Tomorrow About This Time (15 page)

He was beside himself with fury now, and snatching the picture, frame and all, he dashed it to the hearth and ground it beneath his heel.

Then out from behind the heavy curtain, with a wild cry like a young tigress, darted Athalie and flung herself upon him, beating him back with her hands and screaming out: “Stop! Stop! You shall not! That is Lilla! That is my mother! Ohhh!” And her cries were like the torn heart of an infuriated creature who had never been controlled.

She pushed him away and crouching low with raining tears gathered up the fragments of the picture and clasped them to her chest. Then standing, she faced her father, a glare of hate in her black glittering eyes, and looked him down even as he had looked at her, and all who witnessed could not but see a resemblance to him in her eyes and attitude.

“You murderer!” she hissed between her red lips. She ground her teeth audibly and repeated, “You murderer!” And then she suddenly reached out with one hand and seized a large triangle of glass that still remained on the edge of the marble shelf and hurled it with all her force straight into the face of the wonderful painting above her, where it cut a deep jagged gash between the lovely eyes and fell in a thousand pieces below.

As the glass slithered through the canvas Athalie gave a scream like a lost soul and darted from the room, almost knocking over the white and frightened Truesdale in her flight, and tore up the stairway to her room, slamming the door with a thunderous sound behind her and flinging herself with wild weeping on her bed.

Meantime Blink had arrived at the front door with his offering of worms and had rung several times before Molly, who thought Joe and Anne were busy in the drawing room with the fire and lights, had slipped to the door and let him in, asking him to wait in the front hall until the housekeeper came to show him where to go. Blink had stood by the door, his cap in his hand, and been a most unwilling witness to the whole awful scene, with its climax of flying coral gauzes, pink flesh, and silver shoes hurrying up the distant staircase. He stood for an instant uncertain what to do and then with innate courtesy stepped to the door of the darkened library where only a dying fire flickered on the hearth, and slipped inside. At least in here, they would think he had not heard. He dropped silently into one of the great leather chairs at the farther end of the room and tried to think what it all might mean and what connection it had with the girl who had climbed out the second story window and telephoned to a man in the city.

It was most silent in the big drawing room after Athalie left. No one dared hardly to breathe. Patterson Greeves stood white and dazed, gazing up at the injured picture, with a stricken look on his face, as if he had suddenly seen a loved one put to death. For an instant he looked in silence, then uncertainly he put up his hands and rubbed them across his eyes as if he were not seeing right. It was as if the mutilated eyes of the picture were accusing him. He turned a pleading pitiful look on the group standing about him, and with a moan he suddenly dropped into a chair, burying his face in his hands and relapsing into an awful silence.

“Dontee, dontee, Master Pat, dearie!” crooned Anne Truesdale, in her sorrow forgetting the presence of the others and relapsing into his childhood’s vernacular. “She’s only a naughty child! She didn’t mean—she doesn’t know!”

A great shudder passed over the man’s body, and the woman gave a frightened look toward the other two and retreated.

Bannard stepped forward.

“Get that washed off the picture, can’t you?” he whispered. “And sweep up the glass?” Anne Truesdale vanished, glad to have something tangible to do.

Bannard stepped to his host’s side and put a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Come, Greeves, don’t lose your nerve. This isn’t nearly as bad as it seems! It really isn’t, you know. The woman was right. She’s only a naughty ungoverned child. And besides, you’ve another little girl to think about—”

Greeves raised his eyes to the sorrowful girl in the doorway and Silver crept to her father’s side and knelt, slipping her arm within his and putting her face close to his.

“I’m afraid this is all my fault, Father,” she said with a catch in her voice. “I ought not to have come. I knew as soon as I saw her. It hurt her, you know, to have me here. She wanted your love for herself—”

The man stirred uneasily and lifted his head drawing his arm around her.

“Don’t say that again!” he commanded sternly. “She is worse than nothing to me! Never can be or could be!”

Anne had come in with soft cloths and a basin of warm water followed by Joe with a stepladder, brush, and dustpan. They tiptoed in silently, as if to a place where a murder had been committed. They did their work swiftly and well and withdrew. The master of the house remained with his head down, resting on one hand, the other arm still encircling his daughter. Bannard stood a little to one side thoughtfully until the servants were gone. Then he raised his eyes to the picture.

“Come, Greeves,” he said with relief in his voice. “It’s not so bad at all. I’m sure it can be fixed. They mend those things so you’d never know, and it isn’t as if the artist were dead. You can have him touch it up himself—”

Patterson Greeves rose shaking, his arm still about his daughter, who slipped up from his knees and stood beside him. The father gazed agonizingly up at the picture, tears blurring into his eyes.

“The little devil!” he murmured. “That’s what she is! A little hellcat!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t talk that way, friend!” Bannard’s hearty voice was like a breeze from a windswept meadow driving the unpleasant atmosphere away from the room. “Nothing gained by that. Try to understand what has made her like this.”

“Do you mean to say I’m to blame for her devilishness?” Greeves demanded excitedly.

“I wasn’t saying who was to blame, my friend. I was merely suggesting that you might look further into the matter before you feel in utter despair. The mother is responsible for a lot, I should say, but your problem is not who is to blame, but what can you do about it.”

“I shall send her away at once, either to some school where she will be made to behave, or else back, back to the mother who made her what she is.” The man’s tone was hard, unforgiving, uncompromising. “I shall
make
her take her back. Money will do it!”

“Then you
would
be to blame!” flashed Bannard. “What, would you give her no opportunity
ever?
Would you force her to remain what she is?”

“I would get her out of my sight forever.”

“Isn’t that just where you made your mistake before? Pardon me. I realize that I know nothing about the matter. It is only a suggestion.”

“You do think I’m responsible for having a child like that!”

“Well, isn’t a father responsible? Isn’t that what God meant he should be?”

Silver had moved away from her father and was standing by the mantel looking up at the pictured eyes of her mother, her eyes full of wistfulness. Her father began a restless striding up and down the room, answering nothing, now and then tossing back his head in an impatient way he had. At last he wheeled around and faced Bannard.

“I cannot think there is any fairness in that,” he said harshly and took another turn across the room. Then coming back with more of a grip upon himself he said: “But I have made enough of a scene today. I had hoped you were to be my friend. If you stand this test you will indeed be a friend. I must work this thing out by myself. Let us forget it if you can and endeavor to glean a little friendship at least from the evening. We came in here to have some music, and I have exhibited a family skeleton instead. Let us close the door on it for the night and do something else. My daughter, after all this are you equal to giving us a little music?”

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

D
iagonally 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.”