Chapter VI: Part 6

With them on their travels from town to town went a punching-bag, which Adair inflated and set up as soon as their trunks were unpacked. Every morning, stripped to the waist, Phyllis had to double up her little fists, and start a-pummelling for ten furious minutes. There could be no begging off from this daily rite; it was one of the iron rules of married life; pleadings, caresses, protests all were in vain. An icy bath had to follow, and if she hesitated too long on the brink, or showed too mutinous a row of toes, Adair would jump up, and tumble her in as mercilessly as a boy with a puppy. At night, too, he was no less rigid in regard to her prayers. His own religion was very nebulous. He never prayed himself nor went to church; but apparently that was no reason why Phyllis should be similarly backward. It gave him a peculiar pleasure to see her kneeling beside the bed, her night dress flowing about her slender, girlish body, and her hair drawn back, and held by a circlet of red ribbon. He knew no prettier picture, nor was it without a tender and uplifting value. For it was his name that moved on her lips, and who would not have been proud to send so enchanting a little deputy to plead for one before the Throne of Grace? Then it was that he seemed to love her best; and though all unaware of it, he, too, was praying in the deeper, unspoken language of the heart.

"You've forgotten your prayers!"

"Oh, it was so cold--I thought I wouldn't to-night."

"Jump up!"

"It's so cosy here with you--and you ought to have said it sooner--and anyhow, I won't."

"Jump up!"

"Oh, Cyril, that hurts!"

"Of course, it hurts."

"It's wicked to pinch as hard as that."

"It's wickeder not to say your prayers."

"Oh, Cyril, don't, _don't_!"

"Jump up, then."

"I'm not in the right frame of mind now--you have pinched it all away.--All right, all right, don't--I'll do it! Though I don't think a pinch-prayer would be as good as a real one. Do you?"

"This is the prayer-rush time--God won't notice it."

"Not even if I am black and blue? Why, the angels will be shocked."

"They are that already with the fuss you have made. Roll out, you bad little chap,--out with you!"

Sometimes Adair was sharp with her--impatient and fretful. He made very little effort to control his moods, which, as with most artists, were as changeable and capricious as those of a child. Nine women out of ten would have retorted in kind, and the honeymoon period would have insensibly passed, and with it much of the charm and rapture of their union. It was due to no help of Adair's that they did not descend to the ordinary plane of married life, with its deliquescence of nearly everything beautiful and romantic--occasional harshness on one side, tears and pin-prickings on the other, and departing illusions on both. People can still get along very tolerably in this manner, and remain fairly fond and faithful, but no one can contend it is the poet's ideal. It was certainly not Phyllis', and she was determined to avoid such a catastrophe.

In her ambitious little head the honeymoon was to be only the beginning of a sweeter intimacy beyond. She saw, lying latent in Adair, a capacity to love as great as her own (she was presumptuous enough to think that no one could love any better), and her one consuming endeavor was to draw it forth. Whether or not the prize was worth the winning never occurred to her. This big, splendid, untamed man-animal was hers, with all his weaknesses and defects, with all his fine qualities and bad, and she had accepted the responsibility of him with naive self-confidence. To love was her vocation, and she set herself to it with delight.

Her unfailing gaiety, her pretty artifices to amuse and cajole him, her constant study of means to give him pleasure--all were as the drops that wear away the stone. High-spirited, quick-tempered, and with a sensitiveness that a glance could wound, she yet put such a rein upon herself that no provocation could draw from her an unkind word. She might grow suddenly silent, her mouth might quiver, her eyes glisten, but no sharp retort ever passed her lips. There are many men with whom this would not have answered. To some, indeed, an exquisite gentleness and forbearance almost tempts their harshness. 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.

These lapses of his helped his love much more than they hurt it, and through them he began to acquire some self-control, some degree of consideration--some shame. In him devotion brought out devotion. Instead of resenting Phyllis' strategems to keep him good-humored and happy, he was touched to the quick. It was a new idea, this of keeping love alight; of consecrating thought and care to it and guarding the precious flame from extinction. It dawned upon him as something entirely novel and unheard-of. Yet it was beautiful; he approved of it heartily. He innocently ascribed the invention to Phyllis, and as usual was tremendously impressed. It made him wonder whether she ever thought of anything else but love. As he grew to know her better he saw that it inspired all she did--that every impulse and every action sprang from it.

Had he been a king, and she the transient, pretty butterfly of the moment, she could not have striven harder to fascinate and hold him. Her saucy tongue, her fancifulness, her audacity, her often-declared determination to be as much sweetheart as wife--all were as spice to a love that might otherwise have cloyed. To adore a man is not enough--there is nothing the poor darling silly animal gets tired of so soon as being adored.--One had to keep him interested, captivated, filling in one's own little person all his complicated needs of passion, comradeship, entertainment, variety, and mental recreation. But how well one was repaid! If one gave a whole harem's worth of love, one received a whole harem's worth back, and sweetest of all one could watch the unfolding and ripening of a really fine nature. She was sure her infatuation had guided her truly in that respect; that her choice had fallen on a man with heart and soul big enough to repay her devotion. He might be rough, but she had never a moment's doubt as to the diamond, nor as to her ability to shape and polish it.

