PHIL MOVES TO AMZI'S
When he had recovered from the first shock of his wife's return,
Kirkwood adjusted himself to the new order of things in a philosophic
temper. Nan had withdrawn absolutely her day-old promise to marry him.
That episode in his life was ended. He felt the nobility of her attitude
without wholly accepting its conclusions. He had tried to persuade her
that the geography of the matter had nothing to do with it; that having
promised to marry him when they believed Lois to be safely out of the
way, her return did not affect their status in the least. This was the
flimsiest casuistry, as he well knew. It made a tremendous difference
where Lois was!
"I have to go away to-morrow, Phil, and I'm likely to be in Indianapolis
much of the time until spring. I can't take you with me very well; a
hotel is no place for you, and I shall be very busy. And I can't leave
you here alone, you know."
His tone was kind; he always meant to be kind, this dear father of hers!
He hurried on with an even greater thoughtfulness to anticipate a
solution of this problem which had occurred to her instantly, but which
she lacked the courage to suggest.
"I saw your Uncle Amzi to-day and had a long talk with him about you. I
proposed that you go to his house and stay, at least until I get through
my work with the Sycamore Company. We won't make any definite date for
your return, for the reason that I don't just know when I'll be free to
settle down here again. Amzi was perfectly agreeable to the idea--quite
splendid about it, in fact. Your mother, it seems, means to stay with
him. And now there's this further thing, Phil. You won't mind my going
into it a little bit, once and for all. The law gave you to me long
ago, but apart from that I suppose I have a certain moral claim to you.
But I want you to feel free to do as you like where your mother's
concerned. What I said of her yesterday I'm sorry for; I shouldn't have
done that if I'd been myself. And I'm not making it necessary for you to
make a choice between us. We're old comrades, you and I, Phil, and there
can't be any shadow of a difference between us, now or ever. It's the
simplest and easiest thing for you to go to your uncle's house, and we
won't even consider the fact that your mother is there; we'll just
assume that her being there is the most natural thing in the world, and
that it's a matter of our common convenience for you to be there, too.
You see how perfectly easy and natural it all comes about."
She clung to him, the tears welling. She had never been disappointed in
him, and this generosity moved her deeply. He was making it easy for her
to go to her mother; that was all. Her soul rebelled against the fate
that made necessary any choice when her father was so gentle, so wise,
so kind, and her mother so transcendently charming and lovable.
"You are so good to me; you have always been so good!" she sobbed. "And
I'm sorry I was ugly yesterday, about Nan. You know I love Nan. No one
was ever kinder to me than Nan--hardly you, even! And I don't want you
to give her up; you need each other; you do understand each other! Oh,
everything is so queer and wrong!"
"No, Phil; things are not as queer and wrong as they look. Don't get
that idea into your head. Life isn't queer or wrong; life simply isn't
as easy as it looks, and that's very different."
He smiled, turning her face so that she could see that he smiled not
unhappily.
"But I don't want you to go away; I'd die if I thought I shouldn't see
you any more--and all the good times we've had, right here in this old
house--and everything--"
"But this isn't the end of things. When I'm back, as I shall be for a
day or two frequently, I'll always let you know; or you can run over to
the city and do a theater with me whenever you like. So let's be
cheerful about everything."
The passing of her trunk from her father's house to her uncle's was not
neglected by the gossips. Her three aunts noted it, and excoriated
Kirkwood and Amzi. They took care that every one should know how they
felt about the transfer of poor, dear Phil (on whom they had lavished
their love and care for years, to the end that she might grow up
respectable, etc., etc.) to a roof that sheltered her Jezebel of a
mother.
"That was nice of him," said Lois, when Phil explained her coming.
"How's your father getting on these days?"
"Oh, quite well!" Phil replied.
She was establishing herself in a room adjoining her mother's. Lois, in
a flowered silk kimona, commented upon Phil's clothes as they were
hauled from the trunk. Her opinions in the main were touched with her
light, glancing irony.
"I'll wager Jo bought that walnut-stain effect," she remarked, pointing
an accusing finger at a dark waist. "That has Josephine stamped on it.
Poor old soul!"
Her manner of speaking of her sister set Phil to giggling. Mrs. Waterman
had bought that particular article over Phil's solemn protest, and she
now sat on the bed and watched her mother carry the odious thing
gingerly by the collar to the door and fling it in the direction of the
back stairs.
Lois brought from her own room a set of silver toilet articles and
distributed them over the top of Phil's bureau.
"I forgot all about these, Phil; but they fit in handily right here. A
little self-indulgence of my own, but my old ones are good enough. Oh,
please don't!" she exclaimed, as Phil began to thank her. "Why shouldn't
you have them? Who has a better right to them, I'd like to know!"
