Tomorrow About This Time (6 page)

She, too, would fast, and would go to Miss Lavinia’s room and the old wing chair, and draw the shades and lock the door, and pray for the master! Perhaps then her prayer might be heard and answered. She would ask for the sake of Miss Lavinia and his uncle Silver. They must be beloved of the Lord. It would be terrible to have their nephew come out an unbeliever in these days of unbelief. The family must not be disgraced. But she must not let the servants know what she was doing. They must not find that anything was amiss with the master. Surely the Lord would hear and all might yet be well in spite of the awful young woman that had arrived, apparently to remain.

So she scuttled away to Miss Lavinia’s sunny south bedroom and locked the door.

Downstairs, Patterson Greeves gave his guest a chair and began to pour out curses against God.

Bannard listened a moment, head up, a startled, searching, almost pitying look in his eyes, then he rose with an air of decision.

“Look here, Greeves, you can’t expect me to sit quietly and listen while you abuse my best Friend! I can’t do it!” And he turned sharply toward the door.

Patterson Greeves stared at his guest with surprise and a growing sanity and apology in his eyes.

“I beg your pardon,” he said brusquely. “I suppose God must be that to you or you wouldn’t be in the business you are. I hadn’t realized that there was anybody with an education left on earth that still felt that way, but you look like an honest man. Sit down and tell me how on earth you reconcile this hell we live in with a loving and kindly Supreme Being.”

“You don’t look as if you are in the mood for a discussion on theology to do you any good now,” answered the younger man quietly. “I would rather wait until another time for a talk like that. Is there anything I can do for you, friend, or would you rather I got out of your way just now?”

“No, stay if you don’t mind my ravings. I have an idea you’d be a pretty good friend to have and I’ve been hard hit. The fact is, I suppose I’ve been a good deal of a fool! I married again. A woman who was utterly selfish and unprincipled. We’ve been divorced for years. Now suddenly our daughter is thrust back upon me, a decree of the court I’d utterly forgotten! She arrived without warning, and she’s the most impossible specimen of young womanhood I’ve ever come across! If a loving God could ever—! What are you smiling about, man? It’s no joke I’m telling you!”

“I was thinking how much you remind me of a man I have been reading about in the Bible. Jehoram is his name. Ever make his acquaintance?”

“Not especially,” answered Greeves coldly, with evident annoyance at the digression. “He was one of those old Israelite-ish kings, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, a king, but he blamed God for the results of his own actions.”

“Mm! Yes. I see! But how am I to blame for having a daughter like that? Didn’t God make her what she is? Why couldn’t she have been the right kind of a girl? How was I to blame for that?”

“You married a woman whom you described as utterly selfish and unprincipled, didn’t you? You left the child in her keeping during these first formative years. What else could you expect but that she would be brought up in a way displeasing to yourself?”

The scientist took three impatient turns up and down the room before he attempted to answer.

“Man! How could I know? Such a thing wasn’t in my thoughts! I insist it was a dastardly thing to wreak vengeance on me in this way. No, you can’t convince me. This thing came from your God—if there is such a being. I’ve been watching and waiting through the years for a turn in my luck to prove that the God I’d been taught loved me had any thought toward me. But this is too much. Why should I wait any longer? I
know!
God, if there is a God, is a God of hate rather than love.”

“Jehoram’s exact words,” said the minister. “This evil is of the Lord. What should I wait for the Lord any longer?”

“Exactly!” said Greeves. “Don’t you see? Jehoram was a wise man. I respect him.”

“But he found he was mistaken, you know. Wait till ‘tomorrow about this time’ and perhaps you, too, will find it out. God’s purposes always work out—”

Patterson Greeves wheeled around and looked sharply at his visitor. “What do you mean, ‘tomorrow about this time’?”

“Go read the story of Jehoram and you’ll understand. The city was in a state of siege. The people were starving crazed by hunger, were eating their own children, and appealing to the king to settle their demoniacal quarrels. The king was blaming God for it all, and suddenly the prophet appeared and told him that ‘tomorrow about this time’ there would be plenty to eat and cheap enough for everybody. How do you know but tomorrow about this time God may have relief and joy all planned and on the way?”

Greeves turned away impatiently and began his angry pacing of the room again.

