The Prodigal Girl (16 page)

“I think it’s fun!” said Jane stoutly.

“Help yourself!” yawned Betty. “I pass.”

“Betty, dear,” called Eleanor, “come down and get something to eat.”

“Thanks! But no way!” shouted Betty rudely. “I’m going to bed.”

So Eleanor climbed the stairs once more and brought Betty a long, thick nightgown with long sleeves that she had just unearthed from the old attic trunk.

“What! Wear that thing?” refused Betty. “Not while there’s life left in me to protest! I’d never expect to emerge if I once put on that antique. That’s one that Noah wore in the ark, Mums.”

“You’ll be glad of it when you find out how cold it is here,” urged Eleanor earnestly.

“Then I’ll wait till I’m glad, but I think you’ve guessed wrong. I’ll never be glad, and I think I prefer to die to the cause of suitable garments for sleeping. So if you find your little Elizabeth frozen stark in the morning you can lay it to bringing her up to the North Pole against her will, and not to the lack of Grandmama Noah’s best nightgown.”

“Never mind, Eleanor,” said Chester, coming by the door just then. “She’ll come to it. Let her find out for herself. That’s the best way.”

Betty cast him a gleam of hate and resolved that she would freeze solid before she ever put on a thick nightgown.

At last they were all stowed away in their beds, most of them glad to get the thick garments from other days and the hot water bottles that Eleanor had tucked in beside them. There were heaps of blankets and down quilts over all, and piles of wood by every stove. The house had lost its freezing atmosphere and was filling with a healing warmth, and only Eleanor’s teeth were chattering as she crept in at last to a well-earned rest and put her tired head on the pillow. Too weary she was to realize that it was less than forty-eight hours since she had lain and worried about this trip, and now here she was! Just glad to lie down and be warm, and know that her brood were safe for the night at least. There were thousands of things that might happen tomorrow, of course, but for the night they were safe.

The candles left in the hall burned down to the sockets and blinked out. The house lay dark and still. The fires banked down, stopped crackling, and all the family slept. While outside in the wide, wild night the soft flakes continued to come down, wilder and faster as the night wore on.

And the next day was the Sabbath.

Chapter 12

W
hen the morning dawned it was scarcely perceptible, the air was so altogether filled with the beating, flying, drifting snow. Snow from above, snow from below, snow from all sides, out and over and under, a new white world, such as the children had never seen before. The old rambling farmhouse seemed almost snowed under, and only the smoke from the big-mouthed chimneys gave any signs of life.

They slept till nearly noon, and when they awoke, the whiteness prevailed over all the earth, and the air. It was as if they had been let down, house and all, to the bottom of the ocean, and were there amid the drifting, hurling, eddying deep, only that the water was white, white snow in tempestuous motion. They were as isolated as if they had been wrecked at the bottom of the ocean. They stood at their various windows and looked out with varied feelings.

Chester’s face was almost exultant. They were here! They were
all
here! And none of the terrible things that had attacked his children could get to them! Not for a while at least. So far they were safe.

If they had waited a day later they could not have made it up the mountains. The drifted snows would have shut them out, and perhaps he would never have been able to manage it again, never have been able to save them from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But now they were here, and God had shut them in with His snow and His terrible cold.

It was curious how old phrases from the Bible kept continually coming to him and fitting in with things. Was it just because he was here where these walls had so often echoed to the reading of the scripture, and where his father’s and mother’s voices in prayer had so often been heard? Had these things perhaps lingered in the atmosphere, and some undiscovered arrangement of his soul had become a human radio to set them vibrating once more? He had read that someone was trying to perfect an instrument so delicate and so far reaching that we might sometime be able to hear the voices of Moses and the prophets, of Jonah and Paul, and Washington and Lincoln again. Well, perhaps some such thing had happened here. He turned from the window with a reverent look in his eyes and called:

“Eleanor, come and see the world! We must have slept till Christmas!”

Eleanor’s first word was an exclamation of anxiety: “Chester, what can have happened to Michael and Jim?” Chester’s face sobered.

