Otherwise Phyllis Part 14

"It's all right, Phil--all right. It was only an old negative. I was looking over the rubbish here and amused myself by printing some of the old plates. There are a lot of old ghosts hidden away there in the closet. This was an old shop, you know, dating back to the Civil War, and there are negatives here of a lot of our local heroes. I wonder if it's right to throw them away? It's like exterminating a generation to destroy them. There must be people who would like to have prints of some of these."

"We might sell them to that new photographer for money enough to paint the building," she suggested. "The real owner would owe us a lot of rent if he ever turned up, which he never will. That would be our only way of getting even."

"There spoke a practical mind, Phil!"

She knew from the poor result of his effort to appear cheery that something had occurred to depress him. His own a.s.sociations with Montgomery had been too recent for the resurrection of old citizens to have any deep significance for him.

"We must go, Phil; I didn't mean for you to catch me here. I've wasted the whole afternoon--but some of the Sugar Creek views have come out wonderfully. We must clean up and turn the room over to Bernstein right away."

Her alert eyes marked the Sugar Creek pictures at one end of a shelf built against the window, but from his position at the moment she had surprised him in his brooding she knew that he had not been studying them. Nor did these new prints from old plates present likenesses of Montgomery's heroes of the sixties; but there were three--a little quaint by reason of the costumes--of a child, a girl of fourteen, and a young woman; and no second glance was necessary to confirm her instant impression that these represented her mother--the mother of whom she had no memory whatever. There were photographs and a miniature of her mother at home, and at times she had dreamed over them; and there was a portrait done by an itinerant artist which hung in her Uncle Amzi's house, but this, her Aunt Josephine had once told her, did not in the least resemble Lois.

Kirkwood tried clumsily to hide the prints.

"No; Phil, please don't!" he exclaimed harshly.

"Of course, I may see them, daddy,--of course!"

He allowed her to take them from him.

"It's mamma," said Phil. "How dear they are!" she murmured softly.

As she turned the prints to catch the dimming light, he watched her, standing inertly with his elbow on the shelf.

"Isn't it odd that I never saw any of these! even Uncle Amy hasn't them."

She bent over the print of the child, who stood with a hoop, smiling as though in delight at her belated rescue from oblivion.

"You were going to give these to me, weren't you, daddy?" She was running over the others. One that showed the mature woman in a fur cape long out of fashion and with a fur cap perched on her head, held her longest.

"If you want them," said her father, "you shall have them, of course. I will touch them up a bit in the morning."

"Maybe," said Phil looking at him quickly, "it is better not to keep them. Was it one of these plates that broke?"

"Yes," said Kirkwood; "it was this one"; and he indicated the picture that revealed his wife in her young womanhood.

It was over this that he had been dreaming alone in the dim gallery when she had interrupted his reverie. The pity of it all, the bleak desolation of his life, smote her sharply, now that she had caught a glimpse of the ghosts scampering off down the long vistas. With an abrupt gesture she flung aside the melancholy reminder of his tragedy.

"Dear old daddy!" She held him in her strong arms and kissed him.

She felt that all these spectres must be driven back into their world of shadows, and she seized the prints and tore them until only little heaps of paper remained and these she scattered upon the floor.

"Are these the plates?"

He indicated them with a nod. One after the other they crashed echoingly in the bare gallery. She accomplished the destruction swiftly and with certainty. One that fell on edge undamaged she broke with her heel.

Then she took a match from his pocket and lit the gas in one of the old burners. The light revealed a slight smile on his face, but it was not his accustomed smile of good humor. His eyes were very sad and gentle.

"Thank you, dear old Phil! I guess that's the best way, after all. It must be time to go home now. Are you ready?"

"Wait here a minute--you had better pull down the windows and lock up.

I'll close the office and you can meet me on the landing."

She went out, closing the door, and ran down to the office, where Charles Holton stood at the window looking out upon Main Street, where the electric lamps were just sputtering into light.

"Ah," he cried turning toward her with a bow, "I'd begun to think you had forgotten my unworthy presence on earth!"

"Not at all, Mr. Holton. I'm sorry, but my father is too much engaged to see you to-day. If you really want to see him you can come in to-morrow."

This was not what he had expected. Dismissal was in her tone rather more than in her words. Their eyes met for a moment in the dim dusk and he would have prolonged the contact; but she walked to the desk and stood there, looking down at the copy of "Elia" which lay as she had left it when he had interrupted her reading. She refused to be conscious of his disappointment or to make amends for having caused him to wait needlessly. He turned at the door.

"I hope I haven't put you to any inconvenience?" he remarked, but without resentment.

"Not at all, Mr. Holton. Good-afternoon!"

"Good-day, Miss Kirkwood."

She listened until his step died away down the stair and then went out and whistled for her father.

CHAPTER VIII

LISTENING HILL

The Holton farmhouse, a pretentious place in the day of Frederick Holton's grandfather, was now habitable and that was the most that could be said for it. When the second generation spurned the soil and became urbanized, the residence was transformed from its primal state into a country home, and the family called it "Listening Hill Farm." Its austere parlor of the usual rural type was thrown together with the living-room, the original fireplace was reconstructed, and running water was pumped to the house by means of a windmill. The best of the old furniture had been carried off to adorn the town house, so that when Fred succeeded to the ownership it was a pretty bare and comfortless place. Samuel had never lived there, though the farm had fallen to him in the distribution of his father's estate; but he had farmed it at long range, first from Montgomery, and latterly, and with decreasing success, from Indianapolis after his removal to the capital. The year before Fred's arrival no tenant had been willing to take it owing to the impoverished state of the land.

