Lady (34 page)

Hurry? Where? There was a hurricane. I felt bewildered, not understanding what she wanted me to do.

"Go to her. She needs you. She still thinks it was you. Tell her you didn't."

I lowered my eyes, then sat down. "I can't."

"
You -- can't
?" The words exploded with disbelief. "You shall! You must!"

I felt everyone's eyes on me, but I didn't care. I would not go. I thought Miss Berry was reaching for her hat as she flew across the room, but it was me she wanted. She seized my shoulders and pulled me to my feet with a strength I wouldn't have thought possible, and shook me until my teeth clacked. Then she sat me down, took up her hat, and left the room without another word.

I glanced around at the others, and went back to the window. No one said anything. Outside, the storm had begun again, the velocity of the wind, the intensity of the rain matching my own storm of feelings. I felt a hand on my back and was whirled around to face Ag, her young fury matching Miss Berry's elderly one. Who did I think I was? she demanded, her face redder than I had ever seen it, her eyes running with tears. I had never heard her talk so much or so fast or so angrily. Who had taken us in and opened her house to us when we were flooded, and we would have been sleeping at the American Legion for a week? Who had paid Harry's hospital bills when he was sick? Who had sent her, Ag, to camp? Who had given us Christmas and Thanksgiving and Lord knew what else year after year? Yes -- and how did Nonnie get to go to normal school, except that Lady talked Ma into it, and paid her tuition. Paid for Nancy, too! And who did I think was helping to send me away to school! Who gave and nursed and took care of us, and not only us, but everyone -- there wasn't a family in town practically who wasn't obliged to her -- and who was now as miserable a woman as could be found?

"And if you want to know what I think of you," she ended, "I think you're -- you're nothing but a stinker!"

Finished, she fled in tears. I looked at Harry and Lew, who turned and leaned on the windowsill. I looked the other way, into the mirror over the bureau, a true goblin's mirror where an ugly boy did ugly things -- a mirror that . . .

Then, suddenly, I was running from the room, while Lew and Harry stared after me, and downstairs Nancy was pulling at me as I tried to open the door, with rain and leaves gusting in around us. Unheedful, head ducked low, I ran past her into the storm.

It was an astonishing feeling to be out in it, both fearful and exhilarating. As I made for the far side of the Green, I was shocked to see that the Sparrows' house looked as if it had been suddenly repainted; the white clapboards were turned absolutely green from the leaves that the wind had plastered to it. Trees were going down all along the sidewalk, lifting the paving in serrated rows like half-extracted teeth. One of the elms in front of Lady's house had already fallen, and now the other went, toppling toward the street, branches sprawling over the driveway. Everywhere I looked I saw broken boughs and networks of projecting roots as I cut diagonally across the front lawn to the back.

The flower beds were in shreds, the plants crushed under fallen boughs. Even as I appeared, a huge tree near the carriage house started to go. I stopped in my path and watched as with an audible noise it tore the earth around its roots and tumbled, the left side of the top mass thundering down onto the roof of the summerhouse. There was a terrible sound of breaking wood and timber, the delicate lattice collapsed, and the summer-house itself disappeared, engulfed in greenery. Beyond, the boats in the Cove bobbed furiously, some torn from their moorings and driven pell-mell toward the shore. The weathercock had fallen from the ridgepole of the carriage house and lay in the driveway, but it was not the rooster whose safety I feared for.

Miraculously, the gazing-globe sat unharmed on its pedestal. All around it lay debris and branches, any one of which might have struck it. Still it remained whole, and I could see myself in it as I dashed toward it. I seized it lightly but firmly in my fingers, drew it from the hole in the pedestal, and ran back across the lawn. Another branch broke off, tumbling in my path, and fearing I would never get the globe to safety in one piece, I changed course, heading for Lady's back door.

I pushed through, intending to leave the globe in the back entryway. I saw the inside door swinging to and fro on its hinges. I had a quick sensation something was wrong. I stepped into the kitchen, then called; there was no reply. I backed through the hall door, still holding the globe in my hands. Then I heard a sob. I ran down the hall.

