By this time the roofs of the square were black with people. A clerk from the express office climbed out the window, slid down the awning and dropped to the sidewalk at Honora’s feet. Bystanders stood knee deep in the water of the fountain. Then some mounted carabinieri came up the Via Condotti and Honora turned and climbed the stairs while the voices of thousands blessed her in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost, world without end.
Chapter XXXI
Coverly’s security clearance was renewed pending Cameron’s return from New Delhi but Brunner had gone to England and Coverly had no way of knowing when the old man would come back. Then, through some irreversible and confused bureaucratic process Coverly was served a ten-day eviction notice by the government housing office. His feelings were mixed. Their life in Talifer seemed over, if it could ever have been said to have begun. He could easily find work as a pre-programmer somewhere else and the thought of leaving Talifer seemed to Betsey like the promise of a new life. At about this time he received a wire from St. Botolphs. COME AT ONCE. This unprecedented directness from his old cousin alarmed him and he packed and left. He arrived there late the next afternoon. The day was rainy but as they approached the sea the rain turned to snow. The fall of snow whitened the bare trees and the slums beside the tracks and gave them, so Coverly thought, a pathos and beauty that they would have at no other time in their history. All this whiteness made him lighthearted. When he got off the train Mr. Jowett was nowhere around and the station had been abandoned. He saw no one to wave to in the windows of the Viaduct House; no one in the feed store. Crossing the green he was stopped by a procession of men and women leaving the parish house of Christ Church. They were eight and they walked two by two. All the men but one, who was bareheaded, wore stocking caps. He guessed that there had been a tea, a lecture, some charitable gesture, and that these were the inmates of the poor farm. One of them, an angular man, seemed mad or foolish and was muttering: “Repent, repent, your day is at hand. Angel voices have told me how to make myself pleasing to the Lord. . . .” “Hushup, hushup, Henry Saunders,” said a large Negress who walked at his side. “You just hushup until we get into the bus.” A bus was parked at the curb with HUTCHINS INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND painted on its side. Coverly watched a driver help them in and then walked on up Boat Street.
A nurse opened Honora’s door. She gave Coverly a knowing smile as if she had heard a great deal about him and had already formed an unfavorable opinion. “She’s been waiting for you,” she whispered. “The poor thing’s been waiting for you all day.” There was no reason for reproach. Coverly had wired his old cousin and she knew exactly when he would arrive. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” the nurse said and went down the hall. The house was dirty and cold. The walls, plain as he remembered them, were now covered with a paper printed in black latticing and dark red roses. He opened one of the double doors into the living room and thought at first that she was dead.
She slept in a shabby wing chair. During the months since he had seen her she had lost her corpulence. She was terribly wasted. She had been robust—hardy, as she would have said—and now she was frail. Her leonine face and the childish placement of her feet were all that was not changed. She slept on and he looked around the room which, like the hallway, seemed neglected. Here was dust, cobwebs and flowered wallpaper. The curtains were gone and he could see the light snow through the high windows. Then she woke.
“Oh, Coverly.”
“Cousin Honora.” He kissed her and sat on a stool by her chair.
“I’m so glad you got here, dear, I’m so glad you came.”
“I’m glad to be here.”
“You know what I did, Coverly? I went to Europe. I didn’t pay my tax and Judge Beasely, that old fool, said they’d throw me in jail so I went to Europe.”
“Did you have a good time?”
“Remember the tomato fights?” Honora asked, and he wondered if she had lost her mind.
“Yes.”
“After the frost I used to let you and the others come into my tomato patch and have tomato fights. When you’d thrown all the tomatoes you used to pick up the calling cards the cows had left and throw those.” That this redoubtable old woman should call a steaming pile of cow manure a calling card was a reminder of the eccentric niceties of the village. “Well, when you’d thrown all the calling cards and all the tomatoes you used to be quite a mess,” Honora said, “but if anyone asked you if you’d had a good time I expect you’d say yes. That’s the way I feel about my trip.”
“I see,” said Coverly.
“I’ve changed,” Honora asked, “you can see that I’ve changed, can’t you?” There was some lightness, some hopefulness, even some pleading in her voice as if he might say persuasively that she hadn’t changed at all and she could then stamp out into the garden and rake a few leaves before the snow covered them.
“Yes.”
“Yes, I suppose I have. I’ve lost a lot of weight. But I feel much better.” This was bellicose. “However, I don’t go out now because I’ve noticed that people don’t like to see me. It makes them sad. I see it in their eyes. I am like an angel of death.”
“Oh, no, Honora,” Coverly said.
“Oh, yes, I am. Why shouldn’t I be? I’m dying.”
“Oh, no,” Coverly said.
“I’m dying, Coverly, and I know it and I want to die.”
“You shouldn’t say that, Honora.”
“And why shouldn’t I?”
“Because life is a gift, a mysterious gift,” he said feebly in spite of the weight the words had for him.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “you must be going to church a great deal these days.”
“I sometimes do,” he said.
“High or low?” she asked.
“Low.”
“Your family,” she said, “was always high.”
This was harsh, flat, that old contrariness upon which she had counted more than anything else to express herself, but now she seemed too feeble to keep it up. She followed his eyes to the ugly wallpaper and said: “I see you’ve noticed my roses.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m afraid they’re a mistake but when I came home I called Mr. Tanner and asked him to bring me over some wallpaper with roses on it to remind me of the summer.” Stooped and leaning forward in her chair, she raised her head, her eyes, and gave the roses a terribly haggard look. “I get awfully tired of looking at them,” she said, “but it’s too late to change.”