by Jan Karon
“Do be kind,” he implored.
Cynthia made herself comfortable in the corner of the sofa. “One of the things I like about you is . . . you’re romantic.”
He felt his face flush. “I dare say I’ve never once thought of myself as romantic.”
“But how could you escape thinking it? It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Look at the way you love the old writers, especially Wordsworth. And your roses, and the gardens at Lord’s Chapel. And the way you set a table with family china and attend to the needs of your friends . . . and, oh, and go without a car for years on end!”
“That’s romantic?” he asked, perplexed.
“Terribly!”
Certainly this sort of evening beat dining at the country club. Why, he might have been talked into playing a rubber of bridge by now, which he utterly despised, or, worse yet, doing the fox-trot with Hessie Mayhew. There was, however, a price to pay for an evening with Cynthia Coppersmith: He found that he kept feeling his collar grow tighter.
“I could go on,” she announced, tilting her head and gazing at him.
“Please don’t!” he said. Please do, he thought.
“Why don’t we take a walk, then?” His neighbor got up and fluffed her silk dress, which he found to be the color of raspberries crushed in a bowl of cream. “What a splendid dinner! I’m fairly stupefied.”
He grinned. “That’s one way to put it.”
They strolled toward the monument, feeling a light chill in the air. He couldn’t avoid seeing the reward posters in every shopwindow they passed, with Cynthia’s bold likeness of Barnabas staring dolefully toward the street.
As they went around the monument and walked by the Porter place, he saw that Miss Rose and Uncle Billy had come out and settled themselves in the chrome dinette chairs that held a permanent position at the edge of their neglected lawn. “Well, looky here, Rose, it’s th’ preacher!”
“I can plainly see that,” snapped Miss Rose, who was attired in rubber overshoes, a chenille robe, a cotton housedress, pajama pants, and a golf hat. Father Tim was frankly amazed at the style she could bring to such odd apparel.
“Miss Rose, Uncle Billy, I believe you know my neighbor.”
“Cynthia Coppersmith!” said Cynthia, extending her hand. “We’ve met at church. So nice to see you again. I admire your home.”
“Don’t try to buy it,” warned Miss Rose, darkly.
“Preacher, why don’t you ’uns come in? Come in an’ have a sip of tea Rose made today. You’ve never seen our place.”
“My place,” said Miss Rose, jabbing him sharply with her elbow.
“Rose, don’t act up, now. We got comp’ny.”
“Uncle Billy, I don’t believe . . .”
“Aw, Preacher, come on and visit a spell. It’d be a blessin’.”
The rector looked at his neighbor, who nodded with enthusiasm. “Let’s do it! I love old houses.”
As they walked up the broken flagstones in the dark, he took Cynthia’s arm and whispered: “You might be careful of the refreshments.”
She laughed with delight. He knew instinctively that she considered this a grand adventure. How exciting, after all, to go where one must be careful of the refreshments.
Uncle Billy turned on the hall light as they entered the front door, and a great chandelier shone weakly through a layer of grime and dust. “Missin’ some bulbs,” said their host apologetically.
He heard Cynthia’s astonished murmur. They were in a broad foyer with a ceiling that soared two stories high and was ornamented on either side by staircases that, even in the ghostly light, were clearly extraordinary in their design. Faded murals swept up the walls, depicting elaborate gardens and statuary, exotic birds and urns overflowing with fruit. Carved balustrades were missing, with several appearing to lie on the floor where they’d fallen.
In an odd sense, it was a privilege to be in the Porter place, as few had ever been invited and hardly anyone, of late, wished to be asked.
“This is the front hall,” Miss Rose said, glowering at her guests.
“Glorious!” said Cynthia. “Absolutely glorious. Who built your home?”
“My brother, Willard,” said Miss Rose, in whom the ice suddenly began to melt. “My brother, Willard James Porter. There’s his picture.” She pointed up the stairs on the right, where a large, wide-framed portrait hung. Even in the dim light, Father Tim recognized the strikingly handsome face of the intense young man in Miss Sadie’s silver frame.
