"Why, Jesse?" I asked.
"Why? Christmas comes, ought to be snow, oughtn't there? It's fittin' and proper." He was bundled into his old sweater, and wore his needlepoint slippers, and, as if in a way of maintaining his status in the household, was making a pretense of polishing the silver sugar bowl with a felt cloth. But as he replied his dark eyes had a twinkle in them, a light that I had not thought to see again, and I knew him well enough to realize there must be something behind his comment that I should be able to decipher. Just then Lew and Harry came in with more branches, and when they had passed through to the hallway I saw Elthea steal another look, first at me, then at Jesse.
"Jesse, honey, Indians have rainmakers for when it won't rain -- maybe what we need is a snowmaker."
He polished and growled and then said, "Got my heart set on one more Christmas with snow."
"That's what you say every year. You'll be saying the same thing in this same kitchen to that same boy next year, except he'll have grown a foot."
Jesse winked at me in secret complicity, though of what nature I had no idea, and I went through the door still wondering what he wanted with snow.
As always, he had his reasons, whose source was revealed when in fact snow did fall two days before Christmas Eve. This seemed to offer him satisfaction, and though he chose to remain upstairs that afternoon, Elthea said he was sitting by the window watching it come down. We all wondered what would happen if it continued; the plows would not be out on Christmas Eve. Later, and more mysteriously, Lady telephoned to say she would not be over for our traditional tree-trimming -- nor did she mention seeing us for hers, another odd thing -- but, immersed in the holiday activities at our own house, what with Nonnie's arrival home and the usual cheerful bustle her visits always provided, we forgot about both the snow and Lady until I heard a sound out in front, one unmistakable to my ear. Before anyone else could get to it I had rushed and flung open the front door.
"Anyone for a sleigh ride?" Lady called, bundled up beside Colonel Blatchley, whose chestnut mare was hitched between the shafts, the sleigh twinkling in the streetlight gleam. "Put on your things, come along while there's still snow!"
And so I finally got my sleigh ride, and having come so unlooked-for, it was the more memorable. The sleigh could take only four at a time, and I let the rest go first, one load, then another, while doors opened around the Green and the neighbors waved, and Gert Flagler tromped out on her stoop to see what the racket was about. At the end of each trip the sleigh deposited the passengers at Lady's doorway, then drove around to ours for the next load, and when it came my turn Lady arrived in the sleigh alone. The Colonel, she said, had gone in to mix the punch, and did I mind if just we two went?
I didn't mind.
She wore her fur coat and little fur hat, and when she had us bundled under a warm car blanket, she snapped the reins, the horse stepped smartly out, and off we went. Along Broad Street and then up to Main Street, past the church and the silent graveyard, down Main to the end, then off onto a country road whose path was unmarked by any former tracks.
If a sleigh ride in July is merely being taken for a ride, a hoax of sorts, my sleigh ride that December eve was none. With Lady Harleigh? It became one of my most memorable recollections. The darkened sky above, the snow falling lightly around us, the air tingling, pristine, the cold making my nostrils pinch, the jingle of the brass bells, the muffled beat of the horse's hoofs, the breath pouring from its nostrils like dragon's smoke, the feel of Lady's fur against my cheek, and in the cold the slight trace of her flower perfume; and if no fox came to view out in the whitened fields, nothing else was lacking. She was my Snow Queen, and I her willing prisoner.
We returned the way we had come, talking now and then, but mostly feeling the spell of the moment. I thought what a handsome town we had, how elegant the fronts of the houses along Main Street, with what care they were presented for the passers-by, their lighted doorways and windows and the colored lights over the trees and along the fences, green wreaths over the knockers fluttering red bows.
"Where would anyone live but here, if they could?" Lady said enthusiastically. If her feelings toward the owners of these houses was soon to alter, and theirs toward her, tonight all was as it should be, tonight it was as though the street itself were bidding us a happy Christmas.
