Tomorrow About This Time (30 page)

Silver had gone early to the Flats with the minister, and Anne Truesdale was out doing marketing. They had the house to themselves. The father girded up his soul and went to the talk before him. It had to come sooner or later.

Athalie regarded him composedly for a moment before responding: “Well,” said she, “with Lilla on the high seas and my money mostly gone, I suppose I’ll have to make a try. I won’t go to school. What is it you want me to do? Go to church and Sunday school?”

Now, nothing was further from Patterson Greeves’s intention than to attend divine service of any sort or to make his family do so, but in that instant it flashed across his consciousness that that was the very thing that would have to be done if Athalie was to remain in the town and live as a member of the old Silver family should, in good and regular standing. Athalie could not associate with the young people of the town and expect to be comfortable among them unless she did as they did, unless she did as the traditions of the family laid down. For himself he would probably have ignored what people thought and have shut himself in with his books and his few friends and let the town go hang. But here he was preaching the standard of his old family and insisting upon its being kept high, and in his heart not planning to do so himself. He saw the inconsistency at once and knew also that the thing she had suggested was the very influence that would readjust her abnormal young soul, if anything could do it. If religion was good for anything it ought to be good for that. In fact, there was somewhere hidden away in his own soul the belief not yet extinct that religion did do things to souls when it really got a chance! Also, there was Bannard. He had some sense if he was a minister. She wouldn’t likely get much nonsense hearing him. And there was Silver! Of course Silver would want to go to church. Somehow he shrank from letting Silver know how far he had strayed from the religion of her mother and her mother’s people. All this passed through his mind in the lifting of an eye. He was accustomed to control his face and cover it with a mask among men. He scarcely seemed to hesitate as he replied:

“Yes. Certainly. Of course you will go to church and Sunday school.”

“Oh, heck!” said Athalie, a kind of hunted look coming into her eyes as she flounced around and stared out of the window.

Greeves watched her painfully, trying to adjust his own thoughts to this unexpected turn. He would have to go to church himself probably to enforce this. He felt like reechoing her exclamation.

What was he letting himself in for? Well, if it got too strenuous he could always send her away to camp when he found the right place. Then, too, he would have to be courteous to Bannard. He had been awfully decent last night, knowing just the thing to be done, and not making a great fuss about it as some would have done, and making every thing public. Yes, of course he would have to go to church occasionally. Tomorrow was the Sabbath. He would have to go then to start things right. Then after that perhaps he could manage to be away a good deal Sundays, run down to the shore or make a visit to New York or Boston—any excuse would do. He would have to go a good deal anyway to consult libraries.

“Well,” said Athalie as suddenly, whirling back as she had turned away. “What else? I’m game.”

Her fixed gaze was rather disconcerting. He couldn’t help admiring the way she took it. There was something rather interesting about her in spite of all her devilishness. Where did she get that?

“There are three things that I shall require,” he said following out the plan he had formed during the night. Poor soul, he had gone such a little way in this matter of fatherhood and discipline. He thought it could all be enumerated under three headings.

Athalie watched him attentively.

“Obedience—”

Athalie winced.

“Who do I have to obey? Not that red-faced servant woman! Not that other girl!”

Her father faltered. “Because I
won’t!
That’s
flat!
“

“They would fall under the next point,” temporized Patterson Greeves, “which is courtesy.”

“Oh, you mean I’ve got to be
polite!
All right. I suppose I can.

What next?”

“Modesty!” finished the father with a sudden realization that his list was pitifully short, and she was dismissing them all and making it shorter.

“Well, what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I do not like the way you dress or behave. You constantly call attention to yourself, to your person. It is probably not your fault that you are somewhat stout, although I have understood there are diets that will regulate that sort of thing, but it is your fault when you dress in loud and noticeable colors and strange styles, or when you expose your flesh to view.”

Athalie’s brow drew down.

She glanced down at her dashing little blouse of orange crochet over a flannel skirt of orange and black stripes. Her plump pink arms showed through the knitted mesh, and the brilliant scarf she was wearing jauntily across one shoulder revealed much fat neck. A flush of disappointment rolled up her carefully unpowdered cheek. She had really tried to look pleasing for that interview. According to her standard she looked nice.

“I’ve worn the only things I have,” she said sullenly. “I’m sure I don’t know how to please you.”

Something in the wistfulness of her tone appealed to him. He cast about how to answer her.

“Suppose you go up and spread out what you have, and I’ll come and look at your things. If you haven’t got the proper clothes we’ll have to go and buy some.”

A glint of interest shone in Athalie’s eyes.

“I’ll go up and spread them out,” she said eagerly. “It won’t take me long. There’s really some quite spiffy ones.”

He almost groaned aloud as she disappeared like a bright, saucy butterfly. How was he to make her understand that it was their very “spiffiness” that made the trouble?

In a few minutes he heard her calling, and he goaded himself up the stairs trying to prepare to be very diplomatic and gentle and firm.

Athalie stood by the door, her face radiant, and behind her on the bed lay shining masses of silks and satins and velvets in gaudy array, and all around the room were hangers on which hung limp effigies of herself done in all colors of the rainbow, the vintage of Lilla’s cast-off frocks, made over for her neglected daughter.

Athalie led him around the room beginning with what she considered the sober ones and going on to the more dressy affairs. He went from one to the other with growing bewilderment and pain, and when he had finished he stood back in dismay and began at the beginning again. He could not find one thing that filled his idea of what a young girl should wear. Once he thought he had discovered it in a simple-looking brown outfit with a gleam of brilliant green, which Athalie had hung behind the door as if she had forgotten it or did not want it inspected because it was too dull. He took the hanger down and began to examine it.

“Now this,” he said with a tone of growing satisfaction and picking up a corner of the long tunic that was bound in tailored fashion, “this seems—why, what is this? Trousers?”

