Athalie Greeves came noiselessly forward to the library door, a look of
expectancy on her round pink face, a cat-and-cream expression about her
lips. As noiselessly Patterson Greeves forced himself to step to the
doorway again, a heavy frown upon his brow, a look of extreme suffering,
one would almost have said dread, in his eyes. Anne with frightened eyes
peered bravely round the door, and the two on the wide flagging stones
of the porch waited, the girl with wistful eager, yet courageous eyes,
ready for either love or renunciation, whichever the indications showed;
the minister hovering tall above her, a look almost of defiance on his
strong face, an air of championship and protection about him.
Nobody spoke for the first instant which seemed almost like an eternity.
The two girls saw each other first, for Patterson Greeves stood within
the library door.
The girl on the steps was gowned in a blue-gray tweed suit, well fitted
and tailored and a trim little soft blue straw toque with a sharp black
wing piquantly stabbing the folds of the straw. Her hair was golden in
the sunlight, and as she stood seemed like a halo round her face. The
light of the morning was in her eyes as she peered into the shadows of
the hall, then suddenly grayed with chill and reserve as she met the
eyes of the other girl.
Athalie’s plump face grew suddenly hard, her lips drooped, her eyes
glared, her head went slightly forward with a look of stealth and
jealousy and her hand went instinctively out to catch the doorframe. Her
whole form seemed to crouch with a catlike motion, and green lights
danced in her eyes, though they might have been reflected from her
dress. The minister lifted amazed eyes and saw her. He put out an
involuntary hand of protection toward the girl by his side.
Then Patterson Greeves stepped into the hall sternly, his back to
Athalie and came toward the door. He looked and stopped short, his hands
suddenly stretched out and then drawn back to his eyes with a quick
hysterical motion as if he would brush a fantasm from his vision:
“Alice!” came from his lips in a low broken tone of agony, as if the
torture and mistakes of the years were summed up in the words.
During that instant while he stood with his fingers pressing his eyes
Athalie began stealthily to step back and across the hall to the wide
arched doorway of the stately old parlor that ran the depth of the house
on the other side of the hall from the library. Her eyes wide and round
were fixed on her father. An instant later there was only left the
swaying of the old silk cord tassel that held the heavy maroon curtains
of the doorway.
Then the girl on the doorstep came to vivid life and stepped up quickly
toward her father with eager light in her face.
“Father!” She said the word with a world of reverence and stored up
love, tender caressing sound, so genuine, so wistful, it could not fail
to reach the heart of any man who was not utterly dead to his
fatherhood. They were clasping hands now, looking earnestly, eagerly
into one another’s eyes.
Anne Truesdale, behind the door, averting her loyal gaze, the minister
with anxious attitude upon the doorstep, the alien daughter behind the
heavy portière, one eye applied to a loop-hole close to the doorframe,
were breathless witnesses of the moment. Then Patterson Greeves drew his
daughter within the library door with the one word “Come,” and closed
the door behind them. The minister came to himself, murmuring that he
would return or telephone later, and took his departure. Anne Truesdale
closed the front door, and with an anxious glance as she tiptoed by the
library door, vanished up the stairs. A soft stirring at the end of the
back hall where Molly listened, a cautiously closed latch, and all was
still.
Athalie in the big dim parlor held her breath, listening, peered
cautiously, and then drew back and gazed about her with a leisurely air.
The room was wide and very long, with windows heavily curtained in the
old-fashioned stately way. The ceilings high, the walls hung with dim
old portraits in heavy gilt frames. The floor was covered with heavy
velvet carpet, rich and thick in scrolls and roses, bright with care,
though the years had passed many times over it. The furniture was rare
and old and comfortable, and would have graced many a finer mansion. One
or two chairs done in fine hand-made tapestry softly faded with the
years, tables and cabinets that had come down from the masters in wood
work. A rosewood piano of a make some thirty years back, whose name was
still dignified and honored. Athalie stood and gazed about, half
contemptuously. The chairs, yes—but the carpet! How funny! She would
have to see that it was taken up at once and a hardwood floor—of
_course_—this would be a grand room for a dance. She gave an
experimental whirl on a cautious toe. Those curtains were gloomy! She
slid a sleek hand into a well camouflaged silken pocket and brought
forth chocolates wherewith she had fortified herself. Her mouth
comfortingly filled with the creamy velvet of Dutch creams she started
on a tour of inspection, pausing first before an ancestral portrait
hanging above a curiously carved sofa with hand-wrought tapestry
upholstery. The picture frame, tarnished with the years, seemed like an
open doorway to the past. From it looked forth a woman plain of face,
smooth of hair, with a carved high back comb towering above her sleek
head, and bearing a bird on her finger. The eyes were so expressionless
and the face so sombre that it was impossible not to connect it with a
monotonous existence. A woman satisfied with a pet bird! Athalie paused
and took in the thought. A lift of her well-rounded shoulders, a
contemptuous smile, that was her reaction to the woman of long ago. She
meant little to the girl modern in all her thoughts and feelings. There
was hardly a shadow of conception of that sheltered, sweet, strong life
that had given much to the world in her passing. The girl passed to the
portrait of the man in military uniform hanging between the two long
front windows and her jaws paused in their slow rhythmic manipulation of
the chocolates to study him a moment. This must be old General Silver.
Her mother had told her about him. Not much, only that he had been
something—made some great mark in the Civil War, or was it the war
before that? Athalie’s ideas of history were most vague. She knew only
that it was very long ago if one might judge by the old-fashioned
hair-cut, the high collar, the strange war trappings, not in the least
like a modern soldier. He had bushy eyebrows, from beneath which his
piercing eyes looked over her head straight out to some far seen enemy,
keen, cutting, stern—the girl shuddered. There had been that look in
the eye of this new-found father of hers, not at all fatherly, not
“dadish” as she expressed it to herself, purely official. He was like
his ancestor, she decided, as she stood and watched the picture.
