“What do you think of going across the river to live?” Maretta said to Merle later in the evening, when they were dishing up hot chocolate in the kitchen.
“Oh, I don’t care,” said Merle. “I like it all right here.”
The room had grown hot and full of cigarette smoke. They sat around on the floor, drinking their chocolate cautiously. The phonograph was silenced.
“Well,” said Rummy in a little while, “what do you say we wash the dishes and go home?”
“Never mind about the dishes,” said Mrs. Butler, “but the evening’s yet young.”
“I’m sleepy,” said Rummy, stretching himself. “Come on, Maretta.” Maretta got up obediently.
Outside Rummy linked his arm through hers and flashed the bug light about their feet. It made the grass a sharp unnatural green. A heavy dew had fallen, but the night was clear, and the air fresh after the hot room. They breathed deeply of it. “It’s like a drink of water,” said Rummy. They went down past the fence to Miss Molly’s garden. The faint spicy fragrance of pinks and tangled flower stalks came to them. They looked up at the sky, in which there was no moon but millions of stars whose light fell on their lifted faces like big flakes of snow. Maretta stepped into the water up to her ankle, getting into the canoe. In the darkness the river seemed to be overbrimming its banks.
“You know,” said Rummy as the canoe floated forward into the darkness, “Claudine is getting to be an awful brat.”
Maretta Hotchkiss rowed slowly down the river. It was a calm morning. The sun burned softly on her hands and bare arms, on the blistered green paint of the gunwale. The bailing can knocked gently back and forth at each pull of the oars. The shouts of someone watering a team at the Canadian shore came to her, pure and small, floated on the water, together with the jingling of the harness and the footfalls of the horses, splashing and stamping.
It was early June, and another summer. Merle was dead. She had died very suddenly in the winter. Mrs. Butler had bought the Hodges place, before Merle’s death, and now she had moved into it, with Claudine.
Maretta passed the red house where they had had so many good times last summer. They had all been so foolish—she was a year older. She thought that even if Merle were still alive they couldn’t have such good times this year. Rummy was different this year too. His father wasn’t well. He had heart trouble, and Rummy was doing more things around the place. She had asked him to come with her this morning, pausing at the Blakes’ long dock, holding to the dock with one hand and keeping the boat in position with one oar dipped in the water.
She said, “Come on down and call on Ma Butler.”
He said, “I’ve lots to do. I’ve been down there once, anyway. No good reason to go again.”
As she shoved off and started downstream he called, “I’ll be around this afternoon to go swimming.”
She nodded, watching him turn and walk back to the boathouse. He was big, and thick around the shoulders. It made him look a little stooped sometimes.
Mrs. Butler was glad to see her. She came out of the house briskly, a hammer in one hand. She wore a mob-cap and a big gingham apron, the apron pocket sagging from a handful of nails. She wiped her face with a corner of the apron and put her arms about Maretta, giving her a brusque, strong hug. They sat down on the railing. There was only one chair on the porch and neither wanted to take it. Sawdust and wood cuttings littered the steps. They had been mending the porch roof, which had collapsed completely at one end under the heavy snow. Old tattered shingles lay below the bridal wreath and rosebushes. There were no curtains in the windows yet.
“I’m keeping busy, Maretta,” said Mrs. Butler. “My God, it’s the only thing to do. Plenty of work around the old place. Some days I’m glad I got it, and some days I hate the sight of it. You never saw such an old wreck. And pretty nearly everything stolen from the inside of it. I imagine I’d know where to find some of the things, too, if I cared to drive around the island a bit. But I don’t care. Let ’em keep ’em.”
“It’s lovely over here,” said Maretta. “Do you like it better than the other side?”
Mrs. Butler paused, turned her head a little, and gave Maretta a shrewd reproachful glance.
“You know well enough, Maretta Hotchkiss, that I’d never’ve left the other side except for one reason, and that was so Merle and her friends could have better times. My God,” she said abruptly, “sometimes I can’t believe it yet.”
Maretta looked down at the cedar railing and began to pick off minute shreds of bark. There was a short silence, then Mrs. Butler said, almost fretfully, “Why don’t the gang come down and see me? Claudine, she hasn’t got a soul to play with, poor little thing. She misses you so.”
Maretta said, “There’s almost nobody here except Rummy and me.”
“That’s it. It’s just Rummy I’m surprised at,” said Mrs. Butler. “Down at our house every night last summer, and plenty of ice cream and cake I made for him, too. Now he won’t even come near me.”
“He’s busier this summer,” said Maretta. “Mr. Blake isn’t very well.”
“Oh, he isn’t so busy he couldn’t come down here once in a while,” said Mrs. Butler knowingly. She laughed harshly. “Well, he was here once. Came down to say he was sorry, and all that.”
“Don’t you believe he’s sorry?” asked Maretta.
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Butler, her voice relaxing. “I guess he’s sorry. I guess you’re all sorry enough. Did you see Claudine yet?”
“No,” said Maretta. “Where is she?”
“Around here somewhere. Oh, babe! Oh, Claudine! Come’n say hello to Maretta.”
Claudine came slowly out of the house and sat down in the rocker. She said, “Hello, Maretta.”
“Been primping, I guess,” said her mother. “She don’t make herself very useful, this one. But she’s all we’ve got, and we love her.”
She reached out a strong red hand and patted Claudine on the shoulder. Claudine made no gesture. She looked at Maretta with a slow languid stare, her gray eyes veiled, her figure drooping against the back of the chair. She had on a pink cotton dress and dirty white socks. Her knees were brown and bare. Maretta thought, “There’s something insulting about the kid.” She liked Mrs. Butler, but she wanted to leave.
Mrs. Butler followed her down to the gate.
“Come again. Come often, Maretta. And you can tell Rummy Blake from me he’s a cupboard guest. Yes sir, that’s what he is—a cupboard guest.” Her voice hardened again.
Maretta crossed the road where a few sheep were lying in the cedar shade. In her embarrassment she had nothing to say. She turned and waved and hurried along the grassy shore to the rowboat. The sun was almost at noon.
Nell
THE ROAD on which Cora was walking followed the river, running along on a high green bank. Below there was a sandy beach and a long stretch of shallow water reaching almost to the edge of the channel. The river had built a wide submerged sand bar, here where it turned. On each side of the road the grass was cropped close, fitting each rise and hollow of the ground as the skin of a peach the fruit. Here and there were clumps of blue iris mixed with buttercups. On the right the ground sloped gently away toward farms and woods.
The day was sunny, the water very blue. The balsams and cedars which crowded to the edge of the opposite shore stood tiny and clear. Small figures in blue or white were moving about on the narrow beaches and the docks. She caught a flash of light from the wet side of a boat.
The