Phil reached home shortly before one, and called her father's name in the hall without eliciting a response. The odor of roasting turkey was in the house, and she noted that the table was set for four. The maid-of-all-work was moulding cranberry jelly when Phil thrust her head into the kitchen.
"There's going to be company for dinner," the woman explained. "Your pa came in and told me so. He's gone down to his office for a minute."
Phil had not heard that they were to have guests. She stood in the dining-room viewing the two extra places and wondering whom her father had asked. Usually on holidays, when the rest of the family assembled at Amzi's, the Kirkwoods had eaten their midday meal alone. If he had asked the Bartletts' to share this particular Christmas feast it must have been without premeditation, for she had herself visited the sisters on her way to Amzi's, and nothing had been said about a later meeting. It was not like her father to invite guests without consulting her. Her mother's return had changed the world's orbit. Nothing was as it had been; nothing seemed quite real. The house in Buckeye Lane, about which so many happy memories clustered, was suddenly become distorted and all out of drawing, as though she viewed it through a defective window-pane. She went upstairs and glanced warily into her father's bedroom, as though fearing to find ghosts there.
As she redressed her hair she regarded herself in the mirror with a new curiosity. She was a stranger to herself; she was not the same Phil Kirkwood who had stood before the glass that morning, but a very different person—a Phil who had come suddenly upon a hidden crevasse in the bright, even meadow of her life and peered into an undreamed-of abyss.
If her mother—that mother who had always lived less vividly in her imagination than her favorite characters in fiction—had not proved so bewilderingly, so enthrallingly captivating, so wholly charming and lovable, she might have grappled the situation with some certainty. But no woman had ever been like that! Her mother was the most wonderful being in the world! Little by little through the years her aunts had been creating in Phil's mind a vulgar, vain, wicked figure and pointing to it as a fair portrait of her mother. She had always disliked her aunts; she found herself hating them now with a passionate intensity that frightened her.
She flung herself down in the window-seat and looked toward Main Street with unseeing eyes. A wonderful voice murmured in her ears, speaking a new language. She tried to recall what had been said as she crouched at her mother's feet, her head in her lap, before the fire in Amzi's living-room; but it was like the futile effort to recall an elusive strain of music. She had felt curiously no disparity of years in that interview; it had been like a talk with a newfound sister, or with a girl with whom she had established one of the sudden intimate friendships of school days. This wonderful Lois touched with a warm brilliancy innumerable points and surfaces that flashed and gleamed before Phil's fascinated, eager eyes. She had satisfied her curiosity as to Phil in a dozen direct questions that elicited information without leaving any ground for discussing it. Was Phil well?—and happy? What was Phil most interested in? Had there been money enough for her needs? And always with the implication that if the answers to these questions should not prove satisfactory, it did not greatly matter, as the deficiencies could easily be supplied.
They were to see each other, Phil and this enchanting mother—to-morrow; yes, there had been definite agreement upon that. But Lois had seemed as indifferent to days after to-morrow as to days before yesterday. And while this troubled Phil, she had caught so much of her mother's spirit, she had been so responsive to the new amazing language that fell so fascinatingly from her mother's lips, that she accepted the promise of a single to-morrow without misgivings. Sufficient unto the day was the wonder thereof!
She drew from her pocket a wristlet of diamonds, which Lois had given her as they parted at Amzi's door. The gems sparkled in the sunny window. It was a trinket of beauty and value, and Phil clasped it upon her wrist and contemplated it with awe and delight. It was worth, she assumed, almost or quite as much as the house in which she lived; and yet her mother had bestowed it upon her with gay apologies for its paltriness—this mother out of a fairy-tale, this girlish mother with the wise, beautiful eyes, and most entrancing of voices.
The gate clicked and she glanced down at the yard. Her father was bringing Rose and Nan to the house! They were walking briskly, and advanced to the door laughing. The women looked up, saw Phil, and waved their hands. Her father flung a snowball at the window. Happiness was in the faces of the trio—a happiness that struck Phil with forebodings. She had never in her imaginings thought an hour would come when she would begrudge her father any joy that might come to him; even less had it ever seemed possible that she would look forward with dread to meeting Rose and Nan. She hid her mother's gift and ran down to let them in.
