The Prodigal Girl (17 page)

“How could you tell up in the attic?” asked Chris.

“Why, you could see most of the houses in the valley from there, and you could easily tell if anybody was snowed under.”

“Why didn’t you telephone?” asked Jane.

“They didn’t have telephones then, silly!” said Chris.

“Yes, the telephone had been invented, but it hadn’t penetrated these parts then,” said Chester, “and if it had we couldn’t have afforded to have one. People were poor in those days. We got our living from the soil. But when we looked we could see smoke coming cheerfully up from most of the houses, showing that they had fires, and in some places we could see that the men were out digging paths around the houses. But there was one house, just below the brow of a windswept hill, that seemed to have been utterly obliterated. There wasn’t even a dark streak where the chimney ought to have been, and not a wisp of smoke in the air above it.”

“How did you know there was any house there at all?” asked Doris eagerly. She was sitting on a little old-fashioned stool by the fireplace now, her cheeks red as roses, and listening with all her might. Doris loved a story.

“Oh, we knew every house in the neighborhood of course, just as you know everyone who lives on your own street. And besides, that special house was where Letty Cameron and her mother lived alone, and they were very poor. Mr. Cameron had died the year before after a long illness, and Letty and her mother had had a hard time getting on. They took in sewing, and Letty taught in the district school over on the other side of the hill. Letty was a pretty girl, and Clint had been going with her more or less, taking her to singing school and going over there to cut wood for them sometimes. And when there wasn’t any sign of smoke coming from the chimney, I could see Clint was very much disturbed, and so was Father.

“He asked Clint how much wood he had cut the last time he was there, and Clint said, ‘Plenty.’ They talked about it a minute or two, and then Father said we must go and see. They got out the old bobsled and hitched up the horses, but the drifts were so deep they had to keep stopping to shovel themselves out. I remember Mother didn’t want me to go along, but Father said, ‘Oh, let him go! He’s got to learn to be helpful, and he’s getting a big boy now.’ I was so proud to be allowed to go along. But it was a long time before we got down to the road. By that time they had got out the old snowplow down in the village, and part of the way the road was broken. We stopped and got some other men and boys to go along and then struck into the back road that led to the Cameron cottage. It was an exposed road and terribly drifted. I remember wishing several times that I had stayed at home; my hands got so cold, and my feet felt as if they didn’t belong to me. But there were eight or ten men with us by that time, and at last we reached the Cameron house. But it was all snowed under except one or two windows on the second floor.

“When we shouted, nobody answered, and when at last we tunneled through to the side door and knocked, nobody answered. The men talked about it a minute or two and decided the Camerons had gone to somebody’s house to stay till the storm was over, but Clint insisted that we ought to go in and see, and so at last Father put his shoulder to the door and wrenched it open.

“I remember how solemn we all felt, just as if we were housebreakers as we went marching solemnly in. Father told Clint to go ahead as he was kind of a friend and was often there, and when they got into the kitchen where they lived mostly, they saw why there hadn’t been any smoke from the chimney. There was plenty of wood piled around the hearth, as if they had brought it in from the shed to be ready for cold and storm, but the fireplace was completely smothered in snow, and snow lay away out over the floor for a couple of feet. You see, the stone that is put across the top of the chimney to keep things from falling down had blown off in the storm, and the snow had come down and put out the fire, probably fallen down in great quantities. The Camerons were unconscious, almost frozen to death. They were huddled in each other’s arms in the bed, with all the blankets they had piled over them, but it was bitter cold, and the wind and storm had been rushing down the chimney for hours.

“I don’t think either of them ever quite recovered from the shock. Mrs. Cameron had pneumonia the next winter, and Letty was never strong after that. My brother Clint married her a few weeks later and went to live down at their house. He seemed to have aged during that day. I never saw anyone work so hard in my life as Clint did, digging that tunnel to the house. He was all bound up in Letty.”

“Was that my aunt Letty that died?” Jane asked with awe in her voice.

