Lady (8 page)

There was poetry as well, and while I lay propped against the pillows with my knees drawn up, reading of Horatius at the bridge -- brave Lars Porsena! Braver Horatius! -- I could hear Mrs. Harleigh downstairs, making jokes with Nonnie while she prepared my lunch tray. Since our neighbor's advent in our house, my sister was no longer the Nonnie of the scowling countenance, the harsh voice, the pursed lips. Their earnest and steady conversation floated up the stairway, Mrs. Harleigh's questions bright and inquisitive, Nonnie's responses quiet and level, without the shrill, complaining tone we had become used to.

There came a time when there was no more "Mrs. Harleigh" at all, but only "Lady." On this particular day she had arrived with a large beribboned box which she placed beside me on the counterpane. I did not wait to guess what was in it, but greedily tore the wrappings apart to find a Roxy Radio Junior magic lantern. It was made of red-painted tin, with a telescope lens and a removable panel in back into which postcards, inserted upside down, could be projected onto a wall right side up. As I admired its elegant decoration of gold striping, I said, "Thank you, Mrs. Harleigh."

Ignoring my thanks, she gave a sudden puzzled look, "But don't you remember? You were going to call me 'Lady.' Surely you haven't forgotten?"

I said I hadn't, but thought she had. Her face clouded; pressing the tips of her fingers to her forehead, she said wonderingly, "Did I? I sometimes do forget." She gave a nervous laugh and continued: "No. I remember. Distinctly. Our little supper of veal cutlets. It had snowed. Jesse and Elthea had gone out. We ate in the dining room, alone."

She paused, as though to recollect the scene more clearly. "All that snow, and . . ."

And, I thought she must say, the man with the red hair came to the door. She gave a look of surprise and exclaimed, "I never paid you! Did I? Did I pay you?"

I confessed she had not. She scrunched up her eyebrows and made a mock-tragic face as though to apologize for her bad manners and, digging into her bag, pressed five dollars into my hand. And though she continued speaking of the evening of the "little veal-cutlet supper," never once did she mention Mr. Ott, or his mysterious errand, or how or why his visit had troubled her so painfully.

Before leaving, she sat on the side of the bed, while I snuggled down under the sheet, her hand brushing my hair down against my forehead.

"My hair goes the wrong way," I reflected glumly.

"It's because you're parting it on the wrong side. See, your crown is
Inere
" -- pointing it out with her finger -- "and I'll show you how to train it properly."

She left the room, calling to Nonnie for a stocking. Returning, she cut the bottom off, knotted it, and when she'd wet and combed my hair with a left-side part, she put the stocking cap over it to plaster it down.

"Now you sleep in that every night for a while, and pretty soon -- no more cowlick."

"Lew'll laugh at me," I said; the cap looked ridiculous.

"Lew won't laugh," Lady asserted firmly, "and if he does, who cares?" She kissed me, then grew gravely silent. At last, with misty eyes, she said, "You're very good for me, Woody."

"I know," I answered simply.

She laughed then, and pulled me to her and held me in her arms. "I guess I'm better for you than Rabbit Hornaday," I ventured to add, nestled against her, and feeling her heart throb against my cheek. She murmured something, and I said, "Do you really like him?"

"Harold? Mm. Yes, I do. Things have not been easy for him."

"He killed Colonel Blatchley's rabbits."

"So he did. And is sorry for having done so. And since the Colonel has forgiven him, I think you all might do likewise. His mother is at Meadowland, you know, and then there's Dora for him to worry about."

Meadowland was the state women's home at Middlehaven where Rabbit's mother had been sent for rehabilitation. Dora, his sister, had been given into the care of the aged aunt they lived with, and was not permitted to attend school with others of her age. Though today she would have been called an "exceptional child," and helped accordingly, in those days she was left to get about by herself, and spent most of her time sitting on the baggage platform of the depot opposite the Rose Rock soda-pop works, throwing rocks at the freight trains.

"What d'you talk about with Rabbit?"

"Oh-h . . . he tells me what he's been doing, or how many trains pass his house during the day. . . ."

"That's dumb."

"Not if you like trains as much as Harold does. He's really a bright boy, but he doesn't want anybody to suspect it, so he pretends. Very hard, pretending. You ought to get to know him, all of you. He might just be smarter than you think."

