Seattle R. E.175,000(about)Broken Axe (Gov't 3's)250,000A. T. & S. F. bonds20,000Phœnix Lumber75,000Other securities100,900(maybe)
His jaw fell and he gulped when he tried to speak. Even Amzi could not joke about half a million dollars.
"Thunder! You must be fooling, Lois."
"I may be fooled about some of that stuff, but those figures are supposed to be conservative by people who ought to know."
"Lord! you're a rich woman, Lois," he remarked with awe. "It's flabbergasting!"
"Oh, I haven't done so badly. You'd probably like to know how it came about, and I might as well tell you the whole story. Jack was an awful fizzle—absolutely no good. I saw that early in the game, and I knew where I'd bring up if I didn't look out for myself. He began nibbling like a hungry rat at my share of father's estate as soon as you sent it to me. I backed him in half a dozen things he wanted to go into. He hadn't the business sense of a baby, and I began to see that I was going to bump my head good and hard if I didn't look sharp. He began to cheer himself during his failures by getting drunk, which wasn't exactly pretty. He went his way and I went mine, and as he lied to me about everything I began to lie to him about my money. I made some friends, and one of these happened to be the wife of a banker with brains. Through him I made some small turns in real estate, covering them up so Jack wouldn't know. The fifth year after I left here I made twenty thousand dollars in one turn. Then I grub-staked two young fellows who wanted to try their luck in Nevada—nice college boys, all on the square. I invested about two thousand dollars in those youngsters, and as a result got into Broken Axe. It was so good that it scared me, and I sold out for the two hundredand fifty thousand you see on the slip there, and bought Government bonds with it. My banker covered all these things up for me as long as I had Jack on my hands. When he became intolerable I got rid of him, legally, for fear he'd cause trouble if he found what I'd been doing. I'm a little tired of running my own business now and mean to dump it off on you if you don't mind. I left my papers in a safety vault in Chicago, but here's my Phœnix Lumber and a jumble of miscellaneous junk I want to send West to be sold so I can put it into things around here. I'm not going back there any more."
"Lord!" he ejaculated, rubbing his head. "You made all that money yourself?"
"Sheer luck, mostly. But it isn't so bad, take it all round. By the way, in that junk there are some Sycamore Traction bonds I took off the bank's hands out there. They were carrying them as collateral for a man Sam Holton stung on one of his Western trips. He'd planted all he could in New York and had to try a new field. The bank foreclosed on the bonds and I bought twenty of them at sixty-five. I suppose from what I hear that they're not good for much but kindling."
"You got 'em at sixty-five, Lois?"
"The bank only lent on them at that, and there was no market for them out there. What's going to become of that road?"
Amzi glanced toward the empty counting-room where a single clerk was sealing the mail.
"Tom's trying to save it. And I've been buying those things myself at seventy."
"You think it's a good buy at that? Going to clean up something out of it?"
Amzi flushed, and moved uneasily in his seat.
"No. That's not just the way of it. I don't want to make any money out of it; neither does Tom. We're trying to protect the honest people around here at home who put their money into that scheme. Sam and Bill Holton made a bigplay for small investors, and a lot of people put their savings into it—the kind o' folks who scrimp to save a dollar a week. Tom's trying to sift out the truth about the building of the line, and if he can force the surrender of the construction company's graft over and above the fair cost of the road, Sycamore will be all right. Your bonds are good, I think. People have been up in the air over the rumors, and anxious to sell at any price. What I'm doing, Lois, as far as I'm able—"
He fidgeted uneasily, seemingly reluctant to disclose just what he was doing.
"Well," she said impatiently.
"I'm picking up all I can from these little fellows—farmers, widows, and so on, and if Tom works out his scheme and the bonds are good, I'm going to let them have them back. That's all," he ended shamefacedly; and added, as though such a piece of quixotism required justification to a woman who had rolled up a fortune and was therefore likely to be critical of business methods, "I suppose I'd be entitled to interest."
"I suppose you would, you gay Napoleon of finance!" She looked at him musingly with good humor and affection in her fine eyes.
"I sort o' like this old town, Lois, and I don't want any harm to come to the folks—particularly these little fellows that don't know how to take care of themselves."
"Is Tom animated by the same philanthropic motives, or is he going to get a fee for his work?"
"Oh, he'll get paid all right. It's different with Tom."
"I suppose so. He ought to have a good fee if he can straighten out that tangle. But, Amzi—" She hesitated a moment, then began again more deliberately. "If you're getting more of those bonds than you want, you might buy some with my money—I mean with a view to taking care of these home investors who are in a panic about Sycamore. I suppose I owe something to the community myself—after—"
She gave him her quick, radiant smile.
He nodded gravely.
"All right, Lois. I'll remember that. And I'll tell you something else, now that we're on business matters. The First National Bank over the way there is built up in the air too high; it's got all the weaknesses of the Holton family—showy without any real bottom to it. Some of their stock has always been owned around through the state—quite a bunch of it—and Bill has had to sell part of his own holdings lately; he's got only a scant majority. I've been picking up a little myself, on the quiet. After Tom gets through with the Holtons, I doubt if Bill's going to be able to hold on. I know his line of customers; I guess I could tell you about every piece of paper he's got. It's a poor line, wobbly and uncertain. There was a new examiner here not long ago, and he stayed in town two or three days when he usually cleans up in a day. Banking is a business, Lois, not a pastime, and Bill isn't a banker; he's a promoter. Do you get the idea?"
