by Jane Langton
The words of the hymn were by John Bunyan:
He who would valiant be
’Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.…
Joan Sawyer was blinded. She couldn’t see the words on the page because the sunlight had kindled her lashes like sparks. Looking past the glare from her hymnbook, she could dimly perceive the dark robe of the minister on the pulpit. His head was lowered. His lips were barely moving:
No foes shall stay his might,
Though he with giants fight;
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.
The plate was passed, the dollar bills dropped in, and behind the reading desk Joe fell back on the velvet chair, assailed by another frightful thought. What about Paul Dobbs, the boy who had been driving the car that killed Ed Bell? It occurred to Joe that he was going to have to do something about young Paul. And once he started, he would have to go right on doing it. And Paul was only the beginning. Joe’s head reeled with the monstrous statistics of human poverty, inadequacy, wretchedness, and self-destruction. It was as though the glittering surface illusion by which he had so long been mesmerized had parted like a veil to reveal the tortured condition of his fellow men and women. The bright illusion was still there—the watery images of the windows creeping across the wall, Joan Sawyer glowing like a torch—but these elegancies were of no particular use to anybody, except perhaps as a voiceless congratulation of some kind. Bully for you, said the rainbow as you helped an old lady across the street. Not bad, if I do say so myself, twittered the singing bird. The impassive majesty of nature was what you got for dogged acts of kindness. Well, the truth was, you got the majesty anyway, kindness or no kindness. But looked at as a bargain, it made some kind of balance in the world, tit for tat.
Standing up again, Joe turned over his sermon notes, transfixed by this discovery, while outside the window the leaves clinging to the oak tree fluttered in felicitation, Many happy returns of the day, and the sun clapped its hands in sarcastic tribute, as if to say, What a jerk! You finally figured it out. You certainly took your time.
After supper on that chill November day, as the lid of clouds drew off over the ocean, leaving the bony landscape of southern New England without protection from the cold, Homer and Mary Kelly bundled up and drove back to Nashoba to visit the place where Ed Bell was buried.
They found it in the new part of the Old West cemetery at the top of the hill, not far from Arlene Pott’s gravestone, and Carl Bucky’s and Agatha Palmer’s. As they stood silently looking at it, Homer was distracted by something over his shoulder. Glancing back, he saw the full moon coming up beyond the thicket of trees to the east, flattened into an oblate spheroid. The other way, above the crest of the hill, the sky glowed with the remaining shreds of the sunset. It was like that moment on the river when Joe Bold had plucked out of the advancing evening the instant when sunlight and moonlight were equal. It was that time again.
Through the thick twilight, Homer walked out of the cemetery with Mary, remembering Ed’s comic dance with straw hat and stick. As the moon rose and the sun declined, the memory struck the same celestial balance. It was a joke in sidereal time, and the laughter echoed from west to east, from sunset to moon-rise.
The man’s death was a calamity. But he had lived a good life. He had set an example. Surely there was no question about it, that Ed Bell had been a lasting monument of generosity and righteousness?
EPILOGUE
We are not surprised that the young pastor soon found among the fair daughters of the parish one who became a true helpmeet.
Reverend Edward G. Porter, 1899
on the marriage of Lincoln’s first minister,
William Lawrence, to Love Addams, 1750
Perhaps it is sad when a bereaved husband puts aside his grief and observes that there are other women alive in the world. In Joe Bold’s case the discovery’ was slow. The convergence of Joseph Bold and Joan Sawyer was like the approach of shy elephants, weaving and turning aside, slowly waving their trunks and shifting their huge feet.
The courtship, such as it was, went forward by widely separated leaps and plunges. There was the morning in church when a random streak of sunlight turned Joan into a Roman candle. And the day, months later, when Joe was fascinated at a Parish Committee meeting by the spiral whorls of her left ear. Half a year after that he was charmed at the County Hospital, where Joan was now working as an occupational therapist, by the nimble way she caught a ball tossed by Mr. O’Doyle. From then on, the small jolts of tender noticing happened more frequently, until at last Joe could think of nothing else.
Matters came to a head at another meeting of the Parish Committee. Joan was holding the floor that evening, explaining the problem of the overflowing septic tank and the need for another bathroom in the parish house.
“You mean we need another septic tank as well as another bathroom?” said Lorraine Bell, who was running the meeting. “How much would it cost?”
Joan explained. Lorraine listened, and soon it occurred to her that something other than sewage was brimming under the surface of the discussion, a substance more ethereal than the noisome contents of the septic tank. But Lorraine kept her eyes on her notes and jotted down lists of figures.
“What is the precise location of the present septic system?” said Joe ardently, his long hands rapidly shuffling his budget sheets.
Joan looked carefully at her diagrams and told him that the septic tank was buried at the curve of the driveway behind the parish house near the maple tree. Diligently, Joe scribbled the word tree on his budget sheet, then tumbled his papers wildly once again.
Lorraine decided sensibly that it was time to end the meeting. Sweeping her notes together, she called for a vote to adjourn.
“But we haven’t decided what to do about the toilets,” said Fred Harris, looking at her in astonishment.