“Yes, those are the knickerbockers,” said Athalie. “I used to like that a lot, but I’m sort of tired of it. However, if you like it I’ll put it on. I thought maybe—but I’ll put it on!”

She seized the hanger and slipped into the bathroom, returning in a brief space of time with the garment on. Patterson Greeves drew a long breath. She seemed to be clothed properly for the fist time. The lines were straight, the color was dark, her form did not appear so sensuous.

“Now that—” he began, “step out from behind the bed and let me see.”

Athalie stepped out and walked.

“Why, what is that? Is it torn? Is it ripped? Why, how short it is!”

“No, those are open all the way up to the waist. That is the knickerbockers underneath. Haven’t you been used to the knickerbockers suits? They’re all the craze at school. I had one of the first that came out. I just made Lilla get it, or rather I bought it myself and sent the bill to her and told her I’d tell a friend of hers something she didn’t want told if she didn’t pay it—”

Athalie’s tongue was rattling on eagerly, but Athalie’s father was sick at heart. As she strode about the room, whirling in front of the long mirror on the old-fashioned bureau, her stout legs were revealed clad in green trousers that finished in a tailored cuff below the knee, and a full eight inches above this, brown tunic flopped and flared, making her a grotesque figure, neither man nor maid. A fashion that might have been tolerated or even fancied on a slender little child but was revolting on a girl of Athalie’s age and build.

“Take it off,” ordered the discouraged parent. “Haven’t you anything decent at all?”

Athalie stopped, dismayed, and retreated half frightened into the other room. When she came out again she was wearing the little orange dress, and she looked lonesome and unhappy.

Her father wheeled around from the window where he had been looking unseeingly into the garden—it was strange how the only relief from things sometimes is to look out the window and get a wider vision—and eyed her perplexedly.

“We’ll have to go to town and do some shopping. I think it would be best to take your sister along—”

“She’s
not
my sister! And I won’t go if you take her! I thought you understood that!”

“That’s not obedience, Athalie!”

The girl looked down stormily. “Well, then if you force her on me I won’t obey. I don’t see why you want her along. She can’t pick out my clothes! I wouldn’t wear a rag she selected. You ask her if she would like what I chose for her.”

The father reflected that that was probably true. Silver would certainly not look right in any of Athalie’s clothes.

“Well, then we’ll take the housekeeper,” he temporized.

“That frumpy thing!” said Athalie.

“Well, who would you suggest?” He looked desperately at his daughter and wondered why a creature of so young an age should be able to perpetrate so much trouble and get away with it.

Athalie dimpled into a charming smile. “I don’t see why you and I couldn’t go just together. It’s you that’s to be suited, isn’t it? And me that’s to do the wearing? Well, then, what has anybody else to do with it?”

“I’m not at all certain that I—”

“Oh, if you don’t know what you want—” began Athalie with a toss of her head.

“Very well,” said her father with swift decision. “Get ready at once. I’ll phone for a car. Can you be ready in half an hour?” He looked at his watch.

“Yes,” she said brightly, casting a selective eye around her wardrobe.

“But what will you wear?” he asked, uneasily looking around also trying to find something that would do. “I don’t see anything here that is suitable.”

Athalie pouted.

“Perhaps we’d better wait, and I’ll telephone for something to be sent out on approval, a blue serge suit or something,” he suggested helplessly.

Athalie darkened. “I’ve got an old tweed thing in the trunk. I hate it, but maybe you’d like it.” “Let me see it.”

She pawed in her trunk a moment and fished out a brown tweed coat and skirt. He took it up and examined it, his face clearing.

“Now, that’s what I call a nice, neat, sensible dress for a girl,” he said. “Is it all whole? There aren’t any slits or anything in it? Well, put that on, and some kind of a hat that doesn’t look too fast, and dark stockings and gloves. And—Athalie, wash your face!
Wash
it, I mean!”

Athalie waited until he had closed the door and then she materialized her thought of him behind his back in a very forceful expression. Having thus unburdened her soul she set about dressing hastily and when she came downstairs seemed to him quite presentable in her trim brown coat and skirt. The skirt was shorter and narrower than he would have desired, but it would have to do for the present, and she wore a small, neat hat of brown straw from which she had just extracted some kind of an ornament in feathers that resembled a burning bush. It was drawn down over her forehead till she looked quite demure, and her feet were quietly encased in brown stockings and tan oxfords with low heels and rubber soles. She wore gloves, and her whole aspect seemed to have changed. Looking on her now her father wondered perhaps if it might not be possible sometime to even—well—rather like her.

That morning’s shopping was an experience Patterson Greeves will never be likely to forget. He felt as if he were leading a wild young coyote by a chain, which might at any moment give way in his hand and let chaos loose in the stores. The number of things that Athalie picked out and her father disapproved were too numerous to mention. Sometimes they found a saleswoman who sided with the girl and took it upon herself to advise the father, and then Greeves went to another store. Again they fell to the hands of a prim, sharp woman who called Athalie “dearie” and patronized her, and the girl simply refused to try on or look at a thing under her guidance.

In his pocket Patterson Greeves carried a brief memorandum, the result of a secret interview with Anne Truesdale, which he from time to time consulted anxiously as if it were a talisman that would somehow guide him through the mazes of this expedition. It read:

Four or five heavy gingham dresses for school
.

Two sprigged muslins for afternoons
.

A nice white dress for evening socials
.

A dark-blue silk for best
.

Two serviceable blue serges made sailor style
.

Athalie had two methods. One was to go into ecstasies over something she liked, talk about its simplicity and its classic lines, and how sweet and quiet it was. The other was to walk off out of the department entirely and be found looking drearily out of a window when she saw her father’s eye on something that did not interest her.