Part 9

He rose without a word; and leading her up some steps, guided her inside the theater. In the twilight of the wings were some stage-hands in overalls; an actor whom she recognized as the wicked prince, sitting on a soap-box, waiting listlessly for his cue; from the stage itself came the sound of voices raised to an unreal pitch, and strangely exciting and fantastic, in a cadence that was neither recitative nor speech. She could not help noticing, even in her agitation, the shabby, dilapidated, disorderly appearance of everything--the ropes, the dusty props, the frayed material of the scenes, the general air of comfortlessness--receiving the shock that comes to every one on first seeing the theater from the wrong side. But the ratty individual gave her no time to take more than a passing glance, leading the way with whispered warnings through a gorge of canvas, and down a twisting iron stair to the dressing-rooms below. He stopped at one of the little cabin-like doors, opened it, and ushered her in. Then he left her, and shuffled away with diminishing footfalls.

The dressing-room was bald, bare, uncarpeted, and painted a staring white. Below a mirror flanked by two flaring gas-jets there ran a sort of shelf on which were grease-paints, crayons, brushes, a pot of cold-cream, a pot of rouge, and other necessaries for "making up." From nails on the wall--common, every-day nails--there straggled an untidy line of men's clothes. On a box in the corner was a wash-basin, pitcher, soap, and a towel that was none too clean. Three empty chairs, and a wall decoration completed the picture. The wall decoration was a printed notice, in large and emphatic letters: "Smoking positively prohibited in this theater. Ladies must not use alcohol curling-irons."

Most young women, in a situation so equivocal and so unfamiliar, would have been ill at ease, frightened, apprehensive of many vague and dimly suspected dangers. But Phyllis' faith in Adair had none of this faltering quality. She loved, and loving she trusted. Her tremors had ended the moment the door had closed her in--the moment, in fact, when the others would have trembled most. To her, on the contrary, the little room breathed security for the very reason that it was Adair's. With adorable folly she pressed kisses on all his outstretched possessions; nuzzled her cheek against his coat; put her little foot beside one of his big man's shoes, delighting in the contrast--and altogether felt greatly comforted and refreshed.

After a while she heard a tremendous commotion overhead that swelled, sank and swelled again as the house broke into applause at the end of the act. There was a lumbering, scratchy, pattering sound as of a dozen pianos being moved at once by stalwart men in slippers--it was the new scene being set. The passageway outside, previously so still, resounded with a rush of feet--with exclamations and laughter as the company scudded to make their respective changes. The door was flung open, and there, brisk and smiling, on the threshold stood Correze!

Phyllis ran to his arms, and hiding her face against him began to cry. She was so happy, so wretched; the misery of that last hour had tried her more than she knew; her joy at seeing Adair seemed to exhaust the little strength she had left, and her conflicting emotions could find vent only in tears. How sweet it was to be petted, to be soothed--to feel so small, and weak, and helpless in that powerful clasp! Her tears flowed afresh. Flowed at the thought of her love for him, of his love for her, at the beauty, wonder, and solace of it all. Nothing could ever harm them as long as they had each other, nothing, nothing.

She made him take a chair, and seating herself at his feet crossed her arms on his knees and looked up at him. In this position it seemed easier to confide, easier to answer his persistent questions, easier at the same time to satisfy her craving to nestle close. As Adair heard of the letter he turned as black as a thunder-cloud and his hands clenched.

"I know whom I've to thank for that!" he exclaimed furiously. "The damned little treacherous hound, I could choke her for it! I've seen something working in her eyes all along, but I never dreamed she could be as low and contemptible as that! And so she was keeping tab on us, was she, with all her mean little eyes and ears, the dyed toad!"

"Cyril, you really know who it is?"

He made a hissing sound--a disgusted assent. "She isn't twenty feet from here," he exclaimed, "unless she is at the key-hole this moment." He rose; stepped to the door, and looked out. "Not here," he said.

"But tell me, is she one of the actresses in the company?"

