Chapter IV: Part 4

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_!

*CHAPTER XIII*

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!

*CHAPTER XIV*

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."

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 Correze!

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."

* * * * *

"Good-night, Miss!"

*CHAPTER XV*

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.

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.