Chapter 1
Leona said, "But the country doesn't even look like spring! It must be weeks behind New York!"
Dan Collier glanced away from the road at the woods on either side. The birches had new leaves, but they were small and pale, and the reddish buds on the oaks were still tightly curled. Behind the paler colors, like the background of a tapestry, he could see the darkness of evergreens marching up the slope. He and Leona had left the parkway half an hour before, and now they were driving up a road that wound through hills that grew steeper, more irregular, with every turn. Dan knew this country well, though he had never seen it in early spring; it was both familiar and strange, and its bareness held a kind of promise. Or was he imagining that, because he was looking forward to the next few months-to a new job and a new place to live?
Beside him, Leona spoke again. "It ought to be warmer, with May only two days off. Do you think we'll freeze in Windover? Just the name makes me shiver."
She buried her chin deeper in fur and pressed her shoulder against Dan's. Looking down, he could see only her delicate little nose, her long eyelashes, and a strand of hair, darker than the mink jacket that had been her father's Christmas present. He hadn't wanted her to bring that jacket; he didn't think it was suitable for Windover-or was it because he himself hadn't given it to her and wished he had? However, Leona had insisted that, wherever they went, she was going to be warm-and, as happened so often, she was justified.
Aloud, he said, "No, we won't freeze in the cottage. It's just as well we're not going into the big house, though. That would be cold, because it has high ceilings and lots of windows."
"Was it built just for a summer place?"
"I suppose so, though it has a furnace. But Uuncle Edgar spent only one winter there-the year my mother was too ill to be moved. After she died, he went South."
"Dan!" Leona sat up. "Did your mother die in Windover? You never told me-"
"You never asked me, and it didn't seem important."
"But don't you-I mean, don't you mind coming here to live? Won't it be upsetting?"
He shook his head, his eyes fixed on the road. "No," he said. "You see, Mother was always an invalid; I hardly ever saw her except in bed or lying on sofas. She never-well, I never associated her with Windover." He could have added, Or with any other place, but Leona wouldn't have understood what he meant. Her childhood had been as different as possible from his. It was a long way, he reflected, from a big, sunny house outside Philadelphia, with adoring sisters and brothers, and gay, young-looking parents, to the gloomy Park Avenue apartment and the only slightly less gloomy country house in the Berkshires where he had grown up. Yes, it was a very long way....
He looked at his wife. This time her face was turned up to him-small, dark, vivid. Her amber-colored eyes were bright with excitement-a look she always had whenever he spoke of his boyhood. Leona never could believe those years had been real: they were something you read about or saw in a movie; they didn't happen to anyone you knew. Dan had tried to explain them to her, to tell her that his bringing up hadn't been in the least sinister or depressing. "Only children are common," he said. "So are divorces. So are invalid mothers. Just because my life happened to combine all three you make it into a grade-B picture. The lonely boy, the neurotic mother, the father whose name is never mentioned, the stuffed shirt of an uncle. It wasn't really like that, you know."
"Maybe not," Leona conceded. "But you must have been unhappy, all the same. You were too young to realize it. It took me-and being married to me-to make you realize how lonely you were. Didn't it, Dan?"
He had admitted, partly to satisfy her, that it had. But now, as they drove on through the afternoon sunlight, he thought that there had been one summer when he had realized his unhappiness clearly enough. It was the last summer he spent in Windover, the year his mother died, and just before he went to college. Dan Collier felt an odd pang, remembering the summer, and he wished that he weren't with Leona, hurrying to get to Windover, to see the house and unpack the car and go to the Inn for dinner and the night. If he were driving alone, he could pull up beside the road or better still, turn into the narrow lane that wound off through the woods. He would get out and sit on a stone wall and think about that last summer, and about Christina Edgren....
Leona was speaking, and, as often happened, it seemed as if she were reading his mind-not completely, not quite accurately, but coming close to what he had been thinking. "I wish you'd tell me something about Windover, Dan. Is it backwoods, small-town, or are there a few civilized people? It's funny, but you haven't given me a very clear picture of it." Her laugh was rather brittle. "I don't even know whether I'll hate it or not."
"I don't know, either," he said, with an effort. "But whatever we find, I know it will be better than living in a two-room apartment in uptown New York, or in one of those overpriced, cheaply built houses in Deanebury."
He couldn't see Leona's frown, but he could hear it in her voice. Leona's voice could be as gentle and teasing as a child's, and then unexpectedly it could turn sharp, or, as it was now, petulant. "Are you sure there wasn't anything else in Deanebury, if you had to go there-"
"Leona, you know we've been over all that!"
