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.