Winterbound

by Margery Williams Bianco

  Caroline was the one who got along with her best. Over Caroline she seemed to exert a peculiar fascination. Caroline would follow her about, watching her, or with the small girl’s insatiable interest in the conversation of elder persons, sit spellbound listening to Mrs. Cummings’s accounts of the various places she had lived in, all of them, it began gradually to appear, superior in every detail to the Ellis household.

  “You’re an old-fashioned one!” Mrs. Cummings would remark to her occasionally. Caroline seemed to take it as a compliment.

  More and more often Kay and Garry, as well as the younger ones, took to slipping over to the Rowes.

  “What did she come for if she can’t even get the supper by herself once in a while?” Mary asked bluntly one afternoon when Kay explained that she had to hurry home.

  “It isn’t that so much,” Kay said. “Garry and I don’t mind doing things; we always have. Only it’s worse than having no one in the house at all. And nothing’s ever quite right, though goodness knows we’ve turned the place upside down to make her comfortable. She says her room’s like an ice box, though she’s got every extra quilt in the house on her bed this minute, with the fireplace as well, and Garry and I were freezing last night. She didn’t seem a bit like that when she first came, but I suppose you never do know how people will turn out.” “I tell you, you want to watch her,” said Mary, who had paid more than one visit to the Ellis house. “She reminds me of nothing in the world so much as the boll weevil in that Carl Sandburg record!”

  “You can’t tell me a thing about old ladies,” said Edna, who had faithfully driven over one day to see how the family were getting along, and in two minutes had shrewdly summed up the situation. “I’ve had plenty to do with them and I know.” And noticing Kay’s worried face and Garry’s curt cheerfulness she added sensibly: “You’d better all of you pile right in my car this minute and we’ll go down to town to see the movies. I’ve got a free evening and the roads are fine, and I’ll get you back before bedtime.”

  The movies—even those that the one local picture house afforded in this off season—followed by hot chocolate at the corner drugstore, seemed like positive dissipation after so many shut-in weeks on the hillside. It was cheerful to see lights and shop windows and people walking about on sidewalks again, and the drive home over frozen roads and under a clear star-lighted sky, singing at the tops of their voices while Edna steered skilfully between the bumps, was almost the best part of the evening. They returned blessing Edna, and with renewed strength to cope with Mrs. Cummings through another week at least.

  Neal referred to her cheerfully as “the old gal.” “How’s your old gal getting along?” he would ask the girls whenever he saw them.

  “You see, you didn’t start right,” he told them one day. “What you ought to have done was just to have buttered her feet a bit, see, like they do to cats in a strange place. Then she’d have been kept so busy lickin’ the butter off she wouldn’t have no time for complaints.”

  “Seems to me we’ve done nothing but butter her feet, ever since she came in the house,” said Garry, “and that’s the whole trouble.”

  “Well, we had a little heart to heart talk, out here on the road the other day,” Neal went on. “She told me how terrible everything was in the country, and I told her how terrible everything was in the country, and believe me I could tell her a whole lot more’n she could tell me. I just jollied her along and she took it all like a lamb, and I could see she was getting the impression I was a nice, quiet, intelligent sort of a guy, someone she felt she could have real confidence in. I tell you, what that old soul needs is just to forget her troubles and get out and have a good time for once. Some night I’m going to shave real well and get my best pants on and take her out to one of these country dances over at Warley Center or some place. You see if I don’t!”

  But for all Neal’s joking things went from bad to worse.

  The brunt of it fell upon Kay, for Garry could always basely find some excuse for outdoor jobs, preferring the biting cold to Mrs. Cummings’s running monologues. The absence of a radio was one grievance; she’d have thought everyone had a radio, these days. But there were plenty of others. It was not pleasant to be reminded continually, in not too roundabout a way, how much better built, better equipped, and better managed other people’s houses were; how Mrs. Cummings’s own daughter had a little house so snug, you wouldn’t believe it, everything was so handy and kept like a new pin; her husband got her an electric egg beater only the other day. How all the other country places Mrs. Cummings had ever lived in before had electricity and furnaces and plumbing; running water upstairs and down, and everything so “nice.” How Mrs. Cummings never could bear stoves, nasty dirty things with all the mess and ashes, and as for pumps—why, hardly anybody these days put up with a pump. So unhandy!

