Grange House Read online

  “What do you see, Mr. Lanman?” I had stolen from the raspberry patch cross the lawn and nearly to the steps.

  He started and turned to look at me below him. I must admit, I had startled myself with my question. But once tossed, it could not be retrieved—there it floated aloft between us.

  “Ehmm.” He colored slightly, then stepped down one of the broad stairs of the piazza as if to go join the group he had been watching.

  “Forgive me,” I said, “I did not mean to embarrass you.”

  But now his face flooded with color. “I’m not embarrassed in the slightest, Miss Thomas,” and he bowed toward me. I stepped upon the lowest of the stairs. He smiled.

  “I was just considering the beauty of this scene.”

  “The beauty?”

  “Yes, how fine these old grasses are and how vibrant the man and then the children surrounding him—how the sea around them also serves to remind us of our own short lives, the sea eternal and man ephemeral”—he chuckled ruefully—“or something like that.”

  “You have quite a terrible idea of beauty, Mr. Lanman,” I declared.

  He crossed his arms, playful but attentive. “And what is so terrible in that?”

  I climbed two more of the steps between us. “You indicate that what is beautiful must remind us of our insignificance.”

  He did not smile. “I believe it must.”

  “Then she is a very schoolmarm.” I smiled, but I, too, was serious. “Yet I do not think beauty need teach us anything.”

  “What, then, is its function?” And now his tone condescended, just slightly, to me.

  I shook my head and pursed my lips, then drew a large circle into the air with my finger.

  “Nought,” I whispered. “Beauty—”

  “Beauty is never for nought, I hope,” he interrupted, and then, indeed, he smiled at me, raising an eyebrow. “You should know that better than most, Miss Thomas.”

  I felt a tiny shiver of pleasure at what was clearly meant to be a compliment, and I returned his smile. Indeed, what did it matter that I did not quite agree? I turned to look again at what he saw. But now the scene had entirely altered, and its comfortable distance was soon to vanish, for Bart Hunnowell was walking back up the lawn directly toward us, my white bowl in his hands.

  “Miss Thomas, I believe this is yours?” Bart advanced to the bottom of the steps and stopped there, holding out the bowl. I looked quickly back over my shoulder.

  “Yes, Mr. Hunnowell, you know that it is.”

  Following my glance, Bart smiled and drew an inch closer, addressing Mr. Lanman above me.

  “Excuse me, Jonathan. I do not mean to interrupt, but you see Miss Thomas and I have some small business matter to attend here.”

  “We were just speaking of beauty, Mr. Hunnowell”—I took one step down to him, the quicker to end this little encounter—“never business.”

  “Ah, Beauty.” He grinned up at me. “Do you wish your raspberries back?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, determined to pin him down. “No. I wish to know your views on the subject.”

  He looked at me and then at Mr. Lanman, raising a hand to shield his eyes as he considered us. I had caught him.

  “Beauty is genius,” he answered seriously.

  “Ha!” Mr. Lanman guffawed behind me. “Rossetti! I detest Mr. Rossetti.”

  “Rossetti?” I asked.

  “Mr. Dante Rossetti,” Bart answered, “a man—”

  “Who wrote this about his mistress,” Jonathan broke in, and then began to recite dismissively:

  “Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call

  Of Homer’s or of Dante’s heart sublime,—

  Not Michael’s hand furrowing the zones of time,—

  Is more with compassed mysteries musical;”

  There he halted, his disdain a bit heavy in the air.

  “I have not heard that poem,” I mused.

  “And what is so detestable in that, Jonathan?” Bart Hunnowell set down the bowl.

  “Detestable? He sets the creations of great masters beside a single woman and finds them wanting.”

  “But he is right: Beauty is caught—it is not made.” To my surprise, Bart had come to stand quite close, drawn intently to the conversation. “It is but a glance, quicksilver—the flash of fire before it is gone.” He had both hands on his hips.

  “Yes, but that quicksilver, as you call it, does not understand itself.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Rossetti sets a standard for beauty based on mystery—on the incomprehensibility of a woman he loves.”

  “And should the beloved be other than incomprehensible?” Mr. Hunnowell had shifted the talk, his whole body gone quite still.

  “I should hope,” Mr. Lanman declared, “to know and understand thoroughly the nature of the beloved.”

  “I should never wish such a thing,” Bart Hunnowell replied quietly.

  “Why?” My girlish voice sounded a little odd cast in between them.

  “When my beloved is incomprehensible, she is endless,” he said. “And I would follow her into that blank unknown.”

  “Oh,” said I. Mr. Hunnowell had answered me as if I were not a marriageable girl whose head might spin at such talk of love. He had answered me with passion, with passion for an idea. I felt suddenly that I stood alone in a quite capacious room and the air was lovely.

  Jonathan Lanman coughed. “Perhaps Miss Thomas would like her berries, Mr. Hunnowell.”

  It broke the spell. He looked at me and smiled. “Miss Thomas”—he stooped and picked up the bowl—“answer me this first.”

  “What is it?”

  “How many berries are there in this bowl?” He spoke quite low, as if we were in secret negotiation.

