Chapter IX
The next morning, towards noon, Cyril Adair was lounging over the bar of the Good Fellows’ Grotto, with one well-shod foot perched on the metal rest below. Before him was a Martini cocktail, and the admiring, deferential face of Larry, the bar-keeper. Adair stood the scrutiny of daylight better than most actors. Late hours, dissipation and grease-paint had not impaired a fine and ruddy skin that the morning razor left as fresh as a boy’s. His brown eyes were clear, and there was about him an air of unassailable health that was enhanced by broad shoulders, a neck as firm as any ever cut from Greek marble, and a finely-swelling chest—the physique, in fact, of what he had some pretensions to be—a good, welter-weight boxer. His skill in this direction was well known, and his readiness when tipsy to exercise it on any one unfortunate enough to offend him, was one of the scandals of his stormy and scandalous life. His engagements, nine times out of ten, had the knack of ending in the police court, with raw beefsteak for the plaintiff’s eye, and the option of “seven day’s hard” for the uncontrite defendant. Even when stark sober—and to do him justice he drank only in fits and starts, with long intermissions between—there was something subtly formidable in the man, and people instinctively made way for him, and treated him with a respect verging on fear.
He was over-dressed in what was the last accentuation of the prevailing fashion—with far too much braided cuff, with far too startling a waistcoat, with far too extravagant a tie and pin—and worse than anything, wore them all with assertiveness and self-complacency. Though his manners were good (when he liked,) and his address agreeable, and even ingratiating, he was too showy, too self-satisfied, too elaborately at ease, and his assurance seemed to rest, not on the conventional groundwork of birth and breeding, but rather on his power and will to knock you through the door if he cared to take the trouble.
Of course, he was profoundly ignorant, knowing nothing, reading little, his life bounded by the footlights on one side, and the stage-door on the other—and like all such men perpetually nervous lest he should be found out. His inherent ability was enormous—as enormous as his vanity. He had fought his way up from nothing—from the muddy streets in which he had sold papers, and begged, and starved, his whole boyhood long. He was full of instincts that had never had the chance of becoming anything more—instincts, which, if cultivated, might have made him a very different man. He was passionately fond of bad music; delighted in the only pictures he knew, those in hotels and saloons; he had, stored away in a memory that never forgot anything, half the plays of Shakespeare, and thousands of lines of trashy verse. A savage, in fact, in the midst of our civilization, which, after trying to grind him into powder, and denying him everything, was unjust enough to despise him heartily for what he had made of himself unaided. Could he have refrained from taking offense at trifles, and from punching people’s heads, he could easily have retained the high place he had once held on the New York stage. He had no one to thank but himself if he were now touring the country in a fifty-class company, with an enemy in every manager who had ever employed him. He had a strong, unusual talent. In the delineation of somber and misunderstood natures, contradictory, pent-up, heroic—the out and out bad man with a spark of good—he was admitted by metropolitan critics to have no equal in America. Others copied him slavishly and made successes, while he, their inspiration and their model, remained comparatively unknown. There were times when he felt very badly about it, but a pretty face and a provocative petticoat could always divert his attention. Needless to say he had not to look far to find either.
“Larry,” he asked nonchalantly, “do you know any people in Carthage here named Ladd?”
“I don’t believe I do, Mr. Adair,” returned Larry, scratching his head. “Leastways, none except Robert T. R. Ladd, the railroad president.” Larry was unable to conceive that this mighty name could possibly have any bearing on Adair’s question. “No, I don’t believe I do.”
“Oh, the railroad president? Any family?”
“Just one daughter.”
“Well, go on—tell me about her.”
“Why, there isn’t much to say, except people call her the prettiest girl in Carthage—but then they always say that of a millionaire’s daughter—Emma Satterlee would turn the milk sour, and yet in the society notes—”
“Did you ever see her?—No, no, I don’t mean that one—the railroad man’s—the Ladd girl?”
“Yes, I saw her onst in a church fair. She hit me all right. Slender brunette, very aristocracy, with the kind of eyes that if you’re fond of brunettes—seem like—”
“How old is she?”
“Hell, how do I know! Twenty—twenty-one—something around there. Just a girl.”
“And the prettiest one in Carthage?” repeated Adair, sipping his cocktail as though the description pleased him.
“Well, I would leave my happy home for her,” said Larry, with a grin. “Pretty—I’d say she was pretty—pretty enough to eat.”
“Lives out Chestnut Avenue way, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, in the stone house that’s set back in a kind of park, with a big gate in front and a driveway. The Ladds’ are at the top of the top, you know. My, I felt I was breaking into the swell bunch myself when she told my fortune for a dollar. If I had had the nerve and the money I guess she would be telling it yet! And she smiled so sweet when she took it, like I was as good as anybody. God forgive me if I seem to talk disrespectful of her, for she’s a lady through and through, and I knew it even if I was only a bar-keeper.”
“Toss you for the drinks,” said Adair, draining his glass. “Hand over the box, Larry.”
“Sure Mike,” said the bar-keeper rattling the dice.
Adair encountered an acquaintance, a commercial traveler named Hellman, on the sidewalk outside.
“Just the fellow I wanted to see,” he cried. “Hellman, there is such a word as temerity, isn’t there?”
“Bet your life,” said Hellman. “The temerity of my playing Hamlet, you know—the temerity of you thinking yourself a better-looking man than I am—the temerity of—”
“And you spell it t-e-m-e-r-i-t-y?” interrupted Adair.
“Yes, why?”
“Oh, I used it in a letter I was writing to a girl, and I didn’t want to mail it till I was sure.” He showed the envelope in his hand, with his thumb hiding the name.
“Always at it,” said Hellman, with an unpleasant laugh. “Who are you throwing the handkerchief at now?”
“The prettiest girl in Carthage,” returned Adair genially. “There’s a box over there—let’s drop it in.”
And together they crossed the street, and sent the letter on its way.
It was to Phyllis, begging in warm but respectful language for the privilege of calling on her.