Winterbound

  But Caroline shrank back as Neal lifted the dead fox to his shoulder.

  Mary was waiting for them in the doorway. There was a grand smell of roast goose and mince pie, apple sauce and baking sweet potatoes as they crowded into the kitchen where the big table was already set. A happy joking meal, with the box of candy to finish up with and a bottle of Mary’s special three-year-old dandelion wine to drink a toast to the absent ones.

  “What I call a dinner!” said Jimmie.

  “Two Christmases ago,” Neal said, “I’d been out of work for quite a spell and we were sitting down round this table here to a nice dish of frankfurters and boiled potatoes. I don’t know how come we happened to get the frankfurters, either, but anyway all at once there was a sort of crash outside, right against the woodshed door, and old Sam he started up and near knocked the table over. I went to open the door, and there outside was standing the prettiest two-year-old buck I ever saw, right there in the yard. Some dogs must have been chasing him and he’d come running down the hill, scared nearly to death, and turned right into the dooryard not knowing which way to go. I looked at him, and he looked at me, and then he got his breath and started off again down the pasture, and I said to Mary: ‘Can you beat that! Here comes our Christmas dinner knocking right at the door, and we can’t touch it! ’”

  “You can’t shoot a deer any time?” asked Martin.

  “Not any time, not until they make an open season again, and there hasn’t been that in years. Only if it’s on your own land and you can prove to the game warden they’ve been doing damage. I kind of hate to shoot a deer any time, law or no law, but that was one time I did feel sore about it. There he stood, and there was my gun right in the corner, and just frankfurters for Christmas!”

  There was a log fire burning in the parlor and when the dishes were stacked the four older ones gathered there, while the little girls played house with the doll’s bed and tiny table that Jimmie and Martin had made and painted and the new china tea set and shining pots and pans, and the boys went out again to coast by themselves. Mary brought out a hooked rug she had just started and a boxful of rags ready cut and wound into balls for working, and the sight of the soft faded colors set Kay off immediately on suggestions for design. While their two heads were bent over the hooking frame Garry and Neal played checkers by the fire and Tommy, who had been too excited by Christmas to take his usual nap, rolled and unrolled the colored balls all over the floor with the help of the youngest cat.

  It was nearly dusk when they started home, and as Mary stood in the door with them she said: “I’m certainly going to miss you people if you ever go away. I hope you never do!”

  “If we do, we’ll come back here every year for Christmas!”

  Kay had been so fascinated watching the rug pattern grow under Mary’s fingers that she wanted to start one for herself. Like everything that Kay began it was bound to be something ambitious and unusual. Trunks and closets were rummaged for old material that could be dyed, since very little of the Ellis’s discarded wardrobe was of the colors she wanted. Mary had lent her an extra rugging hook, Neal made a frame, and she wrote off to Edna for dyes and burlap. Garry, who never minded staining her hands, mixed and boiled over the kitchen stove, and the insides of the family saucepans and kettles developed strange hues that refused to scour off. Things hung outdoors were frozen stiff this weather, so the woodshed was draped with lines of dripping color, and Garry’s winter salad, if it ever sprouted at all, threatened to come up striped like Joseph’s coat. Hooking was harder work than Kay realized; her fingertips grew sore tugging the rags through the stiff burlap, but she kept on at it doggedly, neglecting everything else.

  Caroline had no part in these activities except to help in cutting up rags, of which she soon tired. The after-Christmas days began to weigh on her heavily. The boys were busy on their own affairs and Shirley was in bed with a cold. She took to hanging aimlessly about and one morning when the girls wanted to discuss something in peace and quiet Garry turned on her.

  “Can’t you for heaven’s sake find something to do, Caroline! With this whole house and the state of Connecticut to play in, you’ve got to stick right under foot every minute. Now go—scat and vamoose. Beat it!”

  “I’m going,” Caroline ruffled like an angry chicken. “I was just going anyhow. And you needn’t be so smart either and give yourself all those idiotic airs just because you think you look like Amelia Earhart with your hair that way, ’cause you don’t, even if you do keep her picture stuck away in your bureau drawer to look at when you think nobody knows about it.”

