John Adair

“ There was an air of concern and silent bewilderment visible upon Butler's features, and an occasional expression of impatience escaped his lips as he watched from the porch the ineffectual efforts of the negroes to force the truant steeds towards the house.
"All in good time," said Adair, answering the thoughts and looks of Butler, rather than his words, "all in good time; they must have their play out. ”

“ John smiles blandly at his friends and continues: "It may be that I am prejudiced, Miss Adair, for a man naturally likes to think that he ought to be exactly like what he is, but I like being little. There is a peculiar charm in the upsidedownness of being a lord of creation and yet so much shorter than most ladies—to feel that they could take me up and horsewhip me without an effort, and yet that they do not! ”

“ It is an ill place for her, wife, and not apt to please the girl with anything she may find there. Wat Adair is an irregular man, and savage as the beasts he hunts. His associates are not of the best, and but little suited to Mary's quiet temper. ”

“ Adair had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, an Indian fighter in the West, a member of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention, Speaker of the House of Representatives of that State, Registrar of the United States Land Office, and was one of the ablest, most trusted, and best beloved of Kentuckians.
Adair afterward declared that "the intentions of Colonel Burr ... were to prepare and lead an expedition into Mexico, predicated on a war" between Spain and the United States; "without a war he knew he could do nothing." If war did not come he expected to settle the Washita lands. ”

“ Ladd?"
There was a pause; the shrewd, heavy-lidded eyes slowly inventoried Adair and read beneath the tarnished air of fashion. Failure, need, hunger sap a man, and can not be hid, least of all from a professional observer. John Hampden Campbell was one of the leaders of the New York bar and was what they call a "court room lawyer" of high rank; which means that others hand up the guns, while he shoots them off. His knowledge of human nature was profound, and being profound was neither unsympathetic nor unkind. ”

“ And I hear many old people, who ought to know, say the same thing."
"Your father taught you well and wisely," replied Butler; "prayer will guard us against many ills, and chiefly against ourselves. But against the harm that others may do us, we should not forget that prudence is also a good safeguard. It is always well to avoid a dangerous path."
"But, for all that," said the maiden smiling, "I am not afraid to go as far as the garden."
"If you mean to get the corn," interrupted Mistress Adair, in no very kindly tone, "you had as well go without all this talk. ”

“ For if you do but taste his blood,
'twill make your courage rise
'Twill make a man forget his woe,
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widows heart to sing,
tho the tear was in her eye
Then let us taste John Barleycorn,
each man a glass in hand,
And may his great posterity
ne'er fail in all Scotland. ”

“ Adair's mother had been an Irish peasant girl. She was kind and warm-hearted, and spoke with a brogue; she was always laughing and singing, even under circumstances when a right-minded person would have thrown himself into the East River. She drank, too. Everybody drank. He used to be given sips from her glass, and knew what it was to be tipsy before he was eight. It was about that time he began to sell papers on the streets, for his father was dead, and his mother-- Well, he wouldn't go into that. But in her way she had always been good to him. She wouldn't let the men beat him. ”

“ Adair, on her side, asked for no explanations. She was naturally, behind her pale and placid countenance, a woman of a tortuous and intriguing mind. She preferred to look through a keyhole even when she could walk straight in at the door; and knowledge which could be gained by a little manœuvring was always more desirable and precious in her eyes than any information which a simple question would elicit. ”

“ With his reappearance and success the flood-gates of his past were opened, and there gushed forth a Niagara of malignant chatter. His amours, his fights, his disreputable escapades, his divorce--all were revived. Every one seemed to have a story to his discredit, and to be in haste to get it into print. Nor was his marriage to Phyllis allowed to escape the same soiling publicity, and the tale was embellished with slanders and innuendoes that would have goaded a much more patient man to fury. Adair was with difficulty restrained from knocking editorial teeth down editorial throats ”

“ She'd hold his poor, pretty, dormouse head up, and swim him off to a lovely island where there were peanuts on peanuts, and an alabaster mousery with all modern improvements.
That lovely island seemed a terribly long way off. As the emblem of an engagement it lay so far over the horizon that Adair began to doubt its very existence. His eyes grew lack-luster; he lost his confident bearing; poverty and failure stamped him, as they stamp every man with an unmistakable mark. We instinctively move away from the unsuccessful. We see that mark, and widen our distance. Success likes success. ”

“ He could see but dimly, but they were all beautiful, each telling some story of the sacred days that would come no more. He felt his way through the little hall into the room where he had last looked upon his mother's face. He stood where he had stood before—and he looked down. Long musing, he turned and made his way up-stairs. As he passed the half-open door on his way, he could see the shadowy outline of the little store, as Miss Adair had left it for the night, the petty wares consorting ill with the significance of the hour. ”

“ Feeling themselves in the wrong their vanity is insulted, and with morbid perversity they go from bad to worse. But Adair was not of this sort. With all his faults he was a man of generous instincts, and capable of quick and headlong repentances. He could come in like a thunder-cloud, on edge with nerves, snappish, morose, ready to fly off the tangent at a trifle--and five minutes later would be sitting at Phyllis' feet, his face in her lap, conquered, contrite, declaiming hotly against himself, his ill-temper all striking inward. ”

“ Adair," he explained, "I don't want a goody-goody young man with a benevolent forehead and a spotless past, and a Y.M.C.A. accent--but an impatient, chip-on-his-shoulder, impulsive fellow, who would like to get off the bench and fight somebody. It's a Cyril Adair play, and I am going to fit him as carefully as a Fifth Avenue tailor. And on the police-court judge side of it, I am going to show the public the colossal power those men have for good or evil. ”

