"h.e.l.lo, Amy! Merry Christmas, everybody!"
Amzi walked toward Lois. "Phil, this is your mother." Mrs. Hastings glided from her post by the hearth until she stood between Phil and Lois, who stood with her back to the center table, the tips of her fingers resting upon it. Her face betrayed no apprehensions. For the moment she was out of the scene and the contest lay between Phil and her aunts.
"Phil, this is not the place for you! Go into the other room at once,"
said Mrs. Hastings, swallowing a sob.
Amzi struck a match and lighted a cigar with his habitual three puffs.
Across the flame he saw Phil sweeping the group with her eyes. She stood erect, her hands in her m.u.f.f to which particles of snow clung where it had fallen in her encounter with the boys at the gate. The crisp air had brightened her cheeks. She wore that look of unconcern for which she had been distinguished as a child. She moved her head slightly, to avoid the figure of the intercepting aunt, and met for an instant her mother"s indifferent, unappealing gaze. Her intuitions grasped the situation and weighed its nice points. Phil had rarely in her life been surprised and she showed no surprise now.
"It"s rather cold, isn"t it, Phil?" Lois remarked.
"Chilly in here--rather!" said Phil in the same key.
"Phil!" thundered the aunts.
"Christmas is nicer with snow. I hate green Christmases," observed Lois, who had not changed her position.
"I"ve never seen but two," replied Phil, as readily as though the dialogue had been rehea.r.s.ed; "and I hated them." Then, drawing her hand from her m.u.f.f, she flung it out in a burlesque of the amateur recitationist:--
"O pray, upon my Christmas morn, Let snow the leaf-shorn boughs adorn.
"How _is_ that, Amy! A little worse than my worst?" She stepped round her Aunt Kate, shook hands with her mother, then upon second thought dropped her m.u.f.f, seized both her hands, and kissed her.
"Were you all really just about going? I"m late! Made nine stops on the way, took a brief sleigh-ride with Captain Wilson, ate too much b.u.t.ter-scotch at the Bartletts", and here we are!"
She pushed a chair toward the hearth so violently that the castors screeched and her Aunt Kate jumped to avoid being run over.
"Why not sit down, mamma? Amy, where"s my present? Here"s me to you."
She picked up her m.u.f.f, drew out a parcel tied with red ribbon, with a bit of mistletoe tucked under the bow-knot, and tossed it to Amzi.
"It"s perfectly bully that you"re back," she said, addressing herself again to her mother. "Actually here all right,--a real Christmas surprise. I"ll take that up with Amy later; he"s no business playing such a trick. But it must tickle you to see how dee-lighted everybody is! Oh, are you off, Aunt Josie? h.e.l.lo, Lawr_i_nce!" She turned to wave her hand to Hastings at the door, where Waterman, Fosd.i.c.k, and he had witnessed their wives" discomfiture. Those ladies were now attempting to impart to their exits the majesty of righteous indignation.
Phil kicked an old carpeted footstool to the hearth, and dropped upon it at her mother"s feet.
"What an old fraud Amy is not to have told me!"
She waited for the ultimate sounds of departure, and kissed her fingers to the closed door.
Then she raised her arms quickly and drew down her mother"s head until their cheeks touched.
"Thunder!" said Amzi, and left them together.
CHAPTER XVII
PHIL"S PERPLEXITIES
Phil reached home shortly before one, and called her father"s name in the hall without eliciting a response. The odor of roasting turkey was in the house, and she noted that the table was set for four. The maid-of-all-work was moulding cranberry jelly when Phil thrust her head into the kitchen.
"There"s going to be company for dinner," the woman explained. "Your pa came in and told me so. He"s gone down to his office for a minute."
Phil had not heard that they were to have guests. She stood in the dining-room viewing the two extra places and wondering whom her father had asked. Usually on holidays, when the rest of the family a.s.sembled at Amzi"s, the Kirkwoods had eaten their midday meal alone. If he had asked the Bartletts" to share this particular Christmas feast it must have been without premeditation, for she had herself visited the sisters on her way to Amzi"s, and nothing had been said about a later meeting. It was not like her father to invite guests without consulting her. Her mother"s return had changed the world"s...o...b..t. Nothing was as it had been; nothing seemed quite real. The house in Buckeye Lane, about which so many happy memories cl.u.s.tered, was suddenly become distorted and all out of drawing, as though she viewed it through a defective window-pane.
She went upstairs and glanced warily into her father"s bedroom, as though fearing to find ghosts there.
As she redressed her hair she regarded herself in the mirror with a new curiosity. She was a stranger to herself; she was not the same Phil Kirkwood who had stood before the gla.s.s that morning, but a very different person--a Phil who had come suddenly upon a hidden creva.s.se in the bright, even meadow of her life and peered into an undreamed-of abyss.
If her mother--that mother who had always lived less vividly in her imagination than her favorite characters in fiction--had not proved so bewilderingly, so enthrallingly captivating, so wholly charming and lovable, she might have grappled the situation with some certainty. But no woman had ever been like that! Her mother was the most wonderful being in the world! Little by little through the years her aunts had been creating in Phil"s mind a vulgar, vain, wicked figure and pointing to it as a fair portrait of her mother. She had always disliked her aunts; she found herself hating them now with a pa.s.sionate intensity that frightened her.
