Lady (5 page)

What can I say about Rabbit Hornaday, except that he was a jerk? Nobody liked him much, and we all tried to avoid him, which was difficult because somehow he was always there. I didn't like him watching me, blowing steam through his puckered-up lips, so I suggested that if he wanted to make a lot of money, he should go over and shovel out Gert Flagler. He blinked, licked the run from his nose, and silently trudged over to Mrs. Flagler's, where he fell to work with a will.

I took up my own shovel again, and worked my way up the drive. By the time I had cleared the path to the kitchen, I was puffing hard. Suddenly the window flew up and a voice I recognized said, "Woody?"

I felt a pang of joy, hearing Mrs. Harleigh speak my name. Though I was the third son, I had inherited my father's nickname of "Woody" Woodhouse, and, as he had seldom been called George, I was seldom called Frederick, or even Fred. There were other, more important Woodhouses in town, members of the venerable Old Guard, and we were merely latecomers of no importance in the local social scheme -- still I was pleased that Mrs. Harleigh knew exactly "which one" I was.

"Darling, you must be thirsty." She leaned over the sink, extending to me a glass of bubbling ginger ale, and as I stood on a milk box to take it she broke off the icicles fringing the windowsill and plinked them in my glass.

"Swizzle sticks," she said gaily. "You can pretend it's a highball. Don't get overheated, though."

It took another hour to complete the rest of the drive, the little walk from there to the kitchen door, a path to the bird feeder, another to the birdbath, and the wider sweep up to the carriage house. I shoveled in front of the doors, then pulled both pairs wide to be sure they would open all the way. Finished, I banged my shovel to remove the excess snow and was beating my mittens furiously before applying for my wages when I looked behind me. It was snowing again! Big wet flakes were already obscuring the path of my labors.

Tired, I tramped over to the dusty, cobwebbed sleigh I had discovered sitting opposite the Minerva, and flopped down in it to get the snow out of the tops of my artics. At my feet I found a heap of sleigh bells; I picked them up and untangled the harness. The brass bells were tarnished, but they rang, and I sat shaking them in my two hands as if they were reins, looking at the Minerva landaulet and pretending I was engaged in a race; if I'd had a horse between the shafts, no car on earth --

"It's better in July."

I dropped the bells and turned at the sound of Mrs. Harleigh's voice. Wrapped in fur, she stood in the doorway, and I had the idea she had been watching me for some time.

"What's better?"

"A sleigh ride. You know, 'sleigh ride in July'?" She offered me her hand and I helped her up, making room on the seat beside me.

"How about a sleigh ride in January," I hinted, "it's snowing again."

"I
know
. All your work. Are you cold?" She put her hand to my forehead. "No, you're hot. It's too big a job for you. You must let Lew or Harry do it next time." Her arm slipped around me and she drew me close. The feel of her fur sleeve against my cheek was an inexpressible thrill.

"I can find other things for you to do if you want to earn some money," she continued. "This darn place is just too much for Jesse to look after. Gosh, isn't this seat
sprung
?" She bounced several times and her laugh reminded me of a young girl's. I picked up the bells again and jingled them. The sound must have disturbed her, for, her mirth fading, she reached and stilled them. As I let the bells fall in my lap, her fingers sought mine and she gently laced them together. I put my head against her fur coat and we sat this way for some time, without speaking, watching the wet snow come down beyond the open doors.

Out on the street, Blue Ferguson sped by in the Pilgrim Market truck, its tire chains chattering and throwing up a wet spume under the tail exhaust: the spell was broken.

"Modern times," Mrs. Harleigh murmured, lifting her arm from around me. As she moved to step down, I looked up at her face. Her eyes were moist and she quickly turned away, but her tone was gay as she said, "Come along, let's make some hot cocoa."

She waited while I closed the carriage house and as we hurried to the kitchen door she gave me half her coat to wrap in; the silk lining had an embroidered monogram, a curly, curvy "A.H."
AH
, I thought, Adelaide Harleigh. I was in heaven, and knew it,

"Brr! It's chilly!" she said when we had stamped our feet on the mat and come through the back entryway. She touched the radiator. "I think Jesse might have forgotten the furnace." She shed her coat and tossed it carelessly on a chair. "Take .off your things and I'll go down and put some coal on."

