Lady (43 page)

"Lady, of course, made the mistake so many women do. She was sure she could change Edward, which of course adds up to plenty of self-delusion, nothing more. The thing was, she didn't really like Edward. All the stories about him frightened her. Folks were surprised she didn't jump to the bait right away, and that she avoided Edward every chance she got. So Mr. Harleigh had a talk with Mrs. Strasser, and those two got in cahoots. Oh, she was a tartar, I tell you. It didn't come out until after the old man was dead, but he'd settled a handsome trust fund on Mrs. Strasser for her getting Lady to marry Edward -- and I guess she earned the money, because it wasn't an easy job. But little by little, between them, they wore the poor girl down. Edward was given orders to court her, and the old woman wheedled and cajoled and nagged until Lady started going about with him. Edward was charming and handsome, and could be a nice boy if he put his mind to it. And there was the promise of money in the air; poor Lady, she'd gotten so tired of scrubbing floors, and doing beadwork for her mother. So with Edward and the parents all pressing her, she said yes.

"So it's arranged that he takes her off on one of those overnight excursions, down to New York on a steamboat. But at Saybrook he got her off the boat and made them miss it. They stayed overnight at a hotel, and he managed to have his way with her, as the saying goes. And Lady wasn't one of those tramps from the River House, she had scruples. Why, he'd no sooner bring her home from a picnic, than there he'd be in the taproom with that Al Yager and Yonny Turpin from the feed store. There used to be a girl -- Elsie Thatcher was her name -- she worked the tables in the taproom. A nice girl, but not such a good one that she could resist Edward Harleigh. Old Mr. Harleigh got her run out of town for having a baby. Edward's baby. If Elsie'd been smart, she'd of fought for some money at least, but they sent the Constable with her to put her on the train at Lamentation, and that was the last anyone heard of Elsie.

"Edward had had a narrow escape, and the old man was furious, and if Edward didn't mend his ways, at least he darned them enough to fool Lady. They got married in a hurry. Went to Mexico on their honeymoon. When they got there, Edward informs Lady that she's pregnant.
Edward
, mind you. She'd been examined by that terrible Dr. Forbes, he was the Harleighs' doctor, and he didn't bother informing Lady, or even her mother, but told Mr. Harleigh instead. Now, there's a nice, small-town girl who doesn't know a lot about these matters, her mother's never told her about much, and here she is on her honeymoon, and she's already going to have a baby. They're to wait the birth out in Guadalajara and have the certificate date falsified, then pop up back home, showing the child all over Main Street as being just a reg'lar little fellow.

"Except the baby miscarried and died. Three days later Edward got her on a train back East, no one the wiser, but Mr. Harleigh's mad as a wet hen. They got back here and found that he'd picked out a house for them, the one across the Green; it's all furnished, and Lady never had a say in anything.

"But she was determined she was going to make Edward happy, and the old man, too. She had spirit, if nothing else. Naturally she didn't feel so well after losing the baby, and that's how I began looking after her. Mrs. Strasser came around a lot, kind of keeping her eye on the poor girl. Mr. Harleigh hadn't long to live, and he wanted that grandchild, preferably a boy, to have the name. Edward was more terrified of him than ever, but he went back to his wild ways soon enough, I can tell you, and Lady took the hindmost -- she'd just have to put up with it. He began frittering away his time on cars, and horses, and what-all he could find to keep him away from the house. He'd found out about the plot between his father and Mrs. Strasser, and he decided Lady was in on it, too, and he felt
he'd
been trapped. He came to hate poor Lady, who was just trying to do everything right by him.

"She urged him to get out from under the old man's thumb, to go somewhere else and get a job, but Edward wouldn't have any of it. And you don't get out from under Ellsworth Harleigh's thumb that easy. So they stayed. Mr. Harleigh ruled Edward, Mrs. Strasser ruled Lady, and between them the young couple did just as they were told.

"There was Lady, seeing Edward off in his Pope-Hartford auto in the morning, just like any other wife seeing her husband off to work, but he didn't go to work; he went to the City Club or the country club, and back drunk for dinner. Finally, she got pregnant again, and I was hired to look after her full time. I was there when he came home, drunk as usual, and she told him. He only laughed, saying he knew he had it in him, and that would hold the old bastard, meaning his father, of course. All Lady had to do was stay quiet and let the baby come, while Edward lolled around the River House, or he'd parade her around the Green so's Ruthie Sparrow and the others could see that there was going to be an heir at last. And each Sunday she was required to make an appearance at the Harleighs', where the old lady would instruct her in being a dutiful daughter-in-law, dutiful wife, and certainly a dutiful mother.

