“Why, Father!” I said aloud. He nodded encouragingly, but did not speak.
“Father?” I repeated, “Father, is this you?” He laughed a little, softly, putting up one hand and tossing his hair off from his forehead—an old way of his.
“What are you here for?” I asked again. “Did Mother send for you, too?”
When I had said this, I felt confused and troubled; for though I did not remember that he was dead—I mean I did not put the thought in any such form to myself, or use that word or any of its synonyms—yet I remembered that he had been absent from our family circle for a good while, and that if Mother had sent for him because I had a brain fever, it would have been for some reason not according to her habit.
“It is strange,” I said. “It isn’t like her. I don’t understand the thing at all.”
Now, as I continued to look at the corner of the room where my father was sitting, I saw that he had risen from the cushioned window-seat, and taken a step or two towards me. He stopped, however, and stood quite still, and looked at me most lovingly and longingly; and then it was that he held out his arms to me.
“Oh,” cried I, “I wish I could come! But you don’t know how sick I am. I have not walked a step for over two weeks.”
He did not speak even yet, but still held out his arms with that look of unutterably restful love. I felt the elemental tie between parent and child draw me. It seemed to me as if I had reached the foundation of all human feeling; as if I had gone down—how shall I say it?—below the depths of all other love. I had always known I loved him, but not like that. I was greatly moved.
“But you don’t understand me,” I repeated with some agitation. “I can’t walk.” I thought it very strange that he did not, in consideration of my feebleness, come to me.
Then for the first time he spoke.