"I think I see the point, but if his bank's going to smash, why don't you keep away from it? There's a double liability on national bank stock, isn't there? Seems to me that's the reason I never bought any."
"Right, Lois; but I don't intend the First shall bust. It won't do me or my bank or the town any good to have it go to smash. A town of the size of this don't live down a bank failure in one generation. It soaks clear in. I've got enough now to assert my rights as a stockholder, only I'm keeping under cover; there's no use in screaming in the newspapers. I haven't anything against Bill Holton, and if he pulls through, all right; but if he can't—well, I've never wanted to nationalize this bank, but that would be one way of doing it."
"You seem to be full of large thoughts, brother. You may play with my money all you like in your charitable games, with a few reservations. I like to eat and I don't want to spend my old age in the poorhouse. There's cash enough here to run me for some time and you can use half of thatin any way you like. I'll take any chance you do, and you'll find I won't cry if the boiler bursts. My Seattle real estate is all right—and I mean to hold fast to it. Now I want to do something for Phil; I want to make sure she never comes to want. That's only right, you know."
She waited for his affirmation.
"You ought to do it, Lois," he said. "I mean to do the right thing by her myself. If I should die to-night, Phil would be taken care of."
"That's like you, Amzi, but it isn't necessary. I want to set aside one hundred thousand for Phil. I'd like to make a trust fund of it, and let her have the income from now on, and turn over the principal when she's thirty, say. How does that strike you?"
"It's splendid, Lois. By George, it's grand!"
He blew his nose violently and wiped his eyes. And then his humor was touched again. Phil, the long-unmothered, the Main Street romp, the despair of sighing aunts, coming in for a hundred thousand dollars! And from the mother whom those intolerant, snobbish sisters had execrated. He was grateful that he had lived to see this day.
"You've been fine to Phil, and I appreciate it, Amzi. She's told me all about it; the money you offered her and all that; and how you've stood by her. Those dear sisters of mine have undoubtedly worked me hard as an awful example. If they hadn't painted me so black, the dear beautiful child wouldn't have warmed to me as she has."
"If the girls knew you had all that money, Lois, it would brace 'em up a good deal. It's a funny thing about this funny old world, how the scarletest sins fade away into pale pink at the jingle of money."
This bit of philosophy seemed not to interest her; she was thinking of something else, humming softly. Her sins were evidently so little in her mind that she paid no heed to his remark or the confusion that covered him when he realized that he had been guilty of a tactless and ungracious speech.
"Mrs. King called on me this afternoon, the dear old soul."
"You don't say!"
"I do, indeed. She put on her best clothes and drove up in the old family chariot. She hasn't changed a bit."
Amzi sat pigeon-toed. Mrs. John Newman King, whose husband had been United States Senator and who still paid an annual visit to Washington, where the newspapers interviewed her as to her recollections of Lincoln, was given to frank, blunt speech as Amzi well knew. It was wholly possible that she had called on Lois to administer a gratuitous chastisement, and if she had done so, all Montgomery would know of it.
"Don't worry! She was as nice as pie. Josie had kindly gone to see her to tell her the 'family' had warned me away; the 'family' wanted her to know, you know. Didn't want an old and valued friend like the widow of John Newman King to think the good members of the House of Montgomery meant to overlook my wickedness. Not a bit of it! You can hear Josie going on. She evidently laid it on so thick it made the old lady hot. When she came in, she took me by both hands and said, 'You silly little fool, so you've come back.' Then she kissed me. And I cried, being a silly little fool, just as she said. And she didn't say another word about what I'd done or hadn't done, but began talking about her trip abroad in 1872, when she saw it all, she says—the Nile and everything. She swung around to Phil and told me a lot of funny stories about her. She talked about Tom and you before she left; said she'd never made out how you and Tom meant to divide up the Bartlett girls; seems to be bent on marrying you both into the family."
"Thunder!" he exploded. This unaccountable sister had the most amazing way of setting a target to jingling and then calmly walking off. The thought of her husband's marrying again evidently gave her no concern whatever.
"Not nice of you to be keeping your own prospects a dark secret when I'm living under the same roof with you. Out with it."
"Don't be foolish, Lois."
"But why don't you be a good brother and 'fess up? As I remember they're both nice women—quite charming and fine. I should think you'd take your pick first, and then let Tom have what's left. You deserve well of the world, and time flies. Don't you let my coming back here interfere with your plans. I'm not in your way. If you think I'm back on your hands, and that you can't bring home your bonny bride because I'm in your house, you're dead wrong. You ought to be relieved." She ended by indicating the memorandum of her assets; and then tore it into bits and began pushing them into a little pile on the table.
"It must be Rose—the musical one. Phil has told me about the good times you and she and Tom have had in Buckeye Lane. I looked all over the house for your flute and wondered what had become of it; so you keep it there, do you—you absurd brother! Rose plays the piano, you flute, and Tom saws the 'cello, and Nan and Phil are the audience. By the way, Mrs. King mentioned a book Nan Bartlett seems to be responsible for—'The Gray Knight of Picardy.' Everybody was reading it on the train when I came out, but I didn't know it was a Montgomery production. Another Hoosier author for the hall of fame! It comes back to me that Nan always was rather different—quiet and literary. I don't doubt that she would be a splendid woman for Tom to marry."
