It's pleasant, on the whole, to do something worth doing; to make grass grow where it has never grown before; to put the last touch to a canoe-paddle of exactly the right weight and balance; to bring to something approximating one's ideal of a sound sentence the last stubborn, maddening clutter of words in a manuscript that has grown from a pen-scratch on the back of an envelope into a potential book. And Tom Kirkwood was not without his sense of satisfaction. He had without litigation straightened the Sycamore Company's financial tangles. Its physical deficiencies were being remedied and its service brought to standard. He had never in his life felt so conscious of his powers. He was out of debt—having paid back two thousand dollars Amzi had loaned him in the fall, after Phil had raised the red flag of danger in their affairs. The load was off his back; men spoke to him in the street with a new cordiality; the "Evening Star," in an excess of emotion following the taking-over of the First National Bank by Amzi and all the moving incidents connected with the drama of Main Street's greatest day,—the "Evening Star" had without the slightest provocation, declared that the Honorable Thomas Kirkwood was just the man for governor. The Desbrosses Trust & Guaranty Company had not only paid him handsomely, but was entrusting him with the rehabilitation of a traction company in Illinois that was not earning dividends.
He came back to Montgomery to try some cases at the April term of court and sent his trunk to the Morton House.
"It isn't square, daddy," said Phil, breaking in upon him at his office on the day of his arrival. "We were to open the house again when you had finished at Indianapolis. And here you are, not even telling me you were coming."
The office was dingier and dustier than ever. She abused him for not at least giving her a chance to clean it against his coming.
"I have to be off again in a week; it didn't seem worth while to put you to the trouble of opening the house just for that," he replied evasively. His own affairs again occupied his mind, and the sight of Phil gave a keen edge to his curiosity as to her life at Amzi's.
"Your new suit is certainly some clothes, and a glimpse of that four-in-hand makes the world a nobler and better place to live in! If the Indianapolis boulevards can do that for you, it's too bad I didn't know it long ago. I have an idea"—and she paused pensively in the act of dusting a chair—"I'm a good deal worried by the idea that you ought to be mussed!"
He pleaded mockingly for mercy, calling attention to her inconsistency in admiring his raiment while at the same time threatening it with destruction.
"You seem to have been to the dressmaker yourself. How's your bank account, Phil? I suppose your uncle will have to be more careful about overdrafts now that he has a national bank."
"Oh, I'm not broke. And"—suddenly serious—"I must tell you something, daddy. I've been waiting for a chance to ask you if you cared; it didn't seem right not to ask you; and, of course, if you mind, I won't."
He smiled at her earnestness, her unusual indirection. She was immensely grown up; there were new manifestations of her otherwiseness. He noted little sophisticated tricks of manner that reminded him vaguely of some one else.
"Amy says it's all right for me to do it, but that I must ask you; and mamma says that, too."
Her preluding roused apprehensions. What might not have happened in these weeks that Phil had spent with Lois? He observed his daughter with a new intentness. She drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and touched it lightly, with an un-Phil-like gesture to her nose; and an instant later, with an almost imperceptible movement of her head, resettled her hat. She had acquired—quite unconsciously he did not question—a new air. She was his old Phil, but the portrait had been retouched here and there, and was reminiscent in unaccountable ways of some one else very like and very different.
"Yes, Phil, come out with it," he said, finding her eyes upon him in a wide, unseeing gaze—and that, too, he now remembered. She had taken on, as young girls do, the superficial graces and innocent affectations of an older person. Such perfectly natural and pardonable imitation is induced by admiration; and Lois had been a woman of fascinations in old times! He had no reason for believing that she had changed; and it had been clear to him that first day of Lois's return that she had laid strong hold upon Phil's imagination.
"Mamma wants to give me some money: she has already done some nice things for me. She bought this hat and suit; but she wants to do more."
Kirkwood frowned. Lois had no right to come back and steal Phil away from him. He was at once jealous, suspicious. He, too, had assumed that Lois's return had not been voluntary; that she had come back of necessity and flung herself upon Amzi's charity. It would be quite like her to try to tempt Phil with a handful of trinkets.
