Painted and powdered, her hair all kind of wild, the strangest hat, and pants, mind you, in the middle of the afternoon! I feel so sorry for poor Miss Lavinia. She set such store by that boy! But it never pays to bring up other people’s children, does it? I can remember how she used to sit out there in the garden by the hour playing with him and reading to him. A waste of time, I say—but aren’t you surprised that he should do this? It seems as if he might have managed to stay respectable even if he is divorced.”
Aunt Katie looked up from the potatoes she was frying for the minister’s breakfast and smiled. “Oh, didn’t you know who that was? It’s one of his daughters. He has two, but this must have been the younger one. She’s only a child, fourteen, I think Mr. Bannard said, and she’s been off at boarding school—I suppose you must expect some craziness from little girls nowadays; there is so much more freedom in the world, especially in New York. But isn’t it nice Mr. Greeves has two daughters to keep him from being lonely? The other one is a little older. Her name is Silver. Mr. Bannard says she is the perfect picture of her mother’s portrait hanging over the mantel in the drawing room. Do you remember it, that lovely Sargent painting?”
“No,” said Lizette, coldly eyeing her adversary. “I don’t go over there. That Mrs. Truesdale doesn’t show herself very friendly. I think she takes on airs. Daughters, you think then? Are you quite sure? Well, I suppose the minister ought to know.” She surrendered the bit of scandal reluctantly. “It certainly is strange we never heard of them before. Daughters! Well, he better keep a little control of them then. One of ‘em was having carrying on in her room last night, I’ll tell you! Dancing, that’s what she was doing, in her underwear! A great big girl like a full-grown woman takes up with such outlandish fashions it’s time she was stopped by law, I say.”
“Well,” said Aunt Katie soothingly, “we don’t all have the same taste in dress, you know—”
“Dress!” sniffed Mrs. Weldon. “Undress, I should say! However, as you say, it takes all kinds to make a world. Well, I just ran over to see if you could let me have a cup of sour milk. Mine got too sour, and I had to throw it out.”
Aunt Katie always seemed to have whatever was needed by anyone, and the sour milk was immediately forthcoming.
There being no further excuse for lingering, the neighbor lingered anyway.
“The minister told you! So he’s been over to the Silver place already! He’s a good deal younger than Pat Greeves. He must be nearer the age of one of the daughters. Curious he should run after a man like that right off the first day! I thought he set up not to be a tody-er, but I suppose they’re all alike. They know which side their bread is buttered when a rich man comes along.”
“Oh, they met at the fire down at Frogtown night before last. Mr. Greeves ran across the meadow as soon as he heard the alarm and got into the thick of it helping with the best of them. Then they came home together and took to each other right away. It’s going to be grand having the old Silver place open again, young people in it, and folks going back and forth visiting.” Aunt Katie’s face was innocent as a lamb. The guest eyed her keenly but could detect no hidden sign that Aunt Katie realized she had ignored the criticism.
“Oh, well, if you take it that way of course. Some might feel they wanted to wait and be sure all was as it should be. But time will tell. Well, I must run home and stir up my batter cakes. Uri’ll be waiting.”
Down at the firehouse where Uri spent much of his time when he was not sitting in the lobby of the hotel, it was discussed that morning. There was always a knot of conversation around the firehouse door even in early morning. It was just across from the blacksmith’s shop and the hotel, and “handy-by” from the market and post office. When any frequenters came down to the business portion of Silver Sands, morning, noon, or night, they always dropped around for a minute, or an hour, to wait for whatever errand had brought them to mature, it might be the mail to be distributed, the horseshoe to be set, or the drummer to arrive at the hotel for their appointment with him and there paused for a bit of gossip. It was a distributing agency for the private affairs of the town and now and then the outlying districts. It was the country club for the so-inclined of the town and stood in place of golf for the men who did not aspire to athletics. The good old fire engine was athletic enough for them, and between fires they stood around and polished it and worshipped it and told tales of their own valor.
