Now came the beginning of what was like a new era of life for Phœbe—an
era in which, more keenly than ever before, she was to understand,
and—to suffer. Up to now she had not by any means been indifferent to
the things that touched her own existence. And how she had loved and
hated, joyed and sorrowed, with her enthralling favorites of the screen!
But the time was come when she was to awaken to depths and heights of
feeling—depths and heights all the more strikingly contrasted because
her imagination was film-trained; she was to regard herself as the
central figure in a heart drama that seemed countless reels long.
And about her, who—with her mother away—who was to take counsel with
her, to sympathize, even to guess one small part of all that which
surged through her young heart?
It was the great pipe-organ in Uncle John’s church that had most to do
with her sudden emotional awakening, with her realization that something
really momentous had come into her life. Weeks before she had started to
school at Miss Simpson’s, the church organ had moved her. In New York,
at one of the great temples dedicated to moving-pictures, she had often
listened to the boom of just such a glorious instrument—listened with
calm interest and pleasure, her hand clasped lovingly in her mother’s.
And the church organ had not failed to recall to her the theatre, and
those sweet hours that, alas, she had never fully appreciated.
But the first Sunday following Genevieve Finnegan’s visit! The
pipe-organ stirred her cruelly. It spoke her own tragedy—it told the
story of her broken, bankrupt home.
She had gone to church meaning to sit up proudly in the Blair pew, to
keep her chin high, and her lips smiling; to stand and sit and kneel
with the greatest poise, so that those who cared to look would
see!—particularly those who might be sitting directly behind her. But
when the organ broke forth, filling the high, dim spaces, there swept
over her a realization of the sadness and the finality of the ending of
that New York life which had been so sweetly happy. And the young head
drooped, the lashes glistened, the lips trembled pitifully.
Standing, she kept her look lowered. Kneeling, she prayed—but not “Oh,
dear God” (as Uncle John had taught her); instinctively her silent
prayer was addressed to her mother. “Oh, darling, darling!” she
implored, her forehead against the backs of her small gloved hands. With
inward sight she beheld the loved features, the yearned for arms, the
comforting breast.
Then—remorse. Behind the adored figure, what was that other? The Christ?
Yes. She had seen Him once. It was in a war picture. A soldier was
dying, alone, in No Man’s Land. And suddenly, there by the side of the
dying had appeared the One whose look of love and compassion had brought
a smile to the face of the prostrate boy. She must not pray to her
mother. She must pray to Him. “Oh, dear Jesus,” she plead, “give me back
my mother! Oh, please give me my mother!”
Grandma, shifting upon her old knees, came nearer to Phœbe by a hand’s
breadth. Grandma’s dress, of wool, and black, with pipings of grosgrain,
had been made for her two years before. Faintly it smelled of
moth-balls.
Phœbe shrank away.
That morning Uncle John’s sermon failed to bore her as usual. She had
her thoughts. Only at first were they miserably unhappy. As Uncle John
progressed, she fell to thinking of a plan: it had to do with her return
to New York. The dear apartment was still there, even if Mother was
West. Perhaps—undoubtedly!—Sally was still on hand, black and bland,
devoted as ever, and full of her accustomed gaiety. Why should Phœbe
stay in a town that treated her unkindly and gossiped about her mother?
Why not go back to New York, the dear home, the fond servant and the
enchanting “movies”?
But how could it be managed? She determined to ask her father.
“I will go! I will go! I will!” she promised herself. “I won’t stay
here! I hate it! I hate it!”
She went out of the church with a face so pale that the blue veins stood
forth on her white skin like tracings of ink. She remembered how screen
actresses bore themselves when they were suffering—how wistful was their
expression, how far-away was the look in their beautiful eyes. Phœbe
bore herself like them, walking slowly, with uplifted countenance. And
her pain was real.
In a way, Uncle Bob and her father spoiled the beauty of her keen pain.
Arriving home, she found them on the sunny side of the house, tinkering
with fish-lines. Her father had a can of worms, and he was adding to
them by turning back the winter banking of sod from the clapboards. They
welcomed her joyously, and coaxed little shrieks from her by holding out
the worm-can. She changed her dress, and spent the long afternoon at her
father’s heels. The paleness left her face. She consented to carry the
worms, and a shoe-box filled with sandwiches.
But night brought back something of the sweet grief of the morning. Her
father held her for an hour after supper, seated in a big chair by the
sitting-room hearth. Her cheek against his breast, she longed to talk to
him of her mother—of the plan that had occurred to her that morning; yet
she dared not. He was not like Uncle Bob, plump and smiling and full of
invitations to confidences: he was so quiet, and thoughtful, so
sombre-eyed, even mysterious. She felt his mysteriousness most when she
looked at his tight-closed lips, his set jaws. And she asked herself,
Was he grieving as she was grieving, and was it about Mother?
