There was something else which Phœbe did not understand. Walking,
mittened and warmly clad, over the snow-crusted half-acre of Grandma’s
garden, she gave herself up to conjecture. Or in the sitting-room, with
Grandma seated nearby, sewing, she puzzled her small head. And when she
drove with Uncle Bob into the country, through lanes of naked trees that
edged bare fields, she studied his big, good-natured face and wished
that she might open her heart and ask him all about it.
That something else which she did not understand was this: a strict
watch was being kept upon her—almost as if in fear!
Why? Did they, her father, and her uncles and grandmother, think that,
missing her mother, she might run away to New York? Or was it that they
guessed how terribly she longed for her mother, and made sure that she
should never be left alone? But—if they were sparing her loneliness, why
was she not sent to school every day, like other children whom she saw
clattering along the sidewalk that ran just outside the high hedge? Or
why were children not asked into the big Blair garden to play with her?
And why did Daddy, who for years had been so busy with his work that he
could seldom give her more than a very occasional afternoon, why was he
putting aside all work now in order to stay there with her—particularly
since Mother, ill and alone, assuredly needed him if she could not have
Phœbe?
There were other curious things. She was never permitted to go downtown
unless her father accompanied her. She was never allowed to drive alone
with Grandma. She might not go to Sunday school or church with Uncle
John. And at last she was able to see that a certain iron rule obtained
concerning her movements: she could not play in the garden unless Uncle
Bob or Daddy was home; and she could not leave Grandma’s to walk or
drive unless her father or an uncle was in the surrey.
It was all very puzzling.
When people called, Phœbe did not meet them. Sophie, suddenly grown
enthusiastic over some ordinary household matter, hurried her upstairs,
or down cellar, as the case might be; or took her egg-hunting to the
tall frame chicken-house standing in the back lot.
If the attic received them, Sophie kept a watch upon the garden from the
tiny attic window; and as soon as the visitors took their leave,
Sophie’s interest in the top of the house promptly melted, and Phœbe was
coaxed away from the fascinating boxes and barrels that filled the room,
and led down to the sitting-room and Grandma. If on the approach of
callers Sophie found pressing reasons for going down into the cellar,
and taking Phœbe along, the watch that was set on the attic window was
transferred to the ceiling of the cellar. For Sophie kept turning her
face up at it inquiringly, kept an ear cocked toward that corner of it
which was under the wide entrance hall. And when a dull thump announced
the shutting of the front door, Sophie invariably found herself ready
and eager to leave the cellar for other duties higher up.
“Why don’t I ever meet anybody?” Phœbe pondered.
Her mind dwelt on certain dark, dramatic possibilities. In New York, how
freely had she tasted of that—to her—most perfect of all joys—the
moving-pictures. She went to some temple of the silent play three or
four times every week—sometimes with her mother, but more often with her
mother’s black maid. Oh, the never lessening lure of the film dramas!
The grip of them! The beauty of their heroines! The masterful, handsome
heroes in them! The villains always foiled! The maidens consistently
saved! Oh, Dustin Farnum! Oh, lovely, dainty Marguerite Clark! Oh,
gun-handling, stern and adorable William S. Hart!
And now, her imagination trained, Phœbe, as she considered conditions as
she saw them, asked herself if, perhaps, Daddy and the others were not
in fear of enemies! of kidnappers! of Mexican bandits! And this new
hazard soon came to seem the logical, then the probable, then the true
thing.
From a cautious attitude, she changed to actual fear. She began each day
with a careful look from her windows, scanning the grounds, the hedges.
Once in the open, she looked for foot-prints on the walks leading up to
the house. She was always on the alert. And a new look came into the
gray-blue eyes—a look of anxious questioning.
It was bad enough in the daytime. But at night she suffered, and dreaded
the going-down of the sun. Toward evening she set herself one task: the
lowering of her curtains, but more particularly the curtains of the
sitting-room—against the peering in of faces! As twilight came, it
seemed to her that the big house gathered into itself more dwellers than
just the half-dozen of which she was one. They were up in the attic,
these strange visitors, or down in the cellar, or in the closet under
the stairs. In her own room at bedtime, having glanced under her
four-poster, she locked her clothes-closet against Something which she
felt was lurking therein. While before she fell asleep, or if she waked
in the still hours, she held her breath and listened—listened. Sometimes
there were snappings; sometimes softer sounds came to her, like the
creeping of stealthy feet. In the blackness, white shapes sprang up
before even her tight-closed eyes—sprang up, wavered, swelled, melted.
She covered her head. Never was one small hand left free, lest it be
taken by one unknown and clammy!