  Well-to-do people, it seemed, were what Mrs. Cummings had always been used to. Her last place now, out on Long Island, she’d had her own bathroom with a shower in it, and everything so comfortable. Kay ought to see how people lived, nice people. She managed to convey that poverty, even temporary, was rather a disgrace and that not having certain luxuries stamped one, as it were. Mrs. Sterling had a lovely apartment; she’d often gone there to help with sewing or spring cleaning, and she’d do anything to oblige Mrs. Sterling who was such a nice lady, but if she’d known the sort of place she was coming to—well, there! It couldn’t be helped, so the only thing was to make the best of it.

  Even the goaded worm will turn at last and Kay, one morning when the pump had frozen unexpectedly, Big Bertha for some reason refused to draw, and Caroline in the general confusion had forgotten to put on her heavy sweater under her school coat and the omission was only found out too late to remedy, turned upon Mrs. Cummings in exasperation.

  “If you were so comfortable at your daughter’s house, Mrs. Cummings, and you really feel that way about everything, I should think you’d better go back there,” she said.

  Garry, still tinkering with the pump and a kettle of boiling water in the back kitchen, could hardly believe her ears. It was very seldom that Kay lost her temper, but this was one of the times. Garry recognized that tone, not so very different from Penny’s when Penny got thoroughly mad.

  One retort led to another; there was a sharp brief battle of words from which Kay emerged shaken but victorious, with an odd sensation of feeling herself for the first time head of the household in her mother’s absence. Mrs. Cummings retired to her room; lunch, when it came, was a silent and extra-polite meal and later Garry whispered over the dishpan:

  “Do you suppose she’s really going?”

  “She’s been acting for days as if she wanted to, and I told her she could. She’s probably packing her trunk now. Garry, I just couldn’t have stood another single day of it!”

  “I know it, old girl. I’m darn glad you spoke out. Home will be home again, anyway!”

  “Mother will be worried, I suppose, and Cousin Carrie furious when she hears, but I just don’t care. We can always get someone else if we have to.”

  “No more of Cousin Carrie’s old bats, thank you. Why, Penny would never have stood her a day, I know! To think of all the women out of jobs who’d have been glad to come here if they only knew, and could have a good time with us.” Garry swished the milk pitcher out vigorously.

  “Oh, I don’t suppose this place is such a catch! It is uncomfortable and muddly and hard work in winter, but it’s no better for being told about it every minute of the day.”

  When Mrs. Cummings emerged, closing the door carefully behind her, it was to call up the station for a taxi, disdaining Edna. But there was only one train a day in winter—Garry could have told her that much—so another uncomfortable twenty-fours hours had still to pass. Mrs. Cummings improved them by being unusually nice to Caroline, managing to treat her with an air of veiled pity. Her silence towards the rest of the family seemed to denote a meek acceptance rather unexpected in her, but Kay was to find a
surprise still in store.

  “The month is not up for three days yet, Mrs. Cummings, and mother paid you that before she left, so I don’t think we owe each other anything,” said Kay next morning, feeling a little uncomfortable now the storm was over and hoping for at least a pleasant leave-taking.

  “There’s next month’s salary due to me, Miss Ellis,” returned the old lady, having sized up Kay’s inexperience long ago.

  “Next month?”

  “A month’s pay or a month’s notice, that’s always understood, Miss Ellis. It was you that give the notice, not me. The arrangement as I understood it was for two months at least, and there’s my fares and expenses to be thought of, not to speak of my having thrown over another very good job just to come up here to you, on account of obliging Mrs. Sterling and all, though what I’m to say to her . . .”

  “You needn’t trouble about Mrs. Sterling,” said Kay, white with anger. “I shall tell her myself everything that is necessary. And I think it will be a very long time before she finds you another place!”

