Whenever Silver came anew into his vision again she gave her father a
start, her appearance was so much like his lost Alice.
There was something exquisite and spiritlike in her face that rested and
soothed him. It was curious that the word “blest” flitted through his
mind when he thought of how she made him feel. He lifted a troubled face
to greet her now and a sick dismay stole over him as he saw the suitcase
in her hand.
She put it down and came quickly over to him, her lips smiling although
her eyes were grave. Her voice had a lilt of sorrow in it though she
tried to make it cheerful.
“Father, I’ve thought it all out in the night,” she said perching on the
arm of his chair and putting her arm softly around his neck—just so her
mother used to sit and touch his hair lightly with her fingers. He had
not thought of it in a long, long time.
“You see, I’ve sort of promised this man I would take this position, and
he has held it for me already for several days while I was getting
packed up. I feel that I ought to go back right away and get to work.”
She was talking rapidly, trying to stem the tide of emotion she
evidently felt, and the stricken look on his face made it no easier.
“I didn’t tell you this morning at breakfast because I didn’t want you
to be disturbed by any other question till you had had your talk with
Athalie. It wasn’t fair to her. But I saw her just now as she came
upstairs and I feel sure you have come to some understanding.”
“Now, father dear, please don’t try to change me,” she took the hand
that he put out in protest and held it close. “Listen to me. It isn’t at
all what you are thinking. I’m not being driven away nor anything. I am
simply going away because I feel that it is my duty. No, you’re not to
talk, please, till I’m through. Listen, father, Athalie is younger than
I am and she needs you more. You must get acquainted with her and teach
her to love you. She hasn’t ever had anybody real to love her, I am
sure, and I have, you know. And it isn’t as though I didn’t have you
too. It’s quite, quite different from what it was before I came. I have
a father now and I know he loves me. And we can write to each other, and
that will be wonderful! And I’ll have someone to advise me—”
“Stop!” cried Patterson Greeves springing to his feet, his tortured
nerves refusing to hear more. “Stop! don’t speak of it again! I tell you
I have borne enough. You shall not go away, Silver, my Silver-Alice! I
need you! I want you! You remember your grandmother told you to find out
if I needed you. Well, _I do_! God knows I do! Do you suppose for an
instant I would let the welfare of that other strange child come between
us? She is nothing to me, never can be. Her mother was a viper, and she
is going to be just like her! I will send her—!”
Suddenly both of them became aware of the opening of the door and there
on the threshold stood Athalie, attired in giddy sports clothes with a
golf club in her hand, but the bright smile with which she had entered
had died on her lips and her face was white as death, her eyes like two
blazing coals.
For an instant she stood there facing her father, her eyes wide with
sorrow, consternation, something terrible and inscrutable. Then she
turned with a quick glance of hate toward Silver and exclaimed:
“Oh, heck!”
The slam wherewith she emphasized her exit from the door reverberated
through the house like thunder as she stormed upstairs again. Anne
Truesdale hurried in from the back hall with her apron wrapped around
her hands and over her heart, and stood like an old gray squirrel her
head on one side perking her ears, watching, listening. But Athalie’s
sobs were smothered in the pillow for the hurt had gone deep, deep!
The two left in the library white and shaken looked at one another.
Silver’s eyes said sadly: “Father, don’t you see I must go?” but the
man’s lips spoke the answer.
“It would be impossible, Silver. I could not endure her.”
It was an hour before they arrived at a compromise. Silver was to remain
for a time, was to send for her trunk, and to be allowed to follow her
own course about keeping out of Athalie’s way, on condition that the
father was to make an honest effort to win Athalie to a better way of
behavior, and to try to cultivate a little love between them, though
that Patterson Greeves declared was an impossibility.
To this end he had agreed to keep his feelings in the background and try
to show Athalie a good time, that being the thing which seemed to be
uppermost in her mind and the most likely to make her amenable to
reason.
When Silver left him to go back to her room it was with the satisfaction
of seeing Anne Truesdale precede her up the stairs to tap at Athalie’s
door with the message that her father was now ready to go with her to
the golf links if she would come down at once.
