Tomorrow About This Time (18 page)

“Dear knows! John says she might be most anybody. You know Patterson Greeves got a divorce! Maybe she’s his secretary. That’s the way they do things nowadays. Isn’t it the limit? Say, I smell my other loaf of bread burning. Excuse me a minute, please. You hold the wire. I want to ask you about what happened at the sewing circle the other day. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Mrs. Weldon took no nap that afternoon. She was too excited. She felt it her bound duty to keep a watch and find out if there were “doings” going on in the old house and if she ought to do something about it. What else should a good neighbor do when the respectable dwelling of an old neighbor was threatened with modernism?

The hedge was too high for her to see the terrace and the scene in the garden, but later when Athalie, having cried out her brief wrath, dressed herself in a bright little pair of pajamas with lace ruffles around the ankles and having turned on all the lights proceeded to practice a little dancing in front of the window, Lizette was there, binoculars and all, with her fat husband behind her staring over his spectacles and laughing coarsely in her ear. This was a good joke, a good joke to tell down at the hotel. Those religious Silvers come to this!

The next morning when she slipped through the garden and under the back fence across the lots to the garden of Aunt Katie Barne’s neat little place on the side street where the minister boarded, to get a cup of sour milk, she paused with her apron over her head and said:

“Oh, have you heard what’s happened over at the Silver place? They do say Pat Greeves has come back and brought a
woman
along! I’ve been told she was his secretary or typewriter or something. But she’s very ordinary. I saw her go by myself, and I was shocked!

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

P
atterson Greeves had not slept at all the night before. 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.