Winterbound (16 page)

Garry had started seed-flats indoors, and her precious boxes, covered with odd panes of glass, filled every available sunny window space upstairs and down. She watered and shifted, covered and uncovered, a dozen times a
day according to the temperature, and woe betide anyone who moved a box or carelessly opened a window at the wrong moment. She had cauliflowers in the living room and tomatoes on the shelf behind the kitchen stove, and waged a continual war with the coon kitten, who took a diabolic pleasure in scratching up the seeds the instant her back was turned. In the intervals of caring for her vegetable infants she found time to walk down the hill and visit small Julia, seven weeks old now and fast outgrowing the clothes basket in which she slept proudly under the peach-colored silk quilt. It was on her return from one of these visits that Kay, deep in the weekly letter from Santa Fé, waved a hand to a letter and a postcard propped on the mantelshelf. The postcard was a greeting from Jane, a view of Bermuda with a very blue sea and a very white beach. The typewritten envelope was addressed to Miss Margaret Ellis and bore a New York postmark.

Garry, opening it, gave a sudden whoop.

“You see—she's coming after all!”

“Who?” Kay looked up from her letter.

“That woman. The one we wrote to. She's coming next week.”

“Garry, you're fooling!”

“I'm not. Listen here.” She read aloud:

“Dear Miss Ellis,

“I am sorry to have been so long answering your letter. If you still feel inclined to put me up I shall be very glad to come to you on the proposed terms, and will arrive on the afternoon train next Monday, the twenty-first. If by any chance you have altered your plans and find this no longer convenient, please wire me at above address.

“Yours very sincerely,       

“E
MILY
H
UMBOLD
.  (Z.Y.3.)  

“Good for her!”

Kay looked scared. “I'd given up all idea of it. She'll find the place awful, Garry. We can't possibly let her come!”

“Try and stop her,” Garry returned. “She sounds pretty businesslike about it, if you ask me. I like that. And she hasn't asked one single question either. I told you that letter would produce an effect!”

“Turned her brain, more likely, if she's read all you wrote her and still wants to try it out. We'll just have some sort of crank or lunatic on our hands and you'll have to deal with it all,” said Kay with an air of washing her hands of the whole business. “I'll do my best, but I bet you she won't stay a week, once she finds out what it's really like.”

“Well, that'll be fourteen dollars anyway, and if she doesn't stay we can always charge her for the month ahead, like that old devil of a Cummings did; no good having experiences if you don't learn something by them. I shall be the business and practical head of the family. All you need do is to be a pleasant dignified hostess and lend the right atmosphere.
And
help with the meals. Heaven knows I'm no cook. All they ever ate at the Collins's was fried potatoes and stew.”

“Atmosphere!” Kay looked round at the room, littered with her own work, the rugging frame, temporarily neglected, leaning in one corner with a tangle of cut rags beside it, and Garry's seed-flats and boxes everywhere in evidence. “Do you suppose we'll ever get the place to look like anything again?”

“Leave it to me. I told her we were a busy family, and we might as well preserve the effect. Let's see: today's Thursday. We've got four whole days to fix up in.”

“We'll need them,” said Kay darkly.

Once the wire was sent—“Perfectly all right, will expect you Monday.”—even Garry herself felt a little daunted, with a sensation of bridges definitely burned behind her. It would have been one thing for the unknown Z.Y.3 to have arrived during those first days when they were still all excited about the project; it was quite another
to have her turning up now after all these weeks, a real and actual person. But having started the business Garry was determined to see it through all the same, and spent the next two days in a fury of sweeping and scrubbing, dragging unwanted articles up to the attic and carrying others down, till in the end Kay had to admit that the guest room at least looked presentable. Ever since Mrs. Cummings sternly shook its dust from her feet it had become mainly a glory hole for this and that. Cleared out now and tidied, with new curtains and the best bedspread (long known in the Ellis family as the White Elephant) carefully displayed, Kay's one finished rug on the floor and a fine old farmhouse pine table, one of Penny's auction weaknesses, set for a desk between window and fireplace with a bookshelf above it of Garry's contriving, it had quite a comfortable air.

