“I know you’ve wondered why I never gave any money to speak of, all these years.”
“No, no, certainly not,” someone said.
“And don’t say you didn’t, because I know you did.”
There was a profound silence.
“The reason I haven’t given as freely as you thought I should is simply this: I’ve been hoarding Papa’s money.” She looked slowly around the room, meeting every eye.
“I’ve earned interest on the capital and invested the interest, and I haven’t spent foolishly, or given to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who held his hand out.”
There was a variety of supportive murmurs.
“So, what I’m prepared to do this evening is to give Lord’s Chapel a special gift, in loving memory of my mama and papa, and in appreciation for the church I’ve called home since I was nine years old.”
She paused for a moment. “This gift is in the amount of five million dollars.”
After a collective intake of breath, a cacophony broke out in the rectory study, something like what was usually heard at the Fourth of July parade when the llamas passed by.
“Shush!” said Miss Sadie, “there’s more. This money is to be used for one purpose only. And that is to build a nursing home.”
She looked around the room. “But I don’t mean just any nursing home. This home will have big, sunny rooms, and a greenhouse, and an atrium with real, live birds.
“It will have books and music, and a good Persian rug in the common room, and the prettiest little chapel you ever saw. I want a gold-fish pond, and a waterfall running over rocks in the dining room.
“And above every door, there’ll be a Bible verse, and this is the verse that will be over the front door: ‘Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, according as we hope in thee.’”
Miss Sadie clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward.
“There, now!” she said, as radiant as a girl. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Of course, it was wonderful. There was no denying, in any way, shape, or form, just how wonderful it was.
She appeared to sit even straighter in her chair. “You understand, of course, that this is only half the plan—but it’s enough to get us started.”
When the meeting broke up at nine-thirty, those assembled had drunk two pots of coffee and a pitcher of tea, and had eaten every peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the platters. And though no one had said so, the traveling senior warden had not been sorely missed.
In all, it had felt like a very grand party, with Miss Sadie Baxter the center of attention, the belle of the ball.
At Home in Mitford, Ch. 5
Father Tim’s Birthday (the Big Six-0)
EMMA HAD TOLD him over and over again that at one o’clock today, no sooner and no later, a printer was coming to pick up a purchase order for the new church letterhead.
The printer, she said, told her to ask him the following:
Did he want the line drawing of Lord’s Chapel printed in dark green or burgundy, or would he like purple, which was always a good religious color and, according to the story of the building of Solomon’s temple, one of God’s favorites?
Also, did he want the address line run under the pen-and-ink illustration of the church, or at the bottom of the page, like the Presbyterians did theirs? And did he want a Helvetica, a Baskerville, or a Bodoni like the Baptists?
He felt that, among other things this morning, he should look up the meaning of Helvetica, Baskerville, and Bodoni, and made a note to tell the printer that God also requested purple to be used in the temple Moses built.
It was unusually cool for late June, and he savored his short walk to the office, noticing that he was feeling better than he had in years. He had dashed off a note to Walter after his morning prayers, quoting the encouraging message of Hebrews 4:16: “Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
Boldly! That was the great and powerful key. Preach boldly! Love boldly! Jog boldly! And most crucial of all, do not approach God whining or begging, but boldly—as a child of the King.
“I declare,” Emma said as she made coffee, “you’re skinny as a rail.”
“That’s what I hear,” he said, with obvious satisfaction.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re not calling me ‘that portly priest’ anymore.”
“I can fix that,” she said, and opened her bottom desk drawer to reveal several Tupperware containers. The open drawer also contained a glorious fragrance that wafted upward and soon filled the small room.
“Pork roast with gravy, green beans, candied sweet potatoes, cole-slaw, and yeast rolls.”
“What in the world is this?”
“Lunch!” said Emma. “I figure if we eat early, it’ll still be hot.”
Just as his clothes were beginning to fit comfortably again, he saw temptation crowding in on every side. He could outrun Winnie Ivey, but in an office barely measuring ten by fourteen, it looked like it was going to be pork roast and gravy, and no turning back.
