The Road Through the Wall (17 page)

“Asleep,” the girl said.

Mrs. Ransom-Jones put her head inside again. The furniture was still pushed roughly against the walls, but someone had been trying to arrange it. The table had chairs around it, the chairs were all facing correctly—that is, none of them were facing the walls—and there was a path between them and around the room. “Hello?” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. Then she took the girl by the arm and swung her inside. “You just go in and stay there,” she said, with an irritation that deepened when she again noticed the money in the girl's hand. Must be thirty dollars there, Mrs. Ransom-Jones thought; she saw the girl well inside the door and closed her in. Then, coming down the walk, Mrs. Ransom-Jones refused to look at Miss Fielding, but turned doggedly up the street to her own house.

Miss Fielding, relaxing into her chair again, watched indifferently while Mrs. Ransom-Jones tripped up the street. Miss Fielding was old and sensed constantly, rather than knew sometimes with sharp clarity, the decay of her body around her, the gradual easing of tensions that had once been vital. Miss Fielding was interested in anything for a little while, would rise from her chair to watch a cat crossing the road, but after the little while was over, Miss Fielding, in her chair, went back to searching the face of death.

Consequently Miss Fielding watched unregarding the back of Mrs. Ransom-Jones going rigidly up the street, the face of the odd girl's sister looking out the front door. When the heavy girl Mrs. Ransom-Jones had put so firmly inside her own house came out of the house again, no more warily than before—like an animal that persistently and dumbly walks against the bars of its cage expecting each time around that they will have ceased to restrict it—Miss Fielding raised her eyes and let them follow the girl down the street. Miss Fielding's eyes were not good any more; she had not seen the money in the girl's hand while the girl was talking to Mrs. Ransom-Jones, but when the girl passed Miss Fielding's porch Miss Fielding's dim eyes registered vaguely that there was money about the girl: some spot of unmistakable green. It was past Miss Fielding's usual hour for retiring indoors; she rose uncomfortably and went inside.

In her neat little house she was able to move comfortably with the steady pull of her body toward death; for more years than she could remember Miss Fielding had been following herself along a well-defined path, around the circle of hours that made a day, around the circle of days that made a year, around the circle of years that made Miss Fielding older and nearer to lying down for good. When she was forty-odd and had finally resigned any thoughts of new ways of life (perhaps at one time Miss Fielding had regarded marriage as she now regarded death, perhaps she had thought of a somewhat larger, more involved life), Miss Fielding had set out to make her world as clean and uneventful as a convalescent room; sometimes it seemed, even, that Miss Fielding's long convalescence from birth would culminate in sufficient strength for her to die without effort. The tiny house on Pepper Street was Miss Fielding's only home; there was no other room on earth where she could go and be recognized. She had no relatives, no friends except those people who passed her front door. A slight reliable flow of money, from a bank Miss Fielding had never seen, fed her and clothed her and kept her housed. Her little home was dark and well-fitted; Miss Fielding had gradually sold (not given away; there was no one she knew well enough to give things to) most of the furniture she had been encumbered with at the death of whoever had preceded Miss Fielding in this quiet life; and now, with her chair by a neat table, her narrow bed, her dresser where her clothes lay, her two-burner stove, and her brush and comb, Miss Fielding waited for her time to be up. “Passing on,” she called it.

When she died her things would dissolve neatly; the little money from the bank would stop automatically when its purpose was ended, her small residue of furniture would be sold and the money neatly applied to Miss Fielding's passing, the Pepper Street house would snap back to its original purpose as a dwelling for the living, and the pinpoint of consciousness of Miss Fielding which would be left would be in the minds of children and busy people, and would grow tinier and vanish in a reasonably short time. Some lives, ending as Miss Fielding's would, leave a grain of memory, like a grain of sand, in the depths of another mind, a grain of sand which is like the constant irritation under an oyster's shell, eventually to grow with coating after coating of disguising beauty into a pearl. Sometime this memory would be pried loose, in its rounded beauty, to stand by itself as an object of delight. Miss Fielding had no fears of ultimate survival, even in beauty. When she passed on, she would draw after her every trailing mist of herself, effacing herself so completely that even after her death, even after her bones, which she could not help, were gone, she would be a bother to no one, would intrude on no mind.

