A lady stepped from the westbound train at Montgomery just at nightfall on the day before Christmas. The porter of the parlor car pulled down more luggage than travellers usually bring to Montgomery, and its surfaces were plastered with steamship and hotel labels. Amzi Montgomery, who had been lurking in the shadow of the baggage-room for some time, advanced and shook hands hurriedly.
"Well, Lois!"
"Well, Amzi!"
In the electric-lighted shed the lady might have been seen to smile at the brevity and colorlessness of this exchange, or possibly at the haste with which Amzi was crossing the platform to the hack-stand.
"Here are my checks, please, Amzi. Don't be discouraged—there are only six of them!" she said cheerfully; her remarks being punctuated by the thump of her trunks as they were tumbled out of the baggage-car. She stood glancing about with careless interest while Amzi shouted for the transfer man. She trailed her umbrella composedly as she idled about the platform, refreshing herself with deep inhalations of the crisp December air, while Amzi ordered the trunks delivered to his own house.
Her brother's perturbation was in no wise reflected in Mrs. Holton's manner. To all appearances she was at peace with the world, and evidently the world had treated her kindly. Her handsome sables spoke for prosperity, her hat for excellent taste; she was neatly gloved and booted. She gave an impression of smoothness and finish. In her right hand she carried a tiny purse, which she loosened carelessly from time to time, letting it swing by its chain, and catching it again with a graceful gesture.
"The town may have changed," she remarked, when Amzi came back and put her into the dingy carriage, "but the hacks haven't. I recall the faint bouquet of old times. That must be the court-house clock," she continued, peeping from the window. "They were building the new courthouse about the time I left. I miss something; it must be the old familiar jiggle of the streets. Asphalt? Really! I suppose the good citizens have screamed and protested at the improvements, as good citizens always do. It's stuffy in here. If you don't mind, Amzi, we'll have some air."
She gave the strap a jerk and the window dropped with a bang.
"How's your asthma these days? You never speak of yourself in your letters, and when I saw you in Chicago I didn't like your wheeze."
"Thunder! I haven't got the asthma. I'm as fit as a fiddle. Doctors tell me to watch my blood pressure and cut off my toddies. Remember? I used to like 'em pretty well."
"Verily you did!"—and she laughed merrily. "You used to mix a toddy about once a month as near as I can remember. Frightful dissipation! Unless you've changed mightily, you're a model, Amzi; a figure to point young men and maidens to. Whee!" she exclaimed as the hack rattled across the interurban track in Main Street, "behold the lights! Not so different from Paris after all. What did I see there—Hastings's Theater? Didn't that use to be the Grand Opera House? What a fall, my countrymen! That must be where our illustrious brother-in-law holds forth in royal splendor. What's his first name, Amzi?"
"Lawrince," he replied, and she saw him grin broadly as the light from an overhead lamp shone upon them. "That's what Phil calls him."
"Phil's at home, of course?"
This was her first reference to Phil, and she had spoken of her daughter carelessly, casually. Amzi shuffled his feet on the hack floor.
"I guess Phil's back; she's been in Indianapolis. Phil's all right. There's nothing the matter with Phil."
He was so used to declaring Phil's all-rightness to his other sisters that the defensive attitude was second nature. His tone was not lost upon Lois and she replied quickly:—
"Of course, Phil's all right; I just wondered whether she were at home."
"She's with Tom," Amzi added; and as the hack had reached his house he clambered out and bade the driver carry in the bags.
She paused midway of the walk that led in from the street and surveyed the near landscape. This had been her father's house, and there within a stone's throw stood the cottage in which she had begun her married life. The street lights outlined it dimly, and her gaze passed on to the other houses upon the Montgomery acres, in which her sisters lived. These had not been there when she left, and the change they effected interested her, though, it seemed, not deeply.
The door was opened by a white-jacketed Negro.
"This is my sister, Mrs. Holton, Jerry. You can take her things right up to the front room."
"Yes, sah. Good-evenin', ma'am; good-evenin'. Mighty fine weather we're havin'; yes, ma'am, it shore is cole."
