_Her father—hers! And some woman!_
It hurt Phœbe cruelly. And the pain was a double one. For she suffered
on her own account, imagining a nebulous figure intrude itself between
her and the father she loved with such a feeling of absolute possession;
and she suffered for her mother. A strange woman in that mother’s
place!—in that dear New York nest, at the dainty, round table in the
cosy dining-room, in Mother’s corner of the davenport before the open
fire of the little drawing-room! The pictures that Manila’s foreboding
called up succeeded one another upon her mind’s eye as if it were the
screen of a moving-picture theatre.
That was it! She understood all that Manila’s suggestion might mean
because she knew step-mothers so well! Yes, she could even remember
certain ones in the movies, though not clearly. One fact she was sure
of: _All_ step-mothers were cruel!
Miserable as she was, she did not think of seeking her father, of
telling him what she feared, and how hurt she was. She felt angry toward
him; she resented the way he was acting! Why should he think of another
wife? And Mother away out there alone!
Phœbe went up to her room. Facing this new, threatening trouble, she
wanted seclusion. But not seclusion to weep. Her eyes were dry, and her
head was up. This was a thing that called for action—action! She must
_do_ something! She must! And what?
_She_ knew! Standing in the middle of the room, talking to herself under
her breath, suddenly it came to her. She would thwart any plan of her
father’s to marry again! Did not people always thwart other people’s
plans in the moving-pictures? Well, then, _she_ would thwart.
From that hour forward she began to watch her father, secretly,
jealously. And she discovered things about him that made her uneasy. Why
did he always have that far-away look in his eyes? Why did he keep his
lips shut so tight, with that knotting in the jaws that told her how
hard his teeth were set together? Why did he walk the dull red carpet of
Grandma’s sitting-room so often and so nervously? She had seen “movie”
heroes act like that. _Were all these signs that Daddy was in love?_
She made up her mind to hunt Manila, and ask her just how _her_ father
had acted before he married that awful step-mother.
Meanwhile, seeing these things which at least conveyed worry, she came
to forget herself in concern over her father. He was unhappy. Yet not
about Mother, for it was clear that he did not care for Mother. Then of
course he was suffering about someone else. She must try to distract his
thoughts to herself. She would redouble her tenderness toward him. She
would spend more time with him, kiss him oftener.
During the days that immediately followed, there came into her face and
voice and manner a sweet concern toward him. She took to little
attentions, such as finding his hat for him when he left the house, or
hanging it up when he came in; she lighted his cigarettes; she searched
for bits of lint, or small lengths of thread, on his coat. In other
words, young and slim-legged as she was,—a baby still in most ways—she
yet was assuming toward her father the rôle of little mother: she was
yearning over him. Oh, her Daddy! Her dear, dear Daddy!
After a time, her worry about him lessened somewhat. Few women came to
the house, and these were mostly elderly. And her father went out
scarcely at all—never in the evenings. If he and she walked together, he
often met women whom he knew, and bowed to them, smiling. If he seemed
inclined to stop for a chat, Phœbe was quick to urge him on—first of all
because she would not let herself be cordial to anyone in the town, and,
second, because any woman might be _the_ woman.
But her father never cared to linger when she pulled a little at his
arm. Hopefully she had to admit that he did not seem to like any
particular person.
Then one day real fear came to her—with a definite object for her
jealousy. By chance she and her father stopped at the drug-store down
the street—the drug-store to which she loved to hop and skip, the while
she nonchalantly bounced the rubber ball. This day when she called for
her ice-cream soda, the pretty young woman came forward as usual to wait
on her. The pretty young woman seemed to know Phœbe’s father well—very
well indeed—almost too well! She smiled across the counter at him: she
said, “How are you?” familiarly: she even called him “Jim”.
Phœbe ate her ice-cream soda with a troubled heart. Her father did not
eat anything. He talked with the pretty young woman. And the latter
urged more ice-cream upon Phœbe when the tall glass was half empty. That
aroused Phœbe’s suspicions. She declined a second helping. She
understood the purpose behind a second helping! “She wants to get in
with me,” Phœbe thought. “That’s because she likes Daddy.”
