Ilsa

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “Well?” Ilsa asked.

  “I forget,” he said, smiling. “The woman learned that she was wrong, though. She should have let the child go.”

  “And married the prince and lived happily forever after?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Ilsa smiled what seemed to me a very strange smile. “And that story reminds you of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t get the connection.” She smiled again and went out.

  Werner went on eating his ice cream in silence, frowning at it fiercely. Suddenly he ran his fingers through his black hair in a despairing gesture, but when he spoke his voice was light. “Mattie Belle is the queen of ice-cream makers. I could eat this all night instead of kvetching myself to pieces over the egregious Cardinal Wolsey. You should try those red-hot robes. They are not things to wear in the jungle.”

  “The jungle?”

  “This God-forsaken town. Tell me, how did a woman like Ilsa come out of a place like this?”

  “I don’t think it’s God-forsaken,” I answered coldly.

  “Oh, come now, Henry, you who’ve lived in Paris.…” Then suddenly he seemed abashed. “I am sorry. It was unpardonable of me to speak like that. There is a very small village in the mountains about which I feel the same way—but only because I don’t ever have to go there again, I am afraid.”

  “Where do you play next week?” I asked.

  “Some repellent town in South Carolina.” He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

  “So you and Ilsa will be on the same train?”

  “Yes, for part of the way. It will be very pleasant for me. One gets understandably tired of constantly seeing the same people. Besides, there is no one in the company with whom I am particularly compatible. And your sister-in-law is an extraordinary and wonderful woman.”

  “She’s not my sister-in-law,” I said irritably. I felt guilty for being frightened by his words, but I was.

  I was sure that if Ilsa left for Baltimore she would never come back. I did not, in fact, believe she was going to Baltimore at all. I did not believe she was really troubled about her eyes. I began to search wildly in my head for ways to keep her from leaving on Sunday morning.

  She came running down the stairs, hat and bag in hand, the puppy, Médor, at her heels.

  “All right, Franz, let’s hurry. Good-bye, Hen darling. Brand’s waiting for you. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Monty should come back before you leave, tell him I may be late. I think I’ll stop off at the station on the way home and see about the ticket, and then I can just pick it up tomorrow. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” I answered, watching them leave. Through the open window I saw them get into the waiting taxi and drive off. Mattie Belle came in to clear the dining room.

  “That Mr. Werner sure a pretty man.” She paused at the kitchen door with her tray full of dishes. “He slip me a dollar bill every time he come. You want anything you just let me know, Mr. Henry.”

  “I will.”

  She went out to the kitchen and I lit a cigarette. After a moment I heard her singing in her piping little voice:

  I’se so glad I’se been baptized,

  I’se so glad I’se been baptized—

  over and over to a tune of her own devising.

  I was grateful that Ilsa had a good and faithful servant. Mattie Belle was tiny and wizened, with a face like a little eager monkey. When I saw her I was never in doubt as to the origin of the species. When I listened to Violetta I was even less in doubt. Mattie Belle had never weighed over ninety pounds in her life, but she was strong as a man and had never known a day’s illness, and I knew that she worshiped Ilsa. Now she came back and stuck her head in the doorway.

  “You want anything, Mr. Henry, I’m out by the insinuator. I got a lot of trash to burn.”

  “All right, Mattie Belle. Thank you. But I don’t think I’ll need anything.”

  “Mr. Henry,” she said, “Kin I ask you for something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could you maybe loan me a car token to get home? Miz Woolf, she forgot to pay me tonight. She always pay me Friday night.”

  I reached into my pocket. “Here’re two tokens, so you can come to work tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Henry.” She took the tokens in her little brown monkey’s claw and put them in her apron pocket. “I worried about Miz Woolf. It not like her to forget to pay me. She ain’t been feeling so good. I sure do hope she’s not fixing to get sick. You think she’s all right?”

  “Oh, yes, I think she’s all right. I don’t think she’s sick,” I said.

  “I sure do hope not.” Mattie Belle waggled her little head and went back out to the kitchen.

  I finished my cigarette and started upstairs, Médor tripping over her feet and mine. Médor was the strangest dog I’d ever seen, with wild blank eyes, rather yellowish and sloping, Chinese fashion. Most dogs, hound dogs at least, have heartrendingly melting eyes, but Médor’s always looked as though she were going to jump up like a bucking bronco and make a wild dash across the yard.

  Brand was sitting up in bed when I came in, her top sheet kicked down to the foot. Her bamboo blinds were down to keep out the light and the clean white room was stifling. Her mahogany-colored hair, which Ilsa kept cut short, curled in soft moist ringlets around her face and neck. I raised one of the blinds and sat down beside her. Médor managed to clamber up onto the foot of the bed, tangling herself inextricably in the sheet, and lay there panting.

  “Hello, Uncle Henry,” the child said shyly.

  “Hello, Brand.”

  “Have Mamma and that man gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Papa isn’t back?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Uncle Henry, Mama never used to go out all the time like this. I wish she’d stop. Is it because of that man she goes to see at the theater every night?”

