Chapter XV

Patterson Greeves had not slept at all the night before. His mind was wrought to so high a pitch that it seemed as if he never would sleep again.

Silver’s music had not soothed him, instead it had wrought his heart to sorrow with the memories which came trooping, flooding, threatening his self-control. Her touch was so like her mother’s, her selections, many of them Alice’s own favorites. It seemed as he sat there with half-closed eyes watching her that it must be Alice. It could be no other.

At last the girl herself had seemed to feel the strain she was putting upon her father, and whirling about on the piano stool she declared she had played enough for the first night.

It was then the minister roused from his delight in the music, realizing that it was time for him to take his departure and leave this father and daughter to settle their own situation by themselves. He expressed his pleasure in the music and his hope that he might hear it again, more and often, and made his adieu.

“Just a moment, Bannard,” said Greeves as they neared the front door, “I’ll get that book for you I was speaking of. I saw it this morning in its old place on the shelf—if you don’t mind taking it with you.”

They stepped into the library and turned up the light. There sat Blink, sound asleep, with a draping of angle worms all around the rim of his tomato can, and one bolder than the rest strewn out across his knee.

Roused, he declared he had not been asleep, but had been enjoying the fire and the music, merely waiting till they were through to present his gift. Trust Blink to be equal to a situation. Nevertheless he grinned at his worms, and gathering them up flashed a joke at them that brought a little breath of mirth into the tense atmosphere of the evening and made everybody feel better.

When Blink and the minister had taken their leave Silver and her father sat before the fire hand in hand, half shyly for a few minutes and talked.

If the music had not helped Patterson Greeves to solve his difficulties, it had at least made the situation clearer to his daughter.

“Father,” she said shyly, almost hesitantly, “don’t you think perhaps if you will have a quiet talk with Athalie in the morning it might help? I’ve been thinking about it. She’s probably as excited as we all are. It must be hard for her too. I think perhaps if she understood you might be able to make it easier for her. I was trying to think how I would feel if I were in her place—she was terribly excited and hurt—you could see that—”

They talked for sometime and when Silver finally went to her room Patterson Greeves turned out the light and in the dying firelight he paced the room for hours, back and forth.

In the small hours of the night Anne Truesdale from her anxious chamber off the back hall heard him come softly up the stairs to his room, but when she went in the morning to put his room to rights the bed had not been slept in. There was only a deep dent in the coverlet where folded arms and a head must have rested as of one on bended knees. But Patterson Greeves had no one left to pray to, unless it might have been his dead wife Alice, or his sweet departed Aunt Lavinia, for he did not believe in a God. And if there had been a God he was angry with Him for bringing all this horrible thing to pass upon him.

But when morning dawned, even before Anne Truesdale had been down to open the shutters and tidy up the rooms, he was back in the library again, pacing back and forth. And as soon as ever it would have done any good to call, he was after long distance trying to telephone his divorced wife. He had decided that Athalie must go back to Lilla. He would make it worth her while.

He made a pretense of eating some breakfast with Silver—no sound had as yet been heard from Athalie’s room, and none in the family were disposed to disturb her—but it was plain that he was nervous and overwrought, and the slightest sound made him start and listen for the telephone.

When the call came at last, he hurried to the library only to be informed that Mrs. Greeves had sailed for Europe the day before to be gone indefinitely.

He hung up the receiver and stared about the room with that dazed expression he had worn the day before when he first knew that Athalie was coming to him. And again there sounded in his ear the ring of that derisive laughter, echoing along the halls of his soul with taunting sweetness. Lilla had won out again. It was as if she had tossed her daughter over into his keeping and put the sea between them, so that he was not able to send her back, not even able to bribe Lilla with money to take her unwelcome child to her heart again.

After a few moments he rose and gravely walked to the window. The stun of the blow was subsiding and he was beginning to take it in for the first time that this impossible child was his irretrievably to keep and to care for from this time forth, and that he could not rid himself of the trust. For the first time he was taking it in, and some of the things he had flung out in his first bitterness of soul in talking with the minister the night before came back upon him as great truths that he had uttered. He was responsible for the child, responsible for what she had become. He could not shirk any longer what he had tried to shirk for life. He must face it now. There was not distance enough in the whole universe to put his responsibility away from him. It would follow him like a shadow wherever he went, whatever he did.

