There was a tense moment during which all eyes were fastened with a
horrible fascination on the desecrated picture. Then Patterson Greeves’
army-officer voice rang out like cut steel.
“Who perpetrated that?”
His face had grown so white that it frightened Silver to look at him.
Athalie instinctively withdrew to the shelter of the portière. He stood
looking around on the group, slowly from one face to another, beginning
with old Joe, who had halted midway to the door and was ashy under his
weather tanned skin, answering back his master’s severe gaze with brave
frightened eyes.
“I dunno, sir. I ain’t seen it, sir, before, sir! It was that dark when
I come in to light the fire I didn’t look up, sir!”
The look passed on, steadily, unflinchingly, recognizing the sympathy in
the eyes of Bannard and Silver only by a quiver of the set upper lip. He
read the face of Anne Truesdale like a book. It said in every quiver of
indignant lip and fiery eye that she was not to blame, though she could
tell him where to search for the culprit, and only awaited a word from
him to turn the tide of retribution as it certainly ought to be turned.
So his eyes came to rest upon the daring, unsorry face of his younger
daughter, peering out eerily as if relishing the dènouement of her
escapade.
No one dared turn and look at her. It would seem that look of her
father’s must have scorched her soul, so full it was of outraged pride
and love and sanctity. She must have learned from it at once how deep
her arrow had gone in his soul, how much he had cared for that woman in
the golden frame. How impossible it had been for him ever to care for
her own mother like that. How really futile in the light of that look
her mission in the house had become. Yet part spirit of his spirit, she
dared him back with a glance as steady, as haughty, even while she
trembled visibly at what she had invoked. It was as though she had been
the embodiment of all his mistakes and sins come to mock him. So their
eyes clashed, and the man with one final thrust of judgment and
condemnation in the flash of his eye, turned back once more to the
profaned picture.
It was then for the first time that he saw the portrait beneath it, set
out in the clear detail of perfect photography, as beautiful yet
sensuous, as dauntless, as abandoned in every line of supple body and
smiling face as the daughter whose hand had placed her there.
A low exclamation of horror burst from his lips and he strode forward,
white with anger and struck it full in the faithless smiling face till
the glass shivered in fine fragments on the white of the marble below
and the blood ran down in drops from his hand.
He was beside himself with fury now, and snatching the picture, frame
and all, he dashed it to the hearth and ground it beneath his heel.
Then out from behind the heavy curtain, with a wild cry like a young
tigress, darted Athalie and flung herself upon him, beating him back
with her hands and screaming out:
“Stop! Stop! You shall not! That is Lilla! That is my mother! Ohhh!” and
her cries were like the rending heart of an infuriated creature who had
never been controlled.
She pushed him off by main force and crouching low with raining tears
gathered up the fragments of the picture and clasped them to her breast.
Standing thus she faced her father, a glare of hate in her black
glittering eyes and looked him down even as he had looked at her and all
who witnessed could not but see a resemblance to him in her eyes and
attitude.
“You murderer!” she hissed between her painted lips. She ground her
teeth audibly, and repeated, “you murderer!” and then she suddenly
reached out with one hand and seized a large triangle of glass that
still remained on the edge of the marble shelf, and hurled it with all
her force straight into the face of the wonderful painting above her,
where it cut a deep jagged gash between the lovely eyes, and fell in a
thousand pieces below.
As the glass slithered through the canvas Athalie gave a scream like a
lost soul and darted from the room, almost knocking over the white and
frightened Truesdale in her flight, and tore up the stairway to her
room, slamming the door with a thunderous sound behind her and flinging
herself with wild weeping upon her bed.
Meantime Blink had arrived at the front door with his offering of worms,
and had rung several times before Molly, who thought Joe and Anne were
engaged in the drawing room about the fire and lights, had slipped to
the door and let him in, bidding him wait in the front hall until the
housekeeper came to show him where to go. Blink had stood by the door,
his cap in his hand, and been a most unwilling witness to the whole
awful scene, with its climax of flying coral gauzes, pink flesh and
silver slippers hurled up the distant staircase. He stood for an instant
uncertain what to do, and then with innate courtesy stepped to the door
of the darkened library where only a dying fire flickered on the hearth,
and slipped within. At least in here, they would think he had not heard.
He dropped silently into one of the great leather chairs at the farther
end of the room, and tried to think what it all might mean and what
connection it had with the girl who had climbed out the second story
window and telephoned to a man in the city.
It was most silent in the big drawing room after Athalie left. No one
dared hardly to breathe. Patterson Greeves stood white and dazed, gazing
up at the injured picture, with a stricken look upon his face, as if he
had suddenly seen a loved one put to death. For an instant he looked in
silence, then uncertainly he put up his hands and rubbed them across his
eyes as if he were not seeing aright. It was as if the mutilated eyes of
the picture were accusing him. He turned a pleading pitiful look on the
group standing about him, and with a moan he suddenly dropped into a
chair, burying his face in his hands and relapsing into an awful
silence.
“Dontee, dontee, master Pat, dearie!” crooned Anne Truesdale, in her
sorrow forgetting the presence of the others and relapsing into his
childhood’s vernacular, “she’s only a naughty child! She didn’t
mean—she doesn’t know—!”