"Never you mind," he returned roughly; and then, with a quick remorse at the look in Phyllis' face, he apologized in a roundabout fashion by denouncing the stage in general. "It's a low, dirty business," he cried, "and the people in it are a low, dirty lot; and I guess I'm not so damned much better myself; and if you had a spark of sense you'd clear out, and never see me again! Do you hear what I'm telling you, little chap? Do you hear, Phyllis girl?" He put down his hand, and caught her ear between his thumb and finger, giving it a shake. "Skin out, you darling baby. Your father's right. Go back with my compliments, and tell him I said so!"

His jeering tone hurt her; there was too much sincerity in his self-contempt, too genuine a ring to his proposed dismissal. The contradictory creature, stung to the quick by that letter, and indignantly conscious of much of its truth, was floundering towards righteousness, like a walrus after a floe. Hell, he didn't mean her any harm. Let her get out.

"You'd better hurry," he said, pinching her ear again. "I'm just a cheap actor, as common as the dirt in the road, and you're a beautiful young lady a million times too good for this kind of game. All that you can get out of it is dishonor and disgrace. Go away--let's drop it--love somebody who's worth loving."

He tried to push her from him, but she clung only the tighter, her face paling at his earnestness, and stubbornly looking up at his.

"You couldn't say that if you were--what you say you are."

"How do you know it isn't a trick!" he exclaimed, "just another move in the game--just to get you a little further out of your depth, and then drown you?" His hands closed round her neck with brutal pleasure in her youth, her softness, her delicacy, her powerlessness.

"It's strange," he said wonderingly, "but at this moment when you have never been more tempting to me, I am willing to let you go--want to let you go. It's the first good resolution in my life, yet you stick here like an infatuated little noodle, waiting for it to pass."

She snuggled closer against him.

"Am I tempting?"

"My God, yes."

"And you love me?"

"Oh, my darling, I do, I do!"

"And wouldn't it be nice for a poor little lonesome cheap actor, who's really a great big splendid noble person of genius, if he only knew it--to have me to pet him and love him and adore him, and kiss away his morbid, silly moods, and make such a darling baby of him that he'd burst out crying if I were out of his sight a minute?"

He looked at her sharply for an underlying meaning--a comprehension--an assent. But her candor and innocence were transparent; the purity beneath those limpid depths shone like a diamond in a pool. Her love took no thought of anything base or wrong, either in him or in her; all she sought was the assurance that he loved her, and wanted her; and this achieved she was content to leave the rest to him with unquestioning faith. She did not come of the class to whom marriage is vividly seen as a protection, a safe-guard, a coveted lien on a pocket-book and a man, enforceable by the police; to her it was more one of those inevitable formalities that attend all the big events of life, from being born to being buried, and which one accepts as a matter of course.

Adair, in a gust of passion, caught her up on his knees, and crushed her unresisting body in his arms. Everything was forgotten in the maddening rapture of the moment. The fragrance of her young beauty over-mastered him. His head reeled in the greatest of all intoxications--the woman-drunkenness that makes men crazy. Between his clenched teeth he whispered: "You are mine, and I am going to keep you--you shall never get away now. You had your chance, but it's gone, fool that I was ever to offer it. But now I'll kill you first; do you hear, Phyllis, I'll kill you first, for you're mine, body and soul, and you've gone too far ever to draw back." His voice sank lower; he was beside himself; all he knew was that she was shaking convulsively--that her face, her lips were burning--that love, shame, devouring fever all flamed in the eyes she tried to hide from him.

A knock at the door startled him to his feet. Rap, rap, rap!

"You're called, Mr. Adair," said the voice from without.

"All right, Williams!"

His quick, matter-of-fact tone was as much a shock to Phyllis as the interruption itself. To fall from the clouds, and then land so squarely and coolly on the earth below was a performance disturbing to witness. It seemed to cast suspicion on his sincerity up above. But the misgiving was a fleeting one, for as he turned to her, she perceived in his air of concern and resolution that she was still the dominant thought in his mind.

"See here, Phyllis," he said, speaking fast, "this means only one thing. The company leaves Saturday night after the show to jump to Ferrisburg. You must come with me--that's all there is to it.--Will you?"

