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PHOEBE

BY ELEANOR GATES

THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, APRON STRINGS, THE PRAIRIE GIRL, ETC.

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1919, BY ELEANOR GATES

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THAT LITTLE GIRL WHOSE STORY IT IS

PHOEBE

The train was already moving. Phoebe, with all the solemnity of her fourteen years, puckered her brows over the slip of yellow paper, winked her long lashes at it reflectively, and pursed a troubled mouth. How strange that dear Mother should leave the New York apartment in mid-morning, with the usual gay kiss that meant short separation; and then in that same hour should send this message--this command--which was to start Phoebe away from the great city, where all of her short life had been spent, toward that smaller city where lived the Grandmother she had never seen, and the two Uncles--one a Judge and the other a clergyman--who, though her father's own brothers, were yet strangers to their only niece!

Somehow, without having to be told, Phoebe had always understood that Mother did not like Grandma, or the Uncles, judicial and ecclesiastic. Then why was Mother, without a real farewell, and without motherly preparation in the matter of dress, and with no explanations, sending Phoebe to those paternal relations?

It was all very strange! It was mysterious, like--yes, like stories Phoebe had seen in moving-pictures.

Out of the gloom and clangor of the great station, the train was now fast winding its way, past lights that burned, Phoebe thought, like those in the big basement of the apartment house where she had lived so long. Now the coach was leaving one pair of rails for a new pair--changing direction with a sharp clicking of the wheels and a heavy swaying of the huge car's body. And now the line of coaches was straightening itself to take, as Phoebe knew, that long plunge under the southward flowing Hudson.

She let the telegram fall to her lap and closed her eyes, with a drawing in of the breath. She was picturing all that lay above the roof of the car and the larger domed roof of the tunnel--first there was the river-bed, which the domed roof upheld; next, the wide, deep reach of water which, in turn, held up the ferries and any other passing ships; last of all, the sky, cloud-flecked and sun-lit, through which winged the birds. What a load for that narrow, domed roof!

Her father had been busy with the luggage, directing the porter about the disposal of the two suitcases while taking off his own overcoat and hat. But as he glanced down at Phoebe, he misunderstood the lowering of telegram and eyelids, and dropped quickly to a place beside her. His hand closed over hers, lovingly, and with a pressure that showed concern. "Phoebe?" he questioned tenderly.

She opened her eyes with a sudden reassuring smile. Though in the last three or four years her father had been absent from home long months at a time, so that during any year she might see him only seldom, and then for brief afternoons only, her affection for him was deep, and scarcely second to her love for her mother. Each visit of his was marked by gifts as well as by a holiday outing--to the Park, the Zoo, or some moving-picture theatre; so that gratitude and pleasure mingled with her happiness at seeing him. Also, his visits had, for her, the novelty and joy of the unexpected. He came from Somewhere--mysteriously; and went again, into an Unknown that Phoebe made a part of her day-dreams.

Phoebe Blair was like her father. Her eyes were gray-blue, and set so far apart on either side of her nose that the upper half of her face, at first glance, had the appearance of being, if anything, a trifle too wide--which made her firm little chin seem, correspondingly, a trifle too peaked. Her hair was light brown, thick to massiness, but straight save where it blew against the clear pink of her cheeks in slightly curling tendrils. Of her features, it was her mouth that challenged her eyes in beauty--a fine, sweet mouth that registered every mood of those grave and womanly eyes. As for her height, it was a matter of the greatest pride to her that she already reached to her father's shoulder. But she was, despite her height, still the little girl--sailor hat on bobbed hair, serge jacket worn over blue linen dress, slim, brown-stockinged legs, and laced brown shoes.

Her father was thirty-seven. It seemed an almost appalling age to his small daughter. And yet he still had a boyish slenderness. He was tall, and straight, with a carriage that was noticeably military--acquired at the preparatory school to which his elder brothers had sent him. His hair, brown and thick like his daughter's, was just beginning to show a sprinkling of gray at the temples. His eyes were Phoebe's eyes--set wide apart, given to straight looking, and quick, friendly smiles. He had presented her with his straight nose, too, and his mouth. But his chin was firmer than hers, a man's chin, and the chin of a man who, once having set forward on any course, does not turn back.

Phoebe thought him quite perfect. And she thought it wonderful that he should be a mining-engineer. "It's a clean business," he had told her once, when she was about ten years of age. "It takes a man into the big out-doors." She had treasured up what he had said--turned it over in her mind again and again. And had come to feel that her father was entirely different from the men whom she met in her home--a man set wholly apart.

His profession explained to her his long absences from New York, and the fact that, in the last year or so, he had been compelled to make a club his headquarters during the period of his short stays in the city. "This place is so tiny," Phoebe's mother always said. "And all Daddy's traps are at the Club." It had never occurred to Phoebe to doubt anything that Mother told her. And did not her father fully corroborate this excuse of Mother's? Phoebe longed to have her father stay at home when he arrived in town. But she never complained against his being away. Hers was a patient, a trusting, a sturdy little soul.

