There was another matter that made the autumn days sadder than usual that fall. It was the talk about Carlotta and Brett Kingsman, gossip that everybody seemed to know about before I did. Danny was the one who told me.
He still drove from his home into town where he attended college, and as in other years, I rode with him, sitting in the front seat at his side while the younger freshmen and sophomores were packed in the back. One evening when he had delivered the others at their homes he turned to me suddenly.
“Do you ever see Kingsman these days, Julie?”
“Not if either of us can avoid it,” I answered.
“Well, don’t. He’s no good. There’s talk all over town about him and little Lottie. She may be a dumb kid—all right, so she is—but she’s far too good for him. And if I ever hear of your being with him, I’ll tell Miss Cordelia things that will make her lock you up and—”
“Don’t you think, Mr. Trevort, that you’re being—”
“Shut up,” he said brusquely, and rather to my surprise, I did.
And there was no flippancy about me a few days later either, when I knew that Carlotta had left high school to spend the winter with an aunt in Idaho, an aunt of whom we’d never heard. I met Mrs. Berry one day when I was shopping and hardly recognized the pale, haggard woman as Carlotta’s mother who had been so vivaciously excited only a few months before when Brett invited Carlotta to the prom. Mrs. Berry turned away so that she would not have to speak to me; it was a sobering moment.
There was a strange dreariness in the air that fall. At first I thought that I felt that way because of Carlotta, but later I noticed that Danny was dreary too. I didn’t know why at first, but little by little, the gossip came through that he and Eden were having trouble.
Eden, it seemed, interpreted the relationship between Danny and me as being more than friendship. She didn’t like it that Danny felt he must drive me into town for special events, although she was the one he squired to those events—he only gave me transportation service. She was also annoyed when he mentioned that we had ridden our horses together on some crisp autumn evening—we’d done that for the past ten years—and she didn’t like it when Aunt Cordelia invited him to stay for dinner one evening after he had done some work for her.
Then Alicia and I gave a dinner party for a young foreign exchange student to which we invited Eden and Danny as well as two other couples. Eden sent her regrets, but Danny came anyway, and after that they quarreled. Eden was said to have delivered an ultimatum concerning Danny’s brotherly concern for me; I could have advised her there if she had only asked me: Danny was a sweet-natured lad, but he didn’t hold with ultimatums. Not at all.
And thus things stood. But if Eden (or I either, for that matter) thought that Danny would come running to me with open arms, she (and I) were mistaken. Never had I known him to be as he was that fall—silent, morose, irritable.
After a while as I looked at Danny’s somber face, I began to feel sorry for him. If he were suffering as I suffered after Brett, I felt deeply sorry for him although I was angered, too, at the way he barked at me sometimes. I offered once to stop riding with him if it would help his standing with Eden, and he nearly snapped my head off. I wondered if Father had ever been sharp like that to Alicia and if she’d stood for it and what she’d done if she hadn’t stood for it.
One night in November we drove out toward home in Danny’s car after the last class, the last conference, the last lab make-up period any of the five of us had to attend. It was a cold, rainy evening, and the tensions aroused by term papers, love, approaching exams, lack of love, or simply the wretched weather bore down in varying degrees of intensity upon all of us.
We deposited the three younger ones at their respective dooryards, and then Danny and I drove on through the gathering dusk together, silent, wholly uncommunicative. I remember thinking that even the windshield wipers sounded a little discouraged; their flip across the surface that was cleared one second and splashed with rain the next seemed to suggest futility and despair. “Wherefore?” they clicked wearily in one direction; and “Why?” they wanted to know as they moved in the other.
We passed Carlotta’s home after a while; the place was dark except for a lighted kitchen window. I wondered about Lottie, where she was, what she was thinking that November evening. I wished that Mrs. Berry would not turn away from me when we met; I wanted very much to let her know that I would be one to welcome Lottie home when and if she returned. I wished that Mrs. Berry knew how often I said to myself: “Be very kind, Julie Trelling, be very kind in what you think and say about Carlotta.”
