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By Root 5003 0

so that you can wander uninterruptedly and searching for nothing through a place that, even while you dream, seems not to be a house at all but a random construction put forward to answer some need of the sleeping mind. The house had been neglected in Leander’s youth, but he had restored it during his prosperous years at the table-silver company. It was old enough and large enough and had seen enough dark acts to support a ghost but the only room that was haunted was the old water closet at the back of the upstairs hall. Here a primitive engine, made of vitreous china and mahogany, stood by itself. Now and then—sometimes as often as once a day—this contraption would perform its functions independently. There would be the clatter of machinery and the piercing whinny of old valves. Then the roar of waters arriving and the suck of waters departing could be heard in every room of the house. So much for ghosts.

The house is easy enough to describe but how to write a summer’s day in an old garden? Smell the grass, we say. Smell the trees! A flag is draped from the attic windows over the front of the house, leaving the hall in darkness. It is dusk and the family has gathered. Sarah has told them about her journey with Mr. Pincher. Leander has brought the Topaze in to port. Moses has raced his sailboat at the Pocamasset club and is spreading his mainsail on the grass to dry. Coverly has watched the table-silver-company ball game from the barn cupola. Leander is drinking bourbon and the parrot hangs in a cage by the kitchen door. A cloud passes over the low sun, darkening the valley, and they feel a deep and momentary uneasiness as if they apprehended how darkness can fall over the continents of the mind. The wind freshens and then they are all cheered as if this reminded them of their recuperative powers. Malcolm Peavey is bringing his catboat up the river and it is so still that they can hear the sound she makes as she comes about. A carp is cooking in the kitchen, and, as everyone knows, a carp has to be boiled in claret with pickled oysters, anchovies, thyme, marjoram, basil and white onions. All of this can be smelled. But as we see the Wapshots, spread out in their rose garden above the river, listening to the parrot and feeling the balm of those evening winds that, in New England, smell so of maidenly things—of orris root and toilet soap and rented rooms, wet by an open window in a thunder shower; of chamber pots and sorrel soup and roses and gingham and lawn; of choir robes and copies of the New Testament bound in limp morocco and pastures that are for sale, blooming now with rue and fern—as we see the flowers, staked by Leander with broken hockey sticks and mop and broom handles, as we see that the scarecrow in the cornfield wears the red coat of the defunct St. Botolphs Horse Guards and that the blue water of the river below them seems mingled with our history, it would be wrong to say as an architectural photographer once did, after photographing the side door, “It’s just like a scene from J. P. Marquand.” They are not like this—these are country people, and in the center of the gathering sits Aunt Adelaide Forbes, the widow of a schoolteacher. Hear what Aunt Adelaide has to say.

“Yesterday afternoon,” says Aunt Adelaide, “about three o’clock, three or three thirty—when there was enough shade in the garden so’s I wouldn’t get sunstroke, I went out to pull some carrots for my supper. Well, I was pulling carrots and suddenly I pulled this very unusual carrot.” She spread the fingers of her right hand over her breast—her powers of description seemed overtaken, but then they rallied. “Well, I’ve been pulling carrots all my life, but I never seen a carrot like this. It was just growing in an awdinary row of carrots. There wasn’t no rocks or anything to account for it. Well, this carrot looked like—I don’t know how to say it—this carrot was the spit and image of Mr. Forbes’ parts.” Blood rushed to her face but modesty would not halt nor even delay her progress. Sarah Wapshot smiled seraphically at the twilight. “Well, I took