Chapter VII: Part 7

It was terrible to sit through the play, and to realize with more and more conviction that this sacrifice was unnecessary--that the role, straightforwardly acted, and the comic-policeman side of it ignored, might be made into something worth doing--not very much worth doing of course--but still redeemed from utter banality. But Phyllis knew how her husband bristled at the least touch of criticism. Ordinarily so loving and indulgent, a single word of disapprobation could set him off like an hysterical woman; before now she had inadvertently raised such storms, and looked back on them with terror. She asked herself what she was to do, and could find no answer. Everything in her revolted from lying to him, and yet she would be forced to. It was not cowardice, but the disinclination of seeing him suffer, and the dread of incurring the harshness and anger of the man she idolized. Enmity in his eyes seemed to strike her to the ground; her heart stopped beating; something seemed to die within her.--No, at any cost, she must lie, lie, lie.

She waited for him at the stage-door, a slight dejected figure under the gaslights, and conscious for the first time that her clothes were shabby, and that her gloves were old and worn. O'Dowd's carriage stood by, and she envied the coachman his warm fur collar, and with it came the thought of all she had given up to marry Adair. This put her in better spirits, for she was pleased with everything that enhanced her love, and gave it an unusual and romantic quality--so that for a moment she seemed less cold, less sad, and a delicious heroine-feeling enshrouded her. Had it not been for the fear of what was to come she would have been altogether happy. But a pang of apprehension shot through her, and all the pretty fancies engendered by the fur collar of a sudden disappeared.--She was again standing on the wintry street, tired, frightened, and disheartened.

Adair emerged in a jubilant humor, and squeezed her arm as he passed his own through hers, and moved in the direction of the cars. Boisterous and gay, he was in no mood to notice Phyllis' constraint, and took her approval for granted as he overflowed with talk. It was a great relief to her to remain silent, and nestle close to all that bigness and confidence, and be borne along by that strong arm. All her doubts and fears were lost in an unreasoning gladness, and what did anything matter but love?

Meanwhile the genial tide of Adair's discourse continued without intermission.--O'Dowd, who was a prince of good fellows, had patted him on the back. Eddie Phelps was up in the air, too, and said he had simply walked away from the other man--and oh, how good it was to be in a theater again! It was a piffling part, but after all it was something to have made the best of it, to have shown them what could be done in it by a first class man. That was the beauty of the stage--a real actor could take a janitor or an organ-grinder and create a lot out of nothing. Did she know that all that business in the second act was his?--Yes, positively--every bit of it his, and no wonder O'Dowd hugged him at the wings, and said it was great--yes, just like that--before everybody! You see, it had pulled up the whole thing where it had used to drag, giving it zip and go. Eddie Phelps said that the other fellow had never got a hand there. He had done better than that, hadn't he? And if it hadn't been such a damned feeder for the star--oh, well, success was success, if it were only an inch high!

In this strain of self-laudation, Adair boarded a car, and praised himself all the way home. Throughout he took Phyllis' concurrence for granted, and his exuberance was unclouded by the least suspicion of the truth. He had half finished his supper when with that instinct which was one of the most unexpected endowments of his character, he all at once perceived something to be amiss. It wasn't Phyllis' fault; she had given not a hint of dissatisfaction; nothing was further from her thoughts than to mar that night.

But when he laid down his knife and fork, and stared at her across the table she knew in an instant what was coming.

"My God, Phyllis," he exclaimed, "it is not possible you--you didn't like it?"

She would have given worlds for the lie that would not come; her eyes shrank from his; the sincerity and conviction of his tone made deceit impossible. It was almost in a whisper that she answered: "Oh, Cyril, Cyril,--I'm afraid I didn't."

He pushed away his plate and got up; he could not suffer such a mortification sitting; the flat itself seemed too small to hold his sudden shame, his agitation, the staggering shock of what seemed to him his wife's disloyalty.

"What was the matter with it?" he demanded passionately. "What was it you did not like?--No, no, you needn't try to wriggle out of it; you've said too much to stop now; you've as good as told me it was damned bad, and I want to know why.--The words don't matter; it isn't a question of how you put it, nor how much I mind being knocked by the one person on earth--! My God, Phyllis, what do you mean by saying I was bad?"

She was terrified. No culprit in the dock ever trembled more guiltily, or faced a brow-beating prosecutor with so stricken a look. Her husband's bitter and contemptuous tone cut her like a lash. But it was too late now to make excuses, to palliate the offense. There was nothing for it but to go on--to justify herself--and the better she could do it the more she would wound him! And all this on a night that surely ought to have been their happiest.

"You made the captain too--too common," she stammered. "He is supposed to be a high-bred, aristocratic man--stupid, of course--but a gentleman through and through. In real life--"

"Oh, real life!" he interrupted roughly, "that's where all you ignorant, criticizing people go wrong. He has nothing to do with real life--he's a preposterous stage figure, a convention. I have to take what I'm given; I'm not the dramatist; I can't write new lines for him, can I? My business is to hide the strings that pull his arms and legs, and make him possible--and by George, I did it!"

"But Cyril, dearest, listen--even when you first come on you're not polite enough, not chivalrous enough. You almost burst out laughing at--"

"That's to give contrast to him afterwards."

"But you can do that, and still keep him a gen--I mean nice, and--"

This was all she was allowed to say. Adair towered over her, convulsed, shaking, his voice hardly governable as he stormed and raged. It was the best thing he had ever done; it was perfect; there was fifteen years of stage experience in that one creation. It was awful that it should all go for nothing; it shook his nerve; it shook his confidence in himself; he hardly knew how he could go on playing the part. He wouldn't, he'd throw it up; he warned her to be more careful next time, or as an actor he would be done for. It wasn't that he was afraid of criticism--intelligent criticism--he welcomed intelligent criticism--the criticism of those who knew the stage--helpful criticism. But to club a man in this ignorant, crass way was simply to murder him. How could he ever bear to let her see him again in anything? He was sensitive; he was cruelly sensitive; it was because he had temperament; and if he couldn't please the person he liked he had no courage or heart left, even if he set the whole house crazy. Here was one of the best things he had ever done, killed for ever--and it was she who had killed it! It was the penalty of loving her that he could not go on without her approval; he knew she was wrong; in any one else he would have dismissed it with a shrug, and forgotten it the next minute; yet with her--! Perhaps this sounds more ignominious than it was. To Phyllis at least there was a great pathos in the exasperated outburst that was very far from being due to vanity alone. The revelation of her husband's weakness, of his utter dependence on her good opinion, atoned not a little for the violent things he said. It enlarged her understanding of the childishness that lies so close beneath the artist-nature--of its swift extremes of feeling--and showed her, too, the amazing intensity that Adair put even into a small role, and taught her afresh what a life and death matter the stage was to him. His frenzy, therefore, instead of rousing her resentment, and worse still her scorn and anger, rather quickened within her a tragic pity. His burning face, his dilating eyes, his quivering twitching mouth--all the evidences of an uncontrollable mortification--brought forth instead that womanly feeling, so rich in generosity and indulgence, that would sacrifice everything for the one it loved.

To prove that she was right seemed to her of much less importance just then than to smooth down that wild, distraught man-creature who belonged to her. With love in peril all other considerations were swept away. No pride stood between, no sense of injustice; love was too precious for such pettinesses to interfere.--Then with what piteous artifices she began to eat her words! How adroitly did she argue so that her surrender should not be too apparent, giving way by such fine gradations that Adair hardly suspected the imposture. How contritely she confessed herself in the wrong, her cringing little heart all submission, her whole young body eager to atone her fault.--The wild, distraught man-creature was by degrees coaxed back to tameness and sanity; the thunders subsided; with kisses and caresses he was even prevailed upon to resume his place at table, where, lecturing her masterfully as he ate, though with a steadily lessening severity, dormice peace was at length restored. By the time Phyllis had brought him his slippers, lit his cigar, and snuggled herself against his knees, like a sweet little Circassian who had disturbed her Bashaw, and had been graciously forgiven by that dearest and best of men, Adair mellowed sufficiently to feel some slight self-reproach. He apologized for having got so worked up; fondled her glossy hair; called her his darling little stupid whom he loved so well he couldn't endure her to find fault with him. Between whiffs, mellowing even more, he admitted that he might have been slightly unreasonable, even unkind, but put it all down to his disappointment at failing to please her. "I worked so hard," he said. "I just fell over myself to make them laugh. I--I had to think of the seventy-five, you know, and holding down the job; and as the others liked it, I--I thought you would. My sweetheart girl must try and make some allowances. I couldn't help feeling cross and nervous and all worked up--and, and, it's awful to fail, Phyllis."