And then Danny and I saw something at the same moment; something that made our childhood seem very far away. Carlotta’s father had just thrown open the doors of his lighted garage as we were opposite it, and there, leaning a bit crazily on one side, we could see a wicker cart looking faded and decrepit even in the rainy twilight.
“The old pony cart, Danny,” I whispered. Carlotta and I had never been very close, even as children, but at that moment I could have wept for her.
Danny looked at me and when he saw the tears in my eyes, he took my hand without speaking and drew my arm through the curve of his own. We sat close together, our arms locked, and the car was warm and dark and peaceful. Outside the rain splashed harder than ever against the windshield, and the wipers seemed to have drawn new energy from some source. They weren’t exactly gay, but they were less despairing than they had been moments before.
We rode on like that, still silent, until we came to the long lane that led up to the house. I could see through the trees that there was a fire in the living room fireplace, that Aunt Cordelia was moving about, turning on lights and adjusting shades. The room looked inviting, but I found myself wishing that I could stay with Danny.
“You have a raincoat?” he asked. The first words in over a mile. His voice didn’t sound quite natural.
“Here,” I said, picking up the folded cape on the seat beside me. “Well,” I hesitated. I hated to go in. I wanted to stay out there in the rain with him. But then, I thought he would probably bark at me if I suggested it. “I suppose I must dash. See you in the morning if I don’t drown.”
And then suddenly Danny’s arms were around me, and his lips were on mine, and the crazy windshield wipers commenced singing our names together, much like the taunting of the kids in school a long time ago: Danny loves Julie; Julie loves Danny. I wondered why it had made me so fighting mad in those days.
We sat together for a long time after that, our cheeks close, our arms around one another.
“It’s always been you, Julie. No one ever really except you.”
“Not Eden?”
“I said ‘no one ever really,’ Julie. Eden is a nice girl; I liked her a lot. But she was right; I loved you, and it showed through.”
I loved him so much. Without the reservations that I’d had for another boy whom I didn’t like to remember. “Danny,” I whispered.
“Yes, Julie?”
“I’ve always wanted to tell you—all these years I’ve been sorry about that time I hit you.”
He chuckled a little. “You were a brat, but even then I thought of you as ‘my girl.’ ”
“Was your mother mad at me?”
“No. She said that Chris and Jim and I had no right to tease you.”
“My grandmother Bishop would have scratched the eyes out of any girl who might have blacked Uncle Haskell’s eye like that. He told me so.”
“Not my ma.”
“I love you, Danny.” I felt I had to tell him. And then he kissed me again.
That was the way it was that beautiful evening of cold November rain and muddy country roads and crazy windshield wipers. That was the moment of my greatest security and confidence; it was the time when I realized that love makes one a better person, a kinder and a gentler one. I couldn’t believe as I sat there in the car with Danny that I could have been jealous of Laura, that I could have been cruel to A
ggie or unkind to Aunt Cordelia. Most of all I couldn’t believe that I was the girl who had thought she loved Brett Kingsman.
When I finally entered the living room that evening I noticed that Aunt Cordelia had set a little table in front of the fireplace and was carrying in food from the kitchen to place upon it. This was something new for her; she didn’t believe the living room was a place for eating except for coffee and cake when there were guests. Perhaps she was remembering how I had described the little suppers Alicia liked to serve in front of the fire; perhaps she was remembering that a certain pert girl had spoken of “inflexibility” as a highly undesirable trait.
“This is so nice, Aunt Cordelia,” I said, taking off my wet raincape. The old room seemed to glow with beauty that night; I wondered that I had ever privately fretted over the fact that we couldn’t afford to lower the ceiling or to buy a carpet handsome enough to make a proper setting for Uncle Haskell’s piano.
