CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED
At home on her Hill Tony Holiday settled down more or less happily after her eventful sally into the great world. To the careless observer she was quite the same Tony who went down the Hill a few weeks earlier. If at times she was unusually quiet, had spells of sitting very still with folded hands and far away dreams in her eyes, if she crept away by herself to read the long letters that came so often, from many addresses but always in the same bold, beautiful script and to pen long answers to these; if she read more poetry than was her wont and sang love songs with a new, exquisite, but rather heart breaking timbre in her lovely contralto voice, no one paid much attention to these signs except possibly Doctor Philip who saw most things. He perceived regretfully that his little girl was slipping away from him, passing through some experience that was by no means all joy or contentment and which was making her grow up all too fast. But he said nothing, quietly bided the hour of confidence which he felt sure would come sooner or later.
Tony puzzled much over the complexities of life these days, puzzled over other things beside her own perverse romance. Carlotta too was much on her mind. She wished she could wave a magic wand and make things come right for these two friends of hers who were evidently made for each other as Hal had propounded. She wondered if Phil were as unhappy as Carlotta was and meant to find out in her own time and way.
She had seen almost nothing of him since her return to the Hill. He was working very hard in the store and never appeared at any of the little dances and picnics and teas with which the Dunbury younger set passed away the summer days and nights, and which Ted and the twins and usually Tony herself frequented. Larry never did. He hated things of that sort. But Phil was different. He had always liked fun and parties and had always been on hand and in great demand hitherto at every social function from a Ladies' Aid strawberry festival to a grand Masonic ball. It wasn't natural for Phil to shut himself out of things like that. It was a bad sign Tony thought.
At any rate she determined to find out for herself how the land lay if she could. Having occasion to do some shopping she marched down the Hill and presented herself at Stuart Lambert and Son's, demanding to be served by no less a person than Philip himself.
"I want a pair of black satin pumps with very frivolous heels," she announced. "Produce them this instant, slave." She smiled at Phil and he smiled back. He and Tony had always been the best of chums.
"Cannzy ones?" he laughed. "That's what one of our customers calls them."
And while he knelt before her with an array of shoe boxes around him, fitting a dainty slipper on Tony's pretty foot, Tony herself looked not at the slipper but at Philip, studying his face shrewdly. He looked older, graver. There was less laughter in his blue eyes, a grimmer line about his young mouth. Poor Phil! Evidently Carlotta wasn't the only one who was paying the price of too much loving. Tony made up her mind to rush in, though she knew it might be a case for angel hesitation.
"I've never given you a message Hal Underwood sent you," she observed irrelevantly.
Philip looked up surprised.
"Hal Underwood! What message did he send me? I hardly know him."
"He seemed to know you rather well. He told me to tell you to come down and marry Carlotta, that you were the only man that could keep her in order. That is too big, Phil. Try a smaller one." The speaker kicked off the offending slipper. Philip mechanically picked it up and replaced it in the box.
"That is rather a queer message," he commented. "I had an idea Underwood wanted to marry Carlotta himself. Try this." He reached for another pump. His eyes were lowered so Tony could not see them. She wished she could.
"He does," she said. "She won't have him."
"Is—is there—anybody she is likely to have?" The words jerked out as the young man groped for the shoe horn which was almost beside his hand but which apparently he did not see at all.
"I am afraid she is likely to take Herbert Lathrop unless somebody stops her by main force. Why don't you play Lochinvar yourself, Phil? You could."
Philip looked straight up at Tony then, the slipper forgotten in his hand.
"Tony, do you mean that?" he asked.
"I certainly do. Make her marry you, Phil. It is the only way with
Carlotta."
"I don't want to make any girl marry me," he said.
"Oh, hang your silly pride, Phil Lambert! Carlotta wants to marry you I tell you though she would murder me if she knew I did tell you."
"Maybe she does. But she doesn't want to live in Dunbury. I've good reason to know that. We thrashed it out rather thoroughly on the top of Mount Tom last June. She hasn't changed her mind."