How could he ever write again with this horror hanging over him? Well, what difference did it make to anyone whether he ever wrote again? What difference did anything make to him?

Gradually, however, the business habits of his life settled upon his mind and he began to come at the question more sanely, more seriously, and to really try to think what he could do, and what he should say to this strange, unloving, unlovable girl.

Perhaps the thought of Silver with the Alice-eyes writing some letters up in Aunt Lavinia’s room, a sweet strong sane presence, helped to keep him from the insane desperation that had come upon him the day before. At any rate his tortured mind finally thought out a way, made a semblance of a plan, of what he should say to Athalie and how he should say it.

Thinking more coolly now he could see that he had antagonized her. She was like Lilla. That was plain. Strange that both his children should be like their mothers entirely—and yet—no, he could see some things in Athalie exactly like himself. That being the case perhaps he could understand her a little better if he would come at her in the way he would like to be approached himself, reasonably, gently, firmly, but pleasantly. Subconsciously he had known that yesterday, but it had seemed too much like yielding to an outrageous imposition to treat her in any way but imperiously. Well, that was all wrong, of course, from her standpoint. He had simply antagonized her. It would be of no sort of use to try to control her until he had some hold upon her. He had shown his utter disapproval of her, her dress, her appearance, her habits, from the start. Could he possibly retrieve the past and begin again? Well, it was up to him to try. He could not rid himself of her by making her hate him, though he had no real desire to win her love. Still, he must try something. He could easily see now it would be useless to send her to any school against her will in this state of mind. She would only disgrace him and be back upon his hands in a worse condition than before. He must do his duty somehow, whatever a father’s duty was. Somehow he had never thought before, till Silver looked at him with Alice’s eyes, what the duty of a father might be.

So he rang the bell for Anne and asked her to say to Miss Athalie that he would like to see her in the library as soon as she had finished her breakfast.

Athalie took her time.

She bathed herself leisurely, toying with her perfumes, she bathed her face many times in very hot water and only powdered it lightly, giving a becoming touch of shadow under her eyes as of much weeping and no lip stick at all to her full mouth. It took quite a while to get just the right atmosphere, for it was difficult to make the healthy Athalie look as if she were going into a decline.

She really was trying to please her father. She chose a little dashing frock of dark blue wool with a great creamy white wool collar curiously rolled about her shoulders, and a daring scarlet sash of crimson silk with fringe that hung several inches below the hem. She even put on black silk stockings, thin they were and extremely lacy, but black, and completed by little fairy patent leather slippers with straps intricately fastened to look like ancient Greek foot attire. A black velvet band about her forehead completed her costume and she descended slowly, casually, to the dining room and rang the bell imperiously.

It was Molly who brought a tray with ample food, but she rang again and sent for more, and pursued the even tenor of a prolonged breakfast with satisfaction, until Patterson Greeves awaiting her in the library was almost at the limit of his patience and his newly assumed gentleness, and could barely keep his resolves from leaping out the door and escaping him altogether.

But at last, after lingering in the garden a moment to gather a flaunting red tulip and stick it in her dress where it flared against the white of the collar, she sallied into the library without waiting to knock and gave her father a cool good morning, quite as if he might have been the naughty child and she the casual parent, with many, many greater interests than just parenthood.

Following out his resolves with a visible effort he wheeled a comfortable chair for her to sit down where the light would fall full upon her face and he might study her as they talked. She watched him sharply and then turned and stood with her back to him looking out the window.

“Come here and sit down Athalie,” he said, “I want to have a little talk with you.”

“Fire ahead, Pat,” she said nonchalantly, “I’d rather stand here and look out.”

What could a father do under those circumstances? I ask you what _would_ a father do? His blood boiled. His temper arose and clamored for satisfaction. He was no father of course, but how could he be? Here was this impish child of his defying him again, making it practically impossible for him to exercise the self-control and gentleness he had intended. It was as if she suspected his scheme and was blocking it. How could he have a heart-to-heart talk with a broad blue and white back, a blur against the sunshine of the morning. How was he to make her understand that he meant to do his best by her, do all that was best for her whether it was hard for himself or not, if she stood like that and ignored him? He ought to give her a good whipping. That was what she deserved. It was barbarous of course, but she was a little barbarian, and nothing else would probably reach her. Nevertheless—he glanced around and summoned his new resolves that were just sliding out the door, grappled them to his side, and began:

