Infatuation
her companions. But had they noticed her during the further course of
the performance, they might have had something else to wonder at. With
parted lips, and breath so faint that she seemed not to breathe at
all--with a face paling to marble, and poignant with a curious and
unreasoning distress, her eyes never quitted those of Cyril Adair, and
fixed themselves on his in a stare so troubled, so fascinated, that her
soul seemed to leave her body and to pass the footlights.
*CHAPTER VII*
The tea that followed was but a blurred memory, a confused recollection
of noise and chatter, with a stab at the heart every time the actor's
name was mentioned. She was thankful to get home, and lock herself in
her room. She was in a tumult of shame, agitation, and an exquisite
guilty joy. She partly undressed, and threw herself on her bed,
shutting her eyes to win back the face and voice that had moved her to
the depths. What had he done to her? A few hours before she had never
known of his existence. The merest accident had revealed it to her, and
now he was causing the blood to surge through her veins, and mantle her
cheeks with dishonor. For it was dishonor. Everything in her revolted
at such a position. His preposterous name struck fiercely on her pride
and her sense of the ridiculous--Cyril Adair! How could any one,
masquerading under such an egregious alias, dare to give her a moment's
concern. She burst out laughing at herself, a contemptuous and bitter
laugh. Cyril Adair! No dazzled little housemaid could have been
sillier than she.
Yet his face haunted her, the tones of his voice, that strange,
smoldering look in his eyes. How greedily that dreadful woman had
kissed him! Those were no stage kisses. Before a thousand people she
had abandoned herself to his arms, and fastened that painted mouth to
his in an ecstasy. The audience thought it was acting. Phyllis, with a
keener perception, saw the truth, and it made her savage with jealousy.
That dreadful woman was shameless, crazy, beside herself. She had wooed
him with every fiber of her body, pressing his head to her bosom, using
every artifice to inflame him, and what had brought down the thunders of
the house had not been a delineation of passion, but the naked thing
itself.
It was horrible. Actors and actresses were horrible. No wonder they
were despised even while they were run after. No wonder their lives
were notorious. How could it be otherwise when--? But she envied that
woman. Yes, she envied that woman, terrible as it was to admit it.
Hated her, and envied her.--No, she pitied her as one of her own silly,
headlong sex, cursed with this need to love. She was no longer young;
she was thirty years old if a day; she was probably poor, disreputable,
with nothing in the world but a trunk full of trashy finery, and no home
but a cheap hotel. Love was the only thing she had, poor wretch, the
only thing.
And Cyril Adair? It was hard to imagine him in private life except as
Correze. But, of course, he wasn't Correze--that was absurd. Perhaps
he would be so changed that one would scarcely know him on the street.
She had heard of such disillusions--of tottering old men playing
boys--and wasn't Bernhardt sixty? But a woman can tell, a woman
who--who--cares. That vigorous manhood was no made-up pretense; such
freshness, such warmth, such grace, could not be affected; he was
certainly not much more than thirty, on the border line of youth and
early-maturity when men, to her, possessed their greatest charm.
Lying there, in a swoon of shy delight, she allowed her fancy to fly
away in dreams. Hand in hand, they trod a fairy-land of love and
rapture. She stole sentences from his part, and made him repeat them to
her alone--avowals, passionate and tender, in all the mellow sweetness
of the voice that still reechoed in her heart. He was Correze, and she,
in the madness of her infatuation, had forced her way to him and thrown
herself humbly at his feet. His love was not for her; she aspired to no
such heights; but she had come to be his little slave; to follow him in
his wanderings; to sleep across his door, and guard him while he slept.
To be near him was all she asked. His little slave, who, when he was
dejected and weary, would nestle beside him, and cover his hand with the
softest kisses. She wanted no reward; she would try not to be jealous
of those great ladies, though there would be times when she could not
hold back her feelings, and his hand, as she drew it across her eyes,
would be all wet with tears.
With her maid's knock at the door there came a sudden revulsion.
Phyllis called to her to go away, unwilling to be seen in her
defenselessness, and fearful of she knew not what. But the spell was
broken. The bubble of that pretty fantasy vanished at one touch of
fact. Harsh reality obtruded itself, and with it a pitiless
self-arraignment. She had been swept off her feet by a third-class
actor, in a third-class play, full of mawkish sentiment and unreality,
in a third-class theater where they chewed gum, and ate apples while
they wept over the hero's woes! A wave of self-disgust rose within her.
She felt soiled, humiliated. How dared this cheap, showy creature reach
out to take such liberties with a woman a thousand times above him? A
creature, who in all probability ate with his knife, carried on low love
affairs with admiring shop-girls, and practised his fascinations before
a mirror, like a trick-monkey! Pah, the thought of her amorous
imaginings reddened her cheeks, and consumed her with bitterness and
shame. Where was her self-respect, her modesty? If wishes could have
killed, there would have been no performance of _Moths_ that night at
the Thalia Theater.