“Emma, you must not do this again.”
“Well, I won’t and you can count on it. You’ve been meek as any lamb to the slaughter, and I thought a square meal would be just what the doctor ordered.”
“Not exactly,” said her rector, who enjoyed it to the fullest, nonetheless.
After lunch, Emma went headfirst into the deep bottom drawer, looking for something. She came up with a large bone, wrapped in cellophane.
“For Barnabas,” she said, much to his astonishment. That she had called his dog by name was a landmark event. And to have brought him a bone was nearly a miracle.
“I don’t know why you’re being so good to me,” he said, cheerfully.
She glared at him and snapped, “I just told you, for Pete’s sake. Weren’t you listening?”
For at least two weeks, he’d noticed that her moods were as changeable as the weather.
“Emma, what is it?”
“What do you mean what is it? What is what?” she demanded, then burst into tears, and fled into the bathroom, slamming the door.
By the time she had mumbled an apology, and they’d decided on Baskerville type, burgundy ink, and where to put the address line, it was nearly one o’clock.
“Put your sport coat on,” she said.
“What in the world for?”
“Well, just do it, if you don’t mind.”
“Isn’t this the same printer we’ve been using? He doesn’t wear a sport coat.”
“Peedaddle! Just trust me on this, and put your sport coat on. You might comb your hair a little, too.”
Suddenly, the office had become so minuscule that he wildly imagined Harry Nelson to be right—what they needed to do was knock out the walls and add a thousand square feet.
As he put on his sport coat, she looked at her watch. “One o’clock,” she announced, crisply. She went to the door, threw it open, and shouted, “Here he comes!”
He stared into a veritable sea of smiling faces. And they were all singing “Happy Birthday.”
J. C. Hogan jumped in front of him with a camera, as Emma led him, dazed, down the step and onto the sidewalk.
To say that he was surprised would have been totally inaccurate. He was astounded. It had slipped his mind entirely that today, June 28, was his birthday.
He saw Pearly McGee in a wheelchair, with a hospital nurse. There was Hoppy Harper towering over the crowd, grinning, Miss Sadie in a pink straw hat. Hal and Marge, with Barnabas on his red leash. Miss Rose and Uncle Billy, holding hands on the front row. And Percy Mosely, Mule Skinner, Avis Packard, and Winnie Ivey.
He saw Andrew Gregory from the Oxford Antique Shop across the lane, Mayor Esther Cunningham, and more than a dozen others. Who in the dickens was running the town?
“Look up!” said Emma, pointing above his head at the front of the stone office building. He did as he was told and saw a large banner str
ung above the door. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FATHER TIM, THE BIG SIX-O was printed in bold, red letters.
“What you thought was a squirrel on the roof this morning was Avis Packard on a ladder, hangin’ that thing!”
“Way to go, Avis!” The crowd gave a round of applause.
“See why I told you to wear that dern sport coat?” Emma said as Miss Sadie pinned a rosebud on his jacket. “It’s got a lapel!”
J. C. Hogan was already on his second roll of TX 400, declaring that this was better than the turnout for the American Legion barbecue.
Then, Hoppy stepped forward with a handshake and a hug for the honoree. He’d come straight from the hospital and was wearing his white coat, which Emma thought looked romantic. “A young Walter Pidgeon!” she whispered to the mayor.
“According to Avis, who takes note of such things,” Hoppy declared, “it’s been seven years since you gave up your car for Lent.”
“Exactly!” he said, able at last to say anything at all.
“Well, we feel that a man of your distinction should have himself some wheels. But unfortunately, this bunch could afford only two.”
He heard a loud, explosive sound behind the hemlock hedge in the lot next door.
“Let ’er rip!” shouted Percy, and from behind the hedge roared what someone later called “a sight for sore eyes.”
It was Mule Skinner in a double-knit chartreuse yard-sale outfit, weaving wildly back and forth across the lane on a red Vespa motor scooter.
Barnabas led the group in scattering to the sidewalk.
