As Theodosia sat with her father at supper on the evening after the banker’s visit she spoke of her grandfather’s worry, opening the subject with Horace in abstracted earnestness. The house was disturbed since her grandfather’s illness and she wanted relief.
“I wish you’d stop in to see Grandfather tonight,” she said. “He’s sick and he seems to have some matter to trouble his mind. I think you’d better talk with him a little. He’s worried.”
“Tell him I’ll take him on a trip next summer to the Virginia Ocean. A ship glides down the water on silken satin sails. Tell him to think about that and he’ll drop off right away. Tell him to think of silken satin sails. The silken sad uncertain. Tell him not to think about the silken sad uncertain, but tell him to think of silken satin sails. Nothing is uncertain. All is certain. I’m right.”
“I’m worried myself,” Theodosia said after a little. “Grandfather is real sick. He needs advice maybe. He’s lost heart. He’s got some trouble on his mind.”
“All is lost save honor and there’s damn little of that left, hardly a copper cent’s worth. Tell him to set his mind upon the silken satin sails of certainty. Pour me out another cup of coffee, Dosia, and pass me the jam, Siver. It is jam, isn’t it? Jam is the staff of life and there’s damn little of it left. Damn the jam. Tonight I have to practise again for the play. I take the part of the wicked villain because of my deep stentorian voice. It’s for the benefit of the Sabbath School, and you should go and assist a cause if not to see your sire saw the air. I am your sire, ain’t I? Theodosia sired by Horace, he by Anthony the grand old war horse, he out of Theodosia Montford by Luke Bell. I have to practise tonight for the play. It’s for the benefit of some charity, I forget what, some measure promoted by the combined Sabbath-school interests of the entire town. It’s a big thing. Which of these renderens do you like best? You see the beautiful young lady is in a hazardous position from poverty and what-not....”
“What did my mother die of?” Theodosia asked after the matter of the renderings had been settled.
“Of a meningitis. I was not here at the time. In Lester, I was, attenden court, I recall. I hurried home as soon as I learned of it and asked what was the matter. They said a meningitis. How old are you, Dosia?”
“I’m twenty.”
“To think it! Twenty! Then it’s been seven years, eight, how many? Since your mother died? I recollect I heard them say, ‘The poor motherless orphan, twelve years old.’ Or did they say thirteen? I don’t know why I never married again. Eight years a widower, I’ve been, and not altogether unpresentable to the sex, I’ve heard it said.”
Theodosia wept softly behind her downcast eyes when she turned her thought to her mother. She remembered her as a large broken woman lying on her couch all day, sometimes playing sonatas on the piano half the night. She had given Theodosia the bedroom above the parlor the spring before she died. She was remembered standing at the doorway of the room, ill, directing the houseman to change the furniture this way and that, trying several arrangements.