The election came and went; the voice of the people had been heard, and
Maverick County had a new sheriff. In the house on the Quemado Road
Fectnor's name was heard no more.
On the Saturday night following the election Harboro came home and found a
letter waiting for him on the table in the hall. He found also a
disquieted Sylvia, who looked at him with brooding and a question in her
eyes.
He stopped where he stood and read the letter, and Sylvia watched with
parted lips--for she had recognized the handwriting on the envelope.
Harboro's brows lowered into a frown. "It's from your father," he said
finally, lifting his eyes from the letter and regarding Sylvia.
She tried to achieve an effect of only mild interest. "What can he have to
write to you about?" she asked.
"Poor fellow--it seems he's been ill. Sylvia, how long has it been since
you visited your father?"
"Does he want me to come to see him?"
"He hints at that pretty strongly. Yes, that's really the substance of his
letter."
"I've never been back since we were married."
She led the way into the dining-room. Her manner was not quite responsive.
She made Harboro feel that this was a matter which did not concern him.
"But isn't that--doesn't that seem rather neglectful?"
She drew a chair away from the table and sat down facing him. "Yes, it
does seem so. I think I've hinted that I wasn't happy in my old home life;
but I've never talked very much about it. I ought to tell you, I think,
that I want to forget all about it. I want the old relationship broken off
completely."
Harboro shook his head with decision. "That won't do," he declared.
"Believe me, you're making a mistake. You're a good deal younger than I,
Sylvia, and it's the way of the young to believe that for every old tie
broken a new one can be formed. At your age life seems to have an
abundance of everything. But you'll be dismayed, in a few years, to
discover that most things come to us but once, and that nearly all the
best things come to us in our youth."
He stood before her with an air of such quiet conviction, of such tranquil
certainty of the truth of what he said that she could not meet his glance.
She had placed an elbow on the table, and was supporting her face in her
hand. Her expression was strangely inscrutable to the man who looked down
at her.
"Your father must be getting old. If you shouldn't see him for a year or
so, you'd be fearfully grieved to note the evidences of failure: a slight
stoop, perhaps; a slower gait; a more troubled look in his eyes. I want to
help you to see this thing clearly. And some day you'll get word that he
is dead--and then you'll remember, too late, how you might have carried
little joys to him, how you might have been a better daughter...."
She sprang up, shaking the tears from her eyes. "I'll go," she said. She
startled Harboro by that note of despair in her voice. "When does he wish
me to come?"
"He says he is ill and alone. I think he would be glad if I could persuade
you to go this evening. Why not this evening?"
Unfortunately, Harboro concealed a part of the truth in this. Her father
had quite definitely asked to have her come this evening. But Harboro
wished her to feel that she was acting voluntarily, that she was choosing
for herself, both as to the deed and as to the time of its doing.
And Sylvia felt a wave of relief at the assurance that her father had not
set a definite time. Oh, surely the letter was just what it purported to
be--a cry of loneliness and an honest desire to see her. And Sylvia really
loved her father. There was that in her nature which made it impossible
for her to judge him.
"I could go with you," ventured Harboro, "though he doesn't say anything
about my coming. I've felt we must both go soon. Of course, I need not
wait for an invitation."
But Sylvia opposed this. "If he's ill," she said, "I think I ought to go
alone this time." She added to herself: "I don't want him ever to go. I
must make him believe that enough has been done if I go myself. I must
convince him that my father doesn't care to have him come."
Nevertheless, she was quite resigned to the arrangement that had been made
for her. She helped Antonia make the final preparations for supper, and
she set off down the road quite cheerfully after they arose from the
table. Harboro watched her with a new depth of tenderness. This sweet
submission, the quick recognition of a filial duty once it was pointed out
to her--here were qualities which were of the essence of that childlike
beauty which is the highest charm in women.
