While she carried the tea things into the parlor, I went out to the car and brought in my surprise. She was comfortably ensconced beside her hearth, and I set the large carton on the hooked rug at her feet. Changing her spectacles for the occasion, she used her shears—a pair I hadn’t seen before—to part the gummed tape and open the flaps.
“Oh, dear.” She looked from it to me and back to it, bending forward with the eager expression of a child. “Is it what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is?”
“I think a sewing machine.”
“I think you’re right.”
I lifted it out and set it on a table where she might examine it more closely. Then I showed her the array of attachments for zigzag and buttonholing and for all the other mechanical feats the machine was capable of performing. And the last—
“An automatic bobbin! I declare I thought I’d go to the grave without an automatic bobbin, surely.”
“No one should go to their grave without an automatic bobbin, surely. That’s—well, we just wanted to thank you for—”
“Here, now—here, now.” She took and held my hand, gripping it firmly between hers, then releasing it. She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes. “You’re a good man, Ned Constantine. You’re a good family. Well.” She folded her hands over her broad bosom and smiled. “Well, now, there’s an end to Fairy Belle and I can’t say as I’m sad to see her go.” She peered again at the new machine. Without her spectacles, she had that curiously naked and unfamiliar look of people who habitually wear glasses. “How d’you s’pose I’ll ever learn to run her, at my age?”
I said I believed it was not very difficult, and showed her the accompanying pamphlet of instructions and diagrams. She put her glasses back on to read, slipping her shears on their black ribbon into her lap. “Looks mighty complicated. Perhaps Beth can help me.”
I stuffed the pieces of packing material back in the carton.
“New scissors?”
She shook her head. “Lord knows, I’ve left them others over to Asia Minerva’s or somewhere when we were quilting.” She sipped her cup, eying me over the tops of her glasses. “Leave that, your tea’s gettin’ cold.” I took the chair opposite and stirred lemon and sugar in my cup.
“One-B Weber’s?”
“Ayuh. You’d like the honey better’n sugar, though.”
“Your bees make a good honey.” I stirred with my spoon. “Interesting honey.”
“How so?”
“Your mead, I mean.”
“Oh. Did you like it, then—what was in the little cask?”
“Yes—I did.”
Her face was deadpan. “I thought perhaps you might.”
“We enjoyed the show, too.”
“Show?”
“You know—the fellow in the corn.”
“Was there a fellow in the corn?”
I smiled; she returned my look with one of watchful interest. “Yes, there was a fellow in the corn. A fellow you put there.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I’ve no idea.”
A flicker of disappointment in her expression. “None?”
“Perhaps I have. I’m not sure. The fellow had a—girl.” Giving the single syllable a slight nuance.
“That’s in the natural way, isn’t it? A man and a maid—”
“In a corn patch—”
“You make it sound mighty pedestrian. Who was the—girl?” Duplicating my emphasis.
“I think she’s a sphinx.”
“Oh? Like we said, sometimes it takes awhile to riddle a sphinx. Sphinxes are notoriously puzzling, as we know. But if you saw something—mind I say if—if you thought you saw something, perhaps that something may have given rise to speculation.”
“It has.”
“Then maybe that’s all it was meant to do.”
“‘To discover what is possible?’”
“Certain. But maybe you only dreamed what you saw.”
“That’s possible. What do you spike your casks with?”
She laughed heartily. “A good drink don’t need to be spiked. At least, not what’s in one o’ them casks. Spikin’ generally dulls the senses, don’t it? Take for example that homebrew of the Soakeses. That’ll fog a man in plenty.” She rummaged in her work basket, came up with a bit of crocheting, and proceeded to ply the hook as though her fingers could not bear to be idle. “Anyways, what you saw—or thought you saw—did you enjoy it?”
“Yes. I did. Very much.”
“But—?”
“I didn’t understand it. At least—” I wanted to query her about the identity of the female figure, yet though I was certain she had manipulated the proceedings in some manner, I could see that she didn’t want to be questioned about it, but wished me to resolve what questions I had by myself. Her silver spectacle rims twinkled as she peered over them at the sewing machine on the table. “Amazing invention, a sewin’ machine. Partic’larly since they electrified them. Interestin’—”
“What is?”
“The effects you can get with a little battery. Sparks, and all.” Her look was sly behind her glasses. She returned to her sewing, and step by step led me away from the subject, but more than ever I wanted to solve the riddle of the sphinx, and to comprehend who the figure in the cornfield had been.
“Yes,” she continued, “I believe you have an understandin’ heart. How’s things t’ home?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “Um—”
“You been philandering?”
“No.”
“As I told your wife. You’re not the type. I can spot them ones a mile away.” She moved her chair slightly to take the leg off a worn spot in the rug. “There’s nothing worse than an unforgiving woman.”
“Beth?”
“I s’pose if you’d been sowin’ oats before now, she’d be used to it. Difference is she believes in you.”
“If she believes in me, why doesn’t she forget about it?”