“Sorry,” said Lorraine. “Next time.” Rapidly she led the way out, hauling on her parka, clearing the room of all the extraneous members of the committee.
Joe Bold and Joan Sawyer were left alone. Joan fumbled for her notebook, her rolled-up diagrams of the parish house, her handbag, scarf, coat, and mittens.
Joe bent over to pull on his rubbers. “May I walk you to your car?” he said in a muffled voice.
“Why, certainly,” said Joan, fumbling the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I’m parked way down by the church.”
Blindly they made their way down the hill, trying to avoid drains and other large invisible obstructions that might have erupted out of the pavement during the meeting.
“May I?” whispered Joe, enfolding her large mitten in his glove.
“What an impertinent clergyman,” murmured Joan.
“No, no, it’s not impertinence,” exclaimed Joe, wrapping a second glove around the first. “It has a teleological significance, you see. A purpose above and beyond itself, an ultimate design.”
“Well, I’m glad to know,” babbled Joan, “that it’s a rational act”—she flourished her notebook with her free hand—“founded on fundamental axioms.” All the pages fluttered out of the notebook and flew away in the dark like pigeons. “Oh, dear, look at them go.”
“Oh, Joan,” said Joe in a strangled voice, gathering into one armful notebook, floor plans, coat, scarf, mittens, handbag, and woman.
Next morning when Parker and Libby Upshaw drove up Farrar Road, Parker was offended by the litter of paper blowing across the lawn of the public library and flapping in the oak tree beside the parish house and spilling out of the bushes in front of the church. “Look at that,” he said disdainfully. “People are so thoughtless. They drive out from the slums of Boston and throw trash out of their cars.”
But it wasn’t trash. It was Joan Sawyer’s precise notes on the required alterations to the plumbing system of the parish house, with exact specifications for lengths of copper pipe and new fixtures. Joan had to take her tape
measure back to the basement of the building and figure out the whole thing all over again from scratch.
As it turned out, Joan’s love affair was not the only romance in the congregation of Old West Church that spring. Maud Starr’s was another. When the house next door to Maud’s was put on the market, who should buy it but Pulsifer Rexpole? Rexpole was a famous Harvard professor, a poet, a recipient of the Nobel Prize. Peeking out at him through her windows as he strode in and out of his house after the moving men, carrying cartons of his possessions—light fixtures, spare tires, broken chairs—Maud could almost see the laurel wreath on his head, its ribbons streaming behind him. She was thrilled.
Famous and talented Rexpole might be—he was also ugly, crafty, unprincipled, and thrice divorced, a bird of prey of fiercer visage and sharper beak than Maud herself. He was also a slob. His front yard was soon a dump.
Maud didn’t care. Into her life her new neighbor brought instantaneous excitement, bliss, trouble, disaster, and final utter catastrophe. What more could an adventurous woman ask of almighty God?
Lord dismiss us with thy blessing;
Fill our hearts with joy and peace;
Let us each, thy love possessing,
Triumph in redeeming grace:
Oh, refresh us, oh, refresh us,
Traveling through this wilderness.
—Pilgrim Hymnal
AFTERWORD
Nashoba is an invented town, its Old West Church an imaginary institution. A gusset was inserted in the map of Massachusetts on the northern border of Concord, stretching the towns of Bedford and Acton to east and west, and outraging the history of Carlisle to the north. The name Nashoba harks back to an actual community of Nipmuck Indians who lived somewhere between the Concord and Nashua rivers.
Most of the illustrations in this book are drawings of real buildings in the towns of Concord, Acton, Bedford, Harvard, Carlisle, Lincoln, Mattapoisett, and Cambridge, picked’ up by some sort of literary tornado and set down again around Nashoba’s town common and along her streets and roads.
Many of the epigraphs at the beginnings of chapters are taken from sermons by ministers in Concord’s First Parish and by pastors in the related churches of Lincoln and Carlisle. They were collected by Homer Kelly for his book Hen and Chicks, his history of the Concord church and its daughter parishes in other towns. Other epigraphs are chosen from Homer’s notes on the journal of young James Lorin Chapin. Chapin was a farmer rather than a minister, but he attended Lincoln’s Congregational church and commented in his journal on the sermons he heard there every Sunday in the years 1848, 1849, and 1850 (except for those Sundays when he stayed home in bed).
Turn the page to continue reading from the Homer Kelly Mysteries
I
THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
Four steeds I saw, whiter than whitest snow,
And on a fiery car a cruel youth
With bow in hand and arrows at his side …
For this is he whom the world calleth Love:
Bitter, thou see’st …
—PETRARCH
CHAPTER ONE
THE BULRUSHES beside the water in the Back Bay Fens were like a jungle. Wandering among them looking for a lover, Edward Fallfold amused himself by envisioning tigers and elephants trampling the tall reeds, and livid green parrots flapping up into the gray Boston air.
But there were no tigers, no elephants, no parrots, and no lovers either, even though the weather on this day in late March was springlike and mild. The bulrushes were ten feet tall, with dry stalks that creaked and swayed as Fallfold parted them, trying this pathway and that. Bulrushes here, bulrushes there. The bulrushes reminded him of Titian’s painting of The Rape of Europa in the museum, and he made a mental pun. The bull rushes at Europa and carries her off. But Edward Fallfold didn’t want Europa, that portly wench with the heavy thighs. He wanted someone like the young man approaching him now.