"I'll do it."

"Can you?"

Could I? The coal I shoveled at home! When I had shaken up the fire and returned to the kitchen, there was a pan of milk simmering on the stove, and Mrs. Harleigh was bringing cups and saucers from the cupboard. "You look like a chimney sweep! Here -- wash your hands." That was like her, ignoring the black coal dust I had tracked across her floor and worrying only about my hands. While I took off my mackinaw and washed with the cake of Bon Ami on the sinkboard, she used a broom to erase my anthracited footprints.

"I was going to put out cookies for us," she said, setting the broom behind the door and spooning cocoa into the cups, "but I have a better idea. Do you think your mother could spare you on a snowy Thursday evening?"

"Sure." Ma could spare any of us anytime she got the chance.

"I wondered if perhaps you might join me for a little supper of veal cutlets."

It remains the most elegant invitation I have ever received, and after phoning home I accepted it with alacrity. Then, the room growing warmer, the cocoa steaming in the cups, and Mrs. Harleigh humming as she brought things from the Frigidaire, I realized I had stormed the castle at last.

The 'little supper of veal cutlets" was a feast. In all the years I knew her, I never saw Lady Harleigh achieve anything close to a "simple" meal; it was not her way. To begin with, while she prepared the rest of the things and set the table, there were smoked oysters and anchovies and a deliciously decomposed block of cheese which she explained was Liederkranz, which meant "song collection." It was gooey and smelled awful and tasted delicious; I decided the songs must have been collected by angels on high. Then there were the veal cutlets, breaded and spiced, with scalloped potatoes and Harvard beets and pickled crab apples and thick slices of dill bread she herself had baked, and for dessert a cold chocolate dish in fluted gold cups: she called it a mousse.

I remember the evening well, in each of its particulars. We ate in the dining room at the big mahogany table, seated in its elegant Sheraton chairs with the heart-shaped backs and needlepoint seats. The armchair at the head of the table remained empty and Mrs. Harleigh placed me on her right because, she said, I must be the guest of honor. She liked, she told me, a little wine with dinner, and I was allowed some too. We clinked glasses, and she said, "To present company and absent friends." I thought that was a very handsome toast. I sipped my wine between mouthfuls, and meanwhile looked around. Never had I been in such a room, so rich and lustrous and romantic. At home we had an oak table and a bureau against the wall and none of the chairs matched, and we dined by electric sconces on the walls, with the window shades up, and Mrs. Sparrow always knew what we had for dinner.

Here the shades were discreetly drawn, and there were lighted candlesticks which made the waxed wainscoting shimmer. A bunch of winter cherries, looking like small Chinese paper lanterns, were arranged in an Oriental bowl. There were more of the same Oriental pieces in corner cupboards at the end of the room. On one wall was an antique gilt-framed mirror whose murky glass allowed me to see most of the room in its wobbly surface. Over the sideboard hung twin oval portraits, also in gold frames: one a man, his forbidding countenance frowning down, seemingly at the empty armchair. Smiling over her mousse, Mrs. Harleigh said, "Don't pay any attention to him, the old rapscallion."

Rapscallion! There was a word! She went on to explain that the baleful-eyed gentleman, Edward's father -- whom she called Daddy Harleigh -- had swindled half the town in stock maneuvers before the Panic of 1907. The imposing woman in the other oval was Edward's mother. I recalled Mrs. Sparrow's description of Mrs. Harleigh, and how she would sweep grandly into church for Easter services, hair piled high with combs under a large and imposing hat, a velvet choker around her neck, glasses on a ribbon resting on her important-looking bosom.

"Let us eat our mousse in peace, darling," she admonished, waving her silver spoon at Mr. Harleigh's glowering face.

"Was that his sleigh in the carriage house?" I asked.

"Why -- yes, I suppose it was." She had been bright and animated all evening, filled with questions and any manner of jokes, but now she spoke in short halting phrases, and her light voice suddenly took on a soberer tone. "We -- I used to ride in it. When I was a girl. Edward would come. All the way to Knobb Street and we'd sleigh down here and go round and round the Green. . . ." Her voice trailed off for a moment and she murmured a few words I could not make out. Then she went on as though suddenly capturing a long-lost memory. "I remember one Christmas Eve. We went sleighing. Afterward there was a party at the old Harleigh house. The whole town was there, it seemed. Everyone was -- waiting, you know. For my answer. I said, 'Yes, I will marry you, Edward.' But he already knew. He took me into the conservatory. Put a ring on my finger. He'd even arranged a surprise for the occasion. Carolers came to the door and sang to the party. The last song they sang was --"

She broke off, head down, staring at the gold band on her finger.

