Part 26

"I hope we will never say that word to each other again," exclaimed Phyllis. "It's a horrid word and I hate it. Good-by, Cyril, and don't forget your little slave, counting the minutes at home!"

"Ta, ta, my lamb, I won't forget her. Couldn't if I would, ta, ta!"

There is no harder task than to fold one's hands and wait. Adair had his matinee and his evening performance to engross his thoughts, and allay to some degree his fever of anticipation. But Phyllis had no such resource. Restless, nervous, on edge with suspense--fits of joy alternating with craven terror--she wore out the longest afternoon of her life, and an evening that was more trying still. Her father, to make matters worse, attempted some advances; spoke to her with unexpected kindness; hovered on the brink of another appeal. What a little Judas she felt, sitting opposite him for perhaps the last time, and maintaining a constraint that was, indeed, her armor, for if she responded at all she knew she would never go that night. So she parried and fenced, and kept the conversation impersonal at any hazard, while his face grew steadily more overcast, and the lines of his forehead deepened. She excused herself early, pleading fatigue, and relaxed her attitude to kiss him tenderly good night.

"It'll all come right before long," she murmured softly. "Good night, my darling daddy, and remember I love you whatever happens."

She was off before he could take advantage of a mood so melting. But he felt much consoled, nevertheless.

"She's coming round," he said to himself. "I might have known she would. That's the comfort of her being such a good girl, and so intelligent!"

Up-stairs, the young lady thus complacently described was stripping off her dinner gown, and wondering what dress she would replace it with. She was the daintiest of soubrettes in her long dark-red silk stockings, and Watch, her Russian poodle, gazed at her with an approving, first-row-of-the-orchestra expression that made him look too wicked and dissipated for anything. She gave him a gentle kick on the nose to remind him that staring wasn't gentlemanly, and finally chose a blue tailor-made by Redfern. When this was on, the rest of her preparations were easy. She could not well take Watch, so she took his collar, and this was the first to go into the little hand-bag. A nightgown followed, a pair of stockings, tooth-brush, comb and brush, tooth-powder, some handkerchiefs, the photographs of her father and mother, still in their frames, and a pair of patent leather slippers with gilt buckles. Surely no little bride of her importance and social position had ever set forth with so slender a trousseau. There it all was, dog-collar below, slippers on top, in a bag no bigger than an exaggerated purse. She smiled a little tremulously as she looked at it, touched as only a woman could be by the magnitude of her sacrifice. Her clothes and her father--tears for both, thus equally abandoned, suffused her eyes.

The next thing was a note of farewell, to be found the following morning on her unused pillow. "I am going away with Mr. Adair," she wrote, "taking my own life in my own hands for better or worse. Whether we are to be friends--you and I--depends entirely upon yourself, although alienation from you will be very hard for me to bear. Forgive me if you can, and do not let your disappointment and chagrin embitter you against me; or what would hurt me almost as much--against him. To-night when I kissed you it was good-by, and if it is for ever it will be your own fault, and very, very cruel, for I love you, dearest father, I love you. Ever your devoted Phyllis."

By half-past nine everything was ready; and it was with a consuming impatience that she went into her boudoir with Watch, and ensconsed herself on the sofa to wait. A confidential Russian poodle can be of great help to a young lady in distress. Watch's sympathy; Watch's certainty of everything coming out right; Watch's implied determination to soften the blow to Mr. Ladd; Watch's willingness to whine over the general tragedy of things--all were whimsically comforting. Best of all, he could listen for ever and ever with one ear cocked up, and never lose for an instant his air of highly gratified interest. And what didn't he hear during that hour and three quarters on the sofa! What secrets of longing and tenderness, of girlish hopes, of girlish dreams, of delicious falterings and trepidations--all breathed into that woolly ear!

Then came the suffocating moment of departure--the quieting of an unruly friend--the peeping from the door; the tip-toeing down the stairs; the panicky stops to cower and listen; the stealthy passage of the great dim hall; the groping for bolts and chains; the heavy door swinging heavily back; the cold, dark, starry night beyond; the egress into it; the wild sense of escape and freedom; the sound of gravel under the eager little feet; the gate-way; the wide silent Avenue; the glimmering lights of the cab at the farther corner; and--

"Yes, I'm Tom Merguelis, Miss. Jump in--everything is ready."