Uri Weldon hastened early to the rendezvous that morning with an air of mysterious importance and felt gravely the responsibility of so choice a bit of news as he carried.
Back in the dim shadows of a windowless room under the stairs where the oiling and polishing rags were kept, a tramp awoke at the first scraping of the first armchair on the cement floor. Awoke to the dismal necessity of another day and the immediate problem of getting out of his hiding place before he was discovered. His hairy, dirty face appeared weirdly in brief relief at the doorway as Uri Weldon settled back with his feet on an old soapbox and his pipe tilted at the right angle for conversation. Ted Loundes and Flip Haines lounged up to the doorway and leaning up against the door frame, one on either side of the door, were like a couple of bronze figures personifying Ease and Relaxation.
Uri Weldon started in on his tale with many an embellishment, interrupted by loud haw haws on the part of the younger men. The tramp frowned and ventured another look, scouting for a back exit and finding none. The tale went on. The tramp was not interested. He could not help hearing, but he paid no attention till Ted, helping himself to a log slither from the batten door behind him and cautiously picking his teeth remarked: “I hear that guy Greeves has a pile of dough.”
Uri Weldon nodded importantly. “Well, yes, he’s got a pile. Them Silvers was always well off. Course they owned the beach and the sand business, and all that ground the fact’ries were built on, and then the right of way where the railroad went, and stocks, and so on. But now, you know, a lot of land they had somewhere out in Oklahoma has begun to produce oil. They say the money is rolling in from that. And besides all that, he writes books! Everybody knows they charge a high price for books. It always beat me how they got it. Just a little paper and ink, and words—just words! And getting paid for it! They tell me he’s written a book about bugs that they charge three dollars and seventy-five cents for, and the people in the colleges are buying ‘em like hotcakes! It beats me how with all that learning they can be so easily fooled! But so it is, and Pat Greeves is profiting by it. Well, I suppose his pretty little brats of daughters will inherit a coupla millions apiece or more when he kicks off. Seems odd though. You boys don’t remember, but Pat Greeves and I used to be in a fight in school pretty near every day when we was kids—Hi, there boys! Look up the street there! I bet that’s her coming down this way now!”
Uri’s feet and the front legs of his chair came down to the cement pavement with a crash simultaneously, and the two younger men came about-face with alertness and looked in the direction of Uri’s finger.
“Gosh!” ejaculated Flip. “She’s some winner, isn’t she?” All three men with casual manner sauntered eagerly nearer the street and the tramp, peered earnestly out, stealing across the open space with catlike celerity, then drifting hastily behind the firehouse paused to make his own observation. This then was the daughter of the rich oil magnate who wrote books about bugs.
He had once been a city tramp, and he flattered himself he knew style when he saw it. The cut of a garment, the hang of a fold that indicated quality, the deep-blue flash of a jewel, the peculiar dash of the whole makeup that spoke of lavish expense. The tramp watched and listened to the comments of his companions unaware of his very existence and thought within himself how he might turn this accident of knowledge to his own good. But when the three friends returned to their former positions in the doorway of the firehouse, the tramp had melted away like the shadows and was seen no more.
Chapter 15
Patterson Greeves had not slept at all the night b
efore. His mind was wrought to so high a pitch that it seemed as if he never would sleep again. Silver’s music had not soothed him; instead it had brought his heart sorrow with the memories that came trooping, flooding, threatening his self-control. Her touch was so like her mother’s, her selections, many of them Alice’s own favorites. It seemed as he sat there with half-closed eyes watching her that it must be Alice. It could be no other.
At last the girl herself had seemed to feel the strain she was putting on her father, and whirling around on the piano stool she declared she had played enough for the first night.
It was then the minister roused from his delight in the music, realizing that it was time for him to take his departure and leave this father and daughter to settle their own situation by themselves. He expressed his pleasure in the music and his hope that he might hear it again, more and often, and said his good-byes.
