Phil fluttered her handkerchief.
"It"s Fred!" she said. "See! There by the big sycamore."
Fred waved his cap, then dropped his arm to his side and stood, a sentinel-like figure, at the edge of his acres, etched in heroic outline against the winter sky. His trousers were thrust into his boots; the collar of the mackinaw coat he wore at his work was turned up about his throat. He leaned upon an axe with which he had been cutting the coa.r.s.er brush in the fence corners. The wind ruffled his hair as he stood thus, in the fading light. He had been busy all afternoon and quite unmindful of his aunt"s party, to which, for reasons sufficient to that lady, he had not been bidden.
A sense of his rugged simplicity and manliness seemed to be borne to Phil across the ravine. Something in Fred Holton touched her with a kind of pathos--there was in him something of her father"s patience, and something of his capacity for suffering. As she looked he swung the axe upon his shoulders and struck off homeward across the fields.
Charles sprang ahead of her and began the remainder of the ascent. It was he who was now impatient.
"We must hurry unless you want the crowd to carry us up."
"Let me go ahead," she answered, ignoring the hand he reached down to her, and eager to finish the undertaking. "There"s nothing hard about the rest of it and I know every inch of the path."
CHAPTER XV
LOIS
A lady stepped from the westbound train at Montgomery just at nightfall on the day before Christmas. The porter of the parlor car pulled down more luggage than travellers usually bring to Montgomery, and its surfaces were plastered with steamship and hotel labels. Amzi Montgomery, who had been lurking in the shadow of the baggage-room for some time, advanced and shook hands hurriedly.
"Well, Lois!"
"Well, Amzi!"
In the electric-lighted shed the lady might have been seen to smile at the brevity and colorlessness of this exchange, or possibly at the haste with which Amzi was crossing the platform to the hack-stand.
"Here are my checks, please, Amzi. Don"t be discouraged--there are only six of them!" she said cheerfully; her remarks being punctuated by the thump of her trunks as they were tumbled out of the baggage-car. She stood glancing about with careless interest while Amzi shouted for the transfer man. She trailed her umbrella composedly as she idled about the platform, refreshing herself with deep inhalations of the crisp December air, while Amzi ordered the trunks delivered to his own house.
Her brother"s perturbation was in no wise reflected in Mrs. Holton"s manner. To all appearances she was at peace with the world, and evidently the world had treated her kindly. Her handsome sables spoke for prosperity, her hat for excellent taste; she was neatly gloved and booted. She gave an impression of smoothness and finish. In her right hand she carried a tiny purse, which she loosened carelessly from time to time, letting it swing by its chain, and catching it again with a graceful gesture.
"The town may have changed," she remarked, when Amzi came back and put her into the dingy carriage, "but the hacks haven"t. I recall the faint bouquet of old times. That must be the court-house clock," she continued, peeping from the window. "They were building the new courthouse about the time I left. I miss something; it must be the old familiar jiggle of the streets. Asphalt? Really! I suppose the good citizens have screamed and protested at the improvements, as good citizens always do. It"s stuffy in here. If you don"t mind, Amzi, we"ll have some air."
She gave the strap a jerk and the window dropped with a bang.
"How"s your asthma these days? You never speak of yourself in your letters, and when I saw you in Chicago I didn"t like your wheeze."
"Thunder! I haven"t got the asthma. I"m as fit as a fiddle. Doctors tell me to watch my blood pressure and cut off my toddies. Remember? I used to like "em pretty well."
"Verily you did!"--and she laughed merrily. "You used to mix a toddy about once a month as near as I can remember. Frightful dissipation!
Unless you"ve changed mightily, you"re a model, Amzi; a figure to point young men and maidens to. Whee!" she exclaimed as the hack rattled across the interurban track in Main Street, "behold the lights! Not so different from Paris after all. What did I see there--Hastings"s Theater? Didn"t that use to be the Grand Opera House? What a fall, my countrymen! That must be where our ill.u.s.trious brother-in-law holds forth in royal splendor. What"s his first name, Amzi?"
"Lawr_i_nce," he replied, and she saw him grin broadly as the light from an overhead lamp shone upon them. "That"s what Phil calls him."
"Phil"s at home, of course?"
This was her first reference to Phil, and she had spoken of her daughter carelessly, casually. Amzi shuffled his feet on the hack floor.
"I guess Phil"s back; she"s been in Indianapolis. Phil"s all right.
There"s nothing the matter with Phil."
He was so used to declaring Phil"s all-rightness to his other sisters that the defensive att.i.tude was second nature. His tone was not lost upon Lois and she replied quickly:--
"Of course, Phil"s all right; I just wondered whether she were at home."
"She"s with Tom," Amzi added; and as the hack had reached his house he clambered out and bade the driver carry in the bags.
She paused midway of the walk that led in from the street and surveyed the near landscape. This had been her father"s house, and there within a stone"s throw stood the cottage in which she had begun her married life.
