Daily Alice and Sophie talking at the stone table in the garden, and he felt like a boy kept indoors, bad or sickly. He yawned nervously, and looked over nearby titles; it didn’t appear that anyone had taken a book from these laden shelves in a long time. There were sets of sermons, volumes of George MacDonald, Andrew Jackson Davis, Swedenborg. There were a couple of yards of the Doctor’s children’s stories, pretty, shoddily bound, with repetitious titles. Some nicely bound classics propped against an anonymous laureled bust. He took down Suetonius, and brought down with it a pamphlet that had been wedged between the volumes. It was old, both dog-eared and foxed, illustrated with pearly photogravure, and titled
He looked up, turning the page. Daily Alice and Sophie were gone; a paper plate leapt from the table and spun balletically to the ground.
And here was a photograph of two people sitting at a stone table, having tea. There was a man who looked like the poet Yeats, in a pale summer suit and spotted tie, his hair full and white, his eyes obscured by the sunlight glinting from his spectacles; and a younger woman in a wide white hat, her dark features shaded by the hat and blurred perhaps by a sudden movement. Behind them was part of this house Smoky sat in, and beside them, reaching up a tiny hand to the woman, who perhaps saw it and moved to take it and then again perhaps not (it was hard to tell), was a figure, personage, a little creature about a foot high in a conical hat and pointed shoes. His broad inhuman features seemed blurred too by sudden movement, and he appeared to hear a pair of gauzy insect wings. The caption read “John Drinkwater and Mrs. Drinkwater (Violet Bramble;) elf. Edgewood, 1912.” Below the picture, the author had this to say:
“Oddest of the turn-of-the-century folly houses may be John Drinkwater’s
“The Drinkwaters assembled around them in those years a group of like-thinking people including artists, aesthetes, and world-weary sensitives. From the beginning the cult had an Anglophile twist, and interested correspondents included the poet Yeats, J. M. Barrie, several well-known illustrators, and the sort of ‘poetic’ personality that was allowed to flourish in that happy twilight before the Great War, and that has disappeared in the harsh light of the present day.
“An interesting sidelight is that these people were able to profit from the general depopulation of the farms in that area at that time. The pentagon of five towns around Edgewood saw the heels of improverished yeoman farmers driven to the City and the West, and the bland faces of poets escaping economic realities who came to take their houses. That all who still remained of this tiny band were ‘conscientious objectors’ at the time of their country’s greatest need is perhaps not surprising; nor is the fact that no trace of their bizarre and fruitless mysteries has survived to this day.
“The house is still lived in by Drinkwater’s heirs. There is reputed to be a genuine folly summer house on the (very extensive) grounds, but the house and grounds are not open to the public at any time.”
Elf?
Doctor Drinkwater’s Advice
So we’re supposed to have a chat,” Dr. Drinkwater said. “Where would you like to sit?” Smoky took a club chair of buttoned leather. Dr. Drinkwater, on the chesterfield, ran his hand over his woolly head, sucked his teeth for a moment, then coughed in an introductory kind of way. Smoky awaited his first question.
“Do you like animals?” he said.
“Well,” Smoky said, “I haven’t known very many. My father liked dogs.” Doctor Drinkwater nodded with a disappointed air. “I always lived in cities, or suburbs. I liked listening to the birds in the morning.” He paused. “I’ve read your stories. I think they’re… very true to life, I imagine.” He smiled what he instantly realized to be a horridly ingratiating smile, but the Doctor didn’t seem to notice. He only sighed deeply.
“I suppose,” he said, “you’re aware of what you’re getting into.”
Now Smoky cleared his throat in introduction. “Well, sir, of course I know I can’t give Alice, well, the splendor she’s used to, at least not for a while. I’m—in research. I’ve had a good education, not really formal, but I’m finding out how to use my, what I know. I might teach.”
“Teach?”
“Classics.”
The doctor had been gazing upward at the high shelves burdened with dark volumes. “Um. This room gives me the willies. Go talk to the boy in the library, Mother says. I never come in here if I can help it. What is it you teach, did you say?”
“Well, I don’t yet. I’m—breaking into it.”
“Can you write? I mean write handwriting? That’s very important for a teacher.”
“Oh, yes. I have a good hand.” Silence. “I’ve got a little money, an inheritance…”
“Oh, money. There’s no worry there. We’re rich.” He grinned at Smoky. “Rich as Croesus.” He leaned back, clutching one flannel knee in his oddly small hands. “My grandfather’s, mostly. He was an architect. And then my own, from the stories. And we’ve had good advice.” He looked at Smoky in a strange, almost pitying way. “That you can always count on having—good advice.” Then, as if he had delivered a piece of it himself, he unfolded his legs, slapped his knees, and got up. “Well. Time I was going. I’ll see you at dinner? Good. Don’t wear yourself out. You’ve got a long day tomorrow.” He spoke this last out the door, so eager was he to go.
The Architecture of Country Houses
He had noticed them, behind glass doors up behind where Doctor Drinkwater had sat on the chesterfield; he got up now on his knees on the sofa, turned the convolute key in its lock, and slid open the door. There they were, six together, Just as the guidebook had said, neatly graduated in thickness. Around them, leaning together or stacked up horizontally, were others, other printings perhaps He took out the slimmest one, an inch or so thick.
The next one he drew out was nearly twice as thick. Fourth edition, it said, Little, Brown, Boston 1898. It