“Terribly good-looking!” said his neighbor.
In a surprising burst of cordiality, Miss Rose asked if they’d like a piece of pound cake.
“I love pound cake!” said Cynthia.
Now we’re in for it, he thought.
“You ’uns go on ahead through th’ dinin’ room,” said Uncle Billy, opening the French doors on their right. “Rose an’ me’ll bring up th’ rear.”
Father Tim peered into a vast, dark room with a narrow pathway bordered on either side by towering mounds of musty newspapers.
“You go first,” said Cynthia.
He took his neighbor’s hand and plunged into the darkness toward a light shining under a distant door.
He saw that she ate the pound cake as if she hadn’t had a bite all evening, and did so without inspecting her plate or her fork. As for himself, he broke an infinitesimal piece from the corner of the thin slice and covered the remainder with his napkin. It was one thing to blindly exercise good manners, he observed, and quite another to exercise reasonable caution.
He saw that the vast kitchen was large enough for an entire studio apartment, especially since it led down a hall to a bathroom. With considerable fixing up, it would make as fine a home as anyone could want.
“My brother,” Miss Rose was saying in a loud voice to Cynthia, “nearly married, you know.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. It would have been the most dreadful thing he ever did, of course.”
“I see.”
“Caused an uproar.”
“Umm.”
“Made a fine mess!”
“Oh, dear.”
“Nearly broke his faith.”
“Oh, no!”
“Set the backbiters on us.”
“My, my.” Cynthia looked around for help from the rector.
“You ’uns want t’ see th’ rest of th’ place?” Uncle Billy asked.
“We do!” cried Cynthia, jumping up so quickly she nearly upset the table.
His neighbor held on to his hand throughout much of the tour. There were, after all, stacks of newspapers in every room, old pictures, broken furniture, a mirror that had fallen off the wall and scattered glass across the carpet, and even a dozen silver candelabra, black with neglect, sitting squarely in the middle of the floor of an otherwise empty room where the wallpaper was peeling off in sheets.
The young Willard Porter had surely walked through these rooms, admiring their high ceilings and elaborate millwork, the stained glass in every bathroom, the carved balustrades and hardwood floors. He was beginning to wish they hadn’t come in to witness the morbid decline of his showplace.
At the end of an upstairs hallway, Cynthia made a discovery. “What is this?” she cried, pointing to a blue door. It was a very small door that appeared to have been put there for children.
“That’s my playroom!” said Miss Rose, who had taken off one rubber overshoe because it hurt her corn and was limping down the hall. “My dear brother put that little room up here for his baby sister. Not another living soul could go in there but me.”
“Has anyone else ever been in there?”
Miss Rose looked fiercely at Uncle Billy. “Bill Watson, have you ever?”
“Nossir, I ain’t,” declared her stricken husband. “Nossiree, Bob!”
“Well, we’ll just see. I could tell in a heartbeat if anybody’s stepped foot in my playroom.”
“You ain’t stepped foot in there yourself in a hundred years!
”
Miss Rose bent down and found a small, rusty key under a broken flowerpot by the door and inserted it into the lock.
The rector heard a soft click, and the little blue door swung open easily.
“You have to get on your hands and knees,” instructed Miss Rose, dropping down on all fours, “and crawl in.” Cynthia did as she was told.
“Cynthia,” said the rector, “are you going in there?”
“Why, of course, I’m going in there! How could I not?”
How could she not, indeed, when it appeared to be a small, black hole in the wall, devoid of any ventilation or light.
“There!” said a satisfied Miss Rose, who reached inside and pulled a chain, illuminating the small space with surprising warmth. “Let’s go.”
Without any regard for her silk dress, Cynthia wriggled through the little doorway and disappeared.
“Jist foller that overshoe and that stockin’ foot,” called Uncle Billy.
There were screeches of pleasure, endless sneezes, and uproarious giggles from inside the wall. “Timothy, if I meet the White Rabbit, please take good care of Violet!”