How had the slip of a girl learned to wind one round her finger? Just as
her mother used to do. Always able to make one see the sensible sane
thing to do, always willing to give up herself and stand in the
background while someone else was being helped. Oh, why, why could that
mother not have lived? He wondered all these things as he waited for the
other daughter to present herself, half hoping she would declare against
going.
Athalie came slowly down with a gloomy air. Her eyes looked heavy and
her mouth slouched at the corners. She carried her bag of sticks slung
over her shoulder and she had taken care to wear a bright skirt in place
of the knickers which she would have chosen, obviously trying to please
him if he had but known it, trying to respect that vague respectable
family standard of which he had spoken.
“Pristina!” called grandma from the sitting room, “come here quick and
tell me which one this is.”
Pristina hurried from the kitchen where she was making cake, a flour
sifter in her hand.
“That’s number one,” said Pristina assuredly, “she was the fat one with
the painted face. I wonder why the other one didn’t go too. They are
going to play golf.”
“Seems to me that’s rather frivolous to begin with—golf,” said grandma.
“Seems as if for a man of his years he ought to be getting settled and
getting out his work. If he’s really so great as they say, writing books
and all, why don’t he write ’em? I have no patience with people trying
to keep from growing up. Golf! H’mmph!” sniffed grandma.
“All great people do it nowadays, grandma,” assured Pristina, “they talk
in the magazines about it’s keeping you in condition.”
“Condition! Fiddlesticks! If he’d get out and do a little digging in his
own garden it would keep him in condition enough. What was that
Pristina, that your Uncle Ned said the last time he came down from New
York? It was something very fitting about this golf.”
“Oh, uncle said he had no time for knocking a pill around a ten-acre
lot. But grandma, that wasn’t original. I’ve heard it since, and read it
in the joke column.”
“Very likely they got it from your Uncle Edward,” said grandma
reprovingly. “You have a way of discounting your relatives that is very
disappointing, Pristina. Your own family are as good as any you’ll find
anywhere. Don’t go yet, Pristina. Who is that coming up from the post
office? She’s met them. Perhaps she’ll be coming here. She’ll be able to
tell us something and then we shall know what to think. I declare it’s
very embarrassing not knowing what to think, nor how to act.”
“That’s Lizette Weldon, grandma, and she’s bringing back the cup of
yeast she borrowed last week. I see a cup in her hand.”
Lizette had seen Greeves and his daughter start out.
“My soul!” said Lizette and hastened to grab her brown cape and get the
cup of yeast that she might not miss this so great opportunity. She met
them as they were passing the gate.
“Yes, that’s the one! My, ain’t she coarse!” she commented inwardly.
“Now, does he think he’s going to pretend he don’t know me? Well, I
rather guess not. Good morning, Mr. Greeves. We’re pleased to see the
old house lighted up!”
“There, now!” she said to herself, “that’ll make that fat thing
understand that I saw her last night and perhaps she’ll be more careful
when she cuts up her antics.”
Patterson Greeves startled into recognition lifted a belated hat.
“Oh, yes, good morning. It is a long time since it was lighted. Thank
you. I hope you are quite well!”
“He didn’t know me from the man in the moon,” she told herself as she
hastened up the street with the yeast. “What a man! I don’t wonder she
divorced him. Mercy, but that girl is fat! And her clothes looked like
my patchwork quilt with the rising sun pattern. I wonder he lets her go
out that way. He knows what’s expected in this town, he lived here long
enough, goodness knows. But perhaps he doesn’t care what we think.”
Pristina hastened to the door. Ordinarily Lizette was not overly
welcomed, but a common cause does a great deal to bring folks down to a
common level.
“Well, what do you think of Patterson Greeves’ daughters?” she asked
almost before she had her breath from coming up the steps.
“Daughters?” chorused the Vandemeeter girls, all present but Harriet who
was hastening down from the third story as fast as possible, having left
a pillow in midair as she was making the bed, when she heard Lizette’s
voice at the front door.
