Otherwise Phyllis Part 53

She raised her hand with one of her quick gestures, and it rested for an instant on his arm. As she lifted her face he saw the tears bright in her eyes.

"Don't say it; don't think of it!" she whispered brokenly.

"For Phil's sake we ought to do it if we can," he persisted, surprised to find how unmoved he was.

"For Phil's sake we wouldn't if we could!" Their gaze met searchingly.

"It would be doing Phil a terrible wrong!"

"I don't understand; I can't follow that," he answered.

And still unmoved, untouched, he saw grief and fear in her eyes, her face twitching with the pain of inner conflict.

"No; you don't understand!" she cried softly. "But if you meant it--if we either of us cared any more, don't you see that it wouldn't do! Don't you know how unjust--how horribly unjust it would be to her, to--to lead her to think that Love could be like that; something to be taken on and put off? It would be an unholy thing! It would be a sacrilege! No one would be deceived by it; and Phil would know we both lied!"

"But we might work it out some way; with her to help it might not go badly. I would do my best! I promise you that," he said, more sincere than he had meant to be.

She was greatly moved and he wondered where emotion might lead her. He was alertly watchful for any quick thrust that might find him off guard.

She went on hurriedly.

"Tom," she said gently, "Phil had thought of it; she spoke of it. But nothing worse could happen to her. It would spoil the dear illusions she has about me; and in the end she would think less of you. For you don't mean it; it's only for Phil's sake you suggest it."

"And for your own sake, too; to protect you from--from just such occurrences as--"

His eyes turned away from her to the point in the hedge through which Holton had vanished.

She shivered as though a cold wind had touched her and drew the cloak closer about her shoulders.

"I don't need any one's protection. That poor beast won't bother me. I must say now all I shall ever have to say to you. We won't lie to each other; we need not! There is no real soul in me. If there had been, this house would not have been standing here empty all these years. And yet you see that I haven't changed much; it hasn't really made a great deal of difference in me. I have had my hours of shame, and I have suffered--a little. I believe I am incapable of deep feeling: I was born that way. If I appealed to your mercy now, I should be lying. And for a long time I have lived the truth the best I could. I believe I understand the value of truth and honor, too; I believe I realize the value of such things now. I'm only a little dancing shadow on the big screen; but I mean to do no more mischief; not if I can help it, and I think that at last I have mastered myself. You see," and quite composed she laughed again, "I'm almost a fool, but not quite."

He murmured something as she paused, but she did not heed him, nor ask what he had said. He was not so relieved as he had expected to be by her prompt refusal of his offer, whose fine quixotism he felt had been wasted upon her. He was nothing to her; and never could have been; and this rejection was not the less disagreeable because he had expected it.

It is difficult to imagine any circ.u.mstances in which a man will accept without resentment the idea that he is a negligible figure in a woman's life. The finer his nature the greater his astonishment at finding that she is able to complete her reckoning without including him as a factor in her calculations. And in Kirkwood's case the woman had put him in the wrong when all the right was so incontrovertibly on his side. She had taken high ground for her refusal, and he could not immediately accommodate himself to the air of this new alt.i.tude, which he had never expected to breathe in her company. Her thistledown nature might be the prey of the winds, but even so they might bear her high and far.

"I must go on and finish, for there will never be another chance. You deserve the best life can give you. I'm glad to know things have been going well with you; and Amzi says it's only the beginning. With all my heart I'm glad. It makes it easier for me--don't you see! And I know about Nan Bartlett; not from Phil, but from Mrs. King. I hope you will marry Nan; and if my coming has made any difference, don't let that trouble you! In a little while I shall be gone; but Phil mustn't know that. And I shall never come back here--you may rely on that; but I hope to have Phil come to me now and then. I want to keep in touch with her,--have some part in her life. And you needn't fear that I shan't be--quite a proper person for Phil to visit! You will believe that, won't you?"

"Yes, Lois," he said wonderingly; for he was touched by the wistfulness of her plea that he should not fear her influence upon Phil. "You wouldn't have come back to Phil unless you felt you had a right to; I'm sure of that," he said with warmth.

"No; I should not have been base enough for that," she replied, with a little forlorn sigh.

"And as for your going away, it must not be on my account. It isn't necessary for you to go."

He did not speak of Nan; nor did she refer to her again.

"I'm glad this has happened this way. I think we understand a little better. Good-night, Tom!"

"Good-night, Lois!"

Their hands touched. He saw the flutter of her cloak as she pa.s.sed round the house, seeking the path to Amzi's. The garden was very still when she had gone.