It was a process, unfortunately, that could not be hurried. Against her in the endeavor were the ingrained habits and wilfulness of twenty years. From his boyhood up Adair had lived in an atmosphere of unrestraint, a Bohemian of Bohemians, without ties, care-free, the whim of the moment his only guide. Some backslidings on his part were inevitable and Phyllis, with all her illusions, was sane and cool enough to foresee them. It was hardly a surprise to her, therefore, though frightening and dismaying, when late one night, after awaiting him in vain, Tommy Merguelis appeared unexpectedly in his stead. Any stranger to the young man would have judged him to be in high spirits; his shrill, nervous laugh was louder than usual; and he stammered and giggled as though bubbling over with an unextinguishable good nature. To Phyllis' practised eyes, however, these were ominous signs, and her breath came a little quickly, as she asked news of her husband.

"Oh, he's all right," said Tommy, standing with one hand on the door-knob, and showing no inclination to enter the room. "Oh, Mr. Adair is all right--and hee, hee, don't you worry about him. He's detained, that's all, and he sent me to say he might be late, and, and--"

"And what?"

"They've got him into a game down at Mr. Feld's--the owner of the theater, hee, hee--and he couldn't well refuse, or at least--"

"Oh, Tommy, please--I don't understand."

"Just a little game of draw."

"Cards?"

"Yes--poker."

This did not strike Phyllis as anything very terrible.

"And he sent you to tell me he would be late?" she inquired, much reassured.

Tommy lied manfully. As a matter of fact he had invented the message--and the errand--to shield Adair, who had forgotten everything in the absorption of the game. "Yes," he said, "he can't manage to be back to supper with you, and is awful sorry about it, and hopes you won't mind." Though Tommy could lie, he could not act. His anxiety was obvious; he wriggled uncomfortably; and his silly, convulsive smile presaged some disagreeable revelation. Phyllis, now thoroughly alarmed, and with characteristic directness went straight for the truth.

"Tommy, has he been drinking?"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, he has."

"And they are playing high?"

"A dollar limit."

"And you came here to warn me? Don't deny it,"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, I did, Mrs. Adair."--As Phyllis paused, troubled, uncertain, full of distress, Tommy added: "I don't know as it wouldn't be a good plan for you to come along with me and get him."

"Would he come?"

"Anybody would come for you, Mrs. Adair."

"Surely he doesn't often gamble, Tommy. He has never spoken to me of it?"

"Oh, there's nothing he don't do when the fit takes him. Hee, hee, he's that kind, you know--temperamental."

The word, and the woebegone indulgence with which it was uttered made Phyllis smile. Her humor was always close to the surface, even when there were tears between.

"You are a dear, good fellow," she said, "and I'll never forget your kindness to-night, though as for doing anything, I am going to stay here."

He was amazed at the gentleness of her tone.

"I am never going to be his taskmaster," she went on, as much to herself as to Tommy. "As far as I am concerned he shall always be as free as air. If I went after him at all, it would be to sit on his knee, and drink with him."

Tommy's scandalized face again made her laugh.

"Don't be afraid," she said with tremulous gaiety, "I won't do it this evening, anyhow. Now run away, Tommy, and tell them down-stairs we shan't need any supper after all."

She shut the door after him, and stood with her back to it, forlornly regarding the empty room. She was more than hurt, more than mortified. She had to ask herself if she had failed.

*CHAPTER XIX*

It was dawn when Adair staggered in, undressed and rolled in beside her. Her long vigil had been succeeded by an overpowering slumber, and she was not aware of his return until the streaming sunshine awakened her toward nine o'clock. She wondered at first why her heart was so heavy, and then, with reviving recollection, sat up, and gazed at her sleeping husband. Even a debauch could not impair his fine complexion, and the thick, black hair clustered against the ruddy skin softened Phyllis' expression as she studied his face long and earnestly. The charm of that vigorous manhood was irresistible, and whatever lurking grudge she still had against Adair was lost in a fresh access of tenderness. His uneasy breathing, his hot dry forehead, his parched and parted lips, all appealed as well to the woman in her--the mother, the nurse.

For once the routine of punching-bag and bath was forgone, and her first task on rising was to set about preparing breakfast. This, with the pair, was a trifling matter, consisting of rolls, cream and butter ordered over night and set outside their door on a tray every morning, and the coffee Phyllis made herself over a spirit lamp. She was thus busily engaged when she was conscious of a movement on the bed, and turned to see her husband lowering at her with bloodshot eyes. Awake, he looked disheveled, surly, ill and exasperated. His head was splitting, and he was in one of those vile humors when a man avenges his physical distress on those about him. He pushed Phyllis away as she ran over to him, and told her roughly to leave him alone. The offer of a cup of coffee outraged him. Groaning and swearing, he pulled himself into a sitting posture, and in a voice as intentionally disagreeable as he could make it demanded some hot water.

Holding the cup in both hands, he began to drink it in angry little sips, finding a malign satisfaction in the change that had come over Phyllis. Pale, silent, wounded and frightened, she was utterly at loss to know what to do. Every word was a stab, and she had a stupefying feeling that the end had come. Her only coherent thought, the only manifestation of resentment within her, was to contribute nothing to bring about the catastrophe. If Adair were determined to pull down their little paradise about their ears, and destroy for ever the filmy and poetic fabric of a perfect love, she, at least, would hold herself innocent of the sacrilege. But, oh, the pang of it, the heartrending misery, the disillusion!

