The girl forced a smile and came quickly toward the piano. “Anything that will please you, Father,” she said with an attempt at brightness.
Bannard opened the old grand piano and drew out the creaking stool with the haircloth cushion, and as Silver seated herself it suddenly came over her that here she was in the old ancestral home, sitting at the piano where others who were gone had often sat bringing sweet strains from the old instrument. It thrilled her to realize that she was really here at last in the home she had so long dreamed about. She touched the keys tenderly, and there came forth a sound as if she had caressed them. Her father settled down in the old tapestry chair and shaded his eyes with his hand, watching her graceful outline of head and neck and shoulders and the sweeping curve of the young body as it swayed gently to the music.
Over in the library Blink nestled back in the big chair and closed his eyes to let the music sweep over his soul, while the fire burned low and fell in bright sparkles among the ashes, and a long young angleworm from the can in his lap struggled up and out and over draping itself in an arabesque, perhaps in some modern attempt to interpret the music.
Upstairs in the bed in a tumbled heap of coral and silver Athalie clasped the bits of her mother’s broken picture to what heart she had and wept and wailed, “Oh, Lilla! Lilla! Lilla! Why did you send me here?”
But not even Anne Truesdale, white and anxious down in the back hall listening for developments and trembling with weariness, heard.
Chapter 13
Diagonally across the street, about two hundred yards from the Silver place, next to the meadow, whose white picket fence bordered and whose old brindle-colored cow thrived on the meadow, stood a small brick cottage, somewhat Tudor style in architecture, low and thatchy, with moss on the roof and sunk deep in the thick green turf. It had a swing gate with an iron weight on a chain to make it latch, and a lilac bush leaning so low that the visitor had to duck his head to enter.
The inhabitants were all female, and they looked on the cow and the old yellow cats as their protectors. They were called the “Vandemeeter girls” though the mother and the ancient grandmother were still of the company. There were three elderly spinsters, Maria, Cordelia, and Henrietta. There was also a niece, daughter of a fourth sister long since dead, who rejoiced in the name of Pristina Appleby. Pristina was “thirty-five if she was a day” according to Ellen Follinsbee, the Silver Sands dressmaker who always wore pins in her mouth and kept the other corner open to pass on pleasant conversation.
Pristina was tall and thin and spent much time studying the fashion magazines and sending for all the articles in the advertisement pages. She sang in the choir, and her voice was still good though a trifle shrill on the high notes. She held her book with elbows stiffened and always opened her mouth round and wide, and she took care to have a fresh change of clothes and always got a new hat four times a year. She felt it was due to her position as first soprano, although it was not a paying job, and frequently required much sacrifice of necessities to keep it. They were a progressive family and took several family magazines besides a church paper and the Silver Sands Bulletin. Pristina belonged to a literary club entitled The Honey Gatherers and sipped knowledge early and late. She had recently been appointed to write a paper on some modern author and had chosen Patterson Greeves, “Our noted townsman” as the first sentence stated, and waded through volumes of technical works and thoroughly mastered the terms of bacteriologists in order to do her subject justice. Maria and Henrietta had not approved. They thought the choice of a divorced man, especially as he was reported to be returning to his native town to live, not a delicate thing for a young girl to do. Cordelia maintained that it was a part of the strange times they were living in and added: “Look at the flappers!”
“Well, I never supposed we’d have a flapper in our family,” said Grandma sadly. “The Vandemeeters were always respectable. Poor, but always respectable.”
“Now, Ma, who says Pristina ain’t respectable?” bristled Mother appearing in the kitchen door with a bread pan in one hand and a lump of lard in the other. “Pristina has her life to live, ain’t she? I guess she’s got to think of that.”