She bowed her head, for somehow she could not answer in words.

"It won't do for us to see each other till then; but you ring me up on Saturday between twelve and one at the St. Charles Hotel, and we'll fix up the dates. Have you got that straight?"

She bowed her head again, more overcome than ever.

"Don't worry about a trunk, or any damned foolishness of that sort. Trunks have busted more elopements than six-shooters--just a nightie and a tooth-brush, and we'll manage the rest at Ferrisburg!" His glance sought for some evasion, some backwardness, but there was neither.

"It's the only thing to do," she said simply. "Only, only--" She was holding fast to his hand, swaying a little.

He waited for some objection; some silly, feminine obstacle--

"You do love me, don't you?" she asked as pleadingly as a child. "If you love me I could do anything. Tell me you love me, Cyril."

He kissed her hastily, saying "yes," and again "yes," and ran out of the dressing-room. A thin deferential man peeped in. "I'm Mr. Adair's dresser, Miss," he said. "He told me to show you the way out. If you would be so good as to follow me, Miss."

* * * * *

"Good-night, Miss!"

*CHAPTER XV*

In the meanwhile, Mr. Ladd, closely buttoned up and walking to keep himself warm, restlessly paced the drive-way, awaiting Phyllis' return. At every nearing footfall he would stiffen and stop, and his throat would contract with something very much like trepidation. His anger was all gone. In its place was not only contrition and self-reproach for having shown her that letter, but a very real alarm of the situation he had precipitated. He had been inconceivably stupid--inconceivably unkind and blundering. He had driven the girl straight into the fellow's arms, and had now doubled what he had to undo. Looking back on it he seemed to have said everything he ought not to have said; done everything he ought not to have done. It was a case for frankness, tenderness, and considerate understanding. Hurry, too, in such matters, was the root of all evil. Romance, like faith, grew with persecution. Gad, if she really thought herself in love with this egregious actor, he would put his pride in his pocket, invite him to the house, pretend to like him, and thus earn the right to stipulate for conventions and a long engagement. No cruel father here, but a cool man of the world, craftily leaving it to others to tittle-tattle, to disparage, and best of all to deride with a laughter infinitely more effective than the sternest and angriest of arguments. Yes, that was the program and he must put an iron hold upon himself to see that he did not swerve from it by a hair.

He ran forward in the dark as he heard some one coming, and recognized Phyllis dimly against the lighted street behind.

"Phyllis!" he cried, "Phyllis!" and he caught her hand and held it. Her touch, even more than her silence, told him how estranged they were. His agitation paralyzed his tongue; he hardly knew how to begin; he murmured under his breath, "Forgive me, forgive me"; and then, louder, with an uncontrollable resentment that flashed up in spite of all his self-warnings: "Don't deny it--you've been to him!"

"I wasn't going to deny it, Papa."

"Where? At the theater?"

"Yes."

"You went there alone--not even a maid with you? Have you parted with all sanity?"

His tone was overbearing, harsh, scornful. Alas, for his good and wise intentions! In the impact of two stubborn natures, each rousing in the other an invincible antagonism, there could be no tenderness, no consideration. Each was fighting with the flag nailed to the mast; she for Adair, he for his daughter.

"It was your doing, Papa. I had no alternative."

"Oh, what a lie! I'd sooner have gone with you myself, however bitter or humiliating it might have been for me."

The picture of such an escort to such a rendezvous made her laugh in spite of herself. It was not the kind of laughter to soften or turn away wrath. To Ladd it seemed heartlessness itself.

"It's unbelievable," he broke out, "my God, Phyllis, what am I to say to you? Isn't the man self-condemned on the face of it--with his closed cabs, and underhanded meetings, and now stripping you of every rag of reputation by letting you come to him at his theater? And what do you mean by the theater, anyhow?--His dressing-room, of course?"

"Yes."

Her answer wrung a groan from him.

