Infatuation
Her lips tightened mutinously. She was not a young woman who could be
driven.
"I'll stay here, or walk right out of your house--and you know where."
"Then stay," he cried, rising wrathfully, "and may God forgive you for
the misery you are bringing down on me. I'm only trying to do what's
best, and you treat me as though I was one of that fellow's cruel
parents on the stage! It's no time to mince matters, and I tell you
straight out, Phyllis, he's a blackguard and a scoundrel, and when you
see the Pinkertons' report, I guess you'll go down on your knees and beg
my pardon for your heartlessness and obstinacy."
He glared at her, expecting a retort that would add fresh fuel to his
anger, but she was silent, downcast, trembling. The answer she made was
to herself, inaudible save to her anguished soul: "Oh, that Saturday
night were here!"
*CHAPTER XVI*
The four days that followed were almost unendurable in the strain they
entailed. Phyllis was heavy with her secret; beset by emotions so
conflicting that they seemed to rend her to pieces; forlorn and desolate
under her father's studied coldness. The detectives' report did not
come, or was withheld perhaps,--but the apprehension of it was always
hanging horribly above her head. It was not the facts themselves she
feared most, though she dreaded them, too; it was to hear them
tauntingly on her father's lips; to be forced to stand, and listen, and
cringe at what the human ferrets had unearthed.--Anxious days; leaden
days; sad, introspective, interminable days, never to be recalled in
after life without a peculiar depression.
On Saturday, at the stroke of noon, she was in a telephone booth, with
shivers cascading down her back, and the eagerest heart in Carthage
thumping under her breast. In the time she took to get her number, she
had decided to go, not to go--then again to go, then again not to go.
It was awful, and she couldn't; it was awful, and she would!
"Hello, is that the St. Charles Hotel?"
"Yes, Chincholchell, whodyerwant?"
"Mr. Cyril Adair?"
"Hold the line."
He must have been waiting there for his voice answered immediately,
abrupt and deep: "Hello, is that you?"
"Yes,--you know who."
"Is it all right--you are coming?"
"If you want me to."
His only answer to that was a laugh that shook the wire. How manly and
confident it sounded in contrast to her own quavering whisper!
"Now, listen, you darling baby, and get this right. We're to pick up
the Alleghany local at ten minutes past midnight, and at half-past
eleven I'll have Tom Merguelis waiting for you in a cab, across the
Avenue on the southeastern corner. Can you manage to get out of the
house, do you think?"
"Oh, yes."
"No trunk, you know--just the few things you need, and the fewer the
better."
"I understand."
"Find Tom--that's all you have to do--and the rest is for him."
"Yes, Cyril."
"Say it as though you meant it! I'd rather have you back out now than
fail me at the last moment. That's an awful faint 'yes.'"
"Don't blame me if I'm scared--you'd be scared too, in my place."
"Well, how scared are you going to be at half-past eleven--that's the
real point of it?"
"Cyril, dearest?"
"Yes, my darling."
"I'm coming, I want to come, I'm crazy to come--and you mustn't think
for a single moment that I won't."
"That's the way to talk!"
"And you'll be good to me, won't you?"
"My precious!"
"And love me, oh, so well?"
"Yes, yes!"
"And I'll try to be the best little wife that ever made a man warm, and
comfortable, and happy--and I'm going to keep your heart-buttons sewed
on as well as the others--and darn your beautiful big soul with
girl-silk--and dress you every day in a lovely new suit of kisses, so
that people will turn round on the street, and ask who's your tailor!
And Cyril?"
"Yes, sweetheart?".
"I'm the happiest girl in the world, and the luckiest! And I'm not
scared a bit, and I'll be there at half-past eleven, and I love you, and
I'm going to run away with you; and I'm glad I'm going to run away with
you, and I'm twenty-one, and my own mistress, and as bold as brass, and
six policemen couldn't stop me, and I'm just a little slave panting for
her master, and I've gnawed the ropes through with my teeth, and no one
shall ever tie me up again, or keep me away from you, Amen!"
Again there was that manly, confident laugh.
"I think that little slave had better run home again and pretend to tie
up," he said. "It would spoil everything if your father got wind of
this--I know those rich old fellows--they can be a power for mischief
whether the law is on their side or not. Good-by, my darling, take care
of yourself, and look out for Tommy at eleven thirty. Good-by!"
"I hope we will never say that word to each other again," exclaimed
Phyllis. "It's a horrid word and I hate it. Good-by, Cyril, and don't
forget your little slave, counting the minutes at home!"
"Ta, ta, my lamb, I won't forget her. Couldn't if I would, ta, ta!"
There is no harder task than to fold one's hands and wait. Adair had
his matinee and his evening performance to engross his thoughts, and
allay to some degree his fever of anticipation. But Phyllis had no such
resource. Restless, nervous, on edge with suspense--fits of joy
alternating with craven terror--she wore out the longest afternoon of
her life, and an evening that was more trying still. Her father, to make
matters worse, attempted some advances; spoke to her with unexpected
kindness; hovered on the brink of another appeal. What a little Judas
she felt, sitting opposite him for perhaps the last time, and
maintaining a constraint that was, indeed, her armor, for if she
responded at all she knew she would never go that night. So she parried
and fenced, and kept the conversation impersonal at any hazard, while
his face grew steadily more overcast, and the lines of his forehead
deepened. She excused herself early, pleading fatigue, and relaxed her
attitude to kiss him tenderly good night.