“Well, it’s such a bad night—I thought supper in front of the fire might cheer you. There’s a good, rich soup tonight, and I have a souffle in the oven. We should have asked Danny to eat with us.”
“Some other time,” I said, seating myself in a low chair and looking into the fire. I wanted to think quietly, to savor every sensation of peace and happiness inside me.
I noticed that Aunt Cordelia started toward the kitchen to get the souffle and then stopped in the door to look at me. She sensed something. No wonder; the whole universe was singing. But she walked away without saying anything, and returned shortly with the souffle rising high and lightly browned from the platter on which it rested.
“There is dessert in the refrigerator if you want it later, Julia. I am driving into town with Jonathan this evening. Your father and Alicia have asked us to visit them for a few hours.”
I had intended telling her about Danny and me, but I suddenly decided against it. We would talk about her; I would tell her that the new crimson wool she was wearing under her big kitchen apron was becoming; I would hope that she and Jonathan Eltwing had a pleasant evening with Father and Alicia. There was no particular reason why the events of my evening should have priority over hers.
“I hope Jonathan is a careful driver,” I said after a while. “It’s a bad night.”
Not really. Not for Danny and me. But a bad night for Father to be driving, or Mr. Peters, or Jonathan Eltwing.
Aunt Cordelia nodded. “Once when we were young, Jonathan and I drove home from town in such a rain as this. I always remembered that night—the rain and wind outside; warmth and security inside—”
It was most unusual for her to confide anything of her early years to me. I felt proud that she chose to give me a brief glimpse of something dear to her.
Then I noticed that she was smiling at me. “Didn’t you find that you felt safe and happy with a good driver this evening, Julia?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”
“You are much like the girl I used to be,” she said. “I’m glad it’s Danny,” she added.
10
Because of Uncle Haskell I had never dared admit to anyone that I had an ambition to write. If I could have suddenly bloomed in print, or if a qualified critic had praised a manuscript of mine, I could have squared my shoulders and looked any doubters in the eye. I might have asked Alicia or Father to read one of my stories; I might have asked Jonathan Eltwing, or even Aunt Cordelia, whose literary background stood up well with any of the other three. There were plenty of people to advise and guide me, but I could not bring myself to admit the fact that I was trying to write. I was sure that any such admission would bring to their minds the picture of Uncle Haskell, allegedly working for forty years on a book that no one had ever seen or was likely to see.
I wouldn’t even take the evening course in creative writing that was offered in the college, and for which I, as a high school senior in honors English, was eligible. I was sure that—not my family—but everyone else who knew us, would say, “Well, well, so now it’s Julie! If I were poor old Cordelia I’d lock both Julie and Haskell up in a room with two typewriters and feed them on bread and water until they produced a few thousand words between them.” Something like that. And, of course, I had no more justification for believing that I could write than had Uncle Haskell. He had done well in rhetoric too, many years before, and it hadn’t meant anything in particular. I wondered if I had been around him so long that I might have caught a mild case of delusions of literary grandeur.
I was often troubled by the fear that there was something of Uncle Haskell in my character; if I might possibly have certain weaknesses which had led him to become what he was. I knew that I had a tendency to be overdramatic at times; I wasn’t exactly the be-good-sweet-maid-and-let-who-will-be clever type of girl. And certainly, I had always liked Uncle Haskell, not always warmly, but enough to make me seek out his companionship at times.
Perhaps the loneliness of the old house and the woods helped to foster a habit I had of peopling my mind with characters who loved, hated, despaired, and exulted before my inner eye. Alicia had said once that loneliness could be dangerous in creating so strong a need as to make a shoddy relationship seem beautiful. I wondered sometimes if loneliness had led me to dream dreams that had no basis in reality. I knew that I had a keen desire to give life to the procession of characters who walked with me through the woods or galloped beside me when I rode Peter the Great along the quiet countryside; still I didn’t know whether my attempts to give them life held promise or were only ridiculous.
