She had them all chattering together in a moment more, and they hadn’t an idea she was a day older than any of them. She was small and slender and had a smile like sunshine. They liked her at once and forgot their grievances. They began to tell her as one girl about their school, and their Christian Endeavor, and their fudge party, and she entered into it all eagerly. Christian Endeavor? Of course she would join. She had been a Christian Endeavor at home. Fudge? She loved it. Of course she would come!
Bannard stood for a moment in the doorway where he had followed to see if he could help out in the trying situation, which he had easily sensed from the few words he had caught of Anne’s excited recital, and behold, this wonderful little girl had everything in the hollow of her hand. Then one of the girls looked up, Emily Bragg it was, and giggled.
“Oh, yes, the boys are invited,” beamed Mary Truman. “They don’t know it yet, but I’m going to call them up on the phone. Say, Mr. Bannard, will you see Barry Lincoln? I’d like to ask him, but they haven’t any phone.”
“Yes. I’ll tell Barry,” promised the minister, and then Anne Truesdale with suspiciously red eyes bustled in and began pouring tea for the minister and Greeves. Silver jumped up and taking her father’s arm drew him around the group making him acquainted with each one, and the girls marveled that she remembered their names so well. When they finally broke up and started home to get ready for their fudge party, Silver walked with them down to the gate, an arm around Mary and Roberta, her head turned backward to smile over her shoulder at the other three who were fairly tied in a knot to get closer to her, and so they took their adoring leave at the front gate to the great edification of the Vandemeeters, who felt that their heads were fairly reeling with the exciting program of the day.
“I declare, if this goes on,” said Mother, mopping her weary brow with her apron, “I shan’t get half my work done. I do hope things will settle down pretty soon.”
Over at the Silver mansion Anne Truesdale was gathering the scattered tea things and trying to plan for the evening meal, which had been robbed of several articles of its menu. Greeves stood in the front hall talking with Bannard and watching Silver come brightly up the path, both men thinking how wonderfully she had turned the situation.
“You have no cause to worry about her,” said Bannard with a touch of reverence in his tone.
“I should say not,” said Greeves. “She’s—she’s—like her mother!”
“Didn’t I tell you,” said Bannard with a twinkle in his eye, “that tomorrow about this time you’d begin to see God’s way taking shape?”
Greeves’s face turned sharply toward him, a heavy shadow crossing his brow. “Don’t talk to me about God’s way!” he said harshly. “I’ve seen too much of that. What about my other girl?” And a spasm of anger went like white lightning over his features.
“That will work out, too,” said Bannard reverently. “Give God His way and see.”
“Don’t!” said Greeves sharply. “What about that man down at the Flats, that father! I can’t get him out of my head, Bannard. That’s cruelty to make that little one suffer so. It’s cruelty to take her away from a father and mother like that. She isn’t going to live, is she?”
“She has a chance, the doctor says. It depends a lot upon the nursing. The father and mother are wonders, but they don’t know how.”
“Do you know of a trained nurse you can get, Bannard? I’d gladly pay for one! Couldn’t we telephone to the city for one? Two, if necessary. I’d like to see that child saved. Bannard, if there’s anything that money can do you’ll let me help out? I’d like to make that much amends for the mess I’ve made of my life.”
Bannard cast him a quick appreciative look. “Thank you,” he said. “That means a lot. There’ll be plenty of chances for that sort of thing. But in this case it isn’t so much a question of money as love. It would be hard to find a regular trained nurse that would fit into that household. You saw how primitive everything was. It would have to be somebody who could love to make the service possible. I’m going down now for Mrs. Lincoln. I think she’ll spend the night there. She’s done such things before. She knows how to love.”