  “Well,” I said, “your mother doesn’t get a chance to see plays very often.”

  “Beulah Jackson said that her mother said that actors weren’t nice people. She said people you knew never got to be on the stage or they weren’t quality.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty broad statement,” I said. “Perhaps a good many theater people aren’t persons you’d like to know very well off the stage, but that’s certainly not true of all of them. I used to know someone very well who was an actress—a sort of actress.”

  “Who was she? Was she any kin to us?”

  “Yes. She belonged to the part of our family that never came to this country. I knew her when I was living in Paris. She sang songs in a very special way that was all her own. That was how she made her living. But she was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, kind and gentle and honorable. She had real quality.”

  “What was her name?”

  “It was a French name that I expect will sound a little strange to you.”

  “What?”

  “Telcide de Publier Porcher.”

  “That is a funny name.”

  “Yes. So you see, Mrs. Jackson isn’t always right, and I expect Beulah isn’t either.” I was afraid she might hear something distressing about Ilsa.

  “Beulah’s so biggety,” Brand said. “I don’t much like her. And her brother, Lee, he thinks he’s so smart. Uncle Henry, do you think when the actor goes on Sunday everything’ll be the way it was before?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so.”

  “Tell me a story now?”

  “What kind of a story?”

  “About when you were little.” She lay down and clutched my hand, staring up at me with beseeching eyes.

  The conscious part of my mind was thinking unhappily and nervously. The unconscious part was making words come out of my mouth. I told her about the gentle thudding sound of mallet against wooden ball in the evening when I wa
s very small and Mamma and Papa and their guests would play croquet on the soft green stretch of lawn Papa had tended so carefully. Silver and I, in our thin white night clothes, would lean out of our window and watch them, our eyes gazing drowsily at the graceful pastel sweep of the ladies, and the gallant adagio elegance of the gentlemen, until dark suddenly faded them out like Mamma’s old daguerreotypes.

  And I told her about the birthday parties given for Monty and Violetta, the gay lights, red and yellow and green, of the Japanese lanterns strung about the boathouse and hanging from the trees; and how every once in a while there would be a sudden flame as one of the lanterns would ignite, and the grinning yard boy, his dark watchful face suddenly visible in the flare, would quickly put it out.

  And I told her about the first time I saw Ilsa, sitting on the burnt-out fence talking to the men on the chain gang, and about going down to the beach and swimming in our birthday suits, and Ilsa flashing, brown and glistening, out of the water, and the sandpipers and gulls and foam from the waves seen through new eyes, and at night the bar of light from Ilsa’s lightship flashing across sea and sand, strong, secure.…

  Long before I had finished, the child was asleep. I pulled my fingers gently from her clasp, untangled Médor from the sheet, and tiptoed out.

  42

  I stayed at home all day Saturday reading Beaumont and Fletcher and getting extremely irritated at the two of them because I couldn’t keep my mind on them. I got so mad at Philaster that I could have chewed nails. I kept looking in the direction of the Woolf house, willing myself not to go over; I had sent Nursie with the money for Ilsa in an envelope.

  Every time the phone rang I jumped up, thinking that it would be Ilsa to thank me for the money and to say good-bye. But it rang for the stupidest reasons—wrong numbers, and people who should have called the mill office, and Cousin Belle to say that it was the anniversary of Cousin Josie’s death, and Violetta to say she’d called Ilsa and couldn’t get any answer and was she at my house and Monty wasn’t in the office and where was he? I couldn’t choke her off for about half an hour, and then Silver called to tell me that Eddie was back from down-state and he’d brought some wonderful new chickens, and I had to talk to Eddie, and I grew more and more distracted.

  Shortly after midnight I gave up and went to bed; I was so depressed and miserable that I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think that Ilsa would just accept my money and walk out of my life, and, incidentally, out of Monty’s and Brand’s, forever, without even bothering to say good-bye.

  A little after two I turned on the light and started to read. Shortly after, I heard the telephone. I tore downstairs.

  “Hello,” I gasped, breathless.

  “Henny?”

  “Yes—”

  “It’s Ilsa.”

  “Yes, I know. What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “No, not really. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I was reading.”

  “Hen, I’m sorry to have called you at this ungodly hour. I didn’t realize it was so late. I hope I didn’t rouse the house.”

  “No.”

  “Listen, Henny, Monty seems to be off on a toot. He hasn’t been back since Friday. Undoubtedly he’ll turn up tomorrow or the next day in a vile humor, but I suppose I can’t go to Baltimore till he does. Franz has gone down to the station to return my ticket.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What I called you about was to ask you if you’d mind awfully driving me to the station tomorrow morning? I want to see Franz off and I don’t want to crash into anything on the way—I’m afraid I might if I try to drive in that stupid gray light before the sun comes up. I’m awfully sorry to be such a helpless bore, Hen. I’ll go to Baltimore as soon as Monty condescends to return and then I’ll be all right and won’t bother you any more.”

