And Life Is Better

Ann rattled the buttons in the little box, poking her forefinger among them to find one to match those still attached to her husband’s shirt. She shifted slightly in the low chair by the fireplace. The small of her back ached, the two days just past having tied knots along that part of her spine. Tonight things seemed tranquil; dinner had gone off with scarcely a raised eyebrow from Mother; Peter, Ann’s husband, had told a very funny story about crossed telephone wires; and Wilfreda had not once teased Ben.

Ann found the button, hung it on the tip of her needle, and looked about the room. Surely she was mature enough now to escape the half-childish feeling of apprehension her mother’s presence set up, almost like a low fever distorting everything. Just a hangover from the days before Ann went away to school and college, when she longed to please her beautiful and gifted mother and so often clumsily said or did the wrong thing.

Ann looked first at her mother, sitting opposite her in the blue wing chair, her slender hands moving in quick, accurate dips over the richly hued petit point. Her mother, as if she had awaited Ann’s attention, let her head, the blue-white curls shining in the light, droop lower over her work and sighed.

“That’s such close work, Mother,” said Ann. “Don’t you want to swap with me?”

Mrs. Reed lifted her long lashes; her eyes were so dark they seemed all pupil. “I can’t sit still unless I have something to work on, but it must have beauty.”

“No slurs on my shirt,” drawled Peter from behind his magazine. “If you knew how scarce shirts are, you’d think that one was a thing of beauty.” Smoke from his pipe made a quick cloud around him.

Ann could see the part in his brown hair and the high V of temple deepen in color, but he wouldn’t look up to catch her entreaty. He hadn’t said a word when her mother had settled into his favorite chair with a plaintive, “You don’t mind, Peter? I had a slight headache last night—that lamp near the davenport isn’t strong enough for my work.” This was the first winter since the beginning of the war that Peter had really been at home, instead of commuting between Washington and New York on essential telephone business, and sitting in his own chair was still a conscious pleasure. When Mrs. Reed’s letter had come, announcing her departure from the sanitarium, where she had spent almost two years since the shock of Father’s death had pushed her into a serious breakdown, and suggesting a little visit in her daughter’s home—“You’re all I have now, Ann. Of course, the children may be too much for me, but I’ll make the effort”—Peter had said, “Perhaps we should dispose of the children.” Ann had cried. Peter had given her a hearty hug and shake. “Forget it. I’ll be patient as Job. How long will she stay, do you think? Too bad she couldn’t have made it while I was running the war. Still, I’d rather be on hand as a sort of shock absorber.”

* * *

Peter had never forgotten that Mrs. Reed hadn’t liked the marriage. She’d said he was too old, too insensitive for her only child. Ann’s father had said, “He seems a fine chap, just the sort for you.” Ann, with the degree of independence her years in school and college had developed (years her father had insisted on) had waited until her mother recovered from some mysterious illness, and then had married Peter. Oh, he was just the sort for her! She wished he could like her mother better. After all, Mother was a genius—just look at the exquisite poetry she had written—and you had to admit that a genius is different from ordinary people. She deserved more leeway. At sixty she was still beautiful, with a slender, erect body, a kind of bloom on her skin, and those dark, expressive eyes. Only in sunlight did the lines radiating from the carefully tinted lips show the initial etching of age. No wonder she had collapsed when Father died. He had always shielded her completely.

Now Mother ignored Peter’s remark, except for a glance at Ann, a glance that asked, “Did you hear that? You see.”

Ann looked down at the hearth, where Wilfreda lay on her stomach, one arm around Taffy, the Irish terrier, the other hand turning pages of a schoolbook, her feet wriggling, denting the broadloom.

“Where’s the cat?” Ann asked her.

“I don’t know,” Wilfreda said. “Outdoors, I guess.” She rolled over on Taffy; Taffy yelped, and Mrs. Reed gave a startled cry. “Gosh, what a baby you are, Taffy! Now I got my homework done, can I turn on the radio?”

“Not tonight, darling.”

“Aw, Mum! It’s ‘This Is Your F. B. I.’ Ben’s got his going, but he won’t let me in, and anyway he just has that old Q X R music all the time.” She cocked her head, listening; Ann heard, too, the muted sound of a recorded symphony.

“But Ben’s studying. He studies to music. You take Taffy out for his night run.” Taffy yelped again, this time with delight, and Mrs. Reed murmured, “Must you scream so?”

Wilfreda opened her mouth and shut it again as Ann gave her a push from behind. The little girl looked at her mother, freckles golden over her nose, an amusing grimness in her face exactly like her father’s expression. All she said was, “Okeydokey.”

* * *

Wilfreda left ajar the French door leading to the terrace. Wilfreda’s bursts of action usually left doors ajar, thought Ann. But the air that entered was soft; it smelled golden, rich with the odors of the prolonged warmth this autumn. A moment later Ann was sorry the child had not closed the door, as Mrs. Reed spoke incisively.

“That child must be a foundling! She can’t be my grandchild. Now, Ben—he’s all mine.”

“Both children are related to me, you know,” said Peter. Again he did not lift his head from his reading; but this time a vein grew prominent on his temple.

“I feel a draft; it’s chilling my ankles,” complained Mrs. Reed, stretching toward the fire her gold-brocade slippers, the jeweled heels sparkling, rose-pink nails shining through the nylon hose, slender, graceful ankles gleaming from the folds of the chartreuse satin slacks.

Ann glanced at Peter, who settled lower in his chair. Before she had to ask him or, still worse in her mother’s eyes, shut the door herself, Wilfreda rushed in, out of breath, Taffy leaping at her knees and Boots, the cat, following in sedate dignity.

“Please close the door,” Ann said, “and don’t let Taffy go crazy in here.”

Wilfreda shut the door and flung herself down beside her father, laughing, straddling the arm of his chair, pushing her head down to share the picture at which he was looking. Taffy stood up, his forepaws braced on her leg, and she shut her fingers around his square muzzle to hush him. He broke away, bounced across the room and up the stairs, his toenails noisy, as he caught the cue that Ben had finished his work and was coming down. Boots, with the self-possession of most cats, lay placidly on the hearth.

“Taffy always hears Ben open his door before I do,” said Ann.

“He knows when the radio stops,” said Wilfreda. Her father had drawn her into the chair beside him, one arm around her, and her small face shone with contentment. “Gee, but it’s super to have you home ’most every night,” she said. “Lookit that picture. Where’s the steer going?”

Ben stopped in the entrance from the hall, and Ann smiled at him. He didn’t see her; he was staring at his father and sister, a queer, strained look on his thin face. His dark eyes, like his grandmother’s, with long lashes, seemed too large for the rest of his face. He had lost some of his child look lately, but he had as yet not grown into anything definite. Ann couldn’t see the kind of man he would become. His head was fine, high-domed, with dark hair neatly brushed.