She rocked slowly in her familiar chair while her supper eggs were boiling; the toast was made and the teapot steeping. When the doorbell rang she was frightened; she ran first to cover the toast, and then had to come back from across the room to lift the pan of eggs from the stove—they could coddle in the hot water—and hover apprehensively over the teapot. She had never been interrupted making her tea before; the wise thing was to plan to throw it out, but that would be wasteful. Unreasonably Miss Fielding took the lid off the pot and set it aside—perhaps the rising fumes. . . .

When she answered the door Frederica Terrel was standing solidly outside. “Yes?” Miss Fielding said, the door open an inch.

“My sister?” Frederica said. “Have you seen my sister, please?”

“Your sister?” Miss Fielding wondered. If she entered into explanations of Mrs. Ransom-Jones and Frederica's sister, she would have to be here, standing, and with her tea growing too strong. The girl had no right. “Ask Mrs. Ransom-Jones,” Miss Fielding said, and started to close the door.

“Why?” Frederica frowned and put her hand out to stop the door. “Did you see my sister? What does Mrs. Ransom-Jones know about her?”

Miss Fielding sighed. “I don't know,” she said. “Please go away.”

“But I've got to find my sister,” Frederica said. She made her heavy voice begging. “You see, she runs away sometimes, and it isn't safe. So I've got to find her.”

Miss Fielding was in panic. By refusing to discuss the events of the afternoon she had tangled herself in a worse problem. She felt time running away behind her, the tea spending itself, the eggs solidifying. “I really don't
know
,” she said.

“Please,” Frederica said. “Where does Mrs. Ransom-Jones live?”

“Up the street, up the street,” Miss Fielding said. She waved her hand toward up-the-street.

“Don't you even know which way she went?” Frederica was urgent, hoping that some question might provoke an answer with information.

A horrible thought found Miss Fielding. Her eggs would be too hard, she would have to do them over, she would be late finishing her dinner, it would be dark by the time she got to her porch, with nothing to watch she would be bored and go in before she had had enough air, and then sleep badly and wake up with a headache tomorrow. “I don't
know
,” she said. “Go and ask Mrs. Ransom-Jones, won't you?”

This time she closed the door. She heard Frederica breathing noisily outside for a minute or two and then the sound of the heavy shoes going down the steps. Miss Fielding flew back to her teapot.

•   •   •

“If you're not going to pay attention,” Mrs. Mack said severely to her dog, looking at him over the top of the book, “we won't have any lesson tonight at all.” When the dog pulled his gaze hastily back to her, Mrs. Mack looked down at the book and began to read: “‘So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered mortar, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it.'” She let the book fall to her lap, and said to the dog, “You remember about how the Lord destroys evil people?”

•   •   •

The ladies were sewing at the Roberts house; there was a bowl of salted nuts between Mrs. Merriam and Mrs. Donald, a dish of chocolates between Mrs. Ransom-Jones, who was making herself a blouse, and her sister, who did not sew, but sat with her hands folded, turning her eager eyes from one lady to another. A bowl of fruit stood on the round table in the center of the room, and Mrs. Roberts, with frequent mysterious trips to the kitchen, and numerous secret smiles and hints, had managed to convey the fact that there was to be something exceedingly special for tea.

“How well you do that, dear,” Miss Tyler said to Mrs. Donald, leaning forward to look at the sweater Mrs. Donald was knitting. “Your fingers go so fast, it makes me dizzy.” She looked at her sister and laughed apologetically. “We never learned to knit, did we, sweetie?”

“I never learned any useful arts at all,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said cheerfully.

“I'm trying to teach poor Harriet to sew,” Mrs. Merriam confided, “but she's actually
clumsy
at it.”

