Infatuation
was much cast down to learn that she was to remain alone with Tommy
until the train arrived. "Then we'll all bustle on board together, and
nobody will notice you," explained Tommy. The good sense of this was
apparent, yet at the same time she could not help feeling a little
forlorn and slighted. "Nobody will notice you," said Young Lochinvar's
Tommy.--Now that the die was cast, why should she not be noticed? She
was ready to avow herself Adair's before all the world, and why not on
that dark, ill-lighted platform, when her courage was nearly spent and
her slim young body drooping?
They sat on a bench, and waited in a corner of the vast cavern, she with
her bag in her lap, Tommy with his unrelaxing grin fixed on space.
Waited and waited, while stragglers passed, immigrants with babies and
bundles, hurrying couples returning to the suburbs from a night in town.
Above the noise there suddenly rose a louder thunder. It was the train
bursting in with a roar, hissing steam and grinding its brakes as it
slowed down, throbbing majestically. Tommy seized her by the arm and
ran along the platform.
"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"
"Third car back."
"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"
"Jump in!"
Others were scrambling in, too. Phyllis had a fleeting glimpse of Miss
de Vere, still with dabs of make-up on her sulky, handsome face; of the
wicked Prince, loaded down with baggage, and excitedly taking the
direction of everything on his shoulders; of a stout, authoritative Jew
with a diamond pin, who was staring at her with a greedy curiosity, and
that cattleman's look, as of one who could tell the shape, age,
attractiveness, and market value of a human heifer at a single glance.
They jostled into the empty car, a dozen or more, settling themselves
anywhere, anyhow, like a big boisterous family. Tommy and Phyllis
slipped into a seat at the farther end, and they had hardly done so
before the latter felt a hand reach over and touch her cheek; and
turning, saw Adair! Tommy sprang up, and made way for him, Adair taking
the vacated place as though by right.
Whatever pique she might have held against him vanished in the magic of
his presence. His hand, closing on hers, communicated peace and
resolution. No longer was she afraid, or lonely, or sad, or uneasily
conscious of those other prying and speculating occupants of the car.
The goal was attained; stronger shoulders than her own now lifted her
burden; she had run her race, and could now lie, all spent and weary, in
that haven of heart's content. His musical voice flowed on in caressing
cadences. Had Tommy carried out his instructions? Had Tommy explained
the need of an unobtrusive departure, so that any chance reporter or
busybody might be put off the scent?--Oh, the poor baby, how neglected
she must have felt, on this the night of nights; how utterly ignored and
forgotten!
He drew her head against his cheap fur coat, and stroked her cheek and
tresses--his sweetheart, his darling, his little bride! It was sweet to
be petted; sweeter still to enjoy the luxury of self-pity as he
expatiated with smiling exaggeration on her sad, miserable, wretched
waiting with Tommy, in the sad, miserable, wretched station! She closed
her sleepy eyes, and nestled closer, awake only to catch every soft word
of endearment. Of these she could not have enough. It was heavenly to
doze away with: "I love you, I love you, I love you," falling in that
insatiable little ear; heavenly to feel that big hand playing with her
hair, and tempting kisses as it lingered against her mouth; heavenly to
feel so weak, and small, and helpless, and tired against that muscular
arm. Divine mystery of love! Divine the dependence of woman on man, of
man on woman, neither complete without the other, and each so
different... "My little bride" ... "I love you, ... I love you, ... I
love you..."
The train rumbled through the darkness. The seats held the huddled
figures of the company, all as limp as sacks, as oblivion stole upon
them. Feet were cocked up; hats were pulled over brows; haggard women,
pale men, sprawling in disorder, and through long familiarity as
unrestrained as some low, coarse family--sloppy slippers and frank
stockings to the garter; unbuttoned collars, unbuttoned vests; dirty
cuffs on racks--the squalid evidences of a squalid intimacy.
Looking down at that pure profile, and inhaling with every breath the
fragrance of an exquisite young womanhood which would be his so soon to
take, and, if he wished, to fling away, shattered and destroyed beyond
all mending, Adair felt, with dawning comprehension, and mingled elation
and pain, all that had gone to put this creature so infinitely above
him.
What care, what money, what anxious thought had been lavished to make
her what she was. How incessant the effort; how jealous the guarding
through all these years; how elaborate and costly the training to fit
her for the proud, high position to which she had been born. It came
over him with a strange new perception that the very innocence of her
surrender was but another proof of that queenly rearing. She was not of
a world where women suspected or bargained. They lived their gracious
lives within triple walls, unaware of the sentinels and outposts for
ever watching over them. And what were the sensations of the lucky
thief, who had closed his fingers on the prize, and run? They were not
altogether as joyful as one might have thought. The thief was very much
bemused. That trusting head, snuggled against his breast, was causing a
curious commotion in the heart beneath.