Ann tried to shake off the sharp stab of deepened apprehension at the look on his face. How long would it take for Ben to accept his father’s full presence? How long before he stopped resenting the free flow of affection between Wilfreda and her father? The years while Peter had been so seldom at home had not exactly alienated the boy from his father. In secret Ben worshiped him, absent or at home; but he fought against him. Peter was patient enough, but he saw no reason to hide his irritation at the boy’s shyness, or his dislike of his fears, his odd little ways. Worst of all, Ann thought, was the tacit inclusion of Ann in those fears and ways, as if she had failed in her job of mother. Like last Monday, when Ben came in from school crying because a gang of tough, older boys had waylaid the little fellows and thrown rocks at them. The next morning Ben couldn’t eat his breakfast, he so dreaded the trip to school and home again. When Peter ordered him to eat, he tried, but became ill immediately. Even then, Peter didn’t approve when Ann promised to walk toward school that afternoon to meet Ben.

“Father thinks I just make up that my stomach is sick,” Ben whispered.

“He just wants you to stand up to things, darling,” Ann explained. “You don’t want your stomach running your life, do you?”

All this in a flash through Ann’s mind before Ben turned his eyes from his father and bent to pat Taffy.

* * *

“Where’s the steer going?” repeated Wilfreda. “Doesn’t he want to walk up that gangplank?”

“Probably not,” said Peter. “It’s a good photograph, isn’t it? It’s the old steer’s last walk, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” shrieked Wilfreda, who had been reading the caption. “He’s going to have his throat cut.” She drew a finger under her chin and made a loud noise.

Mrs. Reed screamed faintly, and Ben stalked across the room to stare at the picture, his shoulders hunched, his elbows tight against his sides, skinny even in the bulky gray sweat shirt he wore.

“How can you be so cruel?” Mrs. Reed jumped to her feet, the embroidered panels of the Mandarin coat she wore as a tunic crackling. “Allowing your children to dwell on such barbarous things!” She, too, joined the group, peered at the opened magazine. “Oh, why do they allow such pictures?”

“It’s on the sentimental side, of course,” said Peter drily. “As a photograph, it’s good. Swell light and shadow, good composition.”

“Darling little Ben, don’t torture yourself staring at it.” Mrs. Reed threw an arm around Ben and pulled him away.

“Don’t be such a baby, Ben,” said Wilfreda.

Ann laid aside her workbasket. “Pipe down, Wilfreda. You’ve said enough. You scoot upstairs to bed.”

Mrs. Reed took her stand in front of Peter, her black eyes furious, her foot tapping, her arm tight around Ben’s squirms. “I demand an answer! How can you be so brutal? Look at your poor son!”

“Mother, please!” Ann saw Peter’s set jaw, his deepened flush. “After all, Ben knows meat doesn’t grow on trees.”

“Ann, you know as well as I do—” Mrs. Reed’s musical voice sounded its full diapason, vox-angelica effect—“that a sensitive person can’t stand the horrible things in the world. Have you been so changed that you refuse to protect your child? Oh, I can’t breathe in this room!” She swept away, the dignity of her exit marred by Boots’ scramble for a ball of wool she dropped as she went.

“Wilfreda, you heard what I said,” Ann admonished.

“But Daddy promised to sing me his new song,” protested Wilfreda.

“You’ve spoiled that. Go on!”

Wilfreda glanced at her father, but he ignored her, watching Ann. Reluctantly the child started, clomping slowly on each step to prolong her departure.

“I’m not going to be sick,” said Ben. “Only—” his voice shrilled—“how would you like it if you were that steer?”

“If I were, perhaps I shouldn’t mind.” Peter slapped the magazine shut and tossed it aside. He held out a hand to Ben, saw the boy flinch toward Ann, and pushed himself erect. He looked tired, not threatening at all, as he eyed them. “The photograph is sentimental, as I said, and so are you. You don’t have to visit a slaughterhouse, but why the devil can’t you face the fact of one? What an evening this has been! Never a dull moment. Good-night.” Taffy padded silently behind him to the foot of the stairs, his head cocked, his tail jerking his placating wags. Then he padded back and lay down in front of the fire, nose between his paws.

“Poor Taffy,” said Ann. “He gets more upset than folks, doesn’t he?”

Ben was about to answer, when Ann heard her name in a wail as vibrant as a violin string.

“I guess maybe Grandma’s sick,” said Ben, worried.

“She just wants something,” said Ann. “Look, Benjie, you put on the night latch and turn off the lights for me. Then come to bed.”

Ann ran upstairs, panic circling like bat wings. She could remember her father’s words, strong, reassuring: “Don’t get so frightened, Ann. Your mother’s just nervous. Her heart is a perfectly good ticker.”

* * *

An hour later Ann rose, slow-motion, inch by inch, from the chair beside her mother’s bed. This time the eyelids stayed sealed over the dark eyes, the breath came in regular, faint puffs from the relaxed, pale mouth, there was no movement in the face under the glisten of skin oil. Mrs. Reed had been so exhausted she couldn’t lift a hand to undress. Ann had helped her, had bound a net around the white curls, and had sat with her hand in her mother’s until sleep had ended the murmured lament, “He’s taken you away from me. He doesn’t want me here. What shall I do?”

No light showed under Ben’s door. Good. Ann closed the door of the big bedroom softly. Peter was asleep, too. The night light on the head of her own bed showed her covers folded back, her gown and robe laid on the triangle of puff. He had done that as a small sign for her. Ann watched him a moment, distant and stern in his sleep, the planes of his face severe, the animation of his spirit withdrawn. She longed to wake him, to beg him to help her, and she did not dare. “She’s your mother,” he might say. “Ben is your son. You’re not a foolish child, you are a grown woman.”

Ann went quietly to bed, and lying in the dark, hearing the light sound of Peter’s slow, steady breathing—everything about him is in that same secure rhythm, she thought—tried to comfort herself with Peter’s little sign that he was not angry with her. He thinks I’m not wise enough about Ben, though. He wants a son like himself, dauntless, doughty, intrepid. Ben’s such a little fellow; he suffers so easily. I’ve tried to help him; I know how he feels. Oh, how do you help a child suffer without perishing? Perspective. That was one of Peter’s words. Get things in perspective, learn their relative value, take them in your stride. Perhaps it was those distant Dutch forebears of Peter’s who put that iron, that simplicity in his veins. Well, in dilute form, some of them might be in Ben, mightn’t they? Hadn’t she had her hands full enough with Ben and his father, before her mother had turned up? She fell asleep in the slow revolving of her predicament.

* * *

She woke the next morning heavy from a troubled dream. Peter was already in the bathroom. Ann heard the cascade of the shower and Peter’s deep, true voice trying a phrase, a minor fall of notes, over and over. That must be his new song, the one he did not sing last night. A wry taste of the ruined evening lingered under her tongue, but she swallowed it. Peter’s singing meant that he stepped into the new day with no resentment. The least she could do was to meet him with serenity. She stepped into her gayest house coat, yellow with splashes of blue flowers, brushed back her soft dark hair, had a hasty scrub in the children’s bathroom, heard Ben’s radio and knew he was awake, ran in to shake Wilfreda out of sleep, and hurried down to the sunny kitchen to start breakfast.

