The Winter People

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Thanks for everything, Nomi,” he called to her. “It’s good to have someone to count on. You’ll like my snow girl when you get to know her.”

  She gave him a smile that told of old affection. Because I was in his arms her smile might be for me as well, and I smiled back. I wanted Nomi to like me. I wanted to like her. I wanted to love everyone connected with Glen.

  When she left, closing the door softly behind, Glen looked after her with a gentleness on his face I had seldom seen.

  “She has always done her best for me,” he said. “I can hardly remember my mother—she died when I was so young. And Colton was always away, or too preoccupied with his own work to take a really thoughtful interest in a child. But Nomi has a lot of love to give and after her sister was gone, she poured it out on me. She was always here to turn to, and in a way I didn’t mind not having a mother.”

  I liked the way he spoke of her and I warmed to them both.

  “I hope she’ll like me!” I cried.

  “No one could help liking you,” he said, and I knew I could not ask for a happier start for a honeymoon.

  3

  The next morning the skies were gray, the day cold, and I had a sense of winter coming, of the dark earth waiting. Not asleep, but waiting for the winds and storms that would threaten, the snow and ice that would encase it. But the huge Belter bed had been snugly warm and I had slept soundly until Glen kissed me awake when daylight streaked the window. I moved to him sleepily, wanting my fill of love, but he left the bed as I reached for him, leaving me surprised and uncertain, as I had already been once or twice in his arms. I told myself that these were merely the adjustments of a very new marriage, and tried to put the sense of doubt from my mind.

  I rose that morning filled with a curious mixture of desire to surrender my will to whatever Glen wanted of me, and at the same time a determination to fight, if necessary, for my place in this house, and my right to be Glen’s wife. Perhaps the two were not contradictory, since it was only to Glen that I would be submissive. If Nomi, and the other two when they came, chose not to like me, I would hardly crawl away and die of grief over the fact.

  “You’re looking pretty resolute this morning,” Glen said as we went downstairs.

  “I’m all of that.” In this brave morning light, however gray the day, I felt afraid of no one and nothing. Not of the dark, listening house, nor of Glen’s formidable relatives. Such courage I had that morning—and no thought at all for the dark Scotch-Irishman across the lake.

  We breakfasted in a dining room with pale cream walls, Sheraton furniture and a painting of Monet water lilies over the buffet. Dark green brocade draperies had been drawn back, and I sat on Glen’s right hand where I could look out between them through a large picture window, over treetops and down toward the silvery, early morning pewter of the lake.

  The three of us were surprisingly gay that morning. Nomi was adjusting well, Glen whispered when she went to the kitchen to make him a second serving of pancakes. This morning she looked less unapproachable, less the self-possessed, rather grand lady she had seemed last night. She had substituted a trim shirtwaist dress for the long gray gown, and that made her seem less formidable. Her white hair had abandoned its convolutions and was wound neatly about her head in braids that gave her a coronet and raised her height. Beneath the pale crown her face seemed untroubled—as though she might have accepted the change in Glen’s life, accepted me.

  I had braided my own hair this morning, to let it hang down my back, with a black velvet ribbon at the nape of my neck, holding it in place. Glen would want it loose later, but I liked it out of the way for now. At Glen’s prompting I had put on my green slacks and a pale green sweater set, because it might be chilly in the attic, where we must get to work right after breakfast.

  Nomi would not hear of my helping with the dishes, so the moment we left the table, Glen took me upstairs. The narrow flight to the attic was at the back of the house near our bedroom door, and Glen went ahead of me to switch on lights. Then he reached down his hand to pull me up the last few steps.

  I climbed up to him with my new determination bright as a polished penny—and probably worth about as much. After all, before I could be determined about anything I must find my course of action. That Glen was in need, I had no doubt. I sensed in him a quite terrible and driving need, to which I must somehow contribute an answer. I must be the one to bend gently, but perhaps I must also lead a little, once I knew the course. I could see myself playing to the hilt this tender and generously helpful role. The picture made me glow a little.

