“Seems like it’s finished.”

  “I put it together because I’d finished with the action,” he explained. “All the felt had to be replaced, and a few of the rods.” He coughed apologetically. “They should be spruce, but I used oak dowels because that was all I could get.”

  The old piano suggested that Dolores put on another roll, and she asked dutifully, “Okay if I try another one?”

  “Of course, any that you like. Some had been damaged, I think by rats, but I’ve repaired them. There were only two I had to throw away.”

  She nodded, only half listening, pulling out rolls and reading titles.

  “It plays by itself at times,” he said. “When I’m here in the house alone, turning itself on and off.”

  She threaded a roll and closed the cover. “You’re kiddin’ me.”

  “Perhaps I am, a little. I’m afraid I haven’t got it set up quite right.”

  “What’s this picture?” She tapped it with a fingernail. “I guess I ought not to ask, but you can’t help seein’ it.”

  He laughed. “No, you can’t. It’s Pan observing a wood nymph—at least, I suppose she’s a wood nymph, though I’ve never thought of them as blondes. That’s Pan, with the horns, parting the vines.”

  Dolores leaned closer, studying the picture. “Likes them heavy, don’t he? He looks like the devil.”

  “He isn’t though. He’s a nature god, the god of flocks and herds, forests and meadows. I like it because it’s a comic depiction of Isca’s name, if you think about it.” Too late, he realized his mistake. “Isca means ‘God’s watching.’”

  “Come on,” she said, “I smell that sausage.”

  Midway through breakfast, he put down his coffee cup and cleared his throat. “I should have told you right away—last night, but I didn’t want to spoil it. She’s coming today.”

  Her eyes would not meet his. “To stay?”

  “No, certainly not.” Isca would, he knew, if he begged her; stay until she got herself together and got her hands on more money. Aloud he said, “She’s piled up the Mercedes. She told me last night. A friend—a boyfriend, I imagine—is going to drive her out here.”

  “What time?” Dolores glanced at the kitchen clock. It was eight-thirty.

  “Nine, she said.” There were several bites of sausage left and a good deal of grits; but he found he had appetite for neither. “It won’t be much before noon, really. She won’t get up before eleven.” He swallowed the last of his coffee. “Just the same, you’d better let me drive you home.”

  “What’s she comin’ for, if she’s not goin’ to stay?”

  He did not reply.

  “Your car, isn’t it? She wants your car, Jeff. You goin’ to let her take it?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Her fork clattered to her plate. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what I said. I won’t let her take it unless I have to.”

  She patted her mouth with a bright paper napkin, a moment that would remain in his mind for years to come. “You don’t want to give it to her.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “She’ll wreck it like your other one, won’t she? Maybe kill herself.”

  He shrugged miserably.

  “Listen here, Jeff.” She reached across the table to him, her eyes, big with sincerity, fastened upon his own. “I got a way. I was wantin’ to ask. I couldn’t figure out how, only this makes it fit perfect. I got to take Jimmy to the doctor today.”

  Jimmy was her son.

  “This afternoon. Two o’clock. So you lend me your car, all right? That way she can’t get it. It’ll be gone, and you can tell her somebody stole it. Or anything you want. I’ll bring it back around six and cook your dinner.”

  There was a distant click from the sunporch.

  “All right,” he said.

  She held out her hand. “You let me have those keys.”

  He took them from his pocket and handed them to her, and basked in the glow of her satisfaction.

  She stood, wiping her hands on Isca’s apron. “I’ll stay and wash these dishes for you, if you want me to. Won’t take a minute.”

  “No,” he said. He was listening for the first bars of the music. “I can do them.”

  “You leave them. I’ll wash them for you when I come back tonight. Maybe you ought to show me, you know, where things are. The ashtray and the wipers and all that.” Her eyes were shining with excitement; he wondered whether she actually had a license.

  Outside, he opened the car door for her. “You’ve seen me drive it. It’s a perfectly ordinary three-speed transmission, with power steering and power brakes.” He pointed. “The air-conditioning will come on as soon as you start the engine. See there?” He showed her how to turn it off, how to adjust the fan, and various other things.

  “Jeff…” She kissed him. “This is just so nice of you.”

  Music sounded from the sunporch, fifty feet away.

  Once I had two lips

  As red as the rose.

  Now I’m as pale as

  The lily that grows.

  “…for Jimmy. Jeff, I just got to pay him.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred, Jeff? Please?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t got it.”

  “Three hundred, then. Jeff I got to give that doctor somethin’.”

  Like the flower in the garden,

  All the color has flown,

  Don’t you see what I’ve come to,

  For loving such a one.

  It was, he decided, pretty reasonable for what he’d had. They went back into the house, and he wrote her a check in his den to the tinkling music of the old piano.

  “Jeff,” (she held his check, the keys to the Buick, and both his hands in hers) “you’re goin’ to get this back. Never doubt it. I will repay you.”

  It was at that moment that he truly understood that he would never see her again. He kissed her good-bye, and stood on the sunporch to watch her back briskly out of the driveway and pull onto the state highway. She waved, but there seemed little point in waving back.

