grazing on the grass. Soon we heard the congregation giving the last responses, then the minister’s benediction, and people began spilling from the church vestibule. I saw Mrs. Dodd appear, helping the man in the dark glasses down the steps. Leaving him chatting with a figure I recognized as the old woman I had given our telephone number to, Mrs. Dodd hurried to meet us. She said her car was parked on the other side of the Common, and if we drove around we could follow her. Yes, she had the key.
When we pulled up behind her Buick, the old woman gave us a backward glance as she drove away in her buggy. We were introduced to Mrs. Dodd’s husband, who was blind. I ventured a commonplace about the church music, and Mr. Dodd said with some pride that it was his wife who played the organ. Today, Mrs. Dodd interpolated, was Whitsunday. I looked at Beth: did people still observe Whitsunday?
We drove to Penrose Lane, where Mrs. Dodd led her husband to the porch and settled him in a chair, made him a drink, then joined us on the lawn next door. The lilacs were in bloom along the drive, and a bird was rebuilding the nest in the locust tree, a little yellow bird.
The house, Mrs. Dodd explained before unlocking the front door, was one of the oldest in the village. It had been built by the son of one of the founders, Gwydeon Penrose, whose house was on the Common. This one needed a plaque: 1709.
A bit in need of repair, too, I’m afraid, she said as we entered the musty hallway; well, yes and no. The kitchen was impossible, but for money could be made possible. Likewise the baths. The rest was all we had hoped for, and more. Its charm was infinite. The wide hall divided the house; on one side was the living room, spacious, with pegged floors and the marvelous fireplace, and across the hall a large dining room with the paneled wainscoting under what looked like thirty coats of paint. Connecting the dining room and kitchen was a smaller room with another fireplace. I suspected it was what used to be referred to as the “second parlor,” but Mrs. Dodd called it something that sounded like “bacchante room.” It was only later I realized she must have said “back anteroom.”
Upstairs there were four bedrooms; the largest, with agreeable proportions, revealed another fireplace and overlooked the locust tree at the front corner, with the Dodd hedge below.
We came down, and, leaving the two women talking in the kitchen, I went out back to look at the chicken house again; I was right; it would make a perfect studio. Walking past the stable to the foot of the property, I gazed back at the wide sweep of rutted, weed-choked lawn and made silent decrees. There I wanted a terrace, there a wall, there border gardens. I wanted pigeons in the dovecote, and another birdhouse in the beech tree. I wanted the house painted white, with dark green shutters, and except for removing the front porch, not another line would I touch. The baths would have to be modernized, the kitchen as well. I would put in a picture window. I would clean out the chicken house and put in a skylight and whitewash the interior. I would paint the stable barn- red; I would find Kate a horse. I would have it all just as I had always dreamed of it. In short, I would buy the place.
When I learned how much it would cost.
I walked back to the house to find Beth standing alone in the drive under the lilacs. She had pulled a bloom down to smell it; then, thinking herself unobserved, she put her face in a bunch of them, as though wanting to drown in their scent. Hearing my footstep, she turned, and I still carry the memory of how lovely she looked at that moment, her face buried in the purple clusters.
“Oh, Ned,” she sighed; there was no need to say any more. While overhead, in the branches of the tree, the yellow bird feathered its nest, we, below, laid plans to feather ours. I held Beth’s face in my hands and looked into her eyes. Because of the old trouble, I wanted, this one last time, to be sure she was certain in her heart it was the right move. Her face gave me the answer. I cautioned her to play it deadpan and not seem too anxious; then we went to find Mrs. Dodd again. She met us at her door and ushered us into the sun porch, which also served as the blind man’s study, a small, many-windowed room with half-drawn shades. The walls were lined with shelves holding a helter-skelter collection of books, papers, folders, memorabilia. Over drinks, we learned that Mr. Dodd was, in fact, Professor Dodd, and had taught in a college in the northern part of New England before retiring. Choosing my moment, I inquired when we might speak with Miss Penrose about the house. Professor Dodd said there was no need; he had been authorized to make the sale in the event we found the property satisfactory. He would name a price and that would be it; there would be no dickering. I asked what that price might be, scarcely suppressing a look of astonishment when he mentioned a figure well under what we were prepared to pay.
