The Winter People

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Your sister painted it, didn’t she?” I said. “That picture of the lake in your gallery—your sister Glynis painted it!”

  He spoke to me more sharply than I’d ever heard him do. “Stop it, Dina! Glynis isn’t going to touch what we have between us. Just remember that. That picture was her fantasy. It’s the way her mind turns sometimes. Forget about it. This is the real High Towers, and it’s waiting for us.”

  Glen’s Aunt Naomi must have heard the car, for the front door of the house was pulled open to let a band of light fall across the front veranda, and down a broad flight of steps. Against the lighted doorway stood the slight figure of a woman dressed in a long gray housecoat that fell to her toes. Her white hair was piled high upon her head in intricate convolutions, and the hall light, shining through it, made it an aureole.

  “Nomi!” Glen cried. He pulled me by the hand and we ran together across the white stones of the drive and up the steps. Glen caught her in his arms and swung her around upon the veranda. She patted his hands away in mock reproach, pleased and smiling. Smiling so long as she looked at him. Then suddenly grave when she turned to me.

  “Welcome to High Towers,” she said soberly. “Come in out of the cold. Come in, both of you.”

  We followed her into the narrow hallway that ran from front to back of the house, and its length was familiar to me because I had already seen it through Glen’s eyes. Somehow I was thankful that his sister had not painted the interior of the house. The architect who had built High Towers eighty years ago had believed in spacious rooms, and wasted very little grace on halls and stairs. A Victorian chandelier still hung just inside the front door, lighting the foot of the steep, polished stairway, but the bulbs in its many sockets were dim and not all of them were lighted, so that one had a sense of peering into dimness where the hall vanished beyond, like a tunnel whose other end is lost in darkness.

  “I’ve hot chocolate ready for you,” Aunt Nomi was saying. “Take Dina into the drawing room, Glen dear. There’s a fire to warm you. You didn’t give me much time, but I’ve done what I could to prepare.”

  In the dim light of the hall I could not see her very well, but I was aware of someone who moved with dignity and grace, and with a very great reserve.

  Glen laughed and caught her by one hand. “Nomi has never learned! I’ll want something stronger than hot chocolate, but I’ll get it for myself. You and Dina can have the chocolate, Nomi. My wife isn’t civilized. Not yet.”

  Nomi disappeared at the rear of the dim hall and Glen flung open the door on our right, ushering me into the most beautiful room I had ever seen. Its size was enormous, its plastered ceiling vaulted, with a crystal chandelier dripping glass teardrops which winked in reflected lamp and firelight. It was a room full of color. Color that shocked and yet entranced. The huge rare Chinese rug was of the palest lemon, and the four Victorian sofas the room harbored comfortably were upholstered in velvet. Two of them in apricot, two in dark purple. Several rosewood chairs were cushioned in turquoise, and everywhere there were small tables and ornaments and exquisite bibelots. One wall was solidly hung with paintings, and I glimpsed Picasso, Braque, and a Matisse—all originals. On the opposite wall was a single, honored portrait. Flames leaped invitingly in the wide grate, and across the white marble mantel marched a row of African sculptures, tall against the mirror that reflected them. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries blended at every turn and lived together in harmony with the twentieth-century paintings.

  Glen was aware of my rapt gaze. “Glynis did this room,” he said. “Glynis and I together—but mainly Glynis. The African things are mine. Let me help you with your coat, Dina.”

  I slipped out of the white wool coat, my eyes finding more and more detail in the room to charm me. It was a lived-in museum, and I felt unexpectedly at home. Glen flung the coat over his arm and held me off to study me in my silver-gray wool sheath that I’d belted with a linked silver chain he had bought for me at Tiffany’s.

  “Perfect,” he said. “How was I lucky enough to find you? Enjoy the room—you belong to it now. I’ll be right back.”

  Of course it was lovely to be admired, to be thought more beautiful than anyone else had ever found me, and to be dressed as I had never been dressed before. I was in my all-giving mood, my only intention to be everything Glen wanted me to be.