And Sylvia felt a strange eagerness of body and mind as she went on her
way. She had put all thought of the house under the mesquite-tree out of
mind, as far as possible. Becoming a closed book to her, the place and
certain things which had been dear to her had become indistinct in her
memory. Now that she was about to reopen the book various little familiar
things came back to her and filled her mind with eagerness. The tiny
canary in its cage--it would remember her. It would wish to take a bath,
to win her praise. There had been a few potted plants, too; and there
would be the familiar pictures--even the furniture she had known from
childhood would have eloquent messages for her.
This was the frame of mind she was in as she opened her father's gate, and
paused for an instant to recall the fact that here she had stood when
Harboro appeared before her for the first time. It was near sundown now,
just as it had been then; and--yes, the goatherd was there away out on the
trail, driving his flock home.
She turned toward the house; she opened the door eagerly. Her eyes were
beaming with happiness.
But she was chilled a little by the sight of her father. Something Harboro
had said about her father changing came back to her. He _had_
changed--just in the little while that had elapsed since her marriage. But
the realization of what that change was hurt her cruelly. He looked mean
and base as he had never looked before. The old amiable submission to
adversities had given place to an expression of petulance, of resentment,
of cunning, of cowardice. Or was it that Sylvia was looking at him with
new eyes?
He sat just inside the door, by a window. He was in a rocking-chair, and
his hands lay heavily against the back of it. He had a blanket about him,
as if he were cold. He looked at her with a strange lack of responsiveness
when she entered the room.
"I got your message," she said affectionately. "I am glad you let me know
you weren't feeling very well." She touched his cheeks with her hands and
kissed him. "You _are_ cold," she added, as if she were answering the
question that had occurred to her at sight of the blanket.
She sat down near him, waiting for him to speak. He would have a great
many things to say to her, she thought. But he regarded her almost
stolidly.
"Your marriage seems to have changed you," he said finally.
"For the better, I hope!"
"Well, that's according to the way you look at it. Cutting your old father
cold isn't for the better, as far as I can see."
She did not resent the ungenerous use of that phrase, "old father," though
she could not help remembering that he was still under fifty, and that he
looked young for his years. It was just one of his mannerisms in
speaking.
"I didn't do that, you know," she said. "Being married seems a wonderful
adventure. There is so much that is strange for you to get used to. But I
didn't forget you. You've seen Antonia--occasionally...?"
The man moved his head so that it lay on one side against the chair-back.
"I thought you'd throw that up to me," he complained.
"Father!" she remonstrated. She was deeply wounded. It had not been her
father's way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and
blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had
softened his faults to one who loved him.
"Well, never mind," he said, in a less bitter tone. And she waited, hoping
he would think of friendlier words to speak, now that his resentment had
been voiced.
But he seemed ill at ease in her presence now. She might have been a
stranger to him. She looked about her with a certain fond expression which
speedily faded. Somehow the old things reminded her only of unhappiness.
They were meaner than she had supposed them to be. Their influence over
her was gone.
She brought her gaze back to her father. He had closed his eyes as if he
were weary; yet she discerned in the lines of his face a hard fixity which
troubled her, alarmed her. Though his eyes were closed he did not present
a reposeful aspect. There was something really sinister about that alert
face with its closed eyes--as there is about a house with its blinds drawn
to hide evil enterprises.
So she sat for interminable minutes, and it seemed to Sylvia that she was
not surprised when she heard the sound of tapping at the back door.
She was not surprised, yet a feeling of engulfing horror came over her at
the sound.
Her father opened his eyes now; and it seemed really that he had been
resting. "The boy from the drug-store," he said. "They were to send me
some medicine."
He seemed to be gathering his energies to get up and admit the boy from
the drug-store, but Sylvia sprang to her feet and placed a restraining
hand on his shoulder. "Let me go," she said.
There was an expression of pity and concern for her father in her eyes
when she got to the door and laid her hand on the latch. She was too
absent-minded to observe at first that the bolt had been moved into its
place, and that the door was locked. Her hand had become strange to the
mechanism before her, and she was a little awkward in getting the bolt out
of the way. But the expression of pity and concern was still in her eyes
when she finally pulled the door toward her.
And then she seemed to have known all the time that it was Fectnor who
stood there.