“Atmosphere!” Kay looked round at the room, littered with her own work, the rugging frame, temporarily neglected, leaning in one corner with a tangle of cut rags beside it, and Garry’s seed-flats and boxes everywhere in evidence. “Do you suppose we’ll ever get the place to look like anything again?”
“Leave it to me. I told her we were a busy family, and we might as well preserve the effect. Let’s see: today’s Thursday. We’ve got four whole days to fix up in.”
“We’ll need them,” said Kay darkly.
Once the wire was sent—“Perfectly all right, will expect you Monday.”—even Garry herself felt a little daunted, with a sensation of bridges definitely burned behind her. It would have been one thing for the unknown Z.Y.3 to have arrived during those first days when they were still all excited about the project; it was quite another to have her turning up now after all these weeks, a real and actual person. But having started the business Garry was determined to see it through all the same, and spent the next two days in a fury of sweeping and scrubbing, dragging unwanted articles up to the attic and carrying others down, till in the end Kay had to admit that the guest room at least looked presentable. Ever since Mrs. Cummings sternly shook its dust from her feet it had become mainly a glory hole for this and that. Cleared out now and tidied, with new curtains and the best bedspread (long known in the Ellis family as the White Elephant) carefully displayed, Kay’s one finished rug on the floor and a fine old farmhouse pine table, one of Penny’s auction weaknesses, set for a desk between window and fireplace with a bookshelf above it of Garry’s contriving, it had quite a comfortable air.
“Thank heaven you didn’t cut those old damask curtains up for rugs,” Garry said. “I hung the faded part where it doesn’t show, and the red makes the room look warmer. All the furniture’s waxed, and a job it was, too. The White Elephant looks pretty awful, but it’s brand new and it ought to impress her, and there isn’t a thing else we could use; I hunted through every trunk up there. I hate frilly things myself.”
The White Elephant, a flounced and billowy affair of sea-green rayon taffeta, certainly seemed to have been wafted by some strange mistake into its present setting. The original motive power, as usual, had been Cousin Carrie, on the occasion of “doing over” her own guest room three years ago.
“It doesn’t go with the rest. We never did have the sort of room it belongs to, anyway. (“Thank God!” Garry murmured.) You can bring down the hand-woven cover off my bed and I’ll use the extra army blanket instead.” This was generous on Kay’s part, but since Garry had set the pace she felt bound to keep up with it. “We’ll bring in that small easy-chair from the living room; she’ll want something comfortable to sit in.”
“A gentle hint to stay in her own quarters, you really mean!”
“Well …” They both laughed, remembering Mrs. Cummings and her trailing possessions. “How about cushions? We could spare a few.”
“To recline on in the intervals of composition. We might get a few hints from Emily Post on furnishings for the literary worker. I suppose she’ll bring her own typewriter, but I did remember an ash tray!”
A good deal of joking went into the final preparations, but as train time drew near they were beginning to feel a little qualmish, especially Garry, who had undertaken to do the honors. A kind of reverent hush descended on the household, relieved by occasional nervous giggles. Martin and Caroline looked unnaturally slick about the head and scrubbed about the face, and Caroline in particular kept up an aimless wandering about the room which drove her sisters to desperation.
“Can’t you for goodness’ sake act naturally instead of prowling like a panther in a cage?” Kay demanded. “Take a book and read. Play paper dolls. Do something!”
There was a smothered explosion from Martin, and Caroline retorted: “Well, you said not to get the room all mussed up, and all my books …”
“‘Let’s be talking,’” quoted Garry, and her reminder of the nervous family in Dickens’s pages, trying to appear at ease, set them all off so completely that Kay was still choking when they heard the car just outside.
“There she is!”
