Chapter 12

The election came and went; the voice of the people had been heard, and Maverick County had a new sheriff. In the house on the Quemado Road Fectnor's name was heard no more.

On the Saturday night following the election Harboro came home and found a letter waiting for him on the table in the hall. He found also a disquieted Sylvia, who looked at him with brooding and a question in her eyes.

He stopped where he stood and read the letter, and Sylvia watched with parted lips--for she had recognized the handwriting on the envelope.

Harboro's brows lowered into a frown. "It's from your father," he said finally, lifting his eyes from the letter and regarding Sylvia.

She tried to achieve an effect of only mild interest. "What can he have to write to you about?" she asked.

"Poor fellow--it seems he's been ill. Sylvia, how long has it been since you visited your father?"

"Does he want me to come to see him?"

"He hints at that pretty strongly. Yes, that's really the substance of his letter."

"I've never been back since we were married."

She led the way into the dining-room. Her manner was not quite responsive. She made Harboro feel that this was a matter which did not concern him.

"But isn't that--doesn't that seem rather neglectful?"

She drew a chair away from the table and sat down facing him. "Yes, it does seem so. I think I've hinted that I wasn't happy in my old home life; but I've never talked very much about it. I ought to tell you, I think, that I want to forget all about it. I want the old relationship broken off completely."

Harboro shook his head with decision. "That won't do," he declared. "Believe me, you're making a mistake. You're a good deal younger than I, Sylvia, and it's the way of the young to believe that for every old tie broken a new one can be formed. At your age life seems to have an abundance of everything. But you'll be dismayed, in a few years, to discover that most things come to us but once, and that nearly all the best things come to us in our youth."

He stood before her with an air of such quiet conviction, of such tranquil certainty of the truth of what he said that she could not meet his glance. She had placed an elbow on the table, and was supporting her face in her hand. Her expression was strangely inscrutable to the man who looked down at her.

"Your father must be getting old. If you shouldn't see him for a year or so, you'd be fearfully grieved to note the evidences of failure: a slight stoop, perhaps; a slower gait; a more troubled look in his eyes. I want to help you to see this thing clearly. And some day you'll get word that he is dead--and then you'll remember, too late, how you might have carried little joys to him, how you might have been a better daughter...."

She sprang up, shaking the tears from her eyes. "I'll go," she said. She startled Harboro by that note of despair in her voice. "When does he wish me to come?"

"He says he is ill and alone. I think he would be glad if I could persuade you to go this evening. Why not this evening?"

Unfortunately, Harboro concealed a part of the truth in this. Her father had quite definitely asked to have her come this evening. But Harboro wished her to feel that she was acting voluntarily, that she was choosing for herself, both as to the deed and as to the time of its doing.

And Sylvia felt a wave of relief at the assurance that her father had not set a definite time. Oh, surely the letter was just what it purported to be--a cry of loneliness and an honest desire to see her. And Sylvia really loved her father. There was that in her nature which made it impossible for her to judge him.

"I could go with you," ventured Harboro, "though he doesn't say anything about my coming. I've felt we must both go soon. Of course, I need not wait for an invitation."

But Sylvia opposed this. "If he's ill," she said, "I think I ought to go alone this time." She added to herself: "I don't want him ever to go. I must make him believe that enough has been done if I go myself. I must convince him that my father doesn't care to have him come."

Nevertheless, she was quite resigned to the arrangement that had been made for her. She helped Antonia make the final preparations for supper, and she set off down the road quite cheerfully after they arose from the table. Harboro watched her with a new depth of tenderness. This sweet submission, the quick recognition of a filial duty once it was pointed out to her--here were qualities which were of the essence of that childlike beauty which is the highest charm in women.

And Sylvia felt a strange eagerness of body and mind as she went on her way. She had put all thought of the house under the mesquite-tree out of mind, as far as possible. Becoming a closed book to her, the place and certain things which had been dear to her had become indistinct in her memory. Now that she was about to reopen the book various little familiar things came back to her and filled her mind with eagerness. The tiny canary in its cage--it would remember her. It would wish to take a bath, to win her praise. There had been a few potted plants, too; and there would be the familiar pictures--even the furniture she had known from childhood would have eloquent messages for her.

This was the frame of mind she was in as she opened her father's gate, and paused for an instant to recall the fact that here she had stood when Harboro appeared before her for the first time. It was near sundown now, just as it had been then; and--yes, the goatherd was there away out on the trail, driving his flock home.

She turned toward the house; she opened the door eagerly. Her eyes were beaming with happiness.

But she was chilled a little by the sight of her father. Something Harboro had said about her father changing came back to her. He _had_ changed--just in the little while that had elapsed since her marriage. But the realization of what that change was hurt her cruelly. He looked mean and base as he had never looked before. The old amiable submission to adversities had given place to an expression of petulance, of resentment, of cunning, of cowardice. Or was it that Sylvia was looking at him with new eyes?

He sat just inside the door, by a window. He was in a rocking-chair, and his hands lay heavily against the back of it. He had a blanket about him, as if he were cold. He looked at her with a strange lack of responsiveness when she entered the room.

"I got your message," she said affectionately. "I am glad you let me know you weren't feeling very well." She touched his cheeks with her hands and kissed him. "You _are_ cold," she added, as if she were answering the question that had occurred to her at sight of the blanket.

She sat down near him, waiting for him to speak. He would have a great many things to say to her, she thought. But he regarded her almost stolidly.

"Your marriage seems to have changed you," he said finally.

"For the better, I hope!"

"Well, that's according to the way you look at it. Cutting your old father cold isn't for the better, as far as I can see."

She did not resent the ungenerous use of that phrase, "old father," though she could not help remembering that he was still under fifty, and that he looked young for his years. It was just one of his mannerisms in speaking.

"I didn't do that, you know," she said. "Being married seems a wonderful adventure. There is so much that is strange for you to get used to. But I didn't forget you. You've seen Antonia--occasionally...?"

The man moved his head so that it lay on one side against the chair-back. "I thought you'd throw that up to me," he complained.

"Father!" she remonstrated. She was deeply wounded. It had not been her father's way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had softened his faults to one who loved him.

"Well, never mind," he said, in a less bitter tone. And she waited, hoping he would think of friendlier words to speak, now that his resentment had been voiced.

But he seemed ill at ease in her presence now. She might have been a stranger to him. She looked about her with a certain fond expression which speedily faded. Somehow the old things reminded her only of unhappiness. They were meaner than she had supposed them to be. Their influence over her was gone.

She brought her gaze back to her father. He had closed his eyes as if he were weary; yet she discerned in the lines of his face a hard fixity which troubled her, alarmed her. Though his eyes were closed he did not present a reposeful aspect. There was something really sinister about that alert face with its closed eyes--as there is about a house with its blinds drawn to hide evil enterprises.

So she sat for interminable minutes, and it seemed to Sylvia that she was not surprised when she heard the sound of tapping at the back door.

She was not surprised, yet a feeling of engulfing horror came over her at the sound.

Her father opened his eyes now; and it seemed really that he had been resting. "The boy from the drug-store," he said. "They were to send me some medicine."

He seemed to be gathering his energies to get up and admit the boy from the drug-store, but Sylvia sprang to her feet and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Let me go," she said.

There was an expression of pity and concern for her father in her eyes when she got to the door and laid her hand on the latch. She was too absent-minded to observe at first that the bolt had been moved into its place, and that the door was locked. Her hand had become strange to the mechanism before her, and she was a little awkward in getting the bolt out of the way. But the expression of pity and concern was still in her eyes when she finally pulled the door toward her.

And then she seemed to have known all the time that it was Fectnor who stood there.