“I could go with you,” ventured Harboro, “though he doesn’t say anything about my coming. I’ve felt we must both go soon. Of course, I need not wait for an invitation.”
But Sylvia opposed this. “If he’s ill,” she said, “I think I ought to go alone this time.” She added to herself: “I don’t want him ever to go. I must make him believe that enough has been done if I go myself. I must convince him that my father doesn’t care to have him come.”
Nevertheless, she was quite resigned to the arrangement that had been made for her. She helped Antonia make the final preparations for supper, and she set off down the road quite cheerfully after they arose from the table. Harboro watched her with a new depth of tenderness. This sweet submission, the quick recognition of a filial duty once it was pointed out to her—here were qualities which were of the essence of that childlike beauty which is the highest charm in women.
And Sylvia felt a strange eagerness of body and mind as she went on her way. She had put all thought of the house under the mesquite-tree out of mind, as far as possible. Becoming a closed book to her, the place and certain things which had been dear to her had become indistinct in her memory. Now that she was about to reopen the book various little familiar things came back to her and filled her mind with eagerness. The tiny canary in its cage—it would remember her. It would wish to take a bath, to win her praise. There had been a few potted plants, too; and there would be the familiar pictures—even the furniture she had known from childhood would have eloquent messages for her.
This was the frame of mind she was in as she opened her father’s gate, and paused for an instant to recall the fact that here she had stood when Harboro appeared before her for the first time. It was near sundown now, just as it had been then; and—yes, the goatherd was there away out on the trail, driving his flock home.
She turned toward the house; she opened the door eagerly. Her eyes were beaming with happiness.
But she was chilled a little by the sight of her father. Something Harboro had said about her father changing came back to her. He had changed—just in the little while that had elapsed since her marriage. But the realization of what that change was hurt her cruelly. He looked mean and base as he had never looked before. The old amiable submission to adversities had given place to an expression of petulance, of resentment, of cunning, of cowardice. Or was it that Sylvia was looking at him with new eyes?
He sat just inside the door, by a window. He was in a rocking-chair, and his hands lay heavily against the back of it. He had a blanket about him, as if he were cold. He looked at her with a strange lack of responsiveness when she entered the room.
“I got your message,” she said affectionately. “I am glad you let me know you weren’t feeling very well.” She touched his cheeks with her hands and kissed him. “You are cold,” she added, as if she were answering the question that had occurred to her at sight of the blanket.
She sat down near him, waiting for him to speak. He would have a great many things to say to her, she thought. But he regarded her almost stolidly.