"I guess my sweet tooth did betray me into indiscretions," she answered with an effort at lightness; and added,
"The bon-bon and the caramel Poor Phyllis did waylay; And being only a weak mortal young thing to whom Christmas comes but once a year Is it surprising what befell?
For she knew not the sad word Nay."
"Oh, unutterable horrors! That"s the worst you ever perpetrated!" cried her father. "Just for that you shall eat another piece of mince pie."
"Nothing of the kind, Tom; we must not add to the sufferings of one whose own rhymes are punishment enough," said Nan.
The two women looked at Phil more closely. She seemed preoccupied and her contributions to their banter were perfunctory and spiritless. When they were established in the living-room, Phil crouched on a stool by the fire. Concealment and dissimulation were so wholly foreign to her nature that it was with difficulty that she resisted an impulse to blurt out the whole thing. They would know within a few hours of her mother"s return, and the fact that she had withheld the information would make her situation more difficult. She saw her father furtively touch Nan"s hand; he was beyond question very much in love with her; and Nan had practically confessed, on that memorable afternoon following Amzi"s party, her regard for Kirkwood. Then it had seemed to Phil the most natural and rational thing in the world for her father and Nan to marry; but now in this whirling chaos to which the world had been reduced, the thought of it was abhorrent. No wonder they looked at her curiously, not understanding her silence. Phil loved them all! Phil wanted everybody to be happy! Yet clearly happiness even in the small circle of her nearest and dearest was impossible. Her nimble fancy led her over rough chaotic peaks in an effort to find a point from which to survey the general desolation. In practical terms she reasoned that men and women sometimes remarried after a long estrangement. Perhaps--But she was unable to push beyond that perhaps.
The bell rang and she was glad of the interruption. Fred Holton had come to call. Kirkwood greeted him cordially, and they widened the circle before the grate to admit him. Phil addressed herself to Fred with the kindliness he always inspired in her. He was a trifle abashed by the presence of the Bartletts, and on seeing them, furtively dropped a package he had brought on a chair by the door. Phil, inspecting it glancingly, saw her name scribbled on the paper wrapper.
"Christmas gift! Who guesses this is a Christmas gift for me?"
"Everybody!" cried the Bartletts.
"I guess it"s a book. I hope it"s a book. I shall be disappointed if it isn"t a book," continued Phil.
Fred blushed, and said it wasn"t anything. The clerk in the bookstore had recommended it, and he thought Phil might like it. Phil tore off the wrapper and held up "The Gray Knight of Picardy." The sight of it sent a quick, sharp pain through her heart. It was no longer merely the best tale of the season that her father and one of her dearest friends had written, but a book her father and the woman he loved had written; and this, in the light of the day"s events, was a very different matter.
"Thank you, Fred. It"s nice of you to think of me. And I"m sure it"s a good story."
"They say it"s awfully funny," said Fred.
Nothing seemed funny to Phil; but she exerted herself to be entertaining. She was in a mood to be touched by his gift. Charles Holton had sent her a box of roses from Indianapolis and they were nodding from the tall vase on the mantel. She saw Fred eyeing them, and hastened to say that books made the finest possible gifts.
"It must be lonely in the country to-day," remarked Nan. "But I suppose you"ve spent the day in town."
"Only part of it," replied Fred. "I couldn"t desert the live stock; and I have a man there with me. We had our Christmas feast and I hopped on the interurban."
"Turkey?" asked Phil.
"No; rabbit. Rabbit"s much more wholesome for Christmas than turkey. We sell turkeys to the city folks and feast on rabbits when we need them. I poached this one, too. But don"t tell Mr. Montgomery. It ran under his fence into my pasture, and fearing it was my last chance for Christmas dinner, I pulled the trigger. Is that a high crime, Mr. Kirkwood?"
"Not at all. We"ll a.s.sume that it was really your rabbit that had just been out for a stroll on Mr. Montgomery"s side of the fence. I"ll promise to get you off if you"re prosecuted."
"I should think it would be quite grand and splendid to own a farm and go out and pick off game that way," said Phil musingly. "Monarch of all you survey, and that sort of thing. When I had a Flobert rifle in my enchanted youth and shot sparrows in our back yard, I had something of the same exalted feeling. Only our estate here is too limited. The neighbors kicked; so many wild shots. Absurd how sensitive people are.
But I suppose if I hadn"t broken a few gla.s.ses of new quince preserves the lady across our alley had put to sun in her kitchen window, I might never have lost the gun."
"I don"t seem to remember that incident of your career, Phil," said Rose.
"I hope n.o.body does. The lady"s husband happened to be the town marshal, and he told daddy a lot of sad things that were going to happen to me if I didn"t stop shooting at his perfectly good wife as she followed her usual avocations."
The Bartletts were relieved to find Phil restored to something like her normal cheerful self. They all enlarged upon the impingement of her bullets upon the marshal"s wife"s quinces, discussing the subject in the mock-serious vein that was common in their intercourse. If Phil had killed her neighbor, would it have been proper for the defense to prove that the quinces were improperly prepared? Kirkwood insisted that such testimony would have been grossly irregular and that an able jurist like Judge Walters would certainly have rejected it. They played with the idea of Phil"s heinous crime until they wore it out.
"Put on the black cap and tell me when I"m to die," said Phil. "I"m guilty. I really did kill the woman and I buried her under the plum tree in her back yard. Now let"s think of something cheerful."
