Within the quiet library the father and daughter were coming to their
own. The alienation of the years like a great wall of ice was slowly
melting between them and they were groping for phantom ends of heart
ties broken long ago.
He had seated his daughter in one chair and drawn another opposite her.
He was unnerved with the events of the night and morning. He seemed to
find it hard to control his faculties and adjust himself to the present
circumstances. He hardly seemed to hear her voice or the words she was
speaking. It was his dead wife’s voice that he heard. And there was no
reproach in it, but it rebuked him. It rebuked him so that he could
scarcely speak.
“I have wanted to see you so long—father—I have wanted to know you—!”
she was saying.
He groaned as he dropped his head for an instant and put his hands up to
his eyes:
“You—are—_Alice_!” he said hoarsely.
She smiled. That smile he had loved so well! Was ever man tortured like
this man? To have the dead come back in such perfection, yet in another
body—and with another soul? “His daughter! His _daughter_!” he tried to
say to himself, yet it was as babbling. He could not get its meaning.
This was Alice come to rebuke him. Alice as when he first knew her.
“They always have called me Silver,” she said wistfully. “Grandmother
couldn’t quite bear to call me Alice. But—I shall be glad to have you
call me what you like—”
He looked at her as in a dream. He could not think what to say to her.
He wanted to reach out and touch that lock of hair that was drooping
over her ear, the one with the sunbeam netted in it, it was brushing
against her cheek, that cheek rounded with the same contour as his lost
Alice.
What a fool he had been not to know Alice would leave him her image in
her child. How he had given it away, this dear growing vision of the
lost one! Given it away without a thought, actually been glad to be rid
of the responsibility! And now he had lost it! Lost the right! It was
like giving light to a blind man, bread to a dead man, to give her to
him now. He could never get in touch with her after these years. He had
carved out his life in a different line, a line where she did not fit.
He could never learn to speak her language, nor teach her his. He would
not have her learn his. He shuddered at the thought. He could only look
at her and watch her as she talked, scarcely hearing anything she said.
Afterward some of her sentences came back, stored up by his subconscious
mind perhaps; details of her life, where she had been at school, how she
had occupied her time, sweet incidents of the last years of those she
loved. He understood enough to be rebuked again, seeing how he had
failed in what might have been a pleasant duty toward the beloved of his
beloved.
“You are not—_angry_—with me for coming?” she asked at last lifting
her eyes anxiously to his silent staring face.
A swift contortion as of sudden pain darted over his face. It seemed as
if he might be trying to smile in unaccustomed lines. It hurt him that
she should ask such a thing. He had not thought that would hurt! It hurt
him that he could not answer her with the right cordial words! What were
the right words? Why could he not get hold of them? What a complex thing
this life was anyway that one could go on for years according to a
certain plan and standard, and then suddenly be confronted by
unsuspected emotions which upset the whole universe! He became aware
that she was still awaiting an answer, with sorrow gathering in those
dear blue eyes.
“Angry? Oh, no! Why should I be angry?” he found himself saying in a
cold distant tone. It was as if he were dead trying to call to the
living, so strange and far away his own voice seemed to him.
A slow flush rose in her cheeks and her troubled eyes searched his face
for sign of welcome.
He struggled once more for words:
“I am glad you have come.” The words had not been formed in his
intention. He found to his wonder that they were nevertheless true.
“I wish you had come before!”
“But you were not here!”
“Of course!” he said foolishly. “Then I wish I had come sooner. I wish I
had never gone—from you!”
“Oh, father, do you really? How many times I have wished that!” The blue
eyes were full of wistful eagerness now. It had meant a great deal to
her! Why had it? Was that her mother looking at him through her eyes?
Was he going stark staring crazy? It was Alice’s look. Alice was looking
through those eyes of her daughter’s as one might look through a window!
He was not gazing at the girl now, only at Alice looking through her
eyes. Alice was trying to signal to him, to make him understand
something. What was that the lips so like hers were saying?
“When I was a little, little child grandmother used to tell me all about
you, how you first came to see mother—” Ah! she called her
“_Mother_”!—“How you looked, how you used to sing, and play football
and baseball—how handsome you were—”
Ah! He had lost the thread for a moment and now she was speaking of her
first little baby thoughts of him, how grandmother had taught her
lisping lips to pray “Dod bess favver!” Suddenly the thought of rosy
baby fingers about his neck—where had he seen rosy baby fingers? Not
Lilla’s baby! That had seemed too much a part of Lilla to be pleasant to
him. He had never made much or seen much of Lilla’s baby. He shuddered
at the thought of that other girl upstairs. How should he tell this girl
about her?