“Yes, she only lived about five years after their marriage, and Clint has never got over it. He can’t seem to settle down, just travels from one place to another, doesn’t care to have a home anymore.”

Betty got up suddenly and walked to the window, blinking out at the deep white lace of the snow on the pane.

“I think this is a
terrible
place!” she said in a choking voice. “I don’t know why anybody would stay in it,
ever!
It’s perfectly
poisonous!”

“Aw, cut out that poison business, Betts. You’ve overworked that word for two days now!” declared Chris gruffly.

“Well, now,” said Chester with compunction in his voice. “I’m sorry I’ve given you that feeling, little girl. I was just reminiscing. It didn’t occur to me that it would be depressing. This really is a lovely place, and I want you to grow to like it as much as I did.”

“I never shall!” said Betty violently. “I hate it! It’s just like a prison. It’s perfectly poi—”

“There you go again, Betts, with your poison!” interrupted Chris. “You’re a pain in the neck, you are! If we can’t have a little holiday, sort of a vacation—”

“Holiday!” uttered Betty witheringly. “Do you call this a holiday? A vacation? Come out here to smother under a blanket of snow! The worst of it is there won’t be anybody to dig us out when the storm is over, if it ever is!”

Chester cast a look of despair on Eleanor and sighed heavily.

Eleanor laughed, although she was far from cheerful herself.

“Well, you know, Chester, that wasn’t exactly a cheerful story you told about people freezing to death. Come, let’s do something pleasant. Betty, why don’t you look over those books? Perhaps you’ll find something really interesting to read. There ought to be some rare old books in a collection like that. I confess I’m curious to see them.”

“There wouldn’t be anything among those fusty, old-fashioned things to interest me,” said Betty with her nose in the air and a fine contempt sitting on her shrugged shoulders.

“Yes, there would, Betts, here’s the very thing. Suits you just to a T.
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
. Come and try it!” said Chris, holding out a faded old volume with tattered edges to its yellowed pages.

“I think you’re all perfectly horrid!” said Betty, bursting into tears and rushing up the stairs to her bed where she was heard to fling herself down and weep.

Chester started to follow her, his face full of distress.

“Let her alone, Chester,” said Eleanor. “Let her cry it out. She’s all strung up. You must remember you never crossed her in anything before in her life. It is hard for the child.”

Betty cried herself to sleep and did not come down again until night had settled over the world, and a pleasant smell of something cooking came luringly up the stairs.

Chapter 13

T
here were lamps burning brightly in all the rooms and a great fire of logs in the fireplace in the living room. Now and then a spit of snow came down the chimney to sizzle in the fire as a reminder that the blizzard was still in full force outside, but the house had a cheerful look.

They had all been at work getting things into order. The suitcases were gone from the living room, the packing boxes had vanished from the dining room, the canned things were standing in neat rows on the big old pantry shelves on clean newspaper shelf covers, and the two roasted chickens were in the oven sending out a delicious smell every time the oven door was open. There was really something like a regular dinner set out on the table. Bread freshly cut from the loaves that Hannah had providently wrapped in double waxed paper, a plate of butter, a dish of preserves, another of olives, potatoes roasted in their skins, a corn pudding just out of the oven. Really, they had done wonders for their first real meal in the house. Betty slid into her vacant chair and when she had eaten looked less forlorn.

“Now,” said Eleanor when they had finished, “we’ll all work together putting things away. Jane, you and Daddy may put the food away in the closet we cleaned. You know where everything belongs now. I will wash the dishes, and Chris and Betty may wipe. Thank fortune we have plenty of dish towels. Hannah remembered to put them in. I never would have thought of them. Here, Betty, put this apron on. You mustn’t get that dress dirty. There’s no cleaner here to call every Tuesday and bring things back Friday. We’ll have to look out for our cleaning ourselves. John, you and Doris wash your hands and be ready to carry the dishes to Jane to put in the cupboard.”

It didn’t take long when they all worked, and though Betty did not enter into the affair with any degree of heartiness, she yet managed to do her part, and in a very short time the kitchen was cleared up and the table set for breakfast the next morning.

