Otherwise Phyllis Part 5

"Dear Nan: I love you, Nan," he said softly, and stepped back, waiting for her to speak.

She raised her head and their eyes met.

"Tom," she said, "you are the dearest of men; but that is not for you and me. It will never be for you and me. And please, Tom, because you are the finest of men, never speak of this again. You will promise, won't you?"

"No," he said, shaking his head slowly; "I will not promise. You have reasons and I think I know what they are. I want to talk to you soon, for this has been in my heart a long time. I meant to speak to you last spring. But now the need is greater. I not only need you, but Phil needs you."

She smiled at the mention of Phil.

"That's a poor argument. Phil really doesn't need any one but you. I should be afraid of spoiling dear, splendid Phil."

It was upon this that Rose and Phil came in from the kitchen. Rose was taller than her sister, a slender, handsome woman, with an air of distinction which dishwashing in no wise abated. She was one of those American women who wear an ap.r.o.n like a vestment--who, the _vestis domestica_ flung aside, adorn the parlor as charmingly as they grace the kitchen.

Phil began to whistle a tune, which Rose tried to identify for her by striking the chords.

"What are you two talking about?" asked Phil, turning from the piano.

"Discussing the origin of the pyramids," replied Nan, rising. "You and Rose must have settled something in all the time you took to the dishes.

It was a noisy session, too. You must have been playing drop the teacup."

Phil clasped her hands dramatically, reciting:--

"A moment then, She poised upon the dishpan's utmost verge The heirloom teapot old, with flowers bedight.

And with a cry--"

She paused, feigning forgetfulness. Her father rose quickly and caught up the imaginary fragment:--

"And with a cry As when some greedy wight, on porridge keen, Gulps it, and bawleth loud to find it hot,-- Screams for the cook and tuggeth at his sword--"

"Familiar," observed Rose dreamily from the piano. "Is it 'Pelleas and Etarre' or 'The Pa.s.sing of Arthur'?"

"Nope. 'The Bold Buccaneer,' by the Honest Iceman of Mazoopa," answered Phil.

"And here he is now," said Nan as the front door boomed and rattled.

There was no bell at the Bartletts': but from the door hung a ba.s.s-drumstick, with which visitors were expected to thump. This had been a part of the equipment of a local band that had retired from business. In the dispersion of its instruments the drum had reached a second-hand store. Nan, with a keen eye for such chances, had bought and dismantled the drum, and used the frame as a stockade for fresh chirpers from her incubator. The drumstick seemed to have been predestined of all time to serve as a knocker.

"It's Amy. I told him to come," said Phil.

Her father's face fell almost imperceptibly. The company was complete as it was and much as he liked Amzi he resented his appearance at this hour. Rose went to the door.

"It may be Judge Walters. He's been trying to get over for some time to talk about that new book on hypnotism," said Nan.

It proved, however, to be Amzi. They heard him telling Rose in the entry that he was just pa.s.sing and thought he would drop in.

"That will do for that, Amy," called Phil. "You told me you were coming."

"I told you nothing of the kind!" bl.u.s.tered Amzi.

"Then, sir, you didn't; you _did not_!"

Amzi glared at them all fiercely. His cherubic countenance was so benevolent, the kind eyes behind his spectacles so completely annulled his ferocity, that his a.s.sumed fierceness was absurd.

He addressed them all by their first names, and drew out a cigar.

Kirkwood was smoking his pipe. Phil held a match for her uncle and placed a copper ash-tray on the table at his elbow. Rose continued her search for a piece of music, and Nan curled herself on the corner of a davenport that occupied one side of the room under the open bookshelves.

"This looks like a full session; first we've had for some time,"

remarked Amzi. "Been playing, Rose?"

"No; Phil's trying to remember a tune. Whistle it, Phil."

Phil whistled it, her eyes twinkling.

"Sounds like a dead march done in ragtime," suggested Nan, whose ear was said to be faulty.

"All the great masters will be done over pretty soon by the raggists,"

declared Phil.

"Spoken like the Philistine you are not, Phil," said Kirkwood. "What you were trying to whistle is the 'Lucia s.e.xtette' upside down. Rose, let's have the 'Mozart Minuet' we used to play. We haven't had it for moons."

She played it, Phil turning the music. Then Kirkwood was reminded of the existence of his 'cello. Amzi watched him tuning it, noted the operation restlessly, and then rose demanding:--

"Nan, where's my flute? Seems to me I left it here the last time we played."

This was a joke. It had been in the house at least six years. Phil whistled a few bars from a current light opera, and pretended to be absorbed in an old etching of Beethoven that hung over the piano. She glanced covertly at her uncle, who knew perfectly well that Phil was laughing at him. Nan, meanwhile, produced the flute. It was in this fashion that the trio was usually organized.

"Bad night for asthma, but let's tackle some of the good old ones," said Amzi.

This, too, was part of a familiar formula, and Rose found the music.

Soon Amzi's cheeks were puffing with the exertion of fluting the "Minuet," while Kirkwood bent to the 'cello. Nan and Phil became an attentive audience on the davenport, as often before. When Amzi dropped out (as he always did), Phil piped in with her whistle, and that, too, was the usual procedure. She whistled a fair imitation of the flute; she had a "good ear"; Rose said her "ear" was too good, and that this explained her impatience of systematic musical instruction. Amzi abused the weather and incidentally the flute; they essayed the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria" and the "Traumerei," with like failure on Amzi's part. Then Rose played, number after number, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, without pause. It was clear that the woman loved her music; that it meant a very great deal to her. Its significance was in the fine lines of her face, beautifully grave, but lighting wonderfully through pa.s.sages that spoke to her with special meaning. Her profile was toward Kirkwood. He had, indeed, taken a seat that gave him a particular view that he fancied and his eyes wandered from her hands to her lovely, high-bred face. No one spoke between the numbers, or until Rose, sitting quiet a moment at the end, while the last chord died away, found her own particular seat by the white wooden mantel.

"I guess those chaps knew their business," observed Amzi. "And I guess you know yours, Rose. I don't know that you ever brought out that nocturne quite so well before. Eh, Tom?"

Kirkwood agreed with him. Rose had surpa.s.sed herself, in the opinion of the lawyer. Both men found pleasure in paying tribute to her talents.

Amzi turned to Nan, who nodded acquiescence. The banker really loved music, and slipped away several times every winter to Chicago, to hear concerts or the opera. On occasions he had taken Kirkwood and Phil and they had made a great lark of it.

"What's this rumor about the Sycamore Traction being in trouble?" asked Nan.

Amzi rubbed his head. He had not come to the Bartletts' to discuss business, and the topic was not, moreover, one that interested him at the moment.

"There are a lot of papers on your desk about that, daddy," Phil remarked. "But I suppose those are office secrets."

There was, indeed, a telegram from a New York lawyer asking why Kirkwood had not replied to a certain letter. He glanced at her quickly, apparently disturbed that the matter had been mentioned. Her father's inattention to the letter of the New York lawyer had, independently of Nan Bartlett's reference to the traction company, caused Phil to make certain resolutions touching both her father and herself.

"I've got my hand on that, Phil. I've answered."

Phil saw that the subject of this correspondence, whose import she had scarcely grasped, was not to be brought into the conversation. She turned away as Amzi addressed her father in a low tone.