The wooden furniture from Lady's summerhouse was arranged on news-papers near the furnace, where Jesse had been painting them for the spring. Beyond them was the coal pile, with the shovel leaning against the wood siding of the bin. The supply had dwindled considerably since the day we painted the storm windows and the coal had been delivered, and there were long scrape marks across the cement floor where the shovel had been slid at the coal before carrying it to the furnace.
Jesse was filling the blowtorch with kerosene, pouring from a gallon can through a little tin funnel, and I caught his eye as he glanced up from this work, looking first at me, then at the coal pile. His lower lip jutted out in a pitcher-like curl -- the way it did when he was thinking hard or he disapproved of something -- and he began depressing the torch primer in a rapid series of strokes. I noticed how the coal was being used up, not from the front of the pile, as would ordinarily happen, but along the right side almost to the rear of the bin, leaving an unnatural-looking heap on the left side. I found this a curious way of shoveling coal, but it was not until later that the truth of what I was thinking just then struck me. Still, there was enough import in the moment to cause me to start slightly when Jesse put his hand on my shoulder, as if directing my attention away from the bin. He wiped the blowtorch off with a flannel square and handed it to me,
"You know how to work it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Take the kerosene can and funnel in case you run out."
Back in our own cellar, Harry and I scraped with putty knives while Lew used the blowtorch, I turning over in my mind the small pea of doubt that had become lodged there. It was then that I discovered what I had been thinking all the time: the corpus delicti was hidden in the back of the bin in Lady Harleigh's cellar, where the coal had been piled so irregularly.
Of this fact I grew more and more certain through the early weeks of March while the snow melted all around the town, and sometimes I would sneak along the side of Lady's house where, crouched down, I could see through the grimy pane of the cellar window over the coal bin, watching the pile recede as the furnace was stoked, wondering what would happen when the coal supply was at last exhausted.
My carefully evolved theory was put to the test several weeks later at the height of the flood. For weeks now, with the sun growing warmer, the snow first turned to slush, then melted altogether, running in roiling channels along the roadside, the eaves and gutters of the houses dripping, the drainspouts rattling tinnily from the overflow. The ice in the river had begun breaking up, and the current carried it south in a steady and speedy flow, and the river day by day rose alarmingly. The boys from the nearest CCC group began working around the clock, sandbagging the dike northeast of the town near the airfield -- at night we could look from Nancy's attic window and see the blue glimmer of their lanterns -- but these labors proved fruitless as the water level continued to increase, threatening the lower town.
For days excitement ran high around the Green with rumors of evacuation, and there was only a skeleton crew at the firehouse, the firemen having joined the CCC boys at the dike. Late one afternoon they drove back to the Center in Joe Paulus's car and emerged wet and tired and disheartened. The dike, they said, would not hold through the night. We raced up to the north end of Main Street and climbed the tall tree in the back of the Town Farm. From this vantage point we watched the last of the CCC trucks pulling away, and behind them the river already spilling down the steep slope of the high-banked earthwork, cutting gullies and channels as the water ate away at the sides.
Next morning the National Guard was called out, and we awoke to find our back yard knee-deep in water. The dike had gone. The radio told us that the schools were closed and we looked forward to a watery holiday of undetermined duration. By the following afternoon the Green was a proper lake, and water was coming into our cellar. The trolleys had stopped running, and Ma stayed home from the Sunbeam, but neither her remonstrances nor Nancy's could keep us indoors. After putting on our rubber boots, we sloshed our way up to the Center, then down toward the River Road, where -- astonishing sight -- River House was flooded to the first story, and only the second-floor gallery was visible. People were going by in rowboats, women and children and dogs and possessions being taken to dry land. The current was rapid, swirling with mud as it sluiced along its swollen course, carrying with it anything that would float, tree branches, crates and boxes, here a barrel, there a porch chair. It was when we saw the residents of the Town Farm being loaded into a bus that the real drama of the situation struck us. People were being driven from their homes, and if it was bad today on the River Road, what might it be tomorrow on the Green?
