Chapter 26

Bruton was ordered to move the Fair Mantle Village collections in the early morning hours preceding the siege of Mount Can’t. The objects were crated with the help of National Guardsmen and moved onto National Guard transports.

Seeing and hearing the endless stream of cars, the Villagers and their helpers surmised something momentous was taking place. When they learned things were under control, they assumed the Guard had won. Launching his best profanity, Bruton grabbed his overcoat and told a Guardsman to drive him up to the site so he could triage the casualties. The situation was clarified when the Guardsman radioed in for a body count.

The Villagers were relieved, but the Guardsmen were faced with a real military moral dilemma: What should they do? Taking back the site was out of the question. They couldn’t take arms against unarmed civilians. Should they radio their superiors? Should they arrest the Guardsmen who had relinquished the site? Should they say “Up yours” and go home to their families? Or should they simply carry on and help save what Bruton rightly reminded them was part of the nation’s heritage?

After speaking among themselves, and with more than a little input from the Villagers, they decided to carry on. That way, they did their duty and they didn’t have to answer for anything that happened on Mount Can’t.

Suddenly the assignment was amended: Bruton told them to unload the trucks. “We’re staying put,” he gloated. “Mount Can’t is a fairy tale. Let’s not waste taxpayers’ money. Put everything back.”

Everything was put back where it belonged. Now, however, Bruton thinks it would be nice to give the buildings a fresh look by rearranging the furniture. The buildings should be open for the people who will come to visit Mount Can’t. Fair Mantle Village is an ideal place to escape the cold, and it’s a good time to lobby those visitors for donations to keep the village running.

Farrell goes from one building to the next, lending a willing hand, making volunteers and Guardsmen laugh with witty observations and blade-edge comebacks. It’s a beautiful day. For the first time in months, it doesn’t matter that her mother died, or that she was put out of her home, or that she still could end up losing what little she’s been able to hold on to. It must be the brilliant sunshine and the Christmas-card image of Fair Mantle Village in the snow.

She’s bringing curtains to the gardener’s cottage when Gustie asks her to keep an eye on “the ladies” while Birdsall brings her to visit Tom. “Of course,” she says, as though Gustie couldn’t possibly think she’d refuse.

Mary skips ahead, kicking up the snow. Anne is quiet. She’s embarrassed about what happened with the police? “What did you think of that mob at the hearing?” Farrell asks her. She shrugs. “It was all right.”

My, wasn’t that productive! “A good thing Mr. Hume was there.”

“Yeah.”

How old is she? Thirteen? Shudder. Junior-high age. Kids are weird in junior high. And to her, I’m probably a stupid old lady. Well, this stupid old lady had better wise up and not make small talk, else this kid will think I’m worse than I think.
Farrell smiles. “Almost there. Want to open the door?”

Anne takes the key from Farrell and dashes ahead.

The gardener’s cottage is attached to the carriage house. Furnishings are spare: plain wooden table and kitchen chairs; rope bed; Franklin stove. The hardwood floor is the original; it’s got more waves than Lake Hopatcong in a regatta. The lack of decoration and the bare floors give the cottage splendid acoustics. Little wonder, then that this is one of the buildings where Farrell played her flutes during special events. It’s good to be back. She can almost hear “Johnnie Cope” crisply crashing into the walls.

Mary asks if she can play in the snow. Farrell tells her to be careful, then, with Anne’s help, slips plain, ivory-colored curtains onto cedar rods made by village carpenters. The girl is more at ease. Farrell asks if she’ll be an historic interpreter at the village in the spring. Anne brightens, chats about how she can’t wait to roll hoops again. “It’s so much fun when you do it over all those tree roots.”

“I never saw you dress up when you worked here,” she says in a beatless change of subject.

“I did, a few times. But I’m not the eighteenth century type. Not the thing you want visitors to see.”

Anne’s giggle is shy. “They tried to get Francis to join because he plays harpsichord. He said he wouldn’t be caught dead in knee breeches.”

Farrell tries not to imagine Effen in Colonial garb. “When you think about it, Mr. Hume does have to watch out for his professional image. Would you want to deal with him at somebody’s funeral after seeing him decked out in a powdered wig and silk stockings? All you’d think of is what he looks like in—“

“—a powdered wig and silk stockings,” Farrell and Anne say together.

Anne’s giggle is more open. “Yeah, I guess it would be kind of silly.” She watches Farrell commit a Fair Mantle Village no-no: standing on an original Colonial chair to place the curtains over the windows. “Why do you call him Mr. Hume? Everybody else calls him everything else.”

Farrell makes a face. “Bad habit from the paper, I suppose. We always used courtesy titles when we spoke to people.” She has set one end of the curtain rod and is stretching across the glass to the other side when Anne asks, “Do you like him?”

The end of the rod allegedly slips out of the support. Farrell must step off the chair or tumble against the window. She musters her composure; picks up and shakes imaginary floor dust from the curtain. “Everybody likes F.N.”

