Otherwise Phyllis Part 18

She thrust out a slipper for his inspection.

"Those clothes are not as bad as some I've seen. I don't mind the low-in-the-neck effect when there's a neck to show like yours. Most of 'em look like the neck of a picked gander. I guess f.a.n.n.y did about the right thing. f.a.n.n.y's taste is usually pretty fair."

"Oh, the whole syndicate took a hand in it," said Phil with a sigh.

"They nearly wore me out; but they were so busy consulting each other that they didn't notice that I chose the crepe myself. But I wanted you to like my things, Amy."

"Of course I like 'em. You certainly look grand."

He rummaged in one of the chiffonier drawers.

"Just wait a minute," he said; "you've got to fix this fool thing for me." He placed a fresh tie round his white-wing collar and loosely crossed the ends. "I ain't going to take any chances of spoiling this.

Now, Phil, do your n.o.blest."

"With gloves on? Well, I'm used to doing daddy's over again, so here goes."

He stood with his chin in air while she tied the bow. Her youth, her loveliness, her red lips, compressed at the crucial moment when the bow took form, moved and thrilled him. No one in the world had ever been so dear to him as Phil! When she rested her hands on his shoulders and tilted her head to one side to study her handiwork he raised himself on his toes and lifted his hands, in one of which he had concealed something.

"Bend your head a little, Phil; I ought to have a ladder for this."

And in a moment he drew down upon her neck a chain with a pendant of pearls, which he had chosen with the greatest care at the best jeweler's in Indianapolis.

"Now look at yourself!"

She sprang to the mirror, and while she was exclaiming over it, he remarked, "I guess it don't make you look much worse, Phil. But it doesn't make you look much nicer. Thunder! Nothing could!"

"Amy! I'm going to muss you up!" she cried, wheeling round.

"Phil--don't you touch me; don't you dare!"

He backed away and began drawing on his coat, and she abandoned the idea of mussing him to make sure his tie didn't crawl up over his collar. She clasped him tight and kissed him on the mouth.

"What a dear old pal you are, Amy," she said, laying her cheek against his. "Don't you ever think I don't appreciate what you do for me--what you are to me!"

"I guess that's all right, Phil," he said, and turned round to the chiffonier and blew his nose furiously. "Where's Tom?"

"I guess daddy's gone downstairs."

"Well, most of your aunts are on the job somewhere and we'd better go down and start this party. I hear the fiddlers tuning up."

Amzi II had built a big house with a generous hall and large rooms, and it had been a matter of pride with Amzi III to maintain it as it had been, refusing to listen to the advice of his sisters that he shut off part of it. Amzi liked s.p.a.ce, and he was not in the least dismayed by problems of housekeeping. In preparing for Phil's party he had had all the white woodwork repainted, and the floors of the drawing- and living-rooms had been polished for dancing.

In Montgomery functions of all sorts begin early. The number of available public vehicles is limited, and by general consent the citizens take turns in the use of them. There hadn't been a party at the Montgomery homestead since the marriage of the last of the Montgomery girls. It was not surprising that to-night many people thought a little mournfully of the marriage of the first! The launching of Phil afforded opportunity for contrasting her with her mother; she was or she was not like Lois; nearly all the old people had an opinion one way or another.

Among the early arrivals was Mrs. John Newman King. Mrs. King, at eighty, held her own as the person of chief social importance in town.

The Montgomerys were a good second; but their standing was based merely upon long residence and wealth; whereas Mrs. King had to her credit not only these essential elements of provincial distinction, but she had been the wife of a United States Senator in the great days of the Civil War. She had known Lincoln and all the host of wartime heroes. Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman had been her guests right there in Montgomery--at the big place with the elms and beeches, all looking very much to-day as it did in the stirring sixties. Mrs. King wore a lace cap and very rustling silk, and made pretty little curtsies. She talked politics to gentlemen, and asked women about their babies, and was wholly charming with young girls.

She paused before Phil, in the semicircle that included Amzi and his sisters with their husbands, and Tom Kirkwood.

