The Prodigal Girl (19 page)

But of course! It was a lake, round and beautiful, hidden there among the pines and frozen over likely before the snow began, for where the wind had swept it it was perfectly glassy and smooth. How wonderful! A lake all their own, and frozen like that, so perfectly! At home they had skating for only a week or ten days, or sometimes only a day or two at Christmas, and for the rest of the year they had to go to the rink, and Daddy didn’t like that very much. There had always been a fuss if she let it be known she was going. He said it was too public. But skating! There might be compensations after all. Life wasn’t quite so poisonous as it had looked before.

She closed the window and made the bed thoughtfully, taking care with the smoothness of each sheet and blanket. Skates! How could they get their skates? It would take ages to send home for them, and maybe the skating would be all gone by the time they got here. In fact, would they ever be able to communicate with the outside world until spring? She doubted it, all that wilderness of snow, oceans deep and impenetrable. Well, there must be some skates to be found somehow. Perhaps the attic might yield a store of strange old things that could be made to do.

She went downstairs with her face almost bright.

“Come on out, Betts, it’s wonderful!” said Chris, coming in for something to wear on his hands, having hopelessly split the fur-lined gloves he had started out with.

Eleanor opened up the trunk of old flannel underwear that had been deposited in the woodshed the night they came and found mittens galore, old and darned and ugly, leftovers from the years, but good and warm and welcome now. Betty, peering out at the tunnel they had already completed to the pump, scurried back and donned anything in the way of warm garments she could lay her hands on, everything except those despised galoshes. She came out in a red sweater, gray cap and scarf, and woolen stockings drawn over her shoes.

As she stepped back to the kitchen she stopped and called joyously, with a ring to her voice that sounded almost like the old-time Betty of two years before:

“Oh, Mums! You brought our skates! You old darling! Did you know there is a perfectly precious lake down in the backyard?”

That was a morning of utter joy and excitement. Even Betty forgot that she was an exile and worked away with a broom and a shovel till her back ached and her cheeks needed no rouge to make her utterly beautiful.

Eleanor in the kitchen, looking out occasionally from a windowpane that Chris had cleared for her, forgot her weariness and anxiety, her tormenting doubt whether they had done right to bring the children away from school just at the critical time of the year, with examinations coming on and Christmas so near. She forgot everything but the joy of seeing them all together working away, father and children like so many comrades shoulder to shoulder intent on getting paths everywhere and making a way of communication with the outside world.

Their voices rang out happily, calling how many feet they had done and how deep the drift was in his or her particular space. Happy tears welled into Eleanor’s eyes as she turned away and went back to the kitchen, resolved to have a wonderful dinner ready for them when they came in hungry and tired after their task was finished.

She stood amazed for a minute and read the names on the cans and packages and bags. Flour and sugar and cornmeal, hominy, rice, oatmeal, and a sack of buckwheat. Tins of crackers and biscuits and cakes, glass jars and tin cans of fruits and jellies and vegetables. Baking powder, cocoa, chocolate, even some boxes of shredded coconut. Bars of chocolate, cans of coffee, boxes of tea, salt and codfish and kippered herring. She could hardly think of anything that she could possibly make that did not have its ingredients all there before her. How had Chester managed it? But of course he had put it into the hands of some clerk to select the things. Poor Chester. He didn’t realize how expensive that would be. She ought to have given the order and asked prices carefully, now that they were going to be poor. Well, she would hoard the delicacies and deal them out little by little, making them last a long time so that more would not have to be purchased again soon.

It was almost pleasant to get back to the kitchen lore of her early married days. She was hampered a little by not understanding the wood range and constantly forgetting to poke wood down its voluminous throat, which it seemed to devour in a second and die down in another if she did not poke it in again. It was also bewildering to have to use iron pots and pans instead of her nice smooth aluminum, which she doted on at home. But a further search revealed the fact that Hannah had even managed to put in a few of those—saucepans of different sizes and some of the cake and pie pans. That would make things easier.

Just as she had selected the materials for the meal she was planning and turned to leave the pantry, she heard Chester’s voice outside the window as he slid the big shovel into the top wall of the drift that covered the pantry window and came into contact with Chris’s shovel on the other side of the drift.

“Hello, kid!” called Chester. “That you already? Good work! Having a good time?”

“I’ll tell the world!” shouted back Chris happily.

She paused and watched through the window. She could just see both their faces through the top pane where the light stole down inside the big drift in a jagged line. They were working away on either side of the drift a foot apart, and the snow was giving way before them. It was hard work, too. She knew they had to carry some of it back ten or twelve feet through the narrow passage they had made to get to an open space where they might deposit it.

When she turned back to the kitchen again there came the girls’ ringing laughter, Betty the loudest of them all. She and Jane had formed a partnership, pelting John and Doris with snowballs in return for those they had thrown while the girls were shoveling.

Who would have believed that the Betty of yesterday could be this cheerful creature, playing like a child in the snow!

John had started a snowman out in an open space where the wind had blown the ground almost bare. He was rolling a great ball almost as tall as himself, and now the girls stopped snowballing and helped. When they got it as large as they could roll, they made another smaller one and put it on the top of the first for a head. Jane tore some blue woolen balls from the knit cap she was wearing and stuck them in for eyes. Betty fashioned a nose from snow and found a bit of red ribbon in her pocket that she applied like lipstick. They made arms and put mittens on for hands, and Jane took off her cap and scarf and put them on him, and then they all stood back and shouted for Dad and Mother and Chris to come and see. Altogether it was a wonderful morning, and a great deal of work got itself done.

