Fred moved off across the fields in quest of Perry. Charles never left him wholly happy. His long absence from home had in a way lessened his reliance on family ties, and an interview with his brother deepened the sense of his own dullness. He wondered whether it were not proof of his general worthlessness that he was so quickly adjusting himself to the conditions of rural life; and yet from such reflections his spirit quickly rebounded. In the very soil itself, he felt a kinship, born of a hidden, elusive, cramped vein of poetic feeling that lay deep in his nature. All life, he vaguely realized, is of a piece: man and the earth to which he is born respond to the same laws. He contemplated the wheatfield, tilled partly by his own hands, with a stirring of the heart that was new to his experience. He was wedded to this land; his hope was bound up in it; and he meant to serve it well.
He sprang over the fence into a woods pasture on Amzi Montgomery's farm and strode on. He picked up a walnut and carried it in his hand, sniffing the pungent odor of the rind. It was as warm as spring, and the dead leaves, crisp and crackling under his tread, seemed an anomaly. The wood behind him, he crossed a pasture toward the barn and hesitated, seeing that Perry was entertaining visitors. He had fallen into the habit of dropping in at the Perrys' on Sunday afternoons and he was expected to-day, so he kept on. As he reached the barn lot, he identified Amzi Montgomery and Phyllis Kirkwood, to whom Perry was apparently dilating on the good points of a Jersey calf that was eyeing the visitors wonderingly.
"Don't be afraid, Holton; my lecture is just over. You've heard it before and I'm not going to repeat it," Perry called to him.
"How do you do, Mr. Holton," said Phil.
He pulled off his hat and walked up to shake hands with her.
"I didn't expect to find you here. I usually come over Sunday afternoons."
"Does that mean you wouldn't have come if you'd known we were here!" laughed Phil. "Oh, Uncle Amy, this is Mr. Fred Holton. He's your next-door neighbor."
Amzi turned from his observation of the calf and took the cigar from his mouth. He remembered Fred Holton as a boy and the young man had latterly fallen within his range of vision in Main Street. He availed himself of this nearer view to survey Samuel Holton's younger son deliberately. Fred waited an instant for the banker to make a sign. Amzi took a step toward him and Fred advanced and offered his hand.
"How d' ye do, Fred," said Amzi, and looked him over again. He addressed him quite as cordially as he would have spoken to any other young man he might have found there. "Perry has told me about you. I guess you've got quite a job over there."
"Yes, but I was looking for a job when I took it," said Fred.
"I like being a farmer myself," said the banker, "when I know the corn's growing while I'm in bed in town."
"I think I'll stay up nights to watch my corn grow, if it ever does," said Fred.
"That land of yours is all right," said Amzi amiably, "but it's got to be brought up. That farm's been cursed with overdrafts, and overdrafts in any business are bad."
"That's a new way of putting it," Fred replied, "but I'm sure it's sound doctrine. You can't take out what you don't put in."
"That," said Amzi, feeling in his pocket for his matchbox, "is a safe general principle."
He passed his cigar-case to Perry and Fred, commended his own cigars humorously, and looked Fred over again as the young man refused, explaining that he had grown used to a pipe and was afraid of the shock to his system of a good cigar.
"We were going to take a walk over the place; Mr. Montgomery wants to see his orchard. Come along, won't you?" said Perry.
Fred waited for a confirmation of the tenant's invitation.
"Yes; come along, Fred," said Amzi.
His manner toward Holton was that of an old acquaintance; he called him Fred quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do so. Phil and Perry moved off together and Amzi walked along beside Fred across a field of wheat stubble toward the orchard that stretched away on a slope that corresponded to the rise of Listening Hill in the highway. He talked of fruit-growing in which he appeared to be deeply interested, and declared that there was no reason why fruit should be only an insect-blighted by-product of such farms as his; that intelligent farmers were more and more taking it up. He confessed his firm belief in scientific farming in all its branches. Most men in small towns keep some touch with the soil. In a place like Montgomery the soil is the immediate source of urban prosperity, and in offices and stores men discuss crop conditions and prospects as a matter of course. Amzi owned a number of farms in different parts of the county, but this one that had been long in the family was his particular pride. He paused now and then to point out features of his possessions for Fred's admiration.
