Tomorrow About This Time (16 page)

“We’ve always been respectable,” said Grandma. “It’s likely Pristina knows that. She’s rather respectable herself. You remember how she wouldn’t let that young drugstore clerk hold her hand. Blood will tell generally. I wouldn’t worry.”

But after the paper had been read before The Honey Gatherers, Mrs. Arden Philips, the wife of the postmaster, dropped in with some cross-stitch embroidery doilies for her new hardwood table and casually asked: “Henrietta never kept up her acquaintance with Pat Greeves, did she?”

Mrs. Arden Philips used to be Ruby Hathaway of the same class in high school.

“Henrietta?” said Cordelia looking sharply at that sister.

“Henrietta!” exclaimed Maria contemptuously, as if Henrietta had somehow endeavored to outclass her sisters.

“Mercy, no!” said Henrietta. “Why, Ruby, he’s a married man, very much married. What makes you ask that? It’s years since I’ve heard a word of him.”

“Well, I told Julia Ellen so. After Pristina read that paper there was a great to-do about it, how she got to know so much about him, and then Julia Ellen and Jane Harris both remembered that he was sweet on Henrietta once, and we thought maybe—although Arden said he never noticed any foreign letters coming. Well, Henrietta, how did Pristina come to find out so much about Pat Greeves anyhow? All that about his books on bugs and how he came to be called to those colleges and everything. I’m sure Miss Lavinia Silver never told anything. She was so closemouthed. She always just smiled and said something pleasant, and you came away knowing no more than when you went.”

“She got it out of some sort of an encyclopedia,” said Grandma indignantly. “It began with Bi, I forget the name of it. She took it out of the library. It had a lot of other great men in it. She read it all aloud to us. And then she sent for his book to the city and studied that a lot. It wasn’t very interesting. I tried to read it one day, but it had a lot of words I never saw before. Pristina said they were names of animals and bugs that lived before the foundation of the world or thereabout. I’m sure I don’t know. But Pristina is real smart. She believes in patronizing home talent. I thought it was a bright idea myself, telling people about him before he came back to live here.”

“Why yes, of course!” said Mrs. Arden Philips, looking sharply at Grandma. “That’s what
I
said, but then people will talk, you know. But if I were Pristina I wouldn’t mind in the least. It’ll all blow over, and Pristina’s reputation can stand a little whisper now and then, I guess. But say, wouldn’t it be interesting, thinking back to how he used to like Henrietta, if he should make up to Pristina sometime? Quite romantic, I say. Aunt and niece, you know. It might be.”

“Nonsense! He’s too old!” said Henrietta sharply.

“Besides, he’s divorced!” said Maria with pursed lips.

“Yes, of course,” said the visitor. “But they do say in the city, that doesn’t count so much, and besides, he’s lived in the city so long he probably doesn’t know the difference. It isn’t as if he’d lived here always and kept Silver Sand’s standards. I heard the new school superintendent say the other day it was standards counted. And he can’t help his standards, can he?”

“We’ve always been respectable!” said Grandma sharply. “And I hope we’ll always stay
so
. Pristina has standards if Standish Silver’s nephew
has
lost his! Ruby, did your grandmother send you that recipe for strawberry preserves? My daughter was wishing she could get it.”

“Yes, I have it. I’ll copy it off for you. Well, I must be going. We’re having the minister to supper tonight. I only just dropped in to satisfy myself that I had told the truth to Julia Ellen. I never like to sleep on a lie. I was real sure Pristina hadn’t been corresponding with him.”

There was silence in the room while Maria went to the door with the visitor and until she had reached the picket gate and the iron weight had swung back and clicked against the chain as it always did when the gate shut after anyone. Then Grandma’s pursed lips relaxed and her needles began to click.

“Cat!” said Henrietta. “She always was jealous about those roses!”

That happened three months before Patterson Greeves came home. Nothing more was said in the Vandemeeter home about the matter, but whenever Anne Truesdale opened and aired the front rooms, or stuck pillows out of the windows in the sunshine for a few minutes, “the girls” took occasion to glance over and wonder. And when at last the signs of a more thorough housecleaning than had gone on in years became unmistakable, Grandma had her padded rocking chair moved to the side window where she could watch the house all day long. She declared the light was poor at the front window where she had been accustomed to sit. When the news of the imminent arrival went out officially, Pristina went up to town and bought her new spring hat. It would not do to look shabby on the first Sunday of the noted man’s arrival. After that the Vandemeeters were in a state of continual twitter, making errands to the front window on the slightest possible excuse and always glancing out across.

