Part 16

It will be asked why he could not Have married Phyllis properly and honestly? Apart from other considerations was she not the only daughter of a millionaire father? How did Adair come to overlook this very obvious advantage, and embark instead on all the troubles and vexations attending an illicit connection? To answer this question it is necessary to go back four or five years, and rake up his marriage with Ruby Raeburn, the dancer. She, too, had been the daughter of a rich man--Laidlaw Wright, the Michigan lumber king. Adair had thought he was doing a very good thing for himself. To have a father-in-law who is a "lumber king" has a pleasant sound. Without knowing exactly how it was to happen, he looked forward confidently to a flow of dollars in his direction, either in cash, or vicariously in royal "tips." Surely a lumber king would take care of his own--and of his own's husband. Ruby herself had not been above reproach in holding out the bait, and everybody had congratulated him, or sneered at him for "marrying money." Alas, for the disillusion that followed. Laidlaw Wright was the hardest-fisted man on the Lakes, and no bulldog, guarding a lunch basket, could have shown more formidable fangs than he at any hand slipping towards his money-bags. Adair learned the sad truth that when you possess the millionaire's daughter, it does not necessarily follow that you possess the millionaire. His dead body must too often be crossed first--and this event, however desirable, can not be unduly hurried.

And meanness was not the only drawback to Laidlaw Wright's character. He could spend money as viciously as he withheld it, and make of it a whip of scorpions for the scourging of sons-in-law. When Adair's domestic unhappiness reached the acute stage, the cantankerous old fellow jumped into the ring, snorting battle and destruction. Money was poured out like water; giants of the bar were retained at enormous fees; detective bureaus' worked night and day. Adair was shadowed; his door was burst open at a time of all others when he would have much preferred to have it stay shut; statutes of which he had never dreamed, lying hidden and unrepealed in the dark recesses of the law, were evoked against him with startling effect. He was sent to prison in default of the bail he could not give. Then after eighteen weary days, which the giants of the bar would willingly have made eighteen months, he was tried, and his case dismissed. But as he left the court room he was again arrested. That implacable old man, with his cohorts of lawyers and detectives, had furbished up fresh charges. The indictment was a mile long. Again there was bail, default, and gnashing of teeth in a stinking cell. Of course, he had legal remedies, but these involved legal tender. He had spent his last dollar; legal remedies had to be paid for, and he had nothing to pay with. A wealthy and vindictive man, if he choose to do so, and does not grudge the outlay, can make our judicial machinery into a most serviceable steam-roller.

After the divorce, when all seemed settled and done with, there were alimony bomb-shells to be contended with. This tribute on his son-in-law's freedom became the obsessing prepossession of Laidlaw Wright's life. He subordinated the lumber business to collecting this forty-five dollars a week, until it became Adair's fixed and unalterable purpose to escape payment by every means in his power. North or South, East or West, the battle went on. Injunctions, contempt proceedings, printed forms in immense envelopes, beginning with the familiar phrase: "You are cited to appear before Judge So-and-So to show cause why that you, etc., etc."--rained on Adair's head wherever Saturday night might find it. Incidentally eyes were blackened; blood streamed on box-office floors; bandaged functionaries and limping attorneys cried for vengeance in shabby court rooms--and not only cried, but often got it, in a heaping measure. And afar, the lumber king, like a horrible spider whose net covered the country from sea to sea, kept the wires busy and hot with hate.

When Ruby was killed in what was called "the hansom cab mystery"--an ugly affair that was never really cleared up--the old man probably mourned less for her than for the loss of his cheerless hobby--the persecution of Cyril Adair. However wealthy you are, you can not move the legal steam-roller without at least a pretense of justification; and now the justification lay with Ruby Raeburn in the grave, as stilled as her dancing feet, as finished and done with as the life that had gone out so tragically.

It had all left Adair with a profound hatred of marriage, and a still profounder hatred of rich fathers-in-law. The one suggested jail, mortification, alimony, raided box-offices, large and determined individuals bursting in your doors; the other an unrelenting monster, pitiless and crafty, trailing after you night and day, like a bloodhound. There was no glamour to Adair in Robert Ladd's millions, but rather a sinister and awful significance; and as for marrying Phyllis, and putting his head again in that noose--who that had been in hell ever willingly went back to it? The very thought made him shudder. He might be weak and impulsive, and easily swept off his feet by her damned beauty--but he wasn't as weak and impulsive as that!

