Athalie Part 6

"No. So don't you worry, Sis.... And, say! I'm not going back to school."

"What?"

"What's the use? I can't go to college. Anyway what's the good of algebra and physics and chemistry and history and all that junk? I guess I'll go into business."

"What business?"

"I don't know. I've been working around the garage. I can get a job there if I want it."

"Did you ask papa?"

"What's the use? He'll let me do what I please. I guess I'll start in to-morrow."

His father did not interfere when his only son came slouching up to inform him of his decision.

After Jack had gone away toward the village and his new business, his father remained seated on the shabby veranda, his head sunken on his soiled shirtfront, his wasted hands clasped over his stomach.

For a little while, perhaps, he remembered his earlier ambitions for the boy's career. Maybe they caused him pain. But if there was pain it faded gradually into the lethargy which had settled over him since his wife's death.

A grey veil seemed to have descended between him and the sun,--there was greyness everywhere, and dimness, and uncertainty--in his mind, in his eyesight--and sometimes the vagueness was in his speech. He had noticed that--for, sometimes the word he meant to use was not the word he uttered. It had occurred a number of times, making foolish what he had said.

And Ledlie had glanced at him sharply once or twice out of his sore and faded eyes when Greensleeve had used some word while thinking of another.

When he was not wandering around the house he sat on the veranda in a great splint-bottomed arm-chair--a little untidy figure, more or less caved in from chest to abdomen, which made his short thin legs hanging just above the floor seem stunted and withered.

To him, here, came his daughters in their soiled and rusty black dresses, just out of school, and always stopping on impulse of sympathy to salute him with, "h.e.l.lo, papa!" and with the touch of fresh, warm lips on his colourless cheek.

Sometimes they lingered to chatter around him, or bring out pie and cake to eat in his company. But very soon his gaze became remote, and the children understood that they were at liberty to go, which they did, dancing happily away into the outer sunshine, on pleasure bent--the matchless pleasures of the very young whose poverty has not as yet disturbed them.

As the summer pa.s.sed the sunlight grew greyer to Peter Greensleeve.

Also, more often, he mixed his words and made nonsense of what he said.

The pain in his chest and arms which for a year had caused him discomfort, bothered him at night, now. He said nothing about it.

That summer Doris had taken a course in stenography and typewriting, going every day to Brooklyn by train and returning before sunset.

When school began she asked to be allowed to continue. Catharine, too, desired to learn. And if their father understood very clearly what they wanted, it is uncertain. Anyway he offered no objections.

That winter he saw his son very seldom. Perhaps the boy was busy. Once or twice he came to ask his father for money, but there was none to give him,--very little for anybody--and Doris and Catharine required that.

Some little money was taken in at the Hotel Greensleeve; commercial men were rather numerous that winter: so were duck-hunters. Athalie often saw them stamping around in the bar, the lamplight glistening on their oil-skins and gun-barrels, and touching the silken plumage of dead ducks--great strings of them lying on the bar or on the floor.

Once when she came home from school earlier than usual, she went into the kitchen and found a hot peach turnover awaiting her, constructed for her by the slovenly cook, and kept hot by the still more slovenly maid-of-all-work--the only servants at the Hotel Greensleeve.

Sauntering back through the house, eating her turnover, she noticed Mr. Ledlie reading his newspaper in the office and her father apparently asleep on a chair before the stove.

There were half a dozen guests at the inn, duck-hunters from New York, but they were evidently still out with their bay-men.

Nibbling her pastry Athalie loitered along the hall and deposited her strapped books on a chair under the noisy wall-clock. Then, at hazard, she wandered into the bar. It was growing dusky; n.o.body had lighted the ceiling lamp.

At first she thought the room was empty, and had strolled over toward the stove to warm her snow-wet shoes, when all at once she became aware of a boy.

The boy was lying back on a leather chair, stockinged feet crossed, hands in his pocket, looking at her. He wore the leather shooting clothes of a duck-hunter; on the floor beside him lay his cap, oil-skins, hip-boots, and his gun. A red light from the stove fell across his dark, curly hair and painted one side of his face crimson.

Athalie, surprised, was not, however, in the least disturbed or embarra.s.sed. She looked calmly at the boy, at the woollen stockings on his feet.

"Did you manage to get dry?" she asked in a friendly voice.

Then he seemed to come to himself. He took his hands from his pockets and got up on his stockinged feet.

"Yes, I'm dry now."

"Did you have any luck?"

"I got fifteen--counting sh.e.l.l-drake, two redheads, a black duck, and some buffle-heads."

"Where were you shooting?"

"Off Silver Shoal."

"Who was your bay-man?"

"Bill Nostrand."

"Why did you stop shooting so early?"

"Fifteen is the local limit this year."

Athalie nodded and bit into her turnover, reflectively. When she looked up, something in the boy's eye interested her.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

He looked embarra.s.sed, then laughed: "Yes, I am."

"Wait; I'll get you a turnover," she said.

When she returned from the kitchen with his turnover he was standing.

Rather vaguely she comprehended this civility toward herself although n.o.body had ever before remained standing for her.

Not knowing exactly what to do or say she silently presented the pastry, then drew a chair up into the red firelight. And the boy seated himself.

"I suppose you came with those hunters from New York," she said.

"Yes. I came with my father and three of his friends."

"They are out still I suppose."