They all looked at Pristina standing tall and straight, her abundant brown locks piled high in a coil on the crown of her head, a little too much of her slim white ears showing, a faint natural flush in the hollows under her high cheekbones, the neck of her brown dress guarding the hollow of her throat, and her bony arms encased in full-length bell sleeves. She wore sensible high-heeled shoes (with the addition of tan spats in winter), and her dresses were never higher than eight inches from the ground, even at the highest watermark of short dresses. Yet she seemed to them most modern. They could not have been more worried if she had taken to chewing gum. She was the kind of woman you would make for a good stepmother of eight. Conscientious and willing to take what was left.
“That’s all right, Pristina. Write your paper the way you want. You have to follow your own bent,” said Mother.
And Pristina wrote her paper.
Grandma and the three girls talked it over once when Mother was preparing hotcakes for breakfast.
“You don’t suppose Pristina is getting ideas about Pat Greeves, do you?” suggested Cordelia.
“Gracious!” said Grandma, dropping her knitting. “What put that into your head?”
“Oh, nothing—only she’s so anxious to write that paper and all. And it wouldn’t be strange. She’s young, you know.”
“Well, I should hope she’d have sense enough not to think of marrying a divorced man. That wouldn’t be respectable! And she a church singer!” This from Maria.
“Patterson Greeves isn’t so young anymore, you’ll kindly remember!” said Henrietta pursing her lips. Patterson Greeves had been a senior in high school with Henrietta. They might all remember that he gave her a bouquet of jacqueminot roses when she graduated.
“That’s nothing!” said Cordelia. “Old men always pick out young girls.”
“He’s not old!” said Henrietta.
“You just said he wasn’t young. Oh, well! I only suggested it. I shouldn’t like to see Pristina get ideas. That man has lived abroad. And he’s lived in New York. He’s no fit mate for a girl like Pristina. But then, I don’t suppose he’d look at her. Only as I say, I hope she doesn’t get ideas.”
“We’ve always been respectable,” said Grandma. “It’s likely Pristina knows that. She’s rather respectable herself. You remember how she wouldn’t let that young drugstore clerk hold her hand. Blood will tell generally. I wouldn’t worry.”
But after the paper had been read before The Honey Gatherers, Mrs. Arden Philips, the wife of the postmaster, dropped in with some cross-stitch embroidery doilies for her new hardwood table and casually asked: “Henrietta never kept up her acquaintance with Pat Greeves, did she?”
Mrs. Arden Philips used to be Ruby Hathaway of the same class in high school.
“Henrietta?” said Cordelia looking sharply at that sister.
“Henrietta!” exclaimed Maria contemptuously, as if Henrietta had somehow endeavored to outclass her sisters.
“Mercy, no!” said Henrietta. “Why, Ruby, he’s a married man, very much married. What makes you ask that? It’s years since I’ve heard a word of him.”
“Well, I told Julia Ellen so. After Pristina read that paper there was a great to-do about it, how she got to know so much about him, and then Julia Ellen and Jane Harris both remembered that he was sweet on Henrietta once, and we thought maybe—although Arden said he never noticed any foreign letters coming. Well, Henrietta, how did Pristina come to find out so much about Pat Greeves anyhow? All that about his books on bugs and how he came to be called to those colleges and everything. I’m sure Miss Lavinia Silver never told anything. She was so closemouthed. She always just smiled and said something pleasant, and you came away knowing no more than when you went.”
“She got it out of some sort of an encyclopedia,” said Grandma indig
nantly. “It began with Bi, I forget the name of it. She took it out of the library. It had a lot of other great men in it. She read it all aloud to us. And then she sent for his book to the city and studied that a lot. It wasn’t very interesting. I tried to read it one day, but it had a lot of words I never saw before. Pristina said they were names of animals and bugs that lived before the foundation of the world or thereabout. I’m sure I don’t know. But Pristina is real smart. She believes in patronizing home talent. I thought it was a bright idea myself, telling people about him before he came back to live here.”
“Why yes, of course!” said Mrs. Arden Philips, looking sharply at Grandma. “That’s what I said, but then people will talk, you know. But if I were Pristina I wouldn’t mind in the least. It’ll all blow over, and Pristina’s reputation can stand a little whisper now and then, I guess. But say, wouldn’t it be interesting, thinking back to how he used to like Henrietta, if he should make up to Pristina sometime? Quite romantic, I say. Aunt and niece, you know. It might be.”