"Lady told me around that time that she knew she'd made a terrible mistake. She being Catholic, there's no hope of a divorce, even if the Harleighs would have permitted it. And if she leaves him, Edward knows he'll be cut off without a red cent. One afternoon she was waiting for him in the living room. He came home three sheets to the wind, as usual, and there was a terrible row. Edward was always angry in those days, but Lady had a temper, too -- the German in her, I expect. He slammed out of the house, and when I went in Lady said she'd offered to go away after the baby was born. He came back and practically dragged her out of the house, and later she told me he'd taken her to the Harleighs', where he'd made her repeat what she'd said about leaving. I was given orders to keep her upstairs and not let her out of my sight.

"So I moved into the house full time until the baby came. I brought her one of my pups, a little Yorkie I thought she'd like for company. Lady named him Bert, after Bert Lytell, an actor she'd been sweet on when she was younger. And Bert was good company for Lady, but when Edward came home he'd always have that dog locked up down in the cellar, and he threatened me more than once, I can tell you, saying not to let it upstairs again.

"I wasn't afraid of him. Nor of any of them, if it came to that, Harleigh or no. My family'd been in this town longer than they had, anyway, and my father had dealings with the Harleighs -- not to his profit, believe me. Even so, it wasn't hard to sympathize with Lady Harleigh, after what Edward did to that poor dog.

"One afternoon he surprised us -- he'd come home early from the country club -- we were upstairs, and little Bert was on the bed. He came in, weaving in the doorway, and he saw the dog. He grabbed me by the arm and pushed me from the room, then slammed the door. I thought he was going to murder poor Lady -- but it was the dog he was after. There were dreadful sounds, and then a fearful smell. He'd picked that poor little thing up and thrown it in the fire, and held it there with the poker, until -- oh, it's easy to hate a man who'll hurt a dumb animal like that, and I've hated even the thought of Edward Harleigh from that day.

"Pretty soon the door opens and he comes out. Lady comes after him with the same poker he'd used on the dog, and she caught him on the stairs. She hit him, and he struck her back, and she fell down to the bottom. Even then I might have been able to save the baby, but Edward wouldn't let me telephone for the doctor until he'd cleared the house of the burned smell and the evidence about the dog -- he didn't want anyone to know what he'd done. I did everything I could to help Lady, but by the time Dr. Forbes got there the baby was already slipping.

"After that, there wasn't any use of her trying. She was hurt bad, she lost her powers of speech, and when Edward enlisted and went off to France, I got Lady sent down to a place in Virginia, to recuperate. When she came back, she was talking again, and walking well enough, and Edward came home a hero, and I hoped things might get straightened out. They went off down South, but when they came back it was worse than ever. No one saw Lady, and it turned out Edward was keeping her a prisoner over there, but I didn't find this out until later. He was drinking worse than ever, and giving her all kinds of abuse.

"Then Lady took sick and I was called in again. There was an epidemic of what was called Spanish Influenza going round, and she'd caught it. She was a sick child, and I thought she'd never pull through. The house was a sty. Edward was sleeping across the hall, wouldn't go into her room. I got things cleaned up as best I could, and asked Dr. Forbes to keep me on the case. Lady was raving and practically mad. I was waiting for her to go into the crisis. She got worse day by day, but Edward didn't care. He took himself off to New York, and I stayed by Lady's bed until she came through. Sat there for three days and nights until she opened her eyes and I knew she was going to be all right."

She paused, and I thought she was going to get up and fix tea or make another interlude in her story, but she merely eased her back into the chair and looked at me. When she spoke again, I supposed it was some slight digression, the feeble rambling of an elderly person. Shaking her head, she said, "Cain killed Abel; we murder where we will or must." I only returned her look, and she proceeded as if I had made an interjection after her last sentence. "We are only apes, after all," she said in an explanatory tone, "and which of us knows wrong from right?"

The question was obviously rhetorical; I made no answer.

Then Miss Berry said, "She killed him, you know."

Her look was even and candid, with a hint of wistfulness about it. I thought I had misunderstood something, and my wondering expression brought a rephrasing of the sentence.

