She glanced at Hastings as though he were more likely than the others to respond to observations on sea travel. He declared that he always preferred winter crossings; it was the only way to feel the power and majesty of the sea.
"I always feel so," said Lois.
Amzi fidgeted about the room, wishing they would all go.
"Lois," said Mrs. Waterman, gathering herself together, "you will understand, of course, that we don"t mean to be unkind, but we feel that we have a right--that it is only proper and just for us to know why you have come back in this way, without giving us any warning, so that we might prepare ourselves--"
Lois"s brows lifted slightly; the slim fingers of her right hand clasped the gold band by which the blue enameled watch was attached to her left wrist. She tilted her head to one side, as though mildly curious as to the drift of her sister"s remark.
"Oh, you mustn"t mind that at all! I should have been sorry if you had gone to any trouble for me. Dropping in this way, what should one expect?" A pretty shrug expressed her feeling that nothing at all had been expected. "Jo, do you remember that time you were running from Captain Joshua Wilson"s cow, in his pasture over there beyond the college, and you fell over a fence and cracked a tooth, and how you bawled about it? And I suppose that gold tooth is a memento of the occasion. We used to be the maddest of harum-scarums in those days!"
It was not wholly kind, perhaps, for a woman whose white, even teeth were undisfigured by fillings thus to direct attention to the marks of the dentist"s tool in her sister"s mouth. And yet Lois had not meant to be unkind; the past as symbolized by Captain Wilson"s cow sent her off tangentially into the recent history of Captain Joshua"s family, and she demanded information as to the Wilsons" daughter Amanda, who ran away and married an army officer she had met at Columbus, Ohio. As the sisters had never liked Amanda Wilson, they were not pleased to be obliged to confess that the marriage had been a satisfactory one in every particular, and that Amanda"s husband was now a colonel. The barometer fell steadily and the gloom of the Arctic night deepened in the faces of the trio.
"Anybody have any more eggnog?" asked Amzi guilelessly.
"I think," said Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k furiously, "that we"ve all had enough of that stuff."
This was the least bit pointed, as her husband was at that moment filling a fourth gla.s.s for himself.
Mrs. Waterman renewed her attack, drawing nearer to the culprit.
"Of course, you realize, Lois, that after all that has happened, your coming back here, particularly unannounced, creates a very delicate situation. It can"t be possible that you don"t understand how it complicates things--that as a matter of fact--"
"Oh, as a matter of fact it"s a great bore to talk of it! I suppose I"m the one that"s likely to be most annoyed, but you needn"t waste any time being sorry for me. I didn"t have to come; n.o.body asked me. You"ll not be in the least embarra.s.sed by my coming. I don"t look as though I were in deep distress about anything, do I? Well, I"m not. So don"t prepare to weep over me. Tears are bad for the complexion and puckering up your face makes wrinkles."
Fosd.i.c.k snickered, an act of treachery on his part which brought his wife to Mrs. Waterman"s support. f.a.n.n.y Fosd.i.c.k was readier of speech than Josephine, who was inclined to pomposity when she tried to be impressive.
"You can"t dodge the situation in any such way; you had no right to come back. Your coming can only bring up the old scandal, that we have been trying to live down. It"s not a thing you can laugh off. A woman can"t do what you did in a town like this and come back expecting everybody to smile over it."
"And Jack Holton has just been here; that was bad enough!" threw in Mrs.
Hastings. "And if you are still running after _him_--"
"Girls!" exploded Amzi, "you"d better cut all this out. You"re not going to help matters by fussing over what Lois did. I"m sure we"re all glad to have her back; I"m sure we"ve always hoped she would come back."
"I think the least you say about it the better, Amzi," said Mrs.
Waterman witheringly. "It"s your fault that she"s here. And if you had honored us with your confidence and taken our advice--"
"Thunder! what would you have done about it! I didn"t think it was any of your business."
This from the potential benefactor of their children was not rea.s.suring.
The financial considerations crystallized by the return of the wanderer were not negligible. Every one in Montgomery knew that Jack Holton had come back to wrest money from William, and it was inconceivable that Lois had not flung herself upon Amzi for shelter and support. And as they had long a.s.sumed that she was a pensioner upon her brother"s bounty, they were now convinced by the smartness of her gown and her general "air" as of one given to self-indulgence in the world"s bazaars, that she had become a serious drain upon Amzi"s resources.
"I think," declared Mrs. Waterman, "that it is a good deal our business.
We can"t make the world over to suit ourselves, and we can"t fly in the face of decency without getting scratched. And when a woman brought up as Lois was does what she did, and runs through with her money, and comes home--"
She gulped in her effort to express the enormity of her sister"s transgressions; whereupon Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k caught the ball and flung back:--
"Of course, if Lois is in need of help, we all stand ready to help her.
She must understand that we feel strongly the ties of blood, and I want to say that I"m willing to do my share, in the very fullest sense."
Lois rose impatiently.