The intent routine of breakfast for schoolchildren and a husband with a train to make buoyed Ann into well-being. She let Taffy and Boots out at the kitchen door, set the thermostat at seventy, made coffee, sliced bread for toast, started bacon, laid bright cork mats on the kitchen table. The woman-by-the-day came at nine. Mother (just a whiff of thought, this) never got up until noon. Breakfast, for all its necessary brevity, was the best time of the day. Peter, fresh and ruddy from his shave, kissed her and went to pack his briefcase for the day. Ben sidled into the kitchen, his nose puckered, sniffing the temper of the morning. Ann tugged down his sweater in the rear, patted his sleeked-back hair, and sent him out to call Taffy. She drew the part straight on Wilfreda’s head, tied on blue ribbons.

“Mmmm, bacon! I’m glad the war is over.” Wilfreda plumped into her chair to watch the toaster.

Taffy at Ben’s knee, his eyes eloquent as he smelled bacon and toast, Peter saying, “Coffee tastes like another cup,” Wilfreda eating around and around the yolk of her egg until Ann took Wilfreda’s fork and broke the yellow bubble. “’Most time for the bus to start.” Then, a polo coat over her house coat, Ann backed the family car out of the garage, Peter sat beside her on the front seat, the children piled in behind, and they were off, right on the dot.

As Ann drove homeward alone, her buoyancy sagged a little. She would have to do something about Mother. “You mustn’t interfere between Ben and his father.” She practised the sentence in her mind. “Ben is sensitive, but his father—” She changed that firmly. “But I wish him to learn control. He mustn’t grow up unable to face hard things. After all, he’s got to be a man.” Or was that an apology? “You, being a woman, can shrink away.” Why, I minded things, too, thought Ann, surprised. I borrowed my father’s way of taking them. Now I try to borrow Peter’s way.

Stout, competent, noisy Mrs. Kiely from the village was already setting the kitchen to rights. Ann discussed the day’s work with her, lowering her voice by way of suggesting that they mustn’t wake her mother.

“Land, I forgot about the old lady,” said Mrs. Kiely. “She’s a nervy one, ain’t she?”

In more ways than one, thought Ann, as she went about the round of household tasks, her mind still working on talk for her mother. “If you’re to stay with us, you must remember this is Peter’s home. These are his children.”

“Where can I go? I haven’t money enough to stay longer with Doctor Williker. They were so kind to me, so sympathetic. But your father didn’t leave me enough.” Ann could hear her mother’s plaintive voice.

Well, where could she go? A hotel? Not in New York, with a five-day limit even if you found a corner. South? Money, again. Ann didn’t know how far the two sanitarium years had eaten into Mother’s capital. She didn’t, as a matter of fact, know anything about her mother’s finances. Mother was pretty cagey. All Ann did know was that Father had left everything to Mother, and that he’d been wise about the lawyer he’d appointed as adviser and executor. Ann realized, with another small shock of surprise, that she would not know, ever, how far her mother’s complaints about diminished funds had truth. Not that her mother lied, exactly, say rather that she worked her own petit point over facts.

* * *

When Mrs. Reed appeared for lunch, she was in fine feather. She did not permit anyone to see her until she had completed her rites of scented bath, facial, setting her curls, matching her earrings and bracelets and sandals to the robe she had selected for luncheon. Breakfast she omitted, as the pleasantest way to avoid what she called middle-aged dumpiness. Today she wore hyacinth blue, an old gown her husband had bought her in Florence on one of their bygone springs in Italy. She felt much better, she said, and her dark eyes were shrewd, testing Ann’s mood. She might even think of trying to write again. She praised the omelet Mrs. Kiely brought on the painted trays, and the salad.

In the afternoon Ann drove her mother to the neighboring town for shopping and then took a long way home around the lakes and through the woods, soft and glowing with the last phase of fall coloring. Her mother was a charming and gay companion, telling Ann small incidents from the past, delicate stories of encounters in Cairo, in Paris, in Vienna, in India, for once recalling Ann’s father without tragedy. What a time they had had, thought Ann. Oh, I know she’s trying to seduce me, to win me over to her side, in the conflict against my Peter; but today, if she for a while is happier, how can I attack her?

When they drove into the yard in the brief twilight of the October afternoon, the lights of the house shone golden from the windows, the lights of the car struck the doorway, showing Wilfreda crouched on the step, Taffy pinned between her knees. They leaped together for the car. Ann trod on the brake, jerking her mother forward with the abrupt stop. “Catch Taffy!” she called, and waited until she saw the brown frenzy fighting against Wilfreda’s grasp.

“Careless child,” said Mrs. Reed. “Why, I might have been hurt, lunging forward like that.”

“They’re just glad I’m home,” said Ann, driving into the garage. As she stepped out of the car, Taffy flew at her knees and Wilfreda butted at her with her head.

“Where were you, Mother? It’s so late! You weren’t here when I got home, and Ben’s mad at me, he won’t let me in the workshop, and the boys laughed at me, and—”

Ann kissed her, laughing. “We just took a drive. You’ll have to make it up to Ben for last night. Here, take my shopping bag to Mrs. Kiely.”

* * *

Ann stopped at the door of the playroom, now Ben’s workshop, with benches for tools and projects. He looked up, scowling under his tangle of forelocks, and shook the hair out of his eyes, his scowl vanishing. “Hi, Mum!” He was intent, certain, integrated, his best mood, his hands careful around the bit of polished wood he held. The two neighbor boys at the next bench looked up at her with the tentative air youth has at the approach of a parent. “See my Flying Fortress.” Ann went near, looking at his hands, sensitive, delicately knuckled. “Isn’t it swell?”

“See mine, too, Mrs. Fisher, see mine!” the other two sang out.

“Did you get home all right?” asked Ann.

“Oh, sure. We ganged up together, and the other fellows didn’t dare touch us.”

They had ganged up, they were valiant against the tough boys, they had even thrown out Wilfreda.

“Good,” said Ann.

Wilfreda nudged her elbow. “Mum, can’t Ben spare me a piece of wood to whittle?”

“I told you no!” Ben’s exasperation squeaked. “This is special wood, not for girls’ whittling.”

“What about your homework?” Ann whirled Wilfreda away from the door.

“Friday,” said Wilfreda.

“So it is.” Ann had forgotten. Friday was always the best evening of the week, the release from work, from school for the children, from business for Peter. The lovely beginning of the weekend. Sunday night never had the same relaxed charm. It had too much of Monday in its rushing hours. “Why not walk down the hill to meet your father? ’Most time for his train now.” Fridays, since Peter’s discharge from government work, had been the high mark of the living-tide of the whole week. Oh, let nothing happen tonight, let nothing ugly drift in with this high tide! “You have just fifteen minutes more, Ben. Then you must clean up for dinner.”

Ann looked in for a minute at Mrs. Kiely, who jerked an elbow as she rattled pot covers to indicate that she was too busy to bother with words. The delicious odor of roast beef spoke for her. Ann hurried upstairs to change from her suit into a light dress, a short one, so that, if she could manage, she and Peter could take the little walk through the woods after the children had gone to bed. She brushed away the thought of her mother.

