Witch, page 2
Ellen thought of several remarks and decided not to make any of them. They were coming into the business section—and leaving it. It consisted of a gas station, several small frame buildings converted into shops, and one larger establishment—a genuine country store with a covered porch running the full length of the front. On the porch stood a row of wooden chairs, all of which were occupied. The occupants were, without exception, male. As Ed’s truck passed they all leaned forward, staring unashamedly.
“‘Grapow’s General Merchandise,’” Ellen read from the sign over the porch steps. “What a fascinating place!”
“Mrs. Grapow is one of the town’s most successful businessmen (I use the masculine noun advisedly) and also a pillar of the church. I advise you against the church, Mrs. March, and also against Mrs. Grapow. But you will doubtless ignore both pieces of advice.”
“Those men,” Ellen said. “Were they staring at us? I hope I’m not endangering your reputation, Mr. Salling.”
“That would be virtually impossible,” said Ed serenely. “Did I not mention that I am the town eccentric? They also call me an atheist. I am a rational Deist, but one cannot expect such clods to understand the distinction. Naturally I have rejected their God. He is an unpleasant old man in a nightshirt, with a habit of persistent interference. What really annoys my neighbors, however, is that I have also rejected their Devil.”
“I understand. But it’s hard to think of devils—here.”
Her gesture indicated the last of the houses on the far side of town—a white-painted frame house with the narrow lines and innate dignity of early Georgian.
“You have not, I think, lived in a small town?”
“No. I was born in Brooklyn, of all places. But I used to visit my grandmother in Indiana when I was small. She had—”
“No more,” said Ed, shaking his head. “No more, I implore you. You are a nice woman, Mrs. March—as women go—but I really don’t want to know any more than I already know.”
“You’re nice too,” Ellen said with a smile. “I’ve never been squelched so painlessly.”
“I am not trying to destroy your enthusiasm, only to warn you against naivety. Rousseau’s vision of the noble savage has been long discredited. Bucolic simplicity has as many vices as urban sophistication.”
Ellen felt a slight impatience. She liked this bearded anachronism but she was not prepared to accept his jaundiced view of the universe, or of Chew’s Corners. (It was a frightful name, she had to admit.) Absently she wondered what had warped Ed’s attitude toward his fellow man. Like so many cynics, he was a disappointed romantic. His bookshelves betrayed that fact.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know all about small towns. I expect the townspeople will be aloof at first, but I’ll win them over. I don’t have wild parties or a string of lovers, even if I am divorced. If the neighbors don’t want to socialize I can entertain myself. I read a lot and paint a little, and garden, and knit, and watch birds. I’m looking forward to birdwatching here, after being in the suburbs so long.”
“Oh, yes,” Ed agreed morosely. “We have birds.”
“There are so many things I’ve always wanted to do and never had time for. I’m going to learn to play the guitar; reread War and Peace, and try to read Proust; study Sanskrit; start an herb garden, and learn to crochet and make quilts and put up preserves and—”
A rusty creaking sound stopped her in midsentence. It took her several seconds to identify the sound as Ed’s version of laughter.
“I will say no more,” he said.
The truck turned off the highway. A sign read “Private Road.” The surface was paved, though very narrow. Trees closed in on the truck. Then the foliage on the left disappeared and high on a hill Ellen saw a house.
“That’s not it, is it?” she exclaimed in dismay. The house was a magnificent example of Greek revival, with white pillars along the facade. In size and style it was far too grand for her.
“No, that’s the McKay place. Norman McKay is your nearest neighbor. He had the road paved. It only goes to the two houses, but Norman said he got tired of getting stuck every time it rained. He keeps it plowed in winter, too. Owns his own tractor.”
“That would be an advantage.” A curve in the road shut off Ellen’s view of the stately mansion. “What sort of man is Mr. McKay?” she asked.
“Got a degree from Harvard in business administration,” said Ed. “He collects antiques, porcelain, and books. I exchange a word with him now and then. He is the only other literate person in the area.”