“Nonsense! He’s too old!” said Henrietta sharply.
“Besides, he’s divorced!” said Maria with pursed lips.
“Yes, of course,” said the visitor. “But they do say in the city, that doesn’t count so much, and besides, he’s lived in the city so long he probably doesn’t know the difference. It isn’t as if he’d lived here always and kept Silver Sand’s standards. I heard the new school superintendent say the other day it was standards counted. And he can’t help his standards, can he?”
“We’ve always been respectable!” said Grandma sharply. “And I hope we’ll always stay so. Pristina has standards if Standish Silver’s nephew has lost his! Ruby, did your grandmother send you that recipe for strawberry preserves? My daughter was wishing she could get it.”
“Yes, I have it. I’ll copy it off for you. Well, I must be going. We’re having the minister to supper tonight. I only just dropped in to satisfy myself that I had told the truth to Julia Ellen. I never like to sleep on a lie. I was real sure Pristina hadn’t been corresponding with him.”
There was silence in the room while Maria went to the door with the visitor and until she had reached the picket gate and the iron weight had swung back and clicked against the chain as it always did when the gate shut after anyone. Then Grandma’s pursed lips relaxed and her needles began to click.
“Cat!” said Henrietta. “She always was jealous about those roses!”
That happened three months before Patterson Greeves came home. Nothing more was said in the Vandemeeter home about the matter, but whenever Anne Truesdale opened and aired the front rooms, or stuck pillows out of the windows in the sunshine for a few minutes, “the girls” took occasion to glance over and wonder. And when at last the signs of a more thorough housecleaning than had gone on in years became unmistakable, Grandma had her padded rocking chair moved to the side window where she could watch the house all day long. She declared the light was poor at the front window where she had been accustomed to sit. When the news of the imminent arrival went out officially, Pristina went up to town and bought her new spring hat. It would not do to look shabby on the first Sunday of the noted man’s arrival. After that the Vandemeeters were in a state of continual twitter, making errands to the front window on the slightest possible excuse and always glancing out across.
“I declare it looks good to see the house alive again,” said Mother. “I can almost think I see Miss Lavinia’s white hair at the window over there. My! If she were only back!”
“It’s a good thing she’s not!” said Grandma somberly. “It couldn’t mean anything else but suffering to have her nephew come home divorced!”
“Well, I don’t know about that, Mother,” said her white-haired daughter. “There’s some women you’re better divorced from. You know even the Bible says that!”
“Well, why did he marry her then? That’s what I’d like to know. A boy brought up the way he was, why did he marry her? Oh, you can’t tell me. He just went and got into the nasty ways of the world, the flesh, and devil! That’s what’s the matter. If he’d just come to his hometown and taken a good sweet girl he’d known all his life—”
“There now, Mother, for mercy’s sake, don’t say that. Somebody might think you meant one of ours!”
The curtains were in use at every side window of the Vandemeeter house the night that Patterson Greeves came home. Henrietta at her chamber window high in the peak of the roof noted the gray hair crisply short beneath his soft hat and the slight stoop in his shoulders, and said to herself quite softly: “Goodness! Do I look as old as that?”
They watched the house quite carefully until the lights from the side windows announced the dinner hour in the house across the way, and then they retired to their own belated meal. While they were eating it, Henrietta on a visit to the kitchen for hot water for Grandma’s tea spied the red glow in the sky and called them all to the back kitchen window, or else they would have seen their neighbor vault the fence and sprint down the meadow to the fire.
But the next morning they were up early and keeping tabs from every window spryly.
When the big racing car drew up in front of the house and Athalie got out, they were fairly paralyzed with astonishment.
“Perhaps he isn’t divorced after all,” said Mother in a mollified voice.