“Athalie, my child,” he began, realizing that it was necessary for his own good that he recognize the relation openly. He cleared his throat, “I—ah—”

“Aw, cut the comedy, Pat! What’s eating you? Spit it out! I know I’m in for the deuce of a time, but if you’re going to preach a sermon you’ll have to do it without me. This is too gorgeous a morning to be shut up in the house. Say, Pat, don’t you ever play golf? What say if you and I go to some country club around here and have a game, and then take lunch? Let’s have a ripping old time together and get acquainted, and after that if you haven’t got it all out of your system yet I’ll agree to listen.”

For an instant the astounded father gazed at the face of his cock-sure amazing daughter and wavered, almost considering whether he could accept this high handed proposal. Perhaps if he had this story might have been a different one in many details, who can tell? But Patterson Greeves’ sole contact with youth since he passed out of that class himself had been in the class room or on the battle field, in both of which places he had been the dictator, able to put his victim through instant discipline if he did not obey in every particular; where a mere black mark on a report card, or a spoken word to an under officer, meant that the delinquent would be dealt with speedily and thoroughly, and where respect and obedience were the foundation of breath itself and nothing else was to be tolerated.

And now, while his flesh shrank from the encounter before him, and his whole soul cried out for respect and the open air, a relaxed conscience, and a chance to get things into some natural order again, his puritan inheritance and his whole training demanded respect and obedience, and the moment passed. The scene of the night before rose in his mind’s eye and his blood boiled. He was again in the position of an outraged parent struggling for self-control while he read the ten commandments to a naughty child.

And perhaps it was as well, for Athalie knew how to take advantage of the least opportunity, and she _had_ to learn _sometime_ that law was law.

The silence was growing very tense. Athalie, quick to note his every phase of attitude toward her, so sure of him when she finished her wheedling sentence, began to grow uneasy as his gaze continued, staring, stern and displeased.

“Athalie,” he spoke at last and his words were like icicles, “I can go nowhere, do nothing, until I have had an understanding with you.”

A sullen cloud settled down over the girl’s face.

“Sit down.” He pointed to the chair. Athalie hesitated a second, then with her sullen eyes like smouldering fires fixed on him, seemed to think best to obey, but she sat down tentatively, with one foot slid slightly behind her in readiness to arise again if he offended her. Her lips were pouted angrily. She shrugged her shoulders with a bored attitude as if she were but humoring him for the moment.

The speech he had framed through the long hours of the night deserted him now when he most needed it. Strangely it did not seem to fit. He struggled to find the phrases, cutting ones, intended to show her her place, and keep her in it, an ultimatum which would put things on a proper basis. But the whole thing was gone, and nothing but his own helplessness was upon him.

Then something Silver had said the night before about talking gently, reasonably, came to him. A sense of the room and its hallowed memories filled him. It was as if those who had loved him and cared for him in his earlier years might be hovering around unseen waiting to help him through this trying time. He dropped his forehead on his hand for a moment almost humbly, and then lifting his eyes he tried to tell the girl what was in his heart. None of the sentences he had planned were there. Many of the words he spoke he would not have wished to say to her, it was condescending too much to one who had treated him and his so lightly.

“Athalie,” he said, and his voice sounded now more gentle, with that certain something which always brings attention, “you and I are not in a very pleasant position. Perhaps it may be as hard for you as for me, I do not know. I may not have seemed to you very kind nor sympathetic when you arrived. I certainly did not welcome you. I was utterly unprepared for your arrival, as your mother must have known and intended that I should be. I do not intend to speak of her nor the past any more than is necessary; and there must of course be a great many things that you do not understand about our peculiar situation. We shall just have to put away the past and try to build up a relationship from the beginning. In order to do that there are one or two things that must be clearly understood.

“In the first place we belong to an old and respectable family with many traditions that must be honored, and standards that must be upheld. We owe it to the past.”

He studied her blank sullen face for a moment wondering if she understood.

He struggled to make his words plainer.