“He sounds like the perfect neighbor.”
“No man is perfect.”
Ellen was about to reply, with some acerbity, when Ed suddenly jammed on the brakes. He was not going fast; that fact, and the arm he threw out, kept Ellen from crashing into the windshield. As she righted herself, she caught a glimpse of someone disappearing into the tangled brush along the road. It was evidently this apparition, in the path of the truck, that had caused Ed to stop so suddenly.
The form was that of a boy or young man clad in faded jeans and shirt. His pale-blond hair was worn fashionably long and looked as if it had been trimmed with a pair of rusty hedge shears. All this was normal enough, but there had been something about the figure that disturbed Ellen. The furtive quickness of its movement, perhaps? Or the sly backward turn of the head and the flicker of peering eyes? She was reminded of her earlier fantasies about the woods, and the inhuman things that might slink through in the underbrush.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ed, removing his arm.
“Don’t apologize. Who was that? Shouldn’t he be in school?”
“The halls of Western High School saw no more of Tim after his sixteenth birthday,” said Ed. “To their mutual relief. He should be working at something. He prefers to idle about the woods.”
“How old is he?”
“Almost eighteen, I believe.” Ed gave her a sidelong glance. “I observed your reaction to my statement that Mr. McKay was less than perfect as a neighbor. Tim is one of the imperfections. He is Norman’s nephew, and if I am the town eccentric, Tim is the town delinquent.”
He stopped the truck and jumped out before Ellen had time to pursue the subject. She glanced around. The paved surface ended a few feet ahead. A dusty track, too narrow for anything larger than a bicycle, continued on into the woods. There was no sign of a house, and two tall pine trees, matched giants of their species, were the only unusual features of the landscape. Ed had vanished between these trees. After a moment he returned and got into the truck. He made a sharp right-angle turn toward the two pines and drove between them.
The branches parted and Ellen realized there was a gap between the trees just wide enough to admit a car. Beyond was a brick wall. A wooden gate now swung open. “These trees need trimming,” said Ed, in what Ellen could not help regarding as the understatement of the year. “If you purchase the house I will naturally see that they are pruned.”
After a moment they emerged into a clearing. Ellen sat staring, even after Ed turned off the engine and came around to open her door.
The house was beautiful, but that wasn’t the important thing. It was hers. It reached out invisible arms to pull her in.
According to Rose, the house had been built in the eighteenth century, but Ellen felt sure it must date to a period well before the Revolutionary War—seventeen twenty, perhaps. Originally it had been a standard two-room plan, with chimneys on both ends. Or perhaps—yes, the steep pitched roof had surely been part of the original house. A four-room house, then, with bedrooms above. Some early frontier houses had boasted these amenities. The material was brick; it was now weathered, and covered with green tendrils of Virginia creeper, so that it seemed to blend with the landscape. Later owners had added a frame kitchen wing and a two-room ell behind the house. Ellen doubted that a qualified architect had ever been employed; certainly no professional would have endured the screened porch that blurred the simple dignity of the brick facade. But the house showed the instinctive feeling for line and structure that is found in many early buildings.
Part of the charm of the house lay in its surroundings. The clearing was slightly over an acre in size. Rounded hills, tree carpeted, enclosed the open space and trees formed a wall all around. There were oaks and maples; and Ellen thought how glorious they would be in the autumn, like great colorsplashed impressionist canvases. Many of the trees were evergreens. In winter they would form a sheltering bulwark for the house. One great oak, towering above the chimneys, must have been almost as old as the house. Its trunk was a brilliant, astounding emerald green. Have to get that creeper off, Ellen thought; it can kill the tree, pretty as it is. Behind the house, massed whiteness, like an out-of-season snowdrift, indicated an old apple orchard.
