Otherwise Phyllis
by Meredith Nicholson · English · Gutenberg #28017 · 765,266 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Otherwise Phyllis
Author: Meredith Nicholson
Illustrator: Charles Dana Gibson
Release date: February 7, 2009 [eBook #28017]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28017
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OTHERWISE PHYLLIS ***
Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Barbara Kosker and the Online
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By Meredith Nicholson
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS. With frontispiece in color.
THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN AND OTHER PAPERS.
A HOOSIER CHRONICLE. With illustrations.
THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. With illustrations.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS
[Illustration: PHYLLIS]
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS
BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published September 1913_
TO
ALBERT B. ANDERSON
A CITIZEN OF THE HOOSIER COMMONWEALTH
WHOSE ATTAINMENTS AS LAWYER AND JUDGE
HAVE ADDED TO THE FAME OF MONTGOMERY
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
WITH SINCERE REGARD AND ADMIRATION
CONTENTS
I. THE KIRKWOODS BREAK CAMP 1
II. THE MONTGOMERYS OF MONTGOMERY 14
III. 98 BUCKEYE LANE 34
IV. A TRANSACTION IN APPLES 51
V. THE OTHERWISENESS OF PHYLLIS 65
VI. THE SMOKING-OUT OF AMZI 78
VII. GHOSTS SEE THE LIGHT AGAIN 91
VIII. LISTENING HILL 104
IX. ON AN ORCHARD SLOPE 113
X. PHIL'S PARTY 123
XI. BROTHERS 144
XII. NAN BARTLETT'S DECISION 158
XIII. THE BEST INTERESTS OF MONTGOMERY 168
XIV. TURKEY RUN 182
XV. LOIS 201
XVI. MERRY CHRISTMAS 217
XVII. PHIL'S PERPLEXITIES 241
XVIII. AMZI IS FLABBERGASTED 259
XIX. PHIL MOVES TO AMZI'S 272
XX. BACK TO STOP SEVEN 281
XXI. PHIL'S FISTS 292
XXII. MR. WATERMAN'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY 308
XXIII. PLEASANT TIMES IN MAIN STREET 321
XXIV. THE FORSAKEN GARDEN 336
XXV. PHIL ENCOUNTERS THE SHERIFF 355
XXVI. A CALL IN BUCKEYE LANE 373
XXVII. AMZI'S PERFIDY 385
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS
CHAPTER I
THE KIRKWOODS BREAK CAMP
"Stuff's all packed, Phil, and on the wagon. Camera safe on top and your
suit-case tied to the tail-gate. Shall we march?"
"Not crazy about it, daddy. Why not linger another week? We can unlimber
in a jiffy."
"It's a tempting proposition, old lady, but I haven't the nerve."
Kirkwood dropped an armful of brush on the smouldering camp-fire and
stood back as it crackled and flamed. There came suddenly a low whining
in the trees and a gust of wind caught the sparks from the blazing twigs
and flung them heavenward. He threw up his arm and turned his hand to
feel the wind. "The weather's at the changing point; there's rain in
that!"
"Well, we haven't been soaked for some time," replied Phil. "We've been
awfully respectable."
"Respectable," laughed her father. "We don't know what the word means!
We're unmitigated vagabonds, you and I, Phil. If I didn't know that you
like this sort of thing as well as I do, I shouldn't let you come. But
your aunts are on my trail."
"Oh, one's aunts! Oh, one's three aunts!" murmured Phil.
"Not so lightly to be scorned! When I was in town yesterday your Aunt
Kate held me up for a scolding in the post-office. I'd no sooner climbed
up to my den than your Aunt Josie dropped in to ask what I had done with
you; and while I was waiting for you to buy shoes at Fisher's your Aunt
Fanny strolled by and gave me another overhauling. It's a question
whether they don't bring legal process to take you away from me. What's
a father more or less among three anxious aunts! As near as I can make
out, Aunt Fanny's anxiety is chiefly for your complexion. She says you
look like an Indian. And she implied that I am one."
"One of her subtle compliments. I've always thought Indians were nice."
It was clear that this father and daughter were on the best of terms,
and that admiration was of the essence of their relationship. Phil
stooped, picked up a pebble and flung it with the unconscious grace of a
boy far down the creek. Her Aunt Fanny's solicitude for her complexion
was or was not warranted; it depended on one's standard in such matters.
Phil was apparently not alarmed about the state of her complexion.
"Suppose we wait for the moon," Kirkwood suggested. "It will be with us
in an hour, and we can loaf along and still reach town by eleven. Only a
little while ago we had to get you to bed by eight, and it used to
bother me a lot about your duds; but we've outgrown that trouble. I
guess--"
He paused abruptly and began to whistle softly to himself. Phil was
familiar with this trick of her father's. She knew the processes of his
mind and the range of his memories well enough to supply the conclusion
of such sentences as the one that had resolved itself into a doleful
whistle. As he was an excellent amateur musician, the lugubrious tone of
his whistling was the subject of many jokes between them.
The walls of a miniature canon rose on either side of the creek, and the
light of the wind-blown camp-fire flitted across the face of the
shelving rock, or scampered up to the edge of the overhanging cliff,
where it flashed fitfully against the sky. The creek splashed and foamed
through its rough, boulder-filled channel, knowing that soon it would be
free of the dark defile and moving with dignity between shores of corn
toward the Wabash. The cliffs that enclosed Turkey Run represented some
wild whim of the giant ice plow as it had redivided and marked this
quarter of the world. The two tents in which the Kirkwoods had lodged
for a month had been pitched in a grassy cleft of the more accessible
shore, but these and other paraphernalia of the camp were now packed for
transportation in a one-horse wagon. As a fiercer assault of the wind
shook the vale, the horse whinnied and pawed impatiently.
"Cheer up, Billo! We're going soon!" called Phil.
Kirkwood stood by the fire, staring silently into the flames. Phil,
having reassured Billo, drew a little away from her father. In earlier
times when moods of abstraction fell upon him, she had sought to rouse
him; but latterly she had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence.
She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for him the keenest
delight and, in another and baffling phase, a poignancy on which, as she
had grown to womanhood, it had seemed impious to allow her imagination
to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love
for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; the round
felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut hair, the dejection that
seemed expressed in so many trifles at such moments,--as in his manner
of dropping his hands loosely into the pockets of his corduroy coat, and
standing immovable. Without taking his eyes from the fire he sat down
presently on a log and she saw him fumbling for his pipe and tobacco. He
bent to thrust a chip into the fire with the deliberation that marked
his movements in these moods. Now and then he took the pipe from his
mouth, and she knew the look that had come into his gray eyes, though
she saw only the profile of his bearded face as the firelight limned it.
Now, as at other such times, on summer evenings in the little garden at
home, or on winter nights before the fire in their sitting-room, she
felt that he should be left to himself; that his spirit traversed realms
beyond boundaries she might not cross; and that in a little while his
reverie would end and he would rise and fling up his long arms and ask
whether it was breakfast-time or time to go to bed.
Phil Kirkwood was eighteen, a slim, brown, graceful creature, with a
habit of carrying her chin a little high; a young person who seemed to
be enjoying flights into the realm of reverie at times, and then, before
you were aware of it, was off, away out of sight and difficult to catch
with hand or eye. As a child this abruptness had been amusing; now that
she was eighteen her aunts had begun to be distressed by it. Her critics
were driven to wild things for comparisons. She was as quick as a
swallow; and yet a conscientious ornithologist would have likened her in
her moments of contemplation to the thrush for demureness. And a robin
hopping across a meadow, alert in all his mysterious senses, was not
more alive than Phil in action. Her middle-aged aunts said she was
impudent, but this did not mean impudent speech; it was Phil's silences
that annoyed her aunts and sometimes embarrassed or dismayed other
people. Her brown eye could be very steady and wholly respectful when,
at the same time, there was a suspicious twitching of her
thread-of-scarlet lips. The aunts were often outraged by her conduct.
Individually and collectively they had endeavored to correct her
grievous faults, and she had received their instructions meekly. But
what could one do with a mild brown eye that met the gaze of aunts so
steadily and submissively, while her lips betrayed quite other emotions!
Phil's clothes were another source of distress. She hated hats and in
open weather rejected them altogether. A tam-o'-shanter was to her
liking, and a boy's cap was even better. The uniform of the basketball
team at high school suited her perfectly; and yet her unreasonable aunts
had made a frightful row when she wore it as a street garb. She gave
this up, partly to mollify the aunts, but rather more to save her father
from the annoyance of their complaints. She clung, however, to her
sweater,--on which a large "M" advertised her _alma mater_ most
indecorously,--and in spite of the aunts' vigilance she occasionally
appeared at Center Church in tan shoes; which was not what one had a
right to expect of a great-granddaughter of Amzi I, whose benevolent
countenance, framed for adoration in the Sunday-School room, spoke for
the conservative traditions of the town honored with his name.
Phil had no sense of style; her aunts were agreed on this. Her
hair-ribbons rarely matched her stockings; and the stockings on agile
legs like Phil's, that were constantly dancing in the eyes of all
Montgomery, should, by all the canons of order and decency, present
holeless surfaces to captious critics. That they frequently did not was
a shame, a reproach, a disgrace, but no fault, we may be sure, of the
anxious aunts. Manifestly Phil had no immediate intention of growing up.
The idea of being a young lady did not interest her. In June of this
particular year she had been graduated from the Montgomery High School,
in a white dress and (noteworthy achievement of the combined aunts!)
impeccable white shoes and stockings. Pink ribbons (pink being the class
color) had enhanced the decorative effect of the gown and a pink bow had
given a becoming touch of grace to her head. Phil's hair--brown in
shadow and gold in sunlight--was washed by Montgomery's house-to-house
hairdresser whenever Aunt Fanny could corner Phil for the purpose.
Phil's general effect was of brownness. Midwinter never saw the passing
of the tan from her cheek; her vigorous young fists were always brown;
when permitted a choice she chose brown clothes: she was a brown girl.
* * * * *
Speaking of Phil's graduation, it should be mentioned that she had
contributed a ten-minute oration to the commencement exercises, its
subject being "The Dogs of Main Street." This was not conceded a place
on the programme without a struggle. The topic was frivolous and without
precedent; moreover, it was unliterary--a heinous offense, difficult of
condonation. To admit the dogs of Main Street to a high-school
commencement, an affair of pomp and ceremony held in Hastings's Theater,
was not less than shocking. It had seemed so to the principal, but he
knew Phil; and knowing Phil he laughed when the English teacher
protested that it would compromise her professional dignity to allow a
student to discuss the vagrant canines of Main Street in a commencement
essay. She had expected Phil to prepare a thesis on "What the Poets Have
Meant to Me," and for this "The Dogs of Main Street" was no proper
substitute. The superintendent of schools, scanning the programme before
it went to the printer, shuddered; but it was not for naught that Phil's
"people" were of Montgomery's elect.
Phil was, in fact, _a_ Montgomery. Her great-grandfather, Amzi
Montgomery, observing the unpopulous Hoosier landscape with a shrewd
eye, had, in the year of grace 1829, opened a general store on the exact
spot now occupied by Montgomery's Bank, and the proper authorities a few
years later called the name of the place Montgomery, which it remains to
this day. This explains why the superintendent of schools overlooked the
temerity of Amzi's great-granddaughter in electing the Main Street fauna
as the subject of her commencement address rather than her indebtedness
to the poets, though it may not be illuminative as to the holes in
Phil's stockings. But on this point we shall be enlightened later.
Phil raised her head. There had come a lull in the whisper of the
weather spirit in the sycamores, and she was aware of a sound that was
not the noise of the creek among the boulders. It was a strain of music
not of nature's making and Phil's healthy young curiosity was instantly
aroused by it. Her father maintained his lonely vigil by the fire, quite
oblivious of her and of all things. She caught another strain, and then
began climbing the cliff.
The ascent was difficult, but she drew herself up swiftly, catching at
bushes, seeking with accustomed feet the secure limestone ledges that
promised safety, pausing to listen when bits of loosened stone fell
behind her. Finally, catching the protruding roots of a great sycamore
whose shadow had guided her, she gained the top. The moon, invisible in
the vale, now greeted her as it rose superbly above a dark woodland
across a wide stretch of intervening field. But there were nearer lights
than those of star and moon, and their presence afforded her a thrill of
surprise.
Clearer now came the strains of music. Here was a combination of
phenomena that informed the familiar region with strangeness. The music
came from a barn, and she remembered that barn well as a huge, gloomy
affair on the Holton farm. Satisfied of this, Phil turned,
half-unconsciously, and glanced up at the sycamore. That hoary old
landmark defined a boundary, and a boundary which, on various accounts,
it was incumbent upon the great-granddaughter of Amzi Montgomery I to
observe. A dividing fence ran from the sycamore, straight toward the
moon. It was a "stake-and-rider" fence, and the notches on the Holton
side of it were filled with wild raspberry, elderberry, and weeds; but
on the Montgomery side these interstices were free of such tangle. The
fact that lights and music advertised the Holton farm to the eye and ear
seemed to Phil a matter worthy of her attention. The corn was in the
shock on the Montgomery side; the adjacent Holton field had lain fallow
that year. The shocks of corn suggested to Phil's imagination the tents
of an unsentineled host or an abandoned camp; but she walked fearlessly
toward the lights and music, bent upon investigation. The moon would not
for some time creep high enough to light the valley and disturb her
father's vigil by the camp-fire: there need be no haste, for even if he
missed her he would not be alarmed.
The old Holton house and its outbuildings lay near the fence and Phil
calculated that without leaving her ancestral acres she would be able to
determine exactly the nature and extent of this unprecedented revelry in
the Holton barn. She approached as near as possible and rested her arms
on the rough top rail of the fence. There were doors on both sides of
the lumbering old structure, and her tramp across the cornfield was
rewarded by a comprehensive view of the scene within. The music ceased
and she heard voices--gay, happy voices--greeting some late-comers whose
automobile had just "chug-chugged" into the barnyard. She saw, beyond
the brilliantly lighted interior, the motors and carriages that had
conveyed the company to the dance; and she caught a glimpse of the
farmhouse itself, where doubtless refreshments were even now in
readiness. Phil was far enough away to be safe from observation and yet
near enough to identify many of the dancers. They were chiefly young
people she had known all her life, and the strangers were presumably
friends of the Holtons from Indianapolis and elsewhere.
The strains of a familiar waltz caused a quick reassembling of the
dancers. The music tingled in Phil's blood. She kept time with head and
hands, and then, swinging round, began dancing, humming the air as her
figure swayed and bent to its cadences. By some whim the nearest
corn-shock became the center of her attention. Round and round it she
moved, with a child's abandon; and now that the moon's full glory lay
upon the fields, her shadow danced mockingly with her. Fauns and nymphs
tripped thus to wild music in the enchanted long ago when the world was
young. Hers was the lightest, the most fantastic of irresponsible
shadows. It was not the mere reflection of her body, but a prefigurement
of her buoyant spirit, that had escaped from her control and tauntingly
eluded capture. Her mind had never known a morbid moment; she had never
feared the dark, without or within. And this was her private affair--a
joke between her and the moon and the earth. It was for the moment all
hers--earth and heaven, the mystery of the stars, the slumbering power
of a beneficent land that only yesterday had vouchsafed its kindly
fruits in reward of man's labor.
After a breathless interval a two-step followed, and Phil danced again,
seizing a corn-stalk and holding it above her head with both hands like
a wand. When the music ended she poised on tiptoe and flung the stalk
far from her toward the barn as though it were a javelin. Then as she
took a step toward the fence she was aware that some one had been
watching her. It was, indeed, a nice question whether the flying stalk
had not grazed the ear of a man who stood on Holton soil, his arms
resting on the rail just as hers had been ten minutes earlier, and near
the same spot.
"'Lo!" gasped Phil breathlessly.
"'Lo!"
They surveyed each other calmly in the moonlight. The young man beyond
the fence straightened and removed his hat. He had been watching her
antics round the corn-shock and Phil resented it.
"What were you doing that for?" she demanded indignantly, her hands in
her sweater pockets.
"Doing what, for instance?"
"Watching me. It wasn't fair."
"Oh, I liked your dancing; that was all."
"Oh!"
An "Oh" let fall with certain intonations is a serious impediment to
conversation. The young gentleman seemed unable at this crucial instant
to think of a fitting reply. Finding himself unequal to a response in
her own key he merely said:--
"I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to. I came over here to sit on the
fence and watch the party."
"Watch it! Why don't you go in and dance?"
He glanced down as though to suggest that if Phil were to scrutinize his
raiment she might very readily understand why, instead of being among
the dancers, he contented himself with watching them from a convenient
fence corner. He carried a crumpled coat on his arm; the collar of his
flannel shirt was turned up round his throat. His hat was of battered
felt with a rent in the creased crown.
"My brother and sister are giving the party. I'm not in it."
"I suppose your invitation got lost in the mail," suggested Phil, this
being a form of explanation frequently proffered by local humorists for
their failure to appear at Montgomery functions.
"Nothing like that! I didn't expect to be here to-day. In fact, I've
been off trying to borrow a team of horses; one of mine went lame. I've
just brought them home, and I'm wondering how long I've got to wait
before the rumpus is over and those folks get out of there and give the
horses a chance. It's going to rain before morning."
Phil had heard the same prognostication from her father, and it was in
the young man's favor that he was wise in weather lore. The musicians
had begun to play a popular barn dance, and the two spectators watched
the dancers catch step to it. Then Phil, having by this time drawn a
trifle closer to the fence and been reassured by her observations of the
clean-shaven face of the young man, became personal.
"Are you Charlie Holton?"
"No; Fred. Charlie's my brother."
"And your sister's name is Ethel."
"O. K. I'm trying to figure you out. If you weren't so tall I'd guess
you were Phyllis Kirkwood."
"That's all of my name," replied Phil. "I remember you now, but you must
have been away a long time. I hadn't heard that anybody was living over
there."
"The family haven't been here much since I was a kid. They have moved
out their things. What's left is mine."
Mr. Frederick Holton turned and extended the hand that held his hat with
a comprehensive gesture. There was a tinge of irony in his tone that
Phil did not miss. "What's left here--house, barn, and land--belongs to
me. The town house has been sold and Charlie and Ethel have come out
here to say good-bye to the farm."
"Oh!"
This time Phil's "Oh" connoted mild surprise, polite interest, and faint
curiosity.
The wind rustled the leaves among the corn-shocks. The moon gazed
benevolently upon the barn, tolerant of the impertinence of man-made
light and a gayety that was wholly inconsonant with her previous
knowledge of this particular bit of landscape.
Fred Holton did not amplify his last statement, so Phil's "Oh," in so
far as it expressed curiosity as to the disposition of the Holton
territory and Mr. Frederick Holton's relation to it, seemed destined to
no immediate satisfaction.
"I must skip," remarked Phil; though she did not, in fact, skip at once.
"Staying over at your grandfather's?" The young man's arm pointed toward
the north and the venerable farmhouse long occupied by tenants of the
Montgomerys.
Old Amzi had acquired much land in his day and his grandson, Amzi III,
clung to most of it. But this little availed Phil, as we shall see.
Still it was conceivable and pardonable that Fred Holton should assume
that Phil was domiciled upon soil to which she had presumably certain
inalienable rights.
"No; I've been camping and my father's waiting for me down there in
Turkey Run. We've been here a month."
"It must be good fun, camping that way."
"Oh, rather! But it's tough--the going home afterwards."
"I hate towns myself. I expect to have some fun out here."
"I heard this farm had been sold," remarked Phil leadingly.
"Well, I suppose it amounts to that. They were dividing up father's
estate, and I drew it."
"Well, it's not so much to look at," remarked Phil, as though the
appraisement of farm property were quite in the line of her occupations.
"I've been across your pasture a number of times on my way to Uncle
Amzi's for milk, but I didn't know any one was living here. One can
hardly mention your farm in terms of grandeur or splendor."
Fred Holton laughed, a cheerful, pleasant laugh. Phil had not thought of
it before, but she decided now that she liked him. His voice was
agreeable, and she noted his slight drawl. Phil's father, who was born
in the Berkshires, said all Hoosiers drawled. As a matter of fact,
Phil, who was indubitably a Hoosier, did not, save in a whimsical
fashion of her own, to give a humorous turn to the large words with
which she sometimes embellished her conversation. Her father said that
her freedom from the drawl was no fault of the Montgomery High School,
but attributable to his own vigilance.
Phil knew that it was unseemly to be talking across a fence to a strange
young man, particularly when her father was doubtless waiting for her to
return for the homeward journey; and she knew that she was guilty of a
grievous offense in talking to a Holton in any circumstances. Still the
situation appealed to her imagination. There hung the moon, patron
goddess of such encounters, and here were fields of mystery.
"They say it's no good, do they? They're right. I know all about it, so
you don't need to be sorry for me."
