As we trusted in the fact of the baby, and that the baby would come as promised. Our daily vitamin doses had been supplemented by a bottle of some pleasant-tasting mixture that the Widow had brought-with directions-to our house. And though we joked about taking it I could see how profoundly Beth wished for the fulfillment of her dream of a son, and how profoundly she believed in the Widow’s power to make it possible. It was not misplaced belief.
Thinking back, I suppose those first weeks of early autumn in Cornwall Coombe were the happiest we had ever known together. We seemed to have undergone some subtle transformation that had drawn something to ourselves, both separately and as a family, from the land and the people, who daily were more inclined to accept us as part of their lives. And daily I would see the changes wrought in Beth. She slept better, the smudges under her eyes disappeared, and the lines in her forehead. The brisk air did something to her appetite; she ate sitting down, for a change, and started putting on weight. Her skin took on a fresher look, and I began calling her Peaches because her cheeks reminded me of one, with that same rosy glow.
Kate, too, seemed to be enjoying the beneficial effects of country life. It was a pleasure to see her able to enjoy animals, having been denied them so long. Fred Minerva had steered me to a man in a nearby town who was selling his farm and moving to the city, and had several horses for sale. The mare I ended up buying was large for Kate, but I decided she would soon grow to the proper size. The farmer had warned me that the horse was inclined to be headstrong, and when I presented her to Kate I cautioned her not to get carried away.
It was inevitable that the mare, whom Kate named Trementagne-a French word for north wind she had found somewhere that she shortened to “Tremmy”-would assume an important place in her life, but she seemed interested in sharing her love for the horse with us, and eager to show off the skills she was rapidly acquiring in Greenfarms’ ”equitation” classes.
Not since the Agnes Fair had she evidenced any symptoms of her tormenting illness. She was healthier and happier and never appeared in the morning with the out-of-sorts expression I used to dread. Watching her, I thought I could discern small but obvious changes in her. She was becoming a young woman. She was losing that gangling, knobby look, and, perhaps because of her association with Worthy, she seemed less shy and diffident.
A frequent visitor to our house, the Widow Fortune might stop by, usually late in the afternoon, to watch Kate ride her horse in the field below the stables, or I would hear her and Kate talking in the kitchen, and I knew she was helping Kate allay the fears that brought on the asthma attacks. After a cup of tea, she would take her splint basket and hurry away to nurse old Mrs. Mayberry; then Kate would come out to the studio and watch me paint until Beth returned home.
In the evening, the weather remaining fine, we would barbecue steaks on the terrace, often joined by Worthy Pettinger, for whom Beth and I decided Kate was developing a strong attachment.
Viewed in the light of what occurred later, it was a fool’s paradise, but I could not have known that then. Fool’s paradise in those weeks was still Heart’s Desire, and it seemed nothing could possibly happen to spoil the idyll of our new existence. Above all, and very real, was a profound sense of belonging not only to my family but to the villagers, to the countryside, and, though I did not till it, to the land.
Yet while I worked about the house and at my easel, the grisly souvenir in the hollow tree remained in my thoughts, that and the “gray ghost,” as I had come to regard that other, even more puzzling apparition. If I failed to fathom the unfathomable, it was perhaps not so much due to my lack of mental agility as that I did not feel I could confide my thoughts to anyone. I did not want to tell anyone I had been seeing ghosts, nor did I want people saying I was a fool. Whatever I said, and to whom, it was bound to be repeated, and I hated the thought of these farmer people thinking I was as moon mad as they, and as superstitious.
There were, however, two with whom I was anxious to talk: Robert Dodd and Jack Stump. Robert, with Maggie, was out of town-visiting his university, with which he kept up considerable contact. And the peddler had not as yet finished his territory circuit, for nowhere in the village was his tin-pan clatter to be heard, and I listened in vain.
The only other shadow darkening my existence at that period was the boy, Worthy Pettinger. In its quiet but firm way, the village was adamant on the subject of his “accepting the honor,” as the phrase was couched. Worthy must and would be the Young Lord in the Corn Play. Though he came regularly to our house after school to do chores, he was now invariably late, invariably offhand, and, when I asked him what was troubling him, invariably reticent.
It was hard to know what to do; how could we help when we didn’t really know what the problem was? My own assessment was that the boy’s dark distress stemmed from a reluctance to commit himself to Cornwall Coombe for a seven-year tenure as Harvest Lord-no matter what honors or wealth accrued from this-when it was his desire to be quit of village encumbrances and old-fashioned ways. Who could blame him for being “newfangled”? But if the father continued to hold to his parochial attitude, forcing him to “accept the honor,” there seemed little to be done.
One noontime, having left Worthy using a chain saw on the uprooted tree, I decided to pay a visit to the Hookes. I found the sketch I had done of Sophie at the Widow’s Sunday sociable, put it in a little frame I dug out of a box, and drove out to the Hooke farm.
When I got there, I left the car on the road and walked down the drive circling the house, having learned that the back door was where Cornwall Coombe folk paid weekday calls. Approaching the open Dutch door at the kitchen steps, I was greeted by a flying object, a great squawking feathered projectile, which came flying through the opening. I watched the chicken land, then, wings flapping, run off into a patch of nasturtiums. In another moment, Justin’s smiling face appeared.
“Come in, come in,” he said heartily, reaching to shake my hand and opening the lower half of the door for me.
“Anybody home beside the chickens?” I asked, mounting the steps.
“Tossing a hen through the door brings good luck. Sophie, look who’s here.” Sophie rose from the table where she had been working on some ledgers and offered me a cup of coffee. When she had moved the ledgers aside and set the cup on the table, I presented her with my gift. She took the package and looked from me to it and back again.
“Go ahead, Sophie,” Justin urged, “open it.”
A little gasp escaped her lips as she undid the paper and saw the sketch under the glass. She looked at me gratefully. “Nobody ever drew me before,” she said simply.
Justin came around the table to see. “Why, it’s Sophie to the life.” He pulled out a chair for me to sit. I put sugar in my coffee, and cream from the pitcher Sophie had brought from the refrigerator. Justin asked where she would like the sketch hung.
“In the living room, I think.”
He went to find a hammer, and Sophie led me into the front room, where she picked out a spot for the drawing. “Sophie,” Justin said when he had tapped in a hook and hung the sketch, “take him and show him the upstairs. When you’ve done, Ned, come have a look around the place. I’ve got to get back to the men or they’ll be sitting on their hands.” He clumped down the hall in his heavy boots and Sophie preceded me up the stairs.
I glimpsed a crisp white bedroom with a large four-poster bed similar to the one Beth and I slept in. Sophie took me in and showed me the crocheted counterpane her grandmother had made, pointing out the fine workmanship. “It’s called popcorn stitch.” The room had a serene but solid look to it, with printed curtains at the window, and at the foot of the bed a blanket chest painted with flowers to match the curtains. When I admired it, she blushed, saying she had done it herself.
“You’re very talented, Sophie.”
“But not like you.” A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and she stepped to the window, looking down at the barnyard. A hole had been dug along a strip of lawn between the house and the cornfield, and beside it stood a young tree, ready for planting. Justin came with a shovel, bent to set in the tree. Sophie turned back and said, “Could I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I have my egg money put aside, and I was wondering- How much would you charge to do a painting?”
“I’d love to paint you, Sophie.”
“Not me. Justin. I’d like a picture to hang over the mantel while he’s still Harvest Lord.”
I said I thought that was a fine idea, and that I would be happy to execute the commission. “It’s the first