  Garry, always the level-headed one, was not there at the moment to consult, there was no time to run over and ask Mary about it, and Kay marched upstairs to the little box that held the store of housekeeping money her mother had left, took out four bills, and coming back laid them silently on the table.

  She was too angry to mention the matter until after the taxi had driven away, and then she told Garry, who whistled.

  “Good Lord, Kay! But she’d no right to it at all!”

  “I don’t know, she said she had, and I was just too mad at the whole business to argue with her. I’d rather give her the forty dollars and have done with it, though I suppose I was a fool and I don’t believe one word about that other job she missed taking. We’d have paid it anyhow if she had stayed on.”

  “Well, depend upon it she’ll take good care to steer clear of Cousin Carrie for a while now, anyway, which is something to be thankful for. So Cousin Carrie won’t know a thing and we needn’t have to worry mother about it all. Cheer up, Kay! We’ve got the house to ourselves again, and it’s only three days to Christmas!”

  Mary Rowe’s comment was brief and pointed.

  “The old buzzard!” she exclaimed when Garry told her. “To think of getting away with forty dollars like that! Well, if you ask me I don’t know but it’s cheap at the price.”

  All the same the living room, denuded of Mrs. Cummings’s familiar flotsam and jetsam, had an oddly empty look that evening, and Kay and Garry found themselves wondering if after all they had done everything they could to make the old lady’s stay comfortable, and whether they mightn’t have shown a little more patience with her ways—the sort of uncomfortable regret that always attends the departure of people one has disliked but never of those one cares for. Still, as Garry said, it was only three more days to Christmas.

  Ways and Means

  CHRISTMAS day dawned clear and fine; a white Christmas, for there had been a fresh fall of snow overnight. There was no wind, so trees and bushes held their delicate white tracery on every twig, and the dead weeds by the gateway were changed suddenly to things of beauty.

  For days past the children had been busily concealing secrets from each other and from their elders. What Christmas shopping there was—for the younger ones only—had been done long ago through the mail-order catalogue and had duly arrived and been secreted. Yesterday’s mail had been a heavy and exciting one; even the usually grumpy mailman had a smile for Caroline as she waited by the box. There were thick letters from father and mother among the rest, Christmas cards and several gayly tagged parcels, to be opened on Christmas morning.

  One from mother and Peggy, with a slender silver-and-turquoise chain for Kay, an odd little Indian bowl for Garry, a pocket folder of Indian leather work for Martin, and a tiny silver ring shaped like a snake with a turquoise in his head, that just fitted Caroline’s middle finger.

  “I wish we could have sent her something,” Kay said as they unpacked the box.

  “Your cards were lovely, Kay; she and father would rather have had those than anything, and she’ll have got Caroline’s kettle holder by now, though goodness knows what she’ll have to use it on, out there.”

  “I guess they make tea in New Mexico,” said Caroline, studying the effect of the blue ring on her pink finger.

  “There’ll be tea made anywhere where Penny is,” Garry assured her, quick to make amends. “She can always find use for a kettle holder if it’s only to pick things up outdoors when the sun is too hot, and if your penwiper doesn’t reach father quite by Christmas he’ll have it for New Year’s anyway, and that’s just as good. Now hurry up and open the rest!”

  Candy from Aunt Margaret and another box of candy for Kay, with no name. Silk stockings, handkerchiefs for Caroline, and a tie for Martin. More stockings and socks, green ski pants for Caroline, an embroidered handkerchief case that must have come from one of Cousin Carrie’s bazaars, a diary, three woolen mufflers and a pretty brown sweater—the relatives had gone in heavily for clothing this year—a white china monkey with glass eyes and a hole in his back to put flowers in, a bottle of bath salts, and a rabbit made of green soap and clad in a pink washcloth.

  “Someone must think we don’t take enough baths,” Kay laughed.

  “They’re probably right, but just try it this weather, with a tin bathtub in a drafty kitchen! I wish we’d had the bath salts earlier; they might have impressed Mrs. Cummings, anyway,” said Garry. “Now let’s see. One of these boxes of candy will go to the Rowes; that’s fine. Don’t collapse, Martin; we’ll all be there to eat it just the same. We’ll give Neal my diary. It’s swell and useful, but I’d just as soon have one from the ten-cent store next time Edna goes there. Do we need three mufflers in the family?”