Sensitiveness spoke here; obviously others had made the mistake, of
which she would not be guilty, of sympathizing with him in his
possession of these unprofitable acres. Phil had no intention of being
sorry for him. She rather liked him for not wanting her sympathy, though
to be sure there was no reason why he should have expected it.
"You've been living in Indianapolis?"
"The folks have. Father died, you know, nearly two years ago. I was in
Mexico, and now I'm back to stay."
"I suppose you learned farming in Mexico?" Phil pursued.
"Well, hardly! Mining; no silver; quit."
"Oh," said Phil, and filed his telegram for reference.
They watched the dance for a few minutes.
"What's that?"
Phil started guiltily as Holton turned his head toward the creek,
listening. Her father was sounding the immelodious fish-horn which he
called their signal corps. He must have become alarmed by her long
absence or he would not have resorted to it, and she recalled with shame
that it had been buried in a soap-box with minor cooking-utensils at the
bottom of the wagon, and could not have been resurrected without
trouble.
"Good-bye!" She ran swiftly across the field toward the creek. The horn,
sounding at intervals in long raucous blasts, roused Phil to her best
speed. She ran boy fashion with her head down, elbows at her sides. Fred
Holton watched her until she disappeared.
He made a detour of the barn, followed a lane that led to the town road,
and waited, in the shadow of a great walnut at the edge of a pasture. He
was soon rewarded by the sound of wheels coming up from the creek, and
in a moment the one-horse wagon bearing Phil and her father passed
slowly. He heard their voices distinctly; Kirkwood was chaffing Phil for
her prolonged absence. Their good comradeship was evident in their
laughter, subdued to the mood of the still, white night. Fred Holton was
busy reconstructing all his previous knowledge of the Kirkwoods, and he
knew a good deal about them, now that he thought of it.
At the crest of Listening Hill,--so called from the fact that in old
times farm-boys had listened there for wandering cows,--the wagon
lingered for a moment--an act of mercy to the horse--and the figures of
father and daughter were mistily outlined against the sky. Then they
resumed their journey and Fred slowly crossed the fields toward the
barn.
CHAPTER II
THE MONTGOMERYS OF MONTGOMERY
A stout, spectacled gentleman of fifty or thereabouts appeared at
intervals, every business day of the year, on the steps of Montgomery's
Bank, at the corner of Main and Franklin Streets. As he stood on this
pedestal, wearing, winter and summer, a blue-and-white seersucker office
coat tightly buttoned about his pudgy form, and frequently with an
ancient straw hat perched on the side of his head, it was fair to assume
that he was in some way connected with the institution from whose doors
he emerged. This was, indeed, the fact, and any intelligent child could
have enlightened a stranger as to the name of the stout gentleman
indicated. He was one of the first citizens of the community, if wealth,
probity, and long residence may be said to count for anything. And his
name, which it were absurd longer to conceal, was Amzi Montgomery, or,
to particularize, Amzi Montgomery III. As both his father and his
grandfather who had borne the same name slept peacefully in Greenlawn,
it is unnecessary to continue in this narrative the numerical
designation of this living Amzi who braved the worst of weathers to
inspect the moving incidents of Main Street as a relief from the strain
and stress of the business of a private banker.
When, every hour or so, Mr. Montgomery, exposing a pink bald head to the
elements, glanced up and down the street, usually with a cigar planted
resolutely in the corner of his mouth, it was commonly believed that he
saw everything that was happening, not only in Main Street, but in all
the shops and in the rival banking-houses distributed along that
thoroughfare. After surveying the immediate scene,--having, for example,
noted the customers waiting at the counter of the First National Bank,
diagonally opposite,--something almost invariably impelled his glance
upward to the sign of a painless dentist, immediately above the First
National,--a propinquity which had caused a wag (one of the Montgomery's
customers) to express the hope that the dentist was more painless than
the bank in his extractions.
There was a clothing store directly opposite Amzi's bank, and his
wandering eye could not have failed to observe the lettering on the
windows of the office above it, which, in badly scratched gilt,
published the name of Thomas Kirkwood, Attorney at Law, to the
litigiously inclined. Still higher on the third and final story of the
building hung a photographer's sign in a dilapidated condition, and
though a studio skylight spoke further of photography, almost every one
knew that the artist had departed years ago, and that Tom Kirkwood had
never found another tenant for those upper rooms.
At two o'clock on the afternoon of the day following the return of Phil
Kirkwood and her father from their camp on Sugar Creek, as Mr.
Montgomery appeared upon the steps of the bank and gazed with his usual
unconcern up and down Main Street, his spectacles pointed finally (or so
it seemed) to the photographer's studio over the way. Although a slight
mist was falling and umbrellas bobbed inanely in the fashion of
umbrellas, Amzi in his seersucker coat was apparently oblivious of the
weather's inclemency. One of the windows of the abandoned photograph
gallery was open, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, the head
of Miss Phyllis Kirkwood bent over the cornice and she waved her hand
with unmistakable friendliness. It was then that Mr. Montgomery, as
though replying to a signal, detached his left hand from its pocket,
made a gesture as graceful as a man of his figure is capable of, and
then, allaying suspicion by passing the hand across his bald head, he
looked quickly toward the court-house tower and immediately withdrew to
continue his active supervision of the four clerks who sufficed for his
bank's business.
As depositors were now bringing to the receiving teller's window their
day's offerings, Mr. Montgomery took his stand at the paying teller's
window,--a part of his usual routine,--to relieve the pressure incident
to the closing hour, one teller at other times being quite equal to the
demands of both departments. Mr. Montgomery's manner of paying a check
was in itself individual. He laid his cigar on the edge of the counter,
passed the time of day with a slightly asthmatic voice, drew the check
toward him with the tips of his fingers, read it, cocked an eye at the
indorsement, and counted out the money with a bored air. If silver
entered into the transaction, he usually rang the last coin absently on
the glass surface of the counter.
In other times the sign on the window had proclaimed "Montgomery &
Holton, Bankers"; and the deletion of the second name from the
copartnership was due to an incident that must be set down succinctly
before we proceed further. Amzi II had left a family of five children,
of whom Phil Kirkwood's three aunts have already been mentioned. The
only one of the Montgomery girls, as they were locally designated, who
had made a marriage at all in keeping with the family dignity, had been
Lois.
Lois, every one said, was the handsomest, the most interesting of the
Montgomerys, and she had captured at eighteen the heart of Tom Kirkwood,
who had come out of the East to assume the chair of jurisprudence in
Madison College, which, as every one knows, is an institution
inseparably associated with the fame of Montgomery as a community of
enlightenment. Tom Kirkwood was a graduate of Williams College, with a
Berlin Ph.D., and he had, moreover, a modest patrimony which, after his
marriage to Lois Montgomery, he had invested in the block in Main Street
opposite the Montgomery Bank. The year following the marriage he had, in
keeping with an early resolution, resigned his professorship and begun
the practice of law. He seemed to have escaped the embarrassments and
prejudices that attend any practical undertakings by men who have borne
the title of professor, and whether his connection with the Montgomery
family saved him from such disqualification it was nevertheless true
that he entered upon the law brilliantly. Two or three successes in
important cases had launched him upon this second career auspiciously.
Amzi II was still living at the time of the marriage, and as he valued
his own position in the community and wished his family to maintain its
traditions, he had subdivided a large tract of woodland in which his
father's house stood, and bestowed an acre lot upon each of his
daughters. His son had declined a similar offer, having elected early in
life the bachelor state in which we have found him. As Lois had been the
first to marry, her house was planted nearest to the gray old brick in
which she had been reared.
If the gods favored the Montgomerys, they seemed no less to smile with a
peculiar indulgence upon the Kirkwoods. People who had said that Lois
was a trifle strong-willed and given to frivolity were convinced that
her marriage had done much to sober her. In the second year thereafter
Phyllis was born, a further assurance that Lois was thoroughly
established among the staid matrons of her native town. Then in the
fifth year of her marriage, rumors--almost the first scandalous gossip
that had ever passed current in those quiet streets--began to be heard.
It did not seem possible that in a community whose morals were nurtured
in Center Church, a town where everybody was "good," where no
respectable man ever entered a saloon and divorce was a word not to be
spoken before children,--that here, a daughter of the house of
Montgomery was causing anxiety among those jealous of her good name. A
few of Kirkwood's friends--and he had many--may have known the inner
history of the cloud that darkened his house; but the end came with a
blinding flash that left him dazed and dumb.
The town was so knit together, so like a big family, that Lois
Montgomery's escapade was a tragedy at every hearth-side. It was
immeasurably shocking that a young woman married to a reputable man, and
with a child still toddling after her, should have done this grievous
thing. To say that she had always been flighty, and that it was what
might have been expected of a woman as headstrong as she had been as a
girl, was no mollification of the blow to the local conscience, acutely
sensitive in all that pertained to the honor and sanctity of the
marriage tie. And Jack Holton! That she should have thrown away a man
like Tom Kirkwood, a gentleman and a scholar, for a rogue like Holton,
added to the blackness of her sin. The Holtons had been second only to
the Montgomerys in dignity. The conjunction of the names on the old sign
over the bank at Main and Franklin Streets had expressed not only
unquestioned financial stability, but a social worth likewise
unassailable. Jack Holton, like Amzi Montgomery, had inherited an
interest in the banking-house of Montgomery & Holton. To be sure his
brother William had been the active representative of the second
generation of Holtons, and Jack had never really settled down to
anything after he returned from the Eastern college to which he had been
sent; but these were things that had not been considered until after he
decamped with Lois Kirkwood. Many declared after the event that they had
"always known" that Jack was a bad lot. Those who sought to account for
Lois Kirkwood's infatuation remembered suddenly that he and Lois had
been boy and girl sweethearts and that she had once been engaged to
marry him. It was explained that his temperament and hers were
harmonious, and that Kirkwood, for all his fine abilities, was a
sober-minded fellow, without Holton's zest for the world's gayety. Any
further details--the countless trifles with which for half a dozen years
the gossips of Montgomery regaled themselves--are not for this writing.
Many years had passed--or, to be explicit, exactly sixteen. One of the
first results of the incident had been the immediate elimination of the
Holton half of the firm name by which the bank had long been known.
Jack's brother William organized the First National Bank, toward which
Mr. Amzi Montgomery's spectacles pointed several times daily, as
already noted. Samuel, the oldest son of the first Holton, tried a
variety of occupations before he was elected Secretary of State. He
never fully severed his ties with Montgomery, retaining a house in town
and the farm on Sugar Creek. After retiring from office, he became a
venturesome speculator, capitalizing his wide political acquaintance in
the sale of shares in all manner of mining and plantation companies, and
dying suddenly, had left his estate in a sad clutter.
In due course of time it became known that Lois Kirkwood had divorced
her husband at long range, from a Western state where such matters were
at the time transacted expeditiously, and a formal announcement of her
marriage to Holton subsequently appeared in the Montgomery "Evening
Star."
The day after his wife's departure Kirkwood left his home and did not
enter it again. It was said by romanticists among the local gossips that
he had touched nothing, leaving it exactly as it had been, and that he
always carried the key in his pocket as a reminder of his sorrow. Phil
was passed back and forth among her aunts, _seriatim_, until she went to
live with her father, in a rented house far from the original roof-tree.
Even in practicing the most rigid economy of space some reference must
be made to the attitude of Lois Kirkwood's sisters toward her as a
sinning woman. Their amazement had yielded at once to righteous
indignation. It was enough that she had sinned against Heaven; but that
she should have brought shame upon them all and placed half the
continent between herself and the scene and consequences of her
iniquity, leaving her family to shoulder all its responsibilities, was
too monstrous for expression. They were Montgomerys _of_ Montgomery; it
seemed incredible that the town itself could ever recover from the shock
of her egregious transgression. They vied with each other in
manifestations of sympathy for Kirkwood, whose nobility under suffering
was so admirable; and they lavished upon Phil (it had been _like_ Lois,
they discovered, to label her with the preposterous name of Phyllis!) an
affection which became in time a trial to the child's soul.
Their fury gained ardor from the fact that their brother Amzi had never,
after he had blinked at them all when they visited him in his private
room at the bank the morning after the elopement, mentioned to any
living soul the passing of this youngest sister. It had been an occasion
to rouse an older brother and the head of his house to some dramatic
pronouncement. He should have taken a stand, they said, though just what
stand one should take, when one's sister has run off with another man
and left a wholly admirable husband and a winsome baby daughter behind,
may not, perhaps, have been wholly clear to the minds of the remaining
impeccable sisters. They demanded he should confiscate her share of
their father's estate as punishment; this should now be Phil's; they
wanted this understood and they took care that their friends should know
that they had made this demand of Amzi. But a gentleman of philosophic
habit and temper, who serenely views the world from his bank's doorstep,
need hardly be expected to break his natural reticence to thunder at an
erring sister, or even to gladden the gallery (imaginably the whole town
that bears his name) by transfers of property, of which he was the
lawful trustee, to that lady's abandoned heir.
Lois had caused all eyes to focus upon the Montgomerys with a new
intentness. Before her escapade they had been accepted as a matter of
course; now that she had demonstrated that the Montgomerys were subject
to the temptations that beset all mankind, every one became curious as
to the further definition of the family weaknesses. The community may be
said to have awaited the marriages of the three remaining Montgomery
girls in much the same spirit that a family physician awaits the
appearance of measles in a child that has been exposed to that malady.
And Montgomery was not wholly disappointed.
Kate, who like Lois, was a trifle temperamental, had fallen before the
charms of one Lawrence Hastings. The manner of Hastings's advent in
Montgomery is perhaps worthy of a few words, inasmuch as he came to
stay. Hastings was an actor, who visited Montgomery one winter as a
member of a company that had trustfully ventured into the provinces with
a Shakespearean repertoire. Montgomery was favored in the hope that,
being a college town, it would rally to the call of the serious drama.
Unfortunately the college was otherwise engaged at the moment with a
drama of more contemporaneous interest and authorship. An unusually
severe January added to the eager and nipping air upon which the curtain
rises in "Hamlet," and proved too much for the well-meaning players.
Hastings (so ran tradition) had gallantly bestowed such money as he had
upon the ladies of the company to facilitate their flight to New York.
His father, a successful manufacturer of codfish packing-boxes at
Newburyport, telegraphed money for the prodigal's return with the
stipulation that he should forswear the inky cloak and abase himself in
the box factory.
At this point Kate Montgomery, in charge of an entertainment for the
benefit of Center Church, invited Hastings (thus providentially flung
upon the Hoosier coasts) to give a reading in the church parlors. Almost
coincidently the opera house at Montgomery needed a manager, and
Hastings accepted the position. The Avon Dramatic Club rose and
flourished that winter under Hastings's magic wand. It is not every town
of fifteen thousand that suddenly enrolls a Hamlet among her citizens,
and as the creator and chief spirit of the dramatic club, Hastings's
social acceptance was immediate and complete. In other times the town
would have been wary of an actor; but had not Hastings given his
services free of charge for the benefit of Center Church, and was he not
a gentleman, the son of a wealthy manufacturer, and had he not declined
money offered by telegraph that he might cling stubbornly to his art?
Kate Montgomery talked a good deal about his art, which he would not
relinquish for the boxing of codfish. After Hastings had given a lecture
on "Macbeth" (with readings from the play) in the chapel of Madison
College, his respectability was established. There was no reason
whatever why Kate Montgomery should not marry him; and she did, at the
end of his first year in town. He thereupon assumed the theater lease
and what had been the old "Grand Opera House" became under his ownership
"Hastings's Theater," or "The Hastings."
Fanny Montgomery had contented herself with the hand of a young man
named Fosdick who had been summoned to town to organize a commercial
club. In two years he added several industries to Montgomery's scant
list, and wheedled a new passenger station out of one of the lordly
railroads that had long held the town in scorn. Two of the industries
failed, the new station was cited as an awful example by the Professor
of Fine Arts at the college, and yet Paul Fosdick made himself essential
to Montgomery. The commercial club's bimonthly dinners gave the solid
citizens an excuse for leaving home six nights a year, and in a
community where meetings of whist clubs and church boards constituted
the only justification for carrying a latch-key this new freedom
established him at once as a friend of mankind. Fosdick was wholly
presentable, and while his contributions to the industrial glory of
Montgomery lacked elements of permanence, he had, so the "Evening Star"
solemnly averred, "done much to rouse our citizens from their lethargy
and blaze the starward trail." After he married Fanny, Fosdick opened an
office adjoining the Commercial Club rooms and his stationery bore the
legend "Investment Securities." Judge Walters, in appointing a receiver
for a corporation which Fosdick had organized for the manufacture and
sale of paving-brick, inadvertently spoke of the promoter's occupation
as that of a "dealer in insecurities"; but this playfulness on the
court's part did not shake confidence in Fosdick. He was a popular
fellow, and the success of those Commercial Club dinners was not to be
discounted by the cynical flings of a judge who was rich enough to be
comfortably indifferent to criticism.
Amzi Montgomery being, as hinted, a person of philosophic temperament,
had interposed no manner of objection to the several marriages of his
sisters until Josephine, the oldest, and the last to marry, tendered him
a brother-in-law in the person of Alexander Waterman. Josephine was the
least attractive of the sisters, and also, it was said, the meekest, the
kindest, and the most amiable. An early unhappy affair with a young
minister was a part of the local tradition, and she had been cited as a
broken-hearted woman until she married Waterman. Waterman was a lawyer
who had been seized early in life with a mania for running for Congress.
The district had long been Republican, but with singular obstinacy
Waterman insisted on being a Democrat. His party being hopelessly in the
minority he was graciously permitted to have such nominations as he
liked, with the result that he had been defeated for nearly every office
within the gift of a proud people. He was a fair jury lawyer, and an
orator of considerable repute among those susceptible to the
blandishments of the florid school.
Amzi's resentment of Josephine's choice was said to be due to a grilling
the banker had received at Waterman's hands on the witness stand. Once
while standing on the steps of his bank for a survey of the visible
universe, Amzi was rewarded with an excellent view of the liveliest
runaway that had thrilled Main Street in years. Several persons were
hurt, and one of the victims had sued the grocer whose wagon had done
the mischief.
Waterman was the plaintiff's attorney, and Amzi Montgomery was, of
course, an important though reluctant witness. The banker loathed
litigation in all its forms and in his own affairs studiously avoided
it. It enraged him to find one of his idiosyncrasies advertised by the
fact that he had observed the violent collision of a grocer's wagon with
a fellow-citizen. His anger was augmented by the patronizing manner in
which Waterman compelled him to contribute to the record of the case
admissions touching his habits of life, which, though perfectly lawful
and decorous, became ridiculous when uttered on oath in a law court.
Every one knew that Mr. Montgomery stood on the bank steps at intervals
to take the air, but no one had ever dreamed that he would be obliged to
discuss or explain the habit.
The "Evening Star" printed all of his testimony that it dared; but as
the cross-examination had been conducted before a crowded courtroom the
neat give and take between lawyer and witness had not lacked thorough
reporting. For several weeks thereafter Amzi did not appear on the bank
steps; nor did he revert to his old habit until satisfied that groups of
idlers were not lying in wait. After Josephine introduced Waterman to
the family circle Amzi seemed generously to overlook the offense. He was
as cordial toward him as toward either of the other brothers-in-law,
with the exception of Kirkwood, though of course Kirkwood, strictly
speaking, no longer continued in that relationship.
These details aside, it is possible to return to the bank, and await the
result of that furtive gesture with which Mr. Amzi Montgomery responded
to Phil Kirkwood's signal from the window of the photograph gallery. By
half-past four the clerks had concluded their day's work; the routine
letters to Chicago, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis correspondents had been
sealed and dispatched, and the vault locked by Mr. Montgomery's own
hand. Thereupon he retired to the back room, unlocked the Franklin
Street door and beguiled himself with the "Evening Star." Shortly before
five o'clock he heard light steps outside followed by a tap and Phil
opened and closed the door.
"Lo, Amy!"
She pronounced the _a_ long, after a fashion she had adopted in
childhood and refused to relinquish. Amzi was "A-mee" to Phil. She
glanced into the bank room, seized his newspaper, crunched it into a
football, and kicked it over the tellers' cages into the front window.
Then she pressed her uncle down into his chair, grasped his face in her
hands, and held him while she kissed him on the nose, the left eye, and
the right cheek, choosing the spot in every instance with provoking
deliberation as she held his wriggling head. He lost his cigar and his
spectacles were knocked awry, but he did not appear to be distressed.
Phil set his spectacles straight, struck a match for a fresh cigar, and
seated herself on the table.
"I'm back, Amy. How did you know we'd be home to-day?"
"Dreamed it," said Amzi, apparently relieved that her assaults upon his
peace and dignity were ended.
"I'd been watching for you half an hour before you came out on the
steps. I'd about given you up."
"So? You were pretty late getting home last night. Your father ought to
be ashamed of himself."