"You remember," said her father, "the Maryland epicure's remark about the turkey being an annoying bird—just a leetle too big for one and not quite big enough for two? I decided to see how it would work for four."
"We didn't know we were coming, Phil, when we saw you. Your father came along afterward and found we were going to eat a plain, domestic duck by ourselves; and we weakly, meekly fell," explained Rose.
"There can't be a real Christmas unless there's a party; and I thought it about time we had a quiet little celebration of 'The Gray Knight of Picardy'—seventh edition now printing, and the English rights well placed. Phil, it's up to you to carry on the literary partnership with Nan. I'm out of it. I'm going to write the publisher at once to go ahead and enlighten the wondering world as to the authorship of the 'Gray Knight'—Miss Nancy Bartlett, of Buckeye Lane!"
"You shall do nothing of the kind, Tom," declared Nan with emphasis; and immediately blushed.
This was the first time Phil had heard Nan call her father by his first name. To be sure, he always addressed both Nan and Rose by their Christian names; but that was not surprising, as he had known the Bartletts' well from the time of his coming to the college, when every one called him Professor or Doctor.
At the table Nan and Kirkwood did most of the talking, and now and then they exchanged glances that expressed to Phil some new understanding between them. It had never before been so clear to Phil how perfectly sympathetic these two were. Her father was a clever man and Nan Bartlett an unusually clever woman. At other times Phil would have delighted in their sharp fencing; the snap and crackle of their dialogue; but her heart ached to-day. She felt the presence of a specter at the table. She heard that other voice with its new and thrilling accents, that careless, light laugh with its gentle mockery. She was recalled from a long reverie by a question from Rose.
"How did you find the gathering of the clans at Amzi's?"
"Just about as cheerful as usual," replied Phil colorlessly.
"Amzi's seat will be in the front row of the heavenly choir-loft," observed Nan. "What he has taken from those women has given him a clear title to joys ineffable."
"Amy is not a mere man," said Phil; "he is a great soul."
She had spoken so earnestly that they all looked at her in surprise. If she had referred to her uncle as a brick, or a grand old sport, or the dearest old Indian on the reservation, they would have taken it as a matter of course; but Phil was not quite herself to-day.
"Don't you feel well, Phil?" asked Nan, so pointedly referring to the unwonted sobriety with which she had spoken of her uncle that they all laughed.
"The aunts must have been unusually vexatious to-day. You're not quite up to pitch, Phil. Too much candy has spoiled your appetite," remarked her father.
"I guess my sweet tooth did betray me into indiscretions," she answered with an effort at lightness; and added,
"The bon-bon and the caramel
Poor Phyllis did waylay;
And being only a weak mortal young thing to whom
Christmas comes but once a year
Is it surprising what befell?
For she knew not the sad word Nay."
"Oh, unutterable horrors! That's the worst you ever perpetrated!" cried her father. "Just for that you shall eat another piece of mince pie."
"Nothing of the kind, Tom; we must not add to the sufferings of one whose own rhymes are punishment enough," said Nan.
The two women looked at Phil more closely. She seemed preoccupied and her contributions to their banter were perfunctory and spiritless. When they were established in the living-room, Phil crouched on a stool by the fire. Concealment and dissimulation were so wholly foreign to her nature that it was with difficulty that she resisted an impulse to blurt out the whole thing. They would know within a few hours of her mother's return, and the fact that she had withheld the information would make her situation more difficult. She saw her father furtively touch Nan's hand; he was beyond question very much in love with her; and Nan had practically confessed, on that memorable afternoon following Amzi's party, her regard for Kirkwood. Then it had seemed to Phil the most natural and rational thing in the world for her father and Nan to marry; but now in this whirling chaos to which the world had been reduced, the thought of it was abhorrent. No wonder they looked at her curiously, not understanding her silence. Phil loved them all! Phil wanted everybody to be happy! Yet clearly happiness even in the small circle of her nearest and dearest was impossible. Her nimble fancy led her over rough chaotic peaks in an effort to find a point from which to survey the general desolation. In practical terms she reasoned that men and women sometimes remarried after a long estrangement. Perhaps—But she was unable to push beyond that perhaps.