  The attic space was enormous, stretching above the entire house, with the ceiling high and peaked, so that one could walk about in comfort in most places. Dormers and gables cut into it on either side, and in three places Colton Chandler had placed skylights in the roof, so that whatever northern daylight was available shone into the room. In spite of windows and skylights, however, the place had its shadowy corners and these Glen quickly illumined with lamplight. Except for dull throw rugs here and there the expanse under foot was without covering, utilitarian, and the studio areas had been floored in vinyl tile, to be easily cleaned.

  “When he’s working, Colton wants as little distraction as possible,” Glen said. “The entire front end of the house is his. We’ve installed fiber screens that can be pulled across that section when he’s home and wants privacy. Glynis and I have divided up the center of the house. That’s her dormer area there, and this is mine. She paints quite seriously, you know.”

  There was no dividing screen for the twins. On one side was the busy paraphernalia of the working artist—easel, work table smeared with daubs of paint, a stained palette, numerous brushes standing about in jelly glasses. On the other side there was very little of the workman in evidence. The sturdy worktable was all too neat and unused. An easel had been folded away against the wall. The turntable stood empty. No paints, no brushes, no tools of any kind lay ready for use, but I saw that a narrow wall between the dormers had been lined with drawers. Glen went to these and began to take out chisels, mallets, points—tools of the sculptor’s art. I stood watching as he laid them in order upon the table, examining each with care, studying sharp instruments for their edge. There was a glow about him this morning, an eagerness to be at work that promised well. For the moment he was absorbed in handling his tools, and I could only wait until he should want me, tell me what to do.

  I crossed to the side where his sister worked when she was home. In Glen’s twin sister might very well lie the answers to many things that puzzled me about him. Besides, if I was to make her my friend and ally, I needed to know everything about her that I could learn.

  Over here paintings were stacked against the walls, some framed, some masked with cardboard mats. Apparently she was enormously prolific in her production.

  “Would she mind if I looked at her work?” I asked Glen.

  He scarcely glanced my way. “Do as you like. What does it matter whether she’d mind or not?”

  An odd answer, but I chose a stack leaning against the wall below a dormer and picked up the top one, turning it to the light. At once my attention was caught, as it had been by that painting I had seen in New York. Again the style was pseudo-primitive, with a technique that only a first-rate artist would attain. Glynis Chandler had painted Gray Rocks Lake in the winter season. This was an eerie night scene, lighted partly by the vast stretch of snow-covered lake—snow over ice—with more of the smothering whiteness climbing the far hill beneath scrubby black spruce trees. These were not tall blue spruces—the dignified trees of my memory—but a ragged, weedy second growth. However, all this was mere background for the dramatic scene at one end of the lake where flames shot high in the air, tossing out minute, glowing sparks, casting a sickly yellow light across the snow. Greedy red and orange tongues licked high, consuming the building that was on fire. In Glynis’s imagination Gray Rocks Inn was burning and she had portrayed the event in all its horrid detail.


  On the bank before the inn tiny figures ran frantically about, pouring futile buckets of water onto the holocaust. A fire engine from town had just pulled up, and tiny firemen leaped from the truck, dragging out hoses that would be too late to do any good. At one window the flames had been parted cunningly to reveal a woman in a white dress who stood with her arms upflung, obviously screaming, imprisoned behind a glass frame that she could not open. On the ground below a black-haired man stood looking up at her in helpless anguish. Behind the woman the room was red and I knew there would be no escape for her, ever. All the horror and suffering of the scene came through in devastating reality.

  I must have uttered some exclamation because Glen left his tools and came to look at the picture I had uncovered. At once he took it from my hands and placed it on the easel where the light was better, studying it raptly.

  “What a good job! I hadn’t seen this one. Glynis gets better every year.”

  He sounded so enthusiastic that I could only regard him in astonishment. “But it’s horrible!” I cried. “I don’t care how well it’s done—it’s a dreadful picture!”