Amzi glared at Phil. His curiously large blue eyes could, at will,
express ferocity, and the red and purple in his face deepened as he shut
his jaws tight. She was not, however, in the least disturbed, not even
when he pushed back his chair to escape her swinging legs, and pointed
his finger at her threateningly.
"I wanted to see you," he gasped.
"So I inferred," Phil remarked, bending forward and compressing her lips
as though making a careful calculation, then touching the point of his
nose.
Amzi rubbed the outraged nose with the back of his hand, wheezed
hoarsely (the effect of the rain upon his asthma), and cleared his
throat.
"You'll come down from your high horse in a minute. I've got something
to tell you that will sober you up a bit."
Phil raised her hands and with brown nimble fingers found and readjusted
the pin that affixed a shabby felt hat to her hair. Then she folded her
arms and looked at the tips of her shoes.
"The suspense is killing me. I who am about to die salute you!"
Amzi frowned at her levity. His frown caused a disturbance throughout
his vast tracts of baldness.
"You'll change your tune in a minute, my young commodore. Have you seen
your aunts?"
"No; but it's not their fault! Aunt Josie called; the others telephoned
for dates. I saw Aunt Josie first, which explains why we didn't meet. I
knew something was up."
"Something is up. They got me over to Josie's last night to ask me to
help. It's a big programme. And I wanted to warn you in advance. You've
got to stop all your capers; no more camps on Sugar Creek, no more
tomboy foolishness; no more general nonsense. You've got to be a
civilized woman, and conduct yourself according to the rules in such
cases made and provided."
"Oh, is that it? And they got you to tell me, did they? How sweet of
them!" observed Phil. "I might have guessed it from the look of Aunt
Josie's back as she went out the gate."
"Her back? Thunder! How did you see her back?"
"From the roof, Amy, if you must know. If you had three aunts who had
turned up every few minutes all your natural life to tell you what not
to do, you'd run for the roof, too, every time you heard the gate click.
And that last cook they put in the house was just a spy for them. But
she didn't spy long! I've bounced her!"
Amzi blinked and coughed, and feigned even greater ferocity.
"That's it! That's the kind of thing you've got to stop doing! You're
always bouncing the hired girls your aunts put in the house to take care
of you and you've got to quit; you've got to learn how to manage a
servant; you've got"--and he drew himself up to charge his words with
all possible dignity--"you've got to be a lady."
"You insinuate, Amy, that I'm not one, just natural born?"
"I don't mean any such thing," he blurted. "You know mighty well what I
mean--this skylarking, this galloping around town on your pony. You've
got to behave yourself; you've got to pay attention to what your aunts
tell you. You've got to listen to me!"
"Look me in the eye, you old fraud! I'll bet every one of 'em has called
you up to tell you to see me and give me a lecturing. They're a jolly
lot of cowards, that's all. And I came over here thinking you wanted to
be nice and cheerful like you always used to be. All by your dear old
lonesome you'd never think of talking to me like this; I've a good
notion to muss you up!"
The thought of being mussed was clearly disturbing. He rose hastily and
retreated to the barred window, with the table between them.
"Oh, you're guilty! I always know when they've been putting you up to
something. Come along now and sit down like a good old uncle and tell me
what new idea has struck those foolish females. Sit down right there in
your little chair, Amy; I'll let you off from that mussing if you tell
the truth."
"You see, Phil," he began earnestly, "you've grown up. You're not a kid
any more to chase cats and dogs through the court-house square, and flip
on the interurbans, but a grown woman, and you've got to begin acting
like one. And you've got to begin right now. Just look at your shoes;
look at that hat! What kind of clothes is that sailor boy's suit you're
wearing? You've got to dress like a decent white girl that's had some
bringing-up, and you've got to--you've got--" Amzi coughed as though
afraid of the intended conclusion of his sentence. Phil's eyes were bent
upon him with disconcerting gravity. He hoped that Phil would interrupt
with one of her usual impertinences; but with the suspicion of laughter
in her eyes she waited, so that he perforce blurted it out. "You've got
to go into society; that's what's the matter!"
Phil moved her head slightly to one side, and her lips parted. A faraway
look came into her eyes for an instant only. Amzi was watching her
keenly. He was taken aback by her abrupt change of manner; her sudden
sobriety baffled him. Something very sweet and wistful came into her
face; something that he had not seen there before, and he was touched by
it.
"I suppose I must change my ways, Uncle Amy. I do act like a wild
zebra,--I know that. But I'm sorry. Of course it's silly for a girl
who's nearly nineteen to be as skittish as I am. And they tell me I'm a
bad example to my cousins and the whole town. It's tough to be a bad
example. What's this they're going to do to me?"
"Oh, you've got to be brought out; you've got to have a party; they want
me to have it in my house."
"All right," said Phil tamely. She seemed, indeed, to be thinking of
something else. Her manner continued to puzzle him; he was even troubled
by it. He relighted his cigar and watched the smoke of the extinguished
match after he had tossed it into the little grate.
"Uncle Amy," said Phil, quite soberly, "I'm really serious now. I've
been wondering a good deal about what's going to become of me."
"How's that, Phil?"
"Well, I'm not as silly as I act; and I've been wondering whether I
oughtn't to try to do something?"
"What kind of something? Housekeeping--that sort of thing?"
"Yes; but more than that. I ought to go to work to earn money."
Amzi shrugged his shoulders.
"Thunder! you can't do that," he said with decision. "It wouldn't be
proper for you to do that."
"I don't see why not. Other girls do."
"Girls do when they have to. You don't have to."
"I'm not so sure of that. We might as well be sensible if we're going to
talk about it."
Amzi agreed to this with a nod and resettled himself in his chair.
"Daddy isn't making enough to take care of us, that's all. This
afternoon I was over in his office cleaning up his desk,--you know he
never does it himself, and even a harum-scarum like me can help it
some,--and I saw a lot of things that scared me. Bills and things like
that. And it would be hard to talk to daddy about it; I don't think I
ever could. And you know he really could make a lot of money if he
wanted to; I can tell that from the letters he gets. He doesn't answer
his letters. Every month last year I used to straighten his desk, and
some of last spring's bills are still there, and they haven't been paid.
I know, of course, that that can't go on forever."
"You oughtn't to have to bother about that, Phil. It's none of your
business."
"Yes," she replied, earnestly, "it is my business. And it's been
troubling me for a long time. I can't talk to father about it; you can
see how that would be; and he's such a dear--so fine and kind. I suppose
there isn't anybody on earth as fine as daddy. And he breaks my heart,
sometimes; goes about so quiet, as though he had gone into himself and
shut the blinds, as they do in a house where somebody's dead. It seems
just like that, Uncle Amy."
Amzi was uncomfortable. It was not to hear her speak of drawn blinds in
houses of the dead that he had summoned Phil for this interview. His
sisters had asked him to reason with her, as they had often appealed to
him before in their well-meant but tactless efforts to correct her
faults, but she had evinced an accession of reasonableness that made him
uneasy. She had changed from the impulsive, exasperating young creature
he knew into an anxious, depressed woman in a mackintosh, whom he did
not know at all! He breathed hard for a few minutes, angry at his
sisters for bringing this situation to pass. It was absurd to tame a
girl of Phil's spirit. He had enjoyed, more than anything in his life,
his confidential relations with Phil. It was more for the fun of the
thing than because there was any cause for it that a certain amount of
mystery was thrown about such interviews as this. There was no reason on
earth why Phil shouldn't have entered by the front door in
banking-hours, or visited him in her grandfather's house where he lived.
But he liked the joke of it. He liked all their jokes, and entered
zestfully into all manner of conspiracies with her, to the discomfiture
of the aunts, to thwart their curbing of her liberties. He prided
himself upon his complete self-control, and it was distinctly annoying
to find that Phil's future, seen against a background plastered with her
father's unpaid bills, caused a sudden hot anger to surge in his heart.
Within the range of his ambitions and desires he did as he liked; and he
had a hardened bachelor's fondness for having his way. He walked to the
window and stared out at the street. It grew late and the rain was
gathering volume as though preparing for a night of it.
A truck heavily loaded with boxes and crates of furniture moved slowly
through Franklin Street toward the railway. Amzi was at once alert. He
read much current history in the labels on passing freight, and often
formed the basis for credits therefrom. Was it possible that one of the
bank's customers was feloniously smuggling merchandise out of town to
avoid writs of attachment? Such evils had been known. Phil jumped from
the table and joined him at the window. She knew her Uncle Amzi's mental
processes much better than he imagined; suspicion was writ large on his
countenance.
"Humph!" she said. "That's only the stuff from the Samuel Holton house.
Charlie and Ethel are moving to Indianapolis. That's some of the
furniture they had in their town house here. I saw the crates in the
yard this morning."
"I believe you're right, Phil; I believe you're right."
His eyes opened and shut several times quickly, as he assimilated this
information. Then he recurred to Phil's affairs.
"Speaking of money, Phil, we'll have to do something about those unpaid
bills. In a town like this everybody knows everybody's business--except
yours and mine. We can't have your father's bills piling up; they've got
to be paid. And this brings me to something I've meant to speak to you
about for some time. In fact, I've just been waiting for a chance, but
you're so confoundedly hard to catch. There's--a--some money--er--that
is to say, Phil, as executor of your grandfather's estate, I hold some
money, that--er--"
He coughed furiously, blew his nose, and made a fresh start.
"I'm going to open an account for you--your own money, understand!--and
you can pay those bills yourself. We'll start with, say, five hundred
dollars and you can depend on a hundred a month. It will be
strictly--er--your money. Understand? You needn't say anything to your
father about it. That's all of that."
He feigned sudden interest in the wet street, but Phil, whose eyes had
not left him, tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"Oh, no, you don't! You haven't a cent that belongs to me, and you know
it, you splendid old fraud. And don't you try that game on me again or
I'll stop speaking to you."
"Do you mean--" he began to bluster; "do you mean to say that I don't
know my own business? Do you think I'm going to steal money from your
grandfather's estate to give you? Why--"
"You weren't born to adorn the front row of successful liars, Amy. And
even if you had a million or two lying round loose, you couldn't give me
a cent of it; I wouldn't take it. It wouldn't be square to daddy;
daddy's a gentleman, you know, and I couldn't do anything meaner than to
take your money to pay his debts with. So there, you old dear, I've a
good notion to muss you up, after all."
He again put the table between them, and stood puffing from the unwonted
haste with which he had eluded her grasp. He had managed the matter
badly, and as his hand, thrust into his coat pocket, touched a check he
had written and placed there as a preliminary to this interview, a
sheepish expression crossed his face.
"Well," he blurted, "I'd like to know what in thunder you're going to
do! I tell you it's yours by right. I ought to have given it to you long
ago."
"I'm skipping," said Phil, reaching down to button her raincoat. "We're
going to Rose's for tea."
"Tea?"
Amzi's emphasis implied that in tea lay the sole importance of Phil's
announcement; and yet, subjected to even the most superficial analysis,
Mr. Montgomery's sensations were not in the least attributable to the
thought of tea. Tea in the sense intended by Phil was wholly
commonplace,--a combination of cold meat, or perhaps of broiled chicken,
with hot biscuits, and honey or jam, or maybe canned peaches with cream.
Considered either as a beverage or as a meal, tea contained no thrill;
and yet perhaps the thought of tea at Miss Rose Bartlett's aroused in
Amzi Montgomery's breast certain emotions which were concealed by his
explosive emphasis. Phil, turning up the collar of her mackintosh,
reaffirmed the fact of tea.
"You never come to my house for just tea, but you go to Rose's. You're
always going to Rose's for tea," boomed Amzi.
"Daddy likes to go," added Phil, moving toward the door.
"I suppose he does," remarked Amzi, a little absently.
"By-by, Amy. Thanks, just the same, anyhow."
"Good-night, Phil!"
Phil lingered, her hand on the knob.
"Come over yourself, after tea. There may be music. Daddy keeps his
'cello over there, you know."
"His 'cello?"
It seemed that 'cello, like tea, was a word of deep significance. Amzi
glared at Phil, who raised her head and laughed.
"Nonsense!" he ejaculated, though it was not clear just wherein the
nonsense lay.
"Oh, your old flute is over there, too," said Phil, not without scorn.
Having launched this she laughed again and the door closed upon her with
a bang. She hammered the glass with her knuckles to attract his
attention, flung back her head as she laughed again, and vanished.
Amzi stared at the door's rain-splashed pane. The world was empty now
that Phil had gone. He drew down the shabby green blind with a jerk and
prepared to go home.
CHAPTER III
98 BUCKEYE LANE
The Bartlett sisters lived in Buckeye Lane, a thoroughfare that ran
along the college campus. Most of the faculty dwelt there, and the
Bartlett girls (every one said "the Bartlett girls" just as every one
said "the Montgomery girls": it was established local usage) were
daughters of a professor who had died long ago.
Rose was the housekeeper, and a very efficient one she was, too. In all
business transactions, from the purchase of vegetables to the collection
of the dividends on their small inheritance, Rose was the negotiator and
active agent. She was, moreover, an excellent cook; her reputation in
this department of domestic science was the highest. And as two women
can hardly be expected to exist on something like four hundred dollars a
year (the sum reluctantly yielded by their patrimony), Miss Rose
commercialized her genius by baking cakes, cookies, jumbles, and pies,
if demanded. In Montgomery, where only Mrs. William Holton had ever kept
more than one servant (though Fanny Fosdick had attempted higher
flights), Miss Rose was an ever-ready help in times of domestic
adversity to distracted housekeepers who found the maintenance of even
one servant attended with the gravest difficulties.
Miss Nan was an expert needlewoman, and, like her sister, augmented
their income by the labor of her hands. Her contributions to the pot
were, indeed, much larger than Rose's. The clients she served were
chiefly women of fastidious taste in these matters who lived in
surrounding cities. Her exhibitions of cross-stitching, hemstitching,
and drawn-work were so admirable as to establish a broad field for her
enterprises. Her designs were her own, and she served ladies who liked
novel and exclusive patterns. These employments had proved in no wise
detrimental to the social standing of the Bartlett girls. If Rose baked
a cake for a wedding supper, this did not militate in the least against
her eligibility as a guest of the occasion. And likewise Nan could
unfold a napkin she had herself hemstitched for a consideration, without
the slightest fear that any one would make invidious comments upon the
fact.
In the matter of the respective ages of the sisters no stranger was ever
informed of the exact fact, although every one knew. Judge Walters had
established an unchangeable age for both of them. They were, the judge
said, twenty-nine; though as they were not twins, and as he had
persisted in this fallacy for almost a decade, it is difficult to see
how they could both be permanently twenty-nine.
Not all the time of these ladies was spent in cooking and needlework.
Miss Rose was a musician, who played the organ at Center Church and was
usually the sympathetic accompanist at all concerts given by local
talent. And, as though not to be outdone, Miss Nan quietly exercised the
pen conjointly with the needle. Several editors in New York were quite
familiar with the neat backhand of a lady they had never seen who sent
them from an unheard-of town in Indiana the drollest paragraphs, the
most amusing dialogues, and the merriest of jingles. Now and then Nancy
Bartlett's name was affixed to an amusing skit in which various
Montgomery people found their foibles published to the world, though
with a proper discretion, and so amiably that no one could take offense.
With the perversity of such communities, many declared that Miss Rose
was more talented than Miss Nan, and that she could have written much
better things than her sister if she had chosen. But what could have
been more ridiculous than any attempt to arouse rivalry between sisters
who dwelt together so contentedly, and who were the busiest and happiest
women in town!
The Bartlett girls were the best friends the college boys had. If one of
these ladies undertook, in the absence of a manservant, to drive the
mower across their fifty feet of lawn, some youngster invariably
appeared to relieve her of this task. Or if wood or coal were observed
lying upon the walk in front of the Bartlett gate, it was always a
question whether the Sigma Chis or the Phi Gamma Deltas would see the
fuel first and hasten to conceal anything so monstrous, so revolting to
the soul of young Greeks, in the Bartlett cellar. Amid all their
vocations and avocations, the Bartletts moved tranquilly in an
atmosphere of luxurious leisure. They were never flustered; their
employments were a kind of lark, it seemed, never to be referred to
except in the most jocular fashion. When Rose had entrusted to the oven
a wedding-cake or a pan of jumbles she would repair to the piano for a
ten-minute indulgence in Chopin. Similarly indifferent to fate, Nan at
intervals in the day drew a tablet and fountain-pen from her
sewing-table and recorded some whimsicality which she had seemingly
found embedded in the mesh of a shopping-bag she was embellishing. And
when, in due course, a funny-looking, canary-colored envelope carried
this fragment to the desk of some bored phlegmatic editor, he would, as
like as not, grin and scribble an order to the cashier for two dollars
(or some such munificent sum) and pin it to the stamped "return" canary
envelope, which would presently reach Number 98 Buckeye Lane,
Montgomery, Indiana.
Phil Kirkwood hardly remembered a time when Number 98 had not been a
safe port in the multitudinous squalls that beset her youth. The
Bartletts were wholly human, as witness their pantry and
garret--veritable magazines of surprises! Miss Rose was a marvel at
cutting out silhouettes; Miss Nan would, with the slightest provocation,
play bear or horse, crawling over the floor with Phil perched on her
back blowing a horn. It was no wonder that Phil's vagrant steps turned
instinctively toward Number 98. In the beginning her father used to seek
her there; and having by this means learned the way, it was the most
natural thing in the world for father and daughter to visit the
Bartletts together. A man whose wife divorces him is entitled to some
social consolations, and if tea and jam at the house of two maiden
ladies of irreproachable character satisfies him, the community should
be satisfied also. The gossips had never been able to decide which of
the Bartlett girls was likelier to assume the role of Phil's stepmother.
There were those who favored Rose. As Kirkwood played the 'cello, Rose
to some observers seemed more plausible by reason of her musical talent.
Others believed that it would be Nan, as Nan was "literary" and Kirkwood
was a scholar, suspected of "writing," though just what he wrote no one
was able to say. It had been said thousands of times that Amzi
Montgomery must eventually marry one of the Bartletts, but here, too,
opinion was divided as to which one would probably be so favored. Amzi
had fluted in the Schumann Quartette, devoted to chamber music, but his
asthma had broken up the club, and he now rarely essayed the instrument.
Still, Amzi loved his joke, and Nan was a joker. So it was clear that
either Kirkwood or Montgomery might with propriety marry either Rose or
Nan. Whenever a drought seemed imminent in local gossip, these oases
bubbled.
Phil's aunts were not unaware of the high favor in which their niece
held the Bartletts; nor had they failed to speculate upon the chances of
Kirkwood's remarrying. They resented the idea, chiefly because such
action would cause a revival of the old scandal involving their sister,
which they were pardonably anxious to have forgotten. Then, too, it was
their solemn duty to keep their hands on Phil, who was a Montgomery and
entitled to their consideration and oversight, and if Kirkwood should
remarry, Phil would be relinquished to the care of a stepmother, a
grievous thought at all times.
On this rainy October evening, tea was dispatched in the gayest humor in
the little Bartlett dining-room. Rose and Phil disappeared in the
kitchen to "do" the dishes while Nan and Kirkwood communed in the
book-lined living-room.
"You've had a talking with Phil," said Kirkwood.
"Yes; she came in this morning, when Rose was out and I said several
things to her that I ought to have said long ago. It wasn't easy to say
them. But it's time for her to sober down a little, though I wish in my
heart she could go on forever just as she is. It doesn't seem possible
that she's a woman, with a future to think about."
"Phil's future--" murmured Kirkwood pensively.
"Your future and hers are bound up together; there's no escaping that."
"I'm afraid that's so! There are a thousand things I know should be done
for her, but I don't grasp them. I seem unable to get hold of anything
these days."
He looked at his hands, as though wondering at their impotence. They
were bronzed and rough from the camp, but his sensitive nature was
expressed in them. The gray showed in his beard and hair. Where the
short beard did not hide his cheeks they were tanned. His blue serge
suit had been freshly pressed; a polka-dot scarf was neatly tied under
the points of a white-wing collar. He suggested an artist who had just
returned from a painting trip in the open--a town man who wasn't afraid
of the sun. If an artist one might have assumed that he was none too
prosperous; his white cuffs were perceptibly frayed. Nan Bartlett
scrutinized him closely, and there came into her eyes the look of one
about to say something, long withheld and difficult to say.
She was a small, fair woman, with a becoming roundness of figure. Her
yellow hair, parted evenly in the middle, curled prettily on her
forehead. A blue shirt-waist with a turnover collar and a ready-made
skirt spoke for a severe taste in dress. A gold-wire bracelet on her
left wrist and a stickpin in her four-in-hand tie were her only
ornaments. She had a fashion of raising her arm and shaking the bracelet
back from her hand. When she did this, it was to the accompaniment of a
slight turning of the head to one side and a dreamy look came into her
large blue eyes. It was a pretty, graceful trick. She did not hesitate
now that her mind was made up, but spoke quickly and crisply.
