“Look out, Doris, don’t go near the table. A candle is a dangerous thing. We’ll have to get the lamps in shape as soon as possible.” Eleanor lifted the candle and set it on the high mantel.
“Lamps!” said Betty, aghast. “For cat’s sake! You don’t mean kerosene lamps? I draw the line at that. You can count me out if that’s what you have in mind. I never saw such folly! It’s perfectly poisonous! Chester must have gone crazy!”
“And now,” said Chester, coming back, stamping the snow from his feet, “isn’t this cozy?” He beamed about on them with almost a happy look on his tired, lined face.
“I’ll say it is,” said Betty contemptuously. “Cozy as the tomb! I should have thought you could have found a cemetery nearer home, but perhaps this one is cheaper!”
Chester looked at her as if she had struck him, an ashen shadow stealing over his face, but Eleanor, deliberately cheery, called forth:
“Yes, dear, it is wonderful! I’m going to love it, I’m sure. Now Chester, we need some more light, and let’s see how many beds we can get ready in a jiffy. These children need to be put to bed; they are too cross to live with.”
“Yes,” said Chester. “I have five pounds of candles here.” He picked up a box by the door. “If I remember rightly there are candlesticks in every room. We’ll light the fires in the airtight stoves, and you don’t know how quickly you will have nice comfortable rooms, everywhere. Old-fashioned stoves beat the furnaces for quick heat every time.”
He led the way up a quaint staircase leading from a large hall covered with old oilcloth in tessellated gray and black blocks. The stair rail was mahogany, and the risers were painted white.
Eleanor followed Chester, urging sleepy little Doris. The other children remained huddled in the big living room where they had arrived, looking about with alien eyes.
“Some dump!” commented Chris, slumping into a grandfather chair that would have been almost worth its weight in gold in a New York antiques shop.
“Isn’t it perfectly poisonous!” responded Betty, turning from a survey of a snow-plastered windowpane. “I’ve a notion to go out and sit in the car.”
“You can’t,” said Chris shortly. “It’s gone!”
“Gone? What do you mean? I mean our car.”
“Well, I say it’s gone.”
“But how could it go?”
“Jim drove it. Whaddaya ‘spose he came along for?”
“You don’t mean we’re stranded in this desert without a car?”
“I said it.”
“Chris Thornton! I shall go raving insane!”
“Good stunt!” responded Chris. “Might enliven the desert.”
“Chris, did you manage to get anything?”
“Not a red.”
“I’m just ready to pass out.” “Same here.”
Jane eyed them knowingly.
“You needn’t be so terribly mysterious. I know what it is you’re talking about. Cigarettes. I’m not dumb! I guess I’ve smoked cigarettes, too!”
“Shut up, you baby! We were speaking of chocolates. If you go babbling what we say you’ll get what’s comin’ to you, that’s all,” threatened Chris.
“So will you if you call me baby anymore,” said Jane impishly. “I’m going upstairs and choose the best bed!” And she vanished into the hall.
The big old farmhouse had a hall running through the center upstairs with rooms on each side, and then down three steps from the top of the stairs, rooms rambled off again over the back wings of kitchen and sheds. They seemed vast chambers with their great, old four-poster beds and their fine, old mahogany chests of drawers. Eleanor, tired as she was, could not refrain from laying an admiring hand on the rare old wood and exclaiming over some particularly fine old specimen of a chair or little bedside table.
She chose the right-hand front room for Chester and herself, with the room connecting just in back of it for Jane and Doris. Betty was assigned to the room across the hall from her mother’s, and Chris and John in the room in back of that. There would be plenty of room for each of the children to have separate quarters later if it seemed feasible, but tonight the main thing was to get everybody to bed as comfortably and quickly as possible. There were airtight stoves downstairs with drums in the two back upper rooms, and a gradual warmth was beginning to penetrate the whole house, though it still felt damp and chilly.
