Harvest Home

next, and the one after that, and so the days of reaping went by in Cornwall Coombe. Everyone knew that Harvest Home was soon at hand.

Since the incident of my assumed profligacy with Tamar Penrose the night of Kate’s asthma attack, I had seen changes in Beth which, naturally enough, I thought stemmed from her wounded pride. And yet they were puzzling. Much of the time she seemed merely preoccupied, as though trying to remember something. Seated in the bacchante room after dinner, I would catch her as her needle paused in midair while she stared off into space. I would hear a murmured word or phrase, as if she were trying by repetition to stamp it indelibly upon her memory. Or she would make a sign, absently; then, when I looked up, she’d smile as if she herself knew she was addled. Her smile, once so quick and bright, had become bland, almost irritating in its complacency.

And in my own complacency I understood, or thought I did, her secret. Thought I understood the precise urgings that were prompting this change, those stirrings that lie at the very core of womanhood.

She was waiting for something.

So I waited with her.

She developed a habit of crossing her arms over her chest and hugging her waist and making little rocking movements, as though in an effort to stave off the wound she imagined I had dealt her.

She gave up reading the paper, seemingly taking no interest in what was going on in the world. I would find the telephone off the hook, and when I asked why, she would say it must have gotten knocked off, or, more truthfully, that she just didn’t feel like talking to anyone that day. She never watched her favorite television programs any more, preferring instead to be with Kate through her slow stages of recovery. She seemed indifferent to whatever suggestions I made for amusing her.

“How about dinner over on the turnpike tonight?” I might say.

She would look blankly at me and reply, “Turnpike?”

“At the Yankee Clipper.”

“Ohh. All right. If you’d like to.”

“I thought you might like to.”

She would shrug as if dinner at the Yankee Clipper were the furthest thing from her mind, then go and call the Widow Fortune to see if she minded coming to stay with Kate.

Though I was certain she had gone off into some impenetrable woman’s haven to lick her wounds, I was equally sure that if I was patient and bided my time, she would return to me and all would be as before.

Sometimes I would reach for her hand and squeeze it and try to express what I was feeling. She would untangle her fingers, and give my cheek a pat.

“But I want you to believe me,” I would say. “I want to know that you believe me.”

“Of course I believe you, Ned.”

But, I thought, extraordinary as she was, she did not.

Though she continued each day going about the village to gather up the newly produced handicrafts-the quilts and bedspreads, the carved figures, the woven things-the ruling passion of her existence, her obsession, had again become Kate. I saw the warning signals, but made no move to interfere. I told myself it was natural enough-a mother’s response when her child has been taken from her, then through some miracle restored. I think if Kate at that time had asked for the moon Beth would have discovered some way to get it for her.

I had been thinking of how to repay the Widow Fortune for what she had done. Money was out of the question-she would never accept it-so I turned my mind to some token of our thanks that she could not refuse, some extravagance she would never indulge herself in. One day, an idea occurred to me.

To fill in some of Kate’s time, the Widow had brought her a needlepoint canvas, which she had taught her how to work, and Beth moved her sewing things from the bacchante room to Kate’s bedroom, where they would talk and stitch together, Kate on her needlepoint, Beth on her quilt. When the Widow came, I could hear the three of them up there, laughing and talking, and suddenly it came to me: the perfect gift for the Widow Fortune.

That night, after the old lady had gone and Kate was asleep, I found Beth seated by our bedroom window staring out at the night sky, at the waxing moon and the bright frosty stars. I thought of the night I had found her sitting in the same chair, after the “experience.”

I pulled up the dressing-table bench and sat beside her in silence. Her head rested comfortably against the chair back, and I saw how beautifully the moonlight caressed the most prominent features of her face, her cheekbones, the line of her upper lip, her brow.

I reached for her hand. “What is it?”

Her look was distant, and the complacent smile played at her mouth. “I was just remembering.”

“That night?”

“Yes. That lovely music. So-different from what we’re used to hearing.”

“But you never saw anything?”

“No. I told you.”

I described again the two people, the corn figure I was sure must have been Justin, and the veiled female figure.

“Sophie naked?” She laughed lightly. “I don’t think so. More likely Tamar-if you saw anybody.”

If I saw anybody… Perhaps she was right; perhaps, with the magic of the moment and the cask of honey mead, I had confused reality and fantasy. Maybe I had been hallucinating. I had read about fly agaric, the mushroom that the Widow Fortune had hunted in Soakes’s Lonesome. Taken internally, its properties were capable of producing singular hallucinogenic effects; it was also capable of making one see and comprehend things with stunning clarity.

After a while, Beth, who had got up and was doing something with her hair, spoke again. “And if you did see her, but she wasn’t supposed to be the Corn Maiden, who was she?”

Who, indeed…

And I felt then that it was not a hallucination, but real; I saw that she was the sphinx and that it had been given to me to attempt to comprehend her identity.

Then, with the harvest almost in, it seemed that summer was gone altogether. While in the fields the farmers hurried to bring in the last of the corn, the trees turned, as if they had been left outdoors too long and had rusted. The maples were the color of flame, the locusts the deep red shades of cordovan, the beeches spread their tops like golden umbrellas, and all of them were shedding their leaves rapidly. Pumpkins were brought in from the fields and set out by roadside stands where apple cider was sold, and the village began preparing for winter. Then, as quickly, the frost disappeared, the weather warmed again, and with Harvest Home approaching the valley enjoyed a magnificent Indian Summer.

On the morning before the husking bee, which would precede the Corn Play, I drove to an appliance store over on the turnpike. When I came out half an hour later, I had purchased a Singer sewing machine, a little pink beauty with about a hundred different attachments only a genius would know how to use. It would be a far cry from the Widow Fortune’s old Fairy Belle with the footworn treadle; and it had an automatic bobbin.

On my way home, I passed Dr. Bonfils’s car, and again my thoughts turned to Gracie Everdeen. I had for some time now been brooding on the fact that suicides often left notes, usually written in a fury of desperation, but sometimes shedding light on the motives behind their actions. I decided to pay a call on Mrs. O’Byrne in Saxony.

I found her hanging a wash on the line. “I thought they did that on Mondays in the country,” I called, getting out. When she had pinned her pillowcase I told her the few additional obscure details I had gleaned about Grace’s death, and that it had been suicide. The shock of the news set her down on the kitchen steps. I hastened to add I did not think it likely that her anger at the girl had in any way driven her to such extreme measures; it must have had something to do with Roger Penrose. Was there possibly-

“A letter!” She got up and hung her clothespin bag on the line, then led me up the steps. “She did write a letter. I found it on her bureau after she’d gone. It was all addressed, and I supposed she’d forgotten to mail it, being upset the way she was. I put a stamp on it and sent it.”

A letter, but it had gone.

“Do you remember who it was addressed to?”

“To her beau, to Roger Penrose. But he never got it. Come along, I’ll show you.” She took me through the kitchen and down into the cellar, where she attacked a pile of cardboard cartons, each of which was crayoned with some identifying legend: “Christmas Ornaments,” “Dick’s Winter Things,” “Grandma’s Kitchenware.” One bore the