She sat up in bed that night and read “St. Elmo”, thrilling over the
portions that were full of expressions of love. For her heart was hungry
for affection. When had she lacked protestations of it, with Mother
near? And Sally had never failed to tell her that she was dear. Her
father was not demonstrative—never had been. And now all these others!
With the single exception of Uncle Bob did they ever say kind and tender
things?
When her light was out, she lay thinking of “St. Elmo” and of
moving-pictures in which children, or young and beautiful heroines, had
been held dear beyond words. She repeated lines from the screen that
seemed very sweet to her—one in particular: “_Across the world he went,
seeking her._”
She felt her life a failure—her fate unspeakably sad. She wept, her head
in her arms. All sorts of pictures flashed themselves upon her brain.
And she repeated certain Biblical lines and passages that she had heard
of late, both at home and at Miss Simpson’s. Somehow just to say them
over exalted her strangely. One was, “Whither thou goest I will go”;
another, “He that watcheth over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.”
She slept at last, the tears on her cheeks. The pipe-organ had done it
all—that and the slowly advancing vested choir. It had even made her
forget, temporarily, her childish fear of the dark. For that particular
Sunday night was the first night that she had ever gone to sleep without
looking under the bed and into the clothes-closet.
The next morning, waking late, she wanted to stay where she was, with
the shades drawn, and read “St. Elmo”, and think of sad things, and say
beautiful lines, and enjoy more hours of sweet unhappiness. But voices
called to her from below—Sophie’s, her father’s, Uncle Bob’s. She kissed
her mother’s picture over and over while putting on her shoes and her
dress, and combing her hair. When she went down to breakfast she was
curiously unable to eat.
Doubtless one of the household’s grown-ups, or, perhaps, all of them,
saw that something was wrong, for that morning, promptly on the stroke
of nine, Phœbe had her first lesson at home. It was Uncle John who acted
as tutor. He had her read to him, choosing “The Vicar of Wakefield”. As
she went along, haltingly, he asked her the meaning of words, and had
her shut the book on her forefinger while she spelled them. He gave her
several sums to do, also, using the arithmetic that Genevieve Finnegan
had brought home from Miss Simpson’s; and they spent an hour over the
globe, revolving it, and hunting countries and oceans and
mountain-chains. Phœbe knew far more about the world, and what it looked
like, here and there, and its peoples, and animals, than she dared to
admit to Uncle John. She knew because she had seen so many “travel
pictures”.
That afternoon she spent in the vegetable garden with Sophie. The garden
was at a far corner of the Blair grounds, well away from any house. And
Phœbe saw that here was an opportunity to ask Sophie a few questions—the
questions she shrank from asking anyone else.
“I know why Miss Simpson didn’t want me at school any more,” she said,
by way of a beginning.
Sophie was pulling radishes. “Do y’?” she inquired. “Wasn’t
it—er—because your father wasn’t payin’ her enough money?”
“You know it wasn’t,” declared Phœbe, bluntly. “You know she wanted me
out because my mother is West, getting a divorce from my father.”
“My land!” marveled Sophie, sitting back and staring up. “How’d you ever
guess?—Phœbe, you been listenin’!”
“Genevieve Finnegan,” said Phœbe, laconically.
“Oh, that little imp!”
“_You_ knew all the time?”
Sophie went back to her garnering. “Oh, yes,” she admitted proudly. “I
showed Miss Royal Highness Simpson in. And your Uncle John, he tried to
bluff her—told her your mamma wasn’t well, and so forth. But she didn’t
bluff.”
“She knew,” put in Phœbe, “because there was a piece in a New York
paper.”
“Right y’ are! Well, she didn’t want talk in her school, she said;
didn’t want _her_ little girls, the angels, to even know there was such
a thing as divorce in the whole world!”
“It’s in the movies,” reminded Phœbe. “The girls all know.”
“Course they do! And when she had somethin’ to say to the Judge, you
betcha _he_ told her what’s what!”
“Good for Uncle Bob!”
“He says to her, ‘Miss Simpson, Phœbe will not remain at your precious
school’. And I showed her out the front door,”—this with a flourish of
her arms, both hands coming to rest on her hips while she gave a toss of
the tousled head.
Phœbe touched Sophie on the shoulder. “Is—is divorce why my mother sent
me here?” she asked.
“Phœbe, if I tell y’ the truth——”
“But, then, maybe you don’t know either,” added Phœbe, adroitly, since
she had learned that, with Sophie, the best method was to belittle
Sophie’s knowledge, and thus strike at her pride.
