Lady (9 page)

Lights turned the windowpane a glazed orange, and I saw a car coming along the far side of the road. It slowed, then pulled into Lady's drive. She had returned. The Colonel got out and trudged around to hand her out from the other side. They went in together, and the door closed. I felt the pangs of jealousy; Colonel Blatchley was now my rival.

I kept watch at the window until finally he left, Lady showing him to the door. She lingered for a moment, looking over at the snowmen, then the carriage lamps went off and the door closed. All was dark, except for a light behind the living-room shade, then the outside lamps were turned on again. Leaving the door swung wide, Lady came out. I raised my window softly, and heard the strains of music floating through her open doorway as, holding her evening coat closed, she came down the walk, crossed the street, and walked onto the Green.

Her arms were crossed in front of her, the palms of her hands resting on her shoulders, her head slightly tilted as she looked at the snowmen, Mister and Missus and the children. Closer she came, the ends of her light scarf trailing, to walk among them, stopping to inspect each as she passed it, like a woman undecided about merchandise in a department store. When she got to the last figure -- it was Mister -- she gazed at him for a longer time than she had at the rest, finally changing the angle of his hat.

From over the way the music sounded through the open door; I couldn't tell if it was the radio or the phonograph. I remember it was a waltz, and one part of it sounded like "Sweet Rosie O'Grady." (Later I learned it was
Swan Lake
.) Lady uncrossed her arms and held them slowly and gracefully out to her sides, her body dipping slightly as she moved. She turned and turned again, swaying, looking up at the sky. She danced lightly in time to the music, now moving her arms in the conventional form of a waltz partner, as if one hand were held by a man, the other gathering up her gown and coat together. The coat shone in the light, and her veil-like scarf, and her twinkling shoe tips -- everything shone, her long white gloves, her white face, the diamonds sparkling on her ears.

Then she moved into the circle of snow figures around the tree, and while the music continued she halted her steps. Again she looked up at the sky and I fancied her imagining all the things I had imagined, that in her silvery coat and gauzy scarf and smooth-gloved arms she was the Snow Queen.

Ah, she was my Snow Queen, and I her willing prisoner, and did she live in a frozen palace on the Mirror of Reason, I would take the pieces and spell the word "Eternity" and she would give me the whole world --
and
a pair of skates, good as the ones Rabbit had received. Unable to resist, I took the flashlight from the table and shined it at the pane. She saw the light, and again her feet twinkled as she swept across the snow.

"How was Ignatz?" I whispered down between cupped hands.

"Ignatz who? Oh -- Paderewski? Magwifishent! Wowdafil! What are you
doing
up there, l'il Ignatz?" She giggled like a fellow-conspirator.

"I'se waitin' fer Krazy Kat. Plotz plotz."

"You little dickens, you plotz yourself to bed before you catch more cold."

"Will you come up and tuck me in?"

"I will not. But I'll come tomorrow. Good night, l'il Ignatz." She started away, then turned back briefly and waved the end of her scarf to me. "Good night, friend of my youth." The words came in a whisper on the cold air and I didn't know what she meant, really, but it sounded like such a lovely thing for her to say, tender, affectionate, and personal, and I loved her for it She floated away, stumbling slightly, and I thought that while the Colonel had had a nightcap my Snow Queen must have had one or two herself.

The snowmen melted, leaving only soggy clothes to be picked up and dried on the line, the canes and hats returned to the attic, and the first of Lady's planned larks was the promised musical evening, at the end of the week I returned to school. This was early in April; though the snow lay in gray mushy patches around the Green, Mrs. Sparrow's forsythia was already in bloom. It was Sunday, and Jesse and Elthea had departed at their accustomed hour to go upstreet for dinner and the movies. Shortly thereafter, Ma brought us over the Green where we gathered in Lady's front room with our instruments: Lew his banjo, Harry his cornet, Ag and Nonnie their violins, me my French horn, and Ma at the piano. Some of the dining-room chairs were pulled into a semicircle in the bow of the piano, while Lady sat embroidering in one of the roomy wing chairs beside the lighted fire.

"Well, come, children," Ma said, slipping off her rings and settling her music on the piano rest, "play for Lady."