We rounded the flagpole in front of the church, brightly lighted for Christmas Eve services, with the organ playing and the choir singing, and when we got to the cemetery drive, Lady turned the horse from the road and we glided in.
How still it was, how quiet. The tombstones rose darkly in rows and clusters, their tops catching the increasing fall of snow. Lady drew gently on the reins, slowed, then stopped the horse, and, handing the leads to me, she lifted the corner of the car robe and got out.
"Just for a moment," she said lightly, and I felt the cold air slide in under the blanket as she walked across the white space toward the stone marking Edward's resting place. In the flurrying snow and the pale light, I could just make out the dark shape of her figure as she stood motionless, looking down at the snow-blanketed grave. Behind her was the small rise of the ancient burying ground, with its markers like great, four-legged tables, where the earliest settlers lay buried.
"I must bring some winter cherries," she murmured when I helped her back into the sleigh and we continued along the snowy aisle between the graves, at last passing out onto the street again. "They're the only things that give color in this weather." I recalled the bowl of orange papery blooms like Japanese lanterns that had been on the table on the night of the "little veal-cutlet supper," the night of the first visit of the red-haired man.
As we circled the flagpole again, church was just letting out; the steps were thronged with worshipers being greeted by the minister and his wife.
"Merry Christmas!" we called, and they returned the greeting, all heads craning to see the charming sight of the sleigh and its driver, who waved her gloved hand and nodded as we went along. Lady grew serious as we passed from earshot of the jocund gathering, and again her hand sought mine and she squeezed my mittened fingers in hers. We came at last back to the Green, stretching away from us into a hazy infinity, but the snowfall was not heavy enough to obscure the height and breadth of the Great Elm, and again I felt the surge of pride and pleasure that this was our elm, the largest in the country, here in our little town. The wind had stolen away the final leaf, and its stripped but telling form rose grave and somnolent, venerable as ever.
"Trees are God's noblest race." Lady's face looked pallid in the shine of the streetlights, and though the cold should have put color in her cheeks, they were pale, her eyes smoky and encircled with a purplish cast. "Still, trees last, don't they? While we die quickly. Each of us."
"Look at all the Christmas lights," I said, trying to bring her out of her melancholy. But it was no use; her thoughts that night, for whatever reason, were on death.
"Jesse looks better this week, don't you think?" she asked in the child's tone she sometimes fell into. Yes, I said, he definitely looked better. "He's dying." No, I said. "He will not last the year." But I said Jesse was a tough nut, hard to crack. "Dying," she persisted; "and he's so patient about it."
We continued along the Green, and when we pulled into her drive, she started to get out, then drew me back against the seat and took my hand. "It's true that you'll be going away. Sooner than I could hope for, and one day there is something I should like you to know."
"About you?"
"Don't be a great booby, of course about me."
Aha -- the, as I thought, defunct Mr. Ott. "Is it a deep terrible secret?"
"All secrets are dark and terrible. It's the way of the world. They are like The Dream of a Welsh Rarebit Fiend.'"
"I think," I said, "I know something."
"Ah," she returned, with that mischievous look, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." She laid my hand against her cheek and I could feel the cold through my mitten. "Bu
t it can wait. Come, we must make a merry Christmas. I'll send Lew and Harry out to help you unharness Colonel Blatchley's horse." She donned a mask of lightness, forcibly putting aside her earlier morbid thoughts, and went in, all gaiety, disappearing through the brightly lighted doorway when Elthea answered her ring, stamping her little boots on the mat, the sound of her laughter rising as she went to greet her guests.
The door closed behind her. The snow still came down. The horse clopped her hoofs in the drive, snorted, shivered. I did not know it then, but it was the end of all the Christmases of my childhood, for the closing of that door really marked the end of Lady Harleigh as I had known her. Later, when the party was the merriest, when all went with Christmas good cheer, when the presents had been opened and the fire was dying, we sneaked out through the kitchen, reappearing at the garlanded front door to sing "Good Night, Lady," and this time she did come out to hear, with tears and smiles, and was touched; but after that it was never the same, never could have been, for within months I had made my terrible discovery. And as Lady had told me, never is a long, long time.