We raced to the hardware store, full of customers buying lanterns and fuel, coils of rope, candles, and -- what Lew had said we must get at once -- siphon pumps. We bought the last one. Ma, naturally, was worried when we got home, and we reassured her and Nancy, who was wailing in the kitchen, and then went down cellar to investigate. There was over a foot of water, and the sawhorses on which we had set the scow were already being inundated. We got the boat up through the hatchway and moored it to the trunk of the crab-apple tree in the back yard. We spent the early hours of the night fashioning a drain out of some old pipes our father had left stuck up along the ceiling beams, which we fitted together section by secton, joining the last to the siphon pump. Then we took turns plunging the handle up and down, the suction created emptying the water from the cellar floor and carrying it away through the improvised drainpipe.
It was no use. By next day water surrounded the house, and if the river continued to come up, we would be as homeless as those along the River Road, would in fact be flooded out before nightfall. Lew said we must pack, and get Ma, Ag, Kerney, and Nancy out as quickly as possible. When we came upstairs again, Nancy was sitting at the kitchen table squeezing her knuckles and biting her lower lip. Ma came in bearing an armload of clothing, with Aggie carrying more behind her, and Kerney looking frightened.
The National Guard, Ma explained, was coming to evacuate us, but this might take some time, since the Guard had its hands and boats full elsewhere. At these words Nancy flung her clasped hands toward the ceiling and cried, "Mercy Jesus!" The telephone had gone dead and there was no electricity. All the food from the Frigidaire was in boxes in the back porch, ready to be transported with us. I didn't think the National Guard would be interested in rowing cold pig's hocks and sauerkraut around town, and then realized that if we were being driven out, the Sparrows and Miss Berry and Gert Flagler would most likely also be in peril. Lew and Harry and I ducked out on the back porch and had a hurried conference. Lew, being the tallest, went out the door and down one step, where he was almost up to his boot tops in water, and slogged his way to the tied-up scow. We had brought the oars up as well, and he maneuvered the boat to the steps where we got in, calling inside that we would be back.
We rowed first over to Ruthie Sparrow's -- strange and wonderful to be boating across our own lawn -- and found her sitting in her bay window, her Seiss-Altags sweeping the watery vista. She saw us, and was already in her hat and coat and galoshes when Mr. Sparrow opened the front door, both of them only too happy to be rescued.
Not so Gert Flagler, to whose house we next rowed. Miss Berry was shivering on the stoop, the dogs clustered around her feet and quiet for once. While we transferred Miss Berry and the dogs to the boat, Gert Flagler appeared in high wading boots. No damn National Guard was going to get her out, she said, sloshing her way down the drive to rescue her cow.
Manning the oars, Lew and Harry rowed us down the Green toward the Center. There was no sign of life over at Lady's, and I wondered if they had all left, though there seemed to be no reason to; her house was on higher ground and relatively safe from the rising water.
Our passengers were taken from us at the Masonic Hall, which had been turned into a refugee center, and I spelled first Lew and then Harry at the oars on the return trip. Ag and Kerney were on the porch, Ag with a small suitc
ase with books and other belongings; Kerney clutching the silver candlesticks Pa had bought for Ma when they were first married, and our crystal set and earphones.
But what about the food on the back porch, Ma asked; heaven knew what there would be to eat where we were going. When they were on dry land, Lew said, we would come back and bring whatever we could manage. Ma followed Ag into the boat, we loaded Nancy and Kerney in, then Patsy, and pulled away from our house. Gert was on her stoop, while the cow stood knee-high in water on the lawn.
"You tell old Keep not to send any soldiers around in a boat, I'm not leaving unless Bossy goes!" she stormed, as if it were our own personal flood. Her face screwed up in a pugnacious grimace, she watched our boat slide away from our door. I sat at the stern in order to bail, for the scow, though seaworthy, was leaking water along the keel where the caulking had split. Lew and Harry had us headed on a course for the Great Elm, where the current seemed easier going, but still it was hard work.
Then I saw the front door open across the way, and Lady appeared, bundled up in Jesse's old sweater and running down the walk toward us.
