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.