“There are certain customs and laws of society which we have always maintained. I cannot have my daughter transgressing these things. Our women have always been good and pure, and have never sought to imitate men, nor to flaunt their personalities or their persons. They have always been modest, quiet, sweet women, dressing unobtrusively, becomingly, and in a modest way. I cannot countenance the way you speak, the flippant, pert, rude disrespect, both to me and to the old house servants who have been with us so long that they are an integral part of the family. I cannot countenance your mannish ways, nor your cigarette smoking, nor your décolleté? dresses. I like sweet, modest girls, and if you and I are to get on at all together you must drop these ways and try to be a good girl.”

Athalie’s eyes smouldered furiously, and her lips curled in contempt.

“I suppose that other girl just suits you!” she stormed, “little simp!”

“Silver seems a very modest, sweet girl,” he assented, wondering what he ought to say about the way she had treated the picture last night.

“Well, I _hate_ her!” said Athalie in low hard tones, “I HATE HER!—and you sound to me awfully what they call at school, ‘mid-Victorian.’”

Patterson Greeves began to realize that he was not getting on very well. He looked at his hopeless offspring and longed to vanish out of her sight forever, caring not where or how his soul was disposed, so he might finally escape the problem of her. But something in his puritan conscience refused to let him slide away from the issue. He must face and conquer it. He had slid out of his situation with Lilla by letting it take its course—or had he? Was she not even now as poignant and tangible an element in his life as though he were struggling to live his daily life by her side? It passed through his mind that perhaps nothing was quite ever shoved aside or slid out of. Perhaps we always had to reckon with everything we did, sooner or later—sooner _and_ later. That was a question of life that might be worth looking into, might make a good subject for an article for a magazine—what strange thoughts form themselves beneath the surface when we are in the midst of a tense and trying time! Patterson Greeves brushed the thoughts away impatiently and sat up. He must get these things said that he had resolved to say.

“It makes no difference what I sound like,” crisped the father, “nor by what names your school friends choose to call things. I am telling you certain facts which must be acted upon by you as long as you are under my care. They are the only basis upon which you and I can have any dealings whatever. You cannot carry things with a high hand, ignore everybody else and overturn systems. You are not the ruler here, and you must understand it from the beginning.”

He paused and eyed her, but she gave no sign, just let her smouldering eyes rest on him sullenly, unflinchingly, the slow contempt in the upper lip continuing to grow.

“Those things being thoroughly understood and complied with on your part willingly,” he went on hurriedly, determined not to give her an opportunity to demur, “I am entirely willing to talk over your future with you, and try to arrange as far as is possible and best for you, to make such plans as will be agreeable to you. As to the school you will attend, I shall be glad to send for catalogues and let you have a part in the selection of your—”

She raised her hand imperiously.

“Stop right there!” she demanded sharply, “if you’re banking on me being a good little girl and going to school you might as well understand that I won’t! I came here to live with you. The court said I was to be under your care, and here I’m going to stay. If you try to send me away anywhere I’ll simply run away and make you more trouble. I’d drown myself before I’d go to another boarding school. I’ve lived in boarding schools all my life and I’m _done with them_! You can’t shunt me off that way for it can’t be done!”

A glance into her eyes showed that she fully meant every word she said and something in her tone reminded her stubborn father that she had inherited his power of sticking to a decision. Remembering last evening it seemed fully likely that she would carry out any threat that she might choose to make. He shuddered inwardly and began to weaken.

“Of course, if I found that you were entirely submissive and obedient it might be possible to arrange a school not far away—”

Athalie arose abruptly.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” she asked in a business like tone, “because I’ve got some letters to write.”

“Athalie, sit down,” he thundered, entirely unnerved feeling that his work was all undone again.

“Not when you speak to me in that tone,” said the girl shrugging her shoulders and raising her chin. “I suppose you call that kind of talk up to the standards of your respectable family.”

The crimson swept over her white sensitive face. Her voice was so perfectly like Lilla’s, the reply so entirely what she would have given.

“I beg your pardon, Athalie. It was not. I am very much upset this morning. I will endeavor to control my voice. Will you kindly be seated? Now, I want to ask whether you are going to be willing to be subject to my authority? If not I must begin to take immediate steps to place you where you will be looked after in the right way. I cannot have such scenes recurring. I may as well say I _will_ not have them. I am a busy man with important work to do, and this is utterly upsetting. Will you be a good girl and try to do right?”

His offspring regarded him coolly.