Hungry as wolves they came in when Eleanor rang the big farm dinner bell, all talking at once, all eager to tell Mother how much each had shoveled.

It appeared they were nearly down to the road that led to the little log house at the turn. When they got there, they would be in touch with the world again and could arrange for milk to be left at the gate each morning and the mail and the daily paper to be brought up. But why care, after all? The load of fretfulness and anxiety to get back to the world seemed to have dropped from every shoulder.

“And Daddy,” said Betty, forgetting her recent affectation of calling him by his first name. “Is that really a lake down behind the house, and is it truly frozen over, or is it only a mirage? It looks like a sheet of silver in the sun.”

“Why, yes, certainly, haven’t I mentioned the lake?” asked Chester composedly, helping himself to baked beans—real bean-hole beans from a can that Eleanor had doctored with molasses and seasoning and butter and browned again in the oven. “Yes, that lake is always great. We boys used to spend every afternoon there until dark when we didn’t have chores to do. And sometimes when it was moonlight—”

“Oh–h–h–h–h–hhh!” chorused the excited young people. “
Could we?”

“We could!” said Chester happily, watching the play of pleasure on Betty’s beautiful little face.

Oh, Chester was glad now he had come. He knew he was glad. He felt his prayer was being answered.

“Did you know that Mums brought our skates?” announced Betty with the air of conferring a great secret. “Yes, sir, all of them,” she said as Chris turned an eager questioning face. “I wonder how long it will be before we can get down there?” continued Betty. “It looks miles deep in snow.”

“Ah, but there’s a path if you only know the way. We’ll have to do a pretty bit of shoveling, and it may be a day or two before we get around to the lake, but we’ll get there,” promised Chester.

They all slept like logs that night, going to bed at half past eight. Not even Betty made a protest. But she went to the window of Chris’s room before she went to her own, and looked out on the luminous valley with its one clear little streak of moonlight from a tiny thread of a new moon, and caught her breath again at the loveliness. Strange, unreal world of beauty. It seemed as if it was all a dream. What a splendid place for a house party. If it wasn’t for that old business going bad she would ask Chester to let her invite the whole class up for Christmas week, and they could give a dance, and maybe invite some of the people around the neighborhood if there were any people worthwhile. What a mess that Chester should have failed! She never thought a thing like that could happen to her, to be the daughter of a poor man and have to live on a farm!

And so in spite of the silver sheen in the valley and the heap of skates in the woodshed and the little thread of a new moon hanging over the frozen lake, Betty went to bed with an evil spirit attending and a grudge against her father growing again in her heart. Also she longed for a cigarette, feverishly, wildly as she lay down on the old cord bed that creaked and groaned even with her light weight. A cigarette! If she could have just one. Here it was two whole days since she had had a smoke, and she hadn’t been that long without one for over two years! It was fierce! Perfectly poi—But at that stage Betty fell asleep, for shoveling snow does not tend to make one wakeful.

It took two days to get shoveled down to the lake, because there was so much else to do that they couldn’t work at it constantly. It was maddening to have to come in and wash dishes and carry wood. But finally the last step in the steep hill was cut and a path shoveled out on the ice to meet the windswept silver, and they all raced up to the house to get their skates.

Mother was making doughnuts, and there was a great platter full of the hot delicious circles, freshly powdered with sugar, standing on the table. Good cheer fairly exuded from every face as they stood around eating as many as they pleased with not a word of objection from Eleanor. She would have to mix up more dough, but after all, why not let them enjoy them while they were hot? The cold air and exercise would help to digest them, and they would likely stay out till all hours now that the ice was ready.

So they ate till they could eat no more then shouldered their skates and flew down to the ice.

The sun was just sinking behind the farthest mountain as they came out of the house. It looked like a ball of fire opal against the golden glitter of the departing day. Long ruby rays slithered over the crusty snow. Fine brown pencilings of birch trees made pictures against the distance.

“It looks just like a Christmas card!” said Jane. “Look, Betty!” And Betty, pausing on the top of the hill to finish her last bite of doughnut, felt something like a faint thrill of appreciation for the grandeur spread out before her. Then she whirled down to the ice and, putting on her skates, glided away into the sunset filled with the joy of living, a child on wings flitting over the fairy dazzle of glass as lightly as a bird. Just a happy child, all her tantrums and half-developed passions held at bay by the pure animal joy of flying along on the ice.

The next day a letter came from Dudley Weston and two other letters from Betty’s best girlfriends. Betty was a woman again, with all her pride of self-will, all her arrogance and fury at being kept in prison when the world she had left behind her, her world, was swinging on with dizzying whirl without her.

Betty locked herself in her bedroom to read her letters, though everybody but her father and mother were down on the ice, and even they were in conference behind closed doors over some letters they had received.

Thorny, old girl
, it began,

I call it pretty lousy of your old man to step in and disconnect you the way he did up at the Tav. I must say I think he owes me several apologies, knocking me stiff right out of the blue that way. If he hadn’t been your dad I’d have knocked him cold for that, and next time I’ll do more than that if you know what I mean. Better warn him!

But anyway, what’s the little old idea doing the vanishing act? I called up your house twice yesterday and got nowhere. Gyp Magilkey says she thinks it’s some parent stuff, that your dad was mad as a hatter up at the high dance, but I told her you wouldn’t stand for anybody monkeying with your rights
.