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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 47434
   :PG.Title: Infatuation
   :PG.Released: 2014-11-22
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Lloyd Osbourne
   :MARCREL.ill: Karl Anderson
   :DC.Title: Infatuation
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1909
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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INFATUATION
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      INFATUATION

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      BY

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      LLOYD OSBOURNE

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      AUTHOR OF
      The Motomaniacs, The Adventurer, Etc.

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      With Illustrations by
      KARL ANDERSON

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      INDIANAPOLIS
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
      PUBLISHERS

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      COPYRIGHT 1909
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

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      MARCH

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      PRESS OF
      BRAUNWORTH & CO.
      BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
      BROOKLYN, N. Y.

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.. _`CHAPTER I`:

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   INFATUATION

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   CHAPTER I

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Phyllis Ladd lost her mother at twelve;
and this bereavement, especially terrible to
an only child, brought with it two consequences
that had a far-reaching effect on her character.
An ardent, high-strung nature, acquainted
so early with a poignant sorrow, gets an outlook on
the world that is so just and true as to constitute
a misfortune in itself.  A child ought not to think;
ought not to suffer; ought not to understand.
Individuality, sympathy, sensibility awaken--qualities
that go to make a charming human being--but
which have to be paid for in the incessant
balance of our complex existence.  Phyllis'
school-fellows were no longer the same to her; she felt
herself a person apart; though she played as gaily
as any of them, and chattered her head off, and
tripped blithely along Chestnut Avenue entwined
in the arms of her companions, she was aware, down
in her secret heart, that she was "different."

At twelve, then, her path diverged from the
commonplace, in which, as we all have to admit,
however reluctantly, the chances for a happy life are best.

The second consequence of her mother's death
was to bring her into contact with a scarcely known
individual--her father.  This grave, handsome
man, who sat behind a newspaper at breakfast, and
who was not seen again till dinner time; who drove
away every morning behind a liveried coachman
and a pair of shining bays to a region called "the
office"; whose smile and voice were always a shy
delight to her--this demigod, admired, unknown,
from whom there emanated a delicious sense of
security and strength, now suddenly drew her to his
heart, and became her world, her all.

Robert T. R. Ladd was the president of the K. B. and
O. Railway.  Rich himself, and the son of a
rich man, his interests in Carthage were varied and
many, engaging his activities far beyond the great
road that was associated with his name.  Carthage
was an old-fashioned city; and the boys who had
grown up together and succeeded their fathers were
clannish to a degree little known in the newer parts
of this country.  Joe, who was prominent in
electricity and gas, might want to consolidate a
number of scattered plants, and to that end would seek
the assistance of Tom and Harry and Bob.  George,
perhaps, in forecasting the growth of Carthage a
little too generously, was in temporary straits
with his land-scheme--well, he would ask Tom
and Bob to tide him over, making a company of
himself, and taking them in.  Frank and his
brother, in converting their private bank into the
Fifth National--induced as much as anything by
the vanity of seeing their own names on their
own greenbacks--would feel the need of a strong
local man on the new directorate.  Would Bob
oblige them?  "Why, with pleasure, though if
somebody else would do as well--"  "Oh, we
must have *you*, old fellow."

Such was Carthage--at least the Carthage of
Chestnut Avenue, of the long lines of stately and
beautiful mansions on what was called the West
Side, the Carthage that supported the Symphony
Orchestra, owned the parterre boxes at the opera,
dined, drove, danced, and did business
together--as compact and jealous a little aristocracy as any
in Hungary or Silesia.  Of course there was
another Carthage--several other Carthages--one a
teeming riverside quarter where English was an
unknown tongue, a place black with factory
chimneys, full of noise and refuse, dirt and ugliness,
where forty thousand nondescript foreigners pigged
together, and contributed forty thousand pairs of
very grimy and unwilling hands to the material
advancement of the city and state.  There was a
business Carthage, with banks and sky-scrapers, and
vast webs of wires that darkened the sky.  There
was a pleasure Carthage that awoke only at night,
blazing out with a myriad lights, and a myriad
enticements.  There was a middle-class residence
Carthage; a second-class residence Carthage; an
immense, poor, semi-disreputable, altogether dreary
Carthage that was popularly alluded to as "South
of the slot," the name dating from the time of the
first cable-car line, now long since discarded.

But to return to Phyllis Ladd.

In losing her mother, it might be said she had
discovered her father.  At first perhaps it was pity,
loneliness, almost terror that caused Mr. Ladd to
take this little creature in his arms, and hold her
as he might a shield.  He had idolized his wife; he
hardly knew how to go on living without her; one
day, in his office, as his old friend Latham was
leaving him, he had pulled open a drawer, and taken
a loaded revolver from it.  "Latham," he said,
with a very slight tremor in his voice, "would you
mind putting this damned thing in your
pocket--I--I--find it tempts me."

Yes, his little daughter was a shield; he held her
slim body between himself and despair; he told her
this again and again, as he sat with bowed head and
suffusing eyes in the shadow of an irrevocable
happiness.  And she in whom there stirred, mysteriously,
dimly, the tenderness of the sublime love that
had called her into being--she, even while she
mingled her tears with his, felt within herself the
welling of an exquisite joy.  To love, to solace,
to protect, here again instincts were prematurely
awakened; here again her little feet departed from
the commonplace to carry her far afield.

In time, as weeks and months rolled on, the
blow, so unendurable at first, so crushing and
terrible, softened, as such things will, and a busy world
again engrossed a busy man.  But the intimacy
between father and daughter remained, and
continued unimpaired.  Indeed, it grew even closer, for
now laughter came into it, and gay bubbling little
confidences, and a delightful hour before bedtime,
full of eagerness and zest.  Mr. Ladd, cigar in
mouth, and his keen handsome face as deferential
as any courtier's, listened to the interminable
doings of Satty and Nelly and Jessie, with an
enjoyment that never seemed to tire.

He, too, had his budget of the day, which, often
begun whimsically, not seldom ended in a serious
exposition of his difficulties and problems.  It
amused him to state such complexities in simple
language; to bring them down, by some homely
metaphor, to the comprehension of this adorable
little coquette, who tried with so many childish arts
to dazzle and ensnare him.  Even at thirteen she
was learning the value of drawing out a man about
himself; she was quite willing to understand the
Interstate Commerce Law, and become pink and
indignant over a new classification of "Coal at the
pit's mouth"--if it meant her father would hold
her a little tighter, and give her one of those sudden
glances of approval.

Such intercourse with a shrewd, strong, brilliant
mind--to a child naturally precocious and adaptive--could
not fail to have far-reaching consequences
on her development.  She caught something of her
father's independence; of his lofty and yet indulgent
outlook on a universe made up so largely of fools
and knaves; learned the greatest and rarest of all
imaginative processes--to put oneself in the other
fellow's shoes.  When Joe Howard turned traitor
at the state legislature, and sold out the K. B. and
O. on the new mileage bill, her wrath at his
duplicity rose to fever.  "Well, there's his side to it,"
said Mr. Ladd, with unexpected serenity.  "He
hasn't a cent; he's mortgaged up to the ears; and
has a sick daughter dying of consumption.  He's a
well-meaning man, and I suppose would be honest
if he could.  But if I were in his place, and your
life was at stake, and the doctor ordered you to some
ten-dollar-a-minute place in Colorado or somewhere,
I guess I'd sell out the K. B. and O. too!"

And for that he got a hug that nearly choked him.

"Money and love, my lamb," he said to her once,
"those are the wheels the old wagon runs on.  Miss
Simpkins will fluff you up with a whole lot of fancy
fixings--but I tell you, it boils right down to
that."

"Papa," she asked him on another occasion,
with round wondering eyes, "if it's all like that,
why are you honorable and noble and splendid?"

"I don't know," he answered, smiling.  "I guess
it's pride more than anything else.  Theoretically
the man with the fewest scruples gets farthest in the
race; but thank the Lord, most of us are handicapped
with some good qualities that stick to us
like poor relations."

"But Miss Simpkins says that anybody who is
bad gets punished for it sooner or later.  She says
that was why her brother-in-law's house burned
down; because he was so uncharitable."

"It may be so with the people Miss Simpkins is
acquainted with," said Mr. Ladd, "but it doesn't
hold in the railroad business, nor anywhere else
that I have seen, and I can't help thinking she's a
trifle more hopeful than the traffic can bear!"

This philosophy, so picturesquely expressed, so
genial, so amiably cynical, was not perhaps the best
training for an unusually impressionable mind.
Miss Simpkins learned to dread Phyllis' preface:
"But Papa says--"  What Papa said was often
a bombshell that blew shams to pieces; tore down the
pretty pink scenery of conventional illusions; and
drove cobble-stones through the gauze that separated
Miss Simpkins and her kind from the real world
beyond.  It was a harsh process, and bad for gauze.

At first, not knowing how else to maintain a
fairly large establishment, Mr. Ladd had sought
the services of a "managing housekeeper."  But
the trouble with her--or rather with them, for he
had a succession--was that the "managing" was
considerably overdone.  They were discharged, the
one after the other, without having "managed" to
achieve their one consuming ambition, which was to
capture the rich widower, and lead him to the altar.
After a while, growing weary of being hunted, and
altogether at his wits' end, he invited his unmarried
sister, Henrietta Ladd, to take the foot of his
table, and a place at his hearth.

She was a thin, plain, elderly woman, with a
very low voice and a deceptive appearance of
meekness.  The casual guest at Mr. Ladd's board might
have taken her for a silent saint, who, unwillingly
sojourning in this vale of tears, was waiting with
ladylike impatience for a heavenly crown.  In some
ways this description would have fitted Aunt
Henrietta well enough, though it took no account of a
perverse and interfering nature that was more than
trying to live with.  The silent saint attempted to
rule her brother and her niece with a rod of iron,
and so far succeeded that her two years "tenure of
the gubernatorial chair" (as Mr. Ladd bitterly
called it), was fraught with quarrels and unhappiness.
Her tyranny, like all tyrannies, ended in a
revolution.  Mr. Ladd brought his "unmarried
misery"--also his own phrase--to a sharp conclusion,
and Henrietta departed with a large check
and a still larger ill-will.

"Phyllis," he said, "I guess we'll just have to
rustle along by our poor little selves.  The people
who take charge of us seem to take charge too hard.
They mean well, but why should they stamp on
us?--Yes, let's try it ourselves."

And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became
the acknowledged mistress of the big house.

In her demure head she knew that to fail would
be to incur a danger that was almost too terrible to
contemplate.  Her father might be persuaded into
marrying again, and the thought of such a catastrophe
sobered and restrained her.  She was on her
mettle, and was determined to succeed.  She had
her check-book, her desk, her receipted bills.  She
had her morning interviews with the cook; sent
curtains to the cleaners; rang up various tradespeople
on the telephone; gently criticized Mary's
window-cleaning, and George's nails, and busied herself
with these, and innumerable other little cares,
while Miss Simpkins waited in the study, restlessly
drumming her long, lean fingers on a French grammar.

Of course, she did several foolish, impulsive
things, but no more than some little bride might
have done in the first novelty of controlling a large
household.  She gave a tramp one of her father's
best suits of clothes; she was prevailed upon by
the servants to buy many things that neither they
nor anybody else could possibly need--including
an electrically driven knife-cleaner, and a cook's
table, so compact and ingenious, that it would have
been priceless on an airship, though in her own
spacious kitchen it was decidedly out of place; and
it took her several months to discover that James
was apparently feeding five elephants instead of
five horses.

But she was quick to learn better; and with the
innate capacity she inherited from her father, she
soon had everything running on oiled wheels.  And
all this, if you please, at fifteen, with quite a bit
of stocking between her dress and her trimly-shod feet.

It was seldom that her father ever ventured into
the realm of criticism; but once or twice, in his
smiling, easy-going way, he gently pulled her up.

"I don't know much about these things," he
remarked once, "but don't there seem to be a lot of
new dresses in this family?"

"One can't go naked, Papa."

"Admitting that, my dear, which with people
of our position would certainly give rise to
comment--couldn't we compromise on--well--going
*half*-naked, and perhaps show a more Spartan
spirit, besides, in regard to our hats?"

Phyllis' eyes filled with tears; and flushing with
shame, she pressed her hot cheek against the back
of the chair she was sitting in, and felt herself the
most miserable, disgraced, unworthy little creature
in the whole world.

Mr. Ladd's voice deepened, as it always did when
he was moved.

"My darling," he said, "don't feel badly about
it, because it is only a trifle.  But it is not kind
to your companions to dress better than they do,
and I am sure you do not wish them to feel envious
or resentful.  I just ask you to bear it in mind,
that's all, and be somewhat on your guard."

"I will, Papa."

"Now come and kiss your daddy, and tell him
you're not cross with him for being such an old
fuss-cat."

"Y-y-ou are n-not an old fu-u-uss-cat, but the
dearest, darlingest, bestest--"

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"Do you think it's right to bite a railroad
president's ear?"

"Yes, if you love him!"

"Or muss up the only hair he has, which isn't
very much?"

"Yes, if it helps you to think."

"What's that--*thinking*?"

"Yes, Papa."

"It worries me, dearest, to have you doing
anything as serious as that."

"Papa, it is serious.  Listen!"

"I'm listening,"

"I've a wonderful idea--I'm going to give a party!"

"Splendid--hope you'll ask me!"

"And I'm going to invite Satty Morrison, and
Julia Grant, and Hetty Van Buren, and Maisie
Smith, and the two Patterson girls, and perhaps
Alicia Stewart--and we are going to have
ice-cream, and lady's-fingers, and chocolate-cake, and
Christmas crackers, if I can buy them this time of
year--and, Papa, it's going to be a *hat*-party."

"Oh, a hat-party, goodness me, what's that?"

"To give away all the silly, extravagant hats
I've bought--though I'll have to get two new ones
to make them go round--but you won't mind that,
will you?"

"No, indeed--not for a hat-party."

And next day the invitations were out.

This scandalous way of bringing up an only
daughter caused many people to shake their heads.

"It'll end in a peck of trouble for Mr. Ladd
some day," said the old cats, with which Carthage
was as liberally stocked as any other great and
flourishing American city.  "Mark my words, my
dear, no good can come of bringing up a girl like
a wild Indian, and he'll have nobody to blame but
himself if she goes headlong to the bad."





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.. _`CHAPTER II`:

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   CHAPTER II

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At twenty, Phyllis Ladd was one of the
prettiest girls in Carthage.  A little above
medium height, slim, dark, and glowing
like a rose, she moved with that charming
consciousness of beauty that is in itself almost a
distinction.  The French and Spanish in her mother's
southern blood showed itself in her slender feet and
hands, in her grace, her voice, her gentle, gracious,
and engaging manners.  One could not long talk
to her without realizing that behind those sparkling
eyes there was a fine and highly-sensitive nature,
whimsical, original and intrepid; and to know her
well was to perceive that she was one of those
women who would love with rare intensity; and
whose future, for good or evil, for happiness or
disaster, was irretrievably dependent on the heart.

In a dim sort of way she had the consciousness
of this herself; her flirtations went no further than
to dance with the same partner three or four times
in the course of the same evening; and Carthage,
which gave its young people a great deal of
innocent liberty--and which its young people took
with the greediness of children--in time got to
consider her, in spite of deceptive appearances, as
being cold, proud, and "exclusive."  Certainly her
exclusiveness drew the line at being kissed by
boisterous young men, and though their company
pleased and amused her, she refused to single out
one of them for any special favor.

"They are all such idiots, Papa," she said
plaintively.  "Aren't there any real men
anywhere--real men that a girl *could* love?"

"I'm sure I don't know," returned Mr. Ladd.
"I haven't come across one I'd trust a yellow dog
to, let alone my daughter.  But, frankly, I'm
prejudiced on the young-man question--anybody would
be who has to run a railroad with them!"

"Papa," she cried, throwing her arms around
his neck, and her mood changing to one of her
gayest phantasies, "let's go away together, you and I,
and see if we can't find him.  The Quest of the
Golden Young Man!  There must be one somewhere,
and we'll look for him in every hidy-hole
in the world--in street-cars and banks, and
ice-cream places, and cellars, and factories, and
mountains, and ships--just you and me, with a little
steamer-trunk--and we'll run across him in the
unlikeliest spot--and he may be a bandit in a cave,
or a wild, roystering cow-boy shooting up one of
those awful little western towns--but we'll know
right off that he's our Golden Young Man--and
we'll take him, and put him in a crate, and bring
him home in the baggage-car, and poke him with a
long sharp stick till he's willing to marry me!"

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The Quest of the Golden Young Man!  It began
sooner than Phyllis could ever have believed
possible, and with a companion she would have
been the last to dream of.  Mr. Ladd had a
married sister in Washington, the wife of a
highly-placed treasury official.  Mrs. Sam Fensham was
a very fashionable, energetic, pushing woman,
wholly absorbed in the task of pulling competitors
off the social ladder, and planting her own faultless
French shoes on the empty rung.  Brother and
sister had about as much in common as you could
spread on a dime; but Robert Ladd had all the
American's admiration of ability, no matter in what
direction it was exercised; and Sally Fensham
dearly loved her fraternal relationship to the K. B. and O.

This social strategist had volunteered one of her
rare visits to Carthage under the stress of bad
financial weather.  Brother Bob, who regularly
brightened her Christmas with a check in four
figures, had some peculiarities of purse and heart that
Mrs. Fensham was well acquainted with.  You
might dash him off a letter, slashed with underlining,
and piteous in the extremity of its *cri de coeur*,
and get nothing in reply but two pages of humorous
typewriting, wanting to know why two people,
without children, could not manage to scrape along
in Washington on sixteen thousand dollars a year?

But Brother Bob, face to face, was a very different
person.  If you sat on the arm of his chair,
and talked of pa and ma and the old days, and
perhaps cried a little, not altogether insincerely, over
faces and things long since vanished--if, indeed,
under the spell of that grave, kindly brother, you
somehow shed your cares into an infinite tenderness,
and forgot everything save that you loved him best
of any one on earth--if--but it always happened--you
did not need to give another thought, to
what, after all, was the real object of your visit.

In a day or two, Brother Bob would say; "Sally,
just how many dollars would make you feel eighteen
again, and as though you were waiting for Elmer
Boyd to take you out sleighing?"

You could answer thirty-seven hundred, and get
it as readily as a postage stamp; and with it a look
of such honest affection, such a glisten in those
fine eyes, that your words of thanks stammered a
little on your tongue.

Well, here was Aunt Sally again--arm-chair--pa
and ma--the old days--check--and in her
restless, scheming eyes the birth of a vague idea
that grew ever more and more alluring,--nothing
else than to take this very pretty niece of hers back
to Washington, and enhance the Fensham position
by a splendid marriage.  She had a vision of balls
and dinner-parties, all paid for by her millionaire
brother; a showy French limousine; unlimited boxes
at the theater and opera; and a powerful nephew-to-be,
with a name to hoist the portcullis of many a
proud social stronghold, and allow the wife of a
highly-placed treasury official to squeeze in.  The
Motts, the Glendennings, the Pastors, the Van
Schaicks--the Port Arthurs of Washington
society--Sarah Fensham would assail all of them,
holding before her one of their cherished sons, and
defying them to shoot.  A fascinating prospect
indeed, and one not beyond realization, considering
the girl's beauty, and her father's money.

On the subject being broached to Brother Bob,
it was met with a hostility only comparable to a
Polar bear being robbed of its cub.  The whole
marriage-market business nauseated him, he
declared; his daughter should never be set up on the
counter to be priced and pawed over; not only
would her natural refinement revolt at it, but he
inconsistently and with much warmth announced
that Carthage was full of splendid young men, the
sons of his old associates, amongst whom Phyllis
should find her husband when the time came, and a
fellow worth fifty of those Washington dudes and dough-heads.

"It's all very well for you to talk," said Sally
coldly, "but I should say it was more for Phyllis
to decide than for you."

"She wouldn't hear of such a thing," protested
Mr. Ladd heatedly.  "She is a quiet, home-loving
girl, and wouldn't put herself in a show-window
for anything on earth."

"My house is not a show-window; and what is
there immodest or wrong in her meeting the nicest
men in America?"

"Besides, she wouldn't care to leave me."

Angry as she was, there was something in this
remark that suddenly touched Sally Fensham.  She
was hard and aggressive, but her heart was not
altogether withered, and under extraordinary
circumstances could even be moved.

"My poor Bob," she said, holding the lapels of
his coat, and looking up at him; "do you not know
that Phyllis may meet a man to-day at dinner, and
to-morrow at tea, and the day after drive with him
for an hour in the Park--and then what's father
or mother or anything in the world if she loves
him?  Bob, dear, just get it out of your head that
you are going to keep Phyllis.  When the right
man comes you will no more count to her than--than
that chair!--Oh, yes, of course, every girl
loves her father in a way--but you have only
been keeping her heart warm--and once it's set
on fire--good-by!  And, Bob, dear, listen, is it
not common sense to let her see the right kind of
young men; to sift them and weigh them a bit?
Is it a marriage-market to admit none but those
who are presentable and well-bred and come of
nice people?  Is that a show-window?  No, it's
giving a girl a chance to choose--the chance I
wish to Heaven I'd had.  We simply try to get
the nicest man there is, and you are more apt to
get a prize from a hundred than from six!"

"That applies just as much to Carthage as to
Washington."

"Bob, you don't know what you've been risking.
Your whole way of living is utterly crazy.  Why,
anybody--*anybody* could come here, and make
love to her, and carry her off under your
nose--some awful commercial traveler or cheap pianist
with frowzy hair--Oh, Bob, girls are such
fools--such crazy, crazy fools!"

"Phyllis isn't."

"Was I?"

"No, I don't think you were."

"But didn't I marry Sam Fensham?"

"I don't see that that--"

Sally laughed; and it was not a pleasant laugh
to hear in its self-revelation.  Sam was notoriously
more successful as a treasury official than as a
husband.

"Bob, she has to go to Washington with me,
and you must put your hand in your pocket, and do
things handsomely."

"Against her will?"

Again Sally laughed, more harshly and cynically
than before.

"Just you ask her," she said.

.. vspace:: 2

That night Mr. Ladd did so, and saw with a sinking
heart the electrifying effect it had on her.

Go!  Why, she'd jump out of her shoes to go,
and wasn't daddy the dearest, darlingest, adorablest
person in the world to propose it!  And Aunt
Sally's kindness--wasn't it wonderful!  She would
meet senators and ambassadors, and dance in the
White House with lovely barons and counts, and
try out her French on a real Frenchman and see if
he could understand it!--A winter in Washington!
What could be more exciting, more delirious!

Mr. Ladd affected to share her delight, and
manfully concealed his true feelings, which were
altogether bitter and sad.  But he was a brave old
fellow, and knew how to take his disappointments
smilingly.  Besides, what claim had he to resist the
inevitable?  What right?  What justification?
He would have bitten his tongue out before he
would have reproached her, or marred, by the slightest
word, her overflowing and girlish exuberance.
It was only as they kissed each other good night that
the pent-up appeal came.

"Don't forget your old dad in the shuffle," he
said.  "It's--it's going to be very hard for him
without you, Phyllis."

Her instant contrition was very sweet to him,
very comforting and dear.  In fact, he had to
struggle pretty desperately to allay the storm of
tenderness he evoked.--No, no, he wanted her to go to
Washington.  It was the right thing to do--the
only thing to do.  A girl ought to see something
of the big world before she married and settled
down.--Oh, every girl said that to herself, but
you couldn't get away from the fact that they were
made for men, and men for them, and a father
just held the fort till the Golden Young Man arrived.

How they laughed, with tears in their eyes!
How infinitely precious was the love that bound
them together!  Dad was never to be lost in the
shuffle--never, never; and he was to write every
day, and she was to write; and if it were a hundred
Washingtons she'd come straight back to him if he
were lonely, for to her there was only one real
Golden Young Man, and that was her darling,
darling father.

Yet as Mr. Ladd shut the study door, and returned
to his seat beside the lamp, he knew in spite
of himself that he had said good-by.  His
guardianship was over; near, now, was that unknown
man, that unknown rival, for whose pleasure he had
lavished twenty years of incessant care and
devotion.  Though Ladd was hardly a believer, the
wish came out with the fervency of a prayer: "Oh,
my God, let him be worthy of her!"





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.. _`CHAPTER III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

She did write every day; sometimes the
merest snippets, sometimes long, graphic letters,
full of the new life and the new people.
Her début had been an immense success.  Eddie
Phelps, a horrid, tallowy, patronizing person, but
socially a dictator, had put the stamp of his
approval on her, and she had managed to receive it
and not burst--which, if Papa only knew it, was
a very remarkable feat.  But, anyway, she had
been hall-marked "sterling," and was enjoying
herself furiously.  And the young men were so
different from Carthage, so much more polished and
elegant--and pertinacious.  Washington young
men simply didn't know what "No" meant, and
it was like shoveling snow to get rid of them.  But
Aunt Sarah was a regular White Wings, and the
poor, the detrimental, and the fast--every one, in
fact, who wasn't a first-class *parti* with references
from his last place--got carted away before he
knew what had struck him.

And Aunt Sally!  "Why, Papa, we didn't know
her at all.  She is as young as I am, and twice as
eager, and dances her stockings through every other
night.  Washington is divided between the people
who hate her, and the people who love her, and
they put a tremendous zip into either end of it.
What she really wants is to marry me at the cold
end, and strengthen her position as she calls it;
and though I say it, who shouldn't, the cold-end
young men are coming in fast.  When one proposes
to me, she calls it a scalp, and looks, oh, so
pleased!  But if I see any of them working up to
that I try to stop him in time, though it's awfully
exciting just the same.  That's why I've only three
scalps to report instead of about eight.  Oh, Papa,
what fun it is!"

In time her letters began to change, and there
were little signs of disillusionment.  One was
almost a tract on worldliness, in which she talked
about Vanity Fair, and dancing on coffins, and the
inner hunger of the soul.  There were also
increasing references to J. Whitlock Pastor, always
coupled with "ideals."  J. Whitlock Pastor was quite
a remarkable young man of thirty, with "a beautiful
austerity," and "fine mind."  His people were
immensely wealthy, and immensely fashionable--even
in Carthage there was a sacredness about the
name of Pastor--and Phyllis said there was
something splendid in his taking up forestry as a
life work, and devoting himself to it, heart and soul,
when he had been born--not with a silver spoon--but
with a bird's-egg diamond in his mouth.

If there was anything to be said against J. Whitlock
Pastor, it was that he was almost too good to
be true.  He wanted to leave the world better for
his having been, and all that--and seemed to have
what might be called an excruciating sense of duty.
"A very quiet and rather a sad man," wrote
Phyllis, "whom one might easily mistake for a muff if
one hadn't seen him on horseback.  He rides
superbly, and I never saw a ring-master in a circus
who could come anywhere near him."

All this worked up to a telegram that reached
Mr. Ladd a few weeks later: "I accepted him last
night, and, Papa, please come on quick and bless us."

Mr. Ladd hastened to Washington as speedily as
his affairs would allow, which was five days later,
and arrived just in time to dress for the
introductory dinner at Mrs. Pastor's--J. Whitlock's
mother's.  He tried to imagine he was delighted,
and caught his daughter in his arms with the
enthusiasm of a stage parent.  But Phyllis was so
pale, so calm, so undemonstrative that he hardly
knew what to make of her.  He put her cool
indifference down to Washington training, but still it
puzzled and troubled him.  It was so unlike a girl
who had met her fate--so unlike another pair of
lovers that had been so much in his head that
day--Genivieve de Levancour, and a certain Bob Ladd.
The contrast gave him a certain sense of foreboding.

In the carriage she was very silent, and nestled
against him like a tired child.  He repeated his
congratulations; he strove again to be delighted;
joked, not without effort, about the exalted position
of the Pastors, and what a come-down it was for
them to marry such poor white trash as the Ladds.
Then it occurred to him that perhaps this jarred
upon her!  "Forgive me, Phyllis," he said humbly.
"I--I hardly know what I am saying.  I--I
guess I'm trying to hide what this recalls to
me--what this means to me."

She pressed his hand, and snuggled it against
her cheek, but still shrouded herself in reserve.

"Papa," she said suddenly, "you'd stick to me
through thick and thin, wouldn't you?  Whatever
I did--however foolish or silly I might be, you'd
always love me, wouldn't you?"

"By God, yes," he answered, "though why on
earth you should ask--"

"Only to make sure," she exclaimed, brightening.
"Just to be certain that my old-dog father
hadn't changed.  Now say bow-wow, just to show
that you haven't!"

Mr. Ladd, very much mystified, and not at all
comfortable in his mind, obediently bow-wowed.
It set Phyllis off in a peal of laughter, and it was
with apparent hilarity that both descended at the
Pastor's front door.

Whitlock's mother received them in the
drawing-room.  She was a stately, gray-haired woman,
with a subdued voice, and a graciousness that was
almost oppressive.  Her guests had hardly been
seated, when J. Whitlock himself appeared, and
excused himself, with faultless and somewhat
unnecessary courtesy, for not having been found awaiting
their arrival.  Mr. Ladd saw before him a tall,
thin young man, of a polished and somewhat cold
exterior, with a dryness of expression that was
positively parching.  Like one of those priceless
enamels of the Orient, one felt that J. Whitlock Pastor
had been roasted and glazed, roasted and glazed,
roasted and glazed until the substance beneath
had become but a matter of conjecture.  The enamel
was magnificent--but where was the man?
Mr. Ladd, with a choking sense of disappointment,
began to suspect there was none.

J. Whitlock opened the proceedings much as the
czar might have opened a Duma.  He recited a
neat, dry, commonplace little address of welcome,
and sounded a key-note of constraint and formality
that was rigorously maintained throughout the
evening.  The address was seconded by the
empress-dowager, and then it was Mr. Ladd's turn
to swear loyalty to the throne, and burst into
cheers.  He did so as well as he could, but it was a
poor, lame attempt; and when, almost in despair,
he went up to J. Whitlock, and impulsively wrung
the Imperial hand, the very atmosphere seemed to
shiver at the sacrilege.

A frigid dinner followed in a dining-room of
overpowering magnificence.  There was a
high-class conversation to match, interrupted from time
to time by a small British army--small in
number--but prodigal of inches, and calves, and
chest-measure--who stealthily pounced on plates,
obtruded thumbs, and stopped breathing when they
served you.  Mr. Ladd, smarting with an inexplicable
resentment, compounded of jealousy, scorn
and chagrin, writhed in his chair, and tugged at his
mustache, and gazed from his daughter to his
prospective son-in-law with melancholy wonder.

Yet Phyllis seemed to be perfectly contented,
sitting there so demure, elegant and self-possessed at
the terrible board of the Romanoffs.  Mr. Ladd
could have wished that she had shown a little more
assertion, a little more--well, he hardly knew what
but something to offset the unconscious arrogance
of these people, and to show them that a Ladd was
as good as they were, if not a darned sight better!
But Phyllis, if anything, was too much the other
way.  There was a humility in her sweetness, her
deference, her touching desire to please.  To her
father she seemed to have accepted too readily, too
gratefully, her beggar-maid position at that kingly
table.

But as he watched her some doubts assailed him.
He remembered how singular she had been in the
carriage, how over-wrought, and unlike her usual
self.  Her eyes, fixed so constantly on her
intended's, had in them more pleading than love;
more a curious, studying, seeking look, as though
she, too, was trying to penetrate the enamel, and
see beneath.  But her voice softened as she spoke
to him; she smiled and colored at his allusions to
"us" and "our"; she shyly referred to their
projected honeymoon in the western forests, and
spoke rapturously of galloping through the glades
at the head of twenty rangers, all sunburned and
jingling and armed to the teeth.

What was an old fellow to make of it, anyway?
One could bring up a girl from a baby, and still
not know her.  Mr. Ladd was very much perplexed.

After dinner, the ladies left the two men at their
coffee, and retired.  The British Army set out
liqueurs, cigars, a spirit-lighter, and then noiselessly
vanished.  Now that they were alone together,
Mr. Ladd hoped that J. Whitlock would unbend; hoped
that the long-deferred process of making his
acquaintance would begin.  He might not be an ideal
son-in-law, but it was horse-sense to make the best
of him.  You had to take the son-in-law God gave
you.  Besides, the man that Phyllis loved was
bound to have a fine nature; and if he could unveil
it to her, he surely could unveil it to her father.
So, between sips of Benedictine, and through the
haze of a good cigar, Mr. Ladd essayed the task.

He commenced by describing his own early manhood;
his courtship of Phyllis' mother; his marriage
in face of a thousand difficulties.  Again and again
he faltered; it was all so sacred; his eyes were often
moist--but he persevered; he had to win this
young man, and how better than by appealing to
the sentiment that unites all true lovers?  The
elderly railroad president could not bear utterly to be
left out of these two young lives.  His daughter
was lost to him; at best a husband leaves little for a
father; this stranger had it now in his power to
make that little almost nothing.  Small wonder,
then, that Mr. Ladd struggled for his shred of
happiness; put pride on one side; exerted every faculty
he possessed to attract the friendship of Phyllis'
master.  For a husband is a master; a woman is
the slave of the man she loves; forty centuries have
changed nothing but the words, and the size and
metal of the ring.

It used to be of iron, and was worn on the neck.

Mr. Ladd's gaze, that had been fixed in vacancy,
of a sudden fell full on J. Whitlock's face.  What
he saw was an expression so cold, so delicately
supercilious, so patiently polite, that he stopped as
suddenly as though he had been struck by lightning.
Was it for this, then, that he had opened this holy
of holies, into which no human being before had
ever looked,--this inmost recess of his soul, now
profaned, it seemed to him, for ever?  For a second
his shame transcended even his disappointment.  He
had dishonored the dead, besides dishonoring himself.
He had allowed this tall, thin, bored creature
to hear things too dear, too intimate, to be spoken
even to Phyllis.  My God, what an old fool he
had been, what an ass!

"Had we not better join the ladies?" inquired
J. Whitlock, after the pause had lasted long enough
to redeem the proposal from any appearance of rudeness.

"I suppose we had," returned Mr. Ladd, in a
tone as dry as his host's; and together they both
sought the drawing-room.

A long, long hour followed before, in decency,
a very flustered, embittered, and upset middle-aged
gentleman could dare to say his adieux.  From the
frescoed ceiling the painted angels must certainly
have wept at the sight beneath; or, if they did not
weep, they surely yawned.  The labored conversation,
the make-believe cordiality, the awful gap
when a topic fell to rise no more, certainly made it
an evening that never could be forgotten.  Blessed
Briton who said: "Mr. Ladd's kerridge!"  Twice
blessed Briton who handed them into it, and
uttered the magic word "'Ome!"

.. vspace:: 2

"Did you like him, Papa?"

"A delightful young man, Phyllis, perfectly delightful."

"And his mother?"

"Charming, charming!"

"I never saw either one of them unbend as they
did to you."

"It was a great compliment.  I appreciate it."

"You don't think I could have done better?"

"No, indeed.  Not if you love him."

"Papa?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"Papa, I've done something awful.  Shut your
eyes, and I'll try to tell you."

"Phyllis, what do you--?"

"Are they shut--tight--*tight*?"

"Yes, but I don't--"

"Now, don't talk, Papa, but listen like a good
little railroad president, and I'll tell you what I
think of J. Whitlock Pastor, and that is he's
*unbearable*!  No, no, I'm not joking--I mean it, I
mean it!  He's unbearable, and his mother's
unbearable, and the forty yards around them is
unbearable, and I wouldn't marry him for anything
under the sun, no, not if he was the only man in the
world except the clergyman who would do it; and
Papa, I'm so mortified and ashamed and miserable
that I don't know what to do.  Didn't you notice
me to-night, and how shy and crushed I was, sitting
there like a little Judas, and feeling, oh, horribly
wicked and treacherous?  It was *all* I could do not
to scream out that I hated him, just as loud as I
could: I hate you!  I hate you!  I hate you!--I
was trying to tell you that when we started, but I
didn't have the courage.  I wanted you to see him
for yourself; to realize how unendurable he is;
I--I--wanted you not to blame me too much, Papa."

To Mr. Ladd it was like a reprieve at the gallows'
foot.  Blame her?  Why, elation ran to his head
like wine; he caught her in his arms and hugged
her; had he saved her from drowning he could not
have been more passionately thankful.  His
opinion of the young man came out in a torrent of
unvarnished Anglo-Saxon.  To every epithet he
applied to him, Phyllis added a worse.  In their wild
humor, and bubbling over with a laughter that
verged on the hysterical, they vied with each other
in tearing J. Whitlock to pieces.

"But, Phyllis, Phyllis, how did you ever come
to do it?"

"I don't know, Papa."

"But you must have liked him?"

"I thought I did."

"Was it the attraction of his position--his
name--and all that kind of thing?"

"No, I thought I loved him."

"How *could* you have thought such a thing?"

"It's incredible, but I did, Papa.  I loved him
right up to the moment when he kissed me.  And
how could I stop him after having looked down
at my toes, and said 'Yes.'  He's been kissing me
for five days--and, Papa, I hate him."

The fierceness she put into these three words was
vitriolic.  Disgust, revulsion, outraged pride flooded
her cheek with carmine.

"Papa, I can't make any excuses for myself.
It's not prudery; it's not that; but somehow the
real *me* didn't like the real *him*, and that's all I can
say about it!"

"You'll have to write to him, and break it off."

"But what am I to tell him, Papa?  It's so
awful and humiliating for him.  I guess I'll just
put it down to insanity in my family."

"But, good Lord, we haven't any--we've a very
decent record."

"Oh, Papa, I simply must have been insane to
have got engaged to him.--I'll write him a beautiful
letter of regret, and inclose a doctor's certificate!"

Her incorrigible humor was again asserting itself.
She outlined the letter, her eyes dancing with
merriment.  Mr. Ladd, in no mood to criticize these
swift transitions, joined in whole-heartedly.  They
laughed and laughed till the tears came, and arrived
home like noisy children from a party.

Mrs. Fensham, in a very décolleté gown, and
looking like a sylph of twenty-five, was waiting for
the carriage to take her to a ball.  She swam up
in front of Bob, and raised her two little hands to
his shoulders--a graceful gesture, and one she was
very fond of.

"And you found him a perfect dear, didn't you?"
she murmured ecstatically.

"Well, I don't know that I did," faltered Brother
Bob, placing a kiss on the top of her head.  "The
fact is, Sally, we've decided to call it off!"

"Bob, you haven't broken the engagement!"

Her lisping voice turned suddenly metallic.  She
stared from her brother to her niece, a sylph no
longer, but a woman of forty-five, pale with
apprehension and anger.

"Phyllis has made a mistake, that's all," he said.
"He looked very nice in the show-window, but
now we are going to take him back, and get a
credit-slip for something we want more."

"A new automobile coat for Papa," put in
Phyllis mischievously.

"And you can both laugh about it!" exclaimed
Aunt Sarah in appalled accents.  "Laugh at
throwing over J. Whitlock Pastor!  Oh, you little
Carthage nobodies--haven't you any sense at
all--don't you know what you are doing--isn't he
as much a duke with us as any Marlborough or
Newcastle in England?  He was too good; he was
too nice; he wasn't enough of a snob to blow and
brag--and that's what he gets for it, the 'No' of
a silly girl, who'd prefer a barber's block clerk to
the greatest gentleman in America!"

She tottered to the mantelpiece and burst into
tears--the first tears she had shed in twenty
worldly and scheming years--and the only tears
that did attend the rupture of the Pastor-Ladd
engagement.





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.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

There was the usual chatter, the usual
slanders, the usual innuendoes that
follow such an event.  Charming little assassins,
in Paquin gowns and picture hats flew about
sticking pins into Phyllis' reputation.  Those worse
gossips, the clubs, were not behindhand either; and
old gentlemen, who ought to have known better,
unctuously laid their heads together and passed the
lies along.  It is so much the custom to dwell on
the good side of human nature that we are apt to
forget the existence of another--that cruel
malignancy, which, in embryo, may be seen any time at
the monkey-house in the Zoo.  In its more
developed human form it jostles at our elbows every day.

The American duke himself behaved with a beautiful
propriety.  Publicly he took all the blame on
his own shoulders, and hied him to the western
wilds to scourge the campers and cigarette-smokers
who infested his beloved forests.  Thus congenially
employed, he was quite willing to wait for Time's
healing hand to do the rest.  In a year he was
completely reënameled, and took a finer polish than
ever.

Mr. Ladd hoped that Phyllis would return to
Carthage to hide her head from the storm.  But
she insisted on staying in Washington, and "seeing
it through," which she did with the prettiest
defiance imaginable, returning pin for pin with gay
insouciance, and dancing the night out in all
manner of lions' dens.  In her veins there ran the blood
of that old aristocratic South--of those fighting-cock
Frenchmen, dark, lithe and graceful, who had
loved, gambled and gone the pace with headlong
recklessness and folly; of those fiery Spaniards,
more grave and still more dissolute, to whom pride
was the very breath of life, and who could call out a
man and shoot him with the stateliest of courtesy.--What
a race it had been in the heyday of its
wildness and youth, the torment of women, the terror of
men, alluring even now through the haze of by-gone
pistol-smoke!  And though it has been dead and
gone these hundred and fifty years, the strain yet
persists in some Phyllis here, some stripling there,
attenuated perhaps, but far, far from lost.

Even to-day such intrepidity casts its spell.  The
eyes that are unafraid, the mouth that can smile in
peril, do we not still admire their possessor--and
that most of all in a young, high-bred and exceedingly
attractive woman?  Washington certainly did
in Phyllis Ladd--young-man Washington, that
is,--and they trooped after her in cohorts, and would
have drunk champagne from her little slipper had
she let them.

.. vspace:: 2

Months rolled by.  The tide of Phyllis' letters
rose in Mr. Ladd's drawer--countless pages in
that fine girlish hand, full of zest, full of the joy
of living, revealing, intimate, and silent only in
regard to the most important matter of all--J. Whitlock's
successor.

Mr. Ladd knew what value to set on her assertion
that she was "tired of men."  He waited, not
without jealousy, for preference to show itself;
reading and re-reading every allusion that might
afford a clue.  If she wrote that "the ambassador
was a very kind old man, with aristocratic legs, and
a profile like a horse, who singled me out for
much more than my share of attention"--Mr. Ladd
would forthwith look up that ambassador;
get his diplomatic rating; and worry about his
being sixty-six, and twice a widower.

One day, quite out of the sky, a card was brought
him inscribed, "Captain Baron Sempft von Piller,
First Attaché, Imperial German Embassy,
Washington."  As a rule, applicants to see Mr. Ladd had
first to state their business, and undergo a certain
amount of sifting before they were admitted.  In
this manner inventors were weeded out, cranks,
people with a grievance against the claims' department,
book-agents, labor-leaders, charity-mongers, bogus
clergymen who had been refused half-rates--all
that host who buzzed like mosquitoes outside
Mr. Ladd's net.  But the First Attaché of the Imperial
German Embassy was given an open track, which
he took with a military stride, and the clank of an
invisible sword.

Mr. Ladd turned in his chair, and beheld a florid,
tall, fine-looking young man of twenty-eight or so,
with the stiff carriage of a Prussian officer, and
unshrinking blue eyes that had been trained not to
droop in the face of anything.

The captain wasted no time in preliminaries.
In a carefully-rehearsed sentence, innocent of all
punctuation, and delivered in a breath, he said:
"It is not my intention to trespass overlong on the
time of I know a much-engrossed gentleman but if
you will kindly grant me three minutes I shall be
happy to convince you of the integrity of my
character and the honor of my intentions Mr. Ladd Sir."

Taking another breath that swelled out his
magnificent chest at least four inches, he resumed:
"This I now lay before you is my birth-certificate
these are the reports on my gymnasium courses at
Pootledam respectively marked good very good
indifferent good very good till inspired by the thought
of a military career I entered on probation
subsequently made permanent by the vote of my
fellow-officers the tenth regiment of Uhlans which after
six years of honorable commendation I left
regretted by every one to place myself in the diplomatic
service Mr. Ladd Sir."

Taking a third breath, he went on:

"By kindly glancing at this letter which I have
the honor to bear from my esteemed chief whom
I am proud also to call my friend you will see to
your complete satisfaction that I am no needy
adventurer trading on an historic and greatly-renowned
name but a man of substance promise and
ability with the assurance of reaching if I live the
highest place it is in the power of my country and
my emperor to grant Mr. Ladd Sir."

He was inhaling his fourth breath when Mr. Ladd
managed to interpose a speech of his own.

"I am delighted to see you, captain," he said,
"and I shall be happy to oblige you in any way I
can.  Perhaps you desire to inspect what is really
one of the most perfect double-track railroad
systems in this country, operated at the minimum of
expense, and with an efficiency that makes the K. B. and
O. very favorably regarded by our public.  If it
falls below the high standard of your own
government-owned lines, you must credit us with a traffic
at least sixteen-fold larger per mile than that of
yours.  I will ask you to bear this in mind before
making too critical a comparison."

