Tomorrow About This Time (36 page)

In a quarter of an hour an automobile arrived and two unhappy maidens with handkerchiefs to their eyes stole out and crept into the backseat. Molly, in a flannel petticoat and an extra sweater under her long winter coat, climbed fearfully in between them, and Joe took the front seat beside the driver. They moved off hurriedly through the night, and presently Patterson Greeves and two silent, angry frightened girls emerged from the house and walked down the street to the ten o’clock train for the city.

“Well, they’re all getting away early!” sighed Mother Vandemeeter. “Now we can go to bed in peace. I was afraid they were going to have a dance, and that would have been so out of place in the old Silver house. I just couldn’t have gone to sleep for thinking.”

“I don’t know as they could have gone much later!” said Grandma, getting stiffly up from her padded rocking chair and tottering toward her downstairs bedroom door. “This is the last train, isn’t it?”

Said Pristina up at her top bedroom window: “Now! I wonder which one he is taking to the train!”

Silver and Anne Truesdale busied themselves in putting the house to rights and gathering up the debris of the brief onslaught of the enemy.

“Them old stemmed fruit cups was one of Miss Lavinia’s best prized set,” Anne mourned. “To think one shoulda got broke tonight fer them little fools. I almost just used the old sauce dishes, and then I thought the master might not like it!”

“Never mind, Anne. What difference does a glass or two less make? They’re gone. They might have broken more if they had stayed longer. It looked to me as if they were out to break more than fruit glasses.”

“Yes!” said Anne. “My soul! So that’s that!”

Five hours later, Patterson Greeves, dismissing the car that had brought him back from the city, walked up from the post office corner where he had got out and let himself silently into the house. Anne, released from her vigil, turned over and murmured drowsily to herself again: “So that’s
that!”

In the wee small hours of the morning, with the east paling into pink, the only two who had got any enjoyment out of the affair, Molly and Joe on their way home from their long pilgrimage, sitting in the backseat holding hands and never saying a word, were having a second honeymoon. Their first automobile ride! An all-night affair. They were sore and stiff with the long ride, next day. But what did it matter? They had something to remember to their dying day. They might have other rides, doubtless would when Patterson Greeves got time from parenting to buy a car of his own, but never would any be like that first one, where the moonlight lay like thin sheets of silver over the springtime world.

Chapter 27

S
ometimes a storm will settle the atmosphere, for a time, and it seemed as though Patterson Greeves’s summary dismissal of the house party had really subdued Athalie and made life bearable and even almost pleasant at times in the Silver house.

There had been a stormy scene the next morning between Athalie and her father, but his brief experience in dealing with the young hoodlums the night before had seemed to give him confidence. He laid down the law in no uncertain manner to the young woman, who went through various stages of rebellion to argument then pleading and finally surrender.

“But I told you about that house party when I first arrived, and you never said a word. You had no right to come in and raise a row afterward,” had been her opening sentence of the interview, spoken with stormy eyes.

She left the library with downcast countenance and a promise to apologize to Silver for her insolence of the night before, a condition of her further remaining in the house.

“Although I hate her just as much as ever and always shall!” she added as she was about to close the door behind her.

Her father thought it as well to let this sentiment go unanswered, and Athalie went up to Silver’s door, walked in without knocking, and announced: “My father sent me to apologize.” Having said it, she slammed the door after her and departed, leaving Silver no opportunity to reply.

Thus matters had settled into a semblance of amity between them. The conversation at the table consisted in animated talk between Silver and her father, and absolute silence on the part of Athalie whenever her sister was present. The two girls walked their separate ways as much as if they were in separate spheres. Silver made one or two unsuccessful attempts to bridge over this chasm between them and finally settled down to forget it and be happy.

Silver was living a rich and beautiful life, entering into the church work of the new community with zest and rare tact, already beloved by everyone, and spoken of often as being like her great-aunt Lavinia.

