by Peggy Gaddis
But she managed to keep her depression and loneliness from her father. Joel insisted that her father stay in bed, to prevent a cold which, in his weakened condition, he might not be able to throw off easily. So, though Silas protested at the work his being in bed made for Carey, he yielded to Joel’s insistence.
Carey came to listen for Mrs. Hogan’s footsteps in the morning; to rely on the kindly, cheerful woman more and more each day. Under Mrs. Hogan’s patient teaching, she learned to build a fire in the kitchen stove; she learned to cook simple things, which, with the things her neighbors were constantly sending in, took care of her father’s and her own needs surprisingly well.
She did not realize how much she had begun to rely on Mrs. Hogan for help with her housework until a rainswept, chilly morning when, at ten o’clock, Mrs. Hogan had not arrived. Puzzled, Carey made what shift she could with the breakfast dishes, with preparations for the noon-day dinner and in cleaning such of the house as was in use.
Later in the day Joel came by for his usual visit with her father, and announced: “Ellen Hogan has pneumonia. She’s — well, I’m afraid she’s pretty bad.”
“Oh — no!” Carey was stricken. “I wondered about her. She’s — she’s — such a fine person.”
Joel’s tired face lit up. “Isn’t she? About two-thirds of this community simply lives on her spirit. I think I admire her more than any woman I’ve ever known. She’s the bravest, most valiant woman that ever lived. She’s endured things that would have flattened a less splendid soul. To look at her, you’d never dream that she’d had to stand helpless and watch her drunken brute of a husband murder her two babies in cold blood, would you?”
Carey cried out in horror, white and shaken.
Joel went on grimly, “Jimmy was five, Billie was three. Fine little fellows. Ellen just about worshipped them. Her older children — five of ‘em — were at school one day when their father came home from a night out. Ellen was outside, feeding the pigs and chickens, and the little fellows were at the breakfast table when their father came in. Ellen saw him cross the back yard and knew by his walk that he was drunk — she ran, but before she could reach the back door he had locked it. And — through the window, helpless, she saw him shoot the two little boys.”
Carey was sick with horror, incredulous that such hideous things could happen. Joel looked up at her, his eyes dark, his face white and set.
“Pretty story, isn’t it?” he commented dryly. “Can you imagine any other woman in the world letting that man live? But there’s a Higher Power that sees to justice in such cases. Less than a week later, while he was still a fugitive, the very day after the little boys were buried, he was killed. The car which he had stolen, and in which he was trying to escape, turned over in a ditch.”
He looked up at Carey and said in swift contrition, “I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have told you. It’s only that — well, Ellen’s pretty dear to me. She’s been almost like a foster mother. I can’t remember my own mother and I sort of grew up under Ellen’s guiding hand. Seeing her down and not being able to do much to help her — it sort of knocks the props out from under me.”
With a suddenness that startled Carey, he was on his feet, his face white and set. “What’s the good of being a doctor and helping other people if I can’t help the one person I want most of all to help?”
Carey was shaken by his helpless anger and bewilderment, but before she could answer he went out the door and into the rainswept, dreary day. She heard the sound of his car starting off with a clashing of gears and a spraying of the gravel of the weed-grown drive, which was entirely foreign to Joel’s usual careful driving.
She could not put out of her mind the story he had told her. Remembering Mrs. Hogan’s cheerful, practical manner, her sturdy good humor, her kindness, Carey found it almost impossible to believe that her life held so hideous an experience. She remembered now, and shivered a little at the memory, the night when her father and she had arrived and her father had asked about Mrs. Hogan’s husband. She set her teeth now, recalling the look on Mrs. Hogan’s face, the tone of her voice when she had said dryly: “He died nine years ago.”
She missed Mrs. Hogan sadly. As she went swiftly and clumsily about the accumulation of duties that seemed to keep her running from the time she crawled out of her warm bed, shivering in the chilly dawn, until, exhausted, she crept back into it at nine o’clock at night, she realized even more how much she missed her neighbor.
