Chapter XIII

Diagonally across the street, about a furlong from the Silver place, next to the meadow, whose white picket fence bordered, and whose old brindle cow thrived on, the meadow, stood a small brick cottage, somewhat Anne-Hathaway style in architecture, low and thatchy, with moss on the roof and sunk deep in the thick green turf. It had a swing gate with an iron weight on a chain to make it latch, and a lilac bush leaning so low that the visitor had to duck his head to enter.

The household was entirely feminine, and they looked on the cow and the old yellow cats as their protectors. They were called the “Vandemeeter girls” though the mother and the ancient grandmother were still of the company. There were three elderly spinsters, Maria, Cordelia, and Henrietta. There was also a niece, daughter of a fourth sister long since dead, who rejoiced in the name of Pristina Appleby. Pristina was “thirty-five if she was a day” according to Ellen Follinsbee the Silver Sands dressmaker who always wore pins in her mouth and kept the other corner open to pass on pleasant conversation.

Pristina was tall and thin and spent much time studying the fashion magazines and sending for all the articles in the advertising pages. She sang in the choir and her voice was still good though a trifle shrill on the high notes. She held her book with elbows stiffened and always opened her mouth round and wide, and she took care to have plenty of fresh changes of garments, and always got a new hat four times a year. She felt it was due to her position as first soprano, although it was not a paying proposition, and frequently required much sacrifice of necessities to compass it. They were a progressive family and took several family magazines besides a church paper and the Silver Sands _Bulletin_. Pristina belonged to a literary club entitled “The Honey Gatherers” and sipped knowledge early and late. She had recently been appointed to write a paper on some modern author and had chosen Patterson Greeves, “Our noted townsman” as the first sentence stated, and waded through quartos of technical works, and thoroughly mastered the terms of bacteriologists in order to do her subject justice. Maria and Henrietta had not approved. They thought the choice of a divorced man, especially as he was reported to be returning to his native town to live, not a delicate thing for a young girl to do. Cordelia maintained that it was a part of the strange times they were living in, and added: “Look at the flappers!”

“Well, I never supposed we’d have a flapper in our family,” said grandma sadly. “The Vandemeeters were always respectable. Poor, but always respectable.”

“Now, ma, who says Pristina ain’t respectable?” bristled mother appearing in the kitchen door with a bread pan in one hand and a lump of lard in the other. “Pristina has her life to live, ain’t she? I guess she’s got to think of that.”

They all looked at Pristina standing tall and straight, her abundant brown locks piled high in a coil on the crown of her head, a little too much of her slim white ears showing, a faint natural flush in the hollows under her high cheek bones, the neck of her brown voile guarding well the hollow of her throat, and her bony arms encased in full length bell sleeves. She wore sensible high buttoned shoes (with the addition of tan spats in winter) and her dresses were never higher than eight inches from the ground, even at the highest water mark of short dresses. Yet she seemed to them most modern. They could not have been more worried if she had taken to chewing gum. She was the kind of woman you would pick out for a good stepmother of eight. Conscientious and willing to take what was left.

“That’s all right, Pristina. Write your paper the way you want. You have to follow your own bent,” said mother.

And Pristina wrote her paper.

Grandma and the three girls talked it over once when mother was setting cakes for breakfast.

“You don’t suppose Pristina is getting notions about Pat Greeves, do you?” suggested Cordelia.

“Gracious!” said grandma dropping her knitting, “what put that into your head?”

“Oh, nothing—only, she’s so anxious to write that paper and all. And it wouldn’t be strange. She’s young you know.”

“Well, I should hope she’d have sense enough not to think of marrying a divorced man. That wouldn’t be respectable! And she a church singer!” This from Maria.

“Patterson Greeves isn’t so young any more you’ll kindly remember!” said Henrietta pursing her lips. Patterson Greeves had been a senior in high school with Henrietta. They might all remember that he gave her a bouquet of jacqueminot roses when she graduated.