A boyish and most engaging smile overspread the
captain's features, and for the moment he almost
forgot how to go on with the set speech he had
learned so carefully.  But he stiffened his shoulders,
threw back his head, and continued, like a student
up for a difficult and trying examination:
"Before paying my addresses to one whose youth
beauty and charm has taken captive a heart hitherto
untouched by the sentiment of love I judged it only
right as a gentleman and a former German officer
before seeking to compromise the lady's inclination
in any way whatever to provide myself with the
necessary proofs of my unassailable position and
honor and lay them with profound respect in the
hands of her highly-considered and greatly-esteemed
father Mr. Ladd Sir."

Mr. Ladd nearly fell off his chair at this
announcement; but controlling himself, he bent hastily
over the papers, and managed to hide his stupefaction.
He was very much bewildered, and though
favorably impressed by Von Piller, had the American's
distrust of all foreigners, particularly if titled.
The word "baron" conjured up horrible stories of
imposture and mortification; hungry fortune-hunters;
shameless masqueraders preying on credulity
and snobbishness, always with debts at home and
often wives; old-world wolves ravening for the
trusting lambs of the new.

But the ambassador's letter was most explicit,
and its authenticity could be tested in an hour.  The
craftiest of wolves would not dare to take such a
risk.  Wonder of wonders, it seemed, too, that the
baron was rich--one of the Westphalian iron
kings--with great landed estates besides.  Yes, he was
certainly a very eligible young man.  No harm
could be done by rising and shaking hands with
him.  Mr. Ladd did so, impressively.

"You are very punctilious," he said.  "I wish
we had more of that ourselves.  Your conduct is
manly and straightforward, and I esteem it highly.
Frankly, I should prefer my daughter to marry an
American--but if a foreigner is to win her, I
should be very happy to have that foreigner you."

The baron, who was now quite out of set-speeches,
and had to flounder in English of his own
making, murmured: "I lofe her--oh, how I lofe
her!  My friends they say, 'crazy, crazy,' but I
say, 'no, this tells me I am wise.'"

And with that he pressed his hand to his heart,
with an air of such simplicity and devotion that
Mr. Ladd was touched.

"You're a fine young man," he said, "and I wish
you luck."

"You will speak well of me to her?--Manly,
straightforward--you will say those words?"

"With pleasure, Baron."

The florid face beamed; the blue eyes were
shining; Mr. Ladd remembered the tendency of
foreigners to embrace, and hastened to put the desk
between them.

"I will go now," exclaimed Von Piller.  "I will
what you call, get busy.  I will lay at her little feet
the heart of a man that adores her!"

"Don't be in too big a hurry," said the railroad
president kindly.  "Take an old fellow's advice;
begin by trying to make a good impression."

Von Piller smiled complacently.

"Already have I done it," he remarked.  "She
likes me very mooch.  The battle is half-won, and
all I need is General Papa to reinforce."

It suddenly shot through General Papa's mind
that the baron was not so simple as he appeared.
Mr. Ladd's first feeling of compassion for a
hopeless suit changed to a grinding jealousy.  It was
intolerable to him that anybody should carry off his
precious daughter, and this amiable young man at
once took on the hue of an enemy.  Their farewell
was stiff and formal; and when, two hours later,
the confirming telegram arrived from the German
embassy, Mr. Ladd hotly consigned Captain Baron
Sempft von Piller to the devil.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

Von Piller had not under-estimated the
"good impression."  It was certainly good
enough for him to become, two days later,
the successful suitor for Phyllis' hand.  The
engagement was in the papers, and everybody was
happy--save Mr. Ladd.  On top of his natural
resentment at any poor human biped in trousers
daring to aspire to his daughter, there were two
letters from Washington that embittered him beyond
measure.  The one was from Phyllis; the other
from Sarah Fensham; and though very different in
expression their gist was the same.  He was
besought *not* to come to Washington.

"Dear, darling old daddy," wrote Phyllis, "The
whole thing is such gossamer, so faint and delicate
and eider-downish, that one belittling look of yours,
one unguarded and critical word--would utterly
destroy it.  Of course, Sempft is not the Golden
Young Man, and I know it very well, but I really
do like him lots, and if you will give it six weeks
to 'set,' as masons say, I believe that it will turn
very nicely into love.  But just now--!  Oh,
Papa, the poor little building would topple so
easily--and you know how hard I have found it already
to stay too close to those big, greedy, grasping
creatures who want to race off with one as a
poodle does with a stick.  Not that Sempft isn't
awfully nice and considerate, but I know there will
be times when--!  Oh, Papa, be patient, and give
me a chance, for if you should hurry over and catch
me in the right humor, I would send him away so
fast that he would think he was fired out of a
Zalinski cannon!"

Sarah's letter was in a more wounding strain:
"For Heaven's sake, stay away, my dearest brother,
or you will ruin everything.  That girl of yours is
too fastidious and wilful for belief, and from the
bottom of my heart I am sorry for the poor dear
baron, who is making such a goddess out of an
icicle.  She is possessed of the same insane pride
that you have, and is quite of your own opinion that
nobody is good enough for her.  After bringing her
up all wrong, don't add to your folly by breaking
off a second splendid match.  Stay in Carthage,
and try to acquiesce in the fact that sooner or later
she is bound to marry somebody; and thank your
stars that it is somebody to be proud of.  I know
she is too good for any one but an archangel, but
still, steel yourself to accept a young, wealthy,
handsome, brilliant, accomplished, high-born and
distinguished son-in-law, who has the world at his
feet.  Naturally to you it is an intolerable prospect.
I don't ask you to say that it is not.  But for
Heaven's sake, remain in Carthage, and keep your
sulks at a distance."

After his first anger had passed, Mr. Ladd took
himself seriously to task, and forced that other self
of his to admit the undeniable justice of both these
letters.  He was a cantankerous, cross-grained old
curmudgeon, and the right place for a cantankerous,
cross-grained old curmudgeon was unquestionably--Carthage.
If he were so utterly unable to make
allowances for youth and immaturity--and he had
to assent to the fact that he was unable--he ought,
at any rate, to have the grace to keep his
fault-finding face turned to the wall.  Phyllis was right.
Sarah was right.  Everybody was right, except a
hot-headed old fellow, with a sick and jealous heart,
who, if he did not restrain himself, would end by
marring his daughter's future beyond recall.--Yes,
he would hold himself in; he would do nothing
to incur reproach; he would let things take their
course, and pretend to be a sort of Sunny Jim,
smilingly regarding events from Carthage.

It was none too easy an undertaking, but he
was sustained in some degree by the hurried little
scrawls that reached him, day by day, from Phyllis.--It
was all going splendidly.  She was so proud
of Sempft.  He was everywhere such a favorite.
He was so high-spirited, and manly--and so crazily
in love with her.  It was nice to have him so crazily
in love with her.  It was nice to lead such a big,
swaggering soldier by a pink ribbon--to pin him
with a little, girlish ticket marked "reserved"--to
see him jump at the mere raising of an eyebrow
when some embezzling young débutante had
sneaked him away into a corner.--Then there was
the engagement ring she could not pull her glove
over, with diamonds so large and flashing that they'd
light the gas; there was the gorgeous pearl-necklace,
which Aunt Sarah would not allow her to
accept yet; there was the emperor's wonderful
cablegram of congratulation, all about Germany and
America, as though the two countries were
engaged, instead of merely she and Sempft.  It made
her feel so important, so international--and
horrid, shabby men snap-shotted her on the street like
a celebrity, walking backwards with cameras in
their hands while everybody fell over everybody to
see what was going on!--Oh, yes, Papa, she was
saving it up to brag about to her grandchildren--when
she was a tiresome old lady in a castle corner,
with nothing to do but bore chubby little German
aristocrats.

Her gaiety and sprightliness never wavered.
Her content, her happiness were transparent.  If
her ardor for Baron von Piller seemed never to
pass the big-brother limits, it might be assumed
she concealed her feelings, and was either too shy
or too modest to betray them.  Mr. Ladd, who read
her letters with a microscope, noticed the omission,
and--wondered.  His misgivings were not
untinged with pleasure.  Did she really love this man,
he asked himself again and again?  It was
impossible to be certain.  Had it not been for the
J. Whitlock Pastor episode he would have been
in less doubt.  But with this in mind, he could not
help wondering--wondering a great deal.

The answer to these conjectures came with a
startling unexpectedness.  One afternoon, on his
return home, he found the front door open, and
an expressman staggering up to it with a trunk.
In the hall were five more trunks, and Henry and
Edwards, both in shirt-sleeves, were departing for
the upper regions with another.  Before Mr. Ladd
could ask a question there was a swift rush of
skirts, an inroad of barking dogs, and a radiant
young person was hanging to his neck with round,
bare arms.  It was Phyllis, her eyes dancing, her
face flushed with the romp she had been having with
the dogs, her hair in wild disorder, and half down
her back.

"I'm home, Papa," she cried, "home for good,
and in such awful disgrace you oughtn't to take
me in!  Yes, your wayward girl has crept back to
the dear old farm, and though the snow was deep,
and all she had was a crust from a crippled child--she's
here, Papa, at last, and, oh, oh, oh, so glad!--Down,
Watch, down!  Teddy, you'll get one in
the nose if you don't stop!--Oh, the little wretch
has got my slipper off!"

Teddy scampered away with it, and there was
a lively tussle before it was recovered, with all
manner of laughter and slaps and growls.

"But Captain von Piller?" demanded Mr. Ladd.
"Is he coming?  Is he here, too?"

"No, Papa," she returned, "he isn't here, and
he never will be here, and I left him screaming
till you could hear it all over Washington.  Just
howling, Papa, and calling for warships!  And
Aunt Sarah was hollering, too, till the only dignified
thing left was to tie my sheets together and let
myself out, which I did before there was a riot!"

"Phyllis, you don't mean that your engagement--"

"Hush, Papa, we can't talk here.--Come upstairs
to your den."

There she heaped up a dozen pillows on the
divan; settled herself with Watch's head on her
lap, and Wally and Teddy beside her; asked if
there were any chocolate creams, and resigned
herself to there being none; and then, pushing back the
soft, thick hair from her eyes, told her father to
sit at her feet, and not to crowd a valuable dog.

"Yes, all that's finished," she said.  "It was
splendid and international, and all that, but I could
not stand it any more.  He was just like poor
Whitlock, only worse.  I don't know how to describe it,
Papa, for he was awfully correct and all that--I
wouldn't for worlds have you think he wasn't--only
he expected all the conventional things that go
with being engaged, and wanted me to nestle against
his waistcoat, and, and--pant with joy I suppose--and
whisper what a beautiful, wonderful, irresistible,
bubble-bubble-bubble person he was--and
shyly kiss his hand, probably--Oh, well, Papa,
I tried to, and I didn't like it, and in spite of myself
it seemed wrong and humiliating--and he was so
large, and pink, and German, and so much of him
rolled over his collar, and everybody seemed in
such a conspiracy to poke us into dark corners and
leave us there, and so finally I just said, 'No, I've
made a mistake, and here's your ring, and here's
the cablegram from the Kaiser, and here's the
photograph of your dead mother--and would you
mind getting out of my life, please?--and friends
are requested to accept this the only intimation.'"

"And how did he take it?"

"He wouldn't take it--that was the trouble.
He made a frightful fuss.  He couldn't have made
more if we had been really married, and I had
announced my intention of running away with the
elevator-boy!  He scrunched my hands till I thought
the bones would break, and might have thrown
me out of the window if tea hadn't come in the
nick of time.  Then he went off to Aunt Sarah,
with the German idea of stinging up the family--as
though twenty aunts could make me love a man
I didn't--and succeeded so well that she
practically drove me out.  Oh, her position!  I never
heard the end of it--and of course she said I had
ruined it, and that she never could hold up her
head again.  The only thing to do was to run.  So
I ran and ran and ran--to my old dad!"

She slipped her hand down, and held her father's
collar as though he, too, were a dog, and gave it
an affectionate little tug.

"My darling old dad," she murmured.

"It's not so bad to have one, is it?" he said.
"To know where there is a snug harbor, and an
old fellow who thinks you are perfect, and
everything you do is right.  You will get a lot of
criticism for this, and I suppose Washington will boil
over--but to my thinking, you couldn't have done
better, and I am thankful for your courage.  If
you don't love a man, for God's sake, don't marry
him, even if you're both walking up the aisle, and
he's twiddling the ring!--To tell the truth, I
wasn't a bit partial to Von Piller, and found it
pretty hard to sit tight, and be told he was forty
different kinds of a paragon."

"My darling Papa," she observed sweetly,
"you're never going to like anybody who wants
to marry me, and it's sure to cost me some worry
when the right person does come.--Do you
suppose he ever will?"

"Oh, I guess so."

"In spite of the awful record I have made?
Aunt Sarah says I am branded as a coquette, and
no decent man will ever have anything more to
do with me."

"Rubbish."

Phyllis fondled Watch's ears, which were long
and silky, and tried the effect on dog-beauty of
overlapping them on his head.

"Papa, what's the matter with me?  Why
haven't I any sense?  Why am I not like other
girls?"

"You are very fastidious."

"Yes, that's true."

"And very proud."

"Yes, inherited."

"And demand a great deal."

"Yes--everything."

"You are in love with love--and are rather
in a hurry."

"Oh, Papa--shut your eyes--I am love-hungry.
I want to love--I'm crazy to love.  Only--only--"

"The right man hasn't arrived?"

"I hope it's that.  If it isn't, I'm going to have
a bad time of it.  It seems so useless; this getting
engaged and then hating the poor wretch.--It's
such a terrible waste of energy and heart-beats all
round."

"Dad included."

"What a nuisance I am, to be sure!  I've
exhausted everybody's patience except yours, and
that's getting thin.  It will end in my living alone
in a shanty with nothing but dogs, and the faded
photographs of the men I've thrown over.  Aunt
Sarah called me an awful name; called me an
engagement-buster; said that the habit would grow
and grow till I was a horrid old maid with nothing
to tease but a parrot.--Though I'd love to have a
parrot--two of them--and raise little parrots!
Little fluffy baby parrots must be adorable.  Papa,
let's buy a pair to-morrow, and you'll teach the
he-one to swear, and I'll teach the she-one to be
gentle and submissive and always have her own
way.  And Papa--?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"You aren't cross with me, are you?"

"Not a bit."

"And I may live with you, and add up your
bills, and bring you your slippers, and dream all
day of that Golden Young Man who doesn't exist?"

"Oh, don't say that--He does, Phyllis."

"Papa, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

Socially speaking Carthage was as distant
from Washington as is Timbuctoo.  While
the Von Piller hurricane was raging in the
nation's capital, the Carthage barometer showed
"fair and rising."  To a storm-tossed little mariner,
it was like gaining the lee of some palmy isle, and
casting anchor in still water.  The islanders, too, if
a trifle homespun and provincial, were the most
delightful people, and unspoiled by any intrusion of a
higher civilization.  Phyllis had not realized how
entirely her outlook had changed until she returned
to her own home.  She saw her former school
fellows with new eyes, and while she could not forbear
smiling at some of their ways, she liked them
better than ever before.--They, on their side,
regarded with awe this fashionable young beauty,
who had jilted a Pastor, and given the mitten to
a real, live, guaranteed baron, and who had
descended in their midst, like a racer in a paddock of
donkeys.

Some of them felt very donkeyfied indeed.  Tom
Fergus, a gelatinous young man, somewhat
forward and familiar, who was alluded to in the local
papers as "one of the leaders of the younger set"
said she was "raving pretty, but, my stars, what
was a fellow to talk to her about?"  Billy
Phillpots, who worked in his father's store (many of
the young fellows "worked in his father's store")
vetoed her as "insufferably stuck up," he having
escorted her home one night, and failed to extort
the usual toll at the garden-gate.--The good night
kiss at the garden-gate was quite a Carthage
institution, and as innocent as the kiss of an early
Christian.

Life in Carthage was altogether Early Christian--for
the young people of the better families.
They met every night, and moved in flocks, like
sparrows, alighting first in one house and then
another--taking up the carpets for dancing,
improvising suppers, crowding round the fireplaces
to sing, and tell stories.  Presumably there was
some social line drawn somewhere; but money at
least counted for little, and anybody that was "nice"
was allowed in.  And it must be said, on the whole,
that they were remarkably "nice," and very much
a credit to high-class democracy.  The boys were
well-mannered, brotherly and respectful; the girls
charming in their blitheness and gaiety.  Occasionally
there was a match, and a couple disappeared as
completely as though they had fallen into the river
and been swept away.  You couldn't marry, and
still be a sparrow.  No, indeed!  You passed into
another world, and six months after the sparrows
would hardly know you on the street.  One would
not venture to say this was cruel--though it
always came as a shock to the newly-wedded
pair--it was just the sparrow way, that's all.

Phyllis was soon flying with the rest of them,
and her ready adaptability caused her to be accepted
in their midst without more than a passing
hesitation.  Hiding her riper and more womanly nature,
and absorbing herself in this animated triviality,
she pretended to be as much a sparrow as any
of the flock, and no less lively and empty-headed.
She was lonely, heart-tired, and very much adrift
on the sea of life; and in the engaging childishness
of these girls and boys, who, though of her own
age, were mentally only up to her elbow, she found
a sort of solace, a sort of peace.  They kept her
from thinking; their chatter and good spirits were
exhilarating; the naïve admiration of the young
men warmed, and yet did not disturb her.--Before
her long flight to other skies, the little bird might
well be thankful for the sparrows.

Spring came--summer.  Her twenty-first birthday
passed in the Adirondacks, where her father
had a cottage in that wilderness of woods and lakes.
She was in her twenty-second year now, and knew
what it was to feel old--oh, so old!  That she
was able, by the laws of the land, to buy and hold
real-estate seemed but a poor set-off to this
encroachment of time--though her father repeatedly
pointed out this new privilege the years had brought.
She could marry, too, without his consent--another
empty concession to maturity, considering there was
no one to marry with or without it.  Of course,
there were a few silly babies running after her as
though she were a woolly sheep--but no one that
the wildest stretch of imagination could consider
a man.  Some of their fathers ran, too--stout
widowers panting with the unaccustomed exertion,--but
that was grotesque and disgusting.  Far or
wide, high or low, there wasn't a pin feather of
the Golden Young Man.  His noble race was
extinct.  He lived in books, but you never met him.
Never, never.  He had died out a million years
ago, leaving nothing save a tradition for poets and
novelists to paw over.

Quite convinced that it was a wretched world,
Phyllis danced and rode, picnicked and camped out
after deer in a bewitching Wild West costume, and
was always the first to a party, and the last to leave
it--all very much like one who found it tolerable
enough.  Some would have called her an insatiable
little pleasure-seeker, and been wholly misled.
"What are any of us doing except waiting for a
man?" she once announced with shocking candor.
"It's the fashion to talk of 'other interests' and
we girls are all graduating, and slumming, and
teaching little foreign Jews to sing '*My Country
'Tis of Thee*, and *Columbia*, *Gem of the Ocean*,
and learning to be trained nurses and bacteriologists--just
in the effort to save our poor little
self-respect.  We ruin our complexions, dim our eyes,
and spoil our nice hands--all the property of some
future lord and master, whom we really are
pilfering--and who's deceived?  Who takes it seriously?
We don't, who do it.  Poof, what a pretense it
is!--If you have to wait, why not two-step through
it as I do, and be as happy as you can, like people
snowed up in a train.  That's what a young girl
is--snowed up--and I only wish some one would
come with a spade and dig me out!"

These racy confidences entertained and delighted
her father, but on other people they often had a
contrary effect.  The truth from the lips of babes
and sucklings, however phenomenal, is also
disconcerting.  Old women, who in private taught their
daughters a revolting cynicism, and called it
"putting them on their guard," were much overcome
by Phyllis' frankness.  It was "bold"; it was
"unladylike"; it was "dreadful."  They tore Phyllis
to pieces, and prophesied the most awful things.
It may be that they were right.  Selfishness is a
fine ballast, and an anxious regard for number one
keeps many a little ship on an undeviating course.
Phyllis was made to smart for her unconventional
sayings, and they often came back to her, so distorted
and coarsened by their travels, that her cheeks
flushed with anger.

"There's one thing I am learning fast," she said,
"and that is, all my friends seem to be men, and
all my enemies, women--and I may as well get
used to it now.  I know there are a few exceptions
either way, but it's substantially that, anyhow, and
one might as well face up to it, and save trouble."

"I'm afraid you are what they call a man's
woman, my dear," said Mr. Ladd.

"I'm glad of it," exclaimed Phyllis saucily.  "I
don't want to be any other kind of a woman, least
of all one of those sneaking, cowardly, backbiting,
hypocritical things.  I don't wonder they used to
whip them in the good old days.  If men hadn't
degenerated so terribly, they'd be whipping them now!"

.. vspace:: 2

Autumn saw her back in Carthage again.  Aunt
Sarah was begging to have her for another Washington
winter, and was in a beautifully forgiving
humor.  The breaches in her social position had
been repaired, and the Demon Want, confound him,
was knocking loudly at the door of her elegant
establishment--so that the hope of another visit,
with its accompanying shower of Brother Bob's
gold, loomed very attractively before these cold,
blue eyes.  But Phyllis could not be beguiled; she
had no wish to repeat that mad winter; her mood
was all the other way--for her big tranquil house,
her books, her dogs, her horses, and long dreaming
hours to herself, undisturbed.  She had loved
Washington, and had exhausted it.  The strain of its
business-like gaiety was not to be endured again.
It was a factory of pleasure, and the hours
over-long, the tasks over-hard.  Aunt Sarah might ring
the bell all she wished, but the factory that winter
would be one toiler short.  When a person has
entered her twenty-second year, that advanced age
brings with it a certain serenity unknown to wilder
twenty.  You are glad to lie back with a dog's
head in your lap, and lazily watch the procession.
Silly young men, choking in immense collars, no
longer can keep you out of bed till three A.M.
Let the new débutantes have that doubtful joy.
Twenty-two preferred her book, and her silent
rooms.--Not that Carthage was without its simple
relaxations, but they were well spaced out, with
long intervals between.

.. vspace:: 2

"Miss Daisy wants you on the 'phone, Miss."

"Oh, all right--I'm coming.--Hello, hello,
hello--What a dear you are to ask me--A--matinée
Wednesday?  Love to!--What's it to be?"

"Oh, Phyllis, you won't be offended, will you,
but I'm so poor, and their boxes are only five
dollars, and will hold six, and they've promised to
squeeze in three more chairs--and so I've invited
nine--and it's in that cheap, horrid Thalia Theater,
but nobody can hurt us in a box, and everybody says
the play's wonderful, and you can eat peanuts,
which you can't do in a real theater; and it's
*Moths*, by Ouida, and Cyril Adair is the star, and
he is so wonderfully handsome--oh, you must
have seen his pictures in the barber-shop windows--and
anyway, even if he isn't, the play is delightfully
wicked--because I had such a fight with
mama about it, and then Howard has been twice,
which he wouldn't have done if it wasn't; and even
if it isn't, how am I to give a theater-party on no
more than five dollars?  The Columbia boxes are
fifteen, and so are the Lyceum's, and when they
say six, it's six, and you simply couldn't dare to
ask nine girls because they wouldn't let them in.
But the Thalia man was so pleased and impressed
that I believe he would have included ice-cream if
I had asked him--and Phyllis?"

"Yes, darling."

"It would give such a lot of ginger to it, if
you would lend me your carriage and the
dog-cart--!  Oh, I knew you would!  What a
comfort you are, Phyllis.  I don't know how I'd get
along without you, you are always so generous and
obliging.  Nettie Havens has volunteered tea at
her house--just insisted on it when I told her.
I guess that poor little five never went so far in
all its little history!  I can't think it ever ran a
whole theater-party before, with carriages and teas.
It's an awful tacky way of doing things, I admit,
but what does it matter if we have a good time?--Yes,
that's the only way to look at it, and you're
a darling.  Do you know I think Harry Thayre
is sweet on--!  Oh, bother, she says I've to ring
off, or pay another nickel.  If it was a man she'd let
him have fifteen cents' worth!  Well, good-by,
good-by--!"

.. vspace:: 2

It was a pretty sight they presented in their box,
a veritable flower-bed of young American womanhood.
The bright, girlish faces, the laughter, the
animation, the sparkling eyes, the ripples of
merriment, the air of innocent bravado--all were in
such contrast to the usual patrons of the Thalia
that the house could not take its eyes off them.
It was essentially a shop-girl-and-best-young-man
theater, with a hoodlum gallery, and a general
appearance of extreme youth.  Those who did not
chew gum were almost conspicuous, and a formidable
young man with a voice of brass, perambulated
the aisles with a large tray, and terrorized nickels
and dimes from the pockets of swains.  He had a
humorous directness that made the price of
immunity seem cheap at the money.  It was worth a
dime any time to escape him.

And the play?

It was a rousing love-story, crude, stilted,
old-fashioned, but developed with a force and
earnestness that Ouida has always possessed.  The brutal
Prince, the ill-used Princess, Corrèze, the idol of the
public, the tenor whose voice has taken the world
by storm, heart-broken and noble in his hopeless
love--here were full-blooded situations to make
the heart beat.  And how nine of them *did* beat
in that crowded box.  And what scalding tears
rolled down those youthful cheeks!  And what
little fists clenched as the Prince, passing all bounds,
and incensed to frenzy, struck--positively
struck--the adorable being who was clinging so
desperately to honor and duty!  Who could blame
Corrèze for what was to follow?  Assuredly not
our nine rosebuds, who, if anything, found the
splendid creature almost too backward, too
self-sacrificing.  But--!

And Cyril Adair, who played Corrèze with a
fervid pathos that tore the heart out of your breast!
Of course, you knew he had taken the world by
storm.  Of course you knew the public idolized
him.  Wasn't he the handsomest, manliest, most
chivalrous fellow alive?  Hadn't he a voice to melt
a stone, or drive, as cutting as a rapier, through
even a Prince?  His firm chin, his faultless teeth,
his strange, smoldering, compelling eyes, his
vigorous yet graceful frame--small wonder that the
Princess threw everything to the winds for such a
man.  Under the circumstances none of the nine
would have waited half so long.  The Princess'
devotion to honor and duty seemed hardly less than
morbid.  Her patience under insults was positively
exasperating.  She clung to respectability with both
hands--screamed, raged, but stuck to it as tight
as a limpet--until a blow in the face, and the vilest
of epithets from her brutal husband, toppled her
finally to perdition--that is, if it were perdition
to link the remainder of her life with that glorious
being, and abandon everything for love.

.. vspace:: 2

The box applauded wildly, and led off the whole
house.  The curtain was made to rise again and
again.  Corrèze, advancing to the footlights, was
left in no doubt as to where he had scored his
heaviest hit, and rewarded those eager, girlish faces with
a glance of his fine eyes, and a bow intended for
them alone.  Phyllis was the least enthusiastic of
the party, and her silence during the first
intermission was noisily commented on.  She ate caramels
slowly, and added nothing but monosyllables and
an enigmatic smile to the rapturous demonstrations
of her companions.  But had they noticed her
during the further course of the performance, they
might have had something else to wonder at.  With
parted lips, and breath so faint that she seemed not
to breathe at all--with a face paling to marble,
and poignant with a curious and unreasoning
distress, her eyes never quitted those of Cyril Adair,
and fixed themselves on his in a stare so troubled,
so fascinated, that her soul seemed to leave her
body and to pass the footlights.





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.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

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   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

The tea that followed was but a blurred
memory, a confused recollection of noise
and chatter, with a stab at the heart every
time the actor's name was mentioned.  She was
thankful to get home, and lock herself in her room.
She was in a tumult of shame, agitation, and an
exquisite guilty joy.  She partly undressed, and
threw herself on her bed, shutting her eyes to win
back the face and voice that had moved her to
the depths.  What had he done to her?  A few
hours before she had never known of his existence.
The merest accident had revealed it to her, and
now he was causing the blood to surge through her
veins, and mantle her cheeks with dishonor.  For
it was dishonor.  Everything in her revolted at
such a position.  His preposterous name struck
fiercely on her pride and her sense of the
ridiculous--Cyril Adair!  How could any one, masquerading
under such an egregious alias, dare to give her
a moment's concern.  She burst out laughing at
herself, a contemptuous and bitter laugh.  Cyril
Adair!  No dazzled little housemaid could have
been sillier than she.

Yet his face haunted her, the tones of his voice,
that strange, smoldering look in his eyes.  How
greedily that dreadful woman had kissed him!
Those were no stage kisses.  Before a thousand
people she had abandoned herself to his arms, and
fastened that painted mouth to his in an ecstasy.
The audience thought it was acting.  Phyllis, with
a keener perception, saw the truth, and it made her
savage with jealousy.  That dreadful woman was
shameless, crazy, beside herself.  She had wooed
him with every fiber of her body, pressing his head
to her bosom, using every artifice to inflame him,
and what had brought down the thunders of the
house had not been a delineation of passion, but
the naked thing itself.

It was horrible.  Actors and actresses were
horrible.  No wonder they were despised even while
they were run after.  No wonder their lives were
notorious.  How could it be otherwise when--?
But she envied that woman.  Yes, she envied that
woman, terrible as it was to admit it.  Hated her,
and envied her.--No, she pitied her as one of her
own silly, headlong sex, cursed with this need to
love.  She was no longer young; she was thirty
years old if a day; she was probably poor,
disreputable, with nothing in the world but a trunk full
of trashy finery, and no home but a cheap hotel.
Love was the only thing she had, poor wretch, the
only thing.

And Cyril Adair?  It was hard to imagine him
in private life except as Corrèze.  But, of course,
he wasn't Corrèze--that was absurd.  Perhaps he
would be so changed that one would scarcely know
him on the street.  She had heard of such
disillusions--of tottering old men playing boys--and
wasn't Bernhardt sixty?  But a woman can tell, a
woman who--who--cares.  That vigorous manhood
was no made-up pretense; such freshness, such
warmth, such grace, could not be affected; he was
certainly not much more than thirty, on the border
line of youth and early-maturity when men, to her,
possessed their greatest charm.

Lying there, in a swoon of shy delight, she
allowed her fancy to fly away in dreams.  Hand in
hand, they trod a fairy-land of love and rapture.
She stole sentences from his part, and made him
repeat them to her alone--avowals, passionate and
tender, in all the mellow sweetness of the voice that
still reëchoed in her heart.  He was Corrèze, and
she, in the madness of her infatuation, had forced
her way to him and thrown herself humbly at his
feet.  His love was not for her; she aspired to no
such heights; but she had come to be his little
slave; to follow him in his wanderings; to sleep
across his door, and guard him while he slept.  To
be near him was all she asked.  His little slave,
who, when he was dejected and weary, would nestle
beside him, and cover his hand with the softest
kisses.  She wanted no reward; she would try not
to be jealous of those great ladies, though there
would be times when she could not hold back her
feelings, and his hand, as she drew it across her
eyes, would be all wet with tears.

With her maid's knock at the door there came a
sudden revulsion.  Phyllis called to her to go away,
unwilling to be seen in her defenselessness, and
fearful of she knew not what.  But the spell was
broken.  The bubble of that pretty fantasy vanished
at one touch of fact.  Harsh reality obtruded itself,
and with it a pitiless self-arraignment.  She had
been swept off her feet by a third-class actor, in a
third-class play, full of mawkish sentiment and
unreality, in a third-class theater where they chewed
gum, and ate apples while they wept over the hero's
woes!  A wave of self-disgust rose within her.
She felt soiled, humiliated.  How dared this cheap,
showy creature reach out to take such liberties with
a woman a thousand times above him?  A creature,
who in all probability ate with his knife, carried
on low love affairs with admiring shop-girls, and
practised his fascinations before a mirror, like a
trick-monkey!  Pah, the thought of her amorous
imaginings reddened her cheeks, and consumed
her with bitterness and shame.  Where was her
self-respect, her modesty?  If wishes could have
killed, there would have been no performance of
*Moths* that night at the Thalia Theater.

At dinner she convulsed her father with an
account of the play, in which neither Adair nor the
audience were in any way spared.  In her zest
and mockery, it all took on a richly humorous
aspect, and at times she was interrupted by her
own silvery peals of laughter.  To hear her, how
could any one have guessed that she had been
stirred as she had never been stirred before, and
that the screaming farce she described had been in
reality the one drama that had ever touched her?
Was it in revenge for what she had suffered?  Was
it perversity?  Or was it the attempt to conquer a
physical attraction so irresistible that it tormented
and terrified her even while she fought it with the
best of all weapons--derision?

She passed a wretched night, tossing and turning
on her bed in a whirl of emotions.  She was
haunted by that face which appeared to regard her
with such reproach.  Why had she betrayed him, it
seemed to ask?  The smoldering eyes, compelling
always, were questioning and melancholy.  That
look, of such singular intensity, and with its strange
and mysterious appeal to some other self of hers,
again asserted its resistless power.  She felt
herself slipping back, in a langour of tenderness, to the
mood that had shocked her so much before.  In
vain she repeated the saving words--threw out
those little life-buoys to a swimmer drowning in
unworthy love--"third-class actor"--"matinée
hero"--"shop-girls' idol."--The drowning
swimmer continued to drown, unhelped.  The
life-buoys floated away, and disappeared.  Engulfing
love, worthy or unworthy, drew down her spent
body to the blue and coraled depths, and held her
there, fainting with delight.

In our secret hearts, who has not, at some time
or other, felt an unreasoning desire for one all
unknown.  Is love, indeed--true love, anything else?
Glamour and idealization--we would not go far
without either, and many, hand in hand, have trod
the long path to the grave, and died happy with
their illusions.  Nature, to screen her coarser
intent, fools us, little children that we are, with these
pretty and poetic artifices.  May it always be so,
for God knows, it is an ugly world, and it does not
do to peer too curiously behind the scenes.

.. vspace:: 2

There was a Mrs. Beekman that Phyllis knew,
the widow of a distinguished lawyer, left with
nothing, who had bravely set herself to earn her living
as a milliner.  It was to the credit of Carthage that
Mrs. Beekman's altered fortunes had not impaired
its regard for her.  She kept her friends in spite
of the "Hortense" over her shop, and a window
full of home-made hats, which, of themselves,
would have amply justified ostracism.  It was no
new thing for Mrs. Beekman to act as chaperon,
and repay, in this small measure, many kindnesses
that verged on charity.  So she was not surprised,
though much pleased and excited, when Phyllis
telephoned, and asked her to go with her to the theater.
"I liked the play so much I want to see it again,"
trickled that tiny voice into her ear, "and though
it's at that awful Thalia Theater, we can sit in a
box, and be quite safe and comfortable.--May I
call for you a little after eight, dear?"

Mrs. Beekman, who was an indefatigable pleasure-seeker,
consented with effusiveness.  Phyllis
was a darling to have thought of her.  One of her
girls had told her the play was splendid, and that
the star--oh, what didn't she say about the star!
Was Phyllis crazy about him, too?  Hee, hee, all
alike under their skins, as Kipling said!  Not that
she liked Kipling--he was so unrefined--but
Miss Britt (you know Miss Britt, the silly one,
with poodle eyes, and a poodle-fool if ever there
was one) Miss Britt raved for hours about his
"somber beauty."  Wasn't it killing!  If Adair
wanted to, he could leave town with two box-cars
of conquests!  My, the milliners wouldn't have a
girl left, and the ice-cream parlors would all have
to shut.--At eight, dear?--And dress quietly so
as not to attract attention?  Hee, hee, it was quite
a lark, wasn't it?

.. vspace:: 2

Sitting in the same box, on the same chair, but
with a feeling as though years had elapsed since she
had last been there, Phyllis again saw the curtain
rise on *Moths*.  The impulse that had brought
her, the mad desire to see the man who had
tortured her so cruelly, had changed to a cold
critical mood, to a disdain so comprehensive that it
included herself no less than Adair.  Dispassionate
and contemptuous, it cost her no effort to steel
herself against his first appearance.  His mouth was
undeniably rather coarse; she detected a self-complacency
beneath his Corrèze that his acting failed to
hide; she saw his glance seek the back-benches with
a satisfaction at finding them filled, that struck her
as somehow greedy and tradesmanlike.  What a
disgusting business it was to posture and rant, and
choke back sham tears, and mimic the sacredest
things in life--and watch back-benches with an
eye to the evening's profits!  The wretchedest
laborer, with his pick and shovel, was more of a man.
At any rate he did something that was dignified,
that was useful and wanted.  He was not framed
in cardboard; there was no row of lights at his
honest, muddy feet; his loving was a private matter,
and when he kissed he meant it.--How fortunate
it was that she had come!  How unerring the
instinct that had brought her back to be cured!

But as the play proceeded such reflections were
forgotten in the intensity of her absorption.  Again
she was leaning forward with parted lips; rapt,
over-borne, lost to everything, and pale with an
indescribable tumult of emotion.  She was conscious
of no audience; of naught save the man who held
her captive with a power so absolute and irresistible
that birth, training, pride, weighed as nothing
in the balance.  His voice pierced her heart; his
eyes seemed to draw the soul from her body; she
trembled at her own helplessness, though the
realization of it was also a strange and intoxicating
pleasure.

But intermingled with that pleasure, darting
through it like a tongue of flame, was a jealousy of
Miss de Vere that not even the bitterest of
contempt could allay.  Phyllis felt to the full the
degradation of being jealous of any one bearing so
preposterous a name.  Lydia de Vere!  Her lips
curled at herself.  Oh, that shoddy affectation of
aristocracy!  Lydia de Vere!  And that in a
ten-twenty-thirty cent theater, and hardly clothed above
the waist; and yet, in spite of her painted face,
her dyed hair, and all of her thirty years, with
shoulders and breast that a duchess might have
envied, she was handsome in her common,
flamboyant, chorus-girl way, with the meaningless good
looks that one associates with tights and gilt spears.
Her acting was stilted and false; her fine ladyism
an impossible assumption; she railed at the Prince
in the accents of a cook giving notice.  But her
love for Corrèze taxed no histrionic powers.  It
was vehement and real, as were the kisses she
bestowed so freely, and the caresses she lingered over
with voluptuous satisfaction.  Beneath the drama
of fictitious personages was another of flesh and
blood, like a splash of scarlet on a printed page.

What fury and anguish lay pent up in one girlish
bosom!  What a suffocating sense of defeat,
bitterness and shame!--  To burn with jealousy of such
a woman was more lowering than to--  No, she
would not admit that word to herself.  It was folly,
infatuation, madness--but not love.  It would
pass with the swiftness it had come, leaving her in
wonder at herself, though the scar would remain
for many a long day.  This man was robbing her
of something that never perhaps could be altogether
replaced.  How wicked it was, how unjust--she
who had done nothing to tempt the lightning!
She hated him for it; she clenched her teeth and
defied him; she understood now what she had read
in books that there are men the mind scorns even
while the body surrenders.  But she was made of
stronger stuff; she had pride and courage; her pearls
were not for swine to trample on.  She would
put him out of her head for ever.

It was terrible how he always got back again.
There were tones in his voice that melted every
resolution.  If ever laughter was music, it was
his, and the contagion of it swept the house; and
his face, though not handsome in the accepted sense,
was striking in the effect it gave of an untamed,
extraordinary and powerful nature, only half
revealed.  What was pride or courage or anything?
What availed the hatred of that hotly-beating little
heart?  Had he not but to look her way to make
it his own?  Had he crushed it in his hand, would
it not have died of joy?  Hatred, resentment,
outraged self-respect--words, nothing but words.

As the house streamed out she waited in dread
for Mrs. Beekman's criticism.  However desperately
she might belittle Adair to herself, Phyllis
shrank from hearing condemnation on other lips.
The pride that had failed so utterly to defend her,
had taken sides with the enemy, devotedly,
passionately.  Judge of her surprise, then, her
pleasure and relief, when Mrs. Beekman said to her
solemnly: "Phyllis, that man's a genius!  He's
perfectly splendid!"  Misunderstanding her
companion's silence, and thinking it implied dissent,
she went on with a note of argument in her voice.
"Of course one can feel somehow that he has had
no advantages--that he has probably never been
within ten miles of the people he is trying to
represent--(do you remember his shaking hands with
his gloves on?)--but just the same he has a
wonderful and magnificent talent, and we'll hear of him
as surely as the world heard of Henry Irving, or
Booth, or Bernhardt.  Truly, Phyllis, I believe the
day will come when we'll be bragging of having
admired Adair before he was famous; that is, if
you feel like me about it," she added doubtfully.

"I do, I do!" cried Phyllis.  "I've never seen
anybody on the stage I've liked as much."

"Well, I have," said Mrs. Beekman candidly.
"He certainly suffered from being with all those
idiots, and I don't like that fling-ding walk of
his.--I guess he's about five years short of the
winning-post, but we'll see him romp in as sure as
my name's Emma Beekman."

"Romping in" jarred somewhat on Phyllis' ear,
but all the same Mrs. Beekman's admiration was
very sweet to her, and in a queer sort of way was
comforting and reassuring.  There was dignity in
idolizing a genius; it raised her in her own good
opinion.

She forgot the apples and the chewing-gum;
she forgot even Miss de Vere; a mantle of
unreasoning happiness enveloped her, and with it
came a gush of affection for Mrs. Beekman that
quite astonished the latter.  She held her hand in
the dark, and tried, with many unseen blushes, to
keep the one subject uppermost.  To lie back in
the carriage and hear Adair praised, thrilled her
with delicious sensations.  She was insatiable, and
kept the milliner repeating "genius, genius,
genius," like a parrot.  It cost her an order for a
twenty dollar hat, but what did she care?  She
would have given the clothes off her back in the
extravagance of her desire.  Fortunately
Mrs. Beekman was nothing loath, and would have
chattered for ever on this entrancing topic.  "I guess
we're as bad as my girls," she said, with her
good-natured laugh, "and he could put us both in the
box-car, too, if he had the mind."

"I shouldn't care if I was the only one," returned
Phyllis gaily, "and anyway, I've always loved
traveling!"

"It would be to the devil," said Mrs. Beekman
half-seriously.  "That's where such men come
from, and that's where they go back--and if you
could follow round the circle, I guess you'd find it
mile-stoned with silly girls."

"Oh, if I went, I would stay to the end," cried
Phyllis.  "No putting me off at a way-station.
I'd take a through ticket."

"And get there alone," put in Mrs. Beekman.
"Men like that don't go far with any girl.  They
are a power for mischief, and they weren't much
wrong in the old days to run them out of
town--vagabonds and strolling players, you know.  I
guess in those times they used to take chickens, too,
and anything portable.  A bad lot, my dear, and
they aren't any better to-day."

This was a poor return for a twenty-dollar hat,
and without knowing exactly why, it made Phyllis
exceedingly miserable.  She felt a diminishing
affection for Mrs. Beekman; and the world altogether
suddenly took on a cold and dismal aspect.  Her
spirits were not revived by finding her father
sitting up for her.

"What was the play?" he asked, taking her wraps.

"*Moths*, Papa."

"What?  Twice?"

"Oh, I thought it would amuse me to see it
again, and besides, Mrs. Beekman preferred it to
anything else in town, and I really went for her
sake, you know.  It's a charity to take her out
sometimes; her life is so monotonous, and one feels
so sorry for her."

Mr. Ladd waited, smiling in advance, for another
humorous take-off of the piece.  But there was no
fun in Phyllis that night.  She drank a glass of
water, kissed him good night, and went silently up
to bed.

"She doesn't seem very well," he thought, with a
shade of concern, and remembered that she had
been pale and tired for some days past.  "If she
doesn't pick up in a day or two, I believe I'll get
the doctor."

Had he seen her an hour later, his misgivings
would have increased.  Kneeling beside her bed,
her face crushed in the coverlet, she was weeping
softly and heart-brokenly to herself.





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.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

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   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

Friday, the day that followed, was memorable
to her for its decisiveness and remorse.
She took a long ride, and between canters,
busied her head with plans of escape.  Washington,
Florida, Europe--it mattered little where--so
long as she got away at once.  She looked at
herself dispassionately, and the more she looked
the more utterly despicable did she seem.  She
was undoubtedly in love with this cheap, showy
actor--(somehow in the sunshine his genius had
withered, and he seemed to share the general
tawdriness of gum and apples and shop-boy
sentiment)--crazily in love, infatuated; and to refuse to
admit it was but to hide her head in the sand, like an
ostrich.

The comparison was not a pretty one, but then
she was not looking for pretty comparisons.  In
fact, as far as her feelings for Adair were concerned,
she was eager to find words that could make her
wince.  She said them out loud, exulting in their
brutality; gross words, picked up she hardly knew
where, and put out of mind as unclean and horrible.
To use them now was a form of self-flagellation,
and she laid on the whip with a will.  It was
good for a little fool, she said viciously.  Lash! lash!
It would keep her out of mischief.  Lash! lash!
Let her understand once for all what it
really meant, even if the skin curled off her back.