“Thank heaven you didn't cut those old damask curtains up for rugs,” Garry said. “I hung the faded part where it doesn't show, and the red makes the room look warmer. All the furniture's waxed, and a job it was, too. The White Elephant looks pretty awful, but it's brand new and it ought to impress her, and there isn't a thing else we could use; I hunted through every trunk up there. I hate frilly things myself.”

The White Elephant, a flounced and billowy affair of
sea-green rayon taffeta, certainly seemed to have been wafted by some strange mistake into its present setting. The original motive power, as usual, had been Cousin Carrie, on the occasion of “doing over” her own guest room three years ago.

“It doesn't go with the rest. We never did have the sort of room it belongs to, anyway. (“Thank God!” Garry murmured.) You can bring down the hand-woven cover off my bed and I'll use the extra army blanket instead.” This was generous on Kay's part, but since Garry had set the pace she felt bound to keep up with it. “We'll bring in that small easy-chair from the living room; she'll want something comfortable to sit in.”

“A gentle hint to stay in her own quarters, you really mean!”

“Well …” They both laughed, remembering Mrs. Cummings and her trailing possessions. “How about cushions? We could spare a few.”

“To recline on in the intervals of composition. We might get a few hints from Emily Post on furnishings for the literary worker. I suppose she'll bring her own typewriter, but I did remember an ash tray!”

A good deal of joking went into the final preparations, but as train time drew near they were beginning to feel a little qualmish, especially Garry, who had undertaken to
do the honors. A kind of reverent hush descended on the household, relieved by occasional nervous giggles. Martin and Caroline looked unnaturally slick about the head and scrubbed about the face, and Caroline in particular kept up an aimless wandering about the room which drove her sisters to desperation.

“Can't you for goodness' sake act naturally instead of prowling like a panther in a cage?” Kay demanded. “Take a book and read. Play paper dolls. Do
something
!”

There was a smothered explosion from Martin, and Caroline retorted: “Well, you said not to get the room all mussed up, and all my books …”

“‘Let's be talking,'” quoted Garry, and her reminder of the nervous family in Dickens's pages, trying to appear at ease, set them all off so completely that Kay was still choking when they heard the car just outside.

“There she is!”

Garry, feeling the eyes of the assembled family on her back, strode to the breach. She could hear Edna's voice, cheery and conversational as she climbed out of the car, which was a relief; none of that disapproving silence which had shrouded Mrs. Cummings's arrival. Suitcases, typewriter, and rug bundle were handed out; Garry was just hurrying down the front path when a volley of
soprano yelps, issuing apparently from the very bosom of the tweed-coated figure coming to meet her, made her jump. A deep voice said:

“Shut up, Arabella, this instant. Don't be such a little fool.—Are you Miss Margaret Ellis?”

“I'm so glad you came. Pretty cold still, isn't it? Hello, Edna!”

Garry's prepared speech had forsaken her. They shook hands—a hearty grip—and in the glare of the car lights she saw thrusting from Miss Emily Humbold's broad chest a tiny head, the size and color of a small russet orange, with two wrathful eyes glaring from a ruff of tawny fur. Arabella.

“She won't bite; she just enjoys being disagreeable, that's all.” Miss Humbold picked up the larger of the two suitcases and followed Garry indoors.

“My sister Kay, Miss Humbold. And Martin and Caroline.” Garry hoped her voice didn't sound as nervous as she felt, for introductions always muddled her and just now she was feeling anything but the competent “Miss Ellis” who had composed that famous letter. But Kay came to her rescue.

“I do hope you had a comfortable journey up. Would you like to take your things off or sit down and get warm first?”

Miss Humbold pulled off her hat—a plain sensible
hat with no nonsense about it. Very like its owner, Garry decided instantly, after one look at the square face, short grizzled hair, and keen eyes.

“Splendid, thank you. We came over the bumps in fine style. Where's my nice taxi lady, by the way? I owe her money, which isn't so important, and a great deal of gratitude which is. She rescued me from a pink-eyed young man who seemed to have no idea who you were or where you lived, but insisted on trying to take me there just the same.”

