Tomorrow About This Time (10 page)

But Anne Truesdale’s black silk was rustling close behind, and Silver mounted the stairs looking with eager eyes around, not seeing the glitter of an evil black eye at the keyhole as she passed down the upper hall.

“This was Miss Lavinia’s room,” said Anne swinging wide the paneled mahogany door and revealing quaint rare furniture, rich faded carpet, a glimpse of a pineapple-carved four-poster bed, and the depths of a flowered wing chair by the window, with a little sewing table drawn up and even a work basket with a bit of white linen tidily folded atop.

Anne bustled about, setting straight a chair, patting a pillow, and smoothing a dent out of the wing-chair cushion where she had but just been kneeling. Then she slipped away down the hall and tapped at a door nearer the head of the stairs on the other side.

Silver took off her hat, ran her fingers through her hair, washed her face and hands in the great blue and white china bowl, dried them on a fine linen towel fragrant with rose leaves and exquisitely embroidered with a great
S
at one end. Then she fluffed up her hair a bit more, gave a glance into the mirror and another lingering one around the sweet old room, and went quickly downstairs arriving just in time to hear Anne’s low murmured: “She says she’ll not come down. She’s not feeling so good,” and to see her father’s relief at the message.

At the head of the stairs, Athalie with velvet tread had crept to the railing to listen and peer over from the shadows of the upper hall as they went to the old stately dining room, father and daughter, for their first meal together. As they disappeared and the heavy door closed silently behind them, the girl leaned far over the baluster and made an ugly face ending in a hiss. Then as stealthily as she had come, she crept back to her room, closed the door, locked it, rummaged among her luggage for a five-pound box of chocolates and a novel, and established herself amid pillows on the foot of the big old bed.

Anne Truesdale came up presently with a laden tray of good things, but Athalie with her face smothered in the pillow, and her chocolates and book hid out of sight, declined any sustenance. Anne, pausing thoughtfully in the hall, finally scuttled down the dark narrow back stairs and whisked the tray out of sight, deciding that the master should not know of this hunger strike yet.

After lunch Silver and her father went back to the library for a time, and their low voices in steady cheerful conversation were not soothing to the other daughter’s nerves. She tiptoed to the open window to see if she could hear any words but found she could not on account of a family of sparrows who were nesting in the honeysuckle below and seemed to have been retained for the purpose of chattering.

About half past two Silver and her father went out together down the street. Athalie watched them from the shelter of the window curtain, frowning and noting the amicable footing on which they seemed to be.

They went to the station and reclaimed the girl’s suitcase. On the way back they stopped at the old church and walked slowly through the graveyard, the father pointing out the names on the white stones of those who would be of interest to her among her unknown kin, the girl’s face kindling with tender emotions as she read the records mossy with age. While they were gone the village delivery man arrived with four immense trunks and three wooden boxes. Athalie arose with alacrity from her bed of pain and superintended their installment in the house.

“You can bring the two wardrobe trunks right in here and unpack them at once,” she informed Anne Truesdale haughtily. “I shall need more closet room. I think I’ll take that room across the hall. You might put the other two trunks and the boxes there till we get them unpacked. I shall probably use that for my dressing room.”

“That is the spare bedroom,” said Anne coldly but firmly. “There is a trunk room in the attic where your trunks can be stored.” Athalie gave her a withering look, but such looks had no effect on Anne. She went her way and called the faithful servant, Joe. He managed an extra hand from the street, to help the delivery man, and Athalie’s mammoth trunks were carried slowly up the stairs. Nothing so huge in the way of a trunk had ever entered that house before, and Anne stood aghast as the first one hovered in sight and cast a quick and calculating eye toward the attic stairs. But when she saw how heavy they all were she changed her mind. They should go no farther until they were unpacked. So the first was placed in the back hall for further consideration, while the remaining three proved to be so enormous that Anne demanded the key, and down in the wide old front hall Athalie’s frivolous possessions were brought to light and carried up in the abashed and indignant arms of the three old-fashioned servants, who looked upon the trifles of lingerie with averted gaze and felt that the daring evening frocks of scarlet and silver and turquoise were little short of blasphemies. They hastened them up to the oblivion of the second floor before the master should return, and Anne stood for a full minute gazing out of the hall window across the sunny meadow and pondering whether she ought not perhaps to have left them all down on the back porch where the boxes had been sent, until the return of the master. Such doings! And for a young girl, too. Four trunks! What would Miss Lavinia have said!