The bell rang and she was glad of the interruption. Fred Holton had come to call. Kirkwood greeted him cordially, and they widened the circle before the grate to admit him. Phil addressed herself to Fred with the kindliness he always inspired in her. He was a trifle abashed by the presence of the Bartletts, and on seeing them, furtively dropped a package he had brought on a chair by the door. Phil, inspecting it glancingly, saw her name scribbled on the paper wrapper.
"Christmas gift! Who guesses this is a Christmas gift for me?"
"Everybody!" cried the Bartletts.
"I guess it's a book. I hope it's a book. I shall be disappointed if it isn't a book," continued Phil.
Fred blushed, and said it wasn't anything. The clerk in the bookstore had recommended it, and he thought Phil might like it. Phil tore off the wrapper and held up "The Gray Knight of Picardy." The sight of it sent a quick, sharp pain through her heart. It was no longer merely the best tale of the season that her father and one of her dearest friends had written, but a book her father and the woman he loved had written; and this, in the light of the day's events, was a very different matter.
"Thank you, Fred. It's nice of you to think of me. And I'm sure it's a good story."
"They say it's awfully funny," said Fred.
Nothing seemed funny to Phil; but she exerted herself to be entertaining. She was in a mood to be touched by his gift. Charles Holton had sent her a box of roses from Indianapolis and they were nodding from the tall vase on the mantel. She saw Fred eyeing them, and hastened to say that books made the finest possible gifts.
"It must be lonely in the country to-day," remarked Nan. "But I suppose you've spent the day in town."
"Only part of it," replied Fred. "I couldn't desert the live stock; and I have a man there with me. We had our Christmas feast and I hopped on the interurban."
"Turkey?" asked Phil.
"No; rabbit. Rabbit's much more wholesome for Christmas than turkey. We sell turkeys to the city folks and feast on rabbits when we need them. I poached this one, too. But don't tell Mr. Montgomery. It ran under his fence into my pasture, and fearing it was my last chance for Christmas dinner, I pulled the trigger. Is that a high crime, Mr. Kirkwood?"
"Not at all. We'll assume that it was really your rabbit that had just been out for a stroll on Mr. Montgomery's side of the fence. I'll promise to get you off if you're prosecuted."
"I should think it would be quite grand and splendid to own a farm and go out and pick off game that way," said Phil musingly. "Monarch of all you survey, and that sort of thing. When I had a Flobert rifle in my enchanted youth and shot sparrows in our back yard, I had something of the same exalted feeling. Only our estate here is too limited. The neighbors kicked; so many wild shots. Absurd how sensitive people are. But I suppose if I hadn't broken a few glasses of new quince preserves the lady across our alley had put to sun in her kitchen window, I might never have lost the gun."
"I don't seem to remember that incident of your career, Phil," said Rose.
"I hope nobody does. The lady's husband happened to be the town marshal, and he told daddy a lot of sad things that were going to happen to me if I didn't stop shooting at his perfectly good wife as she followed her usual avocations."
The Bartletts were relieved to find Phil restored to something like her normal cheerful self. They all enlarged upon the impingement of her bullets upon the marshal's wife's quinces, discussing the subject in the mock-serious vein that was common in their intercourse. If Phil had killed her neighbor, would it have been proper for the defense to prove that the quinces were improperly prepared? Kirkwood insisted that such testimony would have been grossly irregular and that an able jurist like Judge Walters would certainly have rejected it. They played with the idea of Phil's heinous crime until they wore it out.
"Put on the black cap and tell me when I'm to die," said Phil. "I'm guilty. I really did kill the woman and I buried her under the plum tree in her back yard. Now let's think of something cheerful."
Nan and Kirkwood dropped out of the circle a little later, and Phil heard them talking in subdued tones in the library. Rose withdrew to the window and became absorbed in a book.
"I saw you and Charlie that day you climbed up the bluff," said Fred the moment Rose was out of hearing. "I hope you won't do that any more. I hope you won't ever do things like that again!" he ended earnestly.
"It was just a lark; why shouldn't I do it?"
"The chances were that you'd fall and be killed. You had no right to take the chance. And Charlie had no right to let you do it."
"Charlie hadn't anything to do with it. He couldn't have helped himself," said Phil defensively.
"Then the rest of them down on the creek should have stopped you. It was the craziest thing I ever saw."