"I don't know anything about it," said Amzi.
"Humph!" She flung the scraps of paper into the air and watched them fall about him in a brief snowstorm. She seemed to enjoy his discomfiture at the mention of the Bartletts. "Let's not be silly, you dear, delightful, elusive brother! If you want to marry, go ahead; the sooner the better. And if Tom wants to try again, I'll wish him the best luck in the world—the Lord knows I ought to! I suppose it's Nan, the literary one, he's interested in. She writes for the funny papers; Phil told me that; and if she's done a book that people read on trains, she'll make moneyout of it. And Tom's literary; I always had an idea he'd go in for writing sometime."
She mused a moment while Amzi mopped his head. He found it difficult to dance to the different tunes she piped. He would have given his body to be burned before referring to the possibility of Tom's marrying again; and yet Lois broached the subject without embarrassment. Nothing, in fact, embarrassed her. He knew a great banker in Chicago who made a point of never allowing any papers to lie on his desk; who disposed of everything as it came; and Lois reminded him of that man. There was no unfinished business on her table, no litter of memories to gather dust! He not only loved her as a sister, but her personality fascinated him.
"They've been good to Tom; and they've been perfectly bully to Phil. They're fine women," he said. "But as to whether Tom means to marry, I don't know; I honestly don't."
"Tut! You needn't be so solemn about it. I intend to see that you get married. If you wait much longer, some widow will come along and marry you for your money—a poor shrimp of a woman with a lot of anæmic children to worry you into your grave. And as for Tom, the quicker the better. I wonder—"
He waited while she wondered. She had an exceedingly pretty way of wondering.
"I wonder," she finished briskly, as though chagrined that she hadn't thought of it before—"I wonder if I oughtn't to tell Tom so!"
The "Thunder!" died in his throat at the appalling suggestion.
"O Lord,no!" he cried hoarsely.
When he had recovered from the first shock of his wife's return, Kirkwood adjusted himself to the new order of things in a philosophic temper. Nan had withdrawn absolutely her day-old promise to marry him. That episode in his life was ended. He felt the nobility of her attitude without wholly accepting its conclusions. He had tried to persuade her that the geography of the matter had nothing to do with it; that having promised to marry him when they believed Lois to be safely out of the way, her return did not affect their status in the least. This was the flimsiest casuistry, as he well knew. It made a tremendous difference where Lois was!
"I have to go away to-morrow, Phil, and I'm likely to be in Indianapolis much of the time until spring. I can't take you with me very well; a hotel is no place for you, and I shall be very busy. And I can't leave you here alone, you know."
His tone was kind; he always meant to be kind, this dear father of hers! He hurried on with an even greater thoughtfulness to anticipate a solution of this problem which had occurred to her instantly, but which she lacked the courage to suggest.
"I saw your Uncle Amzi to-day and had a long talk with him about you. I proposed that you go to his house and stay, at least until I get through my work with the Sycamore Company. We won't make any definite date for your return, for the reason that I don't just know when I'll be free to settle down here again. Amzi was perfectly agreeable to the idea—quite splendid about it, in fact. Your mother, it seems, means to stay with him. And now there's this further thing, Phil. You won't mind my going into it a little bit,once and for all. The law gave you to me long ago, but apart from that I suppose I have a certain moral claim to you. But I want you to feel free to do as you like where your mother's concerned. What I said of her yesterday I'm sorry for; I shouldn't have done that if I'd been myself. And I'm not making it necessary for you to make a choice between us. We're old comrades, you and I, Phil, and there can't be any shadow of a difference between us, now or ever. It's the simplest and easiest thing for you to go to your uncle's house, and we won't even consider the fact that your mother is there; we'll just assume that her being there is the most natural thing in the world, and that it's a matter of our common convenience for you to be there, too. You see how perfectly easy and natural it all comes about."
She clung to him, the tears welling. She had never been disappointed in him, and this generosity moved her deeply. He was making it easy for her to go to her mother; that was all. Her soul rebelled against the fate that made necessary any choice when her father was so gentle, so wise, so kind, and her mother so transcendently charming and lovable.
"You are so good to me; you have always been so good!" she sobbed. "And I'm sorry I was ugly yesterday, about Nan. You know I love Nan. No one was ever kinder to me than Nan—hardly you, even! And I don't want you to give her up; you need each other; you do understand each other! Oh, everything is so queer and wrong!"
"No, Phil; things are not as queer and wrong as they look. Don't get that idea into your head. Life isn't queer or wrong; life simply isn't as easy as it looks, and that's very different."
He smiled, turning her face so that she could see that he smiled not unhappily.
"But I don't want you to go away; I'd die if I thought I shouldn't see you any more—and all the good times we've had, right here in this old house—and everything—"
"But this isn't the end of things. When I'm back, as Ishall be for a day or two frequently, I'll always let you know; or you can run over to the city and do a theater with me whenever you like. So let's be cheerful about everything."
The passing of her trunk from her father's house to her uncle's was not neglected by the gossips. Her three aunts noted it, and excoriated Kirkwood and Amzi. They took care that every one should know how they felt about the transfer of poor, dear Phil (on whom they had lavished their love and care for years, to the end that she might grow up respectable, etc., etc.) to a roof that sheltered her Jezebel of a mother.
"That was nice of him," said Lois, when Phil explained her coming. "How's your father getting on these days?"
