To say that the Doctor was everywhere in Harvey is inexact. He was everywhere except on Quality Hill in Elm 115Street. There, from the big, bulging house with its towers and minarets and bow windows and lean-tos, ells and additions, the Doctor was barred. There was chaos, and the spirit that breathed on the face of the waters was the Harvey representative of the Maryland Satterthwaites, with her crimping pins bristling like miniature gun barrels, and with the look of command upon her face, giving orders in a firm, cool voice and then executing the orders herself before any one else could turn around. She could call the spirits from the vasty deep of the front hall or the back porch and they came, or she knew the reason why. With an imperial wave of her hand she sent her daughter off to some social wilderness of monkeys with all the female Satterthwaites and Van Dorns and Mrs. Senators and Miss Governors and Misses Congressmen, and with the offices of Mrs. John Dexter, Mrs. Herdicker, the ladies’ hatter, and two Senegambian slaveys, Mrs. Nesbit brought order out of what at one o’clock seemed without form and void.
It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, though the sun still was high enough in the heavens to throw cloud shadows upon the hills across the valley when the Doctor stabled his mare and came edging into the house from the barn. He could hear the clamor of many voices; for the Maryland Satterthwaites had come home from the afternoon’s festivity. He slipped into his office-study, and as it was stuffy there he opened the side door that let out upon the veranda. He sat alone behind the vines, not wishing to be a part of the milling in the rooms. His heart was heavy. He blinked and sighed and looked across the valley, and crooned his old-fashioned tune while he tried to remember all of the life of the little girl who had come out of the mystery of birth into his life when Elm Street was a pair of furrows on a barren, wind-swept prairie hill; tried to remember how she had romped in girlhood under the wide sunshine in the prairie grass, how her little playhouse had sat where the new dining-room now stood, how her dolls used to litter the narrow porch that grew into the winding, serpentine veranda that belted the house, how she read his books, how she went about with him on his daily rounds, and how she had suddenly bloomed into a womanhood that 116made him feel shy and abashed in her presence. He wondered where it was upon the way that he had lost clasp of her hand: where did it drop from him? How did the little fingers that he used to hold so tightly, slip into another’s hand? Her life’s great decision had been made without consulting him; when did he lose her confidence? She had gone her way an independent soul–flown like a bird from the cage, he thought, and was going a way that he felt would be a way of pain, and probably sorrow, yet he could not stop her. All the experience of his life was worthless to her. All that he knew of men, all that he feared of her lover, were as chaff in the scales for her.
The Doctor, the boss, the friend, the man, withdrew from his consciousness as he sat behind the vines and he became the impersonal, universal father, wondering at the mystery of life. As he sat musing, he heard a step behind him, and saw his daughter coming across the porch to greet him. “Father,” she said, “I have just this half hour that’s to be ours. I’ve planned for it all day. Mother has promised to keep every one away.”
The father’s jaw began to tremble and his cherubic face to wrinkle in an emotional pucker. He put the girl’s arm about his neck, and rubbed her hand upon his cheek. Then the father said softly:
“I never felt poor before until this minute.” The girl looked inquiringly at him and was about to protest. He stopped her: “Money wouldn’t do you much good–not all the money in the world.”
“Well, father, I don’t want money: we don’t need it,” said the girl. “Why, we have a beautiful home and Tom is making–”
“It’s not that, my dear–not that.” He played with her hand a moment longer. “I feel that I ought to give you something better than money; my–my–well, my view of life–what they call philosophy of life. It’s the accumulation of fifty years of living.” He fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. “Let me smoke, and maybe I can talk.”
“Laura–girl–” He puffed bashfully in a pause, and began again: “There’s a lot of Indiana–real common Eendiany,” he mocked, “about your father, and I just some 117way can’t talk under pressure.” He caressed the girl’s hand and pulled at his pipe as one giving birth to a system of philosophy. Yet he was dumb as he sat before the warm glow of the passing torch of life which was shining from his daughter’s face. Finally he burst forth, piping impatience at his own embarrassment.
“I tell you, daughter, it’s just naturally hell to be pore.” The girl saw his twitching mouth and the impotence of his swimming eyes; but before she could protest he checked her.
“Pore! Pore!” he repeated hopelessly. “Why, if we had a million, I would still be just common, ornery, doless pore folks–tongue-tied and helpless, and I couldn’t give you nothin–nothin!” he cried, “but just rubbish! Yet there are so many things I’d like to give you, Laura–so many, many things!” he repeated. “God Almighty’s put a terrible hog-tight inheritance tax on experience, girl!” He smiled a crooked, tearful little smile–looked up into her eyes in dog-like wistfulness as he continued: “I’d like to give you some of mine–some of the wisdom I’ve got one way and another–but, Lord, Lord,” he wailed, “I can’t. The divine inheritance tax bars me.” He patted her with one hand, holding his smoldering pipe in the other. Then he shrilled out in the impotence of his pain: “I just must give you this, Laura: Whatever comes and whatever goes–and lots of sad things will come and lots of sad things will go, too, for that matter–always remember this: Happiness is from the heart out–not from the world in! Do you understand, child–do you?”