Ellen turned dazzled eyes toward Ed, but her brain was still adding details. That tree on the left was surely a black walnut. There were climbing roses over the porch and lilacs by the kitchen door. A flagstoned path led through tall grass to the screened porch. What a place to sit on summer evenings, with the roses perfuming the air…. The woods were full of white dogwood. A pink one stood by the path.
“I want it,” Ellen said. “Can I have it?”
“Not until you have seen the interior.”
If Ed had hoped to discourage her by a view of the inside, he failed. Ellen was already in love with the house, and she saw the strength and the grace of design under the neglect of recent years. The kitchen was a horror; there wasn’t a single item of equipment later than 1930, and the cupboards had been painted a hideous, peeling dark green. The linoleum was cracked and buckled. Ellen’s doting eye visualized the room with pine cabinets and frosty yellow paint. There was a fireplace in the kitchen; the brick wall in which it was located had been the exterior wall of the original house. The room was large, big enough for a trestle table and benches.
Visibly disgusted by her reaction, Ed dragged her from the kitchen. The narrow enclosed stairs didn’t bother her, not even when Ed pointed out that any visitor over five feet six inches would have to stoop to get under the stair arch. But in the upper hall Ellen stopped short, seized by an incredible emotion.
Desire—exultant, fierce, triumphant. Not sexual, not even physical, but the raw emotion out of which physical desires are formed. It was as if something had leaped up out of chaos to receive her with an uncontrollable burst of joy. It gripped her mind as hard arms might have embraced her body in a welcome too violent to be without pain.
It came, and passed, in a flicker of time. Ellen let out the breath she had just inhaled, and looked around, bewildered.
The upper hall was really only a landing, illumined by a single small window. The worn pine flooring sloped perilously toward the stairs. The low ceiling left room for cupboards on either side of the narrow window. It was a pleasant little place, but there was nothing about it that would explain that uncanny surge of rapture.
Ellen glanced surreptitiously at Ed, and her ungovernable sense of humor helped dispel the sensation she had felt. Ed might inspire a number of emotions, but mad passion wasn’t one of them.
She forgot her aberrant moment as Ed threw open the doors on either side of the landing. The bedrooms were identical in size, about twelve feet by eighteen. Each had a fireplace. The sloping eaves and dormer windows attoned for the decor—early Woolworth, Ellen called it.
“Leak in the roof,” said Ed, dourly indicating a stain that darkened the ugly wallpaper.
“That can be fixed.”
“Only two bedrooms.”
“There are two rooms downstairs, in the addition. They could be guest bedrooms, or maybe a single large study that could be used as a guest room.”
“You haven’t seen the bathroom,” said Ed.
The chamber so designated might have daunted a less determined buyer. The bathtub wasn’t old enough to be quaint, it was merely old, and most of the enamel was worn off its bottom. The inner surfaces of all the fixtures were stained rusty brown by the mineral-heavy water of the area.
“It will look lovely with green tiles and a Nile-green bathtub,” said Ellen dreamily.
Ed was so vexed he forgot to duck under the stair lintel, and smacked his head. He went on down in a seething silence.
Waiting for him to lock the front door, Ellen examined the screened porch. More expense; new screening would be needed, and sections of the wood framework were in poor condition. But she wanted to keep the porch, although it was an aesthetic excrescence. The insect life of Virginia is varied and carnivorous.
Of course she was seeing the place at its best, horticulturally speaking. Some former owner had been a gardener; there was every variety of flowering plant. Ellen’s knowing eye identified the green spears that would be gladioli, the incipient clumps of chrysanthemum, and the feathery emerald embryos of larkspur and foxglove. This was the time of glory for Virginia gardens, but something would be blooming all summer long—rhododendron and mountain laurel, roses of every conceivable variety. Her fingers twitched to be at work. The garden was glorious but neglected; all the shrubs needed pruning, bulbs ought to be dug and separated….
She turned to Ed with eyes so shining that he smiled faintly.
“You are a very poor businesswoman, Mrs. March,” he said. “Your expression would raise the price several thousand dollars, if I were myself a good businessman.”