"Land," he observed reflectively, "is like a man or a horse; you got to treat 'em right or they won't work. Thunder! You think you'll stick it out over there, do you?"
"I've got to; and I want to! I want to make it go!"
Amzi glared at him a moment with puffed cheeks. Fred had spoken with warmth, and being unfamiliar with the banker's habit of trying to blow up occasionally, for no reason whatever, he was a little appalled by Amzi's manner of receiving his declaration.
"If you mean it like that," said the banker, "you will make it go. It's the wanting to do a thing real hard that brings it round. Is that gospel?"
He blurted his question with a ferociousness that again startled Fred; but he was beginning to suspect that this was the banker's usual way of conversing, and his awe of him diminished. Amzi was an amusing person, with a tang of his own; and he clearly meant to be kind. It was necessary to answer the banker's last explosion and Fred replied soberly:
"I hope it is; I hope the wanting to do it will help in the doing."
Amzi made no response to this. He seemed to ignore it, and spoke of Perry admiringly, as the kind of man he liked, quoting statistics of the wheat yield of the field they were traversing, and then stopped abruptly.
"Thunder! How did they come to give you the farm?"
"I took it: I chose to take it. It was by an agreement between my brother and sister and me. I'm not sure but that I got the best of the partition. The stocks and bonds father left didn't mean anything to me. I don't know anything about such things."
"They let you have the farm as your share; you were afraid of the other stuff?"
"Yes; it didn't look very good and I was perfectly satisfied. I thought the arrangement fair enough to me: Charlie knew about the other things and I didn't. Most of them were very doubtful."
"They told you they were doubtful; you didn't know anything about them. Was that the way of it?"
"Yes; that was about the way of it, Mr. Montgomery."
Amzi glared and drew out his handkerchief to mop his face.
"I saw an automobile come out of your place awhile ago and climb the hill toward town. Charlie been to see you?"
"Yes. He had some friends with him from the city. Charlie knows no end of people."
"There are people like that," said Amzi, kicking a clod, and in doing so nearly losing his equilibrium; "there are people with a talent for knowing folks." This was not an important observation, nor was it at all relevant. Mr. Montgomery had merely gone as far as he cared to in the discussion of the distribution of Samuel Holton's estate and this was his way of changing the subject.
Amzi walked ahead with Perry when they met at the edge of the orchard and Phil loitered behind with Fred. A hawk swung from the cloudless blue; sparrows, disturbed by these visitors, flew down the orchard aisles in panic. The air was as dry as the stubble of the shorn fields. From the elevation crowned by the orchard it was possible to survey the neighborhood and Phil and Fred paused in silence for several minutes, with their faces turned toward the creek.
Seeing Phil thus was very different from seeing her across a fence in the moonlight, or meeting her at her kitchen door. Her new dark-blue gown with hat to match struck him as being very stylish, as indeed, they were, having come from the best shop in Indianapolis. Phil in gloves was a different Phil, a remote being quite out of hailing distance. He was torn between admiration for her dressed-upness and rebellion against a splendor that set her apart like a goddess for timorous adoration. Standing beside and a little behind her, his soul was shaken by the quick shadowings of her lashes. He was so deep in thought during this silent contemplation that he started and blushed when she turned round suddenly.
"We're terribly solemn, I think," she remarked, regarding him carelessly.
This was unfair. She had no right to look at him in that fashion, taking his breath away and saying something to which he could think of no reply whatever. Amzi and Perry had wandered away out of sight. She had spoken of solemnity; it was a solemn thing to be alone with a girl like Phil, on a day like this, under a fleckless sky, and with the scarlet maples and the golden beeches gladdening the distances. Without looking at him, Phil extended her monologue:—
"I like cheerfulness myself."
