Chapter XII

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.