“Just a moment, Bannard,” said Greeves as they neared the front door. “I’ll get that book for you I was speaking of. I saw it this morning in its old place on the shelf—if you don’t mind taking it with you.”
They stepped into the library and turned up the light. There sat Blink, sound asleep, with a draping of angleworms all around the rim of his tomato can, and one bolder than the rest strewn out across his knee.
Roused, he declared he had not been asleep but had been enjoying the fire and the music, merely waiting till they were through to present his gift. Trust Blink to be equal to a situation. Nevertheless he grinned at his worms and gathering them up flashed a joke at them that brought a little breath of mirth into the tense atmosphere of the evening and made everybody feel better.
When Blink and the minister had left, Silver and her father sat before the fire hand in hand, half shyly for a few minutes and talked.
If the music had not helped Patterson Greeves to solve the difficulties, it had at least made the situation clearer to his daughter.
“Father,” she said shyly, almost hesitantly, “don’t you think perhaps if you will have a quiet talk with Athalie in the morning it might help? I’ve been thinking about it. She’s probably as excited as we all are. It must be hard for her, too. I think perhaps if she understood, you might be able to make it easier for her. I was trying to think how I would feel if I were in her place—she was terribly excited and hurt—you could see that—”
They talked for some time, and when Silver finally went to her room Patterson Greeves turned out the light, and in the dying firelight he paced the room for hours, back and forth.
In the small hours of the night Anne Truesdale from her anxious chamber off the back hall heard him come softly up the stairs to his room, but when she went in the morning to put his room to rights the bed had not been slept in. There was only a deep dent in the coverlet where folded arms and a head must have rested as of one on bended knees. But Patterson Greeves had no one left to pray to, unless it might have been his dead wife, Alice, or his sweet departed Aunt Lavinia, for he did not believe in a God. And if there had been a God, he was angry with Him for bringing all this horrible thing to pass upon him.
But when morning dawned, even before Anne Truesdale had been down to open the shutters and tidy up the rooms, he was back in the library again, pacing back and forth. And as soon as ever it would have done any good to call, he was trying to telephone long distance to his divorced wife. He had decided that Athalie must go back to Lilla. He would make it worth her while.
He made a pretense of eating some breakfast with Silver—no sound had as yet been heard from Athalie’s room, and none in the family were disposed to disturb her—but it was plain that he was nervous and overwrought, and the slightest sound made him start and listen for the telephone.
When the call came at last, he hurried to the library only to be informed that Mrs. Greeves had sailed for Europe the day before to be gone indefinitely.
He hung up the receiver and stared around the room with that dazed expression he had worn the day when he first knew that Athalie was coming to him. And again there sounded in his ear the ring of that derisive laughter, echoing along the halls of his soul with taunting sweetness. Lilla had won out again. It was as if she had tossed her daughter over into his keeping and put the sea between them, so that he was not able to send her back, not even able to bribe Lilla with money to take her unwelcome child to her heart again.
After a few moments he rose and gravely walked to the window. The stun of the blow was subsiding, and he was beginning to take it in for the first time that this impossible child was his irretrievably to keep and to care for from this time forward and that he could not rid himself of the duty. For the first time he was taking it in, and some of the things he had flung out in his first bitterness of soul in talking with the minister the night before came back to him as great truths that he had uttered. He was responsible for the child, responsible for what she had become. He could not shirk any longer what he had tried to shirk for life. He must face it now. There was not distance enough in the whole universe to put his responsibility away from him. It would follow him like a shadow wherever he went, whatever he did.
How could he ever write again with this horror hanging over him? Well, what difference did it make to anyone whether he ever wrote again? What difference did anything make to him?
Gradually, however, the business habits of his life settled upon his mind, and he began to come at the question more sanely, more seriously, and to really try to think what he could do and what he should say to this strange, unloving, unlovable girl.