“How do you stop this thing?” Mule yelled.
Hal leaped in front of his pregnant wife. “Turn off the key!”
Mule made a wobbly U-turn, turned off the key, dragged his foot to brake the scooter, and glided smoothly to a stop in front of Father Tim, visibly shaken.
To a loud chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” led by Esther Cunningham, the astonished rector got on the scooter, a bit pale beneath his tan, and drove with a mixture of excitement and foreboding to the first rose arbor on the lane, then back again.
By the time he parked it on the sidewalk and put the kickstand down, he noticed that he couldn’t stop grinning.
“You don’t have to make a speech, since you already make one twice every Sunday,” said Mule, slapping him vigorously on the back.
“We know it’s not new,” said Hoppy, “but it’s in great shape. We got it off a little old lady who only drove it on Sundays.”
“Nineteen eighty-two, 125 cc, good as new,” said Percy, kicking a tire.
“Looky here,” Percy said, “you got your horn….” He opened upon the horn and everybody clapped.
“You got your high beam and your low beam.” He demonstrated, which seemed to be another crowd pleaser.
“And get a load of these turn signals. Ain’t that a sight? I rode this thing all the way from Wesley, purred like a kitten.”
“Wide open,” said Mule. “I followed ’im in th’ truck.”
Emma cupped her hands to her mouth and made an announcement. “You’re all invited in for cake and iced tea. But you’ll have to do it in shifts, so step right in and don’t tarry. We can take four at th’ time.”
She had produced a cake from her bottomless bottom drawer, and two gallon jugs of tea with Styrofoam cups.
Hal and Marge filled the cups with ice, and Father Tim cut the cake, as J. C. Hogan shot another roll of black and white, and Esther Cunningham played the kazoo.
The following Monday, the Mitford Muse ran two front-page stories on the local Episcopal church community.
A picture of Father Tim on the motor scooter was mistakenly given this bold headline: “Lord’s Chapel Rector Receives Gift Worth Five Million Dollars.” The story and picture of Miss Sadie giving the rector a cashier’s check had no headline at all and referred to the donor as Sudie bixter.
Mule Skinner looked at the front page and sighed.
“Law, law,” he said, “J.C.’s done it again.”
At Home in Mitford, Ch. 5
Art Show at the Oxford Featuring Uncle Billy’s Drawings
UNCLE BILLY WAS seated in a Chippendale wing chair, balancing a plate of cheese and grapes on his lap, with a paper napkin stuck into his shirt collar.
J. C. Hogan was writing in a notebook with his left hand and mopping his forehead with his right. “When did you say you started drawin’?”
“Oh, when I was about ten or twelve, m’ uncle was a railroad man and ever’ time he come through the valley, he’d blow th’ whistle startin’ up around Elk Grove, and by th’ time he got over t’ Isinglass, don’t you know, I was standin’ by the track, and he’d th’ow somethin’ out t’ me.
“Sometimes, it was a sack of licorice candy, or horehound, and one time it was a little ol’ pack of pencils, real wide pencils with a soft lead, don’t you know. My daddy said that was a foolish thing to give a boy who couldn’t write, so I took to drawin’.”
“Did you ever use ink?” J.C. asked.
“Well, sir, I used it some, but I eat up a jar of pickle relish Rose said was hers, and she burned th’ whole stack of m’ ink pictures.”
“No!” exclaimed Winnie Ivey, nearly moved to tears.
“I’d a clapped ’er upside th’ head,” said Percy Mosely, with feeling.
Miss Rose rustled by in her taffeta gown. “Don’t be tellin’ that ol’ tacky story, Bill Watson! I’ve heard it a hundred times, and it’s a lie.”
“No, it ain’t,” said Uncle Billy, grinning.
“It most certainly is. It was not pickle relish. It was chow chow.” As she turned on her heel and walked away, the rector couldn’t help but notice the Ritz cracker that fell out of her cummerbund and rolled under a chair.
“I hear you’ve quit drawin’,” said J.C. “Why’s that?”