The rector looked wonderingly at his host.
“Ain’t that somethin’, two growed women carryin’ on like that? Don’t that beat all!”
“Oh, Timothy, there’s a tea set in here! Haviland, just like your grandmother’s china! You must come in!”
In the space of a week, he had been on a rooftop and down a coal chute for Cynthia Coppersmith, and that was quite enough for him. He pulled up a battered Morris chair, and sat outside the little door like a cat awaiting a mouse. “You’ll have to bring it out here, Cynthia,” he called, leaning back and winking at Uncle Billy.
“That’s right, Preacher!”
“We can’t come out for hours, I’m afraid.”
“And Bill Watson,” shouted Miss Rose, “don’t you dare come in!”
Her husband laughed. “She don’t have t’ worry about that.”
“Uncle Billy, I don’t know how you’ve lasted with Miss Rose all these years.”
“Well, I give ’er my word, don’t you know.”
There. That was the bottom line. The line that hardly mattered to anyone, anymore.
Uncle Billy shook his head. "Y’ know, Preacher, th’ more things you own, th’ more you’re owned by things. Rose was always owned by this ol’ house and no way out of it, couldn’t sell it because of th’ way ’er brother fixed it with th’ lawyer, and it so big an’ drafty, livin’ in two rooms, don’t you know, lettin’ th’ oil set in th’ tank half th’ time, as she don’t want t’ take charity by burnin’ it, but not thinkin’ a thing of beggin’ food on th’ street. . . .”
They heard Miss Rose let out a squawk of delight.
“Th’ times I’ve seen ’er crawl in there, her arthritis jist disappears, she gits like a girl agin.”
“We may have your problem taken care of. It’s possible that Miss Rose could go ahead and deed the house to the town, with a life estate in a room or two, and one day or another, they’ll turn the rest of it into a museum and maybe a concert hall. Your portion would be well-heated, with a good roof, and a nice, modern kitchen and bath. How do you think we can approach her on that?”
“Law, I don’t know. She holds on to it like a life raft, and hit’s fallin’ down on our heads. Th’ last time I could git up on a ladder was s’ long ago, th’ ladder’s done half-rotted where I left it.”
“Well, my friend, it’s something we need to get on with.”
"Y’ know, Rose has talked about puttin’ a statue of Willard in the front yard. If you could git th’ town t’ do that, it might jist ring ’er bell.”
“Aha!”
“But I’d hate t’ see a statue of Willard standin’ up, it seems too proud. If you was to have ’im settin’ down, now, that might work.”
“Uncle Billy, you’re a thinker!”
“Timothy!”
He peered down at the little door, as his bedraggled neighbor crawled out with something under her arm.
“Look, Timothy! Uncle Billy! It’s your ink drawings! A whole stack of them! Miss Rose meant to burn them and forgot!”
“What an adventure,” said Cynthia, as they walked home along a deserted Main Street. He was carrying the dust-laden bundle of drawings under his arm, as Miss Rose had insisted that they must reside with Cynthia for the time being. “Hit’s f’r th’ best,” Uncle Billy had said, barely able to contain his joy.
“I’m quite exhausted from having so much fun,” sighed his neighbor.
The rector laughed. “We hardly ever hear such a statement in Mitford.” He, too, felt a distinct refreshment of spirit.
At the door of her cottage, he handed her the drawings. “I must get to my boy,” he said. “Thank you for your company. Tonight has reminded me of yet another thing I like about you.”
“What’s that?” she asked, smiling at him.
“You’re simple.”
“I’m perhaps the only woman alive who would be flattered by that remark.”
He laughed. “I knew you’d understand,” he said, taking her hand.
“Timothy?”
“Yes?”
“Would you be interested in going steady?”
He felt as if the entire front stoop had given away under him, but discovered it was merely his knees. He dared not speak, knowing instinctively that he was in a croaking mode.
