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.