Honora is waked this morning by the whistling of the 7:18 as it comes into the station and, half asleep she mistakes this sound for the trumpeting of an angel. She is very religious and has joined with enthusiasm and parted with bitterness from nearly every religious organization in Travertine and St. Botolphs. Hearing the train she sees in her mind an angel in snowy robes with a slender trumpet. She has been called, she thinks cheerfully. She has been summoned to some unusual task. She always expected as much. She rises up on her pillows to hear the message and the train hoots again. The image of a locomotive replaces the angel, but she is not very disappointed. She gets out of bed, dresses and sniffs the air, which seems to smell of lamb chops. She goes down to breakfast with a good appetite. She walks with a stick.
A fire is burning in her dining room this July morning and she warms her hands at this to get the chill of age out of her bones. Maggie, her cook, brings a covered dish to the table and Honora, expecting lamb chops, is disappointed to discover a perch. This makes her very irritable, for she is subject to severe attacks of irritability, night sweats and other forms of nervousness. She does not have to admit these infirmities for if she feels out of sorts she can throw a dish at her cook. She bangs the metal cover against the platter now, like a cymbal, and when Maggie comes into the room she exclaims, “Perch. Whatever made you think I wanted perch for breakfast? Perch. Take it away. Take it away and cook me some bacon and eggs if it’s not too much trouble.” Maggie removes the fish and sighs, but not with any real despair. She is used to this treatment. People often ask why Maggie remains with Honora. Maggie is not dependent on Honora—she could get a better job tomorrow—and she does not love her. What she seems to recognize in the old lady is some naked human force, quite apart from dependence and love.
Maggie cooks some bacon and eggs and brings them to the table. She announces then that there has been an accident near West Farm. A man was killed and a young woman was taken into the house. “Poor soul,” Honora says of the dead, but she says nothing else. Maggie hears the mailman’s step on the walk and the letters fall through the brass slot and spill onto the floor. She picks up the mail—there are a dozen letters—and puts them on the table beside Honora’s plate. Honora hardly glances at her mail. There may be letters here from old friends, checks from the Appleton Trust Company, bills, pleas and invitations. No one will ever know. Honora glances at the pile of envelopes, picks them up and throws them into the fire. Now we wonder why she burns her mail without reading it, but as she goes away from the fireplace back to her chair the light of a very clear emotion seems to cross her face and perhaps this is explanation enough. Admiring that which is most easily understood we may long for the image of some gentle old woman, kind to her servant and opening her letters with a silver knife, but how much more poetry there is to Honora, casting off the claims of life the instant they are made. When she has stowed away her breakfast she gets up and calls over her shoulder to Maggie, “I’ll be in the garden if anyone wants me.”
Mark, her gardener, is already at work. He comes to work at seven. “Good morning, Mark,” Honora says gaily, but Mark is deaf and dumb. Before she employed Mark, Honora ran through every gardener in the village. The last one before Mark was an Italian who behaved badly. He threw down his rake and shouted, “She’sa no good, working for you, Missa Honora. She’sa no good. She’sa planta this, she’sa pullupa that, she’sa changes her mind every five minutes, she’sa no good.” When he finished he went out of the garden leaving Honora in tears. Maggie ran out of the kitchen and took the old lady in her arms, saying, “You mustn’t pay any attention to him, you mustn’t pay any attention to him, Miss Wapshot. Everybody knows how wonderful you are. Everybody knows what a wonderful woman you are.” Mark, being deaf, is protected from her interference and when she tells him to move all the rose bushes she might as well be talking to a stone.