“I think they are all safe,” he said. “An hour would have got them down through the village and over the pass. After that it was all clear sailing, just a big snowstorm. They reached a good hotel and were fast asleep probably before we got to bed last night. Michael said there was no risk whatever. Besides, remember it is high noon, twelve full hours since they left us. There weren’t three inches of snow in the pass when we crossed it, and it did not start to blow till after daylight. I was up putting more wood on the sitting room stoves, and I heard it commence.”

Eleanor looked up at him and found to her surprise that he did not look as worn as she had expected.

“I believe you are enjoying it, Chester,” she said wistfully. “I believe it was the very thing you needed.”

“Is it going to be so very hard for you, dear?” he asked with sudden anxiety.

“Oh, no!” she said, veiling her apprehension. “I believe it is almost interesting. This is such a fine old house, and there is so much to see. And we haven’t been all alone together like this without anything coming between or anything we had to do since the babies were little.”

“Do you feel that too, dearest?” he said and stooped to kiss her.

Across the hall Jane was wriggling into her clothes underneath the sheets to keep from having to stand on the cold floor, and Betty was protesting at being woken up.

“For Pete’s sake, get out of this bed!” said Betty crossly.

“Mamma says to get up. It’s time to get dinner. Did you know we had slept all the morning, Betts?”

“I don’t care if I sleep all the afternoon, too,” snapped Betty. “Go away and let me alone. There’s nothing to do in this dumb dump but sleep. I don’t care if I never wake up.”

“Oh, but Betts! You wanta wake up and look out! It’s grand. The sky and the earth are all mixed up, and you can’t see anything. Not anything but just snow!”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t see what there is nice about that. I think it is poisonous! Just perfectly poisonous!”

“Oh, but it’s going to be fun! It’s going to be wonderful!”

“It isn’t my idea of fun,” growled Betty and turned over to sleep more.

The twins, however, were overjoyed at the snow. Later when Jane had succeeded in rousing Betty, they all sat down to a belated meal, which was neither breakfast nor lunch. Chris began to ask questions about sledding and skating.

“Oh, for the matter of that,” said Chester, “there is a place only a few miles from here where they ski. It’s one of the famous hills where they have the big contests. Some record jumps have been made by the great ski champions there, both Canadian and American.” “Really?” said Betty, surprised out of her gloom. “Absolutely!” said Chester with something of his old twinkle in his eyes.

Betty remembered her role and relapsed into silence, but Chris began to ask questions again.

“Have you ever been to one of those contests, Dad?” “I sure have,” said Chester, his eyes taking on a pleasant look of reminiscing. “It was the last time I was up here in winter. I went over with your uncle Clint. Let me see, that was, I’m not just sure what year. Surely I’ve told you about it before.”

“Oh, gee! Why weren’t we along?” breathed Chris. “It must have been the winter your mother had you all down in Florida, the time Betty was so sick. I thought surely I would have told you about it, though. It was wonderful.

“You know the whole course up there is outlined with evergreens, and strung with a perfect blaze of pennants of all colors. It looks like a vast border of flowers against the whiteness of the snow. People come from all around to see one of those meets. Perhaps we’ll find a way to get there sometime ourselves. They come in sleighs and automobiles from miles away. It is a great affair. Bing Anderson made his big record leap that day of one hundred and ninety feet.”

“Gee, I’ve seen ‘em in the movies,” said Chris, greatly excited, “but I never realized they leaped that far.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve read that Nels Nelsen several years later leaped over two hundred and forty feet!” Chris edged his chair nearer.

“I certainly would like to see that!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I don’t see how it’s done!”

“We’ll go over someday and look at the track. There’s always somebody over there practicing. You know how the course is built, don’t you? It’s like this—here’s the takeoff, here’s where they gain their first momentum—”

Chester took knives and salt shakers and laid it all out, with Great-Grandmother’s Wedgwood sugar bowl for the starting hill and crumpled napkins for other points.