"Where are you going?" she called, and we answered, to the Masonic Hall.
"Nonsense," she returned in a tone I remembered. "Lew -- Harry, come this way -- this way, boys. Hurry before your poor mother gets all wet. Hello, Agnes, hello, Kerney. Nice weather for ducks, isn't it? Don't be afraid, Nancy, the boys will have you safe in a jiffy."
There she stood at the end of her brick walk with Honey beside her, the laughter in her voice, suggesting that this was all some marvelous adventure and sure to prove diverting. She called back to the house for Elthea and Jesse, saying guests were coming and to make ready; then she grabbed the painter as I tossed it to her from the bow, relinquishing it to Jesse, who came behind her in his butler's coat, as if expecting company. Meanwhile Patsy sprang to dry land and went frolicking with Honey. Elthea and Lady helped Ma, then Ag and Nancy onto dry ground while Jesse waded out in rubber boots and carried Kerney to safety. We pushed off, to row back across the Green for the things from the Frigidaire; and half an hour later, grouped around the fire Jesse had built, with hot coffee and tea or cocoa, Lady's laughter floating about us as she talked of the house party we were going to have -- "Larks, my dears, we'll have such larks" -- I openly rejoiced, knowing then that she had come back to us again.
8
Had, in fact, never left us; or so it seemed. She was the Lady of old, brimming with fun and plans, and unable to do enough for us, our whole family scattered helter-skelter about her house. It was large enough, certainly, and sleeping arrangements were easily made, and the extra leaves put in the dining-room table to accommodate us at mealtimes, and plenty of food to put on it from Elthea's pantry. We stayed five days, and they were among the best I can recall. We seldom were alone, and there was no chance to probe Lady's latest and longest retirement. Nor was the last visit of the red-haired man spoken of. It was as if she had blocked out all the unpleasant things that had happened since that Halloween night.
But this was the end of March, and at the final phase of an historic flood; for almost from our transference to the house across the Green the river began receding. Isolated from the world, we were hungry for news, which we got on the crystal set, and were thankful that we had not had to go with the hundreds of others who had been evacuated throughout the valley, including the redoubtable Gert Flagler. Who that was there doesn't remember with a smile the sight of Gert being carried, under protest, into a waiting boat by two husky National Guardsmen? Her furious bellows could be heard even over on our side of the Green, and she swatted her husky saviors with her pocketbook as they rowed away, cradling her latest Spencer corset catalogue in her lap.
"My cow -- my cow --"
"Lady, we'll get your cow."
"Tell it to Sweeney!"
They did. Two men came poling a makeshift raft, got poor Bossy on it, and, mooing loudly, she was taken to dry land.
Lew, Harry, and I were meanwhile spending a good deal of time in Lady's cellar, using another siphon pump, for it had been discovered that the ground, which had soaked up so much moisture, was depositing it through the stonework of the foundations, and this, too, was taking on a foot of water. We pumped it into buckets and carried them up the hatchway stairs and emptied them off behind the carriage house, and I watched with fascination as the level gradually dropped, revealing the bottom of the coal pile, the lower twelve inches of which had gotten soaked.
Harry and Lew began moving the dry coal to the other side of the bin, and I stared in horror as their shovels worked at the place where I had made up my mind that the corpus delicti had been hidden. Then, to my surprise, they were down to the watery floor, with not enough coal left to hide a midget.
The matter remained a mystery as the flood tide continued to recede and the water ebbed back from the Green, leaving an ugly stretch of mud and debris. But, the water line dropping, I knew that each inch brought us nearer to the day when we must leave and go home. Traffic was once again negotiating the roadway along Broad Street, people were seen coming and going on various errands, while a work crew began the job of cleaning up. It was at this point that Lady announced that she was going to give a party -- an end-of-the-flood party, combined with her birthday celebration, where, like Noah, everybody could get as drunk as they wished. The house now being accessible, she would invite all the neighbors, and we would have a high old time. Since it was also to be our farewell to her house, she intended to make it a memorable celebration. So on went the apron, down came the recipe books, out came the baking pans, and she began preparing enormous quantities of food for a buffet supper. Ma, Ag, Nancy, and Elthea helped her, while we boys worked under Jesse's supervision, cleaning, waxing, and polishing in all the downstairs rooms.
