She could smell the smoke on his overalls when he held out his hand. He smelled wonderful, like a smoked ham. His face was round and red and fresh, and he was absolutely huge all over. His hand closed over hers, and his laugh was as big as he was in his huge blue jeans and sweater.
"Imagine me calling you Lee!" he said. "You must be her girl Marly. But you're your mother all over again. I'm Mr. Chris."
Before she had time to say anything—about the car or the hill or the trouble or anything else—he laughed and said, "Can you smell that, Marly? Did you get that whiff just then from the sugarhouse? I told my wife this morning, this time Lee's coming for the first breath of spring."
She had got it. It was absolute sweetness, like a drift of scent from a lilac bush. Like passing an orchard in full bloom. But different. A different sweetness—
"Your great-grandma used to say there was all outdoors in that smell," Mr. Chris said. "She called it the first miracle when the sap came up."
She looked up at him in surprise. So that's where Mother had got the idea of the miracles.
"Where are your folks? At the house?" he asked.
In two minutes they were on the way to the rescue. There were two big horses that he used to gather sap from trees on the steep hills where a tractor would go head-over-wheels, he said. But the tractor was the thing to take that car home in a hurry. Marly sat beside him. The tractor was bright orange against the snow. She felt like a queen in a high chariot as they rolled off along the little road among the trees.
2. Meet Mr. Chris
Marly knew it was sad for Joe, but she couldn't help being pleased by the flabbergasted look on his face. He was just plowing his way past the mailbox saying J. Chris when they came along behind him. She was still riding high on the tractor with Mr. Chris, and the car came along behind like a good little poodle on a chain.
"I found Mr. Chris!" she called to Joe. "I saw the smoke and found Mr. Chris!"
She knew Daddy would be disgusted at her for bragging, but after all, Joe had to be told, didn't he? He stood with his eyes sticking out like a snail's.
"And you're Joe," Mr. Chris said. He leaned down and took Joe's shoulder in his big hand and shook him the way you shake somebody you love and are glad to see. "How'd you get up that hill so fast? I told your mother nobody'd make it today without snowshoes."
Joe smiled and felt better again right away. Mr. Chris was a man who wanted everybody to feel all right. Marly felt a tickle of shame about bragging to make Joe feel bad—but she hoped Joe felt a tickle of shame, too, for leaving her behind.
If he did, it didn't show. He jumped onto the tractor and nearly pushed her off.
"Careful there. Room for everybody," Mr. Chris said.
They rolled down the lane to the big house. A lady came out on the porch with her arms folded in her apron to keep warm. She had the most beautiful white hair Marly had ever seen. Great Grandma must have looked like that whenever Mother came for a visit to Maple Hill, Marly thought. But this was Mrs. Chris.
"Chrissie, they're here!" Mr. Chris called. "You know what—I had to get them up that hill, just like you said I would."
You would have thought Mr. Chris and Chrissie were real relations and not just neighbors that Mother used to know. Everybody was hugging and kissing and crying out each other's names. "Lee! How wonderful ... Why, you've hardly changed. Surely this isn't Marly. And Joe. But I've still been thinking they were babies..."
Daddy stood back of it, alone, the way he usually did at home when friends came to call. But Mother, as always, turned to find him. "Chrissie—this is Dale," she said.
Her voice was even more special when she said, "This is Dale," than it was when she said, "This is Marly," or "This is Joe." Marly loved the voice and the look that seemed to say: Isn't he wonderful? And isn't it wonderful he is here when he was gone so long and everybody thought he might never come home again?
Mrs. Chris kissed Daddy and then stood back with her hands on his shoulders, looking at him. "You look like your picture, except you're not as thin as you were. I cut it out of the newspaper, and it's posted on my kitchen wall."
Daddy stood rather stiffly, the way he always did when people talked about what a hero he was and how much they'd heard about him.
Mother said, "You know, Chrissie, I've never been here in sugaring season before? I always wanted to, I remember, and Grandma was always insisting. But we could never get here until school was out."