"You don't work hard enough; you are not making your time count. It
isn't fair to Phil; it isn't fair to yourself."
"That's true; I know it," he replied, meeting her eyes quickly.
"And now's the time for you to change; Phil needs you. Phil's going to
need a lot of things--money, for example. And you've reached a time of
life when it's now or never."
The bracelet flashed back under her cuff. She looked at her wrist
wonderingly as if surprised that the trinket had disappeared; then she
glanced at Kirkwood, casually, as though she were in the habit of saying
such things to him, which was not, however, the fact.
He straightened himself and his hands clenched as though to do battle at
her behest.
"Mine's a wasted life; for years everything has seemed futile. I'm glad
you spoke to me. I need to be brought up short."
Nan nodded. This was not a debatable question; undeniably he did need to
be brought up with a sharp turn. It was in her mind that perhaps she had
said enough; but she wished to make sure of it.
"Nobody can touch you at your best; it's your best that you've got to
put into the struggle. It mustn't be said of you that you neglect
business, and even refuse cases; and they do say that of you."
"I've grown careless and indifferent," he confessed; "but it's time for
me to wake up. I can't see Phil heading for the poorhouse and that's
where we're going."
"No doubt of it!" she assented. "Phil's aunts complain of you, and say
that if you won't care for her you ought to turn her over to them.
That's funny, on one side, and on the other it isn't. There's a good
deal to support their attitude. Phil's needs are those of a girl ready
to meet the world, and she will need money. And I've noticed that money
is a shy commodity; it doesn't just come rolling uphill to anybody's
doorstep."
Kirkwood knew perfectly well the elusiveness of money; it seemed less
so now from Nan's way of stating the fact. When one needed a dollar one
should go and find it; this was clearly Miss Nan's philosophy, and in
her own affairs he knew that she had demonstrated its efficacy.
He lowered his voice as though about to touch upon a matter even more
confidential than any that had engaged their attention. It was evidently
something wholly pleasant that he wished to speak of; his eye brightened
and his face flushed slightly. The look he bent upon her was of
unmistakable liking.
"'The Gray Knight of Picardy' is booming. I saw a stack of him at
Crosby's to-day: half a dozen people have asked me if I read it. It was
put out so late in the spring that it's astonishing how it's carried
through the summer. Some of the papers are just reviewing it--and the
more deliberate journals are praising it. And when we were speaking of
money matters a bit ago, I clean forgot that I have a check from the
publisher that I'm going to hand you now."
He drew from his pocket a draft which she took eagerly and glanced at.
It was for two thousand dollars, payable to Nancy Bartlett. Nan slipped
it quickly into the drawer of her sewing-table. As she drew her hand
away, he caught and held it an instant. Nan did not look at him as she
quietly freed herself. She ignored the act, though her cheek flushed
scarlet. She minimized the incident by shaking down her bracelet.
"Half of that is yours," she said. "I will deposit it to-morrow and give
you my check. You ought to have made the contract in your own name, but
I never thought they would take it--much less that it would sell, or I
should have insisted in the beginning."
"Well, I had faith in your three quarters of the work; mine is the
poorest part of it."
"Your half made it possible,--the form and the planning. I never could
have done a long-sustained thing like that; I'm a paragrapher, that's
all."
"You're a humorist of a high order," he said warmly. "It's the huge
joke of the thing that is making people like it. Let me see, the
publisher is advertising a quotation from some paper that has called it
the funniest book in ten years."
"That's a stock phrase of the critics," said Nan; "they merely change
the title of the book from year to year. But it's been fun doing a book
that way and putting it out anonymously. Judge Walters spoke to me of it
yesterday; said he had stayed up all night to finish it."
"It's going to take more ingenuity than I possess to hide the
authorship; that's why I want you to carry the burden. The publisher
says the public demand to know who Merlin Shepperd is. And three
magazines want a short story by the author of 'The Gray Knight of
Picardy.' I'll send you the letters. That enterprising Phil has an
uncomfortable habit of running through my desk and I'm likely to forget
to lock up these things. She thought I was working on a brief all last
winter when I was doing my part of the 'Gray Knight.' But I turn the
partnership over to you now--with all the assets and liabilities and the
firm name and style. You are Merlin Shepperd and I am Kirkwood, attorney
and counselor at law, over Bernstein's. You see," he added, smiling,
"your lecture led right up to that. No more literary ventures for me!"
"Well, I'd forgotten the 'Gray Knight' for the moment; but in spite of
him I believe you had better stick to the law."
"There's this, Nan," he said earnestly, looking at her with an
intentness that caused her to move uneasily; "it would seem quite
natural for a partnership like this to be extended further. This world
would be a pretty bleak place without you. You know and understand that.
And there is Phil; Phil needs you just as I do. I mean to start afresh
at the law; I mean to make myself count. And I need you."
He rose and looked down at her. It was as though by this act he
presented himself as a rehabilitated Thomas Kirkwood; a man ready to
grapple with the world afresh for her sake. He bent over and touched
lightly her hands clasped quietly upon her knee.
"Dear Nan: I love you, Nan," he said softly, and stepped back, waiting
for her to speak.
She raised her head and their eyes met.
"Tom," she said, "you are the dearest of men; but that is not for you
and me. It will never be for you and me. And please, Tom, because you
are the finest of men, never speak of this again. You will promise,
won't you?"
"No," he said, shaking his head slowly; "I will not promise. You have
reasons and I think I know what they are. I want to talk to you soon,
for this has been in my heart a long time. I meant to speak to you last
spring. But now the need is greater. I not only need you, but Phil needs
you."
She smiled at the mention of Phil.
"That's a poor argument. Phil really doesn't need any one but you. I
should be afraid of spoiling dear, splendid Phil."
It was upon this that Rose and Phil came in from the kitchen. Rose was
taller than her sister, a slender, handsome woman, with an air of
distinction which dishwashing in no wise abated. She was one of those
American women who wear an apron like a vestment--who, the _vestis
domestica_ flung aside, adorn the parlor as charmingly as they grace the
kitchen.
Phil began to whistle a tune, which Rose tried to identify for her by
striking the chords.
"What are you two talking about?" asked Phil, turning from the piano.
"Discussing the origin of the pyramids," replied Nan, rising. "You and
Rose must have settled something in all the time you took to the dishes.
It was a noisy session, too. You must have been playing drop the
teacup."
Phil clasped her hands dramatically, reciting:--
"A moment then,
She poised upon the dishpan's utmost verge
The heirloom teapot old, with flowers bedight.
And with a cry--"
She paused, feigning forgetfulness. Her father rose quickly and caught
up the imaginary fragment:--
"And with a cry
As when some greedy wight, on porridge keen,
Gulps it, and bawleth loud to find it hot,--
Screams for the cook and tuggeth at his sword--"
"Familiar," observed Rose dreamily from the piano. "Is it 'Pelleas and
Etarre' or 'The Passing of Arthur'?"
"Nope. 'The Bold Buccaneer,' by the Honest Iceman of Mazoopa," answered
Phil.
"And here he is now," said Nan as the front door boomed and rattled.
There was no bell at the Bartletts': but from the door hung a
bass-drumstick, with which visitors were expected to thump. This had
been a part of the equipment of a local band that had retired from
business. In the dispersion of its instruments the drum had reached a
second-hand store. Nan, with a keen eye for such chances, had bought and
dismantled the drum, and used the frame as a stockade for fresh chirpers
from her incubator. The drumstick seemed to have been predestined of all
time to serve as a knocker.
"It's Amy. I told him to come," said Phil.
Her father's face fell almost imperceptibly. The company was complete as
it was and much as he liked Amzi he resented his appearance at this
hour. Rose went to the door.
"It may be Judge Walters. He's been trying to get over for some time to
talk about that new book on hypnotism," said Nan.
It proved, however, to be Amzi. They heard him telling Rose in the entry
that he was just passing and thought he would drop in.
"That will do for that, Amy," called Phil. "You told me you were
coming."
"I told you nothing of the kind!" blustered Amzi.
"Then, sir, you didn't; you _did not_!"
Amzi glared at them all fiercely. His cherubic countenance was so
benevolent, the kind eyes behind his spectacles so completely annulled
his ferocity, that his assumed fierceness was absurd.
He addressed them all by their first names, and drew out a cigar.
Kirkwood was smoking his pipe. Phil held a match for her uncle and
placed a copper ash-tray on the table at his elbow. Rose continued her
search for a piece of music, and Nan curled herself on the corner of a
davenport that occupied one side of the room under the open bookshelves.
"This looks like a full session; first we've had for some time,"
remarked Amzi. "Been playing, Rose?"
"No; Phil's trying to remember a tune. Whistle it, Phil."
Phil whistled it, her eyes twinkling.
"Sounds like a dead march done in ragtime," suggested Nan, whose ear was
said to be faulty.
"All the great masters will be done over pretty soon by the raggists,"
declared Phil.
"Spoken like the Philistine you are not, Phil," said Kirkwood. "What you
were trying to whistle is the 'Lucia Sextette' upside down. Rose, let's
have the 'Mozart Minuet' we used to play. We haven't had it for moons."
She played it, Phil turning the music. Then Kirkwood was reminded of the
existence of his 'cello. Amzi watched him tuning it, noted the operation
restlessly, and then rose demanding:--
"Nan, where's my flute? Seems to me I left it here the last time we
played."
This was a joke. It had been in the house at least six years. Phil
whistled a few bars from a current light opera, and pretended to be
absorbed in an old etching of Beethoven that hung over the piano. She
glanced covertly at her uncle, who knew perfectly well that Phil was
laughing at him. Nan, meanwhile, produced the flute. It was in this
fashion that the trio was usually organized.
"Bad night for asthma, but let's tackle some of the good old ones," said
Amzi.
This, too, was part of a familiar formula, and Rose found the music.
Soon Amzi's cheeks were puffing with the exertion of fluting the
"Minuet," while Kirkwood bent to the 'cello. Nan and Phil became an
attentive audience on the davenport, as often before. When Amzi dropped
out (as he always did), Phil piped in with her whistle, and that, too,
was the usual procedure. She whistled a fair imitation of the flute; she
had a "good ear"; Rose said her "ear" was too good, and that this
explained her impatience of systematic musical instruction. Amzi abused
the weather and incidentally the flute; they essayed the Bach-Gounod
"Ave Maria" and the "Traeumerei," with like failure on Amzi's part. Then
Rose played, number after number, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, without
pause. It was clear that the woman loved her music; that it meant a very
great deal to her. Its significance was in the fine lines of her face,
beautifully grave, but lighting wonderfully through passages that spoke
to her with special meaning. Her profile was toward Kirkwood. He had,
indeed, taken a seat that gave him a particular view that he fancied and
his eyes wandered from her hands to her lovely, high-bred face. No one
spoke between the numbers, or until Rose, sitting quiet a moment at the
end, while the last chord died away, found her own particular seat by
the white wooden mantel.
"I guess those chaps knew their business," observed Amzi. "And I guess
you know yours, Rose. I don't know that you ever brought out that
nocturne quite so well before. Eh, Tom?"
Kirkwood agreed with him. Rose had surpassed herself, in the opinion of
the lawyer. Both men found pleasure in paying tribute to her talents.
Amzi turned to Nan, who nodded acquiescence. The banker really loved
music, and slipped away several times every winter to Chicago, to hear
concerts or the opera. On occasions he had taken Kirkwood and Phil and
they had made a great lark of it.
"What's this rumor about the Sycamore Traction being in trouble?" asked
Nan.
Amzi rubbed his head. He had not come to the Bartletts' to discuss
business, and the topic was not, moreover, one that interested him at
the moment.
"There are a lot of papers on your desk about that, daddy," Phil
remarked. "But I suppose those are office secrets."
There was, indeed, a telegram from a New York lawyer asking why Kirkwood
had not replied to a certain letter. He glanced at her quickly,
apparently disturbed that the matter had been mentioned. Her father's
inattention to the letter of the New York lawyer had, independently of
Nan Bartlett's reference to the traction company, caused Phil to make
certain resolutions touching both her father and herself.
"I've got my hand on that, Phil. I've answered."
Phil saw that the subject of this correspondence, whose import she had
scarcely grasped, was not to be brought into the conversation. She
turned away as Amzi addressed her father in a low tone.
"Tom, as I remember, you made a report on that scheme before the bonds
were sold. Do you mind telling me whether that was for the same crowd
that finally took it up?"
"Yes; but they cut down the amount they undertook to float. Sam Holton
sold a lot of the bonds along the line; a good many of them are held
right here in this county."
"They are, indeed. It seemed a plausible thing for the home folks to own
the securities of a company that was going to do so much for the town;
they pulled that string hard. It was a scheme to draw the coin out of
the old stocking under the fireplace. If it was good for widows and
orphans out in Seattle and Bangor, why wasn't it good for 'em at home?
And it _is_ good for the people at home if it's played straight. I've
had an idea that these cross-country trolleys will have about the same
history the steam roads had,--a good many of 'em will bust and the
original investors will see their securities shrink; and there will be
smash-ups and shake-downs and then in time the lines will pay. Just
what's the trouble here, Tom, if you don't mind?"
"There's an apprehension that the November interest won't be paid. The
company's had some hard luck--a wreck that's piled up a lot of damage
suits, for one thing; and in one or two counties the commissioners are
trying to make them pay for new bridges--a question of the
interpretation of the franchise. I gave warning of that possibility."
"Thunder! I hope it won't come to the worst. I didn't know you were
keeping track of it."
"One of my old classmates at Williams is counsel for the Desbrosses
Trust and Guaranty Company which is the trustee for the bondholders. I
passed on the mortgage for them as to its local aspects. I'm going over
to Indianapolis to meet him in a few days to determine what to do in
event the interest is defaulted. The management has been unsatisfactory,
and after five years the replacements are running ahead of the
estimates."
"I wonder--" began Amzi; then he paused and rubbed his scalp. "I suppose
my neighbor Bill is already out from under."
"I don't know," said Kirkwood soberly. "It was Sam who was the chief
promoter."
"Sam was a smooth proposition. Thunder! I lost money when Sam died. I'd
made a bet with myself that they'd pin something on him before he got
through, but he died just out of spite to make me lose. Thunder! Bill
makes strong statements."
The strength of the statements made by the First National Bank did not,
however, seem to disturb Amzi. What he had learned from Kirkwood had not
been in the nature of fresh information, but it had confirmed certain
suspicions touching the Sycamore Traction Company. The Bartletts and
Phil were talking quietly in a corner. Amzi rose and pulled down his
percale waistcoat and buttoned the top button of his cutaway coat, in
which he looked very much like a fat robin. He advanced toward the group
in the corner.
"Nan," he said, "you didn't buy a Sycamore bond that time I told you not
to, did you?"
Rose beat time for her sister mockingly, and they answered in singsong.
"We did not! We did not! But," Nan added, dropping her hands to her
sides tragically, "but if we had, oh, sir!"
"If you had I should have bought it of you at a premium. It's hard work
being a banker for women: they all want ten per cent a month."
"Paul Fosdick's things were all guaranteed ten per cent a year,"
remarked Rose.
They all waited for the explosion that must follow the mention of this
particular brother-in-law. Nowhere else in town would any one have dared
to bring Fosdick, who was believed to be his pet abomination, into a
conversation. Even in Hastings he found a kind of joy; the presence of a
retired Hamlet among the foliage of the family tree was funny now that
he had got used to it; and Amzi had a sense of humor. This little
company expected him to explode and he must not disappoint them. The
color mounted to his bald dome and his eyes bulged.
"Thunder! Rose, play that jiggly funeral march of a marionette!"
"I refuse," said Rose, spreading her skirts on the divan, "to do
anything so cruel!"
"And besides," said Nan, "I bought a share of stock in his brickyard."
"Nan Bartlett," said Amzi, planting himself before her, "I will give you
a peck of parsnips for that share."
"Couldn't take advantage of you, Amzi; and we never eat parsnips.
They're bad for the complexion."
"Thunder!" he snorted contemptuously.
"Thunder" was his favorite, almost his only, expletive, but his thunder
was only a single boom without reverberations. His four auditors
understood him perfectly, however. Fosdick was always "starting"
something. He had even attempted to organize a new cemetery association,
which, as Greenlawn was commodious, and as any amount of land adjacent
made possible its indefinite expansion, Amzi regarded as an absurd and
unholy project. With Fosdick, Amzi had no business relations of any
kind. He belonged to the Commercial Club, to be sure, but this was a
concession on his part; he never attended any of its meetings. And he
had, it was said, requested his enterprising brother-in-law to withdraw
his patronage from the Montgomery Bank for reasons never wholly clear to
the curious. Fosdick had talked about it in bitterness of spirit; Amzi
had not. Amzi never talked of his business. He rarely lost a customer;
and if a citizen transferred his account to the First or the Citizens'
National, it was assumed that Amzi no longer cared particularly to have
that individual on his ledgers. Such a transfer aroused in cautious
minds a degree of suspicion, for horses rarely died in Amzi's stable.
"Thunder! It's time to go home. Guess the rain's stopped."
Amzi set out for home with the Kirkwoods. He was in capital spirits, and
kept up a steady give and take with Phil. Just before reaching his own
gate they passed Kirkwood's former home. Amzi's sisters persistently
demanded that something be done about the abandoned house, which, with
its neglected garden, was a mournful advertisement of their sister's
ill-doings. It had been a shock to them to discover, a few years after
her flight, that it had passed from her to Amzi and from him to
Kirkwood. The consideration had been adequate; the county records told
the story plainly. There was, of course, no reason why Lois should
continue to own a house for which she had no use; but there was less
reason why her former husband should acquire the property merely, as it
seemed, from motives of sentiment. Every weed in the garden--and the
crop was abundant--called attention to the blot on the Montgomery
'scutcheon. And if Kirkwood was silly enough to cling to the old home,
while living in a rented house in a less agreeable neighborhood, there
was no reason why he should refuse to lease it and devote the income to
Phil's upbringing.
It was not a cheerful item of the urban landscape and the sorrow of
Amzi's sisters that it should remain dolefully at their own thresholds
was pardonable. The moon looked down at it soberly through dispersing
clouds as though grieved by its disrepair. The venerable forest trees
that gave distinction to the "old Montgomery place" had shaken their
leaves upon this particular part and parcel of the elder Amzi's acres,
and piled them upon the veranda steps. The gate, fastened to the post by
a chain and padlock, sagged badly, and bulged upon the public walk.
Amzi stopped and pushed it back, causing the chain to rattle dolorously.
Kirkwood watched him indifferently. Phil lent her uncle a hand. Amzi,
panting from his efforts, ejaculated: "Thunder!" and a moment later they
bade each other good-night under the gas lamp at his own gate.
CHAPTER IV
A TRANSACTION IN APPLES
Phil was not visible the next morning when at seven o'clock Kirkwood
glanced about the house for her. She had indulged herself in the matter
of rising since the high-school bell no longer regulated her habits, and
her father had hardly expected to see her. There was no morning
newspaper to read--he took a Chicago daily at his office--and he opened
the windows and doors to admit the air. Domestic affairs interested
Thomas Kirkwood little. During the years in which Phil was passed from
aunt to aunt he had lived at the Morton House, and after establishing
the new home that he might have her with him, one or another of the
aunts had supervised his household, and at times, to his discomfiture,
all had taken a hand at it.
This rented cottage where the Kirkwoods lived was in the least
fashionable part of Main Street, beyond the commercial district and near
the railroad. Trains thundered through a cut not far from the rear
fence, and the cars of the Sycamore Traction Company rumbled by at
intervals. The cottage was old but comfortable, and it was remarked that
Kirkwood had probably chosen it for the reason that he could go to and
from his office without passing his abandoned home. Phil liked living on
Main Street. Her devotion to that thoroughfare had been a source of
great pain to her aunts. Even as her Uncle Amzi absorbed local color
from the steps of his bank, Phil was an alert agent in the field, on
nodding terms with the motormen of the interurban cars, and with the
jehus, who, cigarette in mouth and hat tipped on one side, drove the
village hacks. Captain Joshua Wilson, who had been recorder of his
county continuously since he lost a leg at Missionary Ridge, and who
wrote a poem every year for the reunion of his regiment, had written
certain lines for the "Evening Star" in which "P. K." was addressed as
the Diana of Main Street. As to the soundness of his mythology there
might be debate, but there was no question as to Phil's thorough
identification with Main Street, all the way from her father's house,
past the court-house, shops, and banks, out to the old Sugar Creek
Bridge where the town became country without any warning whatever.
It was Judge Walters who first called her "Otherwise Phyllis." This was
in Phil's school days before she passed from her aunts' custody. The
judge delighted in Phil's battles with the aunts. Whenever his wife
began to recount a day's occurrences at the supper-table, and the
recital opened promisingly, it was the judge's habit to cut short her
prefaces with, "Otherwise Phyllis--" and bid her hurry on to the
catastrophe, sparing no tragic detail.