"I'm not so opposed to it as you may imagine," he replied, smiling. "I'm not much of a talker. I've been alone a whole lot, in lonesome places where there wasn't anybody to talk to. I suppose talking is a habit. When there are people around who talk about things it's natural to get into the way of talking. Isn't that so?"
"I suspect it is," Phil answered. "While my critics haven't exactly said that I talk too much, they agree that I talk at the wrong time. Let's all be seated."
She dropped down on the grass, and smoothed her skirt. It was the best everyday dress she had ever owned and she meant to be careful of it. Her patent leather oxford ties were the nicest she had ever had, and she was not without her pride in their brightness. Fred seated himself near her. His clothes were his Sunday best, and none too good at that; he was painfully conscious of the contrast of their raiment.
"Your brother Charlie talks a good deal. I saw him the other day," said Phil.
"Yes; Charlie talks mighty well. He can talk to anybody. Where did you meet him?"
"In town, at father's office."
"Oh; he was there, was he?"
It was plain that Fred was surprised that there should be any intercourse between the Kirkwoods and his brother.
"He called to see father; but he didn't see him," explained Phil, as though reading his thoughts and willing to satisfy his curiosity.
"Charlie's getting up a new trolley line. He wanted me to go in with him."
"Gave you a chance to escape from your farm? I should think you would be tempted."
"I didn't feel the temptation particularly," answered Fred; "but it was kind of him to come and see me."
"Well, there is that," Phil replied indifferently. "You seemed to get on first-rate with Uncle Amy. Was that the first time you ever talked to him?"
"Yes. But I remember that once when I was a little chap he met me in the street over by the college—I remember the exact spot—and gave me a penny. I seem to remember that he used to do that with children quite unexpectedly. I imagine that he does a lot of nice things for people."
"Uncle Amy," said Phil deliberately, "is the second grandest man now present on earth. Daddy is the first."
"I don't know your father, except as I see him in the street."
"I suppose not," said Phil.
These commonplaces were leading nowhere, and they were becoming the least bit trying.
"My aunts have decided that the Montgomerys and the Holtons might as well bury the hatchet. They're going to ask your Uncle William to my party. They can't stand not knowing your aunt."
He did not at once grasp this. He was only dimly conscious of Montgomery social values and the prominence of his Uncle William's wife had not seemed to him a matter of importance. His acquaintance with that lady was indeed slight, and he did not see at once wherein Phil's aunts had anything to gain by cultivating her society, nor did Phil enlighten him. This turn of the talk embarrassed him by its suggestion of the escapade in which Phil's mother and his uncle had figured. Phil was not apparently troubled by this.
"They didn't invite you to my party, did they?"
He did not know exactly whom she meant by "they"; and he had not heard of Phil's party.
"No," he answered, smiling; "they probably never heard of me."
"Well, you will be invited. Your brother and sister are coming. Your brother Charlie told me so. He's going to give up a trip to New York just to be there."
Phil, he reflected, had been pleased by Charles's magnanimity in changing plans that embraced the magical name of New York to be present at her coming-out party. From his knowledge of his brother he felt quite sure that Charles must think it worth while to abandon the visit to New York to pay the tribute of his presence to a daughter of the Montgomerys. This contributed to Fred's discomfiture and made it more difficult to talk to Phil. On the face of it Phil was not a difficult person. He had seen her dance round a corn-shock in the moonlight, and a girl who would do that ought to be easy to talk to; and he had seen her, aproned at her kitchen door, throw an apple at a cat with enviable exactness of aim, and a girl who threw apples at cats should be human and approachable. It must be her smart city frock that made the difference: he hated Phil's clothes, and he resented with particular animosity the gloves that concealed her hands.
She saw the frown on his face.