“Yes, he is,” insisted Pristina. “I read it to you from the Biographical Encyclopedia. A book like that, that’s in all the libraries, wouldn’t make a mistake.”
“Well, maybe he’s married again,” said Cordelia. “That’s what they do nowadays!”
“I don’t believe he would! Not with his bringing up!” said Mother. “He couldn’t!”
“Well, the law allows it!” snapped Maria. “That’s why I’m glad I can vote. There ought to be laws!”
“Well, who is she then?” asked Grandma petulantly.
“She’s young,” announced Pristina, who had the best eyes for far seeing. “And her cheeks are awfully red.”
“She’s wearing makeup!” said Maria. “That’s the kind! Maybe she’s—”
“Maria!” said her mother and eyed Pristina. “You shouldn’t say such things.”
“I didn’t say anything, Mother. I was going to say maybe she is just some friend of his wife’s. Or maybe she is a secretary. Writers have secretaries. I’ve read about them.”
“I should think it would be more proper to have a male secretary!” said Grandma. “There’s no excuse for a man having a girl always around him. If he does a thing like that I should think it was plain nobody ought to welcome him.”
“Well, she’s taking an awful while saying good-bye to the man that brought her!” declared Cordelia. “Perhaps he’s her father. He looks old enough to be. He’s held her hand all this time. Why, she’s only a child. Look, she’s got short hair!”
“That’s bobbed!” said Pristina in disdain. “I should think you’d know that, Aunt Cordelia. Plenty of the young girls in Silver Sands have had their hair bobbed.”
“Oh, yes, bobbed. Oh, yes, young girls! But not like that!”
“There goes the minister in!” announced Henrietta a little later. “I wonder why? He’s not the kind that todies to rich people.”
“He would think he owed respect to the relative of so prominent a former member of his church,” suggested Mother. “The Silver family really gave the money to build that church, you know. Gave the lot anyway.”
“I hope the minister is not going to countenance divorce,” said Grandma with a troubled look out the window over her spectacles.
“He preached against it two weeks ago,” contributed Pristina, her hands clasped on the window fastening, her chin on her hands.
“Perhaps he doesn’t know about Patterson Greeves,” said Maria. “Somebody ought to have told him.”
“He’s coming out again. Perhaps Mr. Greeves wouldn’t see him. There’s his car. That rowdy Lincoln boy driving it again. What the minister sees in him!” announced Cor
delia. “See, he’s hurrying. I wonder what’s the matter.”
“Perhaps he’s just found out,” suggested Grandma.
Speculation ran rife, and the watchers hovered not far from the windows, doing extra dusting in the front sitting room to keep near. It was almost like the time when the circus rented the meadow for a week and they could watch the rhinoceros and giraffe go to bed at night. None of them really admitted they were watching until suddenly the minister’s car drew up in front of the Silver house.
“He’s back!” said Pristina glued to the window. “And there’s another woman—no, girl, with him!”
“It looks as if there might be going to be a wedding!” declared Maria primly. “I declare some men are the biggest fools! You’d think after two experiences he’d be satisfied. Oh, men! Men! Men! I’ve no patience with them.”
“Well, I certainly don’t think much of a woman that comes to his house to get married!” said Pristina. “I wonder our minister has anything to do with it.”
“A woman that will marry a divorced man, too,” sighed Grandma.
“Well, I wonder which one it is, the first one or this one?” questioned Pristina. “They both look awfully young. Perhaps they don’t know a thing about him.”
“And neither do you,” said Mother. “Pristina, why don’t you take that cake over that you baked for the sewing circle tomorrow? You’ve plenty of time to make another before the circle, and anyhow, now you’ve found out Stella Squires has made a chocolate cake, it would be better for you to make some other kind, say marble cake or a coconut. If they’re going to have a wedding it would be nice of the neighbors to help out a little.”
“I think I’ll find out whether there is a wedding or not first,” said Pristina with a toss of her head. “We’ll eat the chocolate cake ourselves. I’m going to cut a big piece now.”