"Now, go ahead," he said sullenly. "I'm ready--go ahead!"

She faltered and trembled in asking him what he meant.

He burst out with a scornful laugh.

"I was drunk last night," he said, "you know that as well as I do, and here I am ready to take my medicine--can't avoid it, I know that--and want to get it over with. You wouldn't be a woman if you didn't pay me out."

The vulgarity of the conception stung her.

"I--I don't pay people out," she said simply.

"Oh, no, you're the quiet kind," he went on with an ugly jeer, intent somehow on putting her in the wrong. "You don't say anything, but you sit there and freeze a fellow--and oh, my God, yes, cry! There you go, cry, cry, cry!"

She did break down for a moment under his deliberate cruelty, but quickly rallying, came over, and sat beside him on the bed.

"Don't, don't quarrel with me," she said pitifully, and then added with a gleam of humor, "after all, it wasn't I that was drunk, you know."

She put out her hand, and for a while he permitted it to lie against his aching forehead. All would have been well had he not unfortunately spilled his cup. At this his latent fury broke out anew.

"For God's sake, don't crowd all over me!" he cried. "Sit over there, where we can talk like sensible people. You have made me all wet with the damned stuff."

The fault was his own, and due to his unsteady hands, but he was wilfully pleased to put her in the wrong. He glowered at her with savage reproach as she moved a little farther away in obedience to his command. She was disconcertingly quiet, and it seemed to him an added injustice to be cheated of a scene. There was nothing but her anguished eyes, and her drooping and utterly dispiriting attitude to tell him how well he was succeeding.

"You're a little fool," he announced inconsequently.

He waited for her to answer, but she made no sign of having heard him, sitting there stricken, numb.

"To have tied up with such a damned goat," he added, with immense conviction.

Still no answer.

"The best thing you can do is to pack up and go," he went on.

At this she did find her voice, ghost of a one that it was.

"Is that what you really want me to do, Cyril?"

"It's what you ought to do," he returned, with a sternly paternal air.

"It's for you to decide."

His mumbling reply turned into a groan.

"I lost nearly four hundred dollars last night," he said, after a deadly pause. "Then I had to get into a scrap with Jake Steinberger, and Willie Latimer, and George Wright, and there was a hell of a shindy till somebody turned in a police-alarm, and I only dodged arrest by the skin of my teeth--not but what I'll be summonsed to-day, sure as sure. On top of that my engagement is gone, for I lammed Jake half to death, and I guess he had rather break up the tour all-standing than keep me in the bill another night. And--and--"

"You thought you'd make a clean sweep of everything, once you were at it, and alienate me, too?"

"Yes, like a damned goat," he repeated dully.

"Well, you have succeeded," she said in the same low, even tone, "I dare say you'll be sorry some day at having broken your toys. There isn't anything more to be said, is there, except good-by?"

She was about to rise when Adair flung himself out of the bed, and kneeling before her, pulled off her little slippers and began kissing her naked feet. His repentance was so sudden, so abject that it was almost as though he had gone crazy. It was indeed an hysterical revulsion, and his frame shook, and his hands clenched themselves on her flesh as he abased himself before her. He begged incoherently for forgiveness, for mercy; he would kill himself if she were to leave him; he loved her; he could die for her; the disgrace and despair of it all had driven him mad. At first she resisted, struggling to free herself, and too deeply affronted for any atoning words to touch her; but her powerlessness in his grasp, the warmth of his quick, tumultuous breath against her, even the physical pain he was unconsciously inflicting--all at last took her womanhood by storm, and she drew up his head, and allowed him to sob his heart out in her lap.

How little did either of them know, she sitting on the bed in her night-dress, he nestling close against her in an agony of shame and contrition, that a battle of the soul had been fought and won; that the finer nature had triumphed over the coarser; that an insensible but a most real step had been taken upward. Phyllis extorted no promises; Adair made no vows; rather they clung to each other like little children who had safely passed the edge of a precipice, and in security beyond were trembling at what they had risked.

The woman, always the more practical partner, was the first to descend from the clouds to mundane considerations.

"And what's the poor little damned goat going to do?" she asked, the quoted profanity on her pretty lips as piquant and tender as a lullaby; and accompanying it with a smile so arch that Adair's face, too, could not but light with it.

"Face the music and then get out," returned the D. G.

"Out where, dearest?"

Adair grew overcast.

"Mortimer Clark's on the road somewhere," he said reflectively, "and I'm sure he'd make room for me if he had to fire a whole company. Then there's Nan O'Farrell in the _Diamond Diadem_ and Leo Foster in the _Slaves of Circumstance_. They are all on the cheap, and would jump at the chance of getting me at their prices. As soon as I get round to it, I'll telegraph."

Phyllis hesitated, but at last the words came.

"On the cheap," she repeated. "Why don't you aim higher, Cyril? Why don't you try the real people--those who are worth while, especially now, when you're going to break away from Steinberger?"

His only reply was a shake of the head.

"You know you're too good for this sort of thing," she went on. "It isn't flattery to tell you that--you see it yourself every night--I saw it, and that's why I-- Oh, Cyril, let's try to get where you belong."

"You don't understand," he said moodily. "You don't understand a bit. I had all that once, and I kicked it over. The stage is an awfully small place--for anybody that amounts to anything, you know--though as big as an ocean for the others. There isn't anybody of importance--manager or star--who doesn't _hate_ me." He perceived the doubt in her glance, and continued swiftly: "Oh, it's no conspiracy, or jealousy, or anything of that kind--a tip-top man can override all that if there's money in him for the box-office--but I've set them all against me. There isn't one I haven't punched or insulted somehow. I hold the record for being the best-detested man on Broadway. Why, Alfred Fielman once--that was six years ago, when I was by way of being a metropolitan favorite, and all that, ha, ha--he had me on a forty weeks' contract, and at the end of three he gave me a check for the rest and told me he had no more use for my services. Thirty-seven weeks' full salary--think of it--and the door!"

"But isn't it different now?" asked Phyllis, enfolding him with a pair of the whitest, softest, shapeliest arms in the world, and pressing her cheek against his face. "You've got good since then, and are now mama's little man!"

"Look at last night," protested mama's little man dismally. "Drinking, fighting, gambling, and my job out of the window! That's been me right along--two weeks' notice, and for God's sake, never come back!"

"Just a damned goat," rippled Phyllis, her teeth shining like pearls, and her cheeks dimpling mischievously.

"A silly ass," ejaculated Adair with much self-contempt.

"Now, I want to tell you my idea," cried Phyllis. "We're going to pack up, poor booful disgraced genius--and wife (as they add on hotel registers); and we're going to count our poor little pennies, and take a tourist sleeper to New York, and get a little flat of the sort they rent to dormice in reduced circumstances, and live on air and kisses and hope--while poor Booful will go round telling everybody he's a reformed character, and looking for an engagement. And if the top all hates him, and if the middle is all full, why Booful will begin at the bottom, while Mrs. Booful will wash, and cook, and darn his socks--oh, no, listen,--yes, and darn his socks, and pet him when he is discouraged and cross, and keep everything scrupulously clean (in books if you're awfully poor, you're always scrupulously clean, haven't you noticed it)? Yes, scrupulously clean, and oh, so economical of every nickel till everybody begins to see that Booful isn't a damned goat, but a man of splendid talent, and up, up, up he'll go like a balloon, till there won't be a garbage-can without his name on it, or a bill-board without somebody "presenting" him in letters six feet high, and fame and money will pour in like a Niagara, and, and--Cyril, why shouldn't we?"

His look of indulgence and amusement had gradually changed to downright eagerness.

"If you can stand it, I can," he said.

"Oh, Cyril, I'm not afraid--let's do it!"

"We'll be starvation poor."

"But in a home of our own--no more of these horrid hotels, no more traveling, and something big to live and hope for."

"Those dormice flats are awfully squeezy--and dark."

"So's a robin's nest, for that matter."

"And those pretty hands--it would be wicked to spoil them."

"Oh, I won't spoil them--besides, what would be the good of them if they couldn't work for the man I love."

"Scrubbing floors, and cleaning kettles and polishing the stove?"

"You can help a little."

"And suppose, instead of being easy, it's very hard? It takes courage to start again. You'll have to be brave enough for two, for I've none of that kind of grit or perseverance. Do you think you can bolster up a great big fellow like me, who'll come home like a baby and cry?"

"We'll bolster up each other."

"I--I wish I was more worthy of you, Phyllis."

"Stop kissing my toes--it tickles--and oh, Cyril, don't bite them!"

"I'm ashamed--you are so sweet and good and clever and brave--and the whole of me isn't worth that little pink one, and I don't think I've ever loved you so much as I do this minute, or _respected_ you more. If you were married to a street-car conductor I believe you'd make him president of the United States--and if your husband mayn't bite you, who can?"

"You darling!"

"And I swear by that one that I love you better than anything in the world; and by that one I'll be true to you all my life; and by that one I'll cut my tongue out before I'll ever say an unkind word to you again; and by that one I'm going to do everything you say, just as though you were an angel from Heaven, which you are if ever there was one; and by that fat little big toe that I'm going to try to copy the tenderest, gentlest, most exquisite nature that God ever breathed into a human being; and by the whole chubby little white satin foot--"

"Do sit up--it's important."

"I thought it was all settled. We'll start for New York as soon as I am fired--officially."

"Cyril?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"I'm so infatuated with you that perhaps I don't see things as they are. It is not a dream, is it, that you really could get on in New York--I mean if you lived down all the ill will against you there? I try to detach myself, and criticize you dispassionately--but you always seem to me so tremendously good."

"I am good--in my own kind of work."

"You've no dread of failure?"

"In handing out the goods--? Not a particle, Phyllis. Why should I? Haven't I done it?"

"In your New York days?"

"Why, Phyllis, this isn't brag. I've got notices to show for it, corking notices. What you have seen me do is not my best. No one could do that with the support I get, and I have to carry the whole outfit single handed. A company ought to be a string orchestra--and they give me a brass band!"

"Have you got the notices?--I'd love to see them!"

"They're at the bottom of the trunk somewhere--three books of them."

"Do get them out, and let me read some."

After long rummaging the books were produced. Phyllis, who in the interval had put on a peignoir, and begun to comb her hair, seized on one of them enthusiastically. It was an unwieldy, shabby old volume, and so heavy it was hard to hold. The exertion, and perhaps the excitement had caused Adair's head to throb again, and he was glad to stretch his length on the bed while Phyllis, drawing up a rocking chair, seated herself as close as she could beside him.

The actor had not exaggerated his past successes. For three seasons he had been a notable figure on Broadway, and if his reputation had been more one of promise than achievement it was in dazzling contrast to what he had since become. He had himself almost forgotten the stir he had made--not the deafening curtain calls, the brimming box-offices, the deferential managers,--none could forget that--but the soberer, yet more valuable evidence of the critics. It was electrifying to listen to them again; to see across the mean, intervening years that other self of his lording it so high; to realize, with mingled bitterness, wonder and hope that he was still the same man, with the same if not richer powers, and a new-born resolution to regain what he had so lightly valued and so unconcernedly thrown away.

Phyllis, pink with excitement, and tripping occasionally over the longer words, read notice after notice with indefatigable zest, constantly substituting Booful and other endearing epithets for the more formal name in print, while her husband lay back, listening delightedly, and contributing exclamations, "By George, and it was William Winter who said that!"--"Say, that's Huneker, isn't it?" "A column in _The World_ isn't handed out to everybody, not by a long sight."

BOOFUL OPENS AT WALLACK'S
THE HONOR OF THE REGIMENT PLEASES, BUT
NEEDS CUTTING.
THE STAR SCORES AS MOODY HERO, AND EXCELS
HIMSELF IN MAGNIFICENT PORTRAYAL OF
EBHARDT.

"Those who went last night to see _Booful_ were not disappointed, however they may have disagreed about the play itself. For that brilliant young _darling_ it was hardly less than a personal triumph, and from the rise of the curtain--"

It was a very inconsiderate moment for a heavy rap at the door.

"Come in," cried Adair.

In the shadow stood a bulky figure--a blue figure--a figure with something shining on its swelling chest. Phyllis looked and quailed as the bravest of us do at the sight of the Law, intruding its hob-nailed boot into what is metaphorically termed our castle. In this case the castle was so small, and the Law so large and red and impressive that the former seemed but a trifling refuge against oppression. In the accents of a green and troubled island the new-comer asked: "Are you Misther Adair--Misther Surul Adair?"

"That's me, all right," said the actor.

"You're summonsed for assault and battery, and here's the payper, and it's before Judge Dunn ye're to come at two o'clock."

"Where do I go, officer?"

"The city hall, police court number one."

"Two o'clock, you say? Very good. Tell Judge Dunn I have much pleasure in accepting his kind invitation."

The functionary unbent genially.

"Tay will be served on the lawn," he said, "and the Marine Band will be in attendance, and some of our younger set will be there--in blue."

It seemed incredible to poor, trembling Phyllis that Adair could burst out laughing. But he did, and that with every indication of undiminished spirits.

"All right, officer, I'll be there."

"Good morning, sorr."

"Good morning, officer."

The tears were streaming down Phyllis' face as she ran to Adair, and threw her arms around his neck; but he caressed and comforted her, and gradually got her to smile again.

"I feel better," he said. "Be a dear, and make me some fresh coffee.--Oh, Phyllis, isn't it jolly!"

"Jolly? Oh, how can you--"

"Oh, I mean about going back to New York! A fellow who's hit them once can hit them again, and by George, with you to help me, I just know I'm bound to land!"

"But this awful police court!"

"Don't worry about that--they've never hanged a Free Mason yet.--Easy with the cream, sweetheart.--Where was it we left off? Oh, yes, here it is: 'Adair opens at Wallack's. Those who went last night to see Cyril Adair--'"

_From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--._

*AMUSING SCENE IN JUDGE DUNN'S COURT*

Yesterday the proceedings in Judge Dunn's court were enlivened by the presence of Cyril Adair the actor, who, on the complaint of Jacob Steinberger, his manager, and Messrs. Willard Latimer and George Augustus Wright, brother players, was haled before the bar of justice for assault and battery. The three complainants showed unmistakable traces of a fistic encounter, and there was a subdued ripple of merriment at their bandaged appearance. The encounter was the outcome of a midnight game of poker, and there was a direct conflict of evidence as to who began the fray.

Judge Dunn finally summed up against the defendant, and in default of a fine, ordered him to find personal security to be of good behavior for three months. Much amusement was then caused by Mrs. Adair unexpectedly stepping forward, and pleading most charmingly with the judge to permit her to assume the obligation. The court was unable to resist so attractive a bit of femininity, and though remarking it was somewhat irregular, consented, amid general laughter, to grant her request.

The judge made up for it, however, by giving the defendant a stiff little lecture before dismissing the case, expressing his surprise that the husband of so young and pretty a wife should care to pass the early morning hours at poker and fisticuffs. Adair accepted the rebuke with great good nature and prompted by his wife thanked his honor for his forbearance, adding to the general hilarity by repeating aloud some of the advice that was being whispered in his ear. Apologies followed outside, and the whole party returned to their hotel in the same hack. All's well that ends well!

*CHAPTER XX*

Adair waited until Christmas before severing his connection with Steinberger. The holidays were bad for theatrical business, and the prospect of a temporarily reduced salary and several extra matinees seemed to make this period an auspicious one for departure. With two hundred and eighty dollars, their trunks, the clothes they stood in, and hearts beating high with eagerness and hope, the pair took the train for the City of Success.

Even on their way to it their respective positions began to change. The actor, for all his broad shoulders and big voice and commanding presence, betrayed from the first a helplessness and dependence that both pleased and surprised his little wife. He anxiously deferred to her in everything; fell in readily with every suggestion; listened with profound respect to her plans. He knew New York inside out; poverty was no stranger to him, nor the makeshifts and struggles of the poor; yet in the crisis of their fortunes it was the girl that took the lead--the girl who had never suffered a single privation in her life, who had been reared in luxury, to whom money and ease were as the air she breathed.

Left to his own unguided will Adair would have gravitated to a dingy bedroom in a dingy boarding-house. It was Phyllis who perceived the greater freedom, and the unspeakably greater comfort and charm of a tiny apartment. The nest-making instinct was strong in her, and also the bred-in-the-bone belief that it was the woman's place to guard her man's well-being, and to send him forth to work in the best of trim. She did not know how to cook; she had never swept out a room in her life, she had never even folded a table-cloth, yet her self-assurance and determination never wavered. All this could be learned--pooh, it only needed hard work and intelligence,--she would answer for its being the nicest little flat in New York, and would dismiss Adair every morning in his best clothes, smiling, well-fed, and happy, to look for an engagement.

Brave, confident little heart! Intent little head absorbed in calculations; magic the love that could cast effulgence over those soiled green notes, and the phantom gray city, and the man, none too good, or wise on whom such a treasure of devotion was lavished! But some conception of it pierced his thick skin, and what there was in him that was unselfish and noble felt disquieted at the contrast, and strangely stirred and humbled.

"Phyllis," he said huskily, "I--I didn't know what love meant until I met you. I guess lots of men go all their lives and never know. I've been sitting back here, thinking how nearly I might have missed it."

"And getting quite scared and worried?--The poor precious! If it wasn't for the conductor and that bald-headed man who's sure we're not married, because I put my feet on the seat, and wear red stockings--I'd kiss you right now, and give you a gurgle hug!"

"There are lots like me," Adair went on with unaffected seriousness, "but, Phyllis, there is only one of you. I suppose people are born like that sometimes--just one of them--and there aren't any more.--When we get round to it, we must have children; you mustn't be allowed to die and disappear; it wouldn't be right by the world."

Phyllis wrote down: "Pair tea-cups and saucers, thirty cents," and announced that in the meanwhile the world would have to wait, as one couldn't do everything at once. She added a duster to the list and a pie-pan, while a smile hovered at the corners of her lips. It impelled her to press her knee against Adair's, and whisper something so sparklingly improper that he blushed. Then she returned to housekeeping considerations with a pleased and saucy air, never so happy as when she had embarrassed him.

Accommodation for dormice, although plentiful, left much to be desired, except for dormice fond of grubbiness, gloom, and ill-smelling passages and halls. For dormice willing to live on One-hundred-and-jump-off-the-earth Street there was light and air, and reasonably sized rooms, and even skimpy glimpses of the Hudson. But Cyril wished to be near the theater district and the Thespian Club of which he was a member, and this restricted their choice to below Fifty-ninth Street. Heavens, what innumerable janitors they raised from the depths, what miles and miles of stairs they climbed, what desperate moments of indecision they endured, as, utterly spent, the precious deposit was nearly tempted from their pockets!

At last, however, at the tail of the most offensive little man in New York, whose questions included the likelihood or not of an increase in the family, and who had to be specifically assured that his new tenants meditated starting neither a bagnio nor a sweatshop, nor were going to teach music, or keep naphtha on the premises--at the tail of this personage, who at every step remembered some fresh prohibition, and some fresh possibility, the ideal was reached on the seventh floor of a house between Second and Third Avenue. It was a box of a place--sitting-room, bedroom, kitchen and bath--but shiny new, and with every window open to the sun, and Fifty-eighth Street to look out on instead of some dismal rear. It was taken at twenty-one dollars a month; their trunks followed them in; and they camped out their second night in New York on the bare boards of their new home.

With all our talk of the value of money very few of us have any conception of it. How many at least could believe that a small apartment in New York could be furnished, and prettily furnished, for a hundred and fifty dollars? On a doll-baby scale, of course, with pictures taken from the ten cent weeklies, and framed in blue creton and the same invaluable material accomplishing wonders over packing cases, improvised into wash-stands, bureaus and seats. Phyllis sent Adair off to the club, and set to work alone. She did not want him to see her dirty, tousled, and wearing an old dressing-gown of his in that chaos of disorder; though she presented a sweeter figure than she knew on her knees beside the pail, and scrubbing the floor like a little stage soubrette, or hammering creton with her mouth full of tacks and an inspired expression that would have befitted a Madonna. She was too girlish, too young, for anything to harm her beauty, and so gay and charming that all who came fell under her spell. Gawky messengers helped to move boxes, nail down matting, and elucidate the mysteries of setting up a bed. The janitor's wife, a faded German woman with gentle eyes and a soft voice, and all the European's respect for caste, insisted on joining in; and when, Phyllis, with difficulty and some shame, managed to explain she was unable to pay for such services, the creature kissed her hand, and redoubled her exertions. Beauty is a power everywhere, and if the poor can not pay its toll in compliments, they can wash windows, clean up litter, and carry an offering of frankfurters and sauerkraut up six flights of stairs; and with many an "_Ach_" and "_lieber Gott_" urge the little "high-born" to rest and eat.

