"Oh, Pau." She said no more than this, but Welles had the impression
that these words somehow had made a comment on Vincent's information.
Vincent seemed to think so too, and curiously enough not to think it a
very favorable comment. He looked, what he almost never looked, a little
nettled, and spoke a little stiffly. "It's a very fine specimen," he
said briefly, looking again at the photograph.
"Oh, it looks very much finer and bigger in the photograph than it
really is," she told them. "It's only a bandbox of a thing compared with
Coucy or Pierrefonds or any of the northern ones. It was built, you
know, like the Cathedral at Bayonne, when the Plantagenets still held
that country, but after they were practically pretty near English, and
both the château and the Gothic cathedral seem queer aliens among the
southern natives. I have the photograph up there on the wall only
because of early associations. I lived opposite it long ago when I was a
little girl."
This, to Mr. Welles, was indistinguishable from the usual talk of people
who have been "abroad." To tell the truth they always sounded to him
more or less "showing-off," though he humbly tried to think it was only
because he could never take any part in such talk. He certainly did not
see anything in the speech to make Vincent look at her, almost with his
jaw dropped. He himself paid little attention to what she was now
saying, because he could not keep his mind from the lingering sweet
intonations of her voice. What difference did it make where she had
lived as a little girl? She was going to live next door to him now; what
an awfully nice woman she was, and quite a good-looking woman too, with
a very nice figure, although not in her very first youth, of course. How
old could she be? Between thirty and forty of course, but You couldn't
tell where. His personal taste was not for such a long face as hers. But
you didn't notice that when she smiled. He liked the way she did her
black hair, too, so smooth and shining and close to her head. It looked
as though she'd really combed and brushed it, and most women's hair
didn't.
She turned to him now, again, and said, "Is this your very first call in
Ashley? Because if it is, I mustn't miss the opportunity to cut in ahead
of all the other gossips, and give you a great deal of information. You
might just as well have it all in one piece now, and get it straight, as
take it in little snippets from old Mrs. Powers, when she comes to bring
your milk, this evening. You see I know that you are to get your milk of
the Powers, and that they have plucked up courage to ask you eight cents
a quart although the price around here has been, till now, six cents.
You'll be obliged to listen to a great many more details from Mrs.
Powers than from me, even those she knows nothing about. But of course
you must be introduced to the Powers, in toto too. Old Mrs. Powers, a
very lively old widow, lives on her farm nearly at the foot of Deer
Hollow. Her married son and his family live with her. In this house,
there is first of all my husband. I'm so sorry he is away in Canada just
now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who
in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out
head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' which is the
high-sounding name of a smallish wood-working business on the other side
of the field next our house. You can see the buildings and probably hear
the saws from your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live
in Ashley but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter
of all the residences in that settlement. There are yours, and ours, the
mill-buildings, the house where an old cousin of mine lives, and the
Powers' house, although that is so far away, nearly half a mile, that it
is really only a farm-house in the country. We, you see, are the
suburb of Ashley."