After Bannard was gone a shadow of care seemed to drop upon Greeves’s face, even while he was closing the front door, as he remembered his younger daughter. Now his was the disagreeable task of finding out all about what she had done and dealing with her. How sickening the thought! All the advantage he had gained, or thought he had gained, in the morning would be gone with the first word. His soul shrank from the contest. He was angry and disheartened. How was he to reach her and make her understand that at least she must refrain from outward disrespect to him and his family or she could not remain under his roof? What was the secret of her strange nature that made her willing to do these astonishing things? He hurried back to the drawing room where he could hear Anne’s excited voice relating over again to Silver the chief points of Athalie’s offense. He could see how, to Anne, what had been done was almost the unparadonable sin. To keep the honor and respect of the village was certainly among the first articles of Anne’s creed. With a deep sigh he pushed back the curtain and listened.
“I wouldn’t bother about it, Anne,” Silver was saying. “Athalie probably hasn’t an idea how disagreeable she appeared. She is in a different atmosphere from any she has ever been in before, and it isn’t really her fault, perhaps, that she acts so. I don’t think the girls will say much about it. We are going over next door tonight, and we’ll just have a good time and make them forget about the other. After a little when Athalie gets acquainted and gets to know the ways of Silver Sands she will want to make them like her. I’m sure she will. Just now she’s rather strange and upset in all her ideas—”
“That’s all very well, Silver,” put in the father, “but Athalie can’t publicly disgrace us. And she has openly disobeyed me it seems about the cigarettes. I can’t have that—in this house!”
“She’s been brought up seeing it I suppose—”
“Oh—yes!” said her father with a look of remembrance sweeping over his face. “Of course she’s seen it every day. It’s her standard. But she’s got to learn that it isn’t mine!”
“When she learns to love you, Father, maybe that will make a difference,” suggested Silver shyly.
The father’s face was hard.
“I doubt if she knows how to love anyone but herself,” he said bitterly. “It was the way with her mother. Anne, will you tell Miss Athalie to come down at once to the library?”
Anne was mopping up her eyes. She seemed to take Athalie’s misdeeds as a personal offense. Sacredly all these years she had guarded the honor of the family, and now to have it trampled underfoot by a stranger in one short afternoon was too much. Anne could not put it easily aside. It was an outrage, like having bad boys tear up the tulip beds after Joe had newly trimmed them, or scarring the family Bible. Anne could not get over it. She came sniffling back from the pantry door with a handful of dirty dishes and her cheeks red and angry looking. When she was excited her cheeks always turned fire red.
“But she’s not here!” she affirmed indignantly. “Didn’t I tell ye she’s away down the street like a big red peacock. I would have stopped her if I could, but she’ll not mind the likes of me.”
“She went out?” queried Greeves startled. “I didn’t understand you before. I thought you said she went up to her room. Are you quite sure? Perhaps she’s returned and slipped up the back way.”
“I’m that sure, but I’ll go see, Master Pat,” sniffed Anne and hurried up the stairs.
In a moment she was back again.
“She’s not upstairs, Master Pat. And you should see her room! It’s like a hurricane. There’s frocks and shoes just where she’s dropped them and stockings all over the place. It’s scandalous. If there should be a fire—”
But Greeves was already on his way to the front door.
“I’ll go out and find her,” he said in a low tone to
Silver, grabbed his hat from the rack, and was gone.
An hour later he came back with an anxious look on his face.
“Is she back yet?” he asked Silver who had been hovering from window to window trying to think of a way out of the dilemma for her father, wondering if perhaps Athalie hadn’t run away back to her mother, considering once more whether she ought not to go away herself and so remove one stumbling block from this wayward sister’s path.
“I met a woman—she lives next door—Weldon, Lizzie Weldon, I think her name is. She said she saw Athalie go down the street toward the post office. She was standing at the gate, she said, and watched her out of sight. She’s one of those hawks who knows everybody’s business. I used to hate her when I was a boy. She evidently wanted to find out where Athalie had gone. It isn’t hell enough to have these things happening, but we have to have a lot of vultures around picking at the bones!”
