“I have come for my daughter. She ought not to be in here,” he shouted at her. The woman chattered some jargon at him that had a tang of French, or was it Italian? But he could understand nothing but the words “doctor” and “little ba-bee” and then more tears. She passed beyond his sight.
He lifted himself another step and yet another and stood head and shoulders in a room light and clean with whitewash, a large framed picture of the painted Christ on the cross hung on the wall opposite him over the head of a big brass bed made up with white sheets trimmed with hand-knit lace, and on the clean pillow lay a little face, the most beautiful baby face Greeves had ever looked upon, short black curls tumbled on the pillow, long curling lashes dark upon the rounded cheek, beautiful baby lips gasping for breath, treacherous blue shadows deepening around the eyes and nose.
“These windows ought to be up if it’s pneumonia,” Bannard explained in a whisper. He stretched out a strong arm and threw up both windows. Silver was leaning over the baby feeling her forehead, touching the pulse of the little fluttering restless hand.
“She ought to have oxygen, Mr. Bannard. Can’t you get some quick?” Silver looked up.
“I’ll get it,” said the minister. “Can you stay here till I come?”
She nodded. “Quick!” She was down on her knees beside the bed, putting the spoon that the mother handed her to the little tight-shut lips.
“She ought not to be here!” repeated Greeves wildly, but Bannard swept him along down the stairs with a strong arm.
“Greeves, just run over to that grocery and ring up Doctor Carr. Tell him I said to come instantly to Angelo’s house. I must go for oxygen. You stand by till I come. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Before the dazed professor of bacteriology knew what was happening or could put in a protest, Bannard’s car had given a lurch and darted down the road, and Greeves found himself walking across that squalid street, entering the grimy, unsanitary grocery and asking if he might telephone for the doctor. It reminded him of France. But it was very different from sitting in an office and telling other officers where to go and what to do. He had done reconstruction work, yes, by proxy. It was not the same. He had been an executive. But this was close contact. He hurried back with the idea of carrying Silver bodily out of the infected air and found himself once more standing at the top of those ladderlike stairs in that white airy room, gazing at the little blackening face, listening to the gasping of the baby, the mother’s tears, and his daughter’s voice praying in low, gentle tones: “Oh, Jesus, You know how this mother loves her baby. Come and help us if it be Your will. Save this little darling’s life. For Jesus’ sake, we ask it.” And the mother bowed and crossed herself, hushing her sobs.
Someone brushed roughly by Greeves on the stairs almost upsetting his balance. To think these people lived every day on stairs like this. Incredible! A tall man, young, splendidly built came quickly to the bed and knelt on the other side from the mother and Silver. And he took the little fluttering hand in his big rough one. His face was tender, and there were tears raining down his cheeks, but he paid no attention to them. “Poppie come, Mary, Poppie come! You hear Poppie, Mary? Poppie come home from his work to stay with Mary!”
Greeves stood and gazed transfixed at the face of the rough man before him, transformed by love, tender and sweet with fatherhood! So this was what it meant to be a father!
This was the way he would have felt if he had let himself! This was what he threw away carelessly when he took himself out of the reach of his first little child and brought another carelessly into the world to leave to any Fate that came her way.
“Let Poppie hold it, Mary. Let Poppie hold it!” The strong hand grasped the weak, restless fingers, and the little hand relaxed. For an instant the great dark eyes opened wide in recognition of the beloved face, and the dark head that had kept up its restless motion back and forth from side to side on the pillow rested. The parched lips that had murmured hoarsely “No! No! No!” were quieted. Then the blessed oxygen in the hands of Silver and Bannard reached her nostrils, and she drew a long deep breath. The gasping ceased little by little, and another breath came. A sigh of relief. The fluttering lids drooped, and the long lashes lay on the white cheeks again. A restful natural sleep was coming to the little one.
The doctor came in quietly, laid a practiced finger on the fluttering pulse. The child started and opened her eyes once more. Her glance rested on the doctor in frightened question then turned to the father and was content, dropping off to sleep again. The doctor nodded to Silver in answer to some question about the oxygen, opened his case, and prepared some drops that he handed to Angelo. The father took it and held it to the little lips with as much skill as one trained to such service could have rendered. Greeves stood there watching him with almost jealous eyes, seeing as in a vista a long line of tender services he might have rendered had his heart been right to his own. Where did this rough untaught man learn such angelic gentleness? Here in this bare little house with an environment of the plainest necessities, the father had fenced in a little piece of the kingdom of heaven for his child. Greeves suddenly realized that he was envying this rough untaught working man. With all his knowledge and culture he had missed the blessedness of living that this other man had found, and even his sorrow was sacred because of the love that was between him and his child.
Bannard had gone out again and now returned, bringing with him the district nurse. She quietly took things in her capable hands, and the minister’s group was no longer needed.
As he stumbled shakily toward the treacherous stair Greeves caught hold of the crude railing and gave one more glance back at the big brass bed with the exquisitely knitted white spread and the tiny white face framed in dark curls on the big pillow. The Madonna mother was standing at the head on one side, the tender father kneeling at the other, tears raining unchecked down their sorrowful faces, and the face of the painted Christ overhead looked on with yearning eyes. It was a sight he never would forget.