“_Daughters!_” reiterated Lizette sitting down complacently with the cup
of yeast still in hand, “sort of startling ain’t it. I never heard of
them before, did you? Strange that Mrs. Truesdale or someone never let
it out, but land! she’s as close mouthed as Miss Lavinia Silver was,
every bit, and a thousand times more aristocratic. Well, I met one of
’em face to face and I don’t think much of her. She’s fat and coarse and
dresses outlandish. I was just thinking on my way down she looked as if
she had on my rising sun bed quilt, all queer stripes and stitches over
her skirt and sweater.”
“Daughters!” echoed the Vandemeeters again and looked at one another.
“We must tell Arden’s wife!”
“What’s her name?” asked Pristina.
“Well, he didn’t name her when he introduced her,” evaded Lizette.
“Perhaps that’s the fashion now. But the fact is I don’t believe he
remembered my name, although he pretended he was awful pleased to see
me.”
“Well—it’s only natural—after all these years—” said mother
comfortably.
“No tain’t natural, you know tain’t. Why, I’ve spanked him for stealing
my cherries!”
“That’s probably the reason,” said Pristina, “one can’t be dignified in
the face of a spanking. How old is that girl anyway?”
“Well, I hardly know, Pristeen, she looked older, an younger, ’n she
oughtta be. I couldn’t quite describe it. Kind of as if she was an old
woman that hadn’t growed up, or a baby that had lived a hundred years.
One thing I know, she had smut under her eyes, and them lips never grew
red like that. It ain’t natur’.”
“Is she the oldest or the youngest?” asked mother, biting off her thread
and holding up her needle to the light.
“Well, ’deed I can’t really tell you Mis’ Vandemeeter, but I shud judge
she might be the youngest. But then I ain’t seen the other so you can’t
tell. This one wears pants, regular pants like the boys, if that’ll tell
you anything. But laws! The other one may too for all I know. She keeps
herself mighty close.”
“She went out with Pat—with her father I mean—yesterday afternoon,”
contributed Harriet. “She looked to me like a real modest appearing
girl. She has pink cheeks, not too pink, and light hair, a real girl. I
liked her looks.”
“I’m sure I don’t see how you could tell at that distance, Aunt
Harriet,” said Pristina coldly.
“Well, her dress seemed quiet,” defended Harriet.
“Well, they may wear dresses that scream for all me,” said Pristina
crossly, “I’m going back to my angel cake.”
Lizette’s languidly alert eyes followed her mournfully, and when the
click of the flour sifter could be heard she lowered her voice
sepulchrally:
“Wasn’t Pristina rather interested in Mr. Greeves at one time?”
“Mercy, no!” clamored mother so audibly that her voice could be heard in
the kitchen, “Pristina was a babe in arms when he went away from here.
Just because she did her duty by honoring a fellow citizen in her essay
at the club everybody has jumped to the conclusion that she’s in love
with him. I wish to pity’s sake you’d turn your attention to someone
else, Lizette, and not carry gossip around about my child.”
“Well, now Lucy, I certainly think you’ll have to take that back. I
don’t know what you mean. I only asked a simple question, didn’t I? And
I don’t originate all the questions in this town do I? If I give you a
little hint of what’s passing isn’t that only kindness?”
Mrs. Vandemeeter pursed her lips around a pin and looked angry.
“Well, all I’ve got to say,” said Lizette rising offendedly, “is, if you
don’t ever find any worse things said about you than I say you can count
yourself well off. There’s your yeast. Don’t trouble to get up. I’ve got
to run right back. I thought you’d be interested to know, but of course
if you’re not I’ll keep the rest to myself. Good-bye.”
She shut the door with a slam and swished down the front walk.
“Cat!” said Pristina from behind the pantry door.
“There, now Lucy, I’m afraid you’ve done it. She’ll tell something a
great deal worse. It never does to make an enemy mad, especially if
she’s got a tongue, let sleeping dogs lie, the saying is, and it’s very
true,” said grandma. “Something about it being better to have even a dog
your friend, too, what is it? Don’t any of you know? It bothers me so to
have something like that I can’t remember. Now I shall lie awake all
night tonight thinking of that, and it will worry me like anything that
you gave her a chance to talk about Pristina, Lucy. She’ll talk, I know
she will.”
“Let her talk!” said mother with her head in the air, “I guess Pristina
can stand it. Pristina’s a lady.”