She discovered herself sitting beside a very tall, very thin young man, who smiled down at her in a quizzical, friendly manner not unsuggestive of the Cheshire Cat. That vague, deprecatory grin was as much a part of Mr. Merguelis as his sandy hair, his retreating chin, and the whole amiable vacancy of his expression. His youth had been passed before the public as "assistant" to Professor Theophilus Blitz, the exhibiting hypnotist, who was accustomed nightly to run pins into him; make him drink kerosene under the impression it was beer; smack his lips over furniture-polish; eat potato peelings for sausages; bark like a dog, meow like a cat, make love to a bolster, and generally disport himself to the astonishment and horror of clodhopper audiences. Six years of this had left Tommy without a digestion, and that fixed and bewildered grin, which to Phyllis, under the unusual circumstances of their meeting, seemed to her not without a satiric quality.

But as they drove through the deserted streets she realized her mistake, and corrected so unjust a first impression. The artless, gawky creature idolized Adair, and was proud beyond measure to be serving him so romantically. It gave him an extraordinary fellow-feeling for Phyllis to have her also on her knees at the shrine of the demigod; and he overflowed with a hero-worship so naive and sincere that she could not help liking him--grin and all. Indeed, it seemed a happy augury for her own future that Adair could excite so profound an admiration in those about him. Mr. Merguelis seemed as infatuated as she, and saw nothing strange in these midnight proceedings. There was approval in that everlasting grin. Would she please call him Tommy? Mr. Adair called him Tommy. They shook hands on it in the semi-darkness, and she knew she had found a friend.

Phyllis expected that Cyril would be waiting for her at the station, and was much cast down to learn that she was to remain alone with Tommy until the train arrived. "Then we'll all bustle on board together, and nobody will notice you," explained Tommy. The good sense of this was apparent, yet at the same time she could not help feeling a little forlorn and slighted. "Nobody will notice you," said Young Lochinvar's Tommy.--Now that the die was cast, why should she not be noticed? She was ready to avow herself Adair's before all the world, and why not on that dark, ill-lighted platform, when her courage was nearly spent and her slim young body drooping?

They sat on a bench, and waited in a corner of the vast cavern, she with her bag in her lap, Tommy with his unrelaxing grin fixed on space. Waited and waited, while stragglers passed, immigrants with babies and bundles, hurrying couples returning to the suburbs from a night in town. Above the noise there suddenly rose a louder thunder. It was the train bursting in with a roar, hissing steam and grinding its brakes as it slowed down, throbbing majestically. Tommy seized her by the arm and ran along the platform.

"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"

"Third car back."

"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"

"Jump in!"

Others were scrambling in, too. Phyllis had a fleeting glimpse of Miss de Vere, still with dabs of make-up on her sulky, handsome face; of the wicked Prince, loaded down with baggage, and excitedly taking the direction of everything on his shoulders; of a stout, authoritative Jew with a diamond pin, who was staring at her with a greedy curiosity, and that cattleman's look, as of one who could tell the shape, age, attractiveness, and market value of a human heifer at a single glance. They jostled into the empty car, a dozen or more, settling themselves anywhere, anyhow, like a big boisterous family. Tommy and Phyllis slipped into a seat at the farther end, and they had hardly done so before the latter felt a hand reach over and touch her cheek; and turning, saw Adair! Tommy sprang up, and made way for him, Adair taking the vacated place as though by right.

Whatever pique she might have held against him vanished in the magic of his presence. His hand, closing on hers, communicated peace and resolution. No longer was she afraid, or lonely, or sad, or uneasily conscious of those other prying and speculating occupants of the car. The goal was attained; stronger shoulders than her own now lifted her burden; she had run her race, and could now lie, all spent and weary, in that haven of heart's content. His musical voice flowed on in caressing cadences. Had Tommy carried out his instructions? Had Tommy explained the need of an unobtrusive departure, so that any chance reporter or busybody might be put off the scent?--Oh, the poor baby, how neglected she must have felt, on this the night of nights; how utterly ignored and forgotten!

