"Going out, mamma?"
"Rather think so, Phil!" replied Lois.
It was the week after the visit to the farm, and Phil, who was now scratching away furiously on a short story, had opened her mother's door late in the afternoon to find that lady contemplating with unusual gravity a frock she had flung across the bed for inspection.
"What are you up to, Phil?"
"Up to my chin in ink," replied Phil, holding up a forefinger empurpled from the ink she was affecting. She had read in a literary note that one of the most distinguished of contemporaneous women novelists always used purple ink. Phil was spreading a good deal of it over legal cap purloined from her father's office. Kirkwood was just now in town, and he had called her on the telephone to invite her to supper with him at the Morton House, an arrangement which she disclosed to her mother.
"Your father's home again?" Lois asked indifferently.
"Yes. He has something to do here about those bonds of Charlie Holton's. It sounded rather complicated; and he wants to see Fred, and Amy was to call him into town."
Lois's mind was upon the gown. She compressed her lips as she continued to scrutinize it. It was a gown from Paris and a very handsome one. Having decided that it suited her purposes, she brought out a hat that matched it and tossed it onto the bed.
"How do you think I'd look in those things?"
"Adorable! Shall I order up the machine?"
"Um, no: I'll walk, I think."
"I rather take it that I'm not invited," laughed Phil.
"Bless me, no! I have a call to make that wouldn't interest you."
Phil walked to the bureau—a new one of mahogany that had been among her mother's recent substitutions for the old walnut with which the house had been filled. The folder of a steamship company lay sprawled open across the neatly arranged toilet articles. Phil picked it up idly, and noted certain pencilings that caused her heart to give a sudden bound. She flung round upon her mother with tears in her eyes.
"You are not—not thinking of that!"
Lois walked over to her and kissed her. She took Phil's face in her hands, looking into her eyes steadily.
"You dear chick, you would care!"
"Oh, you mustn't! You must not!" Phil cried. "And you have been thinking of it and not telling me! And just when I thought we understood everything."
"I meant to tell you to-day: I really did. It wasn't easy. But I've got to go, Phil. I'm not sure that I haven't stayed too long! You know I never meant to stay forever."
"Then you haven't been happy here! You don't—you don't like me!"
Lois sank into a chair by the window and drew the girl down beside her. Phil gripped her mother's hands tight, and stared into her face with tear-filled eyes.
"It's as hard for me as it is for you, Phil. But we may as well have it out. I've taken passage for the first Saturday in June, and it's not far off. Some friends are spending the summer in Switzerland and I'm going to join them. It was half-understood when I came here."
"It's hard; it's unkind," Phil whispered. The fact that her mother had planned flight so long ahead did not mitigate the hurt of it. Nothing, it seemed, could ever be right in this world! And she had just effected all the difficult readjustments made necessary by her mother's return! She had given herself so unreservedly to this most wonderful of women! Lois was touched by her show of feeling.
"I'm sorry," she said, stroking Phil's brown head. "I have had thoughts of taking you with me. That would be easy enough—" she paused uncertainly, as the clasp of Phil's hands tightened. "But, Phil, I have no right to do that. It wouldn't be for your happiness in the end; I know that; I'm sure of that."
"Oh, if you only would! I'll be very good—a lot nicer than you think I am if you will take me."
"No!" said Lois sharply, but with a slight quaver in her voice that caused hope to stir in Phil's breast.
"You hadn't any right to come back and make me love you and then run away again! It isn't kind; it isn't just!"
"You wouldn't love me much longer if I stayed! You wouldn't love me very long if I carried you off. You've seen the best of me: I've shown you my best box of tricks. I don't wear well, Phil; that's the trouble with me."
She rose abruptly and drew Phil to her feet, with an effort at gayety.
"As it is we really love each other a lot, and it would be hazardous for me to stay longer. When I saw the first blossoms in the cherry tree, I knew it was time to go. I used to feel that way when I was a child—as though I just couldn't bear to stay any longer. I remember the days and hours when I used to fight it, away back there when I was a school girl. There must be gypsy blood in me. I can go on being just as you have seen me—lazy and comfortable for a long time, and then the thing becomes intolerable. It's the cause of all my troubles, one of the wobbles in my wobbly character. But now that I know what's the matter—that it isn't just malaria—and that the curse or whatever it is will pass in time, I suppose it isn't a weakness any longer, because I know just what to do for it. How's that, Phil, for philosophy!"