“Oh, that’s the kind of idealism you were prating about last night with your dreams that God was working out His purposes for the laboring classes and all that bosh! Excuse me, but I don’t believe any such rot any more for the classes or the nations than I do for the individual. Take myself for instance. If I don’t send off a letter I just wrote to stop it, by tomorrow about this time I may have a worse mess on my hands than I have now. I tell you your God has it in for me! I didn’t tell you I had another daughter, did I? Well, I have, and she’s taken it into her head to come here also. Here! Read this letter!”

He picked up Silver’s letter and thrust it into the young man’s hand. The minister glanced at the clear handwriting, caught the words “Dear Father,” and pressed it back upon Greeves.

“I oughtn’t to read this!” he said earnestly.

“Yes! Read!” commanded the older man. “I want you to know the situation. Then perhaps you’ll understand my position. I’d like to have one person in the town who understands.”

Bannard glanced through the lines with apology and deference in his eyes.

“This is no letter to be ashamed of!” he exclaimed as he read. “This girl had a good mother, I’m sure! Or a good grandmother, anyway!”

Greeves stopped suddenly by the window, staring out with unseeing eyes, and his voice was husky with feeling when he spoke after an instant of silence.

“She had the best grandmother in the world, I think—but—her
mother
was
wonderful!”
There was reverence and heartbreak in his tone.

“Ah!” said the minister earnestly. “Then she will be like her mother!”

“I
could not bear it
—if she were like her mother!” breathed the man at the window with a voice almost like a sob and flung himself away from the light, pacing excitedly back to the shadowed end of the room.

“But you say you have written her not to come?” interrupted the minister suddenly, glancing thoughtfully at the letter in his hand. “Why did you do that? I should think from the letter she might be a great help. Why not let her come?”

The father wheeled around sharply again, kicking a corner of the rug that almost tripped him as if it had personality and were interfering with his transit.

“Let her come! Let her come here and meet that other girl? Not on any account. I—
could not bear it!
“
Again that tortured wistfulness in his voice like a half sob.

The minister watched him curiously with a sorrowful glance at the letter in his hand.

“I don’t quite see
—how you can bear not to!”
he said slowly. “After reading that appeal for your love—!”

“Appeal? What appeal? I don’t know what you mean?”

He took the letter hurriedly and dashed himself into his desk chair with a deep sigh, beginning to read with hurried, feverish eyes.

“Man! I didn’t read all this before! I was so upset! And then the other girl came!”

There was silence for an instant while he read. Then his eyes lifted with a look of almost fear in them. “Man alive!” he gasped. “She’s coming this morning! My letter will be too late!” He picked up the envelope he had so recently addressed and looked at it savagely as if somehow it were to blame. “Too late!” He flung it angrily on the floor, where it slid under the edge of the desk and lay. The tortured man jerked himself out of his chair again and began his walk up and down.

“What shall I do? You’re a minister. You ought to know. She’s on her way now. She’ll be here in a few minutes, and I can’t have her. She mustn’t meet that other girl! I can’t have Alice’s child see her! What would you do? Oh, why did God let all this come about?” He wheeled around impatiently and stamped off again. “I’ll have to get the other one off to school somewhere, I suppose. You wouldn’t be willing to meet that train and say I was called away, would you? Get her to go to a hotel in the city somewhere and wait? I could hire an automobile and take Athalie away. Perhaps there’s a school near her old home. Wait! I know a woman on the Hudson—I wonder—Give me long distance, central.” He had picked up the phone and began to tap the floor with his foot, glancing anxiously toward the clock that was giving a warning whir before striking. “What time does that train get in, Bannard? Have you a timetable?”

Bannard glanced at the clock.

“Why! You haven’t much time,” he said in a startled tone. “It gets here at eleven ten. Would you like my car?” He stepped to the window, glanced out, gave a long, low musical whistle, and in a moment Blink appeared, darting up the front walk warily, with eyes on the front window.

The minister leaned out of the window and called: “Blink, can you get my car here from the garage in five minutes? I want to meet that train.”

Blink murmured a nonchalant “Sure!” and was gone. The minister turned back to the frantic father, who was foaming angrily at the telephone operator and demanding better service.

“Mr. Greeves,” he said placing his hand on the other’s arm affectionately, “my car will be here in a moment. I think you had better take it and meet your daughter. It will be embarrassing for her to have to meet a stranger—”

Patterson Greeves shook his head angrily.