With her smile of reassurance, Phoebe had leaned toward her father, to speak confidingly. "You know, Daddy," she began, "it seems so funny that Mother had me go the way she did. Don't you think so?--without saying why she wanted me to leave, or--or anything? Did she say anything about it to you?"

"A horse!" marveled Phoebe.

"Uncle Bob is fat?" Phoebe inquired.

"And when will Mother come?" interposed Phoebe, with an intonation which made plain her opinion that it would certainly take mother to make the suburban picture complete.

"Phoebe," said her father, speaking with a new earnestness, "Mother is not very well, and she is planning to leave New York for a while, and go where she can get better."

"I know she isn't very well," agreed Phoebe. "She coughs too much."

"I know."

They talked of other things then,--of the homes past which they were rushing, the towns through which they glided and grandly ignored, except for a gingerly slowing down. Noon came, and with it a visit to the dining-car. Then the afternoon dragged itself along. Toward the latter half of it, Phoebe, worn by the excitement of the sudden departure, and lulled by the motion of the train, curled up on the green plush of the car seat and fell asleep, her short brown hair spread fanwise upon her father's shoulder.

The afternoon went; twilight came. Still the train rushed on, carrying Phoebe northward toward that new home awaiting her. She slept a second time, after a simple supper. Her journey was to end shortly before midnight. For this reason her father judged it best that a berth should not be made up for her, but that she should rest as she had in the afternoon, her head on his breast.

She smiled as she slept, blissfully unaware that all at once her happy life was changing; that she was being uprooted like some plant; that a tragedy of which she was as yet mercifully ignorant had come forward upon her, wave-like and overwhelming, to sweep her forever from her course!

A rain was drenching the blackness of the night as the New York train reached the small city that was Phoebe's destination. Her father had wakened her a little in advance of their stop, and when she had washed her face and smoothed her hair, she had peered through the double glass of a car window a-stream with water--and then recoiled from the panes with a sinking of the heart. How dark it was out there! how stormy! how lightless after a life-time in a city which, no matter at what hour she might awake, was always alight!

A long whistle made her catch up her hat and adjust its elastic under her chin. The porter had already taken her father's suit-case and her own to the forward end of the coach. With a wild thumping in her breast and a choking in her throat, she followed her father to the vestibule, where the porter waited with the suit-case and a small, square stool upon which, presently, she stepped down to meet the rain.

There was a single light in the station, and beside it leaned a young man in an agent's cap. With her hand on her father's arm--for he was carrying both of the cases--she crossed a double line of glistening rails to the depot, not taking her eyes from the agent, who represented to her, at the moment, the sole sign of life and refuge in that black, roaring downfall.

Then, "Jim!"

"Hello, Bob!" Her father dropped the luggage and stretched both hands out to a figure that had emerged, in a shining raincoat, from the blackness.

"And Phoebe!" exclaimed Uncle Bob, lifting Phoebe from her feet and at the same time turning himself about, so that she was carried forward to the shelter of a roof. "God bless her! We'll jump into the surrey, Jim, and I'll have you home in a jiffy. What a ghastly night!--It'll take the snow off, Phoebe. But we'll have more. And then for some sleigh-rides!"

The train was gone, booming into the distance, with parting shrieks that grew fainter and fainter. As Phoebe was helped to the rear seat of the surrey, Uncle Bob holding aside the curtains that shut out the storm, she turned her head to look through the night to where great sparks were going up with the smoke of the engine. The train was leaving her--that train which seemed her only link with New York, with the beloved apartment that was to her the home-nest, with her mother--her dear, beautiful mother.

Phoebe gulped.

The drive took some time. Yet conversation lagged, and was a one-sided affair between Uncle Bob and the horse, in which the former urged the latter to "Get up" and "Go 'long." Here and there a street light shone with a sickly yellow flame through the pelting drops. Phoebe tried to see something of the town, to right and left over Uncle Bob's wide shoulders. But only the dim outlines of buildings were discernible. Strange and stormy was the little she could see. And there rose in her a feeling against this town into which she was come; so that, with Grandma and Uncle John still to meet and know, she yet longed for a quick turnabout, and a train that would carry her away again--away and away to the great city, to her little bed and her pretty mother.

The surrey drew up beside a large house that showed a dozen glowing windows, and as the wheels scraped the boards of a step, voices called out in greeting, and Uncle Bob answered them. "I've got 'em!" he cried. Whereupon a hand pulled at the curtain of the surrey on Phoebe's side, and here, under an umbrella, was a tall, thin gentleman in black, who wore eye-glasses and had large teeth. "Our dear little niece!" he exclaimed. And Phoebe climbed down to him, steadying herself by his hand, and was led by him to a wide door where Grandma was waiting--a slender little lady in a gray dress.