“Chris,” called Chester, “you and John come with me and bring up several armfuls of wood. We’ve got to keep fires going all night.”
“We can’t go out in all this snow and get wood,” growled Chris.
“You don’t have to,” laughed his father. “Come this way. If I’m not much mistaken you’ll find the kitchen shed full. Come on, you wouldn’t make much of a pioneer.”
“I should say not!” responded Chris disgustedly. “I think the world has got beyond that stage. There’s no sense in living the primitive life in these days!”
He flung a meaningful glance at Betty with whom he had just been discussing their father’s failure in merciless terms. They both felt that he had no right to fail when he was responsible for them. They felt that he was taking their discomforts in altogether too blithe a manner and needed reproving.
Chester carried a candle and set it on a high shelf in the kitchen and put another in the kitchen shed. Chris came slowly after him. He stared about at the great rambling shed with its rough floor and high rafters, unlike any room he had ever looked upon before, reaching out into weird shadows of seemingly illimitable proportions. It might have been a barn or storehouse, a warehouse perhaps, but what a peach of a gym it would make! His mind wandered to basketball vaguely. Perhaps if one worked things rightly there might be some fun left in the desert after all, that is provided there were any natives near enough in the wilderness to make up two teams.
Along the entire length of one wall was a huge pile of wood, neatly cut in stove lengths and fireplace lengths, and over it the one candle shed the weirdest play of light and shadow. Chris reluctantly consented to carrying an armful of wood into the living room, and slowly returned for another, while John, fully awake now and delighted with the kitchen shed, carried three.
Betty and Jane meantime had been requisitioned for bed making, and the house took on an atmosphere of liveliness, with cheerful voices calling back and forth and candles flickering in every room. The old house had not seen the like for almost twenty years. Chester came up the stairs with an armful of wood humming an old tune: “We’ll stand the storm, it won’t be long. We’ll anchor by and by—”
Unconsciously he had chosen an old favorite of his father’s. It seemed somehow to have been a part of his childhood waiting for him in the old house, come to his heart to welcome him. As he went down the stairs for another load he began to hum and the old words came back to him unconsciously:
“Should earth against my soul engage, soul engage,
Should earth against my soul engage, soul engage,
Should earth against my soul engage, and fiery darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan’s rage,
And face a frowning world. We’ll stand—”
“Listen to Dad!” said Betty with a wondering look on her face as she paused in the flinging of a warm, sweet-smelling sheet across her great-grandmother’s bed to Jane, who was supposed to be helping make the beds. “I never heard him sing like that! Never!”
“I think it’s going to be fun!” declared Jane, catching the sheet and vigorously tucking it in on her side.
Betty suddenly froze into a frown.
“Help yourself!” she said bitterly. “Not me! I’m not accepting things like this when they’re wished on me.”
“What’r ya going to do about it?” mocked Jane.
“I’ll find something to do, mighty quick, and don’t you forget it, Jane!” affirmed Betty mysteriously.
“Well, if you want my opinion, Betts, you’re a fool not to take the fun while it’s going. All us here together like t
his, and Dad and Mother playing along with us, I think it’s going to be great.”
“It’s poisonous, Jinny, just perfectly poisonous! And you’ll find out quick enough. Just wait till you have to fill a lamp, precious! I’ve heard about lamps. They smell to heaven, and you never can get your hands clean afterward. Sort of a Lady Macbeth act, darling. Not all the rain in the sweet heavens and all that sort of thing. You know you’ve had that in school. Only in this case it would be snow, of course. Did you ever see snow like that? I ask you. Look at the windowpanes, perfectly obliterated, and there’s a pile of snow, on every windowsill! Will you look? Isn’t this the grandest dump for the Thornton family to arrive in, caught like rats in a trap.”
“I think it’s fun!” said Jane stoutly.
“Help yourself!” yawned Betty. “I pass.”
“Betty, dear,” called Eleanor, “come down and get something to eat.”