Athalie meanwhile was rummaging among her brilliant clothes, pulling out this and that, deciding what she would wear next after she had sufficiently cowed that hard-hearted father of hers, and finally burrowed her way among silks and organdies to her chocolates and her pillow again, deciding not to put anything away until that objectionable “Anne” person came to do her bidding. She felt she must make it understood from the start that she would be waited upon. Anne wasn’t much like her mother’s maid, but such as she was she must be reduced to obedience. Perhaps she could coax her father to let her have a French maid all her own, a young girl about her own age. That would be rather fun.

Chapter 9

W
hile Athalie was thus engaged her father and Silver were wandering through the quiet graveyard, talking of the past. The man found himself telling his child about his own boyhood, his aunt, his uncle, the old minister, the long sweet services in the quaint old church. There was no bitterness in his voice now as he spoke of the religion of those who had brought him up. Something softening had come over him. He hardly understood himself.

And then suddenly they had come upon the young minister, stooping over a little newly made grave, working with some violet plants in full bloom, planting them in the mellow soil until the little mound became a lovely bed.

They did not see him until they were almost upon him, and then he rose quickly, his hands covered with dirt, his hat on the back of his head, his dark hair curling in little moist waves around his white forehead, and a light of welcome in his face.

“I’m just fixing up this place a bit before the mother comes,” he explained. “It looked so desolate and bare, and this was her only child!” He stooped again and pressed the earth firmly around the violets, with strong capable fingers, arranging the plants as he talked till the whole little mound was one mass of lovely bloom. Then he rose, dusted the dirt away from his hands, and strolled along with them.

“Would you like a glimpse of the old church?” He flashed a smile at Silver.

“Oh, I would!” she exclaimed eagerly. “Grandmother used to tell me stories of my father’s home, all she knew, and she always told about the old church. Mother was here—once—wasn’t she?” She looked up shyly at her father who was walking absentmindedly, sadly beside the young people, his hands clasped behind him as if his thoughts were far in the past. He started as she asked the question, and a pain seemed to stab into his eyes like one who is suddenly brought to view something long lost and very dear.

“Yes, yes! Your mother was here! On our wedding trip! We went to church. We sat in the old pew. She wore a little white hat with white flowers on it and a thin blue dress!” It was as if he were musing over a beloved picture. The minister and the girl exchanged swift understanding glances.

“We will go in,” said the young man. “I have the key.”

He unlocked the old oaken door and the sunshine poured behind them into the ancient hall, lighting up the well-kept red ingrain carpet and meeting the sunshine that poured down from a stained-glass window above in curious blended dancing colors like the pattern of some well-remembered hymn sacred to many services held within those holy courts.

Patterson Greeves walked beside the young Alice as he had walked beside her mother up those stairs to the chapel above, so many years ago, and saw again in imagination the eager friends of his youth leaning over the grained oak railing to get the first glimpse of the bride. Felt again the swell of the pride in the girl he had chosen, remembered the look of pleasure in the eyes of his uncle Standish as he met them at the head of the stairs and escorted them down the aisle to the pew, and Alice’s smile as she looked up at him. Ah! That he had thought was to be the beginning of life! And only one short year it lasted! They all turned to bitterness and night! Fool that he had been that he had thought anything so heavenly could have lasted on this earth! That he had believed there existed a God who cared for him and planned for him! Ah! Well! Bitterness!

The blood rolled through his veins in a sickly, prickly, smothering wave, and he mopped his brow with his handkerchief and wondered why he had let himself in for this sort of thing after all these years. Why had he come down to the old church so full of memories?

