NEAL was right. Next morning there was an ominous grayness in the air. By midday the snow began to fall, first in big whirling flakes, then closer and denser, shutting out the landscape like a white curtain, packing against the door sill and drifting high in the hollows. The children came home from school shouting and red-cheeked, snow clinging thickly to their clothing and sifted down their necks, shaking themselves like dogs as they ran in through the door that Garry held ajar against the rising wind.
“There’s four inches now. If it keeps up Jimmy says we won’t get down to the state road tomorrow, not unless they get the snow plows out.”
It did keep up. Garry and Martin worked hard bringing in armloads of wood before the big outdoor woodpile should get snowed under, till their fingers were frozen through their wet gloves.
“Gosh, there’s enough here to last us through a blizzard!” Martin exclaimed, dropping his last heavy load on the shed floor.
“So you think,” said Garry darkly. It was her job to tend Big Bertha and she knew how much that monster ate.
By supper time the snow had piled halfway up the windowpanes on the north side of the house, and when Caroline pulled the curtain aside it was to peer out on a white and buried world.
There was no going to school next day. The kitchen door opened onto a snowbank, and Martin stepped out above his knees. Jimmie brought the milk over a good hour later than usual, floundering through unbroken drifts, and between them they shoveled a narrow path as far as the mailbox. Later Neal hitched his two horses to the homemade snow plow, three heavy timbers spiked together to make a rough triangle, and the boys and Caroline clung squealing to the back bar while it swung and slithered down the hill, breaking a track and pushing the snow into high banks against either side of the road.
Down on the lower road the town plow was busily forging its way, an impressive yellow monster that threw the loose snow up in showers as it chugged along. Neal, about to turn his horses at the foot of the hill, drew up and waited with the children to see it pass.
“Hey, what you tryin’ to do—spoil the sledding?” he shouted as the engine drew abreast.
The driver grinned back.
“Better take them horses off of the road before we scrape ’em up!”
Road and hedgerow shimmered through the hot air from the exhaust. The horses’ breath came in white clouds as they stood waiting. Neal’s sturdy figure planted with feet braced well apart on the snow plow, the children in their knitted caps and mufflers, old Sam, the Walker hound, sitting down beside them with his tongue lolling out—the whole made a cheerful picture, sharp cut against the heaped sparkling snow.
“Me an’ my horses, we’re making a decent job of it,” Neal drawled. “By the time you’re finished muckin’ up the road bed with that yaller pushcart we’ll have to get to work an’ pay for havin’ it all put back again.”
“Oh yeah? Didn’t see you at the Grange dance Friday night.”
“You didn’t. My best an’ me was all fixed up to go, but she turned it down at the last minute. Seems she heard you was goin’ to be there. Bad news always gets around, some way. Giddap, Dolly!”
The horses swung round into the cleared road, making a wide circle. The snow-plow driver leaned out and waved. Then they were breasting the hill again, the heavy wooden frame lurching like a ship at sea while the children clung to one another to keep their balance.
“Good as toboggan riding” said Neal. “Hang on tight. When we get back I’ll take a turn round the barn and then we’re through. I’ll clear you a nice track there for sleddin’ on.”
The horses pawed and floundered through the drifts on the pasture slope, where the plow left a wide curving track, smooth and close packed for the sleds to run on, with a soft snow bank on either side.
The bright clear cold was growing steadily colder by afternoon, and a steely haze crept over the hills. Neither of the boys wanted to give up coasting, but Caroline left them early and came back to warm her pink chilled hands at the stove.
Kay was deep in her rug, sorting colors by the window.
“Had enough sledding, Caroline?”
“I guess so.”
“Then take your things off quickly. The snow’s just dripping off you!”
Caroline began to tug in a half-hearted way. She was so long about it that Garry had to come and help.
“Anything happened out there?”
“No. . . . I just got tired.”
“You’re all chilled through,” said Garry briskly.
“You should have had sense enough to come in before.”
Caroline flounced aside.
“I’m not. I’m burning hot, if you want to know. And I guess my head aches, too.”
Kay and Garry exchanged glances.
“I’ll tuck you up on the sofa and you can take a nap till supper time.”
In spite of Big Bertha the windowpanes were already beginning to freeze over, earlier than they had ever done before. Garry scratched a fingernail across the transparent ice. “Look at that already! It’s going to be pretty cold tonight.”