“But you aren’t,” said Ellen. “I’ll buy it.”
“I suggest you think it over for a few days.”
“But I—”
“I will hold the option for you, if that is the term. It probably is not. No matter. We need not go through the formalities of a deposit, or whatever the legal stipulation may be. You have my word.”
He stalked off down the path. Ellen followed. She had to run to catch up with him. At the truck, she caught his arm, and when he stopped she turned to take one more look at the house. Her house.
“But I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Salling, I don’t have to think it over. I’m absolutely certain. You don’t know how many houses I’ve looked at. Monstrosities, most of them. I’ll go straight to Warrenton and—”
“You will do nothing of the kind. I insist that you consider the matter first. Talk it over with your family.”
Male chauvinist, thought Ellen.
She said nothing, but Ed appeared to number telepathy among his talents.
“I do not say that because you are a woman. I say it because you are the sort of woman you are.”
“I may be impulsive, but I’m not irresponsible,” said Ellen haughtily. “If I make mistakes, I pay for them without whining. You may rest assured—”
“What is it?” Ed turned, following her gaze.
“An animal, I guess…. It just darted in between the trees.”
“There are squirrels and other creatures about.”
“I never saw an albino squirrel before,” said Ellen.
Ed’s eyes widened.
“You saw a white animal?”
“Someone’s cat, perhaps,” said Ellen; and watched with growing alarm the contortions of the visible portion of Ed’s bearded face.
“I had not intended to tell you,” he said at last, with a gusty sigh. “It disgusts me even to hint at such a possibility. But in view of your unaccountable and sudden attachment…Mrs. March, before you make up your mind, there is something about this house which you must know.”
Chapter 2
“YOUR HOUSE HAS A WHAT?”
Ellen’s brother-in-law put down his butter knife and stared at her.
Ellen poured him a fresh cup of coffee and tried not to think, “Only two more months.” She wondered how she could have lived with him so long and not realized the inevitable truth that had struck her only recently. He wasn’t even handsome. He was tall, and fatherhood to three energetic boys had kept his figure spare and straight; but his hairline began at approximately the top of his head and the kindest adjective friends could apply to his face was “pleasant.” He resembled an ex-football player, but the broken nose had not been won on the playing field; Jack’s eyes, now twinkling with amusement behind horn-rimmed spectacles, had always been poor. His eyes were bad and his ears were too big and his hair was too sparse; and she loved him. She had always loved him, and only in the last months, when she found she must lose him, had she faced the fact. How could she endure a future that did not include his face across the breakfast table every morning?
Well, she would have to endure it. Jack loved her too—as a sister and helpful surrogate mother. Because he was sensitive and kind it would appall him to know of her true feelings. Such a revelation would wreck her hope of keeping his friendship in the future.
Resolutely Ellen returned to the subject she had introduced.
“A ghost,” she said. “My house has a ghost. Isn’t that marvelous? He isn’t even charging extra for it.”
A thunder of feet in the hall preceded the appearance of a boy. It was disconcerting to see one human male, however large in size, follow the stampeding sound; one expected a herd of wild horses, if not buffalo. Phil looked like his father, except that he had more hair—much more hair. It was shoulder length in back and nose length in front. Since Phil refused to use hair bands or—heaven save the mark—bobby pins, the front locks were always a hazard to his vision. He had developed a maddening habit of tossing his hair out of his eyes, but when he got interested in a subject he just let it hang.
Phil was in his last weeks of high school. He had explained to his father that there was really no sense in going to school now that his college acceptance was certain. He was going, however.
Phil threw himself into a chair and seized a handful of bread.
“Charging extra for what?” he asked thickly, through his first bite.
“My ghost.”
“Your what?” asked a new voice.
