But it was difficult, from the summit of Wapshot Hill, not to spread over the village the rich, dark varnish of decorum and quaintness—to do this or to lament the decadence of a once boisterous port; to point out that the Great Pissmire was now Alder Vale and that the Mariner’s Jug was now the Grace Louise Tearoom. There was beauty below them, inarguable and unique—many fine things built for the contentment of hardy men—and there was decadence—more ships in bottles than on the water—but why grieve over this? Looking back at the village we might put ourselves into the shoes of a native son (with a wife and family in Cleveland) coming home for some purpose—a legacy or a set of Hawthorne or a football sweater—and swinging through the streets in good weather what would it matter that the blacksmith shop was now an art school? Our friend from Cleveland might observe, passing through the square at dusk, that this decline or change in spirit had not altered his own humanity and that whatever he was—a man come for a legacy or a drunken sailor looking for a whore—it did not matter whether or not his way was lighted by the twinkling candles in tearooms; it did not change what he was.
But our friend from Cleveland was only a visitor—he would go away, and Mr. Pincher and his passengers would not. Now, past Mrs. Drinkwine’s and over the crown of the hill, the west of the village spread out below them—farmland and woods and in the distance Parson’s Pond, where Parthenia Brown had drowned herself and where the icehouse, useless now, stood with its ramp sloping down into the blue water. They could see, from this high land, that there were no walls or barriers around the village and yet, as the wagon started slowly down the west side of Wapshot Hill and they approached Reba Heaslip’s house, they might wonder how Reba could have carried on her life in a place that was not walled. Whenever Reba was introduced to a stranger she exclaimed: “I was BORN in the inner sanctum of the Masonic Temple.” What she meant, of course, was that what was now the Masonic Temple had been her father’s house, but would her jolting and exclamatory style have gotten her very far in a place like Chicago? She was a passionate antivivisectionist and was dedicated to the alteration or suppression of the celebration of Christmas—a holiday that seemed to her to inculcate and perpetuate ruinous improvidence, false standards and economic depravity. On Christmas Eve she joined her enthusiasms and went among the carol singers, passing out antivivisectionist tracts. She had been arrested twice by what she called the “fascist police.” She had a white house like Mrs. Drinkwine’s and a sign was nailed to her door. THIS IS THE HOUSE OF A VERY OLD LADY WHO HAS GIVEN THE LAST TEN YEARS OF HER LIFE TO THE ANTIVIVISECTIONIST CAUSE. MANY OF THE MEN OF HER FAMILY DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY. THERE IS NOTHING OF VALUE OR INTEREST HERE. SALUTE YOUR FLAG! ROBBERS AND VANDALS PASS BY! The sign was weathered and had hung there for ten years and the ladies hardly noticed it.
On Reba’s front lawn there was a skiff planted with petunias.
Going down the west side of Wapshot Hill with the full weight of the wagon forward on the shafts the mare picked her way slowly. Beyond Reba’s there was a patch of woodland, charmingly dappled with sunlight, and this grove had on them all, even on Mr. Pincher, a happy effect as if it were some reminder of paradise—some happy authentication of the beauty of the summer countryside—for it was the kind of scene that most of them had hanging on their parlor walls and yet this was no photograph or painting through which they traveled with the spotty lights flowing over them. It was all real and they were flesh and blood.
Beyond the woods they came to Peter Covell’s place.
Peter was a farmer. He had a small cash crop—sweet corn, gladioli, butter and potatoes—and in the past he had made some money building stone walls. A powerful man of perhaps seventy with rusty tools, a collapsed barn, chickens in his kitchen, cats in his parlor, lusty and sometimes drunk and always clean-spoken, he had pulled stones out of the earth with a mare that was older than Lady and had set them together into walls that would outlive the village, whatever its destiny. Dam the river and flood it for a reservoir (this could happen) and in the summer droughts people would drive or fly—this being in the future—to see the pattern of Covell’s walls as they appeared above the receding water; or let the scrub take hold, maple saplings and horse brier, and fishermen and hunters, climbing the walls, would say that this must have been pasture once upon a time. His daughter Alice had never married, she loved the old man so, and even now on Sunday afternoons they climbed the hill hand in hand, carrying a spyglass to watch the ships in the bay. Alice raised collies. A sign hung on the house: COLLIES FOR SALE. Who wanted collies? She would have done better raising children or selling eggs.