"My dear child, on this proud occasion I want to say that the day you fell out of the cherry tree in my back yard and broke your arm and came into the house to get a sand tart as usual before going home, just as though nothing had happened, I loved you and I have loved you ever since. And you didn't cry either!"

"I didn't cry, Aunt Jane, because I hadn't sense enough to know I'd been hurt!"

"You were always a child of spirit! It's spirit that counts in this life. And for all we know in the next one, too. Don't you let all these relations of yours spoil you; I've known all the Montgomerys ever since your great-grandfather came here from Virginia, and you please me more than all the rest of 'em put together. Do you hear that, Amzi!"

Amzi was prepared to hear just this; he was nigh to bursting with pride, for Mrs. King was the great lady of the community and her opinion outweighed that of any dozen other women in that quarter of Indiana.

Montgomery is just a comfortable, folksy, neighborly town, small enough to make hypocrisy difficult and unnecessary. In a company like this that marked Phil's entrance upon the great little world, no real Montgomeryite remembered who had the most money, or the costliest automobile, or the largest house. The Madison professors, who never had any hope of earning more than fifteen hundred dollars a year if they lived forever, received the special consideration to which they were ent.i.tled; and Judge Walters might be hated by most of the lawyers at the bar for his sharp admonitions from the bench, but they all respected him for his sound attainments and unquestioned probity. Among others who were presented to Phil (as though they hadn't known her all her life!) were a general and a colonel and other officers of the line, including Captain Joshua Wilson, poet and county recorder, and the editors of the two newspapers, and lawyers and doctors and shopkeepers, and, yes, clerks who stood behind counters, and insurance agents and the postmaster, all mingling together, they and their children, in the most democratic fas.h.i.+on imaginable.

"We're all here," said old General Wilks, who had been a tower of strength in the Army of the Tennessee, "and we're the best people of the best state on earth. I claim the privilege of age, Amzi, to kiss the prettiest girl in Indiana."

Beyond question the arrival of the William Holtons, with their niece and nephew from Indianapolis, caused a stir. They were among the late comers, and the curious were waiting to witness their reception, which proved to be disappointingly undramatic. Their welcome in no wise differed from that accorded to other guests. Every one said that Charles Holton was a handsome fellow, and his sister Ethel a very "nice" though rather an insipid and colorless young woman. It was generally understood that Amzi's sisters had forced his hand. The conservatives were disposed to excuse Amzi for permitting the Holtons to be invited; but they thought the Holtons displayed bad taste in accepting. It was Phil's party, and no Holton had any business to be connected with anything that concerned Phil. And Tom Kirkwood's feelings ought to have been considered, said his old friends.

"You see," Charles Holton remarked to Phil, when he had bowed over her hand with a good deal of manner, "I really did give up that New York trip. I would have come back from China to see you in that gown!"

The musicians (five artists from the capital, and not the drummer and piano-thumper usually considered adequate in Montgomery for fraternity and cla.s.s functions) now struck up the first number.

"Please give me a lot of dances," begged Charles, looking at Phil's card.

"One! Just one!" replied Phil.

"You are bound to be a great tyrant; you should be merciful to your humblest subject."

"I haven't seen any of the humility yet," she laughed.

Her Uncle Lawrence Hastings had undertaken to manage the dance and he glided away with her to the strains of the first waltz. Hastings boasted a velvet collar to his dress-coat, and the town had not yet ceased to marvel that fortune had sent to its door a gentleman so exquisite, so finished, so identified with the most fascinating of all the arts.

Hastings had for the social affairs of Montgomery a haughty scorn. It pained him greatly to be asked to a neighbor's for "supper,"

particularly when it was quite likely that the hostess would herself cook and serve the food; and the Fortnightly a.s.sembly, a club of married folk that met to dance in Masonic Hall, was to him the tamest, the dullest of organizations, and the fact that his brother-in-law Waterman, who waltzed like a tipsy barrel, enjoyed those harmless entertainments had done much to embitter Hastings's life. Hastings imagined himself in love frequently; the Dramatic Club afforded opportunities for the intense flirtations in which his nature delighted. The parents of several young women who had taken part in his amateur theatricals had been concerned for their daughters' safety. And now Phil interested him--this new Phil in city clothes. The antics of Phil, the tomboy of Main Street, had frequently aroused his indignation; Phil, a debutante in an evening gown that he p.r.o.nounced a creation of the G.o.ds, was worthy of serious attention. She was, he averred, Hermione, Rosalind, Portia, Beatrice, combined in one perfect flower of womanhood.