Whereupon she began experimenting with the nail-polisher from Phil's
set.
"This is a good polisher, Phil. I'm going to show you how to do your own
manicuring--every lady her own maid. Sarah dug up a colored hairdresser,
manicurist, and light-running domestic chatterbox this morning, and she
gave my hair a pulling I shan't forget in a hurry. Never again! If you
can't have a trained maid, you'd better be your own beautifier. I had a
wonderful girl the last time I was over, and took her with me on a motor
trip through the chateau country. She was an outrageous little flirt.
Two chauffeurs got into a row about her during the week we spent at
Tours, and one pounded the other into a pulp. The French rural police
are duller than the ox, and they locked up Marie as a witness. Imagine
my feelings! It was very annoying."
Her smile belied the annoyance. Phil surmised that she had enjoyed the
experience; but Lois added no details to her hasty picture. Lois did not
trouble herself greatly with details; everything with her was sketchy
and impressionistic.
"What about boys, Phil?"
"I've had one proposal; he was a senior with a funny stammer. He went
away with his diploma last June, and said he'd never forget. I got his
cards to-day. She's a Lafayette girl he had down for the 'Pan' in his
senior year. She has golden hair," Phil added musingly.
"The scoundrel; to forget you as quick as that!" And Lois laughed as
Phil bent her head and clasped her hands in a mockery of dejection.
"You've come out and I suppose you are asked to all the parties. Let me
see, when I was a girl there were candy-pullings, and 'companies' where
you sat around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The
Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks
went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards--authors, most
likely--or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance.
Wholesome but not exciting."
"Oh, we're livelier and better than that! They have real balls now at
the Masonic Hall; and all the fraternities have dances, and there's the
Pan-Hellenic, and so on. And there are dinners in courses, and bridge no
end!"
"Bridge!"
Lois shrugged her shoulders, lifted her pretty brows, and tossed the
nail-polisher on to the bureau to emphasize her contempt for bridge in
all its forms.
"As to young men, Phil. Tell me all about the Montgomery cavaliers."
"Oh, every girl knows all the boys. They are divided into two classes as
usual, nice and un-nice. Some of them have flirted with me and I have
flirted with them. I suppose there was nothing very naughty in that."
"We will pass that for the present. Tell me about the young fellows who
pay you attentions."
Phil ran over the list, Lois interrupting when some familiar name
arrested her attention. Phil hit off one after the other in a few apt
phrases. Her mother in a rocking-chair, with arms folded, was more
serious than in any of their previous talks. What Phil disclosed was
only the social experience of the average country-town girl. The fact
that she had made a few acquaintances in Indianapolis interested her
mother.
"The Fitches? Yes; nice people. That was through your father? All right.
Go on."
"Well, there are the two Holton boys," said Phil, self-conscious for the
first time. "You see, my aunts thought everything ought to be fixed up
with the Holtons, and they asked Mr. and Mrs. William to my party, and
threw in Charlie and Ethel, and I suggested that they add Fred, too.
They are Samuel's children. There being the two brothers it didn't seem
nice to leave out one; and I already knew Fred anyhow."
"Why this sudden affection of your aunts for the Holtons?--there is a
reason for everything those creatures do."
"Mrs. William is stylish and does things. Her maid wears a cap when she
opens the door, and Mrs. William makes her calls in a neat electric."
"Everything is explained quite satisfactorily, Phil. Amzi told me our
sisters had buried the hatchet, but he didn't put it quite as clearly as
you do. He did tell me, though, that Jack had spoiled your beautiful
party by turning up drunk. That was nasty, vile," she added, shrugging
her shoulders. "Well, about these nephews?"
"Charlie is older, and very citified; quite the most dashing man who
lightens our horizons. He sends me flowers and bon-bons, most expensive.
And he's a joy at paying compliments; makes you feel that you're the
only one, or tries to. He has very large ideas about business and life
generally. But nice, I think, and kind and generous. But, mamma--"
She paused, disconcerted by a sudden keen look her mother gave her.
"He sounds like an agreeable person," remarked Lois, glancing at the
point of her slipper.
"What I started to say was that if you think I shouldn't see them any
more--"
"Bless me, no! I see what's in your mind, Phil, but you needn't trouble
about that. We're just trying to get acquainted, you and I. We
understand each other beautifully, and after while we'll see whether we
have any advice for each other. At your age I hadn't the sense of a
kitten. You're most astonishingly wise; I marvel at you! And you've
grown up a nice, sensible girl in spite of your aunts--none of their
cattishness--not a hint of it. I can't tell you how relieved I am to
find you just as you are. The way they have cuddled up to the Holtons is
diverting, but nothing more. It's what you would have expected of them.
