Otherwise Phyllis Part 46

Phil stopped short. The senior who had proposed to her had employed a similar prelude, and she had no intention of subjecting herself to a second attack.

"You may think of me all you like; but don't tell me; just let me guess.

It isn't any fun if you know people think of you. We expect our friends to think of us. That's what we have them for."

She started off more briskly, but he refused to accommodate himself to her pace. The undercurrent of resentment in his soul gathered force. He must justify his boast to his brother, for one thing; and for another, his face smarted from her mother's light, ironic whip.

"Phil!" he began endearingly.

"Oh, come on! We can't stand in the street all night discussing the philosophy of life."

"Since that afternoon at the Run," he continued, as they started forward again, "everything has been different with me, Phil. I never felt until lately that I really wanted to follow my good inclinations: I've done a lot of things I'm sorry for, but that's all over. I felt that day, as we stood together at the top of the bluff, that a new spirit had come into my life. You know I'm a good deal older than you, Phil--just about ten years' difference; but you seem immensely older and wiser. I never knew a woman who knew as much."

She stopped again, and drew away from him.

"Mr. Holton!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed mockingly; "please don't try that kind of jollying on me. I don't like it."

This, uttered with sharp peremptoriness, did not soothe him; nor was he in any humor to be thwarted. He had felt that Phil liked him; and a great many girls had been in love with him. If she made his approaches difficult, there was the more reason for believing that his proposal of marriage would not fall upon ungrateful ears. And, besides, Phil was just the sort of perverse, willful young woman to jump at a proposal, the more readily if the suitor was set apart from her by barriers that invited a young romantic imagination.

"I wasn't jollying you," he said, "and you know I wasn't. You've known from the first that I admired you. In fact, it was all over with me the first time I spoke to you--when you took me down so. I liked your spirit; I hate these tame, perfectly conventional girls; they bore me to death."

"Oh, I like _that_! How dare you say I'm not perfectly conventional!"

she laughed.

"You know perfectly well what I mean. You have a mind and will of your own, and I like that in you. You're a perfect wonder, Phil. You're the most fascinating creature in the world!"

"Creature!" she mocked.

"Look here, Phil; I don't want you to pick me up like that. I'm ent.i.tled to better treatment. I'm in terrible earnest and I don't mean to be put off in any such way."

"Well, I'm not afraid to walk home alone!" She made a feint at leaving him; then waited for him to catch up with her.

It had been said of Phil that she liked to tease; she had, with a pardonable joy, made the high-school boys dance to her piping, and the admiration of the young collegians was tempered with awe and fear. She felt herself fully equal to any emergencies that might arise with young men. The boys she had known had all been nice fellows, good comrades, with whom she had entered into boyish sports zestfully, until her lengthening skirts had excluded her from partic.i.p.ation in town-ball and the spring's delight in marbles. When her chums became seniors in college and appeared at parties in dress-suits, the transformation struck her as funny. They were still the "boys" who had admired the ease with which she threw, and caught, and batted, and whom she had bankrupted in naughty games of chance with marbles. She liked Charles Holton. The difference in their years added to the flattery of his attentions. He was a practiced flirt, and she had made experiments of her own in the gentle art of flirtation. Phil was human.

"If you knew how depressed I am, and how I need a little sympathy and friendliness, you wouldn't act like that. We are good friends, aren't we?"

"I haven't questioned it."

"We understand each other, don't we?"

"In the plain old Hoosier language, yes!"

"And if I tell you out of the depths of my humility that no one in the world means so much to me as you do, you understand, don't you, Phil?"

"Certainly. Your words are admirably chosen and we'll let it go at that."

Her flippancy now invited rather than repelled him. It was his experience that girls like to be made love to; the more reluctant they appear, the better they like it; and as she moved along beside him her beauty, her splendid health, her audacity struck fire in him. It was to-night or never between Phil and him. His to-morrows were uncertain; there was no guessing what Kirkwood might do, and Phil alone could protect and save him.

"Phil, this whole situation here is an impossible one for you. Because I'm older I realize it probably more than you do. First it was my Uncle Jack that came back here and stirred things up, and now--you won't take it unkindly if I say that your mother's return has been most unfortunate--for all of us. A girl like you oughtn't to be exposed to the gossip of a country town. It's not fair to you. I love you, Phil; I want you to marry me, at once, the quicker the better. I want to take you away from all this. Phil--dear!"

His tone thrilled her; she was persuaded of his kindness and generosity.

