Otherwise Phyllis Part 19

"Well, you'll have to do better than this! You're the only person in the house who hasn't spoken to me! But it was nice of you to come: it must be a trouble to come to town at night when you live so far." She sat down in the window-seat and bade him do likewise. "You did see Uncle Amy, didn't you? I saw you talking to him; but you ought to have come earlier while there was a receiving-line ready for you. Now you'll have to look around for everybody; you have to speak to my three aunts and all my uncles and my father."

"I'll be glad to," declared Fred; and then realizing the absurdity of his fervor in consenting to speak to the aunts and uncles he laughed.

"You're scared," said Phil. "And if you won't tell anybody I'm a little bit scared myself, just because everybody tells me how grown-up I am."

The music struck up and a young cavalier--a college senior, who had worshiped Phil since his freshman year--came to say that it was his dance. She told him that she was tired and would have to be excused. He wished to debate the question, but she closed the incident promptly and effectively.

"I'm busy talking to Mr. Holton; and I can see you any time, Walter."

Walter departed crestfallen; she treated him as though he were still a freshman. He was wearing his first dress-coat and the tallest collar he could buy, and it was humiliating to be called Walter and sent away by a girl who preferred to talk to a rustic-looking person in a cutaway coat and a turnover collar with a four-in-hand tie.

Phil carried Fred off for a tour of the rooms, pausing to introduce him to her father and to the three aunts, to whom she said how kind it was of Fred to come; that he was the only person she had personally asked to the party. And it was just like Phil, for years the loyal protector of all the discards among the cats and dogs in town, to choose a clodhopper for special attention. Kirkwood, who had forgotten Fred's existence, greeted him in his pleasant but rather absent way.

The torrid Wabash Valley summers of many years had not greatly modified the chill in Kirkwood's New England blood, and the isolation in which he had lived so long had deepened his reserve. The scholarly stamp had not been effaced by his abandonment of the academic life, and many of his fellow-townsmen still addressed him as Professor Kirkwood. His joy to-night lay in Phil's happiness; his heart warmed to the terms of praise in which every one spoke of her. It touched his humor that his daughter was in some degree a public character. Her escapades in childhood and youth had endeared her to the community. In her battles with the aunts public sympathy had been pretty generally with Phil.

"Otherwise Phyllis--?" Many a smile had been occasioned by that question. Tom Kirkwood knew all this and was happy and grateful. He had not attended a large gathering of his fellow-townfolk since his wife left him, so that his daughter's coming-out was an event of double significance for him.

The aunts were somewhat critical of the arrangements for refreshing the guests. Amzi, refusing to heed their suggestions that the catering be entrusted to an Indianapolis firm, had arranged everything himself. The cakes were according to the best recipes known at 98 Buckeye Lane, and Rose and Nan were there, a.s.sisting, by Amzi's special command. During the evening he consulted first one and then the other; and when his sisters asked icily for instructions, he told them to look handsome and keep cheerful. This was unbrotherly, of course, but Amzi was supremely happy.

The older people had been served in the dining-room and many of them had already gone or were now taking leave, and the waiters were distributing little tables for the young people.

"Let me see, you were to have refreshments with me, Miss Kirkwood; I have a table in the drawing-room alcove all ready," said Charles Holton to Phil as she still stood talking to Fred in the hall. Fred had been wondering just what his own responsibilities were in the matter. Charles had greeted him affably; but Fred's diffidence deepened in his brother's presence: Charles was a master of the social arts, whereas Fred had only instinctive good-breeding to guide him. Fred was about to move away, but Phil detained him.

"Isn't it curious that you two brothers should have the same idea," said Phil artlessly. "It's really remarkable! But I think"--and she turned gravely to Fred--"I think, as long as you came too late for a dance with me, I shall eat my piece of pie with you--and I think right up there on the stairs would be an excellent place to sit!"

Fred, radiant at the great kindness of this, went off to bring the salad for which she declared she was perishing. Charles looked at her with an amused smile on his face.

"You're a brick! It's mighty fine of you to be so nice to Fred. Dear old Fred!"

Phil frowned.

"Why do you speak of your brother in that way?"

"How did I speak of him?"

"Oh, as if he were somebody to be sorry for!"