“Now,” said Betty dismally, consulting her little wristwatch. “For Pete’s sake, what shall we do? It’s only seven o’clock and a long evening ahead!”

“Not so long, Bettykins,” said her father gently. “People go to bed at nine o’clock in the country, you know.” “For cat’s sake, what for?” said Betty.

“Well, because they have to get up in the morning, I guess.”

“I don’t see how they exist!” moaned Betty.

“Come on,” said Eleanor, coming in from the kitchen rolling her sleeves down. “We’re going to sing now. Jane and I found the old melodeon this afternoon, and Chris mended one of the reeds so it goes pretty well. Where are those old singing books you said you found, Chester?”

“Right here on the shelf,” said Chester eagerly. He was pleased as a boy at the prospect.

“Oh, heck!” groaned Betty but accepted the book and slunk down on the corner of the old sofa that Chris had drawn up to one side of the fireplace.

“Try number ten,” said Chester eagerly, sitting down near a lamp.

“We always used to begin with that every Sunday night. Father liked it. He had a good deep bass voice, and Clint always sang tenor.”

Jane went to the melodeon and pumped away vigorously at the pedals.

“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
Toward Canaan’s fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.”

they sang, only Chris gave Betty’s foot a brotherly kick and loudly substituted Briardale for Canaan with a meaningful look at his sister.

“How perfectly tortuous that instrument is!” said Betty as they finished the seven verses and began to turn pages over in search of another.

“Torturous is good,” said Chris, “only don’t overwork it like you did the poison.”

“Shut up!” said Betty and curled up disconsolately in one corner of the sofa again.

They sang “The Lord’s My Shepherd,” “Rock of Ages,” “Just as I Am,” and then they sang “Happy Day” and “Happy Land” for the children, and Chester’s face looked so rested and happy as he sang the old tunes to the cracked accompaniment of the old melodeon that even Betty refrained from further contemptuous remarks.

“We always sang in the evening,” said Chester when they were quite hoarse with singing. “It’s a pleasant custom. I wonder why we never kept it up!”

“I don’t see how you had time,” said Betty sarcastically.

“What did they have to do?” said Jane. “They couldn’t farm in the nighttime.”

“Oh, we had plenty to do,” said Chester. “There was wood to cut and pile in the woodshed, and if we stayed out skating after school, we had it to do after supper. There were lessons to learn, and we all sat around the table with the big student lamp in the center and studied till nine o’clock. Then my father always got the big Bible and drew up to the table, and we children scattered around the room, Emily by our mother’s side, and the boys around the room, and we sang first, two or three hymns.”

“Who played?” asked Jane quickly.

“Nobody,” said Chester. “We just sang. The melodeon was an importation of later years, bought for Emily to take lessons on. She got so she could play for worship about the time I went away to college, and I only remember that when I came home at vacations.”

“Aunt Emily was the one that married a missionary and went to Africa, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Chester with a sad note in his voice. “We never saw her again. She died of jungle fever after she’d been there about five years, but she was a dear little sister. Pretty, too. She looked a good deal like Betty. I remember the last worship we had before her wedding. Father read the ninety-first psalm, and I shall never forget his prayer that night.”

He was silent for a moment, and Eleanor spoke, as if for the moment she and her husband were alone together.

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve often missed it. We always had family worship in my home, too, you know. I never cared so much about it when I was a girl, but after I went away I really missed it sometimes. It is strange how sweet home grows when we once get away from it forever.”

“I don’t know why we never had it,” said Chester. “I’ve often thought I’d start it someday. It seemed the right thing to do, especially since they made me an elder in the church, but somehow the time never seemed to come.”

“Yes, I know,” said Eleanor. “I don’t see how we could, with school so early and you having to rush off to business meetings at night so much. But it would be nice. The children don’t realize what they’ve missed.”

Betty looked bored, and Chris began to whistle a tune from the hymnbook, although it sounded much more like the jazzy thing they sang in the poolroom the night he played his last game than it did like any conceivable hymn.