A New Song

by Jan Karon

Her eyes told him she understood. “I’ll roll it down here for you anytime.”

  “I’ll be back around this way in, say . . .”—three and a half laps to go—“twenty, thirty minutes? Would that be good?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

  “You could leave it there on the path, where no one can see it. I’d be grateful.”

  “I used to ride a bicycle—it was a pretty green color with a little bell. I loved my old bicycle.”

  “Borrow this one anytime,” he said.

  As they drove into Mitford at eight-fifteen, he felt he was seeing it anew. Though cloaked in fog, the sights he expected to be so familiar seemed fresh and original, almost exotic to his eyes. Lights sparkled in shop windows, street lamps glowed in the heavy mist, the display window of Dora Pugh’s Hardware was dressed with pumpkins and shocks of corn stalks.

  “I love our town,” said his wife, peering out like a kid. Barnabas had his nose flattened against the rear window; even Violet, standing in Cynthia’s lap with her paws against the glass, was gazing intently at Main Street.

  He realized he was grinning from ear to ear, but when he saw Fancy Skinner’s pink neon sign above the Sweet Stuff Bakery, he laughed out loud.

  Once they got into the yellow house and turned on the lights and Harley delivered a pan of fudge brownies, it was too late to go visiting in Mitford. Puny, warned of their homecoming, had put roast chicken, potato salad, and tomato aspic in the refrigerator. They fell upon the meal like dock hands.

  Afterward, they changed into what he’d been raised to call “night-clothes,” and wandered around the house, seeing it all over again, claiming it with their eyes.

  “Timothy!” exclaimed his wife. “Doesn’t that picture look perfect over the sage-green vase?”

  “You must have thought so when you put it there,” he said, amused.

  “I love our home, Timothy.”

  “As do I.” He thumped down at his desk and idly looked through the drawers.

  “What do you think she’s going to say tomorrow?”

  “I can’t imagine, I don’t know. I don’t think she would have called if she didn’t want to make peace. And she spoke of confession. . . .”

  “I feel so sorry for Miss Pringle.”

  He glanced out the study window toward the rectory, where, through the hedge, he saw a light dimly burning in the kitchen.

  “As do I,” he repeated. “As do I.”

  Lessons for the Piano, he read on the black and white sign placed in the grass by the front walk, Inquire Within.

  Hélène Pringle stood in the middle of the rectory living room and looked at him, red-eyed and plaintive. She was dressed simply in a longish dress and worn gray cardigan, and bereft of jewelry or any fanciful adornment. Her hair was swept back severely, as if she’d just dipped her comb in water, and pinned into a chignon.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am . . . and I beg your forgiveness.” He hated that she wrung her hands as she said this. “You are forgiven,” he said, meaning it.

  “Please sit, Father. I have a long story to relate to you. I pray you aren’t in a hurry.”

  “I’m in no hurry at all.” If he did nothing else on this trip, it would be fine with him. Looking around for Barbizon, but failing to spy the outsize mop, he sat in the chair, glad for the ease of it.

  “I suppose I should offer you coffee or tea,” she said, still standing.

  “No, please, Miss Pringle, I have no want of anything. Thank you.”

  It hurt him, somehow, to witness her terrible anxiety. “Please,” he said, smiling.

  She sat on the sofa and gazed at her hands in her lap.

  “Let me begin, then,” she said, “at the beginning.”

  He was puzzled to realize he scarcely recognized this room, which had been part of his life for more than sixteen years.

  “I have two very strong memories of my early childhood,” she said, barely speaking above a whisper. “No one ever believed it possible for me to remember the first, for I was still an infant, lying in a pram. I had been rolled outside to the lawn and parked under a tree, and I remember so vividly the color of the leaves above me, almost . . . chartreuse, a delicate and tender shade of green I’ve seen only once or twice since. I shall never forget the intricate lacework of the leaves, and the sparkle of that wondrous color as they danced in the breeze.”

