The Winter People

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I turned back to the window, but when I pressed my face against a square pane, trying to see as far along the road to town as I could, he came behind me and swung me around, shook me by the shoulders, so that I shrank from his anger, shrank from the force of his hands.

  “Don’t waste any time pitying me,” he said. “I’m not easy on those who victimize others. Nor am I patient with willing victims—if that’s what you are. You need waking up to the present truth. But you’ve always been a dreamer, and it’s not up to me to slap you awake.”

  “No, it’s not!” I cried, “You did that once—and I won’t ever let you again. You put me down badly. You could have answered one or two of my silly letters—you could have been a little kind, no matter how foolish and young I was!”

  “What letters?” he said.

  We stared at each other while comprehension grew. I spoke first.

  “Glynis knew what my letters said. She implied you’d laughed over them together. She told me just this morning.”

  The anger that blazed in him frightened me—but it was not directed against me. “I never laughed at you. The tizzy you went into wasn’t funny. It was obviously painful, and you terrified me. I didn’t want to see you hurt, but I couldn’t have you throw yourself at my head—and be ashamed afterwards.”

  “I was ashamed anyway,” I said. “I kept on dying of shame for a long time. But I grew out of it. Of course I did!” Unbidden, the words of an old song went through my mind, denying, “… except when soft winds blow …”

  “Of course you did.” The gentleness was in him again. “And you mustn’t ever think I was immune to your attractiveness. You grew up very suddenly one night, right in my arms. And you nearly threw me in the growing. Believe me, I had to get out of there fast. You were too young, and wholly innocent—though at the same time wholly Eve.”

  I put my arms about myself and hugged my body tightly because I had begun to shiver. “Then—then you might have answered my letters if you’d received them?”

  “Of course I’d have answered. And I’d have done a good job of sounding the uncle and letting you down gently. As I could from a safe distance. I was still in love with Glynis then, still trying to save something of my marriage. But I’d never have let such a beautiful gift as you wanted to give me go without a very humble thank-you. When you didn’t write, I thought you’d bounced right back and got over me.”

  “Oh, I did—I did!” I said, and began to weep quite openly, like a child, with tears running down my face. I tried to explain to him. “It’s—it’s not me crying! It’s that girl I used to be. She’s still there somewhere inside yowling her head off, and I’ve got to be rid of her. Because I’m in love too. I’m terribly, terribly in love with Glen Chandler.”

  “I know,” he said. Very lightly he touched a tear from my cheek with his finger. “Do you know, I tried to get in touch with you not so long ago. I hadn’t forgotten, you see, and I’d wondered about you a lot. When I was on the Coast recently I called to find out about you. But your mother’s sister answered me and told me how ill Mrs. Blake was. So I didn’t want to push. Now I wish I’d found you again before you met Glen Chandler.”

  He turned away abruptly and strode off down the stairs. I stayed by the window, trying to recover. I was shaking with a chill, and churning inside again—and it was all too ridiculously childish to be endured.

  As I stood there waiting for the tears to stop, Glen’s long cream-colored car swept around the far curve, heading our way. Glen was what I needed! I mopped my face and ran for the stairs, calling out to Pandora.

  “They’re coming! They’ve been able to get through!”

  I couldn’t have been more relieved—and it was not just relief that my terrors with Glynis were over. I was relieved because now I could escape from myself, escape that daydreaming girl who was still trying to govern my life.

  Pandora waited for me near the front door, and her eyes seemed a little sorry as they rested on me. I reminded myself that she too belonged to the enemy camp. She had no right to be sorry because I was eager to be in Glen’s arms again—safely there, where he would protect me from his sister. And from a man like Trent McIntyre as well. Even from me, myself. From me, most of all.

  Trent helped me on with my boots. When he touched my ankle and I winced he looked at me searchingly, but I did not answer. After my recent plunge downhill I could expect it to hurt me, but I must not accept any more of his kindness and sympathy. It was too dangerous. He held my coat for me, handed me my hat, watched me strap it on under my chin. But he had nothing more to say to me—or I to him.