“Well, never mind, Father. I shouldn’t feel too bad about it. It isn’t your fault, and things’ll come right after a while—”
“So you believe that, too!” he said eyeing her keenly. “Well, I must say, I don’t. They’ve never come right for me yet. The thing I’m afraid of is they may confuse you with Athalie. I wouldn’t have a breath of scandal touch you, my Silver-Alice.” He came and touched his lips tenderly to her forehead. She lifted clear eyes to meet his look. “Why, I wouldn’t be afraid of that, Father. It isn’t possible.” “What makes you so sure?” he asked. “You don’t know what old carrion crows inhabit a village like this till they once get scent of a bit of a scandal. Why, even really good women, women who live otherwise a right life, will snatch up such a thing and rush about carrying it from house to house till there isn’t a tatter left of somebody’s reputation.”
Silver still looked untroubled and shook her head. “It can’t be,” she insisted. “There’s a promise, don’t you know? Listen! ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.’”
He looked at her as a man looks at a beloved woman who has just uttered some sweet fallacy concerning which he does not wish to undeceive her. His eyes grew tender with admiration and yearning.
“You are like your mother,” he said with a strange embarrassment in his voice. “If only—” and then he stalked to the window and stood looking out for a long, long time.
Dinner was late that night while Molly made shortcake for the strawberries, but when they sat down Athalie had not yet arrived.
“It’s very strange!” said Greeves looking at his watch anxiously, and he went himself to Athalie’s door and switched on the light to make sure she was not hidden somewhere to evade them all. He made Anne tell over again what she had heard.
“She said it would be that late,” insisted Anne, “and she was going to the roof garden and a carabay! I’m sure that was what she said, carabay!”
Greeves looked thoughtful. What was it Athalie had said about somebody in the city bringing her out the first day? Giving her presents, going to give her a theater party? Surely the child couldn’t have gone in town to meet him without leaving any word. It was absurd. Nevertheless he kept bringing out his watch and looking at it nervously.
Silver, too, seemed worried.
“Perhaps we better not go to that little party tonight, Father, unless Athalie comes in before it is time for us to start.”
“No, that would be foolish,” he said. “Of course you must go. We will both go. Truman was an old friend of mine. I’d like to see him. She will come in before long of course. She is doubtless hiding not far away just for a freak. She is a strange child. I do not understand her.”
But at eight o’clock Athalie had not arrived.
“There is no use fretting over it,” said her father as he walked restlessly up and down, realizing that he was more angry with her than worried. Why should he worry about a child whom he neither wanted nor loved? And yet for that very reason something in him rose and prodded his conscience. Why didn’t he care? Why hadn’t he looked out from her birth that she was the kind of a child for whom he would have to care?
He went to the telephone and called up Bannard.
“That you, Bannard? Say, that strange child of mine is still at large. Have you any way of finding out whether she took a train to town this afternoon, without exciting interest on the part of the whole countryside? Good. I thought you could. I suppose it is foolish to worry. She certainly seems able to look after herself, but somehow I feel responsible. Darned responsible! Thanks. Yes, we’re going over.
See you in a few minutes.”
Greeves and his daughter went to the neighbor’s and Bannard went out to find Barry, but Barry was not to be found. His mother had gone to the Flats for the night to care for the Italian baby, and there was no sign that Barry had been home at all. Bannard sauntered down to the station and inquired of the agent who was just closing up whether he could remember if Mr. Perry went to the city on the four o’clock train, and the agent said no, there wasn’t a soul who’d gone on that train. It was late, and he had to hang around waiting to give the engineer a message. There never was much travel in the afternoon—only one man and a boy took the six o’clock train, and the seven didn’t even stop. It only stopped in Silver Sands for flagging anyway, unless there was somebody to get off.
He sauntered into the drugstore and bought a toothbrush taking plenty of time in the selection, and the soda clerk was relating a tale about the “jane who took two chocolate fizzes and a banana split that afternoon. Some red bird!”