Would Peter sing tonight? Last night he had told Wilfreda he had a new song. Friday was the night for singing. Each week since his return he had sung a new song, composed as he rode into the city and back again at night. Sometimes he made up the verses, sometimes he set to his own music a poem the children knew. Ann begged him to write them out, and he had promised that someday he would. She had his musical shorthand, illegible to her, scrawls on the backs of envelopes, on the margins of official letters, mysterious symbols, the clef, a few notes scattered like swallows on telephone wires. He had a talent he used only for pleasure.

Ann dabbed powder carelessly on her nose, smoothed her dark hair (like the curve of a bird’s wing, Peter said) from the straight line of the parting to the soft knot at the nape of her neck. You’re a plain thing, she tossed at her reflection, but it doesn’t matter, not since Peter first looked at you with that cool tenderness. Funny little plain girl, her mother had always said, articulate in her disappointment that her daughter was not beautiful. Would Peter sing, with Mother in the audience? Mother was still in her high mood, Ann knew, from the lightness of her step as she went about the pleasant business of selecting another dazzling costume for the evening, from the little staccato phrases in which she talked to herself as she moved from bath to closet to dressing table.

Then the sound of Peter’s voice, deep, firm, and gay, like the great artery of the house, spoke wordless to Ann’s heart. He had come, everything was fine, she was a fool to let fear haunt her.

* * *

Dinner, one of Mrs. Kiely’s best, moved smoothly from hot, thin soup to lemon meringue pie. Mrs. Reed, in black velvet with rose-point lace tonight, jet and marcasite in long ear-drops trembling against her smooth, curving throat, told of a motor trip through the Dolomites when the brakes of the car failed and only the skill of the chauffeur saved her and Thomas (your grandfather, dear Ben and Wilfreda) from being dashed to death at one of the hairpin curves. Ben held his breath until the car had mastered the Stelvio Pass. Peter matched her with a story of Carolina mountains, where the natives come around curves on the wrong side of the road at high speed. “‘Little Switzerland,’ they called one place.” Coffee on the low table in front of the fire, because it was Friday.

“Did you make us a song, Daddy?” Wilfreda couldn’t wait longer.

“Who could sing after that dinner?”

“You could!” Wilfreda’s eagerness reached the screaming point. “You could, Daddy!” Taffy echoed her scream with a loud bark of his own, and Mrs. Reed dropped her petit point, clutching her hands over it.

“If you break my eardrums,” said Peter, “I can’t ever sing.”

Wilfreda nuzzled her head against his shoulder, her face screwed into a gargoyle of coaxing. “Pretty please,” she said in a lower key. “For a good girl.”

“He told you he’d sing.” Ben’s scorn cracked through his pretense of absorption in a book. “You don’t have to show off like that.”

Wilfreda tossed up her head, but Peter had her by a lock of hair, and his jerk silenced her retort. “Any performer likes to be coaxed, Benjie,” he said, as he rose and strolled to the piano. He settled himself on the bench.

Peter had his head a little sidewise, bent over the keys in the amusing, half-confidential way with which he always offered a new composition. His singing voice had the rich darkness of his speaking voice; the words were round and clear; behind them the simple accompanying melody ran gay as a spring brook. Good, this was one of his songs about the children.

* * *

Peter let the final repeated line drop an octave lower, and his final tinkling notes flashed the lizard out of sight. Wilfreda’s face was squinched tight in pure joy, Ben was sidling involuntarily and irresistibly toward the end of the piano bench, and even Boots got up, stretched lazily, and strolled nearer to the piano.

“You like?” asked Peter.

Ben stood at the end of the bench. “Oh, yes!” Ben tried the last line, his thin voice croaking down to the low, “after all.” “Sing it again, Dad.”

“Gracious,” said Mrs. Reed brightly. “Who writes poetry around here?”

“My father does,” said Wilfreda. “He writes beautiful poetry about us.”

“Words and music by Peter Fisher.” Peter’s fingers gathered a handful of notes and let them fall in mockery. His quick glance at Ben was tentative, restrained. (The way he’d wait, not moving, for a shy colt to take a nibble from an apple he held, thought Ann.) Ben’s lips were moving, Ann could almost see the words they formed; he was saying over the song, he probably could repeat most of it.

“What was it I said, Dad?” he asked. “After ‘makes shoes and purses’?”

Peter sang the lines again. “Now, all together!” he said.

The three of them—Wilfreda loud and off key, Ben pipsqueak but true, and Peter—sang the refrain. Taffy, who had retreated to a corner, lifted his head in a prolonged howl, and Ben laughed so hard he doubled up. Taffy crawled out of the corner, tail down, and decided he’d had enough. He stalked to the French doors, rolling his brown eyes at Ann.

“Do sing it again, Peter.” Ann smiled at him as she opened the doors to let Taffy out. The dog would be all right for a few minutes; she couldn’t ask either of the children to leave now.

“No. I have another number,” said Peter. “Music by Peter Fisher, words—” he paused, lifting his head to look at Mrs. Reed, whose needle flashed in and out of the heart of the rose—“words by Aurelie Sedge.” Mrs. Reed’s hands froze; she opened her dark eyes wide, staring at Peter, startled, suspicious. “A song, from Wind over the Marshes.”

Ann stood as tall as she could stretch, one hand on the cool glass knob of the door. Her heart began to beat violently. Oh, dear, what now? Peter knew, didn’t he, how seriously her mother took her poems? The three slim volumes were there in the place of honor on the bookshelves, between onyx book ends, the dull, lovely tones of the hand-tooled, special leather bindings just where light fell on them. Ann had made sure there was no dust on the pages before her mother came. She hadn’t known Peter had ever looked at them. Oh, Peter, be careful! Darling, don’t! But Peter was playing again, his head averted, his eyes concealed. Soft, minor chords, the very phrase he had tried this morning in the shower.

* * *

The children were quiet, their faces turned to watch their grandmother, Wilfreda openly inquisitive, Ben, with a tremulous glow, a candle in light air, as if his father’s accomplishment were more than he could easily compass. Peter’s warm voice invested the words with intensity and clothed them in compassion.

“It’s lovely, Peter.” Ann wanted to cry. Not because the song was sad, but because Peter had offered her mother a gift. “Isn’t it, Mother?”

The children waited, and Peter tipped up his head, the lines of his face touched with gravity from the mood just past.

Mrs. Reed dabbed her eyes with a corner of the stiff net on which she was working. “Very nice,” said Mrs. Reed. “Thank you very much, Peter. I must confess I am surprised. Did you write the accompaniment yourself?”

“He certainly did,” said Wilfreda, her face quite pink.

“I hadn’t realized.” Mrs. Reed went back to her rose, her hand moving gracefully. (Don’t spoil it, begged Ann silently. Take his gift!) “That particular poem has never been set to music—before. Ethelbert Nevin asked for it, but I refused. I said, ‘The poem is already my song.’”

Peter let his hands fall against the keyboard; the discord jangled through the room. “You can have it back,” he said quietly.

“It was very nice of you, Peter. I didn’t mean that at all. It isn’t as if you composed for the public, of course.”

“No, of course not.” Peter echoed his succinct reply in a repeated phrase of high, light notes. No. Of course not. “Come on, kids, what’ll you have?”

Wilfreda scampered around to sit beside him on his right, Ben still stood at his left. Mrs. Reed, finding no response in Ann’s withdrawn, controlled expression, gathered up her wools, murmured that her head ached a little, and made an unnoted exit from the room.

Ann went slowly to the chair near the fireplace. Perhaps the children had already forgotten, caught into their zest for the old songs. Not Peter, though. She should be grateful to him for shifting the scene so instantly. Three Blind Mice, now, part singing, which Ben and Wilfreda adored. They were safe on the mainland of normal, pleasant Friday custom. Ann couldn’t join them, she was enisled in humiliation for her mother. She was ashamed of her. I couldn’t help it, she thought, why should I feel so to blame? She’s my mother, but I didn’t make her the way she is. Nor did you ever try to stop her being that way. Was that Peter’s voice? His singing was suddenly louder, as if he had lifted his head to look for her.

You can’t change a woman of sixty, not when she’s gone on that way. But what if someday Peter came to an end of his patience? I can’t throw her out, she’s lonely, she’s not strong, she has had a bad time, Father cherished her so.

* * *

“Good-night, ladies, Good-night, ladies.” The final song.

“That was grand,” Ann said. “You’re getting better on the part singing.”

“You ought to try it.” Peter closed the piano lid. “Some of my chorals need a fourth voice.”

“You know I can’t carry a tune.”

“Say, Daddy, why didn’t Gramma like the song you made for her?” (Oh, trust Wilfreda to dig up every old bone!)

“Ask your mother. She knows her better than I do.” Peter’s tone was bland.

Ann laid down her sewing to hide the tremor of her hands. “Perhaps—” she stopped, trying to swallow dryness—“it reminded her of happier days. She wrote it a long time ago. Before Grandfather died.”

Ben went near Ann, anxiety in his eyes. “That wasn’t what she said.”

“What she said was silly,” declared Wilfreda.

“Rather.” Peter was standing behind Ben, his fingers light on the boy’s shoulder. “She has a fancy for the limelight, and I got too far downstage, that’s all. Forget it.”

Ann, isolated in shame, seized on a way to end this, to stop the way the three of them pressed upon her, demanding what she could not give. “Yes, forget it!” she cried. “Let Boots out and take Taffy for his run.” She flung her hand against her mouth, palm outward. “Oh, Benjie! Run find him! I let him out and forgot him!”

Ben bolted for the terrace door. Ann hurried to the hall closet for her coat, for Ben’s windbreaker, for Wilfreda’s sweater.

“I’ll help.” Peter took the flashlight from her. “No use your rushing out, too. He never goes far.”

Ann stood on the terrace, hearing Peter’s loud whistle, Ben’s panicky calls of “Taffy! Come here, Taffy!” and Wilfreda’s imperative, “You bad dog! Come right here!” She could trace their course by the sounds, down to the highway, back to the slope behind the house, around the gardens, down the wood path. She was to blame for this, too. Her mother had snecked everything out of her head. Why, Ann had put Taffy out because he was annoying her mother! She thought once she heard Taffy’s hysterical hunting bark; but the bark was only her longing, she heard nothing except Peter’s whistle, distant now. After a long time she saw the pinprick of the torch, intermittent like a code, down the wood path, and presently the three of them stood on the terrace, silent, the children huddling together, rebellious at Peter’s command.

“We’re not hunting any more until morning,” he said. “Taffy’s not on the place, unless he’s down a woodchuck hole. Lucky it’s not a cold night.” His voice reassured them. “He’s entitled to a little fun, you know,” Peter went on. “He probably scared up a rabbit, and he always expects to catch the next one. Go on to bed and stop worrying, you hear? If he comes home, I’ll let him in and wallop him just a little.”

Wilfreda nodded, hugged Peter violently, and ran up the stairs. Ben stumbled and caught at the banister.

“Ben!” At Peter’s tone the boy turned his head. “Don’t be a fool. Don’t lie awake thinking up all the awful things you can imagine. Stiffen up, will you?” Ben’s eyes were somber, but he said nothing. Ann yearned after him, but Peter, swinging abruptly around, waved her back into the living room.

They listened. Not a word from the children, just the bang of Wilfreda’s door, the slow rattle as Ben turned the knob.

“I’d take the car and hunt if I thought it would do any good,” said Peter reflectively. “Lucky tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll get up early and have a look around.” He poked among the magazines on the long table, fished out the book he had been reading, and walked slowly toward the hall. “I don’t suppose—” he didn’t look at Ann—“some hot milk or something would help Ben go to sleep?”

“No, I don’t think so, really.”

“I see.” For an instant Peter looked around at Ann, his blue eyes brilliant and unrevealing. “Take it easy,” he said. “This is by no means as tragic as you look.” Then he climbed the stairs.

* * *

Ann tiptoed to the terrace. She couldn’t whistle, her lips kept trembling; anyway, a whistle would bring both children tumbling downstairs. If only Taffy would rush at her in one of his funny high moods intended to divert a scolding! She bolted the doors, left a light burning in the hall.

Her mother’s door was shut. She would expect Ann to come in to bid her goodnight, she would speak of Peter’s song, how much it had hurt her, why it had hurt her. She might say, “All this fuss over a dog!” Ann moved cautiously past the door. Not tonight. She couldn’t take it. At Ben’s door she listened, her hand lifting to the knob. Peter wouldn’t like it. She was already so ridden with blame that a little more might not matter. But perhaps Peter’s way was better.

Peter was in bed, propped on pillows, his night light adjusted to shine on the pages of his book, leaving the room in semidarkness. He turned a page, not raising his eyes.

Ann got ready for bed in a kind of suspended emotion, a torpor of weariness. She stood at the open window, thinking she heard Taffy’s whine. A distant motor on the highway climbing a hill. Funny how many sounds a fall night had with just the vibration of Taffy’s whine. If she kept hearing him, what was Ben hearing?

“Peter.” She stopped at the foot of his bed. “Peter!”

“Let’s stow it, shall we?” His face was impenetrable; he had withdrawn beyond her reach. “Too late to have any committee meeting tonight.”

Ann slept and dreamed and woke to find Peter still reading. She slept again and woke, this time to darkness and the sound of quiet sleep-breathing from his bed. She listened intently; she did hear something, a movement. Stealthily she was up, her feet finding her slippers, her hand groping for her bathrobe. No one heard her creep down the dim stairway and across the dark living room, her hands out for obstacles. Her foot brushed something soft, she heard Ben’s gasp, and she was down on the floor beside him, just inside the terrace doors.

Her arms pulled him close. He was icy cold in his pajamas. She made him stand up and half-carried him to the divan, where she sat down, holding him, covering him with the afghan.

After a time the shaking stopped and Ben said, his throat working so that she felt it against her arm. “How’d you know to find me? I put out the light.”

“I must have heard you in my sleep.” In my heart.

“I thought if he did come home, nobody would know to let him in.”

“Yes, Benjie,” said Ann. “You want to get pneumonia?”

“If I go to sleep, I can’t hear him if I don’t lie right by the door.”

“Are you warm now?”

“Yes.”

“If I stay down here, will you go to bed?”

His words stumbled over tears. “Please don’t make me. He might be caught in a trap and waiting for me to get him out.”

Ann managed to dispose of that horror. One by one Ben brought out for her all the images of his despair, and one by one Ann tried to free him from their grip. Finally, with a long sigh, he fell asleep. Not once had he said to her, “If you hadn’t let him out and forgotten him.” Not once. She tucked her feet under a cushion and eased herself down, carefully, not to wake the boy. Stiffen up. But he needs help, Peter. And so do I.

* * *

Hours later she woke in confusion, not knowing where she was. Ben’s head was under her chin; the uncertain, wavering light of early morning made the trees and shrubbery press close to the glass of windows and terrace doors. Then the weight of knowledge settled upon her.

She couldn’t get back to bed now without disturbing Peter. After the first few hours of deep sleep, he woke instantly if Ann as much as sat up to look at her small clock. She might as well stay right where she was and face the music. That was good, face the music. The music had started it all. Funny how you couldn’t see daylight coming—one minute everything was gray, the next minute the sky had luminous clarity, almost whiteness. The trees and bushes were withdrawing now, back to their proper distance. Color crept into the grass, into the oak leaves. She could see the design in the iron chairs and table on the terrace, she could see the terrace flagstones. She could see—

“Benjie!” Her whisper must have gone into his dream, for he made a little grimace, almost a smile. “Benjie!” She shook him. “Look!”

He stood up and then without a word flung himself against the doors, wrenching at the knob, and into the corner of the terrace, where, out of the way of the wind, curled up on the brushy doormat, a small, contrite brown hump, was Taffy. Ben knelt beside him, feeling him all over, and Taffy lapped at his face without one yelp. Ben pried the dog to his feet, he pulled up the tail and head, regular dog-show posture, he got to his own feet and walked slowly around Taffy, who made a similar clockwise revolution, an eye out for coming reproof. Then Ben slapped his haunch and ordered him into the house.

Taffy rolled his brown eyes at Ann until they showed crescent moons of clear white, gave her a propitiatory wag of his stiff tail, and when she said nothing to him, went with wooden-legged gait to the radiator and sank down, dejected nose between extended paws.

“You just better be ashamed of yourself,” said Ben. Taffy’s tail gave one thump. “Running away, staying out all night, not even telling me where you’ve been!”

“Don’t scold him, Benjie.” Ann’s laugh had a hint of hysteria. “He’s punished himself, not daring to tell us he’d come back.”

“He oughta know how bad I felt!” Ben pushed the fat hassock across the rug and sat down beside Taffy, his hand pulling at the terrier’s velvet ear.

“Look, Benjie, all those awful things you thought up—not one of them was true, was it? The swamp and the lake, and here he is, bone dry.”

“Um-m.” Ben jackknifed forward, his head down against the dog’s back. “This time they weren’t true.”

“You might remember that the next time you start worrying.”

Ben wriggled his rear end; his pajama jacket had crept halfway up his back, the thin white flesh, the fine knobs along the spine were suddenly pitiful, vulnerable.

“It’s just as easy to imagine good things, if you try,” insisted Ann.

“My mind won’t let me,” said Ben wearily.

“Who’s boss, you or your mind?” Ann jumped as Peter came downstairs so fast he seemed to make it in one stride.

* * *

“What goes on?” Peter called from the doorway. “Oh!”

“Don’t scold him, please, Father.” Ben sat up straight, his face crimson. “He’s really repensive.”

Peter looked them over, boy, dog, Ann, and the telltale disordered divan, but all he said was, “Saves me an early-morning expedition.” Then he went back upstairs.

“You’d better crawl into bed for a while,” said Ann.

Ben didn’t want to. His pinched nostrils and mouth had the look of nausea. Ann brought him a cupful of hot water and soda and watched him sip part of it. “You must go and dress if you won’t try to sleep,” she said.

“Awright.” Ben stood up. “How about it, ol’ boy?” he asked crisply, and Taffy leaped to his feet. Boy and dog raced to the stairs and up. Ann heard Ben burst open his sister’s door. “Look who’s here! Look!”

“Go way!” yelled Wilfreda. “I’m sleeping.”

“But Taffy’s back.”

“I knew he’d come back. Daddy said he would.”

Ben slammed the door hard, and then, perhaps remembering his grandmother, shut his own door more gently.

If he had disturbed Mother! Waking her early would be bound to wreck the day for her. One thing about Benjie, the perilous seesaw of his moods touched the sky as well as the black depth of the chasm. “Hold them cheap may who ne’er hung there.” Climbing the stairs, Ann thought that morning had brought light but not enough for the rest of her problem.

Peter came down to breakfast in his work garb—plaid flannel shirt and baggy tweed trousers. He hid himself behind the morning paper, without a word about boy or dog or Mrs. Reed, just a brief, “Fine day for wood chopping.” Ben drank most of his glass of milk and part of his orange juice; he nibbled at dry toast and, unobserved, he hoped, held his plate down between his knees for the moment Taffy needed to lap up the poached egg. He gave a spasmodic jump when, an instant later, Peter spoke to him.

“How about it, Ben? I need a hand on the other end of the saw. After I get the tree down.”

“I promised the fellows to practise with ’em this morning.” Ben squirmed. “Our team’s gotta lick the eighth graders next week.” He filled his cheeks with air, looking like a greedy chipmunk. “I could tell ’em you need a hand. I guess they’d see it was important.”

“Practise an hour and then show up. I’ll get the tree down and bushed. I’m going to tackle that oak, you know, the one where the big branch broke off last week.”

Ben looked translucent, his delight shining through his pale skin. Ann thought, he’s crazy about his father, really; he wants Peter to approve him, he’s afraid of his displeasure.

“Right!” Ben leaped up, Taffy leaped up. Ann caught the cream pitcher just in time.

“Don’t get your face bashed today,” warned Ann, and bit her lip at Peter’s frown. When Ben and Taffy had cleared the front hall, Ann explained, trying not to sound apologetic. “He did get hit with the football a while ago.”

“Why remind him, if he has spunk enough to try it again?”

* * *

Wilfreda came skipping through the dining room. Had she heard? Peter’s voice had been quiet, not harsh, but his reproof measured the distance between him and Ann. Wilfreda held her face up for Ann’s morning kiss. She was like a drowsy kitten, her eyelids faintly swollen with sleep. She had kitten claws, too, sheathed this morning. She laid an arm around Peter’s neck, rubbed her cheek against his, giggling because he tickled.

“I won’t shave Saturday morning, not even for my best girl.” Peter lifted his cup of coffee. “Don’t you joggle me!”

Wilfreda went off with him to be admiring spectator. Ann sat at the table. After a moment down went her head on her crossed arms. What was she going to do about everything, about anything? Presently she stood up. Any minute now Mrs. Kiely would turn up. Ann must make out her shopping list, get into some clothes, drive to market before the Saturday housewives ganged into the shops with their husbands’ pay checks and their week’s orders. Get on the treadmill, no matter how she felt. Feed them, run the house, try to have wisdom enough—My heavens, thought Ann, what a wallow I’m having to myself! I just feel so sorry for Ann Fisher I can’t bear it!

