Part 5

But intermingled with that pleasure, darting through it like a tongue of flame, was a jealousy of Miss de Vere that not even the bitterest of contempt could allay. Phyllis felt to the full the degradation of being jealous of any one bearing so preposterous a name. Lydia de Vere! Her lips curled at herself. Oh, that shoddy affectation of aristocracy! Lydia de Vere! And that in a ten-twenty-thirty cent theater, and hardly clothed above the waist; and yet, in spite of her painted face, her dyed hair, and all of her thirty years, with shoulders and breast that a duchess might have envied, she was handsome in her common, flamboyant, chorus-girl way, with the meaningless good looks that one associates with tights and gilt spears. Her acting was stilted and false; her fine ladyism an impossible assumption; she railed at the Prince in the accents of a cook giving notice. But her love for Correze taxed no histrionic powers. It was vehement and real, as were the kisses she bestowed so freely, and the caresses she lingered over with voluptuous satisfaction. Beneath the drama of fictitious personages was another of flesh and blood, like a splash of scarlet on a printed page.

What fury and anguish lay pent up in one girlish bosom! What a suffocating sense of defeat, bitterness and shame!-- To burn with jealousy of such a woman was more lowering than to-- No, she would not admit that word to herself. It was folly, infatuation, madness--but not love. It would pass with the swiftness it had come, leaving her in wonder at herself, though the scar would remain for many a long day. This man was robbing her of something that never perhaps could be altogether replaced. How wicked it was, how unjust--she who had done nothing to tempt the lightning! She hated him for it; she clenched her teeth and defied him; she understood now what she had read in books that there are men the mind scorns even while the body surrenders. But she was made of stronger stuff; she had pride and courage; her pearls were not for swine to trample on. She would put him out of her head for ever.

It was terrible how he always got back again. There were tones in his voice that melted every resolution. If ever laughter was music, it was his, and the contagion of it swept the house; and his face, though not handsome in the accepted sense, was striking in the effect it gave of an untamed, extraordinary and powerful nature, only half revealed. What was pride or courage or anything? What availed the hatred of that hotly-beating little heart? Had he not but to look her way to make it his own? Had he crushed it in his hand, would it not have died of joy? Hatred, resentment, outraged self-respect--words, nothing but words.

As the house streamed out she waited in dread for Mrs. Beekman's criticism. However desperately she might belittle Adair to herself, Phyllis shrank from hearing condemnation on other lips. The pride that had failed so utterly to defend her, had taken sides with the enemy, devotedly, passionately. Judge of her surprise, then, her pleasure and relief, when Mrs. Beekman said to her solemnly: "Phyllis, that man's a genius! He's perfectly splendid!" Misunderstanding her companion's silence, and thinking it implied dissent, she went on with a note of argument in her voice. "Of course one can feel somehow that he has had no advantages--that he has probably never been within ten miles of the people he is trying to represent--(do you remember his shaking hands with his gloves on?)--but just the same he has a wonderful and magnificent talent, and we'll hear of him as surely as the world heard of Henry Irving, or Booth, or Bernhardt. Truly, Phyllis, I believe the day will come when we'll be bragging of having admired Adair before he was famous; that is, if you feel like me about it," she added doubtfully.

"I do, I do!" cried Phyllis. "I've never seen anybody on the stage I've liked as much."

"Well, I have," said Mrs. Beekman candidly. "He certainly suffered from being with all those idiots, and I don't like that fling-ding walk of his.--I guess he's about five years short of the winning-post, but we'll see him romp in as sure as my name's Emma Beekman."

"Romping in" jarred somewhat on Phyllis' ear, but all the same Mrs. Beekman's admiration was very sweet to her, and in a queer sort of way was comforting and reassuring. There was dignity in idolizing a genius; it raised her in her own good opinion.

She forgot the apples and the chewing-gum; she forgot even Miss de Vere; a mantle of unreasoning happiness enveloped her, and with it came a gush of affection for Mrs. Beekman that quite astonished the latter. She held her hand in the dark, and tried, with many unseen blushes, to keep the one subject uppermost. To lie back in the carriage and hear Adair praised, thrilled her with delicious sensations. She was insatiable, and kept the milliner repeating "genius, genius, genius," like a parrot. It cost her an order for a twenty dollar hat, but what did she care? She would have given the clothes off her back in the extravagance of her desire. Fortunately Mrs. Beekman was nothing loath, and would have chattered for ever on this entrancing topic. "I guess we're as bad as my girls," she said, with her good-natured laugh, "and he could put us both in the box-car, too, if he had the mind."

"I shouldn't care if I was the only one," returned Phyllis gaily, "and anyway, I've always loved traveling!"

"It would be to the devil," said Mrs. Beekman half-seriously. "That's where such men come from, and that's where they go back--and if you could follow round the circle, I guess you'd find it mile-stoned with silly girls."

