Up a Road Slowly

by Irene Hunt

  “Did you feel that completeness the year—the first year you taught, Aunt Cordelia?”

  I was immediately full of consternation at having asked the question, but to my surprise, she answered me readily.

  “Yes,” she said, “I did.”

  We were silent for a while, during which time my worry over a home came uppermost in my thoughts.

  “AmIapain in the neck, Aunt Cordelia?” I asked finally.

  She came quickly from the “woman who had known completeness” to the spinsterish schoolteacher. “I dislike that expression very much, Julia; it is flippant and in poor taste. However, I fully understand your meaning, of course. No, you are neither troublesome nor an annoyance to me.”

  “I thought that maybe I was getting to an age where I am too great a responsibility,” I quoted.

  “I never said that. Laura and Adam and Alicia decided that.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I stayed here then—if I lived with you while I’m in high school. I’ll try to be mature, Aunt Cordelia, honestly I’ll try. I don’t want to be a burden, but when you get down to brass tacks, this is home so far as I’m concerned.”

  Aunt Cordelia closed her eyes for a second and shook her head ever so slightly. But she was smiling as she made the gesture; I had never seen her look like that before.

  “If you choose to stay with me, Julia, I shall be much, much happier this fall than I had expected to be. You have come to seem like my own child, and I haven’t wanted to think of what it would be like this winter with no girl coming in from school, no young mind to guide—” She stopped then, apparently troubled. “How are Adam and Alicia going to feel about this, Julia? They’ve been expecting you, getting things ready for you. Are they going to feel hurt?”

  My spirit was soaring. I would be a part of the old, the familiar. The roots that I had put down during the past six years need not be disturbed. I could be realistic about Father and Alicia without pain; they would welcome me, of course, if I moved into town, but they wouldn’t suffer any sharp agony if I only came in for an occasional weekend. And that was all right. Don’t try to get into the Number One place, my girl. Father and Alicia had as much right to their privacy as had Laura and Bill. Anyway, I had Aunt Cordelia.

  “I’ll make them understand.” I tried to put into words the feeling I had for Father and Alicia: “I like them very much, Aunt Cordelia; I admire them too, but it’s as if they are sort of holiday parents. Everything is just fine and new and beautiful; we’re all polite and careful of one another’s feelings. But they’ll just have to understand: you and I are closer.”

  Aunt Cordelia sat very straight in her chair for a long time without speaking. Then she said quite casually, “Well, I suppose we’d better get to our beds. Be sure to hang your dress up properly, Julia; you left some of your things lying about the room when you left for the weekend.”

  It was cool and quiet and wonderful in my room. I lay in the wide old bed between my two windows, and looked up at the stars which were thick above the trees that night. This was home, this was contentment, a warm and good contentment in spite of the fact that I knew in winter the room would be icy and I’d have to leap downstairs to dress beside one of the big stoves, in spite of the fact that I would not be one of the town clique and so would probably have fewer beaux, in spite of the fact that I knew there would be altercation between Aunt Cordelia and me. It didn’t matter. Here on the wall were the bookshelves that my grandfather had made for Aunt Cordelia when she was young; out in the stable there was Peter the Great, getting old, but still showing his blood; there were the country roads and the woods; there was good old Danny down the road, and silly little Carlotta.

  I thought about things Aunt Cordelia and I had talked about that evening. Especially love. I wondered if I would ever love anyone; if any boy would ever love me. I wondered what it would be like to have a boy’s kiss—oh, not that silly kid-play of Danny’s when Chris and Jimmy held my arms. What interested me were the kisses I read about or the ones I had watched with a kind of a hypnotized distaste when I had seen them in the movies. I wondered what it was like to be married, and then I wondered about babies and the bits I’d heard here and there. Once I had asked Laura shortly after little Julie was born, “Was it very dreadful, Laura?” And she had answered, just as bright and sparkling as she usually was those days, “Not really, darling. A bit rough for a few hours and after that, pure joy.” I wanted a baby very much, one that was all mine, beautiful and soft. I wanted to be grown up and to know all about the things I wondered about. I sighed and turned in my bed luxuriously. “I do so want to be complete,” I thought.