On her return home she stopped at the telegraph-office
to carry out her intention of volunteering a
visit to Aunt Sarah's.  Night or day, in season or
out, there she always had a refuge.  If blood in
Aunt Sarah's case, was not thicker than water, there
was the more robust bond of hard cash always to be
relied upon.  A niece who descended in a shower
of gold could count with confidence on the bread
and salt of hospitality, and the sincerest of
welcoming kisses.  There is something to be said for
people you can count on with confidence.  An
affectionate, love-you-like-a-daughter aunt might have
made excuses.  A money-loving, pleasure-loving,
wholly selfish aunt, living very much above her
income, was one of the certainties of life.

But as she reined in her horse, and the groom
ran to give her his hand to dismount, she wondered,
after all, whether she would telegraph.  The
flagellation had been very successful; the September
sunshine had killed the pitiful glimmer of the
footlights; the crisp invigorating air had brought
sanity with every breath.  No, indeed, she would not
telegraph, she was not half the fool she had thought
herself; it was a girlish weakness to exaggerate
everything--infatuation included.  She would
telephone to that nice New Yorker instead and
invite him to tea.  That oldish man with the
charming distinction and courtesy, who had shown
symptoms of infatuation, too.--Yes, a good whipping
to be followed by two hours of an excessively
devoted Mr. Van Suydam, and perhaps a
boy-and-girl-evening later with the carpet up--and why
should anybody be scared of anything?

So the telegram was not sent; and a young lady,
very much restored, and looking adorably fresh and
pretty on her Kentucky mare, came galloping up
Chestnut Avenue in excellent spirits and appetite.

As for Mr. Van Suydam--he threw over a big
reception to come, and was so agreeable and eager,
in such a sweet, restrained, smiling way, that he
was allowed to hold a little hand a long, long while,
and murmur a whole heartful of tender things that
amounted virtually to a declaration--which was
cruel of Phyllis, not to say unladylike and shocking;
for with half-shut eyes she tried to imagine it was
quite another man who was wooing her, and
abandoned herself to the fiction with a waywardness
that was inexcusable.  But however unjust it was
towards Mr. Van Suydam, who was an honorable
man, and meant what he said, and was naturally
much elated--his suit did Phyllis good, and even
as dummy for another, an inevitable comparison
would insist upon obtruding itself.  Caste is very
strong; it is difficult to associate good-breeding,
honor and distinction with a ten-twenty-thirty cent
star; and though Mr. Van Suydam, was nothing
to Phyllis personally she could not help realizing
the high value she set on the qualities he exemplified--so
high, indeed, that it began to seem impossible
for her to care seriously for any man without them.

An evening with the sparrows rounded out that
day of good resolves and healthy common sense.
She danced with a zest that no genuinely-infatuated
person could have felt, and told ghost stories
afterwards before the fire, and listened to others being
told, with shudders of unaffected enjoyment.
"And my dear, when she looked at that man again,
*she saw that his throat was cut from ear to ear!*"--It
was a jolly evening, innocently hilarious, and
as wholesome as an ocean breeze.  Morbidity and
introspection could not persist in an atmosphere so
genially youthful.  Phyllis never thought once of
Cyril Adair, and flirted outrageously with Sam
Hargreaves, convulsing the sparrows by sharing his
ice-cream spoon.  Ordinarily quiet and backward,
and even a little disdainful, she showed herself in
wild spirits that night, and her audacity, humor
and gaiety were irresistible.

.. vspace:: 2

It was very discouraging, after a night's sleep,
as untroubled as a babe's, to awaken again with a
dull ache within her, and to discover, with
hopeless despondency, that she was not cured at all.
Alas for the girlish armor she had striven so hard
to put about her--Mr. Van Suydam, Sam Hargreaves,
the bitter, ugly things she had said to herself,
the defiant resolutions.  Where was that pride
she had stung to fury?  Where was that sense of
caste which yesterday had seemed so peremptory?

The morning found her bereft of everything,
wretched, defenseless, with no longer even the will
to fly.  She was under the spell once more, and
powerless to throw it off.  Her whole prepossession
was to see Adair again, cost what it might.
Nothing else mattered.  She was mad, infatuated,
contemptible to herself--but she could only be
appeased by the sight of him.  Yet how was it
possible?  How could she contrive it?  She could
not well ask Mrs. Beekman a second time.  That
any one should suspect her secret was intolerable--she
would rather have died.  The circle of her girl
friends was too small to arrange another theater-party
without submitting herself to unbearable
innuendoes and home-thrusts.  Those young women
had a preternatural instinct for detecting the dawn
of love.  In other things they might be stupid and
blind, but for this they were as watchful as hawks,
and as merciless as only twenty can be.  What of
her admirers then--Mr. Van Suydam, say, or
good-natured, fat Sam?  But they could be very
sharp, too--and besides, she could not be so
forward as to seek an invitation.  Young girls in
Carthage had a great deal of liberty--but it had
its limits.  Perhaps she could take one of the
house-maids with her to the matinée--it was Saturday
and the piece was given twice.  But this would
appear queer, especially if it reached her father.

There seemed nothing for it but to dress very
plainly and go by herself.  It was something to
remember that matinées practically existed for
women only--though attending one alone was
unheard of in Phyllis' set.  It was less a social law
than a sort of fact.  Girls went to matinées in pairs
apparently--always had--and apparently always
would.  "Who did you go with, my dear?" was
an inevitable question.  Well, if necessary, one
could meet that with a fib; and if one were found
out, it was no great crime after all--but rather
a mild escapade that a blush could condone.  Of
course a box was out of the question.  She could
not sit solitary in a box for the whole house to gape
at.  But there was nothing to prevent her buying
two orchestra seats, so that any one recognizing
her might draw a natural deduction.  An
adjoining empty seat was almost a chaperon, besides
permitting her to widen her distance from an
unpleasant neighbor.  If there should be two
unpleasant neighbors, she could always rise and walk out.

At two she was passing the Thalia Theater with
an air of well-feigned unconcern, though her steps
grew slower, and she stole quick frightened
glances at the bustling entrance.  She felt the need
of such a preliminary survey before she could
screw her courage up to the point of joining the
in-going throng, who by daylight looked so
depressingly dingy and common that she was fairly
daunted by the sight of them.  Even in the plainest
clothes she possessed, she felt that she would be
noticeable among people like that, and this was
brought home to her the more by the impudent
stare of several young men, who parted, none too
politely, for her to pass.  They knew she had no
business there alone; that she belonged to another
world; and there was speculation, as well as
forward admiration, in the looks they cast at her.
She felt they had somehow divined her hesitating
purpose, and were grinning at her humiliation.
She quickened her pace, and got by with fiercely
flaming cheeks, and a desolating sense of failure.

But the desire was so overmastering that after
a few minutes she turned, and again coerced her
reluctant feet.  Impudent young men could do her
no harm.  What a coward she had been to let them
disconcert her.  She would put down her sixty
cents, and enter boldly, telling herself she was a
factory girl, whose young man happened to be late.
She might even leave the second ticket at the
box-office with the phantom's name on it--though no,
that would mean too much talking, and she
distrusted her voice.  But, anyhow, nothing was
going to keep her out of the theater.  Didn't soldiers
walk tip to breastworks, bristling with guns and
cannons--whole rows of them, with probably a
very similar shakiness in their legs?  She would
advance on that box-office in the same spirit--right,
left, right, left--rubadub, rubadub--with
sixty cents in her hot little hand.

She had scarcely reached the outskirts of the
crowd when she suddenly heard her name called
aloud.  It went through her like a knife, and she
hardly dared turn her guilty head.  There, beside
the curb, in a big automobile, was Mr. Van Suydam,
with a party of women in veils and furs, all
signaling to her.  There ensued an animated
conversation.  Where was she going?  Why shouldn't
she jump in with them?  Mr. Van Suydam would
sit on the floor of the tonneau, and give her his
place.  They were so insistent that it was not easy
to refuse.  She fibbed manfully, and invented
pressing engagements....  At last they rolled
off, waving their hands....

But this chance meeting cost her all the poor
courage she possessed.  Why, she could not explain
to herself--but it was gone, and there was nothing
for it but to hasten away.  She felt she had escaped
detection by a hair; the precious matinée was lost;
her eyes smarted with disappointment and chagrin.
She rankled with the injustice of it, too--the
unmerited and unsought disaster that this infatuation
really was.  She was so wholly innocent of any
blame.  She had done nothing--absolutely
nothing--to incur it.  If you caught measles or
smallpox every one was sorry for you; it was admittedly
a misfortune for which you were in no way
responsible.  But if you caught love (she smiled
at her own phrase), it was an unspeakable disgrace!
Yet what was the difference?  Did it not lie
outside one's self?  How unjust it was, then, to make
a criminal of a woman for what was beyond her
power to control; and the exasperating part was
that she felt a criminal to herself!

Her heart was heavy with shame.  One instinct
made her love unreasonably; another instinct
arrogated the right to criticize with unsparing
venom.  What a contradiction!  What a cruel
heritage from all those thousands of dead people
who had gone to make her body and her mind
with odds and ends of themselves!  She had done
no harm, yet some blind, unknown, malignant force
was grinding her under its heel.  She understood
now why old-fashioned people believed so implicitly
in the devil.  It was their crude explanation of
the unexplainable.

She locked herself in her room, and impelled by
a thought that had been dancing dizzily in her
head, opened her desk, and drew out a sheet of
note-paper.  She managed to write: "Dear
Mr. Adair"; and then, blushing crimson, covered her
face with her hands, and began to tremble with an
uncontrollable emotion.  To continue that letter--to
send it--was to outrage every feeling of
modesty within her.  Under the circumstances any
letter, however cold or conventional, was an avowal.
She might almost as well write "*je t'adore*" under
her photograph, and leave it at the stage-door.
But that blind, unknown, malignant force, after a
moment of respite, again drove her on.  She might
shiver and blush, but the compulsion of it was like
iron, and she had to obey.

"Dear Mr. Adair," she wrote, "I have seen
*Moths* twice, and may I, a mere member of the
public, and altogether unknown to you, take the
great liberty of expressing my admiration of your
wonderful performance?"  She stopped at the
last word, and debated it over with herself--quite
coolly, considering the throes she had been in a
minute before.  No, "performance" would not do.
Bears performed; so did acrobats; it was not the
right word at all.--She took another sheet of
paper, and began again: "Dear Mr. Adair: I have
seen *Moths* twice, and may I, a mere member of
the public, and altogether unknown to you, take
the great liberty of expressing my admiration of
your powerful portrayal of a noble nature struggling
against an illicit passion?  Nothing I have
ever seen on the stage has moved me so deeply, and
though praise from an absolute stranger may seem
little in your eyes, I can not resist the impulse that
makes me write.  Trusting you will receive this
in the spirit that prompts it, believe me, in sincere
homage, Phyllis Ladd."

She read it, and re-read it till the words lost all
meaning.  What would he think of it?  What
sort of person would it conjure up to him?  The
hand, and the paper, and the engraved address all
denoted refinement and good taste.  It would be
quite evident to him that she was a lady, with a
social position of the best--that is, if he knew
what Chestnut Avenue meant in Carthage, and
especially such a number as 214.  But there was
nothing to show that she was young, or
unmarried--or--or--good-looking.  The letter might just as
well have been written by a matron of fifty.  If
only she could have added "aged twenty-one, and
generally considered a very pretty woman."  She
would have liked him to know that, even if she
were never to see him again; would have liked
to tantalize his curiosity in regard to the unknown
Phyllis Ladd whose name was signed at the end.--Though
he probably received bushels of notes.  All
actors were said to.  And being a man he would
probably like some of the warmer ones better--those
from frankly adoring shop-girls, hampered
neither by social position nor backwardness.  Hers
would be pushed to one side, and never thought of
again.  Oh, the little fool she was to send it!
What could come of it but shame, and good
Heavens, hadn't she had enough of that already?

But undeterred, and wilful in spite of everything,
she addressed an envelope, folded her letter inside
it, and went out to drop it herself into the box.  As
it slipped from her fingers she felt an intense
pleasure in her daring.  It was only a coward who
took no risks.  There was her letter in the box
gone beyond retaking.  For better or worse, for
good or evil, it had started on its road, and let
come what might.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

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   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

The next morning, towards noon, Cyril
Adair was lounging over the bar of the
Good Fellows' Grotto, with one well-shod
foot perched on the metal rest below.  Before him
was a Martini cocktail, and the admiring, deferential
face of Larry, the bar-keeper.  Adair stood the
scrutiny of daylight better than most actors.  Late
hours, dissipation and grease-paint had not
impaired a fine and ruddy skin that the morning razor
left as fresh as a boy's.  His brown eyes were clear,
and there was about him an air of unassailable
health that was enhanced by broad shoulders, a neck
as firm as any ever cut from Greek marble, and a
finely-swelling chest--the physique, in fact, of
what he had some pretensions to be--a good,
welter-weight boxer.  His skill in this direction was
well known, and his readiness when tipsy to
exercise it on any one unfortunate enough to offend
him, was one of the scandals of his stormy and
scandalous life.  His engagements, nine times out
of ten, had the knack of ending in the police
court, with raw beefsteak for the plaintiff's eye,
and the option of "seven day's hard" for the
uncontrite defendant.  Even when stark sober--and
to do him justice he drank only in fits and starts,
with long intermissions between--there was
something subtly formidable in the man, and people
instinctively made way for him, and treated him
with a respect verging on fear.

He was over-dressed in what was the last
accentuation of the prevailing fashion--with far too
much braided cuff, with far too startling a
waistcoat, with far too extravagant a tie and pin--and
worse than anything, wore them all with assertiveness
and self-complacency.  Though his manners
were good (when he liked,) and his address
agreeable, and even ingratiating, he was too showy, too
self-satisfied, too elaborately at ease, and his
assurance seemed to rest, not on the conventional
groundwork of birth and breeding, but rather on
his power and will to knock you through the door
if he cared to take the trouble.

Of course, he was profoundly ignorant, knowing
nothing, reading little, his life bounded by the
footlights on one side, and the stage-door on the
other--and like all such men perpetually nervous
lest he should be found out.  His inherent ability
was enormous--as enormous as his vanity.  He
had fought his way up from nothing--from the
muddy streets in which he had sold papers, and
begged, and starved, his whole boyhood long.  He
was full of instincts that had never had the chance
of becoming anything more--instincts, which, if
cultivated, might have made him a very different
man.  He was passionately fond of bad music;
delighted in the only pictures he knew, those in hotels
and saloons; he had, stored away in a memory
that never forgot anything, half the plays of
Shakespeare, and thousands of lines of trashy verse.
A savage, in fact, in the midst of our civilization,
which, after trying to grind him into powder, and
denying him everything, was unjust enough to
despise him heartily for what he had made of
himself unaided.  Could he have refrained from taking
offense at trifles, and from punching people's heads,
he could easily have retained the high place he had
once held on the New York stage.  He had no one
to thank but himself if he were now touring the
country in a fifty-class company, with an enemy in
every manager who had ever employed him.  He
had a strong, unusual talent.  In the delineation of
somber and misunderstood natures, contradictory,
pent-up, heroic--the out and out bad man with a
spark of good--he was admitted by metropolitan
critics to have no equal in America.  Others copied
him slavishly and made successes, while he, their
inspiration and their model, remained comparatively
unknown.  There were times when he felt
very badly about it, but a pretty face and a
provocative petticoat could always divert his attention.
Needless to say he had not to look far to find either.

"Larry," he asked nonchalantly, "do you know
any people in Carthage here named Ladd?"

"I don't believe I do, Mr. Adair," returned
Larry, scratching his head.  "Leastways, none
except Robert T. R. Ladd, the railroad president."  Larry
was unable to conceive that this mighty name
could possibly have any bearing on Adair's
question.  "No, I don't believe I do."

"Oh, the railroad president?  Any family?"

"Just one daughter."

"Well, go on--tell me about her."

"Why, there isn't much to say, except people
call her the prettiest girl in Carthage--but then
they always say that of a millionaire's daughter--Emma
Satterlee would turn the milk sour, and yet
in the society notes--"

"Did you ever see her?--No, no, I don't mean
that one--the railroad man's--the Ladd girl?"

"Yes, I saw her onst in a church fair.  She
hit *me* all right.  Slender brunette, very
aristocracy, with the kind of eyes that if you're *fond*
of brunettes--seem like--"

"How old is she?"

"Hell, how do I know!  Twenty--twenty-one--something
around there.  Just a girl."

"And the prettiest one in Carthage?" repeated
Adair, sipping his cocktail as though the
description pleased him.

"Well, I would leave *my* happy home for her,"
said Larry, with a grin.  "Pretty--I'd say she
was pretty--pretty enough to eat."

"Lives out Chestnut Avenue way, doesn't she?"

"Yes, in the stone house that's set back in a
kind of park, with a big gate in front and a
driveway.  The Ladds' are at the top of the top, you
know.  My, I felt I was breaking into the swell
bunch myself when she told my fortune for a dollar.
If I had had the nerve and the money I guess
she would be telling it yet!  And she smiled so
sweet when she took it, like I was as good as
anybody.  God forgive me if I seem to talk
disrespectful of her, for she's a lady through and
through, and I knew it even if I was only a
bar-keeper."

"Toss you for the drinks," said Adair, draining
his glass.  "Hand over the box, Larry."

"Sure Mike," said the bar-keeper rattling the
dice.

.. vspace:: 2

Adair encountered an acquaintance, a commercial
traveler named Hellman, on the sidewalk outside.

"Just the fellow I wanted to see," he cried.
"Hellman, there is such a word as temerity, isn't
there?"

"Bet your life," said Hellman.  "The temerity
of my playing *Hamlet*, you know--the temerity of
you thinking yourself a better-looking man than I
am--the temerity of--"

"And you spell it t-e-m-e-r-i-t-y?" interrupted
Adair.

"Yes, why?"

"Oh, I used it in a letter I was writing to a girl,
and I didn't want to mail it till I was sure."  He
showed the envelope in his hand, with his thumb
hiding the name.

"Always at it," said Hellman, with an unpleasant
laugh.  "Who are you throwing the handkerchief
at now?"

"The prettiest girl in Carthage," returned Adair
genially.  "There's a box over there--let's drop
it in."

And together they crossed the street, and sent
the letter on its way.

It was to Phyllis, begging in warm but respectful
language for the privilege of calling on her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

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   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

"Dear Mr. Adair: I hardly expected you
to reply to my note, nor could I have
thought it would please you so much as
you say.  Indeed, I hope you will not misjudge
it--or me--for it was written on the same impulse
that makes one applaud in the theater itself, and
with no ulterior idea.  Frankly, I do not think
I ought to ask you to call--the circumstances are
so peculiar--and it is all so against the
conventionalities.  In Washington or New York it would
be different, but this little place--like all little
places--is strait-laced beyond belief.  It will be
my loss more than yours, which perhaps will be
some consolation to you.  Yet it seems too stupid
to say no--that is, if you really *do* want to
come--and I am going to ask you after all.  Surely
a little talk over a cup of tea to-morrow at five
ought not to arrest the stars in their courses, or
bring down the pillars of the universe on our
unfortunate heads?  And if any one should come in,
we might say that we had met before in Washington?
That would place our acquaintance on a
more correct footing, and save me, at least, the
possibility of embarrassment.  Is this asking too
much of you?  Sincerely yours, Phyllis Ladd."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

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   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

There are men who pursue women with a
skill, zest and pertinacity that others do
bears or tigers, and with very much the
same hardihood and delight.  In the rich preserves
of the world, so well stocked with youth and beauty,
they find an unending enjoyment, and an unending
occupation.  No sooner have they brought down
one, and beheld her bleeding and stricken at their
feet, than they are up and off, with another notch
on their gun, and fresh ardor in their hearts.  They
are debarred from taking the tangible trophies of
skin and head; a slipper, a glove, a bundle of letters
are often all they have to show; but within them
wells the satisfaction of the hunter who has made
a "kill."

Amongst this race of sportsmen there were few
hardier or more daring than Cyril Adair.  That
the game was cruel or cowardly had never occurred
to him.  The women he knew--all of the lower
class--frequently played their side of it with eyes
wide open, and ran--not to escape--but with the
full intention of being caught.  This is not urged
in his extenuation.  Often he was not aware of
the subterfuge.  Women to him were but prey,
and in more venerable times he would have
waylaid any lady he favored, with a club.

Behold him in immaculate afternoon costume,
striding along Chestnut Avenue--boutonniere,
silk-hat, cane, new suede gloves, etc.--a devil of a
fellow in his own estimation, with an air and a
swagger that reflected his profound contentment
with himself.  He had never gone a-hunting before
in such a splendid wood.  The thought that he was
actually going to invade one of those imposing
mansions made his pulses leap.  How big they
were, how aristocratic!  What incomes they
represented!  What mysteries of ease and luxury lay
hidden behind those stately windows!  He was
tremendously stirred; tremendously excited.  He
swelled with self-complacency.  He was hardly
over thirty, he was handsome, he was a
genius--and the women loved him!

A man-servant admitted him.  Yes, Miss Ladd
was expecting him.  His hat and cane were taken,
while he gazed, somewhat daunted, at the immense
hall in which he found himself.  He had a
confused sense of tapestries; of stone bas-reliefs very
worn and old; of oriental rugs; of strange-looking,
moldy chairs, straight-backed and carved, with
massive arms, on which there was still the fading
gilt of the fifteenth century.--He was led through
another room of a similar cold and spacious
magnificence, and then up-stairs to the drawing-room.
Here he was left, while the man departed to inform
his mistress of the visitor's arrival.

The elegance and beauty with which Adair found
himself surrounded fairly took his breath away.
His only standard was that of fashionable hotels,
yet here was something that made the splendors of
the Waldorf or the Auditorium seem suddenly
tawdry in comparison.  His instinctive good taste
was ravished by the old Venetian brocades, the
rich dark pictures, the Sheriton furniture, the
harmonious blending of all these, and so many other
half-seen and half-comprehended things into a
gracious and exquisite whole.  Near him was the
table set out for tea, with silver that it was a joy
to look at; and about the little island it made in
the vastness of the room was a wealth of red roses,
marking as it were the boundaries of coziness and
intimacy.

Adair's complacency was not proof against such
aristocratic and undreamed of surroundings.  His
exultation fell, and pangs of self-pity assailed him.
What was he but a child of the gutter, an outcast--a
man full of yearning for the unattainable, who
had been starved and kept down by merciless
circumstances?  Such swift transitions were not
unusual in his peculiar and contradictory nature.
After all, he was an artist, even if often a brute and
a fool, and somewhere within him, very much
overlaid and shrouded, there was a spark of the divine
fire.  Yes, he said to himself, he was coarse and
common, and ignorant and unrefined.  He had done
much with himself; he had achieved wonders,
considering the handicap he had always been
under--but admitting all that, what enormous deficiencies
still remained!  How ill at ease he was in such a
room as this!  How hard he would have to strive
to hide his lack of knowledge and breeding!  He
had almost wished he had never come.  In such a
place he was an intruder--a boor--condemned
to blunder through a part with no author's lines to
help him.

As it turned out, nothing could have been more
fortunate for him than this dejected mood.  First
appearances are everything, and he might easily--so
easily--have made an intolerable impression.
Indeed, in the cold fit, almost the terror, succeeding
the impulse that had caused Phyllis to invite him,
she was prepared to find him forward, and perhaps
eager to take advantage of her recklessness, and
misconstrue it.  At the hint of such a thing she
would have frozen; and the fact that she would
only have had herself to blame would have doubled
her humiliation.  A woman who makes the first
advances to a man is more capable than any of
sudden revulsions.  Her pride is on edge, and
morbidly apprehensive.

But the grave, quiet, handsome man awaiting her
dispelled these fancies as soon as their eyes had
met.  He thanked her with an embarrassment not
unbecoming under the circumstances, for the
unconventionality that had given him the privilege of
meeting her.  His smile as he said this was charming;
his respect and courtesy beyond reproach; that
other nature of his, the artist-nature, so quick and
responsive in its intuitions warned him to put a
guard on himself.  Besides, if the room had
over-awed him, how much more overpowering was the
apparition of this slim and radiant woman, the
mistress of all this splendor, whose pure dark face filled
him with an indefinable sense of another world in
which he was but a clod.  Though he was a
connoisseur of pretty women, and had possessed in
his disreputable past many of greater physical
beauty than Phyllis, not one of them had had the
least pretensions to what in her appealed to him so
strongly--distinction.  From her glossy hair to
the tips of her little feet, she was the embodiment
of race, of high-breeding and high spirit; it was as
marked in her girlish beauty as in any thoroughbred.
She was the child of those who had admitted
no superior save their God and their King.

Adair found himself bereft of all his assurance.
The professional besieger, accustomed to advance
with sureness and precision, unaccountably held
back, hardly knowing why his heart had turned to
water.  It seemed presumptuous enough that he
should even talk on terms of equality with one so
immeasurably above him.  His humility was
painful.  He stammered.  He colored.  His hand
trembled on his tea-cup as he strove to keep alive
a conversation of the usual commonplaces.

"Miss Ladd," he said suddenly, "you mustn't
think I am a gentleman--because I am not.  I
am not accustomed to this kind of thing; you are
the first lady I--I've ever met."  He arrested the
expostulation on her lips and went on hurriedly.
"It's much better to tell you that right off.  I
don't know those books you speak of; I don't know
anything very much; I am awfully uncultivated
and ignorant.  There, I have said it!  It will make
me feel more comfortable, and it will be lots better
than pretending I am something I'm not."

"You are a great actor, Mr. Adair."

"My God," he returned with simplicity, "sometimes
I'm not so sure that I am."  Then he burst
into laughter at his own artlessness--a delightful
laugh, contagious and musical, that no one could
hear without liking him the better.  Phyllis
laughed, too, and somehow with it the ice seemed
broken, and constraint disappeared.  "Miss Ladd,"
he went on, "people like you, and places like this,
are the realities which we try so hard to copy with
our poor theatrical pasteboard and calico.  I used
to hate Mansfield for saying we ought to work as
servants amongst--well, people we couldn't meet
in any other way, and yet the ones we are audacious
enough to represent on the stage.  He meant it as
an insult, of course--but he was right in some
ways.  Just seeing you pour tea makes me feel how
badly we do even that!"

Phyllis, naturally, was touched and flattered.

"Why, we just pour it anyhow," she said, smiling.

"Precisely," exclaimed Adair, "and now let me
do it our way!"  He drew nearer the table, put his
hand to the tea-pot, and grimacing at an imaginary
company, proceeded to pour and pass several
imaginary cups with a grotesque affectation of grace
and elegance.  "Two lumps, dear Sir James?--Patricia,
the Bishop is famishing for some almond
cake.--Oh, mercy me, and what's become of the
Dook?"  It was an admirable bit of mimicry, and
so gay and captivating in its satire that Phyllis
thought she had never seen anything so clever.
She laughed with delight and clapped her hands.

"Though you shock me, too," she protested.
"Corrèze mustn't do things like that--it isn't in
keeping."

"Corrèze?"

"Yes, you are not Mr. Adair to me, though I
know that's your name, and I have invited you.  I
can only think of you as Corrèze."

"Was I as good as that in the part?"

"I told you what I thought of it in my note."

"And you really meant it?"

"Would I have written if I hadn't?  It was an
awful thing to do.  I can't think of it without
burning with shame.--How can you say you are
not a gentleman, Mr. Adair?  Only a gentleman
would have put the right construction on it."

He was questioning her face with his fine eyes.
His intuition again stood him in good stead.  This
was not provocation, it was innocence.  To himself
he said: "No, it is impossible."

Then aloud: "It was the only construction--and
I felt childishly pleased.  We're great children,
you know, we actors; and after all, are we
to blame for liking approbation?  Just think a
moment.  How close it all is to the ridiculous, our
standing up there and declaiming all sorts of
red-hot emotions, with painted paper on one side, and
bald-headed fiddlers on the other!  Doesn't it
sometimes come over a man--sort of shoot through
him--the feeling of what a monkey-spectacle he
is making of himself?  *You* go ahead and play
Lady Macbeth in a nightgown; rage and strut
before those cold, scornful faces.  Then let one
amongst them cry: 'Bravo, bravo,' and give you
a hand!--My Lord, you'd give him your watch
and chain, your diamond pin--don't you see, he
returns you your self-respect, makes your work
worth the doing?--and that's what your note did
for me, Miss Ladd."

"Oh, Mr. Adair, don't talk to me about the
cold, scornful faces at your performance.  I was
there twice, and saw how they called you out!"

"Miss Ladd," he said, his strong, handsome,
eager face whimsically alight, "let me confess the
honest truth--an actor simply can't have enough
admiration!"

"You worry me for fear I didn't make mine
warm enough!  For really, Mr. Adair, in all
sincerity, I--"

"Well, go on."

"Bravo, bravo!"  Her lips parted mockingly
over her white teeth as she pretended to
applaud madly.  It was the daintiest teasing, and
more charming in the intimacy it implied than any
downright praise.  Adair glowed with a pleasure
so honest and boyish that Phyllis might be forgiven
for not suspecting the baser depths he hid so well.

"I'm a conceited ass," he admitted, "and after
all, isn't it enough to turn a man's head to be
here with you, and feel I owe it to the ginger I put
into Corrèze?  Most people get their friends by
introductions and all that, but I just snatched you
out of a whole theater full of strangers.  For you
are my friend, aren't you, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, Corrèze."

"You'll be making me jealous of the chap," he
cried running his hands through his hair with
make-believe exasperation.  "I think he is a good
deal of a whining humbug myself, and the sly way
he throws bouquets at himself is disgusting.  Miss
Ladd, I am ever so much nicer than he is--really
I am--though I see I shall never be able to
convince you."

"No reason why you shouldn't try."

"Perhaps I am ashamed to," he returned, with
an intensity of expression that became him well.
"You find me in a wretched little theater, the
cheapest of cheap stars--the hoodlum's pet, the
shop-girl's dream--and how can it help coloring
your whole idea of me?  You admire my Corrèze,
but for me myself how can you have anything but
contempt?  No, no--listen--it's true--and the
more you knew of my history the more contemptuous
you'd be.  I've been rated very high; I've had
every chance in the world; I've played with the
biggest kind of people, and--succeeded.  Yet I
have always been the dog who hanged himself.
No, there is no mystery about it--there never is
with a man who is sinking--a man of ability.  It's
his own fault every time--every, every time."

His earnestness made Phyllis thrill.  Adair was
playing his best rôle--himself, and playing it with
the fire and eloquence he could always bring to it.
His voice, incomparable in the beauty and range
of its tones, was never so effective as when tinged
with emotion.  Nothing was more manly, more
sincere, more moving.  It rose and fell in cadences
that lingered in the ear after the words themselves
were spoken--veritable music, affecting not only
the listener, but the musician as well.  Under the
spell of it he now found himself tempted into
strange confidences.  Never before had he spoken
of his childhood and early life except to lie, to
brag, to romance.  Yet here, to his own wonder,
and impelled by he hardly knew what, he was
unbosoming himself of the whole ignoble truth.
That instinct of his, so often wiser than himself,
so diabolically helpful, was showing him the right
road.  Had Phyllis been some little milliner this
would have been no road at all; such a one would
have been too familiar with the seamy side of life
to find any glamour in the tale; such a one would
have preferred the bogus palaces and bogus splendors
his instinct would then have indicated.  Phyllis'
intelligence was too keen thus to be deceived;
even genuine splendors would have interested her
less than this pitiful story of the slums; it not only
touched her sensibility to the quick, but enhanced
Adair in her tender and sympathetic eyes.

His father had been an Englishman--a remittance
man named Mayne--George Cyril Augustus
Fitzroy Mayne.  Whether his pretensions were
justified or not, and they were inordinate,
including "Wales" and "Cambridge," he was beyond
all doubt a gentleman, with grand manners, a back
like a ramrod, and a curt, military directness in
speaking.  He used to say "dammy"; was fond
of alluding to himself as "an old Hussar"; was
wont to remark that a gentleman could always be
told by his hat and his boots; and once, when
attacked on the street, had shown extraordinary
courage and adroitness in defending himself with a light
cane.  This was about all Adair remembered of
him, except that he drank hard; had recurring fits
of delirium tremens in which he raged and fought
like a wild beast; and finally, dying in a hospital
ward, was buried like a dog in the Potter's Field.

Adair's mother had been an Irish peasant girl.
She was kind and warm-hearted, and spoke with a
brogue; she was always laughing and singing, even
under circumstances when a right-minded person
would have thrown himself into the East River.
She drank, too.  Everybody drank.  He used to
be given sips from her glass, and knew what it was
to be tipsy before he was eight.  It was about that
time he began to sell papers on the streets, for
his father was dead, and his mother--  Well, he
wouldn't go into that.  But in her way she had
always been good to him.  She wouldn't let the
men beat him.  When she was sent to the Island
for the second time he thought his little heart would
break.  She didn't last long after that.  How
could she, gone as she was in consumption, and
drinking like a fish?  Oh, what a hell it was--what
a hell!  His pennies were all his own now,
though he often had to fight to keep them.  He
was always fighting to keep them--first in
desperation, then by degrees with some coolness and
science.  The bigger boys coached him; egged
him on; he became a regular little bantam.  They'd
make up a purse--a quarter or something--and
set two little wretches to pounding each other.
Anything was allowed, you know--biting, kicking,
scrooging, hair pulling!  There was only one rule,
and that was to win.

Well, so it went on, till he was sixteen or
thereabouts, the toughest young tough you could see
on Avenue A.  He was nicknamed Fighting Joe,
and they used to get up cheap little matches for him
in the back rooms of saloons--real fighting,
stripped to the waist, and four ounce gloves.  His
only ambition was to get into the prize ring, and in
his dreams at night he would see his picture in the
*Police Gazette*.  Then the Settlement workers came--a
pale-looking outfit, with Mission furniture and
leaflets.  They were regarded as a great
infliction--as an insult to an honest tough neighborhood.
It was the correct thing to break their windows,
and lambast their followers.  Fighting Joe took a
prominent part in this righteous task.  What did
it matter that several of them were women?  What
did such brutes care for that?  If ever there was
a young savage on earth it was he.

One of the women was tall and pretty--not
very young--twenty-eight or twenty-nine perhaps.
Miss Cooke, she was--Miss Grace Cooke.  She
would never see him but what she would turn white
with anger and fear.  You see, everything was put
down to him, all that he did do, and all that he
didn't--and totaling up both sides of it, it ran
to a lot.  He couldn't begin to remember the
caddish things he was answerable for; he didn't care to
try; my God, what a brute he was, what a brute!
And yet he admired this woman; guessed he was
in love with her in a calfy way; took every chance
to see her--and insult her!  Of course, there
wasn't the faintest reason why he shouldn't have
walked into the Settlement, said he was sorry, and
have been received with open arms.  But people
like that can't say they are sorry--they don't know
how.  Besides, the social disgrace of it would have
been awful!  Joe Mayne running with that gospel
gang!  The thing was incredible.

Late one winter afternoon he saw her in the
midst of a crowd of hobbledehoys, hooting and
jeering at her.  She was walking as fast as she
dared, looking straight ahead of her, and pretending
not to notice.  It was dark; the street was empty;
and if she was scared she had mighty good reason
for it.  One of the fellows lurched against her, and
down she went on the sidewalk; as she tried to
rise another rolled her over, and tore her hat off.
Of course, it was a great joke, and they were all
roaring with laughter.  Then it was he came
running up--Joe--and when she saw him she gave
him a look he would remember to the day he died.
Oh, the terror of it--the shrinking!  But he
smashed one on the jaw, caught another between
the eyes, and lifted her up, half fainting as she
was, and tried with his dirty hands to smooth her
hair, and put on her hat again.--That's how they
came to be friends; that's how he came to be landed
in the Settlement; everything real in his life dated
from that moment.

He was with them two years; with them as long
as she lived.  There wasn't a good quality in him
that she didn't put there.  On census forms, and
such things, when asked his religion, he always
felt inclined to write: "Grace Cooke."  By God,
it would have been the truth.  She was his
religion yet, far though he had fallen away from
it--oh, so far--!  She stood for everything that
was good and beautiful and noble.  It wasn't love.
It was beyond all love.  She was a Madonna, a
saint, and he had had the privilege to kneel at
her feet--a Caliban of the slums, a tough, a
hoodlum, unworthy to touch the hem of her garment.
Then she died, and that was the end of it.  He
didn't care for the Settlement after she died.  He
got a job as chucker-out in a low place called the
Crystal Palace.  There was a dais, and performers
used to sing.  He thought he would try it himself,
and made quite a hit.  Then he began giving
recitations--*The Fi-erman's Dream*, and that kind
of thing, and they caught on.  He owed it all to
Grace Cooke, who had taught him to read--(not
ordinary reading, he had picked that up somehow
for himself)--but real reading, dramatic reading.
From this it was a step to monologues in costume,
and from that to the vaudeville stage.

Sitting there in the growing dusk, and in an
atmosphere so conducive to confidence, Adair
unfolded his early life with a tender, persuasive and
charming humor.  He often laughed; often he was
silent; again and again he would look up, and
seek Phyllis' eyes in a lingering glance as though
to assure himself of her interest.  For once in his
life he was shy; the slim, pretty hand he gazed
at so covetously was safe from any touch of his;
something told him that the least familiarity would
cost him all he had gained.--It was not policy on
his part.  He was too humble to think of policy.
To be with her alone seemed presumption enough--to
feel her sympathy, her friendship.  Not a
word or act of his should mar that wonderful day.

He rose, apologizing for having stayed so long.

"It is your own fault," he said, holding out his
hand, "you've made me forget everything."

"I'm afraid it was the other way round, Mr. Adair,"
she returned, trying to smile, and thankful
for the darkness that veiled her face.

"Am I ever to see you again?"

She shook her head.

"You mean it is good-by, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, it's good-by."

Her hand was in his, so soft, so motionless, yet
somehow so reluctant to leave his grasp.  His head
was turning; he could not go like that.  No, no,
he could not.  He suddenly pulled her towards
him, and caught her in his arms, kissing her hair,
her cheek, her mouth, with a passion that cared
little whether she was crushed or smothered in
his embrace.  Good God, what was he doing?
After holding back so long, what diabolical folly
had tempted him to this?  Yet she had said it was
good-by.  He had nothing to lose.  Let her pant
and struggle and tremble, he would take tribute
of her beauty nevertheless, however much she was
insulted or outraged.  His lips were wet with her
tears.  He forced her to receive his kisses on her
mouth, exulting in the strength that allowed her
no escape.  But was she resisting him?  A tremor
of maddening delight shot through his frame.  Her
mouth was seeking his, and he heard her whispering
breathlessly: "I love you, I love you, I love you!"

It was so unexpected, so surprising, that he let
her free.  She sank into a chair and covered her
burning face, repelling him as he threw himself
on his knees beside her.

"If you don't go, I shall never forgive you!"
she exclaimed.  "Haven't you shamed me enough?
Do you want me to die of humiliation?"  Then,
from the heart, came the woman's cry: "What will
you think of me?"

That instinct, which in Adair took the place of
conscience, honor, all the conventional virtues and
restraints, again came steadfastly to his help.  He
bent down; kissed her on the brow; and getting
his hat and cane abruptly took his departure.





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   CHAPTER XII

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The dictionary with unhesitating positiveness
informs us that infatuation is "unreasonable
or extravagant passion."  But
are there not those who have stayed unreasonably
impassioned to the end, those whose earthly
parting has been but at the grave?  And does not love
of the admitted, recognized, unextravagant, very
much approved, bless-you-my-children kind only
too often ring out its knell in the divorce court?
That Phyllis was infatuated with this good-looking
scamp was beyond question, if by that one meant
his physical attraction held her as much a slave
as any of our ravished ancestors in the Vikings'
boats.  Her will was gone; her judgment; all her
nicely-balanced highly-critical young-ladyism.  It
was horrifying to her to realize it; her powerlessness
was at once an agony and a delight; it came over
her, with a frightening sense of injustice, that a
woman's happiness lies beyond herself, and is for
ever dependent on some man.

Naturally she sat down, and wrote him a sad
little letter.  He was to forget everything that had
passed, and not misjudge her for an uncontrollable
impulse.  Were he to presume upon it, she would
not only die of shame, but would be forced to
perceive that her trust had been misplaced.  As a
gentleman and a man of honor--and she knew him
to be both--he would understand that it was
impossible for them ever to meet again, and that her
good-by was indeed irrevocable.  But her good
wishes would always attend him, and she would
sign herself, in all sincerity, his friend, Phyllis
Ladd.  This done, she waited in a fever of
impatience for his answer, hoping, dreading, tumultuously
inconsistent, hot fits and cold succeeding each
other in her troubled and anxious heart.

It may be imagined how unkindly Adair took
her commands.  In his large, straggling hand, and
over six sheets of hotel paper he expressed his
energetic dissent.  It was a trite letter--flowery
and theatrical--her haunting eyes, the memory
of her adorable beauty, the despair of a man who
had found love only to lose it, etc.  Had Phyllis
been herself it would have made her smile.
Nothing, indeed, could have shown how far she had
traveled on the road of illusion than her acceptance
of these well-worn phrases.  The tears sprang to
her eyes at the smooth and nicely-rounded description
of his wretchedness; she glowed and thrilled
at the praise of herself, its boldness redeemed by
what she ascribed to a lover's ardor; the pathetic
plea for another meeting was irresistible.  It might
be unwise; it was sure to be painful; but, after all,
it was his right.  He loved her; he bowed to her
decision; his life was hard at best, and now doubly
so; what he asked was so little for her to give,
yet to him it was everything--to see her once
more before they parted for ever.

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They met this time at the corner of a remote
street.  He was very pale, very quiet, and it was
not a lie he told her that he had been unable to
sleep for thinking of her.  Had she known better
what those thoughts were she would have shrunk
from him.  But, fortunately or not, she did not
know.  She, too, was quiet and pale, and it was with
the sense of an impending fate that she took his arm,
and slowly walked with him along the foot-path.
Unconsciously he was more masterful with her,
now that she was away from that daunting house,
and that awe-inspiring drawing-room.  The
sanctity that had enveloped her there had largely
disappeared.  Here was a situation he was used
to--a distractingly pretty girl, a sidewalk rendezvous,
and an infatuation that needed but the right
handling to bring it to the proper conclusion.

Yet with everything so plain--and apparently
so easy, Adair himself was in a whirl of strange
and new emotions.  Something had pierced his
colossal selfishness, and was disturbing him.  It
was annoying at a time when he needed all his
wits about him, and he resented it as a symptom
of unmanly weakness.  One drop of real love in
that ocean of sham was threatening to poison the
whole.  He did not put it thus concretely.  He only
knew that he was uncomfortable, and not rising
as he should to the occasion.  Except for that
far-away Grace Cooke he had never known a decent
woman.  His counterfeit love had been lavished
on counterfeit innocence: and counterfeit purity.
Fooling, he had always been fooled.

But this proud and melting young beauty lay
outside of all his experience.  Had she defended
herself he would have known better how to attack.
But she made no demur when he took her hand
and kissed it; she did not resist, when, after
looking up and down the street to see if they had it
to themselves, he caught her boldly in his arms,
and crushed her against himself, murmuring a
torrent of words that came so readily to his practised
lips.  How radiantly she smiled when he tore off
a tiny corner of her letter, and told her she had
to eat it as a punishment.  Her saucy obedience put
him in a seventh heaven, and it was with a sort
of ecstasy that he snatched it from her, fearful
lest it might do her harm.  That letter, in one
sense, had been disposed of almost as soon as they
had met.  She had tried, for a moment or two,
to adhere to it, and to make him see the necessity
of that good-by.  But under the glamour of his
presence she faltered and broke down, and all that
was left of the matter was her incoherent plea
for forgiveness.  What tenderness she put into this
request!  There never could be a good-by between
them--never, never--and her eyes swam with
tears at her disloyalty to him.

Both felt an uplifting gaiety and light-heartedness,
as she said, in extenuation of her happy
laughter, that they were like people who had grown
rich overnight, for had they not discovered an
enormous nugget--a nugget of love?  It had been
lying there for any to find, but they had been the
lucky ones!  They had a right to be excited, hadn't
they?  The only really serious thing was the fact
that they might have missed it.  They might have
stubbed against it, and passed on--like idiots.
She developed this fantasy with captivating grace
and archness, Adair meanwhile lost in admiration,
not only of the delicate fancy that kept him smiling,
but of her varying expressions so revealing of
unexpected charm.  She grew prettier and prettier
to him--more kissable, more adorable.  He kept
forgetting his ulterior purpose in the rapture of
being with her; he forgot his conceit, forgot his
role; he was perilously near being in love.  Perhaps
he was in love.  At any rate, when he recollected
to take advantage of this unconcealed regard for
him--of all this young ardor and innocent
passion--the words somehow would not leave his tongue.

Her sensitive mouth, so responsive to every look
of his, the sweet candor of her eyes, her
transparent belief in him--all forbade.  There would
be time enough for that; and having made this
concession to his manhood, he straightway put the
idea by, dimly realizing to himself that it was
unpleasant to him.  It takes a bad man to appreciate
and exalt the best of women; he sees her in such
a contrasting light; her baser sisters give her by
relief an angelic brightness.  It is not for nothing
that they say the reformed rake makes the best
husband.  Not that Adair had gone so far as this,
however.  He was not reformed, and cold chills
would have run down his back at the horrid
prospect; while his own brief career as a husband had
left him with a hatred for the word and the
institution.  It was merely a fleeting impulse,
stronger for the moment than he was, and induced
by his artist love of beauty, which included this
time in its comprehension, a rare, gracious and
exquisite nature.