He felt his way down the dark chute, for it was little else, groping with his feet for shallow steps, and stumbled out into the sunshine, silent and thoughtful. He forgot how it was that he came to go into that house of sorrow, forgot that he had let his child stay as long as she was needed, forgot the words of criticism he had prepared for Bannard for letting her go into the infectious atmosphere. For the first time in years he had become a part of a great suffering universe. He forgot his own individuality and his grievances, and his heart was throbbing with sorrow for another.
Meantime Athalie, at home, was dressing elaborately for her evening with Bobs in the city.
Chapter 17
Down the street from the direction of the schoolhouse proceeded a merry group of girls, stopping at their various respective houses on the way to leave books, lunch boxes, and tidy up hair and hands and face. Laughing and chattering they came on with a sudden hush of awe as they approached the silver gate, so long an unopened portal to young people.
Mary Truman and Roberta Moffat went first by reason of Mary’s having been the instigator of the function. Mary’s heavy braid of bright long hair had needed little tidying. It ended in a massive wave of gold below the crisp dark-blue ribbon and frilled in little golden tendrils about her face. Mary wore no hat to rumple the smoothness of the ripples from the delicate line of parting on her crown. She scorned hats, except for Sunday.
Her neat blue-and-white checked gingham dress was just low enough to show the white of her throat, above the sheer collar that matched the rolled-back cuffs and pockets banded with the gingham. The whole school thought that Mary Truman was always well dressed.
Those little gingham bindings on the organdy pockets, for instance, marked the line between the banker’s daughter and other girls whose mothers had not the time to bother with such details.
Roberta Moffat was short and fat, attired in pink chambray whose hem had visibly been “let down” and whose yoke had faded to a nice dependable f
lesh tint, but her round pleasant face was always wreathed with smiles. She had a glitter of white even teeth and a pair of nice black eyes above the little pug nose that was covered with freckles. Always copying Mary as far as her limited means allowed, she wore no hat, gathered her scant locks into a pigtail, and acquired a habit of tossing back the straight locks that would keep falling over her eyes where the hair wasn’t quite long enough from a defunct bang to catch into the confining pink ribbon that held the pigtail. The ribbon was washed and dyed and showed signs of droop but had been retied and stuck out bravely for the occasion.
“I guess she’ll be glad when she sees somebody coming to call on her so soon, don’t you, Mary?” whispered Roberta with a soft giggle.
“I should think she ought to,” said Mary seriously. “I certainly am glad you are all with me, girls. Just think how I’d feel now if I were alone!” And she squeezed Roberta’s plump elbow lovingly.
Emily Bragg was tall, and her sleek brown hair had been bobbed, not for purposes of style however. The top was longer than the rest and fastened at the side with a barrette that gave her the look of an old-fashioned china doll with painted hair all made up hard. She wore a straight little one-piece frock of brown denim with characters worked around the edges in red yarn. On her head was a boy’s brown wool cap, one of her brother Tom’s, and the big shell-rimmed glasses that sheltered her merry eyes and gave her the look of a good-natured boy. She climbed trees and fences, could whistle as well as any of her brothers, and everybody liked her, but she wasn’t a beauty. She was just behind Mary and Roberta, walking arm in arm with little Carol Hamilton, a slight little fairy with pink cheeks and short golden curls who always dressed in pale blue and was adored because she was so pretty.
Della McBride was much taller than the rest, wore her long brown braids in a coronet around her head and had big dark-blue eyes with long lashes. The seriousness of her face was somewhat accentuated by a retreating chin. She was wearing a middy blouse and a dark-blue skirt, and her companion, Vera Morse, a quiet girl with pale eyes and her hair “done up” and brought in sleek loops over her ears, wore a white shirtwaist left over from last year and a brown wool skirt. She carried a brown straw sailor hat in her hand, and talked in a low sweet voice.
They were a wholesome group as they fluttered up to the steps and sounded the old brass knocker, their subdued chatter like the chirps of a bunch of sparrows on the garden wall.
Anne Truesdale let them into the house and seated them in the drawing room dubiously. Such a circumstance had not happened since the days of Miss Lavinia, six whole callers at once in the old house! Then with deep reluctance, only goaded by an indubitable conscience, she mounted the stairs and tapped at Athalie’s door.
“Oh, come in,” drawled that young woman affably. “I’ll let you fasten this dress. I can’t seem to reach around there anymore. I was just about to ring for you. It fastens up the back under that drapery.”
Anne paused in dismay and surveyed the young woman but made no move to investigate the hooks in question.
“There are some young persons down in the drawing room came to call on you,” she announced severely, as if it were a reward far too good for the girl before her but must be handed over for honesty’s sake.
Athalie swung around and faced her. “Come to see me? What are they? Men?”
“Of course not!” reproved Anne. “They’re little girls.”
“Little girls!” scoffed Athalie, taking up a powder puff and giving a touch to her nose. “Well, you can tell them to go to thunder! I’m busy. I hate little girls.”
Anne gasped and tried to begin again, with fearful vision of what it would be if this strange freak of a girl refused to go down.
