Chapter VI

It had not occurred to the minister until he came within sight of the station and heard the whistle of the approaching train, that he had come on a most embarrassing errand.

It had appeared to him as he talked with her father and read her letter that the girl he was about to escort to her home might be anywhere between twelve and fifteen years old. His information concerning Patterson Greeves’ history had been vague and incomplete. He looked to be a young man for all this experience, and the minister had jumped to the conclusion that both girls were quite young.

But when the train drew up at the station and the only stranger who got out proved to be a lovely young woman dressed with quiet but exquisite taste and with an air of sweet sophistication, he became suddenly aware that the errand he had come upon was one of an exceedingly delicate nature and he wished with all his soul he had not undertaken it.

She carried a small suitcase in her hand and walked with an air of knowing exactly where she was going. She paused only an instant to glance about her and then went straight to the station waiting-room and checked her suitcase. She did it with so much apparent forethought as if she had been there before and knew exactly what she had to do, that the young man hesitated and looked about for a possible other arrival who might be the girl he came to meet. But the train snorted and puffed its way slowly into motion and started on, and no other passengers appeared. As she turned away from the checking desk he came hesitantly upon her and their eyes met.

She was slight and small with a well formed head poised alertly, and delicate features that gave one the sense of being moulded and used by a spirit alive to more than the things of this earth. The impression was so strong that he hesitated, with hat lifted in the very act of introducing himself, to look again with startled directness into a face that was so exactly a counterpart of what he had dreamed a girl some day might be that he had the feeling of having been thrust with appalling unreadiness into her presence to whom he would have willed to come with his soul newly shriven.

She had violet eyes with a frank clear glance, hair that curled naturally and frilled about her face catching the sunbeams, lips that curved sweetly but firmly, and the complexion of a wild rose newly washed in dew. She looked like a spirit flower that yet was entirely able to take care of herself on earth.

“Is this—” he hesitated and remembered that he did not know her name—finishing lamely “Mr. Greeves’ daughter?”

She lifted her eyes, with a quick searching look and smiled:

“You are not—You could not be—my father.”

Bannard smiled.

“No, I have not that honor. Your father is—” he hesitated again. Why hadn’t he thought up some excuse for the father who was not there? It seemed inexcusable now that he saw the daughter, not to meet such a daughter! “Your father is—importantly engaged! He has but just arrived himself!”

He felt he was doing better.

“He only had opportunity to read your letter a few minutes ago, and it was impossible for him to get to the train. He asked me to meet you—”

She smiled with a rich warm welcome for her father’s friend and he felt a glow of comfort.

“My name is Bannard,” he finished, “I hope we’re to be friends also.” He put out his hand and she took it graciously and thanked him.

He piloted her to his car and helped her in, then hesitated:

“Your baggage? Didn’t I see you check a suitcase? Wouldn’t you like me to get it?”

A soft rose bloomed out in the girl’s cheeks and the fringes drooped deeply over her cheeks for an instant, then she lifted steady eyes and said:

“No. I believe not, thank you. I’m not sure until I see—my father—whether I shall remain or go on to New York this afternoon.”

He found himself strangely disturbed over this state of things. He wanted to assure her that of course she must not go on anywhere. This was the place that needed her. But of course he could say nothing. He might not even tell her that her father was in trouble. He had not been given permission to do anything but convey her to her home and that by as long a route as possible.

“We’re going by a round-about way,” he explained as he headed his car for a detour quite away from the old Silver Place. “There’s a bad bit of road they are repairing—” he was thankful that he had happened to notice the men at work on his way down and therefore could truthfully give an explanation to this clear-eyed maiden who it seemed to him must be able to read his embarrassment through the very serge of his coat.

“Shall we pass the old Presbyterian church?” she asked eagerly leaning forward and looking about as though it were a spot she knew well by heart but had never seen with her eyes.

“Why, yes, we can,” he responded eagerly, “Are you especially interested in that?” and he looked down with a smile and then a wonder at the light in her eyes.

“It is where my father went to church,” she answered, as if conning things she had learned well—“and there is a cemetery where my relatives are buried. I was interested to see it.”

He drove the car down a smooth ribbon of a road that curved about with wooded land on one hand and mellow fields of rippling green on the other, with a glimpse off at the right of the Silver River and Frogtown factories smothered in pale budding willows against a turquoise sky.

“It is beautiful here, isn’t it?” The girl’s eyes glowed. She drew in long breaths of the spring air. There were violets at the side of the road and it came to him how like her eyes they were.

They crossed a stone bridge and headed more directly toward the river and she exclaimed over the bright winding ribbon of water. Just because he had promised to make the time long, because he liked to see the wild rose color in the round cheeks glow when she opened her eyes wide at the view, he slowed down the car and investigated some minute squeak in the mechanism. Not that it was important. Not that he did anything about it. Just a pleasant little delay. It seemed to him he was experiencing a charmed privilege which was slipping by all too fleetly, and which he would grasp as it went. It might not ever come his way again.

On their way again they wound around the clump of beeches and came into the main street of Silver Sands all shining in the morning sunlight with serene houses on either hand in long stretches of green, and new gardens in geometrical lines behind the houses flanked by regiments of bean poles. A wide straw hat sheltered a lady picking strawberries in the patch of luxuriant vines. The breath of the day was sweet with growing things. The people walked crisply down the pleasant maple shaded pavements as though the going were enjoyment. The anvil rang out with silver sound from the blacksmith-shop as they passed. People began to hail the minister with glad lighting of eyes, and he was kept busy lifting his hat and waving his hand cheerily. Even the boys in the street gave him a greeting and then curiously half-jealous eyes turned to study his companion as they swept on their way.

“They all know you,” the girl commented. “I’m sure you must live in Silver Sands.”

