As Eleanor came in, radiant, expectant, she gave a quick glance round and exclaimed:
“Why, papa, where’s George?”
To “papa” George had up to this time been simply what one man is to another—simply a specimen of the male sex. In this case, not a specimen likely to appeal strongly to the female sex, according to Clearwater’s notion of female likes and dislikes in males. But Eleanor’s look and tone put a sudden very different complexion on the matter. Clearwater abruptly realized that his daughter—this lovely, delicate creature of fine manners, speech and raiment—was in love with the lanky, baggily-dressed fellow, half crank, half knave and altogether detestable.
This discovery, thus all in an instant made real to the father, instead of angering him, threw him into a panic. And out of panic, with its chaos of fermenting emotions, any emotion is as likely to emerge as any other. No one, in a panic, can predict whether he will emerge furious and implacable or trembling and abject. The reason for the panic was his adoration of his daughter. Rarely is there any greater intimacy between father and daughter than friendly acquaintance. But almost always there is a tenacious and worshipful admiration—which, naturally, forbids the frankness of intimacy because each fears that the delusion of the other would be impaired, if not destroyed, should the truth of human weakness come out. The daughter adores the father as the superior type of the superior sex; the father adores the daughter as the embodiment of the female sex’s two awe-inspiring charms, beauty and purity. Clearwater thought his daughter the most beautiful woman in the world, and an angel for purity—certainly, such purity could have no place in the mud-geyser of the world as he knew it. And he was now in terror lest she, idealist, ignorant of the realities, should not understand his attitude toward Helm. No doubt the fellow had talked his theories to her—and they were just the sort of stuff that would appeal to idealism and worldly-ignorance.
“Helm?” said Clearwater, almost as nervous as George had been with his squeaking collar and his rustling handkerchief. “Helm? Oh—he’s gone.”
“But I told him to send for me as soon as you and he had finished.”
“We—that is, he——. Now, Eleanor, you must trust to my judgment about men.”
Eleanor had an expression different from any he had seen before—in her face, in any one’s face. “Father,” she said in a voice that made him quail, though it was neither loud nor in any other obtrusive way emotional, “what did you say to him?”
“He was insulting,” said Clearwater. “He insulted me. His presence was an insult. His ideas are an insult to us both. Eleanor, he is one of those men who go up and down the country denouncing me and men of my sort—all the leading men of the country as robbers, and rousing the passions of the poor and the ignorant against us.”
“You mean he’s a Democrat and you are a Republican,” said Eleanor angrily. “But what do I care for that? I can’t fall in love with a man because he’s a Republican, papa.”