Letty Fox (56 page)

Arnhem is near Croton, and over the Fall Line marked by the Hudson. Without imagination you can see the ice age there. My father had seen me off, and at the station adjacent to Arnhem on the New York Central line I was met by Lucy Headlong, with her car.

At first you mount a long way from the river steeply up to a plateau which holds woods, clustered hillocks, a lake and a road from which slope away bare wild fields downhill on one side, with winding paths leading to hidden dwellings; and on the other are upward slopes with houses, cabins or palaces visible, sheltering behind the crest of the rise. These were declivities like parts of Normandy that I had seen as a child; and orchards which keep falling through appleloam to unseen valleys.

We were now far away from the river. Miles away, it appeared, at intervals, pushed off beyond hill bottoms and over paddocks. Now we were below the crest, in the woods on a mamelon. Now we dropped over this and came into a low country that must have once been marshy. We had come down from the high grounds on switchback roads and the houses on each side had changed in value. First, there were shacks and cottages in a town, then villas; then the houses of artists, stone farmhouses with attached studios and wooden cabins, just as surely home and studio combined. Beyond this, country houses and then the massing of trees as we proceeded toward the low grounds; behind these trees hints of great houses; and visible, in slashes, ancient natural ponds.

On an undulating road at a dangerous turn, a driveway opened and a little wooden arrow, rustic style, said—A. S. HEADLONG. A few hundred yards back we had passed one of the large ponds, nicely banked and surrounded by fine trees.

Lucy Headlong was a fast, nervous driver. She took the dangerous curve and the turn-in neatly, however, and coasted into a private park, beyond a lawn set with birches, a turfed hill, and a Japanese garden with a rivulet and bridge, to a great house, the flagged driveway running two ways in a heart shape, toward the door. A third road ran off into the trees, to stables.

She brought the car to a stop before a side door, in a wing off-shot from the great Norman house. All around were planted thickets. The house stood on a mound which fell away steeply to lawns, tennis courts, and the pond.

“This is your place?”

“This is Arnhem,” she said very offhand. Then she laughed, “I built it!”

It was impossible to praise it. It was magnificent. We went in through the door and saw, through an arch, a great Norman hall. At the other end, windows and doors, all in glass, in steel frames, blazed out across mound and lake. White walls, beams of great size, an open roof, a fireplace, a staircase and a gallery, and long tapestries of a very dull yellow. It seemed to me that this heroes' hall bore some living quarters on its upper deck, like cabins. The rest of my life flew past me as if I were in an express train; it went glittering past and dwindled in the distance. Joy and love sprang up in me, ambition. I had known how to deserve and win Arnhem! Now, at this moment, my real life was beginning.

Mrs. Headlong had already gone out to some domestic quarters behind a small door on another level. At that end of the gallery was a coffee room, perhaps, looking toward the birch lawn. I did not want to seem to be staring. I pulled off my gloves and went to the glass doors. When Mrs. Headlong returned, I said serenely, “Oh, how lovely your lake is in this light!”

Mrs. Headlong seemed pleased with me. She took my hand, “We'll go swimming there tomorrow, if you like, or we can row; but it's badly overgrown with weeds just at present, and the boys ask a dollar an hour to weed.”

We entered a corridor in which were several guest rooms of different sizes, with bathrooms. At the end of this, three doors; one, leading outside, one, to a linen closet, and the middle one opening upon a winding staircase. Mrs. Headlong smiled and took me by the arm, “This will be your room, I think. Do you like it? You can have any one. We will be all alone, for Adrian is in Boston. I had two prepared, one for you, and one for Jacky; so choose. You will be all alone in this wing, but that staircase you just discovered,” and she smiled, “leads into a dressing room, off my room.”

At this I could not restrain myself, and went off into mirthful, but respectfully enthusiastic admiration.

“Shall I show you the way? If you are restless, you have only to unbolt the door and come upstairs. The switch is here; and you can have Adrian's room, which is off mine.”

I said, flinging myself in an armchair, “I love a big place; I was always happy at Green Acres.”

“What is Green Acres?”

I saw everything in a flash. Jacky must have met Mrs. Headlong through Solander, who probably knew Adrian Headlong. I answered negligently, “It's a place my grandmother has in Connecticut.”

