Romance Classics (49 page)

“You couldn’t, of course,” Joel agreed. “It was only that I felt sure you must be pretty fond of him, and I thought maybe if I warned you about him — well, I’m sorry. Just skip it, will you?”

“I’ll be glad to,” she told him curtly.

She knew she was behaving like a spoiled child. But she was so tired; so heartsick; so appalled by all that had happened so suddenly. She was already desperately homesick for the old carefree life. At this time of the day Fifth Avenue would be aglow with lights and her friends would be racing about making plans for the evening — having fun, going places. And yesterday Ronnie had sailed aboard the Paige yacht with a party of ten who were going to spend the next six or eight weeks cruising in the Caribbean. At the thought she set her teeth hard and clenched her hands so tightly that the seams of her gloves strained a little.

The car slid and bounced along over an unpaved road, sticky with mud and strewn thickly with rocks. Joel drove and gave his attention to that, making no effort to talk to her, as though he realized the futility of trying to carry on a conversation with her in her present mood.

She was startled from her thoughts at last when the car turned from the highway along a narrow, winding lane. She could see the dark bulk of a house with lighted windows glowing from top to bottom. There was something queer about that light. At least to Carey’s eyes, accustomed to the white radiance of electricity, there was something odd about that soft, mellow amber, though she did not grasp its significance until the car came to a halt and Joel said curtly: “Well, here we are! May I say ‘welcome home’?”

“Home? This is my father’s place?”

“Yes.”

“But — who are these people? Why are there so many lights?” she demanded as the door burst open and she saw a dozen or more people grouped in the wide, old-fashioned hall.

“These are some neighbors, Miss Winslow, who felt that it would be an unhappy homecoming for your father if he came to a cold, dark, empty house. They’ve been here since early this morning, cleaning and dusting and building fires — and cooking.”

“But — but — I don’t know any of these people. Are they friends of my father’s?”

“I doubt if there’s a man or woman in that house who ever set eyes on your father,” Joel said dryly. “It’s simply the custom — the
neighborly
custom. Shall we get out now? I’m sure you could do with a bit of food and drink, to say nothing of warmth.”

He helped her out and up the steps of an old-fashioned porch to the open door through which spilled a flood of yellow lamplight. She understood now why the light had looked yellow and soft; it was the light from half a dozen old-fashioned oil-lamps. One or two of them were elaborately shaded by painted glass globes, but most of them wore nothing but plain glass chimneys through which the yellow tongues of flame showed cheerfully.

“Come in, child — you must be near frozen,” said a friendly voice. Then a stout, middle-aged woman, who wore a clean snowy apron over her rustling black frock, bustled out of the group about the door and seemed literally to envelop Carey in her warm, friendly welcome. “These folks are all neighbors of yours, but ‘twouldn’t do a mite o’ good for me to introduce ‘em all now. You couldn’t remember all the names, anyway. Just take it that they’re friends and welcome you home. And come and have some supper. I know you must be mighty near starved.”

And without a chance to say a word, Carey felt herself drawn into the wide, old-fashioned hall, where a huge fire roared up a wide chimney. She saw smiling faces all about her; heard murmurs of friendly voices; was drawn into a vast dining room where a long table had been spread with a spotless cloth and where plates had been laid for more than a dozen. Carey’s eyes widened as she saw the food on the table; three elaborate cakes beautifully iced; dozens of small bowls and jars of pickles and preserves and jellies; a platter of cold roast ham; another of hot fried chicken, a vast bowl of thick cream gravy, plates of piping hot biscuits — she had never seen so much food at one time or in one place in her life.

“Sit down, dearie,” said the friendly woman who was obviously the self-elected head of the welcoming committee. She took Carey’s gray coat and helped the girl into a chair. “Everybody find places and set. I know this child is starved. There ain’t no diner on that train they was on until six o’clock, and they ain’t had a mouthful of victuals since noon.”

There was a general rustling and movement as the others found chairs. Then Joel and the nurse came in, supporting between them an eager, excited Silas.

“I tried to put him to bed,” Joel explained to Carey, “but he threatened to run a temperature on me if I did.”