He helped her deftly, grinning with the joy of his hospitable race in "company," and pleased with the richness of the coat he was hanging carefully on the old rack in the hall.
"Tell Sarah we'll have supper right away. Want to go to your room now, Lois?"
"Thanks, no; I'm hungry and the thought of food interests me. You don't dress for dinner, do you, Amzi?"
"Thunder, no! I'll put on my slippers and change my collar. Back in a minute."
As he climbed the stairs she gave herself an instant's inspection in the oblong gilt-framed mirror over the drawing-room mantel, touching her hair lightly with her fingers, and then moved through the rooms humming softly. When Amzi came down she met him in the hall.
"Well, old fellow, it's wonderful how you don't change! You're no fatter than you were twenty years ago, but your hair has gone back on you scandalously. Kiss me!"
She put her arm round his neck and when the kiss had been administered, patted his cheeks with her small delicate hands. Supper was announced immediately and she put her arm through his as they walked to the dining-room.
"It's a dear old house, just as it always was; and it's like your sentimental old soul to hang on to it. Sentiment counts, after all, Amzi. Too bad you had to be a banker, when I distinctly remember how you used to drive us all crazy with your flute; and you did spout Byron—you know you did! You ought to travel; there's nothing like it—a sentimental pilgrimage would brighten you up. If I couldn't move around I'd die. But I always was a restless animal. Dear me! If this isn't the same old dinner service father bought when we were youngsters. It's wonderful that you've kept it; but I don't miss a thing. You've even hung on to the old double-barreled pickle thing and the revolving castor."
She tasted her soup with satisfaction.
"I can see that you are not averse to the fleshpots. I dare say your bachelor establishment is a model. Don't the neighbors try to break in and steal the help? As I remember Fanny she always took the easiest way round. Which is Kate's house, the one beyond the next, or the third?"
"The second; she came next. There's nothing in between your old house and Kate's place."
Amzi met his sister's eyes with a scrutiny that expressed mild surprise that she should thus make necessary a reference to her former domicile, and with somewhat less interest than she had taken in the ancestral china. To Amzi her return was a fact of importance, and since receiving her telegram from New York announcing her visit to Montgomery he had been in the air as to its meaning. Jack Holton's appearance only a few weeks earlier still agitated the gossips. He assumed that Lois knew nothing of this, as, indeed, she did not; but there was nothing in his knowledge of his sister to encourage the belief that she would have cared if she had known. His old love for her warmed his heart as he watched her across the table. In the one interview he had had with her after her flight,—an hour's talk in Chicago,—he had not so fully realized as now, in this domestic setting, how gracefully she bore her years and her griefs! It was this that puzzled him. Sorrow was not written in her still youthful face, nor was it published in her fine brown eyes. They were singularly lovely eyes—retaining something of their girlish roguishness. His masculine eye saw no hint of gray in her brown hair. She was astonishingly young, not only in appearance but in manner, and her vivacity—her quick smile, her agreeable murmurous laughter—deepened his sense of her charm. She had not only been his favorite sister in old times; but through all these years he had carried her in his heart. And though his restraint yielded before her good humor he was appalled by the situations—no end of them!—created by her return.
Not a soul knew of her coming. As he reflected that his sisters were even then dining tranquilly in their several domiciles, quite oblivious of the erring Lois's proximity, he inwardly chuckled. They had for years been "poor-Loising" Lois, and Jack Holton's re-appearance had strengthened their belief that she was in straitened circumstances, a pensioner on Amzi; and they deplored any drain upon resources to which they believed themselves or their children after them justly entitled. They would be outraged to learn that the prodigal had reëntered by the front door of her father's house, followed by a wagonload of trunks, presumably filled with fine raiment.
