"Dad's gone to Indianapolis to be gone several days and didn't expect to be back to-night; so come over and stay with me, won't you—please? If you won't I'll have to go to Aunt Josephine's, which is a heartbreaking thought."
This was the second day after the party, and Nan agreed to go. Phil's maid-of-all-work did not sleep at the house and the aunts had asserted that Phil's new status as a member of society made necessary some sort of chaperonage. Nan arrived at the house late in the afternoon and found Phil opening a box of roses that had just come from Indianapolis by express.
"American beauties! and grand ones!"
She handed Nan the card and watched her face as she read it.
"I should have guessed Charlie Holton," said Nan colorlessly. "Well, they're fine specimens."
"It's very nice of him, I think," said Phil. "Particularly when I was so snippy to him."
"Why did you snip him?" asked Nan, watching Phil thrust the last of the long stems into a tall vase.
"Oh, he started in to rush me. And I guess he's some rusher. I suppose he's had a lot of practice."
"I suppose he has," said Nan indifferently.
"And nobody ever gave me just the line of talk he puts up, except of course Lawrince."
She feigned to be observing the adjustment of the roses with a particular interest, and looking round caught Nan frowning.
"Is he trying to flirt with you? I supposed even he had his decent moments. When did that happen?"
"Oh, at the party; everything happened at the party."
"Two men making love to you on the same evening is a good record for Montgomery. I suppose Lawrence played the ardent Romeo game; I understand that he's better 'off' than 'on.' And you snipped him, of course."
"Oh, I mean to snip them all! Isn't that right?"
"It's pathetic that Lawrence Hastings never quite forgets that he played the banana circuit in repertoire. That man's an awful bore."
"I find him amusing," said Phil provokingly. "And he always gives me a box at matinées. Which is just that much more than I ever get out of my other imitation uncles. If I led him on a trifle, don't you suppose he might come to the point of proposing to fly with me? That would be a consummation devoutly to be worked for."
"Phil, I'll send you to bed if you talk like that."
"There's always the window and the old apple tree; I dare you to put me to bed! I suppose," she said, nodding in the direction of the roses, "that those are a sort of peace offering, to make up for his uncle coming to the party as he did. If that's the idea it was decent of him."
The maid brought in a box that had just been left at the kitchen door. Phil ran to the window and caught a glimpse of a man closing the gate. It was Fred Holton, in a long ulster with the collar turned up about his ears. He untied his horse, attached to a ramshackle buggy, and drove off. Phil recognized him instantly, but made no sign to Nan.
Across the top of the small pasteboard box, "Perishable" was scrawled. Inside, neatly dressed, lay six quails. On a card was written:—
"Compliments of Listening Hill Farm."
"What's Listening Hill Farm?" asked Nan.
"That's Fred Holton's. He lives out there now. It's just like that boy to slip round to the back door with an offering like that. Roses from Charlie; birds from Fred. And there's just about that difference between them."
"Phil," she said with emphasis, "those three aunts of yours haven't the sense of rabbits! The comparison flatters them. They had no business asking the Holtons to your party. It was unnecessary—it was absurd. It was cruel!"
Nan was not often like this. There was unmistakable indignation in her tone as she continued:—
"Your Uncle Amzi should have set his face against it. And I suppose they were satisfied with the outcome; I devoutly hope so."
"Well, don't jump on Amy; he only let them have their way to avoid a fuss. When the three of them descend on him they do try Amy's soul; he never admits it, but I always know afterwards. It unsettles him for a week."
"Those women," said Nan, "have been all over town apologizing for Jack Holton—as though it was up to them to defend him for turning up at your party vilely drunk. I tell you, Phil, I'm glad you have the sense you have in that head of yours and that you've grown up to a point where we can talk of things. The Holtons are no good! There's a crooked streak in the whole lot. And all that's the matter with your blessed trio of aunts is their ambition to stand well with Mrs. William, and your precious uncles lean on the First National counter when they want to borrow money. But you'd think they'd have some respect for your father, for your uncle, for you!"
"Oh, well, it's all over now," replied Phil.
"It's a good thing you're the wise child you are! You understand perfectly that the Holtons are not for you in this world. And if your father weren't the gentleman he is he would have made a big row about those people being asked to your party: it was an insult, too deep for my powers of description. Those women treat your father as though he were a halfway idiot—a fool to be thrust around when it pleases them, and to be the object of simpering tears when they want to play the pathetic in speaking of your mother to people. They are detestable, contemptible. And Jack Holton's turning up at Amzi's was the very last straw."
Phil gazed at Nan with increasing surprise. This was not the familiar Nan Bartlett of the unfailing gentleness, the whimsical humor. This was almost a scene, and scenes were not to the liking of either of the Bartlett sisters.
"Daddy hardly referred to that, Nan. I don't think it really troubled him."
"That's the worst of it, dear child! Of course he wouldn't show feeling about it! That's the heartbreaking thing about that father of yours, that he has borne that old trouble so bravely. It was ghastly that that man of all men should have stumbled into Amzi's house in that way. Nothing was ever nobler than the way your father bore it."