"Oh, quite well!" Phil replied.
She was establishing herself in a room adjoining her mother's. Lois, in a flowered silk kimona, commented upon Phil's clothes as they were hauled from the trunk. Her opinions in the main were touched with her light, glancing irony.
"I'll wager Jo bought that walnut-stain effect," she remarked, pointing an accusing finger at a dark waist. "That has Josephine stamped on it. Poor old soul!"
Her manner of speaking of her sister set Phil to giggling. Mrs. Waterman had bought that particular article over Phil's solemn protest, and she now sat on the bed and watched her mother carry the odious thing gingerly by the collar to the door and fling it in the direction of the back stairs.
Lois brought from her own room a set of silver toilet articles and distributed them over the top of Phil's bureau.
"I forgot all about these, Phil; but they fit in handily right here. A little self-indulgence of my own, but my old ones are good enough. Oh, please don't!" she exclaimed, as Phil began to thank her. "Why shouldn't you have them? Who has a better right to them, I'd like to know!"
Whereupon she began experimenting with the nail-polisher from Phil's set.
"This is a good polisher, Phil. I'm going to show you how to do your own manicuring—every lady her own maid. Sarah dug up a colored hairdresser, manicurist, and light-running domestic chatterbox this morning, and she gave my hair a pulling I shan't forget in a hurry. Never again! If you can't have a trained maid, you'd better be your own beautifier. I had a wonderful girl the last time I was over, and took her with me on a motor trip through the château country. She was an outrageous little flirt. Two chauffeurs got into a row about her during the week we spent at Tours, and one pounded the other into a pulp. The French rural police are duller than the ox, and they locked up Marie as a witness. Imagine my feelings! It was very annoying."
Her smile belied the annoyance. Phil surmised that she had enjoyed the experience; but Lois added no details to her hasty picture. Lois did not trouble herself greatly with details; everything with her was sketchy and impressionistic.
"What about boys, Phil?"
"I've had one proposal; he was a senior with a funny stammer. He went away with his diploma last June, and said he'd never forget. I got his cards to-day. She's a Lafayette girl he had down for the 'Pan' in his senior year. She has golden hair," Phil added musingly.
"The scoundrel; to forget you as quick as that!" And Lois laughed as Phil bent her head and clasped her hands in a mockery of dejection. "You've come out and I suppose you are asked to all the parties. Let me see, when I was a girl there were candy-pullings, and 'companies' where you sat around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards—authors, most likely—or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance. Wholesome but not exciting."
"Oh, we're livelier and better than that! They have real balls now at the Masonic Hall; and all the fraternities havedances, and there's the Pan-Hellenic, and so on. And there are dinners in courses, and bridge no end!"
"Bridge!"
Lois shrugged her shoulders, lifted her pretty brows, and tossed the nail-polisher on to the bureau to emphasize her contempt for bridge in all its forms.
"As to young men, Phil. Tell me all about the Montgomery cavaliers."
"Oh, every girl knows all the boys. They are divided into two classes as usual, nice and un-nice. Some of them have flirted with me and I have flirted with them. I suppose there was nothing very naughty in that."
"We will pass that for the present. Tell me about the young fellows who pay you attentions."
Phil ran over the list, Lois interrupting when some familiar name arrested her attention. Phil hit off one after the other in a few apt phrases. Her mother in a rocking-chair, with arms folded, was more serious than in any of their previous talks. What Phil disclosed was only the social experience of the average country-town girl. The fact that she had made a few acquaintances in Indianapolis interested her mother.
"The Fitches? Yes; nice people. That was through your father? All right. Go on."
"Well, there are the two Holton boys," said Phil, self-conscious for the first time. "You see, my aunts thought everything ought to be fixed up with the Holtons, and they asked Mr. and Mrs. William to my party, and threw in Charlie and Ethel, and I suggested that they add Fred, too. They are Samuel's children. There being the two brothers it didn't seem nice to leave out one; and I already knew Fred anyhow."
"Why this sudden affection of your aunts for the Holtons?—there is a reason for everything those creatures do."
"Mrs. William is stylish and does things. Her maid wears a cap when she opens the door, and Mrs. William makes her calls in a neat electric."
"Everything is explained quite satisfactorily, Phil. Amzi told me our sisters had buried the hatchet, but he didn't put it quite as clearly as you do. He did tell me, though, that Jack had spoiled your beautiful party by turning up drunk. That was nasty, vile," she added, shrugging her shoulders. "Well, about these nephews?"
"Charlie is older, and very citified; quite the most dashing man who lightens our horizons. He sends me flowers and bon-bons, most expensive. And he's a joy at paying compliments; makes you feel that you're the only one, or tries to. He has very large ideas about business and life generally. But nice, I think, and kind and generous. But, mamma—"
She paused, disconcerted by a sudden keen look her mother gave her.
"He sounds like an agreeable person," remarked Lois, glancing at the point of her slipper.