And so amid kindliness and good will, the tiny apartment was got into shape, while the dark wild days without turned to snow, and the frosted panes showed nothing through but white and desolation. The dormice lay snug in their nest, and though their money ebbed, and the cupboard was next to bare, and the household work at times weighed hardly on unaccustomed, slender shoulders, perhaps they were too near Heaven to complain.

Adair had never been a very respectable nor popular member of the Thespian Club, that influential organization from which the New York stage is so largely recruited; and the return of the lost sheep was not accompanied by any particular enthusiasm. But Adair was too noticeable a man, and his talent too well remembered for his presence not to cause some stir, and soon there was comment on his extraordinary change for the better. He was certainly no longer the loud, swaggering, over-dressed Adair of the old days, with the dubious geniality, and the restless eyes. He did not drink; he seemed to have lost his surly streak; in many other ways more indefinite he had softened and improved. The Thespians, who were nothing if not good-natured and generous, very willingly let bygones be bygones, and some of the more important began to suggest his name to managers.

But the managers were made of sterner stuff than the actors and playwrights; they had longer memories, and skins that still smarted. They brightened at the name of Adair for the unexpected pleasure it gave them to say "No." Each had his special wrong to avenge, each his emphatic and passionate denunciation of a man they abominated. "I've only two rules in running my theaters," said Mr. Fielman. "The first is to give the public the best that money can buy; the second, never to engage Mr. Cyril Adair!"--Mr. Paw went further: "My poy, they say in our peeziness that the box-office talks, but if it said Adair all day and all night, I'd sooner get out and sell shoe-laces on the street than see his damn sneering face in any broduction of mine!" Niedringer was no more encouraging, and the Fordingham Brothers were curt and profane.

But the New York theatrical world is a big one; and these giants, while of enormous importance, do not rule all the roost. There are always new producers bobbing up; stars themselves make ventures into management and branch out; many others, independent on a smaller scale, choose the companies that support them. Then there are the second class houses, the vaudeville houses, the stock companies--all requiring an army of professional people. Then, too, hardly a season passes without several incoming actors from some woolly, wild, unheard-of region, arriving, full of eagerness to add Broadway laurels to brows already crowned in Teepee City or Nuggetville, Nevada. Add to these, imported English companies with the lesser parts often unfilled, and "angels," both male and female, with barrels of money for some stagestruck pet, who, desirous of a short cut to greatness, insists on beginning (and usually ending) at the top;--and you will have some small conception of what New York is--theatrically.

Adair did not despair. Not only was the atmosphere of the Thespian Club too redolent of success for that, but he was sustained besides by a couple of small offers which he received for the "road." Determined though he was to appear on Broadway, it was good for his courage and perseverence to have these engagements to refuse. They served to take the edge off the rebuffs he constantly experienced, and gave him something not altogether mournful to reflect on as he waited interminable hours in agents' and managers' anterooms. Not but what there were times when it was almost unendurable. Rejection, with an actor, carries with it a personal mortification; and his air of fashion, his nosegay, his smartly folded overcoat, his affected jauntiness--all intensify by their contrast the bitterness of his lot. He slinks off with pitiful bravado, and eyes suspiciously bright, to pull himself together for another attempt at another place, as dispirited a figure as any to be seen under heaven.

While Adair, with an effort as clumsy as it was touching, strove to hide his disappointment from his wife, and put by in their little home a steadily deepening sense of failure--she, on her side, was keeping him in ignorance of a matter that troubled her exceedingly. Her father had begun to write to her, but in such a way that a reconciliation, instead of becoming nearer, seemed more remote and impossible than ever. With all his tenderness and longing, and almost pathetic appeal "to be friends again," he was unable to resist taking flings at Adair. His hatred for the man came out in implications and covert allusions Phyllis could not forgive. Ostensibly holding out the olive branch, his letters served instead to heighten the estrangement, for behind everything was his conviction it was simply her pride that kept them apart; that having made a mess of her life, and committed an irreparable folly, she was defiantly accepting the misery she had brought down upon herself. That she was insanely happy--that she adored her husband--that neither poverty nor hardship counted a jot in her decision--all these to Mr. Ladd were incredibilities.--Yet the same story dressed up for him on the stage or in a book, would have won his sympathy, and reached his heart.--Of such inconsistencies are we made, and the poor puppets are cried over when flesh and blood is denied.

Of course, Phyllis was abnormally sensitive. Had her husband secured a good engagement, and some recognition she would have been in a more receptive mind to receive her father's advances. But Adair's unspoken anxiety, their diminishing money, their meager meals and the need that they had to take account of every penny--here were so many reasons to accentuate her critical faculties.--And this to be held as a proof that she had been "dragged down" was altogether too much. At first, full of eagerness and over many a closely-written page she had tried to explain matters to her father; but his disbelief was chilling, and from hopelessness her feelings gradually changed to anger. For a couple of weeks she had kept the thousand-dollar check he had sent her, hoping that he would so far relent toward Adair that she might accept it without disloyalty. Then, chagrined, she had returned it, though her extremity was bitter, and the tears dripped over the letter that bore it back. No reconciliation was possible that did not include her husband, or that was offered to him contemptuously and grudgingly. If this were impossible she begged her father to write no more, and spare her further suffering. His answer was as unreasonable as the others, and he contrived to wound even while he thought he was conceding everything.

