Infatuation
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