The proud and haughty Montgomerys turned snobs! It's frightful to think
of it! As for me, I have nothing against the Holtons. I'm this kind of a
sinner, Phil: I carry my own load. No shoving it off on anybody else!
Some people are born with ideals; I wasn't! But I hope to acquire some
before I die; we're all entitled to a show at them. But, bless me, what
are we talking about? There's the other Holton boy; what's he got to say
for himself?"
"Oh, he'd never say it if it were left to him! He's shy, modest, proud.
No frills."
"Handsome?"
"Well, he has a nice face," Phil answered, so earnestly that her mother
laughed. "And he's modest and genuine and sincere."
"Those are good qualities. As near as I can make out, you like all these
young men well enough--the boys you knew in high school and the college
boys. And these Holtons have broken into the circle lately, and have
shown you small attentions--nothing very important."
"Charlie sends me American Beauties, and Fred has brought me quails and
a book."
"What was the book?"
"'The Gray Knight of Picardy.'"
"That's Nan Bartlett's?" Lois looked at the palm of her hand carelessly.
"Yes; it's a great success--the hit of the season."
"I suppose your father and Nan have been good friends--literary
interests in common, and all that?"
"Of course," Phil answered, uncomfortable under this seemingly
indifferent questioning.
"I have read the story. There are pages in it that are like your father.
I suppose, seeing so much of each other, they naturally talked it
over--a sort of collaboration?"
The question required an answer, and Phil shrank from answering.
Closeted with her mother she was reluctant to confess how close had been
the relationship between her father and Nan Bartlett. Her mind worked
quickly. She was outspokenly truthful by habit; but she was a loyal
soul, too. She decided that she could answer her mother's question
without violating her father's confidence as to his feelings toward Nan.
That was all over now; her father had told her so in a word. Lois
hummed, picking bits of lint from her skirt while Phil deliberated.
"Father did help with it. I suppose he even wrote part of it, but nobody
need know that. Daddy doesn't mean to go in for writing; he says the
very suspicion that he's literary would hurt him in the law."
"I suppose he helped on the book just to get Nan interested. Now that
she's launched as a writer, he drops out of the combination."
"Something like that. Daddy is very busy, you know."
Phil entertained views of her own as to the cause of her father's sudden
awakening. She was sure that his interest in Nan was the inspiration of
it, quite as much as alarm at the low ebb of his fortunes. In the
general confusion into which the world had been plunged, Phil groped in
the dark along unfamiliar walls. It was a grim fate that flung her back
and forth between father and mother, a shuttle playing across the
broken, tangled threads of their lives. She started suddenly as a new
thought struck her. Perhaps behind this seemingly inadvertent
questioning lay some deeper interest. Suddenly the rose light of romance
touched the situation. Phil looked at Lois guardedly. What if--? With an
accession of feeling she flung herself at her mother's knees and took
her hands.
"Could you and daddy ever make it up? Could you do that now, after all
these years?" she asked earnestly.
Lois looked at her absently, with her trick of trying to recall a
question not fully comprehended.
"Oh, _that_! Never in this world! What do you think your father's made
of?" Again the shrug, so becoming, so expressive, so final! She freed
her hands, and drew out and replaced a hairpin. For an instant Phil was
dismayed, but once so far afield in dangerous territory she would not
retreat.
"But what would you say?" she persisted.
"Dear Phil, don't think of such a terrible thing; it fairly chills me.
Your father is a gentleman; he wouldn't--he wouldn't do anything so
cruel as that!" she said ambiguously.
"I don't see how it would be cruel, if he meant it--if he wanted to!"
"That's because you are an angel and don't know anything about this sad
old world of ours. Life isn't like the story-books, Phil. In a novel a
nice dear daughter like you might reconcile her parents with tears and
flowers and that sort of thing; but in real life it's very different as
you will see when you think of it; only I don't want you to think of it
at all. I believe you like me; we hit it off quite wonderfully; and I
should expect you to hate me if I ever dreamed of anything so
contemptible as spoiling a man's life twice."
And remembering Nan, Phil could not argue the matter. She was unable to
visualize her father on his knees to her mother. No flimsy net of
sentiment flung across the chasm could bring them within hailing
distance of each other; they were utterly irreconcilable characters. It
was incredible that they had ever pledged themselves to love and cherish
each other forever.
"Phil, what did your father say about my coming back?" asked Lois
abruptly.
Phil hesitated. Her mother looked at her keenly in that instant of
delay, and then laid her hand gently upon Phil's lips.
"No; don't answer that! It isn't a fair question. And now let us forget
all these things forever and ever!"
She proposed a walk before dinner. "I'll get into my boots and be ready
in a minute."
Phil heard her whistling as she moved about her room.