The Magnificent Spinster Read online

  “‘Such as we were we gave ourselves outright,’” Jane repeated when Sylvie had closed the book.

  “What are you thinking?” Sylvie asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jane said, suddenly embarrassed. “I guess that’s what we want to do … and often can’t or don’t.” Then she added, “‘Something we were withholding made us weak.’”

  “That’s not a way of describing you,” Nancy said, smiling across at Jane.

  Lucy wondered what had been in Jane’s mind; she so rarely talked about herself. Perhaps she would ask her later on. Now Jane was mustering the clan to collect the rubbish and the utensils for the trek back.

  “I suppose,” John said as he collected empty hash cans, “giving does make one strong, but I can’t say I always feel that on school days!”

  “Oh, I know. I remember well that drained feeling one gets when there is no let-up because there are papers to correct and next day’s classes to plan.” Jane paused for a moment and placed a hand on John’s shoulder, fraternally.

  “Sometimes, as Nancy well knows, it’s a matter of knowing when too much giving throws a monkey wrench into the works,” he said.

  Nancy was struggling to her feet. “Balance,” she said, laughing because she had just nearly lost hers. “It’s learning how to balance it all, isn’t it? That’s what is so hard at times, when to say ‘no.’ I can’t.”

  “And when can a mother say that?” Lucy asked.

  Captain Fuller was stamping on the remains of the fire and Jane put her whole attention on that crucial matter for a moment. “Do you think it’s really safe? Maybe we should fetch some good salt water and pour it on?”

  “No need,” said Captain Fuller. “See, there’s no spark.”

  “Well then, en avant, mes enfants!” Of course, after Jane had spoken French words, singing the “Marseillaise” became irresistible and they filed off singing, her alto soaring out until she was out of breath.

  They all agreed when they were back at the farm dock that it had been a perfect day, and what luck that the weather had held!

  “Only one more day. I’ll never finish my raft,” Wylie mourned.

  “But can we get Siren into the water tomorrow? You promised,” Tom reminded Sarah.

  “I’m hoping,” Sarah said cautiously. “It all depends on the weather, you know.”

  “I can’t believe a whole week has gone,” Sylvie said.

  And Amy wailed suddenly. “What’s the matter, Amy?” John asked, lifting her up and kissing the top of her head.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said. “Why do we have to go? Can’t we stay a little longer?”

  “Oh, I wish you could,” Jane said, taking a small hand in hers and holding it tight, “but you see the Stevenses are moving in day after tomorrow.”

  “Into our house?” Amy said incredulously.

  “Come on, children, we’d better get going,” Nancy said quite firmly, for everyone was tired, and it was really time they separated.

  “It’s been a glorious day,” Tom said. “Thanks, Aunt Reedy.”

  “I just can’t believe those children are growing up so fast. Tom is suddenly such a grown-up person,” Jane said as Lucy and she carried the baskets up to the big house.

  They stopped in the field to take a last look at the mountains across the bay, dark-blue and purple, making an outline as of huge sleeping animals, Jane thought, such ancient and comforting mountains they always seemed. And she and Lucy didn’t need to talk. It was good to walk on in silent intimacy as they did.

  Sarah had gone on ahead to speak to Annie and they walked into an amazingly silent house and went upstairs.

  While Lucy went into their room to change for supper Jane slipped along the hall and tapped on Frances’ door. Erika opened it. “Come in, come in. We’re having a drink on the balcony,” she said.

  “Has it been a good day?” Jane asked. On the balcony Frances was stretched out on the chaise longue with a blanket over her knees, a glass of Scotch and water beside her on the railing.

  “So peaceful,” Frances sighed. “I slept all afternoon.”

  “And I have nearly finished correcting papers.” Erika came back unfolding another light chair for Jane.

  “Oh dearie, thanks, but I must really wash up before supper.” But she stayed a moment sitting on the rail, just the same, feeling an immense joy in seeing that already Frances looked less drawn. Frances caught her look and smiled back.

  “And how was the expedition?” she asked warmly. “All those Speedwells must have had a great time!”