How she longed to find out about it all, to tell some one all her
terrors. Often at night she determined to go boldly to her father the
very next morning. Just as often the light of the new day withered her
resolution. “If only Mother were here,” she told herself. It was easy to
confide anything to Mother. But she shrank from opening her heart to her
father. What she wanted to know he knew, and could tell her if he wanted
her to know.
Then she thought of Sophie. Uncle Bob was not a remote possibility, but
Sophie was even more approachable. Phœbe broached her subject
diplomatically. “I don’t see many people here, do I?” she inquired.
It was so casual that Sophie had no inkling of what lay beneath the
innocent question. “You don’t lose much, neither,” was the grunted
rejoinder. (Sophie held local society in high disdain.)
“I knew lots of ladies and gentlemen in New York,” Phœbe went on.
“Because Mother has so many friends—beautiful ladies, that wear
beautiful clothes. And gentlemen who are rich, and have cars, and bring
me candy and things.”
Sophie was keenly interested. They were in Phœbe’s own room on this
particular occasion (Phœbe feeling instinctively that she could get
better results on her own territory), and Sophie was so eager to hear
about New York, and the apartment, and the ladies, and the men, that she
sat down, and asked many questions, only stopping, now and then, to go
to the door to look out.
And Phœbe, nothing loath, answered every question—and more. So that
Sophie was given a very fair and truthful account of life in the
metropolitan apartment—that is, of the life that Phœbe saw between her
early waking and her early bedtime.
At the end of this long talk, Sophie was summoned downstairs by
Grandma’s hand-bell, a round, squat affair, like a school-teacher’s
bell, which stood on a little table at the foot of the stairs. And a few
minutes later, Phœbe, who had trailed down after the maid, came upon her
in the library. Sophie was standing close to Grandma, and talking very
low; and when Phœbe entered, the two moved apart, somewhat hastily, and
Sophie smiled a conscious smile, and looked a little guilty, and began
to talk more loudly than was necessary about her duties.
In that moment, Phœbe realized herself cut off from the one being in
that big house of grown-ups with whom she had been making ready to share
her little confidences. For now it was plain that Sophie could not be
trusted.
One thought did not come to Phœbe, namely, that the strict watch kept
upon her had anything to do with her mother.
If the thought had occurred, whom could she have asked? From the very
first night of her arrival Phœbe had discovered that Grandma—dear,
gentle Grandma, with her mild old eyes and her trembling head—did not
care to talk to Phœbe about Mother. Neither did Uncle Bob, who was
always so ready to chatter boyishly about all other matters that seemed
of interest to his niece. As for Uncle John, she never considered
mentioning Mother to him. For one day she had left Mother’s photograph
on the mantelpiece in the sitting-room, and coming for it, she had seen
Uncle John with the picture in his hand. When he discovered Phœbe beside
him, he stared down at her, and the look in his eyes was not good to
see. His lips were drawn back from his shut teeth, too,—as if he were
enraged at the photograph. He almost flung it down, and went out with no
word.
Phœbe understood. Mother had never liked these three who belonged to
Daddy. Naturally, these three did not like Mother. Even for a girl of
fourteen that was simple enough.
And Daddy—Phœbe understood that if she mentioned her mother to her
father, the smile on his face, the light in his eyes, went instantly.
And understanding that, she had come to speak seldom to him of the one
whose absence was a constant hurt, an ache, a burden.
And now Sophie might not be taken into her confidence. For Sophie, voice
lowered and tousled head bobbing close to Grandma’s, had been telling
over all that Phœbe had told to her. Yes, telling it all over—and what
else? For Grandma’s face, as Phœbe caught sight of it, was pale and
stern, and her eyes were wide open and angry behind the round panes of
her gold-rimmed spectacles.
Thereafter Phœbe drew more and more into herself. And what she had to
confide, she confided to the big old doll that had come with her from
New York, packed between two middy-blouses in the suit-case. The big old
doll slept with her, too, in the wide bed. And for added comfort, Phœbe
put the photograph under her pillow of nights. When the light was out
and the covers over her head, she drew the photograph forth and laid her
cheek upon it. Cool it was, and smooth, like the open palm of her
mother’s hand. And held close, thus, it gave forth a faint perfume—a
perfume which Mother had used—which brought Mother near in the dark of
the big room—which brought the tears, too, the wearisome sobbing that at
last, in turn, brought sleep; and sleep brought dreams—dear dreams of
that loved, perfumed presence that now, at times, seemed scarcely more
than the figure in a dream.