  She looked up from gazing at her hands, and he suddenly recognized something vaguely familiar about Hélène Pringle, but he couldn’t have said what it was.

  “The other early impression that shall remain with me always was when ma grandmère looked down upon me as I lay in my little bed in her country home outside Barbizon. I was very sick, and later, as an adult, I thought the whole dreadful episode might have been a feverish dream, but it was not.

  “I was perhaps three years old then. She was wearing her lace cap, and the points of the lace appeared to me like the jagged edges of broken glass. I saw every wrinkle in her face; she was suddenly terribly, terribly frightening to me, but I was mesmerized and could not look away. ‘You,’ she said, ‘have no father. I hope you like that piece of news, ma petite chère.’ ” Then she poked me in the chest with her finger, which had a long and hurtful nail, and I wept for the enormous fear I suddenly had of my grandmother, Hélène.”

  He’d never wanted the ability to feel the pain of others so keenly, but he had it, he had always had it, and there was no help for it. Perhaps it was just as well, for into this empathetic endowment had been lumped the ability to experience his own pain.

  “I understand,” he said.

  She looked at him now with a certain steadiness in her gaze. “At the age of nineteen, my mother, Françoise, went up to Paris to live with her Tante Brigitte. Tante Brigitte was my grandfather’s sister, and not a careful person in the least. She was altogether the wrong guardian for my beautiful and innocent mother.

  “I think, Father, that aunts and uncles don’t always take their roles as seriously as they might.”

  He saw traces of an old bitterness in her face as she spoke.

  “I have always believed that Tante Brigitte conspired to introduce my mother to . . . to . . .” She looked at her hands again.

  “Josiah Baxter?”

  “Yes. He was a man of wealth, and old enough to be my mother’s grandfather.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “It grieves me more than you can know to tell you these things that have lain on my heart for so many years without being spoken.”

  She wept quietly, placing a handkerchief against her eyes and holding it there.

  “Pardon, j’en suis désolée!” she said, at last. “I’m sorry to break down like this.”

  “Please don’t be.”

  “Mr. Baxter . . . brought many expensive things to the apartment in Paris—paintings, sculpture, beautiful objects . . . my mother has memory of a little hand-carved chair with a needlepoint cushion . . .”

  He had seen such a chair in Miss Sadie’s bedroom; at the last minute of their negotiations at Fernbank, Andrew Gregory had bought it, along with numerous other pieces of furniture and table linens.

  “. . . and all those lovely things were shipped to his home in America. The men would come and crate them up, and away they would go across the water, to a place my mother would never know or see.

  “I don’t mean to imply that he never gave gifts to my mother. He gave her several fine pieces of jewelry which are long vanished, sold to help further my education. And he regularly gave money to Tante Brigitte for the household.”

  Something about her . . . so familiar . . .

  “One day, Mr. Baxter . . .”

  He noted that she spoke this name with difficulty, drawing a short breath before she said it.

  “. . . brought the angel to my mother. She told me that he said, ‘Here, my dove, is something to watch over you in my absence.’

  “Then he pulled a small key from his waistcoat and gave it to her.
‘Unlock the little hiding place in the base of the angel,’ he said. My mother examined the base very carefully, but could not find a way to insert a key. He took the key from her then, and turned the angel on its side . . .”

  Hélène Pringle sat for a moment as if made of stone. He sensed that she had heard this story many times; her gaze did not take him in at all, but replayed before her eyes the movie she had made of her mother’s memories.

  “. . . and slid out the bottom, which had appeared to be only a piece of felt to keep the statue from marring the furniture. Just inside the lip of the marble base was a very tiny keyhole.”

  “Ahh,” he said.

  “Mr. Baxter turned the little key in the hole and the bottom of the base, a thin slab of marble, was released into his hand. ‘Now,’ he told my mother, ‘look inside.’

