The girl smiled again. “Twelve-and-a-half,” she said.
Mrs. Ransom-Jones gasped. Certainly the girl was big enough. . . . “Twelve-and-a-half,” she said, without any change in her voice, which she imagined was soothing and yet forceful. “Now you turn right around and go back in—”
“How old are you?” the girl said. “I’m twelve-and-a-half.”
Certainly the girl had no trouble talking; Mrs. Ransom-Jones estimated anxiously that the real problem seemed to be elsewhere, perhaps very slow reactions, Mrs. Ransom-Jones thought; it was difficult to imagine, on Pepper Street, in broad daylight, that a new tenant, and unfortunate girl, could be—
“Dear,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “suppose we go in together and see your nice mother. I’ll just go up to the door with you and we can tell your nice mother that you met me outside and I made you come home again. I’m sure she’ll be happier to know that you’re back in the house, and safe.” For one swift minute Mrs. Ransom-Jones allowed herself to look down at the money again. She retained in her mind, from the first glimpse, a vision of (was it possible?) a twenty-dollar bill, among others. Her second glance confirmed this. A twenty, and several ones. “A girl twelve years old!” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said involuntarily. She took the girl’s arm with determination and faced toward the house. For a minute the girl resisted, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones, with a renewal of the feeling of how she must look to Miss Fielding, had the sensation of tugging against a battleship heavily moored, which gives slightly to a tug, but ultimately remains where it is. Then the girl, leaning against Mrs. Ransom-Jones, began to move along beside her, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones guided her up the walk to the front door. She rang the doorbell and the girl chuckled affectionately. After waiting for a few minutes Mrs. Ransom-Jones said excusingly to the girl, “Just so you’re safe inside,” and tried the door-handle gently. The door opened, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones put her head inside and said, “Hello?” There was no answer, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, her voice a little anxious, “Where is your nice mother, dear?”
“Asleep,” the girl said.
Mrs. Ransom-Jones put her head inside again. The furniture was still pushed roughly against the walls, but someone had been trying to arrange it. The table had chairs around it, the chairs were all facing correctly—that is, none of them were facing the walls—and there was a path between them and around the room. “Hello?” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. Then she took the girl by the arm and swung her inside. “You just go in and stay there,” she said, with an irritation that deepened when she again noticed the money in the girl’s hand. Must be thirty dollars there, Mrs. Ransom-Jones thought; she saw the girl well inside the door and closed her in. Then, coming down the walk, Mrs. Ransom-Jones refused to look at Miss Fielding, but turned doggedly up the street to her own house.
Miss Fielding, relaxing into her chair again, watched indifferently while Mrs. Ransom-Jones tripped up the street. Miss Fielding was old and sensed constantly, rather than knew sometimes with sharp clarity, the decay of her body around her, the gradual easing of tensions that had once been vital. Miss Fielding was interested in anything for a little while, would rise from her chair to watch a cat crossing the road, but after the little while was over, Miss Fielding, in her chair, went back to searching the face of death.
Consequently Miss Fielding watched unregarding the back of Mrs. Ransom-Jones going rigidly up the street, the face of the odd girl’s sister looking out the front door. When the heavy girl Mrs. Ransom-Jones had put so firmly inside her own house came out of the house again, no more warily than before—like an animal that persistently and dumbly walks against the bars of its cage expecting each time around that they will have ceased to restrict it—Miss Fielding raised her eyes and let them follow the girl down the street. Miss Fielding’s eyes were not good any more; she had not seen the money in the girl’s hand while the girl was talking to Mrs. Ransom-Jones, but when the girl passed Miss Fielding’s porch Miss Fielding’s dim eyes registered vaguely that there was money about the girl: some spot of unmistakable green. It was past Miss Fielding’s usual hour for retiring indoors; she rose uncomfortably and went inside.