Then he lifted his eyes to his girl who stood in the open doorway of the chapel now, framed in all her girlish beauty against the background of the rich coloring of the church, its jeweled windows casting rich fantastic lights in a rainbow flood of beauty, glancing away from the cluster of gilt organ pipes, glinting the gold fringe of the pulpit Bible bookmark, focusing on the blood red of the bright old carpet and beating it into a tessellated aisle of precious gems, mellowing the age-worn woodwork of the square high pews and the carvings of the pulpit and red plush pulpit chairs. There was something in the look of his girl as she stood there against that background with all the heritage of her grandfather’s and grandmother’s religion behind her that took away the pain again and made him watch her breathlessly and trace out every likeness to the mother who was gone, made him glad that she had come in spite of all the pain. Even glad of the pain, if it brought this vision.

The minister was explaining about the organ. “Not a wonderful organ and a bit old, but one of the good old makes, and with two or three beautiful stops.” Did she play? She did. He was sure she did.

Wouldn’t she try the organ?

“Her mother could play! Oh, she could play!”

Greeves had spoken without intending, but the other two gave no sign that they had seen the emotion in his face.

“Yes, I know,” the girl said quietly. “I studied with her teacher for two years. He was an old man, but he was wonderful. After he died Grandfather sent me away to study for a while.”

They lingered nearly an hour in the church, the girl drawing sweet harmonies from the old yellow keys, the minister lingering near, calling for this and that favorite, while Greeves sat long in the old family pew and read without seeing them the old familiar texts twined among the fresco,
“THE
L
ORD
Is I
N
His H
OLY
T
EMPLE:
L
ET
A
LL
T
HE
E
ARTH
K
EEP
S
ILENCE
B
EFORE
H
IM.”
Even now after the years it sent a certain note of awe through his soul, an echo of the old days when God was real and life a rare vista before him. There were the same old windows. He used to count the medallions in the border when the sermon was unusually long. There was the shepherd and the lambs and the first verse of the twenty-third Psalm. There was the storm one, purple clouds driven hard across an iron sky, trees and shrubs bowing before it, and the inscription,
“FOR
I
N
T
HE
T
IME
O
F
T
ROUBLE
H
E
S
HALL
H
IDE
M
E
I
N
His P
AVILION:
I
N
T
HE
S
ECRET
O
F
His T
ABERNACLE
S
HALL
H
E
H
IDE
M
E.”

How firmly he used to believe in that when he was a child! How truly he expected to take refuge in that tabernacle if any storm overtook him! And how far he was now from any refuge. What a farce it had been! Beautiful while it lasted. But a farce! He drew himself up with a shudder of disgust at it all, and the tones of the organ caught him as Silver’s fingers trailed over the keys while she talked in low tone with the minister:

“Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee—”

It had been Aunt Lavinia’s favorite, and it stung its way into his soul in spite of his intention otherwise. He could hear her singing it, evenings in the nursery when she held him on her lap, his earliest remembrance, while her eyes watched the sky grow red and gray and deepen into starry blue, and the look about her mouth told him even in his baby days that there was something sad back somewhere in her life, something that she might have given up, possibly for him.

“Nearer my God to Thee, E’en though it be a cross—”

He could hear the gentle murmur of her timid voice in that very pew as he had sat beside her many years. Ah! The tears stung into his eyes unaccountably after all these years. And he? His song had been:

“Farther my God from Thee,

Farther from Thee—!”

How Aunt Lavinia would have agonized in prayer before her deep old wing chair if she could have known! He had seen her kneeling once like that, in her decorous high-necked, long-sleeved nightdress with the little tatted ruffles round her throat and wrists, her eyes closed, her gentle face illuminated with a wistful joy that had awed him, her lips murmuring softly words of pleading for him: “Oh God, bless our little Pat. Make him grow up a good man, loving God more than all else in life! Make him sorry for his sins! Make him love righteousness and hate wrong—”