"Oh, you're so dear, so wonderfully dear!" cried Phil, touching her mother's cheeks lightly with her hands: "and we have had such good times; and I thought we should go on forever, just chumming; and you have stirred me all up about doing things, working—how am I ever to go on trying without you?"
"Nothing could keep you from going on and doing things; you will do great things. It's in you. I think maybe it's the wildness in me that has taken this turn in you. You have more brains in a little minute than I ever had: you are amazingly clever and wise. I'm glad it was left for me to discover it; that's one credit I've got on the Good Book."
There was a new sweetness and a wistfulness in her gravity that did not escape Phil. Phil knew that she could not change her mother's decision. Lois was already preening her wings for flight. Like a migratory bird she was moved by an irresistible call to other lands and other summers. Phil felt the strong columns of her young life totter; but they did not fall, and she knew they would not. It was a sad business, viewed in any light, but life, Phil had realized since Christmas brought her mother back to her, was not a holiday affair.
"I'm only a foolish butterfly down there in the garden," Lois was saying. "I can't stop long anywhere. If I did I'd make mischief. Trouble!" She threw up her hand and snapped her fingers. "What a lot of trouble I've caused in this world! I'm causing some right now; I know it: and it has worried me a lot. And before I flit I've got to straighten things out a little. Don't worry: I'm not going to do anything foolish."
She presented her back for Phil to unhook her gown; and proceeded to array herself in the Paris frock, which she had never worn before.
"By the way, Phil, I subscribed to a clipping bureau so you could see how far your dog piece traveled, and it's being quoted all over creation. Some paper calls it inimitably droll, which I think rather nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil the slang out of your system. It's charming, but it won't do. First thing you know it will be slipping in to your ink-pot and corrupting your manuscripts. You know better; I don't! As you go on Nan Bartlett can probably save you a good many bumps: she's a clever woman. I read her book twice, and I can point out everything your father put into that tale. There's not much of him there; only one of his dry jokes now and then. Don't imitate anybody; write about things you see and feel. One reason I'm not going to take you away with me is the danger of spoiling your American point of view. Two years from now you can go over and have a look; we'll see to that; but meanwhile make yourself into a blotter that soaks up everything. I once met a literary critic who said that the only American literature that's worth anything or is ever going to be worth anything will be dug right out of the soil. I didn't know then that I had a little digger in my own family! No; the other gloves; and get me the pink parasol—the one with the white handle."
She was deftly thrusting the pins through her hat before the oval mirror which had been one of her acquisitions. As she drew on the gloves she turned her supple body to make sure of the satisfactory hang of her skirt. Her good spirits had returned, and she hummed softly as Phil surveyed her. She seemed less indifferent to-day to Phil's admiration. Phil's spirits rose slowly; it was difficult to mourn in this radiant presence.
Lois had exercised all her arts in preparing for this mysterious call. She looked astonishingly well!—and amazingly young! Dressing had always been to Phil one of the nuisances and troubles of life. Her aunts had so annoyed her by their fussiness, and their efforts at self-embellishment had so disgusted her that it had been a revelation to find her mother making herself into charming pictures with so few strokes and so blithe an indifference to results.
Phil watched Lois to the gate, delighting in her easy, graceful step; following the pink dot of the parasol as it was lost and found again through the greenery. Lois sauntered toward the college and Phil turned into the house, speculating as to her destination. Her mother's general spontaneousness and inadvertence had led Phil to the belief that Lois withheld nothing; it was inconsonant with her understanding of Lois that there should be any recesses where the sun did not strike upon glittering mirrors in the long corridors down which, in Phil's adoration, her mother was forever loitering.
Students encountered near the campus turned their heads for a second glance at Lois, thinking her a new girl in town who had escaped their vigilance. She walked through Buckeye Lane to the Bartletts'; lowered her parasol as she passed under the maples in the yard; bent over the lilacs that overflowed upon the path, and smiled at the drumstick as she took it in hand to announce herself.
Nan opened the door. If she was surprised to find Mrs. Holton on her threshold, her manner did not betray the fact. Mrs. Holton owed her a call—a call which by the social canons was slightly overdue.
"I am very glad to see you," said Nan cordially.
It was cool and pleasant in the little cottage. (Houses in Montgomery are always pleasant and cool on the warmest days!) Lois sank into a seat, her eyes taking in the room at a glance. The flute on the music cabinet and the 'cello beside the piano did not escape her. On the table, where presumably Nan performed her literary labors, lay the week's darning. There was no denying the essential domesticity of the atmosphere. Lois vaguely remembered that room from the days when Professor Bartlett was living, and she had been a frequent visitor, delighting in the cookies and raspberry shrub that were the inevitable items of Bartlett hospitality when youngsters were about.