Kirkwood had never, from the day his wife left him, offered himself in
the market-place as an object of sympathy. He had been a man of reserves
at all times, and the sudden termination of his married life had merely
driven him in further upon himself. If he was broken-hearted, the
fragments were well hidden. He felt that he was a failure, and he saw
men of less ability passing him in the race. Now and then he had roused
himself under stress and demonstrated his unusual gifts by striking
successes; but after one of these spurts he would relapse into an
indifference to which he seemed increasingly ready to yield.
He had risen this morning with a new resolution, attributable to his
talk with Nan Bartlett the night before. Even if he did not care for
himself, there was always Phil to consider. And Phil was very much to
consider. She had decided for herself that the high school had given her
all the education she needed. Kirkwood had weighed the matter carefully
and decided that she would not profit greatly by a college course--a
decision which Phil had stoutly supported. Her aunts favored a year at a
finishing school to tone down her rough edges, but having laid their
plan before their brother Amzi that gentleman had sniffed at it. What
was the use of spoiling Phil? he demanded. "Thunder!" And there was no
reason in the world why Phil should be spoiled.
Phil was not, in any view of the case, an ignorant person. She knew a
great many things that were not embraced in the high-school curriculum.
Her father harbored an old-fashioned love of the poets; which is not
merely to say that at some time in his life he had run through them, but
that he read poetry as one ordinarily reads novels, quite naturally and
without shame. Something of his own love of poetry had passed to his
daughter. He had so trained her that literature meant to Phil not
printed pages, but veritable nature and life. Books were a matter of
course, to be taken up and put down as the reader pleased, and nothing
to grow priggish about. She had caught from him an old habit, formed in
his undergraduate days, of a light, whimsical use of historical and
literary allusions. She entered zestfully into the spirit of this kind
of fooling; and, to his surprise, she had developed an astonishing knack
of imitation and parody. Sometimes Kirkwood without preluding, would
utter a line for Phil to cap; they even composed sonnets in this
antiphonal fashion and pronounced them superior to the average magazine
product. Phil had not only learned much from her father, but she had
absorbed a great deal of lore at the Bartletts', where everything
bookish was vitalized and humanized.
Kirkwood, hearing the creak of the swinging door between the pantry and
dining-room,--a familiar breakfast signal,--chose with care a volume of
Bagehot and carried it to the table which had been set, he imagined, by
the "girl" selected by his sisters-in-law to carry on his establishment
during the winter.
He helped himself to grapes, and was eating with his eye on a page of
Bagehot when the door swung again and Phil piped a cheerful
good-morning. She was an aproned young Phil and her face was flushed
from recent proximity to the range. She described her entrance in lines
she had fashioned for the purpose:--
"She came
While yet the jocund day was young, and fetched
In hands but lightly singed upon the stove
The coffee-pot, with muddy contents filled--"
Kirkwood, concealing his surprise at seeing her, took his cue:--
"And he, toying meanwhile with fruitage of the vine,
To-wit the mellow grape, scarce breathed to see
The nut-brown maid, and gasped, 'Where is the cook?'"
"Oh, the cook has went, to come down to the plain prose of it, daddy.
There was one here yesterday, but one's dynastic aunts had picked her
for her powers of observation and ready communication, so I fired her
hence. And with that careless grace which I hope you find becoming in me
I decided to run the shop all by my lonesome for a while. I thought I'd
start with breakfast so that any poisons that may creep into the
victuals will have time to work while the drug-stores are open. How long
do you cook an egg, is it two minutes or two weeks?"
"This will never do," said Kirkwood gravely, watching her pour the
coffee. "You shouldn't have discharged one cook until you had another."
"Tut! There's not enough to do in this house for two able-bodied
women--and I'm one! Rose taught me how to make coffee yesterday, and
toast and eggs are easy. Just look at that coffee! Real amber? It's an
improvement for looks on what you've been brewing for yourself in camp.
And I've been watching your winning ways with the camp frying-pan. Rose
gave me a cook-book that is full of perfectly adorable ideas. Come up
for lunch and I'll show you some real creations."
She slipped away into the kitchen and reappeared with toast and boiled
eggs. She had cooked the eggs by the watch as Rose had instructed her.
Her father relaxed the severity of his countenance to commend them. But
he did not like Phil in this new role. The casting forth of the cook
provided by the aunts would be regarded as an offense not lightly to be
passed by those ladies; but Phil had never appeared so wholly
self-possessed. She poured coffee for herself, diluted it with hot
water, buttered a slice of toast with composure, tasted it and
complained that the grocer had sent rancid butter.
Kirkwood pushed aside his Bagehot. He did not know just how to deal with
a daughter who, without the slightest warning, dispatched her cook and
took upon herself the burden of the household. The coffee was to his
liking; it was indubitably better than he had been used to; but the
thing would not do. He must show Phil the error of her ways and lose no
time about it.
"I'm sorry you didn't like the girl they sent you; but you must find
another. There's no reason, of course, why you shouldn't choose for
yourself; but it's not easy to find help in a town like this. I can't
have you doing the housework. That must be understood, Phil."
"You're not having me; I'm having me, which is a very different thing.
If you had driven me into the kitchen with loud, furious words, I should
have rebelled--screamed, and made a terrible scene. But you did nothing
of the kind. It happened in this wise. Glancing up quite by chance, as
it were, you beheld me pouring coffee of my own brewing. Fatherly pride
extinguished any feeling of shock or chagrin. You have smothered any
class feeling that may linger in your aristocratic soul and are making a
good bluff at enjoying the eating of your breakfast with the lady who
cooked it. Could anything be more beautiful? The ayes seem to have it;
the ayes have it, as I used to be fond of saying when I was boss of the
Philomathean. I wish now I'd taken the domestic science course more
seriously and spent less time in the gymnasium. But thus it is we live
and learn."
Phil's tone made rebuke difficult. He loved her foolishness just as her
Uncle Amzi did--just as every one did except her aunts, for whom the
affected stiltedness of her speech was merely a part of her general
deplorable unconventionality.
"Well, Phil, the idea of your cooking the meals for this establishment
isn't debatable. You're overruled and the debate closed."
"Still harping on my daughter's cooking! Please, in current idiom, cut
it out. Try marmalade on that too, too perfect toast."
He accepted marmalade and returned to the attack.
"You see, Phil, everything's different now. You've got to wake up to
your social responsibilities."
"And be a perfect lady? I know. Amy got me into the back room of the
bank yesterday and told me. One's aunts had bullied the old dear into
springing the sad intelligence. Then Nan had already given me a session.
And now you, too, Brutus, are about to lay the matter before me in a few
crisp sentences. But why all this assumption that I'm not a real lady?
There's a good deal of loose thinking on that subject, to use one of
your own best phrases. If there is nothing more before the house--"
Phil had been studiously stuccoing her toast with marmalade, and she bit
into it before looking at her father.
"You know perfectly well what I mean, Phil. This is a serious time in
your life. You've got to adapt yourself to the ways of the world--the
world of convention. You must consider yourself as a member of society.
It's only in a limited sense that we can be individualists. And I can't
have my daughter weighed down with such cares as these you threaten to
assume. It would hurt me more than I can tell you if I believed it
necessary. But it isn't necessary. None the less I know perfectly well
that if it were necessary you would be equal to it--you are equal to
anything you undertake. But I can't have you wasting yourself on such
things."
"Daddy dear, this is getting terribly philosophical. Let us be really
serious for a little bit. You know, we haven't much money, have we? Not
very much, anyhow."
She had broached the matter as delicately as possible. It had been in
her mind that she must speak to her father about their affairs, but she
had not thought the opportunity would offer so quickly. It was hard to
say to him that she had undertaken to manage the housekeeping as an
economical measure; that she knew he owed money that he had no immediate
prospect of paying.
The hurt look that she had seen in his eyes sometimes was heartbreaking.
When Phil was younger, she used to ask about her mother, but later she
had never referred to her. Her aunts had, after their fashion, not been
above using her mother to point a moral. In their lack of appreciation
of the keenness of the child's intuitions or her eager imagination, they
had established in her a belief that her mother was a bad woman: the
facts spoke for themselves. And having had a bad mother it was incumbent
upon Phil to choose her path with a particular care and to walk in it
circumspectly.
Phil had, by this time, considered the case from the changing viewpoints
natural to the young mind. In that rosy light through which a girl of
fifteen is apt to view life,--the first realizations of sex, the age of
the first novels,--Phil had not been free from the contemplation of her
mother as a romantic figure. For a woman to forsake a husband for a
lover was not without precedents. Phil had dreamed over this a good
deal, in an impersonal sort of way, and the unknown mother had been
glorified in scenes of renunciation, following nobly the high call of a
greater love. By a swift transition her father assumed the sympathetic
role in the domestic drama. She chanced upon novels in which the spurned
husband was exalted to the shame of the dishonorable wife. Her father
fitted well into this picture. She even added herself to the _dramatis
personae_, not without a sense of her value in the scene. But these were
only passing phases. There was no morbid strain in Phil. Her father was
the best of companions, and she was quick to recognize his fineness and
gentleness and to appreciate his cultivation with its background of
solid learning.
Phil's question startled her father. Money had never been discussed in
the household, and this new gravity in his daughter's eyes troubled him.
Phil's needs had been few; her demands had burdened him little. Her
aunts had bought her clothes and sent him the bills. When he gave her
money to spend, he never asked for an accounting, though he was often
amused by the uses to which she put it; and sometimes he had been
touched by her gifts at Christmas or on his birthdays, which ranged from
a reckless investment in gay neckties to a set of some author whose
definitive edition he had coveted--Shelley or Landor or Matthew Arnold.
No; money was not a subject that had interested Phil, and her father
found her direct question disconcerting.
"No, Phil. We are not rich--far from it. It's hardly possible for a
lawyer to grow rich in a town like this. But I haven't been doing as
well as I could lately. I've got to do better and I must be about it."
He drew himself up in his chair and glanced at his watch. It had
stopped, and as the court-house clock boomed eight he set it. It was
quite like him to allow his watch to run down.
"I was in your office yesterday, daddy, and I hope you won't mind, but I
was straightening your desk and I couldn't help seeing some old bills.
Several of them had been there a long time. My graduating dress hasn't
been paid for--and some things like that. We must economize until those
bills are paid. And I was thinking that you ought to get more money out
of the building. Rents are going up on Main Street. I heard Paul Fosdick
say so. You ought to raise the clothing store rent right away. I don't
know of any easier way of getting money," she added drolly, "than by
wringing it from the tenants."
She laughed, to make it easier for him.
"Yes; that's one way of doing it; only Bernstein had a long lease that
expires--I'm not sure when it does expire--" he concluded, and the color
deepened in his dark cheeks. It was his business to know when the lease
on the property expired, and as though reminded by this lapse of
similar failures in other directions, he drew out his watch again and
made sure that he had wound it.
"It expires," said Phil, "on the last day of this next December. I
looked it up yesterday afternoon in that little memorandum book you keep
in your desk."
"I guess that's right. I'm glad you mentioned it. I'll see Bernstein
right away and ask him if he wants to renew the lease. I suppose I ought
to coax a higher rent out of him, but he's been there a long time."
"Oh, he'll stand another fifty and be glad of it. His sign is on all the
fences in the country--'Bernstein's--The Same Old Place.' It would cost
him some money to change that. And you could cheer him up by painting
the front of the building. The interurban is bringing a lot more
business to Montgomery. I've been thinking we ought to do something
about that third floor room where the photograph shop used to be.
Bernstein has an upstairs room in the next building where his tailor
imparts that final deft touch that adjusts ready-made garments to the
most difficult figure. It would be handier for him to conduct the
sartorial transformations in the chamber over his own gate, wouldn't it?
And I don't think we need wait for that photographer to come back from
the penitentiary or wherever he languisheth."
She was minimizing the significance of these suggestions--a significance
that lay, she knew, in the fact of their coming from her--by lapsing
into the absurdities with which she embellished her familiar talk. She
pronounced "languisheth" with a prolongation of the last syllable that
gave to it a characteristic touch of mockery.
"I'd been hoping he'd show up again and cart off his rubbish. But we've
had some fun out of the gallery. If we rent it to Bernstein for his
retouching mysteries, we shan't have any place to develop our
negatives."
"That's so; but maybe we can retouch Bernstein for enough extra to get
them done for us. It's the ducats, my lord, that move my fancy. The
Bernsteins have grown almost disagreeably rich at the same old stand and
it's about time the Kirkwoods were thrusting their talons into the
treasure chest."
Sounds of disaster in the kitchen caused Phil to rise hastily and
disappear through the swing doors. She returned calmly a moment later.
"Only the tea-kettle playing at being a geyser. When we get rich I'm
going to have a gas range. They say it's the only way to cook and cook
and be a lady still."
"That brings us back to cooking--" began her father.
"Not at all, daddy. The subject is dismissed forever. I'm going to have
that Ethiop who does chores for us clean up the photograph gallery. I'll
be down after while, to see how it looks."
She bade him good-bye at the front door, and went whistling about the
further business of the morning. The sky was blue and the air warmed as
the sun climbed into the heavens. Phil felt that she had conveyed to her
father a sense of their imperative needs without wounding him. She was
resolved to help him if she could. Her pride had been pricked by her
Uncle Amzi's proffered aid, which she had carefully avoided mentioning
to her father. She knew that it would have hurt him, and she had
reasoned, much in the fashion of Nan Bartlett, that her father owed it
to himself to exercise his unquestioned gifts to reestablish himself in
his profession. As he left her and walked toward the street, she was
aware that he strode away more quickly than was his wont.
Phil's morning was not eventless. The telephone jingled three times, as
three aunts demanded to know why she had parted with the
maid-of-all-work they had installed in the Kirkwood kitchen. Aunt Josie
was censorious and Aunt Fanny mildly remonstrative; Aunt Kate sought
light as to the reason for the cook's early passing, as she was anxious
to try her herself. Phil disposed of these calls with entire good humor.
Then a senior, between lectures at the college, asked her if she would
go driving with him Sunday afternoon. The senior, in the security of his
fraternity house, prolonged the conversation. As this was Thursday and
there was never any imperative need in Montgomery for making engagements
so far ahead, the senior was exercising unjustifiable precaution. Phil
declined the invitation. Her aunts had repeatedly warned her against
college boys. A daughter of the house of Montgomery was not to waste
herself upon students, a lawless body of whom no one knew anything in
particular save that they seized every opportunity to murder sleep for
reputable citizens.
Phil employed the telephone to order of the grocer and butcher, made
beds, swept rooms, and sat down with a new magazine, dropped at the door
by the postman, to run her eyes over the pictures. One or two things she
was sure her father would like; a sketch of Massenet she must call to
Rose Bartlett's attention. She planned luncheon and began the peeling of
potatoes with a page of Keats propped on the table beside her--a trick
she had learned at the Bartletts'. "Endymion" need suffer nothing from
proximity to potatoes, though it should be said that Phil's paring would
have distressed a frugal housekeeper.
While thus employed a step sounded on the brick walk, and a young man
knocked at the open door without glancing in. He chewed a straw as he
observed the chimneys of the adjoining house, and Phil, sitting by the
kitchen table, paused in her paring to make sure of his identity. Then
she placed her pan of potatoes on the table and crossed quickly to the
door.
"Good-morning, madam. Would you like--"
He extended two apples as samples. Phil glanced at them with interest.
They were not the best of apples, as any one could see. Fred Holton
removed his hat and pulled the straw from his mouth.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Kirkwood," he said, with a gravity that was not
mitigated by a slight quivering of Phil's lips as she continued to
ignore their earlier acquaintance. "I didn't know this was your house or
I shouldn't have come in."
"Then it's a good thing you didn't know," replied Phil. "If you're
selling apples you have to try all the houses you come to. Not to go
into every gate wouldn't be business."
"Well, I suppose that's so," observed Holton doubtfully, letting one of
the apples fall. Phil picked it up with the quick reach of a shortstop.
She ignored his apologies for failing to recover it himself, and
examined the apple critically.
"If you haven't any better apples in your wagon than this, you're not
likely to sell many," Phil commented. "This one's spotted and it's a
safe guess that a worm nestles within. You ought to pick out the best
for samples."
"They're not a very good lot," confessed Holton. "It's an old orchard
and it hasn't had any attention. I'm going to put out some new trees
next year."
"That's a good idea," Phil observed reflectively. "I've noticed that
they've been planting pears and apples in several places around there.
Uncle Amy got a good first crop this year from his young orchard. But he
had a man spray the bugs off. There are a lot of things to do to an
orchard. The land Uncle Amy turned into an orchard runs right up to your
place, and it must be the same kind of land. But it isn't as easy as it
looks--apples isn't."
"Apples isn't?" he repeated soberly.
"Oh, cheer up, that's a joke! I know apples _aren't_!"
The young man smiled.
"Mine _isn't_, I'm afraid, from what you say about them."
"I think maybe that speck isn't a wormhole, after all," said Phil,
subjecting the apple she still held to another scrutiny. "You might give
us a half a bushel of these. My ambitions lead me toward apple pie, and
if it doesn't come out well I can blame your apples."
He smiled again, and frank admiration shone in his eyes as they surveyed
Phil with more assurance.
"If you really want some of these I'll bring them in. Half a bushel?"
"That will be enough," replied Phil succinctly. She rubbed the apple
with the corner of her blue-and-white apron, chose a spot that inspired
confidence, and bit into it. She waited for the effect absently and
puckered her lips. "It's a cooker. What's the name of the brand?"
"Give it up."
"Then I'll tell you. It's a 'Liza Browning. You'd better learn the names
of apples before you go much further in the business. Any farmhand can
tell you. Uncle Amy's taught me about twenty. What's the price of this
precious fruit?"
"Oh, I couldn't charge you for these, you know. You see--"
"Then I won't take them--nary an apple! You bring in those apples and
I'll pay you just the same price you ask everybody else."
Her attention was attracted by a black cat moving along the alley fence
with noble unconcern. Phil stepped out upon the brick walk, drew back
her arm and threw the apple. It struck the fence immediately beneath the
cat, which vanished on the alley side.
"Good shot. You almost got him!"
"Almost nothing!" said Phil scornfully. "You didn't suppose I wanted to
hit the wretch, did you? He's an old pal of mine and would be lonesome
if I didn't scare him to death occasionally."
Holton brought the apples in a sack which he emptied into a basket Phil
found for the purpose. His absence had been prolonged. To measure half a
bushel of apples is not ordinarily a serious matter, but in this
instance the vendor chose fastidiously. The fruit that went into the
sack was beyond question the best in the wagon.
"How much?" asked Phil, surveying her purchase, purse in hand.
"Oh, about a quarter."
She handed him a fifty cent piece.
"Please don't try that again--not here! I've been telephoning the
grocery and apples about like those are a dollar a bushel.
Good-morning!"
"Good-morning, Miss Kirkwood."
He looked at her intently, laughed, threw the sack over his shoulder and
went out, holding the coin in his hand.
CHAPTER V
THE OTHERWISENESS OF PHYLLIS
Hint to those who read with an eye on the clock: skip this chapter! It
is made up from notes furnished by Mrs. John Newman King, Judge Walters,
Captain Joshua Wilson, the veteran recorder, former-Sheriff Whittlesey
and others, and is included merely to satisfy those citizens of
Montgomery who think this entire history should be devoted to Phil, to
the exclusion of her friends and relations. The historian hopes he is an
open-minded person, and he would rather please Montgomery than any other
center of thought and industry he knows; but the laws of proportion (as
Phil would be the first to point out) may not lightly be ignored. Phil's
otherwiseness was always difficult to keep in bounds; it must not
tyrannize these pages. Skip and carry thirteen, but don't complain if
pilgrims from Montgomery take you to task for denying Phil five minutes
of your time.
Phil was on her way to Buckeye Lane the first cold day in November to
call on the daughter of a newly enrolled member of the Madison faculty
when she saw her Uncle Amzi on the bank steps taking the air. She had on
her best walking-suit, and swung a silver cardcase in her hand. The
cardcase marked an advance. Formal calls were not to Phil's taste, but
her aunts had lately been endeavoring to persuade her that it was no
longer seemly for her to "drop in" when and where she pleased, but that
there were certain calls of duty and ceremony which required her best
togs and the leaving of circumspect bits of cardboard inscribed "Miss
Kirkwood." When Phil set forth to call upon a girl friend it was still
something of a question whether caller and callee would sit in the
parlor and be ladies or seek the open to crack walnuts on the kitchen
steps or slide down the cellar door.
As Phil spied her uncle she stopped abruptly, feigned to be looking at
the sign over his head, and when his glasses presently focused upon her,
pretended suddenly to be intent upon the face of the court-house clock
two blocks distant.
"Beg pardon, sir, but is this a bank?"
Thus accosted Mr. Montgomery looked upon his niece with exaggerated
surprise.
"A bank, little girl? What on earth do you want with a bank?"