Amzi did not know what had brought her back, nor did he care, now that he saw her across his table, enjoying tearlessly her fricassee chicken, and sipping the claret he always produced for a guest. The penitential husks which her sisters would have thought proper in the circumstances were not for Lois. He could not imagine her, no matter how grievously she might sin, as meekly repenting in sackcloth and ashes. He wondered just what she meant to do now that she had come back; he wondered what her sisters and the rest of Montgomery would do! The situation interested him impersonally. It sufficed for the moment that she was there, handsome, cheerful, amusing, for he had been seriously troubled about her of late. He was aware that a lone woman, with her history, and blessed or cursed with her undeniable charm, is beset by perils, and it was a comfort to see her under his roof, with no visible traces of the rust of time.
She smiled into his eyes and lifted her glass.
He saw her lips quiver and her eyes fill. There was sincere feeling in her voice, but the shadow upon her spirit was a fleeting one.
"I'm going to run up and change my shoes," she said as they left the table, and in a few moments he heard the click of her heels as she came down.
"This is much cozier," she remarked, resting her smart pumps on the fender beside his worn leathern slippers. "Now tell me about the girls; how do they get on?"
He sketched for her briefly the recent history of the family, replying to her constant interruptions with the frankness she demanded. Waterman she remembered; she had never seen Fosdick or Hastings. Amzi's description of Hastings amused her, and she laughed gayly at her brother's account of the former actor's efforts to lift the local dramatic standard.
"So that's what Kate did, is it? Well, I suppose she has had some fun spending her money on him. Alec Waterman was always an absurd person, but from what you say I judge Josie has held on to her money better than the others. Alec never had sense enough to be a big spender."
"Thunder!" Amzi ejaculated. "Josie's broke like the rest of 'em. Alec has a weakness for gold mines. That's cost a heap, and he doesn't earn enough practicing law to pay for the ice in Josie's ice-box. Fosdick lives up in the air—away up, clean out of sight. I figure that as a floorwalker in a department store Hastings would be worth about twelve dollars a week; and Fosdick might succeed as barker for a five-legged calf in a side-show; but Alec's place in the divine economy is something I have never placed, and I defy any man to place it!"
Amzi was enjoying himself. It was with real zest that he hit off his brothers-in-law to this sister, who afforded him an outlet for long-stifled emotions. He had been honestly loyal to the three homekeeping sisters and to their husbands also for that matter; and the fact that he could at last let himself go deepened his sense of the sympathy and the understanding that had always existed between him and Lois. He hated fuss; and his other sisters were tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels with a sophisticated eye, and tossed them over her shoulder.
"As near as I can make out they're all broke; is that about it?"
"Just about," Amzi replied. "They haven't mortgaged their homes yet, but if Mrs. Bill Holton turns up with a new automobile next spring or gets some specially dazzling rags, I expect to see three nice fresh mortgages on those homes out there."
"Ah! Mrs. William sets the pace, does she? It's a good thing father died before he saw the Montgomerys trying to keep up with the Holtons. William prospers?"
"Judged by Mrs. Bill's doings he does. By the way, Jack has been back here."
Amzi turned to see what effect the mention of Jack Holton would have upon her; but in no wise embarrassed, with only a slight lifting of the brows, she said quickly:—
"I thought it likely. I suppose William ran to meet him—general love-feast and all that?"
They were approaching delicate ground; but it seemed as well to go on and be done with it. He told her, more fully than he had recounted any other incident of the sixteen years, of Phil's party; of the insistence of her sisters upon a reconciliation with the William Holtons, and of Jack's appearance on the threshold. His indignation waxed hot; the enormity of the offense was intensified by the fact that he was describing it to Lois; it seemed even more flagrantly directed against her, now that he thought of it, than to Phil or Phil's father. He rose and stood with his back to the fire as he dilated upon it. Lois frowned once or twice, but at the end she laughed, her light little laugh, saying:—
"And William has got rid of him, of course."
"Oh, they had it out the next day at the bank, but Jack's not far away. He's been in Indianapolis making trouble. He resented being kicked out of the bank—which is about what it came to. And Bill bounced him with reason. He's in trouble. In spite of automobiles and the fine front they put up generally, Bill and the First National are not so all-fired prosperous. Tom's been trying to fix things up for them."