"It isn't likely that she has much to give you; but before you accept anything of importance you should be sure that it's a proper gift for her to offer, that she can afford to do it."
"There doesn't seem to be any question about that, daddy. What she wants to do is to give me a whole lot of money—enough to make me really rich. She wants to put one hundred thousand dollars in a trusteeship for me."
There was consternation in his quick glance. Nothing in his knowledge of Lois justified a belief that she would ever, by any proper and reputable means, command any such sum.
"You must be mistaken, Phil. You must have got the figures wrong. It's more likely a thousand. You know mathematics was never a strong point with you!"
"It's this way, you see, daddy. She made a lot of money—in lucky investments—mines, real estate, and things like that. She told me a little about it; as though it were a great joke. But she is very clever; she did it all by herself—and no one knows it, except just Amy; and she told me I might tell you, so you'd understand. She even said to say to you—" and Phil paused, knitting her brows. To be repeating as from a stranger a message from her mother to her father was a fresh phase of the unreal situation created by her mother's return. "She said to tell you she came by it honestly; that it wasn't tainted money!"
And Phil laughed nervously, not knowing how her father would take this. He seemed depressed, in the old familiar fashion; and she could not know the reason of it, or that the magnitude of his former wife's resources and her wish to divide with her daughter rallied all manner of suspicions round his jealousy.
"She said that either Amy could manage it for me, or that if you liked she would be perfectly willing to turn it over to you. She was very kind about it, daddy; really she was."
"I'm not questioning that, Phil. It's a little staggering, that's all."
"But, of course," she ran on eagerly, "it wouldn't make any difference between you and me. I know you have done everything for me. Please don't ever think I forget that, daddy. And if you have any feeling about it, please say no. I don't want money, just to be having it. We've always agreed that money isn't the main thing in life."
"It's rather necessary, though, as we've found by experience," he replied, with a rueful smile. "I've done pretty badly, Phil; but things are brighter. I'm able now to begin putting some money away for you myself, and I shall do it, of course, just the same. But as to your mother's offer, you must accept it; it's a large sum, far more than I could ever command. It makes you independent; it changes the future for you, puts things within your reach that have been clear out of the question. And it's very generous on her part to tell you to refer the matter to me. I assume," he added, "that she's keeping enough for herself; there might be some difficulty later on if she didn't do that."
"Oh," said Phil, with an unconscious note of pride that did not escape him, "she has plenty; she's richer, I suppose, than almost anybody around here. She didn't ask me not to tell you anything—she's not like that—so you may as well know that she gave Amy a lot of money to help him set up the new bank. It's so funny that I can't help laughing. The whole family—one's aunts, I mean—think she came back to sponge off of Amy, and they don't know she's going to own almost as much as he does in the new Montgomery National. I get to giggling when I see those women strutting by the house with their chins up, but mamma doesn't pay the least attention. I don't believe she thinks about them at all; she's had the house fixed over—pitched a lot of Amy's old furniture into the alley—and is having the garden done by a landscape gardener she imported from Chicago. And those poor women are fretting themselves to death, thinking it's Amy's money she's spending. Yesterday she ordered a seven thousand dollar automobile by telegraph,—just like that!—and when it anchors in front of Amy's gate there'll be some deaths from heart failure in that neighborhood."
Kirkwood's sometime sisters-in-law had been three sharp thorns in his side; and Phil's joy at the prospect of their discomfiture when they beheld their sister rolling about in an expensive motor was not without justification. Lois's prosperity was, however, deeply mystifying. It flashed upon him suddenly that he did not in the least know this Lois of whom Phil had been speaking: she was certainly not the young woman, scarcely out of her girlhood, who had so shamelessly abandoned him. And over this thought stumbled another: he had never known her! As he reflected, his eyes roamed to a large calendar on the wall over Phil's head. This was the 12th of April, his wedding-day. The date interested him only passively; it had long ago ceased to affect him emotionally.
He meant to speak to Nan before he left town and endeavor once more to persuade her that Lois's return had made no difference. As he swung idly in his chair he sought to analyze his feelings. Those little tricks of manner that Phil imitated so unconsciously kept recurring and he tried to visualize the Lois of the present as she must be;—clever, impulsive in her generosities, heedless, indifferent. In all his conjecturing since Christmas he had experienced no longing to have her back; nothing beyond a mild impersonal curiosity as to how time had dealt with her.