“Thanks! But no way!” shouted Betty rudely. “I’m going to bed.”
So Eleanor climbed the stairs once more and brought Betty a long, thick nightgown with long sleeves that she had just unearthed from the old attic trunk.
“What! Wear that thing?” refused Betty. “Not while there’s life left in me to protest! I’d never expect to emerge if I once put on that antique. That’s one that Noah wore in the ark, Mums.”
“You’ll be glad of it when you find out how cold it is here,” urged Eleanor earnestly.
“Then I’ll wait till I’m glad, but I think you’ve guessed wrong. I’ll never be glad, and I think I prefer to die to the cause of suitable garments for sleeping. So if you find your little Elizabeth frozen stark in the morning you can lay it to bringing her up to the North Pole against her will, and not to the lack of Grandmama Noah’s best nightgown.”
“Never mind, Eleanor,” said Chester, coming by the door just then. “She’ll come to it. Let her find out for herself. That’s the best way.”
Betty cast him a gleam of hate and resolved that she would freeze solid before she ever put on a thick nightgown.
At last they were all stowed away in their beds, most of them glad to get the thick garments from other days and the hot water bottles that Eleanor had tucked in beside them. There were heaps of blankets and down quilts over all, and piles of wood by every stove. The house had lost its freezing atmosphere and was filling with a healing warmth, and only Eleanor’s teeth were chattering as she crept in at last to a well-earned rest and put her tired head on the pillow. Too weary she was to realize that it was less than forty-eight hours since she had lain and worried about this trip, and now here she was! Just glad to lie down and be warm, and know that her brood were safe for the night at least. There were thousands of things that might happen tomorrow, of course, but for the night they were safe.
The candles left in the hall burned down to the sockets and blinked out. The house lay dark and still. The fires banked down, stopped crackling, and all the family slept. While outside in the wide, wild night the soft flakes continued to come down, wilder and faster as the night wore on.
And the next day was the Sabbath.
Chapter 12
When the morning dawned it was scarcely perceptible, the air was so altogether filled with the beating, flying, drifting snow. Snow from above, snow from below, snow from all sides, out and over and under, a new white world, such as the children had never seen before. The old rambling farmhouse seemed almost snowed under, and only the smoke from the big-mouthed chimneys gave any signs of life.
They slept till nearly noon, and when they awoke, the whiteness prevailed over all the earth, and the air. It was as if they had been let down, house and all, to the bottom of the ocean, and were there amid the drifting, hurling, eddying deep, only that the water was white, white snow in tempestuous motion. They were as isolated as if they had been wrecked at the bottom of the ocean. They stood at their various windows and looked out with varied feelings.
Chester’s face was almost exultant. They were here! They were all here! And none of the terrible things that had attacked his children could get to them! Not for a while at least. So far they were safe.
If they had waited a day later they could not have made it up the mountains. The drifted snows would have shut them out, and perhaps he would never have been able to manage it again, never have been able to save them from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But now they were here, and God had shut them in with His snow and His terrible cold.
It was curious how old phrases from the Bible kept continually coming to him and fitting in with things. Was it just because he was here where these walls had so often echoed to the reading of the scripture, and where his father’s and mother’s voices in prayer had so often been heard? Had these things perhaps lingered in the atmosphere, and some undiscovered arrangement of his soul had become a human radio to set them vibrating once more? He had read that someone was trying to perfect an instrument so delicate and so far reaching that we might sometime be able to hear the voices of Moses and the prophets, of Jonah and Paul, and Washington and Lincoln again. Well, perhaps some such thing had happened here. He turned from the window with a reverent look in his eyes and called:
“Eleanor, come and see the world! We must have slept till Christmas!”
Eleanor’s first word was an exclamation of anxiety: “Chester, what can have happened to Michael and Jim?” Chester’s face sobered.