Nan and Kirkwood dropped out of the circle a little later, and Phil heard them talking in subdued tones in the library. Rose withdrew to the window and became absorbed in a book.
"I saw you and Charlie that day you climbed up the bluff," said Fred the moment Rose was out of hearing. "I hope you won"t do that any more. I hope you won"t ever do things like that again!" he ended earnestly.
"It was just a lark; why shouldn"t I do it?"
"The chances were that you"d fall and be killed. You had no right to take the chance. And Charlie had no right to let you do it."
"Charlie hadn"t anything to do with it. He couldn"t have helped himself," said Phil defensively.
"Then the rest of them down on the creek should have stopped you. It was the craziest thing I ever saw."
"I suppose it was silly," Phil admitted tamely, "but it"s all over now."
It was in her heart to say that nothing greatly mattered, and yet there was a certain comfort in knowing that he cared. His blue eyes told her frankly how much he cared; and she was not unmindful of the wistful smile with which he regarded her.
His glance wandered from her face to the long-stemmed roses on the mantel-shelf behind her. He knew perfectly well where those roses had come from. She saw the resentment in his eyes. The resumption of social relations between her aunts and the Holtons that had brought her in contact with these nephews of Jack Holton struck her in a new light, with Fred there before her, with Charles"s roses flaunting themselves unrebuked in her father"s house. She had no business to be receiving Fred Holton; Charles"s flowers a.s.sumed suddenly a dire significance. She meant to be rid of them the moment she could do so without attracting attention. It was on her tongue to say something unkind to Fred; her loyalty to her mother seemed to demand it. And yet neither Fred nor Charles had been in any wise responsible for her mother"s tragedy. Fred had risen and stood before the fire with his arms folded. The care he took to make himself presentable, expressed in his carefully brushed clothes; the polish on his rough shoes; his clean-shaven face, touched her now as at other times. She wondered whether, if they had been alone, she would not have confessed her perplexities and asked his counsel. In their talks she had been impressed by his rugged common sense, and her plight was one that demanded the exercise of just that quality. Rose turned the pages of her book. Her father and Nan continued their conference in low tones in the adjoining room.
"You promise--don"t you--that you won"t ever do foolish things like that any more," and Fred put out his hand half in farewell, half as though the clasp he invited would mean a pledge.
"Please forget it. I"ll probably never have another chance. That was the kind of thing you do only once; there wouldn"t be any fun in doing it over again."
"Your father has been mighty nice to me: I wanted to tell him I appreciated it. I felt I"d like to say that to him on Christmas--just a kind of sentimental feeling about it. But you please say it for me.
He"ll understand; I couldn"t say it before the others."
She responded pa.s.sively: there were a good many things that she must say to her father!
Kirkwood and Nan reappeared as they heard Fred saying good-bye to Rose.
Nan said she and her sister must be going, too, as they had some calls to make. At the door Nan kissed Phil, and asked her to come to see her the next day. The kiss and this special invitation, half-whispered, confirmed Phil"s belief that her father and Nan would have told her of their engagement if Fred"s coming had not interfered. She was glad for the delay, and yet it would have been easier in many ways to have met the issue squarely before Nan and Rose. She and her father watched Fred and the women pa.s.s from sight toward town.
"He seems to be a nice fellow," remarked Kirkwood, as they returned to the living-room--"a clean, manly sort of chap."
"He"s all that," replied Phil. "He came to thank you for something: he"s too shy to talk much in company and he asked me to tell you how much he appreciated something or other you had done for him."
"Queer chap, for a Holton," Kirkwood observed, striking a match on the underside of the slate mantel-shelf. "There"s a real n.o.bility in that boy. He didn"t tell you what he wanted to speak to me about? That"s better yet. I imagine his brother isn"t so shy about publishing his good works before men."
Kirkwood"s eyes sought the roses. The "attentions" Phil was receiving had roused in him the mixed bewilderment and awe with which a father realizes that he has on his hands a daughter upon whom other men have begun to look covetously. Half a dozen young fellows were dancing attendance upon Phil. In the hotel and at the theater in Indianapolis men and women had paid her the tribute of a second glance, and Mrs.
Fitch had been enthusiastic about her. His tolerant spirit had not visited upon the young Holtons the sins of their uncle. Charles"s devotion to Phil had rather amused him; he had taken it as an oblique compliment to himself, a.s.suming that it was due to anxiety on Charles"s part to ingratiate himself with Phil"s father quite as much as with Phil.
"I suppose what Fred meant was a little matter between us in the traction business. You know that farm he settled on next to Amzi"s? He"s turned it over to me."
"You mean he doesn"t own it any more?" asked Phil.
"Strictly speaking, no. In the general Holton mess he thought he ought to surrender the property. Rather quixotic, but creditable to the boy.
You see Charlie was executor of their father"s estate. Charlie"s beyond doubt a very smooth young person. And no end plausible. He got Fred to take that farm in settlement of all claims against Samuel"s estate. And when Fred found out there was trouble over his father"s financiering of the Sycamore he hopped on the trolley and came to the city and turned over the farm to me as trustee. He seemed no end grateful to me for allowing him to do it."
"But you didn"t let him--it isn"t fair! Why the farm"s no good anyhow!
And besides, Charlie wouldn"t have done Fred an injury. He talked to me the other day at his aunt"s skating-party about all that traction business and I"m sure he never meant any harm. He couldn"t help what his father did. But to take Fred"s farm away--why, daddy, that would be the supreme grand lim_ite_!"
Kirkwood laughed and pinched her chin.