Meanwhile there began a parade of deliveries from the Center, where things had gotten back to normal: wine from the liquor store, meat from the market, and ice from Mr. Pretty, the vegetable man. Mr. Pretty's industriousness was the talk of Pequot Landing. At one time he had made a comfortable living selling ice, but with G.E.s and Kelvinators on everyone's back porches he changed to peddling vegetables door-to-door in the summer to support his family (large jolly wife, nine kids, all fat) while during the winter he sold firewood and kindling, and trees at Christmas time. In the spring he odd-jobbed, in the fall guided businessmen on hunting trips in Maine. Evenings he took a correspondence course in dentistry, when he wasn't meeting with the Boy Scouts, the Masons, or the church deacons. He was so busy that people said they didn't see where he found time to oblige Mrs. Pretty with so many offspring.
He brought Lady a hundred-pound block of ice, and departed, and behind him came Colonel Blatchley, supervising the laying in of the various liquors, and after he had scouted a suitable spot at which to set up the bar, and a place to set out the champagne, he and Jesse put the wine bottles in a snowdrift to cool until the party.
We had attacked the sideboard in the dining room, and I was making faces in the watery mirror when Lady came in. Remembering the episode with the mirrors in the funhouse at Holiday Lake, I broke off, and she asked us to go up to the attic to find the pads for the table before she laid the cloth. There was a large platter up there which she wanted as well, and she sent Ag along to carry it down.
Warmed by the bricks of the giant chimney at one end, the attic was a cozy spot. We discovered a number of trunks of a size to hide any number of very large men in, and I wondered if the remains of the red-haired man had not found its way into one of these instead of the coal bin. Harry already had one of them open, but no mortal bones did it contain, only clothes from earlier periods.
With a delighted sigh Ag drew out a long robe and tried it on, a sort of dressing gown covered with a feathery pattern of turquoise peacock tails, with gold dots in the eyes, and it made soft swishing sounds as she knotted the sash and moved in it. Lew, meanwhile, discovered an old army tunic, and when he had put it on we went to look in the mirror in
the bedroom under the sloping roof at the other end of the attic. This room we knew to be Jesse's and Elthea's, sparely furnished and, not surprisingly, neat as a pin, for Elthea was unfailingly a good housekeeper. There was a large bed which took up nearly all the floor space, with a great carved headboard and a smaller footboard, and a mattress under the counterpane that sagged toward the middle.
Lew and Aggie were posing side by side before the mirror on the wall, and none of us heard the footsteps on the stairway until Lady's voice was heard to say, "Where are my table pads --" She broke off as she appeared in the doorway, staring at the figures, her face gone white as if she had seen a ghost. Which, I suddenly realized, was precisely the case -- a pair of ghosts. Lew had struck a smart attitude of salute, while Aggie's languid-model pose dripped peacock from sleeve to hem.
Lady's half-moan froze them like figures in a tableau. Her brows drew together in an angry line, and her voice was a harsh whisper. "Get out, all of you, get out of here! Take those things off. Do you hear? Take them off!" We stood, speechless, then Lew plunged past her through the door. Tears came into Aggie's eyes as she looked at Lady, then turned to follow Lew. Lady's hand came out, seizing one of the sleeves, and the delicate fabric tore at the shoulder seam. Then, giving me an impatient shake, she hurried me through the door after the others.
Lew was unbuttoning the tunic, while Ag was trying to unknot the sash of the torn gown. Lady had closed the bedroom door and was stopped at the stairway railing, one hand supporting herself, the fingers of the other pressing at her mouth, and she continued to stare as Aggie's movements grew more agitated in trying to undo the knot. It was Aggie's tears that brought Lady back to herself. Visibly controlling the emotions that had shaken her, she came around the railing, hurried to Ag, and drew her into her arms.