“I’ve always known that I was going to lose my father suddenly!” she broke out. “I don’t know why—he has tragedy in his very face. If you could only see it—his dear, dear face! I love him so, I can’t tell you. I wake up in the night, sometimes, and the thought comes to me: ‘Papa has to die! Some day I’ll have to part from him.’ And then the most dreadful terror seizes me—I don’t know how I can bear it! Papa, oh, Papa!”
She began to sob again; in his sympathy he came and stood by her. “Please, please,” he murmured.
“I’ve no right to inflict this upon you,” she exclaimed.
“Don’t think of that. If I could only help you—if I could suggest anything.”
“It’s one of those cases,” she said, “where nothing can be done. Whatever it is, I’ll have to endure it, somehow. If he’ll only live until I get there, so that I can see him, speak with him again, hear his voice. I’ve never really been able to tell him how much I love him. All that he’s done for me—you see, I’ve been his favorite child, we’ve been like two playmates. I’ve tended him when he was ill, I’ve read to him—everything. So he always thinks about me. He wants me to be happy, and so he hides his troubles from me. He hides them from everybody; and you know how it is—that makes people lean on him and take advantage of him. He’s a kind of family drudge—everybody comes to him, his brothers and sisters, his nephews and nieces—anybody that needs help or advice or money. He’s so generous—too generous, and so he gets into difficulties. I’ve seen his light burning till two or three o’clock in the morning, when he was working over his accounts; and then he looks pale and haggard, and still he smiles and won’t let me know. But I always know, because he stays close to me, like a child. And now there’s been an overflow, and maybe this year’s whole crop is ruined, and that’s a terrible misfortune, and he’s been worrying about it——”
Suddenly she stopped. This was Douglas van Tuiver she was talking to—telling him her family affairs! She had a sudden thrill of fear about it—she ought not to have let him know that her father was in difficulties as to money!
It was only for a moment, however; she could not think very long of anything but her father. What floods of memories came sweeping over her! “He was always so proud of me,” she continued. “When I came out, two years ago—dear old Daddy, he wore his wedding-suit, that he’d had put away in a cedar chest in the attic. He stood beside mother, under the lilies and the bright lights, and both of them would look at me and beam.”
She had risen to her feet, and was pacing the room, talking brokenly, but eagerly, as if it were important to make her listener realize how very lovable her father was. “Just think!” she said. “He had an old purse in his hand—one that my mother had given him on their wedding journey. In it was an orange-blossom from their bridal-bouquet, and some rose leaves that she had bitten off and let fall at his feet, once when he was courting her. He had treasured them for twenty years; and now some one brushed against his hand and knocked the dead leaves to the floor, and they broke and went all to dust, and he got down on his knees and searched for them with tears in his eyes. I remember how mother scolded him for making a spectacle of himself, and he got up and went off by himself, to grieve because his bridal-flowers had turned to dust.”
Van Tuiver had listened in silence. When he spoke, his voice held a strange note. “Never mind,” he said, “you will make it up to him. You will give him flowers from your bridal wreath.”
Again Sylvia found herself uncomfortable. But they were interrupted by the telephone—the connections with her home had been established. She flew to the booth downstairs, but she could hear nothing but a buzzing noise, and so there were some torturing minutes while her questions were relayed—she talking with “Washington,” and “Washington” with “Atlanta,” and so on. What she finally got was this: No one was ill or dead, but she must come at once—nothing must delay her. They could not explain until she arrived. And of course that availed her simply nothing. She was convinced that they were hiding the truth until she was home.