“Has she other places, too?”

“Oh, yes. One in Long Island—a small place in Florida.”

Mrs. Headlong seemed pleased. She gave me a frank smile for the first time and said, “Now, little Letty, do you want to change? We are all alone. I am tired and have invited no one for the week end; though, if you are lonely, we can visit anywhere you like. I have friends, just across the way, everywhere. We can wear slacks and sweaters. I've got things that would fit you, if you want other things. I've got seersuckers and even a land-girl costume that would fit you.”

“I don't think it would,” I said, indicating my figure.

She did not like to be contradicted; I saw that. I looked at her with sweet appeal. She smiled slightly and said, “They are old, you needn't bother about them. They belong to a friend of mine. My friends leave their old things here, so they can pop out for the week end, if I'm having a quiet time.”

She then showed me my bathroom, next door to the bedroom: a room in green tiles, with green silk curtains, a design of water lilies. On the wall above the bath, as a splash board, was a fresco painted by herself. It was, like all her works of that kind, frank, bold, hasty, trite—girls, swans, lotuses.

“It's so nice,” I said, naively.

This seemed to please her well, and I felt my timing was excellent that afternoon. I was like a cat on hot bricks, however; my skin prickled as in extreme heat, for I had never heard that Lucy Headlong had such a place. Why did she teach in the great tumbledown studio on Sixth Avenue? Evidently, not for the money. Her advertisement was modest, and her prices very low. Ninetythree cents took in one lesson, with model, paper, and charcoal provided. Mrs. Headlong excused herself to order dinner and speak to “Washington” she said. Washington was the gardener.

“We'll pick our dinner tomorrow, ourselves; but now we must have what is in the kitchen.”

I sighed. I hate to pick my dinner, but rich people fancy it's either curiously rustic—or economical. I did not risk a remark, but smiled. She left.

No one appeared for a very long time. I climbed the outside stairs to the gallery, found a summer library, a niche for table games, and then the apartment of the Headlongs; bedrooms, showers, dressing rooms, and a long sitting room, glassed in on all sides, overlooking a wood on the next rise, the tennis courts, and the boat house. This was a solitary room. One could live there and forget the world. I came downstairs by the spiral staircase.

In the dressing room I found, as indicated, the clothes Lucy Headlong wanted to lend me. I tried them on. They did, in fact, fit me, and were clean and new pressed.

Lucy Headlong seemed to me to be taking a long time. I wandered out in the Norman hall, dressed in some other woman's outfit, a homemade dress imitating the Spanish, in yellow, white, black, red, a small design with a yellow ground. I stood in the wide, white arch and saw Lucy Headlong waiting at the fireplace on a school bench.

“Hello, there you are,” she said, cheerily waving her hand; “I've made drinks. Do you like Manhattans? If not, tell me what you like, and you shall have it.”

I preferred Scotch and soda, but did not say so. She had the Manhattans mixed in a large glass jug with ice floating in them. I detest this cocktail this way, but I was cheered to see about a quart of it.

“Do you expect someone?”

“No, this is for us. Didn't you tell me you were a stout drinker?” “Oh, yes.”

She glanced at me as she busied herself with the glasses, “Yes, yes, it's just what I thought, child. And tomorrow we'll try the velvet slacks.”

I burst out laughing, “Papa says I look terrible in slacks.”

“Papa says? Well, perhaps you do.” She laughed. “We'll see. But if he says so, no doubt you do. You're very fond of Solander, aren't you?”

“Oh, yes.”

She set her teeth together in an odd smile, quite savage. The night began to close in. I heard no sound from anywhere. I had not seen Washington, the gardener, nor any of the servants. We finished the drinks. We talked away, and Mrs. Headlong was friendly and courteous; but now a fit of embarrassment had seized me. I had been examining myself during the past hour or so, and I could not help asking, “What does she see in me? To tell the truth—I hate to do so—I'm quite an empty bladder, just a balloon full of air and dried peas, I rattle; but she's a well-bred woman and a millionaire, it seems, not to mention having a reputation in her own right. This must all be a gross mistake. Was it Jacky she wanted? Jacky has quality; I am what I am, but no soulmate.” I sweated for half an hour.