“Five degrees now,” cried Martin excitedly when he came in, cheeks burned red with the frost. “And it’s going down all the time. Neal says it’ll drop way below zero tonight.”
Caroline felt no better by supper time. She was cross and irritable, drank a glass of hot milk under protest and was tucked up in her bed, which had long ago been shifted into the room where her sisters slept, warmed by the floor register just above Bertha’s towering head. That register made an isle of comfort on which to dress or undress in chilly weather, and the girls were doubly glad of it tonight.
“I’ll make up a good big fire that’ll keep till morning,” Garry said.
She wedged chunk after chunk into Bertha’s cavernous mouth before closing the drafts. But the wind changed during the night; instead of smoldering as they should the logs burned themselves out and when Garry came down in the early morning there was only a handful of graying ashes left. A chill light filtered through the ice-covered windows. In the kitchen everything was frozen solid.
Garry gave one grim look around her, pulled on a windbreaker, and went out in the shed to split fresh kindling, for Martin had forgotten his job in the excitement of sledding yesterday and the wood-box was nearly empty. The pump handle only gave a dismal croak when she took hold of it, but luckily there was still water—or rather ice—in the kettle. She got the kitchen fire started, set the frozen coffeepot over it, and returned to struggle with Bertha.
Martin heard her stirring and stumbled drowsily out in bathrobe and slippers, his teeth chattering.
“What’s happening? Did the fire go out?”
“Oh, no! I’m just trying to keep the heat down!”
Ashes were flying in the room. Garry, poker in hand, turned a smudgy and exasperated face on him.
“Wrap a blanket around you and go sit by the kitchen stove till I come—and keep it going. And watch that coffeepot. I’ll be right out.”
She laid fresh kindling over the still warm ashes, with a fresh log on top, and opened the drafts. Bertha could be depended upon to do her best.
Martin was peering into the percolator. “Do you suppose frozen coffee’s bad for one?”
“No, of course it isn’t; I’ve drunk it dozens of times,” Garry knew her Martin; he had a horrible memory for scraps of information read in newspapers, especially relating to what he called “chemical reactions.” The slightest hesitation on her part, and that precious coffee would have gone straight into the slop pail. She snatched the pot from him barely in time and set it back on the stove. “There’s enough for us two there and I’ll make some fresh as soon as the water’s thawed out. You get some cups out and for heaven’s sake don’t make any racket; I want Kay to go on sleeping till the house has warmed up.”
The kitchen stove was burning cheerfully by now; they sat with their feet on the oven ledge and drank the left-over coffee while little by little the room grew warmer and tiny misted spots appeared on the window-panes.
“Thirty-six,” said Garry presently, going to look at the thermometer which hung by the doorway between the two rooms. “Lord knows what it’s like outside.”
They were to look at that thermometer many times before the day was out. Neal’s cold snap had come with a vengeance. Martin was all set to go to school in spite of the temperature, but learning when Neal came over with the milk that Jimmy was staying home, he thought better of it, and spent the morning across the way instead. Even that short dash across the road made him feel like an arctic explorer.
“Eighteen below last night,” Neal told them. “Mary and I sat up all night to keep the fires going. It’s all of ten below now, or I miss my guess. No sense letting those kids walk down to the school bus and back this weather.”
And yet there was something exhilarating in the cold, Garry thought when she went out into the yard and felt the keen sting of the air against her face, a sort of excitement in knowing what real winter weather could be like.
Kay was worried about Caroline, who huddled near the stove, listless and shivering. Her cheeks were burning and her hands cold and clammy.
“It’s a straight old-fashioned cold,” said Garry. “If Penny were here she’d give her a good dose of something and put her back to bed. I’ll light the drum stove upstairs and we’ll get the room good and warm before she goes up.”
For once Caroline made no objection to anything. All she wanted was to curl up in bed and lie there, and it was this unwonted submissiveness more than anything else that frightened her sisters.
“If only I knew what she felt like, I’d know more what to do,” Kay said helplessly. But Caroline wouldn’t even tell them what she felt like. She lay and snuffled into her handkerchief, refusing all comfort and only wanting Penny—Penny who had always been on hand every time before when she felt sick.
And Penny was in New Mexico.
Garry went over to the Rowes, sure strength in all emergencies, and returned with Mary and the clinical thermometer.