“I used to wonder how it would be to have a father, a _young_ father,
like other children, to carry me upstairs at night—grandfather was
dear, but you know he had that accident—oh, didn’t you know about that?
I was only two years old when it happened. He was knocked down by a
heavy truck in trying to cross the city street on his way to Presbytery.
He was always lame after that and had to be very careful about lifting.
I used to so long to be lifted up and carried in strong arms—!”
The man wondered at the exquisite thrill that came to him. After all
these years of dreary living, his heart burnt out to ashes, that the
thought of a little child, _his_ little child being carried in his arms
should so stir him! The thought of a rosy cheek cuddling in his neck,
moist lips dropping furtive kisses, soft breath coming and going against
his cheek, golden curls spreading on his shoulder—she would have had
golden curls he knew by the curl of the sunshine in the tendrils about
her forehead. His baby! _Alice’s_ baby! Alice’s gift to him to comfort
him through the lonely years! And _he had let her go_! Was that what the
eyes had been trying to signal him? It was as if Alice stood there
behind the windows of her daughter’s eyes and held out her baby to him
with a smile; and suddenly he understood and reached out the arms of his
heart to gather her to his life. Fool that he had been that he had not
known it sooner, before the mistakes of his life had thickened about him
and unfitted him for caring for her! Suddenly he dropped his face into
his hands again and groaned.
“Father! Dear father! What is it? Did I hurt you somehow?”
“Too late! Too late!” he moaned. “What a fool I have been!”
And there somehow he told her all that she needed to know of the years
that had separated them, broken sentences, more reserves than words,
tender silences. The grafting process had begun in that which had been
so long severed.
When Anne Truesdale, after long lingering and listening to the low
murmur of voices, finally brought herself to tap on the door and
announce lunch, their faces were like the clear shining after rain.
“Come in Anne!” His voice was more like himself than it had been since
his arrival. Anne entered bravely, suppressing her own excitement.
“I’m afraid, Anne, we’ve been upsetting all your arrangements,” he began
penitently as he used to do when as a boy he took all the cookies in the
cooky jar to feed a hungry horde of boys.
“Don’t speak of it, Master Pat. Yer not to apologize to me. This is yer
own house. I and the rest are but here to do yer bidding. It is the
pleasure of us all to have things as you’ll be wanting them.”
The woman held her hands tightly clasped at her waist and made a low
courtesy of respect. The master’s face softened with affection.
“Thank you, Trudie,” he said, using the old childhood name. Then turning
toward the girl he said:
“Trudie, this is Alice’s child! My daughter—Silver! _Silver—Alice!_”
He turned quickly away, his voice husky with feeling, but wheeled as
suddenly back again:
“Could she have Aunt Lavinia’s room? I’d like to have her there—!”
Anne gave the girl one swift sifting glance and rendered instant homage:
“Indeed she could, Master Pat,” she said heartily, satisfaction in her
eyes, “and right pleased would Miss Lavinia be to have such a successor.
Shall I show the way at once? Lunch is putting on the table.”
“Why, I’ll only be a moment,” said the girl beginning to remove her
gloves. “How beautiful to have Aunt Lavinia’s room!”
Anne Truesdale stepped back as Silver advanced to the stairs and spoke
in a guarded voice:
“And what about the young Miss upstairs? Must I speak to her to come
down?”
The man looked as though she had struck him, and the light of shining
went suddenly out of his eyes:
“Oh, why! Yes—I suppose you’ll have to—tell her to come down please!”
he finished with an attempt at ease, and bracing himself made one of his
quick turns and went and stood staring out of the long narrow window
that framed the front doorway.
Silver had paused, glancing back, and caught the low words, felt the
pain in his voice and the sudden dashing of his spirit. It seemed that a
cloud must have just passed over the sun. “The young Miss upstairs!”
That would be the flapper-looking child she saw when she first entered.
Who was she? What right had she here in her father’s house?
But Anne Truesdale’s black silk was rustling close behind and she
mounted the stairs looking with eager eyes around, nor saw the glitter
of an evil black eye at the keyhole as she passed down the upper hall.
“This was Miss Silver’s room,” said Anne swinging wide the panelled
mahogany door, and revealing quaint rare furniture, rich faded carpet, a
glimpse of a pineapple carved fourposter, and the depths of a flowered
wing-chair by the window, with a little sewing table drawn up and even a
work basket with a bit of white linen tidily folded atop.
