Part 4

"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!"

CHAPTER VI

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 naive 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!"

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 debutantes 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.

"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—matinee 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—!"

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, Correze, 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 Correze 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 Correze 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.

The box applauded wildly, and led off the whole house. The curtain was made to rise again and again. Correze, 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.

CHAPTER VII

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.