“She’s hurt. It’s been part of her upbringing to believe in the institution of marriage as prescribed by the vows at the altar. Her faith in you was total. I expect the Tamar episode shook it up a bit.”
“How do you know about it?”
“I hear things.”
“You hear talk, ma’am.”
“No need to get testy. Didn’t I just say you were a good man? Beth was brought up a lady; she don’t understand women like Tamar. But she’ll come ’round.”
“Will she?”
“’Course she will. She wants a bit of talking to. She’s bringin’ her quilt over tonight. You let me have a few words with her; then you just go out of your way to be nice, and see if things don’t work out. That Tamar’s a devil. I brought her into the world, I’ve seen her grow up, and I know what goes on in that mind of hers. Don’t flatter yourself she wants you. She don’t. Or if she does it’s only because she can’t have you. Tamar’s always wanted what she couldn’t have.”
“Like Roger Penrose?”
“Aye, like Roger. ’Ceptin’ she got him in the end, just as she said she would. Or she got of him.” I noted the slight emphasis, waited for her to elaborate; she did not. “‘A man’s good as he ought to be but a woman’s bad as she dares.’ That’s Tamar. Still, she got what she wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Wanted to be Corn Maiden. And she was.”
“In Grace Everdeen’s place.”
“A girl like Tamar can be the downfall of man and woman alike.”
She was not altogether cryptic; her remark was not lost upon me. “It’s not what you think it was.”
“Me? Pshaw, I don’t think anything. Haven’t time. Besides, it’s none o’ my affair.”
I smiled again. The Widow was much more interested in the caprice of the weather and the vagaries of nature and what the earth would yield than she was in the common pursuits of her fellow-creatures. What was here yesterday would be here tomorrow, and if it wasn’t it was no great
matter. What mattered was the earth and what it could provide.
The telephone rang. “Now, who can that be,” she said, rising. “Never get used to that contraption if I see the millennium.” She excused herself and went into the hall, where she picked up the receiver. “Yes, Mr. Deming,” I heard her say; then, not to be eavesdropping, I carried the new sewing machine into the other room and set it up on a card table.
“Everything all right?” I asked as she came in and I saw her serious expression.
“Sakes, I don’t expect anything’s ever all right, do you? Mrs. Deming’s got a touch of somethin’ or other. I must go and have a look.” She patted the machine, then thanked me again. At the door, she offered me her cheek to kiss and said, “Happy you came by. And”—almost an afterthought—“don’t you worry none. There’s news t’home that’ll take care of all.”
“News?” I had turned, but the door was already closing. The last thing I saw was the twinkle of her spectacles in the light.
I drove away feeling better. News t’home that’ll take care of all. Wondering what this mysterious disclosure might be, I scarcely saw the other car as it swept by. It was coming from the direction of the Common, traveling fast. I glimpsed Constable Zalmon at the wheel, an unidentified man beside him in the front seat. I waited until the car had reached the country end of Main Street and turned, onto the Old Sallow Road, then I continued on my way home.
Kate was upstairs in bed; having eaten, she was resting for the husking bee the following night. It would be her first time out since the attack. Beth had decided that evening to have dinner in the dining room, which lately we seldom used. The table had a festive look to it: there were linen place mats on the dark, polished table top, and linen napkins; a small bowl of chrysanthemums; candles. Usually when we ate there, we sat at either end, with Kate between, but tonight Beth had placed herself at my left, and I wondered if this new proximity indicated a change in her attitude. Still, as we ate and talked of inconsequential things, I found her preoccupied and distant.
“I bought the Widow a sewing machine.”
“Did you?”
“From us both. A little present.”
“Did she like it?”
“She seemed pleased. She wants you to show her how to use the automatic bobbin.”
“Of course.” A silence.
I said, “Good soup.”
“Black bean. I put some sherry in it.”
“I can taste it.”
I looked at her over the ironstone tureen between us. “It needs a little salt, I think,” she said. I passed her the silver cellar and she added a shake to her cup.
“I was at the Hookes’ today,” I said.
“How are they?”
“Fine.”
She was staring at the monogram on the napkin, an elegantly scrolled “E” in thick embroidery. “Elizabeth,” she said.
“Hm?”
“It was my mother’s name.”
“I know.”
She traced the figure of the letter with her nail. “I can remember her.”
“Your mother?”
She nodded; a little smile. “I can remember the smell of her soap—Pears’ it was—and I can remember her talking to me. She and Father had separate rooms, and in her bedroom there was a blue wicker chaise with a pocket in the arm for magazines or whatever. I can remember the chaise made a sound—the wicker, I suppose.”
“But, Beth, you were only two—”
“I know. But I can remember. She had a tea gown—it was rose-colored pongee, I think, or some kind of silk, and it had lace cuffs.”
I was astonished. I was certain it was impossible for people to have such early memories. “And she sang to me, naturally”—a little half-laugh. “It was a song about a bird. Something about Jenny Wren. Then Father would come in and I would be taken to the nursery.”