But he overcame the unmanly weakness. Hell, he would take what the gods
had sent him. He hadn't raised a hand to get her; she had thrown
herself at him; oh, she knew what she was doing, well enough, though she
probably expected him to marry her. Perhaps he would, later on. He
wasn't prepared right there to say he wouldn't. But there was plenty of
time for that. He hoped she wouldn't turn out to be one of the crying,
troublesome kind. Add a Laidlaw Wright father-in-law to that, and one
might as well shoot oneself--what with writs, attachments, box-office
seizures, injunctions, citations "to show cause," detectives going
through your pockets, black eyes, fines, contempt-proceedings--all
raining on a fellow in buckets! He smiled grimly at the recollection.
No more of that for him.--Well, if she didn't like the other way, she
would just have to make the best of it. Her innocence here again would
be a great help. The poor little lamb believed every word he said.
Besides, with women, kisses could always atone for everything.
The train rumbled on and on. Adair succumbed to a fitful and uneasy
slumber, through which there ran a thread of tormenting dreams. He had
lost her; they had become separated, and over the heads of a crowd he
saw her disappearing in a vortex of hurrying people; he struggled
unavailingly to follow, swearing, hitting out, shouldering and elbowing
like a madman; the cruel reality of it awakened him to find her sleeping
in his arms. He awakened her, too,--roughly,--to share his relief, his
joy. He made her hold him round the neck; made her kiss him, all sleepy
as she was; crushed and cuddled her in a transport of sudden passion.
Then he nodded off again, his lips resting on her silken hair,
blissfully content, and no longer afraid to close his heavy lids.
They were bundled off at Ferrisburg at three in the morning, all of them
so sodden with sleep that they could scarcely keep their eyes open. A
dilapidated bus, and a freckled boy received them, the former
representing the Clarendon Hotel, the latter, Miss MacGlidden's
theatrical boarding-house. The company divided accordingly, with some
grumpy facetiousness, the lesser members trailing away on foot after the
boy, the principals climbing into the bus,--the trunks of both stacked
high on the platform to await the morning.
The hotel, in spite of its fine name, was a bare, dismal, ramshackle
place; and the lowered lights, and uncarpeted floors gave it a
peculiarly forbidding air as the doors were unlocked to admit them.
Phyllis, clinging to her lover's arm, and overcome with weariness, took
little heed of the arrangements being made for their accommodation. She
had no idea of the _Cyril Adair and wife_ that was being written almost
under her nose. Even when she accompanied Cyril up-stairs at the heels
of a yawning darky, she was equally unaware that her room was also to be
his. No sleepy child at her father's side could have been more
trusting.
The darky shuffled off, leaving them alone together in the big, cold
bedroom. Adair took her in his arms, and kissed her, murmuring
something that she only half heard and altogether failed to understand.
All that she grasped was that he would return in a little while--that
she was to undress, and go to bed, while he went down to get his
dress-suit case. He opened her own little bag, and laughed as he
arranged the contents on the chiffonier, she with blushes, struggling to
restrain him. Then he was gone, and when she went to lock the door, she
found that the key was gone, also.
She took off her hat, her cloak, her bodice, and with no light save a
pair of wretched candles began to brush her unloosened hair. A terrible
misgiving was stealing over her which she tried to allay by prolonging
this familiar task. The missing key, the talk of coming back--what was
she to think? A deadly fear struck at her heart. It was not all for
her honor. There was more at stake than even that--the greater disaster
of Adair's unworthiness. Could this be the love for which she had
abandoned everything? Was it all a lie, a fraud, a trick? She suddenly
seemed to lose the strength to stand, sinking into the nearest, chair,
huddled and trembling.
No, no, he could not be so inconceivably base. She was wrong. His love
was as real as hers. He was incapable of such coldblooded
premeditation. Everything she had was his. It was not that. The
thought of giving herself to him had filled her with an unreasoning joy.
But to be cheated, to barter her life, her soul in exchange for his
pretense--oh, she would have rather died! She would have starved for
him, would have sold the clothes off her back for him, would have borne
unflinchingly odium, contempt, disgrace, asking only that he love her
well. But without that--! It was for him to choose; she had no
resistance left; but if it were, indeed, all a lie she would kill
herself the next day. One could outlive many things, but not _that_.
There are some cheats that leave one with no redress save death.
She heard his step in the corridor; heard the door softly open; looked
up with dilating eyes to learn her fate. The words Adair meant to say
never were said. He stopped, staring down at her with a gaze as
questioning as her own. It was one of those instants that decide
eternities. All that she had thought, all that she had dreaded were
articulate in the piteous face she raised to his. It was a look, which,
mysteriously, for that perceptive instant was open for him to read.
"They have got me a room on the other side of the house," he said, "but
I had to come back first to say good night." He ran over to her, kissed
her lightly on her bared shoulder, pressed a great handful of her hair
across his lips, and hurried away before temptation could overmaster
him.
There was no one to be found anywhere, but he remembered the stove still
burning in the bar-room, and the empty chairs gathered socially about
it. Thither he made his way through the silent office and corridors, and
drawing his cheap fur coat close about him, settled himself to pass what