"You gave Rabbit skates," I muttered in an injured tone. She sat me up with a surprised look.

"Yes, I did. He didn't have skates. And you do."

"His are better."

"Are they? Then perhaps that's why he skates better. You'll have to practice a lot to catch up with him, won't you? But I'm sure Rabbit won't be as ungrateful for his skates as some other people one might mention." There was more than a touch of asperity in her tone, and instantly I regretted my words. Here I sat amid all the wonderful things she'd brought me almost every day, and I was complaining about skates for Rabbit Hornaday.

"I'm sorry."

She kissed me, and oh, the fragrance of her perfume, the tiny surge of blue through a vein in her throat, and those beautiful brown eyes smiling down. Oh, how I loved her, and oh, how I hated her to leave. But tomorrow, she promised as she tiptoed out, tomorrow, what larks.

Lying on the pillows she had fluffed, under the counterpane she'd folded, warm and drowsy, and spoiled as an apple at the bottom of the barrel, I forgave her Rabbit Hornaday and resolved I would try to get to know him. Later, sorting again through the postcard views she had brought with the Roxy magic lantern, I thought what a very nice "lady" she was, and about how cruelly life had made her suffer, but knowing that she refused to be done in by it, and that she would content herself with the memory of Edward Harleigh. And it was from this period that I date the real beginning of our friendship, which lasted from that day, with one tragic interruption, until she died.

She continued coming every day, both mornings and afternoons. When Lew and Harry and Ag came home from school, they would hurry upstairs with their jam-and-peanut-butter sandwiches to the sleeping porch, drawn like nails to the magnet of Mrs. Harleigh, whom they also were now to call "Lady." With her in the house, Lew and Harry had never seemed less interested in their gang, or Aggie in her magazine stories, and when Nonnie came, trying to keep her eye on Kerney, but listening while Lady described the summerhouse she was planning to build that year, it seemed we were much more a family than we had been before.

Once, coming in while Lew had Harry down on the floor and was pummeling him and Harry was trying to twist Lew's leg from the socket, Lady went and pulled them apart. She listened to both sides of the argument, then hugged them together, telling them that they were brothers, and brothers didn't fight, they stuck up for each other. That was the end of internecine warfare in our house, and after that there was only good-natured roughhousing, and even Aggie didn't seem so shy and inclined to stay by herself.

Ma only shook her head, declaring helplessly that we were taking advantage of our neighbor. Once, on my way to the bathroom, I listened over the banister and heard them talking downstairs.

"Mrs. Harleigh, I think my family must be exhausting you -- particularly that one. . . ." I knew who "that one" was.

"Nonsense -- I'm enjoying every minute of it. If you don't mind sharing them . . ."

"Heavens to Betsy, no. I'm glad of the chance to get my shoes off."

"You have wonderful children."

"Do I? Really?" It sounded as if the thought hadn't occurred to Ma before. Now when she came home, she seemed to have left her problems at the Sunbeam and hurried right upstairs to join the circle around my bed -- and around Lady. And in the evenings Lew and Harry would be at the worktable, putting together a crystal set, and talking to me over their shoulders, and for the first time I felt included instead of left out.

It snowed again, and I watched them all out under the Great Elm, making snowmen, half a dozen at least, and, bored with being sick, I wished I could join the fun.

"They're building a snow family out there, imagine!" Lady exclaimed when she came. She flung off her fur coat and I felt her cool cheek against my hot one as she kissed me. She had brought me clean pajamas from Elthea's laundry tubs, and when I had changed she rubbed my chest with Vicks and pinned on a clean flannel, watching the work out the window from time to time. Then she pulled up the chair and read to me, as she often did. Today it was the Hans Christian Andersen story, "The Snow Queen," appropriate for the weather, she said.

An expression I could not instantly decipher came over her face as she told of the goblin whose mirror turned everything it reflected into something ugly, where "the loveliest landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous." She read it with distaste, as if there truly were such a mirror, and I remembered how she had stared into the wobbly glass in the dining room on the night the red-haired man had come.

The story continued. Even good thoughts passing through a person's mind were reflected in the demon-mirror, and all the other goblins said that was fine, for now it could be seen how ugly the world truly was, and all the ugly people in it. The mirror was so evil that in the face of heaven it shattered, and the fragments flew about, some people even getting them into their hearts, which turned them to ice.