She left some of her soda in order to get him out of the store and away.
And she came to hate the drug-store young woman. Once at the table she
made fun of her—of her teeth. Her father said nothing, even seemed not
to hear. Grandma said “Darling!” reprovingly. But Phœbe cared nothing
about the reproof. There was something at stake—something terribly
important. She determined never to go near that drug-store again.
This was more than mere thwarting; already the budding woman was
plotting against a rival!
Next, she made a practice, when her father went down town, to go with
him as far as that drug-store and see him well past it! And when she had
kissed him good-bye at some corner, she returned with no glance toward
that counter which had always yielded such generous sodas and sundaes.
One day Phœbe got a fright. The drug-store young woman ran out to them,
to intercept them. Doctor Blair, she said, wanted to speak to Phœbe’s
father on the drug-store telephone. Phœbe was forced to accompany her
father into the place. But she went warily, and she declined to have a
soda. She came away with fear. And when she was home once more she wrote
her father a note.
“_Dear Daddy_,” it ran, “_I don’t like the girl at the drug-store. You
know what I mean. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. Her grammar is
bad. She says don’t instead of doesn’t, like Sophie. Darling, darling
Daddy._”
She did not give him the note. It was fortunate that she did not. For
the very next day, as she came homeward after seeing her father safe
beyond that dangerous corner, here came the object of her hate. The girl
was pushing before her a white perambulator. In the carriage was a big
rosy baby.
Phœbe would have passed girl and baby without a look. But the former
halted her. “Oh, Phœbe, you’ve never seen my little son,” she said.
Phœbe halted, wide of eyes and mouth. Son? That meant marriage—a
husband!
“My mother-in-law takes care of him,” explained the drug-store girl.
(But of course she was a girl no longer. She was a grown woman—if she
was married and had a baby.)
“He’s nice,” said Phœbe; “—like you.”
After that she often went with her father to have ice-cream sodas at the
drug-store. And always, in his hearing, she asked after the baby and
after the baby’s father, and she rather prided herself on having carried
out this particular case of thwarting very well indeed.
But with the young drug-store woman out of the way, she still had no
peace of mind. For now there rose up in her day-dreams the vision of a
wholly imaginary step-mother. The visionary figure was no longer
nebulous. And it was forbidding. Friends of her own age, school-life,
even the sympathetic companionship of a woman she could have trusted,
would have driven the vision from her thoughts. But in that adult
household, where all of her little confidences were given to no one, her
morbidity grew until the figure she had imagined came to seem to be
alive.
It met her at quick, dim turns in the big lower hall, or on the dark
stair-landing. It lurked in her clothes-closet, usurping the place of
the Other Thing, which now disappeared. Worst of all, she could imagine
the figure in her father’s room!
Curiously enough, it bore no likeness to any of the screen step-mothers
Phœbe had seen. This imaginary step-mother was tall, bony,
heavy-shouldered and long-armed, with sullen eyes and graying brown hair
combed straight back to show a wrinkled brow. What the rest of the face
was like, Phœbe never imagined. It was always the brow and the eyes that
caught her fleet glance as she hurried by.
That her father would scarcely choose such a woman to be his second
wife, somehow never occurred to Phœbe. Had not Botts, poor
liquor-soddened, but kindly, soul, acquired Mrs. Botts when
unquestionably he did not want her? Such things happened to widowers and
divorced men. They were matrimonially helpless. And the vision that
Phœbe’s fear called up was of all things formidable, and overbearing,
yet silent—with the silence that means power.
Phœbe trembled when she thought of her, and at those certain dim places
where the figure met her she felt an awful prickling of the skin.
Her face grew gaunt. Her nose seemed pinched. Her cheeks lost some of
their color. So that Uncle Bob talked about a tonic.
But Phœbe did not want a tonic. “Mother doesn’t believe in medicine for
children,” she declared. “She’d like it better if I didn’t take any.
Wouldn’t she, Daddy?”
Her father looked at her keenly. Then he tucked her under his arm. “I
want a talk with my baby,” he declared. They went into Grandma’s room
together. And no one followed them. Evidently her father had something
very particular to say.
