Mary stopped in the clearing. She dropped the notebooks and put her face in her hands, breathing in great sobs. In snatches between her indrawn breaths she began to mumble and pray ... Homer saw her. He stood up in his canoe and roared at her, with a shriek that tore his throat—"Jump, Mary, jump!"
She heard it, and looked at him, her white face blank. Then she looked up and stood frozen for a second. Then she jumped. The pine tree caught her a glancing, scraping blow, and she fell. But it caught something else, too, and destroyed it...
And the thing that it killed had once been worthy and good (one of those dependable people that everyone turns to and relies on)—the best fellow in all the world.
*59*
... And we went on to heaven the long way round. —Henry Thoreau
"Hoy there." It was a tiny sound. Homer, dazed, turned toward it. Someone was pulling strongly across the water, looking back over his shoulder at him, pulling with his oars and heading his prow firmly across the churning waters of the bay. It was Teddy Staples. He was nearly at the island. Homer stared at him vaguely and started scrabbling at the bushes again. But then Teddy maneuvered carefully among them and pulled Homer's canoe free by stretching an oar to him. Then they landed together on the shore. Homer, his knees weak and nearly folding under him, struggled to the place where Mary lay. Teddy strained at the limbs of the tree, and Homer lifted her tenderly. She was unconscious. "I think she'll be all right," said Teddy. "The trunk just missed her."
The triumphal arch was founded on the sea, and through it, looking far away, Mary could see her distant blue peninsula. There was someone standing on it, and her eyes were so miraculous that she could see right past the columns and the arches and the moldings and the coffered barrel vaults, way across the water, with its dolphin-drawn shells and seagods, to the very texture of the cloth on the person's sleeve. There were long telescopic feelings in her fingers, too, and she could reach out through the arch, far away, and feel the cloth. And her ears were like conch shells that amplified the sound, so that she could hear what the person was saying. He was saying her name, and cursing.
She woke up and smiled at Homer. He stopped cursing. But he went on saying, "Mary, Mary." He was kneeling beside her bed with his arms around her. How lovely, how lovely.
The nurse was touching Homer's arm. He shrank back in dismay. "Oh my God, I'm hurting you."
"No, no. Do it some more."
He did it some more very carefully, while the nurse grinned. "I thought I'd lost you. And you were the only one that would ever do. I knew that right away, the first day I saw you. You spoiled all the others that ever were or ever could be."
"I did? Oh, I'm so glad. How lovely. Oh, that's nice."
Homer leaned back and glared at her. "And, by God, you're going to marry me right away, before you slip through my fingers again. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Please, Mary."
Mary closed her eyes. Her head hurt. What was it she had been trying to decide? Had it been something to do with jumping? She had decided not to jump, that was it. Like the Transcendentalists ... Then Mary put her head back on the pillow and her mind began slowly to unclench like an opening fist. She opened her eyes. "I'll tell you what," she said. "I'll marry you if we don't have to go away for a honeymoon. Could we spend it in the library? I've got a whole new idea—oh, ouch. What's the matter with my foot?"
"It's broken. Compound fracture. You had a concussion, too. You're all beat up."
"Then that's why my head hurts. Listen, Homer. You know how Henry Thoreau would jump rope? He wouldn't refuse. No sir, not Henry. He would just take the rope right away from the two little girls and swing it for himself, at his own pace, with those two strong legs of his leaping up and down. Isn't that right?"
"Oh, sure," said Homer, nodding fatuously (humor her).
"And Emily, too. Emily would have a little rope, like a whip, and she'd swing it quickly, jumping in her small white dress, with her little black shoes tripping up and down in a tight rhythm like a verse, skipping all the way to the stars and back."
"There now, my darling, you just go back to sleep, there's my good girl. And of course we don't have to go away. Libraries are my favorite for honeymoons. We'll live in Alice's house on Fairhaven Bay, and we don't ever have to go away at all."
Next morning Mary woke up feeling a little more like herself. Homer came in again after breakfast, and took a good deal of time kissing her tenderly and telling her exactly why he loved her. Then he helped her out of bed and into a wheelchair and pushed her down the hospital corridor. "There's someone upstairs who would like to see you."
"Oh, oh, it's not Gwen?"
It was Gwen. She was sitting up, eating breakfast, looking wonderfully flat. Tom stood up as they came in, and started to complain. "I wanted to call her Augusta, for Augusta Wind. I mean, how many children do you ordinarily have born in the teeth of a howling gale?"
"No," said Gwen, "that won't do. Oh my, isn't the food good? Just think I didn't cook it. Do go see the baby. She's the nicest one yet."
Homer made a literary suggestion. "What about calling her after Prospero's daughter, in The Tempest? What was his daughter's name? Miranda."
"Oh, good for you. That's it. Miranda. Miranda Hand. I hope you like it, Tom, because that's what it's going to be. You do like it, don't you?"
"Oh, I do, I do."
Homer wanted to know what it had been like, getting Gwen to Emerson Hospital in the middle of the storm. Had they had any trouble?
"Oh, no trouble at all," said Tom. "You don't call driving seventy miles an hour in a hundred-mile-an-hour gale trouble? The only little mishap we had with the pickup, which was all that was running at the moment, was picking up some broken window glass and puncturing a tube. But we didn't even stop. We bumped all the way to the hospital and got here on three wheels and a bent rim."
"Say," said Homer, "that gives me a good idea. Why don't you call the baby Tube-blows Begonia? All these Morgan girls look like flowers.".
Mary felt dizzy and silly. "Flat-tirey will get you nowhere," she said.
"Oh, please don't make me laugh," said Gwen. "It hurts."
Homer pushed Mary down the hall and they looked in the window at the baby, which didn't look like anything much yet, and then they went back to Mary's room. Out of the window they could see the Sudbury River, glittering in the morning sun. Down below in the garden someone was tidying up, sawing a fallen aspen into small lengths of firewood.
"It was the worst hurricane around here since '38," said Homer. "Trees are down all over, especially the old diseased elms. There's a little foreign car wedged between the columns in front of the Middlesex Savings Bank, and a tree fell on the roof of the Rod and Gun Club. One good thing, though: you know that awful fake Colonial Woolworth false-front? It tore off and blew away, like a sail before the wind. It's probably over Connecticut by now." Homer looked up. There was someone standing shyly in the doorway. "Oh, Teddy, come on in. I guess we don't need to tell you how glad we are you came along."
There was a big bunch of ugly-looking flowers in Teddy's arms. Mary smiled at him and reached out her hand. "Teddy, you look wonderful. Where have you been? Are you going to try to tell us you didn't know everyone was looking for you?"
"I sure am. Homer told me the police were after me. But I guess the only way I'd have heard about it was if they'd written it in the sky over Moosehead Lake. I've been down in Maine."