In her neat little house she was able to move comfortably with the steady pull of her body toward death; for more years than she could remember Miss Fielding had been following herself along a well-defined path, around the circle of hours that made a day, around the circle of days that made a year, around the circle of years that made Miss Fielding older and nearer to lying down for good. When she was forty-odd and had finally resigned any thoughts of new ways of life (perhaps at one time Miss Fielding had regarded marriage as she now regarded death, perhaps she had thought of a somewhat larger, more involved life), Miss Fielding had set out to make her world as clean and uneventful as a convalescent room; sometimes it seemed, even, that Miss Fielding’s long convalescence from birth would culminate in sufficient strength for her to die without effort. The tiny house on Pepper Street was Miss Fielding’s only home; there was no other room on earth where she could go and be recognized. She had no relatives, no friends except those people who passed her front door. A slight reliable flow of money, from a bank Miss Fielding had never seen, fed her and clothed her and kept her housed. Her little home was dark and well-fitted; Miss Fielding had gradually sold (not given away; there was no one she knew well enough to give things to) most of the furniture she had been encumbered with at the death of whoever had preceded Miss Fielding in this quiet life; and now, with her chair by a neat table, her narrow bed, her dresser where her clothes lay, her two-burner stove, and her brush and comb, Miss Fielding waited for her time to be up. “Passing on,” she called it.
When she died her things would dissolve neatly; the little money from the bank would stop automatically when its purpose was ended, her small residue of furniture would be sold and the money neatly applied to Miss Fielding’s passing, the Pepper Street house would snap back to its original purpose as a dwelling for the living, and the pinpoint of consciousness of Miss Fielding which would be left would be in the minds of children and busy people, and would grow tinier and vanish in a reasonably short time. Some lives, ending as Miss Fielding’s would, leave a grain of memory, like a grain of sand, in the depths of another mind, a grain of sand which is like the constant irritation under an oyster’s shell, eventually to grow with coating after coating of disguising beauty into a pearl. Sometime this memory would be pried loose, in its rounded beauty, to stand by itself as an object of delight. Miss Fielding had no fears of ultimate survival, even in beauty. When she passed on, she would draw after her every trailing mist of herself, effacing herself so completely that even after her death, even after her bones, which she could not help, were gone, she would be a bother to no one, would intrude on no mind.
She rocked slowly in her familiar chair while her supper eggs were boiling; the toast was made and the teapot steeping. When the doorbell rang she was frightened; she ran first to cover the toast, and then had to come back from across the room to lift the pan of eggs from the stove—they could coddle in the hot water—and hover apprehensively over the teapot. She had never been interrupted making her tea before; the wise thing was to plan to throw it out, but that would be wasteful. Unreasonably Miss Fielding took the lid off the pot and set it aside—perhaps the rising fumes. . . .
When she answered the door Frederica Terrel was standing solidly outside. “Yes?” Miss Fielding said, the door open an inch.
“My sister?” Frederica said. “Have you seen my sister, please?”
“Your sister?” Miss Fielding wondered. If she entered into explanations of Mrs. Ransom-Jones and Frederica’s sister, she would have to be here, standing, and with her tea growing too strong. The girl had no right. “Ask Mrs. Ransom-Jones,” Miss Fielding said, and started to close the door.
“Why?” Frederica frowned and put her hand out to stop the door. “Did you see my sister? What does Mrs. Ransom-Jones know about her?”
Miss Fielding sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Please go away.”
“But I’ve got to find my sister,” Frederica said. She made her heavy voice begging. “You see, she runs away sometimes, and it isn’t safe. So I’ve got to find her.”
Miss Fielding was in panic. By refusing to discuss the events of the afternoon she had tangled herself in a worse problem. She felt time running away behind her, the tea spending itself, the eggs solidifying. “I really don’t know,” she said.
“Please,” Frederica said. “Where does Mrs. Ransom-Jones live?”
“Up the street, up the street,” Miss Fielding said. She waved her hand toward up-the-street.
“Don’t you even know which way she went?” Frederica was urgent, hoping that some question might provoke an answer with information.