She knelt suddenly and clasped Phil in her arms as though to shield her from all the wrongs of the world. There were tears in Nan's eyes, unmistakably, when Phil stroked her cheek, and then for the first time with a sudden impulse Nan kissed her. Phil's intercourse with the Bartletts had been in the key of happy companionship, marked with a restraint that the girl respected and admired. There had been an imperceptible line beyond which she had never carried her pranks with them. Tears she had never associated with either of the sisters. She would have assumed, if it had ever been a question in her mind, that Rose would have been the likelier to yield to emotion.
Nan walked to the window and looked out upon the slowly falling snow. Phil was busy for a moment readjusting herself to the new intimacy established by the sight of her friend's agitation. These first tears that Phil had ever seen in Nan's eyes had a clarifying effect upon her consciousness and understanding. There flashed upon her keen mind a thought—startling, almost incredible. It was as though in some strange fashion, in the unlikeliest spot, she had come upon a rare flower, too marvelous to breathe upon. Her quick wits held it off guardedly for bewildered inspection. Could it be possible that it was for her father that Nan had yielded to tears? Beneath liking and sympathy might there lie a deeper feeling than friendship in this woman's heart? There had always seemed to be an even balance of regard for the sisters in all her father's intercourse with Buckeye Lane. They had been a refuge and resource, but she had imagined that he went there as she did because it was the very pleasantest place in town to visit. Whether he admired one more than the other had never been a problem in her mind, though now she recalled the intimations of her aunts—intimations which she had cast into the limbo to which she committed their views and insinuations on most topics. Phil stood by the black slate mantel of the shelf-lined sitting-room, her heart beating fast. But Nan turned to her laughingly.
"It's old age, Phil! Rose always tells me that I must stop peppering my victuals or I'll become one of the sobbing sisterhood one of these days. What have you been reading lately, Phil?"
"Just finished 'The Gray Knight of Picardy.' Daddy didn't want me to read it—said it was only half good and that I oughtn't to waste time on books that weren't a hundred per cent good. I think it's bully. I'm crazy about it. It's so beautifully, deliciously funny. And Nan—why, Nan, it sounds just like you!"
"Elucidate," remarked Nan carelessly.
"Oh, it's like you, some of it—the general absurdness of it all; and then some of it is so amazingly like dad—when he has a high-falutin' fit and talks through his hat in the old Morte Darthur lingo. It's Malory brought up to date, with a dash of Quixote. I nearly died at that place where the knight breaks his lance on the first automobile he ever saw and then rides at the head of the circus parade. It's certainly a ticklesome yarn."
She advanced upon Nan dramatically, with arm outstretched, pointing accusingly. "Look me in the eye, Nan! Did you and daddy frame that up between you? Be careful now! Dad wrote prodigiously all last winter—let me think it was a brief; and you and he used to get your heads together a good deal, private like, and I feigned not to notice because I thought you were talking about me!"
She clasped Nan by the wrists and laughed into her eyes.
"Go and sit in your little chair, Phil. Your intuitions are playing tricks with your judgment."
"Fudge! I know it's true now. The author's name in the book is a nom de plume. I saw that in a literary note somewhere."
Nan had seriously hoped Phil would not learn of the joint authorship; but already it was an accepted fact in the girl's mind. She was smitten with contrition for her blindness in having failed to see earlier what was now plain enough! Nan was in love with her father! Their collaboration upon a book only added plausibility to her surmise. Nothing could be plainer, nothing, indeed, more fitting! Her heart warmed at the thought. Her father stood forth in a new light; she was torn with self-accusations for her stupidity in not having seen it all before. Admitting nothing, Nan parried her thrusts about the "Gray Knight." When Phil caught up the book and began to read a passage that she had found particularly diverting, and which she declared to be altogether "Nanesque," as she put it, Nan snatched the book away and declined to discuss the subject further.
Nan had recovered her spirits, and the two gave free rein to the badinage in which they commonly indulged.
They were sitting down at the table when Kirkwood arrived. He had found it possible to come home for the night and run back to the city in the morning. Now that Phil's suspicions had been aroused as to Nan, she was alert for any manifestation of reciprocal feeling in her father. He was clearly pleased to find Nan in his house; but there was nothing new in this. He would have been as glad to see Rose, Phil was sure. Phil launched daringly upon "The Gray Knight of Picardy," parrying evasion and shattering the wall of dissimulation behind which they sought to entrench themselves. It was just like Nan and her father; no one else would ever have thought up anything so preposterous, so killingly funny. She went for the book and cited chapters and attributed them, one after the other, to the collaborators.
"Oh, you can't tell me! That talk between the knight and the cigar-store Indian is yours, Nan; and the place where he finds the militia drilling and chases the colonel into the creek is yours, daddy! And I'm ashamed of both of you that you never told me! What have I done to be left out of a joke like this! You might have let me squeeze in a little chapter somewhere. I always thought I could write a book if some one would give me a good start."