*CHAPTER XIII*

As had been previously arranged he met her the next day at the same place. He had come in a closed cab, which he had left a couple of blocks away, and he insisted on their returning to it, and having out their talk in its shelter. Phyllis demurred at first; it wore an unpleasant look to her; it was not fear exactly--she trusted Adair too absolutely for that--but rather a disinclination in which good taste played the bigger part. It seemed to her low, and discreditable, and unworthy. Her love was too fine a thing, and too dear to her, to have it associated with dingy cushions, a dirty floor carpet, and the vulgarizing secrecy of that shabby interior. It took some persuasion to get her to consent; and though she did so at last under the spell of that irresistible voice, it was with a sudden quenching of the brightness that had illumined her heart.

But it never occurred to her to think the worse of Adair. A man could not be expected to have the sensitiveness of a woman. His love was like himself, robust and masterful; he fastened a string to your little collar, and dragged you after him with a splendid insouciance. Every one of your four little paws might be holding back; you might be whimpering most pitifully, but if he wanted a closed cab, in you had to go, whether you liked it or not. Not that you would have had him different; it was sweet to submit; and if he were big, and direct, and unshakable--so, too, was his love.

They drove slowly through the suburban streets, locked in each other's arms. He kissed her back to happiness, to rapture, the discreet twilight screening them in its shadow. Her qualms disappeared, her reluctance, her shrinkings from the ugliness and commonness of that horrid old box. Nothing mattered so long as they could be together, and in her exaltation she even suffered some pangs of remorse for having resisted his pleadings at all.--She had never cared for children, but as her arms were clasped about his neck, she felt a welling tenderness for him that opened her understanding to the love of a mother for her babe--the divine compassion, the exquisite desire to protect and shield, the willingness, if need be, to die herself rather than to have it suffer the least of harm. She whispered this to him in words so sincere and moving, with eyes so moist, and lips so quivering, and her whole young face so glorified by the shining soul within, that Adair would have been less than human had he not succumbed.

He was abashed; his carefully rehearsed plans were glad to creep out of sight and hide; it would have needed very little for him to fall on his knees, penitent and ashamed, and blurt out--not the truth; the truth wasn't tellable--but enough to make him seem less of a beast to himself, less of a hypocrite and villain. But he paused midway; and the impulse, which, if he had allowed it to control him might have carried him into unsuspected regions of honor and manliness, died still-born; and left him--if not exactly what he had been--at least not so very much the better.

With everything so favorable to his purpose, it continued to be a mystery to him that he still held back. This backwardness, this fear, was a new sensation. He had won prettier women in his day, and had won them briskly and straightforwardly, move by move, with cool premeditation.

Why should he falter at this one, like a ninny? What was it about her that checked and daunted him? She had flung herself at him; she had neither the will nor the knowledge to protect herself; she was as innocent as a child, and had delivered herself over to him as guilelessly. But it was not her innocence that stood in his way; he had no such scruples about innocence; innocence, if anything, ought to have whetted the pursuit. It was something subtler than that--this withholding force. It was more as though she were some proud young queen who had been craftily made drunk with drugs, and then had been abandoned in her helplessness to become the sport of a passing soldier.... How surprised Adair would have been had he been told that the love always on his lips, profaned with every breath he drew, a lie in every sense save the very lowest, was, in all good earnest, stealthily making entry in his heart!

Making? Why, it had been there from the first, all unknown to him. But like many a man the devious road seemed to him the straighter; it was the one he meant to follow, anyhow, lead where it might; he would overcome this strange squeamishness that annoyed and bewildered him. What an ass he was! He remembered his first deer, and how the rifle had shaken in his hands--how his teeth had chattered--how it had calmly walked past him, not twelve yards away, and disappeared unscathed. The boys had called it "buck fever," and had guyed him. Hell, this was a kind of buck fever, too, though without the excuse of inexperience ... but still there was no sense in hurrying matters. There was plenty of time, old fellow, plenty of time.

Thus the day lingered out in talk and vows and kisses, with nothing achieved in any direction, and the situation apparently unchanged. Love has a wonderful power of floating on without ever touching the banks of reality! And when one of the lovers keeps the bark deliberately in mid-stream, and the other poor lunatic is so lost in ecstasy that her understanding is in the skies--hours can pass like minutes, and darkness descend all unawares.

