Otherwise Phyllis Part 4

"Oh, your old flute is over there, too," said Phil, not without scorn.

Having launched this she laughed again and the door closed upon her with a bang. She hammered the gla.s.s with her knuckles to attract his attention, flung back her head as she laughed again, and vanished.

Amzi stared at the door's rain-splashed pane. The world was empty now that Phil had gone. He drew down the shabby green blind with a jerk and prepared to go home.

CHAPTER III

98 BUCKEYE LANE

The Bartlett sisters lived in Buckeye Lane, a thoroughfare that ran along the college campus. Most of the faculty dwelt there, and the Bartlett girls (every one said "the Bartlett girls" just as every one said "the Montgomery girls": it was established local usage) were daughters of a professor who had died long ago.

Rose was the housekeeper, and a very efficient one she was, too. In all business transactions, from the purchase of vegetables to the collection of the dividends on their small inheritance, Rose was the negotiator and active agent. She was, moreover, an excellent cook; her reputation in this department of domestic science was the highest. And as two women can hardly be expected to exist on something like four hundred dollars a year (the sum reluctantly yielded by their patrimony), Miss Rose commercialized her genius by baking cakes, cookies, jumbles, and pies, if demanded. In Montgomery, where only Mrs. William Holton had ever kept more than one servant (though f.a.n.n.y Fosd.i.c.k had attempted higher flights), Miss Rose was an ever-ready help in times of domestic adversity to distracted housekeepers who found the maintenance of even one servant attended with the gravest difficulties.

Miss Nan was an expert needlewoman, and, like her sister, augmented their income by the labor of her hands. Her contributions to the pot were, indeed, much larger than Rose's. The clients she served were chiefly women of fastidious taste in these matters who lived in surrounding cities. Her exhibitions of cross-st.i.tching, hemst.i.tching, and drawn-work were so admirable as to establish a broad field for her enterprises. Her designs were her own, and she served ladies who liked novel and exclusive patterns. These employments had proved in no wise detrimental to the social standing of the Bartlett girls. If Rose baked a cake for a wedding supper, this did not militate in the least against her eligibility as a guest of the occasion. And likewise Nan could unfold a napkin she had herself hemst.i.tched for a consideration, without the slightest fear that any one would make invidious comments upon the fact.

In the matter of the respective ages of the sisters no stranger was ever informed of the exact fact, although every one knew. Judge Walters had established an unchangeable age for both of them. They were, the judge said, twenty-nine; though as they were not twins, and as he had persisted in this fallacy for almost a decade, it is difficult to see how they could both be permanently twenty-nine.

Not all the time of these ladies was spent in cooking and needlework.

Miss Rose was a musician, who played the organ at Center Church and was usually the sympathetic accompanist at all concerts given by local talent. And, as though not to be outdone, Miss Nan quietly exercised the pen conjointly with the needle. Several editors in New York were quite familiar with the neat backhand of a lady they had never seen who sent them from an unheard-of town in Indiana the drollest paragraphs, the most amusing dialogues, and the merriest of jingles. Now and then Nancy Bartlett's name was affixed to an amusing skit in which various Montgomery people found their foibles published to the world, though with a proper discretion, and so amiably that no one could take offense.

With the perversity of such communities, many declared that Miss Rose was more talented than Miss Nan, and that she could have written much better things than her sister if she had chosen. But what could have been more ridiculous than any attempt to arouse rivalry between sisters who dwelt together so contentedly, and who were the busiest and happiest women in town!

The Bartlett girls were the best friends the college boys had. If one of these ladies undertook, in the absence of a manservant, to drive the mower across their fifty feet of lawn, some youngster invariably appeared to relieve her of this task. Or if wood or coal were observed lying upon the walk in front of the Bartlett gate, it was always a question whether the Sigma Chis or the Phi Gamma Deltas would see the fuel first and hasten to conceal anything so monstrous, so revolting to the soul of young Greeks, in the Bartlett cellar. Amid all their vocations and avocations, the Bartletts moved tranquilly in an atmosphere of luxurious leisure. They were never fl.u.s.tered; their employments were a kind of lark, it seemed, never to be referred to except in the most jocular fashion. When Rose had entrusted to the oven a wedding-cake or a pan of jumbles she would repair to the piano for a ten-minute indulgence in Chopin. Similarly indifferent to fate, Nan at intervals in the day drew a tablet and fountain-pen from her sewing-table and recorded some whimsicality which she had seemingly found embedded in the mesh of a shopping-bag she was embellishing. And when, in due course, a funny-looking, canary-colored envelope carried this fragment to the desk of some bored phlegmatic editor, he would, as like as not, grin and scribble an order to the cashier for two dollars (or some such munificent sum) and pin it to the stamped "return" canary envelope, which would presently reach Number 98 Buckeye Lane, Montgomery, Indiana.