He drew her head against his cheap fur coat, and stroked her cheek and tresses--his sweetheart, his darling, his little bride! It was sweet to be petted; sweeter still to enjoy the luxury of self-pity as he expatiated with smiling exaggeration on her sad, miserable, wretched waiting with Tommy, in the sad, miserable, wretched station! She closed her sleepy eyes, and nestled closer, awake only to catch every soft word of endearment. Of these she could not have enough. It was heavenly to doze away with: "I love you, I love you, I love you," falling in that insatiable little ear; heavenly to feel that big hand playing with her hair, and tempting kisses as it lingered against her mouth; heavenly to feel so weak, and small, and helpless, and tired against that muscular arm. Divine mystery of love! Divine the dependence of woman on man, of man on woman, neither complete without the other, and each so different... "My little bride" ... "I love you, ... I love you, ... I love you..."

The train rumbled through the darkness. The seats held the huddled figures of the company, all as limp as sacks, as oblivion stole upon them. Feet were cocked up; hats were pulled over brows; haggard women, pale men, sprawling in disorder, and through long familiarity as unrestrained as some low, coarse family--sloppy slippers and frank stockings to the garter; unbuttoned collars, unbuttoned vests; dirty cuffs on racks--the squalid evidences of a squalid intimacy.

Looking down at that pure profile, and inhaling with every breath the fragrance of an exquisite young womanhood which would be his so soon to take, and, if he wished, to fling away, shattered and destroyed beyond all mending, Adair felt, with dawning comprehension, and mingled elation and pain, all that had gone to put this creature so infinitely above him.

What care, what money, what anxious thought had been lavished to make her what she was. How incessant the effort; how jealous the guarding through all these years; how elaborate and costly the training to fit her for the proud, high position to which she had been born. It came over him with a strange new perception that the very innocence of her surrender was but another proof of that queenly rearing. She was not of a world where women suspected or bargained. They lived their gracious lives within triple walls, unaware of the sentinels and outposts for ever watching over them. And what were the sensations of the lucky thief, who had closed his fingers on the prize, and run? They were not altogether as joyful as one might have thought. The thief was very much bemused. That trusting head, snuggled against his breast, was causing a curious commotion in the heart beneath.

But he overcame the unmanly weakness. Hell, he would take what the gods had sent him. He hadn't raised a hand to get her; she had thrown herself at him; oh, she knew what she was doing, well enough, though she probably expected him to marry her. Perhaps he would, later on. He wasn't prepared right there to say he wouldn't. But there was plenty of time for that. He hoped she wouldn't turn out to be one of the crying, troublesome kind. Add a Laidlaw Wright father-in-law to that, and one might as well shoot oneself--what with writs, attachments, box-office seizures, injunctions, citations "to show cause," detectives going through your pockets, black eyes, fines, contempt-proceedings--all raining on a fellow in buckets! He smiled grimly at the recollection. No more of that for him.--Well, if she didn't like the other way, she would just have to make the best of it. Her innocence here again would be a great help. The poor little lamb believed every word he said. Besides, with women, kisses could always atone for everything.

The train rumbled on and on. Adair succumbed to a fitful and uneasy slumber, through which there ran a thread of tormenting dreams. He had lost her; they had become separated, and over the heads of a crowd he saw her disappearing in a vortex of hurrying people; he struggled unavailingly to follow, swearing, hitting out, shouldering and elbowing like a madman; the cruel reality of it awakened him to find her sleeping in his arms. He awakened her, too,--roughly,--to share his relief, his joy. He made her hold him round the neck; made her kiss him, all sleepy as she was; crushed and cuddled her in a transport of sudden passion. Then he nodded off again, his lips resting on her silken hair, blissfully content, and no longer afraid to close his heavy lids.

They were bundled off at Ferrisburg at three in the morning, all of them so sodden with sleep that they could scarcely keep their eyes open. A dilapidated bus, and a freckled boy received them, the former representing the Clarendon Hotel, the latter, Miss MacGlidden's theatrical boarding-house. The company divided accordingly, with some grumpy facetiousness, the lesser members trailing away on foot after the boy, the principals climbing into the bus,--the trunks of both stacked high on the platform to await the morning.