Ellen glanced at her daughter, who had just entered. Penny did not thunder, she floated. She was a dainty creature, with long dark hair flowing loose around a pointed face, but she was dressed like a poverty-stricken farm worker in patched faded jeans and a skimpy T-shirt. The T-shirt fit like a second skin, and Ellen stopped midway between stove and table with a platter of bacon and eggs in her hands.
“‘Grapow’s General Merchandise,’” Ellen read from the sign over the porch steps. “What a fascinating place!”
“Mrs. Grapow is one of the town’s most successful businessmen (I use the masculine noun advisedly) and also a pillar of the church. I advise you against the church, Mrs. March, and also against Mrs. Grapow. But you will doubtless ignore both pieces of advice.”
“Those men,” Ellen said. “Were they staring at us? I hope I’m not endangering your reputation, Mr. Salling.”
“That would be virtually impossible,” said Ed serenely. “Did I not mention that I am the town eccentric? They also call me an atheist. I am a rational Deist, but one cannot expect such clods to understand the distinction. Naturally I have rejected their God. He is an unpleasant old man in a nightshirt, with a habit of persistent interference. What really annoys my neighbors, however, is that I have also rejected their Devil.”
“I understand. But it’s hard to think of devils—here.”
Her gesture indicated the last of the houses on the far side of town—a white-painted frame house with the narrow lines and innate dignity of early Georgian.
“You have not, I think, lived in a small town?”
“No. I was born in Brooklyn, of all places. But I used to visit my grandmother in Indiana when I was small. She had—”
“No more,” said Ed, shaking his head. “No more, I implore you. You are a nice woman, Mrs. March—as women go—but I really don’t want to know any more than I already know.”
“You’re nice too,” Ellen said with a smile. “I’ve never been squelched so painlessly.”
“I am not trying to destroy your enthusiasm, only to warn you against naivety. Rousseau’s vision of the noble savage has been long discredited. Bucolic simplicity has as many vices as urban sophistication.”
Ellen felt a slight impatience. She liked this bearded anachronism but she was not prepared to accept his jaundiced view of the universe, or of Chew’s Corners. (It was a frightful name, she had to admit.) Absently she wondered what had warped Ed’s attitude toward his fellow man. Like so many cynics, he was a disappointed romantic. His bookshelves betrayed that fact.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know all about small towns. I expect the townspeople will be aloof at first, but I’ll win them over. I don’t have wild parties or a string of lovers, even if I am divorced. If the neighbors don’t want to socialize I can entertain myself. I read a lot and paint a little, and garden, and knit, and watch birds. I’m looking forward to birdwatching here, after being in the suburbs so long.”
“Oh, yes,” Ed agreed morosely. “We have birds.”
“There are so many things I’ve always wanted to do and never had time for. I’m going to learn to play the guitar; reread War and Peace, and try to read Proust; study Sanskrit; start an herb garden, and learn to crochet and make quilts and put up preserves and—”
A rusty creaking sound stopped her in midsentence. It took her several seconds to identify the sound as Ed’s version of laughter.
“I will say no more,” he said.
The truck turned off the highway. A sign read “Private Road.” The surface was paved, though very narrow. Trees closed in on the truck. Then the foliage on the left disappeared and high on a hill Ellen saw a house.
“That’s not it, is it?” she exclaimed in dismay. The house was a magnificent example of Greek revival, with white pillars along the facade. In size and style it was far too grand for her.
“No, that’s the McKay place. Norman McKay is your nearest neighbor. He had the road paved. It only goes to the two houses, but Norman said he got tired of getting stuck every time it rained. He keeps it plowed in winter, too. Owns his own tractor.”
“That would be an advantage.” A curve in the road shut off Ellen’s view of the stately mansion. “What sort of man is Mr. McKay?” she asked.
“Got a degree from Harvard in business administration,” said Ed. “He collects antiques, porcelain, and books. I exchange a word with him now and then. He is the only other literate person in the area.”
“He sounds like the perfect neighbor.”
“No man is perfect.”