“Your head is in the clouds tonight, Julie,” Danny would say to me sometimes, and I wanted to tell him all about my secret efforts and hopes. But might it not give Danny pause if he thought I was a female counterpart of my uncle? I would put my dreams aside against the day when Danny would read my work and be ever so proud of me.
We noticed a change in Uncle Haskell during the autumn of my last year in high school. The signs of age, so long apparently held in abeyance, seemed to appear suddenly in many little ways. Lines of fatigue or possibly pain showed up around his mouth; his eyes looked tired, and what was most unusual, he was given to long periods of silence. He still made an occasional trip to the banks of the creek with the old golf bag over his shoulder, but they were less frequent. For some reason his intake of Le Vieux Corbeau had diminished; so too, it seemed, had his gourmet’s taste for his own cookery. There was a trace of wistfulness in the way he asked Aunt Cordelia if he might eat with us for a while, and there was a suggestion of humility in his appreciation for the plain but excellent meals she prepared for us.
He sought me out often during these early autumn days, and we would walk arm in arm through the bright woods, saying little, yet consciously fonder of one another, I believe, than we had ever been before. I noticed on these walks that the old buoyancy of his step was gone, that he walked slowly and deliberately; I noticed, too, how his bright hair had become dulled by gray. He had always seemed at least ten years younger than Aunt Cordelia, but that fall he looked older.
One evening as we walked, I remember that he spoke quite suddenly and irrelevantly. “The old piper is clamoring for his pay these days, Julie.”
I was perplexed. “I don’t understand, Uncle Haskell,” I answered.
He laughed, but less lightly than in other years. “Do you remember how we once discussed the state of my liver when you were little? You were entranced by a new word, and you asked me very directly if my liver was impeccable.” He chuckled at the memory. “Well, it’s no longer impeccable, Julie. As a matter of fact, the doctor tells me that my luck has run out. Cirrhosis.”
I stopped in the path and looked at him. “Surely the doctors can do something, can’t they, Uncle Haskell?”
“Apparently not. You see, I didn’t aspire to just a slight touch of cirrhosis; I did a magnificent buildup.”
To say that I was sorry seemed so trite, so inane. I was more than sorry; I don’t think that even Uncle Haskell knew
how desolate I felt at that moment.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. Then, when the silence became too much for me to bear, I told him of my wish to write.
It seemed callous when I thought of it later, a self-centered remark worthy of Uncle Haskell himself as it came in the face of what he had just told me. But any words of sympathy that I had were too empty, too inadequate; this was a little something I had to offer him for the grim days ahead, a something that I instinctively felt he would love.
“I’ve been trying for a long time to write a little, Uncle Haskell. I’ve never told anyone, and I’m telling you in confidence. I’ve wondered if you would read some of my stuff and criticize it for me? I warn you, it isn’t very good, but I’d like to know if there is any good in it, and what I can do about what’s bad in it.”
There it was. I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone—certainly not Uncle Haskell—about my ambition, but it seemed to have been drawn from me by an urgent necessity.
The obvious delight that came into his eyes was worth relinquishing my secret. He cut our walk short and asked me to bring him one of my manuscripts immediately. Later that evening when Danny and I walked past the carriage-house apartment on our way to saddle our horses for a ride, we saw Uncle Haskell sitting at his table, his glasses astride his nose, a sheaf of papers in his hand.
The manuscript I gave him was not my first, but I considered it at all odds to be my best. I had an old German musician telling the story of his youth, his sufferings in a cold, rat-infested attic where he composed his music. His one solace, other than his work in this desolate environment, was the beautiful daughter of his landlord. This girl, who listened enraptured to the young man’s music and poured out a chaste and gentle passion for the young musician himself, was unfortunately the child of a most brutal and sadistic father who, in a story of four thousand words, wrecked the lives of all the characters involved. The musician, old and feeble, at the end of the story, had apparently had very few satisfactions in life since his criminally insane landlord went on that last rampage so many years before.