The success that had attended his labors had strengthened all the fibers of his will; he was the master of himself, a man again. He had demonstrated to his own surprise and satisfaction that he could devise a plan and put it through; that he could bring an iron hand to his dealings with men. And buoyed up by this fresh knowledge he was impatient at the frustration of any of his plans and hopes. Lois had shaken down the pillars of his life once; but she could not repeat that injury. He had built himself a new argosy and found a new companion for his voyaging. Nan should marry him; if she liked they would remove to Indianapolis to escape gossipy tongues; but he had definitely determined that the marriage should not be delayed. He was a free man and he meant to exercise and enjoy his freedom. He had taken soundings where he had gone down on that first venture and touched nowhere any trace of the wreck; the waters of oblivion rippled listlessly over those unmarked shoals.
He swung round with an uncomfortable sense that Phil had been watching him as she bent forward, her elbow resting on the arm of one of the old office chairs, her hand against her cheek. That had been one of Lois's ways and Phil's brown eyes were very like Lois's! He did not want Phil to attribute his long reverie to retrospective regrets or present longings.
"Well, Phil; I've got to go to the court-house to see Judge Walters. About that money, it's perfectly right for you to accept it; but I think it best that your Uncle Amzi should have the care of it. It's a considerable responsibility, however, and you must let him know that you appreciate his doing it; and I'll speak to him about it myself. If you're going home you can walk as far as the court-house with me."
He had spoken briskly, to emphasize his own indifference to Lois and her money.
While Kirkwood was collecting some papers, Phil, after moving restlessly about and glancing down at Amzi—he happened just then to be standing on the bank steps talking to an agent of the Comptroller's office who had been dispatched from Washington to observe the metamorphosis of the First National into the Montgomery National,—Phil, with an embarrassment that was new to her relations with her father, asked diffidently,—
"Shall I say anything to mamma—I mean about the money?"
This was not at all what she had meant to say. She had hoped that he would send some message to her mother. It was incredible that the wires should be so utterly broken between them as to make all communication impossible. They were both so much to her liking; in her own heart admiration and love enfolded them both so completely that her spirit chafed at the thought of standing first with one and then with the other on the respective sides of the barricade that had risen between them. Her father replied brusquely:—
"No; that's all, I believe, Phil."
As they walked toward the court-house, Lois passed on the opposite sidewalk. It is not against Montgomery conventions to nod to friends across Main Street or even to pause and converse across that thoroughfare if one is so disposed. Phil nodded to her mother. She was unable to tell whether her father was conscious that his former wife was so near; he lifted his hat absently, seeing that Phil was speaking to some one.
"By the way, Phil, have you been in the house lately—the old place, I mean? Amzi's carpenter tells me the wind has torn off the water-spouts and that the veranda posts have rotted badly."
He had so rarely mentioned the long-abandoned house that she was startled. He did not care! This was the most conclusive proof possible that he no longer cared; and the thought of it did not make her happy. Clearly Love was not, after all, a limitless dominion, without other bounds than those set by the farthest stars, but a narrow, dark, and unstable realm. That these two should dwell in the same town, walk the same street, at the same hour, without any desire to see and speak to each other, was the strangest of phenomena.
"Drop in to-morrow and have luncheon with me at the hotel. I want to see all of you I can while I'm here," he remarked when they reached the court-house.
"Very well, daddy."
That evening, after he had eaten the hotel supper with a printed brief for company, Kirkwood went to the Bartletts', but no one answered his summons and he turned away disappointed. Thinking they were probably at some neighbor's house he decided to walk about and return later. His idle roaming led him past Center Church. It was prayer-meeting night, and through the open windows floated a hymn sung waveringly by the small gathering of the faithful. It was here, on just such an April night, that he and Lois had sworn to love and cherish each other to the end of their days. He had been profoundly moved that night, standing before the reverend president of the college in the crowded church and repeating his vows after the kindly, lovable old man. And he remembered how, as they left the church, the assembled students had shown their good-will in ringing cheers. But these memories had lost their poignancy. Verily, he did not care!