His next letter she sent back unopened, and also the one after that. Then there were no more, and the postman's whistle presaged nothing after that but a post card from Tommy. These, with pictures of a local court house, or a new Masonic building, or some bald park, were almost daily visitors. But they spoke of affection and remembrance, and to a sad heart were not without their comfort.

Early one afternoon the sound of the key in the lock warned her that Adair had unexpectedly returned. His face announced his good news before he could so much as utter a word, and then the facts came out in a panting, breathless torrent. Shamus O'Dowd--she knew Shamus O'Dowd, the Irish comedian?--No?--What, never heard of Shamus O'Dowd?--Well, anyway, O'Dowd was at the Herald Square--big business--seats selling three weeks in advance--_A Broth of a Boy_, you know--and the fellow who was playing Captain Carleton had dropped out, and the understudy wasn't satisfactory--and--and--it was seventy-five dollars a week--and here were the lines--and you could have knocked him over with a feather when O'Dowd came right up to him at the club, and fixed it up in five minutes, and they had run through a rehearsal to give him a notion of the business, and it was a damned good character part, and--then, I wonder if that twenty-one dollar apartment had ever seen the like--with Phyllis sitting in Booful's lap, and her arms tight around his neck, and talking two to his one, all rapture and exclamations as though he had done something extraordinary instead of merely getting a job; and Booful, no less proud and foolish and excited felt, too, he had done something extraordinary, holding to the lines as though they were a patent of nobility, and crazy to begin the study of them; and describing the play with such humor and absurdity that his little wife thought she had never heard anything so funny in her life, her teeth shining as she laughed and laughed--especially at O'Dowd, who was described as fifty, with a bull-neck, and ever too much of him in front and behind, with a very short coat, and bounding fat legs, and such a Broth of a Boy that he was ready to fight or dance or sing or make love at the drop of a hat, and generally to caper from sheer exuberance of Irish youth.--Then Booful turned suddenly serious, and got up, and said that on no, no account was he to be disturbed, and began to pace like a lion up and down the doll-baby sitting-room, mumbling his part to himself with a far-away expression, and an occasional frown and swear as he missed a word; while Phyllis, pretending to sew, squeezed herself into a corner, and made as though she was not watching him, which she did in timid little peeps, thinking how handsome he was and noble and manly and splendid, with such returning recollections of his devotion, and gentleness, and simple, unrepining courage in the hard days now fast finishing, that she could have swooned from very tenderness.

_A Broth of a Boy_ was a typical Irish drama. The central figure was a rollicking imbecile, with a tuneful voice and the customary shillelah, who foils the wicked mortgager, chucks colleens under the chin, does a hair-raising leap over a waterfall, and is altogether so Brothy and gay that no one can resist him. The usual British officer, condemned to carry out an unpalatable order, and falling under the spell of a pair of saucy Irish eyes, is found not to be half so bad a fellow as we had anticipated; and though a good deal of a booby, and the target for sarcasms that he is too obtusely English to perceive, gradually wins the toleration and even the affection of the gallery. In real life he would probably have been court-martialed for his arrant disregard of instructions, nor would a bare-legged milk-maid have been considered quite the prize the dramatist deemed her.--But one mustn't criticize this dreamy region too harshly. That great baby, the public, loves it,--and in the theater-world there is plenty of room for this grotesque Ireland, and always will be; and baby's patronage feeds many worthy and deserving people, who otherwise might have not a little trouble of it to live.

Yes, let us be lenient toward the Irish drama. It brought seventy-five dollars a week to that little apartment high up in East Fifty-eighth Street, and hope and courage to hearts that were beginning to falter.

*CHAPTER XXI*

In the whole house that night of Adair's return to Broadway there was probably but one person in front who was even aware that the bill had been changed. That rapt little spectator waited with her heart in her mouth for the actor's appearance, and thrilled herself with fairy tales while the play ponderously opened, and took its course. Adair would be recognized; there would be a wild demonstration of welcome; cheers, applause, yes, an ovation, with people standing up, and the gallery in an uproar!--It was a dream, of course, a phantasy, for her head was too squarely set on her shoulders to count on anything of the sort, but nevertheless it exhilarated her enough to make the reality doubly, trebly disappointing.

His entrance was unheralded by a single handclap, O'Dowd having just retired amid thunders, with part of the audience still insistently humming the refrain of _Sweet Kitty O'Rourke_, (words by Stevowsky; music by Cohen). Adair's first few lines were altogether lost in consequence, the scene beginning in vehement pantomime, and the house only gradually, and with extreme unwillingness, resigning itself to the exit of the star. It must be said they had some right to regret him. Adair was anxious and forced, and so desperately in earnest to be funny that he suggested a marionette. Phyllis' surprise turned to dismay, and dismay to an inexpressible pain. That he won many a boorish laugh only heightened her misery. It was worse than bad, it was common, and she could have bent down and cried in very shame. But in the throes of her despair she was watchful, and her pretty brows corrugated with the intensity of her attention. Poor though the part was, surely it could be done better, oh, so much better; and if only she dared--! An infinite compassion dimmed her eyes, an infinite pity, for was it not for her he had stooped to this vile clowning, debasing himself, blowing out his cheeks like a turkey-gobbler, feverishly catching at every trick to get a grin or a titter? All this sacrifice of dignity, manhood and self-respect to keep the poor little pot boiling on Fifty-eighth Street?