  So it’s tie a yellow handkerchief

  In remembrance of me.

  Wear it around your neck, love,

  In flash company.

  Flash company. love,

  Like so many more.

  If it hadn’t been for flash company,

  I’d never been so poor.

  It was the sage, kindly voice of an old friend lecturing him. He opened the piano and removed the roll. Dolores had cost three hundred and an old car worth, perhaps, five hundred more. And Dolores had been a lot more pleasant. Isca had run something between a quarter million and three hundred thousand, as closely as he had been able to calculate it; and Isca had become a nightmare that had dragged on for years.

  He was learning.

  Rubbing his jaw, he contemplated the old piano. Dolores had been right about the growling base, and it was in tune, to his ears at least. That growl was from the soundboard he had made, largely by guess, from one-eighth-inch plywood.

  He opened the top and looked at it, rubbing his hands. Beyond any question, he could contrive something better now.

  As he went out to the garage to get his tools, it occurred to him that the Buick was registered in Isca’s name as well as his own. Some good—or some entertainment, at least—might come of that.

  The rowdy, joyous song of the old piano floated along the driveway from the sunporch. When he paused to listen, he could just distinguish the sound of laughter and the cheerful cadence of dancing feet. As he pushed a favorite screwdriver into his hip pocket, he began to whistle.

  The Haunted Boardinghouse

  Enan Bambrick had left the university at the close of his third year. It had been due only to the largess of a gentleman of his neighborhood, a certain Dr. Foxxe, that it had been possible for him to attend at all; but the doctor had married again, and his bride had not approved of his charity—or indeed of any other expenditure not devoted to her adornment.

  The news reached Enan at midwinter. He had saved a little money; and his college, which professed to cherish classicists, had permitted him to run up an inconsiderable debt, to be repaid if his patron’s interest should reawaken, or if Enan should find another, or if ever he was himself in a position to repay it.

  But when spring came and the roads were once more passable, he was informed that his business with Calpurnius Siculus and Pomponius Mela was now ended, for the time being at least. His fellows urged him strongly to steal what books he could from the library in order that he might trade for food while pursuing his studies in those that remained. He rejected this well-intended advice, departing the halls of learning with no luggage beyond a clean shirt, a collection of coins begged upon his behalf by his dearest friend, and a tattered, leather-bound Moralia—this last wholly his own, the gift of one of his professors, who, having found a better one, no longer wanted it.

  Upon reaching his native town, some nine days after setting out and after privations too easily imagined, he discovered that his father, a tailor, had small need of his assistance. Through his father’s influence, however, he was at length able to secure a position as a draper’s clerk; and a draper’s clerk he remained for something in excess of a year. Alis volat propriis.

  He flies with his own wings—but not too high, for he slept, with two brother clerks, in the loft above the shop. And if he continued to dine at his parents’ table once or twice a week, if he read Moralia on long summer evenings, if he made for himself a little manual of Latin in a foolscap notebook, the others had peculiarities no less striking; and it was by no means apparent that his eventual end was to be in any way different from theirs.

  Spring returned, and it struck Enan with almost unbearable poignancy that a year had passed; many of the faces he had known would soon be gone. There would be much talk of examinations now, and much casting of summer plans. The wealthiest students would issue invitations—though not, of course, to such as he had been. The ancient apple on the common (said to date from the second millennium) would be wreathed in bridal white.

  Even at the draper’s, summer was not altogether without its pleasures. The shop closed early on Wednesday and Thursday, and was closed altogether on Monday. Enan discoursed upon Vergil to certain attentive cows and buttercups, and wrestled and fished with two younger brothers. He had very nearly become reconciled to a lifetime of praising, measuring, and selling cotton, linen, and wool when the letter came. It was from the kind friend who had begged coins for him; and because it was the most important, and very nearly the only, letter he had ever received, it will be given here in full.

  My Dear Enan,

  We have heard nothing of you here, but I trust you are doing well. Ollie did not matriculate but will be back next term, or so he says. Jo is married now. I doubt you know him.

  I am writing to tell you about a letter I got from a distant relation called Seely. He keeps a little school and wants somebody to take charge of the library there and tutor a bit. Putting it as a favor he asks me to come. I intend to die an M.A., and so I told him I could not, but I might know of someone. Praised you to the firmament, you may be sure. Seems to be board, with a trifle of salary. You’d have to help with this and that at all hours from what he says, and there might be tips from parents now and then. If you are interested in it, write to the Headmaster, New Lake School, Granville.

  Your friend always,

  Leo R. Pruitt, B.A.

  Enan’s hands were shaking before he had finished his first reading of this letter, which he read through a second time, and a third, before refolding it and laying it aside.

  To be master of a library! There would be scores of books—there might well be hundreds. There would be funds, perhaps, now and then for the acquisition of more. He could continue his studies, prepare for an eventual return to the university. It might even be possible to complete his degree in the vicinity of Granville, concerning which he knew nothing, except that it lay some fifty miles to the east.

