Infatuation
things take their course, and pretend to be a sort of Sunny Jim,
smilingly regarding events from Carthage.
It was none too easy an undertaking, but he was sustained in some degree
by the hurried little scrawls that reached him, day by day, from
Phyllis.--It was all going splendidly. She was so proud of Sempft. He
was everywhere such a favorite. He was so high-spirited, and manly--and
so crazily in love with her. It was nice to have him so crazily in love
with her. It was nice to lead such a big, swaggering soldier by a pink
ribbon--to pin him with a little, girlish ticket marked "reserved"--to
see him jump at the mere raising of an eyebrow when some embezzling
young debutante had sneaked him away into a corner.--Then there was the
engagement ring she could not pull her glove over, with diamonds so
large and flashing that they'd light the gas; there was the gorgeous
pearl-necklace, which Aunt Sarah would not allow her to accept yet;
there was the emperor's wonderful cablegram of congratulation, all about
Germany and America, as though the two countries were engaged, instead
of merely she and Sempft. It made her feel so important, so
international--and horrid, shabby men snap-shotted her on the street
like a celebrity, walking backwards with cameras in their hands while
everybody fell over everybody to see what was going on!--Oh, yes, Papa,
she was saving it up to brag about to her grandchildren--when she was a
tiresome old lady in a castle corner, with nothing to do but bore chubby
little German aristocrats.
Her gaiety and sprightliness never wavered. Her content, her happiness
were transparent. If her ardor for Baron von Piller seemed never to
pass the big-brother limits, it might be assumed she concealed her
feelings, and was either too shy or too modest to betray them. Mr.
Ladd, who read her letters with a microscope, noticed the omission,
and--wondered. His misgivings were not untinged with pleasure. Did she
really love this man, he asked himself again and again? It was
impossible to be certain. Had it not been for the J. Whitlock Pastor
episode he would have been in less doubt. But with this in mind, he
could not help wondering--wondering a great deal.
The answer to these conjectures came with a startling unexpectedness.
One afternoon, on his return home, he found the front door open, and an
expressman staggering up to it with a trunk. In the hall were five more
trunks, and Henry and Edwards, both in shirt-sleeves, were departing for
the upper regions with another. Before Mr. Ladd could ask a question
there was a swift rush of skirts, an inroad of barking dogs, and a
radiant young person was hanging to his neck with round, bare arms. It
was Phyllis, her eyes dancing, her face flushed with the romp she had
been having with the dogs, her hair in wild disorder, and half down her
back.
"I'm home, Papa," she cried, "home for good, and in such awful disgrace
you oughtn't to take me in! Yes, your wayward girl has crept back to
the dear old farm, and though the snow was deep, and all she had was a
crust from a crippled child--she's here, Papa, at last, and, oh, oh, oh,
so glad!--Down, Watch, down! Teddy, you'll get one in the nose if you
don't stop!--Oh, the little wretch has got my slipper off!"
Teddy scampered away with it, and there was a lively tussle before it
was recovered, with all manner of laughter and slaps and growls.
"But Captain von Piller?" demanded Mr. Ladd. "Is he coming? Is he here,
too?"
"No, Papa," she returned, "he isn't here, and he never will be here, and
I left him screaming till you could hear it all over Washington. Just
howling, Papa, and calling for warships! And Aunt Sarah was hollering,
too, till the only dignified thing left was to tie my sheets together
and let myself out, which I did before there was a riot!"
"Phyllis, you don't mean that your engagement--"
"Hush, Papa, we can't talk here.--Come upstairs to your den."
There she heaped up a dozen pillows on the divan; settled herself with
Watch's head on her lap, and Wally and Teddy beside her; asked if there
were any chocolate creams, and resigned herself to there being none; and
then, pushing back the soft, thick hair from her eyes, told her father
to sit at her feet, and not to crowd a valuable dog.
"Yes, all that's finished," she said. "It was splendid and
international, and all that, but I could not stand it any more. He was
just like poor Whitlock, only worse. I don't know how to describe it,
Papa, for he was awfully correct and all that--I wouldn't for worlds
have you think he wasn't--only he expected all the conventional things
that go with being engaged, and wanted me to nestle against his
waistcoat, and, and--pant with joy I suppose--and whisper what a
beautiful, wonderful, irresistible, bubble-bubble-bubble person he
was--and shyly kiss his hand, probably--Oh, well, Papa, I tried to, and
I didn't like it, and in spite of myself it seemed wrong and
humiliating--and he was so large, and pink, and German, and so much of
him rolled over his collar, and everybody seemed in such a conspiracy to
poke us into dark corners and leave us there, and so finally I just
said, 'No, I've made a mistake, and here's your ring, and here's the
cablegram from the Kaiser, and here's the photograph of your dead
mother--and would you mind getting out of my life, please?--and friends
are requested to accept this the only intimation.'"
"And how did he take it?"
"He wouldn't take it--that was the trouble. He made a frightful fuss.
He couldn't have made more if we had been really married, and I had
announced my intention of running away with the elevator-boy! He
scrunched my hands till I thought the bones would break, and might have
thrown me out of the window if tea hadn't come in the nick of time.