“Well,” said Pristina, “I’d like to know what those girls are named. You
can tell a whole lot by names.”
“You’ll know soon enough,” said grandma, “get back to your cake. I
wonder if Arden’s wife knows about their being daughters! Well, I must
say it’s a relief to know they’re daughters. The neighborhood has always
been so respectable.”
Athalie was a different creature on the golf course, alert, strong,
skillful, full of eagerness, like a boy. She whistled and talked slang
and patronized her father till he began to feel like a small boy
himself, and all the time as he walked silently from point to point
studying his amazing child, he was seeing himself in all her actions,
and then seeing Lilla in her waywardness between, and realizing more and
more that he was responsible for this queer tantalizing creature. Part
of the time also he was wondering why he had been persuaded to come out
on the golf course with this child whom he disapproved, whom he did not
want to be with, and why he was trying with all his might to control his
temper and make her have a good time. It was all Silver’s doings,
“Silver-Alice!” he said it over and over to himself. “Silver-Alice!
Silver-Alice! Silver-Alice!” and the name sounded sweet to his soul. Why
had he not known what sweetness there was in fatherhood?
On the way home it almost appeared from something Athalie said that she
had been trying to make him have a pleasant time. He felt strangely
touched and chagrined. Not that he liked to have her put herself out for
him. It went against the grain to find her doing such a thing. But the
justice in his soul cried out for her due. He found himself promising
that the morning should be repeated and then groaning within himself
over the interruption to his life this was going to be.
But when they reached the house and Anne told him that the minister had
called up to ask if they would like to take a drive that afternoon he
found himself entirely willing to be interrupted still further.
There was a struggle in his mind about taking Athalie along on the
drive. He felt she would be a disturbing element. But when he asked her
finally if she would like to go she asked suspiciously:
“Is _she_ going?” and when he answered in the affirmative she shrugged
her shoulders and said, “thank you, no. I told you how I felt about
that. You can’t expect me to come when you take her.”
He was relieved. It made things easier. He felt sure Bannard would be
better pleased.
Silver too was relieved. He could see that. Yet there was a cloud in her
eyes, a weight upon her heart. Her conscience was over active. It
troubled her that there should be enmity between her father’s daughter
and herself.
But the day was gorgeous, one of those caressing days in spring when
June seems to have anticipated herself and earth’s tuning has begun.
Little warm scents flitted about, and tiny melodies of living creatures
moving, the whir of a bee’s wings, the grumble as he worked, the stir of
things growing, budding, blossoming, grass blades like rockets shooting
everywhere, sharp emerald sounds broadcasting only to those whose ears
attuned to their pitch, a meadow lark’s note, high, clear above it all.
And then the three seemed so congenial. There was so much to see and
talk about, so much in which all were interested.
Bannard was the guide, Greeves the historian, Silver the audience,
eager, questioning.
They started up the road past the schoolhouse where Greeves had been a
student, out the old Pike, across the covered bridge and curving back of
the village along the beach of silver beside the sparkling stream, down
toward Frogtown. Bannard wanted to show them his mission, and to point
out a good location for the proposed building.
They drew up in front of a row of old stone hovels crazily jostling each
other facing the road and the creek. Bannard pointed to a vacant lot not
far away, and he and Greeves were discussing whether it would be better
farther up the hill. Silver sat watching the children playing on the
path, dirty little things, yet beautiful beneath the dirt. Wonderful
starry black eyes set in faces that might have been the models for some
of the angel faces in the paintings of great masters, tumbled curls, and
rosy cheeks, tiny earrings glittering sharply under the dirt and tousle,
little bodies scantily clad, little savages unaware of their soil and
nakedness. Clamoring, fighting, throwing mud, the older girls carrying
babies too large sizes for their backs, the younger babies huddled to
watch the automobile.
A woman hurried out from one of the houses, a curious three-corner shawl
of bright colors thrown over her head and folded back like a head dress.
She had an air of excitement. Bannard called to her:
“Good morning, Nuncie, all well at your house?”
“Oh, it’s the maister!” cried the woman, her voice full of agitation,
her dark lined face working with emotion.