  Garry made a feint with the dishcloth, for that particular shaft went home.

  “That child gets worse and worse. I don’t know what’s come over her these days,” declared Kay as the kitchen door slammed. “She doesn’t get it from the Rowes, anyway.”

  “Did you ever hear Shirley when she gets thoroughly mad?” asked Garry, smiling in spite of herself. “Caroline needs Penny’s stern hand; she’s the only one to keep her in order.”

  “She’ll get more than Penny’s hand; she’ll get mine, pretty quick, if she doesn’t mend her ways. I do think little girls when they get that age are absolutely detestable,” Kay seemed to forget that she had ever gone through that same detestable stage herself.

  “Well, school begins Monday, praise be. Let’s get back to this bill situation. How do we stand?”

  “Nowhere.” Kay bent a worried look on the pile of close-written grocery slips in her hand. “They all come in a bunch. I’ve paid the telephone and I thought I’d paid up the meat market, but now half of last month’s things seem to have come on this. And there’s the grocery. Garry, do you remember that we had four dozen eggs last month? We couldn’t possibly. We were getting eggs from Mary right along.”

  “There was the time their hens stopped laying,” Garry remembered. “Mary didn’t have enough to give us. It must have been then.”

  “And butter. What we do with butter I don’t know. Penny said to check our slips over every week and I always mean to, but I guess I haven’t. We must have ordered an awful lot of stuff while the Cummings was here; she was forever telling me we were out of things and I just put them down without looking, I suppose. We did get some extra things over Christmas, and the meat bill’s heavy because I feel with Martin and Caroline walking all that way to the bus every day they’ve got to have good meals when they come home. And then there’s their green vegetables, too. Caroline fusses over cabbage and I always thought spinach was cheap, but here it’s been eighteen cents a pound all this time. And there were Martin’s shoes. Those are extra, but that would only make three dollars off.”

  Garry studied the slips spread on the table, whistling softly.

  “It does seem a lot, just for eating. What do you do—make the list just as you think?” For so far the housekeeping had been entirely in Kay’s hands.

  “I go through the pantry and order what we’re out of and what I think we’ll need. It’s how Penny always did. I guess I’m so scared of running out of things that I get more than we really want, each time. It’s all right only instead of spending less since Penny left we seem to be spending more,” said Kay ruefully. “We’re going to be awfully short this month when we get everything paid up and I hate to ask for more. She wrote us she had that dentist bill down there and I never told her I paid Mrs. Cummings that extra month. Those forty dollars would just put us right, now.”

  “I hope she chokes on them,” said Garry, referring to Mrs. Cummings, not to Penny. “But if she did I suppose we wouldn’t hear about it, so that’s no comfort. I wish there was some way we could make money. The big idea would be to make more, not to spend less. But I don’t suppose there’s a thing.” She gazed round the room. “Rugs. But they take forever to hook, and then who’s going to buy them.”

  “All New England is full of hooked rugs. That’s no good. I did have an idea, but it never came to anything. There was a man I met last spring and he saw some o
f my work and liked it, and he thought maybe he could get me some work illustrating. He knows some magazine people and publishers, and he wanted to show them a few drawings I had. I didn’t hear anything for months and months, and I was kind of hoping about it still, and then he wrote me the other day.” Kay paused. “He said they liked them but it wasn’t the kind of work they wanted, and I didn’t know enough about the way drawings have to be made for reproduction. They all thought what I needed was to take a year in illustrating class before I could turn out anything they’d be able to use. He was quite nice about it, and I guess he took quite a lot of trouble, but there it is.”

  “Kay, what a darn shame! You never said a word about it.”

  “There wasn’t any good. I wouldn’t have told you now, only I hate to be just sitting round at home as if I wasn’t even trying to do anything.”

  “You can draw,” said Garry hotly.

