Grabbing the edge of the ice, I tried to pull myself up, only to have it break under my chest, and I continued to flounder.
"Wait! Don't thrash about so!" I heard the voice ring out, and looked to see Mrs. Harleigh skate up to a neat stop a safe distance away. A space of eight or ten feet separated us. Another step and the ice cracked again. Quickly she spun around and scooped up the sail. She threw it in front of her, then lay flat on the ice and slid the bamboo so that by reaching I could grab the tip. Switching to a sitting position, she dug the heels of her skate runners into the ice and held fast to the kite while I pulled myself out. I flopped onto the sail and in another moment she had dragged both it and me to safety.
When we got to the shore, my corduroy knickers were frozen stiff. She helped me take off my skates, working calmly and swiftly to undo the wet knotted laces. She pulled off my soaking windbreaker, substituted her fur jacket, wrapped my head in her scarf, and, leaving the sail behind, hurried me up the hill.
Elthea must have seen my plight, for when we got to the kitchen Jesse was down cellar stoking the furnace, the teakettle was singing on the stove, there were Turkish towels and warm socks and a robe waiting for me. When Jesse came upstairs, Elthea and Mrs. Harleigh bustled around the room, toweling my hair and securing the wool scarf more tightly around my neck, hanging my soaked clothes, and pouring first one cup of tea past my chattering teeth and then another. Elthea said that the river should be posted for "No Skating" and Mrs. Harleigh asked Jesse to bring the Minerva to the kitchen door.
Wrapped in a blanket, my soaked things left with Elthea, I was hustled home to bed in style.
The consequence of this damp adventure was twofold: first on the following day it was discovered I had contracted what was then called the "grippe," and was confined to bed; second, and best, for the term of my illness Mrs. Harleigh became my nurse, saying, "Larks are what this boy needs when he gets well. And larks he shall have." Though in fact they began even before my recovery. Every day, she came across the Green to sit by my bedside while Ma was at the Sunbeam, freeing Nonnie to perform her usual household duties. It was a not unpleasant period for me, and because I did not feel particularly ill my sojourn under the bedcovers was a memorable time. Dosed with Vicks VapoRub and Argyrol drops which stung in my nostrils, with daily visits from Dr. Brainard, and my "nurse" in constant attendance, I recovered gradually. When I was fully up and around again, Ma said I surely must be as spoiled as an apple at the bottom of the barrel.
But during the two weeks I remained in bed my every wish was granted, accepted by Lady as the law of the land. Already I sensed a strong feeling between us, a power which we had over each other. Though I did not know what I could give her, I was selfishly aware of what she could give me, and how easily I could exercise my smallest tyranny on her. My slightest whim might be indulged. I could be read to or played games with, or listened to; my choice of menu was holy writ, and never since have I drunk so much ginger ale or eaten so many sugared crullers or dishes of tapioca.
I loved watching the way she used her hands around my room, as if examining it, the better to know me. The way she puffed up the pillows and smoothed down the sheet, turning the blanket with an exactly measured border, how she leafed the pages of a magazine, or rolled up my rumpled pajamas and dispatched them for Elthea to wash and return ironed -- another first for me -- or precisely aligned my slippers, just within reach if I wanted to go to the bathroom; her slender fingers with their loving touch. How nice it was to know those cool, capable hands feeling my forehead and chest, my pulse, though we both knew it was normal. How nice, and how painful, for -- in my flannels, under the sheets, the thermometer in my mouth -- I was falling in love all over again.
She was such a happy person, and delighted in making me -- all of us -- happy, making us laugh. She could be so comical. Sometimes for my amusement she would use a thick German accent like The Katzenjammer Kids -- "Vot's der matter mitt dot?" -- or like Jack Pearl, who did Baron Munchausen on the radio -- "Vas you dere, Sholly?" -- or more often, it would be a phrase from Krazy Kat, whose antics she avidly followed, deriving great amusement in the triangle of Krazy, who loved Ignatz "the mice," and Offissa Pup, who was enamored of the Kat. She sorrowed for the Kat. "Poor, feckless Krazy," she said, "always getting beaned by one of Ignatz's bricks." (What did feckless mean? I asked. "Why -- it means -- without feck, I suppose. Come on, let's look it up." Out came the dictionary.) She appropriated much of Krazy Kat's vocabulary to her own uses: things with her were often "grend," "magnifishint," and "wondafil." "Fa' goodnitz sakes!" they were. Or she would call me "Ignatz," and say that we were "boom compenions."
She had a collection of stories she enjoyed telling, which she called "The Dreams of a Welsh Rarebit Fiend," whose origins were one of the early Winsor McKay comic strips she'd read as a girl, involving the fanciful adventures of a child who had partaken too greedily of Welsh rarebit and suffered as a result from "extraordinary" dreams, as she called them. And, to tell the truth, you had the feeling that maybe her own dreams were in themselves extraordinary for their unsettling and disquieting nature.
Thus, through my childish demands on her love and her compliant ministering to them, because of my needs and her willing solicitude, we became bound together. All those things, careful, kind, and pleasing, which serve to make life enjoyable, became more vivid and intensified under Lady's loving hand. I had never known such indulgence, such benevolence, such lavish attention. And, watching her embroider in the chair by my bed, listening to her happy talk, how wonderful to settle back and take my pick of the bounty of amusements she had provided: Parcheesi or Chinese Checkers; a jigsaw puzzle of the Taj Mahal; a miniature loom or an Indian beading kit; a Kodak Brownie camera, with film; a soap-bubble set; a Winnie Winkle paintbook, in which, by the mere application of a dampened brush, the invisible colors of the Rinkydink gang, Spike, Spud, Chink, and Perry Winkle himself, were brought to life. It was during this period that I discovered the newest and most exciting thing of all: books; and through Lady Harleigh I found how easy it is to be taken out of oneself, to discover new vistas where nothing matters but the world that is on the printed page. Into this unexplored terrain I now ventured at length, traveling far and wide through a Wyeth-illustrated King Arthur, and Treasure Island, The Arabian Nights, Richard Halliburton's Royal Road to Romance, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales; and one called East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
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, alo
ne."
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.