Winterbound

by Margery Williams Bianco

  The color in the living room was all right, she decided, touching the mantel shelf gingerly with a finger to see if yesterday’s final coat was dry. It was a queer shade; there had been an awful moment when neither she nor Garry felt quite sure about it, but in the end it proved exactly what she wanted, something that took warm tones in the shadow and seemed to change in color with the changes of light in the room.

  One more coat to the pantry shelves, and then everything would be fairly straight. She pulled on her rubber gloves, picked out the yellow paint brush, and set to work.

  Emily Humbold, driven from her typewriter not so much by the smell of paint as by what she called one of her “woolly spells,” which overtook her every so often, had spent the morning happily trundling manure in a wheelbarrow from the Rowes’ barnyard to the new flower border which Garry was making on the south side of the house. If anyone had told the Ellises a month ago that their literary paying guest would spend her free time wheeling manure or shifting rocks they would have been much surprised. But it was Emily who had marched over to borrow the wheelbarrow that morning, and would relinquish it to no one; it was Emily who had dragged or excavated most of the big rocks to finish the terrace that Garry had begun last year.

  “My parents made a big mistake sending me to college,” she said one day. “They should have brought me up to be a road maker or a stone mason. Think of all this solid bone and muscle going to waste!”

  It didn’t go to waste here, for there was plenty of use for it. With Emily Humbold on one end of a crowbar, even the most stubborn rock was bound to yield.

  She sat on the empty wheelbarrow now, a sturdy figure in her short tweed skirt and gray sweater, watching Garry dig. The smell of burning brush drifted over from across the road where Neal too was making ready for spring.

  A gray roadster, coming up the hill, slowed up by the bars and stopped, and Garry turned her head just in time to see a young man bearing down upon them, waving his hat.

  “Is it Emily, or do my eyes deceive me? Emily, of all people, and having a thoroughly good time as usual!”

  Arabella crouched under the wheelbarrow, broke into a volley of barking, and Miss Humbold picked her up before she turned a calm face on the visitor.

  “Our absentee landlord. Well, well!”

  She held out a broad grimy paw across Arabella’s head and added to Garry: “This is my nephew Charles, in case you never met him. I believe he owns another small neglected property somewhere up the road.”

  Garry felt her cheeks burn, remembering the last occasion when she had seen this same Charles, and wondering if Jane had told him about it.

  “I never knew …”

  “No, it isn’t a thing one would boast about,” Emily put in. “I daresay you never expected to see me up here, did you?”

  “One can expect to see you anywhere,” Charles retorted, sitting on the edge of the wheelbarrow beside her. “The last time I saw you was two years ago. You were on all fours, crawling out of a cave somewhere in the Ozark Mountains. Never shall I forget that vision! So when I spotted you just now—what brought you up here anyway?”

  “Nothing to do with you, so you needn’t get so suspicious. I came on the perfectly good invitation of some nice people whom I had never even met, and I’m having the time of my life.”

  “So I see. Well, I hope they’re beginning to know by now just what they’ve let themselves in for!” He smiled at Garry. “A visit from my Aunt Emily is rather like an earthquake; you’re never quite the same again. I’ve known people who actually barricade their doors when they see her coming.”

  “An Ellis fears nothing,” said Emily loftily. “That’s one reason why we get along together so well.” She rose, brushing the earth from her skirt. “Don’t for heaven’s sake go telling the rest of the family where I am, now. I came up here to collect my scattered brains and have a quiet place to work in, which only shows that one can never hope to get away with anything in this world. Since you don’t seem to have troubled to meet your tenants before, you might as well come in now and get it all over with.”

  She linked her arm in her nephew’s and marched him up to the house, while Garry flew round behind the woodshed to poke her head through the kitchen window and warn Kay of their unexpected caller. The kitchen was a mess; saucepans and dishes piled haphazard on floor and table together with all the other contents of the pantry, including half a cold ham and the remains of yesterday’s stew in a soup tureen, while Kay, in a paint-smeared smock and with a blue handkerchief tied over her head, stood putting the last touches on the pantry shelves. Garry, not wanting to raise her voice, went through a mysterious pantomime, her head framed in the open window, and Kay was just exclaiming: “For heaven’s sake can’t you say what you want!” when Emily and Charles appeared on the threshold.

  Garry ducked promptly, leaving Kay to pick her way across the household chattels.

  “I’m afraid we’re in an awful mess; won’t you go through to the living room and I’ll be right in.”

  She dragged her gloves off, not sure from Garry’s pantomime and this sudden descent of their landlord (for Garry had managed to convey that much) whether he hadn’t come to demand the house back at a week’s notice and racking her brains guiltily to remember if she had sent off last month’s rent check on the proper day. Emily Humbold meantime was enjoying the situation; it was a chance to pay off some old scores against this nephew who always made fun of her, and she forced Charles to admit that he had never set foot in the little house before, except on the first day he came to look over the property, and that it was no thanks to him, as she sternly put it, that the walls hadn’t crumbled and the roof fallen in on his tenants’ heads.