The rain and the resultant roads, sticky and hub-deep in red mud, kept her more or less isolated except for Joel’s daily visits. She came to rely on Joel; his every visit brought her some small gift from a neighbor. A jar of jelly, perhaps, or pickles; once a thick, juicy slice of home-cured ham that Joel showed her how to broil, with quartered sweet potatoes, and that was the most delicious food Carey had eaten in a week. Once or twice the gift had been a chicken, dressed and cut up ready for frying, and again Carey and her father had feasted royally. For the rest, they were dependent on such simple foods, mostly out of cans, as Carey had learned to prepare.
Christmas week dawned on her without warning. She got up one morning and looked out of the window, puzzled because the hated landscape looked different. She managed a wry grin as she realized what it was; the rain had stopped, after three solid weeks. A thin-looking, watery sunshine was creeping self-consciously over bare trees and the sodden fields and woods. Her spirits lifted a little.
It was late that afternoon that Joel, stopping by to deliver the grocery order she had given him the day before, said casually, “If you had your ‘ruthers’ which would you ‘ruther’ do — anticipate with glad expectancy, or be taken completely by surprise?”
Carey stared at him, wide-eyed. “‘Ruthers?’” she repeated, puzzled.
Joel grinned. “Would you prefer to know about something in advance — or be surprised?” he elucidated.
“I’d rather — oh, I see what you mean — I’d ‘ruther’ anticipate, I think. I hate surprises,” she answered promptly.
Joel nodded. “That’s what I figured,” he said cheerfully. “Then you can anticipate a Christmas Eve party. You’re going to be ‘showered’ by your kind friends and neighbors — and those who are a mite curious to see the inside of a house that an erstwhile New York debutante runs all by herself.”
Carey caught her breath, looked swiftly about her and then almost accusingly at Joel. He met her eyes and said casually, “I just thought maybe you’d like to know in advance.”
Carey’s cheeks burned beneath that very casual speech, and she managed to thank him as he took off. And then she came back and looked at the big, barnlike, dusty living room; at the disordered dining room beyond; the kitchen, cluttered and disordered because, no matter how hard she tried to work, things seemed to pile up.
Having made a tour of the house, she came back to the kitchen, stuffed wood in the stove, and filled kettles and small tubs with water that she put to heat. Her eyes were dark with determination and her cheeks burned at the memory of the look in Joel’s eyes, the ever-so-casual tone in which he had revealed that the neighbors were curious to see what sort of house she kept.
“He was too polite to remind me the place looked like a pig-sty,” she told herself savagely. “But why wouldn’t it? What do I know about keeping house — or care, either, if I have to be truthful, and I suppose I might as well. But I can if I have to. So the neighbors want to see what sort of a housekeeper I am, do they? Well, I’ll show ‘em, once and for all. Then maybe they’ll stay out of here!”
It was already late afternoon and the faint sunshine had gone. Darkness pressed close. Yet she was so determined to cheat the neighbors of any chance of gossip that she wouldn’t wait until morning. Her spirit quailed a little at the thought of the work it was going to involve, but she set her teeth hard and went at it.
She gave her father his supper and saw him settled comfortably for the night. Then she donned a pair of slacks, a gaily striped jersey shirt, bound
a bright-colored bandanna about her head, and went to work. It was well after midnight before she had finished with the downstairs and had it shining. Her own room was next and though, for a moment, the thought of her bed was tempting, she finished her task.
It was after three o’clock when, using the last of the hot water, she gave herself a not very satisfactory bath in the small portable bathtub and crept into bed so exhausted that she sank almost instantly into a deep sleep.
The following afternoon Joel, returning from his round of calls in the country, stopped for his usual visit. He greeted her with a grin and said lightly, “And what’s all this I hear about your burning the midnight oil to keep your housework caught up?”
“For Heaven’s sake — isn’t it possible to breathe in this — this wilderness without people making up a story about it?” she cried hotly.
Joel’s expression altered. “Don’t let it get you down lady. After all, you’re an object of curiosity around these parts.”