“This is an iced groove—” Chester tilted a silver knife against the crumpled linen hill. “Here is a tower for the judges”—he drew toward him a bottle of olives that Betty had set on the table—“and the bystanders are all along here. Why, at the carnivals I’m told even amateurs do some pretty high jumping.”

“Oh, boy! I’d like to get in on something like that!” remarked Chris wistfully. “Any chance for a fella that isn’t in their clubs?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Chester thoughtfully, looking interestedly at his son.

“I’ve seen
girls
in pictures doing that,” said Jane pointedly.

“It might be that there’d be a chance for you all to try skiing somewhere around here. We’ll inquire when we get settled,” said her father. “That depends….” But he did not say what that depended upon.

There was a distinct silence while the children thought it over, got a thrill from just the idea of going out and skimming through space.

“It’s like what I dream sometimes,” said Jane thoughtfully. “I think I’m walking along on the street, and suddenly my feet somehow rise up a little off the ground and I go along just the same sort of walking on the air, getting faster and faster, only when I go real fast I have to be awfully careful not to lose my balance or I go up higher than I meant, and it kind of scares me, and sometimes I’m afraid my feet will get up over my head, they go so fast, like when you’re in the water, you know—”

“Why, I’ve dreamed that!” said Betty, forgetting herself once more and then went hurriedly on with her eating.

They finished the last of the sandwiches—only stopping to make coffee.

“We must clean out the lunch box first and not waste anything at all,” said Eleanor, “for there’s no telling how long this storm will shut us in from getting fresh supplies.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Chester. “I called up the grocer and told him to pack canned goods and groceries to last for some time. I think also there are a lot more things that Hannah put in the truck. You better investigate; some of them might not keep.”

“I have,” said Eleanor. “There is a pair of roasted chickens and a great, beautiful baked ham. I’m sure I don’t see how she managed to get it all done in so short a time without my knowing a thing about it. There’s a great big tin box full of doughnuts, too.”

“M–m–m–m–m–m–mmm!” said the children in chorus.

“Well, Hannah went out before seven o’clock and got the things as soon as the stores were open,” said Chester. “I just gave her a little hint that we might be needing them.”

“It is really wonderful what you accomplished,” said Eleanor. “We shan’t have to cook for several days, and that will be nice. We shall have a chance to get acquainted with our house and put things away.”

Betty cast a frowning look at the imprisoning snow.

“How long do they keep up, storms like this?” she asked at last. “I think it is perfectly poisonous to have it snow this way. I don’t see how on earth we’re ever to get away from here. How deep does the snow get?”

“Sometimes six or eight feet when it drifts. In fact, there have been times when we have had to tunnel through worse drifts than that. When I was a boy I remember a storm that began just like this and lasted for three days and nights!”

“Oh, murder!” said Betty under her breath, casting a frightened look toward the window.

“We don’t often have such blizzards. That was the worst I ever remember. When it finally stopped snowing we could hardly get the door open. There was a drift all across the front of the house, away up to the top of the first-story windows. You had to go upstairs to see out! My, but it was a beauteous sight! I remember we all went up to the attic to look out and see whether our neighbors were snowed in. It looked like velvet, spread everywhere, and all the valleys and ugly rocky places covered. It was like fairy land. The trees—But there! You’ll see for yourself when the sun comes out.”

“I don’t think it’s ever coming,” said Betty disagreeably, but Chester went on with his story.

“We cleared the way from the back door to the well and out to the cow yard and barn. That was comparatively sheltered, and it didn’t take long with all us boys working. There was John and Sam and Clint and our father; and I was almost eleven years old and did a good share myself.”

The children sat back from the table and looked at their father, trying to think of him as only eleven years old.

“Gee!” said John and grinned toward his mother.

“Then we started to clear away the drift in front of the house, and it was some drift! In places you could reach the top of it from the second-story windows.”

“Ohhhh!”

“It was Clint that suggested we had better find out if anybody else needed help before we began to fancy digging around the place, and he was the one that first thought of going up to the attic to look.”