Infatuation

Phyllis Ladd lost her mother at twelve; and this bereavement, especially terrible to an only child, brought with it two consequences that had a far-reaching effect on her character. An ardent, high-strung nature, acquainted so early with a poignant sorrow, gets an outlook on the world that is so just and true as to constitute a misfortune in itself. A child ought not to think; ought not to suffer; ought not to understand. Individuality, sympathy, sensibility awaken--qualities that go to make a charming human being--but which have to be paid for in the incessant balance of our complex existence. Phyllis' school-fellows were no longer the same to her; she felt herself a person apart; though she played as gaily as any of them, and chattered her head off, and tripped blithely along Chestnut Avenue entwined in the arms of her companions, she was aware, down in her secret heart, that she was "different."

At twelve, then, her path diverged from the commonplace, in which, as we all have to admit, however reluctantly, the chances for a happy life are best.

The second consequence of her mother's death was to bring her into contact with a scarcely known individual--her father. This grave, handsome man, who sat behind a newspaper at breakfast, and who was not seen again till dinner time; who drove away every morning behind a liveried coachman and a pair of shining bays to a region called "the office"; whose smile and voice were always a shy delight to her--this demigod, admired, unknown, from whom there emanated a delicious sense of security and strength, now suddenly drew her to his heart, and became her world, her all.

Robert T. R. Ladd was the president of the K. B. and O. Railway. Rich himself, and the son of a rich man, his interests in Carthage were varied and many, engaging his activities far beyond the great road that was associated with his name. Carthage was an old-fashioned city; and the boys who had grown up together and succeeded their fathers were clannish to a degree little known in the newer parts of this country. Joe, who was prominent in electricity and gas, might want to consolidate a number of scattered plants, and to that end would seek the assistance of Tom and Harry and Bob. George, perhaps, in forecasting the growth of Carthage a little too generously, was in temporary straits with his land-scheme--well, he would ask Tom and Bob to tide him over, making a company of himself, and taking them in. Frank and his brother, in converting their private bank into the Fifth National--induced as much as anything by the vanity of seeing their own names on their own greenbacks--would feel the need of a strong local man on the new directorate. Would Bob oblige them? "Why, with pleasure, though if somebody else would do as well--" "Oh, we must have you, old fellow."

Such was Carthage--at least the Carthage of Chestnut Avenue, of the long lines of stately and beautiful mansions on what was called the West Side, the Carthage that supported the Symphony Orchestra, owned the parterre boxes at the opera, dined, drove, danced, and did business together--as compact and jealous a little aristocracy as any in Hungary or Silesia. Of course there was another Carthage--several other Carthages--one a teeming riverside quarter where English was an unknown tongue, a place black with factory chimneys, full of noise and refuse, dirt and ugliness, where forty thousand nondescript foreigners pigged together, and contributed forty thousand pairs of very grimy and unwilling hands to the material advancement of the city and state. There was a business Carthage, with banks and sky-scrapers, and vast webs of wires that darkened the sky. There was a pleasure Carthage that awoke only at night, blazing out with a myriad lights, and a myriad enticements. There was a middle-class residence Carthage; a second-class residence Carthage; an immense, poor, semi-disreputable, altogether dreary Carthage that was popularly alluded to as "South of the slot," the name dating from the time of the first cable-car line, now long since discarded.

But to return to Phyllis Ladd.

In losing her mother, it might be said she had discovered her father. At first perhaps it was pity, loneliness, almost terror that caused Mr. Ladd to take this little creature in his arms, and hold her as he might a shield. He had idolized his wife; he hardly knew how to go on living without her; one day, in his office, as his old friend Latham was leaving him, he had pulled open a drawer, and taken a loaded revolver from it. "Latham," he said, with a very slight tremor in his voice, "would you mind putting this damned thing in your pocket--I--I--find it tempts me."

Yes, his little daughter was a shield; he held her slim body between himself and despair; he told her this again and again, as he sat with bowed head and suffusing eyes in the shadow of an irrevocable happiness. And she in whom there stirred, mysteriously, dimly, the tenderness of the sublime love that had called her into being--she, even while she mingled her tears with his, felt within herself the welling of an exquisite joy. To love, to solace, to protect, here again instincts were prematurely awakened; here again her little feet departed from the commonplace to carry her far afield.

In time, as weeks and months rolled on, the blow, so unendurable at first, so crushing and terrible, softened, as such things will, and a busy world again engrossed a busy man. But the intimacy between father and daughter remained, and continued unimpaired. Indeed, it grew even closer, for now laughter came into it, and gay bubbling little confidences, and a delightful hour before bedtime, full of eagerness and zest. Mr. Ladd, cigar in mouth, and his keen handsome face as deferential as any courtier's, listened to the interminable doings of Satty and Nelly and Jessie, with an enjoyment that never seemed to tire.