“Hello,” Fallfold said, giving the boy his charming smile, putting an arm around his broad shoulders. “What’s your name? Look, why don’t we go across the street to my room?”
Later he discovered that his young friend was looking for a job and a place to live. The boy was blond, strong, and tall, and Fallfold was immensely taken with him. “I think I can help you,” he said, trying not to sound too eager. “Speak to Mrs. Garboyle. She’s got an empty room. Another kid just moved out. And I’ll bet I can get you a job as a guard in the museum.”
“The museum? What museum?”
“The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It’s just down the road along the Fenway. I’m a trustee.” Fallfold didn’t bother to explain that he had very nearly been named director of the museum. Last year when the former director had been called to Yale, Fallfold had applied to become his successor, and he had come very close. There had been interview after interview. But at last, to his disgust, they had set him aside and chosen young Titus Moon instead. Fallfold had been offered the consolation prize of a place on the unpaid board of trustees.
“As a matter of fact,” he said to his new young friend, whose name was Robbie Crowlie, “there’s a meeting of the trustees this morning. Come on, I’m on my way there now. I’ll introduce you to the security chief. He can always use a new guard.”
“Well, okay,” said Robbie Crowlie cautiously, “thanks a lot.”
Fallfold beamed, and they went off together down the street, strolling along the Fenway past the dorms of Northeastern University, past the Forsyth School for Dental Hygienists and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in the direction of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
In the jungle of the bulrushes Edward Fallfold had found a new love.
CHAPTER TWO
HOMER KELLY was on his way to the meeting with the Gardner trustees. The truth was, Homer was in the dark about the history of painting and sculpture. But it was this very ignorance that was taking him there this morning.
It was all his wife’s fault. If Mary Kelly had not thought her husband an ignoramus about art, she wouldn’t have given him a membership in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum before she went off to New York City to take a course at Columbia.
If she hadn’t given him a membership, he wouldn’t have gone to the reception for new members. And if he hadn’t attended the reception, Homer would never have met Titus Moon, the director of the Gardner Museum. And then he would never have been asked to go to the next meeting of the trustees, to discuss the museum’s peculiar troubles and harassments.
But Mary Kelly did think her husband an ignoramus about art, and therefore she had set in motion the train of events that propelled him now, on this warm misty morning in March, in the direction of the Gardner to meet with the director and the seven trustees.
As Homer strode along the drive from a distant parking place, a fog hung over the Fenway, curling among the feathery fronds of the giant bulrushes on the shores of the sluggish little stream, draping itself over the dead stalks of the brussels sprouts and tomato vines in the public garden plots, wreathing over the curving road. Homer bowed his head against the blowing grit, and scattered the pigeons waddling across his path. The grit, he knew, was not important grit, not grit that counted for something. The pigeons were insignificant pigeons. In a way they were symbols of the neighborhood itself. Back at the turn of the century when Mrs. Jack Gardner had bought the land for her Venetian palace, Frederick Law Olmsted’s emerald necklace of parkland was only beginning to emerge from hundreds of acres of heaped-up muck along Stony Brook and Muddy River. Mrs. Jack had expected fashionable Boston to follow her from Beacon Street with new ranks of lofty marble town houses. But fashionable Boston had gone elsewhere, and now the elaborate dwelling she called Fenway Court stood by itself.
Other public buildings had sprung up along the Fenway—the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Simmons College and Wheelock and Emmanuel—and eventually the vacuum around them had been filled with blocks of houses. But they were not the sumptuous residences Mrs. Gardner had surely foreseen. Inst
ead this whole sweep of road had a seedy and neglected air. Around the corner at the end of Avenue Louis Pasteur, the hospital complex was a choked mass of looming buildings, narrow streets, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and teeming pedestrians. And beyond the hospitals spread the ruined streets of Roxbury, thick with suffering life. But along the meandering artery called the Fenway, from one end, where you could hear the crack of a bat in Fenway Park, to the other, where the massive tower of Sears, Roebuck dominated a tormented intersection, the sidewalks were nearly empty. Homer was alone.
The Gardner Museum was a tall monument of pale brick with a tile roof like that of a villa on the Mediterranean. Homer walked in the front door and introduced himself to the girl at the desk.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Kelly. The trustees are meeting in the Dutch Room. Go to the right around the courtyard, then up the stairs, and right again. They’ll be expecting you.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE PARTY for the benefactors was in progress in the east cloister as Homer made his way around the flowering courtyard. Hungrily he glanced at the plates of tidbits on the white tablecloths, the little cakes, the carafes of coffee, the pineapples impaled with morsels of fruit on toothpicks. But Homer had been invited to a meeting, not a party. Regretfully he climbed the stairs.
The reception in the east cloister was only the beginning of a festive day for the benefactors of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. After their coffee and snacks, they would attend a lecture in the Tapestry Room and tour the greenhouses, then sit down to a grand luncheon in the Spanish Cloister.