href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@28017@[email protected]#XXII" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">XXII.

OTHERWISE PHYLLIS

OTHERWISE PHYLLIS

CHAPTER I

THE KIRKWOODS BREAK CAMP

"Stuff's all packed, Phil, and on the wagon. Camera safe on top and your suit-case tied to the tail-gate. Shall we march?"

"Not crazy about it, daddy. Why not linger another week? We can unlimber in a jiffy."

"It's a tempting proposition, old lady, but I haven't the nerve." Kirkwood dropped an armful of brush on the smouldering camp-fire and stood back as it crackled and flamed. There came suddenly a low whining in the trees and a gust of wind caught the sparks from the blazing twigs and flung them heavenward. He threw up his arm and turned his hand to feel the wind. "The weather's at the changing point; there's rain in that!"

"Well, we haven't been soaked for some time," replied Phil. "We've been awfully respectable."

"Respectable," laughed her father. "We don't know what the word means! We're unmitigated vagabonds, you and I, Phil. If I didn't know that you like this sort of thing as well as I do, I shouldn't let you come. But your aunts are on my trail."

"Oh, one's aunts! Oh, one's three aunts!" murmured Phil.

"Not so lightly to be scorned! When I was in town yesterday your Aunt Kate held me up for a scolding in the post-office. I'd no sooner climbed up to my den than your Aunt Josie dropped in to ask what I had done with you; and while I was waiting for you to buy shoes at Fisher's your Aunt Fanny strolled by and gave me another overhauling. It's a question whether they don't bring legal process to take you away from me. What's a father more or less among three anxious aunts! As near as I can make out, Aunt Fanny's anxiety is chiefly for your complexion. She says you look like an Indian. And she implied that I am one."

"One of her subtle compliments. I've always thought Indians were nice."

It was clear that this father and daughter were on the best of terms, and that admiration was of the essence of their relationship. Phil stooped, picked up a pebble and flung it with the unconscious grace of a boy far down the creek. Her Aunt Fanny's solicitude for her complexion was or was not warranted; it depended on one's standard in such matters. Phil was apparently not alarmed about the state of her complexion.

"Suppose we wait for the moon," Kirkwood suggested. "It will be with us in an hour, and we can loaf along and still reach town by eleven. Only a little while ago we had to get you to bed by eight, and it used to bother me a lot about your duds; but we've outgrown that trouble. I guess—"

He paused abruptly and began to whistle softly to himself. Phil was familiar with this trick of her father's. She knew the processes of his mind and the range of his memories well enough to supply the conclusion of such sentences as the one that had resolved itself into a doleful whistle. As he was an excellent amateur musician, the lugubrious tone of his whistling was the subject of many jokes between them.

The walls of a miniature cañon rose on either side of the creek, and the light of the wind-blown camp-fire flitted across the face of the shelving rock, or scampered up to the edge of the overhanging cliff, where it flashed fitfully against the sky. The creek splashed and foamed through its rough, boulder-filled channel, knowing that soon it would be free of the dark defile and moving with dignity between shores of corn toward the Wabash. The cliffs that enclosed Turkey Run represented some wild whim of the giant ice plow as it had redivided and marked this quarter of the world. The two tents in which the Kirkwoods had lodged for a month had been pitched in a grassy cleft of the more accessible shore, but these and other paraphernalia of the camp were now packed for transportation in a one-horse wagon. As a fiercer assault of the wind shook the vale, the horse whinnied and pawed impatiently.

"Cheer up, Billo! We're going soon!" called Phil.

Kirkwood stood by the fire, staring silently into the flames. Phil, having reassured Billo, drew a little away from her father. In earlier times when moods of abstraction fell upon him, she had sought to rouse him; but latterly she had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence. She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for him the keenest delight and, in another and baffling phase, a poignancy on which, as she had grown to womanhood, it had seemed impious to allow her imagination to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; the round felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut hair, the dejection that seemed expressed in so many trifles at such moments,—as in his manner of dropping his hands loosely into the pockets of his corduroy coat, and standing immovable. Without taking his eyes from the fire he sat down presently on a log and she saw him fumbling for his pipe and tobacco. He bent to thrust a chip into the fire with the deliberation that marked his movements in these moods. Now and then he took the pipe from his mouth, and she knew the look that had come into his gray eyes, though she saw only the profile of his bearded face as the firelight limned it.

Now, as at other such times, on summer evenings in the little garden at home, or on winter nights before the fire in their sitting-room, she felt that he should be left to himself; that his spirit traversed realms beyond boundaries she might not cross; and that in a little while his reverie would end and he would rise and fling up his long arms and ask whether it was breakfast-time or time to go to bed.

Phil Kirkwood was eighteen, a slim, brown, graceful creature, with a habit of carrying her chin a little high; a young person who seemed to be enjoying flights into the realm of reverie at times, and then, before you were aware of it, was off,