Tony sighed. She was afraid Phil was right. Carlotta hadn't changed her mind. Was it because she was afraid she might, that she was determining to marry Herbert?
"And you can't leave Dunbury?" she asked soberly.
Just at that moment Stuart Lambert approached, a tall fine looking man, with the same blue eyes and fresh coloring as his son and brown hair only slightly graying around the temples. He had an air of vigor and ageless youth. Indeed a stranger might easily have taken the two men for brothers instead of father and son.
"Hello, Tony, my dear," he greeted cordially. "It is good to see you round again. We have missed you. This boy of mine getting you what you want?"
"He is trying," smiled Tony. "A woman doesn't always know what she wants, Mr. Lambert. The store is wonderful since it was enlarged and I see lots of other improvements too." Her eyes swept her surroundings with sincere appreciation.
"Make your bow to Phil for all that. It is good to get fresh brains into a business. We old fogies need jerking out of our ruts."
The older man's eyes fell upon Phil's bowed head and Tony realized how much it meant to him to have his son with him at last, pulling shoulder to shoulder.
"New brains nothing!" protested Phil. "Dad's got me skinned going and coming for progressiveness. As for old fogies he's the youngest man I know. Make all your bows to him, Tony. It is where they belong." And Phil got to his feet and himself made a solemn obeisance in Stuart Lambert's direction.
Mr. Lambert chuckled.
"Phil was always a blarney," he said. "Don't know where he got it. Don't you believe a word he says, my dear." But Tony saw he was immensely pleased with Phil's tribute for all that. "How do you like the sign?" he asked.
"Fine. Looks good to me and I know it does to you, Mr. Lambert."
"Well, rather." The speaker rested his hand on Phil's shoulder a moment.
"I tell you it is good, young lady, to have the son part added, worth
waiting for. I'm mighty proud of that sign. Between you and me, Miss
Tony, I'm proud of my son too."
"Who is blarneying now?" laughed Phil. "Go on with you, Dad. You are spoiling my sale."
The father chuckled again and moved away. Phil looked down at the girl.
"I think your question is answered. I can't leave Dunbury," he said.
"Then Carlotta ought to come to you."
"There are no oughts in Carlotta's bright lexicon. I don't blame her, Tony. Dunbury is a dead hole from most points of view. I am afraid she wouldn't be happy here. You wouldn't be yourself forever. Bet you are planning to get away right now."
Tony nodded ruefully.
"I suppose I am, Phil. The modern young woman isn't much to pin one's faith to I am afraid. Do I get another slipper? Or is one enough?"
Phil came back from his mental aberration with a start and a grin at his own expense.
"I am afraid I am not a very good salesman today," he apologized.
"Honestly I do better usually but you hit me in a vulnerable spot."
"You do care for Carlotta then?" probed Tony.
"Care! I'm crazy over her. I'd go on my hands and knees to Crest House if
I thought I could get her to marry me by doing it."
"You would much better go by train—the next one. That's my advice. Are you coming to Sue Emerson's dance? That is why I am buying slippers. You can dance with 'em if you'll come."
"Sorry. I don't go to dances any more."
"That is nonsense, Phil. It is the worst thing in the world for you to make a hermit of yourself. No girl's worth it. Besides there are other girls besides Carlotta."
Phil shook his head as he finished replacing Tony's trim brown oxfords.
"Unfortunately that isn't true for me," he said rising. "At present my world consists of myself bounded, north, south, east and west by Carlotta."
And Tony passing out under the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON a few minutes later sighed a little. Here was Carlotta with a real man for the taking and too stubborn and foolish to put out her hand and here was herself, Tony Holiday, tying herself all up in a strange snarl for the sake of somebody who wasn't a man at all as Holiday Hill standards ran. What queer creatures women were!
Other people besides Tony were inclined to score Phil's folly in making a hermit of himself. His sisters attacked him that very night on the subject of Sue Emerson's dance and accused him of being a "Grumpy Grandpa" and a grouch and various other uncomplimentary things when he announced that he wasn't going to attend the function.