Finding himself presently before Amzi's house, he remembered without emotion that Lois was established there. It was an ironic fling of the dice that had brought her back prosperous and presumably happy to lure Phil away from him! He walked slowly; the proximity of his recreant wife gave him neither pang nor thrill. He loitered that the test might be the more complete.
A man had been walking toward him from the farther side of the Montgomery place, and something furtive in his movements caused Kirkwood to pause. Then, after halting uncertainly and fumbling at the chain that held the Kirkwood gate together, the man retraced his steps, and guardedly let himself into the Fosdicks' yard. Kirkwood listened, and hearing no further sounds dismissed the matter. It now occurred to him to visit his own property, whose decrepitude Amzi had brought to his attention, and finding that he had matches and the house key, he lifted the chain from the rickety gate and passed into the garden. Kirkwood was preoccupied with the idea of putting the house and lot in order and selling it. Now that he was confident that it no longer held any associations for him, he was in haste to be rid of it. He would sell the place and invest the proceeds for Phil. He smiled ironically as he remembered the disparity between his own fortunes and those of his former wife. He did not resent her prosperity; he did not understand it; but if it was the way of the gods to visit fortune upon the unrighteous, so much the worse for the gods.
A brick walk curved round the house, and as he was about to step from it to the veranda he heard voices that came seemingly from the jutting corner of a wing that had been his library. He had no wish to be found there. Very likely the yard was visited frequently by prowlers; and there was a beaten path across the rear which had been for years a short cut between Amzi's and his sisters' houses. He was in no mood for a meeting with any intruder who might be there at this hour, and he was about to steal back the way he had come when a man's voice rose suddenly in anger. A woman replied, evidently counseling a lower tone.
"Here in Tom's graveyard is a fitting place to talk over our affairs. You needn't be in such a hurry to go. We may as well fix this thing up now and be done with it. I'm broke; I haven't got a cent, and it's tough, I can tell you. But it's some satisfaction to know that Will's broke, too. I took care that he got his, all right. The Holtons are all down and out. Will's as poor as I am, and my gay nephew Charlie's busy dodging the sheriff. Not much left for Will now but to go out and rustle for life insurance—the common fate of inglorious failure."
The woman's voice rose crisp and assured on the tender spring air.
"Your note said it was something of importance. I can't stay here all night. I haven't any money for you and your family troubles don't interest me. And let me say, once and for all, that I don't propose to have you following me round. This is a big world and there's room in it for both of us."
Kirkwood could not see them, though he heard perfectly every word that had been spoken, and he could not escape without attracting their attention.
"See here, Lois, I've just heard a whisper from Seattle that you cleaned up a lot of money out there. Good joke on me, wasn't it? I thought you were pretty thick with the Barkleys, but I didn't know he had let you into his deals. I want my share; if it hadn't been for me, you wouldn't have known Seattle was on the map. It's only fair; I'll call it fifty thousand and let it go at that."
"Nothing; absolutely not a penny! I advise you to make yourself scarce. And if you attempt to annoy me while I'm here, I'll do something very unpleasant about it. I agreed to meet you to-night merely to tell you that."
Kirkwood heard her step on the walk, and drew back. The light of the moon was full upon her. She was bareheaded and wrapped in a long coat. It was thus that he saw her again, in the shadow of the house where together they had kindled their hearth,—in the garden plot whose disorder and ruin were eloquent of her broken faith.
She was moving away swiftly, with the light step he remembered. Holton gained her side in a long leap.
"No, you don't! Not by a damned sight, you don't!"
Kirkwood saw them both clearly in their attitude of antagonism—the wife who had wronged him, the friend who had betrayed him.
"You don't shake me so easily. I want my share of the profits. It was a low trick—getting rid of me so you could spend your money on yourself; humiliating me by showing me up as a drunkard in the divorce court. I owe you a good one for that!"
"Not a cent!" she repeated, lifting her head in mockery of his clumsy attempt to becloud the real issue.
Her taunting tone maddened him; without warning he gripped her throat roughly. His tightening clasp stifled her cry as she struggled to free herself.