Lady gave a little shudder, glancing at me for my reaction, then went on to the part about Kay and Gerda and the Snow Queen. Her features became more lively as the tale unfolded further. The Snow Queen is formed out of a snowflake, "clothed in the finest white gauze, put together of millions of starry flakes." She is beautiful, but alas, made of ice, and as cold. At last she takes the boy Kay away from Gerda, wrapping him in her furs and carrying him off in her sleigh through the black clouds and the storm and "it seemed as though the wind sang old songs."

I was thinking of the sleigh in the carriage house and, listening to her voice, I thought of how it would be to go sleighing with this Snow Queen, wrapped in her furs; she would not be cold as ice, but warm and comforting.

Gerda searches far and wide for Kay, finding him at last a prisoner in the palace of the Snow Queen, where there is yet another mirror. This mirror is a great frozen lake, called the Mirror of Reason, which had shattered into a thousand pieces, and the Snow Queen has promised Kay his freedom, and the whole world,
and
a pair of skates, if he can form from the pieces the word "Eternity." Poor Kay cannot do it.

At last Gerda finds him, and of their own accord the ice pieces spell the word, and he is released, and the roses bloom again.

"'There they both sat, grown up, and yet children -- children in heart; and it was summer -- warm, delightful summer.'" She closed the book and laid her head back, looking at the ceiling. "Odd, I thought that story ended 'happily ever after.' But I suppose summer is just as good."

I propped myself up on my elbows. "You didn't like the part about the mirror, did you?"

"No, I didn't. And
you
didn't like the part about the skates, did you?" Laughing, she laid the book aside and rose, saying she must get home and dress; Colonel Blatchley was taking her to hear Paderewski. "And anyway," she said, looking down at the Green, "who could spell 'Eternity' out of the broken pieces of a mirror? Aren't those snowmen marvelous!" She put on her fur coat, kissed me, and went away.

When Nonnie had brought up my supper, while Lew and Harry were on their beds listening to the crystal set, I put on my bathrobe and slippers and sat by the window. Down on the Green the snowmen stood gloriously appareled in hats and coats, gloves, and canes. Ag had explained that it was a family, there was a Mister and Missus, and the children, one for each of us; I was the one with the big ears.

After some time I saw Colonel Blatchley's Studebaker pull into Lady's drive. He was admitted by Jesse, and when he reappeared, with Lady on his arm, I glimpsed a shimmering sort of coat, and sparkly slippers as she came down the steps, and a white scarf around her head. She looked beautiful. Off they went to hear Ignace Paderewski, and while I waited by the window for them to return I thought of remarks I would make to Lady concerning the fact that my nickname was the same as the Christian name of the famous pianist.

Later, when the household had retired, Ma came in, surveyed the sleeping Lew and Harry, then whispered, "All right, young man, time for bed." She got the brush and parted my hair as Lady had done, and slipped the stocking cap on. I submitted to these ministrations, but asked if I could stay up a while longer.

"What on earth for?"

"Lady's coming home."

"I see." She seemed to understand. "She's a lovely person, isn't she?"

"Uh-huh."

"Lots nicer than your old ma."

"No, she isn't. She's just -- different."

"Well, then, I won't be jealous." Her smile was wry as she turned to go. "Bless you." She glanced at Lew and Harry again. "Bless you all -- you're your father's sons. Don't stay up too late."

She went to her room, and while Lew and Harry kicked the blankets about in their bunks, I alternated reading in bed with waiting at the window. It became a protracted vigil, and I wondered if Lady would ever return. The lamp in our room was off, and outside it was a bright moonlit night, bringing into clear focus the snowy Green, and the half-dozen snow figures. I looked up at thfe vast night sky, full of stars that seemed like snowflakes, brittle and crystalline. The edges of my frosty pane were whorled with fantasy-like patterns of ice, and beyond it the light was brilliant, surreal, unearthly. It kindled strange imaginings to me. In my fantasy I saw beyond the pane the Snow Queen, ready to bear me away to her kingdom at the North Pole, and this vision was further enhanced by my own reflection in the blue glass, distorted like the goblin's mirror which had hardened the heart of little Kay, and which made all the world look ugly and unhappy.