Again they kissed and parted, and Phyllis returned home in the sweet weariness of one who has drunk deep of the cup of love. No unanswered questions fretted her, no disturbing thoughts of why he had been silent on the most important thing of all. She was young, fresh, pretty, well-born and rich--why then should she doubt? What, to a little milliner, would have been the inevitable and all-engrossing conjecture, troubled her not a bit. Men had been proposing to her for two years; love out of wedlock, while it might be familiar in books, was inconceivably remote to her; marriage was like breathing; it was one of the great unconsidered facts of life; one loved--one married.

Her preoccupation was rather with closer and dearer things--the varying expressions of that fine and intensely alive face; the mouth with its ever changing charm; that, smiling, could lift one to paradise, that, laughing, seemed to gladden the whole world; the eyes so lustrous, so melting, and yet that at a word could turn so fierce; the wavy hair that was such a joy to her to caress; the broad shoulders that had pillowed her girlish head, and had given her such a comforting sense of vigor and strength--all her own by the divinest of divine rights. Womanlike, she was trying to merge herself in the man she loved; to subordinate her own individuality in his; to become, if she could, a slim, small, dainty counterpart of this God-given creature who had stooped to her from high Heaven itself.

She ate a good dinner and enjoyed it; drank a glass of claret with a connoisseur-like satisfaction in its fine bouquet; for she came of a stock with a royal taste for pleasure, in little things as well as big. If her father appeared somewhat constrained, and more grave and silent than was his wont, she ascribed it to nothing more than a hard day at the office; and exerted herself with all her superabundant good humor to amuse and distract him. But for once she was unsuccessful, and as the meal proceeded his brown study increased. After dinner, as usual when they were alone, they went up to his "den," the custom being for him to smoke a cigar while she glanced over the evening papers, and read to him what seemed to be of interest. As she stood leaning negligently against the mantelpiece she was surprised to notice that he did not settle himself in his usual chair. He came up to her instead, and she felt a sudden knocking at the heart as her uplifted eyes met his.

"How long has this been going on?" he demanded in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Papa?"

He paused as though to control himself.--She knew very well what he meant, and shivers ran down her back.

"Your carrying on with this actor fellow. This--this Adair." He snapped out the name as though it tasted bitter on his lips--spat it--his gray mustache bristling.

She was panic-stricken; her knees weakened beneath her; she had only presence of mind enough to tell herself that lies could not help her. But lies or not, at that moment she could not have uttered a word. It was all she could do to hold to the mantel for support.

Mr. Ladd drew out his pocket-book, and from it a letter.

"A man like that always has some female consort," he went on brutally, "some woman of his own class who follows his shabby fortunes, and considers him for the time being as her especial property; and who protects herself when that property is in danger by ways that suggest themselves to vulgar and common minds. At least, I do not consider it an unjust inference that this anonymous letter--"

Phyllis uttered a little cry, and hid her face in her hands.--So that was what it was?--She ought to have suspected it. But even in her shame a dart of jealousy passed through her heart. Who was this woman who was trying to rob her of Adair?

"It is a typical letter of the kind," continued Mr. Ladd, with grim persistence, "and written in a hand supposed to be disguised, as though anything could disguise the greater matter of the writer's innate vileness and swinishness. It starts with the usual pretense of good will, of friendly warning; and then passes, with hardly a transition, to charges that in a police court would entail its being cleared of any women amongst the spectators. Frankly, Phyllis, it is abominable--though I am going to read it to you, not with the idea of causing you pain, of punishing you, but to show you much better than any words of mine could do, the sort of cattle you are getting mixed up with. One judges men by the company they keep; whoever this woman is, it may be presumed she knows Adair well, and is a friend of his; otherwise what could prompt all this venom? The letter is a mass of lies, but it has a side-light value on this man you're letting fool you. They are a squalid, contemptible crew, and all tarred with the same stick."

He stopped to put his glasses on his nose; and smoothing out the letter, began deliberately to read it: "'You ought to know the goings-on of that girl of yours, and if nobody else is enough your friend to tell you, I--'"

But Phyllis cried out before he could proceed further.