"You are adorable, Phil," he sighed, when the music ceased, leaving them at the end of the living-room. "A star danced and you were born."

"That is very sweet, Lawr_i_nce," said Phil; "but here comes my next partner. You mustn't stand in the way of the young men."

The very lightest laughing emphasis on "young" made a stab of this. He posed in a window and watched her, with his gloomiest Hamlet-like air, until his wife, noting this familiar symptom, interrupted his meditations and commissioned him to convoy a lady with an ear-trumpet to the dining-room.

The party was going merrily; there was no doubt of its complete success.

Some of the older folk remarked upon the fact that Phil had danced with Charles Holton; and he danced well. There was a grace in the Holtons, and Charles was endowed with the family friendliness. He made a point of speaking to every one and of dancing with the wall-flowers. It was noted presently that he saw Mrs. King to her carriage, and was otherwise regardful of the old folks.

Phil had wondered whether Fred Holton would come. She had hoped he would when she asked him at her uncle's farm, and the formal invitation had been dispatched to R.F.D. 7 as promised.

It was ten o'clock when Fred appeared. Phil saw him over her partner's shoulder talking to Amzi in the hall door, and as she swept by him in the dance she caught his eye. Fred had come late out of sheer timidity, but he had arrived at a moment when the gayety was at its height.

His diffidence had been marked even in his college days, and he was unused to gatherings of this kind. The proximity of so many gay, laughing people was a real distress to him. And if the other members of his family were able to overlook Jack Holton's great sin, Fred was acutely conscious of it now that Phil had dawned on his horizon. He had no sooner entered the house than he regretted his temerity in coming; and he had come merely to see Phil--that was the whole of it. Nor did the thought of this now contribute to his comfort. His glimpses of her as she danced up and down the room with three partners in turn--one of them his brother--set his pulses throbbing. Phil in her simple white gown--this glowing, joyous woman was no longer of his world. For the first time in his life his heart was shot through with jealousy. He had always felt Charles's superiority, but with a younger brother's loyal admiration he had not resented it. He resented it now. Fred had resurrected a cutaway coat for this adventure, and he was acutely aware that there were more dress-coats in evidence than he had imagined were available in Montgomery. Amzi, who had greeted him kindly, introduced him to a visiting girl whose name he did not catch, and he was doing his best to present an appearance of ease in talking to her. It had been a long time since he had danced, and he did not know the new steps. The girl asked him why he did not invite her to dance, and this added to his discomfiture. There is no greater unhappiness than that of the non-dancing young man at a dancing-party. He is drawn to such functions by a kind of fascination; he does not understand why other young men with no better brains than his are able to encircle the waists of the most beautiful girls and guide them through difficult evolutions. He vows that he will immediately submit himself to instruction and lift himself from the pits of torment.

The visiting girl was carried off, evidently to her relief and delight, by a strange young man and Fred was left stranded in an alcove. He had never felt so lonesome in his life. Phil vanished and now that he no longer enjoyed even his earlier swift glimpses of her, his dejection increased. He was meditating an escape when, as his eyes sought her, she stood suddenly breathless beside him. A divinity had no right thus to appear unheralded before mortal eyes. Fred blushed furiously and put out his hand awkwardly. Phil's latest partner begged for another dance; there was to be an extra, he pleaded; but she dismissed him with a wave of her fan. There had been high-school dances where Phil had learned to steel her heart against the importunate.

"Why didn't you come and speak to me?" demanded Phil when they were alone.

"I was just waiting for a chance. I didn't want to bother you."