“Arthur,” said Uncle Billy.
“Arthur who?”
“Arthur-itis. But that ain’t hurt my joke tellin’ any. Let me give y’ one t’ go in th’ papers.”
“We don’t print jokes in the Muse,” J.C. snapped.
“If that ain’t a lie!” said Percy Mosely, who was thoroughly dissatisfied with a recent editorial.
“Well, what do you think?”
Andrew Gregory sat on one of the Queen Anne dining chairs that someone had placed in a neat circle around Uncle Billy.
“A smashing success!” said the rector. “Undeniably! How many have we sold?”
Andrew’s pleasure was visible. “Twenty-seven!”
He saw Hoppy Harper come through the door with Olivia Davenport. There was a flush in her cheeks, and her violet eyes sparkled. From what he could see, Hoppy looked more rested than he’d looked in months. Green jelly beans! he thought. That’ll do it every time.
“Well, I must be off,” said Andrew. “Miss Rose and the mayor have eaten all the Brie and I have to dash to The Local and replace it with cheddar!”
Cynthia Coppersmith sat down where Andrew had gotten up. “This is my first social occasion in the village. Except, of course, for visits to the rectory.”
He could not think of one word to say.
“Violet ran away today,” Cynthia said matter-of-factly.
“She did?”
“But she came back.”
“Good! I hear you write and illustrate books about your cat.”
“Yes. Violet Comes to Stay, Violet Goes to the Country…oh, and Violet Has Kittens, of course. To name only a few!”
“What a full life! How old is Violet, anyway?”
“Just two.”
“Two! And she’s done all that?”
“Well, you see, this is Violet Number Three. I have to keep replacing my Violets. The original Violet was seven when I got her, and I painted her for two years before she died of a liver infection.
“Then there was a very haughty Violet, which I found through an ad. Oh, she was lovely to look at, but unaccountably demanding. There were three books with that Violet, before she took o
ff with a yellow tom.”
“Aha.”
“I was sent scurrying, as you can imagine. A contract for a seventh book, and no model!”
“Couldn’t you use a cat of another color, and just, ah, paint it white in your illustrations?”
“No, no. I really must have a Violet to do the job. And not every white cat is one, of course.”
“Of course.”
“So, we were all looking for another Violet, and the newspaper got wind of it and the first thing you know, fifty-seven white cats turned up.”
He had a vision of Barnabas set free in the midst of fifty-seven white cats.
“Then, the eighth Violet story won a book award—the Davant Medal. It’s the most coveted award in children’s literature, and the whole thing absolutely took my breath away! Suddenly, all the books started selling like…”
“Pancakes?” he asked. Blast! He’d meant to say hotcakes.
At Home in Mitford, Ch. 10
George Gaynor’s Confession and Baptism
ON SUNDAY MORNING, he made entries in the loose-leaf book provided for prayers of the people. Under prayers for the sick, he wrote the names of Olivia Davenport and Russell Jacks; Miss Sadie, who had a sore throat; Rebecca Jane, who had the colic; Harold Newland, who had cut his hand on a saw blade; the Baptist kindergarten, who were having a measles epidemic; and Dooley Barlowe, who had come home from Meadowgate this morning with a fever.
Lord, he had prayed on the way to the church at seven o’clock, keep that boy in bed and out of mischief.
While he ordinarily trained his eyes on Miss Sadie’s painting at the rear of the nave, he allowed himself a quick search of the congregation. Hal, with his pipe sticking out of his jacket pocket. Emma in a leopard-skin hat. Louella with Esther Bolick. And yes, there was his neighbor, sitting on the gospel side, looking happy and expectant.
As he offered the prayer before the sermon, he heard a harsh, grating noise somewhere behind him in the sanctuary. When the prayer ended, he saw the entire congregation sitting with open mouths and astonished faces, gazing toward the ceiling.
It was, perhaps, his dysfunctional sleep pattern that caused such an odd storm of feeling. He turned around with a pounding heart, to see that the attic stairs had been let down and that someone in bare feet was descending.