The minister was a frequent visitor at the house, going often on hikes and fishing trips with Greeves, and spending long hours in discussions on political, scientific, and on rare occasions, religious subjects; and often Silver was a third member of the party on these occasions. But the minister was a busy man and did not make his visits to Silver’s house too noticeable. It was fortunate for him that Aunt Katie’s back fence joined the Silver garden and that the high hedge made passing possible without calling the attention of the neighbors, for Silver Sands was very jealous of their minister and would never let him pay more attention to one family or individual without an equal amount somewhere else. Much of his friendship with Silver and her father was carried on in the evening, or morning when they had taken a trek to the woods and come upon the minister, also sometimes when there was no school, with the addition of Blink and his dog.

Athalie had begun to take a real if rather puzzled interest in high school. At first she had attempted to become a leader, had even offered to furnish cigarettes and teach the girls to smoke, telling them they were far behind the times, but this resulted in an instant aloofness on the part of the girls of the better class, Emily Bragg being the only one who really accepted the offer and attached herself to Athalie like a leech.

This was not part of Athalie’s plan. She retired from the field as leader and studied the situation for a few days. She began slowly to perceive that she would never be accepted nor welcomed as long as she lifted her own standards. She must accept the standards of Silver Sands or count herself as an outsider forever.

Experimentally she made an attack on the boys and found to her amazement that they, too, had standards. They might not be exactly the same as their sisters’, and there were few among them who were ready surreptitiously to meet her halfway and laugh with her, yet on the whole, she was losing rather than gaining in influence. Because for some unaccountable reason even the boys seemed to feel that she was unclassing herself. She sat down to ponder and decided that it was the old-fashioned town and that it was hopeless. Whereupon she brushed her hair a long time one day and began to curl the ends under and teach it to be “put up.” She ceased even the surreptitious application of cosmetics applied on the way to school since her father’s distinct command had put an end to a careful make up before her own mirror. Her eyebrows began to grow in their legitimate place, with a strange likeness to Patterson Greeves’s, and altogether she took on a more wholesome look in every way.

Saturday mornings, at Silver’s suggestion, Patterson Greeves made it a point to be at home and to take Athalie to the country club for a round of golf. Even when she grew closer with her schoolmates and found some of her amusement in their Saturday picnics and little round of simple parties she never failed to accept his invitations for golf with alacrity. At such times there were flashes of something like real affection in her eyes, although he was usually too preoccupied to notice her. Indeed he would often have forgotten the engagement if Silver had not reminded him.

Greeves had sought to induce Athalie to eat more wholesome food. He had hunted out a diet menu and urged it upon her, and in some degree she had acquiesced, though he found her often with surreptitious boxes of candy, or taking more cake at tea than the law allowed. It was not until Barry again wielded his influence that she really got at it and began to show a loss in weight.

It was one Saturday morning that she had at last decided to try her father on the subject of knickers. She came down nonchalantly arrayed in them and announced herself ready for the country club. Her father looked up from a page he was correcting with an annoyed frown upon his brow. He had forgotten that it was Saturday and was exceedingly anxious to finish the theme he was at work upon. He took her in, knickers and all, and laid down his papers with a stern look on his face.

“You’ll have to go by yourself if you’re going to wear those things!” he said sharply. “It’s strange you don’t know what a figure you cut in them. You’re too stout for any such getup!”

Athalie, cut to the heart as she always was when her figure was criticized, turned with a shrug and a flip and an “Oh, very well!” and flung out of the room.

Her father settled back to his writing again, thinking that probably she had gone to change, but as she did not return he became absorbed once more and forgot all about it.

Athalie meantime, had stamped out of the front door, down the street, and was making her way swiftly to the old log in the woods, the only refuge she knew outside the house where she would probably meet no one and would be free to cry her heart out and wonder what had become of Lilla. She had not had word from Lilla since they parted.

She was sitting on the log weeping with long quivering sobs when suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder, and looking up she saw that Barry was sitting beside her.

“What’s the matter, kid? Has anything happened? Anyone been treating you mean?”

