Part 11

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?