Otherwise Phyllis Part 23

She advanced upon Nan dramatically, with arm outstretched, pointing accusingly. "Look me in the eye, Nan! Did you and daddy frame that up between you? Be careful now! Dad wrote prodigiously all last winter--let me think it was a brief; and you and he used to get your heads together a good deal, private like, and I feigned not to notice because I thought you were talking about me!"

She clasped Nan by the wrists and laughed into her eyes.

"Go and sit in your little chair, Phil. Your intuitions are playing tricks with your judgment."

"Fudge! I know it's true now. The author's name in the book is a _nom de plume_. I saw that in a literary note somewhere."

Nan had seriously hoped Phil would not learn of the joint authors.h.i.+p; but already it was an accepted fact in the girl's mind. She was smitten with contrition for her blindness in having failed to see earlier what was now plain enough! Nan was in love with her father! Their collaboration upon a book only added plausibility to her surmise.

Nothing could be plainer, nothing, indeed, more fitting! Her heart warmed at the thought. Her father stood forth in a new light; she was torn with self-accusations for her stupidity in not having seen it all before. Admitting nothing, Nan parried her thrusts about the "Gray Knight." When Phil caught up the book and began to read a pa.s.sage that she had found particularly diverting, and which she declared to be altogether "Nanesque," as she put it, Nan s.n.a.t.c.hed the book away and declined to discuss the subject further.

Nan had recovered her spirits, and the two gave free rein to the badinage in which they commonly indulged.

They were sitting down at the table when Kirkwood arrived. He had found it possible to come home for the night and run back to the city in the morning. Now that Phil's suspicions had been aroused as to Nan, she was alert for any manifestation of reciprocal feeling in her father. He was clearly pleased to find Nan in his house; but there was nothing new in this. He would have been as glad to see Rose, Phil was sure. Phil launched daringly upon "The Gray Knight of Picardy," parrying evasion and shattering the wall of dissimulation behind which they sought to entrench themselves. It was just like Nan and her father; no one else would ever have thought up anything so preposterous, so killingly funny. She went for the book and cited chapters and attributed them, one after the other, to the collaborators.

"Oh, you can't tell me! That talk between the knight and the cigar-store Indian is yours, Nan; and the place where he finds the militia drilling and chases the colonel into the creek is yours, daddy! And I'm ashamed of both of you that you never told me! What have I done to be left out of a joke like this! You might have let me squeeze in a little chapter somewhere. I always thought I could write a book if some one would give me a good start."

"We're cornered," said Nan finally. "But we'll have to bribe her."

"I came by the office and found some more letters from magazines that want short stories, serials, anything from the gifted author of 'The Gray Knight of Picardy,'" said Kirkwood. "Why not enlarge the syndicate, Nan, and let Phil in? But I've got to retire; I mustn't even be suspected. This is serious. It would kill my prospects as a lawyer if it got out on me that I dallied at literature. It's no joke that the law is a jealous mistress. And now I have the biggest case I ever had; and likely to be the most profitable. How do we come by these birds, Phil?"

"Fred Holton brought them in, daddy. You remember him; he was at the party."

"Yes; I remember, Phil. He's Samuel's boy, who's gone to live on their old farm."

Nan turned the talk away from the Holtons and they went into the living-room where Kirkwood read some of the notices he had found in his mail. He improvised a number of criticisms ridiculing the book mercilessly and he abused the imaginary authors until, going too far, Phil s.n.a.t.c.hed away the clippings and convicted him of fraud. She declared that he deserved a mussing and drove him to a corner to make the threat good, and only relented when she had exacted a promise from him never to leave her out again in any of his literary connivings with Nan.

The wind whistled round the house, and drove the snow against the panes.

A snowstorm makes for intimacy, and the three sat by the grate cozily, laughing and talking; it was chiefly books they discussed. This was the first time Nan had ever shared a winter-night fireside with the Kirkwoods, much as she saw of them. And Phil was aware of a fitness in the ordering of the group before the glowing little grate. The very books on the high shelves seemed to make a background for Nan. Nothing could be more natural than that she should abide there forever. Phil became so engrossed in her speculations that she dropped out of the talk. Inevitably the vague shadow of the mother she had never known stole into the picture. She recalled the incident of the broken negative that had slipped from her father's fingers upon the floor of the abandoned photograph gallery. Her young imagination was kindled, and her sympathies went out to the man and woman who sat there before the little grate, so clearly speaking the same language, so drawn together by common interests and aspirations.

She was brought to earth by Nan's sudden exclamation that she must go home. There was no question about it, she said, when they pleaded the storm as a reason for spending the night; she had come merely to relieve Phil's loneliness. Nan protested that she could go alone; but Kirkwood without debating the matter got into his ulster, and Phil, screened by the door, watched them pa.s.s under the electric light at the corner.

The streets were deserted and the storm had its will with the world. Nan and Kirkwood stopped for breath and to shake off the snow where a grocer's shed protected the sidewalk.

"I came back to-night," he said, "because I wanted to see you, and I knew I should find you with Phil. Nan, after what happened at Amzi's the other night I find I need you more than I ever knew. I was afraid you might imagine that would make a difference. But not in the way you may think--not about Lois! It was just the thought of him--that he had once been my friend, and came back like that. It was only that, Nan. If she had come back and stood there in the door I shouldn't have had a twinge.

I'm all over that. I've been over it for a long time."

"I think I understand that, but nothing can make any difference as to us. That is one thing that is not for this world! Come, we must hurry on!"