"Tom Kirkwood?" She frowned again at the mention of her first husband, but appeared interested, listening attentively as he described the Sycamore Traction difficulties.
"Samuel always was a bad case. So it's come to this, that Tom is trying to keep William out of jail? It's rather a pretty situation, as you think of it," she murmured. "Just how does Tom get on?"
"Tom didn't get on at all for a long time; but whenever he was pushed into a case he burnt himself up on it. Tom was always that kind of a fellow—if the drums beat hard enough he would put on his war paint and go out and win the fight. There's a dreamy streak in Tom; I guess he never boiled out all the college professor he had in him; but he's to the front now. They think a lot of him over at Indianapolis; he's had a chance to go into one of the best law firms there. He's got brains in his head—and if—"
His jaws shut with a snap, as he remembered that his auditor was a woman who had weighed Tom Kirkwood in the balance and found him wanting. Lois noted his abrupt silence. She had clasped her knees and bent forward, staring musingly into the fire, as he began speaking of Kirkwood. Amzi's cheeks filled with the breath that had nearly voiced that "if."
"If he hadn't married a woman who didn't appreciate him and who wrecked his life for him, there's no telling what he might have done."
She finished his sentence dispassionately, and sat back in her chair; and as he blinked in his fear of wounding her by anything he might say, she took matters in her own hands.
"I was a fool, Amzi. There you have it all tied up in a package and labeled in red ink; and we needn't ever speak of it again. It's on the shelf—the top one, behind the door, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't come back to cry over spilt milk, like a naughty dairymaid who trips and falls on the cellar steps. I ought to; I ought to put on mourning for myself and crawl into Center Church on my knees and ask the Lord's forgiveness before the whole congregation. But I'm not going to do anything of the kind. One reason is that it wouldn't do me any good; and the other is that I'd never get out of the church alive. They'd tear me to pieces! It's this way, Amzi, that if we were all made in the same mould you could work out a philosophy from experience that would apply to everybody; but the trouble is that we're all different. I'm different; it was because I was different that I shook Tom and went off with Jack. Of course, the other man is a worthless cur and loafer; that's where fate flew up and struck at me—a deserved blow. But when I saw that I had made a bad break, I didn't sit down and sob; I merely tried to put a little starch into my self-respect and keep from going clear downhill. Tom's probably forgotten me by this time; he never was much of a hater and I guess that's what made me get tired of him. He always had the other cheek ready, and when I annoyed him he used to take refuge in the Greek poets, who didn't mean anything to me."
She smiled as though the recollection of the Greek poets amused her and ran on in her low, musical voice:—
"When I saw I'd drawn a blank in Jack Holton, it really didn't bother me so much as you might think. Of course, I was worried and humiliated at times; and there were days when I went into the telegraph office and went through the motions of sending for you to come and fish me out of my troubles. I tore up half a dozen of those messages, so you never heard me squeal; and then I began playing my own game in my own way. I hung a smile on the door, so to speak, and did my suffering inside. For ten years Jack never knew anything about me—the real me. For a long time I couldn't quite come to the point of shaking him, and he couldn't shake me,—he couldn't without starving"; and she smiled the ghost of a grim little smile. "I suppose I wasn't exactly in a position to insist on a husband's fidelity, but when he began to be a filthy nuisance I got rid of him. Just before I went abroad this last time I divorced him, and gave him enough to keep him running for a while. My story in a nutshell is this," and she touched her fingers lightly as she epitomized her personal history: "married at eighteen, to a gentleman; a mother at twenty; at twenty-three, ran off with a blackguard; married him in due course to satisfy the convenances. Not forty yet and divorced twice! And here I am, tolerably cheerful and not so much the worse for wear."
She waited for him to say something; but there appeared to be little for Amzi to say.
"I guess we all do the best we can, Lois. You don't have to talk to me about those things. I'm glad you're back; that's all."
He showed his embarrassment, shifting from one foot to the other, and rubbing his hand nervously across his head.