Kirkwood stood suddenly beside them, caught Holton by the collar, and flung him back. Holton's arm was up instantly to ward off an expected blow. He turned guardedly, and his arm fell as he recognized Kirkwood.
"So that's the ticket! It was a trap, was it?" And then his anger mounting, he flung round at Lois. "So this is what brought you back! Well, it doesn't lower my price any! He can have you and be damned to him, but I double my price!"
"This is my property," said Kirkwood coldly; "if you don't leave instantly, I'll turn you over to the police."
"She's come back to you, has she! Well, you needn't be so set up about it. She's anybody's woman for the asking; you ought to have learned that—"
Kirkwood's stick fell with a sharp swish across his shoulders.
"Leave these grounds at once or I'll send you to the lockup!"
Holton looked coweringly from one to the other. The strangeness of the encounter was in the mind of each: that the years had slipped away and that Kirkwood was defending her from the man for whom she had abandoned him. An unearthly quiet lay upon the garden. Children's voices rose faintly on the silvery April night from the grounds beyond. Far away, beyond the station, a locomotive puffed slowly on a steep grade. The noises of the town seemed eerily blurred and distant.
"Clear out! Your business here is finished. And don't come back," said Kirkwood firmly.
"She asked me to meet her here;—you must have known it; it was a damned vile trick—" Holton broke out violently; but Kirkwood touched him with the end of his stick, pointed toward the gate, and repeated his order more sharply. Holton whirled on his heel, found an opening in the hedge, and left them, the boughs snapping behind him.
Kirkwood was the first to speak.
"He's gone, I think. I'll watch until you get safely back to Amzi's."
He lifted his hat; his tone was one of dismissal and she turned as though to leave, hesitated and drew a step nearer.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to speak to you a moment. I shouldn't have thought of seeking you, of course, but this makes it possible."
He made no reply, but waited, leaning on his stick. Her foot tapped the walk nervously; as she readjusted the cloak it exhaled the faint scent of orris that reached him as though wafted down some dim aisle of memory.
"I want to speak about Phil. It was to see Phil that I came back. I want you to know that I wouldn't take her away from you if I could. There must be no misunderstanding about this. Whatever I am or have been or may be, I am not base enough for that."
He was silent for a moment.
"That is something that is not in your hands or mine," he answered. "Phil is the mistress of her own affairs. I was perfectly willing that she should go to Amzi's to be with you; it's for her to decide whether she ever comes back to me."
"That is—generous; very generous," she replied, as though, after hesitating before using the word, her second thought confirmed the choice.
"And about the money; she told me she spoke to you about that to-day. I appreciate your attitude. I want you to understand that I'm not trying to bribe her. I'm glad of a chance to say that I would do nothing to spoil her loyalty to you. You deserve that; and I have no illusions about myself. If I thought my coming would injure her—or you—in any way, I should go at once and never come back. But I had to see her, and it has all happened fortunately—Amzi's kindness, and hers—and your own! Phil is so dear—so lovable!"
Her last words broke in a sob, but she quickly regained her self-control.
"I'm glad," he replied, "if you are not disappointed in her. We have been very close—comrades and friends; but she has gone beyond me; and that was inevitable. She's an independent spirit—quite capable of managing her own affairs."
"I don't think she will ever go beyond you," Lois answered. "She has told me all the story—and I have read a good deal into it that she didn't tell me. And I am very grateful. She didn't have to tell me that you had not embittered her against me; her way of meeting me was reassuring as to that. It was fine of you; it wasn't what I expected or deserved."
Unconsciously they had begun walking back and forth in the path, and once, as they turned, they looked at each other fixedly for the first time. It was the deliberate frank scrutiny of old acquaintances who seek affirmation of fading memories after long absence.
"As to the money, I want to protect her, as far as money can do it, from hardship and need hereafter. I don't want you to think I offer it as restitution—or—penance. I have plenty for myself; I'm giving up nothing in doing it."
He tried to phrase carefully his disavowal of any thought that her gift was a penitential act. He confessed that he had been concerned for Phil's future; and that so far he had not been able to provide for her in case of his death. This brought him to Amzi, whose devotion to Phil he praised warmly. They met immediately upon the safe ground of Amzi's nobility. Then they recurred to Phil. Presently as they passed the veranda, she sat down on the steps and after a moment he seated himself beside her. They had sat thus, looking out upon the newly planned garden, when the mystery and wonder of Phil's coming filled their hearts and minds.