Phœbe had left New York just after the Christmas holidays—holidays
packed with joys as they had never before been packed. For apart from
the usual tree with the usual gifts, there had been other things—a
horseback ride on a horse that belonged to one of Mother’s men friends;
a score of drives in a wonderful limousine that was all blue without and
a soft sand-color within, and ran as if shod with velvet, though with
the strength, Mother said, of eighty horses! And there was a symphony
concert, too, in Carnegie Hall, to which whole flocks of children came,
and to which Phœbe wore her very best of all white dresses; and there
was an afternoon at the Opera, where Mother had wonderful seats in a box
which Phœbe understood cost a fortune, and Phœbe saw a great curtain
lift to display castles, and forests, soldiers, knights and princesses.
And, of course, there was that supremest of joys—the “movies.” In the
holidays the “movies” were an everyday delight.
How she longed for them!
However, in the big house she spoke of them only to Sophie, and then in
undertones. But in this matter, as in her separation from her mother,
she was not to any degree submissive. Her silence indicated that she
was; but she was merely biding her time.
It was in January that Phœbe came to the big house. And the something
which she did not understand—that being watched, and passed from hand to
hand, and kept apart from other children, and out of school—obtained
through all the rest of the first month of the new year, and through
February and into March.
Then, one day, a sudden change! A quick, bewildering, inexplicable,
happy change!
First of all, to herald it, Uncle John telephoned a Miss Simpson, who
conducted a school for young ladies, and held a long and animated
conversation with that lady—a conversation in which “my niece” and
“Phœbe” figured frequently. Next, Daddy appeared with an unclouded face,
and sat down at the cottage-organ in Grandma’s sitting-room and played a
little, and sang a song or two, Uncle Bob joining in. Next, wonder of
wonders, Phœbe was sent to the nearest drug-store two blocks away, to
get something for Grandma—and she was allowed to go by herself!
What had happened?
She did not find out.
This important news, however, she gleaned from her father: Mother was
now in New York no longer; she had gone West.
“Isn’t Mother any better, Daddy?” she asked anxiously.
“We hope she will be,” he answered.
“Did you have a letter?” Phœbe wanted to know.
“Yes, I got the news in a letter.”
A wave of scarlet swept up Phœbe’s young throat and bathed the earnest
little face. News of Mother—from Mother! It choked her, it was all so
wonderful. For had not Mother, for a long time, failed to send any word
to her and Daddy?
“Oh, a letter?” breathed Phœbe, and there was sweet entreaty in the
young eyes.
Her father began to thrust his hands into his pockets, as if searching,
just as he had done on occasions before. Finding no letter, he slapped
each pocket with the flat of a hand. He had colored, too. And his
forehead was puckered, and he blinked.
“Can’t you find it?” breathed Phœbe.
“Well!—Thought I had it. Mm! Sorry. Must’ve laid it down somewhere.”
He did not find the letter. But Phœbe was comforted by knowing it had
come. Mother was West, in a city built high above the sea. There she
would improve—speedily. So the best thing to do was to wait patiently.
And while she waited—go to school!
The school was Miss Simpson’s. It was not a school, really, as Phœbe
discovered the first day. It was a house—a house very like Grandma’s.
Of course there were differences. At Miss Simpson’s, for instance, the
cellar held a great iron monster-thing with which Phœbe felt on friendly
terms. This monster was the boiler, which sent steam-heat to all the
various rooms.
There was no boiler in Grandma’s cellar, which was broad and high,
brick-floored, and walled with cobble-stones. It contained, of course, a
coal-bin. And there were other bins that Miss Simpson’s cellar could not
boast—bins for potatoes, and turnips. And Miss Simpson had no shelves
full of pickles and preserves, and shining cans of lard, no beams from
which hung corn and onions and peppers, and hams in their sacking, and
smoked bacon in a wrapping of paraffine-paper. She had no pumpkins piled
yellowly in one corner, with green cabbages close beside. And where were
her pork barrels ranged in a row, topped by tubs holding the eggs that
had been “put down,” and the winter supply of butter?
But Miss Simpson’s cellar was much nicer than Grandma’s. For it was just
like a New York basement!
Elsewhere, too, Phœbe felt the school to be infinitely more attractive
than the Blair home. It was new, it was (Miss Simpson herself said it)
modern, and it was built all of brick. Genevieve Finnegan, a girl of
Phœbe’s own age, declared that Miss Simpson’s house was stylish; while a
teacher, touching on architecture one day, proudly catalogued it as
“very English.”
Phœbe did not understand in just what way the school was “very English,”
but she did come to realize, through Genevieve, that whatever very
English might be, it was something much to be desired for any house. As
for Grandma’s residence, well, Genevieve was politely scornful.
Phœbe readily understood why.
The Blair house had gone up when Uncle John was a baby, and was typical,
in its architecture, of the best suburban houses of those remote times.