Garry, feeling the eyes of the assembled family on her back, strode to the breach. She could hear Edna’s voice, cheery and conversational as she climbed out of the car, which was a relief; none of that disapproving silence which had shrouded Mrs. Cummings’s arrival. Suitcases, typewriter, and rug bundle were handed out; Garry was just hurrying down the front path when a volley of soprano yelps, issuing apparently from the very bosom of the tweed-coated figure coming to meet her, made her jump. A deep voice said:
“Shut up, Arabella, this instant. Don’t be such a little fool.—Are you Miss Margaret Ellis?”
“I’m so glad you came. Pretty cold still, isn’t it? Hello, Edna!”
Garry’s prepared speech had forsaken her. They shook hands—a hearty grip—and in the glare of the car lights she saw thrusting from Miss Emily Humbold’s broad chest a tiny head, the size and color of a small russet orange, with two wrathful eyes glaring from a ruff of tawny fur. Arabella.
“She won’t bite; she just enjoys being disagreeable, that’s all.” Miss Humbold picked up the larger of the two suitcases and followed Garry indoors.
“My sister Kay, Miss Humbold. And Martin and Caroline.” Garry hoped her voice didn’t sound as nervous as she felt, for introductions always muddled her and just now she was feeling anything but the competent “Miss Ellis” who had composed that famous letter. But Kay came to her rescue.
“I do hope you had a comfortable journey up. Would you like to take your things off or sit down and get warm first?”
Miss Humbold pulled off her hat—a plain sensible hat with no nonsense about it. Very like its owner, Garry decided instantly, after one look at the square face, short grizzled hair, and keen eyes.
“Splendid, thank you. We came over the bumps in fine style. Where’s my nice taxi lady, by the way? I owe her money, which isn’t so important, and a great deal of gratitude which is. She rescued me from a pink-eyed young man who seemed to have no idea who you were or where you lived, but insisted on trying to take me there just the same.”
“That was Eddie Cregan,” Edna said, bringing in the luggage. “I guess he don’t know much about the roads this side of town. He don’t know much about anything as a matter of fact, but that never stops him.” She carried the remaining bags through to the bedroom, “That’ll be two dollars, so long as you’re staying with the Ellises here, and I won’t charge you nothing extra for the bumps!”
“Can’t you stay a minute?” This from Garry.
“Mm-mm. I got to get back.” Edna always kept business and pleasure strictly separate. She nodded to Martin, rumpled Caroline’s carefully slicked hair in passing, and added to her late client: “Don’t you go letting that Saint Bernard loose till I get safe in the car, now!”
As the door closed behind her Miss Humbold exclaimed: “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a drive so much!” A remark which established her credit immediately in the Ellis family.
The parlor bedroom looked cozy with red curtains drawn and a fire on the open hearth. Kay and Garry had taken a lots of pains with it—pains that were not wasted, as they could see by the pleased look on their guest’s face.
“It’s just what I like: a room you can work and be comfortable in, and no frills. And that open fire is grand!”
“We’ve got a small stove, but we thought you’d rather have it this way. And there’s all the wood you want for burning. Supper will be ready in just a few minutes, and I’ll bring you some hot water.” Garry cast an anxious glance at the room’s one blot, in her opinion—a little painted washstand tucked away in one corner. “We wanted to give you a screen for that, but there’s not one in the house. Maybe I could fix something else. I guess I warned you this was real country, and all we have is a tin bathtub!”
“I hoped I was going to wash at the pump, from your letter.”
“N
ot this weather!” Garry laughed and Caroline, hanging in the background, gave a smothered snicker.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” said Miss Humbold cheerfully. “Anyway it’s all nonsense, washing in the country. What I like is a little healthy dirt; not city dirt, but the kind that goes with outdoors and a good country appetite. Which reminds me, I’d better feed Arabella now, and then she’ll be more settled.”
The tiny Pomeranian was sidling about the floor uneasily. Her small nose worked; her round eyes that seemed just on the brink of tears were fixed imploringly on her mistress, her slender legs, no thicker than a pencil, trembled with suspicion. Garry stooped to put out a hand, but at her movement there was a startling transformation. The thin legs stiffened, Arabella’s ears went back and she gave a sharp venomous growl like the warning of a rattlesnake.