He dropped in at the firehouse to ask the chief if the first of the month would suit the fire company to have their annual service in the church, and keeping his ears open, gathered another straw or two more of evidence.
“An ankle like a square piano!” Uri Weldon was saying with his coarse laugh.
“I wonder she didn’t scare the birds!” said another. “Some bathin’ suit for a country walk!” Then the front legs of the respective chairs came down reluctantly, and the men straightened up to greet Bannard gravely. Everybody liked Bannard. There was nowhere in the town he might not go, nowhere that he would be unwelcome. Young though he was he had that Pauline trait of being all things to all men, though it must be owned that the men at the firehouse were all just a trifle afraid every time he came that he was somehow going to save some of them and take them away from all that life held dear. They had no doubt in their minds but that he could “save” them if he once got them in his clutches.
Slowly progressing up the street, stopping at Mrs. Hoskins to inquire if her nephew in the city had received the letter of introduction he had procured for him, he learned incidentally, as he had thought he would, that Athalie Greeves had passed there that afternoon about half past four “in a scandalous rig,” had gone to the drugstore—”and it’s the second time, Mr. Bannard, the second time in two days, and all those young boys always hanging around the drugstore”—had gone on from the drugstore down the village street as far as she could see from the gate, and passed out of sight without returning.
“And I threw my apern over my head and ran out to look,” added the good woman, showing that she always did her duty by whoever passed, that nothing should be missing out of the general report of the day.
“And I think her father ought to look after her better’n that, don’t you, Mr. Bannard? A young girl like that! And a stranger in town. Folks might misunderstand her. Don’t you think it’s strange we never heard that he had any daughters before?”
Bannard finally reached the Truman’s, but he had little to tell Greeves about his daughter, except that she had not gone on either train to the city and that she had been seen walking down the village street and had bought a soda at the drugstore.
“I wouldn’t be in the least alarmed, though,” he added in a low tone. “There really isn’t anything much can happen in the town. They’re a friendly lot, even th
e pryingest of them. She’ll probably turn up at home before long.”
Just at that moment the dining room door opened and in came the next act of the charade that was in progress, led by Silver who seemed to be the prime mover in every feature of the evening. The girls simply surrounded her and adored her from the start. Bannard watched her, and his eyes lit up with that strange wonder he had felt when first he saw her the day before. A wonderful girl! A real unspoiled girl in the modern world. He thought of how she had gone into that sorrowing home in the afternoon and entered into the need; and now here she was the center of all this merriment, and just as much at home, and just as self-forgetful.
It was remarkable that part she was taking in the act, playing her delicate features into the contortion of a haughty woman of the world. She was talented! But of course she would be. With such a father! And that spirituelle look must have come from the mother. He remembered the exquisite painted face.
Then eager voices claimed him to come and join the group for the next word, and he was drawn away to the other room.
“Oh, have you heard how the baby is?” a low, vibrant voice asked as he passed her in the hall.
So she hadn’t forgotten! She was in all this, a part of it, but she had thoughts for the anxious home.
“She is holding her own,” he said. “I took Barry’s mother down there a little while ago. She will stay all night. You don’t know Barry’s mother yet. She is a strong arm to lean upon, a cool hand on a fevered brow. She knows how to do things without seeming to, and she loves people.”
“Oh, that is good!” said Silver. “Tomorrow I will go and take her place awhile if I may.”
“It will not be necessary,” he said, looking his thanks, “but—you may if your father does not object.”
“Object?” she looked surprised. “Oh, he could not object to that. Of course I will go.”
The company clamored for Silver, and she was swept laughingly into the other room, but the minister felt that somehow between them a bond had been established that was very good to think upon. Only two days and he felt this way about her! But she was an unusual girl. Then he heard her ringing laugh, smiled into the eyes of the boys who were pummeling him to tell them the best way to act the word “penitentiary,” and plunged into the matter before him.