PHŒBE
BY
ELEANOR GATES
AUTHOR OF
THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, APRON STRINGS, THE PRAIRIE GIRL, ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1919, BY
ELEANOR GATES
_All rights reserved_
_Printed in U. S. A._
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THAT
LITTLE GIRL WHOSE STORY
IT IS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHŒBE
CHAPTER I
“_Dear little daughter_,” ran the telegram, “_when you get this,
fill a suit-case with a few things that you’ll need most, and leave
with Daddy for Grandma’s.—Mother._”
The train was already moving. Phœbe, with all the solemnity of her
fourteen years, puckered her brows over the slip of yellow paper, winked
her long lashes at it reflectively, and pursed a troubled mouth. How
strange that dear Mother should leave the New York apartment in
mid-morning, with the usual gay kiss that meant short separation; and
then in that same hour should send this message—this command—which was
to start Phœbe away from the great city, where all of her short life had
been spent, toward that smaller city where lived the Grandmother she had
never seen, and the two Uncles—one a Judge and the other a
clergyman—who, though her father’s own brothers, were yet strangers to
their only niece!
Somehow, without having to be told, Phœbe had always understood that
Mother did not like Grandma, or the Uncles, judicial and ecclesiastic.
Then why was Mother, without a real farewell, and without motherly
preparation in the matter of dress, and with no explanations, sending
Phœbe to those paternal relations?
It was all very strange! It was mysterious, like—yes, like stories Phœbe
had seen in moving-pictures.
Out of the gloom and clangor of the great station, the train was now
fast winding its way, past lights that burned, Phœbe thought, like those
in the big basement of the apartment house where she had lived so long.
Now the coach was leaving one pair of rails for a new pair—changing
direction with a sharp clicking of the wheels and a heavy swaying of the
huge car’s body. And now the line of coaches was straightening itself to
take, as Phœbe knew, that long plunge under the southward flowing
Hudson.
She let the telegram fall to her lap and closed her eyes, with a drawing
in of the breath. She was picturing all that lay above the roof of the
car and the larger domed roof of the tunnel—first there was the
river-bed, which the domed roof upheld; next, the wide, deep reach of
water which, in turn, held up the ferries and any other passing ships;
last of all, the sky, cloud-flecked and sun-lit, through which winged
the birds. What a load for that narrow, domed roof!
Her father had been busy with the luggage, directing the porter about
the disposal of the two suitcases while taking off his own overcoat and
hat. But as he glanced down at Phœbe, he misunderstood the lowering of
telegram and eyelids, and dropped quickly to a place beside her. His
hand closed over hers, lovingly, and with a pressure that showed
concern. “Phœbe?” he questioned tenderly.
She opened her eyes with a sudden reassuring smile. Though in the last
three or four years her father had been absent from home long months at
a time, so that during any year she might see him only seldom, and then
for brief afternoons only, her affection for him was deep, and scarcely
second to her love for her mother. Each visit of his was marked by gifts
as well as by a holiday outing—to the Park, the Zoo, or some
moving-picture theatre; so that gratitude and pleasure mingled with her
happiness at seeing him. Also, his visits had, for her, the novelty and
joy of the unexpected. He came from Somewhere—mysteriously; and went
again, into an Unknown that Phœbe made a part of her day-dreams.
And so her love for him was tinged with something of the romantic. She
was proud of him, and she thought him handsome. Her mother never
exclaimed over him, but other people did. “Was that your father I saw
you with yesterday?” they would ask; and when Phœbe said Yes, they would
add, “Oh, but _isn’t_ he good-looking!” All of which delighted Phœbe,
who long since had compared him with the heroes she had seen pictured on
the screen—which comparison was to the very great disadvantage of the
film favorites. Her father was to her so gallant a figure that she often
wondered at her mother’s indifference to him. But then mother herself
was so lovely!
Phœbe Blair was like her father. Her eyes were gray-blue, and set so far
apart on either side of her nose that the upper half of her face, at
first glance, had the appearance of being, if anything, a trifle too
wide—which made her firm little chin seem, correspondingly, a trifle too
peaked. Her hair was light brown, thick to massiness, but straight save
where it blew against the clear pink of her cheeks in slightly curling
tendrils. Of her features, it was her mouth that challenged her eyes in
beauty—a fine, sweet mouth that registered every mood of those grave and
womanly eyes. As for her height, it was a matter of the greatest pride
to her that she already reached to her father’s shoulder. But she was,
despite her height, still the little girl—sailor hat on bobbed hair,
serge jacket worn over blue linen dress, slim, brown-stockinged legs,
and laced brown shoes.
