There'd been a wind brewing for days, with small-craft warnings posted along the Sound. As the wind continued, the rain came in squalls; the frequent radio bulletins kept us informed of the progress of the storm, calling it a hurricane as it thrashed its way up from the Caribbean to Florida, then into the Carolinas. It approached the town in a gradually consuming fury, as if by coming slowly upon us it could rob us the quicker and to greater profit.
As usual, Ma had gone to the laundry, and the schools, as usual, were open, and as usual Nancy was ironing under the cellar stairs. She emerged in time to make lunch, then, frightened by the storm, retreated to her ironing board and radio programs; she didn't want to see or hear none of that nonsense.
Back at my worktable, with the broad panorama of the Green below, I watched Miss Berry make her way from her door, crossing the Green and heading for Lady's house. This was a strange thing, for to my knowledge she had never paid a visit across the Green in all the time we'd lived there.
Her umbrella unfurled, defying the storm to turn it inside out, clutching the collar of an old black coat, and trying to keep the red bird from flying off with her hat, she made her way up the walk. I thought the wind would blow her away, but she got to the door and was admitted.
Later, I persuaded Nancy to come up and watch the storm with me, which she did only with reluctance, wringing her hands, her dark lips taking on an ashen hue as she offered admonishment to the phenomenon.
"Oh, Lord, you's bad, you's a bad thing, lookit what you's doin' to Missus Sparrow's snowball bushes" -- Mrs. Sparrow's snowball bushes were scudding across the lawn like tumbleweed. "Here, now, you ain't got no call to blow like that, Lord, that streetcar's goan' pop offa that track" -- and so it appeared, the trolley having come up the track listing like a foundered ship, until debris blocked its path and the motorman fled to a nearby house for safety. "Done broke that glass!" -- the butt end of a branch drove through a passenger window. "Lord help us, this whole house is gone to shakin' " -- it had; we could feel the timbers quake in the walls and flooring.
"Lord God bless us, what's she doing out in that?" Nancy exclaimed as Miss Berry closed Lady's door behind her and marched back across the Green.
"She's coming here"; I had a feeling of dread as I got up and went down to open the door. Rage and contempt were on Miss Berry's windblown face as she confronted me, thrusting her black-gloved finger at my chest. "You told!"
"Told?" What was she talking about? The wind tore at the red bird, making it bob ridiculously. I tried to take her hand and bring her in, but she pulled away as if I were contemptible.
"You told about Lady and Jesse."
I felt amazement and then outrage. "No, I didn't. I never said a word."
"You did not tell?" She put her face close to mine, peering through her spectacles. "No one?"
"No . . ." My voice rose in a disconsolate wail on the wind.
Miss Berry darted me another look, then pulled the door to, leaving me behind it, trembling in anger. How could Lady have said it? Why was I blamed? I had never mentioned a word, not to anyone. Was she trying to get back at me? Would she put the blame on me for spite? It was the dirtiest trick I could think of, and instantly my feelings hardened toward her again.
When I got back upstairs, Miss Berry was heading up the Green, the wind buffeting her from behind, a frail craft abroad in rough waves; she looked hardly seaworthy. Colonel Blatchley, long since returned from his summer in England, came out and spoke to her, but Miss Berry shook her head and continued on. I watched her disappear, wondering what errand took her about in such weather. Leaves flurried across the grass in manic torrent, whirling, twisting, flying up in leaf-geysers, while water flowed in the streets as if the hydrants had been turned on. The radio said the hurricane was now ripping through New Bedford and heading for Boston. Again we had been declared a disaster area; the National Guard, the WPA, and other agencies had been called out. When Lew and Harry got home, Lew called Ma and asked her what she was doing: ironing shirts! In the middle of Connecticut's second-greatest disaster, our mother was back on the mangle! Lew told her not to try to come home. Where was Agnes, she fretted on the other end of the line. She agreed to remain at the laundry, but Ag must call when she got home safe.
