Infatuation
decent woman. His counterfeit love had been lavished on counterfeit
innocence: and counterfeit purity. Fooling, he had always been fooled.
But this proud and melting young beauty lay outside of all his
experience. Had she defended herself he would have known better how to
attack. But she made no demur when he took her hand and kissed it; she
did not resist, when, after looking up and down the street to see if
they had it to themselves, he caught her boldly in his arms, and crushed
her against himself, murmuring a torrent of words that came so readily
to his practised lips. How radiantly she smiled when he tore off a tiny
corner of her letter, and told her she had to eat it as a punishment.
Her saucy obedience put him in a seventh heaven, and it was with a sort
of ecstasy that he snatched it from her, fearful lest it might do her
harm. That letter, in one sense, had been disposed of almost as soon as
they had met. She had tried, for a moment or two, to adhere to it, and
to make him see the necessity of that good-by. But under the glamour of
his presence she faltered and broke down, and all that was left of the
matter was her incoherent plea for forgiveness. What tenderness she put
into this request! There never could be a good-by between them--never,
never--and her eyes swam with tears at her disloyalty to him.
Both felt an uplifting gaiety and light-heartedness, as she said, in
extenuation of her happy laughter, that they were like people who had
grown rich overnight, for had they not discovered an enormous nugget--a
nugget of love? It had been lying there for any to find, but they had
been the lucky ones! They had a right to be excited, hadn't they? The
only really serious thing was the fact that they might have missed it.
They might have stubbed against it, and passed on--like idiots. She
developed this fantasy with captivating grace and archness, Adair
meanwhile lost in admiration, not only of the delicate fancy that kept
him smiling, but of her varying expressions so revealing of unexpected
charm. She grew prettier and prettier to him--more kissable, more
adorable. He kept forgetting his ulterior purpose in the rapture of
being with her; he forgot his conceit, forgot his role; he was
perilously near being in love. Perhaps he was in love. At any rate,
when he recollected to take advantage of this unconcealed regard for
him--of all this young ardor and innocent passion--the words somehow
would not leave his tongue.
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