Tomorrow About This Time (19 page)

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 black 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:

“Athalie, my child,” he began, realizing that it was necessary for his own good that he recognize the relation openly. He cleared his throat, “I—ha—”

“Aw, cut the comedy, Pat! What’s eating you? Spit it out! I know I’m in for the deuce of a time, but if you’re going to preach a sermon you’ll have to do it without me. This is too gorgeous a morning to be shut up in the house. Say, Pat, don’t you ever play golf? What say if you and I go to some country club around here and have a game and then take lunch? Let’s have a ripping old time together and get acquainted, and after that if you haven’t got it all out of your system yet I’ll agree to listen.”

For an instant the astounded father gazed at the face of his cocksure amazing daughter and wavered, almost considering whether he could accept this high-handed proposal. Perhaps if he had, this story might have been a different one in many details, who can tell? But Patterson Greeves’s sole contact with youth since he passed out of that class himself had been in the classroom or on the battlefield, in both of which places he had been the dictator, able to put his victim through instant discipline if he did not obey in every particular; where a mere black mark on a report card or spoken word to an under officer meant that the delinquent would be dealt with speedily and thoroughly, and where respect and obedience were the foundation of breath itself, and nothing else was to be tolerated.

And now, while flesh shrank from the encounter before him, and his whole soul cried out for respect and the open-air relaxed conscience and a chance to get things into some natural order again, his puritan inheritance and his whole training demanded respect and obedience, and the moment passed. The scene of the night before rose in his mind’s eye, and his blood boiled. He was again in the position of an outraged parent struggling for self-control while he read the Ten Commandants to a naughty child.

And perhaps it was as well, for Athalie knew how to take advantage of the least opportunity, and she
had
to learn
sometime
that law was law.

The silence was growing very tense. Athalie, quick to note his every phase of attitude toward her, so sure of him when she finished her wheedling sentence, began to grow uneasy as his gaze continued, staring, stern and displeased.

“Athalie,” he spoke at last, and his words were like icicles, “I can go nowhere, do nothing, until I have had an understanding with you.”

A sullen cloud settled down over the girl’s face.

“Sit down.” He pointed to the chair. Athalie hesitated a second, then with her sullen eyes like smoldering fires fixed on him, seemed to think best to obey, but she sat down tentatively, with one foot slid slightly behind her in readiness to rise again if he offended her. Her lips were pouted angrily. She shrugged her shoulders with a bored attitude as if she were but humoring him for the moment.

The speech he had framed through the long hours of the night deserted him now when he most needed it. Strangely it did not seem to fit. He struggled to find the phrases, cutting ones, intended to show her her place and keep her in it, an ultimatum which would put things on a proper basis. But the whole thing was gone, and nothing but his own helplessness was upon him.

Then something Silver had said the night before about talking gently, reasonably, came to him. A sense of the room and its hallowed memories filled him. It was as if those who had loved him and cared for him in his earlier years might be hovering around unseen waiting to help him through this trying time. He dropped his forehead on his hand for a moment almost humbly, and then lifting his eyes he tried to tell the girl what was in his heart. None of the sentences he had planned were there. Many of the words he spoke he would not have wished to say to her, it was condescending too much to one who had treated him and his so lightly.

“Athalie,” he said, and his voice sounded now more gentle, with that certain something that always brings attention, “you and I are not in a very pleasant position. Perhaps it may be as hard for you as for me, I do not know. I may not have seemed to you very kind nor sympathetic when you arrived. I certainly did not welcome you. I was utterly unprepared for your arrival, as your mother must have known and intended that I should be. I do not intend to speak of her nor the past any more than is necessary; and there must of course be a great many things that you do not understand about our peculiar situation. We shall just have to put away the past and try to build up a relationship from the beginning. In order to do that there are one or two things that must be clearly understood.

“In the first place we belong to an old and respectable family with many traditions that must be honored and standards that must be upheld. We owe it to the past.”

He studied her blank sullen face for a moment wondering if she understood. He struggled to make his words plainer. “There are certain customs and laws of society that we have always maintained. I cannot have my daughter transgressing these things. Our women have always been good and pure and have never sought to imitate men nor to flaunt their personalities or their persons. They have always been modest, quiet, sweet women, dressing unobtrusively, becomingly, and in a modest way. I cannot countenance the way you speak, the flippant, pert, rude disrespect, both to me and to the old house servants who have been with us so long that they are an integral part of the family. I cannot countenance your mannish ways, nor your cigarette smoking, nor your revealing dresses. I like sweet, modest girls, and if you and I are to get on at all together you must drop these ways and try to be a good girl.”

Athalie’s eyes smoldered furiously, and her lips curled in contempt. “I suppose that other girl just suits you!” she stormed. “Little simp!”

“Silver seems a very modest, sweet girl,” he assented, wondering what he ought to say about the way she had treated the picture last night.

“Well, I
hate
her!” said Athalie in low, hard tones. “I HATE HER!—and you sound to me awfully what they call at school ‘mid-Victorian.’”

Patterson Greeves began to realize that he was not getting on very well. He looked at his hopeless offspring and longed to vanish out of her sight forever, caring not where or how his soul was disposed, so he might finally escape the problem of her. But something in his puritan conscience refused to let him slide away from the issue. He must face and conquer it. He had slid out of his situation with Lilla by letting it take its course—or had he? Was she not even now as poignant and tangible an element in his life as though he were struggling to live his daily life by her side? It passed through his mind that perhaps nothing was quite ever shoved aside or slid out of. Perhaps we always had to reckon with everything we did, sooner or later—sooner
and
later. That was a question of life that might be worth looking into, might make a good subject for an article for a magazine—what strange thoughts form themselves beneath the surface when we are in the middle of a tense and trying time! Patterson Greeves brushed the thoughts away impatiently and sat up. He must get these things said that he had resolved to say.