"Phyllis, Phyllis!" he exclaimed. Then in an altered voice, full of irritated reasonableness, he went on: "Do you realize that we could have had the same--well, disagreement--over that Pastor fellow you were engaged to? Wouldn't you have been just as wilful in his case--just as sure? Wouldn't it have been the same with Baron von Piller if I had objected violently at the time you engaged yourself to him? Look back on both these affairs. You aren't altogether a fool. Mayn't this be a third mistake?"

She seized his hand in both her own, and squeezed it with all her strength.

"It's because I love him _like that_! Not the love that comes of compliments, of attentions and flowers, but _that_!--But of course you don't understand--you can't."

Mr. Ladd ignored this slight on his more limited knowledge, though his lip curled sardonically under his mustache.

"I am more concerned in how he loves you," he said. "He's acting like a cad, and you know it."

"Papa!"

His voice outrang hers. "Love," he cried, with piercing contempt, "that kind of love is the commonest thing there is. There isn't a drab on the streets who hasn't tasted it to the dregs. God help you when you wake up, and see this man as he is--schemer, scoundrel, blackguard. Do you think I don't know? Do you think I haven't run across hundreds? Do you think I'm going to let an adventurer like that get his hooks into you, and drag you down into his own filthy mire? You're the only thing I have in life; I live for you; there isn't an hour of the day when you're not in my mind. You can't dismiss all this at the nod of a stranger. It carries its obligations--for you, too; the obligation of more than twenty years; not for feeding and clothing you, I don't mean anything so banal--but the deeper one of a love that has kept you warm and happy--that has grown without your knowing it to be a very part of you, as it is all of me."

Had he stopped there the harm might still have been undone. But with a perversity inexplicable at that moment when the tide had turned, and responsive tears were streaming down those girlish cheeks, he had a sudden outburst of rancor that destroyed everything he had gained.

"To think that anybody named Cyril Adair--my God, _Cyril Adair_, with its suggestion of sticky sweetness, and tinsel, and footlights, and mock heroics--could come between two sane, grown-up people like you and me!--Cyril Adair!" he repeated, and laughed mirthlessly.

There was nothing he could have urged against Adair that could have hurt her more. A young and devoted woman can always find excuses for her lover's past. It belongs to a time before her little hand had been stretched out to save him, before she had brought hope and light to one who had never known either, and had consequently--and naturally--abandoned himself to despair. With a feeling surely divine, and often justified by results, she never doubts her ability to wash that black sheep to the fleecy whiteness of her own dainty wool. But poor Cyril's name was a very different matter; it was worse in its pinchbeck and aristocratic pretensions, and school-girl-novel picturesqueness than the most crimson of sins. It would still be stamped on the luckless sheep after he had been whitened as white as snow--the Scarlet Letter of vulgarity, so to speak--affronting good taste on every hill-side. Nothing more showed the degree of Phyllis' infatuation than that she had been able to tolerate this name; and now, to have it flung in her face, with an emphasis so sneering--the one taunt for which she had no answer--was more than she felt herself able to bear.

She drooped beside her father, realizing the futility of any further argument, and of a sudden so tired that the woes of the world seemed to be on her shoulders. Her voice, when at last she broke the silence, was weary, though with none of the weariness of surrender, but rather that of a settled and altogether sad determination.

"We seem to have said all there is to say--good night, Papa."

He would have detained her, but she moved away from him, and preceded him into the house. He followed, respecting her wish to terminate the scene. He was weary, too, and no less willing to be alone. He had to think and to act, and much had to be done that night.

They met at breakfast as usual. She kissed him dutifully, and poured out his coffee as though this Wednesday morning was no different from any other Wednesday morning. They talked on indifferent subjects until the servants had left them. Then the suspended battle was renewed.

"My dear," said Mr. Ladd, with an uncertain smile, "I am thinking of sending you on a visit to your Aunt Sarah's. It will be better for both of us to stay apart for a time, and see matters with a little more calmness and--consideration for each other. There's no sense in being over-hasty, and making momentous resolutions in this twinkling-of-an-eye sort of way. There's lots of time--oceans of time. You may change, I may change--for I don't set up to be inflexible, and neither do you. Yes, you'll go to your Aunt Sarah's, and then to Paris with her if you like, or Monte Carlo. I guess I can fix it up to the nines, even to a look-in at Paquin's, and one of those expensive strolls down the Rue de La Paix. Go ahead--why not?"