6
Easter came and Jesse was still alive, was indeed a tough nut to crack. During that spring vacation, Lady engaged us to give the summerhouse a fresh coat of paint and we worked diligently in the warming April sun, with ladder, bucket, and brush. Dora Hornaday hung about as she so often did, spying on us from beside the gazing-globe, or sometimes from the loft of the carriage house where she liked to idle, staring out and hatching whatever hidden thoughts went on in that ill-shapen brain of hers. The weather was fair, the spring flowers were already up in the gardens, and Elthea would bring a plate of sandwiches and cups of soup out to us at lunchtime. Jesse, seated on the wicker chaise, watched from Lady's window as the work progressed, his gray face imprisoned behind the pane like an ancient tribal sage. Often, Dr. Brainard would stop by when he came home from the hospital, coming out back to see how the work went, then going in to see, in effect, how Jesse's heart went. "Old fellow's strong as an ox," he would say when he came down again, shaking his head in amazement, though I noted he always managed to say it in front of Elthea, as if to allay her fears at the threat of losing her husband. And he would call a hello to Dora, whose presence now was more or less regular, as she stationed herself in the carriage-house loft.
Once, when I came over with my Kodak to take pictures of the newly painted summerhouse, I saw Dora appear from the side door of the carriage house, having descended from her solitary aerie. I watched her circle the lawn warily until she stood by the gazing-globe, staring at her curved reflection.
"What's happening, Dora?"
She seemed not to hear, and I saw that her ears were plugged with large wads of cotton, part of the treatment that was being administered at the clinic Lady was sending her to. The doctors had determined that it was Dora's ear trouble that kept her in her continually half-realized, dreamy state. I clicked my shutter at her, and "Don't!" she said. When I lowered my camera, she leveled her look at me and said nothing more, and presently she disappeared.
Then, suddenly and from nowhere, the blows fell, one more calamitous than the last. Jesse had been taken to the hospital for more tests, and though Dr. Brainard's report was positive, when Jesse came home again both Elthea and Lady were more worried than ever. Dora stopped coming around altogether, and except for Lady's taking the Packard out on her various errands, there were few comings and goings across the Green. It was as if the house were holding its breath, waiting.
It was several weeks later. Heavy rains had set in, and it proved a wet spring. The water in the Cove was high, though never so high as the flood. I sloshed my way home from school in rain gear, ate a sandwich in the kitchen with Nancy, then went across the Green. I was working on a large model of the Hindenburg zeppelin, pinning the intricate maze of struts and crosspieces to a board for gluing. Having used every pin available from Ma's sewing box, I went to borrow some from Lady.
The carriage-house doors were open, the car gone; Lady and Elthea must have gone shopping. Jesse, I supposed, was resting. As usual, the kitchen door was unlatched, and I kicked off my rubber boots and padded in on my stocking feet. Lady had been baking; there were cake layers cooling on racks on the sideboard, and a bowl of frosting sat on the table. I had a lick, then went upstairs to find the tin box she kept her sewing things in. I found it beside her bedroom chaise. I began picking out what pins I could find, then put back the cover and dropped the pins into a paper cup I had brought along.
Outside, the rain had stopped, and the afternoon sun was gleaming palely through a rift in the cloudcast over Avalon across the river. The broad plane of the Cove shone brightly, and boats already launched for the summer bobbed in clusters at their buoys. In the distance, through the just-greening treetops, I could see clumps of smoke blossoming as the freight train came down from Hartford. I watched closely, wondering if someone would try to slow it. These days there was a new engineer, whose ire was easily aroused, and I could hear his whistle making querulous toots as the engine neared the crossing at the Rose Rock soda-pop works.