As she took a step forward he sprang in front of her.

"Nan, I've got to go back to the city on the morning train. I want you to tell me now that you will marry me--let us say in the spring. Let me have that to look forward to. I've waited a long time, and the years are pa.s.sing. I want you to say 'yes' to-night."

He touched her shoulders lightly with his hands. They slipped along her arms till he clasped her fingers, tightly clenched in her m.u.f.f.

"You love me, Nan; I know you do! And you have known a long time that I care for you. Nothing was ever as dear as the thought of you. Whatever has gone before in my life is done and pa.s.sed. I can't have you say 'no'

to me. Please, dear Nan--dearest!"

It was a strange place for lovers' talk, but the tumult of the storm was in Kirkwood's heart. The weariness of a laborious day vanished in the presence of this woman. His habitual restraint, the reticences of his nature were swept away. His was no midsummer pa.s.sion; winter's battle-song throbbed in his pulses. He caught her arm roughly as she sought to continue their flight.

"No, Tom; no!"

"Then why?" he persisted. "It can't be because of Lois--you can't suspect that even the thought of her wounds me now. Jack's coming back proved that to me: I mean what I say; I don't care any more! There's nothing for me in this world but you--you and Phil! The memory of that other woman is gone; I give myself to you as though she had never been."

"Oh, Tom, I don't believe you! I don't believe any man like you ever forgets! And Phil mustn't know you even think you have forgotten! That would be wrong; it would be a great sin! She must never think you have forgotten the woman who is her mother. And it isn't right that you should forget! There are men that might, but not you--not you, dear Tom!"

She shook off his hands and flung herself against the storm. He plunged after her, following perforce. It was impossible to talk, so blinding was the slant of snow and sleet in their faces. She drove on with the energy born of a new determination, and he made no effort to speak again as he tramped beside her.

When they reached the house in Buckeye Lane he sought to detain her with a plaintive "Please, Nan?" But she rapped on the door and when Rose opened it slipped in, throwing a breathless good-night over her shoulder.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BEST INTERESTS OF MONTGOMERY

Phil dropped into the "Evening Star" office to write an item about the approaching Christmas fair at Center Church, for which she was the publicity agent. Incidentally she asked Billy Barker, the editor, to instruct her in the delicate art of proof-reading. As he was an old friend she did not mind letting him into the secret of "The Dogs of Main Street." Barker's editorial sense was immediately roused by Phil's disclosure. He said he would write to "Journey's End" for advance sheets and make it a first-page feature the day it appeared.

Montgomery was a literary center; in the early eighties it had been referred to by the Boston "Transcript" as the Hoosier Athens; and the Athenians withheld not the laurel from the brows of their bards, romancers, and essayists. Not since Barker had foreshadowed the publication of "The Deathless Legion," General Whitcomb's famous tale of the Caesars, had anything occurred that promised so great a sensation as the news that Phil had ventured into the field of authors.h.i.+p. Barker even fas.h.i.+oned phrases in which he meant to publish the glad tidings,--"a brilliant addition to the Hoosier group"; "a new Jane Austen knocks at the door of Fame," etc. He jotted down a list of the commonest typographical symbols, and warned Phil against an over-indulgence in changes, as it might prejudice the "Journey's End"

office against her.

"I was about to offer you a job, Phil, but now that you're a high-priced magazine writer I'm ashamed to do it. Our local has skipped and I'm almost up against going out to chase a few items myself. You might pull out that church fair a few joints, or I'll be reduced to shoving in boiler plate on the first page; which is reprehensible. Kindly humble yourself and give me some 'Personal and Society,'--some of your highly interesting family must be doing something or somebody,--dish it up and don't spare the gravy."

"You haven't heard rumors that the Hastings is to be turned into a fil-lum show-house, have you?" asked Phil, fis.h.i.+ng a lead pencil stub from her pocket.

"Lord, no! Has our own Hamlet come to that? Write a hot roast of it; turn the screw on this commercializing of our only theater--this base betrayal of public confidence by one to whom we all looked for n.o.bler things. I'm sore at Lawrence anyhow for kicking at our write-up of those outlaws who strolled through here playing 'She Never Told Her Love.' The fact is that girl told it in the voice of one who should be bawling quick orders in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Here's where we taunt Mr.

Hastings with his own lofty idealism. Have all the fun with him you like; and not a soul shall ever know from me who knocked him."

Phil nibbled her pencil meditatively.

"You've got the wrong number. Lawr_i_nce hasn't found the price yet; he's only getting estimates; but you'd better coax him to make the change--bring the drammer closer to the hearts of the people. None of these cheap fil-lums where a comic dog runs in and upsets the tea-table, just as the parson is about to say grace, but the world's greatest artists brought within the reach of all who command the homely nickel.

Do you follow me, O protector of the poor?"

"I see your family pride is stung, Phil. Let it go at that. There's a cut of Hastings as Romeo that I'm utilizing as a paper-weight, and I'll run that just to show there's no hard feeling. By the by, Phil, how's your pa getting on with the traction company?"

"Nothing doing! I'm not as foolish as I am young. And besides I don't know."

The editor took a turn across the room and rumpled his hair. He pointed to a clipping on his desk from the Indianapolis "Advertiser" of that morning. The headlines proclaimed:--

SCANDAL IN SYCAMORE TRACTION

RUMORS THAT RECEIVERs.h.i.+P IS IMMINENT

FOREIGN BONDHOLDERS THREATENING