Infatuation
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.
"My dear," said Mr. Ladd, with an uncertain smile, "I am thinking of
sending you on a visit to your Aunt Sarah's. It will be better for both
of us to stay apart for a time, and see matters with a little more
calmness and--consideration for each other. There's no sense in being
over-hasty, and making momentous resolutions in this twinkling-of-an-eye
sort of way. There's lots of time--oceans of time. You may change, I
may change--for I don't set up to be inflexible, and neither do you.
Yes, you'll go to your Aunt Sarah's, and then to Paris with her if you
like, or Monte Carlo. I guess I can fix it up to the nines, even to a
look-in at Paquin's, and one of those expensive strolls down the Rue de
La Paix. Go ahead--why not?"
"I'd rather stay here, Papa."
"Phyllis, this is a request--a favor to me. I want you to."
"When?"
"Why not the noon train? I've taken a drawing-room for you, and a berth
for your maid--and Sarah's expecting you."
"You told her?"
He made no attempt to avoid the implication of her eyes.
"No," he replied. "No, I don't believe in roaring out your troubles
over the long distance 'phone. It was enough to call it an impulse.
With you, my dear, that is always a sufficient reason."--They both
laughed, and Mr. Ladd's anxious cordiality redoubled at so favorable a
symptom. "If it's the real thing, Phyllis, time won't hurt it."
"It is the real thing, Papa."
"But you will go?"
"No."
"Phyllis, I insist."
"I'm sorry, but it's impossible."
"You have to. You must."
"I won't!"
It is the terrible part of stereotyped situations that people will make
use of the stereotyped expressions that go with them. Mr. Ladd was the
kindest and most devoted father on earth, yet the venerable formula rose
to his lips: "You defy me under my own roof?"
It of course forced out the stereotyped reply: "I can leave it."
Mr. Ladd, in silence, looked at her long and steadily; then he bent his
head. She saw nothing but the iron-gray hair; the stooping, dejected
shoulders; the hand, lying as limp as dead, on the damask cloth.
"Papa?"
No answer.
"Papa?"
She ran to his side, all revolt gone, her only thought to comfort him.
Her bare arms entwined themselves about his neck in a paroxysm of
remorse; her bosom swelled; her voice was incoherent as she lavished her
young tenderness upon him. It was a moment that would decide her life.
Had her father left the initiative to her, had he been content to accept
mutely these tokens of her surrender--he would have won, then and there,
and nothing again would ever have come between them. But with blind
stupidity he had to persevere with the intention their clash had
interrupted.
"I will tell you my real reason for wanting you to get away," he said.
"It wasn't what you thought at all--it was to spare you unnecessary
pain. Last night I sent Reynolds, our best secret-service man, to New
York with _carte blanche_ to confer with the Pinkertons and ransack this
fellow's record from top to bottom. From what Reynolds told me he
already knew--I mean what's said down-town, I believe it will be a black
one, so black that there won't be any question about your giving him
up--just on the facts brought out--facts that can not be disproved or
contested. Reynolds--"
"But, Papa, I don't understand. You are setting detectives to go back
over his life, like a criminal? _Detectives?_"
"Yes."
"But how dishonorable, how infamous!"
"Oh, it's done every day; it's common, my dear; if the man's straight it
can't hurt him--but if he has anything to hide, why, we turn on the
search-light, and find out what's wrong.--It's all done secretly; he
won't know; don't worry about that.--I expect a full report in a few
days, and would rather not have you here when I get it."
"And do you think that's fair or right, or anything but--fiendish?"
"How do you know he isn't married, Phyllis?"--he shot this at her
mercilessly. "How do you know anything except what he's told you? You
may be willing to believe him, and all that--but I'm your father, and I
want to _know_, and by God, I'm going to know!"
"Papa, don't!"
"Aha, you're not very confident, are you?"
"He's a man. I don't doubt he's been foolish, and bad, and fast, but to
see it written down cold-bloodedly on sheets of paper is more than I can
bear. I am willing to ignore that; I am willing to take him as he is
_now_. Oh, Papa, a woman can forgive so much."
"Yes, my dear, and a great deal that a father never could."
"I beg you, Papa, I implore you to telegraph to them to stop."
"It's too late--besides it has to be done; I insist on it; I'm going to
strip that man's past to the bone."
"Even if it costs you me? Even if this is the end of everything between
us?"
"Fiddle-de-dee, these theatrics are unworthy of you! You're going to
take the noon train to Sarah's, and behave yourself; and this business,
however disagreeable to both of us, has got to go through."