I already foresaw the end, a dismal Monday morning, parting apologies and courtesies, the cold handclasps and the dislike on both sides. I jangled. There was a humming along my nerves. I said quite nervously, almost losing control: “Can we go out and look at the lake; look at the metallic luster?” and I continued to speak anxiously, “How primitive it looks; it's been this way for ages I suppose, since the Ice Age; it looks like the Ice Age,” and I shivered. I went on feverishly, while she agreed with me and smiled kindly at me, “How chill it becomes! It's Indian summer. How awfully, awfully still!”

She smiled, “We are alone. Don't you like it?”

“It isn't that. I'm not sensitive. I don't infold at nightfall,” and laughing, I raised my eyes to hers and saw a strange, deep, beautiful look on her face. Her eyes were searching me. How good, sensitive she was. How much the grande dame! Yet, simple, industrious; trying to avoid the sloth of easy money.

I hurried on, “There's an abnormal stillness in all this country, I've noticed. It is deathly. You feel the dead are round, and I don't mean the recent dead, but, say, the Indian dead. People who died in the winter, in their tents; died of wintry hunger here. I suppose a lot died here, after all,” I said, looking around me anxiously.

The grass was, by now, almost black; the lustrous lake had turned from chemical greens and reds to olive, and now was slowly growing black.

“There are dead here,” I said.

“Minds die near here; there's an asylum for the criminal insane near here.”

“I'd go mad stuck away from love, wouldn't you?” I said.

A faint star showed. The sky was pale, tender. She smiled and said with consideration, “We'll go in if you feel uneasy. You know the penitentiary is not far away; is that it? Would that make you afraid at night?”

“Oh, no!”

“Well, we will go in anyhow. Tomorrow morning, you will see it all in sunlight.”

We had dinner, a Spanish stew, on the oak table in the coffee room, to save steps for Josephine, said Mrs. Headlong. I saw Josephine now, a middle-aged, dark-haired, sober Irish woman, in the traditional cap and apron. With the stew we had a light, Spanish wine, which Mrs. Headlong got out of a cupboard herself, taking some keys from her room; we had black coffee, but no sweets.

We went back to the Norman hall. Mrs. Headlong, before our early bedtime, said, “Perhaps you will be nervous in such a big house, all alone, the first night, so I think I will show you over it. You will know where everything is, and will not be afraid.”

I said, with a blush, “I have already explored those parts near me.”

“Yes, I know. I heard you walking about.”

We went upstairs, and, by the gallery, entered a suite of rooms used by Mrs. Headlong's half-grown children, all away at schools, their nurse and governess; linen closets, toy cupboards. From these rooms an easy staircase went down to the playroom, from which three doors led, one to the kitchens, one to the coffee room, and one to an outdoor dining room. There was a wooden gallery outside the great kitchen, from which stairs led down to the garages and the men's quarters. Still another exit from the kitchen led to a foyer in which was a powder room, and this again led to the entry in which I had first found myself. Yet, because all these were grouped round the great hall and were divided into wings, everything was clear.

“I shall not be afraid now,” I said.

Mrs. Headlong took me to my room, showed me where the books were, and, in her elegant boarding-school style, bade me good night. I drew the heavy curtains over the windows, both sides, and sat down. I heard faint movement upstairs. Not long afterwards, Mrs. Headlong came down the inside stairs, in her tailored negligee, and said we must leave the door open to the stairs so that I could use it, and that I must come at any time of the night. I said I really wasn't such a coward as all that.

I read for a long time and then put out the light. The windows in steel frames could not be entered from outside, and there was nothing but starlight, very faint over the woods. Laurels and hollies grew near the house. It seemed very stuffy, but I was afraid to pull back the curtains from the windows. I lay in bed under all that stone in the thick silence and laughed at the lavish hospitality, the great house. Yet I was oppressed. The spirit itself stifled. Not far away was an insane asylum. What did the servants do at night? Did they creep down all those staircases? I felt they hated Lucy Headlong. But why? She was kind—indeed. I had never heard such stillness, and asked myself if it had something to do with the Fall Line. Here, the land was truly under the influence of the last ice. I knew that on the other side of the Line, the bush bloomed soft, round and green, and rustled and sang all night. Here, the northern silence murdered all sound. All the things round the house I had seen had been smothered, and would come back in the morning, vampires, to deceive with a fair show.