  When he had gone across the hall to the dining room for his brandy, I moved about with delight, reassured in all I saw. I would like Glynis. Obviously we would have much in common. The faintly unsettling undercurrent of the auto shop was fading under new impressions, new encounters.

  It was possible that Aunt Naomi was going to be more difficult when it came to finding common ground than would Glen’s sister. I had been aware of her watchful attention, of a certain holding back as though she waited to test and try me. This was natural enough and I must not mind. There was no reason why Glen’s aunt should receive so sudden a bride with open arms. Yet this left me with the burden of making an approach and I had a feeling that Naomi Holmes would not be an easy woman to know.

  Inevitably the portrait that held an entire wall to itself drew me. This would be Colton Chandler’s work, of course, and I stood before it, giving it my full attention. It was the full-length portrait of a boy and girl of about seventeen or eighteen. The bold, clear modern lines, the inner excitement that made a portrait by Colton Chandler a work of genius was there. Behind the two seated figures a thin-curtained window hinted at distant woods. His portraits were never static. The two figures in this picture leaned toward one another with an edge of curtain lifting in a breeze behind them, as if engaged in eager, and obviously lively, conversation. I saw at once that the boy was Glen—a darkly handsome youth with bright chestnut hair, dark eyes, and a straight, sensitive mouth. But it was the girl who startled me. In every respect, except for the length of her chestnut hair, she was a duplicate of Glen. Even their clothing was similar. Both wore well-cut fawn trousers, open-throated white shirts with pale yellow sweaters flung about their shoulders. Both pairs of feet were encased in soft-cuffed jodhpur boots that came just above their ankles. Their faces showed three quarters as they bent toward each other, and the girl had reached out with a riding crop to tap the boy on the knee. The half-smile each wore, the light challenge of dark eyes, the shapely ears revealed by the girl’s hair, drawn back with a yellow ribbon, and by Glen’s closer cropping—all were duplicates, one of the other. Glen and Glynis were more than brother and sister. They were clearly twins, and as close to identical as a boy and girl could be.

  Aunt Nomi came through the door bearing an antique tole tray laden with delicate cups and plates.

  “We’ve no live-in household help these days,” she said. “I like to do things myself with off-and-on assistance from town. Besides, that’s why I came here—to keep house for Chandlers.”

  I hurried to clear a place for her on a coffee table before the fire, and then stood back to regard the portrait again.

  “They’re twins, aren’t they?” I said.

  She straightened from lowering the tray to the table and gave me a direct look from brown eyes shadowed with dark lashes. She had yet to smile at me.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t know he had a sister until a little while ago.”

  She shrugged gray-clad shoulders lightly and motioned me into a turquoise chair. “I’m not surprised.”

  I had to learn the answer to this mystery. If Glen wouldn’t tell me about his sister perhaps Nomi would.

  “But why? If they are look-alike twins, they probably are alike, and Glen is the loveliest person I’ve ever met.”

  She paused in pouring chocolate from a silver pot and gave me another appraising look. “Lovely is a strange word for either twin. Mind you, I’m very fond of Glen, but lovely is not the word I’d use for him. Exciting, dashing, debonair, wild—all those words fit both twins. But lovely they aren’t. Just remember one thing. They are
duplicates. Duplicates clear through and in almost every way.”

  “Then I’ll love Glynis too,” I said warmly.

  She handed me my chocolate in a Sevres cup and sipped her own without comment.

  I could feel time slipping away. “Why do you like Glen and not Glynis, when they are so nearly alike?” I asked her boldly.

  She stirred the dark, creamy mixture, frowning at it. “You’ll never do,” she said. “Too much spunk. You won’t leave things alone. You’ll poke and pry and be curious. You’ll try to mend things. I can tell. You must have fooled him badly.”

  “Oh, please!” I cried in dismay. “I’m sorry if I’ve said the wrong thing. It’s just that all this has happened to me so suddenly. I’m still trying to orient myself.”

  “Yes.” She seemed to nod to herself. “He probably whirled you into this in a rush that took your breath away. I’ve been wondering why ever since he phoned me. You’re pretty enough, but so are other girls. And up to now he has never married.”