They were together for nearly two hours, and
when they were forced at last to part it seemed as
though only the half had been said.  Yet not for
an instant had they ever got near the realities.
With Adair these were consciously avoided.  It
was one thing to say: "I love you," with mellow
vibrations, and impassioned eyes; quite another to
descend to the practical considerations that might
reasonably be expected to follow.  He felt neither
in the humor to lie, nor to palter with the ugly
truth, and in a sort of anger dismissed both
alternatives.  He was intoxicated with her; she mounted
to his brain like wine; he only knew one thing, that
come what might, she should never get away from
him.  This was all his dizzy head could hold.
The future could take care of itself.

As for Phyllis she was in that rapt state of
happiness when a woman can do nothing but glow
and worship.  Had not the king descended from
his throne for her?  At last was not her long
heart-hunger gloriously appeased?  Was she not
so possessed with this demigod that all other
sublunary concerns seemed to vanish into
insignificance?  She walked on air; she exulted in the
memory of his caresses; she was the more precious
to herself now that she was his, now that she
belonged to him so utterly.  She hoarded every
compliment he had paid her; and wondered, in delicious
doubt, though not altogether unconvinced, whether
she could be, indeed, all that she had seemed to him.
As for the deeper questions, she had the woman's
faculty of answering them in formless dreams.

They were settled in a vague, tender and
altogether perfect manner.  He--and she--and a
billowing bliss on which they floated evermore, hand
pressed in hand, mouth against mouth, in an
ineffable and transcendant content.

Adair, once beyond her influence, was aware of
a certain sagging of that higher nature she had
conjured into being.  Not that he loved her any
less; he was on fire for her, and his coarse passion
was inflamed a thousandfold by their second
meeting.  But, as he said to himself, he had muffed it.
He was not the first man to feel a twinge of guilt
at having been *good*.  He was a child of his world,
of his conditions, upbringing and environment, and
ought not to be blamed over-much--rather commended
for the first faint stirrings of an embryo
conscience, which, if it had died all too soon, was
still a spark of grace.

The performance tired him more than usual.  He
was slack, and could not get into his part.  As a
consequence, to offset his disinclination, he
overplayed, and left the theater thoroughly
exasperated, and out of heart.  He took supper moodily
by himself, and though ordinarily abstemious--for
no one with his complexion could be accused of
habitual excess--he drank high-ball after high-ball
with a brutal satisfaction in fuddling himself.
He grew wickeder with every gulp, more
cold-blooded and determined.  He would see this thing
through, by God.  He would take her with him
on the road.  She was ripe for it; she was crazy
about him--lady and all, there was the devil in
her all right.  The nicest women were the worst
when they let themselves go.  What a fool he had
been ever to bother with the other kind.  He had
always been a cheap fellow, pleased with cheap
things--with raddled actresses, and silly tiresome
shop-girls.  Here was a little piece that put them
all in the shade; prettier than the prettiest, dewy
fresh, with a twist to everything she said so that
it was an endless pleasure to be with her.  She was
so quick, so daintily impudent, so finely bred and
educated.  God, what an armful!  God, what a
little mistress for a tired and lonely man, sick to
death of common women!

He reeled up-stairs, half drunk, and sought his
room, to sleep the sleep of perfect health and
perfect digestion.  Whatever else Adair was, he was
a sound and vigorous human animal, with a
constitution of iron.  No dreams disturbed his
repose--no spectral finger of remorse pointed at him.  A
child could not have lain more peacefully on its cot
than he.

It will be asked why he could not Have married
Phyllis properly and honestly?  Apart from other
considerations was she not the only daughter of
a millionaire father?  How did Adair come to
overlook this very obvious advantage, and embark
instead on all the troubles and vexations attending an
illicit connection?  To answer this question it is
necessary to go back four or five years, and rake
up his marriage with Ruby Raeburn, the dancer.
She, too, had been the daughter of a rich
man--Laidlaw Wright, the Michigan lumber king.  Adair
had thought he was doing a very good thing for
himself.  To have a father-in-law who is a "lumber
king" has a pleasant sound.  Without knowing
exactly how it was to happen, he looked forward
confidently to a flow of dollars in his direction, either
in cash, or vicariously in royal "tips."  Surely a
lumber king would take care of his own--and of
his own's husband.  Ruby herself had not been
above reproach in holding out the bait, and
everybody had congratulated him, or sneered at him for
"marrying money."  Alas, for the disillusion that
followed.  Laidlaw Wright was the hardest-fisted
man on the Lakes, and no bulldog, guarding a
lunch basket, could have shown more formidable
fangs than he at any hand slipping towards his
money-bags.  Adair learned the sad truth that when
you possess the millionaire's daughter, it does not
necessarily follow that you possess the millionaire.
His dead body must too often be crossed first--and
this event, however desirable, can not be unduly
hurried.

And meanness was not the only drawback to
Laidlaw Wright's character.  He could spend
money as viciously as he withheld it, and make
of it a whip of scorpions for the scourging of
sons-in-law.  When Adair's domestic unhappiness
reached the acute stage, the cantankerous old
fellow jumped into the ring, snorting battle and
destruction.  Money was poured out like water;
giants of the bar were retained at enormous fees;
detective bureaus' worked night and day.  Adair
was shadowed; his door was burst open at a time
of all others when he would have much preferred
to have it stay shut; statutes of which he had never
dreamed, lying hidden and unrepealed in the dark
recesses of the law, were evoked against him with
startling effect.  He was sent to prison in default
of the bail he could not give.  Then after eighteen
weary days, which the giants of the bar would
willingly have made eighteen months, he was tried,
and his case dismissed.  But as he left the court
room he was again arrested.  That implacable old
man, with his cohorts of lawyers and detectives,
had furbished up fresh charges.  The indictment
was a mile long.  Again there was bail, default, and
gnashing of teeth in a stinking cell.  Of course,
he had legal remedies, but these involved legal
tender.  He had spent his last dollar; legal remedies
had to be paid for, and he had nothing to pay with.
A wealthy and vindictive man, if he choose to do
so, and does not grudge the outlay, can make our
judicial machinery into a most serviceable steam-roller.

After the divorce, when all seemed settled and
done with, there were alimony bomb-shells to be
contended with.  This tribute on his son-in-law's
freedom became the obsessing prepossession of
Laidlaw Wright's life.  He subordinated the
lumber business to collecting this forty-five dollars a
week, until it became Adair's fixed and unalterable
purpose to escape payment by every means in his
power.  North or South, East or West, the battle
went on.  Injunctions, contempt proceedings,
printed forms in immense envelopes, beginning with
the familiar phrase: "You are cited to appear
before Judge So-and-So to show cause why that you,
etc., etc."--rained on Adair's head wherever
Saturday night might find it.  Incidentally eyes were
blackened; blood streamed on box-office floors;
bandaged functionaries and limping attorneys cried
for vengeance in shabby court rooms--and not
only cried, but often got it, in a heaping measure.
And afar, the lumber king, like a horrible spider
whose net covered the country from sea to sea,
kept the wires busy and hot with hate.

When Ruby was killed in what was called "the
hansom cab mystery"--an ugly affair that was
never really cleared up--the old man probably
mourned less for her than for the loss of his
cheerless hobby--the persecution of Cyril Adair.
However wealthy you are, you can not move the
legal steam-roller without at least a pretense of
justification; and now the justification lay with
Ruby Raeburn in the grave, as stilled as her dancing
feet, as finished and done with as the life that
had gone out so tragically.

It had all left Adair with a profound hatred of
marriage, and a still profounder hatred of rich
fathers-in-law.  The one suggested jail, mortification,
alimony, raided box-offices, large and determined
individuals bursting in your doors; the other
an unrelenting monster, pitiless and crafty, trailing
after you night and day, like a bloodhound.  There
was no glamour to Adair in Robert Ladd's millions,
but rather a sinister and awful significance; and
as for marrying Phyllis, and putting his head again
in that noose--who that had been in hell ever
willingly went back to it?  The very thought made
him shudder.  He might be weak and impulsive,
and easily swept off his feet by her damned
beauty--but he wasn't as weak and impulsive as *that*!





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.. _`CHAPTER XIII`:

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   CHAPTER XIII

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As had been previously arranged he met her
the next day at the same place.  He had
come in a closed cab, which he had left a
couple of blocks away, and he insisted on their
returning to it, and having out their talk in its
shelter.  Phyllis demurred at first; it wore an
unpleasant look to her; it was not fear exactly--she
trusted Adair too absolutely for that--but rather
a disinclination in which good taste played the
bigger part.  It seemed to her low, and discreditable,
and unworthy.  Her love was too fine a thing,
and too dear to her, to have it associated with
dingy cushions, a dirty floor carpet, and the
vulgarizing secrecy of that shabby interior.  It took some
persuasion to get her to consent; and though she
did so at last under the spell of that irresistible
voice, it was with a sudden quenching of the
brightness that had illumined her heart.

But it never occurred to her to think the worse
of Adair.  A man could not be expected to have
the sensitiveness of a woman.  His love was like
himself, robust and masterful; he fastened a string
to your little collar, and dragged you after him
with a splendid insouciance.  Every one of your
four little paws might be holding back; you might
be whimpering most pitifully, but if he wanted a
closed cab, in you had to go, whether you liked it
or not.  Not that you would have had him different;
it was sweet to submit; and if he were big, and
direct, and unshakable--so, too, was his love.

They drove slowly through the suburban streets,
locked in each other's arms.  He kissed her back to
happiness, to rapture, the discreet twilight screening
them in its shadow.  Her qualms disappeared, her
reluctance, her shrinkings from the ugliness and
commonness of that horrid old box.  Nothing
mattered so long as they could be together, and in
her exaltation she even suffered some pangs of
remorse for having resisted his pleadings at
all.--She had never cared for children, but as her arms
were clasped about his neck, she felt a welling
tenderness for him that opened her understanding to
the love of a mother for her babe--the divine
compassion, the exquisite desire to protect and shield,
the willingness, if need be, to die herself rather than
to have it suffer the least of harm.  She whispered
this to him in words so sincere and moving, with
eyes so moist, and lips so quivering, and her whole
young face so glorified by the shining soul within,
that Adair would have been less than human had
he not succumbed.

He was abashed; his carefully rehearsed plans
were glad to creep out of sight and hide; it would
have needed very little for him to fall on his knees,
penitent and ashamed, and blurt out--not the
truth; the truth wasn't tellable--but enough to
make him seem less of a beast to himself, less of a
hypocrite and villain.  But he paused midway; and
the impulse, which, if he had allowed it to control
him might have carried him into unsuspected regions
of honor and manliness, died still-born; and left
him--if not exactly what he had been--at least
not so very much the better.

With everything so favorable to his purpose, it
continued to be a mystery to him that he still held
back.  This backwardness, this fear, was a new
sensation.  He had won prettier women in his
day, and had won them briskly and straightforwardly,
move by move, with cool premeditation.

Why should he falter at this one, like a ninny?
What was it about her that checked and daunted
him?  She had flung herself at him; she had neither
the will nor the knowledge to protect herself; she
was as innocent as a child, and had delivered
herself over to him as guilelessly.  But it was not her
innocence that stood in his way; he had no such
scruples about innocence; innocence, if anything,
ought to have whetted the pursuit.  It was
something subtler than that--this withholding force.
It was more as though she were some proud young
queen who had been craftily made drunk with drugs,
and then had been abandoned in her helplessness
to become the sport of a passing soldier....
How surprised Adair would have been had he been
told that the love always on his lips, profaned with
every breath he drew, a lie in every sense save the
very lowest, was, in all good earnest, stealthily
making entry in his heart!

Making?  Why, it had been there from the first,
all unknown to him.  But like many a man the
devious road seemed to him the straighter; it was
the one he meant to follow, anyhow, lead where
it might; he would overcome this strange
squeamishness that annoyed and bewildered him.  What
an ass he was!  He remembered his first deer, and
how the rifle had shaken in his hands--how his
teeth had chattered--how it had calmly walked
past him, not twelve yards away, and disappeared
unscathed.  The boys had called it "buck fever,"
and had guyed him.  Hell, this was a kind of buck
fever, too, though without the excuse of
inexperience ... but still there was no sense in
hurrying matters.  There was plenty of time, old
fellow, plenty of time.

Thus the day lingered out in talk and vows and
kisses, with nothing achieved in any direction, and
the situation apparently unchanged.  Love has a
wonderful power of floating on without ever
touching the banks of reality!  And when one of the
lovers keeps the bark deliberately in mid-stream, and
the other poor lunatic is so lost in ecstasy that her
understanding is in the skies--hours can pass like
minutes, and darkness descend all unawares.

Again they kissed and parted, and Phyllis
returned home in the sweet weariness of one who
has drunk deep of the cup of love.  No unanswered
questions fretted her, no disturbing thoughts of
why he had been silent on the most important thing
of all.  She was young, fresh, pretty, well-born
and rich--why then should she doubt?  What, to
a little milliner, would have been the inevitable and
all-engrossing conjecture, troubled her not a bit.
Men had been proposing to her for two years; love
out of wedlock, while it might be familiar in books,
was inconceivably remote to her; marriage was like
breathing; it was one of the great unconsidered
facts of life; one loved--one married.

Her preoccupation was rather with closer and
dearer things--the varying expressions of that
fine and intensely alive face; the mouth with its
ever changing charm; that, smiling, could lift one
to paradise, that, laughing, seemed to gladden the
whole world; the eyes so lustrous, so melting, and
yet that at a word could turn so fierce; the wavy
hair that was such a joy to her to caress; the broad
shoulders that had pillowed her girlish head, and
had given her such a comforting sense of vigor and
strength--all her own by the divinest of divine
rights.  Womanlike, she was trying to merge
herself in the man she loved; to subordinate her own
individuality in his; to become, if she could, a slim,
small, dainty counterpart of this God-given creature
who had stooped to her from high Heaven itself.

She ate a good dinner and enjoyed it; drank a
glass of claret with a connoisseur-like satisfaction
in its fine bouquet; for she came of a stock with
a royal taste for pleasure, in little things as well
as big.  If her father appeared somewhat
constrained, and more grave and silent than was his
wont, she ascribed it to nothing more than a hard
day at the office; and exerted herself with all her
superabundant good humor to amuse and distract
him.  But for once she was unsuccessful, and as
the meal proceeded his brown study increased.
After dinner, as usual when they were alone, they
went up to his "den," the custom being for him
to smoke a cigar while she glanced over the
evening papers, and read to him what seemed to be
of interest.  As she stood leaning negligently
against the mantelpiece she was surprised to notice
that he did not settle himself in his usual chair.
He came up to her instead, and she felt a sudden
knocking at the heart as her uplifted eyes met his.

"How long has this been going on?" he demanded
in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Papa?"

He paused as though to control himself.--She
knew very well what he meant, and shivers ran
down her back.

"Your carrying on with this actor fellow.
This--this Adair."  He snapped out the name as
though it tasted bitter on his lips--spat it--his
gray mustache bristling.

She was panic-stricken; her knees weakened
beneath her; she had only presence of mind enough
to tell herself that lies could not help her.  But
lies or not, at that moment she could not have
uttered a word.  It was all she could do to hold to
the mantel for support.

Mr. Ladd drew out his pocket-book, and from it
a letter.

"A man like that always has some female consort,"
he went on brutally, "some woman of his
own class who follows his shabby fortunes, and
considers him for the time being as her especial
property; and who protects herself when that
property is in danger by ways that suggest themselves
to vulgar and common minds.  At least, I do not
consider it an unjust inference that this anonymous
letter--"

Phyllis uttered a little cry, and hid her face
in her hands.--So that was what it was?--She
ought to have suspected it.  But even in her shame
a dart of jealousy passed through her heart.  Who
was this woman who was trying to rob her of Adair?

"It is a typical letter of the kind," continued
Mr. Ladd, with grim persistence, "and written in
a hand supposed to be disguised, as though
anything could disguise the greater matter of the
writer's innate vileness and swinishness.  It starts
with the usual pretense of good will, of friendly
warning; and then passes, with hardly a transition,
to charges that in a police court would entail its
being cleared of any women amongst the spectators.
Frankly, Phyllis, it is abominable--though I am
going to read it to you, not with the idea of causing
you pain, of punishing you, but to show you much
better than any words of mine could do, the sort
of cattle you are getting mixed up with.  One
judges men by the company they keep; whoever
this woman is, it may be presumed she knows Adair
well, and is a friend of his; otherwise what could
prompt all this venom?  The letter is a mass of
lies, but it has a side-light value on this man you're
letting fool you.  They are a squalid, contemptible
crew, and all tarred with the same stick."

He stopped to put his glasses on his nose; and
smoothing out the letter, began deliberately to read
it: "'You ought to know the goings-on of that
girl of yours, and if nobody else is enough your
friend to tell you, I--'"

But Phyllis cried out before he could proceed further.

"Oh, Papa," she exclaimed in passionate
entreaty, "don't, don't!  You mustn't!  You're
degrading me!  I--I can't stand it!"

"You know my reasons for wanting you to hear
it," he said coldly.

"And you are going to force me to?"

"Yes, I am--for your own good, Phyllis."

As their eyes met something within her seemed
to break.  In all her life her father had been
everything that was kind and gentle and indulgent.  His
arms had ever been her refuge; she had cried out
her baby sorrows on his shoulder; how often, in
contrast to other girls, she had thought herself the
most fortunate of women to have such a father.
Now, in her direst need he was pitiless and
inflexible.  He was determined to humiliate her with
that horrible letter--for his manner, everything,
said that it was horrible.  To gain his point he was
willing to sweep away the fabric of all these years.
Oh, the stupidity of it, the cruelty!  Nothing could
ever be the same again between them after that.
He could degrade her, but it would cost him every
iota of her love.

Her bosom swelled.  Her anger was at so white
a heat that she no longer felt the fears and shrinkings
that had at first assailed her; her heart beat
high, but to another and a fiercer measure.

What a moment for him to begin again: "'You
ought to know the goings-on of that girl of yours,
and if nobody else--'"

"Papa, *Papa*!"

"My dear, you must not interrupt me.  I insist on--"

"Then let me read it to myself."

He paused, looking at her in indecision; and
from her to the coals in the grate.  She perceived
the meaning of his hesitation, and laughed scornfully.

"Oh, you can trust me," she said, holding out
her hand.  "Do you want my word, or what?
I won't destroy it.  Rest assured I shall give you
the pleasure of knowing I am reading every word
of it."

He resigned it to her, tugging at his mustache,
and watching her covertly as she moved nearer the
light and began to read.  He marveled at her
composure, her decision.  She was not evading the
ugly task--her eyes moved too slowly for that,
and her face reflected too clearly the unsparing
comments on her behavior.

It was coarse beyond belief.  Only a man half
out of his wits could have allowed any woman of
his family to read such a thing.  Many of the
expressions she had never heard before, but it is
a peculiarity of gross Anglo-Saxon to be readily
understood.  Nothing was lost on Phyllis, either
in the description of the man she loved, or the
accusations of the vilest kind leveled at herself.
It was an infamous production, soiling and disgusting,
nakedly spiteful, and nakedly pornographic.

She perused it unflinchingly to the end; studied
the signature, "One who knows," and handed it
back to her father.

"I thought people were put in prison for writing
such letters," she said in an even voice.

"So they are," he returned curtly, "though that
isn't quite the point."

"What is the point?"

"To know how much of it is true."

Again her composure startled him.  "Is it
possible you believe any of it?" she asked.

"Yes, I do," he said.--He was holding the letter
in his hand, like a lawyer in court, cross-examining
a witness.  He was determined to get at the bottom
of all this.

"Is it true you went to the theater twice?"

"As a spectator--yes."

"Is it true that you wrote a letter to him?"

"Yes."

"Is it true you invited him here?"

"Yes, he came once."

"And it's true you met him afterwards on one
of the streets in the Richmond district?"

"Yes."

"It's true you let him kiss you there before
everybody--embrace you--hug you like a silly
servant-girl?"

She ignored the insult, and answered imperturbably:
"It was a deserted place; I didn't know
any one was spying on us."

"And it's true to-day you met him again?"

"Yes."

"And drove together in a closed cab?"

"Yes."

"Now, Phyllis, my girl, on your honor; I am
asking you this as your father; I have the right to
ask it, and the right to a sacredly truthful answer--the
affair has gone no further than this?"

"No."

"On your honor?"

"On my honor."

"And all the rest of it?"--He touched the letter.

"Lies, Papa--revolting, hideous lies."

He stumbled towards his chair; seated himself
in it; reached for the cigar-box.  He had expected
a scene; he had expected tears, pleading, and
repentance.  He had a penetrating sense of having
mismanaged everything.  Perhaps he ought not to
have shown her that letter.  It had shocked her
through and through, but not in the way he had
intended.  He had meant it to be like a surgeon's
knife--one sure swift stroke, and she was to rise
cured, disillusioned.  The effect had been
disconcertingly different; he had affronted her to the
quick, he had roused a defiance all the more to be
feared because it was cool, subdued, controlled--the
kind that is apt to last.--He lit his cigar, and
blew out breath after breath of smoke.  He must
not make another mistake.  He would think a little
while before he began again.

She glided slowly towards the door, but with
an air so unconcerned, so free from any suggestion
of flight, that he suspected nothing.  The fact of
her leaving the door ajar seemed to imply an
immediate return.  Several minutes passed before he
suddenly became uneasy.  So peremptory was his
conviction that she was near that he cried:
"Phyllis, Phyllis," before rising to find out what had
become of her.  But she was not in the corridor
outside.  He sought her boudoir--nor was she here
either.  Her bedroom off it?  It was empty, too.
Thoroughly alarmed, he descended the stairs, softly
calling out, "Phyllis, Phyllis!"  He was answered
by a servant's voice below: "Is it you, Sir?"

"Yes, Henry, I am looking for Miss Phyllis?"

"She went out a minute ago, Sir."

"Went out?"

"Yes, Sir."

Good God, she was gone!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV

.. vspace:: 2

Once outside the door, she had raced
downstairs like the wind, put on her hat anyhow,
and sped into the darkness, without waiting
for wrap or gloves.  Her first idea had been
to reach the theater, but as she turned down side
streets in order to evade pursuit and get the
Fairmount Avenue car line, she realized that this
involved too much time.  Her watch, hastily looked
at under a lamp, showed that it was after eight
o'clock, and that she could not hope to gain the
theater before the first act began.  She decided to
telephone instead, and accordingly, walking very
fast, and sometimes running until a pain in her
side forced her to desist, she made her way to
Fairmount Avenue, and to a drug-store she knew
to be there.  It was the matter of a moment to
look up the number of the Thalia Theater, unhook
the receiver, and get central.

"Nick-el," murmured that impersonal arbiter of
human destinies.

"I don't understand--please give me my
number, I'm in such a hurry."

"Nick-el!"

"Drop a nickel in the slot, Miss," said the clerk
helpfully.

She had come away without her purse.  She
hadn't a penny!

As quick as thought she pulled off one of her
rings, and laid it on the counter.

"I have forgotten my purse," she said.  "Please
let me have a quarter, and I'll redeem the ring
to-morrow."

She had been resourceful enough to recollect
she needed more than a nickel--there was the
trolley fare to the theater and back.

The clerk took the ring with no great willingness;
examined it with every apparent intention of
denying her request; then examined her with the
same sharp look.  The horrid creature recognized
her, and his manner changed to a cringing
deference.  "Oh, Miss Ladd, I beg your pardon, I didn't
know it was you, Miss Ladd.  A quarter?  Why
certainly, Miss Ladd.  Only too happy to oblige
you, Miss Ladd.  Take back your ring, and pay
any time at your convenience, Miss Ladd."  He
rang open his cash register, and passed her three
nickels and a dime, together with the ring.  "Put
it back where it belongs," he said, smirking and
rubbing his hands.  "My, what would the boss
say to me if I told him I had kept Miss Phyllis
Ladd's ring!"

She thanked him, and again gave the number
at the telephone, dropping in the nickel that had
cost her so much.  The clerk, though he had moved
away, was all eyes and ears, and she had an
unpleasant sensation of being watched.  But it was
too late to draw back now.  Her need was too
urgent, too desperate for such irritating trifles to
deter her from her purpose.  The horrid creature
would stare.  Well, let him stare!  He would chatter
about it, too, of course.  Well, let him chatter!

"Thalia Theater--box-office."

"I want to speak to Mr. Adair at once."

"It's impossible--he's in his dressing-room, and
we ring up in eight minutes."

"I simply have to speak to him."

"Can't do it--it's against the rules."

"Oh, you must, you simply must!"

"Who are you?"

"Miss Ladd!"

"Who did you say?"

"Miss Ladd--L-A-D-D."

"What is it, please, that you want to see
Mr. Adair about?"

"Something very important."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do it."

"No, no, please.  Mr. Adair will never forgive
you if you don't."  Then she had an inspiration.
Where or how she had learned the name she hardly
knew, but it flashed across her mind at this
moment.  "Is Mr. Merguelis there?"

"I am Mr. Merguelis."

"Mr. Tom Merguelis?"

"Yes."

"Then you might know who I am.  Mr. Adair--"

"Oh, say, yes--you're not the little lady that he--"

"Yes, that's me."

"But, my dear, he's in his dressing-room, and
that's on the level."

"I simply must talk to him for a second, and
you must go and get him."

"Hello, hello--is that you?  Hello--yes, my
dear, I'm sending for him.  Please hold the line."

What an age it seemed, standing there with the
receiver to her ear, and her heart bursting with
impatience.  Meaningless scraps of talk strained
her attention; when these stopped she was in terror
lest she had been cut off; at last there was the
peculiar jarring and disturbance that showed
someone getting into touch at the other end, followed
by Adair's strong clear challenge.

"Who wants Mr. Adair?"

"I do--it's Phyllis."

"Oh, my little girl, I'm in a frightful rush.
Hurry up, tell me what's the matter?"

"I want to see you as soon as I can--something
awful has happened."

"What?"

"I can't tell you here--but can't you guess?"

"Trouble at home?"

"Yes."

"Found out?"

"Yes."

"Your father?"

"Yes."

Adair paused.  Events were moving faster than
he had anticipated.  He was both thrilled and
bewildered at the suddenness of it all.

"It's risky," he said, in a voice that shook a
little, "but you'll have to come up and see me
here--there's nothing else for it."

"That's what I want to do," she answered.

"I'll fix it up with the door-keeper to take you
to my dressing-room.  Just say you have an
appointment with me, and he'll understand.  Wait
there for me until the first act is over--will you?"

"Yes, Cyril."

"And you will excuse me if I run?  They'll
have to hold the curtain as it is."

"Yes, yes--and I'll be there."

"Au revoir, sweetheart!"

"Good-by--I won't be long."

.. vspace:: 2

The stage-door, like most stage-doors, was to be
found in a cut-throat alley, so dark, dangerous, and
forbidding in its aspect that it took all of Phyllis'
courage to enter it.  A ratty-looking individual, so
compactly built into the entrance that he could open
the door by a shove of his boot, exerted this
labor-saving device in answer to her knock, and glowered
at her from over the paper he was reading.

"What do you want?" demanded the ratty individual.

"I have an appointment with Mr. Adair."

He rose without a word; and leading her up some
steps, guided her inside the theater.  In the
twilight of the wings were some stage-hands in
overalls; an actor whom she recognized as the wicked
prince, sitting on a soap-box, waiting listlessly for
his cue; from the stage itself came the sound of
voices raised to an unreal pitch, and strangely
exciting and fantastic, in a cadence that was neither
recitative nor speech.  She could not help noticing,
even in her agitation, the shabby, dilapidated,
disorderly appearance of everything--the ropes, the
dusty props, the frayed material of the scenes, the
general air of comfortlessness--receiving the shock
that comes to every one on first seeing the theater
from the wrong side.  But the ratty individual gave
her no time to take more than a passing glance,
leading the way with whispered warnings through
a gorge of canvas, and down a twisting iron stair
to the dressing-rooms below.  He stopped at one of
the little cabin-like doors, opened it, and ushered
her in.  Then he left her, and shuffled away with
diminishing footfalls.

The dressing-room was bald, bare, uncarpeted,
and painted a staring white.  Below a mirror
flanked by two flaring gas-jets there ran a sort of
shelf on which were grease-paints, crayons, brushes,
a pot of cold-cream, a pot of rouge, and other
necessaries for "making up."  From nails on the
wall--common, every-day nails--there straggled an
untidy line of men's clothes.  On a box in the
corner was a wash-basin, pitcher, soap, and a towel that
was none too clean.  Three empty chairs, and a
wall decoration completed the picture.  The wall
decoration was a printed notice, in large and
emphatic letters: "Smoking positively prohibited in
this theater.  Ladies must not use alcohol curling-irons."

Most young women, in a situation so equivocal
and so unfamiliar, would have been ill at ease,
frightened, apprehensive of many vague and dimly
suspected dangers.  But Phyllis' faith in Adair had
none of this faltering quality.  She loved, and
loving she trusted.  Her tremors had ended the
moment the door had closed her in--the moment, in
fact, when the others would have trembled most.
To her, on the contrary, the little room breathed
security for the very reason that it was Adair's.
With adorable folly she pressed kisses on all his
outstretched possessions; nuzzled her cheek against his
coat; put her little foot beside one of his big man's
shoes, delighting in the contrast--and altogether
felt greatly comforted and refreshed.

After a while she heard a tremendous commotion
overhead that swelled, sank and swelled again
as the house broke into applause at the end of the
act.  There was a lumbering, scratchy, pattering
sound as of a dozen pianos being moved at once by
stalwart men in slippers--it was the new scene
being set.  The passageway outside, previously so
still, resounded with a rush of feet--with
exclamations and laughter as the company scudded to make
their respective changes.  The door was flung open,
and there, brisk and smiling, on the threshold stood
Corrèze!

Phyllis ran to his arms, and hiding her face
against him began to cry.  She was so happy, so
wretched; the misery of that last hour had tried
her more than she knew; her joy at seeing Adair
seemed to exhaust the little strength she had left,
and her conflicting emotions could find vent only
in tears.  How sweet it was to be petted, to be
soothed--to feel so small, and weak, and helpless
in that powerful clasp!  Her tears flowed afresh.
Flowed at the thought of her love for him, of his
love for her, at the beauty, wonder, and solace
of it all.  Nothing could ever harm them as long
as they had each other, nothing, nothing.

She made him take a chair, and seating herself
at his feet crossed her arms on his knees and looked
up at him.  In this position it seemed easier to
confide, easier to answer his persistent questions,
easier at the same time to satisfy her craving to
nestle close.  As Adair heard of the letter he
turned as black as a thunder-cloud and his hands
clenched.

"I know whom I've to thank for that!" he
exclaimed furiously.  "The damned little treacherous
hound, I could choke her for it!  I've seen
something working in her eyes all along, but I never
dreamed she could be as low and contemptible as
that!  And so she was keeping tab on us, was she,
with all her mean little eyes and ears, the dyed toad!"

"Cyril, you really know who it is?"

He made a hissing sound--a disgusted assent.
"She isn't twenty feet from here," he exclaimed,
"unless she is at the key-hole this moment."  He
rose; stepped to the door, and looked out.  "Not
here," he said.

"But tell me, is she one of the actresses in the
company?"

"Never you mind," he returned roughly; and
then, with a quick remorse at the look in Phyllis'
face, he apologized in a roundabout fashion by
denouncing the stage in general.  "It's a low, dirty
business," he cried, "and the people in it are a
low, dirty lot; and I guess I'm not so damned much
better myself; and if you had a spark of sense
you'd clear out, and never see me again!  Do you
hear what I'm telling you, little chap?  Do you
hear, Phyllis girl?"  He put down his hand, and
caught her ear between his thumb and finger, giving
it a shake.  "Skin out, you darling baby.  Your
father's right.  Go back with my compliments, and
tell him I said so!"

His jeering tone hurt her; there was too much
sincerity in his self-contempt, too genuine a ring
to his proposed dismissal.  The contradictory
creature, stung to the quick by that letter, and
indignantly conscious of much of its truth, was
floundering towards righteousness, like a walrus
after a floe.  Hell, he didn't mean her any harm.
Let her get out.

"You'd better hurry," he said, pinching her ear
again.  "I'm just a cheap actor, as common as the
dirt in the road, and you're a beautiful young lady
a million times too good for this kind of game.
All that you can get out of it is dishonor and
disgrace.  Go away--let's drop it--love somebody
who's worth loving."

He tried to push her from him, but she clung
only the tighter, her face paling at his earnestness,
and stubbornly looking up at his.

"You couldn't say that if you were--what you
say you are."

"How do you know it isn't a trick!" he
exclaimed, "just another move in the game--just
to get you a little further out of your depth, and
then drown you?"  His hands closed round her
neck with brutal pleasure in her youth, her
softness, her delicacy, her powerlessness.

"It's strange," he said wonderingly, "but at
this moment when you have never been more tempting
to me, I am willing to let you go--want to let
you go.  It's the first good resolution in my life,
yet you stick here like an infatuated little noodle,
waiting for it to pass."

She snuggled closer against him.

"Am I tempting?"

"My God, yes."

"And you love me?"

"Oh, my darling, I do, I do!"

"And wouldn't it be nice for a poor little lonesome
cheap actor, who's really a great big splendid
noble person of genius, if he only knew it--to
have me to pet him and love him and adore him,
and kiss away his morbid, silly moods, and make
such a darling baby of him that he'd burst out
crying if I were out of his sight a minute?"

He looked at her sharply for an underlying
meaning--a comprehension--an assent.  But her
candor and innocence were transparent; the purity
beneath those limpid depths shone like a diamond in
a pool.  Her love took no thought of anything
base or wrong, either in him or in her; all she
sought was the assurance that he loved her, and
wanted her; and this achieved she was content to
leave the rest to him with unquestioning faith.  She
did not come of the class to whom marriage is
vividly seen as a protection, a safe-guard, a coveted
lien on a pocket-book and a man, enforceable by the
police; to her it was more one of those inevitable
formalities that attend all the big events of life,
from being born to being buried, and which one
accepts as a matter of course.

Adair, in a gust of passion, caught her up on
his knees, and crushed her unresisting body in his
arms.  Everything was forgotten in the maddening
rapture of the moment.  The fragrance of her
young beauty over-mastered him.  His head reeled
in the greatest of all intoxications--the
woman-drunkenness that makes men crazy.  Between his
clenched teeth he whispered: "You are mine, and
I am going to keep you--you shall never get
away now.  You had your chance, but it's gone,
fool that I was ever to offer it.  But now I'll kill
you first; do you hear, Phyllis, I'll kill you first,
for you're mine, body and soul, and you've gone too
far ever to draw back."  His voice sank lower; he
was beside himself; all he knew was that she was
shaking convulsively--that her face, her lips were
burning--that love, shame, devouring fever all
flamed in the eyes she tried to hide from him.

A knock at the door startled him to his feet.
Rap, rap, rap!

"You're called, Mr. Adair," said the voice from
without.

"All right, Williams!"

His quick, matter-of-fact tone was as much a
shock to Phyllis as the interruption itself.  To fall
from the clouds, and then land so squarely and
coolly on the earth below was a performance
disturbing to witness.  It seemed to cast suspicion on
his sincerity up above.  But the misgiving was a
fleeting one, for as he turned to her, she perceived
in his air of concern and resolution that she was
still the dominant thought in his mind.

"See here, Phyllis," he said, speaking fast, "this
means only one thing.  The company leaves
Saturday night after the show to jump to Ferrisburg.
You must come with me--that's all there is to
it.--Will you?"

She bowed her head, for somehow she could
not answer in words.

"It won't do for us to see each other till then;
but you ring me up on Saturday between twelve
and one at the St. Charles Hotel, and we'll fix up
the dates.  Have you got that straight?"

She bowed her head again, more overcome than ever.

"Don't worry about a trunk, or any damned
foolishness of that sort.  Trunks have busted more
elopements than six-shooters--just a nightie and
a tooth-brush, and we'll manage the rest at
Ferrisburg!"  His glance sought for some evasion, some
backwardness, but there was neither.

"It's the only thing to do," she said simply.
"Only, only--"  She was holding fast to his hand,
swaying a little.

He waited for some objection; some silly,
feminine obstacle--

"You do love me, don't you?" she asked as
pleadingly as a child.  "If you love me I could do
anything.  Tell me you love me, Cyril."

He kissed her hastily, saying "yes," and again
"yes," and ran out of the dressing-room.  A thin
deferential man peeped in.  "I'm Mr. Adair's
dresser, Miss," he said.  "He told me to show you
the way out.  If you would be so good as to
follow me, Miss."

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1

"Good-night, Miss!"

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.. _`CHAPTER XV`:

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   CHAPTER XV

.. vspace:: 2

In the meanwhile, Mr. Ladd, closely buttoned
up and walking to keep himself warm,
restlessly paced the drive-way, awaiting Phyllis'
return.  At every nearing footfall he would stiffen
and stop, and his throat would contract with
something very much like trepidation.  His anger was
all gone.  In its place was not only contrition and
self-reproach for having shown her that letter, but
a very real alarm of the situation he had precipitated.
He had been inconceivably stupid--inconceivably
unkind and blundering.  He had driven
the girl straight into the fellow's arms, and had
now doubled what he had to undo.  Looking back
on it he seemed to have said everything he ought
not to have said; done everything he ought not to
have done.  It was a case for frankness, tenderness,
and considerate understanding.  Hurry, too,
in such matters, was the root of all evil.  Romance,
like faith, grew with persecution.  Gad, if she really
thought herself in love with this egregious actor,
he would put his pride in his pocket, invite him to
the house, pretend to like him, and thus earn the
right to stipulate for conventions and a long
engagement.  No cruel father here, but a cool man
of the world, craftily leaving it to others to
tittle-tattle, to disparage, and best of all to deride with
a laughter infinitely more effective than the sternest
and angriest of arguments.  Yes, that was the
program and he must put an iron hold upon himself
to see that he did not swerve from it by a hair.

He ran forward in the dark as he heard some one
coming, and recognized Phyllis dimly against the
lighted street behind.

"Phyllis!" he cried, "Phyllis!" and he caught
her hand and held it.  Her touch, even more than
her silence, told him how estranged they were.  His
agitation paralyzed his tongue; he hardly knew
how to begin; he murmured under his breath,
"Forgive me, forgive me"; and then, louder, with an
uncontrollable resentment that flashed up in spite
of all his self-warnings: "Don't deny it--you've
been to him!"

"I wasn't going to deny it, Papa."

"Where?  At the theater?"

"Yes."

"You went there alone--not even a maid with
you?  Have you parted with all sanity?"

His tone was overbearing, harsh, scornful.
Alas, for his good and wise intentions!  In the
impact of two stubborn natures, each rousing in
the other an invincible antagonism, there could be
no tenderness, no consideration.  Each was fighting
with the flag nailed to the mast; she for Adair,
he for his daughter.

"It was your doing, Papa.  I had no alternative."

"Oh, what a lie!  I'd sooner have gone with
you myself, however bitter or humiliating it might
have been for me."

The picture of such an escort to such a rendezvous
made her laugh in spite of herself.  It was not the
kind of laughter to soften or turn away wrath.  To
Ladd it seemed heartlessness itself.

"It's unbelievable," he broke out, "my God,
Phyllis, what am I to say to you?  Isn't the man
self-condemned on the face of it--with his closed
cabs, and underhanded meetings, and now stripping
you of every rag of reputation by letting you come
to him at his theater?  And what do you mean
by the theater, anyhow?--His dressing-room, of
course?"

"Yes."

Her answer wrung a groan from him.

"Phyllis, Phyllis!" he exclaimed.  Then in an
altered voice, full of irritated reasonableness, he
went on: "Do you realize that we could have had
the same--well, disagreement--over that Pastor
fellow you were engaged to?  Wouldn't you have
been just as wilful in his case--just as sure?
Wouldn't it have been the same with Baron von
Piller if I had objected violently at the time you
engaged yourself to him?  Look back on both these
affairs.  You aren't altogether a fool.  Mayn't this
be a third mistake?"

She seized his hand in both her own, and squeezed
it with all her strength.

"It's because I love him *like that*!  Not the
love that comes of compliments, of attentions and
flowers, but *that*!--But of course you don't
understand--you can't."

Mr. Ladd ignored this slight on his more limited
knowledge, though his lip curled sardonically
under his mustache.

"I am more concerned in how he loves you," he
said.  "He's acting like a cad, and you know it."

"Papa!"

His voice outrang hers.  "Love," he cried, with
piercing contempt, "that kind of love is the
commonest thing there is.  There isn't a drab on the
streets who hasn't tasted it to the dregs.  God
help you when you wake up, and see this man as
he is--schemer, scoundrel, blackguard.  Do you
think I don't know?  Do you think I haven't run
across hundreds?  Do you think I'm going to let
an adventurer like that get his hooks into you,
and drag you down into his own filthy mire?
You're the only thing I have in life; I live for you;
there isn't an hour of the day when you're not in
my mind.  You can't dismiss all this at the nod of
a stranger.  It carries its obligations--for you,
too; the obligation of more than twenty years; not
for feeding and clothing you, I don't mean anything
so banal--but the deeper one of a love that has
kept you warm and happy--that has grown without
your knowing it to be a very part of you, as
it is all of me."

Had he stopped there the harm might still have
been undone.  But with a perversity inexplicable
at that moment when the tide had turned, and
responsive tears were streaming down those girlish
cheeks, he had a sudden outburst of rancor that
destroyed everything he had gained.

"To think that anybody named Cyril Adair--my
God, *Cyril Adair*, with its suggestion of sticky
sweetness, and tinsel, and footlights, and mock
heroics--could come between two sane, grown-up
people like you and me!--Cyril Adair!" he
repeated, and laughed mirthlessly.

There was nothing he could have urged against
Adair that could have hurt her more.  A young
and devoted woman can always find excuses for
her lover's past.  It belongs to a time before her
little hand had been stretched out to save him,
before she had brought hope and light to one who
had never known either, and had consequently--and
naturally--abandoned himself to despair.
With a feeling surely divine, and often justified by
results, she never doubts her ability to wash that
black sheep to the fleecy whiteness of her own dainty
wool.  But poor Cyril's name was a very different
matter; it was worse in its pinchbeck and aristocratic
pretensions, and school-girl-novel picturesqueness
than the most crimson of sins.  It would still be
stamped on the luckless sheep after he had been
whitened as white as snow--the Scarlet Letter of
vulgarity, so to speak--affronting good taste on
every hill-side.  Nothing more showed the degree
of Phyllis' infatuation than that she had been able
to tolerate this name; and now, to have it flung in
her face, with an emphasis so sneering--the one
taunt for which she had no answer--was more than
she felt herself able to bear.

She drooped beside her father, realizing the
futility of any further argument, and of a sudden
so tired that the woes of the world seemed to be
on her shoulders.  Her voice, when at last she
broke the silence, was weary, though with none
of the weariness of surrender, but rather that of a
settled and altogether sad determination.

"We seem to have said all there is to say--good
night, Papa."

He would have detained her, but she moved away
from him, and preceded him into the house.  He
followed, respecting her wish to terminate the
scene.  He was weary, too, and no less willing to
be alone.  He had to think and to act, and much
had to be done that night.

.. vspace:: 2

They met at breakfast as usual.  She kissed him
dutifully, and poured out his coffee as though this
Wednesday morning was no different from any
other Wednesday morning.  They talked on
indifferent subjects until the servants had left them.
Then the suspended battle was renewed.

"My dear," said Mr. Ladd, with an uncertain
smile, "I am thinking of sending you on a visit
to your Aunt Sarah's.  It will be better for both
of us to stay apart for a time, and see matters with
a little more calmness and--consideration for each
other.  There's no sense in being over-hasty, and
making momentous resolutions in this twinkling-of-an-eye
sort of way.  There's lots of time--oceans
of time.  You may change, I may change--for I
don't set up to be inflexible, and neither do you.
Yes, you'll go to your Aunt Sarah's, and then to
Paris with her if you like, or Monte Carlo.  I guess
I can fix it up to the nines, even to a look-in at
Paquin's, and one of those expensive strolls down
the Rue de La Paix.  Go ahead--why not?"

"I'd rather stay here, Papa."

"Phyllis, this is a request--a favor to me.  I
want you to."

"When?"

"Why not the noon train?  I've taken a
drawing-room for you, and a berth for your
maid--and Sarah's expecting you."

"You told her?"

He made no attempt to avoid the implication of
her eyes.

"No," he replied.  "No, I don't believe in roaring
out your troubles over the long distance 'phone.
It was enough to call it an impulse.  With you, my
dear, that is always a sufficient reason."--They
both laughed, and Mr. Ladd's anxious cordiality
redoubled at so favorable a symptom.  "If it's the
real thing, Phyllis, time won't hurt it."