"What I started to say was that if you think I shouldn't see them any more—"
"Bless me, no! I see what's in your mind, Phil, but you needn't trouble about that. We're just trying to get acquainted, you and I. We understand each other beautifully, and after while we'll see whether we have any advice for each other. At your age I hadn't the sense of a kitten. You're most astonishingly wise; I marvel at you! And you've grown up a nice, sensible girl in spite of your aunts—none of their cattishness—not a hint of it. I can't tell you how relieved I am to find you just as you are. The way they have cuddled up to the Holtons is diverting, but nothing more. It's what you would have expected of them. The proud and haughty Montgomerys turned snobs! It's frightful to think of it! As for me, I have nothing against the Holtons. I'm this kind of a sinner, Phil: I carry my own load. No shoving it off on anybody else! Some people are born with ideals; I wasn't! But I hope to acquire some before I die; we're all entitled to a show at them. But, bless me, what are we talking about? There's the other Holton boy; what's he got to say for himself?"
"Oh, he'd never say it if it were left to him! He's shy, modest, proud. No frills."
"Handsome?"
"Well, he has a nice face," Phil answered, so earnestly that her mother laughed. "And he's modest and genuine and sincere."
"Those are good qualities. As near as I can make out, you like all these young men well enough—the boys you knew in high school and the college boys. And these Holtons have broken into the circle lately, and have shown you small attentions—nothing very important."
"Charlie sends me American Beauties, and Fred has brought me quails and a book."
"What was the book?"
"'The Gray Knight of Picardy.'"
"That's Nan Bartlett's?" Lois looked at the palm of her hand carelessly.
"Yes; it's a great success—the hit of the season."
"I suppose your father and Nan have been good friends—literary interests in common, and all that?"
"Of course," Phil answered, uncomfortable under this seemingly indifferent questioning.
"I have read the story. There are pages in it that are like your father. I suppose, seeing so much of each other, they naturally talked it over—a sort of collaboration?"
The question required an answer, and Phil shrank from answering. Closeted with her mother she was reluctant to confess how close had been the relationship between her father and Nan Bartlett. Her mind worked quickly. She was outspokenly truthful by habit; but she was a loyal soul, too. She decided that she could answer her mother's question without violating her father's confidence as to his feelings toward Nan. That was all over now; her father had told her so in a word. Lois hummed, picking bits of lint from her skirt while Phil deliberated.
"Father did help with it. I suppose he even wrote part of it, but nobody need know that. Daddy doesn't mean to goin for writing; he says the very suspicion that he's literary would hurt him in the law."
"I suppose he helped on the book just to get Nan interested. Now that she's launched as a writer, he drops out of the combination."
"Something like that. Daddy is very busy, you know."
Phil entertained views of her own as to the cause of her father's sudden awakening. She was sure that his interest in Nan was the inspiration of it, quite as much as alarm at the low ebb of his fortunes. In the general confusion into which the world had been plunged, Phil groped in the dark along unfamiliar walls. It was a grim fate that flung her back and forth between father and mother, a shuttle playing across the broken, tangled threads of their lives. She started suddenly as a new thought struck her. Perhaps behind this seemingly inadvertent questioning lay some deeper interest. Suddenly the rose light of romance touched the situation. Phil looked at Lois guardedly. What if—? With an accession of feeling she flung herself at her mother's knees and took her hands.
"Could you and daddy ever make it up? Could you do that now, after all these years?" she asked earnestly.
Lois looked at her absently, with her trick of trying to recall a question not fully comprehended.
"Oh,that! Never in this world! What do you think your father's made of?" Again the shrug, so becoming, so expressive, so final! She freed her hands, and drew out and replaced a hairpin. For an instant Phil was dismayed, but once so far afield in dangerous territory she would not retreat.
"But what would you say?" she persisted.
"Dear Phil, don't think of such a terrible thing; it fairly chills me. Your father is a gentleman; he wouldn't—he wouldn't do anything so cruel as that!" she said ambiguously.
"I don't see how it would be cruel, if he meant it—if he wanted to!"
"That's because you are an angel and don't know anything about this sad old world of ours. Life isn't like thestory-books, Phil. In a novel a nice dear daughter like you might reconcile her parents with tears and flowers and that sort of thing; but in real life it's very different as you will see when you think of it; only I don't want you to think of it at all. I believe you like me; we hit it off quite wonderfully; and I should expect you to hate me if I ever dreamed of anything so contemptible as spoiling a man's life twice."
And remembering Nan, Phil could not argue the matter. She was unable to visualize her father on his knees to her mother. No flimsy net of sentiment flung across the chasm could bring them within hailing distance of each other; they were utterly irreconcilable characters. It was incredible that they had ever pledged themselves to love and cherish each other forever.
"Phil, what did your father say about my coming back?" asked Lois abruptly.
Phil hesitated. Her mother looked at her keenly in that instant of delay, and then laid her hand gently upon Phil's lips.
"No; don't answer that! It isn't a fair question. And now let us forget all these things forever and ever!"
She proposed a walk before dinner. "I'll get into my boots and be ready in a minute."
Phil heard her whistling as she moved about her room.
Charles Holton met his brother Fred in the lobby of the Morton House on an afternoon near the end of January. Charles was presenting a buoyant exterior to the world despite a renewal of the disquieting rumors of the fall as to Sycamore Traction and equally disagreeable hints in inner financial and legal circles as to the reopening of Samuel Holton's estate. He resented Fred's meddling in the matter; he was the head of the family and a man of affairs, and he was not pleasantly impressed by the fact that on two occasions to his knowledge Fred had visited Kirkwood at his Indianapolis office.
"I want to see you," said Charles. "Why don't you come to see me when you're in the city and save me the trouble of chasing over here?"
"Well, Charlie, you've found me now. What is it you want?"