The street lights outlined it dimly, and her gaze pa.s.sed on to the other houses upon the Montgomery acres, in which her sisters lived. These had not been there when she left, and the change they effected interested her, though, it seemed, not deeply.
The door was opened by a white-jacketed Negro.
"This is my sister, Mrs. Holton, Jerry. You can take her things right up to the front room."
"Yes, sah. Good-evenin", ma"am; good-evenin". Mighty fine weather we"re havin"; yes, ma"am, it sh.o.r.e is cole."
He helped her deftly, grinning with the joy of his hospitable race in "company," and pleased with the richness of the coat he was hanging carefully on the old rack in the hall.
"Tell Sarah we"ll have supper right away. Want to go to your room now, Lois?"
"Thanks, no; I"m hungry and the thought of food interests me. You don"t dress for dinner, do you, Amzi?"
"Thunder, no! I"ll put on my slippers and change my collar. Back in a minute."
As he climbed the stairs she gave herself an instant"s inspection in the oblong gilt-framed mirror over the drawing-room mantel, touching her hair lightly with her fingers, and then moved through the rooms humming softly. When Amzi came down she met him in the hall.
"Well, old fellow, it"s wonderful how you don"t change! You"re no fatter than you were twenty years ago, but your hair has gone back on you scandalously. Kiss me!"
She put her arm round his neck and when the kiss had been administered, patted his cheeks with her small delicate hands. Supper was announced immediately and she put her arm through his as they walked to the dining-room.
"It"s a dear old house, just as it always was; and it"s like your sentimental old soul to hang on to it. Sentiment counts, after all, Amzi. Too bad you had to be a banker, when I distinctly remember how you used to drive us all crazy with your flute; and you did spout Byron--you know you did! You ought to travel; there"s nothing like it--a sentimental pilgrimage would brighten you up. If I couldn"t move around I"d die. But I always was a restless animal. Dear me! If this isn"t the same old dinner service father bought when we were youngsters. It"s wonderful that you"ve kept it; but I don"t miss a thing. You"ve even hung on to the old double-barreled pickle thing and the revolving castor."
She tasted her soup with satisfaction.
"I can see that you are not averse to the fleshpots. I dare say your bachelor establishment is a model. Don"t the neighbors try to break in and steal the help? As I remember f.a.n.n.y she always took the easiest way round. Which is Kate"s house, the one beyond the next, or the third?"
"The second; she came next. There"s nothing in between your old house and Kate"s place."
Amzi met his sister"s eyes with a scrutiny that expressed mild surprise that she should thus make necessary a reference to her former domicile, and with somewhat less interest than she had taken in the ancestral china. To Amzi her return was a fact of importance, and since receiving her telegram from New York announcing her visit to Montgomery he had been in the air as to its meaning. Jack Holton"s appearance only a few weeks earlier still agitated the gossips. He a.s.sumed that Lois knew nothing of this, as, indeed, she did not; but there was nothing in his knowledge of his sister to encourage the belief that she would have cared if she had known. His old love for her warmed his heart as he watched her across the table. In the one interview he had had with her after her flight,--an hour"s talk in Chicago,--he had not so fully realized as now, in this domestic setting, how gracefully she bore her years and her griefs! It was this that puzzled him. Sorrow was not written in her still youthful face, nor was it published in her fine brown eyes. They were singularly lovely eyes--retaining something of their girlish roguishness. His masculine eye saw no hint of gray in her brown hair. She was astonishingly young, not only in appearance but in manner, and her vivacity--her quick smile, her agreeable murmurous laughter--deepened his sense of her charm. She had not only been his favorite sister in old times; but through all these years he had carried her in his heart. And though his restraint yielded before her good humor he was appalled by the situations--no end of them!--created by her return.
Not a soul knew of her coming. As he reflected that his sisters were even then dining tranquilly in their several domiciles, quite oblivious of the erring Lois"s proximity, he inwardly chuckled. They had for years been "poor-Loising" Lois, and Jack Holton"s re-appearance had strengthened their belief that she was in straitened circ.u.mstances, a pensioner on Amzi; and they deplored any drain upon resources to which they believed themselves or their children after them justly ent.i.tled.
They would be outraged to learn that the prodigal had reentered by the front door of her father"s house, followed by a wagonload of trunks, presumably filled with fine raiment.
Amzi did not know what had brought her back, nor did he care, now that he saw her across his table, enjoying tearlessly her frica.s.see chicken, and sipping the claret he always produced for a guest. The penitential husks which her sisters would have thought proper in the circ.u.mstances were not for Lois. He could not imagine her, no matter how grievously she might sin, as meekly repenting in sackcloth and ashes. He wondered just what she meant to do now that she had come back; he wondered what her sisters and the rest of Montgomery would do! The situation interested him impersonally. It sufficed for the moment that she was there, handsome, cheerful, amusing, for he had been seriously troubled about her of late. He was aware that a lone woman, with her history, and blessed or cursed with her undeniable charm, is beset by perils, and it was a comfort to see her under his roof, with no visible traces of the rust of time.
She smiled into his eyes and lifted her gla.s.s.