Phil Kirkwood hardly remembered a time when Number 98 had not been a safe port in the mult.i.tudinous squalls that beset her youth. The Bartletts were wholly human, as witness their pantry and garret--veritable magazines of surprises! Miss Rose was a marvel at cutting out silhouettes; Miss Nan would, with the slightest provocation, play bear or horse, crawling over the floor with Phil perched on her back blowing a horn. It was no wonder that Phil's vagrant steps turned instinctively toward Number 98. In the beginning her father used to seek her there; and having by this means learned the way, it was the most natural thing in the world for father and daughter to visit the Bartletts together. A man whose wife divorces him is ent.i.tled to some social consolations, and if tea and jam at the house of two maiden ladies of irreproachable character satisfies him, the community should be satisfied also. The gossips had never been able to decide which of the Bartlett girls was likelier to a.s.sume the role of Phil's stepmother.

There were those who favored Rose. As Kirkwood played the 'cello, Rose to some observers seemed more plausible by reason of her musical talent.

Others believed that it would be Nan, as Nan was "literary" and Kirkwood was a scholar, suspected of "writing," though just what he wrote no one was able to say. It had been said thousands of times that Amzi Montgomery must eventually marry one of the Bartletts, but here, too, opinion was divided as to which one would probably be so favored. Amzi had fluted in the Schumann Quartette, devoted to chamber music, but his asthma had broken up the club, and he now rarely essayed the instrument.

Still, Amzi loved his joke, and Nan was a joker. So it was clear that either Kirkwood or Montgomery might with propriety marry either Rose or Nan. Whenever a drought seemed imminent in local gossip, these oases bubbled.

Phil's aunts were not unaware of the high favor in which their niece held the Bartletts; nor had they failed to speculate upon the chances of Kirkwood's remarrying. They resented the idea, chiefly because such action would cause a revival of the old scandal involving their sister, which they were pardonably anxious to have forgotten. Then, too, it was their solemn duty to keep their hands on Phil, who was a Montgomery and ent.i.tled to their consideration and oversight, and if Kirkwood should remarry, Phil would be relinquished to the care of a stepmother, a grievous thought at all times.

On this rainy October evening, tea was dispatched in the gayest humor in the little Bartlett dining-room. Rose and Phil disappeared in the kitchen to "do" the dishes while Nan and Kirkwood communed in the book-lined living-room.

"You've had a talking with Phil," said Kirkwood.

"Yes; she came in this morning, when Rose was out and I said several things to her that I ought to have said long ago. It wasn't easy to say them. But it's time for her to sober down a little, though I wish in my heart she could go on forever just as she is. It doesn't seem possible that she's a woman, with a future to think about."

"Phil's future--" murmured Kirkwood pensively.

"Your future and hers are bound up together; there's no escaping that."

"I'm afraid that's so! There are a thousand things I know should be done for her, but I don't grasp them. I seem unable to get hold of anything these days."

He looked at his hands, as though wondering at their impotence. They were bronzed and rough from the camp, but his sensitive nature was expressed in them. The gray showed in his beard and hair. Where the short beard did not hide his cheeks they were tanned. His blue serge suit had been freshly pressed; a polka-dot scarf was neatly tied under the points of a white-wing collar. He suggested an artist who had just returned from a painting trip in the open--a town man who wasn't afraid of the sun. If an artist one might have a.s.sumed that he was none too prosperous; his white cuffs were perceptibly frayed. Nan Bartlett scrutinized him closely, and there came into her eyes the look of one about to say something, long withheld and difficult to say.

She was a small, fair woman, with a becoming roundness of figure. Her yellow hair, parted evenly in the middle, curled prettily on her forehead. A blue shirt-waist with a turnover collar and a ready-made skirt spoke for a severe taste in dress. A gold-wire bracelet on her left wrist and a stickpin in her four-in-hand tie were her only ornaments. She had a fashion of raising her arm and shaking the bracelet back from her hand. When she did this, it was to the accompaniment of a slight turning of the head to one side and a dreamy look came into her large blue eyes. It was a pretty, graceful trick. She did not hesitate now that her mind was made up, but spoke quickly and crisply.

"You don't work hard enough; you are not making your time count. It isn't fair to Phil; it isn't fair to yourself."

"That's true; I know it," he replied, meeting her eyes quickly.

"And now's the time for you to change; Phil needs you. Phil's going to need a lot of things--money, for example. And you've reached a time of life when it's now or never."