  “Oh, we had a roaring good day of it,” Jane answered. “It’s awful that they have to go day after tomorrow, but Nancy does seem to be fit again, I’m glad to say.” Jane yawned then and laughed. “I’m awfully sleepy,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

  This amused Erika. “No, you have no reason at all to be sleepy after organizing that trek and getting everyone fed and safely home, no reason at all to be sleepy, none at all.”

  Jane laughed then too. “It’s great sport, you know.”

  “But perhaps a little arduous.” Frances smiled at her.

  “Nothing on the island feels arduous,” Jane said quickly. “It’s all fun, a perpetual holiday these days.”

  “Some people might call it rather hard work,” Erika said.

  “I may get sleepy, but it’s not like getting tired,” Jane responded.

  And after she had left them to change her dress, Frances and Erika sat silent for a moment, drinking their drinks and watching a sailboat glide past.

  “She is in her element,” Frances said then. “It’s wonderful to see her here, isn’t it? So free and so much herself.”

  “I have never known a rich person like her,” Erika said. “She is such an aristocrat in an American way … in Europe it would not be like this.”

  “I suppose not,” Frances said thoughtfully, “but that’s not quite it either. Very few rich women in the United States are anything like Jane. Many do feel a responsibility about using wealth with wisdom, many give to the arts and all sorts of social organizations, as they did to Warren when they were parents in the school, but the difference is partly that Jane was always one of us, she chose to be a teacher. And that made all the difference.”

  “It would,” Erika understood. “Not a Maecenas but a fellow worker.” But then she looked across at Frances. “Yet you said in the last years she had lost her skill with the children.”

  “Oh, so painful,” Frances sighed. “The children in some way had outgrown her.…”

  “She is so childlike still in some ways. That is part of her genius, isn’t it? That is also what makes me wonder … how she has kept this child so alive into old age.” She smiled. “Let’s face it, Frances, neither you nor I have done that. We are awfully grown-up, I’m afraid.”

  “Jane will never be entirely grown-up,” Frances said, after thinking this over, “and I think it’s because for her childhood was so intensely happy and fulfilled, and when she is with children she draws on that treasure inside her, and finds it again.”

  “Yet she is very understanding of the burdens people carry, isn’t she? I could feel how she cared about Nancy.”

  “Oh yes, I can’t tell you how many women she has managed to give respite to for a day or a week or a whole summer. But why do we say ‘not grown-up’? I wonder whether that is it.”

  “What is it, then? She is not an intellectual, of course. I am always surprised at how little she manages to read,” Erika said.

  “She is too busy living,” Frances said at once.

  And just then they heard the gong being struck, three notes, and knew it was time to go down.

  “A great woman” was Erika’s last word. “And I myself can’t put my finger on all the reasons why!”

  Without Nancy they seemed a very small family gathered in the dining room for supper before the fire. Sarah lit the tall candles while Jane and Erika brought in plates of chicken soup and hot biscui
ts.

  “Ah.” said Jane. Then she looked around at the four faces on either side of her and added, “But first we must have a grace. Let’s have a silent one this evening. Silence gathers it all together,” she said when they had bowed their heads for a minute, “doesn’t it?”

  Then she said, looking across at Lucy, “Alas, tomorrow will be a hard day because Lucy leaves the island, having accomplished the usual miracles in a few days.”

  “Lucy sees everything,” Sarah was quick to agree. “It’s just amazing what gets done when she is here.”

  “I can give you a list of what I have not accomplished,” Lucy teased. “It would be quite long.”

  “We had better not know,” Sarah said.

  “The fact is that without Sarah and Lucy it could not be managed,” Jane said. “Oh how lucky I am!”

  “I’d be awfully happy if the subject were changed,” Lucy said. She was clearly the least self-assuming at the table.

  “But I must just tell them about the lights!” Jane pleaded. It seemed that Lucy had arrived bearing lights, battery-run, that could be attached to any wall in a dark closet. “No more fumbling for newspapers in the hall cupboard!”

