“Oh! It’s you!” There was at least a wistfulness in his tone.
“Good morning!” said the minister. “Am I—? Perhaps our plans are not
convenient for you this morning—?”
“Oh!” said Patterson Greeves stupidly, as if he had just remembered.
“You look done out, man! Is anything the matter? Can I help? If not,
sha’n’t I just leave this book I promised and run along till another
time?”
“No. Come in!” said Patterson Greeves with a desperate look in his face.
“You’re a minister! It’s your business to help people in trouble. I’m in
the deuce of a mess and no mistake. You can’t help me out. Nobody can.
But it would afford me some satisfaction to ask you how the devil you
can go around preaching the love of God when He allows such Satanic
curses to fall on men?”
Bannard gave him a quick, keen glance, and set his clean-shaven lips in
a firm line as he threw his hat on the hall console and stepped inside
the door.
Anne Truesdale retreated hastily to the pantry and paused to wipe a
frightened tear from her white cheek. The other servants must not
suspect what had befallen the master. Was this then the secret of the
sadness of his face, that he had forsaken the faith of his fathers and
taken to cursing and swearing. It made her shiver even yet to remember
how familiarly he had spoken of the devil. Dear old Mr. Standish Silver!
It was well he was not present to be grieved! And little pretty Miss
Lavinia! If she had heard her darling’s voice talking that way about her
heavenly Father it would have killed her outright! Just have killed her
outright! Oh, it was sad times, and the world a growing weary instead of
bright. And she so glad but the day before that Master Pat was coming
home! Poor Master Pat! She must order waffles for lunch. He was always
so fond of them. She must do all in her power to win him back to right
living. It must have been that awful war! They said some of the officers
were that careless! And of course he’d been a long time away from home.
Poor Master Pat! She must pray for him humbly. There was no one else
left to do it. That was what Miss Lavinia would have done, crept to her
old padded wing-chair and knelt long with the shades drawn. So she
always did when Master Pat was a boy and did wrong. There was the time
when he told his first lie. How she minded that day. Miss Lavinia ate
nothing for a whole four and twenty hours, just fasted and prayed.
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 if she fasted, humble though she was, her prayer might
be heard and answered. She would ask for the sake of Miss Lavinia and
his uncle Silver. They had always stood well with Heaven. 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 that she was fasting.
They must not find that aught 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 invectives against God.
Bannard listened a moment, head up, a startled, searching, almost
pitying look in his eyes, then he arose 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 were 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 Israelitish kings, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, a king, but he blamed God for the results of his own action.”
“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.
Why 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 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 caught 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 heart-break in the tones.
“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 missive 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 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 caught 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 caught 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 situation come about?” He wheeled
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 caught up the phone and began to tap the
floor with his foot, glancing anxiously toward the clock that was giving
a warning whirr preparatory to striking. “What time does that train get
in, Bannard? Have you a time-table?”
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?’”
He set the instrument jiggling snappily, and 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 about 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 arose 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 huddled 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 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 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.”
V
Athalie entered with nonchalance and no sign of the recent tears. Her
face had perhaps been washed and a portion of her complexion 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
puff-ball 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 travelling frock for an accordion-pleated affair of
soft jade-green silk with an expansive neck-line and sleeves that were
slit several times from wrist to shoulder and swung jauntily in
festoon-like serpentine curves around and among her plump pink arms. She
had compromised on a pair of black chiffon-silk stockings with openwork
clocking and black satin sandals with glittering little rhinestone
clasps. A platinum wrist-watch and a glitter of jewels attended every
movement of her plump pink hands with their pointed sea-shell
finger-tips, 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 amazing toilet
while he was talking with the minister.
He stared, and her dimples began to come with reminder of her mother in
the old luring way, filling him with pain and anger and a worse than
helplessness. Her mother’s face was not so fat 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 jimdandies. 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 diamonds. 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 apartments all by himself with a Japanese man to wait on
him, and the most adorable cooking! And he’s going to have a theatre
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 won’t be here only at the week-end. They have to be back at
prep. Monday morning. Their old school doesn’t close for two weeks after
ours.”
His most amazing child had rattled on without let-up thus far, and this
was the first period he had been able to grasp. He hastened to avail
himself of it, meanwhile glancing nervously at the clock.
“School! Yes. School! May I ask why you are not in school yourself?”
“Oh!” she wreathed the dimples coquettishly around her red lips, “why!
didn’t you know I had been fired!” She dimpled charmingly as though it
were something to be proud about. “I suppose Lilla didn’t tell you
because she was afraid you’d be shocked, but you might as well know all
about it at the start. It saves misunderstandings. You see, we had a
pajama party!”
“A pajama party!” cried the horrified father.