We were all worried. The other schoolchildren had gone by, but no Ag, who always came home before going to the library to rebind books for Miss Shedd. Our worry increased as the storm did, and the real havoc began. The smaller, suppler trees were able to bend with the wind and still maintain themselves, but because of the wet spring the ground had been loosened, and one by one the larger trunks were literally uprooted before our eyes. A sixty-foot maple leaned, tottered, and crashed to the earth, taking with it a great cake of dirt and revealing its naked root system, which in no time was washed clean by the driving rain. Another tree went, then another, with great gaping holes appearing in the ground. "Look!" Harry exclaimed, and down went another; I watched it, then returned my eyes to the Great Elm, which I was sure would go at any time. Leaves flew like dark rain from the branches which tossed in thick green waves as the wind tore at them from every direction. Limbs broke off and were borne away, but still the thick trunk held.
By degrees the fury died, and though the rain continued all seemed eerie silence. The sky changed color, a sickly yellow, a Biblical signal of disaster or pestilence.
"Lord, I believe it's over," Nancy breathed gratefully, and I let her go down to the kitchen in her innocence, for I realized that we were now in the eye of the storm, that calm center around which the hurricane spiraled.
We waited, watched, talked among ourselves, worrying about Aggie, and as the rain slackened I looked across the Green to Lady's house. I wondered what she was doing. All was quiet; there were no signs of any activity. Like the others, her lawn was leaf-strewn, the blossoms of her plants had been torn off, leaving only the bare stalks, and the sheets of her afternoon paper were scattered over the grass.
Then into this calm chaos came Agnes, our sister, with Miss Berry. Her umbrella still intact, Miss Berry marched, rather than walked, straight down the Green, avoiding the carnage with careful steps until, arm in arm with Ag, she crossed the roadway in front of our house. Up the walk, up the steps, through the hall, upstairs, and into the room she came. Pulling out the long pin anchoring her hat, she threw the hat on the bed and sat down, looking straight at me.
I glanced at Ag, who'd come in behind her, then said, "Yes, Miss Berry?"
She composed herself by removing her gloves, then began. She had come, she said, directly from the parlor of Mrs. de Sales-Sprague, whom she, Miss Berry, had encouraged in no uncertain terms to surrender the truth concerning the poison-pen letters. It was indeed Mrs. de Sales-Sprague who had circulated them; the stationery had come from Miss Jocelyn-Marie's Gift and Novelty Shoppe, had been stamped and mailed in the post office, and had been delivered by Mr. Marachek. And how had Mrs. de Sales-Sprague come by this information?
Through Dumb Dora.
Spying from the carriage-house loft, Dora had observed certain things, which accounted for her frequent visits during the time we were painting the summerhouse a year ago last spring. From the loft she could see into Lady's bedroom window, where unnoticed she had witnessed demonstrations of affection between Lady and Jesse which even Dora's opaque mind could hardly construe otherwise. Had seen Lady kiss Jesse as she tucked a comforter around his knees. Had seen her sit on the chaise foot, holding his hand as she talked to him. Had seen her, while Jesse dozed in the sun, disrobe and change her clothes before going shopping.
So much for Dumb Dora. But how had Mrs. Sprague found out? By dint of one of her "What-have-we-been-doing-today-Dora-dear"s. Mrs. Sprague had coaxed, and Dora had obliged her by telling. Mrs. Sprague went to Miss Jocelyn-Marie's for the purchase of writing paper of the cheapest sort, and to the post office for stamps. The unwitting Mr. Marachek had done the rest.
Her recital finished, Miss Berry rose. "Lady said you were the one," she
said, facing me with her direct look, "but I told her you weren't. Go, now -- hurry."
Hurry? Where? There was a hurricane. I felt bewildered, not understanding what she wanted me to do.
"Go to her. She needs you. She still thinks it was you. Tell her you didn't."
I lowered my eyes, then sat down. "I can't."
"You -- can't?" The words exploded with disbelief. "You shall! You must!"
I felt everyone's eyes on me, but I didn't care. I would not go. I thought Miss Berry was reaching for her hat as she flew across the room, but it was me she wanted. She seized my shoulders and pulled me to my feet with a strength I wouldn't have thought possible, and shook me until my teeth clacked. Then she sat me down, took up her hat, and left the room without another word.