Anne bustled about, setting straight a chair, patting a pillow, and
smoothing a dent out of the wing-chair cushion where she had but just
been kneeling. Then she slipped away down the hall and tapped at a door
nearer the head of the stairs on the other side.
Silver took off her hat, ran her fingers through her hair, washed her
face and hands in the great blue and white china bowl, dried them on a
fine linen towel fragrant with rose leaves and exquisitely wrought with
a great S at one end. Then she fluffed up her hair a bit more, gave a
glance into the mirror, and another lingering one about the sweet old
room and went quickly down stairs arriving just in time to hear Anne’s
low murmured:
“She says she’ll not come down. She’s not feeling so good,” and to
vision her father’s relief at the message.
At the head of the stairs, Athalie with velvet tread had crept to the
railing to listen, and peer over from the shadows of the upper hall as
they went to the old stately dining room, father and daughter, for their
first meal together. As they disappeared and the heavy door closed
silently behind them the girl learned far over the baluster and made an
ugly face ending in a hiss. Then as stealthily as she had come she crept
back to her room, closed the door, locked it, rummaged among her luggage
for a five pound box of chocolates and a novel and established herself
amid pillows on the foot of the big old bed.
Anne Truesdale came up presently with a laden tray of good things, but
Athalie with her face smothered in the pillow and her chocolates and
book hid out of sight declined any sustenance. Whereupon Anne, pausing
thoughtfully in the hall, finally scuttled down the dark narrow back
stairs and whisked the tray out of sight, deciding that the master
should not know of this hunger strike yet.
After lunch Silver and her father went back to the library for a time,
and their low voices in steady cheerful conversation were not soothing
to the other daughter’s nerves. She tiptoed to the open window to see if
she could hear any words, but found she could not on account of a family
of sparrows who were nesting in the honeysuckle below and seemed to have
been retained for the purpose of chattering.
About half past two Silver and her father went out together down the
street. Athalie watched them from the shelter of the window curtain
frowning and noting the amicable footing on which they seemed to be.
They went to the station and reclaimed the girl’s suitcase. On the way
back they stopped at the old church and walked slowly through the
graveyard, the father pointing out the names on the white stones, of
those who would be of interest to her among her unknown kin, the girl’s
face kindling with tender emotions as she read the records mossy with
age.
While they were gone the village expressman arrived with four immense
trunks and three wooden boxes. Athalie arose with alacrity from her
couch of pain and superintended their installment in the house.
“You can bring the two wardrobe trunks right in here and unpack them at
once,” she informed Anne Truesdale haughtily. “I shall need more closet
room. I think I’ll take that room across the hall. You might put the
other two trunks and the boxes there till we get them unpacked. I shall
probably use that for my boudoir.”
“That is the spare bedroom,” said Anne coldly but firmly. “There’s a
trunk room in the attic where your trunks can be stored.” Athalie gave
her a withering look, but such looks had no effect on Anne. She went her
way and called the faithful servitor. He managed an extra hand from the
street, to help the expressman, and Athalie’s mammoth trunks were
carried slowly up the stairs. Nothing so huge in the way of a trunk had
ever entered that house before, and Anne stood aghast as the first one
hove in sight and cast a quick and calculating eye toward the attic
stairs. But when she saw how heavy they all were she changed her mind.
They should go no farther until they were unpacked. So the first was
placed in the back hall for further consideration, while the remaining
three proved to be so enormous that Anne demanded the key and down in
the wide old front hall Athalie’s frivolous possessions were brought to
light and carried up in the abashed and indignant arms of the three
old-fashioned servants, who looked upon the trifles of lingerie with
averted gaze and felt that the daring evening frocks of scarlet and
silver and turquoise were little short of blasphemies. They hastened
them up to the oblivion of the second floor before the master should
return, and Anne stood for a full minute gazing out of the hall window
across the sunny meadow and pondering whether she ought not perhaps to
have left them all down on the back porch where the boxes had been
remanded, until the return of the master. Such doings! And a young girl
who ought to be in leading strings yet. Four trunks! What would Miss
Lavinia have said!
Athalie meanwhile was rummaging among her brilliant raiment, pulling out
this and that, deciding what she would wear next after she had
sufficiently cowed that hard-hearted father of hers, and finally
burrowed her way among silks and organdies to her chocolates and her
pillow again, deciding not to put anything away until that objectionable
“Anne” person came to do her bidding. She felt she must make it
understood from the start that she would be waited upon. Anne wasn’t
much like her mother’s maid, but such as she was she must be reduced to
obedience. Perhaps she could coax her father to let her have a French
maid all her own, a young girl about her own age. That would be rather
fun.