“I think they are all safe,” he said. “An hour would have got them down through the village and over the pass. After that it was all clear sailing, just a big snowstorm. They reached a good hotel and were fast asleep probably before we got to bed last night. Michael said there was no risk whatever. Besides, remember it is high noon, twelve full hours since they left us. There weren’t three inches of snow in the pass when we crossed it, and it did not start to blow till after daylight. I was up putting more wood on the sitting room stoves, and I heard it commence.”
Eleanor looked up at him and found to her surprise that he did not look as worn as she had expected.
“I believe you are enjoying it, Chester,” she said wistfully. “I believe it was the very thing you needed.”
“Is it going to be so very hard for you, dear?” he asked with sudden anxiety.
“Oh, no!” she said, veiling her apprehension. “I believe it is almost interesting. This is such a fine old house, and there is so much to see. And we haven’t been all alone together like this without anything coming between or anything we had to do since the babies were little.”
“Do you feel that too, dearest?” he said and stooped to kiss her.
Across the hall Jane was wriggling into her clothes underneath the sheets to keep from having to stand on the cold floor, and Betty was protesting at being woken up.
“For Pete’s sake, get out of this bed!” said Betty crossly.
“Mamma says to get up. It’s time to get dinner. Did you know we had slept all the morning, Betts?”
“I don’t care if I sleep all the afternoon, too,” snapped Betty. “Go away and let me alone. There’s nothing to do in this dumb dump but sleep. I don’t care if I never wake up.”
“Oh, but Betts! You wanta wake up and look out! It’s grand. The sky and the earth are all mixed up, and you can’t see anything. Not anything but just snow!”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t see what there is nice about that. I think it is poisonous! Just perfectly poisonous!”
“Oh, but it’s going to be fun! It’s going to be wonderful!”
“It isn’t my idea of fun,” growled Betty and turned over to sleep more.
The twins, however, were overjoyed at the snow. Later when Jane had succeeded in rousing Betty, they all sat down to a belated meal, which was neither breakfast nor lunch. Chris began to ask questions about sledding and skating.
“Oh, for the matter of that,” said Chester, “there is a place only a few miles from here where they ski. It’s one of the famous hills where they have the big contests. Some record jumps have been
made by the great ski champions there, both Canadian and American.” “Really?” said Betty, surprised out of her gloom. “Absolutely!” said Chester with something of his old twinkle in his eyes.
Betty remembered her role and relapsed into silence, but Chris began to ask questions again.
“Have you ever been to one of those contests, Dad?” “I sure have,” said Chester, his eyes taking on a pleasant look of reminiscing. “It was the last time I was up here in winter. I went over with your uncle Clint. Let me see, that was, I’m not just sure what year. Surely I’ve told you about it before.”
“Oh, gee! Why weren’t we along?” breathed Chris. “It must have been the winter your mother had you all down in Florida, the time Betty was so sick. I thought surely I would have told you about it, though. It was wonderful.
“You know the whole course up there is outlined with evergreens, and strung with a perfect blaze of pennants of all colors. It looks like a vast border of flowers against the whiteness of the snow. People come from all around to see one of those meets. Perhaps we’ll find a way to get there sometime ourselves. They come in sleighs and automobiles from miles away. It is a great affair. Bing Anderson made his big record leap that day of one hundred and ninety feet.”
“Gee, I’ve seen ‘em in the movies,” said Chris, greatly excited, “but I never realized they leaped that far.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve read that Nels Nelsen several years later leaped over two hundred and forty feet!” Chris edged his chair nearer.
“I certainly would like to see that!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I don’t see how it’s done!”
“We’ll go over someday and look at the track. There’s always somebody over there practicing. You know how the course is built, don’t you? It’s like this—here’s the takeoff, here’s where they gain their first momentum—”
Chester took knives and salt shakers and laid it all out, with Great-Grandmother’s Wedgwood sugar bowl for the starting hill and crumpled napkins for other points.
The Prodigal Girl Page 12