Then he went off to Aunt Sarah, with the German idea of stinging up the
family--as though twenty aunts could make me love a man I didn't--and
succeeded so well that she practically drove me out. Oh, her position!
I never heard the end of it--and of course she said I had ruined it, and
that she never could hold up her head again. The only thing to do was
to run. So I ran and ran and ran--to my old dad!"
She slipped her hand down, and held her father's collar as though he,
too, were a dog, and gave it an affectionate little tug.
"My darling old dad," she murmured.
"It's not so bad to have one, is it?" he said. "To know where there is a
snug harbor, and an old fellow who thinks you are perfect, and
everything you do is right. You will get a lot of criticism for this,
and I suppose Washington will boil over--but to my thinking, you
couldn't have done better, and I am thankful for your courage. If you
don't love a man, for God's sake, don't marry him, even if you're both
walking up the aisle, and he's twiddling the ring!--To tell the truth, I
wasn't a bit partial to Von Piller, and found it pretty hard to sit
tight, and be told he was forty different kinds of a paragon."
"My darling Papa," she observed sweetly, "you're never going to like
anybody who wants to marry me, and it's sure to cost me some worry when
the right person does come.--Do you suppose he ever will?"
"Oh, I guess so."
"In spite of the awful record I have made? Aunt Sarah says I am branded
as a coquette, and no decent man will ever have anything more to do with
me."
"Rubbish."
Phyllis fondled Watch's ears, which were long and silky, and tried the
effect on dog-beauty of overlapping them on his head.
"Papa, what's the matter with me? Why haven't I any sense? Why am I
not like other girls?"
"You are very fastidious."
"Yes, that's true."
"And very proud."
"Yes, inherited."
"And demand a great deal."
"Yes--everything."
"You are in love with love--and are rather in a hurry."
"Oh, Papa--shut your eyes--I am love-hungry. I want to love--I'm crazy
to love. Only--only--"
"The right man hasn't arrived?"
"I hope it's that. If it isn't, I'm going to have a bad time of it. It
seems so useless; this getting engaged and then hating the poor
wretch.--It's such a terrible waste of energy and heart-beats all
round."
"Dad included."
"What a nuisance I am, to be sure! I've exhausted everybody's patience
except yours, and that's getting thin. It will end in my living alone
in a shanty with nothing but dogs, and the faded photographs of the men
I've thrown over. Aunt Sarah called me an awful name; called me an
engagement-buster; said that the habit would grow and grow till I was a
horrid old maid with nothing to tease but a parrot.--Though I'd love to
have a parrot--two of them--and raise little parrots! Little fluffy baby
parrots must be adorable. Papa, let's buy a pair to-morrow, and you'll
teach the he-one to swear, and I'll teach the she-one to be gentle and
submissive and always have her own way. And Papa--?"
"Yes, dearest?"
"You aren't cross with me, are you?"
"Not a bit."
"And I may live with you, and add up your bills, and bring you your
slippers, and dream all day of that Golden Young Man who doesn't exist?"
"Oh, don't say that--He does, Phyllis."
"Papa, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't!"
*CHAPTER VI*
Socially speaking Carthage was as distant from Washington as is
Timbuctoo. While the Von Piller hurricane was raging in the nation's
capital, the Carthage barometer showed "fair and rising." To a
storm-tossed little mariner, it was like gaining the lee of some palmy
isle, and casting anchor in still water. The islanders, too, if a
trifle homespun and provincial, were the most delightful people, and
unspoiled by any intrusion of a higher civilization. Phyllis had not
realized how entirely her outlook had changed until she returned to her
own home. She saw her former school fellows with new eyes, and while
she could not forbear smiling at some of their ways, she liked them
better than ever before.--They, on their side, regarded with awe this
fashionable young beauty, who had jilted a Pastor, and given the mitten
to a real, live, guaranteed baron, and who had descended in their midst,
like a racer in a paddock of donkeys.
Some of them felt very donkeyfied indeed. Tom Fergus, a gelatinous
young man, somewhat forward and familiar, who was alluded to in the
local papers as "one of the leaders of the younger set" said she was
"raving pretty, but, my stars, what was a fellow to talk to her about?"
Billy Phillpots, who worked in his father's store (many of the young
fellows "worked in his father's store") vetoed her as "insufferably
stuck up," he having escorted her home one night, and failed to extort
the usual toll at the garden-gate.--The good night kiss at the
garden-gate was quite a Carthage institution, and as innocent as the
kiss of an early Christian.
Life in Carthage was altogether Early Christian--for the young people of
the better families. They met every night, and moved in flocks, like
sparrows, alighting first in one house and then another--taking up the
carpets for dancing, improvising suppers, crowding round the fireplaces
to sing, and tell stories. Presumably there was some social line drawn
somewhere; but money at least counted for little, and anybody that was
"nice" was allowed in. And it must be said, on the whole, that they
were remarkably "nice," and very much a credit to high-class democracy.
The boys were well-mannered, brotherly and respectful; the girls
charming in their blitheness and gaiety. Occasionally there was a
match, and a couple disappeared as completely as though they had fallen
into the river and been swept away. You couldn't marry, and still be a
sparrow. No, indeed! You passed into another world, and six months
after the sparrows would hardly know you on the street. One would not