“You know,” Mrs. Donald said, “it seems funny not to see little Caroline Desmond sitting there so quiet, sewing away on her little embroidery.”

“I missed her today,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “I like to watch little Caroline, always so busy.”

“Harriet just won't
apply
herself,” Mrs. Merriam said. “She's intelligent, of course, but she will
not
apply herself.”

“Oh, Lord,” Mrs. Roberts said, from the midst of the complicated business of sitting down after one of her trips to the kitchen. “Don't try to make the child work, Josephine. This is summer—vacation.”

“Anyway,” Miss Tyler said, leaning toward Mrs. Merriam, her eyes wide, “your little girl will have servants to do everything for her when she grows up.” She looked around at her sister. “Servants still do all those things?” she asked hopefully.

“Not
my
daughter,” Mrs. Merriam said, and tightened her lips. “Harriet will be a lady, I hope, but I don't want her growing up to expect service from others. Not
my
daughter.”

“I could use a little service from others,” Mrs. Donald said, and sighed. “I don't know why the men don't have to do the housework for a change.”

Mrs. Roberts giggled. “I can see Mike,” she said, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “Or Brad,” and they both laughed, looking at each other.

“Brad would do it, Dinah,” Miss Tyler said. “You shouldn't say things like that. Brad would do anything
you
asked him.”

“Mike Roberts,” Mrs. Roberts said. She spread her hands wide in a gesture of hopelessness. “He can't even boil water,” she said.

Mrs. Merriam said casually, “Your Hester is gone now, isn't she, Dorothy?”

Mrs. Roberts hesitated, looking down at her sewing, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said smoothly, “None of those high-school girls can really do housework.”

“They are
terribly
inefficient,” Mrs. Donald said, nodding profoundly.

“
I
had a high-school girl once, for about two weeks,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “It was awful.”

“It was
awful
,” Miss Tyler said to Mrs. Donald, in a loud whisper. “She was always making eyes at Brad—Mr. Ransom-Jones.”

“Hester seemed like a nice quiet girl,” Mrs. Merriam said.

“I smell something burning,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said emphatically, and Mrs. Roberts, still clutching the sock she was mending, rose and fled to the kitchen, scattering spools of thread as she went. “I think,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones went on, addressing herself to the sewing on her lap, “I really think, girls, about Hester, you know, that we only make matters worse talking about it.
You
know.”

“Let bygones be bygones,” Mrs. Donald said earnestly.

“I'll
never
forget this girl of ours,” Miss Tyler said to Mrs. Donald.

“Please let's talk about something else, Lillian,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, and Miss Tyler turned around to stare at her sister for a minute. Then she said, her lip trembling. “Of
course
, Dinah, if you'd rather I went on home. . . .”

Mrs. Roberts came back into the room, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said loudly, “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” Mrs. Roberts said. She looked archly around the room. “I nearly ate it
myself
,” she said.

“I'd never
forgive
you,” Mrs. Donald declared.

“I realize,” Miss Tyler said softly to her sister, “that you think I disgrace you whenever you take me out.”

“You know,” Mrs. Donald said to Mrs. Ransom-Jones, across Miss Tyler, “Virginia is driving me crazy to get her a yellow print evening dress like that one of yours—she's
wild
about it.”

“It's much too old,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, shocked. “She'd be
lost
in a style like that.”

“She thinks she may be asked to some college dance or other this fall,” Mrs. Donald said, “and she wants to look older.”

All the ladies laughed, and Miss Tyler said softly to Mrs. Ransom-Jones, “I can get across the street by myself, all right.”

“Tell her to keep on looking fifteen while she can,” Mrs. Roberts said jovially. “They never realize.”

“Having a pretty daughter,” Mrs. Donald said despairingly.

“I
do
think you're wise,” Mrs. Merriam said smilingly to Mrs. Donald, “not to try to
teach
Virginia anything. Anything useful, that is,” she added, turning her smile on Mrs. Ransom-Jones.