The Man in the Wing Chair regarded her with curiosity.
“As usual, Miss Prim scuttles back into her shell as soon as she senses the threat of the supernatural. Why does it bother you so much to talk about things you don’t believe in? It’s not very reasonable.”
Already engaged in dusting another book, she was silent. What could she say? Talking about things she didn’t believe in didn’t bother her at all; she had no doubt that something that didn’t exist could have no effect on her. It wasn’t the supernatural that she feared, it was the influence that the conversation and conviction of the Man in the Wing Chair might have on her. How could she explain that what she feared was coming to believe in something that didn’t exist simply because he believed in it?
“Don’t worry, Prudencia. No man can convert himself or another by the power of the will alone. We’re second causes, remember? Hard as we might try, the initiative isn’t ours.”
“I’m not a Thomist,” she said abruptly, annoyed at feeling that she’d exposed her fears.
Astonished, he looked at her much as a father would at a daughter who’d just boasted of not being able to read.
“That, Miss Prim, is your big problem.”
7
Afew days later, an apology from the Feminist League arrived in the shape of a dozen Comte de Chambord roses. A dozen roses would have been quite sufficient as a means of conveying apologies, but a dozen Comte de Chambord was more than an apology, it was an exquisite peace offering. The librarian immediately detected the expert hand of Hortensia Oeillet in the choice of flower, and that of Herminia Treaumont—who else?—in the Elizabethan verse on the card.
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
Beneath the poem, she read:
Dearest Prudencia,
Will you ever be able to forgive us? We wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t. Devastated, repentant, and deeply ashamed, we’re sending you some old-fashioned bellezza wrapped in our most sincere apologies.
Hortensia Oeillet
P.S. Herminia thought the lines from John Donne would brighten your day. Aren’t they wonderful?
“They are indeed,” murmured Miss Prim, pleased, plunging her dainty nose into the blooms.
Since the day of the unfortunate incident, Miss Prim had not stopped thinking about the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the feminist group that had welcomed her to San Ireneo. And the more she thought about it, the less serious the offense seemed. That didn’t mean she approved, but, somehow, forgiveness had started to alter her view of the women. It was true that their conduct had been thoughtless and rude, and it was also true that delicacy and tact had been conspicuous by their absence, but the librarian had begun to suspect that beneath the slightly inept conspiracy lay a form oflove.
Love? The first time this thought occurred to her she was astounded. She wasn’t a sentimental woman, but she couldn’t help sensing a kind of love—brash, clumsy, maternal—in the way the women had set out to provide her with a husband. As she deftly arranged the roses in a crystal vase, she told herself that if the ladies of San Ireneo considered a husband the greatest good to which a woman could aspire and were determined to obtain one for her, who was she to judge them? If they were prepared to expend time and effort to that end, who was she to treat as an insult something intended as, and which couldn’t in any way be seen as other than, a warm, sincere gift?
Moreover, she had to admit that the idea of marriage did not entirely repel her. Certainly, in public she’d always claimed otherwise, but like many women of her kind, Miss Prim tended to scoff at what she secretly feared she would never have. Once again she cast her mind back and recalled the distraught faces of Hortensia Oeillet and Emma Giovanacci, and Herminia Treaumont’s serene speech. If someone as beautiful and intelligent as Herminia considered marriage essential to a woman’s well-being, who was she to cast doubt on it so emphatically? Had she ever looked into the matter in depth? Had she ever sat down with pencil and paper to list the pros and cons of the marital state? Had she? Miss Prim had to admit that she had not.
At the same time, she couldn’t say she was fully in favor of marriage, either. Marital union, she reflected as she swathed herself in a woolen blanket and stepped out onto the balcony to watch the sunset, was definitely for women of a different kind. Women with a certain flexibility of character, biddable women, women who were comfortable with such concepts ascompromiseoraccommodation. Miss Prim was definitely not one of those. She couldn’t see herself compromising over anything. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to—she’d always valued the concept in the abstract—she just couldn’t imagine itin practice. She had a certain resistance, she’d realized in various situations throughout her life, to relinquishing, even in part, her view of things.
While she found this resistance tiresome, in some ways she was also inwardly proud of it. Why should she concede that a certain composer was superior to another, she told herself, remembering a heated argument about music at the house of friends, when she was absolutely sure that he wasn’t? Why should she accept, as a friendly compromise, that the respective talents were probably difficult to compare when she considered them eminently comparable? Why should she feign, in an even more abject spirit of accommodation, that the superiority of one or other composer depended largely on the listener’s mood? Miss Prim believed that compromises of this kind constituted a sort of intellectual indecency. And though she sometimes forced herself to make them for the sake of her relationships, the fact was that to do so was repugnant to her.
The sky was growing tinged with pink when there was a knock at the door.