  “I can draw, but I can’t draw well enough. Oh, I know all that, but what does make me mad is people wanting to give you good advice and telling you all the things you know for yourself when they don’t even understand your circumstances. I know well enough what I ought to be doing, but I just can’t do it. I need to work and study and see things, and maybe go around and talk to publishers myself, and learn a whole lot I don’t know, but you can’t do all that from up here.”

  “Why can’t you go to town for a while. I can look after things.”

  “It wouldn’t be any use,” Kay shook her head. “I’ve just got to wait, that’s all. I don’t know why I have to spill all this on you, except that I can’t help getting sore sometimes when there’s such a lot I want to do and no chance of doing it. I think everybody ought to be selfsupporting by the time they’re nineteen, and look at me!”

  There was a tap at the door. Neal came in.

  “Good morning. Did I break up the meeting?”

  “Not a bit. We were just having a ways-and-means committee.” Kay bundled the slips back into the table drawer.

  “You’re lucky, at that,” Neal grinned. “We can't even do that over home. We got the ways, but we ain’t always got the means.”

  Garry laughed. “Neither have we, always. How’s Shirley?”

  “Better. She’s cutting out paper dolls on the sofa. Mary wanted to know could you spare us a little coffee, ’cause I won’t be gettin’ down to the store till around supper time. And I thought I’d just take a look how your woodpile was holdin’ out. I guess there’s likely to be a cold snap coming on most any day, now.”

  “More snow?” Kay asked.

  “It’s banking up for that, by the looks of it. The way I figure it, we’ll get a good old-fashioned snowfall, an’ then our cold weather’ll follow right back of it. If we do, Garry, I’ll get the old sleigh out and we’ll all go sleigh riding. Pack all the kids in and have a real family party.” “Grand!”

  Kay didn’t look so happy. “Do you mean it’ll get colder than this?”

  “Why, we haven’t had any real cold yet,” Neal told her. “Not what I call cold. This here is just mild ordinary winter weather. You wait and see.”

  That evening Garry, looking through a pile of papers and magazines that she was tidying up, stopped to reread a few lines that had caught her eye.

  “Listen, Kay. Look at this. Here’s the very thing we want.”

  It was a copy of a weekly literary review that had come with some other magazines from Cousin Caroline, who remembered the country relatives from time to time when papers accumulated. Garry pointed to the advertisement at the foot of one column:

  WANTED. By writer, quiet

  room and plain board with country

  family, or would share small

  cottage. Working privacy essential.

  Reasonable. Z.Y.3.

  “You mean a sort of paying guest? You’re crazy!”

  “I’m not. It would settle our whole question. Listen. She can have the parlor here. It’s warm and quiet, we’ll fix it up nicely and she can shut herself in and write all day if she wants to. And she can have meals with us, or separately. If she wants privacy she needn’t see anything of us if she doesn’t want to; so much the better. That means we won’t have to do any entertaining or bothering about her. And it would be someone staying in the house, too, and that will stop Penny worrying—you know she did, last letter, about our being alone here. And instead of us paying her, she’ll be paying us. I think it’s a swell idea!”

  Garry threw the paper down with her characteristic air of having decided everything, once and for all.

  “But Garry—we don’t know a thing about the kind of person she is, even. Suppose it’s someone terribly fussy?”

  “Only nice people would advertise in that kind of paper, anyway,” said Garry firmly. “And if she’s fussy, she can’t be any fussier than the Cummings was. It says plain board, and heaven knows our board is plain enough to please anyone. When she’s here, maybe we can afford to have it a little fancier. What date is that paper?”

  Kay turned it over.

  “Three weeks old.”

  “Never mind. There’s always a chance she hasn’t found anything to suit her yet. Kay, we’ll have to get that letter written tonight, right now.”

  Garry began to rummage in the desk for paper and envelopes.

  “It mightn’t be such a bad idea,” Kay considered. “If we only knew . . .”

  “Knew what?” Garry’s head lifted impatiently. “I tell you it’s a swell idea. Sit down here. How would you begin?”

