Infatuation
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