“Well, as Talbot used to say, the time has come for the drinking to begin,” the old lady said. “If you and your wife would stop long enough to have a cocktail with me, you would be doing me a great favor. That’s what it amounts to.”
Victor got Theresa, who was waiting in the arbor, and brought her to the porch.
“I know how rushed you children always are,” the old lady said. “I know what a kindness it is for you to stop, but Mr. Sauer and I’ve been quite lonely up here this season. Here I sit, hemming curtains for the cook’s room. What a bore!” She held up her sewing and let it fall. “And since you’ve been kind enough to stay for a cocktail, I’m going to ask another favor. I’m going to ask you to mix the cocktails. Agnes, who let you in, usually makes them, and she waters the gin. You’ll find everything in the pantry. Go straight through the dining room.”
Navajo rugs covered the floor of the big living room. The fireplace chimney was made of fieldstone, and fixed to it was, of course, a pair of antlers. At the end of a large and cheerless dining room, Victor found the pantry. The old servant brought him the shaker and the bottles.
“Well, I’m glad you’re staying,” she said. “I knew she was going to ask you. She’s been so lonely this season that I’m worried for her. She’s a lovely person?oh, she’s a lovely person?but she hasn’t been like herself. She begins to drink at about eleven in the morning. Sometimes earlier.” The shaker was a sailing trophy. The heavy silver tray had been presented to Mr. Sauer by his business associates.
When Victor returned to the porch, Theresa was hemming the curtains. “How good it is to taste gin again,” old Mrs. Sauer exclaimed. “I don’t know what Agnes thinks she’s accomplishing by watering the cocktails. She’s a most devoted and useful servant, and I would be helpless without her, but she’s growing old, she’s growing old. I sometimes think she’s lost her mind. She hides the soap chips in the icebox and sleeps at night with a hatchet under her pillow.”
“To what good fortune do we owe this charming visitation?” the old gentleman asked when he joined them. He drew off his gardening gloves and slipped his rose shears into the pocket of his checked coat.
“Isn’t it generous of these children to stop and have a drink with us?” Mrs. Sauer said, when they had been introduced. The old man did not seem surprised at hearing the Mackenzies described as children. “They’ve come from Horsetail Beach and they’re on their way to Quebec.”
“Mrs. Sauer and I have always detested Horsetail Beach,” the old gentleman said. “When do you plan to reach Quebec?”
“Tonight,” Victor said.
“Tonight?” Mrs. Sauer asked.
“I doubt that you can reach Quebec tonight,” the old gentleman said.
“I suppose you can do it,” the old lady said, “the way you children drive, but you’ll be more dead than alive. Stay for dinner. Stay the night.”
“Do stay for dinner,” the old man said.
“You will, won’t you?” Mrs. Sauer said. “I will not take no for an answer! I am old and privileged, and if you say no, I’ll claim to be deaf and pretend not to hear you. And now that you’ve decided to stay, make another round of these delicious cocktails and tell Agnes that you are to have Talbot’s room. Tell her tactfully. She hates guests. Remember that she’s very old.”
Victor carried the sailing trophy back into the house, which, in spite of its many large windows, seemed in the early dark like a cave. “Mrs. Mackenzie and I are staying for dinner and the night,” he told Agnes. “She said that we were to have Talbot’s room.”
“Well, that’s nice. Maybe it will make her happy. She’s had a lot of sorrow in her life. I think it’s affected her mind. I knew she was going to ask you, and I’m glad you can stay. It makes me happy. It’s more dishes to wash and more beds to make, but it’s more?it’s more?”
“It’s more merrier?”
“Oh, that’s it, that’s it.” The old servant shook with laughter. “You remind me a little of Mr. Talbot. He was always making jokes with me when he came out here to mix the cocktails. God have mercy on his soul. It’s hard to realize,” she said sadly.
Walking back through the cave-like living room, Victor could hear Theresa and Mrs. Sauer discussing the night air, and he noticed that the cold air had begun to come down from the mountains. He felt it in the room. There were flowers somewhere in the dark, and the night air had heightened their smell and the smell of the boulders in the chimney, so the room smelled like a cave with flowers in it. “Everyone says that the view looks like Salzburg,” Mrs. Sauer said, “but I’m patriotic and I can’t see that views are improved by such comparisons. They do seem to be improved by good company, however. We used to entertain, but now?”
“Yes, yes,” the old gentleman said, and sighed. He uncorked a bottle of citronella and rubbed his wrists and the back of his neck.
“There!” Theresa said. “The cook’s curtains are done!”