  “Other girls are not like Dina!” That was Glen’s voice as he came through the doorway, brandy glass in hand.

  I turned to him eagerly for help. “Your Aunt Naomi wonders why you married me. And sometimes I do, too!”

  She made a snorting sound, but before she could speak, Glen came to drop a reassuring kiss on my cheek. “Take off your hat, Dina.” He did not wait for me to obey, but pulled it off himself, to reveal my hair. I had twisted it on top of my head, and as he pulled off the hat it fell loose around my shoulders.

  Naomi Holmes stared at me in surprise. “Good heavens, girl—you’re almost as silver as I am!”

  “Except that Dina’s silver-gilt isn’t due to her years, or to something from a bottle,” Glen said. “It grew that way. It’s as natural as she is. As honest.”

  I could feel warmth sweep into my cheeks and I smiled at him, pleased. So he did know a little about me, after all. I liked to think of myself as honest—though that very trait sometimes got me into trouble.

  “So you married her for her hair?” Aunt Nomi said tartly.

  He laughed in amusement and came to sit beside her on the apricot sofa. “Only partly. Nomi, my love, this is a dream, a vision you see before you in the shape of a girl.”

  He toasted me with his brandy and I took refuge in my cooling chocolate, unsure of myself and troubled by this exchange.

  “She’s been in my mind all along,” he continued. “I’ve been watching for her. Then I walked into a museum in New York and there she was—standing on a tabletop, waiting for me.”

  “In a glass case?” Nomi said.

  “Not exactly, though it would have been nice if I could have found her that way. But don’t you see, Nomi—she’s the girl I can do in alabaster. Icy white alabaster with a hint of green. Green like her eyes. Have you noticed her eyes?”

  “The alabaster that’s upstairs in the studio waiting for you?” Nomi said, paying no attention to my eyes. “Oh, Glen! If only you would!”

  “I’m going to,” he said. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to begin.”

  “That’s marvelous!” She did a rather surprising thing. She rose and walked to Colton Chandler’s portrait of the twins and stood before it, a small, self-possessed woman in gray. “Now he’ll show you!” she said, and I knew she was speaking to the girl in the picture—to Glynis who was my husband’s twin sister.

  “Do you know when she’s coming home?” Glen asked, and I heard a faint edge in his voice.

  “Does anyone ever know?” Nomi tossed over her shoulder.

  Glen drained the last of his brandy and looked at me with bright dark eyes that were somehow triumphant. “There’ll be time. I waited to cable her. But whatever she does, I’ll be launched and this time I’ll finish. I needn’t have it completed before she comes. I only need to be far enough along to prove what I can do.”

  He seemed to be speaking a foreign language that I didn’t understand.

  “Doesn’t your sister approve of your work?” I asked.

  “My sister is part of my work,” he told me.

  Nomi took pity on my bewilderment. “It isn’t his work she’ll disapprove of, my dear. It’s you.”

  “Not this time!” Glen said quickly. “This time it’s too late.”

  All my first doubts and uneasiness were back full force. I did not like the sound of those words—“this time.”

  “What happens after the alabaster head is finished?” I asked. “What happens to me then?”

  “That’s a good question,” Nomi said. Glen laughed at us both. “How fearful you are! Don’t you have more confidence in me—you two? Doesn’t a man who wants a child cherish its mother forever? Doesn’t he love her for herself—not just because of the child she produced for him?”

  I felt reassured, my faith in him strengthened. “I’m not fearful, really, and I know what fine work you’re going to do.”

  Nomi gave me a quick look that might be approval, and came back to us. “You’ve had a long drive, Dina. I’m sure you’d like to see your room. Let me take you upstairs. Glen, will you bring in your bags?”

  Purposefully, she picked up my coat which Glen had laid across a chair, and I caught up my hat and went with her. Glen nodded at me, and I knew I had somehow pleased him, though I had no idea how or why.

  At the foot of the stairs Nomi flicked a switch and a light came on at the top, subdued to dimness by an amber shade. Glen went out the front door to fetch our bags and I followed his aunt upstairs.

  “No one has mentioned Glen’s father,” I said, climbing behind her. “How will Mr. Chandler feel about our marriage?”