Anne seems vaguely dissatisfied. “I thought, maybe, you two were seeing each other or something.”

“Because I was with him at the hearing?” Little gossip monger! She’s either reading too many young adult romances or watching too many soap operas.

When Farrell was Anne’s age, she couldn’t care less about boys. Boys her age couldn’t care about her. She was the adolescent’s nightmare come true: skinny; fine, lifeless hair; acne; glasses; braces; parents who wouldn’t let her follow the clothes crowd.

She looks upon Anne with envy. The kid has everything going for her: good, thick hair; large, dark eyes that probably won’t need glasses until she’s fifty; the figure of a Dresden doll. She’s intelligent and respectful, too, if more than a little nosy about who’s dating whom – or Hume, as the case may be.

“No, we’re not seeing each other.”

“Oh.” The word is a sigh of relief as well as disappointment, but Anne doesn’t press the issue. She returns to the village office with Farrell, having a snowball fight with Mary all along the way.

It’s Francis Hume’s fault that Farrell doesn’t join in the fun.

For Farrell,the business with Mount Can’t is a matter of going so far away from where she started, she’s ended up where she started from. When Bruton drove her to the village that night, the village was going to close. She was going to return to living on ten dollars’ worth of groceries a week. And she was going to return to knowing she’s the wrong age or the wrong color or the wrong sex to suit prospective employers.

She didn’t mind. She knew all along that, come what may, she would be able to endure the put downs and the being made to feel inferior and unwanted.

Something has happened to her within the past three weeks. The restlessness, the intense emotions and the destructive self-doubt have disappeared.

Her voice and manner are softer. She’s not so willing to mentally thrash herself. She’s patient. Polite. Attentive. She laughs more often. She takes the time to listen to other people’s troubles. She talks to strangers drifting down from Mount Can’t. Her actions have nothing to do with cultivating public relations. She enjoys being nice to others. They react to her in kind.

Sometimes, while playing her flutes, tiny Jack singing at her feet, she looks out the window and wonders why she ever left Fair Mantle.

Her musings encompass the town, the newspaper, old neighbors, eateries, the community theater, the art shows, Fair Mantle Village and its villagers. But those same musings always settle upon the name and image of a particular person. It bothers her. As much as she enjoys being here, and as much as she’s enjoyed reacquainting herself with everyone, she can’t understand her friendship with Francis Hume.

He’s the most decent, compassionate person she’s ever known. Yes aside from a love of classical music, literature and foreign languages, she and he have little in common. She was a mere musicology major who, until she arrived at the newspaper, drifted from one office job to another, borne on the whims of ignorant employers who thought all she did in college was play instruments all day.

On the other hand, Effen (why do people call him that???) has been at his profession nearly as long as she’s been drifting and is now a successful businessman; well-schooled, well-known, well-liked. He’s not handsome, but he’s certainly pleasing to the eye. She often thought he had a face that belonged in an early nineteenth-century miniature portrait. (Her own face, she quickly considered, belonged in a fairy tale: the Ugly Duckling. Except in her edition, the Ugly Duckling grew up to become the Ugly Duckling, not a gorgeous swan.)

Effen also has other qualities that Farrell can never claim for herself: the quiet courage to confront the ravages of death day after day; the confidence, control and resignation that come from a deeply seated sense of purpose that may or may not be founded in his religious upbringing.

It’s no secret he’s Roman Catholic. His work is exclusively with Catholic churches. But aside from that, you wouldn’t know what he was. He doesn’t spout dogma, he doesn’t argue theology, and he certainly doesn’t talk Bible unless he’s referring to a piece of classical music. The only clue might be the volumes of Loyola and Aquinas camouflaged amid the professional books and ledgers in his office, volumes that are the survivors of philosophy courses required of all undergrads at the Jesuit university he attended.

But you don’t need religion to be good or courageous or to treat others with the kindness and concern Effen regularly bestows. You just need … what, if not a belief in something higher and better than the reality of the physical world?

If thoughts of Francis Hume pervade Farrell’s musings about her return to Fair Mantle, it’s the “what” of Francis Hume that ends them. It’s too simple to attribute his nature to general benevolence or the love of humanity; too convenient to invoke the Vatican or Jesus Christ.

The only way she can reconcile the puzzle is to view her friend as both a miracle and a mystery: a miracle for his goodness; a mystery for depths she can’t hope to fathom. She has no choice but to accept him the way she accepts the loveliness and horror of the world: knowing there is no explanation. Therein lay the miracle and the mystery.

If Bruton no longer needs her at Fair Mantle Village, she will return to South Windsor if she must. What she feels for Francis Hume will follow her all her life. It’s not the stuff of infatuation, or even the stuff of romantic love. What Farrell feels for Francis Hume is like a monastic rule that chastises, sanctifies and sobers all at the same time: so hard to accept, harder still to cast off, and impossible not to embrace as the penance that will be with her until the life of the world to come.