"Oh, if I went, I would stay to the end," cried Phyllis. "No putting me off at a way-station. I'd take a through ticket."

"And get there alone," put in Mrs. Beekman. "Men like that don't go far with any girl. They are a power for mischief, and they weren't much wrong in the old days to run them out of town--vagabonds and strolling players, you know. I guess in those times they used to take chickens, too, and anything portable. A bad lot, my dear, and they aren't any better to-day."

This was a poor return for a twenty-dollar hat, and without knowing exactly why, it made Phyllis exceedingly miserable. She felt a diminishing affection for Mrs. Beekman; and the world altogether suddenly took on a cold and dismal aspect. Her spirits were not revived by finding her father sitting up for her.

"What was the play?" he asked, taking her wraps.

"_Moths_, Papa."

"What? Twice?"

"Oh, I thought it would amuse me to see it again, and besides, Mrs. Beekman preferred it to anything else in town, and I really went for her sake, you know. It's a charity to take her out sometimes; her life is so monotonous, and one feels so sorry for her."

Mr. Ladd waited, smiling in advance, for another humorous take-off of the piece. But there was no fun in Phyllis that night. She drank a glass of water, kissed him good night, and went silently up to bed.

"She doesn't seem very well," he thought, with a shade of concern, and remembered that she had been pale and tired for some days past. "If she doesn't pick up in a day or two, I believe I'll get the doctor."

Had he seen her an hour later, his misgivings would have increased. Kneeling beside her bed, her face crushed in the coverlet, she was weeping softly and heart-brokenly to herself.

*CHAPTER VIII*

Friday, the day that followed, was memorable to her for its decisiveness and remorse. She took a long ride, and between canters, busied her head with plans of escape. Washington, Florida, Europe--it mattered little where--so long as she got away at once. She looked at herself dispassionately, and the more she looked the more utterly despicable did she seem. She was undoubtedly in love with this cheap, showy actor--(somehow in the sunshine his genius had withered, and he seemed to share the general tawdriness of gum and apples and shop-boy sentiment)--crazily in love, infatuated; and to refuse to admit it was but to hide her head in the sand, like an ostrich.

The comparison was not a pretty one, but then she was not looking for pretty comparisons. In fact, as far as her feelings for Adair were concerned, she was eager to find words that could make her wince. She said them out loud, exulting in their brutality; gross words, picked up she hardly knew where, and put out of mind as unclean and horrible. To use them now was a form of self-flagellation, and she laid on the whip with a will. It was good for a little fool, she said viciously. Lash! lash! It would keep her out of mischief. Lash! lash! Let her understand once for all what it really meant, even if the skin curled off her back.

On her return home she stopped at the telegraph-office to carry out her intention of volunteering a visit to Aunt Sarah's. Night or day, in season or out, there she always had a refuge. If blood in Aunt Sarah's case, was not thicker than water, there was the more robust bond of hard cash always to be relied upon. A niece who descended in a shower of gold could count with confidence on the bread and salt of hospitality, and the sincerest of welcoming kisses. There is something to be said for people you can count on with confidence. An affectionate, love-you-like-a-daughter aunt might have made excuses. A money-loving, pleasure-loving, wholly selfish aunt, living very much above her income, was one of the certainties of life.

But as she reined in her horse, and the groom ran to give her his hand to dismount, she wondered, after all, whether she would telegraph. The flagellation had been very successful; the September sunshine had killed the pitiful glimmer of the footlights; the crisp invigorating air had brought sanity with every breath. No, indeed, she would not telegraph, she was not half the fool she had thought herself; it was a girlish weakness to exaggerate everything--infatuation included. She would telephone to that nice New Yorker instead and invite him to tea. That oldish man with the charming distinction and courtesy, who had shown symptoms of infatuation, too.--Yes, a good whipping to be followed by two hours of an excessively devoted Mr. Van Suydam, and perhaps a boy-and-girl-evening later with the carpet up--and why should anybody be scared of anything?

So the telegram was not sent; and a young lady, very much restored, and looking adorably fresh and pretty on her Kentucky mare, came galloping up Chestnut Avenue in excellent spirits and appetite.

As for Mr. Van Suydam--he threw over a big reception to come, and was so agreeable and eager, in such a sweet, restrained, smiling way, that he was allowed to hold a little hand a long, long while, and murmur a whole heartful of tender things that amounted virtually to a declaration--which was cruel of Phyllis, not to say unladylike and shocking; for with half-shut eyes she tried to imagine it was quite another man who was wooing her, and abandoned herself to the fiction with a waywardness that was inexcusable. But however unjust it was towards Mr. Van Suydam, who was an honorable man, and meant what he said, and was naturally much elated--his suit did Phyllis good, and even as dummy for another, an inevitable comparison would insist upon obtruding itself. Caste is very strong; it is difficult to associate good-breeding, honor and distinction with a ten-twenty-thirty cent star; and though Mr. Van Suydam, was nothing to Phyllis personally she could not help realizing the high value she set on the qualities he exemplified--so high, indeed, that it began to seem impossible for her to care seriously for any man without them.