“That’s nothing!” said Cordelia, “old men always pick out young girls.”

“He’s not _old_!” said Henrietta.

“You just said he wasn’t _young_. Oh, well! I only suggested it. I shouldn’t like to see Pristina get notions. That man has lived _abroad_. And he’s lived in _New York_. He’s no fit mate for a girl like Pristina. But then, I don’t suppose he’d look at her. Only as I say, I hope she doesn’t get notions.”

“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 drug 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 close mouthed. 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 long about. 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 was 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 in the Home and School 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 preserve? 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 any one. 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 forth 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 sepulchrally, “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 home town 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 requisition 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, 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 betimes and keeping tab 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 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 _painted_!” said Maria, “that’s the kind! Maybe she’s—!”

“Maria!” said her mother, and made eyes toward 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 man!” 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 recognize 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 toadies 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 cocoanut. If they’re going to have a wedding it would be nice in 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 upon 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 therefrom.

“Well, even so. Count them. One, two, three, four! Are those others 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 be wanting a trunk.”

“Well, there’s one apiece and one over 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 fire house 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?”

She was a tiny wiry little woman with bright beads of eyes and the quick restless motions of a bird. She perched on the edge of her chair and looked quickly from one to another as she talked.

“Girl,” said grandma pursing her lips and looking over her spectacles. “It was a girl. He gave it to its mother’s parents. I heard they didn’t have much to do with one another.”

“Well, I should think not!” said Ruby Philips. “A man that would marry again!” Mrs. Philips didn’t believe in second marriages.

“And then get divorced!” reminded grandma.

“Well poor thing. I hope she hasn’t suffered from her father’s sins,” said Maria righteously.

“Now Maria,” reproved mother, “you’re going a little fur. You don’t really _know_ that her father sinned.”

“Well, he got divorced, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but Maria, he might uv _had_ to—you know it isn’t _always_ the _men’s_ fault.”

“It’s pretty generally the men’s fault, I guess,” declared Maria, tossing her chin. “I thank goodness I never got tied up to one.”

“Well, Maria, I don’t think you’re very polite to Arden,” said Mrs. Arden, rising with a flame in each cheek.

“Oh, Arden’s Arden, of course. Besides he’s my third cousin. And present company is always excepted you know,” laughed Maria sharply.

Mrs. Arden drew her cape around her briskly and stepped toward the door. There was still a stiffness in her voice. She pursed her thin lips as if her mouth shut with a drawstring like a bag of marbles.

“Well, I must say I don’t like insinuations, even when it’s a joke,” she said coldly, “come Arden, we’ll be late to that meeting. You’d think if there _was_ a wedding he’d invite someone from the town, just for old time’s sake, wouldn’t you? Of course the minister; but he’s a comparative stranger, and he _has_ to have him. Well, I suppose we’ll know sometime. Good night.”

Arden, drab and homely, with blue eyes and light eyelashes followed her obediently out with an air of getting in the way of his own feet. She tripped along down the walk like a sparrow and Arden loped behind, a long limbed, disproportionate man who never seemed to be quite inhabiting all the room in his garments. They crossed the street and passed the Silver house, looking closely and walking slowly. The street lights twinkled over their heads as they passed.

By and by a shadow passed along the street, with something low trailing after, but there was no sound of footsteps though grandma had her window open a trifle. A moment later the front door of the Silver house opened letting out a stream of light and shut again before they could see who had gone in. There seemed to be a dog about. He howled once from the neighborhood of the Silver gate.

At ten o’clock some one came out, perhaps two. It almost seemed like a group. Was one the minister? Was that a dog or only a mote in the eyes that had strained so long through the darkness?

Lights appeared upstairs over the way, went out, and the Silver house remained a white shape against the velvet blue of the night sky. Little stars blinked distantly and the tree-toads sang uninterruptedly in the meadow and down by the brook. Grandma was snoring gently in her downstairs bedroom, and Pristina lay in her narrow bed up in the roof bedroom and wondered why life had seemed to pass her by.