"Amzi, you're the best man in the world, and I didn't come back here to be a nuisance to you. I can sleep here and run off on the early train—I looked it up before I came. But I thought I'd like to see the house—and you in it—once more. It's a big world, and there are plenty of places to go. There's a lot of Europe I haven't seen yet, and I like it over there. I have some good friends in Dresden, and I promised them to come back. So don't feel that I'm on your hands. I'm not! I can clear out in the morning and nobody need know that I've been here."
He walked up to her and laid his hands on her shoulders. He gasped at her suggestion of immediate flight. He had not known how much she meant to him; and oh, she was so like Phil! It was Phil who had danced in his mind while she summarized her life; it was the Phil she did not know—had never known—and for whom, astonishingly, she had not asked beyond her casual inquiry as to the girl's whereabouts. Nothing was clear in his mind save that Lois must see and know Phil.
"I want you to stay, Lois; you've got to stay. And everything's going to be all right."
"Please be square with me, Amzi. This is a small town and a woman can't coolly break all the commandments and then come back and expect to be met with a brass band. You and I understand each other; but you've got to think of the rest of the family; my coming will doubtless outrage our sisters' delicate moral natures—I know that—and there's Tom—it's hardly fair to him to come trailing back. And the town's too small for me to hide in—it was always a gossipy hole."
He clasped her wrists tightly. The working of his face showed his deep feeling. Not often in his life had he been so touched, so moved. Two big tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks.
"You've got to stay because of Phil! I tell you there's nobody to think about but Phil!"
Suddenly she threw her arms about his neck and burst into tears.
"Oh, I couldn't speak of her! You don't understand that it's because of Phil I ought to go! You thought I was heartless about it, but it's not that I don't care. I'm afraid to see Phil! I'm afraid!"
"Don't you worry about Phil," he answered, digging the tears out of his eyes with his knuckles. "Phil's all right," he concluded.
He crossed the hall and when he returned, carrying a bulky photograph album, she had regained her composure, and stood holding her hands to the fire.
"Sit here and look at Phil: I've got all her pictures from the time she was a baby. I guess you remember these first ones."
She sat down by the center table and he turned up the gas in the blue-shaded lamp. She passed the baby pictures quickly, but looked closely at those that showed her daughter at school age. Under each photograph Amzi had written the date, so that as a record the collection was complete. There were half a dozen disclosures of Phil in her M.H.S. sweater. Amzi called attention to these with a chuckle.
"Nearly killed the girls; Phil chasing round town in that thing! And here she's trigged out in her graduating clothes. I guess you'd have been proud of her that night. Her piece was about tramp dogs; funniest thing you ever heard! And here she is—let me see—yes, that was last summer. Those other things are just little snapshots; and here's a group showing Phil with her class. Phil in front—she was the head of her class all right!" he ended proudly.
Whatever emotions may have been aroused by this pictorial review of her child's life, Lois outwardly made no sign. She murmured her pleasure at one and another of the pictures, looked closely at the latest in point of time, sighed and closed the book.
"She looks like me, I suppose. Is she taller?"
"The least bit, maybe; but you're as like as two peas," answered Amzi; and then added, with the diffidence of a man unused to graceful speeches, "I guess you'd almost pass for sisters. By George, Lois, you're a wonder! You ain't a year older!"
"That's no compliment, Amzi! I ought to have changed," she replied soberly. "But there's gray in my hair if you know where to look, and the wrinkles are getting busy."
"The more I think of it, the more remarkable the resemblance gets," he persisted, ignoring her confessions.
"That doesn't make it any easier, Amzi; please don't speak of that again."
She tossed the book on the table, as though dismissing a disagreeable subject.
"Well," she said, "about going?"
"You're not going," he replied with decision. "I won't let you go. I don't know how we're going to work it all out, but it won't be so bad. The girls have got to take it."