“I insist on seeing my neighbors,” Silas said eagerly. “And by the way, I never before realized how beautiful that old word was. And I don’t know how to thank you for — this welcome home.”

“Well, sakes alive,” said the self-elected head of the welcoming committee, “it’d be a fine thing if Midvale’s most famous citizen come home to a cold, empty house and with no food on the table.”

She studied Silas for a long moment and then she grinned impishly, a grin that made her look years younger as she said, “You ain’t changed much, Si, since the days when I used to switch your little legs for running away from home to go swimming in the creek.”

Silas stared at her and suddenly he cried,
“Ellen!
But it can’t be — not Ellen Watkins, who was the prettiest girl in town — ” He caught himself up and colored painfully, then said awkwardly, “I — well, Ellen, it’s good to see you again.”

Ellen grinned cheerfully. “Ellen Watkins that was, Si,” she told him comfortably. “Ellen Hogan that is. I was sixteen when I worked for your mother that summer, mostly keeping you from getting drowned in the creek. I married Bob Hogan the next fall.”

Silas looked swiftly about the table and said, “But where is Ed?”

“He — died nearly nine years ago, Si,” Ellen said after the faintest possible hesitation.

Carey set her teeth hard against the resentment that swept over her at hearing her father called by any such ridiculous name. She was worn out, nervous, strained — and she felt as though she hated these people. She didn’t want to be welcomed and warmed and fed and surrounded by a lot of middle-aged strangers whose eyes were friendly and warm — but avid with sharp curiosity, too. She felt as though their eyes were prying, prodding, trying to ferret out her innermost secrets. She wanted nothing in the world but to be let alone.

She shivered as she looked about her. The dining room was a big, square room. Its walls were of unpainted pine that had merely darkened and mellowed with age without acquiring the slightest shred of charm. The huge fireplace, in which a great fire of logs blazed, was built of rough, cheap brick. There were two windows against which the wet, cold night pressed sullenly between hideous curtains of stringy-looking “lace.” Altogether it seemed to Carey the dreariest, most cheerless room she had ever seen.

“Don’t look so tragic,” said a low-pitched voice beside her. “After all, you’re tired. Things will look much brighter tomorrow.”

She would not look at Joel Hunter. She felt she knew exactly the expression that would be on his face. He despised her and she loathed him, and if they were thrown into contact for the next hundred years, she told herself passionately, she’d go right on loathing him. Only her loathing would grow deeper and more blistering with the years, she promised herself savagely.

The seemingly interminable meal was over at last. Carey found that these amazing neighbors grouped about were treating her as though she were a guest in their home, instead of the reverse. She was ushered off upstairs to her own room by Ellen Hogan, while the nurse and Joel got her father away from his friends and to his room opposite the dining room.

Ellen had carried a lamp high in her hand, lighting Carey’s stumbling feet up the stairs and along a bleak, echoing corridor to a door which Ellen pushed open.

“I thought you’d like this room better than one at the front,” Ellen said cheerfully. “For one thing it’s right above the kitchen and so there’s a place for a small heating stove. I had ‘em put one up for you and built you a fire. After all, you city girls are used to being a heap more comfortable than country folks.”

She was busily turning down the covers on a huge bed where the pillows looked to Carey larger than her mattress back home. The covers were thick-looking, gaily colored patchwork quilts, and sheets that were coarse but spotlessly clean. Carey had never seen so puffy a bed or one that looked quite so inviting to her weary body.

“Where is the bath?” she asked as she opened her overnight case and brought out a chiffon nightgown, a matching negligee and frivolous, feather-trimmed mules.

She looked up when Ellen did not answer her and caught the woman’s eyes on the contents of the overnight case. There was such hunger in Ellen’s tired, middle-aged eyes that for a moment Carey was startled and touched with pity. Then Ellen caught herself up, looked at Carey and said gently:

“Heavens, child, there ain’t no bathroom. There’s no waterworks here. But I brought up a fresh pitcher of water for you, and I can get you some hot water off the stove. It won’t be a mite of trouble.”

Without waiting for Carey to answer she bustled out, and Carey looked about her, winking back the tears. The room was large like all the rest of the house she had seen. It was a corner room, as gaunt-looking, as barnlike, as the ones downstairs.