At dinner she convulsed her father with an account of the play, in which
neither Adair nor the audience were in any way spared. In her zest and
mockery, it all took on a richly humorous aspect, and at times she was
interrupted by her own silvery peals of laughter. To hear her, how
could any one have guessed that she had been stirred as she had never
been stirred before, and that the screaming farce she described had been
in reality the one drama that had ever touched her? Was it in revenge
for what she had suffered? Was it perversity? Or was it the attempt to
conquer a physical attraction so irresistible that it tormented and
terrified her even while she fought it with the best of all
weapons--derision?
She passed a wretched night, tossing and turning on her bed in a whirl
of emotions. She was haunted by that face which appeared to regard her
with such reproach. Why had she betrayed him, it seemed to ask? The
smoldering eyes, compelling always, were questioning and melancholy.
That look, of such singular intensity, and with its strange and
mysterious appeal to some other self of hers, again asserted its
resistless power. She felt herself slipping back, in a langour of
tenderness, to the mood that had shocked her so much before. In vain
she repeated the saving words--threw out those little life-buoys to a
swimmer drowning in unworthy love--"third-class actor"--"matinee
hero"--"shop-girls' idol."--The drowning swimmer continued to drown,
unhelped. The life-buoys floated away, and disappeared. Engulfing
love, worthy or unworthy, drew down her spent body to the blue and
coraled depths, and held her there, fainting with delight.
In our secret hearts, who has not, at some time or other, felt an
unreasoning desire for one all unknown. Is love, indeed--true love,
anything else? Glamour and idealization--we would not go far without
either, and many, hand in hand, have trod the long path to the grave,
and died happy with their illusions. Nature, to screen her coarser
intent, fools us, little children that we are, with these pretty and
poetic artifices. May it always be so, for God knows, it is an ugly
world, and it does not do to peer too curiously behind the scenes.
There was a Mrs. Beekman that Phyllis knew, the widow of a distinguished
lawyer, left with nothing, who had bravely set herself to earn her
living as a milliner. It was to the credit of Carthage that Mrs.
Beekman's altered fortunes had not impaired its regard for her. She
kept her friends in spite of the "Hortense" over her shop, and a window
full of home-made hats, which, of themselves, would have amply justified
ostracism. It was no new thing for Mrs. Beekman to act as chaperon, and
repay, in this small measure, many kindnesses that verged on charity.
So she was not surprised, though much pleased and excited, when Phyllis
telephoned, and asked her to go with her to the theater. "I liked the
play so much I want to see it again," trickled that tiny voice into her
ear, "and though it's at that awful Thalia Theater, we can sit in a box,
and be quite safe and comfortable.--May I call for you a little after
eight, dear?"
Mrs. Beekman, who was an indefatigable pleasure-seeker, consented with
effusiveness. Phyllis was a darling to have thought of her. One of her
girls had told her the play was splendid, and that the star--oh, what
didn't she say about the star! Was Phyllis crazy about him, too? Hee,
hee, all alike under their skins, as Kipling said! Not that she liked
Kipling--he was so unrefined--but Miss Britt (you know Miss Britt, the
silly one, with poodle eyes, and a poodle-fool if ever there was one)
Miss Britt raved for hours about his "somber beauty." Wasn't it
killing! If Adair wanted to, he could leave town with two box-cars of
conquests! My, the milliners wouldn't have a girl left, and the
ice-cream parlors would all have to shut.--At eight, dear?--And dress
quietly so as not to attract attention? Hee, hee, it was quite a lark,
wasn't it?
Sitting in the same box, on the same chair, but with a feeling as though
years had elapsed since she had last been there, Phyllis again saw the
curtain rise on _Moths_. The impulse that had brought her, the mad
desire to see the man who had tortured her so cruelly, had changed to a
cold critical mood, to a disdain so comprehensive that it included
herself no less than Adair. Dispassionate and contemptuous, it cost her
no effort to steel herself against his first appearance. His mouth was
undeniably rather coarse; she detected a self-complacency beneath his
Correze that his acting failed to hide; she saw his glance seek the
back-benches with a satisfaction at finding them filled, that struck her
as somehow greedy and tradesmanlike. What a disgusting business it was
to posture and rant, and choke back sham tears, and mimic the sacredest
things in life--and watch back-benches with an eye to the evening's
profits! The wretchedest laborer, with his pick and shovel, was more of
a man. At any rate he did something that was dignified, that was useful
and wanted. He was not framed in cardboard; there was no row of lights
at his honest, muddy feet; his loving was a private matter, and when he
kissed he meant it.--How fortunate it was that she had come! How
unerring the instinct that had brought her back to be cured!
But as the play proceeded such reflections were forgotten in the
intensity of her absorption. Again she was leaning forward with parted
lips; rapt, over-borne, lost to everything, and pale with an
indescribable tumult of emotion. She was conscious of no audience; of
naught save the man who held her captive with a power so absolute and
irresistible that birth, training, pride, weighed as nothing in the
balance. His voice pierced her heart; his eyes seemed to draw the soul
from her body; she trembled at her own helplessness, though the
realization of it was also a strange and intoxicating pleasure.