Ellen was about to reply, with some acerbity, when Ed suddenly jammed on the brakes. He was not going fast; that fact, and the arm he threw out, kept Ellen from crashing into the windshield. As she righted herself, she caught a glimpse of someone disappearing into the tangled brush along the road. It was evidently this apparition, in the path of the truck, that had caused Ed to stop so suddenly.
The form was that of a boy or young man clad in faded jeans and shirt. His pale-blond hair was worn fashionably long and looked as if it had been trimmed with a pair of rusty hedge shears. All this was normal enough, but there had been something about the figure that disturbed Ellen. The furtive quickness of its movement, perhaps? Or the sly backward turn of the head and the flicker of peering eyes? She was reminded of her earlier fantasies about the woods, and the inhuman things that might slink through in the underbrush.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ed, removing his arm.
“Don’t apologize. Who was that? Shouldn’t he be in school?”
“The halls of Western High School saw no more of Tim after his sixteenth birthday,” said Ed. “To their mutual relief. He should be working at something. He prefers to idle about the woods.”
“How old is he?”
“Almost eighteen, I believe.” Ed gave her a sidelong glance. “I observed your reaction to my statement that Mr. McKay was less than perfect as a neighbor. Tim is one of the imperfections. He is Norman’s nephew, and if I am the town eccentric, Tim is the town delinquent.”
He stopped the truck and jumped out before Ellen had time to pursue the subject. She glanced around. The paved surface ended a few feet ahead. A dusty track, too narrow for anything larger than a bicycle, continued on into the woods. There was no sign of a house, and two tall pine trees, matched giants of their species, were the only unusual features of the landscape. Ed had vanished between these trees. After a moment he returned and got into the truck. He made a sharp right-angle turn toward the two pines and drove between them.
The branches parted and Ellen realized there was a gap between the trees just wide enough to admit a car. Beyond was a brick wall. A wooden gate now swung open. “These trees need trimming,” said Ed, in what Ellen could not help regarding as the understatement of the year. “If you purchase the house I will naturally see that they are pruned.”
After a moment they emerged into a clearing. Ellen sat staring, even after Ed turned off the engine and came around to open her door.
The house was beautiful, but that wasn’t the important thing. It was hers. It reached out invisible arms to pull her in.
According to Rose, the house had been built in the eighteenth century, but Ellen felt sure it must date to a period well before the Revolutionary War—seventeen twenty, perhaps. Originally it had been a standard two-room plan, with chimneys on both ends. Or perhaps—yes, the steep pitched roof had surely been part of the original house. A four-room house, then, with bedrooms above. Some early frontier houses had boasted these amenities. The material was brick; it was now weathered, and covered with green tendrils of Virginia creeper, so that it seemed to blend with the landscape. Later owners had added a frame kitchen wing and a two-room ell behind the house. Ellen doubted that a qualified architect had ever been employed; certainly no professional would have endured the screened porch that blurred the simple dignity of the brick facade. But the house showed the instinctive feeling for line and structure that is found in many early buildings.
Part of the charm of the house lay in its surroundings. The clearing was slightly over an acre in size. Rounded hills, tree carpeted, enclosed the open space and trees formed a wall all around. There were oaks and maples; and Ellen thought how glorious they would be in the autumn, like great colorsplashed impressionist canvases. Many of the trees were evergreens. In winter they would form a sheltering bulwark for the house. One great oak, towering above the chimneys, must have been almost as old as the house. Its trunk was a brilliant, astounding emerald green. Have to get that creeper off, Ellen thought; it can kill the tree, pretty as it is. Behind the house, massed whiteness, like an out-of-season snowdrift, indicated an old apple orchard.
Ellen turned dazzled eyes toward Ed, but her brain was still adding details. That tree on the left was surely a black walnut. There were climbing roses over the porch and lilacs by the kitchen door. A flagstoned path led through tall grass to the screened porch. What a place to sit on summer evenings, with the roses perfuming the air…. The woods were full of white dogwood. A pink one stood by the path.