A great shudder passed over the man’s body, and the woman gave a
frightened look toward the other two and retreated.
Bannard stepped forward.
“Get that washed off the picture, can’t you?” he whispered, “and sweep
up the glass?” Anne Truesdale vanished, glad to have something tangible
to do.
Bannard stepped to his host’s side and put a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Come, Greeves, don’t lose your nerve. This isn’t nearly as bad as it
seems—!”
The man groaned and shuddered again.
“It really isn’t you know. The woman was right. She’s only a naughty
ungoverned child. And besides, you’ve another little girl to think
about—” Greeves raised his eyes to the sorrowful girl in the doorway
and Silver crept to her father’s side and knelt, slipping her arm within
his and putting her face close to his.
“I’m afraid this is all my fault, father,” she said with a catch in her
voice, “I ought not to have come. I knew as soon as I saw her. It hurt
her you know to have me here. She wanted your love for herself—”
The man stirred uneasily and lifted his head drawing his arm around her.
“Don’t say that again!” he commanded sternly, “she is worse than nothing
to me! Never can be or could be!—”
Anne had come in with soft cloths and a basin of warm water followed by
Joe with a step ladder, brush, and dust pan. They tiptoed in silently,
awesomely, as if to a place where a murder had been committed. They did
their work swiftly and well and withdrew. The master of the house
remained with his head down resting on one hand, the other arm still
encircling his daughter. Bannard stood a little to one side thoughtfully
until the servants were gone. Then he raised his eyes to the picture.
“Come, Greeves,” he said with relief in his voice, “it’s not so bad at
all. I’m sure it can be fixed. They mend those things so you’d never
know. And it isn’t as if the artist were dead. You can have him touch it
up himself—”
Patterson Greeves arose shakingly, his arm still about his daughter, who
slipped up from his knees and stood beside him. The father gazed
agonizedly up at the picture, tears blurring into his eyes.
“The little devil!” he murmured, “that’s what she is! A little hell
cat!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t talk that way, friend!” Bannard’s hearty voice was like
a breeze from a wind-swept meadow driving the sick miasms away from the
room. “Nothing gained by that. Try to go back of her and see what has
made her like this.”
“Do you mean to say I’m to blame for her devilishness?” Greeves demanded
excitedly.
“I wasn’t saying who was to blame, my friend, I was merely suggesting
that you might look farther into the matter before you feel in utter
despair. The mother is responsible for a lot, I should say, but your
problem is not who is to blame, but what can you do about it.”
“I shall send her away at once, either to some school where she will be
made to behave, or else back, back to the mother who made her what she
is.” The man’s tone was hard, unforgiving, uncompromising. “I shall
_make_ her take her back. Money will do it!”
“Then you _would_ be to blame!” flashed Bannard. “What! would you give
her no opportunity _ever_? Would you force her to remain what she is?”
“I would get her out of my sight forever.”
“Isn’t that just where you made your mistake before? Pardon me. I
realize that I know nothing about the matter. It is only a suggestion.”
“You do think I’m responsible for having a child like that!”
“Well, isn’t a father responsible? Isn’t that what God meant he should
be?”
Silver had moved away from her father and was standing by the mantel
looking up at the pictured eyes of her mother, her eyes full of
wistfulness. Her father began a restless striding up and down the room,
answering nothing, now and then tossing back his head in an impatient
way he had. At last he wheeled and faced Bannard.
“I cannot think there is any fairness in that,” he said harshly and took
another turn across the room. Then coming back with more of a grip upon
himself he said:
“But I have made scene enough of this day. I had hoped you were to be my
friend. If you stand this test you will indeed be a friend. I must
thrash this thing out by myself. Let us forget it if you can and
endeavor to wrest a little friendship at least from the evening. We came
in here to have some music and I have exhibited a family skeleton
instead. Let us close the door on it for the night and do something
else. My daughter, after all this are you equal to giving us a little
music?”
The girl forced a smile and came quickly toward the piano. “Anything
that will please you father,” she said with an attempt at brightness.
Bannard opened the old grand piano and drew out the creaking stool with
the hair-cloth cushion, and as Silver seated herself it suddenly came
over her that here she was in the old ancestral home, sitting at the
piano where others who were gone had often sat bringing sweet strains
from the old instrument. It thrilled her to realize that she was really
here at last in the home she had so long dreamed about. She touched the
keys tenderly, and there came forth a sound as if she had caressed them.
Her father settled down in the old tapestry chair and shaded his eyes
with his hand, watching her graceful outline of head and neck and
shoulders, and the sweeping curve of the young body as it swayed gently
to the music.
Over in the library Barry Lincoln nestled back in the big chair and
closed his eyes to let the music sweep over his soul, while the fire
burned low and fell in bright sparkles among the ashes, and a long young
angle worm from the can in Barry’s lap struggled up and out and over
draping itself in an arabesque, perhaps in some modern attempt to
interpret the music.
Upstairs in the bed in a tumbled heap of coral and silver Athalie
clasped the bits of her mother’s broken picture to what heart she had
and wept and wailed, “Oh, Lilla! Lilla! Lilla! Why did you send me
here?”
But not even Anne Truesdale, white and anxious down in the back hall
listening for developments, and trembling with weariness, heard.