Part 5

"By God, yes," he answered, "though why on earth you should ask--"

"Only to make sure," she exclaimed, brightening. "Just to be certain that my old-dog father hadn't changed. Now say bow-wow, just to show that you haven't!"

Mr. Ladd, very much mystified, and not at all comfortable in his mind, obediently bow-wowed. It set Phyllis off in a peal of laughter, and it was with apparent hilarity that both descended at the Pastor's front door.

Whitlock's mother received them in the drawing-room. She was a stately, gray-haired woman, with a subdued voice, and a graciousness that was almost oppressive. Her guests had hardly been seated, when J. Whitlock himself appeared, and excused himself, with faultless and somewhat unnecessary courtesy, for not having been found awaiting their arrival. Mr. Ladd saw before him a tall, thin young man, of a polished and somewhat cold exterior, with a dryness of expression that was positively parching. Like one of those priceless enamels of the Orient, one felt that J. Whitlock Pastor had been roasted and glazed, roasted and glazed, roasted and glazed until the substance beneath had become but a matter of conjecture. The enamel was magnificent--but where was the man? Mr. Ladd, with a choking sense of disappointment, began to suspect there was none.

J. Whitlock opened the proceedings much as the czar might have opened a Duma. He recited a neat, dry, commonplace little address of welcome, and sounded a key-note of constraint and formality that was rigorously maintained throughout the evening. The address was seconded by the empress-dowager, and then it was Mr. Ladd's turn to swear loyalty to the throne, and burst into cheers. He did so as well as he could, but it was a poor, lame attempt; and when, almost in despair, he went up to J. Whitlock, and impulsively wrung the Imperial hand, the very atmosphere seemed to shiver at the sacrilege.

A frigid dinner followed in a dining-room of overpowering magnificence. There was a high-class conversation to match, interrupted from time to time by a small British army--small in number--but prodigal of inches, and calves, and chest-measure--who stealthily pounced on plates, obtruded thumbs, and stopped breathing when they served you. Mr. Ladd, smarting with an inexplicable resentment, compounded of jealousy, scorn and chagrin, writhed in his chair, and tugged at his mustache, and gazed from his daughter to his prospective son-in-law with melancholy wonder.

Yet Phyllis seemed to be perfectly contented, sitting there so demure, elegant and self-possessed at the terrible board of the Romanoffs. Mr. Ladd could have wished that she had shown a little more assertion, a little more--well, he hardly knew what but something to offset the unconscious arrogance of these people, and to show them that a Ladd was as good as they were, if not a darned sight better! But Phyllis, if anything, was too much the other way. There was a humility in her sweetness, her deference, her touching desire to please. To her father she seemed to have accepted too readily, too gratefully, her beggar-maid position at that kingly table.

But as he watched her some doubts assailed him. He remembered how singular she had been in the carriage, how over-wrought, and unlike her usual self. Her eyes, fixed so constantly on her intended's, had in them more pleading than love; more a curious, studying, seeking look, as though she, too, was trying to penetrate the enamel, and see beneath. But her voice softened as she spoke to him; she smiled and colored at his allusions to "us" and "our"; she shyly referred to their projected honeymoon in the western forests, and spoke rapturously of galloping through the glades at the head of twenty rangers, all sunburned and jingling and armed to the teeth.

What was an old fellow to make of it, anyway? One could bring up a girl from a baby, and still not know her. Mr. Ladd was very much perplexed.

After dinner, the ladies left the two men at their coffee, and retired. The British Army set out liqueurs, cigars, a spirit-lighter, and then noiselessly vanished. Now that they were alone together, Mr. Ladd hoped that J. Whitlock would unbend; hoped that the long-deferred process of making his acquaintance would begin. He might not be an ideal son-in-law, but it was horse-sense to make the best of him. You had to take the son-in-law God gave you. Besides, the man that Phyllis loved was bound to have a fine nature; and if he could unveil it to her, he surely could unveil it to her father. So, between sips of Benedictine, and through the haze of a good cigar, Mr. Ladd essayed the task.

He commenced by describing his own early manhood; his courtship of Phyllis' mother; his marriage in face of a thousand difficulties. Again and again he faltered; it was all so sacred; his eyes were often moist--but he persevered; he had to win this young man, and how better than by appealing to the sentiment that unites all true lovers? The elderly railroad president could not bear utterly to be left out of these two young lives. His daughter was lost to him; at best a husband leaves little for a father; this stranger had it now in his power to make that little almost nothing. Small wonder, then, that Mr. Ladd struggled for his shred of happiness; put pride on one side; exerted every faculty he possessed to attract the friendship of Phyllis' master. For a husband is a master; a woman is the slave of the man she loves; forty centuries have changed nothing but the words, and the size and metal of the ring.

It used to be of iron, and was worn on the neck.

Mr. Ladd's gaze, that had been fixed in vacancy, of a sudden fell full on J. Whitlock's face. What he saw was an expression so cold, so delicately supercilious, so patiently polite, that he stopped as suddenly as though he had been struck by lightning. Was it for this, then, that he had opened this holy of holies, into which no human being before had ever looked,--this inmost recess of his soul, now profaned, it seemed to him, for ever? For a second his shame transcended even his disappointment. He had dishonored the dead, besides dishonoring himself. He had allowed this tall, thin, bored creature to hear things too dear, too intimate, to be spoken even to Phyllis. My God, what an old fool he had been, what an ass!

"Had we not better join the ladies?" inquired J. Whitlock, after the pause had lasted long enough to redeem the proposal from any appearance of rudeness.

"I suppose we had," returned Mr. Ladd, in a tone as dry as his host's; and together they both sought the drawing-room.

A long, long hour followed before, in decency, a very flustered, embittered, and upset middle-aged gentleman could dare to say his adieux. From the frescoed ceiling the painted angels must certainly have wept at the sight beneath; or, if they did not weep, they surely yawned. The labored conversation, the make-believe cordiality, the awful gap when a topic fell to rise no more, certainly made it an evening that never could be forgotten. Blessed Briton who said: "Mr. Ladd's kerridge!" Twice blessed Briton who handed them into it, and uttered the magic word "'Ome!"

"Did you like him, Papa?"

"A delightful young man, Phyllis, perfectly delightful."

"And his mother?"

"Charming, charming!"

"I never saw either one of them unbend as they did to you."

"It was a great compliment. I appreciate it."

"You don't think I could have done better?"

"No, indeed. Not if you love him."

"Papa?"

"Yes, dearest?"

"Papa, I've done something awful. Shut your eyes, and I'll try to tell you."

"Phyllis, what do you--?"