Infatuation
impossible for us ever to be friends. But you are wrong, Papa. He's not
an adventurer, nor anything like it. Surely I ought to know better than
you, and if I have been willing to love him, and marry him--"
"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you about him," interrupted Mr. Ladd
harshly. "You believe in him now, of course. One can't reason with
lunatics, and I shan't try. I'll give you six months--perhaps even
less--and then I want you to remember what I am saying to you now."
"That you were right?"--Her voice was scornful.--"Oh, Papa, this is
unworthy of you."
"Phyllis," he retorted, "that's the last thing on earth I would ever say
to you. If you should come back to me disillusioned, broken, utterly
weary of the muddle you have made of it all, you will find everything
unchanged between us and the whole matter as ignored as though it had
never been. That's what you are to remember--that my heart and my purse
will never be closed against you."
"Though both are dependent on my giving up my husband?"
"He will give you up, my dear, fast enough."
"How dare you say that, Papa--how dare you!" A mist of anger was in her
eyes, and two spots of crimson glowed dangerously on her cheeks. Never
in her life had she been more roused; up to that moment she had still
hoped to save the day and win her father over, but now she perceived the
irrevocable nature of what was being said. Yet outwardly, at least, she
restrained herself, and hid within her quivering breast a tumult that
seemed to rend her to pieces.
"If I seem to be misjudging Mr. Adair it is only because I know more
about him that you do," continued Mr. Ladd in a tone not untinged with a
grim satisfaction. Even as he spoke he drew out a thick packet, and
unfolded it on his knee. It was a mass of typewriting, with here and
there a notorial seal on paper of a different color, and an occasional
newspaper cutting neatly pasted in the center of a little sea of
comment. "Here we have him in black and white," he went on, "and
frankly, Phyllis, he offers you a very poor promise of a happy married
life."
"And you expect me on my wedding morning to sit down and read these
things--these abominable slanders your detectives have scraped
together?"
"Oh, no. But I demand to have Mr. Adair sit down and answer them."
"Would you believe him if he did?"
"Facts are facts. He can't deny them."
"And you called _me_ unreasonable? Oh, Papa!"
Mr. Ladd ignored the taunt.
"When he appreciates that his whole disreputable past is known to me,"
he went on, with the same inflexible composure, "he may condescend to
consider--an arrangement."
"An arrangement?--What do you mean?"
"I have brought a blank check with me," he explained. "He can name
anything--and get it. I'd rather pay more now than less later."
His brutality overwhelmed her. It took her a few seconds to understand
the incredible baseness he imputed to Adair. In the light of this her
father's previous insults paled to insignificance. She was too stunned
to make any reply, and for a while could do nothing but look at him in
speechless wonder. Then she rose, and rang the bell.
"The marriage could be annulled," said Mr. Ladd, oblivious of everything
except his one preoccupation. "The next thing is to keep the newspapers
quiet, and that I can do. We'll go abroad--"
The darky came running up with a pitcher of ice water. No one ever rang
for anything else in the Clarendon Hotel. He entered, jingling the ice.
"Show this gentleman out," said Phyllis, "and I want you to remember I
shall not be home to him again."
"Phyllis!"
The entreaty in his voice moved her not a bit, nor the outstretched
hand, veined, wrinkled and shaking.
"It's conceivable I may forgive you for this, Papa," she exclaimed,
"though God knows it will be hard. But if you offer that check to Cyril
I shall hate you till the day I die!"
"Have it your own way then," he returned dully, and with a curious break
in his voice. "Take your own wilful road, and come back to me when your
heart's broken. I'll be waiting for you, Phyllis, and ready to forget
and forgive."
She disdained to make any reply. The darky officiously gathered up the
silk hat and gloves from the floor, and presented them to Mr. Ladd. The
latter, with a last look at his daughter's unrelenting face, turned in
silence, and passed out.
"The stairs are to the left, sah," said the darky.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
Whether disillusion was finally destined to arrive or not, there was
certainly not a hint of it during those succeeding weeks. There was no
happier little bride in America, than Phyllis Adair, and intimate
acquaintance with that extraordinary creature, man, only redoubled her
delight in him. The bigness, directness, simplicity, intolerance, and
dog-like devotion of her husband were an unfailing joy to her. No
little girl who had been given a coveted St. Bernard could have taken
more anxious, eager, excited care of him. She would feed Adair with the
daintiest morsels from her own plate; she would exert every faculty she
possessed to amuse and distract him when he fell into one of his
despondent moods; she would mock him with such pretty archness when he
grew irritable over trifles. "Damn it all, where did that fool Williams
put my patent leather shoes?"--"Damn it all, you will find them in the
bottom of the wardrobe neatly ranged with the others," she would answer.
No matter how ill his humor she always found the means to make him
smile; her quick wit, or her slim, audacious body each exultantly
willing to tease and bewitch him.
Of all human gifts surely that of loving has received the least general
recognition. A genius for music, a genius for mathematics or natural
history, or sculpture, or mechanics, is at once admitted and acclaimed.