In the living room, Lady was crouched on the Oriental rug, beside the wing chair. I hardly knew her, she looked so dreadful. Her hair was uncombed, her face swollen and red, her eyes stared wildly. I remembered her saying once that storms frightened her. Before I could move to her, she began dragging herself across the floor toward me, moaning like some wild mad thing. Then she stopped, came to her knees, and flung her hands up in supplication. Still clutching the globe in the crook of my arm, I dropped to the floor and threw myself into her arms, touching her hair and face, and telling her not to cry, that everything was all right now, that I was there.

She pulled herself together, sniffing and wiping her nose and eyes, and then she raised her tear-stained face and took my face between her hands and gave me a long, searching look. Then her look altered slightly, falling on the silver gazing-globe. Her laugh broke out amid her sniffles and she shook her head in disbelief.

"In this storm?"

"Yes."

"Oh, l'il Ignatz," she said, drawing me to her, "have you come to tell my fortune?"

Last Songs

And so we became friends again. I came and went across the Green as I always had, and Ma and Ag were happy that we'd made it up. Each of us, Lady and I, renegotiated our relationship charily, not mistrusting each other, but aware of damage already done, and each wanting the wound to heal with the least amount of scar tissue. I, being younger, and more unthinking -- but mature enough to recognize her value to me, for I loved her -- entered into this new phase with more energy and zeal than she, but even I was aware that I must tread softly. I was also aware that in keeping my promise to Jesse I would have to "act grown-up," not "stupidy," and so it happened through the next half-decade that I became more and more the adult, and she the child.

But if I hoped she would provide an occasion for explanation, none came. Except for the culpability of Dora and the Spragues in loosing the scandal, she seemed disinclined to speak about anything of a personal nature, as if too much of her had been exposed, and though we often talked of Jesse, and of Elthea, who wrote frequently, and of things as they were before Jesse's death, neither of us mentioned the scene in the bedroom with the needlepoint slippers, and it was only over a period of years that I finally learned all the facts. Some of the story was to come from Lady, and some from Miss Berry, this second part being related to me after an interval of fifteen years. The truth is always made up of lots of smaller pieces of other truths, and so it was with Lady, but I was to discover how long a shadow truth casts, and over how much ground. The final truth was, to me, astonishing, as it would have been to anyone else, but no truth could hurt by then. Lady was gone, and Jesse, too; there were no others to know her secret and only two to keep it: Miss Berry and I.

That September of the hurricane had also been the time of "poor Czechoslovakia," and everyone said there would be a war that fall, surely by Christmas. But England's Prime Minister went to Munich, chatted with Hitler, surrendered Czechoslovakia, and came away saying there would be peace in our time. Next morning, making his mail rounds, our postman, Mr. Marachek, was crying over the fate of his country. It was a sad day, for him, for everyone.

Soon after, Mother came home with my bus ticket and I went away to Blankenschip. I would turn fifteen the following January. Though Lady wanted me to go to school, though she had helped provide funds to make it possible, and though I went, I did not like it. Blankenschip School was a preparatory academy near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, enabling its students to ready themselves for a naval career, and offered as part of its curriculum full sea voyages aboard a barkentine. It was, however, not a rich man's sons' school. Moreover, though it was nondenominational, to me it resembled nothing so much as a church afloat, for there were tedious chapel services twice -- sometimes three times -- daily.

It was, furthermore, part of the agreement made between the school and its applicants that each student must partially defray the costs of his education by work periods during the day, and it fell my lot to be assigned a dining-hall detail, where, under the flint-eyed scrutiny of the supervisor, I was required each morning and evening to put the chairs upon the tables, mop the giant floors, and when they dried, put the chairs down again. Betweentimes it was my job to polish the brass: brass kick plates on the doors, brass handles and brass hinges, or brass chandeliers with their scrolls and turnings, brass lamp bases, brass wastebasket rims, even the brass fittings of the tables themselves; brass, all brass, and all constantly in danger of turning green. It was my duty to see that they did not.

When I had finished, in time for morning chapel services, I washed the brass polish from my fingers and hurried to my pew for the pastor's harangue. After classes, and more chapel, I returned to continue my duties in the dining room, then to study, and then to bed. It made for a long and uninteresting day.