"It is the real thing, Papa."

"But you will go?"

"No."

"Phyllis, I insist."

"I'm sorry, but it's impossible."

"You have to.  You must."

"I won't!"

It is the terrible part of stereotyped situations that
people will make use of the stereotyped expressions
that go with them.  Mr. Ladd was the kindest and
most devoted father on earth, yet the venerable
formula rose to his lips: "You defy me under my
own roof?"

It of course forced out the stereotyped reply:
"I can leave it."

Mr. Ladd, in silence, looked at her long and
steadily; then he bent his head.  She saw nothing
but the iron-gray hair; the stooping, dejected
shoulders; the hand, lying as limp as dead, on the
damask cloth.

"Papa?"

No answer.

"Papa?"

She ran to his side, all revolt gone, her only
thought to comfort him.  Her bare arms entwined
themselves about his neck in a paroxysm of
remorse; her bosom swelled; her voice was incoherent
as she lavished her young tenderness upon him.  It
was a moment that would decide her life.  Had
her father left the initiative to her, had he been
content to accept mutely these tokens of her
surrender--he would have won, then and there, and
nothing again would ever have come between them.
But with blind stupidity he had to persevere with
the intention their clash had interrupted.

"I will tell you my real reason for wanting you
to get away," he said.  "It wasn't what you
thought at all--it was to spare you unnecessary
pain.  Last night I sent Reynolds, our best
secret-service man, to New York with *carte blanche* to
confer with the Pinkertons and ransack this
fellow's record from top to bottom.  From what
Reynolds told me he already knew--I mean what's
said down-town, I believe it will be a black one, so
black that there won't be any question about your
giving him up--just on the facts brought out--facts
that can not be disproved or contested.  Reynolds--"

"But, Papa, I don't understand.  You are setting
detectives to go back over his life, like a
criminal?  *Detectives?*"

"Yes."

"But how dishonorable, how infamous!"

"Oh, it's done every day; it's common, my dear;
if the man's straight it can't hurt him--but if
he has anything to hide, why, we turn on the
search-light, and find out what's wrong.--It's all done
secretly; he won't know; don't worry about that.--I
expect a full report in a few days, and would
rather not have you here when I get it."

"And do you think that's fair or right, or
anything but--fiendish?"

"How do you know he isn't married, Phyllis?"--he
shot this at her mercilessly.  "How do you
know anything except what he's told you?  You
may be willing to believe him, and all that--but
I'm your father, and I want to *know*, and by God,
I'm going to know!"

"Papa, don't!"

"Aha, you're not very confident, are you?"

"He's a man.  I don't doubt he's been foolish,
and bad, and fast, but to see it written down
cold-bloodedly on sheets of paper is more than I can
bear.  I am willing to ignore that; I am willing
to take him as he is *now*.  Oh, Papa, a woman
can forgive so much."

"Yes, my dear, and a great deal that a father
never could."

"I beg you, Papa, I implore you to telegraph to
them to stop."

"It's too late--besides it has to be done; I
insist on it; I'm going to strip that man's past to
the bone."

"Even if it costs you me?  Even if this is the
end of everything between us?"

"Fiddle-de-dee, these theatrics are unworthy of
you!  You're going to take the noon train to
Sarah's, and behave yourself; and this business,
however disagreeable to both of us, has got to go
through."

Her lips tightened mutinously.  She was not a
young woman who could be driven.

"I'll stay here, or walk right out of your
house--and you know where."

"Then stay," he cried, rising wrathfully, "and
may God forgive you for the misery you are
bringing down on me.  I'm only trying to do what's
best, and you treat me as though I was one of that
fellow's cruel parents on the stage!  It's no time
to mince matters, and I tell you straight out, Phyllis,
he's a blackguard and a scoundrel, and when you
see the Pinkertons' report, I guess you'll go down
on your knees and beg my pardon for your
heartlessness and obstinacy."

He glared at her, expecting a retort that would
add fresh fuel to his anger, but she was silent,
downcast, trembling.  The answer she made was to
herself, inaudible save to her anguished soul: "Oh,
that Saturday night were here!"





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.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

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   CHAPTER XVI

.. vspace:: 2

The four days that followed were almost
unendurable in the strain they entailed.
Phyllis was heavy with her secret; beset
by emotions so conflicting that they seemed to rend
her to pieces; forlorn and desolate under her
father's studied coldness.  The detectives' report
did not come, or was withheld perhaps,--but the
apprehension of it was always hanging horribly
above her head.  It was not the facts themselves
she feared most, though she dreaded them, too;
it was to hear them tauntingly on her father's lips;
to be forced to stand, and listen, and cringe at what
the human ferrets had unearthed.--Anxious days;
leaden days; sad, introspective, interminable days,
never to be recalled in after life without a peculiar
depression.

On Saturday, at the stroke of noon, she was in
a telephone booth, with shivers cascading down her
back, and the eagerest heart in Carthage thumping
under her breast.  In the time she took to get her
number, she had decided to go, not to go--then
again to go, then again not to go.  It was awful,
and she couldn't; it was awful, and she would!

.. vspace:: 2

"Hello, is that the St. Charles Hotel?"

"Yes, Chincholchell, whodyerwant?"

"Mr. Cyril Adair?"

"Hold the line."

He must have been waiting there for his voice
answered immediately, abrupt and deep: "Hello,
is that you?"

"Yes,--you know who."

"Is it all right--you are coming?"

"If you want me to."

His only answer to that was a laugh that shook
the wire.  How manly and confident it sounded in
contrast to her own quavering whisper!

"Now, listen, you darling baby, and get this
right.  We're to pick up the Alleghany local at ten
minutes past midnight, and at half-past eleven I'll
have Tom Merguelis waiting for you in a cab, across
the Avenue on the southeastern corner.  Can you
manage to get out of the house, do you think?"

"Oh, yes."

"No trunk, you know--just the few things you
need, and the fewer the better."

"I understand."

"Find Tom--that's all you have to do--and
the rest is for him."

"Yes, Cyril."

"Say it as though you meant it!  I'd rather
have you back out now than fail me at the last
moment.  That's an awful faint 'yes.'"

"Don't blame me if I'm scared--you'd be
scared too, in my place."

"Well, how scared are you going to be at
half-past eleven--that's the real point of it?"

"Cyril, dearest?"

"Yes, my darling."

"I'm coming, I want to come, I'm crazy to come--and
you mustn't think for a single moment that
I won't."

"That's the way to talk!"

"And you'll be good to me, won't you?"

"My precious!"

"And love me, oh, so well?"

"Yes, yes!"

"And I'll try to be the best little wife that ever
made a man warm, and comfortable, and happy--and
I'm going to keep your heart-buttons sewed
on as well as the others--and darn your beautiful
big soul with girl-silk--and dress you every day
in a lovely new suit of kisses, so that people will
turn round on the street, and ask who's your tailor!
And Cyril?"

"Yes, sweetheart?".

"I'm the happiest girl in the world, and the
luckiest!  And I'm not scared a bit, and I'll be
there at half-past eleven, and I love you, and I'm
going to run away with you; and I'm glad I'm
going to run away with you, and I'm twenty-one,
and my own mistress, and as bold as brass, and six
policemen couldn't stop me, and I'm just a little
slave panting for her master, and I've gnawed the
ropes through with my teeth, and no one shall ever
tie me up again, or keep me away from you, Amen!"

Again there was that manly, confident laugh.

"I think that little slave had better run home
again and pretend to tie up," he said.  "It would
spoil everything if your father got wind of
this--I know those rich old fellows--they can be a
power for mischief whether the law is on their
side or not.  Good-by, my darling, take care of
yourself, and look out for Tommy at eleven thirty.
Good-by!"

"I hope we will never say that word to each
other again," exclaimed Phyllis.  "It's a horrid
word and I hate it.  Good-by, Cyril, and don't
forget your little slave, counting the minutes at
home!"

"Ta, ta, my lamb, I won't forget her.  Couldn't
if I would, ta, ta!"

There is no harder task than to fold one's hands
and wait.  Adair had his matinée and his evening
performance to engross his thoughts, and allay to
some degree his fever of anticipation.  But Phyllis
had no such resource.  Restless, nervous, on edge
with suspense--fits of joy alternating with craven
terror--she wore out the longest afternoon of her
life, and an evening that was more trying still.
Her father, to make matters worse, attempted some
advances; spoke to her with unexpected kindness;
hovered on the brink of another appeal.  What a
little Judas she felt, sitting opposite him for
perhaps the last time, and maintaining a constraint
that was, indeed, her armor, for if she responded
at all she knew she would never go that night.
So she parried and fenced, and kept the
conversation impersonal at any hazard, while his face
grew steadily more overcast, and the lines of his
forehead deepened.  She excused herself early,
pleading fatigue, and relaxed her attitude to kiss
him tenderly good night.

"It'll all come right before long," she murmured
softly.  "Good night, my darling daddy, and
remember I love you whatever happens."

She was off before he could take advantage of a
mood so melting.  But he felt much consoled,
nevertheless.

"She's coming round," he said to himself.  "I
might have known she would.  That's the comfort
of her being such a good girl, and so intelligent!"

Up-stairs, the young lady thus complacently
described was stripping off her dinner gown, and
wondering what dress she would replace it with.  She
was the daintiest of soubrettes in her long
dark-red silk stockings, and Watch, her Russian poodle,
gazed at her with an approving, first-row-of-the-orchestra
expression that made him look too wicked
and dissipated for anything.  She gave him a
gentle kick on the nose to remind him that staring
wasn't gentlemanly, and finally chose a blue
tailor-made by Redfern.  When this was on, the rest of
her preparations were easy.  She could not well
take Watch, so she took his collar, and this was
the first to go into the little hand-bag.  A
nightgown followed, a pair of stockings, tooth-brush,
comb and brush, tooth-powder, some handkerchiefs,
the photographs of her father and mother, still in
their frames, and a pair of patent leather slippers
with gilt buckles.  Surely no little bride of her
importance and social position had ever set forth
with so slender a trousseau.  There it all was,
dog-collar below, slippers on top, in a bag no bigger
than an exaggerated purse.  She smiled a little
tremulously as she looked at it, touched as only a
woman could be by the magnitude of her sacrifice.
Her clothes and her father--tears for both, thus
equally abandoned, suffused her eyes.

The next thing was a note of farewell, to be
found the following morning on her unused
pillow.  "I am going away with Mr. Adair," she
wrote, "taking my own life in my own hands for
better or worse.  Whether we are to be friends--you
and I--depends entirely upon yourself, although
alienation from you will be very hard for
me to bear.  Forgive me if you can, and do not
let your disappointment and chagrin embitter you
against me; or what would hurt me almost as
much--against him.  To-night when I kissed you
it was good-by, and if it is for ever it will be your
own fault, and very, very cruel, for I love you,
dearest father, I love you.  Ever your devoted
Phyllis."

By half-past nine everything was ready; and it
was with a consuming impatience that she went into
her boudoir with Watch, and ensconsed herself on
the sofa to wait.  A confidential Russian poodle
can be of great help to a young lady in distress.
Watch's sympathy; Watch's certainty of everything
coming out right; Watch's implied determination to
soften the blow to Mr. Ladd; Watch's willingness
to whine over the general tragedy of things--all
were whimsically comforting.  Best of all, he could
listen for ever and ever with one ear cocked up,
and never lose for an instant his air of highly
gratified interest.  And what didn't he hear during that
hour and three quarters on the sofa!  What
secrets of longing and tenderness, of girlish hopes,
of girlish dreams, of delicious falterings and
trepidations--all breathed into that woolly ear!

Then came the suffocating moment of
departure--the quieting of an unruly friend--the peeping
from the door; the tip-toeing down the stairs; the
panicky stops to cower and listen; the stealthy
passage of the great dim hall; the groping for bolts
and chains; the heavy door swinging heavily back;
the cold, dark, starry night beyond; the egress into
it; the wild sense of escape and freedom; the sound
of gravel under the eager little feet; the gate-way;
the wide silent Avenue; the glimmering lights of
the cab at the farther corner; and--

"Yes, I'm Tom Merguelis, Miss.  Jump in--everything
is ready."

She discovered herself sitting beside a very tall,
very thin young man, who smiled down at her in a
quizzical, friendly manner not unsuggestive of the
Cheshire Cat.  That vague, deprecatory grin was
as much a part of Mr. Merguelis as his sandy hair,
his retreating chin, and the whole amiable vacancy
of his expression.  His youth had been passed
before the public as "assistant" to Professor
Theophilus Blitz, the exhibiting hypnotist, who was
accustomed nightly to run pins into him; make him
drink kerosene under the impression it was beer;
smack his lips over furniture-polish; eat potato
peelings for sausages; bark like a dog, meow like a cat,
make love to a bolster, and generally disport
himself to the astonishment and horror of clodhopper
audiences.  Six years of this had left Tommy
without a digestion, and that fixed and bewildered grin,
which to Phyllis, under the unusual circumstances
of their meeting, seemed to her not without a satiric
quality.

But as they drove through the deserted streets
she realized her mistake, and corrected so unjust
a first impression.  The artless, gawky creature
idolized Adair, and was proud beyond measure to
be serving him so romantically.  It gave him an
extraordinary fellow-feeling for Phyllis to have her
also on her knees at the shrine of the demigod; and
he overflowed with a hero-worship so naïve and
sincere that she could not help liking him--grin
and all.  Indeed, it seemed a happy augury for her
own future that Adair could excite so profound an
admiration in those about him.  Mr. Merguelis
seemed as infatuated as she, and saw nothing
strange in these midnight proceedings.  There was
approval in that everlasting grin.  Would she please
call him Tommy?  Mr. Adair called him Tommy.
They shook hands on it in the semi-darkness, and
she knew she had found a friend.

Phyllis expected that Cyril would be waiting for
her at the station, and was much cast down to learn
that she was to remain alone with Tommy until
the train arrived.  "Then we'll all bustle on board
together, and nobody will notice you," explained
Tommy.  The good sense of this was apparent,
yet at the same time she could not help feeling
a little forlorn and slighted.  "Nobody will notice
you," said Young Lochinvar's Tommy.--Now that
the die was cast, why should she not be noticed?
She was ready to avow herself Adair's before all
the world, and why not on that dark, ill-lighted
platform, when her courage was nearly spent and
her slim young body drooping?

They sat on a bench, and waited in a corner of
the vast cavern, she with her bag in her lap, Tommy
with his unrelaxing grin fixed on space.  Waited
and waited, while stragglers passed, immigrants
with babies and bundles, hurrying couples
returning to the suburbs from a night in town.  Above
the noise there suddenly rose a louder thunder.  It
was the train bursting in with a roar, hissing steam
and grinding its brakes as it slowed down,
throbbing majestically.  Tommy seized her by the arm
and ran along the platform.

"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"

"Third car back."

"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"

"Jump in!"

Others were scrambling in, too.  Phyllis had a
fleeting glimpse of Miss de Vere, still with dabs of
make-up on her sulky, handsome face; of the wicked
Prince, loaded down with baggage, and excitedly
taking the direction of everything on his shoulders;
of a stout, authoritative Jew with a diamond pin,
who was staring at her with a greedy curiosity,
and that cattleman's look, as of one who could tell
the shape, age, attractiveness, and market value of
a human heifer at a single glance.  They jostled
into the empty car, a dozen or more, settling
themselves anywhere, anyhow, like a big boisterous
family.  Tommy and Phyllis slipped into a seat at
the farther end, and they had hardly done so
before the latter felt a hand reach over and touch her
cheek; and turning, saw Adair!  Tommy sprang
up, and made way for him, Adair taking the vacated
place as though by right.

Whatever pique she might have held against him
vanished in the magic of his presence.  His hand,
closing on hers, communicated peace and resolution.
No longer was she afraid, or lonely, or sad, or
uneasily conscious of those other prying and
speculating occupants of the car.  The goal was attained;
stronger shoulders than her own now lifted her
burden; she had run her race, and could now lie,
all spent and weary, in that haven of heart's
content.  His musical voice flowed on in caressing
cadences.  Had Tommy carried out his instructions?
Had Tommy explained the need of an unobtrusive
departure, so that any chance reporter or
busybody might be put off the scent?--Oh, the
poor baby, how neglected she must have felt, on
this the night of nights; how utterly ignored and
forgotten!

He drew her head against his cheap fur coat, and
stroked her cheek and tresses--his sweetheart, his
darling, his little bride!  It was sweet to be petted;
sweeter still to enjoy the luxury of self-pity as he
expatiated with smiling exaggeration on her sad,
miserable, wretched waiting with Tommy, in the
sad, miserable, wretched station!  She closed her
sleepy eyes, and nestled closer, awake only to catch
every soft word of endearment.  Of these she could
not have enough.  It was heavenly to doze away
with: "I love you, I love you, I love you," falling
in that insatiable little ear; heavenly to feel that
big hand playing with her hair, and tempting kisses
as it lingered against her mouth; heavenly to feel
so weak, and small, and helpless, and tired against
that muscular arm.  Divine mystery of love!
Divine the dependence of woman on man, of man on
woman, neither complete without the other, and
each so different...  "My little bride"
... "I love you, ... I love you,
... I love you..."

The train rumbled through the darkness.  The
seats held the huddled figures of the company, all
as limp as sacks, as oblivion stole upon them.  Feet
were cocked up; hats were pulled over brows;
haggard women, pale men, sprawling in disorder, and
through long familiarity as unrestrained as some
low, coarse family--sloppy slippers and frank
stockings to the garter; unbuttoned collars,
unbuttoned vests; dirty cuffs on racks--the squalid
evidences of a squalid intimacy.

Looking down at that pure profile, and inhaling
with every breath the fragrance of an exquisite
young womanhood which would be his so soon to
take, and, if he wished, to fling away, shattered
and destroyed beyond all mending, Adair felt, with
dawning comprehension, and mingled elation and
pain, all that had gone to put this creature so
infinitely above him.

What care, what money, what anxious thought
had been lavished to make her what she was.
How incessant the effort; how jealous the
guarding through all these years; how elaborate and
costly the training to fit her for the proud, high
position to which she had been born.  It came
over him with a strange new perception that the
very innocence of her surrender was but another
proof of that queenly rearing.  She was not of a
world where women suspected or bargained.  They
lived their gracious lives within triple walls,
unaware of the sentinels and outposts for ever
watching over them.  And what were the sensations of
the lucky thief, who had closed his fingers on the
prize, and run?  They were not altogether as
joyful as one might have thought.  The thief was
very much bemused.  That trusting head, snuggled
against his breast, was causing a curious
commotion in the heart beneath.

But he overcame the unmanly weakness.  Hell,
he would take what the gods had sent him.  He
hadn't raised a hand to get her; she had thrown
herself at him; oh, she knew what she was doing,
well enough, though she probably expected him to
marry her.  Perhaps he would, later on.  He
wasn't prepared right there to say he wouldn't.
But there was plenty of time for that.  He hoped
she wouldn't turn out to be one of the crying,
troublesome kind.  Add a Laidlaw Wright father-in-law
to that, and one might as well shoot oneself--what
with writs, attachments, box-office seizures,
injunctions, citations "to show cause," detectives
going through your pockets, black eyes, fines,
contempt-proceedings--all raining on a fellow in
buckets!  He smiled grimly at the recollection.  No
more of that for him.--Well, if she didn't like
the other way, she would just have to make the
best of it.  Her innocence here again would be a
great help.  The poor little lamb believed every
word he said.  Besides, with women, kisses could
always atone for everything.

The train rumbled on and on.  Adair succumbed
to a fitful and uneasy slumber, through which there
ran a thread of tormenting dreams.  He had lost
her; they had become separated, and over the heads
of a crowd he saw her disappearing in a vortex
of hurrying people; he struggled unavailingly to
follow, swearing, hitting out, shouldering and
elbowing like a madman; the cruel reality of it
awakened him to find her sleeping in his arms.  He
awakened her, too,--roughly,--to share his relief,
his joy.  He made her hold him round the neck;
made her kiss him, all sleepy as she was; crushed
and cuddled her in a transport of sudden passion.
Then he nodded off again, his lips resting on her
silken hair, blissfully content, and no longer afraid
to close his heavy lids.

They were bundled off at Ferrisburg at three in
the morning, all of them so sodden with sleep that
they could scarcely keep their eyes open.  A
dilapidated bus, and a freckled boy received them, the
former representing the Clarendon Hotel, the latter,
Miss MacGlidden's theatrical boarding-house.  The
company divided accordingly, with some grumpy
facetiousness, the lesser members trailing away on
foot after the boy, the principals climbing into the
bus,--the trunks of both stacked high on the
platform to await the morning.

The hotel, in spite of its fine name, was a bare,
dismal, ramshackle place; and the lowered lights,
and uncarpeted floors gave it a peculiarly
forbidding air as the doors were unlocked to admit them.
Phyllis, clinging to her lover's arm, and overcome
with weariness, took little heed of the
arrangements being made for their accommodation.  She
had no idea of the *Cyril Adair and wife* that
was being written almost under her nose.  Even
when she accompanied Cyril up-stairs at the heels of
a yawning darky, she was equally unaware that
her room was also to be his.  No sleepy child at her
father's side could have been more trusting.

The darky shuffled off, leaving them alone
together in the big, cold bedroom.  Adair took her
in his arms, and kissed her, murmuring something
that she only half heard and altogether failed to
understand.  All that she grasped was that he
would return in a little while--that she was to
undress, and go to bed, while he went down to get
his dress-suit case.  He opened her own little bag,
and laughed as he arranged the contents on the
chiffonier, she with blushes, struggling to restrain
him.  Then he was gone, and when she went to
lock the door, she found that the key was gone, also.

She took off her hat, her cloak, her bodice, and
with no light save a pair of wretched candles
began to brush her unloosened hair.  A terrible
misgiving was stealing over her which she tried to
allay by prolonging this familiar task.  The
missing key, the talk of coming back--what was she
to think?  A deadly fear struck at her heart.  It
was not all for her honor.  There was more at
stake than even that--the greater disaster of
Adair's unworthiness.  Could this be the love for
which she had abandoned everything?  Was it all
a lie, a fraud, a trick?  She suddenly seemed to
lose the strength to stand, sinking into the nearest,
chair, huddled and trembling.

No, no, he could not be so inconceivably base.
She was wrong.  His love was as real as hers.  He
was incapable of such coldblooded premeditation.
Everything she had was his.  It was not that.  The
thought of giving herself to him had filled her with
an unreasoning joy.  But to be cheated, to barter
her life, her soul in exchange for his pretense--oh,
she would have rather died!  She would have
starved for him, would have sold the clothes off
her back for him, would have borne unflinchingly
odium, contempt, disgrace, asking only that he love
her well.  But without that--!  It was for him to
choose; she had no resistance left; but if it were,
indeed, all a lie she would kill herself the next day.
One could outlive many things, but not *that*.
There are some cheats that leave one with no
redress save death.

She heard his step in the corridor; heard the door
softly open; looked up with dilating eyes to learn
her fate.  The words Adair meant to say never
were said.  He stopped, staring down at her with
a gaze as questioning as her own.  It was one of
those instants that decide eternities.  All that she
had thought, all that she had dreaded were articulate
in the piteous face she raised to his.  It was a look,
which, mysteriously, for that perceptive instant was
open for him to read.

"They have got me a room on the other side of
the house," he said, "but I had to come back first
to say good night."  He ran over to her, kissed her
lightly on her bared shoulder, pressed a great
handful of her hair across his lips, and hurried away
before temptation could overmaster him.

There was no one to be found anywhere, but he
remembered the stove still burning in the bar-room,
and the empty chairs gathered socially about it.
Thither he made his way through the silent office
and corridors, and drawing his cheap fur coat close
about him, settled himself to pass what little
remained of the night.  There was sawdust on the
floor, spittoons, scraps of sausage-rind; the air stank
stalely of beer and spirits; the single gas-jet, turned
very low, flickered over the nude women that
decorated the mean, fly-blown walls, and flickered, too,
over a man, half-slumbering in a chair, who, but
glimmeringly to himself, had taken the turning road
of his life.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII

.. vspace:: 2

The sensation of most runaway couples,
after filling up a blank form, and having
a marriage service gabbled over them by
a shabby stranger in a frock-coat, is one of unmixed
astonishment at the facility of the whole proceeding.
A dog-license is no harder to obtain, and the
formalities attending vaccination are even greater.

Phyllis emerged from the Reverend Josiah Lyell's
with a ring on her finger, and a cardboard
certificate on which the Almighty, angels, and forked
lightning were depicted above her name and
Adair's.  The first discussion of their married life
was what to do with this monstrosity.  Phyllis was
for tearing it up, but Adair, superstitiously afraid
of bad luck, insisted stoutly on its being retained.

"I'll hide it at the bottom of my trunk," he said.

They returned to the carriage, which was awaiting
them as composedly as though nothing in
particular had happened in the ten-minute interval.
Adair wished to take a drive before going back
to the hotel, thinking that the air and repose would
be soothing for their nerves,--but to his surprise
Phyllis demurred.

"I've been married your way," she said, "now
you must come and be married mine."

"Yours, Phyllis?"

"Yes, tell him to drive to a Catholic church."

He gave the order good-humoredly.  "Aren't
you satisfied?" he asked.  "Do you want more
angels and forked lightning?"

"You see, I've always been a sort of Catholic,"
she explained.  "Not a good Catholic, but a poor
little straggler, galloping on half a mile behind, like
a baby sheep that's got left.  I've never liked
the confession part of it, but really, Cyril, there's
a sort of whiff of Heaven about a Catholic church
that I need occasionally.  It's just as though you
were awfully hungry, and went in to smell a
beautiful dinner a long way off!"

"All right, Phyllis, if we are going to get
married we might as well do it thoroughly," assented
Adair.  "If you think that beautiful dinner will
help us any, let's go and smell it by all means."

As kind fate would have it, it was rather an
attractive church, and better still it was altogether
deserted.  The autumn sunshine was streaming
through stained-glass windows; a faint perfume of
incense lingered in the air; the peace and solitude
gave an added dignity to the altar, with its suffering
pale Christ, its tall candles, its effulgent brasses
gleaming in the rosy light.  Phyllis made Adair
kneel at her side, and holding his hand tightly in
hers, prayed silently with downcast eyes, and the
least quiver of a smile at the corner of her lips.

On their way out they stopped at the font.  She
crossed herself, touched her fingers to the water,
and scattered some drops on Adair's face.
"That's that you will always love me," she said,
with captivating solemnity, "that's that you will
always be true to me; and that's that--I may
die first!"

Adair dabbled his own hand in the holy water,
as though the act had a religious significance, "Oh,
God," he said, looking up in all seriousness, "if
there is a God--take care of this sweet wife of
mine, and guard her from every harm; and if there
isn't, I swear by this I am going to do it myself
just as well as I know how!"

They kissed each other, and were about to go,
when Phyllis noticed the poor-box.  She slipped
off her best ring, a little diamond such as girls are
permitted to wear, and unhesitatingly dropped it in.
Adair, caught by the picturesqueness of the
offering, would have sacrificed his horseshoe pin had
he not been prevented.

"No, that's too pretty," she cried jealously.
"Haven't you something you don't like that God
*would*?"

A little rummaging discovered a gold pencil-case
which seemed to fulfill this demand--at least on
Adair's side--and it forthwith followed the ring.
Then they sought the open air.

"Now, at last I feel really married," said Phyllis
gaily, as they climbed back into the carriage.
"What a strange, dizzy, *safe* sort of feeling it
gives one.  And just think I could hug you right
now before the driver, and that old lady with the
basket, and that little boy blowing his baby brother's
nose--and nobody could say Boo!"

.. _`She waited for him at the stage-door.`:

.. figure:: images/img-220.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: She waited for him at the stage-door.--*Page* 284

   She waited for him at the stage-door.--*Page* `284`_

She alarmed Adair by pretending to carry the
hugging into effect until he tried to push her away,
and told her to behave.  She replied with a
delighted, bubbling outcry over her new freedom:
"Oh, but I'm married now, and can do just what
I like, and can have breakfast in bed with you
every morning, and put my shoes out with yours
to be blacked, and I'm Mrs. Adair, and have a
wedding-ring, and a certificate with forked
lightning on it!"  She exultantly popped up her feet
on the seat in front, showing a shocking amount
of black silk stocking with a bravado that made
him grab at her skirt to pull it down; and in
the ensuing romp there was more silk stocking still,
and so much happy laughter on her part, and scandalized
protestation on his that the driver turned
round, and they were all but disgraced.

The narrowness of the escape sobered her, and
for the rest of the drive she was demureness itself.
What a joy it was to recline with half-shut eyes,
and let the air fan away all the troubled memories
of the night before!  Mind and body craved repose,
and mind and body found it in the cradle-like
movement of the carriage.  Adair was very tired, too,
and willing enough to share his pretty companion's
mood.  Deliciously conscious of each other, though
more asleep than awake, they abandoned themselves
to the fresh bright morning, and breathed
in deep drafts of contentment.

On their return to the hotel, the carriage stopped
and Tommy Merguelis jumped up on the step.  His
perennial grin, and withered, foolish face was not
unclouded by a certain anxiety.  He dropped a
bunch of roses into Phyllis' lap, with an awkward
compliment which got as far as she was a rose
herself, and then ended midway with a terrified giggle.

"I'm awful sorry," he said, addressing Adair,
"but you're wanted at the theater, Mr. Adair, and
I've been chasing around after you for the last
half-hour.  They want you to rehearse right off with
Miss Clarke, and coach her a bit in the business."

"Why, what's the matter with De Vere?" asked
Adair, surprised.

A slight glaze seemed to spread itself over the grin.

"She won't be in the bill for a day or two,"
said Tommy.  "She's been suddenly taken awful
bad."  He paused, seeking a decorous name for the
attack in question, and finally veiled it in the
obscurity of a foreign language: "A crisis de nerves,"
he added.

"Oh, tantrums?" said Adair in a plainer tongue.
"What a confounded nuisance!"

"She kept yelling and yelling until we got the
doctor," went on Tommy; "and then on top of that
Miss Clarke had to get into a hair-pulling match
with Miss Larkins--and so I think you had better
hurry, Mr. Adair, if there's to be anything doing
to-night."

"Great Lord, I think so, too!" cried the latter, to
whom, like all stars, the evening performance was
next to a religion.  "You go on to the hotel," he
went on, turning to Phyllis, "and make yourself
as comfortable as you can."  The vexation in his
voice was even a better apology than the one in
words.  "I'm damned sorry," he said.  "It's the
most infernal shame.  Forgive me, Phyllis, please
do, and try not to mind."

Thus it was that she drove to the hotel alone,
while Adair and Tommy strode off to quiet the
tempest in the theater, and start a tedious and
prolonged rehearsal with Miss de Vere's understudy.

Phyllis went to her room, and found one alleviation
of its loneliness in examining that mysterious
object, her wedding-ring.  It was so strange, so
unfamiliar, so charged with significance and finality.
Just a trifling hoop of gold, and yet with what
myriad meanings.  Probably in days gone by, when
of brass or iron it was riveted on the neck, little
brides mirrored themselves in pools with a similar
awe at their altered state, and a similar questioning
of the unknown future.

For better or worse, for good or evil, her life
was linked to Adair's beyond all recalling, and the
emblem of their compact glittered on the hand she
gazed at so long and earnestly.

But you can not hypnotize yourself for ever with
a wedding-ring--even one not two hours old.
There was another matter that called more
insistently for her attention.  Cyril had promised her
two hundred and fifty dollars for her clothes, and it
behooved her to get pen and ink, and begin making
her calculations.  This she did with much erasing,
much crinkling of girlish brows--with a profound,
wise-baby expression as though all the world were
at stake.  There was a delicious immodesty in
spending Adair's money for such laced and ribboned
femininities--nightgowns, stockings, chemises, and
what she wrote down ambiguously as "those
things," and colored as she wrote it.  How thrilling
it was, and how exquisitely shocking!  Oh, dear,
what nice ones they would have to be,--twenty-five
dollars gone for six in the twinkling of an eye,
for surely economy here would be a crime, men
being notoriously fond of--

"Mrs. Adair?"

Her new name was so unfamiliar that she
hesitated before answering: "Come in."

"A gentleman to see you, Mrs. Adair."

The door opened, and there on the threshold
stood her father!  His face was white, his eyes
morose and sunken, his whole air so formidable that
in the first shock of recognition Phyllis could do
no more than stare at him in terror.

"May I enter?" he asked, in that deeper intonation
of his which he never used except under
some special stress.  As he spoke he looked about
sharply, and with a bristling hostility as though
expecting to discover a second occupant of the room.

"Mr. Adair isn't here," she said, answering the
silent question.  "I am all alone, Papa."

She would have kissed him, but he brushed past
her to a chair, and seated himself heavily, laying his
silk hat and his gloves on the floor beside him.
Thus stalwartly in possession of the chamber, he
appeared more formidable than ever, and the
deliberate gaze he bent on Phyllis was masterful and
menacing.

"So you've gone and thrown away your life,"
he said at last.  "Forgive me, my dear, if I am
not able to congratulate you upon it."

"I married Mr. Adair this morning, if that's
what you mean."  She hardly knew how to say
more without adding to her offense.  Her father
was bound to put her in the wrong whatever reply
she made.  A terrible hopelessness weighed her
down, and crushed the unspoken appeal on her lips.

"Thrown away like that," he repeated, with a
gesture.  "You, who had everything; you, with
beauty, position, money, brains--my God, the
folly of it--the cruel, wicked, heartless folly of it!"

"Don't, Papa!" she pleaded.  "It's done, and
so what's the good of wounding me now?"

"Done!" he cried out bitterly.  "That depends
on what you mean by the word.  I will call it done
in six months when you will leave him for good,
and he will name his price for a divorce.  That's
the way adventurers marry money nowadays.  They
enjoy the girl till they are tired of her, and then
sell!"

Phyllis struggled to keep her composure under
the affront.  "You are very unjust," she returned
in a low voice that trembled in spite of herself.
"You are determined to think the worst of him,
and make it impossible for us ever to be friends.
But you are wrong, Papa.  He's not an adventurer,
nor anything like it.  Surely I ought to know
better than you, and if I have been willing to love
him, and marry him--"

"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you about
him," interrupted Mr. Ladd harshly.  "You believe
in him now, of course.  One can't reason with
lunatics, and I shan't try.  I'll give you six
months--perhaps even less--and then I want you to
remember what I am saying to you now."

"That you were right?"--Her voice was
scornful.--"Oh, Papa, this is unworthy of you."

"Phyllis," he retorted, "that's the last thing on
earth I would ever say to you.  If you should come
back to me disillusioned, broken, utterly weary of
the muddle you have made of it all, you will find
everything unchanged between us and the whole
matter as ignored as though it had never been.
That's what you are to remember--that my heart
and my purse will never be closed against you."

"Though both are dependent on my giving up
my husband?"

"He will give you up, my dear, fast enough."

"How dare you say that, Papa--how dare
you!"  A mist of anger was in her eyes, and two
spots of crimson glowed dangerously on her cheeks.
Never in her life had she been more roused; up to
that moment she had still hoped to save the day
and win her father over, but now she perceived the
irrevocable nature of what was being said.  Yet
outwardly, at least, she restrained herself, and hid
within her quivering breast a tumult that seemed
to rend her to pieces.

"If I seem to be misjudging Mr. Adair it is only
because I know more about him that you do,"
continued Mr. Ladd in a tone not untinged with a grim
satisfaction.  Even as he spoke he drew out a thick
packet, and unfolded it on his knee.  It was a mass
of typewriting, with here and there a notorial seal
on paper of a different color, and an occasional
newspaper cutting neatly pasted in the center of a
little sea of comment.  "Here we have him in
black and white," he went on, "and frankly, Phyllis,
he offers you a very poor promise of a happy
married life."

"And you expect me on my wedding morning to
sit down and read these things--these abominable
slanders your detectives have scraped together?"

"Oh, no.  But I demand to have Mr. Adair sit
down and answer them."

"Would you believe him if he did?"

"Facts are facts.  He can't deny them."

"And you called *me* unreasonable?  Oh, Papa!"

Mr. Ladd ignored the taunt.

"When he appreciates that his whole disreputable
past is known to me," he went on, with the
same inflexible composure, "he may condescend to
consider--an arrangement."

"An arrangement?--What do you mean?"

"I have brought a blank check with me," he
explained.  "He can name anything--and get it.
I'd rather pay more now than less later."

His brutality overwhelmed her.  It took her a
few seconds to understand the incredible baseness
he imputed to Adair.  In the light of this her
father's previous insults paled to insignificance.
She was too stunned to make any reply, and for
a while could do nothing but look at him in
speechless wonder.  Then she rose, and rang the bell.

"The marriage could be annulled," said Mr. Ladd,
oblivious of everything except his one
preoccupation.  "The next thing is to keep the
newspapers quiet, and that I can do.  We'll go abroad--"

The darky came running up with a pitcher of
ice water.  No one ever rang for anything else in
the Clarendon Hotel.  He entered, jingling the ice.

"Show this gentleman out," said Phyllis, "and
I want you to remember I shall not be home to
him again."

"Phyllis!"

The entreaty in his voice moved her not a bit,
nor the outstretched hand, veined, wrinkled and
shaking.

"It's conceivable I may forgive you for this,
Papa," she exclaimed, "though God knows it will
be hard.  But if you offer that check to Cyril I
shall hate you till the day I die!"

"Have it your own way then," he returned dully,
and with a curious break in his voice.  "Take your
own wilful road, and come back to me when your
heart's broken.  I'll be waiting for you, Phyllis,
and ready to forget and forgive."

She disdained to make any reply.  The darky
officiously gathered up the silk hat and gloves from
the floor, and presented them to Mr. Ladd.  The
latter, with a last look at his daughter's unrelenting
face, turned in silence, and passed out.

"The stairs are to the left, sah," said the darky.





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.. _`CHAPTER XVIII`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII

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Whether disillusion was finally destined
to arrive or not, there was certainly not
a hint of it during those succeeding
weeks.  There was no happier little bride in
America, than Phyllis Adair, and intimate acquaintance
with that extraordinary creature, man, only
redoubled her delight in him.  The bigness, directness,
simplicity, intolerance, and dog-like devotion
of her husband were an unfailing joy to her.  No
little girl who had been given a coveted St. Bernard
could have taken more anxious, eager, excited care
of him.  She would feed Adair with the daintiest
morsels from her own plate; she would exert every
faculty she possessed to amuse and distract him
when he fell into one of his despondent moods;
she would mock him with such pretty archness when
he grew irritable over trifles.  "Damn it all,
where did that fool Williams put my patent leather
shoes?"--"Damn it all, you will find them in
the bottom of the wardrobe neatly ranged with the
others," she would answer.  No matter how ill
his humor she always found the means to make him
smile; her quick wit, or her slim, audacious body
each exultantly willing to tease and bewitch him.

Of all human gifts surely that of loving has
received the least general recognition.  A genius
for music, a genius for mathematics or natural
history, or sculpture, or mechanics, is at once admitted
and acclaimed.  But what of a genius for loving,
which of all is infinitely the rarest?  The trouble
is that every one is conceited enough to think that
he (or she) is a wonder at it.  But frankly, do
we really indeed see so many love-geniuses about
us?  Are we not rather struck instead by an almost
universal love-poverty?  If the husband stays
drearily at home every night of his life, and if the
wife is entirely absorbed in the baby, are we not
asked enthusiastically to applaud a happy home?
This is the national ideal, and tens of thousands
are yawning heroically through it.  But where's
love in any but half-pint sizes?  Everybody insists
it is there in barrelfuls, much as they insisted in
the fairy tale in the case of the man with the
invisible clothes.--We are not defending hubby when
he gets tangled up with the blonde lady, but
emotionally speaking (only *emotionally*, be it
understood), it may be an upward step.  If you have
a ten per cent. capacity to love, it is hard to be
fobbed off with a four per cent. partner.

Phyllis was one of the chosen few in whom the
capacity to love was inordinate.  Her one thought
was to make herself indispensable to the man to
whom she had given herself.  Adair was the last
thing in her head at night, the first at dawn.  Hardly
was there an act of hers in which his personality
was not a contributing factor.  Her insatiable
ambition was to please and delight him, and her brain
was ever busy to find fresh ways, and improve on
the old.  Her finesse, her humor, her ardent and
tender imagination--all were enlisted to a single
end.  Passion she had in plenty, for she was of a
voluptuous nature, and the blood coursed hotly in
her veins--but she had more than that to give him,
and was possessed of a thousand captivating arts to
ensnare this love that was said to be so elusive, and
bind it tight with a myriad silken threads.

It will be asked was Adair worthy of so supreme
a devotion?  Is it not enough to answer that he
was not altogether unworthy?  There was a lot of
human clay in the creature, and while Phyllis was
exerting all her blithe young ardor to keep the
altar-fires aflame, he was content to look on lazily, and
man-like, take many things for granted.  Had she
been no better, their love would have run the
ordinary course, and perished fast enough on the rocks
of habit and satiety.  Adair's spiritual side was all
but dormant.  He was encased in materialism as
stoutly as some of us in fat; whatever gropings he
had toward higher things were all in the direction
of the stage.  Feelings he could not initiate
himself he took here ready made, and showed almost
a genius in their comprehension.  He presented a
paradox of one who could admirably "get into"
any written character, and yet who was wholly
unable to "get into" his own.

Phyllis knew much more what laid beneath than
he.  To her the yearning, troubled, inarticulate
soul of the man appealed as pathetically as the
sight of some great, ashamed, bearded fellow who
had never been taught to read.  In the finer sense
Adair had never been taught anything.  His instincts
alone had saved him from being a clod.  In
his fight up from the bottom he had arrived a good
deal splashed with mud; and Phyllis, figuratively
speaking, rolled back her sleeves, and set herself to
tubbing him.

He was extraordinarily submissive in this respect,
extraordinarily grateful and responsive.  He made
no pretense of hiding his ignorance, but questioned
her like a child, and often as artlessly.  At
thirty-four he was having the universe reconstructed for
him, and the process filled him with astonishment.
Phyllis read aloud to him from such unheard-of
authors as Thackeray, Carlyle, Hardy, Stevenson,
and Meredith until these strange names became
quite familiar.  She could read French, too,
translating as she went, while he sat back, profoundly
respectful and impressed, his humility tinged with
the zest of ownership.  Yes, her youth, her beauty,
her intelligence, her love, all were his; and as he
gazed at her through the haze of his cigar, the
words often fell heedlessly on his ear as he felt the
mantling of a divine contentment.

Yet he could be very masterful on some matters.
Phyllis was not allowed to receive the advances of
the company, or to associate with any of its members,
a prohibition not a little difficult to obey in the
course of their constant traveling together.  But if
Phyllis shrank from being rude, Adair suffered from
no similar delicacy, and was brutally direct in
making his wishes plain to his stage companions.  It
was not only that he feared Lydia de Vere, whose
yellowish eyes were full of enmity, and whose
powers for mischief he well knew; but in contrast
to his dainty wife these theater-people somehow
began to strike him as tarnished and common, and
he was jealously reluctant to expose her to their
familiarities.  Intercourse with Phyllis was
sharpening his critical faculty; his view-point was
insensibly changing; there were even times when he
realized his own deficiencies.--Tommy Merguelis
was the one exception he made.  The lanky young
man, when weighed in the new scales, was found
to be less wanting than the others.  There was
something sensitive and refined about Tommy.
Ill-health, pins, and years of furniture-polish had been
as cleansing fires.  He was a humble person who
would accept his humble inch and grin gratefully,
and not reach out for an ell.  Yes, Phyllis might
be friends with Tommy.

With them on their travels from town to town
went a punching-bag, which Adair inflated and
set up as soon as their trunks were unpacked.
Every morning, stripped to the waist, Phyllis had
to double up her little fists, and start a-pummelling
for ten furious minutes.  There could be no begging
off from this daily rite; it was one of the iron
rules of married life; pleadings, caresses, protests
all were in vain.  An icy bath had to follow, and
if she hesitated too long on the brink, or showed
too mutinous a row of toes, Adair would jump up,
and tumble her in as mercilessly as a boy with
a puppy.  At night, too, he was no less rigid in
regard to her prayers.  His own religion was very
nebulous.  He never prayed himself nor went to
church; but apparently that was no reason why
Phyllis should be similarly backward.  It gave him
a peculiar pleasure to see her kneeling beside the
bed, her night dress flowing about her slender,
girlish body, and her hair drawn back, and held
by a circlet of red ribbon.  He knew no prettier
picture, nor was it without a tender and uplifting
value.  For it was his name that moved on her
lips, and who would not have been proud to send
so enchanting a little deputy to plead for one
before the Throne of Grace?  Then it was that he
seemed to love her best; and though all unaware of
it, he, too, was praying in the deeper, unspoken
language of the heart.

"You've forgotten your prayers!"

"Oh, it was so cold--I thought I wouldn't to-night."

"Jump up!"

"It's so cosy here with you--and you ought to
have said it sooner--and anyhow, I won't."

"Jump up!"

"Oh, Cyril, that hurts!"