But what of a genius for loving, which of all is infinitely the rarest?
The trouble is that every one is conceited enough to think that he (or
she) is a wonder at it. But frankly, do we really indeed see so many
love-geniuses about us? Are we not rather struck instead by an almost
universal love-poverty? If the husband stays drearily at home every
night of his life, and if the wife is entirely absorbed in the baby, are
we not asked enthusiastically to applaud a happy home? This is the
national ideal, and tens of thousands are yawning heroically through it.
But where's love in any but half-pint sizes? Everybody insists it is
there in barrelfuls, much as they insisted in the fairy tale in the case
of the man with the invisible clothes.--We are not defending hubby when
he gets tangled up with the blonde lady, but emotionally speaking (only
_emotionally_, be it understood), it may be an upward step. If you have
a ten per cent. capacity to love, it is hard to be fobbed off with a
four per cent. partner.
Phyllis was one of the chosen few in whom the capacity to love was
inordinate. Her one thought was to make herself indispensable to the
man to whom she had given herself. Adair was the last thing in her head
at night, the first at dawn. Hardly was there an act of hers in which
his personality was not a contributing factor. Her insatiable ambition
was to please and delight him, and her brain was ever busy to find fresh
ways, and improve on the old. Her finesse, her humor, her ardent and
tender imagination--all were enlisted to a single end. Passion she had
in plenty, for she was of a voluptuous nature, and the blood coursed
hotly in her veins--but she had more than that to give him, and was
possessed of a thousand captivating arts to ensnare this love that was
said to be so elusive, and bind it tight with a myriad silken threads.
It will be asked was Adair worthy of so supreme a devotion? Is it not
enough to answer that he was not altogether unworthy? There was a lot
of human clay in the creature, and while Phyllis was exerting all her
blithe young ardor to keep the altar-fires aflame, he was content to
look on lazily, and man-like, take many things for granted. Had she
been no better, their love would have run the ordinary course, and
perished fast enough on the rocks of habit and satiety. Adair's
spiritual side was all but dormant. He was encased in materialism as
stoutly as some of us in fat; whatever gropings he had toward higher
things were all in the direction of the stage. Feelings he could not
initiate himself he took here ready made, and showed almost a genius in
their comprehension. He presented a paradox of one who could admirably
"get into" any written character, and yet who was wholly unable to "get
into" his own.
Phyllis knew much more what laid beneath than he. To her the yearning,
troubled, inarticulate soul of the man appealed as pathetically as the
sight of some great, ashamed, bearded fellow who had never been taught
to read. In the finer sense Adair had never been taught anything. His
instincts alone had saved him from being a clod. In his fight up from
the bottom he had arrived a good deal splashed with mud; and Phyllis,
figuratively speaking, rolled back her sleeves, and set herself to
tubbing him.
He was extraordinarily submissive in this respect, extraordinarily
grateful and responsive. He made no pretense of hiding his ignorance,
but questioned her like a child, and often as artlessly. At thirty-four
he was having the universe reconstructed for him, and the process filled
him with astonishment. Phyllis read aloud to him from such unheard-of
authors as Thackeray, Carlyle, Hardy, Stevenson, and Meredith until
these strange names became quite familiar. She could read French, too,
translating as she went, while he sat back, profoundly respectful and
impressed, his humility tinged with the zest of ownership. Yes, her
youth, her beauty, her intelligence, her love, all were his; and as he
gazed at her through the haze of his cigar, the words often fell
heedlessly on his ear as he felt the mantling of a divine contentment.
Yet he could be very masterful on some matters. Phyllis was not allowed
to receive the advances of the company, or to associate with any of its
members, a prohibition not a little difficult to obey in the course of
their constant traveling together. But if Phyllis shrank from being
rude, Adair suffered from no similar delicacy, and was brutally direct
in making his wishes plain to his stage companions. It was not only
that he feared Lydia de Vere, whose yellowish eyes were full of enmity,
and whose powers for mischief he well knew; but in contrast to his
dainty wife these theater-people somehow began to strike him as
tarnished and common, and he was jealously reluctant to expose her to
their familiarities. Intercourse with Phyllis was sharpening his
critical faculty; his view-point was insensibly changing; there were
even times when he realized his own deficiencies.--Tommy Merguelis was
the one exception he made. The lanky young man, when weighed in the new
scales, was found to be less wanting than the others. There was
something sensitive and refined about Tommy. Ill-health, pins, and years
of furniture-polish had been as cleansing fires. He was a humble person
who would accept his humble inch and grin gratefully, and not reach out
for an ell. Yes, Phyllis might be friends with Tommy.
With them on their travels from town to town went a punching-bag, which
Adair inflated and set up as soon as their trunks were unpacked. Every
morning, stripped to the waist, Phyllis had to double up her little
fists, and start a-pummelling for ten furious minutes. There could be
no begging off from this daily rite; it was one of the iron rules of
married life; pleadings, caresses, protests all were in vain. An icy
bath had to follow, and if she hesitated too long on the brink, or