It had towers—two of them—round and shingled, with points that held
lightning-rods. It had fancy cornices, too, and trimmings that were
considered marvels of beauty when they were new. Now Genevieve referred
to them as “ginger bread.” And it had green blinds on its many
windows—blinds that had rattled in all the storms of the passing years,
but were still intact, testifying to the wood and workmanship of that
period of the long-ago.
But the house was “old-fashioned.” There was no concealing it—everybody
in town knew it. Once, in the days when the Blair house was new, it had
stood all to itself, in the center of what was known as Blair Farm. The
farm had been cut up into lots later on. Then the big, lonely house had,
as it were, drawn the town lovingly to it, and had taken its place as a
sort of landmark, rearing its unfashionable turrets among very
up-to-date structures. Genevieve and her mamma, and her papa, together
with five servants, were dwellers in one of these structures. Genevieve
referred to her home—carelessly—as a “chalet.”
There was nothing to be said in criticism of Miss Simpson’s—even though
it was not a chalet. Genevieve declared, and other girls upheld her,
that Miss Simpson’s was so unusually splendid in the way of interior
woods, marbled entrance hall, frescoed ceilings and the like that the
man who had put it up had “gone broke.” Genevieve said it boastfully.
How much further, indeed, could any man go who was putting up a house
than to go broke?
Phœbe was convinced.
She was quick to admit to herself that, interiorly at least, there was
much to be desired in the way of improvements at Grandma’s. If the big
Blair house was not comparable to Miss Simpson’s, it was also far from
coming up to the standard of apartments in New York. For example,
consider the wall-paper on Grandma’s ceilings, and the colored glass in
certain of Grandma’s doors. Crayon reproductions of family photographs
were not at all “the thing,” Phœbe knew and Genevieve averred. Neither
were wax flowers modish—and Grandma had so many frames of them! And then
there was that little item of lace curtains. Phœbe did not have to be
told that nobody who really knew would, in these later and wiser times,
go out and buy lace curtains.
Phœbe did not see the upper floors of Miss Simpson’s; but the street
floor was proof of what might be expected at the top of the graceful
stairway. How beautiful the great drawing-room was, with its satin-wood
walls, carved and bracketed for silk-covered shades. How deep the great
rugs were in all the big downstairs rooms! And there were velvet couches
on either side of the library fire, and here, before a glowing hearth,
Miss Simpson gathered her girls of an afternoon for the function of tea.
The maid who served the tea wore a cap. And on no account did she ever
lift her eyes to smile, as Sophie smiled. What was most important, this
maid referred to Miss Simpson as “Madam.” And Phœbe knew this was most
proper and desirable. For Sally had always called Mother “Madam.” If
Phœbe had not known about all this, Genevieve would have been the one to
teach her, Genevieve being a stickler for all that was proper
and—fashionable.
Phœbe came to look upon the tea-function at Miss Simpson’s as a rare
privilege. This was because only a certain very small group of girls in
town might share the opportunity of attending that daily function. For
Miss Simpson’s School, as Uncle John had said, and as had been borne out
architecturally and otherwise—Miss Simpson’s School was most exclusive.
Freed from long weeks of loneliness, Phœbe welcomed the School with
delight. She felt it rightful that she should be there, too. For was not
her Uncle John the most fashionable rector in town? Was not her Uncle
Bob a Judge?—that he was Judge of the new Court for Juveniles
subtracting only a little from the honors that were his. And was not her
father, her dear, gallant, handsome father, a mining-engineer? And were
not mining-engineers in the same class, socially, as doctors, and
lawyers, and bankers, and mayors of the city? Genevieve said so.
So Phœbe, welcomed to the School by Miss Simpson, received into the
exclusive tea circle before that library fire, and made one of a little
“set” of pupils out of well-to-do families—Phœbe began to feel at home
in this small, new city, to fret less for the dear mother who was taking
such a long time to get well, and to put behind her all thoughts of the
something which she had not understood. In fact, Phœbe was coming to be
almost patient, almost happy and contented once more.
And then, one morning, with the same suddenness that had found her free
of restraint and bewildering conjectures, there came another change.
How it came she scarcely knew. Why it came, she had no idea. It was
there—all about her—like the air; no, more like an obscuring smoke. She
could not see what was wrong. But she could feel. Phœbe curtsied to Miss
Simpson and that august principal did not smile. And there were other
signs—signs that struck a chill to Phœbe’s tender heart.
Phœbe did not ask any questions. New Year’s Day had ended a wonderful
life. This new life was baffling; full of cruel blows. “Submit,”
counseled a still, small voice; “submit, and wait for Mother.”
The hot tears stung the gray-blue eyes. Phœbe blinked them away, opened
her Physical Geography, and smiled bravely at a picture of a chimpanzee
climbing a cocoanut tree.
Phœbe smiled—but she awaited a new blow.