“Hundred and a half,” said Mary. “I don’t believe it’s anything more than a cold. You could call the doctor up, but he’d have eight miles to drive and the roads are awful. Neal says there’ll be hardly a car out today. I tell you what. If her temperature goes up, or if she isn’t any better by tomorrow, why don’t you call Miss Hussey? She’s the district nurse.”
“Would she come?”
“Of course she’ll come. And she hasn’t so far to drive, either. I’d as soon have her as anyone. She was grand when Shirley was sick last spring. And if you need a doctor she’ll tell you right away. I’ll write her number down for you, and I’ll leave the thermometer here.”
She went, and the little wave of reassurance she had brought somehow vanished with her.
“Do you suppose it is anything?” Kay worried.
“Anything” meant pneumonia, Garry knew. That unspoken word hung in the air between them.
“She’d have a worse temperature than that, if it was.”
Miss Hussey, over the telephone, sounded cheerful and unperturbed. There were a lot of bad colds going about just now. Keep the little girl in bed, and she would come over and have a look at her tomorrow.
“Well, I suppose that’s all we can do,” said Kay.
She went upstairs to sit with Caroline. She found Alice in Wonderland on the bookshelves and began to read to her, but in the middle of the Hatter’s tea party the print began to dance up and down before her eyes; her teeth chattered and she was conscious of a steadily growing ache through all her limbs. When Garry came up with a cup of hot tea it was to find two patients instead of one.
“I g-guess it’s flu all right,” Kay said. “I’ve had it before. Anyway we know what it is, now.”
“Everything would happen at once,” Garry thought, as she tucked Kay, too, into bed and marched down to fetch the thermometer and fill fresh hot-water bottles. The kitchen fire had gone down by the time she had Kay fairly settled; the pump was frozen up again and when she did get water boiling at last the kettle tipped over the open stove hole and scalded her wrist as she made a hasty grab to catch it.
Martin ran for the olive oil in the pantry, but that too was a solid lump in the bottle, so all she could do was to smear butter on, biting her lip as Martin wound a bandage round with shaking fingers.
“That’ll be all right; I don’t give a hoot if it is septic—it takes the pain out anyway. Now pull my sleeve down —ouch! Thank goodness it’s my left hand, or we’d be in a worse fix yet.”
It was colder than ever that night. With Kay and Caroline in bed there seemed a gloom over the house. Garry and Martin ate their supper by the stove, and as she glanced at the windows Garry remembered those early winter days when they had asked one another: “Do you suppose it ever gets much colder than this?” This cold was like a living enemy. It seemed to prowl round the house, pushing at the door sills, snatching at every possible cranny to get in, and if it weren’t for the snow which had sealed many of the cracks it would have been worse yet.
No taking chances on the stoves tonight, Garry decided. With Martin’s help she dragged the sofa across the floor, cautiously so as not to wake Kay and Caroline upstairs; Martin brought a mattress and blankets from his own room and together they camped in the circle of Big Bertha’s comforting glow, like sentries round a camp fire.
“Aren’t you going to undress?” Martin asked.
“Not tonight.” She lit the stable lantern, set it on the floor by the stairway with the wick turned low, and lay down on the sofa with her clothes on and the old red comforter from the spare room wrapped about her.
“Then I won’t sleep either.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Garry.
The shadows stretched high on the walls, making queer pictures among the cracks and bulges of the old plaster. Now and again a log shifted in Big Bertha’s interior, sending a little tongue of flame leaping up the stovepipe. Out in the pantry a rat, undismayed by the cold, was gnawing busily. Garry’s wrist began to bother her. At the time she had been too busy to notice it much, but now the warmth was bringing out the pain.
Martin, for all his determination to keep her company, soon fell asleep, the blankets hugged tightly around him, but Garry lay long awake, watchful for a movement in the room above her, listening, as night drew on and the cold grew more intense, to the strange snapping and creaking of the frost outside—sudden sharp cracks and muffled thuds, as though the house itself were fighting desperately in the grip of the enemy, its old timbers about to fly apart at any moment. Frightening sounds to one who had never heard them before. They seemed to come from underfoot, from all around. One, louder than the rest, cracked like a pistol shot on the stillness, and in the dim light from the lantern she saw Martin’s face, startled and wide-eyed, raised from his mattress.