Ellen came back while Carey still stood with the cobwebby nightgown in her hand, an almost frightened look in her eyes as she took in the place about her.

“Here’s your hot water, child,” Ellen said cheerfully. “Shall I stay and tuck you in?”

“Oh, no — thank you very much, but I’m quite capable of putting myself to bed.”

She hadn’t meant to sound curt or unfriendly. But she was tired and heartsick and she felt that if this woman didn’t go and leave her alone to her unhappy thoughts, she’d scream.

Ellen seemed to understand. For a moment she hesitated and then she seemed to think better of whatever it was that she had been about to say. So she said quietly, “Don’t take things so hard, child. After all — whatever it is that hurts you — it can’t last. Nothing ever does. We sort of outgrow things — heartache and despair, and all the rest of it. After you’ve had a good night’s sleep you’ll feel much better.”

She went out and closed the door. And Carey was free at last to slide out of her traveling clothes and into her nightgown. And to cry herself to sleep, even while the sturdy common-sense of her, long submerged but very slowly struggling to the surface now, tried to scold her out of such idiotic behavior.

SHE LOOKED at the small travelling clock on the dresser. Half-past seven. A scandalous hour to awaken, she told herself, and snuggled back under the covers, sinking drowsily into sleep. Suddenly she awakened with a little jerk. Her father! The nurse! Mary Somebody. Breakfast! She was quite sure the nurse wouldn’t get breakfast; and she herself knew so little about it —

She set her teeth hard and forced herself out of bed. The chill air of the room struck through the wisp of chiffon and her teeth were chattering long before she’d managed to get into a pleated sports skirt and draw on a warm, comfortable cardigan jacket.

She went out into the corridor. There was not a sound in the house. She went quietly downstairs, anxious that her father should sleep as long as possible, and found her way to the kitchen. She stood there for a moment, appalled. Hitherto her experience with kitchens had been brief; but she knew them vaguely as white-tiled places where there were electric ranges and electric ice-boxes. This one had an ancient wood-range propped up on two bricks beneath each leg. There was a battered kitchen table covered with a worn oil cloth. And there was a small pantry where she found food supplies.

Three-quarters of an hour later, with a smudge on her nose, her hair tumbled about her face, tears running from smoke-rimmed eyes, she had a sullen smoulder in the stove and the kitchen was thick with smoke. She was halfway between tears of rage and hysteria when she heard a footstep on the back porch and the door swung open to admit Joel Hunter.

“Good Lord, what’s up?” he demanded. Then he added with a gleam of humor that made her yearn with all her heart to throw a stick of wood at him, “Trying to burn down the house?”

Carey straightened and thrust back a fallen curl with the back of a sooty hand, adding a smudge across her brow to the one she already wore on her nose.

“The general idea was that I might build a fire and cook breakfast,” she told him icily. “But I don’t seem to be getting ahead very fast.”

“Here, let me,” Joel said briskly. “These stoves are contrary brutes. You have to know just when to pamper them and just when to kick the living daylights out of them.”

“At the moment, I’d thoroughly enjoy jumping on the thing with an axe,” Carey admitted.

“I know — I’ve felt the same way,” answered Joel, with a cheerful grin as he twisted a wad of paper into the now empty grate of the stove, scattered a handful of pine-splinters expertly in place and then dropped, with a deftness that won her respect, several sizable sticks of wood above them. She watched, wide-eyed, while a match sent a tiny flame licking eagerly at the paper, igniting the splinters and finally clasping the sticks of wood so that in a few minutes the fire was burning, roaring briskly.

“It’s sheer magic,” Carey told Joel simply.

“There’s a smudge on your nose,” he told her, his eyes twinkling a little, though his voice was grave. “And your hair’s all tumbled, and there’s another smudge on your forehead. But in spite of all that you’re still the prettiest girl I ever saw.”

There was, to her embarrassment, something in his eyes that made her heart give a little startled jerk. Which was pretty crazy, considering that he was a man she scarcely knew and one whose world was far removed from hers. For a moment they looked straight at each other and something of her bewilderment and uneasiness registered in her eyes. Joel’s mouth thinned a little and his eyes chilled.