I glanced around at the others, and went back to the window. No one said anything. Outside, the storm had begun again, the velocity of the wind, the intensity of the rain matching my own storm of feelings. I felt a hand on my back and was whirled around to face Ag, her young fury matching Miss Berry's elderly one. Who did I think I was? she demanded, her face redder than I had ever seen it, her eyes running with tears. I had never heard her talk so much or so fast or so angrily. Who had taken us in and opened her house to us when we were flooded, and we would have been sleeping at the American Legion for a week? Who had paid Harry's hospital bills when he was sick? Who had sent her, Ag, to camp? Who had given us Christmas and Thanksgiving and Lord knew what else year after year? Yes -- and how did Nonnie get to go to normal school, except that Lady talked Ma into it, and paid her tuition. Paid for Nancy, too! And who did I think was helping to send me away to school! Who gave and nursed and took care of us, and not only us, but everyone -- there wasn't a family in town practically who wasn't obliged to her -- and who was now as miserable a woman as could be found?
"And if you want to know what I think of you," she ended, "I think you're -- you're nothing but a stinker!"
Finished, she fled in tears. I looked at Harry and Lew, who turned and leaned on the windowsill. I looked the other way, into the mirror over the bureau, a true goblin's mirror where an ugly boy did ugly things -- a mirror that . . .
Then, suddenly, I was running from the room, while Lew and Harry stared after me, and downstairs Nancy was pulling at me as I tried to open the door, with rain and leaves gusting in around us. Unheedful, head ducked low, I ran past her into the storm.
It was an astonishing feeling to be out in it, both fearful and exhilarating. As I made for the far side of the Green, I was shocked to see that the Sparrows' house looked as if it had been suddenly repainted; the white clapboards were turned absolutely green from the leaves that the wind had plastered to it. Trees were going down all along the sidewalk, lifting the paving in serrated rows like half-extracted teeth. One of the elms in front of Lady's house had already fallen, and now the other went, toppling toward the street, branches sprawling over the driveway. Everywhere I looked I saw broken boughs and networks of projecting roots as I cut diagonally across the front lawn to the back.
The flower beds were in shreds, the plants crushed under fallen boughs. Even as I appeared, a huge tree near the carriage house started to go. I stopped in my path and watched as with an audible noise it tore the earth around its roots and tumbled, the left side of the top mass thundering down onto the roof of the summerhouse. There was a terrible sound of breaking wood and timber, the delicate lattice collapsed, and the summer-house itself disappeared, engulfed in greenery. Beyond, the boats in the Cove bobbed furiously, some torn from their moorings and driven pell-mell toward the shore. The weathercock had fallen from the ridgepole of the carriage house and lay in the driveway, but it was not the rooster whose safety I feared for.
Miraculously, the gazing-globe sat unharmed on its pedestal. All around it lay debris and branches, any one of which might have struck it. Still it remained whole, and I could see myself in it as I dashed toward it. I seized it lightly but firmly in my fingers, drew it from the hole in the pedestal, and ran back across the lawn. Another branch broke off, tumbling in my path, and fearing I would never get the globe to safety in one piece, I changed course, heading for Lady's back door.
I pushed through, intending to leave the globe in the back entryway. I saw the inside door swinging to and fro on its hinges. I had a quick sensation something was wrong. I stepped into the kitchen, then called; there was no reply. I backed through the hall door, still holding the globe in my hands. Then I heard a sob. I ran down the hall.
In the living room, Lady was crouched on the Oriental rug, beside the wing chair. I hardly knew her, she looked so dreadful. Her hair was uncombed, her face swollen and red, her eyes stared wildly. I remembered her saying once that storms frightened her. Before I could move to her, she began dragging herself across the floor toward me, moaning like some wild mad thing. Then she stopped, came to her knees, and flung her hands up in supplication. Still clutching the globe in the crook of my arm, I dropped to the floor and threw myself into her arms, touching her hair and face, and telling her not to cry, that everything was all right now, that I was there.
She pulled herself together, sniffing and wiping her nose and eyes, and then she raised her tear-stained face and took my face between her hands and gave me a long, searching look. Then her look altered slightly, falling on the silver gazing-globe. Her laugh broke out amid her sniffles and she shook her head in disbelief.
"In this storm?"
