But night brought back something of the sweet grief of the morning. Her father held her for an hour after supper, seated in a big chair by the sitting-room hearth. Her cheek against his breast, she longed to talk to him of her mother—of the plan that had occurred to her that morning; yet she dared not. He was not like Uncle Bob, plump and smiling and full of invitations to confidences: he was so quiet, and thoughtful, so sombre-eyed, even mysterious. She felt his mysteriousness most when she looked at his tight-closed lips, his set jaws. And she asked herself, Was he grieving as she was grieving, and was it about Mother?
She sat up in bed that night and read “St. Elmo”, thrilling over the portions that were full of expressions of love. For her heart was hungry for affection. When had she lacked protestations of it, with Mother near? And Sally had never failed to tell her that she was dear. Her father was not demonstrative—never had been. And now all these others! With the single exception of Uncle Bob did they ever say kind and tender things?
When her light was out, she lay thinking of “St. Elmo” and of moving-pictures in which children, or young and beautiful heroines, had been held dear beyond words. She repeated lines from the screen that seemed very sweet to her—one in particular: “Across the world he went, seeking her.”
She felt her life a failure—her fate unspeakably sad. She wept, her head in her arms. All sorts of pictures flashed themselves upon her brain. And she repeated certain Biblical lines and passages that she had heard of late, both at home and at Miss Simpson’s. Somehow just to say them over exalted her strangely. One was, “Whither thou goest I will go”; another, “He that watcheth over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.”
She slept at last, the tears on her cheeks. The pipe-organ had done it all—that and the slowly advancing vested choir. It had even made her forget, temporarily, her childish fear of the dark. For that particular Sunday night was the first night that she had ever gone to sleep without looking under the bed and into the clothes-closet.
The next morning, waking late, she wanted to stay where she was, with the shades drawn, and read “St. Elmo”, and think of sad things, and say beautiful lines, and enjoy more hours of sweet unhappiness. But voices called to her from below—Sophie’s, her father’s, Uncle Bob’s. She kissed her mother’s picture over and over while putting on her shoes and her dress, and combing her hair. When she went down to breakfast she was curiously unable to eat.
Doubtless one of the household’s grown-ups, or, perhaps, all of them, saw that something was wrong, for that morning, promptly on the stroke of nine, Phœbe had her first lesson at home. It was Uncle John who acted as tutor. He had her read to him, choosing “The Vicar of Wakefield”. As she went along, haltingly, he asked her the meaning of words, and had her shut the book on her forefinger while she spelled them. He gave her several sums to do, also, using the arithmetic that Genevieve Finnegan had brought home from Miss Simpson’s; and they spent an hour over the globe, revolving it, and hunting countries and oceans and mountain-chains. Phœbe knew far more about the world, and what it looked like, here and there, and its peoples, and animals, than she dared to admit to Uncle John. She knew because she had seen so many “travel pictures”.
That afternoon she spent in the vegetable garden with Sophie. The garden was at a far corner of the Blair grounds, well away from any house. And Phœbe saw that here was an opportunity to ask Sophie a few questions—the questions she shrank from asking anyone else.
“I know why Miss Simpson didn’t want me at school any more,” she said, by way of a beginning.
Sophie was pulling radishes. “Do y’?” she inquired. “Wasn’t it—er—because your father wasn’t payin’ her enough money?”