VII
Some nights Jason used to go to her bedside and sit. Not tonight, though. He picked up in the living room the copy of Caesar’s Gaellic Wars.
The Swiss, who feared neither Gods nor men, suffered…
“Who am I to be afraid?” Jason thought. He who had led eight Ohio country boys to death in a stable in France and come out of it with only the loss of the tip of his left shoulder!
The Swiss who feared neither Gods nor men suffered—
He pulled the lamp closer.
The night wore on in a melange of verbs and participles. Toward eleven the phone rang.
“This is Mr. McCutcheon.”
“Oh, yes.”
“There’s a serious injustice been done your daughter.”
It seems that there had been some wild excursion into the boys’ locker-room—during which someone was posted as sentry outside. The sentry had run away but Jo was there trying to warn them at the moment when the monitors appeared.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davis. There isn’t much we can do in these cases—except offer our sincere apology.”
“I know.”
The phone put on the voice of Mr. Halklite.
Here it was! The Pan-American Textile account.
“Hello, Mr. Davis! I’m in Philadelphia. We’ve had some correspondence—I’ll be down in your part of the world tomorrow and I thought I’d drop in. Sorry to call so late…”
Breakfast was waiting when, having made a journey to his office and back, Jason went to his bedroom—almost immediately Jo, who had heard him come in, knocked at the door and demanded in alarm:
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m just tired. I’ve been working all night. Say, if you have those girls to lumpshun—” the words seemed extraordinarily hard and long—“then fix up the room afterwards. Very important. Business meeting.”
“I understand, Daddy.”
Holding to the bed-post he swayed precariously. “Whole future depends on this man. Make it nice for him.”
With no more warning he pitched forward across the bed.
VIII
Unexpectedly at eleven o’clock the colored girl admitted Mr. Halklite. On his tour of inspection Mr. Halklite had become, perforce, less and less kind, though he was kindly by nature. Keenness was his valuable business asset—exercising the quality had temporarily become dull—there was the necessity of weeding out the exhausted and the inefficient. Halklite could tell the dead from the living, and that was half of why he had just been elected a vice-president of Pan-American Textile. Only half, though. The other half was because he was kind.
A little girl came into the room.
“Good morning. Is your father in? I think he expected me.”
“Won’t you come in? Father’s got a cold—he’s lying down.”
In Jason’s bedroom Jo shook and shook the exhausted body without result. She went back into the living room.
“Daddy’ll be getting up presently,” she said. “He’s sorry he wasn’t dressed to meet you.”
“Oh, that’s all right. You’re Mr. Davis’ little girl?” Mr. Halklite said.
Jo crossed as if casually to the piano bench and turned back to him with sudden decision.
“Mr. Halklite, father’s had flu, and the doctor doesn’t want him to get up. He’s going to try to.”
“Oh, we can’t let him!”
“The doctor didn’t want him to. But Daddy’s like that. If he says he’ll do something, he does. Daddy needs a woman to take care of him. And I’m so busy at school—”
“Tell him not to get up,” Halklite repeated.
“I don’t even know whether he can.”
“Then tell him it doesn’t matter.”
She went to her father’s room and presently returned.
“He sent you best regards. He was sorry not to see you.”
Her heart was in agony. Keeping that agony out of her expression was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.
“I’m good and sorry,” Mr. Halklite said. “I wanted to talk to him. How old is your father, young lady?”
“I don’t know. I guess he’s about thirty-eight.”
“Well a man can be young at thirty-eight,” he protested. “Isn’t your father still young?”
“Daddy’s young. But he’s serious.” She hesitated.
“Go on,” Halklite said. “Tell me about him. I’ll leave you to your lessons as soon as I finish my cigarette. But I think you ought to stay out of your father’s room while he’s ill.”
“Oh, I do.”
“You’re fond of your daddy?”
“Yes—everybody is.”
“Does he go around much?”
“Not much—Oh, he does though. He goes out to see Mama once a week. And he goes to walk half an hour when I go to bed. He starts out when I start to bed and then I call down to him when I hear him open the door coming in—pour dire bon soir.”
“You speak French?” She regretted that she had mentioned it, but she admitted, “I grew up in France.”
“So did your daddy, didn’t he?”
“Oh no, Daddy’s very American. He can’t even speak French much, really.”
Halklite stood up, made his decision suddenly, perhaps irrationally.
“You tell your father we want to put our account in his hands. Maybe that’ll cheer him up and help him get well. ‘Pan-Am-Tex.’ Can you remember that? He’ll understand.”
IX
It was April again and they walked in the zoo.
“It’s been a hard year, Jo.”
“I know that, Daddy. But look at the peacocks!”
“This is your education, Jo. It’s most of what you’ll ever know about life. You’ll understand later.”
“I know we’ve had bad times, Daddy. Everything’s better again, isn’t it? Look at the peacocks, mon pere. They don’t worry.”
“Well, if you insist, let’s sit on the bench and stare at them.”
Jo sat silent for a moment. Then she said:
“We were peacocks once, weren’t we?”
“What?”
“They probably have sorrows and troubles sometimes, when their tails don’t grow out.”
“I guess so. What school do you want to go to next year? You can have your choice.”
“That doesn’t seem to matter any more. Look at the peacock— Look! the one that’s trying to peck outside the cage. I love him—do you?”
Jason said, “After all, considering everything, it wasn’t such a bad year.”
“What?” Jo turned from the cage where she had gone to try, unsuccessfully, to feed the bird a shelled peanut.
“Daddy, let’s stop worrying. I thought we stopped months ago. Mother’s coming home next week. Maybe some day we’ll be three peacocks again.”
Jason came over to the wire.
“I suppose peacocks have their problems.”
“I suppose so. Look, Daddy! I’ve got this one eating the popcorn.”
