“I clean ’em out,” he said.
“What?”
“Name’s Pepoon, they all know me. I come to clean ’em out. Want yours cleaned? I live over the river, go ’round to all the houses regular, Bill Pepoon.”
He jerked his hand again toward the pump house, an animal-like gesture, blinked the gray eyes under rusty eyebrows.
“Want me to clean it? I got bags to take it away.”
“Oh, I see. But I haven’t got one.”
“Y’ain’t got one? What’s that?”
Letting the shovel fall easily from his shoulder, he pointed with it once more toward the pump house, incredulous.
“It’s a pump.”
“A pump?”
“Yes, a pump. Come and see it.”
He opened the door, showed the little motor on the oil-stained floor, gleaming, motionless, an oilcan beside it, the red wooden pump shaft upright in its groove. The gnome stared at it, unconvinced.
“Oh. Y’ain’t got one.”
“No, it’s a pump.”
“Well, if y’ever want me, name’s Pepoon, over the river, let me know. Know anybody else wants one cleaned?”
“Thanks — no, I don’t.”
“Cracky, a pump. And it looks just like—! All right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No trouble at all. Good-by.”
“Good-by.”
He hesitated for a moment, casting an appraising eye at the Purington house, as if estimating his chances there too, but now a little skeptical, then shouldered his shovel again, and was gone almost at a trot around the corner of the woodshed and down into the lane that led to the Town Landing, where presumably he had his “bags.” His “bags”! Good god, what a conception. He was all of a piece, an earth-god, and an earth-god of the very lowest — and best! — order. A miracle, no less, and probably inspired by the lilacs. Willed by the lilacs! A terrestrial empathy.
“Who was that funny man?”
Buzzer, squatted by the woodshed door, had arranged her collection of white quartz pebbles in a neat circle, like a crown, on the grass.
“Well, you know, Buzzer, I sort of think it was a god, I think it must have been an earth-god, just popped up out of the earth, like a jack-in-the-box!”
“He wasn’t a god! How could he be a god! He was too dirty.… Did you see my pebbles? This is kingy, and this is queeny, and I’ve got the king and queen of the toenail shells.”
“So you have. And what about a walk, my pet, to get the mail.”
“The mail?”
She raised the blue eyes, questioning, abstracted, looked beyond him, to the ends of the earth, as if considering the ultimate of all ultimate problems, then scrambled quickly to her feet, flapping the small hands, fin like.
“All right, but don’t you touch them, now!”
“No, I won’t touch them.”
“And can we walk to the golf-links road and go to the secret place?”
“Yes, perhaps, if there’s time, we can go to the secret place.”
“And eat a checkerberry leaf?”
“And eat a checkerberry leaf.”
“And look for Indian Pipes?”
“And look for Indian Pipes.”
“You mustn’t just say everything I say!”
“‘Blueberry, bayberry, checkerberry, cherry — goldenrod, silverrod, jackin-the-pulpit-berry—’”
“‘Mayflower, columbine, lady’s-slipper, aster — which is the flower for your mistress, master?’ Ho ho — and milkweed pods full of silk—”
“You can make a silk bed for kingy and queeny.”
“If they aren’t all gone. Do you think they’ll be all gone?”
“I don’t know, my pet. It’s pretty late, you know, and all those seeds have to get busy, and find homes for themselves before spring comes — ha, and this is something you didn’t know — I read it in a book.”
“What, daddy?”
“That seeds have hearts. Did you know that?”
“Hearts that beat?”
“Well, I’m not so sure about their beating, but they’re hearts, just the same. A little teeny tiny heart, and it’s called a corculum—”
“A corculum! Ho ho! What a funny word!”
“Yes, it means ‘little heart,’ see? So I guess you’ve got a corculum.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m not a seed!”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. I might try planting you, you know!”
Amused, intent on this entrancing world of bright images, images like pebbles to be arranged in rows or circles, to be strung like beads, the small blue homespun-clad figure, with doubled fists and lowered golden head, galloped ahead of him like a little horse. She ploughed through the drifts of fog-dampened poplar leaves, yellow and brown; kicked them, trampled on them; alternately raised and lowered her face, singing; half closed the blue eyes to feel the cool fog-drip on her cheeks, in her hair, the hands outspread — good lord, how wonderful, she was living in a world of her own, a burning and secret world of her own. The same world? a different world? A new world — that was it — the world of the poet, the first poet, the poet who saw simultaneously, for the first time, the sea and a flower. What! Dogs and horses in one and the same world—! It was a miracle.…
The letter, when he opened Box 67 with the thin steel key, the blue envelope, addressed with the clear delicate handwriting — the bold T and K, the open-eyed “o’s”—how very odd that her handwriting always made him think of her eyes, as if the blue eyes looked up at him frankly from the envelope itself — the letter, carried in his hand, became at once a part of the indiscreet dream — and not merely an extension of it, but perhaps its very center. The letter, on its way from Boston, pernoctating, keeping its open-eyed vigil, had itself brought the sea change, the soft inland-going sea fog, and had brought, too, the obscure and all-troubling delicious dream, the half-seen sculptural shape of involved struggle, the hand lifted and vanishing, the face darkening as it turned away. Pernoctate — yes, the letter had kept a vigil, its blue eyes open all night, and it was this that had projected the whole thing — its influence had preceded it, even to bringing into his very sleep the half-guessed presence, the half-happy and half-unhappy joining and sundering, the ecstatic but broken embrace. Broken!
The familiar sensation of breathlessness, the heart contracting on itself — and yet it was good, too — whatever the outcome, it was good. Joy either way, freedom either way. Enid had come nearer, she already stood nearer, this was the important, the essential, change; and this would be true even if Nora hadn’t herself yet made any decision. Or even if she had decided not to decide.
“And that’s our old friend the Quaker burying ground,” he said quickly, feeling a little breathless, “with all the little headstones exactly alike — see? — and exactly the same size.”
“Why, daddy?”
“Well, it’s really rather nice; it’s to remind people not to be too proud, to be humble — no matter what they’ve done, or who they are. Not to boast. You see, the Quakers thought to put up a huge great pompous marble tombstone was like a boast, was like saying, ‘Ho, look at me, how grand I am! Ho, look at me, but don’t pay any attention to that little Smith fellow down there, with that measly little stone of his, like a school slate. Why, you’ve only got to look at his stone to see how unimportant he is!’ See?”