Disappointing. Quite as Lilla had said he would be. Hard as adamant.
Flint in his eye. No yielding to coaxing. No weakness anywhere that one
could probe. Was the bird lady his wife or daughter? She looked back and
studied the first portrait critically, deciding she must have been his
wife. No wonder she looked as if she had dragged out a drab existence!
And yet—she looked back to the soldier’s face. There was a fascination
about him somewhere. What was it? The moulding of the firm lips? The
arch of the heavy brow? The curve of the wavy hair, brushed fiercely
forward from either side of the head and focussing over the forehead in
a high standing brush? Well—somehow that made you long to conquer, to
draw a smile to those stern lips, a soft light to the eyes—it must have
been that something that made Lilla marry her father. It couldn’t have
all been money nor station for Athalie had heard her mother tell many
times of other lovers, far famed and wealthy. There was something about
her father she had come to conquer, and she hardened her own wilful lips
in determination and passed on to the next wall opposite the bird lady.
A stately dame with soft white hair and a cap looked forth from the next
frame with a smile, more human than the others, the girl felt; her stiff
black silk seemed almost to rustle from its frame with dignity and
kindliness, and the painted hands held primly a wide, gracious fan of
rare old lace. And by its side hung the portrait of her husband
apparently, a fine old gentleman with silvered hair, high stock, and
courtly manner, fitting mate for the dear old lady, both portraits so
lifelike that Athalie paused almost abashed for an instant as if someone
unexpectedly had entered the room. It gave her a feeling of unaccustomed
awe, these strong, painted personalities all about her, past history
caught and imprisoned on the canvas for another age to know intimately.
They looked down at her with kindly gracious eyes and she turned away
awkwardly, uncomfortable, and swept the room with another glance.
On the back wall Uncle Standish Silver in more modern business garb, and
his sister Lavinia, in her Sunday best silk, long-sleeved, high-necked,
fastened with a great cameo at the throat, and pretty crimped hair drawn
back and up from her ears in a knot on top of her shapely head, were too
modern to excite her curiosity, too old-fashioned to hold her interest.
Her eyes wandered to the frame opposite the side window, half in shadow
of the heavy curtain, a picture of a young man, a mere boy he was. She
walked the length of the room eagerly to inspect it and stopped in
admiration. A boy a little older than herself, and looking strangely
like herself, only slim and tall, and with eyes—yes with eyes like the
soldier—and—yes—_eyes like her father’s_! It must be her father when
he was a boy!
She stood a long time looking at it with mingled feelings, admiring,
jealous, determined, studying him as he had been when almost her age.
She felt if she knew him then, she would be more able to understand and
influence him now. Finally, with a sigh of impatience she turned and was
about to slip out of the room when she suddenly saw for the first
time—how had it escaped her?—the portrait of a young and beautiful
woman, fresh, vivid, smiling, from a great oval frame over the white
marble mantel. The eyes were wonderful, large, loving, innocent, deeply
intelligent and with a look of life about them that made the girl
uneasy. Those eyes seemed suddenly to have been watching her all the
time, to have followed her around the room, to be searching her down to
the depths of her mean, selfish little soul. They were maddening eyes to
a girl like Athalie. They belied every purpose of her life, every
standard and ideal dear to her soul, every act of which she was
conscious. They were like an angel’s eyes come down to earth for
judgment.
Slowly, with gathering storm in her own dark eyes, she approached, and
the two eyes seemed to meet. Who was this young girl dressed in misty
white like a bride, fashioned not so long ago either? And was that a
veil on her head? And orange blossoms—a spray? What bride of recent
years had a right there, in the centre of the great room, the place of
honor? It must be—! It _was_ her father’s first wife! Here in the house
where she had come to live! Watching her with searching angel-eyes like
that! Clean eyes that made her conscious of herself! Assured eyes that
claimed their right to be there!
And who was it she resembled? Where had she seen that face before, those
true clear eyes?
It suddenly flashed over her and she trembled from head to foot with
rage and ground her teeth in quick fury. _That girl out on the
doorstep!_ Was that the girl of the portrait? Or had her father married
another wife, a young girl like that? Had he _dared_, and not let them
know? Could he do that? Or—stay! There had been a child. Lilla had
always said that it died—but perhaps!
Suddenly Athalie, in a burst of rage, took a long step toward the
portrait, a spring up, and spat forth a great mouthful of well
masticated sticky chocolate straight into the lovely painted face,
covering eyes and nose and smiling lips, and dripping in ugly brown
courses down cheeks and chin. The girl surveyed her work of desecration
with satisfaction and a lifted chin and stuck out tongue as any naughty
child of three might have done. Then lifting her hands in a hateful
defiant gesture she darted from the room and went lightly upstairs.
In a moment more after rummaging in her suitcase, she stole forth with a
large framed photograph hidden in the folds of her skirt, and slipped
down to the parlor again, going straight to the mantel and putting her
picture directly under the picture of the girl bride.
It was a recent picture of Lilla taken in exceedingly gauzy négligée,
one of the expensive affairs of velvet and chiffon and fur she loved to
don, an intimate picture not meant for public gaze, a bold-eyed,
challenging, still beautiful woman, with amazing hair falling over bare
shoulders and down upon the silk pillows of her chaise longue, on which
she was half reclining. It was framed in an exquisite silver frame and
intended for Athalie to show her former husband that he might see how
lovely she still remained in spite of his indifference.
Athalie stood back and surveyed with jealous eye the picture smiling
defiantly forth beneath the defaced one, made another grimace of hate
and flew up the stairs again to her room, leaving her mother’s picture
to hold its own with the other portraits of the family.