"I'm sorry Rose isn't here; she's spending the day in Indianapolis," Nan observed.
"I knew that. That's why I came to-day," replied Lois, smiling. "I wished to see you alone."
They exchanged the quick glance called for by this statement. Nan nodded.
"I shall be leaving very soon," Lois remarked, holding her parasol at arm's length and whirling it idly.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Nan replied.
She shook the bracelet down upon her round white arm with her accustomed gesture, rested her elbow on the writing-table, and waited. She had just come in from a walk and was clad in a blue wash waist and dark skirt. She was immediately conscious of the perfections of Lois's raiment, noting its points from silk hose and modish pumps to the utmost tip of the feather on the beguiling Paris hat.
Nan's imagination was at work upon the situation: Tom Kirkwood's former wife had come to call upon her, and wished to see her alone; and Tom Kirkwood was in love with her, and she would have married him had not this lovely apparition returned to shake her resolution. In the way of people who write she began to view the encounter with unconscious detachment. She was not to remain long in doubt as to the purpose of Lois's visit.
"I am going abroad for an indefinite stay. I may return, of course, now and then, but just to pass the time of day. Montgomery will never be my home. Amzi and Phil—"
A smile, a slight movement of her head, a lifting of the hand completed the sentence.
"They are strong ties," Nan replied, smiling in return.
"I want to tell you how deeply grateful I am to you and your sister, for your kindnesses to dear Phil. In these years that I have been gone you and Rose have been"—she hesitated—"like mothers and grown-up sisters to her. The result speaks for itself. Without you those sisters of mine would have made a fool of her."
"Oh, Phil couldn't have been spoiled!" exclaimed Nan.
"Anybody might be spoiled," Lois insisted. "I'm rather a sad example of the spoiled child myself. I speak, you see, from a weight of experience!"
The smile continued in lips and eyes. She was tremendously at ease and her ease was disconcerting.
"Phil has kept us delighted and bewildered. She was born with understanding; there's genius in the child!" said Nan, with warmth.
"Ah! I knew you realized that! Tom"—she spoke her discarded husband's name unwaveringly, smiling still—"Tom has not quite taken her at full value, though he has been—splendid. Amzi has been a dear angel to her,—but even he has never fully taken in the real Phil. But here, in this house"—she looked about, as though the more fully to place the room in evidence—"you have taken her into your hearts! And she needed the oversight of women—of women like you and Rose. You have been her great stimulus, the wisest of counselors. It seems almost as though I had left her on your doorstep! I am not so dull but that I see it all."
Nan colored deeply. Lois's suggestion, so bluntly put, that she had cast her child upon the Bartletts' doorstep aroused uncomfortable memories. After an instant's reflection Nan said:—
"Phil and her father have been unusually close; I don't believe Mr. Kirkwood has failed at any point in duty or sympathy. He is immensely proud of her development."
"Yes. But—he is not a woman! And there's a difference, if I haven't forfeited my right to an opinion on that point!"
She skirted the fringes, the dim borders of the past with the lightest step. She fumbled the keys of the closed doors as though they were silver trinkets on a châtelaine. In Nan's consciousness they seemed to tinkle and jingle softly in the quiet room.
"I thought of taking Phil away with me, to see the world,"—Nan felt a sudden tightening of the throat—"but I have decided against it. That will come later. In the work she wants to do it is better for her to stay here. If she learns Montgomery she will know the world! Does that sound a little studied? I am not a maker of phrases—far from it! But she has splendid talents?" she ended questioningly.
"Phil has the best mind of any girl I ever knew: she takes my breath away!" cried Nan.
"So! I knew you wouldn't fail me there!"
"We all realize it: we expect great things of her," added Nan.
Lois bent toward her with her winning manner. She drew the parasol across her lap and clasped it in both hands.
"That is why I am appealing to you; that is what brought me here to see you—alone. I am leaving Phil here with you because—because it is so much better for her to be with you than with me! You have done my work for me—oh, we won't discuss that! I know it all. You must credit me with some little understanding before we go further!"
Just where that "further" was to lead, Nan could not guess. She murmured something to the effect that Mrs. Holton was far too kind.
"There is every reason why I should be kind," Lois retorted. "And this brings me to a rather more serious matter, and one—one I am not broaching without reason. I want to speak of Tom!" she flashed. The smile had left her face; her lovely eyes were very grave.
"There is nothing that we need say about Mr. Kirkwood," said Nan, reddening and stirring uneasily.