  7

  Dr. Jonathan Eltwing did not forgive easily. I soon learned that he would not be quick in forgetting my behavior on that day when he and his wife first called on us, and I knew that I couldn’t blame him. I admired and respected the huge, sad-eyed scholar who was equally kind to Aunt Cordelia and to his sad little wife, but it was a long time before he was anything but cool and distant toward me.

  The Eltwings had established themselves in a pleasant old house about three miles from Aunt Cordelia’s, shortly after their initial visit to us. It was as lonely and isolated as ours, but much smaller and out of keeping with the handsome furnishings they had sent out from the East. People wondered what had brought Jonathan Eltwing back to our part of the country after so many years in which he had apparently forgotten his birth-place. No one was ever quite sure although it was generally believed that he had sought out a place where he could shield his wife from curious eyes and tongues. Mrs. Peters had her own idea which she confided to me. “Sometimes old memories have a strong pull, Julie. I can’t say this to many people, but it’s my own conviction that Jonathan Eltwing has never been able to forget the winter he and Cordelia were eighteen.”

  Whatever the reason for their return, they were a sad and tragic couple. Within a few months after their arrival, it was obvious that the state of Katy Eltwing’s mind was worsening. She was fearful when neighbors called in the casual, friendly way of country people; sometimes she strayed from home and had been found, frightened and bewildered, in the adjacent fields and woods. The housekeeper from town gossiped of days when Mrs. Eltwing sat at the piano and wept because her hands had lost their skill; she told how Jonathan Eltwing would leave his work to hold the distraught woman in his arms, soothing and comforting her until she forgot her sorrow.

  Often when his wife was safely under the care of others, Jonathan would come down to Aunt Cordelia’s and sit before the fire, talking quietly with her, sometimes leaning his head against the back of the chair as if he savored a tranquil moment removed from care. He spoke politely to me on these occasions, but that was all; he never saw Uncle Haskell nor did he ever ask of him. My uncle and I did not share Aunt Cordelia’s place in the affection of our new neighbor.

  There came an autumn night of fog and mist just a year after the Eltwings’ arrival, however, when it was necessary for Jonathan Eltwing to talk to Uncle Haskell and to me.

  It was on one of those rare occasions when Aunt Cordelia had gone into town to attend a lecture with Father and Alicia. I was up in my room polishing off the last of my homework when I heard Uncle Haskell’s voice, its habitual jauntiness submerged in anxiety.

  “Julie, come down quickly,” he called, and I ran downstairs wondering at the note of alarm in his tone. Once outside in the dooryard I understood his concern, for there, holding his hand as if she were a child clinging to a parent, was Mrs. Eltwing. Her grayish blonde hair, dampened by the mist, had come unpinned and fell in a tangle about her face and shoulders. Those shoulders were bare, still beautiful in spite of mud and scratches, and they rose from what had once been a lovely dress of blue velvet, now torn in a dozen places by brambles or underbrush that she had encountered, the long full skirt splashed halfway to her waist by mud and water.

  “She was in the middle of the old creek bridge,” Uncle Haskell told me in a low voice. “She was crying—afr
aid to come on across or to turn back. See if you can take care of her, Julie.” He was as agitated as if someone had placed a day-old infant in his arms.

  I knew the creek bridge. It was narrow and without railings. When the creek was high, as it was that night, the dilapidated old crossing seemed a little hazardous even to sure-footed kids such as Danny and I were. I felt a rush of sympathy for the lost woman who had attempted to make that crossing alone and in the night, but when I tried to take her hand in order to lead her inside, she cried out shrilly, refusing to allow me to touch her, and turning to Uncle Haskell as if for protection.

  He led her inside while I ran to the telephone and called her husband. “I’ll be there,” Jonathan Eltwing said as soon as I spoke his wife’s name; I heard him drop the receiver without bothering to put it back on its hook.

  In the living room I turned on the lights and Uncle Haskell helped the disheveled woman into an armchair where he stood looking down at her, apparently perplexed and uncertain as to what he should do next. Mrs. Eltwing looked up at him, and the fright seemed to leave her eyes as if she suddenly recognized a friend. The light shone on tiny beads of mist that covered Uncle Haskell’s blond hair; she seemed to be fascinated by them.

