“If I died, they’d both be sorry,” she told herself, “and maybe then they wouldn’t be divorced.”
Next, overwhelmingly, came a longing to see her mother. “I’ll go,” she determined.
She sat up. And in the dark of the closet, with the door shut, and as noiselessly as possible, she packed the suit-case.
CHAPTER VIII
The suit-case packed, Phœbe sat down upon it—to think. She had known even as she took down and folded her dresses that she could not really run away. But the packing had served as a physical relief to her mental anguish. Also, she had hoped in her secret heart that she might be discovered at her packing!—discovered and comforted; more: the ready suit-case, the threatened departure by night, alone, might bring her father and her uncles to believe that the wisest thing they could do would be to send her to her mother. Oh, how she longed for her mother!
The tears came then, and she wept, her head bowed upon her knees. Divorce! Never again the dear apartment with mother and Daddy—the beloved home-nest, with its ivory woodwork and rose hangings, its perfumed warmth, and beauty and cosiness. Her mother and father were to be forever apart—forever!
Sorrow broke over her like a wave. “Forever!” she wept. “Forever!” There was something almost delicious about the very force and keenness of her grief. She was going through a crisis such as she had seen pictured upon the screen. And the very word Forever augmented her suffering and that sense of curious gratification in the undergoing of such agony.
So again and again she went back over the cause of her weeping. Divorce! They were to be separated during all the coming years, those two whom she loved so dearly. Never again might she have them together, with her, one at each hand. Always now there would be the pain of having Mother gone if she, Phœbe, was with Daddy; of having Daddy gone if she was with Mother. Always it would be like that—like now.
And then her resentment rose against those two loved ones. “Oh, what’s the matter with them! What’s the matter with them!” she burst out. That father who seemed so gallant and fine—how could her mother bear to be away from him? And Mother, beautiful, sweet, altogether adorable—what more did her father ask? They were through with each other! Oh, why? And then, melting once more, Oh, how could she bear it! Oh, Mother! Mother!—Oh, dear Daddy!
Next, of a sudden, a more terrible thought: Would the divorce of her parents mean that she might not be allowed to see her mother again?