“Oh, don’t answer now,” she said, gazing at him with amusement. “Just think about it.”
She leaned forward and brushed his cheek with hers. Wisteria!
Then she turned and went inside. “Good night,” she said, closing the door.
He didn’t know how long he sat on her steps, quite unable to walk the few yards to his back porch.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Something to Think About
When Betty Craig opened the door, she looked worried.
“Father,” she said, receiving his weekly delivery of a pound of livermush, “I’m glad you’re here. His livermush always cheers him up for a day or two.”
“How is he?”
“Ornery.”
“Aha.”
They walked into Betty’s tidy kitchen, wall-papered with geese in blue bonnets. The windowsill was brimming with African violets, and outside the window he saw dozens of bird feeders made from plastic milk containers.
“What has Russell been doing?”
“Sit down, Father, and let me tell you.”
Betty, who was one of the most positive people he knew, looked desolate. They sat at her round table, in captain’s chairs with blue cushions.
“He gets up in the morning fussing, and he goes to bed fussing. Ida would have done this, Ida would have done that. He hates my cooking and won’t take his medicine and shaves his toenails on the hooked rug. He chased my cat down the hall with an umbrella and . . .”
She looked down at her hands, which she was obviously wringing.
“And what?”
“And peed in the bed twice, for pure meanness!”
“No!”
“Yes, sir,” said Betty, whose lower lip had begun to tremble.
“Betty Craig, you are the finest nurse in these mountains. You are caring, sensitive, brave, and persevering. And you are also something else.”
“What’s that?” she asked, meekly.
“Tough! Why, you’ve nursed men as big as Buicks and cleaned enough bedpans to sink a ship. How on earth did an old goat like Russell Jacks put you in a shape like this?”
She looked at him fiercely. “I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it. You nursed Parrish Guthrie in his last days, did you not?”
“I did!”
“Then you can handle a dozen like Russell Jacks, and then some.”
She sighed deeply. “I did go off my vitamins about a month ago.”
“There! That’s it! Take those vitamins, Betty. Tote that barge! Lift that bale!”
&
nbsp; “What on earth has got into you, Father?”
“Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll talk to Russell. I’ll tell him exactly what’s what, that you’ll set him out on the stoop with his suitcase if he doesn’t straighten up at once.”
Betty looked relieved. “You do that!” she said, blinking back a tear. “And I hope it helps. Because if Mr. Jacks leaves,” she said with alarm, “they want me to take in Miss Pattie!”
Russell lay sleeping in a room filled with sunlight and ruffled curtains, with All My Children blaring on the TV. The rector quietly turned it off. His last two visits had been hurried. Today, he would spend a full hour.
He sat in a wing chair by the bed and prayed for the old man. With the right opportunities, he could have been another Capability Brown.
“I ain’t asleep,” said Russell, without opening his eyes.
“Is that right?”
“Nope. I cain’t sleep around here.”
An old Dooley Barlowe, if he ever saw one!
“Why is that?”
“Noise. Constant goin’ an’ comin, cat slitherin’ around my ankles, phone ringin’, neighbors bangin’ on th’ door.”
If he had learned anything in the diocesan counseling workshops, it was that sympathy can be deadly. He changed the subject.
“Russell, I’ve been meaning to ask . . . do you know if the boy was ever baptized?”
“Nossir. That’s th’ kind of thing Ida would’ve knowed. She kept a Bible with such things in it, our married date, when th’ kids was born, like that. Ida was a churchwoman, and I hate t’ think th’ times she begged me t’ go with ’er.”
The old man was silent for a long time and turned his head away. When he looked at the rector, he was weeping. “I’d give anything on this green earth t’ go t’ church with Ida now. But I waited ’til it’s too late.”
How many times had he heard those words from sorrowing parishioners? Too late! Too late to love. Too late to help. Too late to listen. Too late to discipline. Too late to say I’m sorry.
“Russell, it’s too late to do what Ida wanted, but it’s not too late to do what Betty wants.” He heard himself speak with unusual severity.