  “It’s not a bother,” I said. “Don’t be like that. I’ll be over for you at six.”

  “Maybe you’d better make it a quarter to. Is that too horribly early for you? I’m awfully sorry.”

  “No, of course not. I’ll be there.”

  “Bless you, Henny. Good night.”

  There didn’t seem much point in going back to bed. It was so late, and I was afraid that if I went to sleep I wouldn’t wake up, so I dressed and sat down with a book. At five-thirty I slipped downstairs.

  When I got to Ilsa’s she was sitting on the porch steps waiting for me, though I was ahead of time. She was silent as we drove to the station. The early morning was gray and misty; the street was blotted out a few yards ahead of us, and I had to drive slowly. I could feel her pushing the car along as she leaned forward, straining to see through the windshield.

  “This’ll burn off by noon,” I said. She nodded.

  As the station came into view, she said, “We’re nearly there, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” I told her, and she fumbled for the handle of the door.

  The company was assembled on the platform. The little Ophelia was huddled into a heavy coat, in spite of the heat, and was smoking a cigarette in a long yellow holder. Queen Gertrude sat on her suitcases and dozed. Werner was not among them. Then I caught sight of him at the far end of the platform, almost hidden by the fog. Ilsa had gone close to the company and was looking strainedly for him. Queen Gertrude looked up from her nap.

  “He’s down there, honey,” she said, pointing.

  “Thank you very much,” Ilsa said, and hurried off into the gray distance. I stood in the station doorway and watched the two of them walk up and down, up and down, just out of range of the others; two dim, mist-blurred shadows. I was grateful that there were very few people at the station besides the theatrical troupe. As far as I could see there was no one who might recognize me, or, what was more important, Ilsa, and she was out of view of the station master’s desk.

  I turned and went back to the car to wait for her. I had a sudden feeling that she was going to get on the train with Werner and go off with him just as she was, but I knew that I must not watch. I sat in the car and closed my eyes.

  —If I can count to a hundred before the train comes, she won’t go, she’ll come back—I said to myself, reverting to an old superstition of my childhood. But when I had reached sixty I heard the train roar in and scream to a stop. For a moment there was the excited sound of voices raised in farewell and greeting, the tapping of hammers against wheels, the thud of mailbags, the sound of water, all the sudden busy noises, then the long roar as the train pulled out, and silence under the fog.

  One by one the other cars filled and pulled off. Mine was the only one parked on the dirty gray sand. I watched the station door and thought that in a moment I would have to go.

  Then Ilsa came out and walked slowly toward the car. I was filled with shame and self-reproach as I saw her fumble for the handle of the door. She slouched down in the seat and lit a cigarette.

  “Franz said to say good-bye to you,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  I turned the car around and drove her home.

  “You’d better come in with me and have some coffee,” she said in a flat voice.

  I followed her in. Brand was just coming down the stairs dressed in a fresh cotton frock, and she rushed headlong at her mother. Ilsa clasped the child to her, suddenly trembling violently. “Oh, darling,” she whispered, “darling, darling, darling.…”

  43

  Two weeks had gone and Monty had not returned. It was the longest he had ever stayed away, and Ilsa had a hard time quieting Brand and convincing her that all was well. She herself began to imagine that something must have happened to Monty, but she told everybody in her definite voice that he had gone downstate to look up an old mortgage for a client. Nobody but I knew that Monty had just disappeared, though I think that Mattie Belle guessed, because she was much more solicitous than usual, and hovered over Ilsa like an anxious little marmoset.

  Ilsa was more depressed and irritable than I had ever seen her. She gave piano lessons nearly
every morning, and the housework kept her busy, but in the afternoons she would sit for hours staring at the marble Othello and Iago; or at the piano, not playing; or she would hold a book in her lap and not read. Sometimes I would push through the rice portieres and find her sitting there, and she would not even turn around or acknowledge my presence. Médor would climb onto her lap and sleep there and she would smile down at the ancient puppy face; sometimes she would walk down by the river with Brand; and sometimes, when the wind blew the train whistle, searching and clear, a strange expression would come to her face. But her vitality, the tremendous aliveness that seemed to be the essence of her—for the moment this was gone.

  We had day after day of overcast skies and rain, and I remembered how the furious sun, that seemed to wilt everyone else, seemed, in Ilsa, to light answering fires. And I thought that if only the sun would come out she would be all right again. This heavy humidity was infinitely more exhausting than the febrile sunlight.

  I almost made myself sick with impotent worry.

  We were sitting out on the porch one afternoon, watching Médor stumble over her own shadow. Brand and Beulah Jackson were playing behind the house down by the river; their voices drifted back to us, changed and blurred by the wind. Ilsa lay in the hammock and fanned herself slowly with a Chinese fan I had found in the attic. I sat on the rail in my shirt sleeves, too lazy and worried to move, though the sun struggling through the clouds was sending perspiration down my back.