“He’s sittin’ on a log out beyan’ de garden, cryin’ fo’ to break his heart!”
Sylvia fled to the spot, and fell upon her knees by him and flung her arms about him, crying, “Papa, Papa!” He was still sobbing; she had never seen him exhibit such emotion in her life before, and she was terrified. “Papa, what is it?”
She felt him shudder and control himself. “Nothing, Sylvia. I can’t tell you.”
“Papa,” she whispered, “do you object to Frank Shirley as much as that?”
“No, my dear—it isn’t that. It’s that the whole thing has knocked me off my feet. My little girl is going away from me—and I didn’t know she was grown up yet. It made me feel so old!”
He looked at her, trying to smile and feeling a little ashamed of his tears. She looked into the dear face, and it seemed withered and wrinkled all of a sudden. She realized with a pang how much he really had aged. He was working so hard—she would see him at his accounts late at night, when she was leaving for a ball, and would feel ashamed for her joys that he had to pay for. “Oh, Papa, Papa!” she cried, “I ought to marry a rich man!”
“My child,” he exclaimed, “don’t let me hear you say a thing like that!”
Poor, poor Major! He said it and he meant it; he was, I think, the most naïve of all the members of his family. He was a “Southern gentleman,” not a business man; he hated money with his whole soul—hated it, even while he spent it and enjoyed what it brought him. He was like a chip of wood caught in a powerful current; swept through rapids and over cataracts, to his own boundless bewilderment and dismay.
§ 24
“He is without any pride of family.” That had been the verdict upon the Major pronounced by his mother, who had been a grand lady in her own day. She would turn to her eldest daughter and say, “Look after him, Nannie! Make him keep his shoes shined!” And so now, towards the end of their conference, Sylvia and her father found themselves looking at each other and saying, “What will Aunt Nannie say?” Sylvia was laughing, but all the same she had not the nerve to face her aunt, and ’phoned the Bishop to ask him to break the news.