"Of course, it hurts."

"It's wicked to pinch as hard as that."

"It's wickeder not to say your prayers."

"Oh, Cyril, don't, *don't*!"

"Jump up, then."

"I'm not in the right frame of mind now--you
have pinched it all away.--All right, all right,
don't--I'll do it!  Though I don't think a
pinch-prayer would be as good as a real one.  Do you?"

"This is the prayer-rush time--God won't notice it."

"Not even if I am black and blue?  Why, the
angels will be shocked."

"They are that already with the fuss you have
made.  Roll out, you bad little chap,--out with you!"

Sometimes Adair was sharp with her--impatient
and fretful.  He made very little effort to control
his moods, which, as with most artists, were as
changeable and capricious as those of a child.  Nine
women out of ten would have retorted in kind,
and the honeymoon period would have insensibly
passed, and with it much of the charm and rapture
of their union.  It was due to no help of Adair's
that they did not descend to the ordinary plane
of married life, with its deliquescence of nearly
everything beautiful and romantic--occasional
harshness on one side, tears and pin-prickings on
the other, and departing illusions on both.  People
can still get along very tolerably in this manner,
and remain fairly fond and faithful, but no one can
contend it is the poet's ideal.  It was certainly not
Phyllis', and she was determined to avoid such a
catastrophe.

In her ambitious little head the honeymoon was
to be only the beginning of a sweeter intimacy
beyond.  She saw, lying latent in Adair, a capacity
to love as great as her own (she was presumptuous
enough to think that no one could love any better),
and her one consuming endeavor was to draw it
forth.  Whether or not the prize was worth the
winning never occurred to her.  This big,
splendid, untamed man-animal was hers, with all his
weaknesses and defects, with all his fine qualities
and bad, and she had accepted the responsibility
of him with naïve self-confidence.  To love was
her vocation, and she set herself to it with delight.

Her unfailing gaiety, her pretty artifices to
amuse and cajole him, her constant study of means
to give him pleasure--all were as the drops that
wear away the stone.  High-spirited, quick-tempered,
and with a sensitiveness that a glance could
wound, she yet put such a rein upon herself that
no provocation could draw from her an unkind
word.  She might grow suddenly silent, her mouth
might quiver, her eyes glisten, but no sharp retort
ever passed her lips.  There are many men with
whom this would not have answered.  To some,
indeed, an exquisite gentleness and forbearance
almost tempts their harshness.  Feeling themselves
in the wrong their vanity is insulted, and with
morbid perversity they go from bad to worse.  But
Adair was not of this sort.  With all his faults
he was a man of generous instincts, and capable of
quick and headlong repentances.  He could come
in like a thunder-cloud, on edge with nerves, snappish,
morose, ready to fly off the tangent at a trifle--and
five minutes later would be sitting at Phyllis'
feet, his face in her lap, conquered, contrite,
declaiming hotly against himself, his ill-temper all
striking inward.

These lapses of his helped his love much more
than they hurt it, and through them he began to
acquire some self-control, some degree of
consideration--some shame.  In him devotion brought
out devotion.  Instead of resenting Phyllis'
strategems to keep him good-humored and happy, he
was touched to the quick.  It was a new idea, this
of keeping love alight; of consecrating thought
and care to it and guarding the precious flame from
extinction.  It dawned upon him as something
entirely novel and unheard-of.  Yet it was beautiful;
he approved of it heartily.  He innocently ascribed
the invention to Phyllis, and as usual was
tremendously impressed.  It made him wonder whether
she ever thought of anything else but love.  As he
grew to know her better he saw that it inspired all
she did--that every impulse and every action
sprang from it.

Had he been a king, and she the transient, pretty
butterfly of the moment, she could not have striven
harder to fascinate and hold him.  Her saucy
tongue, her fancifulness, her audacity, her
often-declared determination to be as much sweetheart as
wife--all were as spice to a love that might
otherwise have cloyed.  To adore a man is not
enough--there is nothing the poor darling silly animal
gets tired of so soon as being adored.--One had
to keep him interested, captivated, filling in one's
own little person all his complicated needs of
passion, comradeship, entertainment, variety, and
mental recreation.  But how well one was repaid!  If
one gave a whole harem's worth of love, one
received a whole harem's worth back, and sweetest
of all one could watch the unfolding and ripening
of a really fine nature.  She was sure her infatuation
had guided her truly in that respect; that her
choice had fallen on a man with heart and soul big
enough to repay her devotion.  He might be rough,
but she had never a moment's doubt as to the
diamond, nor as to her ability to shape and polish it.

It was a process, unfortunately, that could not
be hurried.  Against her in the endeavor were the
ingrained habits and wilfulness of twenty years.
From his boyhood up Adair had lived in an
atmosphere of unrestraint, a Bohemian of Bohemians,
without ties, care-free, the whim of the moment his
only guide.  Some backslidings on his part were
inevitable and Phyllis, with all her illusions, was
sane and cool enough to foresee them.  It was hardly
a surprise to her, therefore, though frightening
and dismaying, when late one night, after
awaiting him in vain, Tommy Merguelis appeared
unexpectedly in his stead.  Any stranger to the young
man would have judged him to be in high spirits;
his shrill, nervous laugh was louder than usual;
and he stammered and giggled as though bubbling
over with an unextinguishable good nature.  To
Phyllis' practised eyes, however, these were ominous
signs, and her breath came a little quickly, as she
asked news of her husband.

"Oh, he's all right," said Tommy, standing with
one hand on the door-knob, and showing no
inclination to enter the room.  "Oh, Mr. Adair is all
right--and hee, hee, don't you worry about him.
He's detained, that's all, and he sent me to say he
might be late, and, and--"

"And what?"

"They've got him into a game down at
Mr. Feld's--the owner of the theater, hee, hee--and
he couldn't well refuse, or at least--"

"Oh, Tommy, please--I don't understand."

"Just a little game of draw."

"Cards?"

"Yes--poker."

This did not strike Phyllis as anything very terrible.

"And he sent you to tell me he would be late?"
she inquired, much reassured.

Tommy lied manfully.  As a matter of fact he
had invented the message--and the errand--to
shield Adair, who had forgotten everything in the
absorption of the game.  "Yes," he said, "he can't
manage to be back to supper with you, and is awful
sorry about it, and hopes you won't mind."  Though
Tommy could lie, he could not act.  His
anxiety was obvious; he wriggled uncomfortably;
and his silly, convulsive smile presaged some
disagreeable revelation.  Phyllis, now thoroughly
alarmed, and with characteristic directness went
straight for the truth.

"Tommy, has he been drinking?"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, he has."

"And they are playing high?"

"A dollar limit."

"And you came here to warn me?  Don't deny it,"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, I did,
Mrs. Adair."--As Phyllis paused, troubled, uncertain,
full of distress, Tommy added: "I don't know
as it wouldn't be a good plan for you to come along
with me and get him."

"Would he come?"

"Anybody would come for you, Mrs. Adair."

"Surely he doesn't often gamble, Tommy.  He
has never spoken to me of it?"

"Oh, there's nothing he don't do when the fit
takes him.  Hee, hee, he's that kind, you
know--temperamental."

The word, and the woebegone indulgence with
which it was uttered made Phyllis smile.  Her
humor was always close to the surface, even when
there were tears between.

"You are a dear, good fellow," she said, "and
I'll never forget your kindness to-night, though as
for doing anything, I am going to stay here."

He was amazed at the gentleness of her tone.

"I am never going to be his taskmaster," she
went on, as much to herself as to Tommy.  "As
far as I am concerned he shall always be as free
as air.  If I went after him at all, it would be to
sit on his knee, and drink with him."

Tommy's scandalized face again made her laugh.

"Don't be afraid," she said with tremulous
gaiety, "I won't do it this evening, anyhow.  Now
run away, Tommy, and tell them down-stairs we
shan't need any supper after all."

She shut the door after him, and stood with her
back to it, forlornly regarding the empty room.
She was more than hurt, more than mortified.  She
had to ask herself if she had failed.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX

.. vspace:: 2

It was dawn when Adair staggered in, undressed
and rolled in beside her.  Her long
vigil had been succeeded by an overpowering
slumber, and she was not aware of his return until
the streaming sunshine awakened her toward nine
o'clock.  She wondered at first why her heart was
so heavy, and then, with reviving recollection, sat
up, and gazed at her sleeping husband.  Even a
debauch could not impair his fine complexion, and
the thick, black hair clustered against the ruddy
skin softened Phyllis' expression as she studied
his face long and earnestly.  The charm of that
vigorous manhood was irresistible, and whatever
lurking grudge she still had against Adair was lost
in a fresh access of tenderness.  His uneasy
breathing, his hot dry forehead, his parched and parted
lips, all appealed as well to the woman in
her--the mother, the nurse.

For once the routine of punching-bag and bath
was forgone, and her first task on rising was to
set about preparing breakfast.  This, with the
pair, was a trifling matter, consisting of rolls, cream
and butter ordered over night and set outside their
door on a tray every morning, and the coffee Phyllis
made herself over a spirit lamp.  She was thus
busily engaged when she was conscious of a movement
on the bed, and turned to see her husband
lowering at her with bloodshot eyes.  Awake, he
looked disheveled, surly, ill and exasperated.  His
head was splitting, and he was in one of those vile
humors when a man avenges his physical distress
on those about him.  He pushed Phyllis away as
she ran over to him, and told her roughly to leave
him alone.  The offer of a cup of coffee outraged
him.  Groaning and swearing, he pulled himself
into a sitting posture, and in a voice as intentionally
disagreeable as he could make it demanded some
hot water.

Holding the cup in both hands, he began to drink
it in angry little sips, finding a malign satisfaction
in the change that had come over Phyllis.  Pale,
silent, wounded and frightened, she was utterly at
loss to know what to do.  Every word was a
stab, and she had a stupefying feeling that the end
had come.  Her only coherent thought, the only
manifestation of resentment within her, was to
contribute nothing to bring about the catastrophe.  If
Adair were determined to pull down their little
paradise about their ears, and destroy for ever the
filmy and poetic fabric of a perfect love, she, at
least, would hold herself innocent of the sacrilege.
But, oh, the pang of it, the heartrending misery,
the disillusion!

"Now, go ahead," he said sullenly.  "I'm ready--go ahead!"

She faltered and trembled in asking him what he meant.

He burst out with a scornful laugh.

"I was drunk last night," he said, "you know
that as well as I do, and here I am ready to take
my medicine--can't avoid it, I know that--and
want to get it over with.  You wouldn't be a
woman if you didn't pay me out."

The vulgarity of the conception stung her.

"I--I don't pay people out," she said simply.

"Oh, no, you're the quiet kind," he went on with
an ugly jeer, intent somehow on putting her in the
wrong.  "You don't say anything, but you sit
there and freeze a fellow--and oh, my God, yes,
cry!  There you go, cry, cry, cry!"

She did break down for a moment under his
deliberate cruelty, but quickly rallying, came over,
and sat beside him on the bed.

"Don't, don't quarrel with me," she said pitifully,
and then added with a gleam of humor, "after
all, it wasn't I that was drunk, you know."

She put out her hand, and for a while he
permitted it to lie against his aching forehead.  All
would have been well had he not unfortunately
spilled his cup.  At this his latent fury broke out
anew.

"For God's sake, don't crowd all over me!" he
cried.  "Sit over there, where we can talk like
sensible people.  You have made me all wet with the
damned stuff."

The fault was his own, and due to his unsteady
hands, but he was wilfully pleased to put her in the
wrong.  He glowered at her with savage reproach
as she moved a little farther away in obedience to
his command.  She was disconcertingly quiet, and
it seemed to him an added injustice to be cheated
of a scene.  There was nothing but her anguished
eyes, and her drooping and utterly dispiriting
attitude to tell him how well he was succeeding.

"You're a little fool," he announced inconsequently.

He waited for her to answer, but she made no
sign of having heard him, sitting there stricken,
numb.

"To have tied up with such a damned goat,"
he added, with immense conviction.

Still no answer.

"The best thing you can do is to pack up and
go," he went on.

At this she did find her voice, ghost of a one
that it was.

"Is that what you really want me to do, Cyril?"

"It's what you ought to do," he returned, with
a sternly paternal air.

"It's for you to decide."

His mumbling reply turned into a groan.

"I lost nearly four hundred dollars last night,"
he said, after a deadly pause.  "Then I had to get
into a scrap with Jake Steinberger, and Willie
Latimer, and George Wright, and there was a hell of a
shindy till somebody turned in a police-alarm, and
I only dodged arrest by the skin of my
teeth--not but what I'll be summonsed to-day, sure as
sure.  On top of that my engagement is gone, for
I lammed Jake half to death, and I guess he had
rather break up the tour all-standing than keep me
in the bill another night.  And--and--"

"You thought you'd make a clean sweep of
everything, once you were at it, and alienate me,
too?"

"Yes, like a damned goat," he repeated dully.

"Well, you have succeeded," she said in the same
low, even tone, "I dare say you'll be sorry some
day at having broken your toys.  There isn't
anything more to be said, is there, except good-by?"

She was about to rise when Adair flung himself
out of the bed, and kneeling before her, pulled off
her little slippers and began kissing her naked feet.
His repentance was so sudden, so abject that it was
almost as though he had gone crazy.  It was indeed
an hysterical revulsion, and his frame shook, and
his hands clenched themselves on her flesh as he
abased himself before her.  He begged incoherently
for forgiveness, for mercy; he would kill himself
if she were to leave him; he loved her; he could
die for her; the disgrace and despair of it all had
driven him mad.  At first she resisted, struggling
to free herself, and too deeply affronted for any
atoning words to touch her; but her powerlessness
in his grasp, the warmth of his quick, tumultuous
breath against her, even the physical pain he was
unconsciously inflicting--all at last took her
womanhood by storm, and she drew up his head,
and allowed him to sob his heart out in her lap.

How little did either of them know, she sitting
on the bed in her night-dress, he nestling close
against her in an agony of shame and contrition,
that a battle of the soul had been fought and won;
that the finer nature had triumphed over the coarser;
that an insensible but a most real step had been
taken upward.  Phyllis extorted no promises; Adair
made no vows; rather they clung to each other like
little children who had safely passed the edge of
a precipice, and in security beyond were trembling
at what they had risked.

The woman, always the more practical partner,
was the first to descend from the clouds to mundane
considerations.

"And what's the poor little damned goat
going to do?" she asked, the quoted profanity on
her pretty lips as piquant and tender as a lullaby;
and accompanying it with a smile so arch that
Adair's face, too, could not but light with it.

"Face the music and then get out," returned the D. G.

"Out where, dearest?"

Adair grew overcast.

"Mortimer Clark's on the road somewhere," he
said reflectively, "and I'm sure he'd make room
for me if he had to fire a whole company.  Then
there's Nan O'Farrell in the *Diamond Diadem*
and Leo Foster in the *Slaves of Circumstance*.
They are all on the cheap, and would jump at the
chance of getting me at their prices.  As soon as
I get round to it, I'll telegraph."

Phyllis hesitated, but at last the words came.

"On the cheap," she repeated.  "Why don't
you aim higher, Cyril?  Why don't you try the real
people--those who are worth while, especially now,
when you're going to break away from Steinberger?"

His only reply was a shake of the head.

"You know you're too good for this sort of
thing," she went on.  "It isn't flattery to tell you
that--you see it yourself every night--I saw it,
and that's why I--  Oh, Cyril, let's try to get
where you belong."

"You don't understand," he said moodily.
"You don't understand a bit.  I had all that once,
and I kicked it over.  The stage is an awfully
small place--for anybody that amounts to
anything, you know--though as big as an ocean for
the others.  There isn't anybody of
importance--manager or star--who doesn't *hate* me."  He
perceived the doubt in her glance, and continued
swiftly: "Oh, it's no conspiracy, or jealousy, or
anything of that kind--a tip-top man can
override all that if there's money in him for the
box-office--but I've set them all against me.  There
isn't one I haven't punched or insulted somehow.
I hold the record for being the best-detested man
on Broadway.  Why, Alfred Fielman once--that
was six years ago, when I was by way of being
a metropolitan favorite, and all that, ha, ha--he
had me on a forty weeks' contract, and at the end
of three he gave me a check for the rest and told
me he had no more use for my services.  Thirty-seven
weeks' full salary--think of it--and the door!"

"But isn't it different now?" asked Phyllis,
enfolding him with a pair of the whitest, softest,
shapeliest arms in the world, and pressing her cheek
against his face.  "You've got good since then,
and are now mama's little man!"

"Look at last night," protested mama's little
man dismally.  "Drinking, fighting, gambling, and
my job out of the window!  That's been me right
along--two weeks' notice, and for God's sake,
never come back!"

"Just a damned goat," rippled Phyllis, her teeth
shining like pearls, and her cheeks dimpling
mischievously.

"A silly ass," ejaculated Adair with much self-contempt.

"Now, I want to tell you my idea," cried Phyllis.
"We're going to pack up, poor booful disgraced
genius--and wife (as they add on hotel registers);
and we're going to count our poor little pennies,
and take a tourist sleeper to New York, and get
a little flat of the sort they rent to dormice in
reduced circumstances, and live on air and kisses
and hope--while poor Booful will go round
telling everybody he's a reformed character, and
looking for an engagement.  And if the top all hates
him, and if the middle is all full, why Booful will
begin at the bottom, while Mrs. Booful will wash,
and cook, and darn his socks--oh, no, listen,--yes,
and darn his socks, and pet him when he is
discouraged and cross, and keep everything scrupulously
clean (in books if you're awfully poor, you're
always scrupulously clean, haven't you noticed it)?
Yes, scrupulously clean, and oh, so economical of
every nickel till everybody begins to see that Booful
isn't a damned goat, but a man of splendid talent,
and up, up, up he'll go like a balloon, till there
won't be a garbage-can without his name on it, or
a bill-board without somebody "presenting" him
in letters six feet high, and fame and money will
pour in like a Niagara, and, and--Cyril, why
shouldn't we?"

His look of indulgence and amusement had
gradually changed to downright eagerness.

"If you can stand it, I can," he said.

"Oh, Cyril, I'm not afraid--let's do it!"

"We'll be starvation poor."

"But in a home of our own--no more of these
horrid hotels, no more traveling, and something big
to live and hope for."

"Those dormice flats are awfully squeezy--and dark."

"So's a robin's nest, for that matter."

"And those pretty hands--it would be wicked
to spoil them."

"Oh, I won't spoil them--besides, what would
be the good of them if they couldn't work for the
man I love."

"Scrubbing floors, and cleaning kettles and
polishing the stove?"

"You can help a little."

"And suppose, instead of being easy, it's very
hard?  It takes courage to start again.  You'll
have to be brave enough for two, for I've none of
that kind of grit or perseverance.  Do you think
you can bolster up a great big fellow like me, who'll
come home like a baby and cry?"

"We'll bolster up each other."

"I--I wish I was more worthy of you, Phyllis."

"Stop kissing my toes--it tickles--and oh,
Cyril, don't bite them!"

"I'm ashamed--you are so sweet and good and
clever and brave--and the whole of me isn't worth
that little pink one, and I don't think I've ever
loved you so much as I do this minute, or
*respected* you more.  If you were married to a
street-car conductor I believe you'd make him
president of the United States--and if your
husband mayn't bite you, who can?"

"You darling!"

"And I swear by that one that I love you better
than anything in the world; and by that one
I'll be true to you all my life; and by that one I'll
cut my tongue out before I'll ever say an unkind
word to you again; and by that one I'm going to
do everything you say, just as though you were an
angel from Heaven, which you are if ever there was
one; and by that fat little big toe that I'm going
to try to copy the tenderest, gentlest, most exquisite
nature that God ever breathed into a human being;
and by the whole chubby little white satin foot--"

"Do sit up--it's important."

"I thought it was all settled.  We'll start for
New York as soon as I am fired--officially."

"Cyril?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"I'm so infatuated with you that perhaps I don't
see things as they are.  It is not a dream, is it,
that you really could get on in New York--I mean
if you lived down all the ill will against you there?
I try to detach myself, and criticize you
dispassionately--but you always seem to me so
tremendously good."

"I am good--in my own kind of work."

"You've no dread of failure?"

"In handing out the goods--?  Not a particle,
Phyllis.  Why should I?  Haven't I done it?"

"In your New York days?"

"Why, Phyllis, this isn't brag.  I've got notices
to show for it, corking notices.  What you have
seen me do is not my best.  No one could do that
with the support I get, and I have to carry the whole
outfit single handed.  A company ought to be a
string orchestra--and they give me a brass band!"

"Have you got the notices?--I'd love to see them!"

"They're at the bottom of the trunk somewhere--three
books of them."

"Do get them out, and let me read some."

After long rummaging the books were produced.
Phyllis, who in the interval had put on a peignoir,
and begun to comb her hair, seized on one of them
enthusiastically.  It was an unwieldy, shabby old
volume, and so heavy it was hard to hold.  The
exertion, and perhaps the excitement had caused
Adair's head to throb again, and he was glad to
stretch his length on the bed while Phyllis,
drawing up a rocking chair, seated herself as close as
she could beside him.

The actor had not exaggerated his past successes.
For three seasons he had been a notable figure on
Broadway, and if his reputation had been more one
of promise than achievement it was in dazzling
contrast to what he had since become.  He had himself
almost forgotten the stir he had made--not the
deafening curtain calls, the brimming box-offices,
the deferential managers,--none could forget
that--but the soberer, yet more valuable evidence of
the critics.  It was electrifying to listen to them
again; to see across the mean, intervening years that
other self of his lording it so high; to realize, with
mingled bitterness, wonder and hope that he was
still the same man, with the same if not richer
powers, and a new-born resolution to regain what
he had so lightly valued and so unconcernedly
thrown away.

Phyllis, pink with excitement, and tripping
occasionally over the longer words, read notice after
notice with indefatigable zest, constantly substituting
Booful and other endearing epithets for the
more formal name in print, while her husband lay
back, listening delightedly, and contributing
exclamations, "By George, and it was William Winter
who said that!"--"Say, that's Huneker, isn't it?"
"A column in *The World* isn't handed out to
everybody, not by a long sight."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

BOOFUL OPENS AT WALLACK'S
THE HONOR OF THE REGIMENT PLEASES, BUT
NEEDS CUTTING.
THE STAR SCORES AS MOODY HERO, AND EXCELS
HIMSELF IN MAGNIFICENT PORTRAYAL OF
EBHARDT.

.. vspace:: 2

"Those who went last night to see *Booful* were
not disappointed, however they may have disagreed
about the play itself.  For that brilliant young
*darling* it was hardly less than a personal triumph,
and from the rise of the curtain--"

It was a very inconsiderate moment for a heavy
rap at the door.

"Come in," cried Adair.

In the shadow stood a bulky figure--a blue
figure--a figure with something shining on its
swelling chest.  Phyllis looked and quailed as the
bravest of us do at the sight of the Law, intruding
its hob-nailed boot into what is metaphorically
termed our castle.  In this case the castle was so
small, and the Law so large and red and impressive
that the former seemed but a trifling refuge against
oppression.  In the accents of a green and troubled
island the new-comer asked: "Are you Misther
Adair--Misther Surul Adair?"

"That's me, all right," said the actor.

"You're summonsed for assault and battery, and
here's the payper, and it's before Judge Dunn ye're
to come at two o'clock."

"Where do I go, officer?"

"The city hall, police court number one."

"Two o'clock, you say?  Very good.  Tell
Judge Dunn I have much pleasure in accepting his
kind invitation."

The functionary unbent genially.

"Tay will be served on the lawn," he said, "and
the Marine Band will be in attendance, and some of
our younger set will be there--in blue."

It seemed incredible to poor, trembling Phyllis
that Adair could burst out laughing.  But he did,
and that with every indication of undiminished
spirits.

"All right, officer, I'll be there."

"Good morning, sorr."

"Good morning, officer."

The tears were streaming down Phyllis' face as
she ran to Adair, and threw her arms around his
neck; but he caressed and comforted her, and
gradually got her to smile again.

"I feel better," he said.  "Be a dear, and make
me some fresh coffee.--Oh, Phyllis, isn't it jolly!"

"Jolly?  Oh, how can you--"

"Oh, I mean about going back to New York!
A fellow who's hit them once can hit them
again, and by George, with you to help me, I just
know I'm bound to land!"

"But this awful police court!"

"Don't worry about that--they've never hanged
a Free Mason yet.--Easy with the cream,
sweetheart.--Where was it we left off?  Oh, yes, here
it is: 'Adair opens at Wallack's.  Those who
went last night to see Cyril Adair--'"


.. _`*From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--*`:

.. figure:: images/img-265.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--*

   *From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--*
   AMUSING SCENE IN JUDGE DUNN'S COURT

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   *From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--.*

.. class:: center bold

   AMUSING SCENE IN JUDGE DUNN'S COURT

.. vspace:: 1

Yesterday the proceedings
in Judge Dunn's court were
enlivened by the presence of
Cyril Adair the actor, who,
on the complaint of Jacob
Steinberger, his manager, and
Messrs. Willard Latimer and
George Augustus Wright,
brother players, was haled
before the bar of justice for
assault and battery.  The three
complainants showed
unmistakable traces of a fistic
encounter, and there was a
subdued ripple of merriment
at their bandaged appearance.
The encounter was the
outcome of a midnight game of
poker, and there was a direct
conflict of evidence as to who
began the fray.

Judge Dunn finally summed
up against the defendant, and
in default of a fine, ordered
him to find personal security
to be of good behavior for
three months.  Much
amusement was then caused by
Mrs. Adair unexpectedly stepping
forward, and pleading most
charmingly with the judge to
permit her to assume the
obligation.  The court was
unable to resist so attractive a
bit of femininity, and though
remarking it was somewhat
irregular, consented, amid
general laughter, to grant
her request.

The judge made up for it,
however, by giving the
defendant a stiff little lecture
before dismissing the case,
expressing his surprise that the
husband of so young and
pretty a wife should care to pass
the early morning hours at
poker and fisticuffs.  Adair
accepted the rebuke with
great good nature and
prompted by his wife thanked
his honor for his forbearance,
adding to the general hilarity
by repeating aloud some of
the advice that was being
whispered in his ear.
Apologies followed outside, and
the whole party returned to
their hotel in the same hack.
All's well that ends well!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX

.. vspace:: 2

Adair waited until Christmas before
severing his connection with Steinberger.  The
holidays were bad for theatrical business,
and the prospect of a temporarily reduced salary
and several extra matinées seemed to make this
period an auspicious one for departure.  With two
hundred and eighty dollars, their trunks, the clothes
they stood in, and hearts beating high with eagerness
and hope, the pair took the train for the City
of Success.

Even on their way to it their respective positions
began to change.  The actor, for all his broad
shoulders and big voice and commanding presence,
betrayed from the first a helplessness and dependence
that both pleased and surprised his little wife.
He anxiously deferred to her in everything; fell in
readily with every suggestion; listened with
profound respect to her plans.  He knew New York
inside out; poverty was no stranger to him, nor
the makeshifts and struggles of the poor; yet in the
crisis of their fortunes it was the girl that took the
lead--the girl who had never suffered a single
privation in her life, who had been reared in luxury,
to whom money and ease were as the air she
breathed.

Left to his own unguided will Adair would have
gravitated to a dingy bedroom in a dingy boarding-house.
It was Phyllis who perceived the greater
freedom, and the unspeakably greater comfort and
charm of a tiny apartment.  The nest-making instinct
was strong in her, and also the bred-in-the-bone
belief that it was the woman's place to guard
her man's well-being, and to send him forth to work
in the best of trim.  She did not know how to
cook; she had never swept out a room in her life,
she had never even folded a table-cloth, yet her
self-assurance and determination never wavered.
All this could be learned--pooh, it only needed
hard work and intelligence,--she would answer for
its being the nicest little flat in New York, and
would dismiss Adair every morning in his best
clothes, smiling, well-fed, and happy, to look for an
engagement.

Brave, confident little heart!  Intent little head
absorbed in calculations; magic the love that could
cast effulgence over those soiled green notes, and
the phantom gray city, and the man, none too good,
or wise on whom such a treasure of devotion was
lavished!  But some conception of it pierced his
thick skin, and what there was in him that was
unselfish and noble felt disquieted at the contrast, and
strangely stirred and humbled.

"Phyllis," he said huskily, "I--I didn't know
what love meant until I met you.  I guess lots of
men go all their lives and never know.  I've been
sitting back here, thinking how nearly I might
have missed it."

"And getting quite scared and worried?--The
poor precious!  If it wasn't for the conductor and
that bald-headed man who's sure we're not
married, because I put my feet on the seat, and wear
red stockings--I'd kiss you right now, and give
you a gurgle hug!"

"There are lots like me," Adair went on with
unaffected seriousness, "but, Phyllis, there is only
one of you.  I suppose people are born like that
sometimes--just one of them--and there aren't
any more.--When we get round to it, we must
have children; you mustn't be allowed to die and
disappear; it wouldn't be right by the world."

Phyllis wrote down: "Pair tea-cups and saucers,
thirty cents," and announced that in the meanwhile
the world would have to wait, as one couldn't
do everything at once.  She added a duster to the
list and a pie-pan, while a smile hovered at the
corners of her lips.  It impelled her to press her
knee against Adair's, and whisper something so
sparklingly improper that he blushed.  Then she
returned to housekeeping considerations with a
pleased and saucy air, never so happy as when she
had embarrassed him.

.. vspace:: 2

Accommodation for dormice, although plentiful,
left much to be desired, except for dormice fond
of grubbiness, gloom, and ill-smelling passages and
halls.  For dormice willing to live on
One-hundred-and-jump-off-the-earth Street there was light
and air, and reasonably sized rooms, and even
skimpy glimpses of the Hudson.  But Cyril wished
to be near the theater district and the Thespian
Club of which he was a member, and this restricted
their choice to below Fifty-ninth Street.  Heavens,
what innumerable janitors they raised from the
depths, what miles and miles of stairs they climbed,
what desperate moments of indecision they endured,
as, utterly spent, the precious deposit was nearly
tempted from their pockets!

At last, however, at the tail of the most offensive
little man in New York, whose questions included
the likelihood or not of an increase in the family,
and who had to be specifically assured that his
new tenants meditated starting neither a bagnio nor
a sweatshop, nor were going to teach music, or keep
naphtha on the premises--at the tail of this
personage, who at every step remembered some fresh
prohibition, and some fresh possibility, the ideal was
reached on the seventh floor of a house between
Second and Third Avenue.  It was a box of a
place--sitting-room, bedroom, kitchen and bath--but
shiny new, and with every window open to the sun,
and Fifty-eighth Street to look out on instead of
some dismal rear.  It was taken at twenty-one
dollars a month; their trunks followed them in; and
they camped out their second night in New York
on the bare boards of their new home.

With all our talk of the value of money very
few of us have any conception of it.  How many at
least could believe that a small apartment in New
York could be furnished, and prettily furnished, for
a hundred and fifty dollars?  On a doll-baby scale,
of course, with pictures taken from the ten cent
weeklies, and framed in blue creton and the same
invaluable material accomplishing wonders over
packing cases, improvised into wash-stands, bureaus
and seats.  Phyllis sent Adair off to the club, and
set to work alone.  She did not want him to see
her dirty, tousled, and wearing an old dressing-gown
of his in that chaos of disorder; though she
presented a sweeter figure than she knew on her
knees beside the pail, and scrubbing the floor like
a little stage soubrette, or hammering creton with
her mouth full of tacks and an inspired expression
that would have befitted a Madonna.  She was too
girlish, too young, for anything to harm her beauty,
and so gay and charming that all who came fell
under her spell.  Gawky messengers helped to move
boxes, nail down matting, and elucidate the
mysteries of setting up a bed.  The janitor's wife, a
faded German woman with gentle eyes and a soft
voice, and all the European's respect for caste,
insisted on joining in; and when, Phyllis, with
difficulty and some shame, managed to explain she was
unable to pay for such services, the creature kissed
her hand, and redoubled her exertions.  Beauty is
a power everywhere, and if the poor can not pay
its toll in compliments, they can wash windows,
clean up litter, and carry an offering of frankfurters
and sauerkraut up six flights of stairs; and with
many an "*Ach*" and "*lieber Gott*" urge the little
"high-born" to rest and eat.

And so amid kindliness and good will, the tiny
apartment was got into shape, while the dark wild
days without turned to snow, and the frosted panes
showed nothing through but white and desolation.
The dormice lay snug in their nest, and though
their money ebbed, and the cupboard was next to
bare, and the household work at times weighed
hardly on unaccustomed, slender shoulders, perhaps
they were too near Heaven to complain.

Adair had never been a very respectable nor
popular member of the Thespian Club, that influential
organization from which the New York stage is so
largely recruited; and the return of the lost sheep
was not accompanied by any particular enthusiasm.
But Adair was too noticeable a man, and his talent
too well remembered for his presence not to cause
some stir, and soon there was comment on his
extraordinary change for the better.  He was
certainly no longer the loud, swaggering, over-dressed
Adair of the old days, with the dubious geniality,
and the restless eyes.  He did not drink; he seemed
to have lost his surly streak; in many other ways
more indefinite he had softened and improved.  The
Thespians, who were nothing if not good-natured
and generous, very willingly let bygones be
bygones, and some of the more important began to
suggest his name to managers.

But the managers were made of sterner stuff than
the actors and playwrights; they had longer memories,
and skins that still smarted.  They brightened
at the name of Adair for the unexpected pleasure
it gave them to say "No."  Each had his special
wrong to avenge, each his emphatic and passionate
denunciation of a man they abominated.  "I've
only two rules in running my theaters," said
Mr. Fielman.  "The first is to give the public the best
that money can buy; the second, never to engage
Mr. Cyril Adair!"--Mr. Paw went further: "My
poy, they say in our peeziness that the box-office
talks, but if it said Adair all day and all night, I'd
sooner get out and sell shoe-laces on the street than
see his damn sneering face in any broduction of
mine!"  Niedringer was no more encouraging,
and the Fordingham Brothers were curt and profane.

But the New York theatrical world is a big one;
and these giants, while of enormous importance, do
not rule all the roost.  There are always new
producers bobbing up; stars themselves make
ventures into management and branch out; many
others, independent on a smaller scale, choose the
companies that support them.  Then there are the
second class houses, the vaudeville houses, the stock
companies--all requiring an army of professional
people.  Then, too, hardly a season passes without
several incoming actors from some woolly, wild,
unheard-of region, arriving, full of eagerness to add
Broadway laurels to brows already crowned in
Teepee City or Nuggetville, Nevada.  Add to these,
imported English companies with the lesser parts
often unfilled, and "angels," both male and female,
with barrels of money for some stagestruck pet,
who, desirous of a short cut to greatness, insists
on beginning (and usually ending) at the top;--and
you will have some small conception of what
New York is--theatrically.

Adair did not despair.  Not only was the
atmosphere of the Thespian Club too redolent of
success for that, but he was sustained besides by a
couple of small offers which he received for the
"road."  Determined though he was to appear on
Broadway, it was good for his courage and
perseverence to have these engagements to refuse.
They served to take the edge off the rebuffs he
constantly experienced, and gave him something not
altogether mournful to reflect on as he waited
interminable hours in agents' and managers'
anterooms.  Not but what there were times when it
was almost unendurable.  Rejection, with an actor,
carries with it a personal mortification; and his air
of fashion, his nosegay, his smartly folded overcoat,
his affected jauntiness--all intensify by their
contrast the bitterness of his lot.  He slinks off with
pitiful bravado, and eyes suspiciously bright, to pull
himself together for another attempt at another
place, as dispirited a figure as any to be seen under
heaven.

While Adair, with an effort as clumsy as it was
touching, strove to hide his disappointment from
his wife, and put by in their little home a steadily
deepening sense of failure--she, on her side, was
keeping him in ignorance of a matter that troubled
her exceedingly.  Her father had begun to write
to her, but in such a way that a reconciliation,
instead of becoming nearer, seemed more remote and
impossible than ever.  With all his tenderness and
longing, and almost pathetic appeal "to be friends
again," he was unable to resist taking flings at
Adair.  His hatred for the man came out in
implications and covert allusions Phyllis could not
forgive.  Ostensibly holding out the olive branch,
his letters served instead to heighten the estrangement,
for behind everything was his conviction it
was simply her pride that kept them apart; that
having made a mess of her life, and committed an
irreparable folly, she was defiantly accepting the
misery she had brought down upon herself.  That
she was insanely happy--that she adored her
husband--that neither poverty nor hardship counted a
jot in her decision--all these to Mr. Ladd were
incredibilities.--Yet the same story dressed up for
him on the stage or in a book, would have won his
sympathy, and reached his heart.--Of such
inconsistencies are we made, and the poor puppets are
cried over when flesh and blood is denied.

Of course, Phyllis was abnormally sensitive.
Had her husband secured a good engagement, and
some recognition she would have been in a more
receptive mind to receive her father's advances.
But Adair's unspoken anxiety, their diminishing
money, their meager meals and the need that they
had to take account of every penny--here were so
many reasons to accentuate her critical faculties.--And
this to be held as a proof that she had been
"dragged down" was altogether too much.  At
first, full of eagerness and over many a
closely-written page she had tried to explain matters to
her father; but his disbelief was chilling, and from
hopelessness her feelings gradually changed to
anger.  For a couple of weeks she had kept the
thousand-dollar check he had sent her, hoping that
he would so far relent toward Adair that she might
accept it without disloyalty.  Then, chagrined, she
had returned it, though her extremity was bitter, and
the tears dripped over the letter that bore it back.
No reconciliation was possible that did not include
her husband, or that was offered to him contemptuously
and grudgingly.  If this were impossible she
begged her father to write no more, and spare her
further suffering.  His answer was as unreasonable
as the others, and he contrived to wound even while
he thought he was conceding everything.

His next letter she sent back unopened, and also
the one after that.  Then there were no more, and
the postman's whistle presaged nothing after that
but a post card from Tommy.  These, with pictures
of a local court house, or a new Masonic building,
or some bald park, were almost daily visitors.  But
they spoke of affection and remembrance, and to a
sad heart were not without their comfort.

.. vspace:: 2

Early one afternoon the sound of the key in the
lock warned her that Adair had unexpectedly
returned.  His face announced his good news before
he could so much as utter a word, and then the
facts came out in a panting, breathless torrent.
Shamus O'Dowd--she knew Shamus O'Dowd,
the Irish comedian?--No?--What, never heard
of Shamus O'Dowd?--Well, anyway, O'Dowd
was at the Herald Square--big business--seats
selling three weeks in advance--*A Broth of a Boy*,
you know--and the fellow who was playing
Captain Carleton had dropped out, and the
understudy wasn't satisfactory--and--and--it was
seventy-five dollars a week--and here were the
lines--and you could have knocked him over with
a feather when O'Dowd came right up to him at
the club, and fixed it up in five minutes, and they
had run through a rehearsal to give him a notion
of the business, and it was a damned good character
part, and--then, I wonder if that twenty-one
dollar apartment had ever seen the like--with Phyllis
sitting in Booful's lap, and her arms tight around
his neck, and talking two to his one, all rapture and
exclamations as though he had done something
extraordinary instead of merely getting a job; and
Booful, no less proud and foolish and excited felt,
too, he had done something extraordinary, holding
to the lines as though they were a patent of
nobility, and crazy to begin the study of them; and
describing the play with such humor and absurdity
that his little wife thought she had never heard
anything so funny in her life, her teeth shining
as she laughed and laughed--especially at
O'Dowd, who was described as fifty, with a
bull-neck, and ever too much of him in front and
behind, with a very short coat, and bounding fat
legs, and such a Broth of a Boy that he was ready
to fight or dance or sing or make love at the drop
of a hat, and generally to caper from sheer
exuberance of Irish youth.--Then Booful turned
suddenly serious, and got up, and said that on no, no
account was he to be disturbed, and began to pace
like a lion up and down the doll-baby sitting-room,
mumbling his part to himself with a far-away
expression, and an occasional frown and swear as he
missed a word; while Phyllis, pretending to sew,
squeezed herself into a corner, and made as though
she was not watching him, which she did in timid
little peeps, thinking how handsome he was and
noble and manly and splendid, with such returning
recollections of his devotion, and gentleness, and
simple, unrepining courage in the hard days now
fast finishing, that she could have swooned from
very tenderness.

*A Broth of a Boy* was a typical Irish drama.
The central figure was a rollicking imbecile, with a
tuneful voice and the customary shillelah, who foils
the wicked mortgager, chucks colleens under the
chin, does a hair-raising leap over a waterfall, and
is altogether so Brothy and gay that no one can
resist him.  The usual British officer, condemned
to carry out an unpalatable order, and falling under
the spell of a pair of saucy Irish eyes, is found
not to be half so bad a fellow as we had anticipated;
and though a good deal of a booby, and the target
for sarcasms that he is too obtusely English to
perceive, gradually wins the toleration and even the
affection of the gallery.  In real life he would
probably have been court-martialed for his arrant
disregard of instructions, nor would a bare-legged
milk-maid have been considered quite the prize the
dramatist deemed her.--But one mustn't criticize
this dreamy region too harshly.  That great baby,
the public, loves it,--and in the theater-world there
is plenty of room for this grotesque Ireland, and
always will be; and baby's patronage feeds many
worthy and deserving people, who otherwise might
have not a little trouble of it to live.

Yes, let us be lenient toward the Irish drama.
It brought seventy-five dollars a week to that little
apartment high up in East Fifty-eighth Street, and
hope and courage to hearts that were beginning to
falter.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXI`:

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   CHAPTER XXI

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In the whole house that night of Adair's return
to Broadway there was probably but one
person in front who was even aware that the
bill had been changed.  That rapt little spectator
waited with her heart in her mouth for the actor's
appearance, and thrilled herself with fairy tales
while the play ponderously opened, and took its
course.  Adair would be recognized; there would
be a wild demonstration of welcome; cheers,
applause, yes, an ovation, with people standing up,
and the gallery in an uproar!--It was a dream, of
course, a phantasy, for her head was too squarely
set on her shoulders to count on anything of the
sort, but nevertheless it exhilarated her enough to
make the reality doubly, trebly disappointing.

His entrance was unheralded by a single
handclap, O'Dowd having just retired amid thunders,
with part of the audience still insistently humming
the refrain of *Sweet Kitty O'Rourke*, (words by
Stevowsky; music by Cohen).  Adair's first few
lines were altogether lost in consequence, the
scene beginning in vehement pantomime, and the
house only gradually, and with extreme unwillingness,
resigning itself to the exit of the star.  It
must be said they had some right to regret him.
Adair was anxious and forced, and so desperately
in earnest to be funny that he suggested a
marionette.  Phyllis' surprise turned to dismay, and
dismay to an inexpressible pain.  That he won many
a boorish laugh only heightened her misery.  It
was worse than bad, it was common, and she could
have bent down and cried in very shame.  But in
the throes of her despair she was watchful, and her
pretty brows corrugated with the intensity of her
attention.  Poor though the part was, surely it
could be done better, oh, so much better; and if
only she dared--!  An infinite compassion dimmed
her eyes, an infinite pity, for was it not for her he
had stooped to this vile clowning, debasing himself,
blowing out his cheeks like a turkey-gobbler, feverishly
catching at every trick to get a grin or a titter?
All this sacrifice of dignity, manhood and self-respect
to keep the poor little pot boiling on Fifty-eighth Street?

It was terrible to sit through the play, and to
realize with more and more conviction that this
sacrifice was unnecessary--that the rôle,
straightforwardly acted, and the comic-policeman side of
it ignored, might be made into something worth
doing--not very much worth doing of course--but
still redeemed from utter banality.  But Phyllis
knew how her husband bristled at the least touch
of criticism.  Ordinarily so loving and indulgent, a
single word of disapprobation could set him off like
an hysterical woman; before now she had
inadvertently raised such storms, and looked back on
them with terror.  She asked herself what she was
to do, and could find no answer.  Everything in
her revolted from lying to him, and yet she would
be forced to.  It was not cowardice, but the
disinclination of seeing him suffer, and the dread of
incurring the harshness and anger of the man she
idolized.  Enmity in his eyes seemed to strike her
to the ground; her heart stopped beating; something
seemed to die within her.--No, at any cost, she
must lie, lie, lie.

.. _`284`:

She waited for him at the stage-door, a slight
dejected figure under the gaslights, and conscious
for the first time that her clothes were shabby, and
that her gloves were old and worn.  O'Dowd's
carriage stood by, and she envied the coachman his
warm fur collar, and with it came the thought of
all she had given up to marry Adair.  This put
her in better spirits, for she was pleased with
everything that enhanced her love, and gave it an unusual
and romantic quality--so that for a moment she
seemed less cold, less sad, and a delicious
heroine-feeling enshrouded her.  Had it not been for the
fear of what was to come she would have been
altogether happy.  But a pang of apprehension shot
through her, and all the pretty fancies engendered
by the fur collar of a sudden disappeared.--She
was again standing on the wintry street, tired,
frightened, and disheartened.