  She answered me carelessly. “He’ll be pleased enough. Especially if you produce another Chandler. They’re a clan, you know. You’ll always be an outsider. Just as I am.”

  “But what about me?” I addressed the straight back that moved to the top of the steep staircase ahead of me. “Will he like me?”

  “The Chandlers aren’t very much aware of other people,” she said dryly and marched down the narrow, dim hall, small and defiantly erect. “I hope you’ll like your room.” She flung open a door. “It’s really tide best bedroom in the house, overlooking the lake as it does, and being the largest, as well. Colton is home so little that he doesn’t mind what his room is like. He’s in the attic studio most of the time anyway. Glynis hates to look at the lake, so her room is at the front of the house, overlooking the drive, and Glen’s old room was next to hers, on one side. I have a lake-view room, too. I took what was left over when I came here, and I’ve grown fond of it, small as it is.”

  “Then this is your guest room you’re giving us?” I asked as she touched a switch that lighted dressing table lamps across the room.

  “It was my sister Elizabeth’s room,” Nomi said. “Colton’s wife. The twins’ mother. She loved Victorian things—old pieces that have been handed down in my own family. I hope you can stand the stuff. I can’t.”

  I saw the welcoming wood fire in the grate and I was aware of dark mahogany and rosewood, an oval rug and expanses of bare floor, kept shining with wax. But it was the amazing bed that dominated the room. I knew enough about American furniture to recognize a Belter bed when I saw one. This was of his later period when he had gone wildly ornate. The rosewood was dark, almost purple, with the expected streakings of black, and I knew it was laminated work, because no ordinary wood would take this lacy carving. Nor could solid wood be molded into the undulating curves of this design: The back rose to a great carved peak at the top, curving downward like rounded shoulders to enclose the bed on either hand. The side boards dipped low and then rose to another curve that enclosed the foot. The supports were huge round pedestals, low, stubby and without beauty, intended only to hold the weight of the bed. The whole thing was straight out of history and I walked around it, examining every detail, delighted at the prospect of sleeping in such a bed. Belter had designed other furniture, of course, but beds had been his specialty.

  Nom
i watched me dryly and let me look. Perhaps she was relieved that for the moment I had stopped asking questions. Hers could not be an easy role in this household of Chandlers, and now I had come to add to her difficult problems.

  “Good Lord!” Glen, his hands full of bags, stood in the doorway. “Nomi, angel, why on earth this room? And what are we to do with that mausoleum of a bed!”

  “You and Glynis were born in it.” The tart note was in her voice again. “Have you told Dina about the blizzard that raged the night you were born? When Colton couldn’t get out, and the phone lines were down. Between us, Cook and I managed. Elizabeth lived and you twins were born unmarked and beautiful. At least outwardly. Sometimes I’ve wondered if that blizzard did something to you that’s out of sight.” But she smiled now as she lightened her tone.

  “Nomi has a fantastic imagination,” Glen told me. He dropped the bags and strode about the room, whistling in dismay. “I suppose it will have to do. Mother may have loved the room, but there are times when it gives me goose bumps. No matter—we can get rid of the museum aspects, and—”

  “Get rid of a Belter bed?” I asked in astonishment and patted one carved shoulder lovingly.

  “At least you’ll have your own bathroom,” Nomi put in. “And you probably won’t stay here at High Towers all that long, will you, Glen?”

  “If I can work, I’ll stay forever!” Glen said.

  “Of course you’ll work, darling,” I told him. “And if you like we will stay forever.” I crossed the room, heedless of Nomi’s dry observance, and flung my arms about his neck, kissed him warmly.

  He must have given his aunt a look over the top of my head. “You see, Nomi? You see the treasure I’ve found?”

  She said, “Humph,” and the sound was noncommittal, unflattering. She turned her back and went to make sure of towels in the bathrooms, of fresh bars of the pine-scented soap that would always remind me of High Towers.

  Glen did not release me. All the bright spirit I loved in him was evident. At least his homecoming was as it should be—exhilarating, joyful, offering promise of whatever it was he wanted most.