"Don"t be a lot of geese, you girls! Of course, you"re all cut up at seeing me so unexpectedly, but I"m not going to let you be foolish about it. It"s all in a lifetime anyway: and I really wish you wouldn"t say things which to-morrow or the day after you"ll be sorry for. I understand as perfectly as though you ran on all night just how you feel; you"re horrified, ashamed, outraged--all those things. Bless me, you wouldn"t be respectable women if you were not! If you fell on my neck and kissed me I should resent it. Really I should! You would be a disgrace to civilization if my showing up here on Christmas morning didn"t give you nausea. I"ve been divorced twice, and anybody with any sort of nice feeling about life would make a rumpus about it. I"m rather annoyed about it myself; so that"s all perfectly regular. You have said just what you ought to have said and you feel just as you should feel.
Now that"s understood, why not talk of something else and be comfortable?"
The three men had discreetly betaken themselves across the hall and the children of Amzi II were alone.
"You forget, Lois, that there are other persons besides ourselves to consider. If it were just Amzi and us--" persisted Mrs. Waterman, shifting her ground before this shameless confession.
"There"s the whole world, when you come to that," said Lois. "What"s in your mind, Jo,--Tom and Phil? Well, there"s nothing novel in that; I thought about them a good deal before I came back. You may scratch Tom off the list; he"s clear out of it. But as for Phil--"
"As for Phil, you have no right--"
"I haven"t the slightest claim on Phil, of course; I never said I had, and I don"t pretend to have. Please don"t a.s.sume, f.a.n.n.y, that I"ve lost all the wits I ever had! I"ll say to you frankly that I feel that my coming may be troublesome to Phil; and yet the fact that I am here" (she smiled and threw out her arms, allowing them to fall to emphasize the futility of words)--"the fact that I am here shows that I have considered that and decided to take the risk of coming, in spite of Phil."
"Lois, you don"t seem to have the slightest comprehension of the case--not the slightest," urged Mrs. Waterman, resenting the smile with which her sister had ended. "You brutally abandoned Phil; and now you come back to spoil her life. I didn"t suppose there was a woman in the world so callous, so utterly without shame, so blindly selfish--"
Amzi paused in his stride across the room and planted himself belligerently before his oldest sister. His eyes bulged angrily.
"Josie, you can"t talk like that to Lois; not in this house! I tell you, Lois is all right. If you don"t like her, you can let her alone. I"m not going to have you talk to her like this--not here. Now I want you to understand, you, Josie; you, Kate; you, f.a.n.n.y" (he indicated each in turn with his pudgy forefinger) "I wouldn"t let her badger you, and I"m not going to let you jump on her."
"You talk like a fool, Amzi," said Mrs. Waterman, angry tears flashing in her eyes. "If you realized what we have always stood for in this community, and what it means to you as well as the rest of us; and poor little Phil, and all--"
"What have you all got to do with Phil? Phil"s all right," he shouted hoa.r.s.ely.
"I think," shot Mrs. Hastings, "that the easiest thing for Lois, and the best thing, is for her to go quietly without seeing Phil."
"That"s my own opinion," affirmed Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k.
Lois listened with her detached air, as though the subject under discussion related to some one she knew slightly but was not particularly interested in.
"Bless me! Such a wow and a wumpus. You really think I"d better go?" she asked casually.
The three, accepting this as a sign of yielding, chorused an eager, sibilant Yes.
"Think of Phil, just at the threshold of her life. We"ve done our best for poor dear Phil," said Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k chokingly. "Amzi can"t deny that we"ve tried to do our duty by her."
"Of course, you have all been nice to her," remarked Lois, picking up a box of candy and shaking it to bring to the surface some particular sweetmeat.
"It has not been so easy to bring Phil up!" declared Mrs. Waterman, enraged that Phil"s mother should take their a.s.sumption of responsibility for the child"s upbringing so lightly, so entirely as a matter of course.
"You ought to know, without our telling you, Lois," said Mrs. Hastings, "that your coming back will be the worst thing possible for dear Phil.
If you think about it quietly for an hour or two, I"m sure you will see that."
"You ought to go down on your knees to G.o.d with it!" boomed Mrs.
Waterman, "before you think of contaminating her young life. It"s only right that we should talk to our pastor before coming to a decision."
Amzi snorted and walked to the window. There he saw as he looked out upon the lawn something that interested him; that caused a grin to fasten itself upon his rubicund countenance. Phil, under a fire of s...o...b..a.l.l.s from a group of boys who were waiting with their Christmas sleds for a chance to hitch to a pa.s.sing vehicle, gained Amzi"s gate, ducked behind the fence to gather ammunition, rose and delivered her fire, and then retreated toward the house. Her aunts, still stubbornly confronting her mother, and sobbingly demanding that Phil be kept away pending a recourse to spiritual counsel, started at the sound of an unmistakable voice. Amzi, chewing his cigar, watched Phil"s flight up the path, and noted the harmless fall of the final shots about her. She waved her hand from the doorstep, commented derisively upon the enemy"s marksmanship, and flung the door open with a bang. A gust of cold air seemed to precipitate Phil into the room.