Adair emerged in a jubilant humor, and squeezed
her arm as he passed his own through hers, and
moved in the direction of the cars.  Boisterous and
gay, he was in no mood to notice Phyllis'
constraint, and took her approval for granted as he
overflowed with talk.  It was a great relief to her
to remain silent, and nestle close to all that bigness
and confidence, and be borne along by that strong
arm.  All her doubts and fears were lost in an
unreasoning gladness, and what did anything
matter but love?

Meanwhile the genial tide of Adair's discourse
continued without intermission.--O'Dowd, who
was a prince of good fellows, had patted him on
the back.  Eddie Phelps was up in the air, too, and
said he had simply walked away from the other
man--and oh, how good it was to be in a theater
again!  It was a piffling part, but after all it was
something to have made the best of it, to have
shown them what could be done in it by a first
class man.  That was the beauty of the stage--a
real actor could take a janitor or an organ-grinder
and create a lot out of nothing.  Did she know
that all that business in the second act was his?--Yes,
positively--every bit of it his, and no wonder
O'Dowd hugged him at the wings, and said it was
great--yes, just like that--before everybody!
You see, it had pulled up the whole thing where it
had used to drag, giving it zip and go.  Eddie
Phelps said that the other fellow had never got a
hand there.  He had done better than that, hadn't
he?  And if it hadn't been such a damned feeder
for the star--oh, well, success was success, if it
were only an inch high!

In this strain of self-laudation, Adair boarded
a car, and praised himself all the way home.
Throughout he took Phyllis' concurrence for
granted, and his exuberance was unclouded by the
least suspicion of the truth.  He had half finished
his supper when with that instinct which was one
of the most unexpected endowments of his
character, he all at once perceived something to be
amiss.  It wasn't Phyllis' fault; she had given not
a hint of dissatisfaction; nothing was further from
her thoughts than to mar that night.

But when he laid down his knife and fork, and
stared at her across the table she knew in an instant
what was coming.

"My God, Phyllis," he exclaimed, "it is not
possible you--you didn't like it?"

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She would have given worlds for the lie that
would not come; her eyes shrank from his; the
sincerity and conviction of his tone made deceit
impossible.  It was almost in a whisper that she
answered: "Oh, Cyril, Cyril,--I'm afraid I didn't."

He pushed away his plate and got up; he could
not suffer such a mortification sitting; the flat
itself seemed too small to hold his sudden shame,
his agitation, the staggering shock of what seemed
to him his wife's disloyalty.

"What was the matter with it?" he demanded
passionately.  "What was it you did not like?--No,
no, you needn't try to wriggle out of it; you've
said too much to stop now; you've as good as told
me it was damned bad, and I want to know why.--The
words don't matter; it isn't a question of
how you put it, nor how much I mind being
knocked by the one person on earth--!  My God,
Phyllis, what do you mean by saying I was bad?"

She was terrified.  No culprit in the dock ever
trembled more guiltily, or faced a brow-beating
prosecutor with so stricken a look.  Her husband's
bitter and contemptuous tone cut her like a lash.
But it was too late now to make excuses, to palliate
the offense.  There was nothing for it but to go
on--to justify herself--and the better she could do
it the more she would wound him!  And all this
on a night that surely ought to have been their
happiest.

"You made the captain too--too common,"
she stammered.  "He is supposed to be a high-bred,
aristocratic man--stupid, of course--but a
gentleman through and through.  In real life--"

"Oh, real life!" he interrupted roughly, "that's
where all you ignorant, criticizing people go wrong.
He has nothing to do with real life--he's a
preposterous stage figure, a convention.  I have to take
what I'm given; I'm not the dramatist; I can't
write new lines for him, can I?  My business is to
hide the strings that pull his arms and legs, and
make him possible--and by George, I did it!"

"But Cyril, dearest, listen--even when you first
come on you're not polite enough, not chivalrous
enough.  You almost burst out laughing at--"

"That's to give contrast to him afterwards."

"But you can do that, and still keep him a gen--I
mean nice, and--"

This was all she was allowed to say.  Adair
towered over her, convulsed, shaking, his voice hardly
governable as he stormed and raged.  It was the
best thing he had ever done; it was perfect; there
was fifteen years of stage experience in that one
creation.  It was awful that it should all go for
nothing; it shook his nerve; it shook his
confidence in himself; he hardly knew how he could go
on playing the part.  He wouldn't, he'd throw it
up; he warned her to be more careful next time, or
as an actor he would be done for.  It wasn't that
he was afraid of criticism--intelligent criticism--he
welcomed intelligent criticism--the criticism of
those who knew the stage--helpful criticism.
But to club a man in this ignorant, crass way was
simply to murder him.  How could he ever bear
to let her see him again in anything?  He was
sensitive; he was cruelly sensitive; it was because
he had temperament; and if he couldn't please the
person he liked he had no courage or heart left,
even if he set the whole house crazy.  Here was
one of the best things he had ever done, killed for
ever--and it was she who had killed it!  It was
the penalty of loving her that he could not go on
without her approval; he knew she was wrong; in
any one else he would have dismissed it with a shrug,
and forgotten it the next minute; yet with her--!
Perhaps this sounds more ignominious than it
was.  To Phyllis at least there was a great pathos
in the exasperated outburst that was very far from
being due to vanity alone.  The revelation of her
husband's weakness, of his utter dependence on her
good opinion, atoned not a little for the violent
things he said.  It enlarged her understanding of
the childishness that lies so close beneath the
artist-nature--of its swift extremes of feeling--and
showed her, too, the amazing intensity that Adair
put even into a small rôle, and taught her afresh
what a life and death matter the stage was to him.
His frenzy, therefore, instead of rousing her
resentment, and worse still her scorn and anger,
rather quickened within her a tragic pity.  His
burning face, his dilating eyes, his quivering
twitching mouth--all the evidences of an uncontrollable
mortification--brought forth instead that womanly
feeling, so rich in generosity and indulgence, that
would sacrifice everything for the one it loved.

To prove that she was right seemed to her of
much less importance just then than to smooth
down that wild, distraught man-creature who
belonged to her.  With love in peril all other
considerations were swept away.  No pride stood
between, no sense of injustice; love was too precious
for such pettinesses to interfere.--Then with what
piteous artifices she began to eat her words!  How
adroitly did she argue so that her surrender should
not be too apparent, giving way by such fine
gradations that Adair hardly suspected the imposture.
How contritely she confessed herself in the wrong,
her cringing little heart all submission, her whole
young body eager to atone her fault.--The wild,
distraught man-creature was by degrees coaxed
back to tameness and sanity; the thunders subsided;
with kisses and caresses he was even prevailed upon
to resume his place at table, where, lecturing her
masterfully as he ate, though with a steadily
lessening severity, dormice peace was at length restored.
By the time Phyllis had brought him his slippers,
lit his cigar, and snuggled herself against his knees,
like a sweet little Circassian who had disturbed her
Bashaw, and had been graciously forgiven by that
dearest and best of men, Adair mellowed sufficiently
to feel some slight self-reproach.  He apologized
for having got so worked up; fondled her glossy
hair; called her his darling little stupid whom he
loved so well he couldn't endure her to find fault
with him.  Between whiffs, mellowing even more,
he admitted that he might have been slightly
unreasonable, even unkind, but put it all down to his
disappointment at failing to please her.  "I worked
so hard," he said.  "I just fell over myself to make
them laugh.  I--I had to think of the seventy-five,
you know, and holding down the job; and as
the others liked it, I--I thought you would.  My
sweetheart girl must try and make some allowances.
I couldn't help feeling cross and nervous
and all worked up--and, and, it's awful to fail,
Phyllis."

She, at this, the naughty little hypocrite, would
have eaten more humble pie; would have protested
afresh that it was only one tiny-winy thing she had
objected to--though even on that she wasn't half
as sure as she had been.  But Adair cut her short.
In his softened humor he was prepared to concede
something to her criticism; there was a speck of
truth in what she had said, however much it had
upset him; he was going to pull up the part a bit;
he was--

Phyllis had sprung up, and darted into the bedroom,
with so sparkling a smile, and with such an
air of animation and mystery that Adair hardly
knew what to make of it all.  But he was accustomed
to her girlish escapades, and lay back with
his cigar, listening to bureau-drawers being hastily
opened and shut, and awaiting developments with
amused anticipation.  She could be such a little
devil when the fancy seized her, and rejoiced in
the most shocking exhibitions for his private
delectation.  He was unprepared, however, for her to
bound out in a suit of his own, the sleeves and
trousers rolled up, and her hair half-hidden
beneath a jaunty cap.  She had made herself up for
Captain Carleton, and the moment she opened her
mouth Adair recognized the fine parody of himself
in the rôle.  The words she had pat, her
retentive memory having caught and retained them
during his laborious "study"; and while she was less
sure of the imaginary milk-maid, she paraphrased
the latter's lines with sufficient accuracy to keep her
cues straight.  She knew she was playing with
fire; her face was a picture of mingled roguishness
and terror, yet she was impelled by a headlong
daring that was irresistible.

She flung herself into the scene with mad
abandonment, mimicking his voice, his gestures, his
laugh, the very way he leaned against the
pasteboard gate--a whirlwind little figure, dancing
crazily on the egg-shells of his vanity.  It was the
cleverest, wickedest, most unsparing travesty of
his whole performance, carried through with
inordinate zest and mischief, and heightened by a slim
young beauty that had never seemed to him more
alluring.  Her little feet had never looked so small
as with the coarse trousers flapping about her
ankles; the audacious curves above intensified her sex;
while the partly opened coat displayed the ribbons
and lace of her night-dress beneath--the whole a
vision of captivating girlhood.

Adair at first made no sign at all except to
stare at her in a sort of stupefaction.  His face
grew so dark that she felt shivers running down
her back, and for a moment she wondered if she
had not mortally offended him.  The first smile
she wooed from him set her pulses dancing with
relief.  Yes, he was smiling, he was laughing, he was
clapping his hands; and then, oh, the joy of it,
he was bursting out with great, deep "Ha, ha's"
of delight!  Thus encouraged, she redoubled her
exertions; she outdid herself; she was in the second
scene now, and was tearing it to pieces like a puppy
with a rag-doll, panting with excitement and
success, and rapturous with victory.  Adair jumped
up, and in a paroxysm of admiration, passion,
exultation and self-reproach, ran and crushed her in
his arms.  Phyllis felt the filmy lace-stuff rip
asunder, and his lips seeking her flesh, while all
incoherent he breathed out that he loved her, loved
her, loved her, and that she was right; yes, he
had been playing it all wrong; never would he go
against her judgment again, and then and there
took back every word he had said!  He was just
a vain, silly, conceited, swollen-up jackass, not even
worth her finger-tip; and he couldn't forgive
himself for the way he had treated her; and the only
thing he could think of doing to show how badly
he felt was to plump down and kiss her little
slippers, which he forthwith did with a humility that
would have been more impressive had there been
a less frantic flurry of kicks and protests.

Thus the evening that had begun so ill ended in
tenderness and profound accord.  The very last
thing Mr. Dormouse murmured as he lay locked
in his wife's arms was that she was the cleverest
little actress in the world, and pretty enough to
eat, and a million times too good for him--which
on the whole was the truest thing Dormouse
had said for a long while, and showed that
his ideas were improving.  Little though he knew
it he was improving in every way, and could he
have set himself back six months he would have
been astounded at the contrast.  Women make men
in other senses than the physical, and this robust
lump of egoism, selfishness, ignorance and conceit
was being slowly and unconsciously transformed.
Something of Phyllis was passing into him, and in
the magic of that soul-infiltration the grosser side of
him had begun to crumble.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXII`:

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   CHAPTER XXII

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It is disappointing to chronicle that the altered
and improved rendering of the English
captain passed almost unnoticed.  Mr. Kemmel,
O'Dowd's right-hand man, indeed had objected to
the change; and failing to bully Adair into submission
had carried the affair up to the star.  But that
comedian, with a kindness that bordered on a
sublime indifference, refused to interfere.  "Hell, it
don't matter how he plays it as long as he gets the
words over," was his sage comment; and a wave
of a large, fat hand dismissed the subject for ever.
O'Dowd had his own private reasons for wishing
to stay on good terms with Adair, which he was
too regal, if not too cautious, to pass on at that
moment to Mr. Kemmel.  O'Dowd, being star,
manager, and half-author of the piece was minting
money under all three heads, and his concern for
the box-office was proportionately great--so great
that he could consider the choice of an understudy
without irritation, and even accept a man who
might "draw."

On first being commanded to understudy his principal,
Adair had accepted the task much in the spirit
of Mary Ann, when she is told: "Oh, I forgot to
say you must do the washing, too!"  It was a
drudgery and a bore that he would have been well
content to avoid, for one look at O'Dowd's red
face and vigorous frame convinced him of the
remoteness of the contingency for which he was to
fit himself.  He set no hopes in that direction, and
it came to him as a real surprise, a couple of weeks
after he was engaged, to be asked into the office
and told of a new contract he was to sign.

"'The Guv'nor ain't satisfied with that fourth
clause," said Mr. Kemmel.  "He says it ain't
plain--hey, there, don't let Phelps go, I want him and
Klein for witnesses."

"Where isn't it plain?" demanded Adair, who
remembered the document as one of unusual rigor,
without even the usual two weeks' notice.  "Do
you wish to add penal servitude to my other
fifty-seven penalties?"

Mr. Kemmel did not deign to smile.  He was a
pale, bald Jew of about thirty-six, with a peculiarly
bleak way of addressing actors.

"No," he answered, "we want to clear up the
understudy part of it."

"Understudy part of it?  What do you mean?"

"Well, if you went on for five or six weeks,
taking the Guv'nor's place every night and
matinée--you might make out like it was a new
engagement--and try to stick us."

Adair was too mystified to take offense.

"Stick you?" he repeated.

"Yes, sue us afterwards for three or four times
the salary."--Mr. Kemmel sighed, and looked
upward, as though reflecting on man's inhumanity to
man.  "In this business one has to be so careful,"
he added, as impersonally as though he were
speaking to a stone pillar, "so careful--well, as I was
saying, here we have iron-claded it, and you are to
sign where it is penciled, and return the old
contract to-morrow."

The typewritten words swam a little as Adair
gazed at them; he was afraid of being tricked; he
wanted to make sure that the precious seventy-five
a week had not been tampered with.  But there it
was, all right, along with the new proviso.  It was
difficult to believe that this last amounted to
anything, for O'Dowd's appearance precluded the least
idea of illness.  The man was as strong as a bull,
with a voice that shook your ear-drums, and the
shoulders of a negro coal-heaver.  He was offensively
healthy, and so limited in any interest but
the theater that he moped visibly of a Sunday.
One might as well understudy the Metropolitan
Museum on the chance of its taking a night off.
Adair laughed as he signed the new contract, and
hardly thought of the matter for a day or two
afterwards.

It was Kemmel who again brought it home to him.

"I'm keeping the orchestra for you to run over
the Guv'nor's songs again with them," he said.
"You sing them good enough, but the leader says
you crowd the overture, and sometimes get ahead
of him."

There are no people in the world so unmurmuring
as actors; they will rehearse till their voices
crack and their legs drop off, and all this, too often,
under volleys of insults and reproaches.  Adair
had played two performances that day, and was
worn out and hungry; yet it never occurred to him
to make any objection to such an unexpected order.
The poor, weary orchestra was there, as hungry
and worn out as he, but as willing as every one
connected with the stage seems always to be; they
scraped and tootled and drummed and bassooned
for two mortal hours, from a quarter past eleven
till after one A.M., while Adair sang Irish melodies
to the darkened house.  O'Dowd himself, in a
stage-box, was the solitary though far from silent
spectator.  Cigar in mouth, profane, morose and
savagely critical, he bellowed furiously from his
dark crimson cave.

"No, no, no, *no*!  Hell's bells, do that again!
At the second verse there now!  For God's sake,
Mr. Glauber, emphasize the key-note, boom it out
on that first cornet so he can't miss it, and lam it
in again on the minor.  The minor!  *The minor*,
damn it!  And, oh Lord, Adair, call that a brogue?
Hell's bells, it's because you're in such a
hurry--Glauber will wait for you--damn it, give it again,
let it stick to your teeth--like this: 'Of owl the
ma-a-a-a-ids of swate Kilda-a-a-a-rrr--'"

Adair had an unusually tuneful voice, and the
middle register of his rather high baritone was full
of warmth and charm.  These catchy melodies
appealed to him, and the sentiment was of a
downright, popular kind.  One rollicked the humor and
quavered the pathos, and either put in brogue or
didn't as one remembered or forgot it.  As a
matter of fact--except for the brogue--he did the
songs more justice than the great O'Dowd himself,
and sang them more sweetly and appealingly.  He
had no conception of it that night, however, as he
was hectored and bullied without cessation until his
eyes smarted, and his bewildered head was whirling.
He had a whipped feeling as he went off, and
a corroding sense of defeat and failure.  It was
idiotic to expect him to sing, and now that he had
been tested and found wanting he hoped the silly
goats would leave him alone.

He turned as he was putting on his overcoat in
the wings, and saw that one of the silly goats had
followed him.  It was Mr. Kemmel, more bleared
and bleak than ever, and evidently with something
disagreeable to say.

"Oh, Adair," he exclaimed in a low voice, "hold
on a minute, I want to talk to you.  I've called a
full rehearsal for to-morrow at nine o'clock,
orchestra and all--for you'll have to go on in the
Guv'nor's place to-morrow night!"

"I go on?--*I*?"  Adair was thunderstruck.
"What do you mean, Kemmel?"

"Just that."

"But he's as well as I am."

"The climate ain't agreeing with him, hee,
hee!"--Kemmel's cackle was as cold as the draft off
an iceberg.

"The climate?"

"New York state.  He's got to get right out
to-night, and that with us playing a run, and with
eight weeks of our lease unexpired.  If it weren't
for the lease, and my Lord, the forfeit to Boaz and
Gotlieb, he'd jump us out with him, run or no run.
Ain't it awful, Mabel!"

"But Kemmel, what's the matter?"

"Well, it's like this, Adair.  He and Julia
Garrett were divorced here two years ago, and the
dime museum freaks who tried it allowed her to
marry again, and forbade him.  They do things
like that in New York, and if you kick it's
contempt of court!  The next day he married our
Mrs. O----, Claudia Kirkwood at Chicago.  See?
There's nothing they can't forget here in two years,
and so we came back, feeling pretty safe--and
would have been, too, if number one hadn't got
tired of the man who was keeping her in London,
and rushed over here with her little hatchet.  We've
been trying to buy it, but it wasn't for sale--at
least not at any figure we could pay--so we made
a bluff offer of eight thousand, and reserved our
Pullman!"

"Are you going to try to keep the run here?"

"*You* are!"

"And if I can't--if I don't draw?"

"Then we'll close."

"I wonder you didn't get Anderson Bailey or
Henry Millard, or that man who has just left
Blanche Mortimer--what's his name?"

"Costs too much--you're cheap."

Then to take the edge off this remark, he added:

"Say, that's not a knock; we wouldn't take them,
anyway; I'm not throwing any bouquets, Adair,
but you are damned good in it, really damned
good--and are exactly what we want.  And don't you
feel sore about the money, either.  We are paying
you seventy-five salary, and four hundred and
twenty-five worth of chance to make a big hit.  You
wish to get on, don't you?  Well, you may be a
made man in eight weeks.  We're taking a gamble,
and so must you.  What if you are a holy frost?
Don't go around belly-aching for money, but see
if you can't win out.  We believe you can; we are
sure you can; go ahead!"

Praise, opportunity, the belief of others in
you--how softening they are!  Kemmel, the niggardly,
the fault-finding, the lean, mean jackal of
the Irish lion, suddenly took on a new hue.  Adair
found himself shaking his hand.  What a good
chap Kemmel was, after all!  He shook his hand
cordially, effusively, all former bitterness forgotten
in an intoxication of joy.  Kemmel melted too, under
that irresistible spell; had a spasm of expansiveness
and indiscretion; went so far as to say, in a
darkling, confidential manner, that Adair had sung
"all round" the boss.

"That's why I went for you like I did and balled
you up now and then," he confided.  "It wouldn't
do to have him think *that*, you know.  He's funny,
like all of them, and while two-thirds of him is
box-office, the other third is temperament--and
my, it don't do to jar it!"

Phyllis had been sent home alone long before
this, and Adair found her sound asleep in bed.  A
considerate husband would have let her lie
undisturbed, and would have kept his great news till the
morning.  But Adair had no more compunction in
waking her up than if she had been a pet puppy;
and rolled her over, and tumbled her about almost
as roughly, and with the same clenched-teeth zest
in her drowsiness, beauty and helplessness.  And
she, woman-like, loved it, roughness and all--which
goes to show how stupid consideration is at
times, and how misplaced.  Adair never gave it a
thought, and his selfishness was rewarded by two
bare, satiny arms reaching for his neck, and the
eagerest little mouth in the world begging kisses
and taking them.

And the news?

Don't blame him if it had grown a little.  It
was so truly-truly big that there could be no harm
in making it a trifle bigger.  Is it not permissible,
with your adoring little wife nestling beside you in
her nightie, and holding you fast lest you might
suddenly be snatched away by some envious and
ruthless agency--is it not permissible, I say, to
add a stick and a cocked hat to some ordinary, very
plainly-dressed facts?  The whole rehearsal, thus
gloriously reviewed in the retrospect, was brought
up to the key of Kemmel's appreciation.  The
unexpired lease of the theater was seen to be a
subterfuge, and no doubt O'Dowd had gone away
to organize a number two company--the shrewd
fellow; he and Kemmel mighty well knew they
had made a "find"--they weren't in that business
for nothing--and both were up in the air about it.
The next thing would be a two years' contract,
with a real salary and percentages!  Cyril Adair,
the Irish comedian, ha, ha!  Well, why not?  It
would bring him back to Broadway in the right
way, the big way!  Bring him back to stay, by
George, for with this as a stepping-stone they'd
never get him off the grand old street again.
And once solid--

With unloosened imagination they soared the
sky, vying ecstatically with each other in that
ethereal azure where everything is possible, two little
children before the opening doors of paradise, and
hardly less simple and naïve--big hand on little,
voice outstripping voice, girl-heart and man-heart
blended in an idyllic love.  But alas, closer than
paradise, oh, so much closer--on the next floor,
in fact--was an honest motorman of the Metropolitan
Street Railway, who lumbered out of bed, and
hammered loudly on the floor for silence.  On East
Fifty-eighth Street this was a hint not to disturb a
sleeping toiler.  Bang, bang, bang, and the creaking
springs and bedposts as the stalwart Brother of
the Ox again sought repose.  He got it all right;
he often had to hammer, but never had to hammer
twice; Phyllis had a great deal of humorous
tenderness for her working-men neighbors--those
decent, silent men who used to pass her so
respectfully on the stairs; who played cheap
phonographs on Sunday nights, raised families and
canaries, owned dogs and took in boarders, till one
wondered their apartments didn't bulge out and
burst!--So McCarthy returned to the Land of
Nod, and the dormice, reduced to whispers, soon
kissed each other sleepily, and took their own road
thither.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

One wonders sometimes why almost
anybody can not be a successful Irish
comedian?  Given a good figure, a pleasing,
sympathetic voice, and a face naturally inclined to
smile--and the rest seems as easy as taking
pennies from a blind man.  Certainly Adair caught his
house as surely as ever did O'Dowd, and moved
through the piece amid the same thunders of
applause.  Younger, handsomer, and an incomparably
better actor, and with that charm, so baffling to
describe, which yet was ever-present and
ever-compelling, he measured himself against his
predecessor, and never for a moment had the least doubt
of the outcome.  It is not often that fairy tale
came as bravely true; that the dream of overnight
turned as quickly into the fact of to-day.  Small
wonder that Adair, standing there on the stage
when all was done, his ears still ringing with the
applause of that departing audience, was too
exalted, and much too self-sure to fret at Kemmel's
misgivings.

"Oh, you did fine," cried Kemmel.  "You were
splendid, splendid!  But will they ever come back?"
He jerked his head in the direction of the curtain.--"It
was O'Dowd that brought them--not you;
they already had their tickets; the pinch comes
to-morrow, day after to-morrow.  Can you draw them
then, ah, that's the point?--No, no, don't
misunderstand me, Adair.  I'm all up in the air about
you; you justified all we hoped; more than we
hoped; you don't need to be told how you hit them
to-night.  But I'm scared--scared of your
success--and I'm that nervous that I--!"  Again he
turned towards the curtain, and his voice was
almost a wail.  "Oh, my God, Adair, will they ever
come back?"

.. vspace:: 2

The astonishing thing was that they did--crowded
back, swarmed back, breaking all the records
of the piece.  Business rose by leaps and
bounds till they were playing to capacity; till the
thrilling words "sold out" were posted almost
nightly on the box-office window; till a ravening
horde of speculators took possession of the
sidewalk in front, alternately delighting Kemmel with
their advertising value, and wringing his soul with
anguish at the money he saw going astray.  Not
that these were his only preoccupations; he was too
loyal to his employer's interest, and too expert a
theatrical man to let a success run along without a
guiding hand.  Adair's name went up in electric
letters; pictures and paragraphs were scattered
broadcast; an option was secured on another theater
to continue the run, and, what seemed to him the
best of all, he had Adair securely tied up by a new
contract.  Kemmel, in his own words, was "on
to his job," and in his letters to O'Dowd he was
already urging a number two company, and submitting
estimates and names.

The new contract, of course, was a marvel of
one-sidedness; on-to-his-job Kemmel naturally
saw to that, and paid a legal iron-worker twenty-five
dollars to make it of seamless steel.  But on
the running out of the existing contract at
seventy-five dollars a week, it assured Adair two hundred
and fifty as long as it pleased O'Dowd to
employ him.  Seamless steel could not accomplish
everything, and a substantial increase of salary had
to be accorded.  Adair would have stood out for
more; but Phyllis, with feminine caution, prevailed
on him, to make no demur.  Booful's day would
come; stick to her and he would wear diamonds--not
to speak of bells on his darling fingers and toes;
but just now money was secondary to cementing
his position till he was stuck up so high on Broadway
that they'd have to feed him with a ladder.--Besides,
two hundred and fifty dollars a week was
an *awful* lot of money.  Forty weeks at two
hundred and--

"Forty weeks, you goose!" expostulated Adair.
"I'd be the last person to object if it were forty
weeks.  But down there, on that smudgy blue
place, they can cancel everything in forty seconds."

"People aren't cancelled who are playing to capacity."

"I know, but the utter damned meanness that--"

"Poor little Booful mustn't worry, and if he'll
stop damning and rampaging, I'll take him down
to his Uncle Macy's, and show him that lovely
fur coat I want him to buy as soon as we have
some money."

"I suppose you are right, Phyllis, but it galls me to--"

"My darling, sweetheart love," she broke in with
pretty seriousness, "nothing is so important as your
success, and once make that secure, money follows
as a matter of course.  Let Booful keep shinning
up the pole, even if they do pick his pockets, and
never think of anything but the gilt ball at the
top, and--and *me*."

This was good advice and Booful acted on it.
The two hundred and fifty, too, looked less
despicable as every day drew it nearer; and as it became,
not an abstraction to be argued over and theoretically
scorned, but a tidy little bundle of greenbacks
that would go far to ease life, both on the spending
side of it and the saving.  Oh, yes, half of it
was to be laid by in the bank for a rainy day.
Meanwhile, they lived up to the last cent of the
seventy-five, which once so much, now suddenly
grew meager by contrast, and by the greater
inroads made upon it.  Booful rolled home in cabs;
there were little restaurant suppers with a fizzling
pint of wine; Phyllis bought a coveted peignoir,
made out of pale blue fluffy-nothingness, and with
a hand-embroidered collar delicately touched with
gold.--Well, why not?  The nearing future was
too bright not to discount it a little in the present.

We have said that Kemmel kept his press agent
busy; and in the same thoroughgoing spirit that
placarded every garbage-can from Twenty-sixth
Street to Harlem, strove by a thousand means to
get Adair's name prominently into the papers.  If
he succeeded beyond all expectations he ascribed it
to his own astuteness, instead of to the fact that
Adair, for the moment, was an extremely spectacular
figure in the theatrical world.  It was one of
the remarkable things about this man that he
impressed himself so indelibly in the recollection of
every one who had ever known him.  It was too
often a disagreeable recollection; he had sown
hatred with a royal hand; yet, in a queer, negative,
altogether unprofitable way he had fascinated
everybody.  Others might make a disagreeable
impression and be forgotten.  But no one ever forgot
Adair.  Magnetism, personality, genius--whatever
word one chose to call it--he had the peculiar
faculty of arresting attention, of exciting interest, of
making people talk and speculate about him.

It was indubitably at times a most unlucky gift.
With his reappearance and success the flood-gates
of his past were opened, and there gushed forth a
Niagara of malignant chatter.  His amours, his
fights, his disreputable escapades, his divorce--all
were revived.  Every one seemed to have a story
to his discredit, and to be in haste to get it into
print.  Nor was his marriage to Phyllis allowed to
escape the same soiling publicity, and the tale was
embellished with slanders and innuendoes that
would have goaded a much more patient man to
fury.  Adair was with difficulty restrained from
knocking editorial teeth down editorial throats;
and it showed Phyllis' power over him, and the
change generally in his disposition that the police
courts were untroubled by his presence.

Lies about herself Phyllis could bear with some
fortitude, but Adair's earlier life, as thus revealed
by the sensation-mongers, cost her many a bitter
pang.--The woman who had tried to shoot him at
the Café Martin, and the whole revelation of that
horrid affair--the Burt-Wauchope scandal, where
rather than save himself by compromising an
unknown girl, he had gone to prison for contempt;
and that, not quietly and nobly, but with a
vain-glorious satisfaction in his martyrdom--the
discreditable spree on Tim Bartlett's yacht--how
horrible, how unendurable it was--this graveyard
resurrection of bygone years!

Adair never justified himself to her, never tried
to palliate or explain away the incidents of his
outrageous past.  That instinct, which in all his
relations with her invariably guided him aright, served
him as well now as it had always before.  He was
more gentle, more tender, trusting to kisses rather
than words.  "Don't let this hurt you," he once
said to her, the only time he had ever ventured to
speak to her, "that wasn't me, Phyllis.  There
wasn't any me until you came.  You know that,
don't you?  No me at all, but just a big brute,
and if he didn't have a soul it was because it was in
your bureau drawer along with your stockings and
handkerchiefs, and I guess you thought it was a
sachet bag or something, and never looked at it twice."

The most jealous, dismayed and heart-sick of
women could not have resisted such pleading; not
if she were in love, that is, and her lover's voice
was as appealing, and his eyes as convincing and
sincere.--In a divine commingling of wife-love and
mother-love, so pure, so uplifting that it
transcended all physical expression, save alone what the
breast could give, she drew his head to her bosom,
comforting him, comforting herself in an act
emblematic of all that is most beautiful in humanity.

.. vspace:: 2

The more one studies the stage the more one is
surprised by its disregard of principles that govern
every-day, ordinary affairs.  Perhaps it is because
actors are all children, who have clung tenaciously
to playing Indian in the hall, and shooting tigers
under the parlor sofa long after the rest of us have
grown up.  It is a good thing for the world that
"temperament" is so largely confined to the
paste-board walls of the theater; or we might see our
grocer sulking over his butter, or railway
presidents impetuously ordering off trains because they
had taken a sudden distaste to the landscape of
some state.  Self-interest, that sheet anchor of
society, is but a kedge to the theatrical ship, and many
plow the main without even that.  Caprice often
outweighs all money-making considerations; and
though we are far from decrying those who
sacrifice dollars to art (and there are many), may one
not be a little peevish with the others, whose vanity
and wilfulness often take such spiteful forms?

It certainly cost Shamus O'Dowd all of twelve
thousand dollars, if not double or treble that amount
to close the run at the Herald Square Theater and
bring it to a peremptory conclusion.  From his
Rocky Mountain ranch he had watched, with a
grinding and increasing anger, the success of the
man to whom he had left his rôle.  The swelling
royalty returns exasperated him; the laudatory
notices, sent in such profusion by Kemmel (who was
innocent enough to think they would please)--were
as tongues of flame leaping up the legs of a captive
at the stake (such fat legs as they were, and with
such an ample scorching surface), and all the talk
of another theater and a second company clogged
his eyes with blood, and seared his low, coarse
face with the furrows of an intolerable indignation.

Nightly for twenty-five years he had been taking
others' crimes on his brawny shoulders--murder,
arson, embezzlement, forgery--he grabbed for
them all, never so happy as when misjudged, with
only the audience in the secret of his sacrifice;
nobody on the stage could do anything wrong
without his making a rush to take the blame--and the
oaths he kept with an incredible fidelity; the superb
impulses that started from him as freely as perspiration;
his goodness, chivalry, and almost insensate
honor--!  Oh, the irony of reality as contrasted
with those affecting fictions!

"Dear Kemmel," he wrote, in his ugly, sprawling,
impatient hand.  "Take the bloody show right
off, and fire Adair, and keep the others on
half-salary till you can fix me up a route outside of New
York.  In God's name, what do you think I'm made
of, that I'm to play a number two company all
around the clock while he's starring my hit on
Broadway?  And don't you put up any back-talk
about it, either, for I mean every word of it if it
takes my last red--though you must see that it
don't.  If we have to go forfeit on the theater,
hell's bells, pay the bloody cormorants, and do you
hear, Get Out!!!  For I'm sick of the whole
business.  Fix it up with Mallory to send out
something like this, even if you have to pay space
rates for it, and I want it featured:--'The
substitution of Mr. Cyril Adair for Mr. Shamus
O'Dowd in the star-rôle of *A Broth of a Boy*
has resulted so disastrously to the management that
the Herald Square Theater will be dark on Monday
night, and all outstanding tickets refunded at the
box-office.  The experiment was an unfortunate
one for all parties, for Mr. O'Dowd, previous to
his departure from New York, owing to his
doctor's orders, was playing to enormous business, and
bade fair to remain all the season.  In
Mr. O'Dowd's hands *A Broth of a Boy* has been a
record money-maker, and friends of the genial star
will be enthusiastic to learn of his early return to
harness.  The old adage of the lion's skin is thus
verified again, and we are not disparaging
Mr. Cyril Adair when we say he was unlucky to be
cast for the Donkey.'

"I hope this is all clear, and that I have not
overlooked anything.  Perhaps when you are about
it you had better fire Grace Farquar, too.  Pretty
girls are cheap, and I should like another more
come-on, preferably a blonde this time.  Received
your check for $1,182.40.  No more for the
present.  Cordially yours, Shamus O'Dowd."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

The right girl's cheek against his own is
usually worth more to a man than all the
philosophy to be found in books.  Adair
was stunned; he was too helpless, too hurt even to
murmur.  When one is struck by a thunderbolt,
one lies where one falls.  He expected Phyllis to
fall also, and in a dull, heart-broken way was
surprised by her intrepidity.  She picked up the great,
despairing creature; kissed him, petted him, crooned
over him like a baby, smiling through her tears, and
exerting all her pretty fancifulness to make him
smile, too.  Men may excel in marching up to
cannon and saving people from burning buildings, and
descending to the bottom of the sea in submarines;
but in the forlorn hopes of life it is most often the
women who lead.

After a while Adair was revived; on examination
it seemed that he wasn't seriously damaged at all,
only scared--oh, yes--just scared all out of his
poor Booful wits; and a fairy potion called:
"What does anything matter as long as we have
each other?" was extraordinarily effective in
pulling him together again.  Then Phyllis jumbled up
all the swear-words she had ever heard, and hurled
them indiscriminately at Shamus O'Dowd, with
such piquancy and humor, coming as they did from
that sweet mouth, and with such a delicious
lady-intonation that Adair was convulsed, and a tiny
bit shocked--which was precisely what she had
schemed for, the daring little wretch.

Thus began a new era of looking for an engagement;
and it must be said it was a very sad, anxious,
bitter era, for they were dreadfully
poor--hungry-poor--and every time there was a knock at the
door it was a dun who had to be coaxed and
persuaded into going away.  Adair's recent
prominence had done little to incline managers towards
him, and though they were more civil, and he
generally got greater consideration at their hands, it
was evident that their former hostility still
persisted.  But his professional reputation now stood
pretty high; and occasionally one, bolder than the
rest, would coquette with him, keeping him on
tenter-hooks while a frantic search was made "for
somebody that would do as well."  This somebody
was always found, and Adair would be told politely
that "the vacancy had been filled."

Incidentally he learned that his parting from
O'Dowd had been grossly misrepresented by that
"genial star," who had spread it about broadcast
that Adair was as impossible as ever, and so inflated
and top-lofty that it had been cheaper to break the
run of the piece than to stand his vagaries any
longer.  This was in such accord with Adair's
former character that it found ready credence up
and down Broadway; and the great Mr. Fielman
himself enunciated the general sentiment when he
said to Rolls Reece, the dramatist: "If that
fellow Adair only had the manners and decency of a
common hod-carrier, I'd give him a five years'
contract, and make a fortune out of him; but the stage
is on too high a level nowadays for men like that
to get a second chance to disgrace it--at least from me!"

.. vspace:: 2

No one appreciates more than an actor the need
for being well-dressed when seeking an engagement.
His appearance is a considerable part of his
capital, both on the boards and off; he may have
had little breakfast, and less lunch, but his clothes
must be good, and his linen immaculate, and in a
"profession" judged so largely by superficialities,
it behooves him, poor dog, to affect at any cost an
air of fashion that but too often is the most pathetic
of masquerades.

It was now that Phyllis rose to the occasion with
an unexpected capacity that showed she was, indeed,
her father's daughter.  She got the janitress to
teach her how to wash and iron white shirts; and
in a short time could glaze a bosom better than her
instructress, and almost as well as a French
laundry-man.  She learned how to press Adair's coats and
trousers; she turned his ties; she ironed his collars;
she cleaned his gloves with gasolene.  No man was
ever valeted with more assiduous care, or sent out
every morning looking sprucer or better-groomed.
When she kissed him good-by for the day it was
always with a playful admonition, for Adair bore
adversity none too well, and though he tried to hide
his despondency he was beginning to break down
under the long continued strain.

.. vspace:: 2

"And he knows he's a great, big, handsome,
splendid Booful?"

"Oh, he's sure of it!"

"And he's going to step out like a Crown Prince
going down to see his Emperor-Papa at the club?"

"You bet he is."

"And swing his cane as though he owned all
Broadway--and throw back his head like a Greek
statue, and swagger into their horrid old offices
like a millionaire?  For he *is* a millionaire, you
know--not a money-one, but a Love-Millionaire--for
don't I love him millions and millions?"

It took a kiss to answer that; and then the
Love-Millionaire, laughing a little tremulously, would
hurry away, whistling with much bravado as he
went down the stairs, two at a time, as suited a
great, big, handsome, splendid Booful; who,
whatever his demerits in the past, was fast retrieving
himself before the Great Judge.--And if, on his
departure, Phyllis would lay her head on her arm
and give way to uncontrollable tears, you would
be wrong to feel too sorry for her.  For the
misfortune that draws a man and woman together,
and extorts from each their noblest qualities is not
really a misfortune at all, but a precious and
beautiful thing that it would become us more to envy.

Thus the days passed in a deadening, cowing,
unutterably depressing search for work.  Adair was
rebuffed, put off, told to call again; he abased
himself to men he despised; he forced his presence with
hungry persistence on dramatists and stars who
were putting on new plays, affecting a good
fellowship that was a transparent, dismal lie.  He tried
to buy them wine, cigars--inveigle them into
promises, and his lunch often went in a tip to some
greedy understrapper who guarded their portals.

It is strange the mile-wide demarcation that
divides the real stage--the stage of Sothern, John
Drew, Faversham, Maude Adams, etc., from that
other to which Adair had so long associated himself.
This other had no representative save Adair in the
whole Thespian Club.  It was a region apart, and
a region that Adair was determined never to
return to.  It would have called him back willingly
enough, and in his desperation he might have
returned to it had it not been for Phyllis.  It was
she who kept his resolution alive; she was too
confident of his talent to let him throw it back into that
Dead Sea; it meant the abandonment of every
serious ambition;--artistically speaking, suicide,
death.--Booful belonged to the top, and it was his
business and hers to get him there.

Brave words, but how about fulfilment?  The
end of the month would find them turned out of
doors.  Phyllis dreaded to see herself in the glass,
she was becoming so pale and wan; in the unequal
battle everything was going except her courage;
sometimes, alone in the silent apartment, even that
seemed to droop, and a daunting terror would
overwhelm her--less for herself than for Adair.  He
was drinking again, and justified himself with a
bitter vehemence.  "They all say, 'Have a
drink'!" he exclaimed.  "Nobody ever says 'Have
an eat'!"--His harsh, despairing humor recurred
to her, as well as his sudden resentment at her pity.
He had made atonement, but the sting remained--or
rather a foreboding of something somber and
evil that in spite of herself she could not shake off.

.. vspace:: 2

One day at the club a card was brought Adair,
inscribed Mr. John H. Campbell; and the boy told
him the gentleman was waiting to see him in the
visitors' room.  Adair knew no such person, but
he went out to greet him with mingled curiosity
and hope, for here perhaps was the long-sought
engagement.  An imposing, distinguished looking,
very well-dressed man of fifty rose from the sofa,
and asked him, with much suavity, whether he had
the pleasure of addressing Mr. Cyril Adair.  This
question being quickly and politely settled, the
imposing gentleman begged for a few words of
conversation; and indicating a place for Adair beside
him, he reseated himself with a bland, kind air
which yet was not without an underlying
seriousness, not to say solemnity.

"I have come on a very confidential matter," he
said, fixing Adair with his shrewd, keen,
heavy-lidded eyes.  "A matter, Mr. Adair, so delicate
that it is not easy to convey it except in a
round-about form.  May I explain I have sought you
out at the request of--Mr. Ladd?"

There was a pause; the shrewd, heavy-lidded
eyes slowly inventoried Adair and read beneath
the tarnished air of fashion.  Failure, need,
hunger sap a man, and can not be hid, least of all from
a professional observer.  John Hampden Campbell
was one of the leaders of the New York bar and
was what they call a "court room lawyer" of high
rank; which means that others hand up the guns,
while he shoots them off.  His knowledge of
human nature was profound, and being profound was
neither unsympathetic nor unkind.  But he could
shoot straight, nevertheless, and it was hardly a
satisfaction to the victim to hear that murmur of
"poor devil!" as the eminent counsel laid aside
the smoking weapon.

"My father-in-law!" exclaimed Adair in amazement.

"He would be happier if he could cease to bear
that name," said Mr. Campbell.

"He can hardly very well help himself," retorted
Adair bluntly.

"No, but you could," put in the lawyer, with a
vagueness that was intentional.  "By this time you
must realize that it is a union that is scarcely to
your own best interests nor the young lady's."

"Haven't noticed it," said Adair, staring at him
queerly.

"Mr. Ladd would be prepared to make very
heavy sacrifices to put back things as they were
before."

"What sort of sacrifices?"--Adair's tone was
not unfriendly; it was rather questioning and
perplexed.

"We would rather leave it to you to suggest
them, though we are counting more on your
concern for her welfare.  Frankly, Mr. Adair, without
meaning the least disrespect, and with a thorough
knowledge of your honorable and straightforward
conduct--do you consider you're acting rightly in
holding this young lady to what most people would
call a very bad bargain?"

"Being married to a starving actor?"

"Oh, that is putting it too--too--"

"Of course, she has thrown herself away--I
know that."

There was a gleam in the heavy-lidded eyes.

"It could all be rectified," said Mr. Campbell
soothingly.  "Very easily, and very quickly
rectified.  It is just a question, it seems to me, of our
getting together, and talking it over reasonably.
In fact, some of the details might be omitted
entirely.  Mr. Ladd is a man of very large means,
and is the soul of honor.  He would see to it that
your future was made easy."

"How easy?" asked Adair.

"I mean," returned Mr. Campbell, "that he
would substantially recognize your honest desire to
be guided by his wishes--wishes that you admit
are just, and so much to the young lady's advantage
that you are willing to withdraw entirely."

"Those are all words," exclaimed Adair; "let's
get to figures."

Mr. Campbell looked pained.  After having
confined the interview so skilfully within the limits
of irreproachable good taste, this brutality outraged
his ear.  He had not been unprepossessed by Adair,
and felt sorry for him.--But here was the cloven
hoof.--The fellow was just a low, mercenary
adventurer after all.

"The figures are ten thousand dollars," he answered coldly.

"Why, I don't call that anything!"

"Cash," added Campbell, with a pursing of his lips.

"Of course, it's cash," cried Adair, "it's going
to be that, whatever it is.  Only it isn't enough.
She's worth more than ten thousand dollars."

Campbell saw that his personal bias had made
him err.  Adair's vibrating tone had caught the
note of his own; suavity and good humor were
all-important, and he scurried back to them, like an
incautious general flying for the batteries he has
left behind.  When he spoke again it was in his
best lullaby manner.

"My dear fellow," he said, "the real point is
that you concede the principle.  That is so, is it not?"