"No, you first," we said, and so Ma began, as she usually did, with "Keep the Home Fires Burning," which was always for our father, and then "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers," which she used to play for us as babies, and then the "Going Home" movement from the
New World Symphony
, which one by one we all joined in.

"Now, now, I think we'd better start that again," Ma said, laughing, with a rueful look to Lady, "Agnes, dear, you'd better tune, you're flat." Ag blushed and tuned her violin to Ma's A, and when we began again it went better. We all felt a little foolish at first, never having performed for company before, but it remained for Lady to cause us to shrug off our inhibitions and play our best. Exchanging looks with Ma, she sat plying her embroidery needle with a rhythmical stitch, listening quietly, her smile saying that this was the best sort of evening, that this was what friends were for.

The time for Jack Benny's "Jell-O again" came and went and no one even noticed. After dinner, Lady expressed her concern about the septic tank in her back yard. Her plumber had told her the tank must be dug up and emptied, a nasty job, but a necessary one. Ma's eye fell on Lew, Harry, and myself, and we knew what was coming.

"Why, the boys can do that for you," Ma said with Her Look, "can't you boys?"

"I wouldn't think of it," Lady replied, shaking her head. "Perhaps I can get someone from the Town Farm." The Town Farm was the poorhouse, where Pequot's indigents were housed, but Ma said not an inmate there would be up to such a task. No, the boys would be happy to do it, "
Won't
you, boys?"

Around eight-thirty Colonel Blatchley stopped in for a visit, taking the wing chair opposite Lady and lighting up one of the expensive cigars she kept him provided with. The Colonel, a retired banker, handled Lady's money and holdings for her, and advised her carefully on all financial matters. I never learned why he was called "Colonel," though it was generally assumed it had something to do with the British regiment he had served in during the war. Only half American, he spoke with traces of an English accent, and he "sported" rather than wore his clothes: tattersall vests, baggy knickers, shoes with fringed tongues, sometimes even spats. He was well past fifty, bluff, genial, and portly, a good old duffer; wifeless for years, he loved playing the ever-youthful courtier to Lady. But, serving him his "twenty drops," which was what he called his ample bourbons-and-water, Lady would say, "What does the landed gentry want with baggage from the wrong end of Knobb Street?"

The Colonel had come at the instigation of Mrs. Porter de Sales-Sprague, who had maneuvered herself into the position of planning and writing a pageant to be mounted that summer in celebration of the town's tercentenary. With the Colonel as intermediary, Mrs. Sprague was requesting that Lady open the Josiah Webster House, Built 1702, to the Daughters of the Pilgrims Club and their guests during the festivities. Lady laughed, saying she couldn't imagine who would want to pay good money to see her parlor.

"My dear," said the Colonel gently, "yours is one of the most historical houses in our town -- surely . . ." The truth of the Colonel's statement was well known. George Washington had visited in this very room at the time of the Yorktown Conference, though he had bedded down over on Main Street, where he and General Rochambeau had made the final plans for the Battle of Yorktown, which ended the American Revolution. Still, historical site or not, Lady did not seem inclined to favor Mrs. Sprague's suggestion. She crinkled her eyebrows with amusement and asked, "Will she want my tea service as well? Must Jesse get out the silver polish? And will there be
only
tea? No cocktails?"

The Colonel gave us all a broad wink. "Yes, I should think cocktails -- surely the 5:10-ers will be invited."

"Ah, yes, the 5:10-ers could hardly get through a party without cocktails, even if Eamon Harmon doesn't have to mix his own gin anymore. Well," Lady continued dubiously, "if it's a case of the 5:10-ers . . ."

The 5:10-ers were members of the Pequot Landing establishment, so-called because of the active politicking that took place at the back of the 5:10 trolley car from Hartford, a local version of the "smoke-filled room" of convention fame. During these half-hour rides from the city, the 5:10-ers discussed events as they pertained to Pequot, and made certain determinations, picking various candidates for office, and seeing to it that certain appointments were filled. There was nothing underhanded or nefarious in this; it was simply a way of doing things.