"I suppose it was silly," Phil admitted tamely, "but it's all over now."
It was in her heart to say that nothing greatly mattered, and yet there was a certain comfort in knowing that he cared. His blue eyes told her frankly how much he cared; and she was not unmindful of the wistful smile with which he regarded her.
His glance wandered from her face to the long-stemmed roses on the mantel-shelf behind her. He knew perfectly well where those roses had come from. She saw the resentment in his eyes. The resumption of social relations between her aunts and the Holtons that had brought her in contact with these nephews of Jack Holton struck her in a new light, with Fred there before her, with Charles's roses flaunting themselves unrebuked in her father's house. She had no business to be receiving Fred Holton; Charles's flowers assumed suddenly a dire significance. She meant to be rid of them the moment she could do so without attracting attention. It was on her tongue to say something unkind to Fred; her loyalty to her mother seemed to demand it. And yet neither Fred nor Charles had been in any wise responsible for her mother's tragedy. Fred had risen and stood before the fire with his arms folded. The care he took to make himself presentable, expressed in his carefully brushed clothes; the polish on his rough shoes; his clean-shaven face, touched her now as at other times. She wondered whether, if they had been alone, she would not have confessed her perplexities and asked his counsel. In their talks she had been impressed by his rugged common sense, and her plight was one that demanded the exercise of just that quality. Rose turned the pages of her book. Her father and Nan continued their conference in low tones in the adjoining room.
"You promise—don't you—that you won't ever do foolish things like that any more," and Fred put out his hand half in farewell, half as though the clasp he invited would mean a pledge.
"Please forget it. I'll probably never have another chance. That was the kind of thing you do only once; there wouldn't be any fun in doing it over again."
"Your father has been mighty nice to me: I wanted to tell him I appreciated it. I felt I'd like to say that to him on Christmas—just a kind of sentimental feeling about it. But you please say it for me. He'll understand; I couldn't say it before the others."
She responded passively: there were a good many things that she must say to her father!
Kirkwood and Nan reappeared as they heard Fred saying good-bye to Rose.
Nan said she and her sister must be going, too, as they had some calls to make. At the door Nan kissed Phil, and asked her to come to see her the next day. The kiss and this special invitation, half-whispered, confirmed Phil's belief that her father and Nan would have told her of their engagement if Fred's coming had not interfered. She was glad for the delay, and yet it would have been easier in many ways to have met the issue squarely before Nan and Rose. She and her father watched Fred and the women pass from sight toward town.
"He seems to be a nice fellow," remarked Kirkwood, as they returned to the living-room—"a clean, manly sort of chap."
"He's all that," replied Phil. "He came to thank you for something: he's too shy to talk much in company and he asked me to tell you how much he appreciated something or other you had done for him."
"Queer chap, for a Holton," Kirkwood observed, striking a match on the underside of the slate mantel-shelf. "There's a real nobility in that boy. He didn't tell you what he wanted to speak to me about? That's better yet. I imagine his brother isn't so shy about publishing his good works before men."
Kirkwood's eyes sought the roses. The "attentions" Phil was receiving had roused in him the mixed bewilderment and awe with which a father realizes that he has on his hands a daughter upon whom other men have begun to look covetously. Half a dozen young fellows were dancing attendance upon Phil. In the hotel and at the theater in Indianapolis men and women had paid her the tribute of a second glance, and Mrs. Fitch had been enthusiastic about her. His tolerant spirit had not visited upon the young Holtons the sins of their uncle. Charles's devotion to Phil had rather amused him; he had taken it as an oblique compliment to himself, assuming that it was due to anxiety on Charles's part to ingratiate himself with Phil's father quite as much as with Phil.
"I suppose what Fred meant was a little matter between us in the traction business. You know that farm he settled on next to Amzi's? He's turned it over to me."
"You mean he doesn't own it any more?" asked Phil.
"Strictly speaking, no. In the general Holton mess he thought he ought to surrender the property. Rather quixotic, but creditable to the boy. You see Charlie was executor of their father's estate. Charlie's beyond doubt a very smooth young person. And no end plausible. He got Fred to take that farm in settlement of all claims against Samuel's estate. And when Fred found out there was trouble over his father's financiering of the Sycamore he hopped on the trolley and came to the city and turned over the farm to me as trustee. He seemed no end grateful to me for allowing him to do it."