"We've had a month of it already," Mr. Chris said. "The best season I've seen in years. Chrissie and I were saying, all of you ought to come to the camp tonight."
"Mother, let's!" Marly cried. "Joe, there's a little brown house—"
"I know what a sugar camp is," Joe said.
"You must eat before you go on to Maple Hill," Chrissie said. "Lee, I sent our man Fritz over to kindle a fire. I thought going in there in the cold—" She looked at Mother with a frown that didn't seem to suit her face at all. "There wasn't much I could do to straighten up, Lee," she said. "If you'd let me know sooner—" She began bustling around the huge warm kitchen, which had a stove twice the size of an ordinary stove and a table ten feet long.
"I wrote late on purpose so you wouldn't bother," Mother said.
Marly looked with dismay at the table being set. She slipped close to Mother and whispered, "Do we have to stay and eat here?" She could hardly wait to go on and see Maple Hill.
"Hush," Mother said, and blushed.
"Why do we?" Joe whispered. This time he and Marly were on the same side. "All that lunch we brought—"
Daddy heard. "You two sit down and behave yourselves," he said. "Do as your mother says."
The whole day would go, just visiting, and they had to leave again tomorrow. As nice as Mr. Chris and Chrissie were, nothing could seem right or finished until they had got to Maple Hill. Getting there had taken weeks of talk and worry already; it was slower than Christmas. Now it was so close—"only a little piece down the road from Chris's" as Mother always said—and they still couldn't see it.
"I'm not hungry at all. Maybe Joe and me could just—"
"Now, hush!" Mother said again.
But Mrs. Chris had heard. She looked at Marly, smiling. "There's not a bit of use you being starved when you get there," she said. "Your mother'll have plenty else to do without worrying about feeding the family the first five minutes."
Mr. Chris had to get back to the sugar camp to watch his fire. "Mother, can't we go back with him?" Marly asked. That would be second best.
"Later. Maybe tomorrow," Mother said, and gave Marly a look that said, "What a bother you are..."
So they watched Mr. Chris go off in the bright chariot, out along the lane and down the road and over the hill, where he disappeared as if he had fallen off the earth.
"It's wonderful, Joe. Hundreds of trees with buckets hanging around them like charm bracelets. And smoke coming out of the little brown house. It looks like the old witch's house in Hansel and Gretel."
"I've read all about sugar camps," Joe said. He was still bothered because she'd seen it first, she could tell, and because she had turned out to be the one to come to the rescue.
"But there's a wonderful smell," she said. "I'll bet you didn't find that in any old book!"
Actually, eating at Chrissie's was wonderful. When you ate her food, you knew why Mr. Chris had got to be so huge. Mrs. Chris didn't putter around either. Everything was ready in a few minutes because she had expected them. She even knew they were in a big hurry and didn't mind at all.
"Would you like me to go along, Lee? I might be able to help a little," she said. "We've tried to keep track of the place, but an empty house—I don't know. One thing and another seems to go to pieces. Chris wrote you about somebody breaking in—"
"Yes," Mother said. "But we don't mind having to work at it. In fact, that's what we want; it's what we came for. Dale's going to stay on there and work while the children finish school."
"He'd best do som
e of his eating with us," Mrs. Chris said.
Daddy started to protest.
"What's one more to feed?" Mrs. Chris said with a laugh. "You could do with some fattening, Dale. Anything I love to do is fatten a man."
Daddy's face looked tight. Marly held her breath, remembering something he said to Mother before they started out. "I want to be alone. None of that country good-neighbor business, I hope. Everybody trading dinners and knowing everybody else's business."
Mother noticed, too, Marly could tell. She stood up quickly and said, "Well, we'd better be off, I guess. Chrissie, that was so wonderful..."
Mrs. Chris stood on the porch again to wave them good-bye. "If you should get stuck again, just honk and honk!" she called. "But I don't think you will. Fritz cleared the road this morning."
Marly felt her hands clenched tight with excitement. Now—soon—she thought. Joe had his face glued to his window again. "Joe, it's not on that side," she said.
He looked at her. "How do you know?" he asked.