“Maybe I don’t know!” cried Sophie, scornfully. “I guess I knew all
about it before you ever showed up. Your paw brought you, young lady,
without your mamma knowin’ that he planned to. Now!”
“Sophie!” It was Phœbe’s turn to sit back. She stared, aghast.
“Yes, ma’am. Your paw just naturally stole you.”
“But Mother’s telegram! It told me to come.”
“Yes? Well, your paw sent you that telegram.”
Phœbe did not speak for a minute. While things began to clear for
her—the swift packing, the sudden departure from New York, the telegrams
that had come, one after another, the fact that she had had no letters,
nor been permitted to read those written her father. Stolen! By her
father, from her mother!
“Why?” demanded Phœbe, suddenly; then, as Sophie glanced up, “Why did
Daddy steal me?”
“Didn’t want you out there in a divorce town, I guess.”
“Oh. And why was I watched so, and never taken anywhere for a long
time?”
“If I tell y’, you’ll never, never tell?”
“Never, never, _never_—cross my heart to die!”
“The folks here was afraid your mamma’d steal you back.”
Phœbe was appalled. She got up, and stood over Sophie, wavering a
little, too shocked to speak.
“Phœbe!” comforted Sophie, reaching out her earth-stained hands. “Dear
kiddie!”
“They—they don’t want me to be with Mother?—again?”
Quickly Sophie averted her eyes. “I wouldn’t say that,” she declared.
“Why, no! Y’ see, it’s this way: two of ’em here thinks the same about
it, dearie. Your grammaw and the Judge thinks a little girl is always
best off when she’s with her mother. I heard the Judge say so, and his
maw agreed. But your Uncle John——”
Phœbe drew in a long, trembling breath. Then, “I hate him!” she
declared. “Because he hates my mother.”
“You spoke the truth that time,” continued Sophie. “He married your
mamma to Mister Jim, but he didn’t like her—never. Oh, he’s _all_ on
your paw’s side.”
“You mean that Daddy——?”
“Your daddy don’t say what he thinks,” reminded Sophie. “But I guess
your mamma done somethin’ that made him pretty mad.”
Phœbe longed to know what, to ask about it. Yet she shrank from having
Sophie tell her anything that might be in the slightest degree against
her mother.
“I don’t know what it was,” Sophie went on. “But it got so bad between
’em that there just had to be a split-up. Course your Uncle John’s dead
against divorces, bein’ a minister. The ’Piscopal Church is like that.
And I kinda believe your father thinks the same way. But your Uncle Bob
and your grammaw say that if a married couple ain’t happy they oughta
sep’rate, and be done with it, and not quarrel around where there’s a
child.”
Phœbe knelt, and put a hand under Sophie’s chin. “Tell me:” she begged;
“When Daddy and Mother are divorced, what do you think is going to
happen to me?”
“We-e-ell,”—Sophie considered the question, pursing her mouth and
blinking.
“Oh, now!” challenged Phœbe, impatiently. “What do they all say?”
“What do they know about your mamma’s plans?” Sophie retorted. “Maybe
she’ll marry again.”
Phœbe threw back her head and laughed. “Marry again!” she cried. “My
mother? She’d _never_ do that! Never! She’ll come back. And I’ll live
with her. I won’t stay here. Not one minute! Not——”
“Sh! Sh!” warned Sophie. “Don’t talk so loud. And just think over this:
If your Maw _don’t_ marry again, maybe Mister Jim won’t let you go back
to her.”
“Why not?”
Sophie shook her head. “I don’t understand it myself,” she admitted.
“Only I know that your Uncle Bob thinks there oughta be what he calls a
reg’lar new home, with a husband in it to take care of your mamma.”
“Daddy would take care of Mother and me,” declared Phœbe, proudly. “I
know Daddy.”
“But y’ see, after a divorce, your Daddy might want to be dead sure
everything was right for you, and happy, and—and safe.”
“Safe!” repeated Phœbe, disdainful. “You don’t know New York. What could
happen to me or Mother in our dear little apartment? Why, the whole
thing—marrying again, and not being safe in New York—it’s just
crazy!—Oh, Sophie, how long will it be before Mother is divorced? Oh, I
hope it’s soon! Then I’ll have her! I’ll have her! Oh, _Sophie_!”
She gave Sophie a hug, and they promised each other not to breathe one
word of their conversation.
“Don’t you see how much it’s like a movie?” Phœbe wanted to know. “Daddy
steals me, then Mother tries to steal me back, then Nevada—why, it’s
_exactly_ like a movie. And a _good_ movie!”
Sophie thought so too.