"But you didn't let him—it isn't fair! Why the farm's no good anyhow! And besides, Charlie wouldn't have done Fred an injury. He talked to me the other day at his aunt's skating-party about all that traction business and I'm sure he never meant any harm. He couldn't help what his father did. But to take Fred's farm away—why, daddy, that would be the supreme grand limite!"
Kirkwood laughed and pinched her chin.
"What a terrible young person you are! You seem to forget that I'm not the Holtons' attorney. I'm hired by the poor innocents who bought Sam Holton's bonds, and it's my business to get all the money for them I can. Charles's tricks with his father's estate only figure incidentally, but they have a dark look. It's merely a case of the sins of the parents being visited upon the children—"
He had been speaking half-carelessly, not really heeding what he said, and he arrested himself with an impatient shrug of the shoulders. The visitation of a parent's sins upon children was not a subject for discussion in that household, as Phil realized with a poignancy born of her morning's adventure. Kirkwood was instantly contrite as he saw tears in Phil's eyes. He would not for worlds have wounded her. It was impossible for him to know how in her new sensitiveness this careless speech, which a day earlier would have passed unheeded, aroused all her instincts of defense. She was half-aware of the irony by which their talk about the nephews of Jack Holton had carried them with so fateful a directness to her mother.
Kirkwood frowned. His former wife was of all subjects the most ungrateful on this Christmas day. The old wounds had healed absolutely and the scars even had vanished in his new hope and happiness. He did not mean to have his day spoiled. He crossed the room to the window where Phil stood pulling idly at a withered geranium leaf. He drew her round and kissed her.
"Forgive me, dear old Phil! I wouldn't hurt you for ten thousand kingdoms. And I didn't mean that. I don't think it; moreover, I don't believe in that philosophy."
His contrition was unmistakedly sincere; yet she knew that if he had not obliterated the thought of her mother from his mind he would not have let slip that reference to parental sins. His forgetfulness was worse than the offense itself.
She experienced a sensation, new in all their intercourse, of wanting to hurt him. This was, in all kindness and charity, the instant for announcing her mother's return; and yet before making that disclosure Phil meant to force him to tell her in so many words that he was engaged to marry Nan. This was the most astonishing of all Phil's crowding experiences of the day, that she harbored with cruel satisfaction the thought of inflicting pain upon her father—her old comrade, with whom she had so joyfully camped and tramped and lived so many happy days in this little house, where now for the first time shadows danced malevolently.
"I wanted this to be a happy day, Phil. What do we care about the Holtons or Sycamore Traction! Charlie and Fred are all right, and I must say that I've been a good deal pleased by the attitude of both the young fellows. But I have something to tell you; something you've been prepared for for a long time in that wise, old head of yours. It's made me the happiest man in the world; and I hope it will make you almost as happy. And I believe it's for your good; that it's going to be a great big factor in working out all your problems and mine! Come now, forgive me, and tell me whether you want three guesses as to what it is!"
He rested the tips of his fingers on her shoulders, standing off and looking at her with all the old fondness in his eyes. He had spoken buoyantly; his manner was that of a young man about to confide a love affair to a sympathetic sister.
Phil slipped from under his hands and stood rigid, with her back against the geranium box. She swallowed a sob and lifted her head to meet the blow. He would not have it thus, but caught her hands and swung them in a tight clasp.
"It's Nan, Phil, dear: Nan's promised to marry me! She's been saying she never would. It was only last night she agreed to take this poor old wreck and try to make a man of me. We meant to tell you to-day if Fred Holton hadn't come in, and then the girls had to run. But nobody is to know for a month yet; we mean to be married at Easter. That last point we fixed up just now in the library. You see what a lot of things can happen right here in dear old Montgomery within twenty-four hours."
He waited for one of her characteristic Philesque outbursts—one of the tumultuous mussings with which she celebrated her happy surprises. Nothing was needed to complete his joy but Phil's approval, about which he had never had the slightest question. In his last talk with Nan on Christmas Eve they had discussed Phil and the effect of their marriage upon her rather more than upon themselves. And he had now exhausted himself upon the announcement; there was nothing more that he could say. Phil's hands were cold in his, and with an almost imperceptible pressure she was thrusting him away from her. Two great tears welled in her eyes and stole down her cheeks.