The bracelet flashed back under her cuff. She looked at her wrist wonderingly as if surprised that the trinket had disappeared; then she glanced at Kirkwood, casually, as though she were in the habit of saying such things to him, which was not, however, the fact.

He straightened himself and his hands clenched as though to do battle at her behest.

"Mine's a wasted life; for years everything has seemed futile. I'm glad you spoke to me. I need to be brought up short."

Nan nodded. This was not a debatable question; undeniably he did need to be brought up with a sharp turn. It was in her mind that perhaps she had said enough; but she wished to make sure of it.

"n.o.body can touch you at your best; it's your best that you've got to put into the struggle. It mustn't be said of you that you neglect business, and even refuse cases; and they do say that of you."

"I've grown careless and indifferent," he confessed; "but it's time for me to wake up. I can't see Phil heading for the poorhouse and that's where we're going."

"No doubt of it!" she a.s.sented. "Phil's aunts complain of you, and say that if you won't care for her you ought to turn her over to them.

That's funny, on one side, and on the other it isn't. There's a good deal to support their att.i.tude. Phil's needs are those of a girl ready to meet the world, and she will need money. And I've noticed that money is a shy commodity; it doesn't just come rolling uphill to anybody's doorstep."

Kirkwood knew perfectly well the elusiveness of money; it seemed less so now from Nan's way of stating the fact. When one needed a dollar one should go and find it; this was clearly Miss Nan's philosophy, and in her own affairs he knew that she had demonstrated its efficacy.

He lowered his voice as though about to touch upon a matter even more confidential than any that had engaged their attention. It was evidently something wholly pleasant that he wished to speak of; his eye brightened and his face flushed slightly. The look he bent upon her was of unmistakable liking.

"'The Gray Knight of Picardy' is booming. I saw a stack of him at Crosby's to-day: half a dozen people have asked me if I read it. It was put out so late in the spring that it's astonishing how it's carried through the summer. Some of the papers are just reviewing it--and the more deliberate journals are praising it. And when we were speaking of money matters a bit ago, I clean forgot that I have a check from the publisher that I'm going to hand you now."

He drew from his pocket a draft which she took eagerly and glanced at.

It was for two thousand dollars, payable to Nancy Bartlett. Nan slipped it quickly into the drawer of her sewing-table. As she drew her hand away, he caught and held it an instant. Nan did not look at him as she quietly freed herself. She ignored the act, though her cheek flushed scarlet. She minimized the incident by shaking down her bracelet.

"Half of that is yours," she said. "I will deposit it to-morrow and give you my check. You ought to have made the contract in your own name, but I never thought they would take it--much less that it would sell, or I should have insisted in the beginning."

"Well, I had faith in your three quarters of the work; mine is the poorest part of it."

"Your half made it possible,--the form and the planning. I never could have done a long-sustained thing like that; I'm a paragrapher, that's all."

"You're a humorist of a high order," he said warmly. "It's the huge joke of the thing that is making people like it. Let me see, the publisher is advertising a quotation from some paper that has called it the funniest book in ten years."

"That's a stock phrase of the critics," said Nan; "they merely change the t.i.tle of the book from year to year. But it's been fun doing a book that way and putting it out anonymously. Judge Walters spoke to me of it yesterday; said he had stayed up all night to finish it."

"It's going to take more ingenuity than I possess to hide the authorship; that's why I want you to carry the burden. The publisher says the public demand to know who Merlin Shepperd is. And three magazines want a short story by the author of 'The Gray Knight of Picardy.' I'll send you the letters. That enterprising Phil has an uncomfortable habit of running through my desk and I'm likely to forget to lock up these things. She thought I was working on a brief all last winter when I was doing my part of the 'Gray Knight.' But I turn the partnership over to you now--with all the a.s.sets and liabilities and the firm name and style. You are Merlin Shepperd and I am Kirkwood, attorney and counselor at law, over Bernstein's. You see," he added, smiling, "your lecture led right up to that. No more literary ventures for me!"

"Well, I'd forgotten the 'Gray Knight' for the moment; but in spite of him I believe you had better stick to the law."

"There's this, Nan," he said earnestly, looking at her with an intentness that caused her to move uneasily; "it would seem quite natural for a partnership like this to be extended further. This world would be a pretty bleak place without you. You know and understand that.

And there is Phil; Phil needs you just as I do. I mean to start afresh at the law; I mean to make myself count. And I need you."

He rose and looked down at her. It was as though by this act he presented himself as a rehabilitated Thomas Kirkwood; a man ready to grapple with the world afresh for her sake. He bent over and touched lightly her hands clasped quietly upon her knee.