“It’s the baby, little Mary, Angelo’s Mary. Vary seek. I go for the
doctor. He come two times yesterday. I tink she got the pneumonias. She
turn all black. Her heart stop—”
Before the account was finished Bannard was out of the car. “Will you
excuse me a moment?” he said hurriedly, “I must go in and see. This is
the beautiful baby I told you about,” he finished, looking at Silver.
“Oh, please let me come too. Perhaps there is something I can do. I have
had a course in nursing.”
“Come then,” said Bannard and hurried into the house without knocking.
Greeves put out his hand to stop her, but Silver was gone before he
realized. Pneumonia! Didn’t the child know that was contagious. What did
Bannard mean by letting her go? Suppose she should take it and die, now
when he had just got her, leave him as her mother had done! He shuddered
and sprang out of the car, resolved to bring her back again into the
clean air and sunshine, away from germs and contamination. What was the
use of being a specialist on germs if one couldn’t save one’s own from
danger? So he stumbled up the steps and into a deserted room.
There was no squalor nor dirt. The walls were grimy with age and use,
and the bare floor was worn in hollows by many feet, but both were clean
as soap and water could make them. He stared about. There was nothing in
the room but a cookstove neatly blacked with a pot of stew simmering
away, a wooden table covered with oilcloth, two chairs and an old sofa
with lumpy springs. A painted dresser held a few cheap dishes, some
spoons and forks; and a pair of rude steps shallow almost as a ladder
led up through an open door, winding out of sight. He could just see the
flash of Silver’s gray-blue tweed skirt as she disappeared up those
impossible stairs.
“Silver!” he called and then without knowing it, “Alice!” but no one
answered him. The sound of the factory near by kept up a monotonous
clatter in regular rhythm, and there were subdued voices overhead. He
stepped to the door and looked up. Such stairs! He never had seen their
like. They were like carvings in a sheer wall. They went winding up in
the shallow space like pictured stairs, like the stairs in a nightmare.
How did anybody ever climb them? How had Silver and Bannard climbed
them? Didn’t Bannard know any better than to let a girl go up a place
like that? He put a tentative foot on the first step and perceived that
it was hollowed out in bowl shape by many feet that had gone before. He
groped with his hand to the wall that seemed to advance and slap him in
the face. He lifted another foot to another step, and went winding and
groping up in the dark and uncertainty. A woman appeared at the head of
the stairs weeping. She had wonderful dark hair and her eyes were
piteous.
“I have come for my daughter. She ought not to be in here,” he shouted
at her. The woman chattered some jargon at him that had a tang of
French, or was it Italian? But he could understand nothing but the words
“doctor” and “little ba—bee” and then more tears. She passed beyond his
vision.
He lifted himself another step, and yet another and stood head and
shoulders in a room light and clean with whitewash, a large framed
picture of the painted Christ on the cross hung on the wall opposite him
over the head of a big brass bed made up with white draperies trimmed
with hand knit lace, and on the clean pillow lay a little face, the most
beautiful baby face Greeves had ever looked upon, short black curls
tumbled on the pillow, long curling lashes dark upon the rounded cheek,
beautiful baby lips gasping for breath, treacherous blue shadows
deepening about the eyes and nose.
“These windows ought to be up if it’s pneumonia,” Bannard explained in a
whisper. He stretched out a strong arm and threw up both windows. Silver
was leaning over the baby feeling of her forehead touching the pulse of
the little fluttering restless hand.
“She ought to have oxygen, Mr. Bannard. Can’t you get some quick?”
Silver looked up.
“I’ll get it,” said the minister. “Can you stay here till I come?”
She nodded. “Quick!” she was down on her knees beside the bed, putting
the spoon which the mother handed her to the little tight-shut lips.
“She ought not to be here!” repeated Greeves wildly, but Bannard swept
him along down the stairs with a strong arm.
“Greeves, just run over to that grocery and ring up Doctor Carr. Tell
him I said to come instantly to Angelo’s house. I must go for oxygen.