He, too, had his budget of the day, which, often begun whimsically, not seldom ended in a serious exposition of his difficulties and problems. It amused him to state such complexities in simple language; to bring them down, by some homely metaphor, to the comprehension of this adorable little coquette, who tried with so many childish arts to dazzle and ensnare him. Even at thirteen she was learning the value of drawing out a man about himself; she was quite willing to understand the Interstate Commerce Law, and become pink and indignant over a new classification of "Coal at the pit's mouth"--if it meant her father would hold her a little tighter, and give her one of those sudden glances of approval.

Such intercourse with a shrewd, strong, brilliant mind--to a child naturally precocious and adaptive--could not fail to have far-reaching consequences on her development. She caught something of her father's independence; of his lofty and yet indulgent outlook on a universe made up so largely of fools and knaves; learned the greatest and rarest of all imaginative processes--to put oneself in the other fellow's shoes. When Joe Howard turned traitor at the state legislature, and sold out the K. B. and O. on the new mileage bill, her wrath at his duplicity rose to fever. "Well, there's his side to it," said Mr. Ladd, with unexpected serenity. "He hasn't a cent; he's mortgaged up to the ears; and has a sick daughter dying of consumption. He's a well-meaning man, and I suppose would be honest if he could. But if I were in his place, and your life was at stake, and the doctor ordered you to some ten-dollar-a-minute place in Colorado or somewhere, I guess I'd sell out the K. B. and O. too!"

And for that he got a hug that nearly choked him.

"Money and love, my lamb," he said to her once, "those are the wheels the old wagon runs on. Miss Simpkins will fluff you up with a whole lot of fancy fixings--but I tell you, it boils right down to that."

"Papa," she asked him on another occasion, with round wondering eyes, "if it's all like that, why are you honorable and noble and splendid?"

"I don't know," he answered, smiling. "I guess it's pride more than anything else. Theoretically the man with the fewest scruples gets farthest in the race; but thank the Lord, most of us are handicapped with some good qualities that stick to us like poor relations."

"But Miss Simpkins says that anybody who is bad gets punished for it sooner or later. She says that was why her brother-in-law's house burned down; because he was so uncharitable."

"It may be so with the people Miss Simpkins is acquainted with," said Mr. Ladd, "but it doesn't hold in the railroad business, nor anywhere else that I have seen, and I can't help thinking she's a trifle more hopeful than the traffic can bear!"

This philosophy, so picturesquely expressed, so genial, so amiably cynical, was not perhaps the best training for an unusually impressionable mind. Miss Simpkins learned to dread Phyllis' preface: "But Papa says--" What Papa said was often a bombshell that blew shams to pieces; tore down the pretty pink scenery of conventional illusions; and drove cobble-stones through the gauze that separated Miss Simpkins and her kind from the real world beyond. It was a harsh process, and bad for gauze.

At first, not knowing how else to maintain a fairly large establishment, Mr. Ladd had sought the services of a "managing housekeeper." But the trouble with her--or rather with them, for he had a succession--was that the "managing" was considerably overdone. They were discharged, the one after the other, without having "managed" to achieve their one consuming ambition, which was to capture the rich widower, and lead him to the altar. After a while, growing weary of being hunted, and altogether at his wits' end, he invited his unmarried sister, Henrietta Ladd, to take the foot of his table, and a place at his hearth.

She was a thin, plain, elderly woman, with a very low voice and a deceptive appearance of meekness. The casual guest at Mr. Ladd's board might have taken her for a silent saint, who, unwillingly sojourning in this vale of tears, was waiting with ladylike impatience for a heavenly crown. In some ways this description would have fitted Aunt Henrietta well enough, though it took no account of a perverse and interfering nature that was more than trying to live with. The silent saint attempted to rule her brother and her niece with a rod of iron, and so far succeeded that her two years "tenure of the gubernatorial chair" (as Mr. Ladd bitterly called it), was fraught with quarrels and unhappiness. Her tyranny, like all tyrannies, ended in a revolution. Mr. Ladd brought his "unmarried misery"--also his own phrase--to a sharp conclusion, and Henrietta departed with a large check and a still larger ill-will.

"Phyllis," he said, "I guess we'll just have to rustle along by our poor little selves. The people who take charge of us seem to take charge too hard. They mean well, but why should they stamp on us?--Yes, let's try it ourselves."

And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became the acknowledged mistress of the big house.