I returned home for the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, then suddenly it was summer vacation again. To my surprise, I had completed my freshman year at Blankenschip almost without realizing it. That summer, Harry and I got jobs on the State Highway Department road gang; work that was hot and dirty, but built up muscle, paid well, and gave me time to think.

And though I had much that was new to consider, still my mind returned to the old, to Lady Harleigh, Jesse Griffin, and the house across the Green. For both Lady and myself there had evolved a tacit understanding that if things between us would never be the same -- the old things -- there would be new things. With Elthea gone she was alone now, and getting older. I was growing up, and had my promise to Jesse to keep, that I would in all things "look after Missus." But with Elthea gone it would not be an easy adjustment for Lady.

In a very special way she was spoiled and used to being waited on, to being looked after, taken care of. Now, as if driven by some perverse instinct, she refused to hire new help, and insisted upon doing all the household work herself. Many were the times I found her down on her hands and knees scrubbing the linoleum in the kitchen, or bending over the toilet bowl with a can of Old Dutch Cleanser. She ran the washing machine in the basement, hung out the sheets and pillowcases, swept, vacuumed, even hauled the trash barrels to the street on Wednesdays.

Still, such household labors seemed to take little toll of her. She had always been used to work, and even with servants to help she'd commonly managed a large part of it herself. She didn't look any older, at least to the cursory eye. Her hair got grayer, but it was becoming to her. She favored darker colors, a lot of black or navy blue or plum. She seemed to have given up wearing hats. Her shoes were not the dainty ones that I remembered, but of a more "sensible" sort. This was undoubtedly for her comfort, for her limp was more pronounced at times, and took on the responsibilities of Jesse's corns in matters of weather prophecy.

Colonel Blatchley, feeling that she was lonely, increased his visits, often stopping by several times in one day. Good old faithful Colonel Blatchley, he never gave up hoping. For the rest, Lady had only Honey, the dog, for company -- Honey as faithful and loving as the Colonel. From visit to visit, as I returned over the years, I observed further changes, small, but all leading to the final result. She moved less quickly than I remembered, and since she was often drowsy she began taking regular naps in the afternoons. Her hands trembled increasingly, until she could not disguise the fact, and she had trouble holding her teacup on its saucer. She let her figure go. Not to say she became fat, but her body thickened, and she renounced the regime of calisthenics she had maintained for years, dutifully following a local radio gym instructor. But even with all that had happened to her, she accepted the challenge of that most commonplace of creatures, a woman bereft. It was as if she had been twice widowed, once by Edward Harleigh, once by Jesse Griffin. I suspect it was the second widowhood that was the truer one. She was then, in the year the war began in Europe, only fifty-three years old.

The light that was Lady Harleigh now burned with a mellow incandescence; she softened, and if her vitality diminished, her determination only increased. If in time she became querulous, argumentative, even unreasonable, as she called on the last of her resources and fought the specters around her -- Edward's, and then Jesse's -- these seemed the only means at her disposal to fend off the phantoms of guilt that plagued her.

That winter she had suffered a slight accident, slipped on some ice at her back doorstep and fractured her ankle. Dr. Brainard put her in a cast, which did not come off until early summer. And it was during that last summer of peace that she chose finally to explain matters to me, an interview which came about in a most natural way.

When the Highway Department truck dropped me off after work, Lady telephoned to ask if I would go with her in her new car for a "special little drive," it was such a lovely day. We went, at her suggestion, along the back country roads toward Lamentation Mountain, avoiding the new parkway that had been put through a few years before, and making our way slowly up the slope to a spot she seemed particularly to favor.

It was a sort of lookout where the road ended and there was turn-around space, affording a handsome view of the valley. To the west wound the railroad tracks, with the little country station people often favored over the larger and noisier one at Hartford for their trips to and from New York, and which was almost the only reason for going to Lamentation at all. East of us lay the river, and the steeple of First Church and the clustered roofs and chimneys of Pequot Landing. Nearer was Talcottville, which in the old days had been called Two Stone, and at the river Talcotts Ferry, where the oldest ferryboat in America still plied the water. Between the two lay the Paulus farm, and the meadow pond, where Chester Welles had built the first corn mill.