"I'm the authentic T.B.M.," he parried from his perch on the porch railing. "I've cut out dancing."
"More idiot you!" retorted Charley promptly. "Mums, do tell Phil it is all nonsense making such an oyster in a shell of himself."
Mrs. Lambert smiled and looked up at her tall young son, looked rather hard for a moment.
"I think the twins are right, Phil," she said. "You are working too hard.
You don't allow yourself any relaxation."
"Oh, yes I do. Only my idea of relaxation doesn't happen to coincide with the twins. Dancing in this sort of weather with your collar slumping and the perspiration rolling in tidal waves down your manly brow doesn't strike me as being a particularly desirable diversion."
"H-mp!" sniffed Charley. "You didn't object to dancing last summer when it was twice as hot. You went to a dance almost every night when Carlotta was visiting Tony. You know you did."
"I wasn't a member of the esteemed firm of Stuart Lambert and Son last summer. A lily of the field can afford to dance all night. I'm a working man I'd have you know."
"Well, I think you might come just this once to please us," joined in Clare, the other twin. "You are a gorgeous dancer, Phil. I'd rather have a one step with you than any man I know." Clare always beguiled where Charley bullied, a method much more successful in the long run as Charley sometimes grudgingly admitted after the fact.
Phil smiled now at pretty Clare and promised to think about it and the twins flew off across the street to visit with Tony and Ruth whom the whole Hill adored.
"Phil dear, aren't you happy?" asked Mrs. Lambert. "Have we asked too much of you expecting you to settle down at home with us?"
"Why yes, Mums. I'm all right." Phil left his post on the rail and dropped into a chair beside his mother. Perhaps he did it purposely lest she see too much. "Don't get notions in your head. I like living in Dunbury. I wouldn't live in a city for anything and I like being with Dad not to mention the rest of you."
Mrs. Lambert shifted her position also. She wanted to see her son's face; just as much as he didn't want her to see it.
"Possibly that is all so but you aren't happy for all that. You can't fool mother eyes, my dear."
Phil looked straight at her then with a little rueful smile.
"I reckon I can't," he admitted. "Very well then. I am not entirely happy but it is nobody's fault and nothing anybody can help."
"Philip, is it a girl?"
How they dread the girl in their sons' lives—these mothers! The very possibility of her in the abstract brings a shadow across the path.
"Yes, Mums, it is a girl."
Mrs. Lambert rose and went over to where her son sat, running her fingers through his hair as she had been wont to do when the little boy Phil was in trouble of any sort.
"I am very sorry, dear boy," she said. "It won't help to talk about it?"
"I am afraid not. Don't worry, Mums. It is just—well, it hurts a little just now that's all."
She kissed his forehead and went back to her chair. It hurt her to know her boy was being hurt, hurt her almost as much to know she could not help him, she must just let him close the door on his grief and bear it alone.
Yet she respected his reserve and loved him the better for it. Phil was like that always. He never cried out when he was hurt. She remembered how long ago the little boy Phil had come to her with a small finger just released from a slamming door that had crushed it unmercifully, the tears streaming down his cheeks but uttering no sound. She recalled another incident of years later, when the coach had been obliged to put some one else in Phil's place on the team the last minute because his sprained ankle had been bothering. She and Stuart had come on for the game. It had been a bitter disappointment to them all. To the boy it had been little short of a tragedy. But he had smiled bravely at her in spite of the trouble in his blue eyes. "Don't mind, Mums. It is all right," he had said steadily. "We've got to win. We can't risk my darned ankle's flopping. It's the bleachers for me. The game's the thing."
The game had always been the thing for Phil. Even in his blundering, willful boyhood he had played hard and played fair and taken defeat like a man when things had gone against him.
There was a moment's silence. Then Mrs. Lambert spoke again.