“I declare it looks good to see the house alive again,” said Mother. “I can almost think I see Miss Lavinia’s white hair at the window over there. My! If she were only back!”

“It’s a good thing she’s not!” said Grandma somberly. “It couldn’t mean anything else but suffering to have her nephew come home divorced!”

“Well, I don’t know about that, Mother,” said her white-haired daughter. “There’s some women you’re better divorced from. You know even the Bible says that!”

“Well, why did he marry her then? That’s what I’d like to know. A boy brought up the way he was, why
did he marry her?
Oh, you can’t tell me. He just went and got into the nasty ways of the world, the flesh, and devil! That’s what’s the matter. If he’d just come to his hometown and taken a good sweet girl he’d known all his life—”

“There now, Mother, for mercy’s sake, don’t say that. Somebody might think you meant one of ours!”

The curtains were in use at every side window of the Vandemeeter house the night that Patterson Greeves came home. Henrietta at her chamber window high in the peak of the roof noted the gray hair crisply short beneath his soft hat and the slight stoop in his shoulders, and said to herself quite softly: “Goodness! Do I look as old as that?”

They watched the house quite carefully until the lights from the side windows announced the dinner hour in the house across the way, and then they retired to their own belated meal. While they were eating it, Henrietta on a visit to the kitchen for hot water for Grandma’s tea spied the red glow in the sky and called them all to the back kitchen window, or else they would have seen their neighbor vault the fence and sprint down the meadow to the fire.

But the next morning they were up early and keeping tabs from every window spryly.

When the big racing car drew up in front of the house and Athalie got out, they were fairly paralyzed with astonishment.

“Perhaps he isn’t divorced after all,” said Mother in a mollified voice.

“Yes, he is,” insisted Pristina. “I read it to you from the Biographical Encyclopedia. A book like that, that’s in all the libraries, wouldn’t make a mistake.”

“Well, maybe he’s married again,” said Cordelia. “That’s what they do nowadays!”

“I don’t believe he
would!
Not with his bringing up!” said Mother.
“He couldn’t!”

“Well, the law allows it!” snapped Maria. “That’s why I’m glad I can vote. There ought to be laws!”

“Well, who is she then?” asked Grandma petulantly.

“She’s young,” announced Pristina, who had the best eyes for far seeing. “And her cheeks are awfully red.”

“She’s wearing
makeup!”
said Maria. “That’s the kind! Maybe she’s—”

“Maria!” said her mother and eyed Pristina. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

“I didn’t say anything, Mother. I was going to say maybe she is just some friend of his wife’s. Or maybe she is a secretary. Writers have secretaries. I’ve read about them.”

“I should think it would be more proper to have a male secretary!” said Grandma. “There’s no excuse for a man having a girl always around him. If he does a thing like that I should think it was plain nobody ought to welcome him.”

“Well, she’s taking an awful while saying good-bye to the man that brought her!” declared Cordelia. “Perhaps he’s her father. He looks old enough to be. He’s held her hand all this time. Why, she’s only a child. Look, she’s got short hair!”

“That’s bobbed!” said Pristina in disdain. “I should think you’d know that, Aunt Cordelia. Plenty of the young girls in Silver Sands have had their hair bobbed.”

“Oh, yes, bobbed. Oh, yes, young girls! But not like that!”

“There goes the minister in!” announced Henrietta a little later. “I wonder why? He’s not the kind that todies to rich people.”

“He would think he owed respect to the relative of so prominent a former member of his church,” suggested Mother. “The Silver family really gave the money to build that church, you know. Gave the lot anyway.”

“I hope the minister is not going to countenance divorce,” said Grandma with a troubled look out the window over her spectacles.

“He preached against it two weeks ago,” contributed Pristina, her hands clasped on the window fastening, her chin on her hands.

“Perhaps he doesn’t know about Patterson Greeves,” said Maria. “Somebody ought to have told him.”