“I want it,” Ellen said. “Can I have it?”
“Not until you have seen the interior.”
If Ed had hoped to discourage her by a view of the inside, he failed. Ellen was already in love with the house, and she saw the strength and the grace of design under the neglect of recent years. The kitchen was a horror; there wasn’t a single item of equipment later than 1930, and the cupboards had been painted a hideous, peeling dark green. The linoleum was cracked and buckled. Ellen’s doting eye visualized the room with pine cabinets and frosty yellow paint. There was a fireplace in the kitchen; the brick wall in which it was located had been the exterior wall of the original house. The room was large, big enough for a trestle table and benches.
Visibly disgusted by her reaction, Ed dragged her from the kitchen. The narrow enclosed stairs didn’t bother her, not even when Ed pointed out that any visitor over five feet six inches would have to stoop to get under the stair arch. But in the upper hall Ellen stopped short, seized by an incredible emotion.
Desire—exultant, fierce, triumphant. Not sexual, not even physical, but the raw emotion out of which physical desires are formed. It was as if something had leaped up out of chaos to receive her with an uncontrollable burst of joy. It gripped her mind as hard arms might have embraced her body in a welcome too violent to be without pain.
It came, and passed, in a flicker of time. Ellen let out the breath she had just inhaled, and looked around, bewildered.
The upper hall was really only a landing, illumined by a single small window. The worn pine flooring sloped perilously toward the stairs. The low ceiling left room for cupboards on either side of the narrow window. It was a pleasant little place, but there was nothing about it that would explain that uncanny surge of rapture.
Ellen glanced surreptitiously at Ed, and her ungovernable sense of humor helped dispel the sensation she had felt. Ed might inspire a number of emotions, but mad passion wasn’t one of them.
She forgot her aberrant moment as Ed threw open the doors on either side of the landing. The bedrooms were identical in size, about twelve feet by eighteen. Each had a fireplace. The sloping eaves and dormer windows attoned for the decor—early Woolworth, Ellen called it.
“Leak in the roof,” said Ed, dourly indicating a stain that darkened the ugly wallpaper.
“That can be fixed.”
“Only two bedrooms.”
“There are two rooms downstairs, in the addition. They could be guest bedrooms, or maybe a single large study that could be used as a guest room.”
“You haven’t seen the bathroom,” said Ed.
The chamber so designated might have daunted a less determined buyer. The bathtub wasn’t old enough to be quaint, it was merely old, and most of the enamel was worn off its bottom. The inner surfaces of all the fixtures were stained rusty brown by the mineral-heavy water of the area.
“It will look lovely with green tiles and a Nile-green bathtub,” said Ellen dreamily.
Ed was so vexed he forgot to duck under the stair lintel, and smacked his head. He went on down in a seething silence.
Waiting for him to lock the front door, Ellen examined the screened porch. More expense; new screening would be needed, and sections of the wood framework were in poor condition. But she wanted to keep the porch, although it was an aesthetic excrescence. The insect life of Virginia is varied and carnivorous.
Of course she was seeing the place at its best, horticulturally speaking. Some former owner had been a gardener; there was every variety of flowering plant. Ellen’s knowing eye identified the green spears that would be gladioli, the incipient clumps of chrysanthemum, and the feathery emerald embryos of larkspur and foxglove. This was the time of glory for Virginia gardens, but something would be blooming all summer long—rhododendron and mountain laurel, roses of every conceivable variety. Her fingers twitched to be at work. The garden was glorious but neglected; all the shrubs needed pruning, bulbs ought to be dug and separated….
She turned to Ed with eyes so shining that he smiled faintly.
“You are a very poor businesswoman, Mrs. March,” he said. “Your expression would raise the price several thousand dollars, if I were myself a good businessman.”
“But you aren’t,” said Ellen. “I’ll buy it.”
“I suggest you think it over for a few days.”