"Come up to my room. I don't care to have all Montgomery hear us."
When the door closed on them, Charles threw off his overcoat and confronted his brother with a dark countenance.
"You're playing the devil with the whole bunch of us—do you realize that! You've been sneaking over to Kirkwood to tell him all our family history. You think by playing up to him you'll get a lot of money. If you had any claims against father's estate you ought to have come to me with them—not gone to the man that's trying to pull us all down."
"Stop, right where you are! I went to Kirkwood because I felt that the only square thing was to turn the farm over to him until things were straightened out. And after I'dturned in the farm, you fell over yourself to surrender some stuff you had—things you'd tried to hide or placed a fake appraisement on."
Charles, standing by the window with his hands in his pockets, smiled derisively. Fred's long ulster accentuated his rural appearance. He was a big fellow and his deep voice had boomed with an aggressive note his brother resented.
"Don't bawl as though you were driving cattle. There's no need of telling all Main Street our affairs. Do you know what's the matter with you—Kirkwood's working you! He's trying to scare you with threats of the penitentiary into telling him a lot of stuff about the family. He meant to try it on me, but I beat him to it—I told him to go to the bottom of everything. And if you'd kept your mouth shut I'd have taken care of you, too. You took that farm with your eyes open; and I'll say to you right now that you got a better share of the estate than Ethel and I did."
"Then you haven't anything to be afraid of. If it's all straight there can't be any trouble. Is this all you wanted?"
This was evidently not in the least what Charles wanted, for he changed his tone and the direction of the talk.
"You know, Fred, I was in father's confidence very fully. I am older than you, and I was associated with him in his schemes and knew all about them. Father was a very able man; you know that; everybody said he was one of the shrewdest and most farseeing men in the state. I won't say that his methods were always just what they should have been; but he's dead and gone, and it's not for us to jump on him or let anybody else kick him. So far we understand each other, don't we?"
"All right; hurry up with the rest of it."
"This is not a hurrying matter. I've got to take you into my confidence, and I want it understood that what I say doesn't go back to Kirkwood. He's a relentless devil, once he gets started. I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that he may have a motive for pursuing us—you and me and anyother Holton he has a chance to injure. You see that point, don't you?"
"No. What is it?"
"Well, you're duller than I think you are if it hasn't occurred to you that Kirkwood is trying to even up with us for the loss of his wife. It was our dear Uncle Jack that ran off with her; it was a Holton that did it! You recollect that, don't you?"
"I seem to recall it," replied Fred ironically. He had mechanically drawn out his pipe and was filling it from a canvas bag of cheap tobacco.
"And that's all there is to it. Kirkwood had mooned around town here for years, doing nothing. Then suddenly an old friend of his in the East took pity on him and gave him this Sycamore Company to meddle in, and he's contemptible enough to use a law case for personal vengeance against perfectly innocent people. And you walked into the trap like a silly sheep!"
"You know you don't believe that, Charlie. Kirkwood isn't that kind of man. He's on the level and high grade."
"He may be all that; but he's a human being too. There's no man on earth who'd pass a thing like that. An ignorant, coarse beast would have shot somebody; but an educated man like Kirkwood calculates carefully and sticks the knife in when he sees a chance to make it go clear through. That girl of his is the cutest kid in Indiana, and I wouldn't do anything to hurt her. But we've got to protect ourselves, you and I, Fred. We're not responsible for Uncle Jack's sins. The whole thing is blistering Kirkwood right now because Uncle Jack's turned up and the lady in the case has had so little decency as to follow him."
"I don't suppose she thought of doing anything of the kind. She and Uncle Jack broke long ago. He told me so, in fact, at Indianapolis, and made her cruel abandonment an excuse for borrowing five dollars of me."
"Well, we've got to get rid ofhim! He's doing all he can against us; sending people to Kirkwood with stories aboutfather, and the traction business. I tell you, Fred," he declared ardently, "our family is in danger of going to hell if you and I don't do something pretty quick to stop it."
Fred puffed his pipe and watched his brother fidgeting nervously about the room. A phonograph across the street called attention to a moving-picture show. In the hotel office below, the porter proclaimed the departure of the 'bus to connect with the six-three for Peoria and all points West.
"There they go now!" exclaimed Charles from the window. "By George! She's a good-looking woman yet!"
Fred joined him and looked down. Phil and her mother were passing rapidly on the opposite side of the street. Unconsciously Fred drew off his cap.
"She's a very pleasant woman," he remarked. "Phil introduced me to her the other day."
"The devil she did! Where did all this happen?"
"At Mr. Montgomery's. Phil's staying there while her father's away."
"I like your cheek! They say my nerve is pretty well developed, but it isn't equal to that. How did our late aunt—I suppose that's what she is," he grinned—"take you?"
"Like a lady, for instance. My going there wasn't as cheeky as you imagine. I was invited."
"Phil?"
"No; Mr. Montgomery."
"There must be a trick in it somewhere. He's a foxy old boy, that Amzi. Has the general appearance of a fool, but he never loses any money."
"He's offered me a job," said Fred.
"He'swhat?"
"Offered me a job."
"What's the joke? You don't mean that with all this fuss over his sister's coming back he's picked out a Holton to offer a job to!"