“ Adair always called him George; and he was aware that a marriage between him and Flora would be agreeable to his own and to her friends. It was just the connection which his parents wished for, but he was not a person ready to marry any girl who was pointed out to him as eligible; on the contrary, he was determined never to marry any one whom he did not like very much. If he could like one an alliance with whom would please his family, he thought it would be a most desirable thing, and therefore he cultivated an intimate acquaintance with the Adairs. ”

“ Mrs. Adair stood by that stile for a long while after he had gone. She had shot her bolt and hit no one but herself and the man for whom she cared.
She realised that distinctly. She looked forward a little, too, and she understood that if Durrance did not, after all, keep Ethne to her promise and marry her and go with her to her country, he would come back to Guessens. That reflection showed Mrs. Adair yet more clearly the folly of her outcry. If she had only kept silence, she would have had a very true and constant friend for her neighbour, and that would have been something. ”

“ Of course one can feel somehow that he has had no advantages--that he has probably never been within ten miles of the people he is trying to represent-- (do you remember his shaking hands with his gloves on?) --but just the same he has a wonderful and magnificent talent, and we'll hear of him as surely as the world heard of Henry Irving, or Booth, or Bernhardt. Truly, Phyllis, I believe the day will come when we'll be bragging of having admired Adair before he was famous ”

“ As a possible husband for one of her daughters, many things must be pardoned in him which would not be passed over in a poor younger son. She replied with a smile, "Well, we can arrange that at some other time; for the present, having caught you here, we may of course count upon your remaining with us." Taking his answer for granted, she continued, "Allow me to present my friends, Mrs. and Miss Adair." Mr. Earnscliffe bowed to the Adairs, shook hands with [11] Helena, and then walked on with Mrs. Elton towards the cascade. ”

“ Misunderstanding, self-justification, the rights or wrongs of their unhappy estrangement--all were forgotten, all were swept away. Clinging to him she guided him along the passageway and into the sitting-room, where Adair, bewildered and astonished, was waiting to receive them. Even in the throes of that tumultuous moment Phyllis, trying to see with her father's eyes, took in Adair with a welling pride. Never had he appeared to her more manly, more distinguished or noble; and when she said: "My husband, Daddy," it was with a little air that told of her own content with the man of her choice. ”

“ His daughter's tranquillity seems to have come from her mother; certainly it cannot be inherited from the restless Reginald Adair.
The third person present at the breakfast-table—and, for the time being, the only visitor in the house—is a young man of seven or eight-and-twenty, tall, dark, and very spare, with a coal-black beard trimmed to a point, earnest dark eyes, and a remarkably pleasant and intelligent expression. He is not exactly handsome, but he has a face that attracts one; it is the face of a man who has quick perceptions, great kindliness of heart, and a refined and cultured mind. ”

“ At the risk of telling a twice-told tale I will recapitulate the facts as they were known to the public at the conclusion of the inquest.
The Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, at that time governor of one of the Australian Colonies. Adair's mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were living together at 427, Park Lane. The youth moved in the best society, had, so far as was known, no enemies, and no particular vices. ”

“ But put it this way: Women look backwards, we look ahead; so misfortune hits them harder, eh?"
Mrs. Adair answered in her own way. She did not expressly agree. But a certain humility became audible in her voice.
"The mountain village at which Ethne is living," she said in a low voice, "is called Glenalla. A track strikes up towards it from the road halfway between Rathmullen and Ramelton." She rose as she finished the sentence and held out her hand. "Shall I see you?"
"You are still in Hill Street?" said Durrance. "I shall be for a time in London."
Mrs. Adair raised her eyebrows. ”

“ Here was a situation he was used to--a distractingly pretty girl, a sidewalk rendezvous, and an infatuation that needed but the right handling to bring it to the proper conclusion.
Yet with everything so plain--and apparently so easy, Adair himself was in a whirl of strange and new emotions. Something had pierced his colossal selfishness, and was disturbing him. It was annoying at a time when he needed all his wits about him, and he resented it as a symptom of unmanly weakness. One drop of real love in that ocean of sham was threatening to poison the whole. ”

“ The servant bowed and retired. When he had done so—"'Od, sir, ye seem to be greatly at your ease here," said Mr Adair, who was not a little surprised, with the others, as well he might, at the free and easy manner of his son-in-law in his friend's house, "You and your freen maun surely be unco intimate."
"Oh! we certainly are so," replied Mr Mowbray, laughing. "I can use any freedom here—the same as if I were in my own house."
"Weel, that's pleasant and friendly like," said Mr Adair. "But isna your freen himsel lang o' makin his appearance?" ”

“ But whar'll ye put the lad?"
"Ou, tak ye nae fash about that, guidman. I'll manage that. Isna there the wee room up the stair, wi' a bed in't that micht sair the king himself—sheets as white as the driven snaw, and guid stripped druggit curtains just oot o' the mangle?"
"Weel, weel, guidwife, ony way ye like as to thae matters," replied Adair; "and I'll awa, in the meantime, and get haud o' the siller. There's gowd yonner for the liftin. Deil o' the like o't ever I saw." Saying this, he flung out of the apartment, and in the next minute was again in the presence of the mysterious stranger. ”

“ Delighting as much as her father in acts of kindness, Rosy hastened to obey an order so agreeable to her. In a trice, she had the table covered with various good things, conspicuous amongst which was a jolly round of salt beef. In compliance with the request of his host, the stranger drew into the table thus kindly prepared for him; but, to the great disappointment of his entertainer, ate very sparingly.
"Dear help me, man!—eat, eat, canna ye!" exclaimed Adair, every now and then, as he marked the listless manner in which the stranger pecked at the food on his plate. "Eat, man, canna ye!" ”