Part 6

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.

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 matinee—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 matinees 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 matinees 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 matinee 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.

CHAPTER IX

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.

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.

CHAPTER X

"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."