“I do,” he responded. “It is a good place to live. My particular corner is just down that next street, the white house with the rose trellis over the door. I board with a blessed old lady whom everybody calls Aunt Katie Barnes. She nearly turns herself out of house and home trying to find new ways of making me comfortable. It is a very friendly community. They take one in heart and soul.”

She flashed him an appreciative glance and asked thoughtfully:

“Have you known my father long?”

“Well, not so very long—” the minister answered—“that is—you know he has only recently returned—but we are wonderfully good friends considering the short time. I—you—” he hesitated. There was something he wanted to tell her for her reassurance, to answer the question in her eyes which he felt sure she was too loyal to her father to ask, but his lips were sealed. And after all what was there to say even if they had not been? What reassurance had he himself that the man he had left raving at Fate in the old library would give any sort of an adequate welcome to this pearl of a girl? He felt as if he wanted to tell her that if her father wasn’t glad to see her he would take him by the neck and shake him till he was. But one couldn’t tell a strange girl things like that about her father.

“This is the Presbyterian church we are coming to now, the one on the left. The main part was built in sixteen hundred and seventeen. Hasn’t it nobly simple lines? The stones have weathered to as fine a color as any cathedral in the old world. I love to see it against the sky with the sunset behind it. That spire is a thing of beauty don’t you think? And those doves in the belfry are a continual delight. Do you know Aldrich’s bit of a verse, ‘And on the belfry sits a dove with purple ripples on her neck?’ There goes one now swooping down to the pavement. Did you see the silver flash on her wing? And now we’re coming to the part of the cemetery where your ancestors are buried. See that big gray granite column? No, the plain one just beyond. That is the old Silver lot. All the Silvers are lying there. Your grandfather and great-grandfather and their wives in that centre plot, and those side plots are for the sons and their wives and children. It was a peculiar arrangement and forethought of the first Silver settler and carried out by each succeeding one in turn. There, those two gray stones are for Standish Silver and his sister Lavinia, the last of the family who bore the Silver name.”

“Aunt Lavinia and Uncle Standish. I have their pictures,” said the girl softly as if doing homage to their memory. “They brought up my father.”

She lifted shy friendly eyes:

“Silver is my name, too. It’s a queer name for a girl isn’t it? But I like it. I like to think I’m a Silver too.”

“It is a beautiful name,” said the young man, doing homage with his eyes.

“They were a wonderful people from all I hear. I would like to have known them.”

And now all too soon they were at the Silver door and he was helping her out of the car.

He found his heart pounding strangely with anticipation for the girl at his side. How would she be received? He felt as if he must stay by her till he was sure, although delicacy dictated that he disappear as soon as his errand was done.

Blink with nonchalant foresight was idly flipping pebbles at a toad in the meadow from his perch on the fence, his back to the road. At his feet, attentive to each motion, apparently approving and aiding and abetting the game barked a big yellow collie. The dog bounded joyously across the road at sight of the car and precipitated himself upon the minister with a wag and a glad grin of recognition, then gave a friendly snuff to the girl’s hands, looked up and smiled a dog greeting with open cordiality.

“What a dear dog!” exclaimed the girl. “What a beauty!” She was bending over him with the enthusiasm of a true dog lover and Blink sauntered idly over and leaned against the car pleased at her demonstration, eyeing her furtively, appraisingly. “May I introduce his master Barry Lincoln, otherwise ‘Blink’ to his intimate friends?” said Bannard.

The girl lifted frank, friendly eyes to Blink’s embarrassed ones and liked him at once. She put out her hand warmly and grasped his rough shy one as she might have done to an older man, and the boy’s heart warmed toward her.

“What a very interesting name!” she said gaily, “If I stay here long I am sure I shall try to qualify to use it. Is the dog’s name Link?”

The boy grinned.

“He’s Buddie,” he admitted shyly.

“Well, Buddie, I hope I meet you again,” she said, with another flash of warmth in her eyes for the boy whose own were now filled with open admiration. She passed into the white gate and Blink looked after her with a new stirring in his heart, call it loyalty if you like, Blink had no idea what it was. He lifted his glance to the minister’s smile and found the same thing in his friend’s eyes, and an unspoken covenant flashed between them to protect her if ever she needed their protection. Blink would have expressed it in words, “She’s a good scout.” Blink and the dog stood by the car, Buddie wagging his plume of a tail vigorously, and watched the man and the girl go up the flower-bordered walk to the big mullioned door.

From inside the library Patterson Greeves watched the two figures arrive.

Joe Quinn watched from the shelter of the smoke-bush close to the lilac hedge where he was digging about the tulip beds, and Molly the cook, having seen the car from her pantry window, had hurried up to the front hall window on pretext of looking for the housekeeper, and was gazing down curiously on the two, wondering what next was coming to the old house.

At the extreme dark end of the back hall Anne Truesdale, in hiding, could glimpse the minister’s hat through the side lights of the hall door, and a snatch now and then of the lady’s feather, and she stood with hand involuntarily on her heart, waiting, not daring to come forth till “that huzzy” as she thought of Athalie, had gone up stairs. But Athalie, one foot on the lower step, had turned back to look at her irate father, perfectly aware that he was disturbed by the sight of something out of the window, and herself caught a glimpse of the minister returning. Ah! So that was why she was being sent upstairs! A good looking young man and she bundled away! This was no part of Miss Athalie’s plan of life, so she whirled about on the lowest step and waited also.

Then the fine old knocker reverberated through the long silent house, Patterson Greeves retreated hastily in panic to his library and Anne Truesdale, chained to duty by an inexorable conscience, was forced to come forth and open the door.

The stage was set and the actors came on as the door was timidly opened by Anne.