"Hell, yes," returned Adair.  "I'd concede a
lot for fifty thousand dollars."

"But that is a very, very large sum of money."

Adair, with one hand in his trousers pocket, was
restlessly turning over the two nickels that were
there--all he had.

"I don't think so," he said.  "Anyway, she's
worth that, and more."

"I was hardly authorized to commit Mr. Ladd
to such an amount," objected Mr. Campbell,
"though I will not say right off that I might not
entertain it.  But you understand, Mr. Adair, that
it implies you will not resist an action for divorce,
and--  Well, you know we'd like to have the matter
absolutely settled and done with."

"For fifty thousand dollars?"

The heavy-lidded eyes were obscured by a
momentary glaze.

"We will meet you," said Mr. Campbell.

Adair rubbed the nickels together, and asked,
with a slight catch of his breath, if he could have
something on account.

"Certainly," assented the lawyer, producing his
pocket-book.  He removed a sheaf of bills, and
Adair perceived that they were in denominations
of a thousand dollars each.  He had never seen a
thousand-dollar bill before in his whole life, and
here was a thick packet of twenty or more.  No
wonder that he was overawed.  Campbell noticed
his fascinated stare, and dilly-dallying with the
notes, spread them out with an elaborate carelessness.
To Adair, it was all a blur of $1,000, $1,000,
$1,000, $1,000, a green mist of money, a crisp,
crinkling, dizzying affluence.--Campbell was saying
something to him.  There was a paper to be signed.
It was a temporary memorandum to be replaced
later by a more formal document.  Buzz, buzz, buzz!
The paper was handed to him.  Buzz, buzz, buzz,
and the room going round and round.  He was
standing on his feet, shaking with the pent-up
passion that he had been so long holding back.  The
actor in him had been waiting for that, but the
actor was lost in the man.

"You're a damned hound!" he cried hoarsely,
"And the man who sent you is a damned hound,
and here is your damned paper, and may it choke
you both!  My wife isn't for sale, do you hear
that!  My wife isn't for sale, whether it's for fifty
thousand or fifty million!  Is that plain?  Do you
concede the principle, or shall I boot it into you?
I thought I'd lead you on; I thought I'd just see
how far you'd go--you with your sable overcoat,
and fat pocket-book, and your stinking respectability.
I had you sized up all right, and was only
giving you rope to hang yourself.  Get out of
here, and get out quick, or I'll kick you from here
to your cab.  Get out!"

It was needless to say that John Hampden
Campbell did not need to be pressed.  Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace could have
scarcely been in a bigger hurry.  Cramming the
notes and papers in his pockets, he sped from the
visitors' room like a large, imposing projectile which
had been fired from some monster cannon.  A second
later his flying coat-tails were deposited in his
cab, and he was speeding away, considerably shaken
in spirit and body, for the mountain quiet of his
twenty-eight story office.

.. vspace:: 2

Lying on Phyllis' table, all ready for mailing,
was a long letter to her father.  Pride had crumbled
and she had determined to seek his help.  She
had begun it with constraint, attempting, none too
effectually, to conceal her sense of injury and
injustice; but as page followed page the old
tenderness returned with an irresistible force.  That gray,
handsome head was before her, that mellow voice
was in her ears, and the wretchedness and folly
of alienation came home to her with a new and
piercing significance.  The request for money; the
cold, exact exposition of her need--was passed and
forgotten in the impetuous rush of her pen.  She
loved her husband, she loved her father, and this
estrangement was unbearable.  Like many women
under the stress of a deep emotion she wrote with
a singular eloquence.  She wept as she described
Cyril--his unceasing goodness, his loyalty, his
fortitude, his good humor and devotion.  He was
everything a woman loved best in a man; and
instead of her marriage having been a mistake, a
failure, it was more than she thought life could
ever give her.  Would not her father forget all
that had passed, as she, too, would forget?  Their
love was too deep, too dear, to make reconciliation
impossible.  She would climb into his lap again,
and put her arms about him--his sad, worn,
desolate little girl--and they would whisper to each
other what fools they had been, and kiss away the
last shadow of misunderstanding.

So it ran, page after page, in her fine, delicate
hand, an appeal that no father could have resisted.
A beautiful letter, touched with the quality of tears;
full of womanly longing; heart crying to heart,
across an aching void.  Alas, that it never went.
It was torn to pieces, and thrown passionately on
the floor.  Campbell had intervened, and the news
of his offer was thus received in the little flat on
East Fifty-eighth Street.  "That's the end of it,"
cried Phyllis, regarding the scraps of paper.
"That's the end of everything between Papa and me!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV

.. vspace:: 2

It is one of the peculiarities of looking for a
theatrical engagement that hope is never quite
extinguished.  There is always some one who
wants you to call next week; there is always a
company just short of a part they are considering
you for; there is always some friendly member
of the Thespians who has "mentioned your name,"
and gives you a scribbled address or a telephone
number.  This is stated to explain the fact why
Adair, instead of surrendering to circumstances,
as any other man would have done in any other
walk of life, still snatched at straw after straw with
egregious determination.  His circumstances were
becoming absolutely desperate.  Suspension from
the club was staring him in the face; in eight days
his sticks of furniture and his trunks would be
dumped out on the street; it was only by the most
rigid parsimony that body and soul could be kept
together.  Phyllis said the dormice were floating
on a shingle, and with tearful laughter would
expatiate on the pitiful, half-drowned things, so scared
and hungry on a bobbing sea.  What was to
happen when they slid off?--Oh, but Booful wasn't
to mind.  She'd hold his poor, pretty, dormouse
head up, and swim him off to a lovely island where
there were peanuts on peanuts, and an alabaster
mousery with all modern improvements.

That lovely island seemed a terribly long way
off.  As the emblem of an engagement it lay so far
over the horizon that Adair began to doubt its very
existence.  His eyes grew lack-luster; he lost his
confident bearing; poverty and failure stamped him,
as they stamp every man with an unmistakable
mark.  We instinctively move away from the
unsuccessful.  We see that mark, and widen our
distance.  Success likes success.  It isn't decent to
be very, very poor.  Fingers tighten on pocketbooks,
and respectable, prosperous legs quicken their
steps.--Adair was sinking, though the dismal
masquerade still went on--the immaculate cuffs,
the once smart tie, the pressed clothes, shiny with
constant ironing.  There is many such a figure on
Broadway--and in some mean room there is usually
a woman who believes in him, stinting herself
and starving for his sake.

One dark, wintry Sunday afternoon in early
spring, as Phyllis was sitting near the frosted
window, sewing and thinking and dreaming by
the scanty light, she was roused by the tramp of
many footsteps on the stair outside, and a confused
bumping, scuffling sound, accompanied by a hoarse
murmur of voices.  With a horrible premonition
she ran to the door and opened it, giving a cry as
she recognized Adair being supported in by two
companions.  His face was swollen and discolored;
one eye was closed in a rim of crimson; his mouth
was dribbling blood; sawdust and filth befouled
his clothes, and a stench of vile whisky exhaled
from him like a nauseating steam.  He was helped
over to a sofa, and allowed to collapse, while the
men hurried away as though ashamed of their task,
and thankful to have done with it.

It was the first time he had ever appeared
repugnant to Phyllis; he was drunk, and she knew
it, and the fumes of the disgusting stuff stifled her
with loathing.  But she unloosened his collar, laid
a couple of pillows under his head, unlaced his
shoes; and bringing a basin, rinsed the oozing blood
from his lip.  With pity, yes, but with the raging,
furious pity that goes with lost illusions, and the
falling of one's little world; a pity less for him
than for herself that this should be the end of a
love that to her had been the very breath of life.

He regarded her stupidly with his one open eye,
moaning faintly, and drawing himself laboriously
near the basin, spat into it.  Then he put out his
hand, and tried to touch her, but she shrank from him.

"Phyllis," he said, in a raucous whisper, "Phyllis";
and then, as though overcome by the exertion,
closed that single bleary eye, and dozed off.  But it
was not for very long.  He awakened again.
"They loaded me up with that cursed whisky,"
he whispered.  "I was all in, and needed it.  God,
if they didn't pour a bottle of it down my throat!"--For
a while he rambled on brokenly, spluttering
with laughter as he held up his clenched fist as
though he found a strange, childish entertainment
in the action.--Little by little he pulled himself
together.  He was a powerful man, sound to the
core, and though he was badly spent, health and
nature were rallying to his side.

"Come here," he said, in the same husky whisper,
but with a noticeable increase of vigor and
self-command.  "Come here, I wanter tellyerboutit."

Phyllis crouched by his side, so dejected and
heartsick that it was well for him she hid her face.

"I was with Morty Stokes and a whole lot of
them," he went on, his words running together
tipsily.  "Tagging on, too, you know--royal,
open-handed fellow, Morty, good fren' of mine,
always something to eat--gives bell-boy tip that
would keep us for a week.  And it was down at
the Queensbury Club, pay ten dollars, and,
member--one-day member, you know--though the fight
we went to see was tipped off--wasn't any, you
know--but we stayed on, Morty opening champagne,
and Kid Kelly was there who beat Cyclone
Crandall last month; and somehow Morty and the
Kid got into a row about Tammany corruption, and
both so blind that neither of them could have spelled
Tammany for a million, and everybody had to pull
them apart.  Then Morty, just blazing said: 'I
can't lick you, but here's a fellow that can,' and he
pointed at me, and says, 'Cyril, I'll give you five
hundred dollars to wipe this dirty loafer off the
map!'  And I took it as a joke, and said yes I
would, and before I knew it they were appointing a
referee, and Kid Kelly was stripping down to the skin."

Adair stopped and laughed--a groaning kind
of laugh, as mirthless as the wind that rattled the
window-panes.  "He had only been out of training
ten days, and as for my standing up against him
he might have been Battling Nelson.  But it
suddenly came into my head, why here's a chance to
make something--not Morty's five hundred dollars
for licking him--I'd only drunk half a glass
of wine, and knew better--but a bit at the other
end of it; and so I said, yes, four hundred for the
winner, and a hundred for the man out, and all as
insultingly as I could make it, as though that
hundred was for the Kid instead of me.  And finally,
when it was all settled, it all wasn't--Morty
standing out for two ounce gloves, and the others for
sixes, he saying he wanted to mark the dirty mutt
with something to stay; and that it was to be two
ounces or nothing, though what was to happen to
me in the mix-up wasn't mentioned, the fact being
he didn't care as long as he could see the Kid
pounded; and it was two shakes the Kid didn't
pound *him*, it all worked up to such a hullabaloo,
with some of them holding him, and others the Kid,
and all of them yelling at once till at last they shoved
us into the ring, with Tom Hallahan for referee,
and Billy Sands holding the stakes and keeping
time, and then we shook hands and squared off.

"The Kid wasn't so soused but what he had an
inkling of the truth, and at the first go-off he meant
to let me down easy, like the good-hearted Irish
boy he was, and I could see it in his eye--(half
of fighting is in the eyes, Phyllis)--and it was just
a pat here, and a wallop there, and a lot of
quick-stepping and stage-play, all feints and parries and
pretending.  But I wasn't for selling the fight,
thinking Morty might sour on it, and call the whole
thing off--so I walked right into the Kid, hammer
and tongs; and by the time I had barked my
knuckles on his teeth, and landed him a lefter on
the jaw for all I was worth, he was as savage as
hell, and ready to kill me; and by George, it was
only bull-headed luck that he didn't--that, and
the wine he had drunk, and I stood up to him for
five rounds; and first it was for the hundred
dollars, and then for my very life.  I managed to get
on my legs before I was counted out on the fifth,
though the floor was heaving like a ship at sea,
and I saw about eight of him, shooting out sixteen
arms, and eighty-four fists; and down I went for
keeps.--But I got it!"

He opened his hand, and showed two fifty dollar bills.

"They won't put us out on the street for yet
a while," he said gloatingly.  "We're a hundred
dollars ahead, not to speak of about nine quarts of
whisky!  Take it, sweetheart, and, and--"

Her arms were about him, and she was sobbing,
her lips seeking his, unmindful of the blood, the
swollen, discolored flesh, the stale reek of whisky,
every fiber in her agonizing with tenderness and
remorse.  Those things that but a minute before
had filled her with an unutterable revulsion, that
had shocked and dismayed her beyond expression
were of a sudden transformed into the evidences
of a tragic devotion.  It was for her that he came
to be lying there, disheveled, bleeding and dirty;
covered with livid bruises; smashed, disfigured, and
cruelest of all--misjudged.  No wonder that the
scorching tears fell; that the girlish arms could not
hold him tight enough; that the little head snuggled
down so pitifully, so guiltily, to atone for the cruel
wrong.

"I guess the dormice are still on their shingle,"
said Adair, "though a lot of skin and fur has been
rubbed off one of them.  Make him a cup of tea,
dearest--his little nose is hot, and I'm sure it
would do him good!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

It was a week before Adair ventured to go out
except at night, and it was longer still before
he outgrew the stiffness following the lost
battle.  He congratulated himself on having come
so well out of it, for an ordinary man, however
good an amateur boxer, runs a serious chance of
harm in a fight with a champion pugilist.  The
doctor passed his ribs, passed his jaw, deliberated over
his collarbone, and finally reduced the damages to
a pair of broken knuckle-bones and a badly-sprained
wrist.  Privately he warned Phyllis that her
husband had had a narrow escape, and told her to
keep him out of mischief for the future.  "He's
the worst-mauled man I have examined for a long
while," he said, "and that blow over the heart
might have killed him.  Next time let him agree
with his adversary quickly according to the
Gospel--or use a club, and use it first."

But the knuckles and the wrist were not all the
damage.  With lessened strength there was
lessened will, lessened courage; and acquiescence in
defeat succeeded the long spun-out endeavor to turn
the tide of fortune.  Soon it was tacitly understood
between them that they could strive no longer; and
when Adair, with something of a catch in his voice,
said he would go round and see Heney, Phyllis
made no demur.  Heney represented that other
stage of nonentities and fourth-raters; that
maelstrom of hopelessness, cheapness and shoddy; that
vast theatrical system which cadges for the public's
small change, and seeks to please the factory-girl
and the artisan.  To go back to it was to abandon
everything--ambition, reputation, future.

Yet it was pleasant to be warmly received.
Heney was overjoyed, gave him a good cigar,
patted him on the knee, and said he was just the
chap he had been looking for to take out *The
Danites*.  He had been working over the piece
himself to introduce Portolini's trained dogs, and
incidentally to "jack it up."  Heney was common
and underbred and talked with a toothpick in his
mouth--but he was a man not without a certain
feeling.  He made no allusions that might
embarrass Adair, and ignored recent events.  His
consideration was increased perhaps by the opportunity
thus given him of getting Adair for *The Danites*.
He had been hoping to revivify it with the trained
dogs, but here was a man who could command
success, for Adair was a money-maker and the surest
"draw" in the business.  Terms were quickly
settled.  A hundred a week, and a forty weeks'
contract, with the usual notice on both sides.  It could
be typed and signed later on; meanwhile here was
a spare carbon of the play to look over; and
rehearsals would begin as soon as the dogs had
finished their vaudeville dates at One Hundred
Twenty-fifth Street and Brooklyn.

Adair left the office feeling as though he had
sold himself to the devil.  An old nickname of his
recurred to him as he walked slowly homeward:
"The Four-bit Mansfield."  He kept repeating it
on the way, "The Four-bit Mansfield, The Four-bit
Mansfield!"  Yes, that was what he was; that was
as near as he would ever get to the real thing;
before he hadn't cared, but now it was gall and
wormwood to him.  Yet it was as "The Four-bit
Mansfield" that he had won Phyllis.  It would not
do to forget that.  Winning Phyllis had been the
most wonderful event in his life, little though he
had appreciated it at the time.  Looking back at
it all he was astounded at his own blindness;
astounded and frightened, too, to recall how easily
the affair might have had a different ending.  Love
was a queer business; he hadn't really cared very
much for her at first; he had simply taken her
because she was so bewitchingly pretty--and with
such innocence had offered herself; and yet, bit by
bit, it had grown to this, grown into something
that was the only thing in life.  He could readily
conceive himself dying for Phyllis if it meant
saving her or protecting her, and that with no tom-fool
fuss either, or theatrics.

A fellow couldn't hope to carry away all the
prizes, and he'd rather be a "Four-bit Mansfield"
with Phyllis than the biggest kind of a star without
her.  What a gay, gentle, insinuating, clever little
wretch she was!  He could come home in the
damnedest humor--it hurt him to think how often
he had--so cranky and impatient and cross that
any other woman in the world would have flounced
into a fury--and little by little she would coax
him and pet him and smooth him down till instead
of flinging plates at each other, as most people would
have done, by George, she'd be sitting on his knee,
and he'd be smiling down at her, a thousand times
more in love than ever, with such a pang of
self-reproach, and such a new understanding of her
sweetness and tenderness that his heart would swell
till he could hardly speak.

.. vspace:: 2

When Adair left his house that afternoon to
call on Heney, he noticed a large, luxurious
limousine snailing along Fifty-eighth Street as though
the chauffeur was searching for a number; and he
wondered what so fine a car could be doing in such
a mean neighborhood.  Had he seen it stop in front
of his own door he would have been more surprised
still, for that was what it did, to the extreme
gratification of the youngsters playing about the
sidewalk.  A gentleman alighted, rang the bell
marked "Adair," pushed open the door when it
began to emit mysterious clicks of welcome, and
toiled up those interminable stairs till he found
Phyllis awaiting him at the entrance of her little
apartment.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "I'm looking for
Mr. Adair?"

Phyllis saw before her a thin, dark, exceedingly
well-dressed man of about forty, with an aquiline
nose, a pale handsome face, and an air of noticeable
distinction and importance.

"I'm sorry, but he has just gone out," she
answered.  "I am Mrs. Adair--will you not come in?"

He followed her into the sitting-room with a
manner of such ease and good-breeding that Phyllis
was suddenly transported back to her former
existence, and tingled with a pleasurable curiosity.

"Perhaps I can do instead," she said, smiling,
and offering the stranger a chair.

"Not only as well--but better," he returned.
"If I had not heard about you I should not be
here at all."  He kept staring at her in a keen,
questioning way with something of the penetration,
and the appearance of inner mental working of
some great specialist studying a patient.  Though
continuing to look at her, Phyllis could feel that
those brilliant eyes had left nothing in the room
unnoticed, and she realized with a twinge how
pinched and shabby it all must seem to him.

"I am Rolls Reece, the dramatist," he observed
at last.  "It may be that you've never heard of
me, though I hope you have--for it will facilitate
matters."

Of course that name was familiar to Phyllis.
Rolls Reece was the author of more successful plays
than any man in America.  He was the founder
of a school--his own school--and to take a
foreign word for which we have, no equivalent
he was essentially a *féministe*.  In representing
nice women on the stage, women of refinement and
position, he had a field in which he stood
paramount.  Not that he confined himself wholly to
plays of this type, however.  He was an indefatigable
worker; with an ambition that balked at
nothing; he was always reaching out, always trying
experiments; a piece of his, *Money, the King*, had
been strength and brutality personified.--That it
was Rolls Reece who was before her filled Phyllis
with a sudden and gratified astonishment.

"Certainly I know your name," she said.
"Who is there that doesn't!"

He waved the compliment from him with a
gesture of his hand--a hand as fine and small as a
woman's.  One invariably associated Rolls Reece
with those fine, small hands, which, when he grew
excited, gripped themselves on his chair with the
tenacity of a sailor's in the rigging of a ship.  It
showed the importance he attached to this interview
that he was already beginning to clench the
furniture.

"My dear lady," he went on, "I have to be
frank with you--and being frank, especially in
regard to an absent husband, is neither easy nor
agreeable.  Perhaps I had better give you the sugar
on the pill first; and that is I have outlined a play
that I should like to write with the idea of
Mr. Adair creating the central figure.  If I could
write it with him in mind, I am presumptuous
enough to think I could make a big thing of it.--He
could do it, of course--do it magnificently.
This talk does not turn on his talent, his ability,
which is immense.  No, no, these are not
compliments.  Years ago when I was a nobody on the
*Advertiser*, doing theatrical criticism with a
recklessness and off-handedness that now makes my
gooseflesh quiver to look back on--just a
know-it-all young ass--I remember the profound
impression Mr. Adair's work used to make upon me.
I have often seen him since, going out of my way
to do so--one has had to, you know--and that
original conviction of his power has steadily grown
with me."

He stopped, giving her that curious look of
his, so grave, and yet with what might be called a
smile in suspension.

It swiftly lit up his face as Phyllis remarked:
"Now for the pill?"

"Yes, the pill," faltered Rolls Reece, gripping
the arms of his chair, and appearing acutely
uncomfortable.  "Ahem, the pill is--I suppose it
isn't grammatical to say are--well, in fact, some
of Mr. Adair's characteristics that those who
admire him most, must deprecate and
deplore--characteristics that have unhappily hampered, or
rather so far have ruined his career.  Please,
please, Mrs. Adair, do not stop me!  This is not
a question of personalities at all.  Regard me
simply as a contractor, looking for a first-class
workman--Bill, we'll call him; and it having
reached me in a round-about way that Bill has
married and pulled up, I've dropped in on
Mrs. Bill to make sure."

"Are you not afraid Mrs. Bill may be prejudiced
in her husband's favor?"

"My dear lady, it is remarkable to find any one
prejudiced in Bill's favor!  That it should be his
wife is all the better."

"Better for what?"

"I've told you I want to write that play for him."

At this Phyllis' rising ill-will died away.  There
was too much of the little Frenchwoman in her
for her not to become diplomatic and cool when her
husband's interests were at stake.  Instead of
making a hot rejoinder, she replied, with a
frankness not at all easy under the circumstances: "I
understand perfectly what you mean, Mr. Reece.
It is true he has spoiled everything, and has an
awful lot to live down.  I ought to be grateful to
you as the first person--the first important
person--who has realized that he has changed.
But how am I to convince you of it?"

"By speaking just as you do."

"Oh, I can hardly hope that a wife's word will
count for much.  Yet, Mr. Reece, it is absolutely
true."

"It is not his past that bothers me," went on
Rolls Reece.  "Everybody has a past, and I was
a theatrical critic once myself--but what I want
to be assured of is that he won't begin a new
one.  Really, Mrs. Adair, if I put him in a big
Broadway production can I be guaranteed that he
will--behave?"

"Yes."

"And neither drink, nor quarrel with anybody,
nor punch anybody's head--(including mine)--or
calmly leave us in the lurch because he doesn't
like the pattern, say, of the dressing-room carpet?"

"Wait and talk with him yourself.--All that
folly is over and done with."

"The longer I live," observed Rolls Reece, "the
more I appreciate that women are the power behind
the throne.  Every man, in a queer, subtle sort
of way, reflects some woman.  I came here to see
whom Adair was reflecting, and if I hadn't been
satisfied I shouldn't have stayed.  My interest
is selfish, of course.  My unwritten play to me
is much more important than Mr. Adair;
otherwise--to me, I mean--his peculiarities of
character would be of supreme unimportance.--May
I say he reflects an unusually charming and
delightful one?"

Phyllis smiled.

"I hope that means it is all settled?" she asked.

"If you'll go bond for him--yes."

She clapped her hands.  "Oh, I'm so glad," she
cried.  "Oh, Mr. Reece, I can not tell you how
poor we are, how desperate.  It has been such a
heart-breaking struggle, and we had almost reached
the giving-up place.--But tell me, you say the play
is not written yet?"

"Oh, no, we're talking of an October opening."

October!  They were then in early April.  The
joy, the elation died under that crushing blow.
What was to become of them during the intervening
months?  Phyllis could scarcely speak, the
disappointment was so keen.  "It will be very hard
for us to wait," she said at last.  "Mr. Adair has
to go back to the cheap theaters, and from what he
said I am afraid he will have to sign a long
contract."

Under any other circumstances Rolls Reece
would have laughed.  Adair, that disreputable
genius, as a scrupulous respecter of contracts,
foregoing the star part in a New York production at the
dictates of honor and conscience was sublimely
incredible.  But nevertheless Phyllis' own
sincerity impressed him.  Her beauty was of a fine,
sensitive, aristocratic type, the kind that the
dramatist, of all men, would recognize and appreciate the
most.  The proud yet touching air, the exquisite
girlishness, the arch, appealing, pretty manners--all
disturbed him with a feeling that verged on
jealousy.  No doubt Adair had altered.  To be
believed in by such a woman surely counted for
something; to be put on a pedestal by her was to stay
there, of course; it was impossible to conceive
anything low or underhanded being confided to one
who struck him as the embodiment of candor.
The surprise was how Adair had ever got her.

"I have thought of all that," he said, referring
to her last remark.  "If Mr. Adair will be satisfied
with modest rôles, and will consent to go on the
road, I can contrive to keep him busy the whole
summer."  In the mouth of any other man, what
he added would have sounded intolerably
conceited; but he had been successful too long, and had
grown too used to it, for the sentence to be
anything but matter-of-fact.  "I have eight companies
out, you know, and whether my managers like it or
not, they'll have to find room for your husband."

His tone was so considerate, so kind, and his
eyes gave such a sense of dawning friendship that
Phyllis' reserve melted.  She spoke eagerly, with
a little tremor of emotion, and a delicious
consciousness of sympathy and responsiveness.  "I
want to tell you about him," she said.  "I couldn't
do it before when it seemed in doubt whether you'd
risk your play with him or not.  It would have
seemed, oh, as though I were trying to plead with
you, and debasing myself and him to win you over.
But now that it is settled I am not ashamed--no,
Mr. Reece, I am proud to make you realize how
you have misjudged him."

With this as a beginning she told him of their
coming to New York; of their struggles and
privations; of Adair's unshaken, unwavering devotion
during those bitter days.  With poverty love had
not flown out of the window; no, it had drawn them
closer together than ever before.  She might never
have known otherwise the depth of the noblest and
tenderest heart that ever beat; he had never
complained, never railed--had borne himself
throughout with a sort of silent fortitude, and oh,
all this with such an effort to be cheerful,
to make light of things that were grinding
them to pieces.  She told him of her father's
offer, of Adair's passionate rejection of it at
a moment when he was next to starving; of
the fight with Kid Kelly, and the hundred dollars
he had earned at such a cost.  Through her mist
of tears she saw that Rolls Reece was not unmoved;
his eyes, too, were moist; once he took her hand,
and pressed it to his lips, with something about
their being friends--always friends.  Throughout
he had perceived the other side of the story, the
side she had not dwelt on, and indeed was scarcely
aware of--her own intrepid part in that comradeship,
her own sustaining courage and love.  The
picture she drew of Adair conjured up for the
dramatist another even more touching; and old
bachelor that he was, and pessimist of pessimists
on the marriage question he momentarily turned
traitor to all his convictions.

When she stopped, with a sudden shame at
having unbosomed herself to a stranger, and in a
confusion that was all the prettier for the blush that
accompanied it, and the air at once so deprecating
and scared as though she were disgraced for ever--Rolls
Reece hastened to save her from the ensuing
embarrassment.

"You mustn't regret having taken me into your
confidence," he said.  "I'm just an old
sentimentalist, and belong more than anybody to that
world that loves a lover.  It is worth all those
stairs to hear anything so really affecting and
beautiful, and when I said I wanted to be friends,
I meant it."

"I'm afraid you're almost as impulsive as I am,
and as indiscreet."

"Oh, my dear lady, if it wasn't for indiscretion
what a dreary planet this would be to live
in.--Imagine the heartrending effect if everybody
thought before they spoke, and men were all wise,
and women were all prudent!  Why, what would
happen to dramatists?"

"You are nice," she said, giving him a candid,
smiling look in which there was a lurking roguishness;
"and I'm glad we're going to be friends; and
I'm not a bit sorry I gave you a peep into an awfully
hidden place--a girl's heart, you know--though,
of course, you mustn't expect to make a habit of it;
and I'm glad you're the great, famous, splendid
Rolls Reece, and are going to like me, and write
Cyril a wonderful play, and be our fairy uncle
for ever and ever; and some day, when you are
accused of plagiarism or something, and they put you
in jail, I'll come down to the prison and bring you
a loaf of bread with a file in it, or change clothes
with you in your cell, and then it will come home
to you how very lucky you were ever to know me,
and you will skip off to South America bursting
with gratitude."

"In the meanwhile I'm afraid the fairy uncle had
better bring his call to an end," remarked Rolls
Reece.  "It's less spectacular--though I can still
be grateful, mayn't I?  Indeed, I am so happy,
Mrs. Adair, for you have convinced me in more
ways than you are aware of that we have been
unjust to your husband, and that I may safely trust
the play to him."

"I can't help doubting whether you'll ever come
back?" she said, as they stood confronting each
other.  "It's a dream, and you are a dream-dramatist,
and I'll wake up from a nap, and will
find everything more miserable than before because
of it.--Some day you will know what this means
to us," she added poignantly.  "Some day when--when
it's long, long passed, and we can talk about
it like ordinary people.--You have to get a little
way off to be sorry for yourself, don't you?  I am
just beginning to see how unspeakably wretched
and forlorn we were, that poor boy and I, though
I should probably have never found it out if it
hadn't been for you."

"Well, that's over," said Rolls Reece comfortingly.
"If he'll work hard, and do his best, I'll
back Mr. Adair through thick and thin.  He has an
unquestionable talent; it will be a pleasure, an
inspiration to write for him; if he'll do his share, I'll
engage to do mine, and between us we'll keep at
it, play on play, till we land a winner.  Only--"
and here he paused, and raised a warning finger.

"He'll be as good as gold," said Phyllis, filling
in the interval.  "Don't let the fairy uncle worry
about that."

"And when may I see him?"

An appointment was forthwith made for the
same evening; and the dramatist shook hands, and
was about to go when Phyllis exclaimed again that
it was a dream, and that it simply couldn't, couldn't,
couldn't be true, and asked him laughingly to leave
his umbrella as something tangible to show Adair.
Rolls Reece caught at the notion, but instead of
anything as prosaic as an umbrella, slipped off a
superb ruby ring instead, and laid it on the table.

"There's the pledge of the fairy uncle's return,"
he said gaily, and hurried away before it could be
restored to him.

.. vspace:: 2

"Good Heavens, Phyllis," cried Adair, "what's
that thing?"

"A ring."

"But it's a ruby--why, it's valuable--where
on earth did it come from?"

"A fairy uncle left it."

"Left it?"--Adair stared at her astounded.

"Yes, I was afraid he wouldn't keep his promise
to come back, so he said I could hold it by way
of a pledge."

"But who is He?"

"Rolls Reece, I think his name is."

In an instant he was by her side, clutching at
her arm.

"Phyllis--my God--it wasn't really Rolls Reece?"

"Yes, Booful-love-darling, it just was, and I've
adopted him as our fairy uncle, and he has adopted
us, and he's coming back at nine this evening to talk
things over, and he wants to star you in a new play
of his, and listen, listen, Cyril, he believes in you,
and says you have an immense talent, and says he is
going to write you play after play, and, oh, my
darling, my darling, my darling--!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Rolls Reece returned and redeemed his
ring, and attested his sincerity in manifold
and delightful ways.  He did not mince
matters with Adair, however, and put it to
him straight, in a man-to-man talk that lasted
but twenty minutes yet in which everything
was said, accepted, and agreed on.  The actor,
dosed alternately with home-truths and praise,
emerged triumphantly from the ordeal.

He was told he had missed a magnificent career;
that it was only his own unmitigated folly he had to
thank for it; that the number of successful
dramatists who were willing to write plays for him was
reduced to precisely one--and that one was none
too sure of his, Adair's, reformation--though as
confident as ever, more than ever, of his genius.
That word, like charity, covered a multitude of sins,
if Rolls Reece could say that nothing else mattered.
Adair, in fact, let the whole case against him go by
default.

"I'm changed," he said simply.  "That's all
behind me, Reece.  The reason for it is in the other
room there--and I should think the sight of her is
worth all the denials and protestations I could
make."

"Yes, indeed, it is, Adair," said Rolls Reece.

"I suppose there are men who can get along by
themselves, and be decent," remarked Adair.  "But
I need girl-ballast in my little ship, and if I had had
it earlier I shouldn't have made such a confounded
ass of myself."

"Then we can count it as all arranged--and
I'm going to start at work on the play to-morrow."

"It may sound commonplace," said Adair, "but
apart from your play, and success, and all that--I'd
like to make her, well, you know--feel that she
hadn't drawn such an awful blank in the husband-raffle.
Oh, God, Reece, I've pulled her down to
this--look at this place I've made her live in, will
you?--And I shan't breathe a free breath till I
get her out of it."

"It is in your own hands, Adair."

"Perhaps you overestimate my--well, what I can do?"

"No, I don't, and I'm not alone in that either.
Fielman, Fordingham, Taylor, Niedringer--it's
common talk with all of them.  You can pull it off
if you want to."

"Oh, Lord, don't say that again, Reece.  If
anybody on this mortal earth ever wanted to, it's me."

"Not another word then.  You're satisfied and
so am I; and if you should ever feel discouraged,
remember there are only about thirteen men in
America who can act, and you are one of them, and
not the last, either.  Let's call in that charming
wife of yours, and see if she doesn't agree with me."

.. vspace:: 2

Rolls Reece secured a six weeks' engagement for
Adair in a play of his called *The Upstarts*, that
was touring Washington, Baltimore, Syracuse,
Cincinnati, and what are called the near-by cities.  The
hundred and fifty dollars a week seemed a veritable
fortune, though it was judged wiser to husband it
by letting Phyllis remain in New York, and thus
save the heavy traveling expenses that would
otherwise have been incurred for her.  The dormice
had learned the value of money with a vengeance.
Adair himself, once the most careless of spenders,
now showed an economy that was laughable and
pathetic.  He foreswore cigars; lived in the
cheapest of cheap boarding-houses; grudged every penny
that could be saved.  There was to be no more
shingle for dormice, but a warm little nest lined
with green bills, from which, in hard times, they
could put out their little noses unafraid.

Rolls Reece expected to secure him another
engagement with a western company to fill in the
summer months; and with such an agent enlisted in
his service the most spendthrift of actors needed
to have taken no thought for the future.  But
Adair, who never did anything by halves, was
cautious to the point of penury.  He was determined
Phyllis should never suffer such privations again,
and those who called him miserly and mean little
suspected the reasons that made him appear so.
Phyllis herself was kept in the dark lest she should
emulate his example; and the savings-bank account
rose and rose without her having the least knowledge
of it.  The equivalent of cabs, good dinners,
cigars, wine, expensive rooms, and Pullman berths
stacked themselves in that yellow pass-book, and
bore witness to a stoical self-denial.  No more
shingles for dormice, thank you!

.. vspace:: 2

In spite of the separation Phyllis was not
unhappy during those long, silent days.  Spring was
in the air, and her heart, too, basked in that inner
sunshine of contentment and hope.  Like a weary
little soldier she was glad to rest on the battlefield
beside the parked cannon, and enjoy the contemplation
of victory.  Body and soul had been sorely
tried; the reaction left both in a sweet languor; it
was pleasant to do nothing; to lie back dreaming.

Rolls Reece came often to see her, and many a
day they spent in his big motor racing over the
snowy landscape of Long Island or Westchester
County.  He sent her flowers; he was assiduous in
the little attentions women like; he was always so
cheerful, so helpful, so kind.  For him it was an
intimacy that might have had a dangerous ending.
He was perilously near falling desperately in love
with Phyllis, and the latter never showed more
address than in the way she guided him past the rock
on which their friendship might have foundered.
She was quite frank about it--disarmingly frank.
She liked him too well to lose him, and told him so,
and was prettily imperious with him, and yet never
provocative nor coquettish.  A man and woman
friendship is nothing without sentiment, but it has
to be a loyal, tender sentiment, that can cause neither
the least self-reproach.  Rolls Reece slipped by the
rock unhurt, admiring as he did so the adroitness
of the young beauty whom he knew had grown so
fond of him.  As to that there was never any
question--it was self-confessed--and being a man he
was naturally flattered and pleased.

But he was high-bred, sensitive, clever, and
innately a gentleman, with an unusual perception, and
a taste for the rarer and finer qualities of women.
Others in his place might have persevered harder,
and then turned sullen.  He did neither.  Indeed,
Phyllis' whole love-story, as it came out by
degrees, touched him profoundly.  Her audacity, her
daring, her blind reckless headlong surrender to the
man that had captivated her--all these to him were
more than moving.  A woman that could stake
everything for love was altogether to Rolls Reece's
taste.  And Phyllis had not only staked everything,
but had succeeded in the more difficult task of
making love endure and grow.  There were many
subjects on which she knew nothing; she could not
have told the name of the vice-president, and she
thought the Balkans were in South America, but
when it came to love the dramatist was amazed at
her profundity.  On this topic, however, the one
topic that seriously interested her, she had an
insight and a knowledge, not to speak of a whole
whimsical vocabulary that made Reece appreciate
his own shortcomings.  Love, passion, sex--these
were the real things of life and that demure brown
head was insatiably concerned with them.

Of course, the new play, too, came in for an
endless amount of talk and discussion.  It was to be
called *The Firebrand*, and every few days Rolls
Reece had a little sheaf of manuscript to read to her.
It dealt with a young man, who, in the whirl of
politics, had secured the place of a police-court
magistrate in a low quarter of Chicago.  The suffering,
misery and injustice thus passing in review before
him, first startles and then rouses a nature
passionately sympathetic and humane.  His decisions are
original, picturesque, and conventions are torn to
pieces.  He clashes with the boss who has put him
into office, and defies him.  The young judge makes
enemies right and left; alienates the family of the
girl he is engaged to; is sold up at auction through
liabilities assumed on behalf of a children's society
he has started.

The boss leads in the machinations to ruin him,
which is made the easier by the firebrand's own
hot-headedness and indiscretion; the third act is in an
assignation house where the judge is trapped.  He
explains his innocence to his triumphant tormentors;
he tells of the half-grown girl he has trailed there,
and appeals, with a fine outburst, to their humanity
to help him save her; the boss refuses, and taunts
him with the scandal that next day will shake
Chicago.  Then the judge plays his trump card, and
tells them what he had been trying to hold back,
that the girl is no other than the boss' own daughter;
and smashing open a door discloses her and the
satyr, who has brought her there.  This, in brief,
was the play, shorn of all its externals--an
intense, powerful, essentially modern play, brutally
real, and yet animated by a burning purpose, and
a resentment no less fiery against the diabolical
misgovernment of our large cities.

Rolls Reece labeled it "dangerous goods," which
in truth it was, and was correspondingly uplifted.
He said he was tired of writing sugar-candy plays,
and wished to show his detractors that he could
grapple with big emotions as well as the lesser,
pink-tea femininities with which his name was
always associated.  "And remember, Mrs. Adair,"
he explained, "I don't want a goody-goody young
man with a benevolent forehead and a spotless past,
and a Y.M.C.A. accent--but an impatient,
chip-on-his-shoulder, impulsive fellow, who would like
to get off the bench and fight somebody.  It's a
Cyril Adair play, and I am going to fit him as
carefully as a Fifth Avenue tailor.  And on the
police-court judge side of it, I am going to show the public
the colossal power those men have for good or evil.
They can blight more human lives in one morning
than the whole Supreme Court could do in ten years.
In their dingy little field they are absolute monarchs,
from which there is no appeal.  We owe thousands
of criminals to their crass stupidity, and when they
work in collusion with corrupt politicians they are
a scourge and a terror to every decent man or
woman in their midst."

.. vspace:: 2

The dramatist had referred several times to a
friend of his, Andrew Hexham, whom he particularly
wished Phyllis and Adair to meet.  Ordinarily
so frank he was somewhat hazy and mysterious
in his references to this personage, who
apparently was a man of large fortune, and of
considerable importance in theatrical affairs.  Once
Reece dropped his play, and went off for three
days--an extraordinary lapse from his habit of
persistent industry--and on his return mentioned he
had been, staying with Hexham, smiling in a queer,
guilty kind of way that tantalized Phyllis' curiosity.
But nothing could be got out of him--at least
nothing that could explain his singular
entertainment whenever Hexham's name came up.  It
seemed, however, that this man had to be won over;
that *The Firebrand* was in some dim manner
dependent on his good will; that he was a fussy,
troublesome, dictatorial person, not a little
prejudiced against Adair.  This had to be overcome at a
meeting; and Phyllis, especially, was commanded to
go out of her way to be "nice to him"--"You're
such an irresistible little baggage when you choose,"
said Rolls Reece.  "I want you to tie him up in
bow-knots, just as you tied me, to dazzle him, and
then we'll sign the contract right there before he
can undazzle himself."

"I'm not much good at fascinating people unless
I like them," returned Phyllis ingenuously and
doubtfully.

"Oh, you'll like him," protested Reece.  "I'll
answer for that, you know."

"Well, I'll do my best," said Phyllis, wondering
to herself what it all meant.  "I'll sit very close,
and make dachshund eyes at him, and encourage
him to talk about himself.  That's the secret of
woman's charm when you analyze it.  See how it
caught you!"

.. vspace:: 2

It was too bad, though, that Rolls Reece should
have chosen the Sunday that Adair ran over from
Philadelphia, where *The Upstarts* was booked for
a week.  The pair had been separated for nearly
four weeks, and Phyllis wanted her husband all to
herself.  Rolls Reece, Andrew Hexham, even *The
Firebrand* itself, were very secondary things when
weighed against the rapture of Adair's return.
She pleaded with Rolls Reece to postpone the
meeting until Monday afternoon, but the dramatist
with unexpected obstinacy stood out for Sunday
evening.  Hints were lost on him, and even some
pink-cheeked, shy, half-murmured things merely
made him laugh instead of relenting.--Sunday
night it had to be.

But to do him justice, the dramatist tempered
severity with his usual generosity.  He sent a
prodigal amount of flowers, as well as a case of
champagne, and would have contributed his colored butler
had he been allowed--which he wasn't.  Phyllis
said that the Pest Person (as all that day she hotly
called Mr. Hexham)--the Pest Person had to take
them as they were, and if there was one thing worse
than a hired butler, it was a borrowed one.  If the
Pest Person didn't like the way he was treated--if
he were the sort of Pest Person who judged people
by striped nigger-trousers and gilt chandeliers,
why, he could just go to the devil.--Which went to
show, incidentally, how good that four weeks' rest
had been for Phyllis, and how fast she was getting
back her former spirit.

.. vspace:: 2

At nine that evening Adair and Phyllis were
both waiting for their visitors.  True to her
promise to Rolls Reece the latter had dressed
herself with unusual care; and Adair, who was allowed
to see but not touch, swore she had never looked
more ravishing.  Her fresh young womanhood
entranced him; she was so slender, so graceful, so
girlish, and the red rose in her hair was not more
exquisite.  What a beauty she was!  How altogether
perfect from the top of her dark head to her
trim little feet!--And the saucy mouth that was
always ready to part on the dazzling teeth; the
low, sweet, eager voice; the bubbling, caressing
laugh--after four weeks of loneliness, of dismal,
dreary separation, it was as though he had never
really appreciated them before; and it was
intolerable to be stuck to a chair and forbidden to move
when everything in him bade him seize her in his
arms, and assert his master's right.

Worst still, Rolls Reece and the Pest Person
were late.  The minutes ticked away--five past,
ten past, a quarter past, twenty past--and yet there
was neither dramatist nor Pest.--Ah, there they
were at last!  Phyllis ran to admit them, fumbling
at the latch of the door in her excitement.  She
opened it on the dimly-lighted landing, and held
out both hands in welcome to Rolls Reece, who
stood before her.  His friend was hidden in the
shadow, but as she glanced towards him recognition
suddenly pierced her heart.  It was her father!

All he said was her name, and that so humbly,
and with an intonation so affecting that she flung
her arms about him in a paroxysm of tenderness,
unmindful of everything save the love that suddenly
flooded her whole being.  Misunderstanding,
self-justification, the rights or wrongs of their unhappy
estrangement--all were forgotten, all were swept
away.  Clinging to him she guided him along the
passageway and into the sitting-room, where Adair,
bewildered and astonished, was waiting to receive
them.  Even in the throes of that tumultuous
moment Phyllis, trying to see with her father's eyes,
took in Adair with a welling pride.  Never had he
appeared to her more manly, more distinguished
or noble; and when she said: "My husband,
Daddy," it was with a little air that told of her
own content with the man of her choice.

"I am here in the character of a repentant father,
with ashes on his head," said Mr. Ladd; and going
up to Adair, held out his hand.  "Will you not
forgive me?" he asked, "and may we not be
friends?"

Rolls Reece had looked forward to being present
at this evening of reconciliation; of being patted on
the back for the big part he had taken in it; of
drinking his own champagne amid the ensuing
festivity and joy.  But as he saw the two men's hands
meet and grasp; as he saw Phyllis press between
them, her eyes suffusing, and sobs choking her
utterance, he realized that he was gazing at a scene
too sacred for him to share.  He silently effaced
himself, shut the door without noise, and tiptoed
down the stairs.

"It's a good world," he murmured to himself,
"yes, a damned good world; and in spite of what
people say, things often work out right."

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.. class:: center

   THE END

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