"Lady killed Edward."

I was trying hard to understand, but was not succeeding. "She murdered him?"

"Yes. Adelaide Harleigh murdered her husband, Edward Harleigh." Thus it was put to me, and I had no reply. Miss Berry continued.

"It must have come out of the fever, the idea, for I'd caught mutterings of it in her delirium. When Edward got home, Lady's fever was broken, but she was still contagious. The afternoon Edward was due back, she was insistent about making all kinds of preparations, having me bathe her, having the mirror to fix her face, the brush to brush her hair, and she wanted the wrapper she'd worn on her wedding night, a sea-green wrapper with peacocks on it. That night when I got up for a glass of water, I saw her leaving her bedroom and going into Edward's. He did not put her out that night. He accepted her, and it was the death of him."

"How?"

"She made him make love to her."

"But Edward hated her, wouldn't have anything to do with her."

"Yes, but not that night. That night she managed him well enough."

I could see how it must have gone. Edward had always desired her, even though he hated her. He wanted that body. On the riverboat, on their honeymoon, after his return from France, even after Washington, he had used her. Edward coming back from New York, getting drunk downstairs, coming up, finding her -- alluring, irresistible. She opening her wrapper, inviting him to bed. Taking advantage of his lust, seducing him into death with kisses, fondlings, caresses, her lips against his, the disease given, microbes the murder weapon, hatred the motive.

I heard again Lady's voice, saying the words "There was nothing I wouldn't have done to have Jesse. Nothing. And nothing I
didn't
do."

Nothing, not even short of murder.

"Even if he hated her," Miss Berry was saying, "he couldn't resist. She exposed him, and he knew she'd done it on purpose. He laughed and said he was glad. By then he had contracted a deadly lobar pneumonia. But still he took time to die. I couldn't keep her out of the sickroom. He kept watching her, and sometimes he'd laugh; he said he'd come back, and she lived in her hell. After he died, she got out all those things, medals and pictures and who knew what, and put them right where she could see them, every day. She wanted to be reminded of what she'd done. I told her it was wrong, but nothing could convince her. I told her I'd never come back into that house again, and I almost never have. It's not in the German character to feel guilt, but it is in the New Englander's, and Adelaide was always more New England than anything else. But I don't think folks were put on earth to bear that sort of pain, no matter what they've done."

Nor did I. A sea-green wrapper with peacocks on it. I remembered the scene in the attic, Ag dressed in the wrapper, and Lady's look, a look of horror and of guilt. It must have been unbearable.

"Still," Miss Berry concluded, "she was nice, wasn't she? A very nice lady?"

Yes, I agreed, a very nice lady.

Together we shared her secret, but together we shared something else as well, for we knew that a woman may be weak or strong, commit folly, do dreadful and terrible things, be all or be nothing, and be -- Lady Harleigh. And she herself had learned the greatest lesson of all: that we learn not through happiness but through suffering.

I did not go immediately back to the Marini farm, but cut across the Green, a familiar path, to the brick house over the way. I wanted to see the gazing-globe that Robert's wife had restored to the garden.

I had left Miss Berry's sun porch, where everything seemed the same. And now, seated in the garden that I could only think of as Lady's, on her stone bench, here, too, everything seemed the same. All my earlier feelings of disorientation fled as I looked around me. Though Lady was dead, at her place all seemed as I remembered it. The summerhouse was gone, destroyed in the hurricane, but the weathercock still spun on the carriage-house gable, and the brick walk still led to the little circle of cemented brick, last resting place of Ott, the
corpus delicti
. And within the circle, as of old, the gazing-globe. All the same: almost exactly as it had always been. I had changed; this had not

A caul of cobweb stretched from the globe to the top of the pedestal. I wiped it away with my ringer. A bug scuttled into the hole underneath. Putting my fingertip on the globe's "North Pole" as Lady had once done, I walked around it. And under the arc of my arm, as I moved, the globe reflected all those landmarks I had already noted for myself, flowing in one unbroken line, neither starting nor ending at any particular place, but infinitely continuing. And I thought if ever the word was to have been spelled from broken pieces, it had been spelled now. For the globe had been made whole again, a piece of magic made manifest not by esoteric powers but by the mere fact of a dentist's pretty Polish wife buying a new globe to replace the old one. Replacement, too, was continuity -- perhaps even "Eternity."