  Kay thought it over, staring at the sheet of paper in front of her.

  “Dear Madam, having seen your advertisement . . .”

  “No,” said Garry after a moment. “That’s what everybody would write. We don’t want to sound like a tea room or a boarding house. Leave this to me, Kay. We’ve got to write something that will make her interested, to start with.”

  She took a pad and pencil and settled herself in the sofa corner, overalled knees drawn up to her chin as usual in moments of deep thought.

  “Don’t put a whole lot of stuff that will make her think the place nicer than it is,” Kay advised, beginning after the first shock to get really interested.

  “What do you think I am? I’m going to tell her the worst, then there won’t be any come-backs.”

  For ten minutes Garry scribbled, with many pauses and a good deal of scratching out. Presently she said: “Listen to this:

  “Dear Z.Y.3,

  “If you really want a place in the country where you can write in peace and quiet we have a comfortable ground-floor room, with open fireplace. We are four in the family, and my sister is an artist. This is genuine country. We have no modern conveniences except the telephone. You could have plain meals either with us or by yourself and we can undertake that you will not be disturbed in your work unless you want to be, because we are usually pretty busy ourselves. There is no radio and we are seven miles from the railroad. We like it here and I think that you would.

  “Yours sincerely,

  “MARGARET ELLIS.

  “And a darn good letter too, I call it.”

  “Why did you say that about me?” Kay objected.

  “To show her the sort of people we are. She’d want to know, if she’s going to live with us. And you can’t say I haven’t been strictly truthful.”

  “You’ve been too truthful,” Kay groaned. “Do you suppose anyone in their senses would want to come here, after reading that?”

  “Anyone like you or me would. Like me, anyway. And most writers hate radios; that’s why I said we hadn’t got one. So she won’t have that to worry about.”

  “She’ll have plenty else! You never said what we would charge.”

  “Do I have to? I thought she’d say that. Good Lord, Kay, what should we charge?”

  “Five dollars a week?”

  “You’re nuts. Fifteen is more like it.”

  “Garry, we can’t! There isn’t even a bathroom.”

  “I sort of hinted a
s much, didn’t I? There’s our old zinc tub in the kitchen, and we’ll include Cousin Carrie’s bath salts, free. Now listen here. This has got to cover our grocery bill, don’t forget. Down at that farm over near the lake they charge sixteen a week; Mary told me. But they give you cream, and we don’t have cream. Suppose we charge her fourteen? That’s fifty-six dollars a month, and if you’re a writer and want peace and quiet—and that’s what she’s willing to pay for—you just try living anywhere for fifty-six dollars a month, and see what you get!”

  “It seems an awful lot to me.”

  “We’ve got to be businesslike,” said Garry. And she added at the foot of the letter: “Would fourteen dollars a week be too much ?”

  It was not until after the letter, duly copied and addressed in Garry’s square sturdy hand, had been stamped and left on the mantelpiece for next morning’s mail, and Garry herself was just dropping off to sleep in bed, the covers pulled up to her ears, that there came a dubious whisper from across the dark room.

  “Garry ... I was thinking. That advertisement never said it was a woman. Suppose it’s a man?”

  Garry’s voice was muffled by blankets.

  “All the better. If it’s a man we can make him chop our kindling for us. He’ll want some sort of exercise.”

  Kay sighed.

  “Well, I suppose we’ll know when we get an answer. If we ever do.”

  But a good deal was to happen before that answer came.

  Winterbound

  NEAL was right. Next morning there was an ominous grayness in the air. By midday the snow began to fall, first in big whirling flakes, then closer and denser, shutting out the landscape like a white curtain, packing against the door sill and drifting high in the hollows. The children came home from school shouting and red-cheeked, snow clinging thickly to their clothing and sifted down their necks, shaking themselves like dogs as they ran in through the door that Garry held ajar against the rising wind.

  “There’s four inches now. If it keeps up Jimmy says we won’t get down to the state road tomorrow, not unless they get the snow plows out.”