"Yes."
"Oh, l'il Ignatz," she said, drawing me to her, "have you come to tell my fortune?"
PART FOUR
Last Songs
1
And so we became friends again. I came and went across the Green as I always had, and Ma and Ag were happy that we'd made it up. Each of us, Lady and I, renegotiated our relationship charily, not mistrusting each other, but aware of damage already done, and each wanting the wound to heal with the least amount of scar tissue. I, being younger, and more unthinking -- but mature enough to recognize her value to me, for I loved her -- entered into this new phase with more energy and zeal than she, but even I was aware that I must tread softly. I was also aware that in keeping my promise to Jesse I would have to "act grown-up," not "stupidy," and so it happened through the next half-decade that I became more and more the adult, and she the child.
But if I hoped she would provide an occasion for explanation, none came. Except for the culpability of Dora and the Spragues in loosing the scandal, she seemed disinclined to speak about anything of a personal nature, as if too much of her had been exposed, and though we often talked of Jesse, and of Elthea, who wrote frequently, and of things as they were before Jesse's death, neither of us mentioned the scene in the bedroom with the needlepoint slippers, and it was only over a period of years that I finally learned all the facts. Some of the story was to come from Lady, and some from Miss Berry, this second part being related to me after an interval of fifteen years. The truth is always made up of lots of smaller pieces of other truths, and so it was with Lady, but I was to discover how long a shadow truth casts, and over how much ground. The final truth was, to me, astonishing, as it would have been to anyone else, but no truth could hurt by then. Lady was gone, and Jesse, too; there were no others to know her secret and only two to keep it: Miss Berry and I.
That September of the hurricane had also been the time of "poor Czechoslovakia," and everyone said there would be a war that fall, surely by Christmas. But England's Prime Minister went to Munich, chatted with Hitler, surrendered Czechoslovakia, and came away saying there would be peace in our time. Next morning, making his mail rounds, our postman, Mr. Marachek, was crying over the fate of his country. It was a sad day, for him, for everyone.
Soon after, Mother came home with my bus ticket and I went away to Blankenschip. I would turn fifteen the following January. Though Lady wanted me to go to school, though she had helped provide funds to make it possible, and though I went, I did not like it. Blankenschip School was a preparatory academy near P
ortsmouth, New Hampshire, enabling its students to ready themselves for a naval career, and offered as part of its curriculum full sea voyages aboard a barkentine. It was, however, not a rich man's sons' school. Moreover, though it was nondenominational, to me it resembled nothing so much as a church afloat, for there were tedious chapel services twice -- sometimes three times -- daily.
It was, furthermore, part of the agreement made between the school and its applicants that each student must partially defray the costs of his education by work periods during the day, and it fell my lot to be assigned a dining-hall detail, where, under the flint-eyed scrutiny of the supervisor, I was required each morning and evening to put the chairs upon the tables, mop the giant floors, and when they dried, put the chairs down again. Betweentimes it was my job to polish the brass: brass kick plates on the doors, brass handles and brass hinges, or brass chandeliers with their scrolls and turnings, brass lamp bases, brass wastebasket rims, even the brass fittings of the tables themselves; brass, all brass, and all constantly in danger of turning green. It was my duty to see that they did not.
When I had finished, in time for morning chapel services, I washed the brass polish from my fingers and hurried to my pew for the pastor's harangue. After classes, and more chapel, I returned to continue my duties in the dining room, then to study, and then to bed. It made for a long and uninteresting day.
I returned home for the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, then suddenly it was summer vacation again. To my surprise, I had completed my freshman year at Blankenschip almost without realizing it. That summer, Harry and I got jobs on the State Highway Department road gang; work that was hot and dirty, but built up muscle, paid well, and gave me time to think.
And though I had much that was new to consider, still my mind returned to the old, to Lady Harleigh, Jesse Griffin, and the house across the Green. For both Lady and myself there had evolved a tacit understanding that if things between us would never be the same -- the old things -- there would be new things. With Elthea gone she was alone now, and getting older. I was growing up, and had my promise to Jesse to keep, that I would in all things "look after Missus." But with Elthea gone it would not be an easy adjustment for Lady.