“I don’t know whether I will or not,” she answered calmly, “it depends upon how you behave. If you let me have my own way and have a good time I presume I shall—depends upon what you call good. I don’t intend to be goody goody. But if you try to bully me you’ll wish you hadn’t, that’s all. That’s what I told Lilla when I left her. I said ‘Lilla, he may have bullied you, but he’s not going to bully me. It isn’t being done.’”

A sudden startled wonder came to him as she spoke of her mother that made him forget to listen to the arrogant ending of her sentence.

“Athalie,” he said suddenly changing the subject, “are you aware that your mother has sailed for Europe?”

The girl gave him a look as if he had unexpectedly stabbed her, and her eyes filled up with tears, her lips trembled. She struggled for an instant with a sob, gave a slight nod of assent with her chin and broke down with a heart rending little cry, sinking her head upon her arms, her whole gaudily attired body shaking with suppressed sobs, as if the thought were too deep for sound.

Patterson Greeves stared at her for a moment uncomprehending, unable to meet this amazing phase of his most mysterious daughter, resenting her change of combat as if she had broken some rule of the game. She was not being true to type. How could he meet such an antagonist? Lilla used to cry prettily, pettedly, outrageously, to order, when she found all other weapons useless; but this was grief, genuine, deep, terrible. The grief of an uncontrolled nature. Grief of the kind he always had felt in his own troubles. Was it possible that something in his heart was stirring toward her, yearning—? No. This child of Lilla deserved all she was getting—ah! but child of himself too. Could it be possible that Lilla loved the child? If so why had she sent her away from her? It seemed out of the probable that Lilla could love anything but herself. Could it be possible that the child loved Lilla? She did not seem like a loving child. But those sobs were not angry, they were hurt, stricken cries. Had Lilla been unkind to the girl? His sense of justice roused toward her. He put out a vague hand and touched her shoulder.

“Athalie, haven’t you had a—_happy_—life? Hasn’t your mother been good to you?” he asked hesitatingly.

She lifted a tear stained face from behind which fires flashed in her eyes, and shook his groping hand off.

“That’s none of your business,” she said, “you never tried to make it any happier, did you?”

The father sat and saw a few more of his shortcomings marched out before him in the open, and swallowed hard on the sight. He, Patterson Greeves, of a respected family had contrived to do some of the most contemptible things a man can do on earth! It was unbelievable, and yet he was beginning to believe it.

He stared at her a moment with that dazed expression coming again. It dazes most souls to really look in their own eyes and behold how different they are from their fancied selves. Then he drew a deep sigh and arose going to the window to stare out across the meadow.

“No. I don’t suppose I ever did,” he said reluctantly at last. The sobs ceased as suddenly as they had begun. There ensued a prolonged silence. Then the father added as though to himself:

“I had no intention of overlooking any duty, I simply did not realize.”

Finally the girl raised her head and in quite a controlled voice said:

“That’s all right, Pat, I’m here now. Forget it! We aren’t getting anywhere and I’m going up and wash my face. If you change your mind about that golf just send me word.”

She was at the door when he wheeled about and said hesitatingly: “There’s one thing, Athalie, I wish you wouldn’t call me Pat. I don’t like it. It sounds disrespectful. It makes me ashamed. I—”

“All right, dad, since you ask it that way I won’t, but I like you a lot more when you’re Pat. It seems to make you more homey and understandable. Well, so long! You know where to find me!” and she flashed away like a bright-throated, naughty blue-jay.

The father sat down in a chair and covered his face with his hands. The interview for which he had been all night preparing was over and he had got nowhere. Nothing had been accomplished, except that perhaps he himself had weakened. A sense of his own forgotten responsibility, and a certain wistful turn of her voice had undone him. How was he ever to do anything with this unmanageable child?

The door suddenly opened without warning and Athalie’s head flashed in again.

“I just wanted to say, dad, that if you take that other girl along you needn’t count me in. She and I are two people. I hate her. So don’t go to bunching us up for it won’t work, and don’t give me any more of that line about getting advice from her about dress, see? I won’t stand for it, that’s all. If you want me to live up to your standards you’ve got to live up to mine! understand?”

She was gone. And if she had suddenly hurled a leaden weight on her father’s heart the world could not have turned darker or his heart been more heavy. How was ever such a state of things to work out?

A soft knock on the door broke in upon these thoughts, and Silver stepped within the room dressed in coat and hat and gloves, with her suitcase in her hand.