CHAPTER XXV

PHIL ENCOUNTERS THE SHERIFF

The May number of "Journey's End" containing Phil's veracious account of the dogs of Main Street created almost as much of a sensation as the consolidation of the First National with Montgomery's Bank. The "Evening Star" did not neglect its duty to Indiana literature. A new planet blazed in the Hoosier heavens, and it was the business of Montgomery's enterprising afternoon daily to note its appearance and speculate upon its course and destiny. The "Evening Star's" "local" wrote a two-column "story" about Phil for the Sunday supplement of the Indianapolis "Advertiser." The fact that Miss Kirkwood belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families in central Indiana was not overlooked; but this was merely the prelude to a breezy description of her many adventures, her athletic prowess, her broad democracy. The "Evening Star's" "local" was under obligations to Phil for many quiet news tips; and beyond question he fully balanced the account. The pastor of Center Church made "The Dogs of Main Street" the text of a sermon on the humane treatment of dumb animals--a sermon that Phil heard perforce, as she sat, blushing furiously, beside Amzi in the Montgomery pew.

Amzi nearly perished with pride. Busy as he was with the remodeling of the old bank, made necessary by the consolidation (he scorned the idea of moving his bank into the Holton property!), he found time to stand on the bank steps and invite comments on "Phil's latest";--there hadn't been a time since Phil was six when her "latest" wasn't a subject of spirited conversation. Phil's own happiness was mitigated somewhat by the fact that "Journey's End" had lately refused two other ma.n.u.scripts.

Still the editor wrote explaining why her stories were not available and urged her to try again. "Stick to the local flavor," he said, "and don't read Stevenson so much. Anybody can write stories about the French Revolution; not many are able to catch the character and life of Main Street." While she pondered this, she resolved to be a poet and sold a jingle to "Life."

Kirkwood wired his congratulations from Chicago. He had not fully recovered from the shock of Lois's declaration of her belief in Phil's genius. Reading Phil's sketch over a lonely dinner in a Chicago hotel, he was p.r.i.c.ked anew by the consciousness that he had never fully appreciated Phil's qualities. What Lois had said made a difference. He would have chuckled over the Philesque touches in "The Dogs of Main Street" in any circ.u.mstances, but he remembered enough of the commencement essay to value her changes, and to note the mark of the file on certain sentences. The thing had form and something akin to style. While he had been counseling Nan Bartlett as to "The Gray Knight," writing that was quite as individual as hers had been done without his guidance under his own roof!

In spite of his professional successes, Fate still played pranks with him. Nan had set herself determinedly against the idea of marrying him, and his a.s.surance that Lois had rejected the idea of remarriage, even for Phil's sake, had not shaken her resolution. Lois's return had dimmed the glow of his second romance. And Nan and Rose had gone to call on her--an act whose finality was not wasted on Kirkwood.

The authorship of "The Gray Knight of Picardy" was now generally known, and when the Bartletts called on Phil's mother the talk ran naturally upon books and writers; and as Nan would not talk of herself, Phil's ambitions were thoroughly discussed. Phil, knowing that the Bartletts were coming, had discreetly taken herself off. Lois's account of the visit, given before Amzi at the dinner-table, lacked all those emotional elements which Phil had a.s.sumed to be inevitable where a man's former wife describes a call from a woman whom that man has been at the point of marrying. Phil had not lost her feeling that the world is a queer place.

"They are splendid women, Amzi," Lois declared. "If you don't marry Rose pretty soon, I shall have to take the matter into my own hands."

"Thunder! Rose marry me!" Amzi e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Why not!" Lois answered, composedly dropping a lump of sugar into his coffee. "_Nan_ can't marry you; I should never have chosen you for Nan!"

The ice cracked ominously and Amzi began talking about the furniture he was buying for the new bank. Of course Lois knew! Phil had no doubts on that point. That astonishing mother of hers had a marvelous gift of penetration. Phil's adoration was increasing as the days pa.s.sed. It was little wonder that following Mrs. John Newman King's courageous example, people seemed to be in haste to leave cards at Amzi's for Mrs. Holton.

The gossip touching Lois's return lost its scandalous tinge and became amiable, as her three sisters were painfully aware. The "stand" they had taken in support of their private dignity and virtue and in the interest of public morals had not won the applause they had counted on. People to whom they went for sympathy politely changed the subject when they attempted to explain themselves. Mrs. John Newman King told the pastor of Center Church, who had sought her advice as to his own duty, that she hoped he wouldn't make a fool of himself. These were shocking words from a woman who had known Abraham Lincoln, and who was a greater power in Center Church than the ruling elders.

