Read Ebook: Phœbe by Gates Eleanor

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Ebook has 1290 lines and 49145 words, and 26 pages

"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.

"Well, big eyes!" hailed her father, when he came in.

She raised on an elbow. "Daddy," she whispered, "isn't it so--so different here--everything. Why, in New York nobody has water-pitchers."

Her father laughed. "This is a wonderful old house," he declared. He sat down beside her.

"It's so big!" Phoebe lay back. Her hand crept into her father's and she looked up at the high ceiling, with its covering of wall-paper in a wavy, watered design.

"You'll get used to it," he promised, "and you'll like it. And do you know how happy Grandma is to have you?--Uncle John and Uncle Bob, too? I can see they love my little girl already."

"And they'll love Mother," added Phoebe, stoutly "You just wait till she comes back well again. Won't they, Daddy?"

Her father rose, and the smile in his eyes gave place to an expression of sudden pain. "I don't doubt it," he answered hastily. Then leaning to smooth back the hair from her brow, "You're tired, aren't you, darling? And so is Daddy. We'll say good-night now, and in the morning there'll be so much to see, and do, and talk about."

"Yes, sir."

He laid his cheek against hers, so babyish still. "God bless my daughter," he said tenderly.

Her arms went round his neck then. "Oh, Daddy," she implored brokenly, "how long will I be away from mother? Oh, Daddy, just one day and I miss her so!"

He soothed her. "I can't tell, Phoebe," he asserted. "But will you trust me to do the best that I know how?"

With her wide eyes upon him, he stood at the middle of the room, his right arm raised to put out the electric light. He pulled at the cord, and the room went dark. He felt his way to the door then, and went out with a last affectionate good-night which Phoebe answered cheerily enough.

But when the sound of his footsteps died away in the hall, she stared into the blackness, seeing him still there at the room's center with his arm upraised. And her loneliness and loss she told silently to that picture of her father which still remained under the swinging globe in the blackness.

"I want Mother," she said, over and over. "Oh, Daddy, I want to go back to New York, to Mother. Oh, Daddy, don't leave me here without Mother." Then, "Oh, Mother, if I could only be with you! Oh, dear, dear Mother!"

The tears came then,--tears of weariness as well as grief. And Phoebe, curled up in the wide bed, her face buried in the curve of an arm, sobbed herself to sleep.

A fairy bell was tinkling. The clear tones were part of a dream so sweet, though afterwards not remembered, that Phoebe smiled in her sleep. The tinkling grew steadily louder. Phoebe waked, saw where she was, and raised her head to listen. The bell was outside. Persistent and musical, its ringing called Phoebe from her bed to a window. She peered down through a gap in the storm shutters.

A messenger boy on a bicycle was coming up the curving drive that led from the front gate to the house. The rain was over. The sun glinted on the metal of his wheel. He disappeared from Phoebe's view under a square, flat roof that was one story below her window.

She ran to put on her shoes and stockings. She splashed her face with the icy water in the flowered bowl, and dressed at top speed. A messenger boy conveyed only one thing to her: a telegram from her mother.

She was right. When she came racing down to ask, her father was standing by the front door in the big hall, the telegram open in his hand.

He did not permit Phoebe to read the wire, but put it away in the leather case that held his paper money. And he did not reply to it by another telegram when the messenger boy reminded him that there was an answer.

"I'll write your mother," he explained to Phoebe.

After breakfast he sat down to write. That first day at Grandma's, Phoebe learned that during each week-day morning the library was sacred to Uncle John. So Phoebe's father wrote at Grandma's desk in the sitting-room, with Phoebe writing at the sewing-table close by.

Her father's letter was short. His face was stern as he wrote it. Then he paced the floor. Phoebe had often seen him like that in New York. She understood that he was frequently worried over business. And she understood business worries, because she had seen several worried business men in the "movies." Usually they stood over curious machines out of which ran a long narrow strip of paper. And as a rule they ended by committing suicide with a pistol. Phoebe stole anxious glances toward her father as she wrote.

It was a short letter, since it occurred to Phoebe that perhaps a little of her father's pacing might be due to impatience. She was not a rapid penman.

Her letter finished and folded, she took it to him. "Put this in with yours, Daddy?" she asked.

He stared down at her, not answering for a moment. Then, "Yes," he said, "of course." He added her letter to his, but he did not seal the envelope.

When he was gone, Phoebe sat down to wait. There were things to be seen outside--a barn to explore, and a chicken-coop. Also, Grandma had promised to show Phoebe over the house. But Phoebe was not especially interested. What she wanted most was the return of her father, that she might hear the hour of her return to New York.

Sophie came in to set the living-room to rights. On better acquaintance, there was something exceedingly attractive about Sophie. Her hair was so bright, her eyes were roguish. She had dimples. In the matter of dress, however, she entirely lacked that black-and-white smartness which Sally, Mother's colored maid, possessed. Remembering Sally gave Phoebe a happy thought: Here was the one, of all those in the big house, who would be a pleasant companion to the local "movies."

"Is there a moving-picture theatre in this town?" she asked.

"Is there!" cried Sophie. "I should say! Many as nine, I guess."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

"Mm." Sophie looked doubtful, somehow. But she kept her own counsel. "I seen a grand picture last night," she confided.

"Did you! Oh, tell me about it!"

First, for some reason, Sophie went to the door and looked out into the hall. Then, launching into her story, she dropped her voice. "It was all about awful rich folks," she began. "There was a girl, and you seen her at the start in her papa's viller. He's so rich that his hired men wear knee pants."

The story grew. With it mounted Phoebe's interest and Sophie's enthusiasm. And when Sophie was done, Phoebe in turn remembered a picture full of high adventure and love that put danger to scorn.

"The horse jumped off a fast train," she related. "And the brave young cow-boy fell to the water below. But horses can swim. This horse made for shore, and the cow-boy swam along beside him. The waves were high--it must have been the ocean. Now you saw him, now you didn't. But he got closer and closer to land. Pretty soon the horse touched bottom. You saw the cow-boy was safe. When there, on the beach, stood the villain--with a gun in his hands!"

"Phoebe." Her father had entered. He was frowning at Sophie.

"Daddy!" Phoebe ran to him. "Oh, there are nine movie theatres in this town, Sophie says. Oh Daddy, I'd like to go to one this afternoon."

"But, Uncle John, Phoebe," said her father.

She did not understand. "Couldn't Sophie take me?"

"Phoebe, your Uncle John is a clergyman," explained her father, his voice grave. "If his niece goes to the movies, that looks as if he approves of them. And he doesn't."

Phoebe stared, aghast. "But Mother took me hundreds of times," she reminded.

"Not in this town, dear."

"But can't I even see travel pictures?"

"I'm sorry."

Phoebe sat down, dumbfounded. Sophie went out quietly, without lifting those roguish eyes.

Phoebe's father came over to his daughter, and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. "In this house," he said, speaking very low, "the less my little girl says about the movies the better."

"Yes, sir," answered Phoebe, dutifully.

But rebellion came into her heart that first morning. And thereafter her Uncle John, rector of the town's most exclusive church, and undeniably a most devout man, was to play the r?le of villain in the drama which Phoebe felt that she was living.

The subject of moving-pictures was forgotten temporarily when more fairy tinklings announced the arrival, about noon, of a second messenger boy. He had still another telegram from Phoebe's mother. And this time he waited while Phoebe's father wrote out an answer. Then he went tinkling away.

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