Her father was thirty-seven. It seemed an almost appalling age to his
small daughter. And yet he still had a boyish slenderness. He was tall,
and straight, with a carriage that was noticeably military—acquired at
the preparatory school to which his elder brothers had sent him. His
hair, brown and thick like his daughter’s, was just beginning to show a
sprinkling of gray at the temples. His eyes were Phœbe’s eyes—set wide
apart, given to straight looking, and quick, friendly smiles. He had
presented her with his straight nose, too, and his mouth. But his chin
was firmer than hers, a man’s chin, and the chin of a man who, once
having set forward on any course, does not turn back.
Phœbe thought him quite perfect. And she thought it wonderful that he
should be a mining-engineer. “It’s a clean business,” he had told her
once, when she was about ten years of age. “It takes a man into the big
out-doors.” She had treasured up what he had said—turned it over in her
mind again and again. And had come to feel that her father was entirely
different from the men whom she met in her home—a man set wholly apart.
His profession explained to her his long absences from New York, and the
fact that, in the last year or so, he had been compelled to make a club
his headquarters during the period of his short stays in the city. “This
place is so tiny,” Phœbe’s mother always said. “And all Daddy’s traps
are at the Club.” It had never occurred to Phœbe to doubt anything that
Mother told her. And did not her father fully corroborate this excuse of
Mother’s? Phœbe longed to have her father stay at home when he arrived
in town. But she never complained against his being away. Hers was a
patient, a trusting, a sturdy little soul.
With her smile of reassurance, Phœbe had leaned toward her father, to
speak confidingly. “You know, Daddy,” she began, “it seems so funny that
Mother had me go the way she did. Don’t you think so?—without saying why
she wanted me to leave, or—or anything? Did she say anything about it to
you?”
“Well, you see,” her father answered, “having you go this way spared
your dear little heart. No good-byes, or tears. But pretty soon
Grandma’s, with Uncle Bob, and Uncle John, and a big garden, and a
horse——”
“A horse!” marveled Phœbe.
“Oh, he’s an old horse, and he pulls the surrey. Because Uncle Bob won’t
have a motor car—he wants to walk to and from the Court House, and keep
down his weight, and——”
“Uncle Bob is fat?” Phœbe inquired.
“Well, stout. And Uncle John, being a clergyman, and a trifle
particular, doesn’t believe ministers should rush around in automobiles.
So the surrey is for Uncle John, but Grandma will let you drive for her
sometimes. And there are ducks and chickens to feed, and big beds of
flowers, and a tall, green hedge where the birds build their nests,
and——”
“And when will Mother come?” interposed Phœbe, with an intonation which
made plain her opinion that it would certainly take mother to make the
suburban picture complete.
“Phœbe,” said her father, speaking with a new earnestness, “Mother is
not very well, and she is planning to leave New York for a while, and go
where she can get better.”
“I know she isn’t very well,” agreed Phœbe. “She coughs too much.”
“Exactly. You know, Mother’s health hasn’t been good for quite a
while——”
“I know.”
“And she must have the change. I didn’t want to have you go, dear, to a
strange city, where your mother has no friends, and might be very ill.
So away you go to Grandma’s till everything is straightened out. And
you’ll—— Oh, look at that automobile!—there! It’s keeping up with the
train! My! My! but that’s considerable speeding!”
They talked of other things then,—of the homes past which they were
rushing, the towns through which they glided and grandly ignored, except
for a gingerly slowing down. Noon came, and with it a visit to the
dining-car. Then the afternoon dragged itself along. Toward the latter
half of it, Phœbe, worn by the excitement of the sudden departure, and
lulled by the motion of the train, curled up on the green plush of the
car seat and fell asleep, her short brown hair spread fanwise upon her
father’s shoulder.
The afternoon went; twilight came. Still the train rushed on, carrying
Phœbe northward toward that new home awaiting her. She slept a second
time, after a simple supper. Her journey was to end shortly before
midnight. For this reason her father judged it best that a berth should
not be made up for her, but that she should rest as she had in the
afternoon, her head on his breast.
She smiled as she slept, blissfully unaware that all at once her happy
life was changing; that she was being uprooted like some plant; that a
tragedy of which she was as yet mercifully ignorant had come forward
upon her, wave-like and overwhelming, to sweep her forever from her
course!