Mother turned with a laugh. "Yes, how did you, Marly? I don't think I ever said. Did I?"
For a minute Marly felt confused. She could see it in her mind, the whole place, the slope, the trees, the tumbly barn against the hill. Then suddenly she knew. "You said you used to sit on the front porch and watch the sun go down," she said.
Mother and Daddy looked at each other, the look that said: What a child! She's quite bright after all! Joe crowded over to look from her window, too. He looked determined and she knew how he felt; after what happened before, he absolutely had to see Maple Hill first. And she decided to let him. Boys were queer. They seemed afraid they'd stop being boys altogether if they couldn't be first at everything.
Suddenly the sun came out. All day it had been hidden, but now it burst from the clouds. Everywhere the crusted snow began to shine like Christmas cotton. It was only a minute, and then it disappeared again beneath a cloud. And there, as if the blinding moment of brightness had created it like the wave of a wand, was the house on Maple Hill.
She thought Joe would never see it. But suddenly he said, "Is that it? That little house—"
"That's it," Mother said firmly, and turned the car off the road. "I told you it was just a small place, didn't I?"
"But it's pretty—little and pretty," Marly said quickly. And it was, in a way, though it looked awfully lonely in the vast countryside—and dilapidated, too. The porch was heavy with snow and you could see where one step had fallen in. Huge snowy bushes hung over the railing. It looked as if nobody had lived there for a hundred years. The trees on the hill were huge and bare, like skeletons.
"I always loved the windows," Mother said as if she was trying to find something good to say.
They were all little squares, Marly noticed then, with tipsy shutters.
"They're so nice with ruffled white curtains," Mother said.
Everybody sat still. Nobody could think of anything else to say for a minute. Then Daddy spoke. "Fritz seems to have made a good big fire. Look at the smoke coming from the chimney."
"Me go in first!" Joe cried then. "Mother, can I unlock the door?"
"Maybe we'd better flip a nickel for a privilege like that," Daddy said, looking at Marly.
But she shook her head. She sat still while Joe got out and ran to the back door, while Daddy and Mother followed. She wanted time to say something to herself that she had planned to say.
It had to be the right place. All outdoors. With miracles. Not crowded and people being cross and mean. Daddy not tired all the time anymore. Mother not worried. But it looked little and old to be all that. She was afraid, now that she was actually here, that it wasn't. She wished that they were still on the way. Sometimes even Christmas wasn't as much fun as getting ready for it. Maybe thinking about Maple Hill would turn out to be better than Maple Hill itself.
She whispered, "Please, let there be miracles."
"Marly!" Mother called. "Aren't you coming?"
Forever and forever now, on Christmas morning, Marly knew, she would stop on the stairs where she couldn't see the living room yet. Afraid maybe somebody had forgotten to light the tree. Because—that once—it really had happened. She felt afraid to go into this house now, even though she didn't know what she expected inside. She didn't even know what she'd miss if it wasn't there.
"Marly!" Daddy came out of the door again. She heard him say to Mother, "What's wrong with that child? In such a hurry to get here and then just sitting—"
She got out of the car then, saying the words once more, and ran every step of the way. Daddy laughed and opened the door wide for her to go running in.
3. Maple Hill
As dusty and musty as that house was, it was full of treasures. All Marly and Joe could do was run around looking and yelling at each other, "Look! Look at this!"
First the kitchen. There was a stove nearly as big as Chrissie's, and water was steaming away in a cunning tub at the side which Mother said was called a "reservoir." "Mother, that's what you used to dip your bathwater out of," Marly said. She had imagined how it must be. Now she knew.
"We kept rainwater in it," Mother said. "That's what comes from the pump there by the sink. That water's so soft that one rub of the soap makes it full of suds."
It was queer thinking about water being "soft" and "hard," and right away Joe began pumping at the funny old thing that stood between the sink and the cupboard. Nothing happened, and Mother said, "You have to pour some water in the top first, Joe, to prime it."