  “No more carrying of a candle to the downstairs toilet,” Sarah added.

  “Where do you ever find out that such things exist?” Jane asked. “It’s a mystery to me, but you do.” Then she smiled. “I can just hear Pappa saying ‘great minds invent small improvements.’ That was when someone told him about a gas-run refrigerator and stove. He was quite astonished.” Instinctively Jane glanced up at the photographs on the mantel, Pappa in his Palm Beach suit sitting on a rock looking amused. “There have not been many changes,” Jane said as though to reassure him.

  “So many changes in the world since your father bought the island,” Frances said thoughtfully, “and still you keep that safe, secure past alive here so the past flows into the present, and that is very restful … and rather rare in these United States, where we so often feel we have outgrown our parents’ taste and sometimes even their values.”

  “But the present,” Lucy said, for Frances put her on the defensive as far as Jane was concerned, “flows into the future all the time and that is what keeps it so alive, isn’t it? Think of all the children who came here years ago and now bring their children.…”

  “And grandchildren.”

  Jane turned to Sarah then, her eyes shining, and said, “You know, I think this is the year to unbury the treasure we hid on the mountain one fine day at least twenty years ago. I am waiting for the right child to go with us. That day it was Cam and her dear mother and Matthew, Viola’s youngest. He found it rather a hard climb, but he was the one to find the little niche in the rocks where we hid it.”

  “What was the treasure?” Frances asked.

  “Ah, that is a secret,” Jane said. “Of course we imagined someone finding it a hundred years from now, but I’m afraid I can’t wait that long! What do you think, Sarah?”

  “Maybe when Angela comes her little boy might be the right child.”

  “I don’t know why I talk about the right child. Any child will do.”

  After supper there was talk of reading something, but Lucy felt she must pack and Jane admitted that she felt rather sleepy, so after doing the dishes they took their candles and climbed the stairs to bed, only Sarah staying in the warm kitchen to have a little time with Annie.

  Of course the next morning was one of those wrenching ones when beloved people had to leave, and rather a hustling and bustling one at that. Sarah was off just after dawn to meet Bruce at the boathouse and get Siren launched and the sails up.

  Jane would drive Lucy to the airport, so at least they did not have to say good-bye at the dock, where she pinned the traditional sprig of spruce in Lucy’s lapel and Frances and Erika were the only ones to stand and wave till they were out of sight.

  “I wish I were going to be here to help you get the little house ready for the English invasion,” Lucy said.

  “Dearie, Sarah will help and it will be done in no time.”

  They stood on West Wind and enjoyed seeing the sights of the harbor, full of boats of all sizes and shapes and Old Glory flapping in the breeze as they passed the Coast Guard station.

  “Any day now the Wellens should be turning up in their lobster boat to spend a night at the dock. I do hope the weather will hold and their little boy is well again. He had a long siege of pneumonia last spring and I know Esther worries about him.”

  “It’s good to see Erika and Frances letting down. Erika was pretty tense when they arrived, didn’t you think?”

  “Everyone works so hard,” Jane said, “and I feel I do nothing at all these days.”

  Lucy chuckled at this and slipped an arm through Jane’s. “Your nothing at all would exhaust some people I know.”

  Captain Fuller was easing West Wind in through two or three boats tied up at the dock by then, and the first lap of Lucy’s journey back to Philadelphia was over. “I’m so glad we don’t have to say good-bye yet,” Jane said as they followed Captain Fuller with the luggage up to Jane’s car.

  After several weeks of walking around the island, where the only vehicle was an ancient jeep, it was rather fun to be driving, Jane felt. And to see all the people on the streets as they flashed by. “We’re continentals now,” she announced. “We have left the timeless world and I had better look at my watch.”

  They knew each other so well, these two, that it was taken for granted that Jane would not wait at the airport. A long farewell would be too painful, after all. So a quick hug and “Write soon” and she was on the road home again, singing the whole way to keep up her spirits.