"I thought I might separate it from some of its cash; or if the terms
are satisfactory I might leave some money. If the venerable old party I
address holds a job inside we might withdraw from the public gaze and
commune within the portals. The day is raw and that ice-cream suit
invites pneumonia."
Passers-by viewed the pair with an amused smile. Captain Wilson,
stumping along at the moment, asked without pausing:--
"Stranger in town, Amzi?"
"Yes, Cap; she's just bought the town and wants the key to the bank
vault."
Phil followed her uncle into the bank and waited for him to walk round
behind the cages. The dingy old room with its walnut counter and desks
seemed at once a brighter place. The four clerks made it convenient to
expose themselves to Phil's smile. She planted herself at the paying
teller's cage and waited for Amzi's benevolent countenance to appear at
the wicket. She held up her cardcase that he might have the full benefit
of her splendor, extracted a small bit of paper, and passed it in to
him. Seeing that it was not one of the familiar checks of the Montgomery
Bank, he scrutinized it closely. It was a check of the "Journey's End"
Magazine Company for fifty dollars, drawn upon a New York bank and
payable to Phyllis Kirkwood.
Amzi's face expressed no surprise. He threw it back and waved her away.
"It's no good. Worthless!"
"No good? You don't mean--"
"No good, Miss Kirkwood--without your indorsement."
"Why didn't you say so! I don't want to come as near sudden death as
that again."
He thrust out a pen so that she need not turn to the tall desk behind
her to make the indorsement. He examined the signature carefully and
blotted it.
"One of your own efforts, Phil?" he asked carelessly.
"Well, yes, you might say so. I suppose you'd call it that."
"Poetry?"
"A poor guess, Amy, and marks you as an ignorant person. Fifty dollars
for a poem out of my green little cantaloupe? That's half what Milton
got for 'Paradise Lost.' And the prices haven't gone up much since John
died."
She knew that his curiosity was aroused. This play of indifference was
an old game of theirs, a part of the teasing to which she subjected him
and which he encouraged.
"Story?"
"Absurd! Everybody in this town is writing a novel. Every time I go into
the post-office I see scared-looking people getting their manuscripts
weighed, and nervously looking round for fear of being caught. Nan says
it's a kind of literary measles people have in Indiana. Aunt Josephine's
cook writes poetry--burnt up a pan of biscuits the other day when she
was trying to find a rhyme for 'Isaiah.'"
"I wondered what caused me so much pain the last time I ate supper at
Josie's. I must have swallowed a sonnet. What's your line, Phil?"
"Zooelogy."
"Possible?"
"It was this way, Amy. You know that piece I read at the high-school
commencement--'The Dogs of Main Street'?"
"I do, Phil, I do; I nearly laughed myself to death."
"Well, it did seem to tickle the folks. I was about to kindle the fire
with it one day when I happened to think that if it would make a
high-school commencement laugh it ought to raise a laugh out of 'most
anybody. So I touched it up and put in a few new dogs I've got the boys
in Landers's livery-stable taking care of, and sent it to three
magazines. The first two regretted, but the third fell for it. They want
pictures of the dogs, though, and will give me twenty more round iron
dollars for a full set, so if you see me on the hike with the camera in
the morning, don't ring up the town marshal."
"Well, well," said Amzi; "it sounds like easy money. Going to keep it
up?"
"I have said nothing," replied Phil, holding up her cardcase and
swinging it by its short chain. "Just credit me with the fifty and I'll
bring in my book the next time I find it."
In front of the theater she ran into her Uncle Lawrence, gloomily posed
before the entrance with his astrakhan collar drawn up about his ears.
He had once seen Richard Mansfield in just such a coat and had been
moved to imitation.
"Divinity!" breathed Hastings tragically, noting Phil's glowing cheeks
and satisfying raiment.
"Forget it!" said Phil. "How about a box for the Saturday matinee? I
think I'll pull off a party for a bunch of girls at your expense. What
is that on the boards? You don't mean that 'Her Long Road Home'
threatens this town again? Why rub it in, Lawr_i_nce?"
"They've canceled," said Hastings with a sigh. "That booking-office is a
den of thieves. No honor, no feeling, no ideals of art!"
His tones were unusually abysmal. He stood with his back to the door of
his theater as though shielding it from Philistine assaults upon the
drama's divine temple.
"By the way, Lawr_i_nce--" Her Aunt Kate had rebuked her at least a
thousand times for calling him "Lawr_i_nce." He had asked her to call
him "Uncle Larry," which was her main reason for not doing so. Her
standard of uncles was high. She had never admitted her aunts' husbands
to a share in a relationship that was ennobled by Amzi Montgomery.
Fosdick was usually "Paul" to Phil; Waterman she always called "Judge,"
which he hated. "Lawr_i_nce, what became of that play you wrote
yourself and put on in Chicago? Why don't you bring it here and give the
town a treat?"
Hastings bent upon her the grieved look of a man who suffers mutely the
most unkindest cut of all. _Et tu, Brute!_ was in his reproachful
glance.
"I didn't think this of you, Phil. Of course you knew the piece closed
Saturday night at Peoria."
She had not known. Her aunt had spoken largely of the venture. The
theatrical powers of New York having frowned upon Hastings's play, he
had produced it himself, sending it forth from Chicago to enlighten the
West before carrying it to Broadway, there to put to rout and confusion
the lords of the drama who had rejected it. Five thousand dollars had
been spent and the play had failed dismally. Nor was this the first of
Hastings's misadventures of the same sort. Phil analyzed her uncle's
gloom and decided that it was sincere, and she was sorry for him as was
her way in the presence of affliction. Hastings was an absurd person,
intent upon shining in a sphere to which the gods had summoned him only
in mockery. Phil lingered to mitigate his grief as far as possible.
"I'm sorry; but I suppose if a play won't go, it won't."
"A play of merit won't! My aim was to advance the ideal of American
drama; that was all. The same money put into musical comedy would have
nailed S. R. O. on the door all winter."
"Lawr_i_nce," said Phil, glancing up at the facade of The Hastings,
"I'll tell you how you can make a barrel of money out of this brick
building."
He looked at her guardedly. Phil was a digger of pits, as he knew by
experience, and he was in no humor for trifling. His own balance at the
bank was negligible, and his wife had warned him that no more money
would be forthcoming for the encouragement of the American drama.
"Lawr_i_nce, what you ought to do is to hire that blind piano-pounder
who thumps for the fraternity dances, put a neat red-haired girl in a
box on the sidewalk, get one of the football team who's working his way
through college to turn the crank, and put on a fil-lum."
This was, indeed, rubbing salt in his wounds. He flinched at the
thought.
"Turn my house over to the 'movies'! Phil, I didn't think this of you.
After all I've tried to do to lift this dingy village to a realizing
sense of what drama is--what it should mean--"
"Trim it, Hector. You can break all the banks in town uplifting the
drama and never put it over. About once a winter you have a good piece;
the rest of the time the folks who want to see real actors go to
Indianapolis or sneak up to Chicago for a week and beat you to it. That
fil-lum show down by the court-house is rotten. Coarse and stupid. Why
not spend a few dollars changing the front of this joint and put on good
pictures? The people who keep the pictures moving in Indianapolis sit
around the fire Sunday evenings and burn money--it comes in so fast the
banks haven't room for it. Call this 'The Home Fireside'--no nickelodeon
business--and get the Center Church quartette to sing. It will sound
just like prayer-meeting to people who think a real theater a sinful
place. If you don't tackle it, I'll throw Bernstein out and take it up
myself. There's a new man in town right now trying to locate a screen;
beat him to the wire, Lawr_i_nce."
"By Jove, Phil--!"
She started off briskly and a little farther on met Jack Whittlesey the
sheriff, who grinned and touched his coonskin cap.
"Got an engagement, Phil? Hope not. Uncle Alec is goin' to holler in a
few minutes."
"I'm out calling, Sheriff, but if you're sure the judge is going to act
up, I'll take a look in."
She crossed the street to the court-house. To Phil nothing was funnier
than Alec Waterman in the throes of oratory. Waterman was big and burly,
with a thunderous voice; and when he addressed a jury he roared and
shook his iron-gray mane in a manner truly terrifying. In warm weather
when the windows were open, he could be plainly heard in any part of the
court-house square. When Phil reached the circuit court-room Judge
Walters, with his feet on the judicial desk, was gazing at the ceiling,
as was his habit when trials grew tedious. As Phil entered, he jerked
down his feet, sat erect, snapped his fingers at the bailiff, and
directed the placing of a chair within the space set apart for the bar.
Phil smiled her thanks, and made herself comfortable with her back to
the clerk's desk. The case in progress was a suit for personal injuries
against the Sycamore Traction Company, brought by Waterman for a farmer,
who, on the preceding Fourth of July, had been tossed a considerable
distance toward Chicago by a violent contact with one of the defendant's
cars. The motorman and the conductor had both testified that the car was
running empty and that the proper signals had been given at the required
crossings.
The judge left the bench and lounged about the clerk's desk, hoping to
catch Phil's eye and draw her aside for one of the parleys in which he
delighted; but Phil had immediately become absorbed in the testimony.
Waterman's voice rose louder and louder as he sought to befuddle the
motorman as to the time of the accident, the place where the collision
occurred and the signaling, but without avail. The attorney for the
company looked on with an amused smile of unconcern. Both the motorman
and the conductor had been carefully rehearsed in their testimony and
there was little likelihood that plaintiff's counsel would be able to
trap them. Waterman was going back and forth over the time of day,
attempting to show that the car was behind its schedule, and exceeding
the speed limit, but the man clung to his story stubbornly. It was at
exactly five minutes past three; he was running slowly, and had whistled
at all the earlier stops; and when he saw the plaintiff driving upon the
right of way ahead of him he put on the brakes as quickly as possible.
Phil moved to a chair just behind Waterman. He was so deeply engrossed
that he did not notice her. He was making no headway, and was about to
drop the witness when Phil bent over and whispered. Without turning
round he rose and renewed the attack.
"I will ask you, sir, to state to this jury whether it is not a fact
that the brake of your car was out of order and whether it had not given
you trouble before you struck the plaintiff?"
The witness stammered and glanced at counsel for the defendant, who rose
and objected to the question as not proper cross-examination. The judge
returned to the bench with renewed interest and overruled the objection.
The witness admitted that there had been some slight trouble with the
brake, and Waterman roared another question that drowned the
explanation.
"Isn't it a fact that you ran past Stop 7 just south of the scene of
this collision, and did not stop your car because it was out of control
by reason of a crippled brake?"
The witness was plainly disturbed, and the defendant's counsel was
unable to protect him. He admitted that the brake might not have been in
perfect order, but it was an old car--
"It was an old car," boomed Waterman, "and the brake was worn out and
you couldn't have stopped at that crossing even if you had wanted to!
Isn't that the fact?"
The motorman telegraphed appealingly to the company's lawyer. The judge
ordered him to answer the question.
"There were no passengers on the car," the man, now thoroughly confused,
murmured inconsequently.
Waterman bent his head and took another cue from Phil, then strode
majestically toward the witness.
"There were no passengers on your car? Why not?" he thundered.
"Why not what?" faltered the witness.
"I ask you, sir, if it isn't true that there was a passenger waiting at
Stop 7 and that you ran by that crossing because your brake wouldn't
work?"
The witness looked at Phil and involved himself in difficulty by
admitting that the car's speed was such that he was unable to see
clearly whether any passenger was waiting at Stop 7. After sparring
between counsel, Phil was placed upon the stand and sworn to tell the
whole truth. Main Street had heard that something unusual was happening
in the circuit court and the room filled.
Her name, she testified, was Phil Kirkwood. (She always signed herself
Phil at school, distrusting Phyllis as high-falutin'.)
"Otherwise Phyllis," interposed the judge soberly. "It is essential that
the record identify all witnesses beyond per-adventure."
The audience tittered. Phil began her story. She had been spending the
Fourth of July at her Uncle Amzi's farm, but wanted to return home
before her uncle was ready, to attend a party. There was no question of
the time, as she had walked across the fields to that particular stop to
meet the car on its scheduled hour. She had stood upon the track and
waved the flag placed in the shed at the stop for that purpose, but to
her disgust the car had rushed by at full speed. She had heard the
hissing of the air as the car whirled by, and there being no other car
for an hour she had been obliged to return to the farm and wait for her
uncle to drive her in.
Counsel for defendant, a stranger to the ways of Montgomery, who had
come from Indianapolis to try the case, asked Phil ironically if she
were an expert in the management of a trolley car.
"Oh, I shouldn't say that," said Phil; "but I used to ride with motormen
sometimes, back and forth to the farm, and they let me stop and start
the car."
She explained that she knew from the sound as the air went on that the
brake was out of order. The twelve good men and true in the jury box
bent forward attentively as she met the lawyer's questions. He was a
young man and Phil was undeniably pretty. In her calling clothes she did
not look like a girl who would chum with motormen. His manner was
elaborately deferential.
"Miss Kirkwood, may I trouble you to tell the jury whether you ever rode
in the car of this particular motorman?" he asked.
"No, sir," replied Phil.
"You never saw him before, and after all you're not sure he's the man
who was in charge of that car that day, are you?"
Phil dangled the cardcase from her white-gloved fingers carelessly.
"Perfectly confident of it," she answered.
"If you are sure of it, will you kindly tell the jury just how it is you
remember him--how you identify him as the motorman on this car on that
particular afternoon?"
"Oh! Do you really want me to tell that?" asked Phil.
"Answer the question!" the attorney returned sharply, misreading her
apparent reluctance.
"Why," began Phil, speaking rapidly and distinctly and turning toward
the jurors,--"why, it's because I had noticed him all that summer
passing our house and he always ran faster than the other motormen,--you
could tell his car at night if you didn't see it because it ran so
fast,--and he's the same man who ran into Bernstein's delivery
wagon--the one with the lame horse--at the corner of Monon Street about
a week before the Fourth of July. I saw that, too!"
"If Your Honor please," said Waterman, rising as the court ruled that
Phil's last answer, which the defendant's counsel had sought vainly to
interrupt, should be stricken out, "the plaintiff rests. We will waive
argument in this case," he added impressively, putting from him, with
unprecedented self-denial, the chance of pillorying the unfeeling
defendant corporation.
Judge Walters looked down at Phil solemnly.
"The court is unable to determine whether the witness is also associate
counsel for plaintiff, but in any event, I suggest that she claim the
usual witness fee at the clerk's office."
Phil left the court-room and resumed her walk toward Buckeye Lane.
Paul Fosdick, just coming down from his office, arrested her. Fosdick,
whose blithe spirit was never greatly disturbed by the failure of his
enterprises, greeted Phil gayly. He entertained a high opinion of Phil.
At family gatherings, which his wife and sisters-in-law made odious by
petty bickerings, Phil was always a refuge. It was nothing to Phil which
of her aunts wore the best hat, or that Mrs. Hastings had been abroad
and to New York while the others had been denied these recreations and
delights. If his wife's faith in him had been shaken by his inability to
grasp the fortune which always seemed just within reach; and if, on
Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving Day, when they met at Amzi's,
he was a bit uncomfortable, knowing that his wife's share of the
Montgomery money had gone into many ventures without ever coming out
again, Phil could be depended upon to infuse cheer into those somber
occasions. He frequently discussed his schemes with Phil, who was
usually sympathetic; and now and then she made a suggestion that was
really worth considering. Where other members of the family criticized
him harshly behind his back, Phil delivered her criticisms face to face.
"Lo, Phil!"
"Lo, Paul!"
"Phil, what's new about Sycamore Traction? They say your pa's going to
have a receiver appointed."
"If he does they will print it in the papers. How do you like my hat?"
"It's a dream, but I hope you're not going to make trouble for your dear
aunts' husbands by going in for clothes. The competition in the family
is hot enough now without you butting in. Hastings is in mourning at the
bank and Waterman is sad over his last political licking and my billions
are coming by slow freight."
"By the way, Paul, I fell over that busted brickyard of yours out by the
flour mill the other day when I was walking for my health. There ought
to be money in bricks," she ended meditatively.
"There ought, Phil, but there ain't. I'm still hoping to pull that
scheme out, but it takes time. You know this town doesn't know how to
back up its enterprises."
"Cease knocking! What you want to do is to stop trying to organize an
undertakers' trust in this town where everybody lives to a green old age
and get busy with brick. The last time I was in Indianapolis I saw a lot
of new houses built out of brick that looked just about like those
pink-and-yellow effects you started in on. They came from over in
Illinois somewhere, and I guess the clay's off the very same stratum.
What you ought to do is to nail close to some of the city architects and
hypnotize them into using your goods."
"We tried all that, Phil; but they wouldn't listen."
"Let me see; what name did you give those bricks?"
"We called 'em the 'Gold Finish.' Nothing the matter with that, is
there?"
"'Most everything's the matter with that name. Anything that suggests a
gold brick is bound to scare sensible people. Think of living in a house
that people would laugh at and call the 'gold-brick' house! You've got
to get a lot better, Paul. Try once more and call 'em the 'Daffodil' or
the 'Crocus'--something that sounds springlike and cheerful. And play up
local pride--a Hoosier product for Hoosier people. Then when you've done
that, fly to Chicago and give away enough to build a house in one of the
new suburbs and daffodils will spring up all over the prairie. Am I
lucid?"
"There may be something in giving an old dog a new name. I've a good
notion to give it a try, and if--"
"Oh, there's no charge! You might send me up a couple of those brick; I
can use 'em for nut-crackers."
Judge Walters once said of Phil that if she would keep a diary and write
down honestly everything that happened to her if would some day put
Pepys to the blush. Not every day was as rich in adventure as this; but
this is not a bad sample. If Phil had been a prig or fresh or
impertinent, she would not have been the idol of Main Street. A genius
for being on the spot when events are forward must be born in one, and
her casual, indifferent air contributed to a belief in Main Street that
she was leagued with supernatural agencies. If there was a fire, Phil
arrived ahead of the department; and if a prisoner broke out of jail,
Phil knew it before the "Evening Star" could print the fact.
"Some one told me," Captain Wilson would begin, addressing Judge
Walters; and the judge would answer, "Otherwise Phyllis." And the judge
would say, "I'm going to quit taking the 'Star' and subscribe for Phil."
Phil had, on the whole, a pretty good time.
CHAPTER VI
THE SMOKING-OUT OF AMZI
Although a Holton had brought scandal upon the house of Montgomery by
eloping with one of its duly married daughters, or perhaps because of
that disagreeable circumstance, Mrs. Hastings, Mrs. Fosdick, and Mrs.
Waterman were constantly exercised over the affairs of the Holtons. The
Holtons prospered, as witness the fashion in which William (the wicked
Jack's brother) had built up the First National Bank after the
dissolution of the old Montgomery & Holton partnership. And there was
Samuel, who had varied his political activities by organizing companies
to raise vanilla beans or sarsaparilla, or to dig silver in Mexico--a
man of affairs, unquestionably, who had outgrown Montgomery and moved to
the state capital where he died. Even Samuel's paltry achievements were
touched with a certain magnificence in the eyes of these ladies; Samuel
had escaped from Montgomery and this was a consummation that had long
been the burden of their prayers. The very existence of the First
National Bank was offensive to the sisters of Amzi Montgomery. They had
wanted Amzi to "nationalize" his bank when the break occurred and it had
been "just like" their stubborn brother to continue in the old rut.
Mrs. William Holton lived in a modern house that was superior to
anything the Montgomerys could boast. It had two bathrooms, a
music-room, and electric lights. In Montgomery one bathroom had long
been a summit-crowning achievement, to which the fortunate possessor
might point with pride; and as for dedicating a room to music, and
planting in it a grand piano flanked by a bust of Mozart, and shedding
upon it a dim opalescent glow from concealed lights--no one in the
community had ever before scaled such heights of grandeur.
For half a dozen years after their sister's escapade the Montgomery
sisters had not spoken to a Holton; but in such communities as theirs
the "cutting" of persons with whom one has been brought up is attended
with embarrassments. William Holton had married, a little late, a
Memphis woman he had met on a trip to Mexico to inspect the plantations
in which he and his brother Samuel were interested. She was "a Southern
woman," with a charming accent, as every one admitted. The accent was
greatly admired. Several young girls sought to soften the vowels of
their native Hoosier speech in conformity with the models introduced by
Mrs. Holton. The coming of this lady, the zest with which she entered
into the social life of the town, the vacillations of certain old
friends of the Montgomerys who had taken sides against the Holtons after
the Kirkwood incident, had given the three sisters an excuse for
abandoning the feud in so far at least as it applied to William Holton.
In any view of the case, no matter how base the Holtons might be, there
was no reason why the family sins should be visited upon the lady with
the aforesaid accent, whose taste in dress was unassailable and who
poured tea with such an air.