“O, now, daddy Pat! You needn’t pull a long face and make out you never
did such things. You know you had gay times when you went to school, and
you can’t be young but once. There isn’t anything so terrible in a
pajama party! You see the whole trouble was I got caught out on the
fire-escape in mine and all the rest got away, so I had to be fired, but
it was fun. I don’t care. I’d be fired over again just to see how Guzzy
Foster, that’s the math. prof., looked when that ice and salt went down
his back. You see it was this way. One of the girls had a dandy box from
home, and she happened to tell one of the boys from the military prep.
that she had it, and he coaxed to get some of the things. So May Beth
told him if he and some of his friends would come under the fire-escape
at exactly midnight she’d drop down a box of cake for them. Well,
everything went all right till the party was almost over and the girls
had eaten all they could stuff, and they had the box for the boys all
packed and I was to go out and throw it down to them because May Beth
had an awful cold and her pajamas were just thin crêpe de Chine and she
was all of a shiver anyway from eating so much cold ice cream. So I said
I didn’t mind even if it was cold. I thought it would be fun, and I went
out with the box and whistled softly for the boys, and they answered
once, and then, it was all very still. It was moonlight and I could see
them lined up among the bushes on the campus. I swung the box over the
railing and whispered, ‘Here she comes,’ and just as I did it I somehow
caught my toe in the burlap that came off the ice-cream freezer—I had
on Tillie Irvin’s pink satin mules with forget-me-nots on them, and she
was sore as a boil at me about that too—and then before I knew what was
happening, I somehow hit the ice-cream freezer and knocked it over, and
_slosh!_ out went all the sloppy ice and salt water through the iron
grating of the fire-escape, and I looked down and there was Guzzy
Foster—he and his wife have their apartment right under my room, and we
thought they were away for the week-end, that’s why we chose my room for
the party—he was just inside his window with his head stuck out of an
old red bath robe looking up—the old ferret. He was always snooping
round to stop any fun that was going—and he caught the whole stream of
icy salt water full in his face and down his old mathematical back, and
I hope he gets pneumonia from it. He’s the limit! Well, I heard him gasp
and splutter, and draw in his head, and I heard the boys snicker down in
the bushes and scatter out to the street—they got the cake all right. I
called one of ’em up on the phone at the station before I left and found
out—and I just danced up and down in those pink satin mules with the
forget-me-nots and howled for a minute, it was so funny. And then all of
a sudden I realized it had got very still behind me and I looked in the
window and the lights were out. There wasn’t a sound of a girl to be
heard, and down the hall I could hear hard steps that sounded like Mrs.
Foster, so I tried to get in the window, but it was fastened! Babe Heath
did that because she thought if the window was locked they wouldn’t
think to look out. But there was I in thin china-silk pajamas and the
wind blowing up from the river like ice! It was grand skating the next
day, so you may know it was pretty fierce! But I stuck it out till she
found me, and they fired me so quick Lilla didn’t have a chance to come
and see what was the matter. They just sent me home that night in charge
of Guzzy Foster himself. His name’s Augustus Charles, but we call him
Guzzy and I had a horrid, horrid time, so it’s up to you to be good to
me!”
Patterson Greeves gasped, and grasped the arms of the big chair into
which he had dropped as Athalie entered, looking at his child in abject
helplessness.
The distant sound of an approaching train stirred him to nervous action
once more.
“I certainly cannot approve of your outrageous conduct,” he began, in a
tone such as he might have used in his classroom. “It was inexcusable,
impossible, indecent—! I cannot think how a girl could bring herself to
so demean herself. And the first thing you must do will be to write a
humble acknowledgment and apology to the principal of the institution
and promise that for the future your conduct shall be irreproachable. I
will see at once about your reinstatement, and I cannot countenance in
future any disregard of the rules of the school or of the rules of good
breeding.”
But the girl broke in with a boisterous laugh:
“What’s that you say? Me go back to that school? Well, I guess anyhow
not. _Not on your life, I don’t!_ You couldn’t _drag_ me within sight of
the old dump. I’m done with it forever, and I’ll tell the world _I’m
glad_! Why? Don’t you like me? Doesn’t this dress suit you any better?
I’ve got some stunners in my trunks. When do you think they will bring
them out from the city? Can’t we get a car and go after them? I’m just
dying to show you some of my things, and the big portrait of Lilla she
had taken for the General—!”
Greeves arose, white and angry.
“Get on your things at once!” he almost shouted. “We are going back to
your school. It is impossible for you to stay here. I am a very busy
man. I have important work to do.” He glanced wildly at his watch, and
then gave a quick look out of the window as he strode to the bell and
touched it, flinging open the hall door and looking up the stairs.
“But I am not going back to school!” declared Athalie with a black look.
“I’m going to stay right here! I won’t be the least trouble in the
world. I’ll have my friends, and you can have yours. I’ll go my way, and
you can go yours. That’s the way Lilla and I always did. Only, Daddy
Pat, have we got to have that old limb of a housekeeper around? I hate
her! I couldn’t get on with her a day. I’m sure I’d shock her. She’s a
pie-faced hypocrite and you’d better fire her. I’ll run the house. I
know how! Daddy Pat—may I call you _Pat_?”
“_No!_” thundered the scientist. “You may not. You may say ‘Father’ if
it’s necessary to call me anything!” He glared at her. “And you may go
to your room at once and stay there until I send for you!” he added
suddenly, as he glanced once more out of the window and saw an
automobile draw up before the door. Then both of them became aware that
Anne Truesdale stood in the open door, her face as white as her starched
apron, a look of consternation upon her meek face and her hands clasped
nervously at her belt.