  By the time we heard the car door slam in front of the house, I was fully recovered. Outwardly, at least. The McIntyres had been kind to me, and I must thank them. But did they really matter, now that Glen was coming for me?

  I held out my hand to Pandora. “Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you both.”

  I had not offered my hand to Trent, but he took it anyway, and held it for a moment before he let it go.

  “Just be careful, Bernardina,” he said. “And phone if you need us.”

  But I wasn’t able to leave at once, after all. At Pandora’s invitation Nomi came in with Glen. Pandora greeted them cheerfully, insisted that we all have a cup of coffee together before we left. Besides, there was something she wanted to consult with them about.

  We gathered informally around her kitchen table, and the atmosphere seemed far more relaxed and cheerful than it ever did at High Towers.

  “It’s only a few days till Christmas Eve,” Pandora said. “And we haven’t had our bonfire party for years. What do you say we hold it again this year—over here on our side of the lake? We’ll take care of the picnic part, if you’ll bring one of your wonderful mince pies, Nomi, and—”

  As she ran on I hardly listened. Glen sat with one arm across the back of my chair. He had kissed me warmly when he came in. Everything was right in my world again. His quarrel with Glynis no longer spilled over to me. He had recovered his good nature entirely, and he smiled at Pandora in as companionable a fashion as though he had never referred to the McIntyres as belonging to an enemy camp. He did not even try to cut Trent. I almost purred in the shelter of his arm because I was showing Trent the real state of affairs—how much my husband loved me, and I loved him.

  “I suppose we really ought to keep you far away from Colton,” Glen told Pandora. “But if you’ll call a truce on talking about the land you want to buy, I think the bonfire party would be a wonderful idea. And a special treat for Dina. Colton will approve. He likes family rituals.”

  “What about Glynis?” Trent had said nothing till now.

  Glen shrugged. “She’ll do as she pleases, as usual. But I’ll try to persuade her to come. Perhaps it will be good for Keith, too—for all of us to get together. We can start the fire as soon as it gets dark on Christmas Eve.”

  Nomi spoke stiffly, disapproving. “There’ll be trouble.”

  “Don’t play Cassandra this Christmas,” Glen said. “Everything’s going to be fine. Dina’s our talisman for change.”

  I had a feeling that Trent agreed with Nomi, but no further objections were offered, and when we’d finished our coffee, we went out to Glen’s car. I sat beside him in the front seat, and Nomi sat in back. She looked thoroughly sour and disgruntled this morning, and I suspected that she had not yet forgiven Glen for his precipitous flight the night before. When I smiled at her, she only glowered.

  “Now then,” Glen said as we started off on the short drive around the lake, “you’d better tell me what this is all about, Dina. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what Pandora was chattering on the phone. Why did you come across the lake this morning? And how did you manage it?”

  “Manage?” I said, bristling a little at the change in his tone. “I managed by knotting two sheets together and letting myself down from the balcony of our room. After Glynis locked me in.”

  Glen laughed, and I moved a little away from him in the
front seat. “Good for you, Dina. That will show her she can’t play such tricks on my wife. You’ll find her sense of humor gets out of hand at times, but don’t hold that against her. She’s a prankish sort of creature. I am too, you know, but not to the same extent. You mustn’t mind.”

  “I do mind!” I cried.

  I was suddenly furious. I had been submitted to cruel baiting. I had been locked into my room, threatened with injury, and Glen had shrugged everything off lightly.

  “Do you think I don’t mind being a target for witch balls?” I went on stormily. “Or the prospective victim for an animal trap, or having my door locked in the middle of the night, with a promise of no food and no heat? But what I mind even more is the way she laughed about it. I think she’s just a bit mad—your sister.”

  Glen’s right hand flung out and pinned me back against the seat. The car swerved, skidded, and he let me go to bring it back to the road.

  “Don’t ever say a thing like that!” he told me roughly. “If you call Glynis mad, you call me mad. And we’ll neither of us take that sort of thing lightly.”