Amzi read his newspaper in the little back room of the bank on a
November afternoon and awaited the coming of his sisters. The necessity
for any business discussions between them had steadily diminished. Their
father's estate had long ago been distributed, and Amzi had not troubled
himself as to the subsequent fate of the money he had paid to his
sisters. They were all blessed with husbands, and if these gentlemen did
not safeguard their wives' property it was no affair of his. There had
been about half a million dollars, which meant in round figures a
hundred thousand dollars apiece, and this in Montgomery is a great deal
of money.
When his sisters arrived, Amzi rose with the nice courtesy that lay in
him and placed chairs for them about the table. Then panting from his
exertion he pulled a cigar from his waistcoat and dry-smoked it. They
were unwontedly grave, suggesting the gloom of a committee appointed to
perfect funeral arrangements for a poor relation.
"You have talked to Phil about the party, I suppose," said Mrs.
Waterman.
"I have: I most certainly have, Josie," replied Amzi, sighing heavily.
"And she's going to do what we want?"
Amzi tilted his head to one side reflectively, and took the cigar from
his mouth.
"She's going to stand for the party, if that's what you mean; but as to
doing what you want on general principles, I'm not so dead sure."
"It was your duty, Amzi, to go into the matter thoroughly--to lay down
the law to her," observed Mrs. Fosdick.
"All right," nodded Amzi. "In the words of the poet, I done it. But Phil
doesn't need lectures."
"Doesn't need them?" sniffed Mrs. Fosdick. "That poor child couldn't
have a lecture too many. She always pulls the wool over your eyes. It's
right and proper for us to know just what she said when you told her she
had to stop running round so much and act like a respectable
well-brought-up girl."
"You're a lot of silly geese about Phil--all of you," declared Amzi,
bringing his gaze to bear upon them _seriatim_. "Phil is far from being
a fool, and there's a heart in her as big as the court-house. We don't
appreciate her; we're always nagging her and trying to reform her."
The plural was pure chivalry. It was not Amzi who nagged Phil. The
aunts, perfectly aware of this, and ready usually to challenge any
intimation that their attitude toward Phil was not dictated by equity
and wisdom, were silent. Their failure to respond with their customary
defense aroused his suspicions. They had been to a tea somewhere and
were in their new fall togs. Their zealous attempts to live up to what
were to him the absurdest, the most preposterous ideals, struck him
just now as pathetic; but he was fond of his sisters. If the course of
their lives was inexplicable and their ambitions ridiculous and futile,
his good humor never failed in his intercourse with them. But they had
not disclosed their hand on this occasion--he was confident of this--and
he warily fortified himself to meet whatever assault their strategy had
planned. The three women glanced at one another covertly: Kate and Fanny
seemed to be deferring to their older sister. It was with unmistakable
diffidence and after a minute scrutiny of her cardcase that Mrs.
Waterman spoke.
"Amzi, this is an important time in Phil's life, and there are some
things we ought to counsel each other about. We all take it for granted
that you know where Lois is."
Amzi crossed his fat legs and shrugged his fat shoulders. He was not in
the least pleased by the direction of the inquiry.
"We feel we are entitled to know all you know about her," added Mrs.
Fosdick.
"You should remember," said Mrs. Hastings, "that she's our sister as
well as yours."
Amzi's jaws tightened and he inspected the end of his cigar. This sudden
manifestation of sisterly interest in Lois was not without its amusing
side. They had long ago spurned their sister with bitterness, and his
speculations as to the real object of their visit had not touched the
remote horizons against which Lois was vaguely limned.
"I don't see," he observed deliberately, "that Lois has anything
whatever to do with Phil or any of the rest of us."
"Of course not, Amzi. That's exactly the point. We only want to be sure
she's a long way off; we're entitled to know that. And we've heard--"
Mrs. Hastings laid upon _heard_ that fine, insinuating inflection that
is a part of the grammar of gossip. His sisters had heard something, and
while he discounted its value automatically, as was his way, he was not
without curiosity as to its nature. They saw that he was interested.
"The Walters have just got back from a Western trip, and they heard in
Seattle that Lois has left Holton. He had been doing badly--drinking,
and all that."
"It was bound to come, of course," said Mrs. Waterman. "You can't tell
me that people who do a thing like that can ever be happy."
Her tone did not please Amzi. It was clear that he found the whole
subject disagreeable. He was immensely annoyed that they had come to him
to discuss Lois after years of silence. It was as though a great rock
planted in the avenue of her exit had succumbed to the tooth of Time and
its exfoliations were falling ominously about him.
"I thought it was understood long ago that we had dropped Lois. If she
and Holton got tired of each other, it's their business. I don't imagine
you want me to send for her to come home."
"Amzi!" they gasped.
It seemed that this shuddering exclamation expressed a horror that shook
their very souls. It was incredible that so dark a thought should have
crossed the mind of a man commonly looked upon as sane.
"That would be the limit," cried Mrs. Hastings. "Don't even mention such
a thing--it's too horrible to joke about."
"I wasn't joking. If she's gone to smash with Holton, I thought maybe
you wanted us to bring the prodigal home, and give her veal loaf for
Sunday evening tea. By the way, Kate, don't ever turn me loose on any of
your veal loaf again. The last I had at your house gave me indigestion;
it might have led to apoplexy and killed me."
The fierceness of his frowning caused his scalp to wrinkle clear back to
his fringe of hair. His sisters were vexed by his attempt to relieve the
discussion with humor. It was necessary to sober him, and Mrs. Hastings
thought she could effect the sobering of Amzi.
"Minnie Walters says they have lost their money; the judge saw Jack
Holton, but you know how the judge is; he wouldn't ever speak of it to a
soul."
"Minnie would," said Amzi dryly.
"Minnie only mentioned it in the kindest way," said Mrs. Waterman,
coloring. "You know Minnie doesn't gossip; but as an old friend of our
family she thought we ought to know. I think it was kind of her to tell
us."
"Well, it doesn't seem to have made you girls much happier. What on
earth are you going to do; what do you want me to do?" he demanded,
blowing out his cheeks and glaring.
"We don't want you to do anything, Amzi," said Mrs. Hastings, with that
sweetness with which women of little discernment attempt to blunt the
wrath of man.
It was important to keep Phil in the picture: with Phil dancing before
them Amzi could be held in subjection. Mrs. Waterman hastened to mention
Phil and the responsibility they all felt about her, to justify their
curiosity as to Phil's mother. Amzi blew his nose and readjusted his
spectacles. Mrs. Waterman advanced the battle-line boldly.
"We assume that you have always kept in touch with poor Lois and that
you still hear from her. And we feel that the time has come for you to
treat us more frankly about her. It's for Phil's sake, you know, Amzi."
Amzi could not see how any of the later transactions in the life of
Phil's mother were of the slightest importance to Phil. He shook his
head impatiently and shrugged his shoulders.
"Lois," he blurted, "is in Dresden."
"Then she _has_ left him!" cried Mrs. Fosdick, with a note of triumph
that trumpeted the complete vindication of Mrs. Waterman's averments.
"I tell you I don't know anything about Holton," replied Amzi, who had,
in strictest truth, told them nothing of the kind. He experienced the
instant regret suffered by secretive persons who watch a long-guarded
fact slip away beyond reclamation; but repentance could avail nothing,
so he added,--
"Yes; she's abroad. She's been over there for some time."
"Of course, he's run through her money; that was to be expected!"
exclaimed Mrs. Fosdick in a tone that implied a deep resentment of the
fate that had robbed the erring Lois of her money.
"If he did she never told me so," Amzi answered. "But Lois was never
what you might call a squealer; if he robbed her you can be pretty dead
sure she wouldn't sob about it on the street corners. That wouldn't be a
bit like the Lois I remember. Lois wasn't the woman to go scampering off
after the Devil and then get scared and burst out crying when she found
her shoes beginning to get hot."
After all these years Amzi had spoken, and his sisters did not like his
tone. Their brother, a gentleman the correctness of whose life had never
been questioned, was referring to the conduct of the sister who had
disgraced her family in outrageous and sinful terms. The Prince of
Darkness and the fervid pavements of his kingdom were not to be brought
into conversation with any such lightness, as though the going to the
Devil were not, after all, so horrible--not something to be whispered
with terror in the dark confessional of their souls. One might have
imagined that Lois's very sins had endeared her to this phlegmatic older
brother! There was not only this gloomy reflection, but his admissions
had opened long vistas to their imaginations. He probably knew more than
he meant to disclose, and this made it necessary to continue their
pumping with the greatest discretion.
"It would be hard if she came back on you for help--after everything
that's happened; but of course that would be your affair, Amzi," said
Mrs. Hastings leadingly.
"It would," Amzi admitted explosively. "It undoubtedly would!"
This, in their eagerness, seemed an admission. The interview was proving
fruitful beyond their fondest hopes. He had doubtless been in Lois's
fullest confidence from the first; and darkest of all, it was wholly
likely, now that she had broken with Holton, that Amzi was supplying her
with the means of subsistence in the capitals of Europe. Around this
last thought they rallied.
"Of course, if Lois should really be in need, Amzi," said Mrs. Waterman,
"it would be the duty of all of us to help her; that would only be
right. But even if it comes to that we should have to consider Phil,
too. When you think of everything, our responsibility is much greater
for Phil than for Lois. Phil is here; her life's before her; she's one
_of_ us, you know, Amzi."
"Right, Josie; you are mighty right. What you mean is that if it came to
a question of Lois's starving in Europe and Phil's starving on our
doorsteps, we'd help Phil first because she's right here under our
noses. But I don't understand that Lois is starving; nor is Phil for
that matter. Phil's all right."
The thought that he was sending money to Lois was disagreeable; that he
should be doing so when Phil's needs cried so stridently aroused the
direst apprehensions. They had all received from Amzi their exact
proportion of their father's estate; even Waterman had never been able
to find a flaw in the adjustment. Through Waterman they had learned that
Lois's proper receipt was on file; they knew exactly the date on which
it had been placed of record in the county clerk's office. They had
looked upon this as the final closing of all the doors that shut this
sister out of their calculations. They, or their children, were
potential beneficiaries in Amzi's property if he ultimately died a
bachelor. And there was no telling when his asthma might be supplemented
by a fatal pneumonia. This was never to be whispered in so far as the
chances of their own offspring were concerned; but of Phil and the
propriety of her expectations they might speak with entire candor.
"While we are talking of these matters," observed Mrs. Hastings, "we may
as well face one or two things that have troubled us all a good deal.
You know as well as we do that poor Tom has gradually been playing out;
it's pitiful the way he has been letting his business go. Every one
knows that he has ability, but he's been living more and more up in the
air. He owns the block over there and the rent he gets from that is
about all he has. And I shouldn't be at all surprised if the block had
been mortgaged."
"I've heard," said Mrs. Waterman, examining a button on her white glove,
"that he has borrowed money on it."
They looked guardedly at Amzi. Mrs. Waterman's husband, who kept an eye
on the county records, had, at his wife's behest, assured himself
frequently that Kirkwood's block in Main Street was unencumbered.
Kirkwood's former home, the decaying monument to his domestic tragedy,
and the only other thing he owned, was free also. In this process of
"smoking out" their brother it would have helped if they could have
pointed to the menace of her father's encumbered property to Phil; but
they had already learned more than they had expected in establishing
beyond per-adventure the fact that Lois and Amzi maintained
communication, and that in all likelihood he was providing for her in
her exile. It was high time they scanned the top shelves of the closet
occupied by the dancing family skeleton!
"While we're about it we may as well face the possibility that Tom may
marry again," remarked Mrs. Fosdick suddenly.
Amzi drew his hand across his pink dome.
"Nothing to hinder him that I know of," he replied.
"I don't know of anything that would wake him up unless it would be
that. The right sort of woman could do a lot for a man like Tom, with
all that he has suffered." This from Mrs. Waterman, who seemed deeply
moved by the thought of Kirkwood's sufferings.
"But Phil--I can't imagine Phil with a stepmother. We never could allow
that; we should have to take her away from him," declared Mrs. Fosdick.
Amzi rested his elbow on the table, and breathed hard for a minute. He
took the unlighted cigar from his mouth and waved it at them.
"What's got into you girls anyhow! You're borrowing trouble in all the
banks in the universe--a little above your line of credit. You seem
terribly anxious about Lois all of a sudden. It just happens that I
know she ain't hungry, and that she's over there living like a
respectable woman. Lois isn't like the rest of us; Lois is different!
There's more electricity in Lois than the rest of us have; you know it
as well as I do. Now just to satisfy your curiosity I'll tell you that I
saw Lois--"
"You saw her!" they chorused.
"I saw her in Chicago about two months ago. She was on her way to Europe
then; I had dinner with her and put her on the train for New York, and
she sailed the day she got there; so now, if you're scared to death for
fear she's going to turn up here in town, you can put it clean out of
your minds."
They sighed their relief. He was not given to long speeches and the
effort of his recent deliverances caused him to cough, and the coughing
brought his voice finally to a high wheeze. He had not quite finished
yet, however.
"Now, as for Tom Kirkwood marrying," he went on, "let him marry. It's
none of our business, is it? He married into our family and got the
worst of it. It wasn't a particularly cheerful business, the way it came
out. If he's fool enough to try it again, it's his trouble not ours; and
you can't tell but he might make a go of it next time."
"We have no idea of trying to hinder him," said Mrs. Waterman with
dignity. "As you say, it's Tom's trouble. And of course we could manage
so Phil wouldn't suffer, no matter what he did."
"Phil suffer! Thunder! What are you always talking about Phil for; I
tell you Phil's all right! Phil's got more gumption than all the rest of
us put together. Phil's an honor to the family; she's the best girl in
this town and the best girl in the whole state of Indiana, or the United
States, for that matter. If you have visions of seeing Phil chased over
the back lot by any stepmother, you have another guess coming. Thunder!"
He drew out a white silk handkerchief and blew his nose. The sisters saw
with regret that there was no recurring to the attractive subject of
that interview in Chicago, though their minds were beset with a thousand
questions they wished to ask him about it. They realized that to do so
would be a blunder. They had stumbled upon a gold mine and were obliged
to leave its rich hoard untouched. They returned to Phil, who, as a
topic, offered safer ground than her mother.
"Phil's party," said Mrs. Hastings briskly, "ought to be in keeping with
the family dignity. We thought it a lot better for you to have it in
your house than for us--our own houses are small." (This with
resignation.) "And it doesn't seem quite nice for _us_ to have it in the
Masonic Hall, though some of the nicest people are doing that. To bring
Phil out in her grandfather's house speaks for the whole family. And
it's dear of you to consent to it. We all appreciate that, Amzi."
"Of course it's the place for it!" affirmed Amzi impatiently. "I'll give
that party and you can get whatever Phil needs and do it right; you
understand? And then I want you to give me all the bills. Now what else
do you want?"
"We feel," began Mrs. Fosdick, "that the invitations, which will go out
in your name, should take in everybody we want Phil to know."
Amzi grinned guardedly.
"That's pretty good, Fanny. Do you suppose there's a man, woman, baby,
or yellow dog in this town that Phil doesn't know? I doubt it. But go
on."
"We don't mean that way, Amzi," said Mrs. Waterman patiently. "We
mean--"
"Thunder! Go on!"
"We mean that the list should be representative--that old differences
should be put aside."
The wrinkles on Amzi's pink pate scampered back to find refuge in his
absurd fringe of pale-gold hair. Mrs. Waterman advanced her pickets
hurriedly.
"You know we've had to recognize the Holtons of late, disagreeable
though it has been. William isn't like Jack--you know that; and when he
brought his wife here, a perfect stranger, it didn't seem fair to ignore
her."
"The fact is," Mrs. Fosdick interpolated, "we simply couldn't, Amzi.
This town's too small to carry on a feud comfortably. We all stopped
speaking to the Holtons after poor Lois left, but the rest of them
couldn't help what Jack did; and, of course, Lois--"
"You want to ask Mr. and Mrs. William to Phil's party?"
Mrs. Fosdick, fearing from the fierceness with which he reduced the
matter to words, that he was about to veto the suggestion, hastened to
strengthen their case.
"For business reasons, Amzi, we feel that we ought to bury the hatchet.
Paul has to meet William Holton constantly. No matter what we think,
William _is_ really one of the wide-awake business men of the town, and
in all sorts of things; and Paul has to keep him on the executive
committee of the Commercial Club--the president of the First National
Bank can't be overlooked, though you can't ever doubt Paul's devotion to
all our interests."
"And," Mrs. Waterman added, "Mr. Holton retained Alec in a case last
winter."
"Yep," observed Amzi, "he did. It was that suit about opening up Chapel
Street and I was one of the defendants." And then he added, with
calculated softness, as though recalling a pleasant memory, "Alec lost
the suit."
The mention of the Chapel Street Extension had been an unfortunate slip
on Mrs. Waterman's part; but Amzi was generous.
"Bill Holton is undoubtedly a leading citizen," he observed, looking at
the ceiling and rubbing his nose absently. The irony of this, if he
intended any, was well hidden. William Holton, president of the First
National Bank, was a business rival, and Amzi never abused his
competitors. Having satisfied his curiosity as to the ceiling, he
announced his complete acquiescence in the idea of inviting the William
Holtons. "No objection whatever," he declared, "to asking Bill and his
wife. Is that all of 'em you want?"
"Well, there are Ethel and Charlie. They've just closed their house here
and mean to live in Indianapolis, but of course they still belong here.
Charlie is doing very well, they say--quite a brilliant young man; and
Ethel is very sweet and well-bred. She went to Miss Waring's school in
Indianapolis and knows some of the nicest young people in the city. I
think it would be nice to ask them; it always looks well to have some
out-of-town guests."
"That Sam's children you're talking about? What's the matter with the
other boy?"
"Fred? I think the less we say about him the better. He's been down in
Mexico on one of Sam's schemes and I guess he didn't do well. He's on
the old farm next your place. I guess Ethel and Charlie can represent
that branch of the family. If you think--" began Mrs. Fosdick, anxious
that Amzi should be fully satisfied.
"Thunder! I don't think. You fix it up to suit yourselves."
They began to adjust their wraps, fairly well satisfied with the results
of the visit. Amzi eyed their autumnal splendors with the mild wonder a
woman's raiment always aroused in him.
"Tom marry again, you say," he observed pensively. "What's put that idea
in your head?"
"Why, you know as well as we do, Amzi, that he and Rose Bartlett are
very sympathetic," exclaimed Mrs. Hastings, veiling a sharp glance at
him. The three women, feigning inattention, were alert for their
brother's reply. It came promptly.
"Rose is a fine woman," he said with cordial emphasis. "A fine woman.
And," he immediately added, "so's Nan!"
Then he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and filled his cheeks and
glared.
They were grieved by the mention of Nan. The bluff heartiness with which
he had expressed his admiration for Rose had been gratifying and
satisfying; but by speaking with equal fervor of Nan he had sent them
adrift again.
CHAPTER VII
GHOSTS SEE THE LIGHT AGAIN
Kirkwood plunged into work with an ardor that was not lost upon Phil. He
rose early and kept office hours with a new faithfulness, and he
frequently carried books and papers home for study. Something was
impending, Phil surmised, in the affairs of the Sycamore Traction
Company, for he had been to Indianapolis to confer with the New York
lawyer who represented the trustee for the bondholders and they had made
an inspection of the road together. It had always been Kirkwood's way
when aroused to devote himself tirelessly to his client's business, and
Phil had not failed to note how completely labor transformed him. His
languor and indifference now disappeared; he spoke feelingly of the
generosity of his Williams classmate, who had placed the Sycamore case
in his hands. It was a great opportunity and he assured her that he
meant to make the most of it.
He warned her that she was not to tell any one what he was engaged upon,
and that she must not be surprised into confessions by her aunts. He
began to visit the capital, always returning on the evening train,
though she knew that he might more comfortably have spent the night in
the city. He explained to Phil that he hoped to adjust the Sycamore's
affairs without litigation.
"I'm just enough of an old fogy to cut myself out of a big fee by
smoothing the wrinkles without a lawsuit. It's the professor in me,
Phil; it's the academic taint."
And to this the obvious retort was, of course, that it was because of
his highmindedness that he sought peaceable adjustments where more
drastic measures would have been to his profit.
She, too, was putting forth her best energies, and he was relieved to
find that she disposed of her work so lightly; even her frequent
calamities were a matter for jesting. They made a joke of the washing of
the supper dishes: he insisted on helping her, and would don an apron
and do the rougher part of it. He declared that he had never been so
well fed before, and that her cooking showed real genius. It would be a
dark day when his fee in the traction case would make it possible to
install a new maid-of-all work.
Phil was aware that their talk drifted often and with seeming
inevitableness to the Bartletts. Her successes with the housekeeping
were due to the friendly supervision of the sisters in Buckeye Lane. He
liked to hear her recount the ways in which they were her guide and
inspiration. In doubts she flew to them; but one or the other appeared
almost daily at the cottage. "Rose showed me how to make that sponge
cake," Phil would say; or, if the furniture in their little parlor had
been rearranged, it was very likely Nan who had suggested the change. It
was a considerable distance across town from the Kirkwoods' to Number 98
Buckeye Lane, and as these women were exceedingly busy it was not
without sacrifice that they visited Phil so constantly. "Nan read me
some new jokes she's just sending off this morning: I wonder how people
think up such things," Phil would observe, turning, perhaps, with her
hand on the pantry door; and she knew that her father's face lighted at
the mention of Nan and her jokes.