  “Nonsense! An artist has the privilege of choice. Do you think scenes like this don’t happen? If she chooses to paint them, she has that right.” There was reproach in his words for an outsider who did not comprehend the problems and purpose of a professional. “I can see what she put into it, because I feel the same way. Don’t you understand, my innocent darling? She’s painted out her feelings about this miserable inn at the end of the lake, and about the people who are destroying Gray Rocks. That woman at the window is our Pandora, of course. She’s responsible for all this. And the man below the window, who knows he can’t save her, is her son, Trent McIntyre. It’s a beautiful picture, really. It says everything we feel—both Glynis and I, about the McIntyres.”

  I recalled Nomi’s words—that I must remember the twins were identical in every way. I found myself staring at Glen with shock in my eyes. When he turned from the picture and saw my face he laughed, and I could not bear his laughter either. I might have turned from him and fled toward the attic stairs, trying to run away as I had done that night in the art gallery in New York, all my earlier resolutions to be what he wanted me to be tossed aside—but he put his arms about me, held me close.

  “My poor, frightened darling. I suppose you feel that you’ve stepped into a nest of vipers. But it isn’t as bad as all that. What Glynis does is therapeutic, really. When she paints out all this hostility, it helps her. Then she needn’t go setting the inn on fire, or trying to burn Pandora alive, because she’s done it all harmlessly on canvas. Besides, if the woman at the window had an ounce of sense, she would break the glass and drop to the ground. The inn isn’t built all that high.”

  I pushed away so I could look into his face. “Could you paint like that?”

  “I can’t paint at all any more. But if you mean will I do something like this to you in stone—the answer is no. Glynis and I feel the same way about the lake, but we don’t choose the same solutions. If I do anything about the McIntyres I’ll take a more practical means.”

  I did not want to think about the McIntyres. I had thrust Trent McIntyre away into some deep recess and I would not easily call him out. I pressed my face against Glen’s chest, not wanting to look into the brightness in his eyes—that bright delight that was for his sister’s painting.

  “Your Aunt Nomi said you were duplicates,” I whispered.

  “Duplicates in every way except possibly one, and I don’t mean the obvious fact that I’m a man. There’s another difference. Glynis is haunted, and I’m not. Be glad of that, Dina love, and don’t be so fearful for me.”

  He put his fingers beneath my chin and tilted it so he could kiss my lips, reassuring me. Yet the existence of Glynis Chandler was looming all too large upon my horizon and casting a very dark shadow before it. How was I to fight what I did not understand?

  “Come back here,” Glen said, and led me to his side of the attic, his fingers warm upon my own, leading me toward light and an absence of nightmare. “This is what I want to show you. Now I’m ready to tell you what I mean to do with you. I want you to see this as I do before I begin.”

  He pulled a sturdy three-legged turntable stand into the open, its top strong enough to hold a block of stone. Something already occupied the stand, covered by a cloth. He whisked off the covering and I saw the block of alabaster that he had told me about in New York. It stood fixed in a timber frame secured to the turntable, ready for working, and it was more than life-size, but the head that would emerge from it would be smaller. The stone was a beautiful, pure, translucent white—an icy white, with a sense of transparency about it, as though one looked into shimmering depths where there was a faint greenish cast.

  “It’s lovely,” I said. “Lovely just as it is.”

  “I knew it was meant for me when I first saw it and I brought it home to High Towers to wait for the right moment. Though I won’t open the actual stone until I’ve done a maquette first. That is, a sketch of your head in clay to give me the sense of what I want to do. The stone comes last, since there’s no erasing deep mistakes, once they are made.”

  I ran my hand across the cool, smooth surface. It had not yet been polished as it would be when finished, but even now it felt slippery to the touch and held a subtle gleam.

  “It seems strange that stone should appeal to sculptors,” I said. “Strange that so much beauty can come out of something as hard and resistant as this.”