An evening with the sparrows rounded out that day of good resolves and healthy common sense. She danced with a zest that no genuinely-infatuated person could have felt, and told ghost stories afterwards before the fire, and listened to others being told, with shudders of unaffected enjoyment. "And my dear, when she looked at that man again, _she saw that his throat was cut from ear to ear!_"--It was a jolly evening, innocently hilarious, and as wholesome as an ocean breeze. Morbidity and introspection could not persist in an atmosphere so genially youthful. Phyllis never thought once of Cyril Adair, and flirted outrageously with Sam Hargreaves, convulsing the sparrows by sharing his ice-cream spoon. Ordinarily quiet and backward, and even a little disdainful, she showed herself in wild spirits that night, and her audacity, humor and gaiety were irresistible.

It was very discouraging, after a night's sleep, as untroubled as a babe's, to awaken again with a dull ache within her, and to discover, with hopeless despondency, that she was not cured at all. Alas for the girlish armor she had striven so hard to put about her--Mr. Van Suydam, Sam Hargreaves, the bitter, ugly things she had said to herself, the defiant resolutions. Where was that pride she had stung to fury? Where was that sense of caste which yesterday had seemed so peremptory?

The morning found her bereft of everything, wretched, defenseless, with no longer even the will to fly. She was under the spell once more, and powerless to throw it off. Her whole prepossession was to see Adair again, cost what it might. Nothing else mattered. She was mad, infatuated, contemptible to herself--but she could only be appeased by the sight of him. Yet how was it possible? How could she contrive it? She could not well ask Mrs. Beekman a second time. That any one should suspect her secret was intolerable--she would rather have died. The circle of her girl friends was too small to arrange another theater-party without submitting herself to unbearable innuendoes and home-thrusts. Those young women had a preternatural instinct for detecting the dawn of love. In other things they might be stupid and blind, but for this they were as watchful as hawks, and as merciless as only twenty can be. What of her admirers then--Mr. Van Suydam, say, or good-natured, fat Sam? But they could be very sharp, too--and besides, she could not be so forward as to seek an invitation. Young girls in Carthage had a great deal of liberty--but it had its limits. Perhaps she could take one of the house-maids with her to the matinee--it was Saturday and the piece was given twice. But this would appear queer, especially if it reached her father.

There seemed nothing for it but to dress very plainly and go by herself. It was something to remember that matinees practically existed for women only--though attending one alone was unheard of in Phyllis' set. It was less a social law than a sort of fact. Girls went to matinees in pairs apparently--always had--and apparently always would. "Who did you go with, my dear?" was an inevitable question. Well, if necessary, one could meet that with a fib; and if one were found out, it was no great crime after all--but rather a mild escapade that a blush could condone. Of course a box was out of the question. She could not sit solitary in a box for the whole house to gape at. But there was nothing to prevent her buying two orchestra seats, so that any one recognizing her might draw a natural deduction. An adjoining empty seat was almost a chaperon, besides permitting her to widen her distance from an unpleasant neighbor. If there should be two unpleasant neighbors, she could always rise and walk out.

At two she was passing the Thalia Theater with an air of well-feigned unconcern, though her steps grew slower, and she stole quick frightened glances at the bustling entrance. She felt the need of such a preliminary survey before she could screw her courage up to the point of joining the in-going throng, who by daylight looked so depressingly dingy and common that she was fairly daunted by the sight of them. Even in the plainest clothes she possessed, she felt that she would be noticeable among people like that, and this was brought home to her the more by the impudent stare of several young men, who parted, none too politely, for her to pass. They knew she had no business there alone; that she belonged to another world; and there was speculation, as well as forward admiration, in the looks they cast at her. She felt they had somehow divined her hesitating purpose, and were grinning at her humiliation. She quickened her pace, and got by with fiercely flaming cheeks, and a desolating sense of failure.

But the desire was so overmastering that after a few minutes she turned, and again coerced her reluctant feet. Impudent young men could do her no harm. What a coward she had been to let them disconcert her. She would put down her sixty cents, and enter boldly, telling herself she was a factory girl, whose young man happened to be late. She might even leave the second ticket at the box-office with the phantom's name on it--though no, that would mean too much talking, and she distrusted her voice. But, anyhow, nothing was going to keep her out of the theater. Didn't soldiers walk tip to breastworks, bristling with guns and cannons--whole rows of them, with probably a very similar shakiness in their legs? She would advance on that box-office in the same spirit--right, left, right, left--rubadub, rubadub--with sixty cents in her hot little hand.

