Infatuation
little selves. The people who take charge of us seem to take charge too
hard. They mean well, but why should they stamp on us?--Yes, let's try
it ourselves."
And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became the acknowledged
mistress of the big house.
In her demure head she knew that to fail would be to incur a danger that
was almost too terrible to contemplate. Her father might be persuaded
into marrying again, and the thought of such a catastrophe sobered and
restrained her. She was on her mettle, and was determined to succeed.
She had her check-book, her desk, her receipted bills. She had her
morning interviews with the cook; sent curtains to the cleaners; rang up
various tradespeople on the telephone; gently criticized Mary's
window-cleaning, and George's nails, and busied herself with these, and
innumerable other little cares, while Miss Simpkins waited in the study,
restlessly drumming her long, lean fingers on a French grammar.
Of course, she did several foolish, impulsive things, but no more than
some little bride might have done in the first novelty of controlling a
large household. She gave a tramp one of her father's best suits of
clothes; she was prevailed upon by the servants to buy many things that
neither they nor anybody else could possibly need--including an
electrically driven knife-cleaner, and a cook's table, so compact and
ingenious, that it would have been priceless on an airship, though in
her own spacious kitchen it was decidedly out of place; and it took her
several months to discover that James was apparently feeding five
elephants instead of five horses.
But she was quick to learn better; and with the innate capacity she
inherited from her father, she soon had everything running on oiled
wheels. And all this, if you please, at fifteen, with quite a bit of
stocking between her dress and her trimly-shod feet.
It was seldom that her father ever ventured into the realm of criticism;
but once or twice, in his smiling, easy-going way, he gently pulled her
up.
"I don't know much about these things," he remarked once, "but don't
there seem to be a lot of new dresses in this family?"
"One can't go naked, Papa."
"Admitting that, my dear, which with people of our position would
certainly give rise to comment--couldn't we compromise on--well--going
_half_-naked, and perhaps show a more Spartan spirit, besides, in regard
to our hats?"
Phyllis' eyes filled with tears; and flushing with shame, she pressed
her hot cheek against the back of the chair she was sitting in, and felt
herself the most miserable, disgraced, unworthy little creature in the
whole world.
Mr. Ladd's voice deepened, as it always did when he was moved.
"My darling," he said, "don't feel badly about it, because it is only a
trifle. But it is not kind to your companions to dress better than they
do, and I am sure you do not wish them to feel envious or resentful. I
just ask you to bear it in mind, that's all, and be somewhat on your
guard."
"I will, Papa."
"Now come and kiss your daddy, and tell him you're not cross with him
for being such an old fuss-cat."
"Y-y-ou are n-not an old fu-u-uss-cat, but the dearest, darlingest,
bestest--"
"Do you think it's right to bite a railroad president's ear?"
"Yes, if you love him!"
"Or muss up the only hair he has, which isn't very much?"
"Yes, if it helps you to think."
"What's that--_thinking_?"
"Yes, Papa."
"It worries me, dearest, to have you doing anything as serious as that."
"Papa, it is serious. Listen!"
"I'm listening,"
"I've a wonderful idea--I'm going to give a party!"
"Splendid--hope you'll ask me!"
"And I'm going to invite Satty Morrison, and Julia Grant, and Hetty Van
Buren, and Maisie Smith, and the two Patterson girls, and perhaps Alicia
Stewart--and we are going to have ice-cream, and lady's-fingers, and
chocolate-cake, and Christmas crackers, if I can buy them this time of
year--and, Papa, it's going to be a _hat_-party."
"Oh, a hat-party, goodness me, what's that?"
"To give away all the silly, extravagant hats I've bought--though I'll
have to get two new ones to make them go round--but you won't mind that,
will you?"
"No, indeed--not for a hat-party."
And next day the invitations were out.
This scandalous way of bringing up an only daughter caused many people
to shake their heads.
"It'll end in a peck of trouble for Mr. Ladd some day," said the old
cats, with which Carthage was as liberally stocked as any other great
and flourishing American city. "Mark my words, my dear, no good can
come of bringing up a girl like a wild Indian, and he'll have nobody to
blame but himself if she goes headlong to the bad."
*CHAPTER II*
At twenty, Phyllis Ladd was one of the prettiest girls in Carthage. A
little above medium height, slim, dark, and glowing like a rose, she
moved with that charming consciousness of beauty that is in itself
almost a distinction. The French and Spanish in her mother's southern
blood showed itself in her slender feet and hands, in her grace, her
voice, her gentle, gracious, and engaging manners. One could not long
talk to her without realizing that behind those sparkling eyes there was
a fine and highly-sensitive nature, whimsical, original and intrepid;
and to know her well was to perceive that she was one of those women who
would love with rare intensity; and whose future, for good or evil, for
happiness or disaster, was irretrievably dependent on the heart.
In a dim sort of way she had the consciousness of this herself; her
flirtations went no further than to dance with the same partner three or
four times in the course of the same evening; and Carthage, which gave
its young people a great deal of innocent liberty--and which its young
people took with the greediness of children--in time got to consider
her, in spite of deceptive appearances, as being cold, proud, and
"exclusive." Certainly her exclusiveness drew the line at being kissed
by boisterous young men, and though their company pleased and amused
her, she refused to single out one of them for any special favor.