  “You’re just typical of all these property owners who disgrace the housing situation in this country,” she boomed at him. “You rent places out without taking the slightest interest in their upkeep. Come on, Garry; while we’ve got him here you’d better show him all the cracks you had to stuff up this winter, and all the places where the roof leaks. And how about that kitchen pump, while we’re at it?”

  “You just shut up; you’re as bad as Arabella, every bit!” Charles told her. “Miss Ellis, I hope you weren’t too awfully uncomfortable this winter. I left everything to the agent, but I had meant to come up here myself some time and make sure.”

  There was a great difference between the house as he had seen it on that first visit, with unscraped walls and smoky ceilings, the dust and litter of its last occupancy still strewing the floors, and the way it looked now. Kay got over her first shyness as she showed him what they had done, and in a few minutes they were deep in the discussion of beams and floor boards, Dutch ovens and old pine paneling, for this was something about which she felt thoroughly at home and could talk freely.

  Garry beckoned Emily out into the kitchen, and pulled the door to.

  “You never told us about Mr. Bassett being your nephew, all this time.”

  Emily Humbold smiled, for there was something accusing in Garry’s voice.

  “Listen, young woman. I’ll tell you exactly how the whole thing happened. When I got your letter I liked it. Out of nearly fifty answers it was the only one that was frank and sensible and friendly, and with a sense of humor, too. But it reached me late. I’d already taken a room for a month in a farmhouse up in New York state and your letter was forwarded on to me there. I put it aside and I thought maybe I’d write to you anyway; I wish now I had. Then …” she paused a second, “I happened to be spending the week-end with some friends in East Warley the same time that Jane was there. She told me what happened on that ride she took. And that settled me. I put two and two together and I went straight back and packed up my things, and I wrote to you the week after. I wasn’t going to tell you all this, but as things have happened I might just as well. I heard Charles had bought a house somewhere out this way, but until Jane told me about your helping her that afternoon and who you were I’d never connected your letter with this pla
ce at all.”

  “It wasn’t anything. It just happened we both got lost on the same road, and if it wasn’t for her horse getting scared we might never have met at all.”

  “I suppose Jane never told you that she’d taken a turn of the rein round her wrist, like the young idiot she is, and that with the horse dragging that way she couldn’t have let go if she’d wanted to? Well, think it over. I happen to be rather fond of Jane.”

  “So that was it. I thought she looked scared.” Garry was sober, remembering that drop of the ledges and Jane’s face when she first caught up with her. “No, she never told me that.”

  “She wouldn’t. You and I and Jane are the only ones that know it now. Charles would have given her the devil, for she’s ridden enough to have more sense, but I guess all he’ll ever know is that she lost her way and you helped her home. We’ll leave it at that. Only I did want you to know some time how I felt about it.”

  Garry looked at the kitchen clock, perched temporarily on the bread box. “How about some lunch?”

  “Can we do it?”

  “I guess so. There’s cold ham and potato salad, and we’ll have something hot to drink with it if I can ever get at the stove again!” Garry laughed. “Take him off for a walk, and Kay and I will fix things. I didn’t mean to act mad, and it was just my darn pride anyway, for I spent one whole evening composing that letter and I did think I’d turned out a masterpiece, though Kay swore you’d never want to come once you’d read it!”

  “Little she knew me!” Emily retorted.

  As they strolled up the hill towards the Bassett house Emily said to her nephew:

  “I hope you realize those young people did every bit of the work on that place themselves, and that they spent their own earnings buying the paint and wall paper. You can see for yourself what they’ve made of it. That eldest girl has a real feeling for line and arrangement, and her taste is instinctive, though she hasn’t much experience. You might do worse than let her have a hand in experimenting with your place. She’s restless and ambitious, but she puts her whole heart in anything she undertakes, and though she’s all for painting just now I think she’d do a great deal better in work of this kind, if she had a chance to find it out for herself.”

  “She’s done a nice job there, and she knows quite a lot; I found that out. I did feel a bit ashamed, but when I told the agent to let the house to year-round tenants I was thinking of local people, and how could I know it would be anyone like this? How about the rest of the family?”

  “The father is an archaeologist, away on a two-year expedition. The mother is in New Mexico at this minute, taking care of some sick relative. The girls undertook to manage for themselves this winter, and they have certainly done it.”

  “How did you come into the picture?”

  “Through advertising for a place to board—the kind I wanted. Garry saw the ad and answered it, and I wish you’d seen her letter. I’ll show it to you some day. Sort of ‘I’ll tell you the worst, and if you still like it you can take a chance.’” Emily chuckled. “I decided a young woman with that much sense was worth knowing. They’ve turned the house upside down for my comfort, I pay them fourteen dollars a week and they’re scared that’s too much.”

  “That the red-headed one?” Charles asked.

  “She’s the business head of the family, and a lot more too. She’s keen on gardening and wants to go in for it practically—take a job with some nurseries down the road, if she can get it. She might, for she isn’t afraid of work, or of anything else for that matter.”

  “She’d be a nice friend for Jane. They’re about the same age.”

  “I thought of that, too,” said Emily innocently.

  Lunch was all ready when they returned, with a transformed Kay as hostess, and after there was another visit to the big house, Emily this time staying at home to work, as she said, but actually feeling that the three young people would get on more easily alone.