  “She looked inside and found two pieces of paper, folded many times. ‘Open this one first,’ he told her, and she did. It was his will, written in his own hand and in French, though he spoke and wrote hardly any French at all. He had asked a Paris attorney to translate the wording into the language of my mother, and he had copied it in a very awkward and labored hand. It stated that upon his death he was bequeathing a third of his assets to my mother.”

  Hélène Pringle drew a deep breath and went on.

  “In English, he wrote at the bottom, ‘This is a codicil to my final will and testament, which is in the keeping of my solicitor, William Perry, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.’ It was signed in his handwriting, and dated April 14, 1947. He told her he was traveling back to America with a copy for his solicitor.

  “My mother said she felt a strange sort of joy and wonder, yet at the same time a fearful sense of dread. She then withdrew the other folded paper. It was . . . a love letter. I hope you might read it one day.”

  She sat with the handkerchief pressed to her eyes again, making no sound.

  “Afterward,” she continued, looking at him, “everything was placed back in the marble base, the key was turned in the lock, and the little slab with the felt bottom was put into place.

  “Then Mr. Baxter slipped the key into the pocket of my mother’s frock and said goodbye until his next visit, which he supposed would be in the summer, in July.

  “That afternoon, the men came to crate the pieces he had bought for his home in America, and Tante Brigitte told them what was to be packed and what was to be untouched. Somehow, the angel was packed and taken away and put on the ship to America. . . .”

  He saw the stricken look on her face, as if it happened only yesterday, or last week, and was as near to her in reality as this room in which she was sitting.

  “Tante Brigitte sent a man to the docks to look for the crate, but the boat had gone.”

  She rose from the sofa and walked around the room, anxious and alarmed, then stood in front of the windows and drew the sheer panels apart and looked into the street.

  He waited, sick with the weight of her distress.

  She turned and came again to the sofa and sat down. “He never returned to Paris. You recall that the will was dated the day of his leave-taking, April 14, 1947. I was born December 12, 1947.”

  The room might have been contained in a timeless, noiseless bubble. He couldn’t hear the ticking of a clock or a car moving in the street; he heard only the beating of his heart.

  “When he did not come in July, my mother dispatched a letter to his lumberyard near Mitford, and heard nothing in reply. Several weeks after I was born, a letter was sent again. Two months later, it was returned to us unopened, and stamped Addressee Deceased.

  “Tante Brigitte wrote a letter to the manager of Baxter Lumber Company, believing she could extort money somehow, and it, also, was returned, with Out of Business written on the envelope in long-hand. Years later, I would pore over those returned envelopes, pondering the words deceased and out of business, and their tormenting finality.

  “My family had lost all hope of any connection with my . . . with the American visitor to the little apartment in Paris.

  “My aunt was not entirely poor, Father, but her means were limited, and there was no family friend or legal counsel to fall back upon. She sent my mother home to Barbizon with a seven-month-old child, to live with ma grandmère.”

  There was a prolonged silence during which Hélène Pringle stared at the piano, as if it might contain an answer long sought.

  “Perhaps to compensate for this terrible strait in the family affairs, Grandmère Hélène created a legacy of bitterness and hatred that I hope never to witness again in this life. Bitterness and hatred, Father, are contagious, did you know?”

  “I know,” he said.

  “She infected my mother with this virulent acrimony, and I, too, became horribly contaminated by it. It was as if . . . as if a venomous liturgy were composed among us, and we recited it, day after day, religiously. It became to us larger than the real world. Our entire focus was upon the bitterness and anger felt toward my father and his money and his fine American home named Fernbank and his deceased wife whom he had called beautiful, and his much-adored Sadie and the fact that she had someone called China Mae to serve her and do her laundry and braid her hair.

  “My grandmother would begin the recitation with the arrival of her breakfast tray, telling me how my mother never had le courage, le cran, le culot, to pursue the matter to its utmost and final outcome, to claim her portion, no matter what the effort, even if it meant going to America and seeking the thing that contained all our future prospects.

