The Magnificent Spinster Read online

  “Oo, I’ve never tasted a violet!” Daisy said, her eyes sparkling.

  And Snooker promised to steal one if she could.

  “Time to get back to work,” said Cook. “There are vegetables to peel and cut up, Daisy, after you’ve done the dishes.”

  Outdoors the tennis players were starting their second set. Viola and Vyvian had won the first one, six-four. Lawrence, a spectacled young man with a ruddy complexion and rather floppy chestnut hair, was an erratic player and kept the girls busy chasing his balls, and Edith, who hated losing to her older sister, couldn’t help showing that she minded when his second serve was out again.

  “I’m sorry, Edith,” he said, taking a big white handkerchief out to wipe his face. “I’m out of practice.”

  “Practice will never make him perfect,” Alix whispered to Jane.

  “Sh—sh …” Jane said fiercely, trying to control a fit of uncontrollable giggles.

  Edith gave them a cold look. But it was no use. Alix gave Jane one look and they were suffused with giggles.

  “Come on, Lawrence, they’re only silly girls—let’s play,” Viola commanded, and this time the nettled Lawrence’s serve was hard and flat, and they ended by having quite a long rally.

  “It’s getting late,” Jane, who was getting restless, said to the world at large, “and Alix and I have to help Martha pick lettuce for supper and beans for lunch!”

  “Run along, for heaven’s sake!” Edith called after them.

  “Little sisters should keep their place,” Jane said, winking at Alix. They walked along, then, at the bend in the road, turned to look back at the tennis court through the pine trees. “Poor Lawrence!”

  They found Martha already picking in the vegetable garden, very glad to see them. “It’s so hot,” she said. “Let’s hurry so we can go for a swim.” In a short time they walked down together to the low, shingled bathhouse, a series of cubicles which opened into a roofless area so the temporary inhabitants could dress and undress in sunlight and open air. This summer there was a swallow’s nest in Jane’s and Alix’s cubicle and they had sometimes been frightened by the mother swallow when the babies were small, as she dive-bombed the intruders. But it was worth it, Jane told her father, “because we have seen everything, Pappa.”

  The big salt pool, a long rectangle, with a shallow, enclosed place at one end for the little children, was quite close to the shore. On very hot days Jane and Alix sometimes went in to the icy ocean itself, screaming when they finally brought themselves to take the plunge.

  On this day Allegra and James Reid were sitting in the big wooden armchairs in their bathing suits when the girls came sauntering down through the field. Allegra had on an old, rather faded suit with a sailor collar and wide dark-blue bloomers, and, of course, stockings and flat black sneakers. She was wearing a white hat. Jane had never understood why women had to be smothered in clothing when going for a swim while Pappa looked so comfortable in his long blue shorts and vest.

  “Do I have to wear stockings, Mamma?”

  “Dearie, the young men will be here shortly, and I think perhaps you do have to.” Very occasionally when only the family was present this humiliation could be avoided.

  “I’m only a child, after all,” said Jane, lifting her chin as she did, when she was feeling stubborn. Unfortunately, it gave her a rather grown-up air.

  “You have such long legs, Jane,” her mother said gently.

  “What difference does that make?”

  But then they heard voices and Jane knew there was no hope, as the four tennis players came round the bathhouse. Lawrence gave a whoop of delight at the sight of the pool and ran out on the diving board as though he was about to dive in fully clothed. Jane watched him and suspected that this enthusiasm had to do with getting away from tennis and into a sport where he could excel. He had been on the swimming team at Exeter.

  When Jane and Alix came out from their cubicles ready to swim, their mother and father were already in, Allegra doing her breast stroke up and down for a daily stint and James floating on his back. The girls ran to the beach to watch a yawl go sailing past and wave to it.

  “It’s the Emersons, Mamma. They’ve got Alice out!” At this four heads appeared over the cubicle walls, as Vyvian, Lawrence, Edith, and Viola stood on the benches to see. In August the harbor was full of boats of all kinds and the island was an excellent observation post, set at the harbor’s mouth a quarter-of-a-mile from the mainland. Every Saturday they had grandstand seats for the races on the big porch.

  “I’m too hot,” Alix announced. “I’ve got to swim.”

  And in an instant she and Jane had plunged in from the deep end. “Whew! It’s freezing, Mamma!” Jane called out, but within a moment she felt a kind of ecstasy at being in the water, the delicious shock of cold and something she enjoyed without defining it, her arms and legs as free and fluid as the element they swam in, for once not constricted by bodices and petticcats and skirts. Oh, to be a seal!

  They were joined by the two young men, who showed off their dives, Lawrence managing a superb jackknife though the diving board was really not high enough. Vyvian threw the big red ball in, and by the time Edith and Viola emerged, Alix and Jane were screaming with joy as they threw the ball around. Allegra and James left them to it, after Allegra’s head had been soaked with spray.

  “Oh Mamma, I am sorry!” But Jane’s eyes were sparkling with the joy of it all, and who cared about getting hair wet? Mamma certainly did not.

  Nevertheless, when Edith and Vivyan joined in the game she and James went back to their chairs to watch and dry off in the hot sun.

  Allegra drank the scene in, the activity in the pool, and then beyond it the long field, gold in August just before the haying, rippled in lovely waves by the breeze, and rolling right up to the farmhouse. Beyond it, sky, today a rather rare day, not a cloud in sight. She turned to her husband with one of those warm smiles that seemed to enfold him and the whole world around him in joyful appreciation and love. And he reached over and took her hand in his. They stayed on until Jane and Alix pulled themselves up the ladder and lay on the edge, panting.

  “It’s awful to feel so heavy again when you get back into the air,” Jane said, lying on her back, looking up at the sky.

  “You’d better get dressed, dears. You’ve been in a long time.”

  “Just one more swim, Mamma!”

  “Very well, but someone might pick a bunch of flowers for Mr. Perkins’ room … black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace, on the way up to the house. I’ll do a bunch for the table myself.”

  “We’d better get started …” Alix murmured. “The suits have to be rinsed, and everything.”

  Of course they were dressed and on their way up the winding path that meandered around the emerald golf greens long before their parents followed. They picked assiduously, though the black-eyed Susans were tough and sometimes a whole plant got tugged out. But it was necessary to stop quite often and look out over the harbor to see what sail was gliding past, and to take a deep breath of the Mount Desert mountains, dark blue in the distance, ancient and round like sleeping elephants, Jane thought. Or to look the other way at the forest edge, spreading out from the tall trees to a tapestry of blueberry and wild cranberry bushes.

  “I wish there didn’t have to be a golf course,” Jane said, “it spoils the wildness.”

  “Well, yes,” Alix considered this. “But Pappa loves it.”

  “Croquet’s a much fiercer, better game,” Jane said. “And you don’t need all those clubs and things.”

  “Anyway,” said Alix, “it’s just about a perfect place, you have to admit.”

  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 i
nto 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.