  For once there was no one at the dock when Jane and Captain Fuller got back. She decided to go over to the pool and see if the Speedwell kids maybe wanted a swim, and on the way stop in and say a greeting to her niece Daisy and her husband. They lived in Alix’s house all summer but there had been no time so far to see how things were with them and their large, happy Newfoundland dog. The house, gray-shingled, with blue-green trim at the windows, was visible from the dock but there was no one in sight.

  “Halloo, halloo,” Jane called as she climbed the porch steps. “Anyone home?”

  Perfect silence. No bark even. So they must be on the mainland. John and Daisy were curators of a small marine museum, and maybe this was one of their days over there, she surmised. Had Captain Fuller made a special trip for them? Otherwise how did they get over? Jane didn’t like things to happen on the island without her knowledge. Orders to Captain Fuller should go through her, so others who might want to do shopping or take a walk in town could go along. “Maybe I shouldn’t be so proprietary,” she admonished herself. “I guess I can be pretty stiff-necked myself when you come right down to it.” So nothing would be said this time, she decided.

  In a way it was lovely to be walking the familiar path through the blueberry bushes and up into the field alone. “Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight,” she murmured. Marian had always said that you knew who you were only when you were alone. Jane looked about her, noting once more how amazing it was that one heather plant smuggled in from Scotland by a cousin years ago had flourished and spread, so now a large area would soon be purpled over among the wild cranberries along the edge of the woods … and wondered if that statement of Marian’s were true. She herself never felt as lit up alone as with a beloved friend, did she? Yet this morning, with the strong feeling aroused by Lucy’s departure still alive in her, she saw that it was true. The rush of the last days, the battle with Wylie over the boat, the expedition to Baker’s, the hot discussion about Vietnam, Nancy’s valiant determination to get well—all this that had been stirred up on the surface now began to sink deep down, to coalesce into some large, vague question as to what life was all about. In the large arena it did often seem a very small achievement to do what she tried to do here on the island, to maintain something created long ago for the pleasure of friends �
� and to pass along the values it represented.

  Here Jane stopped in her thoughts, for she had always found such generalities bothersome. And her instinct was to probe the words … values, for instance, a rather glib word, she felt. What did it really mean? It was more to the point to consider that without Sarah none of it would be possible any longer. Lucy did a wonderful job, of course, but Sarah was the pin that held it all together through the whole summer. I have always wanted to be independent, to be my own man (why do I say man, not woman, Jane asked herself?), but these last years I have had to accept how dependent I have become, and sometimes I react badly, I know. Jane had been quite sharp with Sarah about some decision she felt she ought to have been asked about only the other day. I am dependent on Lucy too, but that is different, goes back fifty years or more, is the entirely voluntary dependence of true friendship and love. Whereas Sarah and I sort of inherited each other—and there are bound to be prickly times.

  So then what is life all about? Some weaving together of all this, and the values, she supposed, as she received a wave of scent from the rugosa roses by the boathouse, have to do with holding it all together, living it from moment to moment … but just then Amy ran out and hugged her round the knees. “Can we swim now?”

  “Let’s!”

  “The others are all sailing with Sarah … Mummy’s packing. I did hope you would come!”

  Next morning, the day of leaving for the Speedwells, Jane woke late because it was raining and even at eight it felt very dark, and a little lonely without Lucy. But this is the morning to pay bills, she told herself, and I had better get going. Sarah had lit a blazing fire in the dining room so breakfast with Frances and Erika turned into a cozy time. When the weather was not at its best the house itself was, and became a comforting ark. Frances and Erika decided to stay downstairs and write at the big table and enjoy the warmth. Sarah put on a slicker and went off with her rucksack on her shoulder to help the Speedwells burn rubbish and get themselves together.

  And Jane settled in at her father’s huge roll-top desk in the office just off the big living room, picking a bunch of bills from one of the pigeonholes where everything got stuffed. She never ceased to be astonished by the grocer’s bill. Pappa would not believe what food costs these days, she thought, as she made out a check. And the big cylinders of gas for the refrigerator and small auxiliary stove had gone up astronomically since Jane had taken over on the island.