“What was that?”
“Only the frost cracking, I guess. Go to sleep again.” He snuggled under the blankets.
“I don’t like it. Say . . . Garry?”
“What?”
“Suppose the whole house was to crack up?”
“It won’t. I guess it’s stood worse frosts than this.”
She got up to put more wood on the kitchen stove and crept halfway up the stairs to listen if Kay or Caroline was stirring. But there was no sound; only the queer watchful emptiness of the house about her, the crackling of the frost outside. It was just two o’clock. She pulled the covers round her once more and settled back to doze.
When she opened her eyes again it was daylight. Martin was awake before her: he had set the kettle over and made fresh coffee. In his anxiety to have it good and strong he had used double measure and let the percolator bubble frantically; Garry winced at the first bitter mouthful, but it did her good.
Kay’s fever had gone down, but she felt weak and miserable. Martin was a tower of strength that morning, helpful as only a boy can be when he suddenly realizes a crisis in the familiar machinery of home life. He brought in wood, swept up the living room, washed the dishes, and kept looking anxiously at Garry as though he expected her, too, at any moment to keel over before his eyes. As a matter of fact she wasn’t feeling any too good herself; her head was buzzing, the floor had a tendency to rise and drop unexpectedly under her feet as she moved about, and more than once she paused in what she was doing to clench her teeth and mutter angrily: “Garry Ellis, just pull yourself together, you blame fool. You can't get sick now.”
The morning dragged by and at midday, when Garry had almost given up hope of her, Miss Hussey arrived. The mere sight of her brought comfort. She was stout and motherly and deliberate in her movements. She took off her numerous outer wrappings, unpacked her little black bag on the table, tied a fresh apron over her uniform, and went out into the kitchen to peer into the kettle and poke the fire up, chatting to Garry about the weather and asking after the Rowes (particularly Shirley and Tommy, both of whom, it seemed, she had helped to bring into the world)—as though driving six miles over ice-bound roads in zero weather to look after a family of strangers were quite an everyday matter, as it doubtless was to her.
“Good thing Neal Rowe got that road plowed out before it froze up on him,” she remarked cheerfully, “or I’d have had a hard job getting up here, chains or no chains. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve had to pull me out of the drifts, either. Sure as we get a real hard cold spell or a big snowfall, someone up the back roads gets sick. I never knew it to fail. And this road’s nothing to where I have to go, sometimes.”
Upstairs she took temperatures, straightened beds, and shook pillows with a masterly hand. She gave Caroline a hospital bath from head to foot, which filled that young person with a sense of great importance and did much to raise her spirits, and she rubbed Kay’s aching limbs with alcohol.
“Now I guess you’re all set for a while,” she said when she rejoined Garry downstairs. “I’ll look in again day after tomorrow if you need me, but I guess you won’t. Keep that child indoors till after the cold spell’s over, and don’t let your sister there get up till she has to. Two or three days in bed ought to put her straight again. How do you feel yourself?”
“All right,” said Garry.
The shrewd eyes rested on her approvingly.
“Don’t overdo it, and if you get any temperature go right to bed and call me up. We don’t want you sick, too, if we can help it. What did you do to your wrist, burn it?”
“The kettle spilled over.”
“I’ll fix it for you.” She unbuckled her bag once more to take out salve and a roll of bandage. “There’s nothing like cold weather for things happening. A day like this it seems like all your fingers are thumbs and everything you take hold of either spills on you or cuts you or you drop it on your toe. That feel any better?”
“It certainly does. Thanks a lot.” Garry pulled her sleeve down gratefully over the cool soft dressing. “I . . . we . . . Mary didn’t say what we owed you for coming.”
“Fifty cents,” said Miss Hussey briskly, buttoning up her coat.
She picked up her little bag again and was gone, driving off down the hill to visit other households in affliction, leaving comfort and cheer behind her.
For five more days the frost held. Kay and Caroline were up and about again but there was no going out except for Martin, who spent long hours skating with Jimmie on the little pond at the foot of the hill. Life was a monotonous round of watching the thermometer and tending stoves.
On the sixth night Garry woke up towards dawn with a sudden queer sensation of something having happened, an unfamiliar feeling in the air. Sitting up in the darkness, it took her a full minute to realize what it was. The cold spell had finally broken.