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 Nan had withdrawn absolutely her day-old promise to marry him.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