The aunts had not been above planting in Phil's young breast the
suspicion that her father was romantically "interested" in one of the
Bartletts--as to which one they hoped she would enlighten them. They
tried to keep track of the visits paid by the father and daughter to
Buckeye Lane; their veiled inquiries were tinged also with suspicions
that Amzi might be contemplating marriage with one of these maiden
ladies of the Lane--the uncertainties in each case as to the bright star
of particular adoration giving edge to their curiosity. The cautious
approaches, the traps set in unexpected places, amused Phil when she was
not angered by them. As she viewed the matter it would be perfectly
natural for her father to marry either of the Bartlett sisters, her only
fear being that marriage would disturb the existing relations between
the two houses which were now so wholly satisfactory.
Phil managed to visit her father's office every day or two, trips to
"town" being among the Montgomery housewife's privileges, a part of her
routine. Much visiting was done in Main Street, and there was always
something to take one into Struby's drug-store, which served as a club.
Even in winter there was hot chocolate and bouillon to justify the
sociably inclined in lingering at the soda-water tables by the front
windows. Phil, heedful of the warnings of the court-house clock, managed
to keep in touch with current history without jeopardizing the
regularity of meals at home. She was acquiring the ease of the Bartletts
in maintaining a household with a minimum of labor and worry. Her aunts
had convoyed her to Indianapolis to buy a gown for the coming-out party,
which was now fixed for the middle of November; and they were to return
to the city shortly for a fitting. All Main Street was aware that Phil
was to be brought out; the aunts had given wide publicity to the matter;
they had sighingly confessed to their friends the difficulties, the
labor, the embarrassment of planting their niece firmly in society.
Phil, dropping into her father's office in the middle of an afternoon
and finding him absent, dusted it from force of habit and began turning
the pages of a battered copy of "Elia" she kept tucked away in an alcove
that contained the Indiana Reports. A sign pinned on the door stated
that her father would return in half an hour. This card, which had
adorned the door persistently for several years, had lately ceased to
prophesy falsely, Phil knew, and she thought she heard her father on the
stairs when a young man she did not at once recognize opened the door
and glanced about, then removed his hat and asked if Mr. Kirkwood would
return shortly.
"I'm Mr. Charles Holton," said the visitor.
For a man to prefix "mister" to his own name was contrary to local
usage, and the manner, the voice, the city clothes of Charles Holton at
once interested Phil. She was sitting in her father's old swivel chair,
well drawn in under his big flat-top desk, across which she surveyed the
visitor at leisure. She placed him at once in his proper niche among the
Holtons: it was of him that people were speaking as a Montgomery boy who
was making himself known at the capital. He was the brother of Ethel and
Fred, and clearly an alert and dashing person.
"Pardon me; but I remember you perfectly, Miss Kirkwood. I hope we may
dispense with the formality of an introduction--we old Montgomery
people--and that sort of thing!"
Holton carried a stick, which was not done in Montgomery save by elderly
men, or incumbents of office, like Judge Walters or Congressman
Reynolds. His necktie also suggested more opulent avenues than Main
Street.
"By the outward and visible sign upon the portal I assume that Mr.
Kirkwood will return shortly."
He referred to his watch, absently turned the stem-key, and sat down in
one of the chairs which Phil had lately dusted.
"I used to see you around a lot when I was a boy--you and your pony; but
we've all been away so much--my sister Ethel and I. You know Ethel?"
"I've seen her," said Phil.
"We've just been breaking up our old home here. Rather tough, too, when
you think we're quite alone. We've sold the old house; sorry, but the
best offer I got was from a doctor who wants to turn it into a
drink-cure sanatorium. Tough on the neighbors, but there you are! It
didn't seem square to stand in the way of bracing up booze victims."
He expected her approval of this attitude; and Phil murmured phrases
that seemed to fill the gap he left for them.
"Had to go to the highest bidder--you can hardly give away an old house
like that in a place like this. Neighbors are kicking, but it wasn't my
fault."
Phil said she supposed that was so.
She was still noting various small items of Holton's raiment--his tan
oxford shoes, brilliant socks, and brown derby. A brown derby seemed odd
in Montgomery. From the pocket of his sackcoat protruded the cuffs of
tan gloves, and he wore an inconspicuous watch chain passed from pocket
to pocket of his waistcoat. Not even the most prosperous of the college
seniors had ever presented to Phil's eye a variety of adornments so
tastefully chosen, a color scheme so effective. The interview seemed to
be to the young man's liking. He talked with assurance, holding his
light stick with one hand, and balancing his hat on his knee with the
other. Often before men had come into the office as Phil sat there and
she had conversed with them while they waited for her father. She had
usually exhausted the possibilities in forecasting her father's return
at such times; but this gentleman seemed in no wise impatient. He spoke
of the world's affairs lightly and with a flattering confidence in the
understanding and sympathy of his auditor. The theatrical attractions at
the capital, the promise of grand opera in Chicago, the political
changes, these were things of passing interest, but nothing to grow
feverish about.
"The new trolley line will make a lot of difference to towns like
Montgomery--revolutionize things in fact. Part of the great social
change that is apparent all over the Middle West. There won't be any
country folks any more; all hitched on to the cities--the rubes
derubenized and inter-urbanized!"
Phil admitted that the changes he suggested were of significance. Her
father often used similar phrases in speaking of tendencies and
influences; but it was to be expected of him. The same ideas as
expressed by Charles Holton derived a certain importance from the fact
that he condescended to utter them; they gained weight and authority
from his manner of presenting them. He was not only a man of the world,
but an acute observer of social phenomena; and he was a new sort. She
had not known any one like him. The memory of her two meetings with Fred
came back to her: she recalled them the more clearly by reason of the
contrast between the brothers.
"Your brother has moved back to the farm," she suggested to gain
confirmation of a relationship which seemed hardly plausible with this
radiant young person before her.
"Oh, Fred! Well, I'd have you know that I offered to take Fred in with
me, but he wouldn't see it. I'd like the folks over here to know that;
but I couldn't do anything with him. He camped on one of our Mexican
mines so long that he is afraid of cities,--isn't city-broke,--and
seemed relieved when I suggested that he take the farm. It's no great
shakes of a farm as farms go, but he's one of these plodding chaps who
like a hard job. He came back and took a look around and said it was
back to the soil for him! So there was the farm, just waiting for
somebody to tackle it. I haven't seen him for some time,--I'm terribly
busy,--but I dare say he's out there, an earnest young husbandman
anxious to become one of these prosperous farmers who push the price of
bread out of sight and cry to have the tariff taken off champagne. You
don't happen to know Fred?"
"I've met your brother," said Phil with reserve.
"Well, I suppose we Montgomery folks are all acquainted without being
introduced. Lots of 'em moving to Indianapolis; I'm thinking of
organizing a club over there to keep the Montgomery people together--an
annual dinner, say; and that sort of thing. Do you know, it's rather
nice of you to be talking to me in this friendly, neighborly way; it
really is."
As Phil seemed not to see at once wherein the particular kindness of it
lay, he smiled and continued:--
"Our families haven't been so friendly, you know. Pardon me!"
Phil, seeing now what he meant, colored deeply, and glancing out of the
window was rewarded by a glimpse of Amzi's back. He had just concluded
an observation and was turning into the bank.
"You will pardon me, won't you," pleaded young Holton, lowering his
voice.
"I think father will be here shortly," Phil remarked irrelevantly.
He had opened himself to the suspicion that he had broached the subject
of the antipathy between their houses merely to test its dramatic value.
To be talking to the daughter of a woman with whom his uncle had eloped
made a situation; it is possible that he liked situations that called
into action his wits and an evident gift for using his voice and eyes.
He had been rapidly noting Phil's good points. He wished to impress her,
and he was not convinced that the impression he had made was favorable
or that she forgave him for touching, however lightly, upon the
ungrateful topic of her mother's dereliction. He had never thought of
his Uncle Jack's escapade with Mrs. Kirkwood concretely; it had happened
long ago, before he became attentive to such things; but the young woman
with whom he was now conversing visualized the episode for him. In his
mind there was an element of picturesqueness in that joint page of
Holton-Montgomery history. He wondered whether Phil looked like her
mother. Phil was pretty enough, though in repose she seemed rather
spiritless. She was swinging herself in the swivel chair, carelessly,
and since his reference to the old scandal he saw or imagined that he
saw her manner change from courteous interest to a somewhat frosty
indifference. His pride was pricked by the sense of his blunder. He
flattered himself that in his intercourse with men and women he was
adroit in retrieving errors, and his instinct warned him that the
curtain must not fall upon a scene that left him in discomfiture at the
back of the stage.
"It pleased Ethel and me very much to have an invitation to your party,
Miss Kirkwood. It was nice of you to ask us, and we shall certainly come
over, even if I have to give up a trip to New York I had expected to
make at just that time. Let me see, it's the twentieth, isn't it? Well,
I guess I can make them wait down there. We Western folks don't often
get a chance to make New Yorkers wait."
Phil was disposed to be magnanimous. He undoubtedly wished to be
agreeable; and it was his uncle, a remote person whom she had never
seen, who had decamped with her mother. It was hardly just to hold him
accountable for his uncle's misdeeds. She wondered whether the uncle had
been like this nephew, or whether he was more like William Holton, whom
she had seen frequently all her life. In her encounters with Fred
Holton, she had only vaguely associated him with that other and
indubitably wicked Holton who had eloped with her mother.
She was conscious that some one was stirring in the room overhead, and
she became attentive to the sounds. Her father had asked delay in
disposing of the apparatus of the old photograph gallery; he had wanted
to look the old stuff over, he had said, and he wished also to utilize
the darkroom in developing the pictures he had taken on their last
outing. One of the objects of her call this afternoon had been to urge
him to haste, as Bernstein wanted to move his remodeling shop into the
rooms at once.
"I make it a rule of my life," Holton went on, "to duck when it comes to
other people's mistakes. I make enough of my own without shouldering
those my friends and relations are responsible for--particularly my
relations. For example, if dear old Fred wants to throw himself away on
a farm, that's his trouble. I did all I could to save him. And when I
had done that, I had done my best, and I'm a busy man with troubles of
my own!"
Her reception of this was not wholly satisfactory. She made in fact no
reply at all.
"Excuse me," she said, hearing steps unmistakably; "I think maybe father
is on the floor above. If you will wait here, I'll run up and see."
He saw her erect for the first time as she passed him. Her apparent
languor as she swung in the old creaky chair had belied what was
evidently her more natural manner. The few steps necessary to carry her
from the desk to the door were taken lightly, with a long, free stride.
Captain Wilson, in apostrophizing her as the Diana of Main Street, had
paid no inappropriate tribute to Phil's graceful carriage. Holton rose
as she crossed the room, noting her brown cheek, the golden glint in her
hair, her finely modeled features, her clear brown eyes and their dark
lashes. His eyes still rested upon the door for a moment after it had
closed upon her. Then he struck the floor with his stick, and whistled
softly. "Lordy!" he ejaculated.
Phil accused herself of dullness in not having thought earlier of the
photograph gallery. Her father must have been conducting himself very
quietly there or she would have heard him before. It had been a bright
day and he had undoubtedly been taking advantage of the sun to do his
printing. She had always encouraged his experiments in photography,
which afforded him one of his few recreations. He owned a fine camera
and he gave to every detail of the photographer's art the care he
bestowed upon anything that deeply interested him. They had bound in
portfolios many of the views obtained in their adventures afield, and he
had won prizes at state and national exhibitions of camera societies.
Phil was relieved to know that he was developing these newest plates,
for now there would be no excuse for retaining the deserted gallery and
it could be turned over to Bernstein without further delay.
It had grown late, and even under the glazed roof she did not at once
make him out.
"Daddy!" she called softly.
She had broken in upon one of his deep reveries, and as she spoke he
started guiltily. The oblong of glass he had been holding, staring at in
the lessening light, fell with a crash, breaking into countless pieces.
"Oh, daddy! Did I scare you like that! Hope it wasn't one of the best
negatives that went to smash--hard luck to wipe one of those Autumn on
Sugar Creek gems out of existence!"
"It's all right, Phil--all right. It was only an old negative. I was
looking over the rubbish here and amused myself by printing some of the
old plates. There are a lot of old ghosts hidden away there in the
closet. This was an old shop, you know, dating back to the Civil War,
and there are negatives here of a lot of our local heroes. I wonder if
it's right to throw them away? It's like exterminating a generation to
destroy them. There must be people who would like to have prints of some
of these."
"We might sell them to that new photographer for money enough to paint
the building," she suggested. "The real owner would owe us a lot of rent
if he ever turned up, which he never will. That would be our only way of
getting even."
"There spoke a practical mind, Phil!"
She knew from the poor result of his effort to appear cheery that
something had occurred to depress him. His own associations with
Montgomery had been too recent for the resurrection of old citizens to
have any deep significance for him.
"We must go, Phil; I didn't mean for you to catch me here. I've wasted
the whole afternoon--but some of the Sugar Creek views have come out
wonderfully. We must clean up and turn the room over to Bernstein right
away."
Her alert eyes marked the Sugar Creek pictures at one end of a shelf
built against the window, but from his position at the moment she had
surprised him in his brooding she knew that he had not been studying
them. Nor did these new prints from old plates present likenesses of
Montgomery's heroes of the sixties; but there were three--a little
quaint by reason of the costumes--of a child, a girl of fourteen, and a
young woman; and no second glance was necessary to confirm her instant
impression that these represented her mother--the mother of whom she had
no memory whatever. There were photographs and a miniature of her mother
at home, and at times she had dreamed over them; and there was a
portrait done by an itinerant artist which hung in her Uncle Amzi's
house, but this, her Aunt Josephine had once told her, did not in the
least resemble Lois.
Kirkwood tried clumsily to hide the prints.
"No; Phil, please don't!" he exclaimed harshly.
"Of course, I may see them, daddy,--of course!"
He allowed her to take them from him.
"It's mamma," said Phil. "How dear they are!" she murmured softly.
As she turned the prints to catch the dimming light, he watched her,
standing inertly with his elbow on the shelf.
"Isn't it odd that I never saw any of these! even Uncle Amy hasn't
them."
She bent over the print of the child, who stood with a hoop, smiling as
though in delight at her belated rescue from oblivion.
"You were going to give these to me, weren't you, daddy?" She was
running over the others. One that showed the mature woman in a fur cape
long out of fashion and with a fur cap perched on her head, held her
longest.
"If you want them," said her father, "you shall have them, of course. I
will touch them up a bit in the morning."
"Maybe," said Phil looking at him quickly, "it is better not to keep
them. Was it one of these plates that broke?"
"Yes," said Kirkwood; "it was this one"; and he indicated the picture
that revealed his wife in her young womanhood.
It was over this that he had been dreaming alone in the dim gallery when
she had interrupted his reverie. The pity of it all, the bleak
desolation of his life, smote her sharply, now that she had caught a
glimpse of the ghosts scampering off down the long vistas. With an
abrupt gesture she flung aside the melancholy reminder of his tragedy.
"Dear old daddy!" She held him in her strong arms and kissed him.
She felt that all these spectres must be driven back into their world
of shadows, and she seized the prints and tore them until only little
heaps of paper remained and these she scattered upon the floor.
"Are these the plates?"
He indicated them with a nod. One after the other they crashed echoingly
in the bare gallery. She accomplished the destruction swiftly and with
certainty. One that fell on edge undamaged she broke with her heel.
Then she took a match from his pocket and lit the gas in one of the old
burners. The light revealed a slight smile on his face, but it was not
his accustomed smile of good humor. His eyes were very sad and gentle.
"Thank you, dear old Phil! I guess that's the best way, after all. It
must be time to go home now. Are you ready?"
"Wait here a minute--you had better pull down the windows and lock up.
I'll close the office and you can meet me on the landing."
She went out, closing the door, and ran down to the office, where
Charles Holton stood at the window looking out upon Main Street, where
the electric lamps were just sputtering into light.
"Ah," he cried turning toward her with a bow, "I'd begun to think you
had forgotten my unworthy presence on earth!"
"Not at all, Mr. Holton. I'm sorry, but my father is too much engaged to
see you to-day. If you really want to see him you can come in
to-morrow."
This was not what he had expected. Dismissal was in her tone rather more
than in her words. Their eyes met for a moment in the dim dusk and he
would have prolonged the contact; but she walked to the desk and stood
there, looking down at the copy of "Elia" which lay as she had left it
when he had interrupted her reading. She refused to be conscious of his
disappointment or to make amends for having caused him to wait
needlessly. He turned at the door.
"I hope I haven't put you to any inconvenience?" he remarked, but
without resentment.
"Not at all, Mr. Holton. Good-afternoon!"
"Good-day, Miss Kirkwood."
She listened until his step died away down the stair and then went out
and whistled for her father.
CHAPTER VIII
LISTENING HILL
The Holton farmhouse, a pretentious place in the day of Frederick
Holton's grandfather, was now habitable and that was the most that could
be said for it. When the second generation spurned the soil and became
urbanized, the residence was transformed from its primal state into a
country home, and the family called it "Listening Hill Farm." Its
austere parlor of the usual rural type was thrown together with the
living-room, the original fireplace was reconstructed, and running water
was pumped to the house by means of a windmill. The best of the old
furniture had been carried off to adorn the town house, so that when
Fred succeeded to the ownership it was a pretty bare and comfortless
place. Samuel had never lived there, though the farm had fallen to him
in the distribution of his father's estate; but he had farmed it at long
range, first from Montgomery, and latterly, and with decreasing success,
from Indianapolis after his removal to the capital. The year before
Fred's arrival no tenant had been willing to take it owing to the
impoverished state of the land.
Most of the farms in the neighborhood were owned by town people, and
operated by tenants. As for Fred, he knew little about agriculture. On
the Mexican plantation which his father and Uncle William had
controlled, he had learned nothing that was likely to prove of the
slightest value in his attempt to wrest a living from these neglected
Hoosier acres. His main qualifications for a farming career were a
dogged determination to succeed and a vigorous, healthy body.
The Holtons had always carried their failures lightly, and even Samuel,
who had died at Indianapolis amid a clutter of dead or shaky financial
schemes, was spoken of kindly in Montgomery. Samuel had saved himself
with the group of politicians he had persuaded to invest in the Mexican
mine by selling out to a German syndicate just before he died; and
Samuel had always made a point of taking care of his friends. He had
carried through several noteworthy promotion schemes with profit before
his Mexican disasters, and but for the necessity of saving harmless his
personal and political friends he might not have left so little for his
children. So spake the people of Montgomery.
Charles Holton was nearing thirty, and having participated in his
father's political adventures, and been initiated into the mysteries of
promotion, he had a wide acquaintance throughout central Indiana. He had
been graduated from Madison, and in his day at college had done much to
relieve the gray Calvinistic tone of that sedate institution. It was he
who had transformed the old "college chorus"--it had been a "chorus"
almost from the foundation--into a glee club, and he had organized the
first guitar and banjo club. The pleasant glow he left behind him still
hung over the campus when Fred entered four years later. Charles's
meteoric social career had dimmed the fact (save to a few sober
professors) that he had got through by the skin of his teeth. Fred's
plodding ways, relieved only by his prowess at football, had left a very
different impression. Fred worked hard at his studies because he had to;
and even with persistence and industry he had not shone brilliantly in
the scientific courses he had elected. The venerable dean once said that
Fred was a digger, not a skimmer and skipper, and that he would be all
right if only he dug long enough. He was graduated without honors and
went South to throw in his fortunes with his father's Mexican projects.
He was mourned at the college as the best all-round player a Madison
eleven had ever boasted; but this was about all.
When he accepted Listening Hill Farm as his share of his father's
estate, Fred had a little less than one thousand dollars in cash, which
he had saved from the salaries paid him respectively by the plantation
and mining companies. This had been deposited as a matter of convenience
in an Indianapolis bank and he allowed it to remain there. He realized
that this money must carry him a long way, and that every cent must go
into the farm before anything came out of it. He had moved to the farm
late in the summer--just in time to witness the abundant harvests of his
neighbors.
One of the friendliest of these was a young man named Perry, who had
charge of Amzi Montgomery's place. Perry belonged to the new school of
farmers, and he had done much in the four years that he had been in the
banker's employ to encourage faith in "book farming," as it had not yet
ceased to be called derisively. He was a frank, earnest, hard-working
fellow whose ambition was to get hold of a farm of his own as quickly as
possible. He worked Amzi's farm on shares, with certain privileges in
the matter of feeding cattle. Amzi picked him up by chance and with
misgivings; but Perry had earned the biggest
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