"Oh, you misunderstood me! I was merely pleased that you were being nice to him. Fred would never have thought of asking you to sit on the stairs with him--I knew that; it was just like you to save him from embarra.s.sment."

"Oh!"

He was piqued by the connotations suggested by Phil's "Oh!" Phil was not only stunningly pretty, but she had wits. It was his way to impress girls he met, and there was no time for dallying now; Fred would return in a moment and take Phil away from him. He intended to see a great deal of her hereafter, and he believed that in the opening skirmishes of a flirtation a bold shot counts double. Phil waved her hand in the direction of the table where the Bartletts, her father, and Amzi were seating themselves, and when she looked round at Holton, she found his eyes bent upon her with a fair imitation of wistfulness and longing which in previous encounters of this sort he had found effective.

"I don't believe you realize how beautiful you are. I've been over the world a good deal and there's no one anywhere who touches you. There are lots of nice and pretty girls, of course, but you are different; you are a beautiful woman! To see you like this is to know for the first time what beauty is. And I know--I appreciate the beautiful soul there is in you--that shines out of your eyes!" His voice was low, and a little tremulous. "I want the chance to fight for you! From that first moment I saw you in your father's office I have thought of nothing but you.

That's why I came--why I gave up business of real importance to come.

And I shall come again and again, until you tell me I may come no longer."

His voice seemed to break with the stress of deep feeling. Phil listened, first in surprise that yielded perhaps to fear, and then her head bent and she looked down at her fan which she slowly opened and shut. She did not lift her eyes until she was sure he had finished.

"By the way," she remarked, with studied carelessness, as she continued to play with her fan, "I wish I could quote things offhand like that. It must be fine to have such a memory! Let me see, what is that from--'The Prisoner of Zenda' or 'How Lulu Came to Logansport'? Oh!" (with sudden animation as Fred came bearing two plates) "there's my young life-saver now!" Then to Charles again: "Well, I shall certainly look up that quotation. It was ever so nice of you to remind me of it!"

Holton struck his gloved hands together smartly in his irritation and turned away. Phil was undoubtedly different; but she was not through yet. She called him back, one foot on the stair, and said in a confidential tone, "That nice little Orbison girl,--the blonde one, I mean, who's visiting here from Elwood,--I wish you'd take good care of her; I'm afraid she isn't having a wildly exciting time."

"This is what I call being real comfortable and cozy," she remarked to Fred as they disposed themselves on one of the lower steps.

Below and near at hand were most of the members of her family. She saw from the countenances of the three aunts that they were displeased with her, but the consciousness of this did not spoil life for her. She humanly enjoyed their discomfiture, knowing that it was based upon the dinginess of Fred's clothes and prospects. Their new broad tolerance of the Holtons did not cover the tragic implications of Fred's raiment.

They meant to protect Phil in every way, and yet there was ground for despair when she chose the most undesirable young man in the county to sit with in the intimacy of the refreshment hour at her own coming-out.

Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k leaned back from her table to ask Amzi in an angry whisper what he meant by allowing Phil to invite Fred Holton to her party.

"What's that? Allow her! I didn't allow her! n.o.body allows Phil!

Thunder!" And then, after he had picked up his fallen napkin, he turned to add: "There's nothing the matter with Fred that I know of!"

The comparative quiet that now reigned was much more to Fred's liking than the gayety of the dance. Phil treated their companionship as a matter of course and his timidity and restraint vanished. Nothing in his experience had ever been so agreeable and stimulating as this. That Phil, of all humankind, should have made this possible was to him inexplicable. It could not be that when this was over, he should be hurled back to Stop 7.

Phil, who had disposed of Charles's confession of adoration to her own satisfaction, now seemed bent upon winning some praise from the halting tongue of Charles's brother. To make conversation she directed attention to her new trinket, holding out the chain for Fred to admire the pearls.

In doing this he saw the pulse throbbing in her slim throat, and this in itself was disturbing. Her nearness there on the stairway affected him even more than on the orchard slope where he had experienced similar agitations. When she laughed he noticed an irregularity in one of her white teeth; and there was a tiny mole on her neck, just below her left ear. He did not know why he saw these things, or why seeing them increased his awe. It seemed wonderful that she could so easily slip her hands out of her gloves without drawing the long gauntlets from her arms. Farther and farther receded the Phil of the kitchen ap.r.o.n with whom he had bargained for the sale of the saddest apples that had ever been brought to Montgomery by a self-respecting farmer! When her father came to the stair-rail to ask if she felt a draft from the upper windows, Fred was shaken with fear; the thought that the airs of heaven might visit affliction upon this brown-haired and brown-eyed marvel was at once a grief to him. He felt the world rock at the bare thought of any harm ever coming to her.

