Title Page

For Sheila White Blake English, 1931—1995

Epigraph

She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her … and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.

—WALTER PATER

VOLUME I

VOLUME I

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

If you have come for a long stay, you must arrive at Grange House by water. The House sits at the farthest edge of the harbor from Middle Haven town, the last habitation before the harbor gives way to the open sea, and though a road runs between the town and Grange House, it is narrow and rocky—entirely unsuitable for the conveyance of large families with luggage. Rather, you must take the night steamer from Boston, which deposits you at the Grange House pier before teatime.

I like to stand in the prow of that boat, steaming farther and farther north and east, and be the first to feel the air sharpen and cool, leaving the damp heat of Boston, the shipyards at Portsmouth, and voyaging into the clear silence born in the chill air of Maine. And though I watch for it, I am never prepared for the first sight of Grange House on its point, though I know the approach, and early learned to read where the slick black shale ledges of the shoreline turn to the white granite boulders marking the entrance to Middle Haven’s harbor.

If you have arrived this way, most likely you are what the native people like to call a rusticator, a city dweller come for the cooler air of the north. From the pier, the steamer’s side appears lined with such visitors as she draws near, and the captain brings her along at a smart clip. Then he gives the engineer two bells and a jingle and guides her right in. You can see the mate now, waiting with the forward spring line in his hand before he tosses that hawser neatly over the piling just as the bow nudges alongside. He holds it, straining, and she’s in against the pier with hardly ajar. You are arrived into a mayhem of unloading, the wharf dipping below the weight of trunks and summer guests. There you stand, surrounded by the men’s cries and the groaning creak of the steamer’s lines straining against the pier; and then you turn and look up the lawn to the House, set high and away, atop its granite foundation.