“That was Eddie Cregan,” Edna said, bringing in the luggage. “I guess he don't know much about the roads this side of town. He don't know much about anything as a matter of fact, but that never stops him.” She carried the remaining bags through to the bedroom, “That'll be two dollars, so long as you're staying with the Ellises here, and I won't charge you nothing extra for the bumps!”

“Can't you stay a minute?” This from Garry.

“Mm-mm. I got to get back.” Edna always kept business and pleasure strictly separate. She nodded to Martin, rumpled Caroline's carefully slicked hair in passing, and added to her late client: “Don't you go letting that Saint Bernard loose till I get safe in the car, now!”

As the door closed behind her Miss Humbold exclaimed: “I don't know when I've enjoyed a drive so
much!” A remark which established her credit immediately in the Ellis family.

The parlor bedroom looked cozy with red curtains drawn and a fire on the open hearth. Kay and Garry had taken a lots of pains with it—pains that were not wasted, as they could see by the pleased look on their guest's face.

“It's just what I like: a room you can work and be comfortable in, and no frills. And that open fire is grand!”

“We've got a small stove, but we thought you'd rather have it this way. And there's all the wood you want for burning. Supper will be ready in just a few minutes, and I'll bring you some hot water.” Garry cast an anxious glance at the room's one blot, in her opinion—a little painted washstand tucked away in one corner. “We wanted to give you a screen for that, but there's not one in the house. Maybe I could fix something else. I guess I warned you this was real country, and all we have is a tin bathtub!”

“I hoped I was going to wash at the pump, from your letter.”

“Not this weather!” Garry laughed and Caroline, hanging in the background, gave a smothered snicker.

“Well, it wouldn't be the first time,” said Miss Humbold
cheerfully. “Anyway it's all nonsense, washing in the country. What I like is a little healthy dirt; not city dirt, but the kind that goes with outdoors and a good country appetite. Which reminds me, I'd better feed Arabella now, and then she'll be more settled.”

The tiny Pomeranian was sidling about the floor uneasily. Her small nose worked; her round eyes that seemed just on the brink of tears were fixed imploringly on her mistress, her slender legs, no thicker than a pencil, trembled with suspicion. Garry stooped to put out a hand, but at her movement there was a startling transformation. The thin legs stiffened, Arabella's ears went back and she gave a sharp venomous growl like the warning of a rattlesnake.

“Don't mind her; she's apt to go off like an alarm clock that way. Just pay no attention to her and she'll be all right,” Miss Humbold said.

Supper was an easier and more informal meal than any of them had expected. Even Caroline, who had good behavior written all over her, sat at first with her hands in her lap and only lifted her eyes to say “please” and “thank you,” began to unbend; Martin got past the yes-and-no stage and found himself talking naturally, and Garry felt the weight of responsibility dropping rapidly from her shoulders.

“You see,” she said to Kay over the dishwashing, while Miss Humbold was unpacking, “she's nice. We're going to get along all right.”

“A good beginning, if we can manage to keep it up. How was the supper?” For that had been Kay's anxiety.

“Fine!”

Tapping at the door later, to make sure their guest had everything needed for the night, Garry found her stretched comfortably in the armchair, her feet to the fire and an open book on her knee. A blue eiderdown lay across the foot of the bed and from a dent in its fold Arabella's sharp little eyes peered out, a faint sleepy growl sounded no louder than a sigh.

Evidently Arabella, too, was at home.

There are some people who seem able to settle into a household without, as Garry put it, causing a single ripple. Miss Emily Humbold was one of them. She asked no questions, she had an amazing knack of knowing where everything was without being told, she went her own way and expected the rest of the family to go theirs. She slept late, breakfasted in her room, and sometimes they saw scarcely anything of her till supper time. Long after the girls had gone to bed at night they could still hear the brisk tapping of her typewriter in the room below.

Her habits fascinated Caroline, who had been told beforehand that Miss Humbold was a writer, and that writers were never under any circumstances to be disturbed at work. Passing the open door one day she saw Miss Humbold, cigarette in hand, engaged in pacing up and down the floor, and stood staring at her in open curiosity.