These same personages formed the "Academy Parliament," known thusly because, often unable to transact all of their political dealings on the trolley, the 5:10-ers would meet outside the old Academy Hall before or after court sessions, or following Town Meeting, and make further dispositions regarding civic welfare. Most of the men were business executives in the city, others had local enterprises, and all were white, of English descent, and went to First Church. They were the town's Old Guard, sons of the original settlers, and were comfortably secure husbands and fathers. They played golf at the country club on Saturday afternoon, returned to dance and get drunk on Saturday night, and went to church bleary-eyed on Sunday morning.

Among the 5:10-ers were Eamon Harmon, whose family were seed growers; Sam Merriam, in insurance; Walt Bricker, president of the bank; Jack and Phil Harrelson's father, a lawyer; and Porter Sprague, retired and under sentence to his wife.

"You may as well say yes to Mrs. Sprague, Lady," Ma said lightly, "you know she won't stop until she has your house." The Colonel was quick to agree, but still Lady demurred. While the discussion went on, I found my eye straying to the gate-leg table between the back windows, and the shrine Mrs. Sparrow was forever talking about: little faded flags; a medal in a box lined with blue velvet; a framed speech; an array of photographs, most prominent among them the one that had been taken when Edward Harleigh was welcomed home from France, five months before his death.

"It's going to be a beautiful spring," Lady whispered as we left with our instruments. She kissed the Colonel's cheek warmly, but I noticed how adroitly she had avoided giving him an answer; Mrs. Porter de Sales-Sprague wasn't going to have
everything
her own way.

At Easter vacation we tackled the job of digging up the septic tank behind Lady's house, under the supervision of Jesse Griffin, who was a little of a plumber and a little of a carpenter and a little of just about anything else you could think of. But Lady didn't want him doing the digging, and so it fell to us to open up the lateral pipes which had gotten clogged and consequently caused the tank to back up. It was hard, dirty work, and it took most of our vacation to complete the job.

Lady meanwhile had spoken with some of the 5:10-ers, who agreed that what the town needed was a proper sewage system, and Eamon Harmon and the others agreed to put the matter before the Town Meeting. There were two people who could be counted on to oppose any proposal that smacked of progress: Porter Sprague, who was still Keeping Cool with Coolidge, and No-Relations Welles, who opposed everything on general principles. Once he held Town Meeting in session way into the night because he was against the town having to pay for the laundering of gymnasium towels at the high school.

But while the problem of sewage was discussed at the Academy Hall, we dug in and dunked out, and emptied Lady's septic tank. She paid us handsomely for our labors, and we were always in and out of her house. Having keenly felt its emptiness, she tenanted it with us -- a population explosion that never seemed to mar its serenity or elegance. We were, as she often said, her family, and though she got us ready-to-hand, with all our faults intact, she interested herself in every detail of our various small existences. Her instinctive consideration and understanding, the quiet delving into our individual personalities, the precise knowledge she had of each of us stemmed, I think, more from her powers of intuition than anything else. She quickened our interest, sharpened our perceptions, encouraged our temperaments, fertilized our imaginations, and added zest to all our lives.

She exemplified all the German virtues of housewifeliness and industry -- it was the way her mother had brought her up. Hard work, thrift, and cook with potatoes. She loved cooking and baking and canning -- it was always such a pleasure to see her in the kitchen -- and she kept a good housewife's garden behind the carriage house, priding herself on the size of her summer squash, and the healthy issue of her pole beans. In her less active moods she was forever doing needlework of some kind: embroidery, crewel, petit point; to this day I have a unicorn she stitched up for me, seemingly overnight. She enjoyed and respected art -- painting, music, sculpture -- and she valued good, careful writing.

Though it would have been easy for her to cause her influence to be felt in the town, she most often withheld it. She believed that you could get a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar; flies she got, and friends galore. But while she had the respect and admiration of the community, she held herself aloof from its common currents of daily life, only bringing her power to bear when it seemed most needful.

As the weather became warmer, the carpets were taken up and put in mothballs, and the bare floors echoed with our footsteps, the walls with our shouts and cries. The living room became a place where Things Happened. Imagine sitting there and hearing Rosa Ponselle, our first Carmen, and having Lady tell how she rolled cigarettes and switched her hips and was stabbed by Don José. Or putting a Rachmaninoff roll on the player piano. Or looking at Renoir's glowing women in a picture book. We got paint sets and began painting. We went to the Athenaeum in Hartford to see the statues, Greek, unclothed, fig-leafed.