“Don’t mind her; she’s apt to go off like an alarm clock that way. Just pay no attention to her and she’ll be all right,” Miss Humbold said.
Supper was an easier and more informal meal than any of them had expected. Even Caroline, who had good behavior written all over her, sat at first with her hands in her lap and only lifted her eyes to say “please” and “thank you,” began to unbend; Martin got past the yes-and-no stage and found himself talking naturally, and Garry felt the weight of responsibility dropping rapidly from her shoulders.
“You see,” she said to Kay over the dishwashing, while Miss Humbold was unpacking, “she’s nice. We’re going to get along all right.”
“A good beginning, if we can manage to keep it up. How was the supper?” For that had been Kay’s anxiety.
“Fine!”
Tapping at the door later, to make sure their guest had everything needed for the night, Garry found her stretched comfortably in the armchair, her feet to the fire and an open book on her knee. A blue eiderdown lay across the foot of the bed and from a dent in its fold Arabella’s sharp little eyes peered out, a faint sleepy growl sounded no louder than a sigh.
Evidently Arabella, too, was at home.
There are some people who seem able to settle into a household without, as Garry put it, causing a single ripple. Miss Emily Humbold was one of them. She asked no questions, she had an amazing knack of knowing where everything was without being told, she went her own way and expected the rest of the family to go theirs. She slept late, breakfasted in her room, and sometimes they saw scarcely anything of her till supper time. Long after the girls had gone to bed at night they could still hear the brisk tapping of her typewriter in the room below.
Her habits fascinated Caroline, who had been told beforehand that Miss Humbold was a writer, and that writers were never under any circumstances to be disturbed at work. Passing the open door one day she saw Miss Humbold, cigarette in hand, engaged in pacing up and down the floor, and stood staring at her in open curiosity.
“Kay said you were busy writing a book.”
“I am,” said Miss Humbold, pausing.
“Is that how you do it?”
“It’s how I do most of it.”
“Goodness, I should think you’d get tired. I should think …”
“Caroline!” Kay’s voice sounded a warning from the kitchen, but Caroline only gave a little wriggle.
“I should think it would be lots easier if you sat down.”
“I have tried that,” said Miss Humbold, “but it doesn’t work nearly as well. You see, everybody has their own way of doing things. I like to write walking up and down, but sometimes in town that’s a nuisance to other people, so that’s why I wanted to come to the country. Country floor boards are so much stronger.”
Caroline looked from the solid wide flooring to Miss Humbold’s even more solid figure, and decided that Miss Humbold was probably right.
“Do you s’pose you’ll get it finished soon? I just keep hoping you won’t ’cause Garry says when you do you’ll go back to the city again, and I don’t want you to.”
Miss Humbold’s booming laughter rang out.
“I tell you one thing,” she said, nodding confidentially, “but don’t you go telling anyone else. It’s going to be a mighty funny book if I ever do get it finished!”
In spite of her peculiar methods of book writing Miss Humbold was a person after Caroline’s own heart. She liked going for walks, and whenever possible she took Caroline and Shirley with her. She had a way of talking nonsense with such solemnity that the little girls were never quite sure how far to believe her, but when it came to serious matters she took a profound interest in everything, liked to discuss a question from every possible angle, and could out-argue even Caroline herself.
Arabella was less adaptable. She still flitted noiselessly about the house, reserved and dignified, resisting all approaches. Her one object in life was to guard Miss Humbold in a world beset, according to Arabella, with incalculable dangers.
Neal always affected terror when he caught sight of her pattering at Miss Humbold’s heels. “You watch that bloodhound of yours,” he would call. “I’m scared she’s goin’ to tear my old Sam to pieces if she once gets a sight of him. We ain’t none of us safe with a savage animal like that roamin’ the country!”
And when he dropped in at the house he would first poke his head cautiously round the door. “You sure you got that bloodhound chained safe?”