She flung herself down in the window-seat and looked toward Main Street with unseeing eyes. A wonderful voice murmured in her ears, speaking a new language. She tried to recall what had been said as she crouched at her mother"s feet, her head in her lap, before the fire in Amzi"s living-room; but it was like the futile effort to recall an elusive strain of music. She had felt curiously no disparity of years in that interview; it had been like a talk with a newfound sister, or with a girl with whom she had established one of the sudden intimate friendships of school days. This wonderful Lois touched with a warm brilliancy innumerable points and surfaces that flashed and gleamed before Phil"s fascinated, eager eyes. She had satisfied her curiosity as to Phil in a dozen direct questions that elicited information without leaving any ground for discussing it. Was Phil well?--and happy? What was Phil most interested in? Had there been money enough for her needs?
And always with the implication that if the answers to these questions should not prove satisfactory, it did not greatly matter, as the deficiencies could easily be supplied.
They were to see each other, Phil and this enchanting mother--to-morrow; yes, there had been definite agreement upon that. But Lois had seemed as indifferent to days after to-morrow as to days before yesterday. And while this troubled Phil, she had caught so much of her mother"s spirit, she had been so responsive to the new amazing language that fell so fascinatingly from her mother"s lips, that she accepted the promise of a single to-morrow without misgivings. Sufficient unto the day was the wonder thereof!
She drew from her pocket a wristlet of diamonds, which Lois had given her as they parted at Amzi"s door. The gems sparkled in the sunny window. It was a trinket of beauty and value, and Phil clasped it upon her wrist and contemplated it with awe and delight. It was worth, she a.s.sumed, almost or quite as much as the house in which she lived; and yet her mother had bestowed it upon her with gay apologies for its paltriness--this mother out of a fairy-tale, this girlish mother with the wise, beautiful eyes, and most entrancing of voices.
The gate clicked and she glanced down at the yard. Her father was bringing Rose and Nan to the house! They were walking briskly, and advanced to the door laughing. The women looked up, saw Phil, and waved their hands. Her father flung a s...o...b..ll at the window. Happiness was in the faces of the trio--a happiness that struck Phil with forebodings.
She had never in her imaginings thought an hour would come when she would begrudge her father any joy that might come to him; even less had it ever seemed possible that she would look forward with dread to meeting Rose and Nan. She hid her mother"s gift and ran down to let them in.
"You remember," said her father, "the Maryland epicure"s remark about the turkey being an annoying bird--just a leetle too big for one and not quite big enough for two? I decided to see how it would work for four."
"We didn"t know we were coming, Phil, when we saw you. Your father came along afterward and found we were going to eat a plain, domestic duck by ourselves; and we weakly, meekly fell," explained Rose.
"There can"t be a real Christmas unless there"s a party; and I thought it about time we had a quiet little celebration of "The Gray Knight of Picardy"--seventh edition now printing, and the English rights well placed. Phil, it"s up to you to carry on the literary partnership with Nan. I"m out of it. I"m going to write the publisher at once to go ahead and enlighten the wondering world as to the authorship of the "Gray Knight"--Miss Nancy Bartlett, of Buckeye Lane!"
"You shall do nothing of the kind, Tom," declared Nan with emphasis; and immediately blushed.
This was the first time Phil had heard Nan call her father by his first name. To be sure, he always addressed both Nan and Rose by their Christian names; but that was not surprising, as he had known the Bartletts" well from the time of his coming to the college, when every one called him Professor or Doctor.
At the table Nan and Kirkwood did most of the talking, and now and then they exchanged glances that expressed to Phil some new understanding between them. It had never before been so clear to Phil how perfectly sympathetic these two were. Her father was a clever man and Nan Bartlett an unusually clever woman. At other times Phil would have delighted in their sharp fencing; the snap and crackle of their dialogue; but her heart ached to-day. She felt the presence of a specter at the table. She heard that other voice with its new and thrilling accents, that careless, light laugh with its gentle mockery. She was recalled from a long reverie by a question from Rose.
"How did you find the gathering of the clans at Amzi"s?"
"Just about as cheerful as usual," replied Phil colorlessly.
"Amzi"s seat will be in the front row of the heavenly choir-loft,"
observed Nan. "What he has taken from those women has given him a clear t.i.tle to joys ineffable."
"Amy is not a mere man," said Phil; "he is a great soul."
She had spoken so earnestly that they all looked at her in surprise. If she had referred to her uncle as a brick, or a grand old sport, or the dearest old Indian on the reservation, they would have taken it as a matter of course; but Phil was not quite herself to-day.
"Don"t you feel well, Phil?" asked Nan, so pointedly referring to the unwonted sobriety with which she had spoken of her uncle that they all laughed.
"The aunts must have been unusually vexatious to-day. You"re not quite up to pitch, Phil. Too much candy has spoiled your appet.i.te," remarked her father.