“As if I hadn’t been made aware of that every moment since I came here!” she raged. “I hate the whole darned place — and its snoopy people! I wish they’d stay away from here and let me alone!” She had to set her teeth hard to fight back the tears that she felt would have been the final humiliation.
“Sorry. No one meant to bother you, I’m sure.”
“Then why don’t they let me alone? My father and I haven’t asked a darned thing of them — except for them to keep their long, snoopy noses to themselves.” She struggled again with tears.
“None of us realized — ”
“Now, don’t you go all high and mighty on me,” Carey snapped childishly. “Because you know very well I didn’t mean you — nor Mrs. Hogan, either. She’s a lamb and I love her.”
“And what am I? And how do you feel about me?” Joel said unexpectedly.
“That you’re a tower of strength and a rock in a raging sea. If ever I lost my grip on you, I’d be completely sunk,” Carey told him impulsively. “I can’t ever repay you for what you’ve done for — for us — ”
“Can’t you? I think we both know you can make me so happy that I’ll be delirious — ”
Startled, Carey saw the look in his eyes, the look that was as though tiny flames leaped there. She felt herself drawn toward him, but he made no move to touch her. She was frightened and uneasy. “Don’t — don’t talk nonsense. You’ve been more than just a family physician. You’ve been our best friend.”
There was a slight emphasis on that last word and Joel said, “Oh, yes, of course — a friend. Well, let it go at that. And Mrs. Hogan sent you word that she would be here for your Christmas party.”
“Oh — is that possible?” Carey cried joyously.
“No — but then Ellen Hogan was always one to do the impossible,” said Joel. “I’ll have a look-see at your father if he’s awake.”
He went out of the kitchen and Carey stood for a moment quite still beside the stove where a glowing fire burned cheerily. She had hurt Joel. He had seen her uneasiness and discomfort when he had, for a moment, lowered his guard. She didn’t want to believe that he was in love with her. The thought distressed her, because she owed him so much; she was intensely grateful to him; but — she didn’t love him. She couldn’t love anybody. There wasn’t room in her jumbled, harassed thoughts for love. When she thought of love, she thought of Ronnie. And hated herself for the weakness of tears stinging her eyelids, the lump in her throat that the memory of Ronnie always brought.
When she heard Joel’s footsteps along the hall she was busy preparing her father’s supper tray. She looked up at Joel suddenly, her face touched with a soft rose color as she said impulsively, “Please stay and have supper with me. That is — if you’re sure you haven’t any patients who will be walking the floor and tearing out handfuls of hair because you’re late getting back to your office.”
“May I stay? I’m lonely as the devil — ”
“So am I. It may not be much of a meal. The meals I cook these days are always a surprise to me. But maybe you won’t mind being surprised — sometimes they are so good I’m surprised; and sometimes they are so bad I am surprised that food can be so unattractive. But I’m always surprised one way or another.”
Joel laughed appreciatively and Carey was a little startled to discover how pleasant it was having him there. She had been lonely. That was the reason she liked sharing the big, clean kitchen with him and why the meal that the two of them evolved tasted so good, she went on telling herself hours later when he had gone and she was in bed. But she wasn’t in love with him — that was ridiculous! She, Carey Winslow, in love with a country doctor whom she scarcely knew! But just the same she fell asleep and dreamed of him.
Nine
CHRISTMAS EVE was a glorious day. Not at all the sort of Christmas to which Carey was accustomed. Usually Christmas for her meant snow and parties and winter sports, which she adored. But Christmas in Midvale was a mild, pleasant day with a blue sky overhead, sunshine so thick and bright that it might have been spread on with a brush. It was still wet and muddy underfoot, but the sunshine seemed to creep into one’s very bones and chase away the dispiriting dampness that Carey had hated so much when they first arrived.
Today for the first time Silas was allowed to get up and dress himself and to sit in the warm kitchen while Carey went briskly about her tasks, beneath her father’s surprised eyes.