He had not abused her mother or spoken unkindly of his uncle even. He had shown the nicest tact and discretion in his proposal of marriage, hinting at his own difficulties without attempting to play upon her sympathies. She could not laugh it off; she felt no inclination to do so.

"I'm sorry, Charlie; I'm awfully sorry; and I didn't want you to go on; I really didn't mean to let you; I tried to stop you. I respect you and like you; but I don't love you. So that's all there is to it. Now we must hurry home."

They were quite near Amzi's gate, and there was need for urgency. The thought of her mother gave him an angry throb; very likely she was waiting for them.

"You don't mean that, Phil! I can't have it that way."

"I do mean just that. So please don't say any more about it; we won't either of us be happier for talking about it."

"That's not square, Phil. You knew it was bound to come to this. You let me go on believing, hoping--"

"If you think such things of me, I shall be sorry I ever saw you."

"I've offered you a way out for yourself; your happiness is at stake.

You must get away from here. Let us get married now--to-night, and leave this place forever, Phil!"

"No!" she cried angrily, frightened now as he stopped and planted himself before her at the edge of Amzi's lawn, where the house loomed darkly against the stars.

He gripped her arms. In all her rough play with boys, none had ever dared to touch her, and she choked with wrath. He had taken her off guard. Her hands, thrust into her m.u.f.f, were imprisoned there by his grasp of her arms.

"Phil, you can't leave me like this. You've got to say yes. I'll kill myself if you don't."

She tried to wrench herself free, but his anger had slipped its leash and was running away with him. He drew her toward him, and the brute in him roused at her nearness. He threw an arm round her suddenly, and bent to kiss her. Abruptly she flung him back, wrenched her arms free and seized his wrists. Her fear left her on the instant; she was as strong or stronger than he, and she held him away from her easily, breathing deeply, and wondering just how to dispose of him. She laughed mockingly as he struggled, confident in the security of her greater strength. The light from Amzi's gate-lamp fell upon them, and she peered into his face curiously. At other times the spectacle of a gentleman in a silk hat held at ease by a young woman in her best evening bonnet would have been amusing, but Phil was thoroughly angry.

"I didn't think you would be like this. I thought all the time that you were a man; I even thought you were a gentleman!"

He jerked back in an effort to free his arms, a movement that precipitated his hat to the pavement. She gave his wrists a wrench that caused him to cry out in pain. To be held in a vise-like grip by a girl he had tried to kiss was a new and disagreeable experience. His anger rioted uncontrollably. He brought his face closer and sneered:--

"You needn't take such grand airs;--think what your mother is!"

She flung him against the iron fence with a violence that shook it, and her fists beat a fierce tattoo on his face--white-gloved fists, driven by sound, vigorous, young arms; and then as he cowered, with his arms raised to protect himself from her blows, she stepped back, her anger and contempt still unsatisfied.

He lifted his head, guardedly, thinking the attack was over, and with a quick sweep of her arm she struck his face with her open hand, a sharp, tingling slap. As she turned toward the gate, her foot encountered his hat. She kicked it into the street, and then, without looking back, swung the gate open and ran up the path to the house.

CHAPTER XXII

MR. WATERMAN'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY

Jack Holton reappeared in Montgomery toward the end of March, showed himself to Main Street in a new suit of clothes, intimated to old friends that he was engaged upon large affairs, and complained bitterly to a group of idlers at the Morton House of the local-option law that had lately been invoked to visit upon Montgomery the curse of perpetual thirst. He then sought Alexander Waterman in that gentleman's office.

Waterman he had known well in old times, and he correctly surmised that the lawyer was far from prosperous. Men who married into the Montgomery family didn't prosper, some way! An a.s.sumption that they were both victims of daughters of the House of Montgomery may have entered into his choice of Waterman as a likely person to precipitate a row in Sycamore affairs. It was with a purpose that he visited Waterman's office on the Mill Street side of the court-house, over Redmond's undertaking parlors--a suggestive proximity that had not been neglected by local humorists.

"This is your chance, old man, to take up a fight for the people that can't fail to make you solid. What this poor old town needs is a leader.

They're all sound asleep, dead ones, who'd turn over and take another nap if Gabriel blew his horn. These fellows are getting ready to put over the neatest little swindle ever practiced on a confiding public.

The newspapers are in it--absolutely muzzled. I won't lie to you about my motive in coming to you. I'm sore all over from the knocks I've got.