Chapter 7
A few days later, an apology from the Feminist League arrived in the shape of a dozen Comte de Chambord roses.
A dozen roses would have been quite sufficient as a means of conveying apologies, but a dozen Comte de Chambord was more than an apology, it was an exquisite peace offering.
The librarian immediately detected the expert hand of Hortensia Oeillet in the choice of flower, and that of Herminia Treaumont—who else? —in the Elizabethan verse on the card.
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
Beneath the poem, she read:
Dearest Prudencia,
Will you ever be able to forgive us? We wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t. Devastated, repentant, and deeply ashamed, we’re sending you some old-fashioned bellezza wrapped in our most sincere apologies.
Hortensia Oeillet
P.S. Herminia thought the lines from John Donne would brighten your day. Aren’t they wonderful?
“They are indeed,” murmured Miss Prim, pleased, plunging her dainty nose into the blooms.
Since the day of the unfortunate incident, Miss Prim had not stopped thinking about the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the feminist group that had welcomed her to San Ireneo.
And the more she thought about it, the less serious the offense seemed.
That didn’t mean she approved, but, somehow, forgiveness had started to alter her view of the women.
It was true that their conduct had been thoughtless and rude, and it was also true that delicacy and tact had been conspicuous by their absence, but the librarian had begun to suspect that beneath the slightly inept conspiracy lay a form of love.
Love? The first time this thought occurred to her she was astounded.
She wasn’t a sentimental woman, but she couldn’t help sensing a kind of love—brash, clumsy, maternal—in the way the women had set out to provide her with a husband.
As she deftly arranged the roses in a crystal vase, she told herself that if the ladies of San Ireneo considered a husband the greatest good to which a woman could aspire and were determined to obtain one for her, who was she to judge them?
If they were prepared to expend time and effort to that end, who was she to treat as an insult something intended as, and which couldn’t in any way be seen as other than, a warm, sincere gift?
Moreover, she had to admit that the idea of marriage did not entirely repel her.
Certainly, in public she’d always claimed otherwise, but like many women of her kind, Miss Prim tended to scoff at what she secretly feared she would never have.
Once again she cast her mind back and recalled the distraught faces of Hortensia Oeillet and Emma Giovanacci, and Herminia Treaumont’s serene speech.
If someone as beautiful and intelligent as Herminia considered marriage essential to a woman’s well-being, who was she to cast doubt on it so emphatically?
Had she ever looked into the matter in depth?
Had she ever sat down with pencil and paper to list the pros and cons of the marital state?
Had she? Miss Prim had to admit that she had not.
At the same time, she couldn’t say she was fully in favor of marriage, either.
Marital union, she reflected as she swathed herself in a woolen blanket and stepped out onto the balcony to watch the sunset, was definitely for women of a different kind.
Women with a certain flexibility of character, biddable women, women who were comfortable with such concepts as compromise or accommodation.
Miss Prim was definitely not one of those.
She couldn’t see herself compromising over anything.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to—she’d always valued the concept in the abstract—she just couldn’t imagine it in practice.
She had a certain resistance, she’d realized in various situations throughout her life, to relinquishing, even in part, her view of things.
While she found this resistance tiresome, in some ways she was also inwardly proud of it.
Why should she concede that a certain composer was superior to another, she told herself, remembering a heated argument about music at the house of friends, when she was absolutely sure that he wasn’t?
Why should she accept, as a friendly compromise, that the respective talents were probably difficult to compare when she considered them eminently comparable?
Why should she feign, in an even more abject spirit of accommodation, that the superiority of one or other composer depended largely on the listener’s mood?
Miss Prim believed that compromises of this kind constituted a sort of intellectual indecency.
And though she sometimes forced herself to make them for the sake of her relationships, the fact was that to do so was repugnant to her.
The sky was growing tinged with pink when there was a knock at the door.
“Prudencia,” said the Man in the Wing Chair, “I have some business to do in the village and I’m afraid it’s the staff’s day off. Would you mind keeping an eye on the children? They’re playing in the garden. I’m sorry to ask, but I’ve no choice.”
Conscious that her sunset had just been ruined, the librarian assured him pleasantly that she would look after the children.
They weren’t normal children, she thought as she made her way downstairs.
They didn’t read normal books, or play normal games, or even say normal things.
It wasn’t that they were unpleasant, or rude—actually, she had to admit that they were delightful—but they were quite unlike any children she’d encountered at friends’ houses, in the street, or in restaurants.
When she spoke to them, she often had the uncomfortable sensation that she was being interrogated.
It was the children who steered the conversation.
It was they too who peppered the chats with strange items of information that the librarian considered quite unsuitable for children of their age.
“Today we learned about Russian archimandrites and starets, Miss Prim. Do you know the story of Starets Ambrose and the turkeys?” Teseris had asked one morning in the kitchen as the librarian was making herself some cheese on toast behind the cook’s back.
Miss Prim solemnly confessed that she knew a little about the elders of the Russian Orthodox church, but that she had never heard of Starets Ambrose or any turkeys.
No sooner had the librarian made this sincere admission of ignorance than the child launched into a disquisition on Starets Ambrose and the monastery of Optina, the similarities between him and Starets Zosima and the story of the turkeys that refused to eat.
“One day, a peasant woman who tended turkeys for a landowner went to see the starets,” explained the little girl.
“She was very sad because the turkeys were dying and the landowner was going to evict her. When the pilgrims at the monastery heard her crying, they laughed and told her not to bother the monk with such trivial nonsense. But Starets Ambrose listened to her very carefully and when she’d finished, he asked what she fed the turkeys.
He advised her to change their feed and gave her his blessing.
Once the woman had left, they asked the elder why he’d wasted his time over some turkeys. Do you know what he said?”
“I have no idea,” replied Miss Prim, bewildered.
“He said they were all blind if they couldn’t see that those poor turkeys were the woman’s whole life.
Starets Ambrose didn’t divide problems into big and small like everyone else does.
He always said that angels are in the simple things; you never find angels where things are complicated.
He believed that the small things are important. ”
They definitely were not normal children, she sighed as she trotted down to the garden.
She made her way along the path lined with now leafless hydrangeas and turned right into a bower formed by the branches of six large plane trees that were also starting to shed their leaves.
This was where, on two aged wrought-iron benches, the children of the house had their headquarters.
When they saw Miss Prim enter their sanctuary, their tousled heads sprang apart.
“Your uncle asked me not to let you out of my sight, so I came to see what you were up to,” she said truthfully.
“We weren’t doing anything, just reading a book from when we were small,” said Septimus.
“And what book is that?” she asked, peering discreetly at the small yellow volume the boy was holding.
“It’s the story of a toad who loves driving,” he said with the superior air of someone who believes he has a secret that can’t be guessed.
Miss Prim smiled benevolently.
“A toad who’s friends with a mole, a rat, and a badger?”
Taken aback, the children nodded.
“You know it? It’s a pretty old book. It was already around when our grandmother was small. It’s fairly ancient,” said Septimus with absolute seriousness.
The librarian suppressed another smile.
“I’ve read it and studied it.”
“Studied it? But it’s just a children’s story!” cried Teseris, eyes wide.
Miss Prim crossed her arms and gazed over the children’s heads at the horizon.
“It’s more than a children’s book, it’s literature. And literature is to be studied, analyzed. One traces its influences and researches what it’s intending to convey.”
The children stared at her while the mild evening light, filtering through the yellowing leaves of the trees, threw flickering shadows on their faces.
“Our uncle says if you do that to books it spoils them,” declared Septimus eventually. “He hates all that text analysis stuff. He’s never made us do it.”
A cold wave of indignation washed over her.