“Indeed, Miss Athalie, they’re quite grown-up little girls. They’re some of them older than yourself, and they’re the daughters of the best people in this town. Your father’ll be quite angry if you don’t see them.”
Athalie surveyed her coldly. She remembered that she was trying to please her father as far as it was compatible with her own plans.
“Very well,” she said coldly. “I’ll be down after a while and look them over, but I never had much time for girls, unless they have some pep, and I don’t fancy they have in this little old town. Are you going to fasten those hooks for me or not?”
“Oh, Miss Athalie,” said Anne disapprovingly. “You’ll never wear that dress downstairs at this time of the day! The whole village would be scandalized, and your father would be disgraced. The young ladies would not understand it I am sure. It’s not at all the custom to dress in that style in the afternoon.”
Athalie was attired in a startling outfit of scarlet satin and tulle, set off by long clattering strings of enormous jet beads and pendant hoops of jet with long fringes dangling from her ears. Her hair stood out in a perfect thistledown fluff; scarlet stockings of sheerest silk and tiny high-heeled red leather shoes with intricate straps adorned her plump feet. Her face and arms and neck, of which there was much in evidence, were powdered to a degree of whiteness that reminded Anne Truesdale of a Bible phrase about whited sepulchers. Indeed, she was a startling vision as she stood there imperiously waiting for Anne to fasten her scant shoulder drapery and looked years older than she was. But when Anne finished her protest and made no move to assist her ladyship, a storm arose on the whited face, and the red kid shoes stamped in rage.
“Thank you,” she said grandly. “I’m not in the habit of accepting advice from the servants about what I shall wear. You can go! I’ll get along without your assistance. I see I shall have to ask my father for a French maid. Go! I said, go!”
Anne went.
When she reached the door she paused.
“You’ll be down at once, Miss Athalie, please! It’s not considered good breeding to keep young ladies waiting.”
“Shut the door!” stormed Athalie. “I’ll be down when I like and not before.”
Then in quite a leisurely manner she dabbed more powder on her nose, struggled with the refractory hooks until she conquered them, tilted a bit of a hat of scarlet straw and ribbon atop her fluff of hair, brought it well down over her eyes, jerked it aslant until the dangling cluster of overgrown cherries with which it was adorned hung well over one cheek. She surveyed herself in the glass complacently, posed imperiously, then took up a pair of long black gloves and an evening coat of black satin with a collar of white fur and slowly descended the stairs.
Down in the drawing room the waiting girls were having a grand time. They had been little children when last they remembered coming to that dim shrouded room to call on dear Miss Lavinia, whom each one of them had loved. They went quietly about looking at the portraits and whispering at first, giving bits of memoirs that were family traditions in their homes. Gradually they settled down to await their hostess’s coming.
“We ought to have told Mrs. Truesdale not to have her dress up,” said Mary. “We should have said we’ve just come from school.”
“Oh, well, what’s the difference? She’ll come pretty soon,” said Roberta. “I like to sit in this big room and wait. Won’t it be a grand place to have the Christian Endeavor social? My! I hope she asks us. We could toast marshmallows at that fire, and there’s room for a long line of chairs for Going-to-Jerusalem. The boys always like that so they can roughhouse.”
“Maybe Mr. Greeves might not like roughhousing,” suggested Della. “He’s a very great writer, my father says.”
“Oh, we’ll get Father to invite him over that night so he won’t hear it,” said Mary happily. “Father can always fix people so they don’t mind things.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t think it’s very polite of her keeping us waiting so long. There won’t be any time to take her walking nor show her the schoolhouse before supper if she doesn’t hurry.”
“Maybe she was taking a bath,” suggested practical Emily Bragg. “You know, you couldn’t come down all soapy.”
The girls giggled.
“Shh!” said Mary. “I think she’s coming.”
“I wonder what grade she’ll be in,” whispered Carol.
“Sshhh!” said Roberta. “There she is! Oooohhh!”
Athalie flashed on their vision between the curtains and stood, one hand holding back the heavy curtain, her evening cloak still on her arm, and looked them over half contemptuously. They had never seen anything like it before, not even in the movies. Silver Sands was rather careful what films came to town. Mrs. Truman headed a committee of patrons who assisted the managers in making their selections.
At last Athalie broke the stillness, which was growing fairly electric: “I’m Miss Greeves!” she announced. “Did you want to see me?”
The girls might have been said to huddle in a group, feeling suddenly that in numbers was strength. Mary as leader and instigator of the expedition gave a frightened glance behind her and stepped bravely up as her father would have done if he had been there.
“We’ve come to call,” she said pleasantly, watching the twinkling earrings with curious fascination. “Mother thought you might be lonesome—”
“Very kind, I’m sure,” responded Athalie insolently. “I was just going out, but it’s early. I can spare a few minutes.”
She flung her cloak and gloves on a chair and sat down, her scarlet tulle skirt flaming around her. She sat with the pose of a society lady, her body flung rather than seated upon the chair. The girls were deeply impressed, all but Emily Bragg who wanted to laugh.
Tomorrow About This Time Page 17