* * *
Next door — that is, just across the maple-lined driveway — stood another large white house in the sort of “bungalow” style of the early part of the century. Grandpa had built it for Aunt Marian when she married, but she had moved away for good and it was now rented to a family named Barton. Mr. Barton was a banker, wore a derby, and drove about in a shiny black car. They had a very young chauffeur, Richard, who wore a dashing greenish uniform — again, not a soldier’s. (I heard he was not fighting in Flanders because of some ailment whose nature I could not learn, eavesdrop though I tried.)
The day after our arrival, Grandma took me to call on the Bartons to meet Emma, who was to be my playmate. The mother was out and I met Emma’s grandmother, an old old lady who sat in a wheelchair all day, knitting for the soldier boys. She had knitted ninety-two helmets and over two hundred “wristers,” and let me try on one of each. She was deaf and had a sort of black box beside her to hear with. Emma’s grandmother was much older than either of mine, who were old enough. Her daughter was a Christian Scientist, but apparently she permitted her old mother to be lame and deaf if she wanted to.
Emma appeared. She was five and a half, a year younger than me. She was a very pretty child. I immediately felt the aura of wealth surrounding her, like a young Scott Fitzgerald. Her hair was in a “Dutch cut” (so was mine), but hers was sleek and smooth and black. It even had blue highlights in it, but I suspect someone may have pointed that out to me. Her eyes were gray and her skin very white. She was a little plump, and was wearing a beautiful pair of “rompers,” made of some spongy kind of crepe, deep rose red. She always wore rompers of the same material but in different colors, with a white ruff at the neck. I think I thought they were possibly a Christian Science costume.
Emma’s grandmother said, “Aren’t you going to show your new friend your playroom and your toys?” Emma looked put out. She said, ungraciously, “I’ve just put everything in apple-pie order.” It was the first time I had heard that expression and it baffled me. However, her grandmother finally persuaded her to show off her possessions and we went upstairs together, to a small white-walled room at the head of the stairs, with shelves around the walls and a bay window with a window seat in it. Outside a shop, I had never seen so many toys in my life; the display of dolls was overpowering. What I liked best was a milk can that wound up, played a little tune and, with his long ears first, up came a white woolly rabbit, who looked around him and sank down again. Emma was allowed to read the funny papers, which I was not. Now it seems to me that “Mutt and Jeff” and “Buster Brown and His Dog Tige” were rather highbrow fare for a little girl.
Naturally, Emma and I became very close friends. Often her mother came over to argue with Grandpa about Christian Science in the evenings. She was tall, with blue eyes and black hair like her daughter, and very high coloring. She got nowhere with Grandpa of course, who never even went to church, but he loved to argue with her and would pretend to give in on certain points just to be able to point his cigar at her and demolish her logic. All this I understood, like Beppo, by tone of voice rather than by words, but I listened and listened while pretending to play cards and to read the Literary Digest myself.
Outside their house the Bartons had a catalpa tree. I don’t know why this tree, or perhaps its name, fascinated me. I rather disliked its big hanging pale green leaves and those long beans, but every day Emma or I would say, “After lunch we’ll meet under the catalpa tree.” Once we had a fight, I don’t remember what about. I pulled her shiny black hair, and she screamed. Agnes came running from our house and Emma’s mother’s maid from theirs, and they pulled us apart and we were not allowed to play together for three days.
* * *
At school the teacher’s name was actually Miss Woodhead. She had bright red hair and was very pretty. We loved her so much we didn’t even make fun of her name. We sat in alternate rows of boys and girls, and began every morning by singing “Good morning to you, good morning to you,” bowing to either side. At my left sat a beautiful boy named Royal Something. His name made him doubly attractive to me, stuffed as I was with the English royal family, although I realized he wasn’t really royal. He had dark eyes and shiny dark brown hair cut rather long. At the end of the day we helped each other on with our coats and once, when he helped me buckle my arctics, as I looked at his long shiny hair, neat starched collar, and red necktie, I felt a wonderful, powerful thrill go through my stomach.
I did stay on at school through Thanksgiving, I suppose, because there was the business of the Pilgrim Fathers. Miss Woodhead made a model of “The Landing of the Pilgrims” on a large tabletop. The Rock was the only real thing. Miss Woodhead made the ocean in a spectacular way: she took large sheets of bright blue paper, crumpled them up, and stretched them out over the table. Then, with the blackboard chalk, she made glaring whitecaps of all the points: an ocean grew right before our eyes. There were some little ships, some doll people, and we also helped make log cabins. (Twenty years later I learned the Pilgrim Fathers had no log cabins when they landed.) But I felt closely related to them alclass="underline" “Land where my father died / Land of the pilgrims’ pride”—for a long time I took the first line personally. Miss Woodhead asked us to bring anything we had at home to contribute to Plymouth and Thanksgiving, and in my conceit I said (to the wonder and admiration of the class, I hoped) that we had some real little trees, just the right size, with snow on them. So I contributed four trees from the toy village my grandparents let me play with, and from then on the village was half deforested when set up at home.
* * *
Whenever I could, I explored the house like a cat. It was an old colonial pre-Revolutionary house, but wings had been added and porches built on with no regard for period style. The front room was rarely used. Once in a while Grandma entertained a friend there in the afternoon. Yet it was my favorite. This was before the days when people were conscious of preserving the character of old houses. Perhaps because this room was so little used, it had been preserved by accident. The antique furniture was upholstered in gray blue, the walls were papered, and it all went together. There were even some paintings I now realize were primitives, in gold frames on the walls, done by an ancestress. It was a quiet room, and I could sit on the carpet there undisturbed and think. On both porches the floors were set with thick green panes of glass, frosted over and scratched, I suppose to give light to the cellar underneath. To me they were as beautiful as slabs of jade or malachite. Grandma’s sitting room on the front, with a fireplace and bay windows onto the lawn, was called the “sewing room,” but I never saw Grandma sew. In the dining room I studied each and every plate and cup on display in two glass cases, and the silver on the sideboard.
In the wing at the back, the largest room had once held a billiard table when the sons were alive; now it was used as a living room, but it was always referred to as the “billiard room.” It had layers and layers of curtains, the innermost of brickish red velvet. The Oriental carpet was a slightly lighter red. In the middle there was a large square table with a lamp on it, and layers of magazines were laid out on the front. There were some black leather sofas and armchairs. At the back was an enormous rubber plant in a gigantic brass pot; Grandma was quite proud of it. There was an upright piano, a fireplace with magnificent brass fenders and fire tongs, and high on the mantel was a tiny pair of top boots that had belonged to my father.