"That's what's happened. They want Perry—his farmer—to take a teaching place at the agricultural school.It's a fine chance for him, and Mr. Montgomery has released him from his contract. Perry recommended me, and Mr. Montgomery asked me to the house a few evenings ago to talk it over. The arrangement includes my own farm, too, which Kirkwood holds as trustee until the Sycamore business is straightened out."
Charles backed away and stared at his brother scornfully.
"You idiot! don't you see what they're doing? They're buying you body and soul. They want to get you on their side—don't you see it?—to use against Uncle Will and me. Well! of all the smooth, cold-blooded, calculating scoundrels I ever heard of, they are the beatingest. Of course yousawit; you haven't walked into the trap!"
"I've accepted the position."
"You blundering fool, you can't accept it! I won't let you accept it!"
"I'm moving my traps to the Montgomery farmhouse to-morrow, so you'll have to call out the troops if you stop me."
"Well, of all the damned fools!" Then after a turn across the room he flashed round at his brother. "Look here, Fred; I see your game. You want to marry that girl. Well, you can't do that either!"
"All right, Charlie. Suppose you write out a list of the various things I can't do so I won't miss any of them. You haven't any sense of humor or you wouldn't talk about Phil marrying me. Phil's not likely to marry a clodhopper, her uncle's hired hand."
"Don't be an ass, Fred. Phil's a fine girl; she's a wonder."
"I suppose," said Fred deliberately, "that if you wanted to marry Phil Kirkwood yourself there would be no disloyalty to our family in that. It would be perfectly proper; quite the right thing."
"I didn't say I wanted to marry her," jerked Charles.
He was pacing the floor with bent head. His brother's equanimity irritated him and intensified his anger. He struck his hands together suddenly as though emphasizing aresolution, and arrested Fred, who had knocked the ashes from his pipe and was walking slowly toward the door.
"I say, Fred, I didn't mean to flare up that way, but all this Sycamore business has got on my nerves. Sit down a minute. Uncle Will's in a terrible funk. Plumb scared to death. And just between you and me he's got a right to be."
He crossed to the door, opened it and peered into the hall. Fred balanced himself on the footboard of the bed, and watched his brother expectantly. Earlier in the interview Charles had begun to say something as to their father's affairs, but had failed to reach the point, either by design or through the chance drift of their talk. Charles was deeply worried; that was clear; and Fred resolved to give him time to swing back to the original starting-point.
"I'm sorry if Uncle Will's in trouble," he remarked.
"It's the First National," Charles went on in an excited whisper. "The examiner made a bad report last month and the Comptroller sent a special agent out who's raised the devil—threatened to shut him up. That's bad enough. If old Kirkwood gets ugly about Sycamore, you can't tell what he may do. He's playing an awful deep, quiet game. The fact is he's got us all where he wants us. If he turned the screws right now we're pinched. And here's something I didn't mean to tell you; but I've got to; and you've got to come in and help me. Father knew the Sycamore was over-bonded. The construction company was only a fake and charged about double a fair price for its work. Father only cashed part of the bonds he got on the construction deal and hid the rest; and when he died suddenly I had to think hard and act quick, for I saw the road was going to the bad, and that the people who had bought bonds in good faith would rise up and howl. When I took hold as administrator, I inventoried only the obvious stuff—that's why it looked so small. I meant to give you and Ethel your share when the danger was all over—didn't want to involve you; you see how it was. And now Kirkwood's trying to tracethat stuff—about three hundred thousand—a hundred thousand apiece for you and Ethel and me. No; not a word till I get through," he whispered hoarsely as Fred tried to break in. "They can send me up for that; juggling the inventory; but you see how we're all in the same boat. And what you can do to save me and the bank and father's good name is to go to Kirkwood—he thinks well of you and will believe you—and tell him you know positively that father never got any of the construction bonds. You can be sure the construction company fellows got rid of theirs and took themselves off long ago. It was a fake company, anyhow. It's all in Kirkwood's hands; if you shut him off, Uncle Will can pull the bank through. And I'll give you your share of the bonds now."
The perspiration glistened on his forehead; he ran his hands through his hair nervously. Misreading the look in Fred's face for incredulity, he pointed to the closet door.
"I've got the bonds in my suit-case; I was afraid Kirkwood might find a way of getting into my safety box at Indianapolis. He's no end smart, that fellow. And I figure that if the road goes into a receivership the bonds will pay sixty anyhow. You see where that puts you—no more of this farmer rot. You'd be well fixed. And it will be easy for you to satisfy Kirkwood. Just the right word and he will pull his probe out of the administratorship, and get a receiver who will represent us and give us the proceeds when the trouble's all over. Damn it! Don't look at me that way! Don't you see that I've been taking big chances in hiding that stuff, just for you and Ethel! I'm going crazy with the responsibility of all this, and now you've got to help me out. And if Kirkwood gets to the grand jury with that administration business, you see where it puts us—what it means to you and Ethel, the disgrace of it. Don't forget that father took those bonds—his share of Sycamore swag—and left it up to me to defend his good name and divide the proceeds when it was safe. Don't stand there like a dead man! Say something, can't you!"
It had slowly dawned upon Fred that he was listening to an appeal for mercy, a cry for help from this jaunty, cocksure brother. It was a miserable mess; beyond doubt much of what he had heard in the stuffy hotel room was true. It would not be Charles's way to incriminate himself so far unless driven to it by direst necessity. It was clear that he was alarmed for his personal safety. Fred did not doubt that Charles had attempted to swindle him; had in fact gone the full length of doing so. His simple, direct nature was awed by a confession that combined so many twists and turns, so many oblique lines and loops and circles. He sank into a creaky rocker, and rapped the arm idly with his pipe-bowl, conscious that Charles hovered over him as though fearful that he might escape.