“That little thing’s got me beat,” he admitted to Miss Humbold one evening when they were all gathered round the stove in the Rowes’ kitchen, Arabella as usual on her mistress’s knee. “It isn’t often I can’t make friends with a dog, but she won’t have a word to say to you. She’s no bigger’n a ball of knittin’ wool but she’s got the spirit of a dog ten times her size, and I bet you if she ever was scared of anything she’d be too proud to let on!”
It was Garry who first succeeded in making friends with her, and that by accident.
From the beginning Arabella and the coon cat had been at daggers drawn. In the house there was no chance of trouble, but on this morning Miss Humbold was at work and Arabella had wandered out by herself. Usually she kept close to the house, but there was something today in the sunshine and the smell of the air tempting to a small dog and she forgot her caution. It was the chance for which the coon cat had been waiting.
Both he and the Rowes’ old tomcat were out in the field below the house, watching each other at a distance as cats will, for there was no love lost between the two of them, but at the sight of Arabella all differences were forgotten: here was a common enemy. They exchanged glances, and each began to stroll forward, stalking her. Arabella saw them. It was an awful moment for a little dog. Her tail drooped; slowly and with dignity she turned round and prepared to retreat.
Garry, coming round the corner of the house, was just in time to see her headed for the stone steps leading up to the terrace, the two cats bearing down upon her, one on either side, with a businesslike air. Arabella, brought up in an apartment, managed stairs with great difficulty. These were high and steep and they must have loomed to her like a mountain. Painfully but proudly she made the ascent step by step, her head held high, never once looking behind her, and it was not until she reached the top that Garry saw actual tears rolling down her cheeks.
She held out her arms and for the first time Arabella sprang into them, burying her little nose in Garry’s neck. The ice was finally broken.
Company
WITH spring in the offing the days passed quickly. There were still occasional flurries of snow that lay for a few hours and melted again—“poor man’s manure” Neal called it, welcoming the good it did to the fields—but in the damp hollows skunk cabbage was already uncurling, song sparrows were singing in the leafless boughs of the apple trees and every sugar maple along the roadside bore its hanging sap pail. Year after year Mary Rowe declared that she wouldn’t be bothered with syrup-making, but every spring she gave in, and it was the children’s task after they got home from school to make the rounds of the scattered trees by fence and wood lot, empty the little s
ap buckets into a big milk pail, and carry the clear watery sap back to be dumped into the flat sugaring-pan over the outdoor fireplace. Twenty gallons to a gallon of syrup, Mary reckoned, and that meant a good many trips back and forth.
Feeling like millionaires with Emily Humbold’s fourteen dollars a week rolling in steadily, Kay and Garry had ordered paint and wall papers from the mail-order catalogue, and for days past the house had been turned upside down, to the horror of Arabella and the coon cat who both loathed the pervading smell of turpentine. The hated drab of the living-room woodwork had given place to a soft pinkish lilac that suited the pale yellow walls, and a deeper shade of pumpkin yellow was chosen for kitchen and pantry. Wall papers had taken longer to decide upon, for most of the patterns were either too elaborate or too modern for Kay’s taste, but they found at last a tiny sprig pattern for Penny’s bedroom, a rosebud chintz for Caroline who liked gay color, and an old-fashioned trellis design in brown on a light background that just suited their own room. Papering had to wait for warmer weather but the painting was almost done, and Kay was counting the days until Bertha, her winter’s duties nobly ended, could be dismantled and carried out piecemeal to the woodshed and the room begin to look at last as it should.
Kay had thrown herself into the job with energy, glad of something to take her mind off her own problems. The Pilliwigs were finished. They had already gone to two publishers and come promptly back again, and Kay was beginning to feel the old hopelessness about trying to do anything from this small corner of the world. Stamps cost money; she was all for giving up and putting the drawings aside, but Garry was insistent and she had sent them off again now for the third time, with no greater hopes of success. Meanwhile the house was something she could give her mind to at least, and with more rewarding effect.