  “Then you’d better have a look at that piece of alabaster you’re working on when you get home,” Nomi said. “You shouldn’t have gone off and left it yesterday. I told you so on the way. How do you know what will come into your sister’s sane and level head next? She’s mad enough.”

  For Nomi, Glen had no answer. He gave his attention to the car, while I sat trembling with angry dismay beside him. The road on the far side of High Towers was barely passable, and when we came to the snow-clogged driveway we had to get out and climb the hill through deep snow, marked only with rabbit tracks frozen into the crust. Glen helped Nomi and ignored me. Thankful for high boots, I fended for myself, and gritted my teeth over the punishment to my ankle. I felt far too miserable to worry about physical pain.

  When we reached the house Glen ran up the front steps to open the door. For once it was locked and as Glen waited impatiently for Nomi to rescue us with her key, I walked to the end of the veranda and looked out at snow-laden pine branches. The storm had swept on its way, and the sun made a dazzle of the enchanted landscape. Without the wind, everything seemed hushed and breathlessly still, muffled by a snowy world. As still as the boy who stood beneath one of the trees, leaning against its trunk, his rifle in hand as he watched us leave the car and go into the house. I waved to him, but he did not wave back. It seemed to me that, for all his quiet, there was an electric excitement about him. As though he waited for something unholy to happen. He was her son—too much her son, perhaps.

  Glen had gone inside, and I hurried after him as he ran up the stairs. He did not stop at our room, but dashed ahead to the attic, and I followed up the last flight of steps.

  Warm light touched the great skylights, washed across the studios. Glen rushed to the place where he had left the alabaster head. It was not where he had worked on it. For a moment he stood staring at the turntable stand, stunned to find it empty. Then he flung about the attic, searching. I tried to help him and when we found nothing, he rushed for the stairs again, shouting for Glynis as he went down. I heard her voice answer from the direction of the drawing room, but I did not follow him to the lower floor. This was between him and his sister now. Whatever had happened, wherever Glynis had put the head, I did not want to be there during the explosion that might follow.

  Instead, I went to the door of our bedroom and tried to open it. The door was no longer locked, but it jarred against some heavy obstacle that should not have blocked my way. I shoved impatiently and the object—my dressing table bench—moved a little. At the same time something on it teetered and swayed. I made a desperate effort to snatch what stood upon it to safety, but I was too late. With a crash that rang in my ears for days afterwards, the alabaster head fell to the bare floor and lay there, shattered.

  9

  I knelt beside the splintered alabaster, sick with horror, too shocked to think clearly. I could only pick up bits of bruised, translucent stone and try vainly to fit them back into what remained of the piece. Obviously, the head was done for—smashed beyond any possible repair.

  From what seemed a great distance I heard Glen calling to me, asking what had crashed. My voice seemed to crack, and no words came. Then it was Glynis who ran up the stairs and a moment later stood behind me in the open doorway, staring at what lay upon the floor.

  “Oh, no!” she cried, and I looked up at her in desperation. She had done this—not I. But I would be blamed. That was the plan.

  “You’ve managed well, haven’t you?” I said.

  She stared me down with her dark, slightly glittering eyes. “I? What have I to do with this? You’ve been jealous of Glen’s work all along. Jealous because he paid more attention to his beautiful creation than he did to you. So now—”

  “What has happened?” That was Glen on the stairs. I could not bear to see his face—yet I could not take my eyes from him.

  It was like watching someone I loved being fatally stabbed. His expression of curiosity gave way to stunned disbelief, followed by the beginning of pain—and then agony. He pushed me aside and bent over the poor broken thing on the floor. He knelt to pick up a bit that had been a curve of mouth and chin—and the effect upon me was macabre. It was I who lay there shattered. Not a piece of cold alabaster, but my own flesh and blood. It was I who would never be put back together again. This was the moment at the window of the inn multiplied a thousand times. I would rather face fire than the death of hope in Glen’s face.

  When he could manage to speak, he turned to his sister, not to me. “How did it happen?”