He had. For when he was seated, he drew her to him, and looked up into
her face—anxiously! “I’ve got something important to tell you,” he said.
“About Mother?” she asked eagerly.
“N-n-ot exactly.”
As he looked away, plainly embarrassed, a great fear came to her. What
Manila had said was coming true—and he was about to confess it! A
step-mother!
She longed then to kneel beside him, to beg him to promise her that he
would never marry, to tell him she could not bear it. But she held back.
“No, it’s just that I have to take quite a trip,” her father went on.
“West?” she cried. She turned his face. Her eyes were shining.
“To South America—Peru,” he answered.
“Oh.” She backed a little, trying to adjust herself to the news. Once
she had seen him go on such trips with little or no concern. Now the
thought of his leaving hurt keenly.
“I sha’n’t be gone long,” he said comfortingly. And kissed her.
“Daddy,—while you’re gone—may I go West? To Mother?”
“I’m afraid—not—just right away.”
“But if you go—to tell Mother good-bye.” She was pressing the point. For
one thing she wanted to know before he went the truth from him about the
divorce.
“I—I sha’n’t be going.”
Her eyes stared into his. “Daddy! You and Mother _are_ divorced!”
“Phœbe!” he gasped, plainly astounded.
“_Did_ you steal me away from Mother?” she demanded.
“Has someone told you that?”
She nodded.
He shook his head. “Oh, my little girl!” he said sadly.
“Daddy! It isn’t true!” Now she knelt, looking up at him, imploring.
“All your life, Phœbe,” he began, “I’ve kept one thought in front of me
always: your happiness. I want you to believe that——”
“I do!”
“Whatever I’ve done—even if it doesn’t turn out right—remember that I
never considered myself, only my daughter. I brought you here, where you
miss your Mother, when I knew your little heart would ache. Oh,
Phœbe,”—he bent toward her lovingly—“you used to notice, didn’t you,
that in New York, when Daddy left the apartment, he kissed only you
good-bye?”
“Yes.”
“And for a long time you haven’t seen Daddy and Mother go anywhere
together.”
“Daddy,” she whispered, with a quick look beyond him, lest she be
overheard, “don’t you like my mother?”
“Ah, Phœbe!” He shook his head again, sighing. “Ah, if I could only
spare my little girl!”
“Daddy!” she cried, her arms suddenly about him. “Dear, dear Daddy!”
“Phœbe, you must try to understand,” he counseled; “and take it all just
like the little woman you are. Then you and I will decide what’s
best—nobody else. It’s your happiness I’ll think of—just you!”
She felt now that she was to hear the truth. She was ready to confide in
him all her fears of a step-mother—even her jealousy; ready to say if,
above all things, he wanted her happiness, then he could give her that
by putting no new wife in her mother’s place.
But her father got no further with what he plainly intended to say to
her. And Phœbe was not able to open her young heart to him. For their
conference was broken in upon by Sophie, who entered, smiling, telegram
in hand.
“Boy wants a’ answer, Mr. Jim,” she announced.
Phœbe’s father took the yellow envelope with a trace of irritation at
being interrupted.
“Oh, Daddy, is it from Mother?” Phœbe questioned.
He did not answer. The telegram was open in his hand. He was reading it,
and his hand was shaking.
“Wait!” he bade, as Sophie turned to go.
“Is it?—Oh, Daddy!” pleaded Phœbe. She saw with alarm that his face had
gone suddenly white.
He rose, crushing the wire and thrusting it into a pocket “Where is my
mother?” he asked the girl.
“In the dinin’-room.”
In obedience to his gesture, Sophie went out. He turned to Phœbe. “I
must see Uncle Bob,” he said quietly. Then, leaning to lift her to her
feet, “And you go into the garden for a little while, till Daddy wants
you.” He kissed her.
Phœbe asked no other question. She was used to mystery, to being
bewildered. But she knew something had happened—something out of the
ordinary. It was no business telegram that could drive the color from
her father’s face and set his fingers to trembling. As she walked over
the lawn she reflected that, after all, everyday life very closely
resembled the “movies”.