  “Beautiful—beautiful,” she whispered after a while. “You are a kind and beautiful man. I am not afraid now.” She took his hand and pressed it against her cheek.

  Uncle Haskell glanced at me in consternation. “Dear Mrs. Eltwing,” he stammered, “dear little lady—”

  She apparently did not notice his discomfiture, but continued to look at him as if just seeing him gave her complete happiness. If it had not been for the sadness of her condition, I could have laughed at his incredulous and frantic expression.

  I noticed that her slippers were gone, that her feet in the torn stockings she wore were cut and bleeding. I brought a basin of warm water and a soft towel, but when I prepared to bathe her feet she again resisted me and turned imploringly to Uncle Haskell.

  He hesitated when I extended the basin toward him; I doubt if Grandmother Bishop’s darling had ever performed a personal service for anyone, but after a few seconds, he knelt before Katy Eltwing and bathed and dried her little feet as tenderly as Father would have done for me under like circumstances.

  He was still kneeling on the floor, touching the cuts on her feet with iodine which I had brought from the medicine chest, when Jonathan Eltwing ran up the porch steps and into the living room. His face looked haggard as he bent over his wife and lifted her in his arms.

  “Katy—Katy, I thought you were sleeping,” he said brokenly. “Poor little girl, I never dreamed—”

  “The golden-haired man found me, Jonathan—I wasn’t afraid after he found me. But I’m so tired—so tired. I think you’d better take me home, darling.”

  He laid her on a couch in the library and sat beside her, soothing and reassuring her for a long time. Finally he came back into the living room, closing the door softly behind him.

  “She is asleep,” he said with a heavy sigh. He slumped down in an armchair without looking at either Uncle Haskell or me. “Where is Cordelia?” he asked abruptly.

  “She’s in town with Father and Alicia,” I answered. “They’ll probably be bringing her home in a little while.”

  He nodded. “Now tell me, Haskell, where did you find Katy? What happened?”

  His voice was harsh with dislike. I glanced at Uncle Haskell quickly, half expecting a stinging reply, but he answered Dr. Eltwing civilly although with an unmistakable coldness.

  “I had gone for a walk down toward the creek. I heard crying from the bridge. I went to her, brought her here as you can see.”

  “Did she recognize you?”

  “No, it was quite dark in the woods. We have only met the one time; she could have had no idea who I was. I’m sure of that.”

  “But she allowed you to take her hand—to lead her?”

  “Yes. She was like a lost child, happy to be rescued.”

  Dr. Eltwing ran his hand across his forehead. “I can’t understand. For months she has allowed no one to touch her except me, even when she has been lost and frightened. And yet, she allowed you to lead her—to wash the cuts on her feet.”

  I felt a little sick. I thought that if this sorry business fed Uncle Haskell’s ego, that if he boasted of the special place he held in this deranged woman’s feelings, I would die of shame for him. I watched his face to see if I could read his reactions.

  But there was nothing in his face that night to substantiate my fears. He stood there, silent and perplexed, as he looked down at Jonathan Eltwing’s bent head. For the first time, I thought that he looked old.

  Finally he said, “If it will help her—if my listening to her music will make her happy—” He broke off and started for the door. “Feel free to call on me if I can help her, Jonathan,” he called back, and was gone.

  Dr. Eltwing did not talk to me after Uncle Haskell left. He went into the library and, lifting his wife in his arms, carried her as if she were a sleeping child, down the long lane to his car. I followed with a soft pillow from the couch, and when he had placed his wife in a half-reclining position on the seat, I adjusted the pillow beneath her head and shoulders. Then I looked up at his sad face as he stood watching me, and for a second I forgot that he was “Dr.” Eltwing and that, in any case, I was too young to address him by his given name. But before I realized it, the name had slipped out.

  “She will be all right now, Jonathan,” I said.

  Dr. Eltwing apparently forgot something too. He said, “Thank you, little Cordelia.” Then he patted my shoulder and drove away.