"As if," said Phil, when her father had been rea.s.sured, "the likes of me could take cold. What do you do all day on a farm in winter weather?"

"Let me see; I chopped wood, this morning; and I'd bought some corn of Perry--that is, of your uncle--and went over with the wagon to get it; and this afternoon I brought the wood I had chopped to the woodshed; and then I went out to look at my wheatfield, and almost bought a cow of another neighbor--but didn't quite make a bargain. And then I began to get ready to come to your party."

"You must have worked awfully hard to get ready," said Phil, "for you were late getting here."

"Well, I loafed around outside for an hour or so before I came in," and he smiled ruefully. "I'm not used to parties."

"You seem to get on pretty well," said Phil rea.s.suringly.

One of the waiters had brought them ice-cream and cake, and after she had tasted the cake Phil caught Rose Bartlett's eye and expressed ecstasy and grat.i.tude by a lifting of the head, a closing of the eyes, a swift folding of the hands.

"How are you going to amuse yourself out there by yourself all winter?"

she remarked to Fred; "I shouldn't think there would be much to do!"

"Oh, there won't be any trouble about that! I've got plenty to do and then I want to do some studying, too. I'm going up to the University in January to hear lectures--farming and stock-raising and things like that. Perry has put me up to it. And then in between times I want to get acquainted with the neighbors; they're all mighty nice people and kind and friendly. That sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?"

"Well, it sounds wholesome if not wildly exciting. I've lost my job.

They took my kitchen away from me just as I was getting started; and I haven't anything much to do--except being sociable."

"Of course, you've come out now, and you'll be going to receptions and dances all the time."

"I can't exactly cry O joy, O joy at the thought of it. There must have been gypsies in my family somewhere. You'll think I'm crazy, but I'd like to go out right now and run a mile. But there will be skating afterwhile; and snowstorms to go walking in. I like walking in snowstorms,--the bl.u.s.tering kind where you can't see and go plunking into fences."

Fred agreed to this; he readily visualized Phil tramping 'cross-country in snowstorms. "It's an awful thing," Phil resumed, "to have to be respectable. Aunt Kate wants to go South this winter and take me with her. But that would mean being shut up in a hotel. If daddy didn't have to work, I'd make him take me to California where we could get a wagon and just keep camping. Camping out is the most fun there is in _this_ world. There's a nice wooziness in waking up at night and hearing an owl right over your head; and there are the weather changes, when you go to sleep with the stars shining and wake up and hear the rain slapping the tent. And when you've gone for a long tramp and come back tired and wet and hungry, and sit and talk about things awhile and then tumble into bed and get up in the morning to do it all over again--! Does that sound perfectly wild? If it does, then I'm crazy, for that's the kind of thing I like--not to talk about it at parties in my best clothes, but to go out and do it and keep on doing it forever and ever."

She put the last crumb of the Bartlett cake into her mouth meditatively.

"I like the outdoors, too," said Fred, for whom this statement of her likings momentarily humanized his G.o.ddess and brought her within the range of his understanding. "The earth is a good old earth. There are no jars in the way she does her business. There's something that makes me feel sort o' funny inside when I go out now and see that little wheat-patch of mine, and know that the snow is going to cover it, and that with any kind of good luck it's going to live right through the cold and come to harvest next summer. And it gives me a queer feeling, and always did, the way it all goes on--and has always gone on since the beginning of the world. When I was a little boy here in Montgomery and went to Center Church Sunday-School, the most interesting things in the Bible were about those Old Testament people, raising cattle and tending flocks and farming just like the people right here at home. I suppose it's a feeling like that I always had that makes me want to be a farmer and live close to the ground--that and wanting to earn a living," he concluded, smiling. He was astonished at his own speech, which had expressed ideas that had never crystallized in his mind before.

"That," said Phil, "is what poetry is--feeling like that."