We asked about available schools and doctors. Mrs. Dodd shook her head. The village could not afford its own doctor; the nearest one was in Saxony, on the far side of the river; he came in emergencies. Aside from him, the Widow Fortune, a sort of midwife, homeopath, and veterinarian combined, was all Cornwall Coombe had. Legal matters were usually handled by a lawyer in Ledyardtown. Though there was a school of sorts, most of the farm children didn’t go beyond the eighth grade. For those who wanted to attend, there was a high school over in Saxony, but hardly anyone from Cornwall Coombe, except the paperboy, went there. Learning was scant in the village. I looked at Beth; this was something we hadn’t foreseen. No doctor, no school; both were necessary.
There was, however, Mrs. Dodd suggested, a good place over in Ledyardtown, the Greenfarms School, which had a fine reputation. Many parents in the neighboring towns who desired better education for their children sent them there. No bus, though; Beth would have to drive. Car pool? No, none of the village children attended Greenfarms. If we cared to, Mrs. Dodd would take us over after lunch. I asked Mr. Dodd if we would encounter difficulty finding workmen to do the renovation; he mentioned a Bill Johnson, who lived out on the turnpike, and said this man could probably give us a more than satisfactory job. Mrs. Dodd offered a bite of lunch with them, but we declined tactfully. She suggested the Yankee Clipper, also out on the turnpike, or if something light would do, there was the Rocking Horse Tavern in the village. We chose the latter, finished our drinks, and when Mrs. Dodd brought her husband’s lunch on a tray, with the food carefully cut up for him, we left, asking if we might have a few hours to discuss the situation. Mr. Dodd said to take all the time we needed, the house would still be there.
Crossing the lawn, I heard again the voice reading from a book:
We parked beside the Common, then paused to admire the wooden rocking horse over the doorway of the tavern, a polychromed figure with gilded mane and tail. Inside, the air was thick with pipe smoke and talk of corn among the farmers gathered around the bar; several eyed us with curiosity as we found a table in the back and ordered beers and steak sandwiches, and began exchanging ideas about the house. Beth laughed when I told her about having misunderstood Mrs. Dodd’s comment about the bacchante room, and said it cried for mulberry walls, and could we have a hunter-green sofa? She remembered there was a Victorian sideboard in storage we could hide the TV in.
Some others came in, an older man and five younger ones, and they also were stared at as they heaved past the bar with heavy-booted tread and took a table in the corner. While the men at the bar talked corn, these talked tobacco, a burly, almost ruffian-looking gang, obviously a family. The older one, an angry, bristly man, we decided must be the father.
After lunch, as we waited for Mrs. Dodd, we stood outside the tavern and had a look around the Common. This large central area of the village was more than an eighth of a mile long, oval in shape, encircled by a road which began at the north end where Main Street left off. On the west side were a Grange hall, a firehouse, and a grocery; then the post office, an ancient squat, oddly shaped building of wood and stone, with a large, lopsided chimney. Next door was the Gwydeon Penrose House, then the drugstore, a barbershop, and more houses. Our side began with the tavern; next to it a building apparently combining the facilities of town hall and library; another ancient clapboarded dwelling, now converted into a bank, with Ye Beauty Shoppe upstairs; more houses; and the church, directly opposite the post office.
People were taking their Sunday ease along the walks, looking in the shop windows or forming little knots of conversation, while their offspring played on the Common where the sheep bleated as dogs without leashes ran among them.
What cars were parked along the curbing seemed of Eisenhower vintage, their wheels and fenders still muddy from the winter. A wagon creaked by, a stolid farmer holding the reins. He pulled up, got down, and went into the tavern we had just quit, sliding a look at us as he passed. I thought how wonderful to hear horses’ hoofs, the sort of sound one expected in such a place.
Taking Beth’s arm, I walked with her in the direction of the church. An old man sat on the top step near the vestibule doorway, his chair tilted back, his lap filled with knitting as his gnarled hands plied large wooden needles.