  Or perhaps in time some wealthy family might desire a tutor to accompany its heir. Enan had known several such individuals, half teacher and half servant. A tutor might attend a class or two himself, might take on an additional pupil here and there in order to make that possible. And who could be more suitable? …young Arthur’s present tutor… known and respected… himself.

  It says something for Enan’s character that he wrote his friend to thank him before writing the headmaster of New Lake School. Then and only then, with much chewing of the draper’s already well-chewed pen, with much scratching of head and much wringing of hands and walking up and down, did he dare address Mr. Seely, modestly and even humbly, expressing ab imo pectore his entire willingness to accept the position on whatever terms Mr. Seely might think suitable. With what care this letter was folded and stamped, with what feelings it was committed to the town’s post office, need not be described.

  The tobacconist around the corner had in his youth been a stoker of coaches, and Enan seized the earliest opportunity to question him regarding Granville.

  “You’re not figuring on staying very long?” the tobacconist inquired, knocking out his pipe.

  “I might.” Enan was scrupulous. “A friend of mine’s got family there.”

  The tobacconist shrugged. “Lock your door, lad. And shut your window, too. You know the coach don’t run?”

  Enan shook his head.

  “Not no more—used to be a big place.” The tobacconist did not know whether there was a university in Granville or near it, had never heard of New Lake School.

  June was nearly spent already. July passed without word. The pupils at New Lake School, Enan told himself, very probably did not attend classes during the summer months; it might well be that Mr. Seely himself had gone afield.

  Toward the end of August, in a fever of anxiety, he wrote again.

  When the harvest was nearly in, when cartloads of pumpkins were to be seen in every street and the breath of men and horses smoked at two the afternoon, when the bell of the grammar school that had been his own sounded before sunrise, and little troupes of its pupils went from door to door at dusk, habited as witches, tunnel men, and ghouls, the letter arrived.

  It was torn and stained, and had been marked by a town far to the south. When Enan opened it, he discovered that it had been composed in August—by one of those coincidences that seem nearly preternatural, upon the same date that he had penned his second missive. As a precedent has now been established, this tattered letter, too, will be given in full. Usus magister est.

  Mr. Bambrick:

  You appear nicely fitted for the position in question. I should appreciate it if you would come at once; in any event you must arrive before the fifteenth of September, at which time our new term commences. Please consider this urgent.

  G. Vincent Seely

  Enan wrote immediately, informing Mr. Seely that his letter had miscarried; but he slept very little that night, and in the morning, with every apology he could lay tongue to, but with the tenacity of one clinging to his last hope, he resigned his post with the draper. In less than an hour, he had packed his scant belongings and bade his parents farewell.

  There was, as the tobacconist had warned him, no coach to Granville. There was, however, a coach to Bradford, which was, Enan was assured, not much over ten miles from it. Noon found him aboard, having secured a half-price ticket by his promise to help fire and carry water, and to push if necessary. Vast and clumsy, streaming brownish-black smoke, it departed at a pace no horse could have maintained for more than half a mile; and Enan knew for the first time (and the last) the exhilaration of rapid tireless motion. The night’s hard frost had left every twig of every bush and every blade of grass in every meadow traced with white. White, too, were the plumes of spent steam leaking from the coach’s cylinders; white still, they froze upon the rattling windowpanes until the interior was left in milky twilight, and Enan was forced to lay his book aside.

  The man in the seat across the aisle asked whether he was going to Bradford. He shook his head. “No, to Granville.”

  “Hello… To Granville? Is that your home?”

  Enan shook his head again.

  “Know the place?”

  “No,” Enan said truthfully. “I’ve never been there. Where are you from?”

  “Bradford.” The man paused, sucking his teeth. “You have a care, hear me?”

  “I’ll surely try to,” Enan said. “It’s a dangerous place, I take it?”

  The man turned to look at the sheeted ice on his own window for a moment, and Enan feared he had offended him.

  “Granville’s an odd sort of place, that’s all,” his fellow passenger told him at last. “Know anything about its history?”

  Enan shook his head.

  “It’s old, that’s all. They say it goes back to the first settlers hereabouts. Older than that, maybe.”

  Enan ventured to ask how that was possible.

  “Oh, there was people here before. We just don’t like to talk about them is all. And then Granville wasn’t left empty in the war like most places. There was more boats on the river then, and Granville had something to do with them—I don’t know what. Anyhow, walls got put up all around, and they’re still there. There’s fever and worse in the swamps, too. Things left over from the wars, just like the walls, they say.”

  “Perhaps you could put me on the road to Granville when we get to Bradford,” Enan suggested. “That is, if you would be so good.”

  His fellow passenger cocked an eyebrow. “How you going to get across the river?”

  That was what Enan himself wondered as he studied it from a pier of the ruined bridge. The ice near the shore seemed solid enough; but a winding snake of dark water showed near the center of the wide channel, vagrant and threatening. The most sensible thing to do, he realized, would be to stay the night in Bradford and hope for a cold one that would make for stronger ice in the morning; but he commanded only scant funds, and he was far too diffident to beg a lodging from the traveler he had talked with on the coach, even if he were able to locate his house.