A horrible thought found Miss Fielding. Her eggs would be too hard, she would have to do them over, she would be late finishing her dinner, it would be dark by the time she got to her porch, with nothing to watch she would be bored and go in before she had had enough air, and then sleep badly and wake up with a headache tomorrow. “I don’t know,” she said. “Go and ask Mrs. Ransom-Jones, won’t you?”
This time she closed the door. She heard Frederica breathing noisily outside for a minute or two and then the sound of the heavy shoes going down the steps. Miss Fielding flew back to her teapot.
• • •
“If you’re not going to pay attention,” Mrs. Mack said severely to her dog, looking at him over the top of the book, “we won’t have any lesson tonight at all.” When the dog pulled his gaze hastily back to her, Mrs. Mack looked down at the book and began to read: “‘So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered mortar, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it.’” She let the book fall to her lap, and said to the dog, “You remember about how the Lord destroys evil people?”
• • •
The ladies were sewing at the Roberts house; there was a bowl of salted nuts between Mrs. Merriam and Mrs. Donald, a dish of chocolates between Mrs. Ransom-Jones, who was making herself a blouse, and her sister, who did not sew, but sat with her hands folded, turning her eager eyes from one lady to another. A bowl of fruit stood on the round table in the center of the room, and Mrs. Roberts, with frequent mysterious trips to the kitchen, and numerous secret smiles and hints, had managed to convey the fact that there was to be something exceedingly special for tea.
“How well you do that, dear,” Miss Tyler said to Mrs. Donald, leaning forward to look at the sweater Mrs. Donald was knitting. “Your fingers go so fast, it makes me dizzy.” She looked at her sister and laughed apologetically. “We never learned to knit, did we, sweetie?”
“I never learned any useful arts at all,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said cheerfully.
“I’m trying to teach poor Harriet to sew,” Mrs. Merriam confided, “but she’s actually clumsy at it.”
“You know,” Mrs. Donald said, “it seems funny not to see little Caroline Desmond sitting there so quiet, sewing away on her little embroidery.”
“I missed her today,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “I like to watch little Caroline, always so busy.”
“Harriet just won’t apply herself,” Mrs. Merriam said. “She’s intelligent, of course, but she will not apply herself.”
“Oh, Lord,” Mrs. Roberts said, from the midst of the complicated business of sitting down after one of her trips to the kitchen. “Don’t try to make the child work, Josephine. This is summer—vacation.”
“Anyway,” Miss Tyler said, leaning toward Mrs. Merriam, her eyes wide, “your little girl will have servants to do everything for her when she grows up.” She looked around at her sister. “Servants still do all those things?” she asked hopefully.
“Not my daughter,” Mrs. Merriam said, and tightened her lips. “Harriet will be a lady, I hope, but I don’t want her growing up to expect service from others. Not my daughter.”
“I could use a little service from others,” Mrs. Donald said, and sighed. “I don’t know why the men don’t have to do the housework for a change.”
Mrs. Roberts giggled. “I can see Mike,” she said, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “Or Brad,” and they both laughed, looking at each other.
“Brad would do it, Dinah,” Miss Tyler said. “You shouldn’t say things like that. Brad would do anything you asked him.”
“Mike Roberts,” Mrs. Roberts said. She spread her hands wide in a gesture of hopelessness. “He can’t even boil water,” she said.
Mrs. Merriam said casually, “Your Hester is gone now, isn’t she, Dorothy?”
Mrs. Roberts hesitated, looking down at her sewing, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said smoothly, “None of those high-school girls can really do housework.”
“They are terribly inefficient,” Mrs. Donald said, nodding profoundly.
“I had a high-school girl once, for about two weeks,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “It was awful.”
“It was awful,” Miss Tyler said to Mrs. Donald, in a loud whisper. “She was always making eyes at Brad—Mr. Ransom-Jones.”
“Hester seemed like a nice quiet girl,” Mrs. Merriam said.