Phoebe permitted herself to be kissed, first by Grandma, then by Uncle John, as the man with large teeth proved to be, then by Uncle Bob, who had shed his raincoat and now stood forth, a heavy-set person, quite bald, and apple-cheeked, with smiling blue eyes.

The greetings over, Phoebe fell back a step, felt for and found her father's hand, and then lost herself in contemplation of the trio of new relatives. Of them, Daddy had, assuredly, spoken frequently. But, man-like, he had never essayed a description of them, never endowed them either with virtues or faults, never taught her in advance to render to the three any love or loyalty. So that now, appraising them, Phoebe was unprejudiced in her judgment, and viewed them as she might have viewed three strangers who were not related. How very old Grandma was! Phoebe noted that the white head trembled steadily, as if Grandma were, perhaps, cold. As for Uncle John, there was something altogether forbidding about him--eye-glasses, teeth and all. Aloofness was a part of her feeling toward this clerical uncle. But Uncle Bob--upon his apple-round cheeks glistened drops that Phoebe knew were not rain. And his eyes were shining with something that Phoebe recognized--the something she knew as love. He was big, he was round, he was, oh, so very homely. But straightway, with a child's true instinct, Phoebe loved him.

Behind the three was another figure. Phoebe first glimpsed the white apron, which to her city-bred eyes meant that here was a maid. And such a funny maid, in a lavender dress, with no cap on tousled yellowish hair that had been kinked rather than curled. The maid had a wide, grinning mouth, and eager, curious, hazel eyes. Yet altogether she was a likeable person, Phoebe decided. Youth spoke to youth across the Blair sitting-room. So that when all were seated in the high-ceilinged dining-room for a bite of supper, Phoebe answered Sophie's smile with one of her own, and for the cup of steaming chocolate that was set at her plate murmured a friendly "Thank you."

The supper was a quiet affair. Grandma bobbed and nodded over her chocolate, speaking only when Sophie was to fetch something or when one of the three men needed to be urged to another helping. Uncle John spoke not at all--after he had said what Phoebe afterwards learned was "a blessing". He looked at his food crossly. Phoebe's father had little to say, too. He looked tired and white. And when he smiled at Phoebe, he seemed not to see her, but to be looking beyond somehow. Only Uncle Bob appeared cheerful. His eyes danced when Phoebe lifted her eyes to him shyly. Every now and then he patted her shoulder. But--compared by her New York standards--Phoebe voted the supper altogether dreary--the result, she felt sure, of having Uncle John present.

A little later, she was conducted to her room by Sophie. How unlike was that strange bed-chamber to the wee, cosy place, all rose hangings and sheer white, which for as long as her memory could trace had held her white bed and the twin one that was her mother's! The new room was at the top of a long, wide stairway that wound back upon itself. The new room was high, and surely as large, Phoebe thought, as all of the New York apartment made into one. It had lace curtains at both windows, and there was an old-style dressing-table, slabbed over its top with mottled marble. When Phoebe touched the marble, she drew back from it, and stared, a little amazed. It was so cold!

Sophie seemed to guess something of what was passing through Phoebe's mind. "I'll just put a fancy towel on it t'morra," she promised. "Ain't had time today."

"Thank you," murmured Phoebe. Certainly the dressing-table needed something.

Sophie hung about for a little, shifting her weight from one substantial foot to the other, and making offers of aid. Could she unpack Phoebe's jo-dandy suit-case? Phoebe replied with a polite, "No, thank you." Could she unbutton the blue linen dress? Again, "No, thank you." Then the windows had to be raised a trifle, and lowered again because of the rain. There were two windows, great, high affairs against which tall green blinds were fastened. Next, Sophie displayed the clothes-closet, and hung Phoebe's serge coat on a nail. Last of all, she caught up the two thick pillows on the wide bed, beat them as a baker beats his dough , flung them down into place once more, and grudgingly sidled to the door.

Phoebe, standing in the middle of the floor, hat still in hand, made a pathetic little figure that appealed to Sophie's heart. "Ain't there anything I can do?" she inquired, persisting.

Phoebe nodded. "If--if Daddy will please come up to kiss me good-night," she answered, choking; "and--and put out my light."

"I'll tell him, you betcha," declared Sophie, heartily. She went out, turning her tousled head to smile a good-night.

Phoebe hurried with her undressing. There was no running water in the big room, and she could not bring herself to open her door and call down, or go down, in quest of it. Presently, however, she caught sight of a tall pitcher standing in a wide, flowered bowl, both atop what seemed to be a cupboard. She went to peer into the pitcher. Sure enough! The pitcher was full of water; and Phoebe, using all the strength of her slender arms, heaved it up and out and filled the bowl.

"How funny!" she marveled. And once in bed, with a single electric light shining full into her face from where it hung on a cord from the high center of the ceiling, she studied the room itself, walls, furniture, curtains, carpet. "How queer!" she murmured, over and over.

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