Just for that she dressed in her gayest green slacks and red jacket. She stood in front of the mirror to put on her largest imitation-jade earrings. She plowed through hatboxes to find a red beret, and matched lipstick to it. Well, farmer in the dell, you’re looking very well. Very swell.

Mrs. Kiely was banging around in her attack on the breakfast dishes. Now, if Ann could just slide past her mother’s door—The door stood open; the better to eat you, my dear. “Ann, are you there, dearest? Could you spare me just a moment?”

The Venetian blinds were down, not a crack of light from the windows, the lovely small rose-quartz lamp with parchment shade on the table threw a pool of soft light over the bed. Mrs. Reed lay back on many pastel-hued small pillows, her lashes feathering her cheeks.

“I can’t lift my head this morning,” she said faintly.

Ann went slowly to stand beside the bed. Her mother had lifted her head far enough to do a good job on make-up and to brush her white curls, Ann noted.

* * *

“Sit down, Ann. There are things I must say.”

“How about a cup of hot tea? Or a glass of pineapple juice?”

“No, thank you.” Mrs. Reed shivered. “I couldn’t stand a thing. Do sit down, you trouble me, fidgeting that way.” She opened her eyes, dark with reproach. “Composure, that’s what you need.”

“It’s Saturday morning, Mother, and I must compose my shopping list.”

“But I must speak with you.”

Ann resigned the slight advantage standing gave her and sat down, holding herself erect, her hands interlaced.

“I’ve had a dreadful night, Ann. No one can realize—If Peter had asked my permission, as he must know he should have done, I could have prevented it all.” She went on fluently, ignoring Ann’s attempt to explain. “He’s undone all the doctors have built up, he’s brought back all my intolerable grief. That song was for your father. I haven’t allowed myself to live through that time. The song plunged me headlong into all I have lost. You would understand if you were still my sweet little Ann. But from the moment that man met you he has worked to alienate you from me. Oh, I see far more than you think! As a mother, I can’t stand silently by and see such change. You are growing into a hard, cold woman, at times almost a coarse woman; you are destroying your old fineness and tenderness. I must speak of this before it is too late. You knew how I was suffering last night. Why, I might have died here alone and you wouldn’t have come near me!”

“I was downstairs with Ben. Ben had a bad night, too. Taffy ran away, and Ben couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s another thing I must speak of. Ben.” Mrs. Reed sat higher among her pillows. “He is most unhappy, his father is constantly critical of him. It’s a dreadful atmosphere for a sensitive boy like Ben. If only I could take him away with me!”

Ann was so cold that her bones felt brittle; in the hollow of her chest was nothing but a great lump of ice. “Peter loves his son,” she said quietly. “And Ben adores his father. Peter is a good man, in ways he is a great man, he makes other men seem very small and common. You were rude to him last night. He offered you a gift and you threw it in his face.”

Mrs. Reed flounced upright, the fingers of one hand spread over her breast. Her eyes had a quick wariness, and she bent her lips into a cajoling smile. “I told you I was suffering so much I really haven’t any idea what I said. My only instinct was to run away and hide. I’ll tell you, Ann, what I’ll do! I’ll make it up to Peter. He must send the song to Schirmer. I’ll allow him to use the poem. Schirmer will remember how well Sea-Wings and The Stringed Lute sold. Years ago when you were still a child. Schumann-Heink used them often in her concerts. I still get royalties. I’ll let Peter share them with me. Where is Peter? Tell him I want to see him.”

Ann rose, steadying herself with a hand on the back of the chair, holding a fist against her mouth until the impulse to burst into wild laughter died.

* * *

“He’ll be pleased, won’t he?” her mother said.

“Peter gave you back the poem last night, remember?”

“But he must have the music written down. Don’t say anything to him, then. Get me the score. I’ll send it myself.”

“No. Peter never writes out the songs. Nor would he write it for you, ever. I would die before I asked him, too!”

“But I need the money, Ann! I’m frightened when I see how what your father left is melting away. Surely if Peter is all you say, he would do that little thing for me.” Tears filled her eyes. Ann could hear her father’s voice: “Your mother can even weep beautifully.” Mrs. Reed dropped back against the pillows. “You know I can’t stand the winter in this climate. I must have warmth and sunlight. There’s that wonderful inn at Pass Christian, near New Orleans—your father and I spent a winter there before the war interfered with most pleasant things. Very relaxing there on the Gulf, just what my nerves demand. They’re holding a suite for me, but it’s expensive, very. After all the doctors’ bills—Don’t you see how frightening it is?”

Ann turned away. Then she said, “If you need money, Peter might help. He is generous. Have you really spent all the capital Father left?”

“Oh, I can manage for the little while I have left. You know how small a return you get now on anything safe. But never mind. Only a little of my long journey left.” Her sigh was long and lingering. “I’d like the song published, though. It’s been so long since I’ve had anything before the public, there’d be a certain stimulus, thinking of people singing my poem.”

“Some things are irrevocable, and last night is one of them. When are you going South?” Ann moved to one of the windows. By putting an eye close to the blinds she could see outdoors, the color and shape of trees and grass and stones intensified as if the slit were the lens of a telescope. She could see Peter! He stood in the entrance to the garage, hands shielding the match he held to his pipe; he had it lighted; he picked up the long saw from its hook; the sunlight flashed on the bright steel like a shout, a great cry. The angle of his head, the way it rode his shoulders leaped like flame in Ann, melting her bitter, frozen blood.

“I am going at once,” said Mrs. Reed. “I simply can’t live if I stay here. You misunderstand everything I say. You misinterpret everything I try to do. If I stay, I shall break down again. Someday, when it is too late, you may feel remorse for what you have done to a lonely woman, your mother.”

“I’ll ask Peter and Mrs. Kiely to bring up your trunks,” said Ann.

“Not a word of regret? Not a shred of tenderness?”

Ann went quickly to the side of her mother’s bed. “Look, Mother.” She spoke without a quaver. “You know I’m no brute. You know that you’re a Circe, an enchantress. But the old spell is broken. I’ve grown up at last. I am sorry for you—I know how lonely you are. Father made you his life work, really. I can’t, I know now he always hoped I wouldn’t. He pushed me out so I’d have a chance.” Ann bent to kiss her mother, and Mrs. Reed turned her head away. “You can be sweet. You’ll have all the guests at the inn marveling at you, waiting on you, some of those nice elderly Southern colonels, you know! Now I must go, it’s late for marketing. Bye.”

* * *

As she backed the car out of the garage, Ann heard the rumbling, swishing crash of the oak; as she drove along the road, she had a glimpse of Peter, standing with his feet well apart, hands braced on the ax helve, his face contemplative, satisfied. Resting a moment and figuring the next move. Wilfreda was clambering, monkeylike, through the branches. No sign of Ben or Taffy. Perhaps Ben’s hour wasn’t up yet. The scene in her mother’s room had destroyed time; it had seemed a lifetime.