"I've thought," she said, bending forward with her arms folded upon her knees, "that Phil ought to travel—that I might take her away for a little while." She waited for his assent; but when he was silent, she hurried on to set herself right in this. "But I don't believe that would be best. Not with me. Trotting around with me over there wouldn't do her any good. It might spoil her point of view, which is—just right—sound and healthy. The child's a genius. She wants to write—of course you know that."
He did not know it. Jealousy pricked him at this sudden revelation of something in Phil that he had not with all his opportunity realized.
"She's very clever," he responded tamely.
"It's more than that! She has a trunkful of stuff she's written—some of it rubbish; some of it amazingly good."
He resented these appraisements of Phil's literary experiments. It was disagreeable to hear from Phil's mother things which he should have learned for himself. His trained analytical faculties were disturbed; he had regarded the theory of the superior keenness of maternal perception as rather fantastic. Phil had never confided her ambitions to him; in fact, it was now clear that she had concealed them, perhaps fearing his criticisms.
"She's so droll!"—and Lois laughed at some recollection. "She has a delicious humor—her own special flavor. All these people in Montgomery are story-book people to her. She's a deep one—that little Phil! She has written pages about them—and the drollest of all about those women over there."
She indicated with a gesture the domiciles of her sisters. The fact that Phil had utilized her aunts as literary material amused Lois profoundly. But finding that the burden of the talk lay with her she asked, "What would you think of college for Phil? Or is it too late?"
"She didn't seem a good subject when the time came; and besides," he added bluntly, "I couldn't afford it."
"Oh, she didn't speak of it regretfully; she didn't complain because you hadn't sent her!"
"No, of course not; that wouldn't be like Phil. I'm not sure college would be a good thing for her now; she's read prodigiously—away ahead of most girls, ahead of most people! There wouldn't be so much that college could do for her. And if she really has the creative faculty, it's better not to curb or check it. Not in her case. She led her class in high school without working at it. Whatever she wants to know she will get without tying herself up in a college course."
Lois nodded. He was an educated man who had himself been a teacher, and his testimony was entitled to respect. She was far more comfortable than he as they continued the discussion. The breadth of her understanding of Phil piqued him. In these few weeks Lois had learned much about Phil that had been a sealed book to him. His position was absurd; it was preposterous for him to be learning about Phil from Phil's mother, when it was he who had shaped the course of Phil's life. He wondered whether Lois knew that her disclosures hurt his pride, shattered his vanity.
"The dear child seems to be the sole prop of most of the paupers in the bottoms. I went with her to look at one of her families yesterday, and I could see where her spare change has been going. She's set up a piano in the box factory so the girls can amuse themselves at noontime and you may be sure they're all crazy about her. Everybody seems to be!"
The remembrance of Phil's generosities amused her. She mentioned a number of them with murmurous glee and unmistakable admiration. Phil had never confided these things to him, and he reflected ruefully that her indulgence in pianos for working-girls probably accounted for deficiencies in her own wardrobe that had not at times escaped his masculine eye. He had mildly wondered what became of the money he gave Phil for shoes! It argued an unresponsiveness in his own nature that Phil had concealed her adventures as Lady Bountiful from him—and he had thought she told him everything!
He was learning about Phil from the last person in the world who had any right to know Phil. He had seen in her precociousness, her healthy delight in books, nothing astonishing, and he had known nothing of her scribbling. His irritation grew. He was impatient to escape from this garden that Holton had spoken of as Kirkwood's graveyard; from this cheerful ghost beside him, with her low, musical voice and her murmurous laughter. His thoughts flew to Nan, to whom he now meant to go with his last appeal.
It flashed upon him that he might assure his victory over Nan's qualms by carrying to her the definite knowledge that there was absolutely no hope, as he fancied Nan believed there was, that he and Lois might bridge the wide chasm that had separated them for so many years and renew the old tie. If he could go from Lois to Nan with that news, he believed his case would be invincible. He would ma