  Glynis dropped to her knees beside him and put both arms about him. “Darling—don’t look like that. Don’t suffer so. I can feel it inside me—the pain. What a vicious, cruel thing for her to do.”

  He let her hold him for a moment, as shattered in himself as the alabaster head. Then he moved away from her touch, stood up to face me, and his eyes were like hers—the same glittering black.

  “You’d better tell me,” he said.

  I was too sick at heart to be anything but blunt. “I opened the door and the head fell over and smashed. It was propped up on that dressing table bench. Someone put it there to block the door.”

  Glen moved toward me, and I don’t know what he would have done if Glynis had not stepped between us. “Wait, Glen! Don’t do anything foolish. She’s silly and young. And she has no idea what an artist’s work means to him. Perhaps she didn’t intend it to happen. Glen, listen to me!”

  I flattened myself against the wall, listening in fascinated horror as she went on.

  “Perhaps she thought she was protecting the head from me, when she brought it downstairs to your room after you’d gone yesterday. And I suppose when she went out the window so idiotically this morning—running away like a child—she forgot all about it. Forgot that she would return by the door that it was blocking.”

  To my own ears my voice sounded more shrill than I intended. “Stop it! Stop your lying! Glen, it’s not true. Not a word she has said is true!”

  Glynis smiled sadly, pitying my outburst. “I don’t know whether what I’m saying is true or not. I only meant to give you an out, if you wanted to take it. I’m guessing, of course.”

  “She put it there!” I cried. “I never brought the head downstairs, Glen. I never put it by the door. Why would I do such a stupid, mean thing? Someone would be sure to knock it over and—”

  “Exactly,” Glynis said. “If you won’t take my way out, then you’d better tell him the truth.”

  “Wait a minute—both of you!” There was growing desperation in Glen. “Stop yammering at me. Nothing will bring it back. My work—” he paused as if to breathe, “—my lost work! But I want to know the truth of what happened.”

  “I’ve told you the truth!” I said. “You know I’m not the lying sort, Glen. Believe me—believe me!”

  “Glynis?” he questioned. “Did you put the head there, Glynis
?”

  Her expression was one of sorrow for his loss, but there was serenity in her as well—an air of open frankness that I did not understand. She stood before her brother without touching him, but I had never seen more warmth, more lovingness in her. She spoke simply and convincingly. If I had not known otherwise, I might have believed her myself.

  “You know we’ve never lied to each other, Glen. Not because we might not want to at times, but because when you’ve lied to me I’ve always known. And it’s been the same when I lied to you. I’m not lying now. I haven’t touched the head since you showed it to us yesterday. I certainly haven’t carried it to your room, or set it up as a booby trap behind your door. No one could do that and come out through the door into the hall, as Dina would realize if she had thought her plans through clearly. This is something which could be done only by the person who went out the window. And that wasn’t I, Glen dear.”

  He searched her face gravely—searched and accepted. Then knelt beside the wreckage on the floor and began to gather it up, bit by bit.

  “Your sister is lying, Glen.” I had to say it again. “Your twin, your other self, is lying. But that doesn’t really matter, Glen. It’s your worth that matters. You can start another head. I’ll pose for you. You can start over! Perhaps it will be even better next time.”

  He looked up at me coldly, remotely. “Do you think I could ever see you like this again?” He held up a fraction of eye and brow. “Do you think I could ever recapture what I felt for you?” He gathered the shattered pieces in his hands, and there was no love in him for me. I was still dressed for outdoors in my coat and boots. I turned and without another word went out of the room and down the stairs. Nomi waited in the hallway below, but she did not try to question me, or stop me. I went past her out the front door and around the house.

  The boy no longer stood beneath the sweeping branches of a pine tree. His footprints led along the lake side of the house, and then down the hill. My own tracks, left this morning, when the storm was over, were still in clear evidence. I followed them to the place below the balcony where I had dropped from the end of my knotted sheets. All the marks were there to be seen clearly. The sheets still dangled from the iron post above, flapping when the wind blew. There was no second trail, no evidence that anyone else had come down the same way and then tramped off through clean snow to leave the evidence of passing behind him.