So he did. Old brown smelly water began coming out, but soon it got paler and paler, and Mother had them empty the reservoir of ordinary water and put rainwater in it. "Tonight you can have a bath in that old tub, just like I did—if it doesn't leak," Mother said to Marly.
"Let it leak," Daddy said. "Then we'll automatically have enough suds on the floor to scrub it." He sounded happy and cheerful and interested. He was exploring things, too.
The old cupboard wasn't fastened to the wall like in an apartment. It had a sliding door right in the middle, and under the door were all kinds of fascinating things: faded boxes of spices and mustard and herbs and a little grinder full of peppercorns. A bigger grinder had a cute little drawer filled with spiderwebs and ancient coffee—and with mouse-leavings. Everywhere there were mouse-leavings. "You can tell who has been living here!" Mother said.
Daddy and Joe went out to look at the old barn while Marly and Mother looked at the things in the cupboard. "These were Grandma's everyday dishes," Mother said. " 'Heavy so we couldn't break them,' she used to say. There are some good, fine dishes somewhere in a box, Uncle John said."
In the top drawer Marly found dingy, blackened spoons and forks and knives. Mother said, "You see why Mrs. Chris thought we'd better eat where we were. You and I will have to get enough of these cleaned before suppertime."
"First can I see the rest of the house?" Marly asked. Imagine being stuck in the kitchen, no matter how interesting it was!
"Of course," Mother said. "But, Marly—this is the first place we women have to start to dig."
We women. Marly felt proud when Mother said that.
They went into the dining room, which had a heavy round table and cane-bottomed chairs and a cupboard across one corner. There was a window seat with a long cushion on it that had its stuffing coming out. "I helped make that cushion one summer," Mother said. "It was lovely, bright yellow. Grandma helped me cut it out, just to fit." She touched it, and dust flew out. "It's hard to believe it was bright yellow," she said. She looked around. "I wonder what happened to Grandma's old sewing machine? Uncle John seems to have kept out just the things a man uses."
"Where did you eat? Here?" Marly asked.
"On holidays, in here. Mostly in the kitchen."
There was everything to find out. Where did you sleep? Where did you play? Where did Grandma sleep?
Upstairs were three little bedrooms under the eaves. A wonderful old feather tick was rolled up and wrapped in canva
s and put away in a huge trunk. Quilts were there, too, the very quilts Mother had told about. Sunbonnet girls. Wedding rings.
"The pillows are here, too, wonderful down pillows," Mother said, and searched them out. "How musty they smell! When we come back, we'll hang them out in the sun." She began to sneeze and had to put them quickly away again.
"I knew how everything was going to look," Marly said. It was really true. "Even if you hadn't told me, I'd have known which was your room and which was John's and which was Grandma's. But your window is the best. It looks out the most."
"It faces the valley, not the hill. I always liked that," Mother said. "This should be your room, Marly, because it was mine." She came and stood by the window, and never in her whole life had Marly ever loved her quite as much as at that moment. "Sometimes I was a little lonely up here," Mother said. "It's good you'll have Joe to explore with. John never seemed to want me along, and there were lots of boys for him to go with. Hunting and fishing, things like that."
"Joe says I'm too slow. He won't take me either," Marly said. "But I don't care. Sometimes you can go with me, and I'm not a bit afraid to go alone."
Out of the window were wide fields with wonderful rail fences just like in the pictures of Lincoln splitting rails. There were sudden gullies, too, where you knew streams would flow when the snow melted, and in every direction were fringes of brown and green. The woods even came tumbling into the fields where new trees were growing.
"I tried going alone," Mother said, "but I never really liked it. The minute I got into the woods it felt lonely, and I got scared and hurried back to Grandma." She put her hand on Marly's shoulder in a nice friendly way. "I'll try not to be too busy, but a farmer's wife has an awful lot to do." She leaned close to the window and rubbed some of the dust off to see better. "You know, I've never seen it like this before—with snow on it and the leaves gone. It's lovely, isn't it? You see the shapes of things." Her breath made the glass misty, and so did Marly's, so everything had a kind of mysterious fog around it. "If I could draw—" Mother said.
Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) Page 2
