out of yourself. It’s impossible to remain sad for long in a house full of children.
Well, that is a matter of opinion.
Pips Waldo is here, she writes. You always liked Pips. And Judson Erlanger. Remember him? He’s married to one of the Chandos girls.
I’ll say I remember him! Judson Erlanger took me to the Princeton Ball.
It’s getting to be a real Little Baltimore over here, she concludes. And who knows, we may even find you another husband. Melhuish knows quite everyone.
I have already endured thirteen years of Violet’s condescension, brought on by her marriage to Donald Melhuish—Lord Melhuish as she reminds me with tedious regularity. The truth is, I could have snagged Melhuish for myself, had my tastes run to cold castles and men in skirts, but I allowed Violet to have him and I’ve said nothing since to disturb her smug satisfaction in her title and her connections and her lumpen Melhuish offspring. To some, it is given to tread the wilder track, to risk the ravine in order to conquer more majestic peaks, and I have always had a head for heights.
PS, she adds. You might think of spending some time with Doopie. She has missed you dreadfully.
So there we have it. Violet doesn’t want me in London for the zest I would undoubtedly bring to her life, nor does she particularly intend to find me a lord to marry. Tired of playing the angel of mercy, she hopes simply to saddle me with the retard.
What a trial Doopie has been to us all, a regrettable afterthought in a family already perfectly adorned by myself and Violet. If people must have children, two is certainly enough. But our misguided parents would have her, and they would allow her to arrive on my birthday, too.
“Maybell,” Father said, “you have the best birthday gift a girl could ask for.”
I had hoped for a new donkey cart, not an attention-seeking brat of a sister.
They named her Eveline and doted on every smile she smiled and every mew she mewed, but Sister Eveline didn’t impress me. Over and over, she’d allow a person to take away her pacifier, then look injured and start her sobbing. She never learned to say “No.” Then, after she caught inflammation of the brain, there could be no doubt about it. The child was a vegetable.
“Slow” was the word Mother used. “Slow, but special.”
The fact is, Eveline is stupid. Always was, always will be. I renamed her Stupid, but she’s so dumb she can’t even say it. “Doopie” is the best she has ever managed.
They tried her at Elementary School, but she was an embarrassment to us all, and it was soon decided that she would do just as well at home. She’s handy with a needle, I suppose. She can knit and crochet. And she’s quite the green-thumb, which used to endear her to Father.
“I had given up that Ficus for lost,” he’d say, “but Eveline has raised it from the dead.”
He claimed she knew every plant in the conservatory and talked to them like friends. Well, that says it all about Doopie’s powers of communication.
“Bayba,” she used to call me. And “Vite” was the best she ever managed for Violet.
“She does love you so,” Mother used to tell me. “Her eyes don’t leave you for an instant when you come into the room.”
There has never been any question of Doopie marrying, though I believe I am the only one who ever took the trouble to inform her of this. In 1914, when Violet was coming out, it was decided that because of the threat of war I had better come out, too. Just as well, because the Prussians quite ruined the 1915 season. Doopie helped with the trimming of our gowns.
“We’re invited to the Bachelor’s Club Cotillion,” I explained to her, “which is something that will never happen to you.”
She just smiled. How much of what one says penetrates her brain one never can tell, but she always seems contented enough. The only question was what would become of her. Father seemed to think that two sisters and a Trust Fund answered the case, but I was never consulted. And when Danforth Brumby asked for my hand, nobody asked him if he’d mind having a half-wit in the attic someday.
Violet thought she’d made her escape, I guess, settling overseas. I suppose she thought an idiot couldn’t be sent on a sea voyage. But when the time came, after Father passed over and Mother had to be placed in the care of a full-time nurse, it so happened that Brumby and I were much burdened with the renovations at Sweet Air. It would have been most unsuitable for Doopie to move in with us. She might have bumped into a marble pillar awaiting installation and brought it tumbling on top of her, or wandered into the path of some falling beam. It was safer by far to send her to Violet. We provided her with a chaperone, and they traveled first class, and everything has worked out for the best. From their army of peasant retainers, Violet and Melhuish have been able to furnish her with the simple companionship she requires and then, with the arrival of the babies, she has gained a nursery full of playmates.
So, I will not fall for Violet’s sly attempt at luring me to England. I see her little game. She hopes to catch me while I’m weakened by grief, and change the arrangements for Doopie. Well, they seem perfectly satisfactory to me. I shall stay where I am and reign over Baltimore.
20th March 1932
Stepsons are sent to try us. The earth has barely settled on his father’s grave, and Junior is demanding to know my plans for Sweet Air. Do I expect to stay on, alone in such a large and isolated house? And if I were to think of selling, he knows his father would have wanted the place kept in the family. Junior has never liked me. He’s never forgiven me for replacing his sainted mother and making Danforth smile again. He obviously hopes to spook me out of the place and then pick it up at a knockdown price. He’ll probably come around tapping on windows and making hooty owl noises. Well, he’ll find Maybell Brumby is made of sterner stuff than that.
24th March 1932
Randolph Putnam pressed me to join him for luncheon today, but I declined. I find him too eager, and anyway I’d already agreed to take tea with Nora Sedley Cordle. One social obligation a day is enough for anyone, especially where Nora is involved. She sat behind her Reed and Barton teapot, pretending friendship, but I read her like a book. She’s hoping I’ll give up Sweet Air, too. I always was a challenge to her social ambitions and now I suppose she’s hoping I’ll get me to a nunnery. Well, one thing I can tell her. She may be a Daughter of the American Revolution, but she had better learn to leave the ruffled neckline to those of us who can carry it off.
1st April 1932
The telephone keeps ringing and no one speaks. Today a package arrived, The World’s Most Chilling Ghost Stories. Junior must take me for a fool.
3rd April 1932
Not sleeping well. I’ve instructed Missie not to answer the telephone after ten p.m.
7th April 1932
Randolph Putnam crossed the street to tell me how strained I look and recommend I take myself off to Palm Beach for a while. And leave Nora Sedley Cordle to consolidate the gains she made while I was in mourning? I think not!
10th April 1932
A quantity of horse manure was deposited on the front steps during the night. Missie says she was wakened by the sound of unearthly laughter and didn’t close her eyes again till morning. Much theatrical yawning when she brought in my breakfast tray. Just what one needs at a time like this: the help falling asleep on their feet.
12th April 1932
Another letter from Violet. The most extraordinary thing, she wrote.