The Presbyterians were just then canva.s.sing the town in the interest of a projected hospital, and the "Evening Star" printed the subscriptions from day to day. Amzi's name led all the rest with one thousand dollars; and immediately below his modest "A. Montgomery," "Cash" was credited with a like sum. It was whispered that Lois Montgomery Holton was the anonymous contributor. Lois's three sisters were appalled by the increasing rumors that their erring sister had come back with money. It was a sinful thing, if true; they vacillated between demanding an inquiry as to the source of the unknown contributor's cash or boldly suing for peace with Lois and Amzi. And to add to their rage, they knew that neither Lois nor Amzi cared a picayune whether peace was restored or not. Lois's sisters were not the first among humankind to conclude that there is a difference between Sin begging bread and Sin with cake to throw away.

Lois's automobile dazzled Main Street at this juncture. The William Holton car, splendid as it had been in its day, was a junk-pile compared to it. The accompanying chauffeur received, it was said, a salary of seventy-five dollars a month. Public interest fastened upon this person.

A crowd that gathered in front of the old bank to inspect the car on the day that Lois and Phil brought it home from Indianapolis heard Mrs.

Holton address him in a strange tongue. By nightfall every one in Montgomery knew that Lois had bought the most expensive car in town; that her chauffeur was French, and that she gave him orders in his own language just as though she had spoken it all her life. Main Street was impressed; all Montgomery felt the thrill of these departures from its usual, normal life.

Lawrence Hastings carried home details as to the "make," horse-power and finish of the machine that caused his wife and two sisters-in-law indescribable anguish. Still the French chauffeur was a consoling feature; a vulnerable target for their arrows. No woman who valued her reputation would go gallivanting over the country with a foreign chauffeur, when it was the duty of Montgomery people to employ worthy college boys to run their machines whenever possible. The sight of Phil at the wheel, receiving instructions in the management of the big car on the day after its arrival, did not greatly add to their joy in life. The exposure of Phil to the malign influences of a French chauffeur was another of Lois's sins that did not pa.s.s unremarked. Still the stars would not always fight against righteousness; Phil would be killed, or she would elope with the Frenchman, and Amzi would be sorry he had brought Lois home and set her up brazenly in the house of her fathers.

Amzi, rolling home to luncheon in the new car and rolling off again with his cigar at a provoking angle, was not un.o.bserved from behind the shutters of his sisters' houses. In the bank merger he had acquired various slips of paper that bore the names of his sisters and their husbands, aggregating something like seven thousand dollars, which the drawers and indorsers thereof were severally unable to pay. The payment of the April interest and the general bright outlook in Sycamore affairs had induced a local sentiment friendly to the company that had already lost Waterman one damage suit. Fosd.i.c.k thought he saw a way of making his abandoned brickyard pay if he could only command a little ready cash. Hastings had not forgotten Phil's suggestion that he transform his theater into a moving-picture house: there were indications that the highbrows were about to make the "reel" respectable in New York, and a few thousand dollars would hitch Montgomery to the new "movement" for dramatic uplift. And here was Amzi soaring high in the financial heavens, with a sister who gave a thousand dollars to a hospital without even taking credit for her munificence!

Amzi and Lois enjoyed themselves without let or hindrance from their neighboring sisters. Packages arrived by express; decorators from Indianapolis came and went; furniture was unpacked in the front yard; and a long stone bench and a sundial appeared in Amzi's lawn, together with a pool, in the center of which an impudent little G.o.d piped joyfully in a cloud of spray. Such trifles as these testified to the prevailing cheer of Amzi's establishment.

The fact that Fred Holton had turned his farm over to Kirkwood was public property now; and people were saying that it was fine of Amzi to give Fred employment. The way in which the Holtons crossed and recrossed the trail of the Montgomerys had been the subject of much discussion.

But the situation was clearing in so far as the Holtons were concerned.

William had removed to Chicago to begin life anew; and Jack had vanished utterly, the day following the collapse of the panic. Charles, too, had disappeared. It was believed that Kirkwood had recovered enough from Samuel's a.s.sociates in the construction company to balance the deficiencies occasioned by fraudulent construction and that he was not particularly interested in Charles's whereabouts.

"How about taking a look at the farm?" asked Amzi one Sat.u.r.day afternoon. "Fred's planting corn and we'll see how the country looks."

Lois and Phil agreed that this was a capital idea and they set off in high spirits.

As they approached the farm, Jack Whittlesey, the sheriff, pa.s.sed on horseback.