  “What does it signify?” I did not look at his face, but kept my gaze upon his hands around the porcelain.

  “Ten? Thirty? A score?” There was laughter in his voice.

  I did look straight at him then. “What is it you wish, Mr. Hunnowell?”

  “A single one.” Something soft crept forward from his tone.

  I raised my voice and waved my hand grandly. “You may have one—choose your pleasure.”

  He reached into the bowl and picked out a large berry. Then he bowed and put the whole bowl at my feet, and as he rose, he took my hand in his and peeled open my fist to put the raspberry in the middle of my palm.

  “For you, Miss Thomas, a keepsake from my morning’s harvest.” And then he turned and strolled down the lawn toward the pier.

  “He is something of a puzzle,” Jonathan Lanman observed from the top of the stairs.

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes on Bart Hunnowell’s retreating back, “he is.” And I did not turn immediately round, my hand still holding the berry at its center.

  “Hunnowell,” Jonathan continued. “I have done some business with his father.”

  I glanced back at him, determined to return to the conversation we had begun earlier and clarify what I had meant about beauty. But his head was now tipped back in reflection, his fingers playing among his blond whiskers, and I saw he had vanished from this scene, become suddenly an office man. Disappointed, I crossed my arms over my chest and scraped the toe of my boot upon the stair, not unused to this masculine habit of disappearing from intelligent conversation at the first mention of business, as if a pair of well-shod heels had clicked smartly together in the man’s head.

  “Though he does not hold a candle to your father,” he said aloud.

  I stared at him, pleased and surprised. The man had not vanished at all.

  “Of course not,” I answered. “My father is the greatest of men.”

  He smiled at my hyperbole. “How fortunate for you.”

  “Indeed,” I replied. And then, not liking to lose this easy informality, I pushed forward. “Tell me of your own father.”

  Jonathan Lanman turned back to face the water. “He died when I was very young—too young to have but
one memory.”

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head and then looked at me. “It is nothing, an insignificance.”

  “Surely not if it is your only recollection.” Still I probed, though I could see the questions pressed a bit too hard upon him. Again he shrugged.

  “He stood against the window, very tall. And he was holding out to me a piece of sugar candy.”

  “And did you take it?”

  Now he smiled sadly at me. “I do not recall.”

  I did not speak again, flooded suddenly with the image of my own father seated across from me in the schoolroom and then, peculiarly, of the warmth of his breath as he leaned across me, pointing up mistakes in my translations.

  “I should very much like to live up to his name,” Jonathan said quietly.

  “His name?”

  “Yes. My name.”

  “I am sincerely sorry for you, Mr. Lanman,” I said softly.

  Now he turned right round where he stood to face me squarely. “Why should you be sorry?”

  “A name is so little.” His eyes widened and I hurried to explain myself. “Such a small thing to have of your father’s, compared to his guidance and his”—I looked away—“warmth.”

  “You are entirely mistaken, Miss Thomas. A name is never small,” he said hotly. “My name is my father in me. It is him restored to the world through me.”

  I nodded, stirred by his vehemence, though I chafed at his dismissal of my remark. Before I could think what to respond, he took my hand in his and gravely shook it.

  “Names are like hands, Maisie Thomas. When I proffer mine to another, I am sure it speaks of a good grip, of a manly character.”

  “Well, I cannot take up your metaphor,” I said breezily, “as women’s hands are often gloved—and our names are more like frocks.”

  He grinned, easier now, and released me. “A womanish thought, if ever I heard one. For you will put yours off before long, I should imagine, and take up that of a husband’s.”

  I did not look at him. “No, you mistake me. I did not mean that at all.”

  “No?”

  “No. I merely meant that a name is nothing but words—like cloth, like gauzy stuff. It is nothing.”

  He coughed. “Perhaps you might feel differently once you have entered your married name?”

  “And why might that be?” I asked him somewhat crossly, unable to tease any longer.

  “It is the name with which you face the world in full possession of all your powers.” He smiled at me, his meaning unmistakable. “Of all your considerable powers, Miss Thomas.” And then he bowed and excused himself.

  “Stuff!” I said to his departing back. I turned round to face the lawn once more, took hold of my skirt, and curtsied to the view; we had had our little conversation. “Stuff!” I said again.

  “What brave words, Maisie Thomas.”

  I looked round to find Miss Grange standing in the shadow of the door.

  “Hello,” I said, made suddenly shy and glad all at once. She pulled her shawl more closely round, her hands remaining in the wool crossed at her neck while she regarded me with a bemused expression. She would understand what I had tried to explain to Mr. Lanman.

  “I have missed you, Miss Grange,” I blurted.

  She stepped out of the shadow and onto the piazza, and I saw the terrible toll the past two weeks had taken. Now, indeed, she was paler than ever I had seen her, and shrunken slightly. My heart constricted for my old friend. Though she had been no relation, clearly Halcy’s death was deeply felt, and I thought such grief to be yet another testament to Miss Grange’s great spirit. I crossed the few feet between us and took her arm. She patted my hand, and we walked to the top of the piazza stairs and looked companionably together upon the view.