She had scarcely reached the outskirts of the crowd when she suddenly heard her name called aloud. It went through her like a knife, and she hardly dared turn her guilty head. There, beside the curb, in a big automobile, was Mr. Van Suydam, with a party of women in veils and furs, all signaling to her. There ensued an animated conversation. Where was she going? Why shouldn't she jump in with them? Mr. Van Suydam would sit on the floor of the tonneau, and give her his place. They were so insistent that it was not easy to refuse. She fibbed manfully, and invented pressing engagements.... At last they rolled off, waving their hands....

But this chance meeting cost her all the poor courage she possessed. Why, she could not explain to herself--but it was gone, and there was nothing for it but to hasten away. She felt she had escaped detection by a hair; the precious matinee was lost; her eyes smarted with disappointment and chagrin. She rankled with the injustice of it, too--the unmerited and unsought disaster that this infatuation really was. She was so wholly innocent of any blame. She had done nothing--absolutely nothing--to incur it. If you caught measles or smallpox every one was sorry for you; it was admittedly a misfortune for which you were in no way responsible. But if you caught love (she smiled at her own phrase), it was an unspeakable disgrace! Yet what was the difference? Did it not lie outside one's self? How unjust it was, then, to make a criminal of a woman for what was beyond her power to control; and the exasperating part was that she felt a criminal to herself!

Her heart was heavy with shame. One instinct made her love unreasonably; another instinct arrogated the right to criticize with unsparing venom. What a contradiction! What a cruel heritage from all those thousands of dead people who had gone to make her body and her mind with odds and ends of themselves! She had done no harm, yet some blind, unknown, malignant force was grinding her under its heel. She understood now why old-fashioned people believed so implicitly in the devil. It was their crude explanation of the unexplainable.

She locked herself in her room, and impelled by a thought that had been dancing dizzily in her head, opened her desk, and drew out a sheet of note-paper. She managed to write: "Dear Mr. Adair"; and then, blushing crimson, covered her face with her hands, and began to tremble with an uncontrollable emotion. To continue that letter--to send it--was to outrage every feeling of modesty within her. Under the circumstances any letter, however cold or conventional, was an avowal. She might almost as well write "_je t'adore_" under her photograph, and leave it at the stage-door. But that blind, unknown, malignant force, after a moment of respite, again drove her on. She might shiver and blush, but the compulsion of it was like iron, and she had to obey.

"Dear Mr. Adair," she wrote, "I have seen _Moths_ twice, and may I, a mere member of the public, and altogether unknown to you, take the great liberty of expressing my admiration of your wonderful performance?" She stopped at the last word, and debated it over with herself--quite coolly, considering the throes she had been in a minute before. No, "performance" would not do. Bears performed; so did acrobats; it was not the right word at all.--She took another sheet of paper, and began again: "Dear Mr. Adair: I have seen _Moths_ twice, and may I, a mere member of the public, and altogether unknown to you, take the great liberty of expressing my admiration of your powerful portrayal of a noble nature struggling against an illicit passion? Nothing I have ever seen on the stage has moved me so deeply, and though praise from an absolute stranger may seem little in your eyes, I can not resist the impulse that makes me write. Trusting you will receive this in the spirit that prompts it, believe me, in sincere homage, Phyllis Ladd."

She read it, and re-read it till the words lost all meaning. What would he think of it? What sort of person would it conjure up to him? The hand, and the paper, and the engraved address all denoted refinement and good taste. It would be quite evident to him that she was a lady, with a social position of the best--that is, if he knew what Chestnut Avenue meant in Carthage, and especially such a number as 214. But there was nothing to show that she was young, or unmarried--or--or--good-looking. The letter might just as well have been written by a matron of fifty. If only she could have added "aged twenty-one, and generally considered a very pretty woman." She would have liked him to know that, even if she were never to see him again; would have liked to tantalize his curiosity in regard to the unknown Phyllis Ladd whose name was signed at the end.--Though he probably received bushels of notes. All actors were said to. And being a man he would probably like some of the warmer ones better--those from frankly adoring shop-girls, hampered neither by social position nor backwardness. Hers would be pushed to one side, and never thought of again. Oh, the little fool she was to send it! What could come of it but shame, and good Heavens, hadn't she had enough of that already?

But undeterred, and wilful in spite of everything, she addressed an envelope, folded her letter inside it, and went out to drop it herself into the box. As it slipped from her fingers she felt an intense pleasure in her daring. It was only a coward who took no risks. There was her letter in the box gone beyond retaking. For better or worse, for good or evil, it had started on its road, and let come what might.

*CHAPTER IX*