“No, no! I can’t meet her! I can’t help it! She’ll have to be embarrassed then. She got up the whole trouble by coming, didn’t she? Well, she’ll have to take the consequences. I have to stay here and get this other one off somewhere. I’ll send her back to her mother if I can’t do anything else! I won’t be tormented this way. I know. You’re thinking this is no way for a father to act, but I’m not a father! I’ve never had the privileges of a father, and I don’t intend to begin now. If my wife had lived it would have been different! But she had to be taken away! Central! Central! Can’t you give me long distance?”

Down the long flight of polished mahogany stairs heavy, reluctant footsteps could be heard approaching.

Patterson Greeves hung up the receiver with a click and wheeled around in his chair with an ashen look, listening.

“She’s coming now!” he exclaimed nervously. “I’ll have to do something. Bannard, if you’d just take that car of yours and go meet that train, I’ll be everlastingly obliged to you. If you don’t want to do it, let her get here the best way she can. It will give us that much more time. I’ve got to do something with Athalie at once!” He rose and went anxiously toward the door, opening it a crack and listening. The steps came on, slowly, and yet more slowly. The minister pitied his new friend from the bottom of his heart, and yet there was a humorous side to the situation. To think of a man of this one’s attainments and standing being afraid of a mere girl, afraid of two girls! His own children!

It was a simple matter, of course, to meet a train and tell the girl her father had been occupied for the time. The car slid briskly up to the curb in the street on time to the dot, and the minister turned pleasantly and picked up his hat.

“I’ll go. Certainly. What do you wish me to say to her?”

“Oh! Nothing. Anything! You’ll have to bring her here, I suppose! Make it as long a trip as possible, won’t you? I’ll try to clear the coast somehow!” He glanced down at the baggage of his younger daughter with a troubled frown. “There’s a carriage here—The servants will—Well, I’ll see what can be done. You’d better go quickly, please!” He looked nervously toward the door, and Bannard opened it and hurried out to his car, Athalie entering almost as he left, her eyes upon the departing visitor.

“Who was that stunning-looking man, Dad? Why didn’t you introduce me? You could have just as well as not, and I don’t want to waste any time getting to know people. It’s horribly dull in a new place till you know everybody.”

Chapter 5

A
thalie entered with nonchalance and no sign of the recent tears. Her face had perhaps been washed and a portion of her makeup removed, but she still had a vivid look and her hair was more startling than ever, now that her rakish hat was removed. It stood out in a fluffy puffball, like a dandelion gone to seed, and gave her an amazing appearance. Her father stared at her with a fascinated horror and was speechless.

She had changed her traveling clothes for an accordion-pleated outfit of soft jade-green silk with an expansive neckline and sleeves that were slit several times from the wrist to shoulder and swung jauntily in festoon-like serpentine curves around her plump pink arms. She had compromised on a pair of black chiffon-silk stockings with openwork lace and black satin sandals with glittering little rhinestone clasps. A plantinum wristwatch and a glitter of jewels attended every movement of her plump pink hands with their pointed seashell fingertips, and a long string of carved ivory beads swung downward from her neck and mingled with the clutter of a clattering, noisy little girdle. No wonder he stared. And she had done all that while he was talking with the minister.

He stared, and her dimples began to come like a reminder of her mother in the old luring way, filling him with pain and anger and something worse than helplessness. Her mother’s face was not as full as hers, but the dimples went and came with such familiar play!

“Dad, you needn’t think you can keep me shut up away from things,” she said archly. “I’m going to know all your men friends and be real chummy with them. The men always like me. I’m like Lilla in that! They bring me stacks of presents and slews of chocolates. I’ve got a lot of going-away boxes in my trunks. Some of them are real jim-dandies. This watch is a present from Bobs. You know who Bobs is, don’t you? Bobs Farrell. He was dead gone on Lilla. He gave me this watch on my last birthday. It’s platinum and diamond. Isn’t it great? He brought me out in his car this morning or I would have had to wait two hours. When I found out what time this little old train started, I just called up his apartment, and he came right down and got me and took me up to his place for breakfast. He has the darlingest apartment all by himself with a servant to wait on him and the most wonderful meals! And he’s going to have a theater party for me some night with a dinner afterward at his apartment. Won’t that be simply great? I’m to ask any two girls from school I like, and he will get the men. And by the way, Daddy, I’ve invited a house party for the first week in June. You don’t mind, do you? There are ten of the girls in my class, and I’ve promised them the time of their life. The fellows will be here only at the weekend. They have to be back at prep Monday morning. Their old school doesn’t close for another two weeks after ours.”