"I'd rather stay here, Papa."

"Phyllis, this is a request--a favor to me. I want you to."

"When?"

"Why not the noon train? I've taken a drawing-room for you, and a berth for your maid--and Sarah's expecting you."

"You told her?"

He made no attempt to avoid the implication of her eyes.

"No," he replied. "No, I don't believe in roaring out your troubles over the long distance 'phone. It was enough to call it an impulse. With you, my dear, that is always a sufficient reason."--They both laughed, and Mr. Ladd's anxious cordiality redoubled at so favorable a symptom. "If it's the real thing, Phyllis, time won't hurt it."

"It is the real thing, Papa."

"But you will go?"

"No."

"Phyllis, I insist."

"I'm sorry, but it's impossible."

"You have to. You must."

"I won't!"

It is the terrible part of stereotyped situations that people will make use of the stereotyped expressions that go with them. Mr. Ladd was the kindest and most devoted father on earth, yet the venerable formula rose to his lips: "You defy me under my own roof?"

It of course forced out the stereotyped reply: "I can leave it."

Mr. Ladd, in silence, looked at her long and steadily; then he bent his head. She saw nothing but the iron-gray hair; the stooping, dejected shoulders; the hand, lying as limp as dead, on the damask cloth.

"Papa?"

No answer.

"Papa?"

She ran to his side, all revolt gone, her only thought to comfort him. Her bare arms entwined themselves about his neck in a paroxysm of remorse; her bosom swelled; her voice was incoherent as she lavished her young tenderness upon him. It was a moment that would decide her life. Had her father left the initiative to her, had he been content to accept mutely these tokens of her surrender--he would have won, then and there, and nothing again would ever have come between them. But with blind stupidity he had to persevere with the intention their clash had interrupted.

"I will tell you my real reason for wanting you to get away," he said. "It wasn't what you thought at all--it was to spare you unnecessary pain. Last night I sent Reynolds, our best secret-service man, to New York with _carte blanche_ to confer with the Pinkertons and ransack this fellow's record from top to bottom. From what Reynolds told me he already knew--I mean what's said down-town, I believe it will be a black one, so black that there won't be any question about your giving him up--just on the facts brought out--facts that can not be disproved or contested. Reynolds--"

"But, Papa, I don't understand. You are setting detectives to go back over his life, like a criminal? _Detectives?_"

"Yes."

"But how dishonorable, how infamous!"

"Oh, it's done every day; it's common, my dear; if the man's straight it can't hurt him--but if he has anything to hide, why, we turn on the search-light, and find out what's wrong.--It's all done secretly; he won't know; don't worry about that.--I expect a full report in a few days, and would rather not have you here when I get it."

"And do you think that's fair or right, or anything but--fiendish?"

"How do you know he isn't married, Phyllis?"--he shot this at her mercilessly. "How do you know anything except what he's told you? You may be willing to believe him, and all that--but I'm your father, and I want to _know_, and by God, I'm going to know!"

"Papa, don't!"

"Aha, you're not very confident, are you?"

"He's a man. I don't doubt he's been foolish, and bad, and fast, but to see it written down cold-bloodedly on sheets of paper is more than I can bear. I am willing to ignore that; I am willing to take him as he is _now_. Oh, Papa, a woman can forgive so much."

"Yes, my dear, and a great deal that a father never could."

"I beg you, Papa, I implore you to telegraph to them to stop."

"It's too late--besides it has to be done; I insist on it; I'm going to strip that man's past to the bone."

"Even if it costs you me? Even if this is the end of everything between us?"

"Fiddle-de-dee, these theatrics are unworthy of you! You're going to take the noon train to Sarah's, and behave yourself; and this business, however disagreeable to both of us, has got to go through."

Her lips tightened mutinously. She was not a young woman who could be driven.

"I'll stay here, or walk right out of your house--and you know where."