Infatuation
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."
*CHAPTER XI*
There are men who pursue women with a skill, zest and pertinacity that
others do bears or tigers, and with very much the same hardihood and
delight. In the rich preserves of the world, so well stocked with youth
and beauty, they find an unending enjoyment, and an unending occupation.
No sooner have they brought down one, and beheld her bleeding and
stricken at their feet, than they are up and off, with another notch on
their gun, and fresh ardor in their hearts. They are debarred from
taking the tangible trophies of skin and head; a slipper, a glove, a
bundle of letters are often all they have to show; but within them wells
the satisfaction of the hunter who has made a "kill."
Amongst this race of sportsmen there were few hardier or more daring
than Cyril Adair. That the game was cruel or cowardly had never
occurred to him. The women he knew--all of the lower class--frequently
played their side of it with eyes wide open, and ran--not to escape--but
with the full intention of being caught. This is not urged in his
extenuation. Often he was not aware of the subterfuge. Women to him
were but prey, and in more venerable times he would have waylaid any
lady he favored, with a club.
Behold him in immaculate afternoon costume, striding along Chestnut
Avenue--boutonniere, silk-hat, cane, new suede gloves, etc.--a devil of
a fellow in his own estimation, with an air and a swagger that reflected
his profound contentment with himself. He had never gone a-hunting
before in such a splendid wood. The thought that he was actually going
to invade one of those imposing mansions made his pulses leap. How big
they were, how aristocratic! What incomes they represented! What
mysteries of ease and luxury lay hidden behind those stately windows!
He was tremendously stirred; tremendously excited. He swelled with
self-complacency. He was hardly over thirty, he was handsome, he was a
genius--and the women loved him!
A man-servant admitted him. Yes, Miss Ladd was expecting him. His hat
and cane were taken, while he gazed, somewhat daunted, at the immense
hall in which he found himself. He had a confused sense of tapestries;
of stone bas-reliefs very worn and old; of oriental rugs; of
strange-looking, moldy chairs, straight-backed and carved, with massive
arms, on which there was still the fading gilt of the fifteenth
century.--He was led through another room of a similar cold and spacious
magnificence, and then up-stairs to the drawing-room. Here he was left,
while the man departed to inform his mistress of the visitor's arrival.
The elegance and beauty with which Adair found himself surrounded fairly
took his breath away. His only standard was that of fashionable hotels,
yet here was something that made the splendors of the Waldorf or the
Auditorium seem suddenly tawdry in comparison. His instinctive good
taste was ravished by the old Venetian brocades, the rich dark pictures,
the Sheriton furniture, the harmonious blending of all these, and so
many other half-seen and half-comprehended things into a gracious and
exquisite whole. Near him was the table set out for tea, with silver
that it was a joy to look at; and about the little island it made in the
vastness of the room was a wealth of red roses, marking as it were the
boundaries of coziness and intimacy.
Adair's complacency was not proof against such aristocratic and
undreamed of surroundings. His exultation fell, and pangs of self-pity
assailed him. What was he but a child of the gutter, an outcast--a man
full of yearning for the unattainable, who had been starved and kept
down by merciless circumstances? Such swift transitions were not
unusual in his peculiar and contradictory nature. After all, he was an
artist, even if often a brute and a fool, and somewhere within him, very
much overlaid and shrouded, there was a spark of the divine fire. Yes,
he said to himself, he was coarse and common, and ignorant and