"Why, Phil! I thought you—you of all people in the world—"
"Mamma has come back!" said Phil colorlessly; and repeated, "mamma has come back. She is at Uncle Amy's, and I have seen her."
There was silence for a little space while he stared at her. Their eyes met in a long gaze. He grew suddenly white and she felt the trembling of his hands.
"O God, no!" he said hoarsely. "You don't mean that, Phil. This is a joke—not here; not in Montgomery! She would never do that. Come, you mustn't trifle with me; it's—it's too horrible."
His voice sank to a whisper with his last word. The word and his tone in uttering it had not expressed the full sense of the horror that was in his face.
"It is true, daddy," she said softly, kindly. "I have seen her; I have talked with her."
"You saw her at Amzi's?" he asked dully.
"Yes; she came last night. I didn't know it until I got to the house this morning. They were all there, and when I went in they tried to send me off; they thought I oughtn't to see her."
"There was a scene, then; they were ugly about it?"
"They tried to be; but it didn't go!"
He noted the faltering triumph of her tone and looked at her more closely.
"They wanted her to go and she held her ground against them?"
"I held it with her," said Phil.
"You didn't think she should go; was that it, Phil?"
"I didn't think she should be treated like a dog!"
Phil drew away, with her head held high, her fists tightly clenched. Kirkwood walked slowly across the room thrice while she stood immovable. He recalled her presence in a moment and remarked absently:—
"Amzi should have told me. It wasn't fair for him to do this. If I had known last night that she was here—"
He broke off with a groan. The resigned, indifferent air he had lately flung off possessed him again, and seeing it the pity stole back into her heart. She moved about, avoiding him, fearful of meeting again that hurt, wounded look in his eyes. The short day was drawing to an end, and the shadows deepened. He was mechanically lighting his pipe, and she crouched in her favorite seat by the fire.
"It's a little tough, Phil," he said finally with a revival of courage, pausing in his slow, aimless wandering through the rooms. "It's a little tough after so long, and now."
She could not controvert this; she merely waited to see what further he had to say. He paused presently, his arm on the mantel-shelf, his fingers nervously playing with his pipe.
"What is she like, Phil?"
"Oh, she is lovely! She is the most charming woman that ever lived!"
"You liked her, then; she was nice to you?"
"She is dear and sweet and wonderful! Oh, I didn't know she would be like that!"
His eyes opened and shut quickly. There was an implied accusation against him in the fervor of her admiration for the wife who had deserted him. He groped for something in self-justification with which to confute Lois Montgomery's daughter.
"You found her what you would like your mother to be,—you didn't think her hard or cruel?"
"No."
"You wouldn't have thought her a woman who would desert a husband and a helpless baby and run away with another man?"
There was silence in the room. He had mercilessly condensed the case against Lois Montgomery, reducing it to its harshest terms for Phil's contemplation. It was in Phil's mind that she had nothing to do with those things; that the woman against whose cheek she had laid her own was not Thomas Kirkwood's recreant wife, but another and very different person. She did not know how to express this; it seemed preposterous to insist to her father that his former wife was not the same woman that she had held speech with that day.
"I can't talk about her in that way, daddy. I can't tell you just how I feel. But it seemed so wonderful, when I went into the house, and those horrible creatures were circling round her like wolves, that we understood each other, she and I, without a word being said! And I hated them all, except dear old Amy. They all went home and Amy went off and left us alone, and we talked just as though we had been old friends."
She ceased as though to attempt to describe it would be profanation.
"What did she say—about me?" he asked blindly.
"Oh, she didn't talk about you at all! It wasn't that kind of talk—not about what she had done—not even about what she meant to do! She is so young! She is just like a girl! And she speaks so charmingly, with the loveliest voice. It's like the way the water ripples round the big boulders at The Run."
"She hadn't anything to say about her going off? I don't quite believe you mean that, Phil."
"That's exactly the truth, daddy"; and there was grieved surprise in her tone. "Why, she isn't like that; she wouldn't ever say anything to hurt any one. I haven't words to tell you about her, because there was never any one like her. She is all sunniness and sweetness. An