"It'll all come right before long," she murmured softly. "Good night,
my darling daddy, and remember I love you whatever happens."
She was off before he could take advantage of a mood so melting. But he
felt much consoled, nevertheless.
"She's coming round," he said to himself. "I might have known she
would. That's the comfort of her being such a good girl, and so
intelligent!"
Up-stairs, the young lady thus complacently described was stripping off
her dinner gown, and wondering what dress she would replace it with.
She was the daintiest of soubrettes in her long dark-red silk stockings,
and Watch, her Russian poodle, gazed at her with an approving,
first-row-of-the-orchestra expression that made him look too wicked and
dissipated for anything. She gave him a gentle kick on the nose to
remind him that staring wasn't gentlemanly, and finally chose a blue
tailor-made by Redfern. When this was on, the rest of her preparations
were easy. She could not well take Watch, so she took his collar, and
this was the first to go into the little hand-bag. A nightgown
followed, a pair of stockings, tooth-brush, comb and brush,
tooth-powder, some handkerchiefs, the photographs of her father and
mother, still in their frames, and a pair of patent leather slippers
with gilt buckles. Surely no little bride of her importance and social
position had ever set forth with so slender a trousseau. There it all
was, dog-collar below, slippers on top, in a bag no bigger than an
exaggerated purse. She smiled a little tremulously as she looked at it,
touched as only a woman could be by the magnitude of her sacrifice. Her
clothes and her father--tears for both, thus equally abandoned, suffused
her eyes.
The next thing was a note of farewell, to be found the following morning
on her unused pillow. "I am going away with Mr. Adair," she wrote,
"taking my own life in my own hands for better or worse. Whether we are
to be friends--you and I--depends entirely upon yourself, although
alienation from you will be very hard for me to bear. Forgive me if you
can, and do not let your disappointment and chagrin embitter you against
me; or what would hurt me almost as much--against him. To-night when I
kissed you it was good-by, and if it is for ever it will be your own
fault, and very, very cruel, for I love you, dearest father, I love you.
Ever your devoted Phyllis."
By half-past nine everything was ready; and it was with a consuming
impatience that she went into her boudoir with Watch, and ensconsed
herself on the sofa to wait. A confidential Russian poodle can be of
great help to a young lady in distress. Watch's sympathy; Watch's
certainty of everything coming out right; Watch's implied determination
to soften the blow to Mr. Ladd; Watch's willingness to whine over the
general tragedy of things--all were whimsically comforting. Best of
all, he could listen for ever and ever with one ear cocked up, and never
lose for an instant his air of highly gratified interest. And what
didn't he hear during that hour and three quarters on the sofa! What
secrets of longing and tenderness, of girlish hopes, of girlish dreams,
of delicious falterings and trepidations--all breathed into that woolly
ear!
Then came the suffocating moment of departure--the quieting of an unruly
friend--the peeping from the door; the tip-toeing down the stairs; the
panicky stops to cower and listen; the stealthy passage of the great dim
hall; the groping for bolts and chains; the heavy door swinging heavily
back; the cold, dark, starry night beyond; the egress into it; the wild
sense of escape and freedom; the sound of gravel under the eager little
feet; the gate-way; the wide silent Avenue; the glimmering lights of the
cab at the farther corner; and--
"Yes, I'm Tom Merguelis, Miss. Jump in--everything is ready."
She discovered herself sitting beside a very tall, very thin young man,
who smiled down at her in a quizzical, friendly manner not unsuggestive
of the Cheshire Cat. That vague, deprecatory grin was as much a part of
Mr. Merguelis as his sandy hair, his retreating chin, and the whole
amiable vacancy of his expression. His youth had been passed before the
public as "assistant" to Professor Theophilus Blitz, the exhibiting
hypnotist, who was accustomed nightly to run pins into him; make him
drink kerosene under the impression it was beer; smack his lips over
furniture-polish; eat potato peelings for sausages; bark like a dog,
meow like a cat, make love to a bolster, and generally disport himself
to the astonishment and horror of clodhopper audiences. Six years of
this had left Tommy without a digestion, and that fixed and bewildered
grin, which to Phyllis, under the unusual circumstances of their
meeting, seemed to her not without a satiric quality.
But as they drove through the deserted streets she realized her mistake,
and corrected so unjust a first impression. The artless, gawky creature
idolized Adair, and was proud beyond measure to be serving him so
romantically. It gave him an extraordinary fellow-feeling for Phyllis
to have her also on her knees at the shrine of the demigod; and he
overflowed with a hero-worship so naive and sincere that she could not
help liking him--grin and all. Indeed, it seemed a happy augury for her
own future that Adair could excite so profound an admiration in those
about him. Mr. Merguelis seemed as infatuated as she, and saw nothing
strange in these midnight proceedings. There was approval in that
everlasting grin. Would she please call him Tommy? Mr. Adair called
him Tommy. They shook hands on it in the semi-darkness, and she knew she
had found a friend.
Phyllis expected that Cyril would be waiting for her at the station, and