She said quickly, "I mean, there must have been something besides those frightful little modern houses! After all, Mrs. Deane roomed with Mother at school, and she and her family are in the town. If we lived there, we could have fun with them."
"We still can," he said patiently. "Windover is only fifteen miles away. We're in Deanebury but not of it, and that's always an advantage when you come to a new place."
"I don't think so," Leona argued. "Look at my family. They've been in the same place all their lives, and before Mother and Daddy were married they lived only two stations apart on the Main Line!"
"Darling," Dan said, "Windover, Massachusetts, isn't Suburbia, Pennsylvania."
"Dan, you know perfectly well we live in Radnor!"
He did, of course; he had said that deliberately, because he was always slightly annoyed by Leona's smugness when she talked about her family. "Radnor, then," he said. "Or St. David's or Bryn Mawr. Those are all prosperous suburban places. Deanebury is a small industrial city and Windover is a village."
"But is village life better than small-town life?"
"I think so." Dan drew a long breath. He didn't want to reopen the argument that had gone on for several days after his company had assigned him to oversee the construction of a large plant in Deanebury.
Leona had received the news with a storm of protest. "But, Dan, I like New York! We've just started to have fun here! And to be shipped off to the wilds of New England-oh, it's too awful! You must do something!"
"The only thing I can do," he had told her quietly, "is to resign and look for another job. I will, if you insist. Do you?"
And, as she always did, Leona gave in when she was forced to face facts. "No, of course not. But why couldn't the company have sent you to New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, or somewhere near the family?"
Privately, Dan was glad it hadn't. Leona was all too willing to slip back into being Leona Harrison, the youngest and prettiest of the four Harrison girls, instead of his wife. He had fallen in love with her a month after he had finished his stint in the Service; he had married her on her twenty-first birthday, not quite two years ago. He loved her very much, though there were times when he wished she would grow up a little faster.
"I may be all wrong about Windover, Leona, but we agreed to try it," he said easily. "And remember, it's not final; we can always move into Deanebury if you don't like the country, or if it's too far from my work. In the meantime, think of the money we'll save, living in our own house."
Like the child she was, Leona was easily distracted. "That's true," she said. "Did you ever think it would be your own house-I mean, when you used to live in it?"
He shook his head. "I thought Uncle Edgar would live for years, and that when he died he'd leave everything to Yale." He smiled. "I wouldn't even believe it now, if I hadn't seen that complicated will of his."
"Why did it have to be so complicated?"
"Because," he said, dryly, "he wanted to be sure I'd be adequately provided for and at the same time prevented from throwing money around-in other words, because I was his sister's child and at the same time my father's son. Poor Uncle Edgar-what a ghastly time he must have had with that will! It represents a compromise that must have nearly torn him in two-" He broke off. "You know, we ought to have gone to see him more often last year."
"If we had," Leona said shrewdly, "he might have thought we wanted him to leave us something. Besides, he disapproved of me because I didn't know the right stuffy people in Philadelphia."
Dan said nothing, for that was perfectly true. Even so, his uncle might have liked Leona if she had made an effort. She could be utterly captivating when she chose.
Presently he said, "Anyway, he left us the Windover place, with two houses on it. Pretty luxurious, isn't it? If we don't like one, we can always move into the other."
"Or if we fight," Leona said, laughing. "You know, this is rather nice country. Not as civilized as Pennsylvania, of course, but still quite lovely."
They had topped a rise and were looking off into a valley or, rather, a series of valleys that all slid down to a larger one that was in deep shadow. To the north, the Berkshires were hyacinth-blue against the clear spring sky. Beyond the valley, the land climbed, ridge on ridge-the light green of meadows, the brown of plowed fields, the pale and dark tapestry of woods.
Dan thought, It all looks so familiar that I can't believe I've never seen it at this time of year. His mother had died in April, but the funeral was in New York, and he had gone straight there from boarding school. He had spent that summer at a tutoring ranch in Colorado, and he hadn't gone back to Windover until the next June, after his graduation from school, the summer he met Christina.
Leona said, "Is that the town-that white steeple?" He nodded, and she said, "It looks miles away."
"It's not so far. We go down, and up, and then down a little and cross a small river that you can't see from here. The village is by the river, and the church and the Green are on top of a hill. Our house is about a mile beyond."
The words "our house" filled him with an unaccustomed excitement. When he had first thought of coming to Windover, he had been only half-serious, amused at the idea, and relieved at finding a place to live. Now that he was here, it was an adventure. He wondered how Leona would like it. He was almost as ignorant of what lay before them as she, for when he was a boy he had known nothing of the real Windover. It was only that last summer that he had become aware of the town, and then he had seen it through Christina Edgen's eyes.