"I don't believe I heard you say whether you were coming to my party or not. If you expect to travel about that time you needn't put yourself out, of course. You shall have one of our regular engraved invitations. How do you get mail out here?" she ended practically.
"R.F.D. 7. It will be thrilling to get something out of that bird's nest besides bills, fertilizer and incubator circulars, and the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture. Thank you very much. But if, after conferring with your aunts, you find that they don't approve of me, it will be all right."
"You have funny thoughts in your head, don't you? Don't you suppose I'm going to have something to say about my own party? Just for a postscript I'll tell you now that I expect you to come. If I've got to have a party I want to have as many fellow-sufferers as possible."
"Does that mean"—and Fred laughed—"that you are not terribly excited about your own party? It sounded that way."
He was not interested in parties himself; he had hardly been to one since he was a child, and the thought of such an imposing function as he assumed Phil's coming out would be appalled him. And there was the matter of clothes: the dress-suit he had purchased while he was in college had gone glimmering long ago. The Sunday best he wore to-day was two years old, and a discerning eye might have detected its imperfections which a recent careful pressing had not wholly obliterated. His gaze turned for a moment toward the land in which lay his hope; he had to look past Phil to see those acres. His thoughts were still upon her party and his relation to it, so that it was with a distinct shock that he heard her say softly and wistfully:—
"It's queer, isn't it?"
"What is?"
She lifted her arm with a sweeping gesture.
"The world—things generally—what interests you and me; what interests Uncle Amy and Mr. Perry; the buzzings in all our noddles. Thousands of people, in towns just like Montgomery, live along some way or other, and most of them do the best they can, and keep out of jails and poorhouses, mostly, and nothing very important happens to them or has to. It always strikes me as odd how unimportant we all are. We're just us, and if God didn't make us very big or wise or good, why, there's nothing to be done about it. And no matter how hard we get knocked, or how often we stumble, why, most of us like the game and wouldn't give it up for anything. I think that's splendid; the way we just keep plugging on. We all think something pleasant is going to happen to-morrow or day-after-to-morrow. Everybody does. And that's what keeps the world moving and everybody tolerably cheerful and happy."
Phil the philosopher was still another sort of person. She had spoken in her usual tone and he looked at her wonderingly. It was a new experience to hear life reduced to the simple terms Phil used. She seemed to him like a teacher who keeps a dull pupil after class, and, by eliminating all unessential factors, makes clear what an hour before had been only a jumble of meaningless terms in the student's mind.
He was still dumb before this new Phil with her a, b, c philosophy when her eyes brightened, and she sprang to her feet. Bending forward with her hand to her ear, and then dropping her arms to her sides, she said:—
"Adown the orchard aisles they come, methinks,—
My lord who guardest well his treasure chests,
Attended by his squire and faithful drudge,
And back to town I soon must lightly skip
Else father will be roaring for his tea."
She was, indeed, a mystifying being! It was not until the absurdity of her last line broke upon him that he saw that this was only another side of Phil the inexplicable. She threw up her arm and signaled to her Uncle Amzi, who was approaching with Perry. The interruption was unwelcome. It had been a bewildering experience to sit beside Phil on the sunny orchard slope. He had not known that any girl could be like this.
"Do you write poetry?" he asked, from the depths of his humility.
She turned with a mockery of disdain.
"I should think you could see, Mr. Holton, that these are not singing robes, nor is this lovely creation of a hat wrought in the similitude of a wreath of laurel; but both speak for the plain prose of life. You have, therefore, no reason to fear me."
In a moment they were all on their way to the house; and soon Phil and Amzi were driving homeward.
"What was Fred Holton talking to you about?" asked Amzi, as he shook the reins over the back of his roadster.
"He wasn't talking to me, Amy; I was talking to him. He's a nice boy."
"He doesn't run so much to gold watches and chains as the rest of 'em. He seems to be pretty decent. Perry says he's got the right stuff in him." And then, with more animation: "Those Holtons! Thunder!”