“I smell something burning,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said emphatically, and Mrs. Roberts, still clutching the sock she was mending, rose and fled to the kitchen, scattering spools of thread as she went. “I think,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones went on, addressing herself to the sewing on her lap, “I really think, girls, about Hester, you know, that we only make matters worse talking about it. You know.”
“Let bygones be bygones,” Mrs. Donald said earnestly.
“I’ll never forget this girl of ours,” Miss Tyler said to Mrs. Donald.
“Please let’s talk about something else, Lillian,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, and Miss Tyler turned around to stare at her sister for a minute. Then she said, her lip trembling. “Of course, Dinah, if you’d rather I went on home. . . .”
Mrs. Roberts came back into the room, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said loudly, “Everything all right?”
“Fine,” Mrs. Roberts said. She looked archly around the room. “I nearly ate it myself,” she said.
“I’d never forgive you,” Mrs. Donald declared.
“I realize,” Miss Tyler said softly to her sister, “that you think I disgrace you whenever you take me out.”
“You know,” Mrs. Donald said to Mrs. Ransom-Jones, across Miss Tyler, “Virginia is driving me crazy to get her a yellow print evening dress like that one of yours—she’s wild about it.”
“It’s much too old,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, shocked. “She’d be lost in a style like that.”
“She thinks she may be asked to some college dance or other this fall,” Mrs. Donald said, “and she wants to look older.”
All the ladies laughed, and Miss Tyler said softly to Mrs. Ransom-Jones, “I can get across the street by myself, all right.”
“Tell her to keep on looking fifteen while she can,” Mrs. Roberts said jovially. “They never realize.”
“Having a pretty daughter,” Mrs. Donald said despairingly.
“I do think you’re wise,” Mrs. Merriam said smilingly to Mrs. Donald, “not to try to teach Virginia anything. Anything useful, that is,” she added, turning her smile on Mrs. Ransom-Jones.
• • •
Tod Donald, seated at his family dinner table, knew already that he hated every part of it more than anything else in the world. He had time, every night at dinner, to hate things individually: the blue-patterned plates, always seemingly set the same, although the chipped one was not always Tod’s, but sometim
es went to James or Mr. Donald; the cup by his mother’s plate and the cup by his father’s plate, and the straight glasses with daisies on them that sat by Tod and James and Virginia, full of milk. Tod even hated milk, when it was served in those glasses.
He hated the blue platter his mother served from, and the salt and pepper shakers, which were glass with red tops, and he hated the silverware designed in flowers, some pieces scratched almost beyond recognition. He even hated the round table and the succession of tablecloths, one pale blue with yellow leaves, one white with red and orange squares. He hated the uncomfortable chairs, particularly his own, where he sat squirming, and he hated his family and the way they talked.
Mrs. Donald, who was gracious and youthful at almost forty, and regarded herself as something more than a housewife, chose, like her daughter, to save her ingratiating side for worthy adherents; at home she was vague and discontented, although she never forgot to dress prettily for her family and herself and to put on fresh lipstick before sitting down at table. She looked irresistibly like Virginia; a little older, her hair short and curly instead of long and straight, her whole naïve childishness a deliberate denial of the years of experience she had had and Virginia was still entitled to; they might, under some circumstances, be taken for sisters.
James and Virginia, with their mother, did most of the talking at dinner; Mr. Donald dined doggedly, as though compelled to sit down with his jailors but not to be courteous to them; Tod moved softly and constantly, eating quickly, trying not to be noticed. Virginia and James spoke boldly in their own house, soothingly to their mother, and James, who was in unceasing training, permitted himself a delicacy of appetite lovingly administered to by his mother and sister.
It was one of Tod’s duties to appear regularly at the dinner table, since a place was set for him and a potato cooked in his name. He was expected to receive food, participate in Christmas, sleep, and keep his clothes under his family roof; his mother’s bright head at the top of the table would turn inquiringly to either side before she started carving, counting her family in a small gesture of grace which assured her that the food so energetically cooked would be used. If Tod were absent he would be punished.