“Cold as, cold as infinity,” thought Ann, and drove faster, hearing Peter’s phrase as he ended the song. “Someday I’ll tell him about Schirmer.” Or would she? Queer that even now, after all that had happened, after all Peter knew of her mother, Ann should feel a sharp twinge of betrayal when she considered telling Peter all her mother had said. Ah, there was Ben, pedaling along on his bicycle, and Taffy, bursting into loud barks when he saw the family car. Ann drove slowly until they were safely past; she shut her lips firmly against the desire to tell Ben not to push himself too hard on the hills.

Because Mother had delayed her, Ann found the markets crowded. Exciting to see the shelves full of bright cans and jars, to see the bins pyramided with the reds and yellows of fruit, with the greens and dusty browns of vegetables. Trundling the metal cart with its two layers of wire baskets, wedging among the housewives, in Saturday-morning carelessness, hair bristling with curlers or plastered in pin-curl snails, coats thrown over cotton work dresses.

Ann, selecting what she wished, thought that half the women she saw there were jittery. Combat fatigue on the home front, Peter called it. If it weren’t for Peter, maybe Ann would feel that way, too. She’d had some bad times while he was in Washington. But he wouldn’t listen to her if she began to worry. We’ll weather this, too, he would say. You underestimate us. It’s just another cycle. Peter really believed that right now was the most exciting, most stupendous time to be alive that the old earth had ever known. “Maybe the English felt that way in Queen Elizabeth’s time,” he had said, “but only a small proportion of them. And the Italians in the period of the Renaissance. Only a few of them, artists, nobles. And the glory that was Greece, with slaves holding up the glory.” That belief of Peter’s was a lamp for her feet, a brilliant light, a radiance; it illuminated everything at which Ann looked, words she heard spoken, the ways of her fellow men.

She had lost it recently, since her mother had entered her house. Almost as if her mother stood between Ann and the lamp of Peter’s belief, leaving Ann in the old darkness of apprehension and unsureness. The way I felt when I was a child. Mother had power enough to throw a spell over me, to drag me back to childhood. Now I am a woman.

Ann carried her stuffed paper bags to the car. Unless she hurried now, she would be late for luncheon. Then she drove home, liking the crisp fall noon, the falling leaves like dry little birds in the air, the green of hillsides, almost as green as fresh grass. Perhaps the prolonged warmth this year had brought new grass up from the old roots. Yesterday she had seen a spray of forsythia in bloom.

At the foot of the hill she stopped the car. She could see the fallen tree, the great pile of branches lopped from the trunk, but no Peter, no children. Usually Peter had to be dragged in from his work. Ann stared, and a nameless fear punctured her mood of elation, so that all brightness ran out. One chunk had been sawed from the trunk, the smooth, blanched surface caught sunlight, the black triangle of the wedge pierced the ringed center, the ax and two-handled saw made a crooked cross on the ground. Ann started the car with a stuttering jerk and drove up the hill to the house.

* * *

Mrs. Kiely opened the front door as if she had been waiting for Ann’s arrival. She flung her apron over her head and turned away, her stout shoulders pumping. Wilfreda peered from behind her, eyes red-rimmed, face more chastened than Ann had ever seen it.

“What is it?” Did she scream or whisper, running up the steps? “What?”

Wilfreda grabbed her, burrowing her head into Ann’s stomach. “Daddy!”

Ann thrust Wilfreda aside, pushed past Mrs. Kiely, and ran. “Peter! Where are you?”

“In here.” His voice came from the study, across the hall from the living room. Ann steadied herself at the newel post for an instant. At least he still could speak! She thrust the door open.

He was lying on the long leather couch, his face bleached white as the pillow under his head, white as the great mummy-bandage about his right hand, and Ben was sitting between his father’s feet, one arm wound around one of his father’s ankles. “It’s all right now, Ann. Don’t be frightened. Doc Sautelle came right over—lucky he was home—sewed me together again.”

“He had to take sixteen stitches,” said Ben, and Ann, even through her shocked horror, heard pride, not fear, in the boy’s, tone.

“All sewed up, not a finger missing, not a bone scraped. Come here, girl!”

Ann sat down beside him, her fingers trembling over the bandage. “What happened? Oh, my dear! Your precious hand!”

“It won’t be much use for a while, but Doc thinks he can keep it limber for me.”

“But what happened?”

“Just an accident,” said Peter.

“I hit him,” said Ben. “With the ax.” He put a grubby hand over his mouth, but his eyes did not leave his father’s face. “My fault, really,” said Peter. “I hadn’t taken the sledge hammer along. I wanted to save time. I thought we’d drive just that one wedge with the ax.”

“You were holding it?”

“Ben had got a couple of good clips at it, and then Mrs. Kiely dropped a couple of pots or something and startled him.”

“Go on,” said Ann.

“You know, I think Benjie might make a good doctor. He grabbed off his shirt and made a first-rate tourniquet, and he never batted an eye—did you, Ben?”

“I didn’t like it,” said Ben.

“Then he got me up to the house, holding my arm up over his head—” Peter waggled the uninjured hand, laid it firmly on Ann’s arm—“mixed me a stiff drink, called up Doc, found out what to do till Doc could get here, and did it. In fact, the one time he might have lost his breakfast with some justification, he swallowed it right back down and got to work.”

Ben arched his thin back and gave Peter’s leg a tighter hug. “I thought I’d just about killed you and I’d better do something. All Sister did was holler and yell.”

“Well, what did Gramma do, and she’s lots older’n me?” asked Wilfreda. “She let out a yell and said, ‘I’m fainting!’”

Peter gave a great roar of laughter. “Lord, I’d forgotten that! I was a little woozy then. She said sympathetically, ‘Just when I wanted my trunk brought up, too!’”

Wilfreda was laughing, too. “And what do you think Ben said to Gramma? When she said she was fainting? He said, ‘Faint away, old gal, and see who catches you!’”

Ann couldn’t restrain her “Ben!”

Peter pressed his hand hard against Ann’s arm, slid it down to her wrist. “Ben was really quite busy,” he said.

“Oh, I know! I’m sorry. Oh, Peter, does it hurt awfully?”

“Not too much. And we learned something, Ben and I. Didn’t we?”

Ann saw the intentness with which Ben looked at his father, the gravity with which he bobbed his head up and down. “You learned the hard way,” said Ann. “A very hard way.”

“Excuse me, Mis’ Fisher, but did you bring any salad greens?” Mrs. Kiely tchked and tchked. “I’m still weak inside me, what with the fright and all.”

“They’re in the car. Wilfreda, go help Mrs. Kiely with the bundles.” Ann put her head down just a moment against Peter, hearing the strong, steady pounding of his heart.

“We could use a little food,” said Peter, his hand brushing her cheek with delicate fingertips. “Couldn’t we, Ben?”

“We sure could,” said Ben stoutly. He stood up, hoisting his lanky corduroy trousers under the belt. “Guess I’ll have to wash.” He rotated his hands, staring at them. “I should think blood would be redder when it dried. Looks like any old dirt.”

Ann stood up, too. “How about a tray, Peter? In here?”

“No. I’ll be okay.”

“Of weariness and fear,” said Ann softly, “I made my Shouting Spear! You should each wear a helmet with a floating plume!”

The End