His Family by Ernest Poole (popular ebook readers txt) 📕

rich, alive. He did not approve of her lips. Once when she had kissed him Roger had started slightly back. For his daughter’s lips were rouged, and they had reminded him of his youth. He had asked her sister to speak to her. But Deborah had told him she did not care to speak to people in that way⁠—“especially women⁠—especially sisters,” she had said, with a quiet smile. All very well, he reflected, but somebody ought to take Laura in hand.

She had been his favorite as a child, his pet, his tiny daughter. He remembered her on his lap like a kitten. How she had liked to cuddle there. And she had liked to bite his hand, a curious habit in a child. “I hurt daddy!” He could still recollect the gay little laugh with which she said that, looking up brightly into his face.

And here she was already grown, and like a light in the sober old house, fascinating while she disturbed him. He liked to hear her high pitched voice, gossiping in Deborah’s room or in her own dainty chamber chatting with the adoring maid who was dressing her to go out. He loved her joyous thrilling laugh. And he would have missed her from the house as he would have missed Fifth Avenue if it had been dropped from the city. For the picture Roger had formed of this daughter was more of a symbol than of a girl, a symbol of the ardent town, spending, wasting, dancing mad. It was Laura who had kept him living right up to his income.

“Where are you dining tonight?” he asked.

“With the Raymonds.” He wondered who they were. “Oh, Sarah,” she added to the maid. “Call up Mrs. Raymond’s apartment and ask what time is dinner tonight.”

“Are you going to dance later on?” he inquired.

“Oh, I guess so,” she replied. “On the Astor Roof, I think they said⁠—”

Her father went on with his dinner. These hotel dances, he had heard, ran well into Sunday morning. How Judith would have disapproved. He hesitated uneasily.

“I don’t especially care for this dancing into Sunday,” he said. For a moment he did not look up from his plate. When he did he saw Laura regarding him.

“Oh, do you mind? I’m sorry. I won’t, after this,” she answered. And Roger colored angrily, for the glint of amusement in Laura’s mischievous black eyes revealed quite unmistakably that she regarded both her father and his feeling for the Sabbath as very dear and quaint and old. Old? Of course he seemed old to her, Roger thought indignantly. For what was Laura but a child? Did she ever think of anything except having a good time? Had she ever stopped to think out her own morals, let alone anyone else’s? Was she any judge of what was old⁠—or of who was old? And he determined then and there to show her he was in his prime. Impatiently he strove to remember the names of her friends and ask her about them, to show a keen lively interest in this giddy gaddy life she led. And when that was rather a failure he tried his daughter next on books, books of the most modern kind. Stoutly he lied and said he was reading a certain Russian novel of which he had heard Deborah speak. But this valiant falsehood made no impression whatever, for Laura had never heard of the book.

“I get so little time for reading,” she murmured. And meanwhile she was thinking, “As soon as he finishes talking, poor dear, I’ll break the news.”

Then Roger had an audacious thought. He would take her to a play, by George! Mustering his courage he led up to it by speaking of a play Deborah had seen, a full-fledged modern drama all centered upon the right of a woman “to lead her own life.” And as he outlined the story, he saw he had caught his daughter’s attention. With her pretty chin resting on one hand, watching him and listening, she appeared much older, and she seemed suddenly close to him.

“How would you like to go with me and see it some evening?” he inquired.

“See what, my love?” she asked him, her thoughts plainly far away; and he looked at her in astonishment:

“That play I’ve just been speaking of!”

“Why, daddy, I’d love to!” she exclaimed.

“When?” he asked. And he fixed a night. He was proud of himself. Eagerly he began to talk of opening nights at Wallack’s. Roger and Judith, when they were young, had been great first nighters there. And now it was Laura who drew him out, and as he talked on she seemed to him to be smilingly trying to picture it all.⁠ ⁠… “Now I’d better tell him,” she thought.

“Do you remember Harold Sloane?” she asked a little strangely.

“No,” replied her father, a bit annoyed at the interruption.

“Why⁠—you’ve met him two or three times⁠—”

“Have I?” The queer note in her voice made him look up. Laura had risen from her chair.

“I want you to know him⁠—very soon.” There was a moment’s silence. “I’m going to marry him, dad,” she said. And Roger looked at her blankly. He felt his limbs beginning to tremble. “I’ve been waiting to tell you when we were alone,” she added in an awkward tone. And still staring up at her he felt a rush of tenderness and a pang of deep remorse. Laura in love and settled for life! And what did he know of the affair? What had he ever done for her? Too late! He had begun too late! And this rush of emotion was so overpowering that while he still looked at her blindly she was the first to recover her poise. She came around the table and kissed him softly on the cheek. And now more than ever Roger felt how old his daughter thought him.

“Who is he?” he asked hoarsely. And she answered smiling,

“A perfectly nice young man named Sloane.”

“Don’t, Laura⁠—tell me! What does he do?”

“He’s in a broker’s