Winterbound (8 page)

“I told you she was mousey,” said Garry after a few days.

In the kitchen it was just as bad. She wanted everything arranged in a different way.

“Don't you think it would be handier if we kept the cups and saucers here and the bread box there?”

“Don't you think it would be handier if the oranges went into the pantry instead of that blue bowl, and then we'd have the chest free to stack dishes on?”

“Don't you think . . .”

Garry, who with Martin's help looked after the few outdoor chores, had her own troubles. She had always kept the wood-box filled and the stoves attended to, but as early as three o'clock Mrs. Cummings would begin to worry about whether the firewood was going to last through the evening or whether it wasn't. And then it would be: “Don't you think, while it's still nice and light . . .”

“Take my advice,” said that young woman one morning,
sternly setting the blue bowl of oranges back where it had always been kept. “If you let her get one triumph—just one—we'll be done for.”

Nevertheless and imperceptibly the household began to find itself organized according to Mrs. Cummings's ideas of comfort. Not that she did very much herself, after the first week, except sit around and keep warm, but she loved to suggest, and Cousin Carrie's reference to general supervision became only too clear. Meal hours were changed about. Mrs. Cummings ate no breakfast, so she usually began to feel faintish about noon, and supper was an hour earlier so that things could be “got out of the way.” Getting things out of the way and having things “handy,” though apparently contradictory terms, were among her firm beliefs. Worst of all, she referred to the absent Penny frequently and invariably as “your dear Ma.”

Caroline was the one who got along with her best. Over Caroline she seemed to exert a peculiar fascination. Caroline would follow her about, watching her, or with the small girl's insatiable interest in the conversation of elder persons, sit spellbound listening to Mrs. Cummings's accounts of the various places she had lived in, all of them, it began gradually to appear, superior in every detail to the Ellis household.

“
You're
an old-fashioned one!” Mrs. Cummings would remark to her occasionally. Caroline seemed to take it as a compliment.

More and more often Kay and Garry, as well as the younger ones, took to slipping over to the Rowes.

“What did she come for if she can't even get the supper by herself once in a while?” Mary asked bluntly one afternoon when Kay explained that she had to hurry home.

“It isn't that so much,” Kay said. “Garry and I don't mind doing things; we always have. Only it's worse than having no one in the house at all. And nothing's ever quite right, though goodness knows we've turned the place upside down to make her comfortable. She says her room's like an ice box, though she's got every extra quilt in the house on her bed this minute, with the fireplace as well, and Garry and I were freezing last night. She didn't seem a bit like that when she first came, but I suppose you never do know how people will turn out.” “I tell you, you want to
watch
her,” said Mary, who had paid more than one visit to the Ellis house. “She reminds me of nothing in the world so much as the boll weevil in that Carl Sandburg record!”

“You can't tell me a thing about old ladies,” said Edna, who had faithfully driven over one day to see how
the family were getting along, and in two minutes had shrewdly summed up the situation. “I've had plenty to do with them and I know.” And noticing Kay's worried face and Garry's curt cheerfulness she added sensibly: “You'd better all of you pile right in my car this minute and we'll go down to town to see the movies. I've got a free evening and the roads are fine, and I'll get you back before bedtime.”

The movies—even those that the one local picture house afforded in this off season—followed by hot chocolate at the corner drugstore, seemed like positive dissipation after so many shut-in weeks on the hillside. It was cheerful to see lights and shop windows and people walking about on sidewalks again, and the drive home over frozen roads and under a clear star-lighted sky, singing at the tops of their voices while Edna steered skilfully between the bumps, was almost the best part of the evening. They returned blessing Edna, and with renewed strength to cope with Mrs. Cummings through another week at least.

Neal referred to her cheerfully as “the old gal.” “How's your old gal getting along?” he would ask the girls whenever he saw them.

“You see, you didn't start right,” he told them one day. “What you ought to have done was just to have
buttered her feet a bit, see, like they do to cats in a strange place. Then she'd have been kept so busy lickin' the butter off she wouldn't have no time for complaints.”

“Seems to me we've done nothing but butter her feet, ever since she came in the house,” said Garry, “and that's the whole trouble.”

“Well, we had a little heart to heart talk, out here on the road the other day,” Neal went on. “She told me how terrible everything was in the country, and I told
her
how terrible everything was in the country, and believe me I could tell her a whole lot more'n she could tell me. I just jollied her along and she took it all like a lamb, and I could see she was getting the impression I was a nice, quiet, intelligent sort of a guy, someone she felt she could have real confidence in. I tell you, what that old soul needs is just to forget her troubles and get out and have a good time for once. Some night I'm going to shave real well and get my best pants on and take her out to one of these country dances over at Warley Center or some place. You see if I don't!”

But for all Neal's joking things went from bad to worse.

The brunt of it fell upon Kay, for Garry could always basely find some excuse for outdoor jobs, preferring the biting cold to Mrs. Cummings's running monologues. The absence of a radio was one grievance; she'd have
thought everyone had a radio, these days. But there were plenty of others. It was not pleasant to be reminded continually, in not too roundabout a way, how much better built, better equipped, and better managed other people's houses were; how Mrs. Cummings's own daughter had a little house so snug, you wouldn't believe it, everything was so handy and kept like a new pin; her husband got her an electric egg beater only the other day. How all the other country places Mrs. Cummings had ever lived in before had electricity and furnaces and plumbing; running water upstairs and down, and everything so “nice.” How Mrs. Cummings never could bear stoves, nasty dirty things with all the mess and ashes, and as for pumps—why, hardly anybody these days put up with a pump. So unhandy!