You stand by till I come. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Before the dazed professor of bacteriology knew what was happening or
could put in a protest Bannard’s car had given a lurch and darted down
the road, and Greeves found himself walking across that squalid street,
entering the grimy unsanitary grocery and asking if he might telephone
for the doctor. It reminded him of France. But is was very different
from sitting in an office and telling other officers where to go and
what to do. He had done reconstruction work, yes, by proxy. It was not
the same. He had been an executive. But this was close contact. He
hurried back with the idea of carrying Silver bodily out of the infected
air, and found himself once more standing at the top of those ladderlike
stairs in that white airy room, gazing at the little blackening face,
listening to the gasping of the baby, the mother’s tears, and his
daughter’s voice praying in low gentle tones:
“Oh, Jesus, you know how this mother loves her baby. Come and help us if
it be your will, save this little darling’s life. For Jesus’ sake we ask
it,” and the mother bowed and crossed herself, hushing her sobs.
Someone brushed roughly by Greeves on the stairs almost upsetting his
balance. To think these people lived every day on stairs like this.
Incredible! A tall man, young, splendidly built came quickly to the bed
and knelt on the other side from the mother and Silver. He took the
little fluttering hand in his big rough one. His face was tender and
there were tears raining down his cheeks but he paid no heed to them.
“Poppie come, Mary, poppie come! You hear poppie, Mary? Poppie come home
from his work to stay with Mary!”
Greeves stood and gazed transfixed at the face of the rough man before
him, transformed by love, tender and sweet with fatherhood! So this was
what it meant to be a father!
This was the way he would have felt if he had let himself! This was what
he threw away carelessly when he took himself out of the reach of his
first little child, and brought another carelessly into the world to
leave to any Fate that came her way.
“Let poppie hold it Mary. Let poppie hold it!” the strong hand grasped
the weak restless fingers, and the little hand relaxed. For an instant
the great dark eyes opened wide in recognition of the beloved face, and
the dark head that had kept up its restless motion back and forth, from
side to side on the pillow rested. The parched lips that had murmured
hoarsely—“No! No! No!” were quieted. Then the blessed oxygen in the
hands of Silver and Bannard reached her nostrils and she drew a long
deep breath. The gasping ceased little by little and another breath
came. A sigh of relief. The fluttering lids drooped and the long lashes
lay on the white cheeks again. A restful natural sleep was coming upon
the little one.
The doctor came in quietly, laid a practiced finger on the fluttering
pulse. The child started and opened her eyes once more. Her glance
rested on the doctor in frightened question, then turned to the father
and was content, dropping off to sleep again. The doctor nodded to
Silver in answer to some question about the oxygen, opened his case and
prepared some drops which he handed to Angelo. The father took it and
held it to the little lips with as much skill as one trained to such
service could have rendered. Greeves stood there watching him with
almost jealous eyes, seeing as in a vista a long line of tender services
he might have rendered had his heart been right to his own. Where did
this rough untaught man learn such angelic gentleness? Here in this bare
little house with an environment of the plainest necessities, the father
had fenced in a little piece of the kingdom of heaven for his child.
Greeves suddenly realized that he was envying this rough untaught
working man. With all his knowledge and culture he had missed the
blessedness of living which this other man had found, and even his
sorrow was sacred because of the love that was between him and his
child.
Bannard had gone out again and now returned bringing with him the
district nurse. She quietly took things in her capable hands and the
minister’s group was no longer needed.
As he stumbled shakily toward the treacherous stair Greeves caught hold
of the rude railing and gave one more glance back at the big brass bed
with the exquisitely knitted white spread, and the wee white face framed
in dark curls on the big pillow. The madonna mother was standing at the
head on one side, the tender father kneeling at the other, tears raining
unchecked down their sorrowful faces, and the face of the painted Christ
overhead looked on with yearning eyes. It was a sight he never would
forget.
He felt his way down the dark chute, for it was little else, groping
with his feet for the shallow steps, and stumbled out into the sunshine,
silent and thoughtful. He forgot how it was that he came to go into that
house of sorrow, forgot that he had let his child stay as long as she
was needed, forgot the words of criticism he had prepared for Bannard
for letting her go into the infectious atmosphere. For the first time in
years he had become a part of a great suffering universe. He forgot his
own individuality, and his grievances, and his heart was throbbing with
sorrow for another.
Meantime, Athalie at home, was preparing an elaborate toilet for her
evening with Bobs in the city.