  In the months that followed, Uncle Haskell became a lay physician to Mrs. Eltwing. It happened shortly after the night when she had been lost in our woods that Uncle Haskell and I were riding past the Eltwings’ place one evening and found her standing at the gate, her face swollen with crying, her eyes wild, her hair and clothing disarrayed. The housekeeper was trying to coax her to come inside, but whenever the woman tried to touch her, Katy Eltwing screamed and clung to the wooden pickets of the fence. I noticed that Uncle Haskell’s face looked pale as we reined our horses and sat for a moment in our saddles watching a scene that was both sorrowful and revolting.

  Then Uncle Haskell dismounted and walked over toward the fence where Katy Eltwing stood.

  “Mrs. Eltwing,” he said pleasantly, “do you remember me? May I come in and talk with you for a few minutes?”

  She stared at him for a brief time and then ran to him, her face like that of a child restored to sweetness after a tantrum. He took her hand and the two of them walked slowly into the house, Uncle Haskell talking to her softly, the housekeeper and I following in silent wonder.

  When Jonathan Eltwing came home at twilight he found Uncle Haskell at the piano playing a few simple melodies which he remembered from his youth, and Mrs. Eltwing sitting beside him, subdued and apparently content. She held out a hand to her husband when he came toward her.

  “The golden-haired man came to me when I was frightened, Jonathan. Please don’t let him go away again.”

  Jonathan Eltwing may not have liked to do it, but there were many days when he was forced to call upon Uncle Haskell for help. And Uncle Haskell, on his part, may not have liked to have his self-centered way of life upset. He never, however, refused to go to Katy Eltwing when she needed him although he always insisted that either Aunt Cordelia or I go with him; sometimes it seemed to me that my poised and self-confident uncle showed signs of being a timorous boy when he was summoned to the Eltwing home. He was always tired and silent when his hours of providing therapy for Katy Eltwing were over.

  She wanted him to play for her when her hands, which had so recently held the high skill of the artist, now stumbled and faltered over the keys. Uncle Haskell was not an accomplished musician, but he was able to play excerpts from the musical plays that were popular when he and Mrs. Eltwing were young, as well as the familiar aria from some op
era. He had a pleasant baritone voice, and this compensated in some measure for the occasional false note he struck on the keyboard.

  She loved to hear him sing “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice” from Samson and Delilah; sometimes she wanted him to sing it over and over again as a child wants to hear a story retold time after time. I used to wonder what Jonathan Eltwing thought about in his study as he listened to that tender love song sung a dozen times over while he tried to concentrate upon the ordeal of Dostoyevsky.

  The pattern of a lifetime did not change for Uncle Haskell except for these sessions with Katy Eltwing. He still had occasion to fill his old golf bag with empty bottles every so often; he continued to perpetuate his myth of being a busy writer; he still clung to his role of a gentleman born to a gracious way of life. He still was completely ridiculous (that’s if you loved him at all) and completely disgusting (that’s if you were a stranger to that side of him which was seldom seen).

  But as far as his attitude toward Mrs. Eltwing was concerned, Uncle Haskell was truly the gentleman he would have liked to be. He was gentle and patient with her, and he was unfailingly silent about her. He never discussed her condition even with Aunt Cordelia or me.

  There was very little that either Aunt Cordelia or I could do for the Eltwings; sometimes my aunt prepared little Sunday night suppers for them—strange supper parties in which Aunt Cordelia did not dare approach Katy Eltwing, but would sit talking to Jonathan when the meal was finished while Uncle Haskell took Mrs. Eltwing for a walk, or sat at the piano playing for her and singing the songs she loved. Often she would fall asleep against his shoulder and he would lift her in his arms, carrying her to the couch in the library, where her husband would cover her carefully and sit close beside her. It was like a strange, unreal play. Sometimes I was happy to escape to the Trevorts and taste the air of reality again with Danny and his kindly, very normal parents.

  As the months passed, we watched Katy Eltwing become feebler, farther and farther removed from everything about her. It was very hard to persuade her to eat enough for the maintenance of her strength. Aunt Cordelia used to cook every nourishing delicacy she could remember and send me over with covered bowls of food that might tempt Mrs. Eltwing’s appetite. Jonathan used to coax his wife to eat whatever I brought over, but after a few spoonfuls, she would turn wearily away, shaking her head.