Perhaps the thought of Silver with the Alice-eyes writing some letters up in Aunt Lavinia’s room, a sweet, strong, sane presence, helped to keep him from the insane desperation that had come upon him the day before. At any rate, his tortured mind finally thought out a way, made a semblance of a plan, of what he should say to Athalie and how he should say it.
Thinking more coolly now, he could see that he had antagonized her. She was like Lilla. That was plain. Strange that both his children should be like their mothers entirely—and yet—no, he could see some things in Athalie exactly like himself. That being the case perhaps he could understand her a little better if he would come at her in the way he would like to be approached himself, reasonably, gently, firmly, but pleasantly. Subconsciously he had known that yesterday, but it had seemed too much like yielding to an outrageous imposition to treat her in any way but imperiously. Well, that was all wrong, of course, from her standpoint. He had simply antagonized her. It would be of no sort of use to try to control her until he had some hold upon her. He had shown his utter disapproval of her, her dress, her appearance, her habits, from the start. Could he possibly retrieve the past and begin again? Well, it was up to him to try. He could not rid himself of her by making her hate him, though he had no real desire to win her love. Still, he must try something. He could easily see now it would be useless to send her to any school against her will in this state of mind. She would only disgrace him and be back on his hands in a worse condition than before. He must do his duty somehow, whatever a father’s duty was. Somehow he had never thought before, till Silver looked at him with Alice’s eyes, what a duty of a father might be.
So he rang the bell for Anne and asked her to say to Miss Athalie that he would like to see her in the library as soon as she had finished her breakfast.
Athalie took her time.
She bathed herself leisurely; toying with her perfumes she washed her face many times in very hot water and only powdered it lightly, giving a becoming touch of shadow under her eyes as from much weeping and no lipstick at all to her full mouth. It took quite awhile to get just the right atmosphere, for it was difficult to make the healthy Athalie look as if she were going into a decline.
She really was trying to please her father. She chose a little dashing frock of dark-blue wool with a great creamy white wool collar curiously rolled around her shoulders and a daring scarlet sash of crimson silk with fringe that hung several inches below the hem. She even put on blac
k silk stockings, thin they were and extremely lacy, but black, and completed by little fairy patent leather shoes with straps intricately fastened to look like ancient Greek foot attire. A black velvet band around her forehead completed her outfit, and she descended slowly, casually, to the dining room and rang the bell imperiously.
It was Molly who brought a tray with ample food, but she rang again and sent for more and pursued the even tenor of a prolonged breakfast with satisfaction, until Patterson Greeves awaiting her in the library was almost at the limit of his patience and his newly assumed gentleness and could barely keep his resolves from leaping out the door and escaping him altogether.
But at last, after lingering in the garden a moment to gather a flaunting red tulip and stick it in her dress where it flared against the white of the collar, she sallied into the library without waiting to knock and gave her father a cool “Good morning,” quite as if he might have been the naughty child and she the casual parent, with many, many greater interests than just parenthood.
Following out his resolves with a visible effort, he wheeled over a comfortable chair for her to sit down where the light would fall full on her face and he might study her as they talked. She watched him sharply and then turned and stood with her back to him looking out the window.
“Come here and sit down, Athalie,” he said. “I want to have a little talk with you.”
“Fire ahead, Pat,” she said nonchalantly. “I’d rather stand here and look out.”
What could a father do under those circumstances? What would a father do? His blood boiled. His temper arose and clamored for satisfaction. He was no father of course, but how could he be? Here was this impish child of his defying him again, making it practically impossible for him to exercise the self-control and gentleness he had intended. It was as if she suspected his scheme and was blocking it. How could he have a heart-to-heart talk with a broad blue and white back, a blur against the sunshine of the morning? How was he to make her understand that he meant to do his best by her, do all that was best for her whether it was hard for him or not, if she stood like that and ignored him? He ought to give her a good whipping. That was what she deserved. It was barbarous of course, but she was a little barbarian, and nothing else would probably reach her. Nevertheless—he glanced around and summoned his new resolves that were just sliding out the door, grappled them to his side, and began: