Many Mansions. Isabel Bolton

      

       Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in 1952.

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Bolton, Isabel, 1883–1975, author.

      Title: Many mansions / Isabel Bolton.

      Description: Dover edition. | Mineola, NY : Dover Publications, Inc., 2020. | Originally printed: 1952. | Summary: “Isabel Bolton, an acclaimed National Book Award finalist, tells the spellbinding tale of Margaret Sylvester. She is in her eighties, lives alone in a New York hotel room, and decides, after considerable deliberation, to reread an unpublished manuscript about her life. Her poignant and sometimes tragic story is communicated with astonishing brevity and immediacy”— Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019041809 | ISBN 9780486843414 (trade paperback) | ISBN 0486843416 (trade paperback)

      Classification: LCC PS3525.I553 M36 2020 | DDC 813/.52—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041809

      Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

      84341601

       www.doverpublications.com

      2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

      2020

      Many Mansions

       BOOK 1

       ONE

      It had snowed in the night, but the snow had been removed from the streets. It rained. The asphalt shone black and glistened in the rain, the tops of the taxis glistened, the umbrellas of the pedestrians and the rubber coat of the policeman at the corner of Twenty-eight Street gave off a bright metallic sheen. The air heavy with clouds and smoke and rain hung like a shroud over the city. In the tall office buildings clustered at the foot of Madison Avenue the lights shining in the assembled windows gave the effect of countless diminished suns and moons peering dead and rayless into the gloom and diffused an ominous light like the amber glow that fills the atmosphere before a summer storm.

      A radio in the next room blared out the news, from the clouds above came the purr and drone of an airplane and from below the noises of the streets; motor cars grinding their brakes, tooting their horns; sirens, an ambulance, in the distance the louder siren screech of fire engines. In another room a telephone rang insistently. Wires under the pavements, cables under the seas, voices upon the air weaving the plots, weaving the calamities, thought Miss Sylvester, beating her breast in that dramatic way she had.

      She was a small creature with delicate bones and transparent parchmentlike skin and her fragility lent her the appearance both of youthfulness and extreme old age. Her face under its crown of perfectly white hair was illumined and animated by cavernous dark eyes that seemed in the most striking manner to isolate her spirit from the visible decay of her body and in the play of her expression there was that immediacy of the countenance to respond to the movements of the heart which is always so noticeable in the faces of children.

      Living so much alone she was in the habit of talking aloud—interrupting her thoughts—“My God, it cannot be! Preposterous. Impossible.” Old age was very obstreperous indeed and life perched up here in her sky parlor amid these congregations of lighted windows, looking into all these offices, watching people sitting at desks, at telephones, dictating letters, plowing through the most monotonous tasks, was bleak enough in all conscience and with this welter of imponderable event flowing through her mind, “Good God,” she frequently asked herself, “Who am I? What am I? And what’s the meaning of it all, these people—all this business conducted high in air—listening to these hotel radios, these telephones and this roar coming up from the streets as though escaped from the infernal circles?” After all, she was human; she had her human needs. Caged up like this!

      But now the protest and revolt that had lighted her face went suddenly blank and was replaced by gentle, reminiscent expressions, for she had had an extraordinarily beautiful experience in the night—the nights of the old were stranger than strange. She had waked from a dreadful dream, sobbing, still, it seemed to her, violently shaking her grandmother and when she had subdued the sobs there she’d lain trying to orient herself. She had touched, or imagined that she had done so, the edge of the bureau, her hand had knocked, or she’d thought she’d knocked it against the wall; the wall retreated while the doors and the single window of her room were replaced by other windows, other walls and doors, and she had had the most bewildering sense of knowing and at the same time not having the slightest idea where she was, listening to many voices while large vistas—lawns and trees and meadows and blue skies and oceans—opened up to her and people appeared and disappeared in all the various rooms through which she searched. Gradually she made out that she was in her own small bed which she had been sure was on the left of the window now restored to its proper position. Left was left and right was right. And there she was correctly located in space while a clock struck twelve. She’d counted the strokes and crossed a threshold. For it was, she’d remembered, her birthday, the first of February 1950, and if she could believe such a thing she was now eighty-four years old. Highly awake to the inordinate strangeness of it all she’d crossed her hands upon her breast aware that gratitude was streaming from her heart. Gratitude, she might very well demand, for what? Just for this—being alive, feeling the breath plunging up and down beneath her hands—her life, this river on which she had been launched, still warm, still continuing to flow. She knew quite well that her hold on it was most precarious—she frequently prayed to be severed from it altogether, and moreover, she realized that life was not likely to offer her change or variety, here she was cooped up in her small room in this treeless iron city. Nonetheless she had her memories. The Kingdom of Heaven was within her. For after all what kind of a heaven could anyone conceive without these images of earth—these days and winds and weathers? Estimated by human events she would not have said that her life had been particularly fortunate. There had been plenty of catastrophe. She had had to bear for many years an intolerable secret which she would carry with her to the grave. However, what did these personal tragedies matter when measured up against a moment like this—fully conscious of carrying in her heart the burden and the mystery, filled with awe and wonder and rejoicing in that warm shaft of living breath plunging up and down beneath her hands?

      Her condition had been a free gift. She had done nothing to induce it. There she had lain consumed with wonder, awe and reverence. What a comfort it had been to feel warm and without pain. The room must have been at just the proper temperature. The blankets felt so soft, the mattress so extremely comfortable. It had been a pleasure to luxuriate in flesh and bones that were not for the moment racked with pain.

      The life of the aged was a constant maneuvering to appease and assuage the poor decrepit body. Why, most of the time she was nothing more than a nurse attending to its every need. As for the greater part of the nights one’s position was positively disreputable—all alone and clothed in ugly withering flesh—fully conscious of the ugliness, the ignominy—having to wait upon oneself with such menial devotion—Here now, if you think you’ve got to get up mind you don’t fall, put on the slippers, don’t trip on the rug. There now, apply the lotions carefully, they’ll ease the pain; that’s it, rub them in thoroughly. Now get back to bed before you’re chilled. Here, take the shawl, wrap it round your shoulders. Turn on the electric heater. It won’t be long before you’re off to sleep. Try not to fret and for heaven’s sake don’t indulge in self-pity. This is the portion of the old—having to lie here filled with cramps and rheums and agues—so aged and ugly with your teeth in water in the tumbler by your bed and your white hair streaming on the pillow and the old mind filled with scattered thoughts and memories, flying here, flying there, like bats in a cracked old belfry—haunted by fears, visited by macabre dreams.

      Dear