She caught a gleam of humor in his eye. The displeasure of his other sisters at her return clearly had no terrors for him. It may have been that she herself shared his pleasure in the thought of their discomfiture. She crossed the hall, wandering aimlessly about, while he waited and wondered. When she returned she said with the brisk manner of one given to quick decisions:—
"I'm going to stay, Amzi. But let us understand now that if I'm a trouble to you, or the rest of them make you uncomfortable, I'll clear out and go to the hotel, or set up a house of my own. So don't be silly about it. I'm a practical person and can take care of myself. I'm not on your hands, you know, financially speaking or any other way."
"Thunder! No!"
This was the first time she had touched upon money matters. While she turned the leaves of the album, the clumsy baggage-men had pounded laboriously up the back stairs with her trunks, emphasizing the prosperity of which her visible apparel spoke. He was not without an acute curiosity as to the state of her fortunes. Lois had always been a luxurious person, but she was, unaccountably, the only one of his sisters who had never asked him for money. He had made what they called "advances" to all of them and these had increased as their fortunes dwindled. There was something bafflingly mysterious here. It was a fair assumption that Jack Holton had spent Lois's money long ago, and the fact that she had floated home with her flags flying and had just announced her ability to set up an establishment for herself was disquieting rather than reassuring. He was ashamed of his fears, but it was against reason that she should have escaped the clutches of a worthless blackguard like Jack Holton with any of her patrimony.
Now that she had announced her determination to remain her spirits rose buoyantly. The thought of meeting Phil had shaken her; and yet that had been but a moment's fleeting shadow, as from a stray cloud wandering across a summer sky. When she referred to Phil again, it was with a detachment at which he marveled. If he had not loved her so deeply and if his happiness at her return had been less complete, he should have thought her heartless. She had called herself "different"; and she was, indeed, different in ways that defied his poor powers of analysis. She was a mystifying creature. Her assurance, her indifference toward the world in general, the cool fashion in which she had touched off on her pretty fingers the chief incidents of her life did not stagger him so much as they fascinated him. She was of his own blood, and yet it was almost another language that she spoke.
She had brought down a box of bon-bons which she now remembered and urged him to try, moving fitfully about the room and poking at the box from time to time absently, while he volunteered information touching old friends. Her interest in local history was apparently the slightest: he might have been talking of the Gauls in the time of Cæsar for all the interest she manifested in her contemporaries and their fortunes. He finally mentioned with dogged daring the Bartletts whom she had known well; they had been exceedingly kind to Phil, he said. Her manner was so provokingly indifferent that he was at the point of bringing Kirkwood into the picture in a last effort to shatter her unconcern. She bit a bon-bon in two, made a grimace of dissatisfaction, and tossed the remaining half into the fire.
"Oh, the Bartlett girls! Let me see, which was the musical one—Rose or Nan?"
"Rose. Nan's literary. They're fine women, and they've been a mighty big help to Phil," he persisted.
"Very nice of them, I'm sure," she said, yawning.
The yawn reminded her that she was sleepy, and without prelude she kissed him, asked the breakfast hour, and went up to bed.
He followed to make sure that she had what she needed, surveyed the trunks that loomed in the hall like a mountain range, and went below to commune with the fire.
As he reviewed the situation, to the accompaniment of her quick, light patter on the guest-room floor, he was unable to key himself to a note of tragedy. The comedy of life had never been wasted on him, and it was, after all, a stupendous joke that Lois should have come back almost as tranquilly as though she had been away for a week's visit. The longer he brooded the more it tickled him. She either was incapable of comprehending the problems involved in her return or meant to face them with the jauntiness which her troubled years had increased rather than diminished.
Life with her, he mused, was not a permanent book of record, but a flimsy memorandum, from which she tore the leaves when they displeased her and crumpled them into the wastebasket of oblivion. It was a new idea; but it had, he reflected, its merits. He went to the front door, as was his habit, to survey the heavens before retiring. The winter stars shone gloriously, and the night was still. The town clock boomed twelve, ushering in Christmas. He walked a little way down the path as he counted the strokes, glanced up at Lois's window, then across the hedges to the homes of the other daughters of the house of Montgomery, chuckled, said "Thunder!" so loudly that his own voice startled him, and went hurriedly in and bolted the door.