  Garry, entering respectably through the front door this time, wandered off by herself to explore the upper rooms once more, leaving Charles and Kay below. It was the first time Kay had set foot in the house and nothing could drag her at first from the big living room with its lovely old paneling and perfect proportions, nor the entry with its graceful curving stair rail and wide fanlight above the door. Sagging floors, crumbling plaster, meant nothing to her, for the gracious spirit of the old house still survived its years of neglect and disrepair, and her quick eyes saw only the beauty that care and money could so easily restore.

  “When I first saw this one room,” Charles told her, “I knew I wanted the place. I didn’t care what the rest of it was like. Half the family still think I’m crazy, for there’s a fortune to be spent on it that I haven’t even got and it may be years before we get all the work done. My mother hasn’t seen it yet, but I can count on her; she feels the way I do about old places, and Jane is happy anywhere in the country.”

  “When will you start work on it?”

  “As soon as possible. I’m going to talk to Neal Rowe. He’s a good workman and he knows a lot about old houses. He’s lived in this part of the country all his life, and if I put him in charge I can trust to things being done the way I want them. I shall be here off and on myself, and as soon as the place is habitable I hope to move into it, even if it means camping at first.”

  Charles had to leave early for the long drive back to town, but not until he had had his talk with Neal, and Garry could hardly wait till supper was cleared before flying across the road to learn the result, for she knew what a job like this would mean to the Rowe family.

  “Did you hear the news?” Neal greeted her. “If the old truck was working I’d go down the hill this minute and buy ice cream for the crowd.”

  “Is it really settled? Hurrah!”

  Neal nodded. “Steady work for pretty near the whole summer. Tuesday he’ll be back, and we’re to go over the place together. He wants me to hire the men and look after the whole job for him. I told him I knew every inch of that house inside and out, for an uncle of mine farmed the place for five years when I was a kid. There’s two closed-up fireplaces in the upper rooms there he never even knew about. We’ll start work next week if the weather holds up. How about me hiring you, Garry, just for a beginning? Want to get up on the roof there and start ripping shingles? That’s a nice easy job that should just about suit you!”

  “Fine with me, but you’d better get Emily on it. She’d be a grand hand.”

  Neal laughed.

  “Emily? We won’t be able to keep Emily off it, not if I know her. She as good as offered yesterday to do my spring plowing for me. Said she’d always had a hankering to hold a plow handle and feel what it was like. Maybe I’ll let her try it out yet.”

  “She’d make a good job of it, too,” Mary defended. “Believe me, anything that Emily Humbold undertook to do, she’d do it and do it well, and don’t you make any mistake!”

  The old truck was put into working order forthwith—Neal was already promising himself a new one before the summer was out—and in the next week or so it made many trips up and down the hill, where the gray roadster, too, was by now a familiar visitor. Then came the spring thaw, when the deep frost was slowly working itself out of the ground and for ten days the hill was axle-deep in mud. Cars could go neither up nor down, and the two households were almost as completely shut off from the world as they were by the winter snows. Mail was left on the lower road to be fetched by the children, who picked their way along the fence banks and floundered in rubber boots through a sea of yellow mire to reach the school bus. Mud and more mud, but the pasture was turning greener day by day, pussy willows were out in the swamps, and Mary Rowe, standing at her open kitchen window, was sure she had heard the first robin in the apple orchard.

  A letter from Santa Fé. In a few weeks now Penny would be coming home.

  Ready for Penny

  EVERY day now the sound of hammers rang busily on the air, where Neal and hi
s helpers were at work on the big house. The old ragged shingles were gone—without Emily’s help—and already the new roof showed raw and bright above the thickening tree tops. A regular eyesore, Garry thought as she looked across every morning from the kitchen window, though time and weather would soon tone it down to the familiar gray that she loved. But she liked the smell of new lumber, the sounds of work and activity that seemed as much a part of spring as the call of robins or the blue gleam of the little Quaker ladies dotting the pasture slope.

  Charles Bassett managed to spend a good part of his time on the hillside, staying at the Rowes and only driving back to town for occasional trips. They saw a good deal of him at the little house, for scarcely a day passed that he did not drag Kay off with him to consult about one thing or another in connection with the work.

  It was after one of these brief absences in town that he brought his brother and sister-in-law up with him to see the alterations, and Garry’s early opinion of Gina changed when she came upon her sitting under the Rowes’ apple trees making dandelion chains for Tommy, with Caroline and Shirley one on either side.

  “I like her,” Caroline said after the car had driven off. “I wish she was going to live here all the time.”

  “I guess her bark’s worse than her bite, after all,” Garry admitted to Kay that evening, and was a little surprised to have her sister turn on her roundly.

  “I don’t see where you ever got that idea of her in the first place. I think she’s awfully nice and very friendly. Foreigners may strike you as different, but that’s only because you haven’t met very many, or the right kind, before. You do make up your mind in such queer ways about people before you even know anything about them, and it’s a great mistake!”

  Garry took the rebuke meekly; not for worlds would she have told her sister where that particular idea did come from, and she was gladder than ever now that she had kept her own council at the time.