She lifted eyes that were brimming with tears, and there was something childish and almost sweet about her helpless young despair.

“You poor kid,” he said again. “What’s the matter?”

He fished a moment in all his pockets then brought out from the breast pocket of his brown flannel shirt a neatly folded clean handkerchief.

“I thought I had a blotter,” he remarked and moving up gently proceeded to wipe the tears from her eyes.

In a moment he had her smiling through her tears with his bright remarks.

“Oh, there’s nothing much the matter,” said the girl, relapsing into her despondency. “I guess I’m only mad. Dad called me fat, and I hate it! He said he wouldn’t go with me in my knickers. He said I looked awful!”

Barry surveyed the garments in question.

“Does make you look sort of wide,” he admitted. “Must be a lot easier to walk in than skirts though. I like ‘em. Why don’t you get thinner, kid? It’s easy. I can tell you what to eat. We tried it one year when we wanted to run. Listen. I’ll write it down for you.”

“I hate spinach!” remarked Athalie coldly.

“Oh, well, that doesn’t cut any ice, kid! When you get skinny you’ll be glad. Try a month and get weighed and see what a difference it makes.”

They talked for some time, and Athalie finally agreed to try it. Then they drifted into more personal talk and Barry said he wished she’d come and see his mother sometime.

Athalie told him about her mother being off in Europe somewhere. She spoke drearily, and the boy read much between the lines that she did not dream she was telling. He was quick to read the heart-hunger and yearning in her voice. There was much that was comforting in his cheery tone and the way he talked of common things. Athalie soon sat up and began to smile. Somehow the world looked brighter and life more possible even without chocolates. Barry said again he wished she would come and see his mother, and this time she said she would and almost thought perhaps she meant it. It would be interesting to see what kind of a mother Barry had.

Then suddenly the boy stood up quite sharply as if he had only just thought about it.

“But I oughtn’t to let you stay here,” he said. “Your father might not like it. Why don’t you go home and put on the togs he likes. It won’t take long. Wait till you get skinny and then wear these again.”

“They won’t fit me,” giggled Athalie. She was growing quite lighthearted.

“Come on over this way. I’ll show you a shortcut home, and you won’t need to pass the firehouse. There’s always a lot of crows there waiting to pick the flesh off your bones.”

“Maybe that would be quicker than dieting,” laughed Athalie brightly.

“You bet it would!” said Barry. “We won’t try that way this time. They’d make remarks if an angel flew by. Now come on down by the creek. It’s pretty there. Have you ever seen the rapids? Not very rapid, but it takes some strength to get a canoe up ‘em. Some day we’ll get your sister and take a canoe jaunt.”

But at that, Athalie’s brow darkened, and her chin went up. “I don’t think she’d care to go,” she said stiffly. “She’s all taken up with doing things down in that Frogtown place.”

“Oh, wouldn’t she?” Barry’s voice was disappointed. Athalie looked at him jealously. The sun seemed to have grown gray. Her loneliness had settled down again.

Barry was tactful for one so young. He saw that for some reason she did not want the sister. He turned the subject immediately to the day and the beauties about them.

“There’s a squirrel up in that tree that throws nuts down on me when I’m fishing sometimes,” he said. “Do you like to fish? Why don’t you come along with your father? He and the minister often come up here. Your sister was along last time.”

Ah! It was the sister! Athalie stiffened perceptibly.

“There he goes now, look!”

Athalie looked up while the boy talked, pointing out the squirrel nest, telling how the squirrels stored their nuts, how they often ran up the tree with a mouthful of leaves to stuff in their nest for a bed.

“See that branch of scarlet leaves up there?” exclaimed the boy suddenly. “It’s early for them to turn red, but aren’t they peachy? Shall I get them for you?”

He was off up the tree in no time, nimble as a squirrel himself, up, up, and up, till the girl watching felt dizzy for him, then out on a hazardous limb and whipping his knife from his pocket. Presently down came the splendid branch, fluttering like thousands of scarlet blossoms, and fell at her feet.