"'Silent Night?" I suggested. We always heard Mme. Schumann-Heink sing "Silent Night" on Christmas Eve.

"No. It was 'Good Night, Ladies.' Only they changed it. They sang -- 'Good Night, Lady.' Extraordinary, I haven't thought of that song for -- for years."

Surely it was a happy memory for her; and yet the way she spoke of it seemed tinged with sadness. It wasn't difficult to understand: she had loved Edward and she had lost him. Would she ever love another? Would she one day marry Colonel Blatchley, as Mrs. Sparrow was forever predicting? I watched her turn the ring on her finger, and the gold burned bright in the candlelight. I imagined her: young, in a hooded cloak, with Edward's arm around her, muffled in furs, behind a prancing horse, sleighing past a pine wood where foxes wintered.

The urge became irresistible and I asked, "Can we go for a sleigh ride sometime? You and me?"

"Oh-h . . ." She made a lovely face and leaned to press my hand and I could smell the scent of her perfume. "Oh, darling, who can sleigh anymore? The streets are plowed as fast as it snows. Besides, where would we find a horse?"

"Colonel Blatchley has horses," I ventured.

"I don't think the Colonel would consent to hitching one of his thoroughbreds to a sleigh."

"For you he would."

I saw her blush worse than Aggie ever did. It was very becoming. I said, "Mr. Welles has one."

"No-Relation's horse?" She began to laugh.

Mr. Welles was a farmer down in Talcottville who went about town selling horseradish from a horse-drawn cart. Because the Welleses of Pequot Landing were of ancient and estimable lineage, the horseradish man was constantly referred to as "No-Relation" Welles.

"And his horse -- !" Mrs. Harleigh dissolved in mirth. "I don't think that poor creature could make it once around the Green at a trot. Sleigh rides are nice for children, though. On a 'Snow Queen' sort of night . . ."

"'Snow Queen?'"

"Yes -- have you never read it? Hans Christian Andersen? It's a fairy tale. 'And the wind sang old songs' -- I always loved that line."

She looked at me thoughtfully as she served me coffee, in the Oriental china from the corner cupboard. Coffee was another first for me; at home we got Postum. As she poured cream from a three-legged silver pitcher, she made more inquiries. What did I do with my after-school time, who were my friends? I had the idea that she had observed me as closely as I had often observed her.

I shrugged and said I played mostly by myself. "I can't play with Lew or Harry," I added dolefully.

"Why?"

"They're older."

"I see."

"And they fight harder than I can."

"What sort of thing does Lew enjoy doing? And Harry?" she asked, leading me along. Well, I said, Lew was good at sports, and was in Boy Scouts, and was a good sketcher. Harry was sort of the inventor of the family, he could always engineer some clever mechanical device with the Erector set, he knew a lot about science and was good at magic. I never had been able to see much difference between Lew and Harry, they were simply my brothers.

"Lew is the athlete, Harry is mechanical and magical -- now what of you?" She rested her eyes on me, in all their candor, and awaited a reply. I didn't know what to say. I had never given thought to what sort of person I was. I was just there, and felt myself lucky to get a crack at our one bathroom. I ventured to say that Ma always claimed me to be "the imaginative one."

"But of course you are!" Mrs. Harleigh exclaimed. "Anyone who sits in a sleigh and imagines he's out riding in it. That is what you were doing, wasn't it?

"Then your mother's right -- you're the imaginative one, and that's as well. Imagination can often get people farther in life than bank accounts and good noses." She ran her slender fingertip along the bump on her nose. "Your mother's so pretty, isn't she?" she said warmly.

"Is she?"

She turned a surprised, almost indignant look on me. "Of
course
she is, can't you tell? She's
very
pretty. And
indefatigable
!" Another of those words. "I am in constant admiration of her, the way she works, going to the laundry every day, and then Saturday afternoon out scouring her stoop as if she lived in Holland. Your mother does not have things easy."