Well-to-do people, it seemed, were what Mrs. Cummings had always been used to. Her last place now, out on Long Island, she'd had her own bathroom with a shower in it, and everything so comfortable. Kay ought to see how people lived, nice people. She managed to convey that poverty, even temporary, was rather a disgrace and that not having certain luxuries stamped one, as it were. Mrs. Sterling had a lovely apartment; she'd often gone there to help with sewing or spring cleaning, and she'd do anything to oblige Mrs. Sterling who was such a nice lady, but if she'd known the sort of place she was
coming to—well, there! It couldn't be helped, so the only thing was to make the best of it.

Even the goaded worm will turn at last and Kay, one morning when the pump had frozen unexpectedly, Big Bertha for some reason refused to draw, and Caroline in the general confusion had forgotten to put on her heavy sweater under her school coat and the omission was only found out too late to remedy, turned upon Mrs. Cummings in exasperation.

“If you were so comfortable at your daughter's house, Mrs. Cummings, and you really feel that way about everything, I should think you'd better go back there,” she said.

Garry, still tinkering with the pump and a kettle of boiling water in the back kitchen, could hardly believe her ears. It was very seldom that Kay lost her temper, but this was one of the times. Garry recognized that tone, not so very different from Penny's when Penny got thoroughly mad.

One retort led to another; there was a sharp brief battle of words from which Kay emerged shaken but victorious, with an odd sensation of feeling herself for the first time head of the household in her mother's absence. Mrs. Cummings retired to her room; lunch, when it came, was a silent and extra-polite meal and later Garry whispered over the dishpan:

“Do you suppose she's really going?”

“She's been acting for days as if she wanted to, and I told her she could. She's probably packing her trunk now. Garry, I just couldn't have stood another single day of it!”

“I know it, old girl. I'm darn glad you spoke out. Home will be home again, anyway!”

“Mother will be worried, I suppose, and Cousin Carrie furious when she hears, but I just don't care. We can always get someone else if we have to.”

“No more of Cousin Carrie's old bats, thank you. Why, Penny would never have stood her a day, I know! To think of all the women out of jobs who'd have been glad to come here if they only knew, and could have a good time with us.” Garry swished the milk pitcher out vigorously.

“Oh, I don't suppose this place is such a catch! It is uncomfortable and muddly and hard work in winter, but it's no better for being told about it every minute of the day.”

When Mrs. Cummings emerged, closing the door carefully behind her, it was to call up the station for a taxi, disdaining Edna. But there was only one train a day in winter—Garry could have told her that much—so another uncomfortable twenty-fours hours had still to pass. Mrs. Cummings improved them by being unusually
nice to Caroline, managing to treat her with an air of veiled pity. Her silence towards the rest of the family seemed to denote a meek acceptance rather unexpected in her, but Kay was to find a surprise still in store.

“The month is not up for three days yet, Mrs. Cummings, and mother paid you that before she left, so I don't think we owe each other anything,” said Kay next morning, feeling a little uncomfortable now the storm was over and hoping for at least a pleasant leave-taking.

“There's next month's salary due to me, Miss Ellis,” returned the old lady, having sized up Kay's inexperience long ago.

“
Next
month?”

“A month's pay or a month's notice, that's always understood, Miss Ellis. It was you that give the notice, not me. The arrangement as I understood it was for two months at least, and there's my fares and expenses to be thought of, not to speak of my having thrown over another very good job just to come up here to you, on account of obliging Mrs. Sterling and all, though what I'm to say to her . . .”

“You needn't trouble about Mrs. Sterling,” said Kay, white with anger. “I shall tell her myself everything that is necessary. And I think it will be a very long time before she finds you another place!”

Garry, always the level-headed one, was not there
at the moment to consult, there was no time to run over and ask Mary about it, and Kay marched upstairs to the little box that held the store of housekeeping money her mother had left, took out four bills, and coming back laid them silently on the table.

She was too angry to mention the matter until after the taxi had driven away, and then she told Garry, who whistled.

“Good Lord, Kay! But she'd no right to it at all!”

“I don't know, she said she had, and I was just too mad at the whole business to argue with her. I'd rather give her the forty dollars and have done with it, though I suppose I was a fool and I don't believe one word about that other job she missed taking. We'd have paid it anyhow if she had stayed on.”

“Well, depend upon it she'll take good care to steer clear of Cousin Carrie for a while now, anyway, which is something to be thankful for. So Cousin Carrie won't know a thing and we needn't have to worry mother about it all. Cheer up, Kay! We've got the house to ourselves again, and it's only three days to Christmas!”

Mary Rowe's comment was brief and pointed.

“The old buzzard!” she exclaimed when Garry told her. “To think of getting away with forty dollars like that! Well, if you ask me I don't know but it's cheap at the price.”

All the same the living room, denuded of Mrs. Cummings's familiar flotsam and jetsam, had an oddly empty look that evening, and Kay and Garry found themselves wondering if after all they had done everything they could to make the old lady's stay comfortable, and whether they mightn't have shown a little more patience with her ways—the sort of uncomfortable regret that always attends the departure of people one has disliked but never of those one cares for. Still, as Garry said, it was only three more days to Christmas.

Ways and Means

CHRISTMAS day dawned clear and fine; a white Christmas, for there had been a fresh fall of snow overnight. There was no wind, so trees and bushes held their delicate white tracery on every twig, and the dead weeds by the gateway were changed suddenly to things of beauty.