The Mysteries of Eleusis
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
T
HE
porch of the house appeared unchanged. The steps still
sagged and the rotting surface of the wood was covered with
~any
broom scratches. There was the old iton railing partially hidden
by vines. The vines were rather thin and without any particular season
in their appearance. Over the window of the door there was a square
of glass colored in dull hues of red and green and gold. The same
gravel and stones separated this house from the one on the right. The
neighboring house still retained its threatening liveliness and the
dreamer half expected to hear the sounds of its peculiar violence.
The terror of home was domestic and rural: quarrels, poverty, abject
and countrified dissension. The neighbors knew the city sins of drink–
ing and laughing and falling on the floor and setting fire to the very
roof over their heads. The dreamer heard voices behind the door of
home and at first thought it was the mother calling out an accusation.
Then the sound became the conglomerate voice of the family. There
were the voices of a sister, a brother, another sister, this one older,
and a mother and father. Unable to bear the excitement of anticipa–
tion, the dreamer opened the unlocked door and stepped into a hall–
way of familiar shape. A ray of sunlight streamed through the door
and illuminated a patch of strange wall-paper that startled the
dreamer. The paper was like an enormously complex tapestry filled
with diminutive human figures, tiny, unrecognizable dogs and flashes
of armour set against a background of richly variegated roses. The
paper was an alteration of frightening importance that shattered the
confidence of the first step on the threshold. It remained as a dariger
signal even when the dreamer joyously noted an old familiar table,
a square, stunted thing of heavy wood. Beside
it
was an iron coat
stand with awkward and ugly hat pegs jutting out from the frame
like stiff branches. There were no articles of clothing on the rack, but
the stand itself, the beloved old eyesore, reached down into the
dreamer's heart. It brought forth re2ollections of the mother's crude,
homemade cotton dresses and her short, overworked hands. And with
it appeared the older sister's very stern face not softened by years of