"Come back to life, can't you! It's not much I'm asking of you; it won't cost you anything to help tide this thing over with Kirkwood. And you get your share right now—to-night. Why—" His lip curled with scornful depreciation as he began again to minimize the importance of the transaction.
Fred shook himself impatiently.
"Please don't! Don't go over that story again or I may do something ugly. Sit down over there in that chair."
He bent forward, his elbows on his knees and gesticulated with the pipe, speaking slowly.
"Let's shake the chaff out and see what's left of all this. You stole my share of those bonds, and now that you're in danger of getting caught you want me to help you hide the boodle. You flatter me with the idea that my reputation is so much better than yours that I'm in a position to keep you out of jail. And for a little thing like that you're willing to give me my honest share of a crooked deal! You're a wonder, Charlie! It must have tickled you to death to see me turning my poor old farm over to Kirkwood to uphold the family honor while you were chasing over the country with the real stuff packed away with your pajamas. It's picturesque, I must say!"
His eyes rested upon his brother's face lingeringly, but his tone and manner were indulgent, as though he were an older brother who had caught a younger one in a misdemeanor.
"Cut that out! I've told you the whole truth. If you won't help, all right."
"No, it isn't all right. There's no all right about any of this. It's rotten clean through."
He frowned with the stress of his thought, then rose, and began buttoning his coat.
"Well?" Charles questioned harshly, impatient for his brother's decision.
"I won't do it. I won't have anything to do with your scheme. After the trouble you've taken to steal those bonds it would be a shame to take any of them away from you. I advise you to carry them back to Indianapolis and turn them over to Kirkwood. He's not half the cold-blooded scoundrel you seem to think. You'd make a big hit with him."
"And after I've told you everything—after I've shown you that I was only covering up father's share in that construction business, for your sake, and our sister's, that's all you've got to say about it!"
"Every word!"
A malevolent grin crossed the older man's face. He was white with passion.
"You'll pay for this; I'll land one on you for this that will hurt."
He waited expectantly for Fred to demand the nature of this vengeance; his rage cried for the satisfaction of seeing him flinch at the blow. Fred settled his cap on his head and walked stolidly toward the door. Charles caught him by the shoulder and flung him round.
"You think you can drop me like that! Not by a damned sight you can't! You think you stand pretty close to the Montgomerys, don't you?—the only real good Holton in the bunch—but I'll give you a jar. You imagine you're going to marry Phil, don't you?—but I'll show you a thing or two.I'm going to marry Phil myself; it's all practically understood."
"That's all right, too, Charlie," replied Fred calmly. "The ambition does you proud. I suppose when you tell Kirkwood you're engaged to his daughter he will call off the dogs."
"Oh, they're not so high and mighty! Now that Phil's mother has brought her smirched reputation back here, Phil will be glad to marry and get out."
"Just for old time's sake, Charlie, I advise you not to play that card."
"You're too late with your advice. That day Phil and I climbed The Cliffs she promised to marry me. You saw us up there; that was before her mother came back. But as far as her mother's concerned, I'll stand for her. A woman that's been through the divorce mill twice has got to be humble. You can be dead sure she would never have shown up here if it hadn't been for old Amzi's ducats. Women like that go where the money comes easiest."
Fred listened with a kind of bewildered intensity. That a man should speak thus of the mother of a girl whom he meant to marry touched the uttermost depths of vulgarity. Little as he had in common with his brother, he had never believed him capable of anything so base. Yet much as he distrusted him, he half-believed the story of the engagement. There must be some basis for his declaration, and it would be quite like Charles to hasten matters with a view to blocking Kirkwood's investigations of the Holton estate. Jealousy and anger surged in his heart. The air of the room stifled him.
"You've lost your mind; that's the only way I can explain you. If you were quite sane, you wouldn't forget the part our father's brother played in Phil's mother's affairs."
"Don't take that tragic tone with me; Uncle Jack's told me all about that woman. She's the very devil. She led him a dog's life until he chucked her."
Fred nodded, slowly drawing on his gloves, whose shabbiness affected his brother disagreeably. Charles had expectedto score heavily with his declaration that Phil had promised to marry him; but this had apparently been a wasted shot. He wondered whether he had misread the symptoms that had seemed to indicate Fred's interest in that quarter.
Fred's composure was irritating. Charles was never sure what impression he made on this quiet brother, whose very unresponsiveness had driven him to disclosures he had not meant to make. He had managed the interview clumsily; he was not up to the mark, or he would not have made so many false starts in this talk, on whose results he had counted much.
His fingers touched his scarfpin and tie nervously.
"Now that you know the whole business I needn't ask you to keep your mouth shut. But I suppose with your delicate sense of honor I'm safe."
"You are quite safe, Charlie. I'd repeat my advice if I thought it would do any good. I'd turn that stuff over to Kirkwood as quickly as I could."
He had opened the door and started down the hall when Charles, his apprehensions aroused as he saw his brother's determined stride toward the stairs, sprang after him.
"What are you up to; where are you going?" he demanded excitedly.
"Stop 7. Good-night!"