Most of the farms in the neighborhood were owned by town people, and operated by tenants. As for Fred, he knew little about agriculture. On the Mexican plantation which his father and Uncle William had controlled, he had learned nothing that was likely to prove of the slightest value in his attempt to wrest a living from these neglected Hoosier acres. His main qualifications for a farming career were a dogged determination to succeed and a vigorous, healthy body.

The Holtons had always carried their failures lightly, and even Samuel, who had died at Indianapolis amid a clutter of dead or shaky financial schemes, was spoken of kindly in Montgomery. Samuel had saved himself with the group of politicians he had persuaded to invest in the Mexican mine by selling out to a German syndicate just before he died; and Samuel had always made a point of taking care of his friends. He had carried through several noteworthy promotion schemes with profit before his Mexican disasters, and but for the necessity of saving harmless his personal and political friends he might not have left so little for his children. So spake the people of Montgomery.

Charles Holton was nearing thirty, and having partic.i.p.ated in his father's political adventures, and been initiated into the mysteries of promotion, he had a wide acquaintance throughout central Indiana. He had been graduated from Madison, and in his day at college had done much to relieve the gray Calvinistic tone of that sedate inst.i.tution. It was he who had transformed the old "college chorus"--it had been a "chorus"

almost from the foundation--into a glee club, and he had organized the first guitar and banjo club. The pleasant glow he left behind him still hung over the campus when Fred entered four years later. Charles's meteoric social career had dimmed the fact (save to a few sober professors) that he had got through by the skin of his teeth. Fred's plodding ways, relieved only by his prowess at football, had left a very different impression. Fred worked hard at his studies because he had to; and even with persistence and industry he had not shone brilliantly in the scientific courses he had elected. The venerable dean once said that Fred was a digger, not a skimmer and skipper, and that he would be all right if only he dug long enough. He was graduated without honors and went South to throw in his fortunes with his father's Mexican projects.

He was mourned at the college as the best all-round player a Madison eleven had ever boasted; but this was about all.

When he accepted Listening Hill Farm as his share of his father's estate, Fred had a little less than one thousand dollars in cash, which he had saved from the salaries paid him respectively by the plantation and mining companies. This had been deposited as a matter of convenience in an Indianapolis bank and he allowed it to remain there. He realized that this money must carry him a long way, and that every cent must go into the farm before anything came out of it. He had moved to the farm late in the summer--just in time to witness the abundant harvests of his neighbors.

One of the friendliest of these was a young man named Perry, who had charge of Amzi Montgomery's place. Perry belonged to the new school of farmers, and he had done much in the four years that he had been in the banker's employ to encourage faith in "book farming," as it had not yet ceased to be called derisively. He was a frank, earnest, hard-working fellow whose ambition was to get hold of a farm of his own as quickly as possible. He worked Amzi's farm on shares, with certain privileges in the matter of feeding cattle. Amzi picked him up by chance and with misgivings; but Perry had earned the biggest dividends the land had ever paid. Perry confided to Fred a hope he had entertained of leasing the Holton farm for himself when his contract with Montgomery expired. Now that Fred had arrived on the scene he explained to the tyro exactly what he had meant to do with the property. As he had seriously canva.s.sed the situation for a couple of years, witnessing the failures of the last two tenants employed by Samuel Holton, Fred gladly availed himself of his advice.

Fred caught from Perry the spirit of the new era in farming. It no longer sufficed to scratch the earth with a stick and drop in a seed; the earth itself must be studied as to its weaknesses and the seed must be chosen with intelligent care. One of the experts from the state agricultural school, in the field to gather data for statistics, pa.s.sed through the country, and spent a week with Fred for the unflattering reason that the Holton acres afforded material for needed information as to exhausted soils. He recommended books for Fred to read, and what was more to the point sent a young man to plan his work and initiate him into the mysteries of tilling and fertilizing. The soil expert was an enthusiast, and he left behind him the nucleus of a club which he suggested that the young men of the neighborhood enlarge during the winter for the discussion of new methods of farm efficiency.

Fred hired a man and went to work. He first repaired the windmill and a.s.sured the water-supply of the house and barn. A farmer unembarra.s.sed by crops, he planned his campaign a year ahead. He worked harder on his barren acres than his neighbors with the reward of their labor in sight.

He tilled the low land in one of his fallow fields and repaired the fences wherever necessary. His most careful scrutiny failed to disclose anything on which money could be realized at once beyond half a dozen cords of wood which he sent to town and sold and the apples he had offered for sale in the streets of Montgomery. These by-products hardly paid for the time required to market them. Perry had suggested that winter wheat be tried on fifty acres which he chose for the experiment, and in preparing and sowing the land Fred found his spirits rising. The hired man proved to be intelligent and capable, and Fred was not above learning from him. Fred did the cooking for both of them as part of his own labor.

Some of his old friends, meeting him in Main Street on his visits to town, commiserated him on his lot; and others thought William Holton ought to do something for Fred, as it was understood that he was backing Charles in his enterprises. Still other gossips, pointing to the failure of the Mexican ventures, inclined to the belief that Fred was a dull fellow, and that he would do as well on the farm as anywhere else.

On a Sunday afternoon in this same November, Fred had cleaned up after his midday meal with the hired man and was sprawled on an old settle reading when a motor arrived noisily in the dooryard. Charles was driving and with him were three strangers. Fred went out to meet his brother, who introduced his companions as business men from Indianapolis.