“By the nurse?”
“No. Mother. She carried me. There was lace on her collar, too.”
“And then?”
“Then she was dead. She just wasn’t there any more. Only the nurse, and Father. Don’t let your soup get cold.”
“I’m not.”
She was crying. I was aghast. Big tears shone in the candlelight and rolled down her cheeks. I reached for her hand; she put it in her lap with the napkin.
“Beth—I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, ran her fingers through her hair, laughed, a small inconclusive laugh. She looked around the room, at the walls above the wainscoting.
“I love that paper.”
It was a copy of an antique paper showing ships in a Chinese harbor, with men in coolie hats loading tea aboard. We called it the Shanghai Tea Party. “It’s a handsome room, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” I waited until she got control of herself again. “You’re not sorry?”
“About what?”
“That we came.”
“No. I’m not sorry. I’m very glad we came.” She gave this last an emphasis that had a touch of defiance about it, as though she were determined to make it work at all costs.
“More soup?” I picked up the ladle, heavy monogrammed silver. Another curly “E.”
“Yes, please.”
I filled her plate, then mine. She was quiet a moment, then said, “Look how the leaves are falling. I hate to see them go. It seems so final, somehow.”
“There’s always the spring.”
“The Eternal Return.”
“What?”
“Just a phrase.”
It was; still, I had the feeling she hadn’t coined it, but had heard it somewhere. She started crying again. I put down my spoon. “Oh, Beth—”
“I’m going to have a baby.”
“Huh?”
“A baby. I missed my period. It must have been that night we drank the mead. I’m going to have a baby.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The Widow had said news, news to home. I couldn’t speak, but reached for Beth’s hand, which now she let me hold.
“How long have you known?”
“Since—since the day of Kate’s accident.”
I saw it then. She had been waiting for me to come home to tell me the news, and when I came it was from Tamar’s house, with lipstick on my shirt and buttons off. No wonder she had got so angry. All these weeks she had been carrying the secret, had been frightened. I knew what she must have been feeling.
“Nobody knows yet. Except the Widow, of course. And Maggie.”
I felt a pang of disappointment that Maggie had been told before me, but I guessed I’d had it coming, after the Tamar business. She let me kiss the clenched knuckles of her fingers, and I told her how glad I was.
“It’ll be born in the spring. Just before Spring Festival.” She fingered the monogram again. “Perhaps Elizabeth.”
“If it’s a girl.”
“Yes. And if it’s a boy—”
“Please, not Theodore Junior.”
She smiled. “No, not Theodore Junior.”
“What, then?”
She folded her fingers under her chin and stared thoughtfully out the window. “I have to ask Missy.”
“What?”
“I have to ask Missy,” she repeated.
I was shocked. “I’m not going to have that birdbrain naming any kid of mine—”
“We must. She wants us to.”
“Who?”
“The Widow.” She caught my look. “That’s little enough, isn’t it?” The terrible picture of the child’s bloodied hands was spinning through my brain. “After what she’s done for us. I want our baby to be special.”
“Of course it’ll be special. But—”
“We’ll have to rake the lawn again.” She laid aside her napkin, rose, and went to the window, where she stood, not saying anything, but just looking out. A long moment passed, and I suddenly had the feeling she had forgotten I was there. I went behind her and put my hands on her shoulders and drew her back to me.
“I don’t know what we’ll do,” she said, “now that Worthy’s gone. All the things that need looking after.”
“We’ll get someone else. When they’ve finished harvesting.
“Yes.” She sounded faraway. “Harvest Home will soon be here. Worthy won’t be in the play. I wonder where he went,” she added musingly.
“Dunno,” I said. I half heard a noise on the stairs as Beth turned to me. “He just said he wanted to go away and—” I broke off; she was staring at me.
“He told you he was going away?”
“Yes. That day we fixed the chimneys.”
“And you didn’t do anything to stop him?”
“How could I stop him?”
“You could have tried to talk him out of it. You could have told someone else so they could have stopped him.”
“Why should he be stopped? I think it’s the best thing he could have done.”
The color had drained from her cheeks. She pulled away angrily and turned her back to me. “A young boy like that, off on his own—”
“He’s almost seventeen, almost old enough to vote, old enough to fight—” I stopped myself, remembering what Worthy said about trying to enlist.
“What’s he going to live on?”
“He’s saved some money. I gave him some more. And I’m going to buy his tractor—”
“You gave him money? That’s just abetting him—”
“God, Bethany, he’s not a criminal.”
“It seems you’re taking rather a lot on yourself, aren’t you? Advising and all. I mean, it’s really none of your business.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. We were having a fight about something that didn’t concern us. I tried to sound calm and reasonable.
“Beth, what difference can it make, if that’s what he wants to do? You’re right, it is none of our business.”
She wheeled on me. “Meddler. You’re meddling in things that don’t concern you. You had no right!” Her hands trembled as she picked up the tureen from the table and went swiftly through the bacchante room into the kitchen.
“Hi, sweetheart.”