“He’s coming out again. Perhaps Mr. Greeves wouldn’t see him. There’s his car. That rowdy Lincoln boy driving it again. What the minister sees in him!” announced Cordelia. “See, he’s hurrying. I wonder what’s the matter.”

“Perhaps he’s just found out,” suggested Grandma.

Speculation ran rife, and the watchers hovered not far from the windows, doing extra dusting in the front sitting room to keep near. It was almost like the time when the circus rented the meadow for a week and they could watch the rhinoceros and giraffe go to bed at night. None of them really admitted they were watching until suddenly the minister’s car drew up in front of the Silver house.

“He’s back!” said Pristina glued to the window. “And there’s another woman—no, girl, with him!”

“It looks as if there might be going to be a wedding!” declared Maria primly. “I declare some men are the biggest fools! You’d think after two experiences he’d be satisfied. Oh, men! Men! Men! I’ve no patience with them.”

“Well, I certainly don’t think much of a woman that comes to his house to get married!” said Pristina. “I wonder our minister has anything to do with it.”

“A woman that will marry a divorced man, too,” sighed Grandma.

“Well, I wonder which one it is, the first one or this one?” questioned Pristina. “They both look awfully young. Perhaps they don’t know a thing about him.”

“And neither do you,” said Mother. “Pristina, why don’t you take that cake over that you baked for the sewing circle tomorrow? You’ve plenty of time to make another before the circle, and anyhow, now you’ve found out Stella Squires has made a chocolate cake, it would be better for you to make some other kind, say marble cake or a coconut. If they’re going to have a wedding it would be nice of the neighbors to help out a little.”

“I think I’ll find out whether there is a wedding or not first,” said Pristina with a toss of her head. “We’ll
eat
the chocolate cake ourselves. I’m going to cut a big piece now.”

Pristina was like that sometimes. And when she was, the aunts looked at her in a hopeless sort of way and kept still. They called it the “Appleby” in her.

All day long they kept their watch on the house. When Silver and her father came out to walk after lunch, they huddled anxiously at the window and commented. This was the bride probably, and the other one—who was the other one? Bridesmaid or secretary? It was hard to decide.

While they were still discussing it, Athalie’s trunks arrived and brought them all to the window again.

“Upon my word, there must be more coming!” said Pristina from her window. “Look at the trunks. They surely wouldn’t have more than one apiece.”

“A bride might have two,” suggested Mother.

“Yes. You know New York! They’re very extravagant livers!” declared Maria who had had the advantage of a week in New York when she was sixteen and had been going on the strength of it ever since and claiming obeisance from her family from it.

“Well, even so. Count them. One, two, three, four! Are those other boxes? They must have books in them. They probably belong to Mr. Greeves. But the girl that came first had her baggage with her. She wouldn’t need a trunk.”

“Well, there’s one apiece and one other besides the boxes,” said Henrietta. “A man wouldn’t want a trunk, would he? Not if he carried his books in boxes. What would a man find to put in a trunk?”

“His clothes, of course,” said Cordelia sharply.

“But a man has so few clothes. Just a suit or two. It seems as if he could hardly fill a trunk with those. Perhaps he brought home relics from the war. If he did, I certainly do hope we get a chance to see them.”

“Perhaps, sometime, if they’re away Mrs. Truesdale will ask you in quietly to see them,” suggested Mother.

“Those trunks are enormous! See, Grandma, they had to get Hank Lawson to help carry that one in. I think that’s scandalous!” This from Maria.

The shades of night settled down and left them still wondering.

“There’s a light in Miss Lavinia’s room. It’s strange they’d let anybody be put in there!”

“Maybe he took that room himself!” suggested Grandma.

Arden Philips and his wife ran in on their way to a committee meeting at the town hall, something about a supper to be given in the firehouse as soon as the first strawberries were ripe. They settled into the window seats and asked everything that had happened all day. Arden contributed the fact that a great pile of mail had come for Mr. Greeves and among them three from New York City.

“Whatever became of that child of Pat Greeves?” asked Mrs. Philips, loosening her silk wrap and throwing it back to adjust a long string of green beads slung around her scrawny neck and looping down below her waist! “Did it live? Boy, wasn’t it?”