"We're cornered," said Nan finally. "But we'll have to bribe her."
"I came by the office and found some more letters from magazines that want short stories, serials, anything from the gifted author of 'The Gray Knight of Picardy,'" said Kirkwood. "Why not enlarge the syndicate, Nan, and let Phil in? But I've got to retire; I mustn't even be suspected. This is serious. It would kill my prospects as a lawyer if it got out on me that I dallied at literature. It's no joke that the law is a jealous mistress. And now I have the biggest case I ever had; and likely to be the most profitable. How do we come by these birds, Phil?"
"Fred Holton brought them in, daddy. You remember him; he was at the party."
"Yes; I remember, Phil. He's Samuel's boy, who's gone to live on their old farm."
Nan turned the talk away from the Holtons and they went into the living-room where Kirkwood read some of the notices he had found in his mail. He improvised a number of criticisms ridiculing the book mercilessly and he abused the imaginary authors until, going too far, Phil snatched away the clippings and convicted him of fraud. She declared that he deserved a mussing and drove him to a corner to make the threat good, and only relented when she had exacted a promise from him never to leave her out again in any of his literary connivings with Nan.
The wind whistled round the house, and drove the snow against the panes. A snowstorm makes for intimacy, and the three sat by the grate cozily, laughing and talking; it was chiefly books they discussed. This was the first time Nan had ever shared a winter-night fireside with the Kirkwoods, much as she saw of them. And Phil was aware of a fitness in the ordering of the group before the glowing little grate. The very books on the high shelves seemed to make a background for Nan. Nothing could be more natural than that she should abide there forever. Phil became so engrossed in her speculations that she dropped out of the talk. Inevitably the vague shadow of the mother she had never known stole into the picture. She recalled the incident of the broken negative that had slipped from her father's fingers upon the floor of the abandoned photograph gallery. Her young imagination was kindled, and her sympathies went out to the man and woman who sat there before the little grate, so clearly speaking the same language, so drawn together by common interests and aspirations.
She was brought to earth by Nan's sudden exclamation that she must go home. There was no question about it, she said, when they pleaded the storm as a reason for spending the night; she had come merely to relieve Phil's loneliness. Nan protested that she could go alone; but Kirkwood without debating the matter got into his ulster, and Phil, screened by the door, watched them pass under the electric light at the corner.
The streets were deserted and the storm had its will with the world. Nan and Kirkwood stopped for breath and to shake off the snow where a grocer's shed protected the sidewalk.
"I came back to-night," he said, "because I wanted to see you, and I knew I should find you with Phil. Nan, after what happened at Amzi's the other night I find I need you more than I ever knew. I was afraid you might imagine that would make a difference. But not in the way you may think—not about Lois! It was just the thought of him—that he had once been my friend, and came back like that. It was only that, Nan. If she had come back and stood there in the door I shouldn't have had a twinge. I'm all over that. I've been over it for a long time."
"I think I understand that, but nothing can make any difference as to us. That is one thing that is not for this world! Come, we must hurry on!"
As she took a step forward he sprang in front of her.
"Nan, I've got to go back to the city on the morning train. I want you to tell me now that you will marry me—let us say in the spring. Let me have that to look forward to. I've waited a long time, and the years are passing. I want you to say 'yes' to-night."
He touched her shoulders lightly with his hands. They slipped along her arms till he clasped her fingers, tightly clenched in her muff.
"You love me, Nan; I know you do! And you have known a long time that I care for you. Nothing was ever as dear as the thought of you. Whatever has gone before in my life is done and passed. I can't have you say 'no' to me. Please, dear Nan—dearest!"
It was a strange place for lovers' talk, but the tumult of the storm was in Kirkwood's heart. The weariness of a laborious day vanished in the presence of this woman. His habitual restraint, the reticences of his nature were swept away. His was no midsummer passion; winter's battle-song throbbed in his pulses. He caught her arm roughly as she sought to continue their flight.
"No, Tom; no!"
"Then why?" he persisted. "It can't be because of Lois—you can't suspect that even the thought of her wounds me now. Jack's coming back proved that to me: I mean what I say; I don't care any more! There's nothing for me in this world but you—you and Phil! The memory of that other woman is gone; I give myself to you as though she had never been."
"Oh, Tom, I don't believe you! I don't believe any man like you ever forgets! And Phil mustn't know you even think you have forgotten! That would be wrong; it would be a great sin! She must never think you have forgotten the woman who is her mother. And it isn't right that you should forget! There are men that might, but not you—not you, dear Tom!"
She shook off his hands and flung herself against the storm. He plunged after her, following perforce. It was impossible to talk, so blinding was the slant of snow and sleet in their faces. She drove on with the energy born of a new determination, and he made no effort to speak again as he tramped beside her.
When they reached the house in Buckeye Lane he sought to detain her with a plaintive "Please, Nan?" But she rapped on the door and when Rose opened it slipped in, throwing a breathless good-night over her shoulder.