I left the sewing box on the floor and started out, glancing at Lady's dressing table. I remembered she kept an assortment of pins in the little pewter dish, and decided I might as well have those, too. I spilled the dish out on the runner, picked out the straight pins from the safety and hair pins, put them in the paper cup, and replaced the rest. Among them was the little steel key for Edward Harleigh's chifforobe, which I returned with the pins, put the cover on, then again started out.
They were there on the floor, just a part of them. I nearly missed them, except that my head was angled slightly down as I came around the bedpost. I stopped, stared. Something occurred; a thought, the merest. I dismissed it, or tried to, but then I felt a sort of panic, an enlarging sensation that expanded my stomach and made my knees buckle. I think I said something aloud. It was the numb, stricken feeling one gets, the slow-rising flood of realization, of fear, that sets the intestinal juices flowing, the adrenal glands secreting. My hand had closed on the paper cup of pins: without thinking, I crushed it; their points stung, pricked me. I dropped the cup, the pins spilled on the carpet. I stooped, not to pick them up, but to examine more closely my discovery.
Still I had not realized all of the truth. It was proof, but not enough. I wanted, desired more. I rushed to the dressing table, tipped over the pewter dish, spilled out the pins, and took the key. I unlocked the chifforobe. I felt the blood charging my neck, my cheeks, all of my head, as shame, fear, disgust, engulfed me. I wanted to vomit.
It couldn't be.
Yet it was.
I would not believe it.
Yet I had to.
Stopping my breath because I could not stop the sight of what I was looking at, I yanked out the drawers one by one from the bottom to the top, each only further illustrating the truth to me. As if needing more proof, I flung open the closet door and began pulling things on hangers from the pole, threw them out on the floor, dragged out hats and shoes and furs.
"What on earth --"
Panting, I wheeled at the sound of the voice. Lady Harleigh stood in the doorway. I hated the sight of her.
She looked about at the confusion of strewn things, the ransacked chifforobe. "Oh, my dear." A faint smile appeared at the corners of her mouth, a sad smile, the smile of things remembered -- or perhaps of things best forgotten.
"My dear," she said again, reaching out her hand to me. The bracelets slid on her wrist, and I stepped back against the bed, away from her, but still staring at her.
She came into the room and began closing the drawers one by one, and she locked the door with the little key, which she held in her hand. She eyed the things on the floor with a faint glance of distaste, then moved beside me at the bed. I stepped quickly away, but she only bent to pick up the slippers. She held them in her hands and, outraged, I saw with what affection her fingers stroked the needlepointed toes. Jesse Griffin's slippers, which I had seen s
ticking out from under the dust ruffle of the bed.
I stared, not at her but at the closed chifforobe, its inventoried contents vividly colorful: the stacks of starched shirts, striped in pink and white, the seven white collars, the violet suspenders, the undershirts and drawers, the little compartment of gold collar studs -- not Edward Harleigh's, but Jesse Griffin's things. I started to feel sick again.
"Pick up those pins, please." She moved to the chaise and sat looking out the window, the slippers on her lap. I could hear Elthea humming downstairs in the kitchen. I knelt and picked up the pins. My hand hurt where they had stuck me, but the pain seemed nothing to the pain in my chest.
"Will you come and sit?" I rose and she nodded toward the vanity bench. I moved to her but did not sit. Two steps away was close enough.
She began speaking. "Do you remember -- last spring? When we walked? By Paulus's pond? I told you then that you were old enough to understand some things, old enough at that moment. And so you were. As you are older now, you must understand more. Will you try?"
I refused to answer. I would never speak another word to her as long as I lived. I dug my fingers into the openwork of the crocheted spread that covered the bed where she slept with Jesse Griffin.
"It would be easy for me to say that Jesse's things were only moved in here since his illness. I will not say that, because it isn't true. His things have always been in this room, for almost twenty years, ever since he came. This is our room together. That is the truth of it. I would like to tell you why."
Still I refused to speak; didn't want to hear; hated the sound of her lightly modulated voice, as if she were preparing to recount the events of a summer vacation. She leaned back against the pillows, slightly averting her eyes as though better to search out her thoughts.