“But I—”
“I will hold the option for you, if that is the term. It probably is not. No matter. We need not go through the formalities of a deposit, or whatever the legal stipulation may be. You have my word.”
He stalked off down the path. Ellen followed. She had to run to catch up with him. At the truck, she caught his arm, and when he stopped she turned to take one more look at the house. Her house.
“But I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Salling, I don’t have to think it over. I’m absolutely certain. You don’t know how many houses I’ve looked at. Monstrosities, most of them. I’ll go straight to Warrenton and—”
“You will do nothing of the kind. I insist that you consider the matter first. Talk it over with your family.”
Male chauvinist, thought Ellen.
She said nothing, but Ed appeared to number telepathy among his talents.
“I do not say that because you are a woman. I say it because you are the sort of woman you are.”
“I may be impulsive, but I’m not irresponsible,” said Ellen haughtily. “If I make mistakes, I pay for them without whining. You may rest assured—”
“What is it?” Ed turned, following her gaze.
“An animal, I guess…. It just darted in between the trees.”
“There are squirrels and other creatures about.”
“I never saw an albino squirrel before,” said Ellen.
Ed’s eyes widened.
“You saw a white animal?”
“Someone’s cat, perhaps,” said Ellen; and watched with growing alarm the contortions of the visible portion of Ed’s bearded face.
“I had not intended to tell you,” he said at last, with a gusty sigh. “It disgusts me even to hint at such a possibility. But in view of your unaccountable and sudden attachment…Mrs. March, before you make up your mind, there is something about this house which you must know.”
Chapter 2
“YOUR HOUSE HAS A WHAT?”
Ellen’s brother-in-law put down his butter knife and stared at her.
Ellen poured him a fresh cup of coffee and tried not to think, “Only two more months.” She wondered how she could have lived with him so long and not realized the inevitable truth that had struck her only recently. He wasn’t even handsome. He was tall, and fatherhood to three energetic boys had kept his figure spare and straight; but his hairline began at approximately the top of his head and the kindest adjective friends could apply to his face was “pleasant.” He resembled an ex-football player, but the broken nose had not been won on the playing field; Jack’s eyes, now twinkling with amusement behind horn-rimmed spectacles, had always been poor. His eyes were bad and his ears were too big and his hair was too sparse; and she loved him. She had always loved him, and only in the last months, when she found she must lose him, had she faced the fact. How could she endure a future that did not include his face across the breakfast table every morning?
Well, she would have to endure it. Jack loved her too—as a sister and helpful surrogate mother. Because he was sensitive and kind it would appall him to know of her true feelings. Such a revelation would wreck her hope of keeping his friendship in the future.
Resolutely Ellen returned to the subject she had introduced.
“A ghost,” she said. “My house has a ghost. Isn’t that marvelous? He isn’t even charging extra for it.”
A thunder of feet in the hall preceded the appearance of a boy. It was disconcerting to see one human male, however large in size, follow the stampeding sound; one expected a herd of wild horses, if not buffalo. Phil looked like his father, except that he had more hair—much more hair. It was shoulder length in back and nose length in front. Since Phil refused to use hair bands or—heaven save the mark—bobby pins, the front locks were always a hazard to his vision. He had developed a maddening habit of tossing his hair out of his eyes, but when he got interested in a subject he just let it hang.
Phil was in his last weeks of high school. He had explained to his father that there was really no sense in going to school now that his college acceptance was certain. He was going, however.
Phil threw himself into a chair and seized a handful of bread.
“Charging extra for what?” he asked thickly, through his first bite.
“My ghost.”
“Your what?” asked a new voice.
Ellen glanced at her daughter, who had just entered. Penny did not thunder, she floated. She was a dainty creature, with long dark hair flowing loose around a pointed face, but she was dressed like a poverty-stricken farm worker in patched faded jeans and a skimpy T-shirt. The T-shirt fit like a second skin, and Ellen stopped midway between stove and table with a platter of bacon and eggs in her hands.