"Dan," Leona was saying, "you're driving crazily. Are you in such a hurry to get there?"
He smiled, feeling himself flush. "Maybe. You know, Leona, we're terribly lucky."
"To have a place to live? Of course."
But he meant much more than that. He meant that he was lucky to be twenty-five, to be married to Leona, to have a job in a part of the world that he had always liked and wanted to know better. More-he was suddenly overwhelmingly happy to be alive. But somehow he couldn't say that to Leona.
Leona was looking at her watch. "It's half past five," she said. "What time did you say they had dinner at the Inn? Seven? Then we'll have time to stop at the house first."
Twenty minutes later they drove through Windover's single street of shops and turned across the river, up the hill to the Green. The great rectangle of emerald grass was dazzling in the late afternoon sunlight; the elms that bordered it were taller than Dan remembered, though the houses themselves-Colonial, clean-lined and white-painted-seemed smaller. "It all looks terribly neat," Leona said with a faint air of disapproval. But when they reached the stone wall and the two towering stone posts where Dan had to get out to unhook the chain that barred the driveway, and when they stopped the car in front of the huge gray house, she burst into delighted laughter.
"Darling, you never told me it was a mansion. It's simply preposterous! Late General Grant in stone and stucco!"
"You're a few years off," Dan corrected her. "It was built in 1907 by my grandfather, who was both architect and contractor, which may explain it." He grinned. "I never knew him, but the house suited my Uncle Edgar perfectly. He belonged to the Gibson period. Can't you see him on that terrace in a striped blazer, with a mandolin?"
"But it's all so wonderfully corny." Leona laughed. "I never thought we'd live in a place like this."
"We're not going to-yet. The gardener's cottage is something else. Grandfather didn't believe in wasting fancy ideas on the help. It's just down the driveway. Let's leave some of our stuff there and then if there's time we'll make a tour of the big house."
The gardener's cottage, built of fieldstone, was comfortably though sparsely furnished. A small lawn behind it was edged with a border that, rather mysteriously, showed signs of recent care.
"This is nice," she said, "but I like the big house's awfulness." She laughed. "Let's get Johnny and Fran Parsons up from New York and throw a terrific party, shall we? That terrace looks like a promenade deck of an ocean liner. Almost anything could happen there."
Dan didn't answer, looking up at the immense stone platform where his uncle used to pace, smoking his after-dinner cigar; at the windows above that were those of his mother's room. Leona was right, of course; the house was a monstrosity. He had been unhappy here-and, for a few weeks that last summer, wonderfully happy. Now, as he looked at it, he felt, for the first time since his marriage-no, since before that, since before he enlisted in the Navy, even before he went to college-a sense of belonging. Perhaps it was the cool dampness that was rising from the garden, or perhaps it was some quality in the air, a thousand feet higher than New York air and a thousand times cleaner.
Whatever it was, something was stealing over him and filling him with a strange sense of peace. He had never been sentimental, least of all about this house; now he felt a rush of emotion, nameless, as yet, but out of key with Leona's gay amusement. Looking at the fantastically shaped pile of stone and stucco, at the chimneys that were dark against the yellow western sky, he thought, It's funny, I'd forgotten about this place, but it's been ticking away all the time. Things have been growing; the garden has been going on; that tree that I used to play in is twice as big as it was. The house has been waiting. It's a funny old place, but my ancestors built it and now it's mine.
"Listen," Leona said. "What is that bell?"
"The clock on the Green." He listened to the four quarters chiming, and then seven long strokes that lingered on the quiet air.
"We must hurry," Leona said. "Dinner's at seven, and I'm simply starved."
When the bell stopped, Dan heard the thin piping of young frogs. The pool at the foot of the garden must be full of them. Uncle Edgar used to have it drained and scrubbed twice a summer because the frogs kept him awake. But Dan liked their sound, because it meant spring.
"Dan!"
"Yes," he said, "we'll go now." As they drove out the gate, Leona said, "What's its name?"
"What?"
"The place. A place like this always has a name."
"Oh," He hesitated. He hadn't thought of it for years. "Rockledge," he said. "Pretty obvious?"
Leona was shaking her head again. "Too good to be true. I thought of Oak Knoll or Holmwood or The Cedars. I adore Rockledge-I do, Dan, honestly. You're not angry with me for making fun of it?"
"Of course not." But he couldn't join in her laughter.