"They are all such idiots, Papa," she said plaintively. "Aren't there
any real men anywhere--real men that a girl _could_ love?"
"I'm sure I don't know," returned Mr. Ladd. "I haven't come across one
I'd trust a yellow dog to, let alone my daughter. But, frankly, I'm
prejudiced on the young-man question--anybody would be who has to run a
railroad with them!"
"Papa," she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, and her mood
changing to one of her gayest phantasies, "let's go away together, you
and I, and see if we can't find him. The Quest of the Golden Young Man!
There must be one somewhere, and we'll look for him in every hidy-hole
in the world--in street-cars and banks, and ice-cream places, and
cellars, and factories, and mountains, and ships--just you and me, with
a little steamer-trunk--and we'll run across him in the unlikeliest
spot--and he may be a bandit in a cave, or a wild, roystering cow-boy
shooting up one of those awful little western towns--but we'll know
right off that he's our Golden Young Man--and we'll take him, and put
him in a crate, and bring him home in the baggage-car, and poke him with
a long sharp stick till he's willing to marry me!"
The Quest of the Golden Young Man! It began sooner than Phyllis could
ever have believed possible, and with a companion she would have been
the last to dream of. Mr. Ladd had a married sister in Washington, the
wife of a highly-placed treasury official. Mrs. Sam Fensham was a very
fashionable, energetic, pushing woman, wholly absorbed in the task of
pulling competitors off the social ladder, and planting her own
faultless French shoes on the empty rung. Brother and sister had about
as much in common as you could spread on a dime; but Robert Ladd had all
the American's admiration of ability, no matter in what direction it was
exercised; and Sally Fensham dearly loved her fraternal relationship to
the K. B. and O.
This social strategist had volunteered one of her rare visits to
Carthage under the stress of bad financial weather. Brother Bob, who
regularly brightened her Christmas with a check in four figures, had
some peculiarities of purse and heart that Mrs. Fensham was well
acquainted with. You might dash him off a letter, slashed with
underlining, and piteous in the extremity of its _cri de coeur_, and get
nothing in reply but two pages of humorous typewriting, wanting to know
why two people, without children, could not manage to scrape along in
Washington on sixteen thousand dollars a year?
But Brother Bob, face to face, was a very different person. If you sat
on the arm of his chair, and talked of pa and ma and the old days, and
perhaps cried a little, not altogether insincerely, over faces and
things long since vanished--if, indeed, under the spell of that grave,
kindly brother, you somehow shed your cares into an infinite tenderness,
and forgot everything save that you loved him best of any one on
earth--if--but it always happened--you did not need to give another
thought, to what, after all, was the real object of your visit.
In a day or two, Brother Bob would say; "Sally, just how many dollars
would make you feel eighteen again, and as though you were waiting for
Elmer Boyd to take you out sleighing?"
You could answer thirty-seven hundred, and get it as readily as a
postage stamp; and with it a look of such honest affection, such a
glisten in those fine eyes, that your words of thanks stammered a little
on your tongue.
Well, here was Aunt Sally again--arm-chair--pa and ma--the old
days--check--and in her restless, scheming eyes the birth of a vague
idea that grew ever more and more alluring,--nothing else than to take
this very pretty niece of hers back to Washington, and enhance the
Fensham position by a splendid marriage. She had a vision of balls and
dinner-parties, all paid for by her millionaire brother; a showy French
limousine; unlimited boxes at the theater and opera; and a powerful
nephew-to-be, with a name to hoist the portcullis of many a proud social
stronghold, and allow the wife of a highly-placed treasury official to
squeeze in. The Motts, the Glendennings, the Pastors, the Van
Schaicks--the Port Arthurs of Washington society--Sarah Fensham would
assail all of them, holding before her one of their cherished sons, and
defying them to shoot. A fascinating prospect indeed, and one not
beyond realization, considering the girl's beauty, and her father's
money.
On the subject being broached to Brother Bob, it was met with a
hostility only comparable to a Polar bear being robbed of its cub. The
whole marriage-market business nauseated him, he declared; his daughter
should never be set up on the counter to be priced and pawed over; not
only would her natural refinement revolt at it, but he inconsistently
and with much warmth announced that Carthage was full of splendid young
men, the sons of his old associates, amongst whom Phyllis should find
her husband when the time came, and a fellow worth fifty of those
Washington dudes and dough-heads.
"It's all very well for you to talk," said Sally coldly, "but I should
say it was more for Phyllis to decide than for you."
"She wouldn't hear of such a thing," protested Mr. Ladd heatedly. "She
is a quiet, home-loving girl, and wouldn't put herself in a show-window
for anything on earth."
"My house is not a show-window; and what is there immodest or wrong in
her meeting the nicest men in America?"
"Besides, she wouldn't care to leave me."
Angry as she was, there was something in this remark that suddenly
touched Sally Fensham. She was hard and aggressive, but her heart was