  “My mother was once a very beautiful woman, but she sacrificed her beauty to bitterness and sorrow. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen that way.”

  “I was never . . . beautiful. I wonder how I could have been born to someone so lovely when I was . . .” She looked away.

  “When you were what?” he asked.

  “Short and plain, like my father.”

  Just plain Sadie . . . the thought came to him out of the blue. It was the way Miss Sadie had often referred to herself. Just plain Sadie, whose feet, when she sat on the love seat at Fernbank, had never touched the floor. Of course. That was the familiar thing he had recognized in this lost and lonely woman who had come seeking what she believed to be her brightest hope.

  “I developed an image of my father over the years, based upon my grandmother’s view of his wicked and profligate conduct, his willful neglect of duty, and his great and selfish wealth. He became monstrous to me, yet I can’t tell you how I longed to love him a little, if only a little, but I could not.”

  He didn’t like the ashen look on her face.

  “Would you care for some water, Miss Pringle?”

  “Non, merci. But then, yes, that would be—”

  “I know just where it is,” he said, sprinting toward the kitchen.

  He realized he was shaking his head again, as if to clear it and make some sense of all he was hearing. His kitchen seemed strange to him, as if he’d never stepped foot in it before. Lord, he prayed, may Your peace be upon this house. . . .

  He took a glass from the cabinet and ran the spigot for a moment and filled the glass and went along the hall to the rectory parlor. And bless this woman in ways I can’t think to ask. . . .

  “There,” he said, as she drank it down. He took the glass from her as if he were a nursemaid and returned to his chair and sat again, holding it.

  “Before my grandmother died fourteen years ago, she contended that a trip to Mitford would be a completely sensible thing to do. She believed the angel would be found sitting on someone’s mantel, ripe for the picking.”

  “And so it was,” he said gently.

  “I determined that I would do this thing for my mother, who, by the way, married Albert Pringle and went to live in Boston about the time I finished college. They were married for seven years before he died of pneumonia. He was a lovely man. I took his name out of gratitude for his kindness. I think he helped relieve my mothe
r of some of the anger. She became almost . . . almost kind again, and every so often, with Albert, I heard her laugh.”

  “Ahh.”

  “I always loved my mother, even when her malice removed her from me over and over again. A year ago, when our finances became so . . . strained, I promised her I would come to Mitford. I didn’t tell her I would look for the angel, Father, I told her I would come to Mitford and find it.”

  “I admire confidence, Miss Pringle.”

  “I could not believe my good fortune when I discovered that you and Miss Sadie had been dear friends, and that your old rectory was for lease, right next door to your home. I believed then with all my heart that I’d been sent on a mission that would . . . would redeem all the hurt, somehow.” She looked at her hands again.

  “A mission?”

  “Yes. I don’t know much about God, Father, that is your forte, but I felt somehow that God had a hand in my coming here. I hope you don’t think it’s impertinent of me.”

  “No, Miss Pringle, not impertinent in the least.”

  “I suppose you wondered why I would bring my furnishings and set up a piano practice with only a six-month lease.”

  “That did cross my mind.”

  “I wanted . . . let me say that all my life since I was a young child, I’ve felt the need of a fresh start, a new beginning. I came here to find the angel, but very deep down, I also hoped I wouldn’t find it. I came thinking that perhaps Mitford could be . . .” She sighed and shook her head slowly.

  “But then, I’ve spent my life devoted to the desire for retribution—perhaps there are no new beginnings for someone like me.”

  “New beginnings are always possible,” he said. “What of your mother? What are her circumstances?”

  “My mother is in a nursing home outside Boston. Her mental faculties are keener than my own, but a series of health problems causes her to require care I cannot give. Albert left us a bit of money and I’ve gotten on rather well with my piano lessons, but . . .”

  He saw the toll this was taking on her, that it would take on almost anyone to recite a legacy of suffering and loss.