clean middy blouses and white, pleated skirts, and wide pale-blue ribbons to tie in a bow at the top of their pigtails. “You'd better hurry. Captain Phil-brook wants to start at three.”

“We're much too dressed up,” Jane groaned. “It's not Sunday, after all.”

It took Snooker years to get the bows right, but at last they were free and ran down to the dock, taking deep breaths of pine.… In midafternoon on a hot day there was a wonderful mixture of smells, the wild roses, seaweed, warm grasses, and pine needles, the island smell to be quaffed like an intoxicating drink.

“Right on time, Miss Jane.” Captain Philbrook lifted his cap. It was low tide, the gangway to the float was steep, and Jane ran down so fast she bumped right into him.

“You could run right on into the water,” he teased.

“Oh, I'm sorry.…”

“
West Wind
is all ready, so step right in, Miss Alix, Miss Jane.”

He was at the wheel now and Alix and Jane stood on each side of him as he swung out and into the channel. “Very little wind today, hardly a breath.… I have an idea there'll be fog tonight. It's a weather breeder.”

But the girls were not paying attention. They were in one of their trances of pure happiness sitting in the stern, not even talking.

Mr. Perkins was standing on the town dock and took off his Panama hat and waved as
West Wind
approached, and the girls waved back. It was always so exciting to meet someone, and especially someone familiar. There he stood in his white suit, with his stiff white collar and black tie, and his black boots. He was tall and thin, with a surprisingly round red face and bright brown eyes behind glasses, and he always seemed to be enjoying some private view of life that was entirely his own.

“He's just the same,” Jane whispered to Alix, “that's what's so wonderful.”

And perhaps he felt the same about them, for he said after the greetings, “You haven't changed, dear girls.”

“I'm an inch taller,” Jane said, teasing him. “I'm fourteen now and Alix is twelve. We're nearly grown-up.”

While Captain Philbrook took charge of the suitcase and an elegant dispatch case, Jane had received the large package tied with a thin gold ribbon, her eyes shining in anticipation.

And Mr. Perkins observed her with evident pleasure. For everything that was happening inside Jane was reflected in an extraordinary way in those blue eyes, so the anticipation of chocolates from Sherry gave her now a special radiance, and this elicited a wink from her observer, one of his rare winks that she recognized as a shy form of admiration.

For those taken into the world of the island, part of the charm was surely that nothing changed. Long before the dock came into sight, Mr. Perkins was standing ready to wave, but when they drew nearer and he could see six people he became a little nervous.

“I don't see very well, but who are all those people, Captain Philbrook?”

“Oh, you must mean the two young men … Vyvian and Lawrence, friends of Miss Viola and Miss Edith.”

“Ah …” Mr. Perkins nodded, taking in the white flannels and blue and red sweaters, and lifted his hat and waved as Allegra and James, his old friends, stood apart smiling and waving their welcome, James so tall and loose-limbed and Allegra small, compact, round, looking especially charming today in a wide-skirted pink linen dress.

“Well, well,” he said, shaking hands all round.

And then as the procession started up toward the house, Captain Philbrook bringing up its rear with the luggage in a wheelbarrow, Allegra took his arm and they talked, and laughed as she pointed out that Jane was carrying the big box of chocolates like a sacred object, leading them all. “You shouldn't have, Donald, but of course the children are crazy about chocolates!”

“Jane is becoming a beauty,” he whispered.

“Oh such a gangling girl,” Allegra said, shy of such praise, and unwilling to admit that Jane was almost a young woman. For the little ones, she felt, must stay children as long as possible. It would be too sad when no one was a child any longer.

“It's her eyes. I've never seen such eyes.”

But sensing the slight withdrawal on Allegra's part he added, “In a way we are contemporaries. Jane is fourteen, she told me, and I have been thinking that it must be about fourteen years ago that we came up to look at the island. James wanted my advice, you remember.”

“I do indeed … and that you were hesitant.”

Mr. Perkins looked quite solemn, “It seemed a rather large undertaking at the time.”

“It did, didn't it, Donald?” James, taking Allegra's free arm under his, joined them. “But I have to say now that I've never regretted it.”

It would have been hard for any of them at this point to imagine life without the island.

Alix had left the group and was picking raspberries, wild ones that grew on either side of the path. Now she ran to Mr. Perkins to offer him a handful.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling happily, and ate them in one mouthful. “The island has a taste too, doesn't it?”

Later, after Mr. Perkins had settled in to his room, the guest room with a balcony where he spent long hours reading and writing on the chaise longue and watching the sails float past, after he had hung up two suits and washed his hands, he joined Allegra, James, Snooker, and the girls for tea on the big porch. The girls sat in the swing, a couch suspended on chains, and swung back and forth, dangling their legs.

“It's just a long soak in happiness to be here,” he said, “and yes, I'll have a second cup.”

“I presume the two couples have gone for a sail?” James asked his wife.

“Yes, Captain Philbrook thinks we'll have fog tomorrow, so they took the chance.…”

“Not much wind.”

“Come and play a game of croquet before supper,” Alix begged.

“Mr. Perkins must be tired,” Snooker said, shaking her head. “He's had a long journey, you know.”

“I slept very well on the train, as a matter of fact. And why not a game of croquet?”

“Hurrah!” Jane was on her feet. “Mamma, Pappa, let's all play!”

Pappa had work to do in the office, but Allegra decided to come along and do some gardening while they played. But on the way she sat down on the cushioned bench in the office for a little talk with James. Vyvian had now been with them for nearly a week, and she was not entirely happy with the idea that this time Viola, surrounded by admiring young men as she had always been, might be serious. Vyvian certainly appeared to be. “Has he talked to you, James?”