"Please do not say that! This is an important moment in your life and mine. And I must speak to you of Tom before I go away. We are not children—you and I. You are a woman and a very noble one and—you must let me say it—I have been one of the worst. There's no finer man in the world than Tom; I never knew that until I had flung him away. And it's only because of you and Phil that he found himself again. I know it all as clearly as though I had been here every day of all these years. You picked up the broken pieces and made a man of him again—you and Phil. And you very much more than Phil! I've come to tell you that I'm grateful for that. He deserves well of the world. He loves you; he wants to marry you. If I hadn't come back just when I did, you would have married him."
She knelt beside Nan with lifted face. There were tears in her eyes.
"Don't you see—don't you understand—that that is the only way I can be happy? I'm not saying this for your sake—and only half for Tom's. It's the old selfish me that is asking it," she ended, smiling once more, though with brimming eyes.
Nan turned her head.
"I can never do it! It's not fair for you to speak to me of him."
"Oh, don't I know that! But I never in my life played fair! I want you to promise me that you won't say no to him! He is started on the way up and on once more: I want you to help him gain the top. He needs you just as Phil does! You have already been to him what I never could have been. It is all so easy and so plain! And in no other way can I be right with myself. I shall never trouble you by coming back! Phil can come to me sometimes—I'm sure you will not mind that! And I shall find peace that way! For Phil's sake you and Tom must marry!"
"Phil loves you so," said Nan; "you have no right to leave her; you don't know what you mean to her!"
"I'm only a pretty picture in a book! She's too keen; she'd see through me very soon. No! It must be my way," she said, with a little triumphant note. She rose and turned to pick up her parasol.
Nan watched her wonderingly, for an instant dumb before the plea of this woman, so unlooked-for, so amazing in every aspect. Lois touched her handkerchief to her eyes and thrust it into her sleeve.
"Now that's all over!" she said, smiling.
"No; it can't be over that way," returned Nan, quite herself again. "For a day I thought I could do it, but I'm grateful that you came back, for your coming made me see what a mistake it would have been. There's no question of his needing me. If I helped him a little to find himself, I shall always be glad, but he has tasted success now, and he will not drop back. And as for Phil, it is absurd to pretend that she needs any one. The days of her needs are passed, and she is at the threshold of happy womanhood. I am glad you came when you did, for I see now how near I was to losing some of my old ideals that would have made the rest of my life one long regret."
"Those scruples are like you—like what I know to be true of you; but you are wrong. I believe that in a little while you will see that you are."
"No," continued Nan; "I know they are not wrong. I am ashamed of myself that I ever wavered, but now I know I shall never be tempted again. I may seem to be taking myself too seriously"—she smiled in her accession of assurance—"but I have a feeling of greater relief than I dare try to explain. I am provincial and old-fashioned, and there are things I can't bring myself to think of lightly. I suppose the prejudices of my youth cling to me, and I can't dissociate myself from the idea that, inconspicuous as I am in the general scheme of things, I have my responsibility to my neighbors, to society, to the world. I am grateful that I saw the danger in time to save myself. Your coming back was well timed; it makes me believe"—she added softly—"that there is more than a fate in these things. I had misgivings from the first; I knew that it was wrong; but not till now have I seen how wrong it was! And I want you to be sure that this is final—that I shall never waver again."
"But in a little while, when I am safely out of the way—"
"Your going or coming can make no difference. I can say in all sincerity that I wish you would stay. I think it would mean much to Phil if you should. I hope you will change your decision. You must understand that so far as Mr. Kirkwood and I are concerned there is no reason whatever for your going."
Lois drew a line in the rug with the point of her parasol, her head bent in an attitude of reflection.
"As for Tom and me," she said, meeting Nan's eyes after an instant, "it's only right for you to know from me that he has given me another chance. He has offered to try me again! It was for Phil's sake. It was generous—it was noble of him! But"—she shrugged her shoulders—"I've caused enough misery. Not in a thousand years would I do it!"
Nan nodded, but made no reply. It was enough that she had established her own position, and nothing that Lois could add really mattered. And Lois, with her nice sense of values, her feeling for a situation, knew that the interview was at an end.
A copy of the May number of "Journey's End" lay on a little stand with other magazines. Her hand rested upon it a moment, as though she thus referred everything back to Phil, but even this evoked nothing further from Nan.
Lois walked to the door, murmuring nothings about the weather, the charm of the flowering yards in the Lane.
At the door she caught Nan's hands, smiled into her eyes, and said, with all her charm of tone and manner:—
"You will kiss me, won't you!"