  “Ah, but that’s the beauty of alabaster,” Glen said. “It is fairly soft to carve. In fact, one has to be careful because the stone will bruise quite deeply if a tool slips. It must be treated with enormous care. Bruises make deep whitish marks that spoil the final effect. But this time there will be no slips. I have the skill—and you will furnish the inspiration. Modeling rather bores me, but I have a feeling for the stone. There’s more satisfaction when a stone piece is done because the risks are greater. I’ve worked in stone quite often, even though the results have been pedestrian. This will be better. There’s something inner which must happen to an artist so that he knows when he can truly create.”

  The glow in his eyes warmed me with hope. What came out of this stone had to be all he wanted it to be. In whatever way I could contribute, I must. But not merely with encouragement and belief. I knew well enough that I lacked the knowledge to justify belief. Praise must come from the qualified, to matter. But if I could understand what he wanted—be what he wanted, I might be able to help.

  “Does Glynis work in stone too?” I asked.

  “No! And I’m glad of it. That’s why it’s safer for me. I can go my own way in this separate medium. I needn’t compete on her own ground. Come here, Dina. Come close, so I can make you see what I want to do.”

  I stood before the block of alabaster and he turned it so that light from the sky touched its surface. Then he caught up a stick of charcoal and began to sketch roughly upon the stone.

  “Do you see? There’s a girl’s head in there, Dina. A sort of ice dryad from Gray Rocks Lake. She’s imprisoned and I’m going to help her come out. She’s facing this way inside the stone, with her hair streaming down her back. The cut-off place will probably be just below the base of the throat, and the hair will fall a little below that in back.”

  He made long strokes with his charcoal stick and I could see the flow of hair as he indicated it. He touched in the nose, the eyes, with the proper space between, a hint of the mouth—it was all there, deep in the stone, ready to emerge as he would coax it from ice into the living, sunny world:

  “Here’s your platform,” he said, waving me to a small dais. “And here’s a canvas chair that you’ll find comfortable. I’ll want you out here in the middle of the floor, so I can walk around you and view you from every angle. Working in the round, every aspect has to relate to all the rest. One doesn’t, for instance, do a portrait of a nose without thinking how it fits into the ov
er-all profile and with every other feature.”

  He was full of his subject and all this was fascinating to me. I had loved great sculpture for a long time, but now I was seeing something of the creative work that went into the stone long before it was brought to final perfection.

  I sat on the dais in the canvas chair and he tried turning my head this way and that. Everyone had a characteristic way of carrying the head, he told me, and I must not strain—we must find the pose that would portray me.

  When he was ready he took a lump of clay from a tin and slapped it on another stand, began to build it up and work it with wire modeling tools and spatulas.

  This was the part he disliked, he said. In clay you built up from the smallest mass to the larger one you wanted. In stone the mass was there and it was a matter of opening up the substance, releasing your own vision to view through the chipping away of the covering that hid it. But a maquette was helpful if you were willing to take the trouble.

  He had placed a mirror on the jutting wall of a dormer to reflect the clay from the opposite side, and though I could not see his work, I could sometimes glimpse Glen’s face, with its bright, absorbed, confident look.

  When I tired he let me rest, but he would not show me what he had done. He kept the clay face turned away from me, since he felt that the slightest question, or hint of criticism, might throw him off at this point. Thus I saw nothing of his morning’s effort and had to be content with his own assurance that all was well and the barrier that had held him for so long was broken.

  It was a good morning. I felt closer to him than ever before, and the troubling events of yesterday could be forgotten. Across the lake to the McIntyres seemed very far away. Glen had driven away painful memories. He had made me happy today.

  At lunchtime we joined Nomi in the dining room again, and again she served us, joining us for the meal. In the afternoon her part-time housekeeper would come out from town to assist with the housework and get dinner. When she was here alone, Nomi got her own supper, she said, but when Colton or the twins were home, dinner was a gala, candlelit meal.