"Phil, I wish you would go to the dance with the girls. It will please them and be good for you. You can't shut yourself away from everything the way you are doing, if you are going to make Dunbury your home. Your father never has. He has always given himself freely to it, worked with it, played with it, made it a real part of himself. You mustn't start out by building a wall around yourself."
"Am I doing that, Mums?" Phil's voice was sober.
"I am afraid you are, Phil. It troubles your father. He was so disappointed when you wouldn't serve on the library committee. They were disappointed too. They didn't expect it of your father's son."
"I—I wasn't interested."
"No, you weren't interested. That was the trouble. You ought to have been. You have had your college training, the world of books has been thrown wide open for you. You come back here and aren't interested in seeing that others less fortunate get the right kind of books into their hands and heads. I don't want to preach, dear. But education isn't only a privilege. It is a responsibility."
"Maybe you are right, Mums. I didn't think of it that way. I just didn't want to bother. I was—well, I was thinking too much about myself I suppose."
"Youth is apt to. There were other things too. When they asked you to take charge of the Fourth of July pageant, to dig up Dunbury's past history and make it live for us again, your father and I both thought you would enjoy it. He was tremendously excited about it, full of ideas to help. But the project fell through because nobody would undertake the leadership. You were too busy. Every one was too busy."
"But, Mums, I was busy," Phil defended himself. "It is no end of a job to put things like that through properly."
"Most things worth doing are no end of a job. Your father would have taken it with all the rest he has on his hands and made a success of it. But he was hurt by your high handed refusal to have anything to do with it and he let it go, though you know having Fourth of July community celebrations is one of his dearest hobbies—always has been since he used to fight so hard to get rid of the old, wretched noise, law breaking and rowdyism kind of village celebration you and the other young Dunbury vandals delighted in."
Phil flushed at that. The point went home. He remembered vividly his boyish self tearing reluctantly from Doctor Holiday's fireworks impelled by an unbearably guilty conscience to confess to Stuart Lambert that his own son had been a transgressor against the law. Boy as he was, he had gotten out of the interview with his father that night a glimpse into the ideal citizenship which Stuart Lambert preached and lived and worked for. He had understood a little then. He understood better now having stood beside his father man to man.
"I am sorry, Mums. I would have done the thing if I'd known Dad wanted me to. Why didn't he say so?"
Mrs. Lambert smiled.
"Dad doesn't say much about what he wants. You will have to learn to keep your eyes open and find out for yourself. I did."
"Any more black marks on my score? I may as well eat the whole darned pie at once." Phil's smile was humorous but his eyes were troubled. It was a bit hard when you had been thinking you had played your part fairly creditably to discover you had been fumbling your cues wretchedly all along.
"Only one other thing. We were both immensely disappointed when you wouldn't take the scout-mastership they offered you. Father believes tremendously in the movement. He thinks it is going to be the making of the next generation of men. He would have liked you to be a Scoutmaster and when you wouldn't he went on the Scout Troop Committee himself though he really could not spare the time."
"I see," said Phil. "I guess I've been pretty blind. Funny part of it is I really wanted to take the Scoutmaster job but I thought Dad would think it took too much of my time. Anything more?" he asked.
"Not a thing. Haven't you had quite enough of a lecture for once?" his mother smiled back.
"I reckon I needed it. Thank you, Mums. I'll turn over a new leaf if it isn't too late. I'll go to the dance and I'll ask them if there is still a place for me on the library committee and I'll start a troop of Scouts myself—another bunch I've had my eyes on for some time."
"That will please Dad very much. It pleases me too. Boys are very dear to my heart. I wonder if you can guess why, Philip, my son?"
"I wish I'd been a better son, Mums. Some chaps never seem to cause their-mothers any worry or heart ache. I wasn't that kind. I am afraid I am not even yet."
"No son is, dear, unless there is something wrong with him or the mother. Mothering means heart ache and worries, plus joy and pride and the joy and pride more than makes up for the rest. It has for me a hundred times over even when I had a rather bad little boy on my hands and now I have a man—a man I am glad and proud to call my son."