“Carey, my angel,” he burst out suddenly, “may a fond and indulgent father ask what the blazes you think you’re doing?”
Carey turned to him a flushed face that had a smudge of flour across one cheek and her eyes were shining. “I don’t expect you to believe it, Pops,” she informed him airily, “but I’m just making a couple of mincemeat pies! Maybe they won’t be fit to eat — but I always say, what’s Christmas without a mincepie or two? What do you always say?”
“I always say my daughter’s a thoroughbred,” Silas said promptly. “And if she says she’s baking mincemeat pies — then she’s baking mincemeat pies, and I’m just the guy that can eat ‘em.”
While her father was resting that afternoon, having the nap that Joel insisted he must have every day for a while yet, Joel came and took her out into the country in quest of a Christmas tree.
“On account of it really isn’t Christmas without a tree,” he assured her gravely.
They found it. A very small tree, because she didn’t dare spend a lot on decorations. On their way back home, they stopped in Midvale and Carey fought her way through the press of people gathered about the counter covered with Christmas tree ornaments in the general store. She and Joel reached home just at dusk and Joel carried the tree into the warm, darkened living room while Carey went busily about the task of preparing supper. Joel was going to stay and help her decorate the tree.
The three of them were having supper in the kitchen when they heard the sound of a car in the drive and a little later there was a knock at the front door. That door used so seldom here that for a moment Carey stared at her father and Joel before she realized what that knock meant.
She carried a lighted lamp with her along the dark, cold hall and put it down on a table before she unbolted the front door and pushed it open. Then she caught her breath and stared. Margaret Hendrix stood on the steps, smiling at her, calm and sure of her welcome.
“Margaret!” Carey gasped, quite sure she was seeing things that weren’t real.
“Hello, Carey — how are you? Heavens, what a barn of a place. I had the dickens of a time finding you — driver, just stow that luggage here in the hall. Here I am.”
Carey stood aside while the taxi-driver brought in stacks of baggage, oddly wrapped parcels and packages, and laid them down as Margaret directed. Margaret paid him, tipping him ostentatiously before she dismissed him.
“And now where’s your father?” demanded Margaret, stepping into the hall, eager for a sight of the man she loved. “And how is he?”
“Do I hear a strangely familia
r voice out of the past?” demanded Silas from the doorway of the lighted kitchen. “Margaret! My dear, it just can’t be! Where in the world — why I was never so glad to see anybody.”
For a moment Carey thought her father was going to kiss Margaret, but he didn’t. He drew her into the warm kitchen and Carey stood still for a moment, her teeth set hard, fighting for composure before she realized that Joel stood before her, looking down at her gravely.
“You’re not happy about the lady’s arrival. Who is she?” he asked gently.
“My father’s secretary. She’s been in love with him for seventeen years, and he seems quite happy about her arrival.”
Joel looked at the heap of luggage and said sharply, “Good grief, what’s that? Miss Santa Claus, eh?”
“Undoubtedly,” Carey agreed, and her heart sank a little even though she told herself she was being silly and childish. But she had worked hard on her own and her father’s Christmas, devising little dainties, small gifts, and the carefully planned and painstakingly produced Christmas feast. Only to have her modest plans knocked skyhigh by Margaret’s arrival.
When Joel and Carey reached the kitchen, Margaret was chattering away, refusing food, saying airily that she had dined on the train and, Carey told herself inwardly, looking down her nose at the kitchen table with its cheap crockery and its red and white checked tablecloth.
“Wait until you see what I’ve brought,” babbled Margaret. “I went into the shops in town before I left and simply let myself go. I’ve got the biggest turkey you ever saw, and we’ll begin cooking him first thing in the morning, Carey. I’m a good cook, if I do have to say it myself. We’ll have mincemeat pies and pumpkin — oh, it’ll be quite a feast, I assure you. And wait until you see the swarms of gadgets I got to decorate the tree. We’ll set it up after you’ve finished supper, Carey, and then you can decorate it in the morning while I’m cooking.”