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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.