  Down on the great rocks at the end of the lawn stood three or four guests idly fishing, their uneven heights a ragged echo of the chopping waves beyond. Scraps of their comments blew backward and up to us in single words, the only movement among them the lift of a wrist as a man shifted the angle of his line. Bart Hunnowell stood at the end of this line of men, neither fishing nor speaking, just regarding the water. Perhaps the flash of our dresses upon the piazza had caught his eye, for he turned round, and seeing us standing there together, he took off his hat and waved it in greeting.

  Miss Grange lifted her free hand briefly in reply. And then, her eyes still upon the men, she said to me, “Come walk with me tomorrow, Maisie Thomas.”

  “Gladly,” I answered, looking across at her, pleased she had not forgotten our little ritual, uncomfortably aware as I spoke that Bart Hunnowell still faced us, watching.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was always with Miss Grange that I took my first walk into the woods behind Grange House, and it was a satisfaction to find myself behind her, following her strict back, remembering the path once again as I stepped along it, carefully, and studiously, as if it were a line I retraced with my copybook pen.

  Though Mama quailed at the dark overhung silence of this interior forest whose bosky corridors appeared to her unhealthy, I was not so faint. In here grew an utter disregard for place or decorum—the bright grass blazed from the backs of rocks and small roots sprung up through the dank mosses. A man on horseback might never find his way through, as the trees above leaned low and heavy across the path. Witches’-broom hung from the balsam boughs, which cast off pinecones tiny as a child’s thumb. Yet in me, the hush of these summer woods refrained—as the trees shifted, creaking in a slight breeze, the inner strings in my chest quivered back a reply. Familiar and foreign all at once, each shift in the path’s direction thrilled, as one thrills to the sight of a thing forgotten come round once more. Again and new, I trod on the damp moss thick as the best Persian spread upon granite.

  When I was a child, the great delight in Miss Grange’s company had derived from the mysteries of the woods she unlocked before me. Few of the other summer guests ventured to penetrate the back regions of the woods behind the House, preferring instead the yachting pleasures of the open, startling waters of the sea. For some fortuitous reason, I had been singled out as one who could walk alongside the quiet familiar of these trees, and my childish self-regard puffed greatly at the unexpected sympathy grown up between myself and my older companion.

  Yet, I admit that in the past few years I had accompanied Miss Grange more and more in order to fathom her—the secrets of the woods grow hushed before this woman whose character I could not mark. Though she was quiet, she was not unforthcoming. Though she was solemn, she was not severe. Try as I might, the older I grew, the less certain I was that I could correctly read a particular smile she gave, or a confirming nod of her head. I had begun to watch Miss Grange with the degree of quiet anticipation one usually reserves for a mummer’s sleight of hand.

  That morning we walked silently along, Miss Grange’s basket slung upon a strap soldier-fashion across her chest and back, lending her slight frame an added heft. And though we did not speak, my companion often paused at several spots upon the way and pointed, as if to recall us to the previous journey here, each place a stitch picked up again and knit anew into the continuous correspondence between us. She seemed disinclined to pause in any spot for long, however, as if her finger tapped impatiently upon the page while she waited for me to turn it as I read. I did not mind her lack of attention; indeed, I welcomed it, sensing that though she did not inquire into me, still she watched alongside, her clear, unstated sympathy the very essence of my pleasure in our friendship.

  But I could not stop from exclaiming aloud at the violent curve the winter wind had caused in a line of spruce. Trees that had stood new and clear and proud last summer now veered at slant angles one from the other—still living, but unalterably shifted, one blown sideways so relentlessly, its newest branches grew round its neighbor in a lateral crutch.

  Miss Grange had stopped beside me. “What is it?”

  “I cannot say,” I whispered. And at first I did no
t know why I had started at the sight. But then I saw the trees had called to mind how Halcy’s arms were wrapped round Henry’s neck just so, tight and small around his sturdy frame. I pulled my linen wrap tighter round the light stuff at my shoulders.

  “Look there instead.” She pointed to a small pine sapling growing at a slight remove from this stand, its trunk grown straight up from a granite boulder, its small roots coiling down around the rock in snakelike fashion to seek the plenishing soil below. I considered the comparison Miss Grange had forced, thinking she meant me to see the old adage about bending with harsh forces played out here among the unsuspecting pines.

  “And I am meant to take hope from this one?”

  “Hope!” She swung round at me with a laugh. “Heavens above, Maisie Thomas. There is no hope to be found in the spectacle of a sapling struggling for nourishment from a rock—separated from its own soil—” She broke off.

  I took her on, playful and serious all at once. “But it has adapted to its situation, Miss Grange.”

  “Adaptation—yes.” Miss Grange stepped backward. “A very woman of the woods,” she muttered, as if in converse with a prior thought.

  “Miss Grange?” I turned to her.

  “‘A woman will be loved’”—my companion’s voice had risen and ordered itself into the swayback rhythms of a pedant—“‘in proportion as she makes those around her happy; as she studies their tastes, and sympathizes in their feelings. In social relations, adaptation is therefore the true secret of her influence.’”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She smiled at me and performed a slight bow to the tree before us.

  “The immortal words of Mrs. Sandford, Maisie—written for the edification of girls, these sixty years past.”