  “One would be nice for Mary, but I’d rather give her this sweater,” Kay decided. “It’s so pretty and my others are still perfectly good, and I know she’d use this more than she would a muffler.”

  “Grand,” said Garry with an extra warmth of tone, for she knew that Kay’s sweaters were far from perfectly good, having seen more than one season’s wear already. “Then the extra muffler will do for Jimmie. Get me that roll of red paper in the table drawer, Caroline, and see if you can smooth some of this ribbon out.”

  The room looked Christmas-like with green boughs above the mantelpiece and trailing ground pine in the Chinese bowl. Two days ago Neal had chosen and cut the two little trees, one for each family, taking the children with him on this annual excursion up the hillside, and Kay had trimmed their own from the box of Christmastree “orderments,” as Caroline used to call them, saved and put by from year to year and which they had remembered to bring with them even though the packing and moving took place in June. So all the familiar colored balls and dangles and shining gold and silver fruits hung there—or at least as many as the tree would hold—and the waxen Christmas angel, a bit smudgy from repeated handling, smiled from the top branch and the pink spun-glass bird chirped silently just below him, as they had done for so many Christmases before in different surroundings.

  “The Christmas angel’s got a regular grin on him,” Martin said, reaching to straighten the old friend, who having lost half a wing soared rather lopsidedly.

  “I should think he would,” returned Garry. “There! I think those look all right.”

  She surveyed the parcels. No one could really tell, unless they looked hard, that the holly-printed ribbon had been twice used. Christmas dinner was to be at the Rowes, but not till two o’clock, for every Christmas Day Neal went out fox hunting; it was the one date in the year, he said, that he never failed to keep, so the family dinner was put off till his return.

  The children spent the morning coasting, not on the road, which was steep and dangerous and forbidden except in the company of elder people, but on the pasture slope behind the Rowes’ barn, where the occasional rocks and bumps were just enough to make the run exciting. Caroline had her new ski pa
nts on, long, warm, and full around the ankles above her arctics, and Shirley had a pair, too, brown ones. Caroline’s had come from a New York store and Shirley’s from the faithful mail-order catalogue, but the children decided there was little to choose between them. Wading through the snow, dragging the sled behind them, the little girls looked like two long-legged gnomes, one brown, one green.

  Kay and Garry were just setting out for the house when Neal returned, old black-and-tan Sam at his heels. He had his gun over one shoulder, something limp and soft and tawny slung across the other, which he dropped on the snow at their feet.

  “Merry Christmas! How’s that for a nice fox?”

  “Merry Christmas! Not such a merry Christmas for the fox though,” returned Garry quickly, for she hated to see anything dead and that clean shining fur, the still slim paws and pointed nose gave her a pang of regret for what had been only a little while ago a living flash of speed and pride and beauty. But Neal was so cheerful and pleased about it; a fox skin she knew was worth ten dollars and ten dollars meant a good deal to the Rowe family. “It’s a beauty, Neal! Where did you get it?”

  “Up over Crooked Hill. He cost me three hours tracking and a six-mile walk. Well, old Sam and me decided we wouldn’t come home without we’d earned our dinner, and I guess we have.”

  “What does he weigh?” Martin asked. The younger ones had gathered eagerly round.

  “Not what you’d think. A bit more than a good-sized cat. Mostly all fur, you see; that’s what makes them hard to hit. Lot’s of times you think you’ve hit a fox, and all you hit is his fur.”

  “It looks like a dog,” Caroline said. But as she drew nearer there was something not at all like a dog in the slant of the half-closed eyes, the warning lift of the lip above white shining teeth; that subtle difference which always sets apart the wild thing from the tame one, even in death. Not a nice thing to meet, Caroline thought, and remembered the gray fox that had howled behind the barn.

  “Want to try a fine warm neckpiece, Caroline?”