512
PARTISAN REVIEW
hacked rockers, and we sat down in them side by side. "How has Mrs.
Terhune been?" I inquired, realizing I had said it again. "She
had
to go to the hospital," said the girl. "Grandfather took her up today."
I was startled and troubled to hear it; I hoped it wasn't anything serious.
"Grandfather says it isn't serious." I was glad that there had been some·
one to take care of her. "She may have to have a slight operation-they
won't he able to decide for a few days." She had a reasonable and earnest
tone and the language of an experienced head nurse; hut I saw that she
was distressed and keyed-up: she had a nervous little trick like a tic of
tossing her hang aside. I wondered about the operation and asked for
the name of the hospital, which turned out to he, not, as I expected, the
Neurological Institute or anything of the sort, hut a gynecological place.
I didn't want to inquire further and presently remarked on the beauty
of the trees. She explained to me the different species, of which she knew
all the Latin names, with the same peculiar poise and precision, which
masked an uncomfortable tenseness. "Haven't you been doing a lot to the
place lately?" I asked. She thought a moment and tossed her hang:
"We've planted a new copper beech. It was almost · the only thing we
didn't have. I hope it gets to he as gorgeous as the ones on the place
across the road. They look as if they were made of bronze. You could
play them on the cello." She did not smile and was not trying to be
clever: that was the way they evidently talked in that family. "We have a
new birdhouse, too." "Have you really?"-! expressed an interest. "It's
a summer hotel for martins. Would you like to see it?" she asked.
She led me by steps down a terrace that smelt rankly of grass in the
autumn damp and past large symmetrical maples that had dropped their
leaves in round golden rugs, to a
cluste~
of cedars and firs
w~ere
I did
not remember to have been. I noticed that Sigismund
1
s studio, which
ought to have l;>een visible from there, had been taken down since summer.
There was not a trace of it left; and I was shocked at the thought that
Ellen had had it removed out of bitterness. I was amused, when we came
to the birdhouse, to see that it had been designed in the same ornamental
and obsolete style as the big house itself. There were three stories per·
£orated by windows and numerous cupolas and towers. The young cousin
explained to me about purple martins, which, she said, were really steel·
blue and opened and shut like scissors. She talked about other birds, too,
and I saw that she not only knew their habits and names, hut had a kind
of poetic perception of their qualities. It occurred to me that Ellen in
her girlhood must have perceived things with the same personal vividness.
She had once composed, I remembered, a whole suite of little pieces on
objects and creatures about the place: the cupola, the stained-glass window,
the garden, the pedigreed collie-and yes, there had been a birdhouse.
There was a squirrel-cage not far away, and I went over to see what
was in
it.
It was built around the trunk of an oak and had one of those
wheels that they spin. When we came up, a squirrel was madly spinning
it. I have always disliked these wheels, which I regard as an imposture on