She, at this, the naughty little hypocrite, would have eaten more humble pie; would have protested afresh that it was only one tiny-winy thing she had objected to--though even on that she wasn't half as sure as she had been. But Adair cut her short. In his softened humor he was prepared to concede something to her criticism; there was a speck of truth in what she had said, however much it had upset him; he was going to pull up the part a bit; he was--

Phyllis had sprung up, and darted into the bedroom, with so sparkling a smile, and with such an air of animation and mystery that Adair hardly knew what to make of it all. But he was accustomed to her girlish escapades, and lay back with his cigar, listening to bureau-drawers being hastily opened and shut, and awaiting developments with amused anticipation. She could be such a little devil when the fancy seized her, and rejoiced in the most shocking exhibitions for his private delectation. He was unprepared, however, for her to bound out in a suit of his own, the sleeves and trousers rolled up, and her hair half-hidden beneath a jaunty cap. She had made herself up for Captain Carleton, and the moment she opened her mouth Adair recognized the fine parody of himself in the role. The words she had pat, her retentive memory having caught and retained them during his laborious "study"; and while she was less sure of the imaginary milk-maid, she paraphrased the latter's lines with sufficient accuracy to keep her cues straight. She knew she was playing with fire; her face was a picture of mingled roguishness and terror, yet she was impelled by a headlong daring that was irresistible.

She flung herself into the scene with mad abandonment, mimicking his voice, his gestures, his laugh, the very way he leaned against the pasteboard gate--a whirlwind little figure, dancing crazily on the egg-shells of his vanity. It was the cleverest, wickedest, most unsparing travesty of his whole performance, carried through with inordinate zest and mischief, and heightened by a slim young beauty that had never seemed to him more alluring. Her little feet had never looked so small as with the coarse trousers flapping about her ankles; the audacious curves above intensified her sex; while the partly opened coat displayed the ribbons and lace of her night-dress beneath--the whole a vision of captivating girlhood.

Adair at first made no sign at all except to stare at her in a sort of stupefaction. His face grew so dark that she felt shivers running down her back, and for a moment she wondered if she had not mortally offended him. The first smile she wooed from him set her pulses dancing with relief. Yes, he was smiling, he was laughing, he was clapping his hands; and then, oh, the joy of it, he was bursting out with great, deep "Ha, ha's" of delight! Thus encouraged, she redoubled her exertions; she outdid herself; she was in the second scene now, and was tearing it to pieces like a puppy with a rag-doll, panting with excitement and success, and rapturous with victory. Adair jumped up, and in a paroxysm of admiration, passion, exultation and self-reproach, ran and crushed her in his arms. Phyllis felt the filmy lace-stuff rip asunder, and his lips seeking her flesh, while all incoherent he breathed out that he loved her, loved her, loved her, and that she was right; yes, he had been playing it all wrong; never would he go against her judgment again, and then and there took back every word he had said! He was just a vain, silly, conceited, swollen-up jackass, not even worth her finger-tip; and he couldn't forgive himself for the way he had treated her; and the only thing he could think of doing to show how badly he felt was to plump down and kiss her little slippers, which he forthwith did with a humility that would have been more impressive had there been a less frantic flurry of kicks and protests.

Thus the evening that had begun so ill ended in tenderness and profound accord. The very last thing Mr. Dormouse murmured as he lay locked in his wife's arms was that she was the cleverest little actress in the world, and pretty enough to eat, and a million times too good for him--which on the whole was the truest thing Dormouse had said for a long while, and showed that his ideas were improving. Little though he knew it he was improving in every way, and could he have set himself back six months he would have been astounded at the contrast. Women make men in other senses than the physical, and this robust lump of egoism, selfishness, ignorance and conceit was being slowly and unconsciously transformed. Something of Phyllis was passing into him, and in the magic of that soul-infiltration the grosser side of him had begun to crumble.

*CHAPTER XXII*

It is disappointing to chronicle that the altered and improved rendering of the English captain passed almost unnoticed. Mr. Kemmel, O'Dowd's right-hand man, indeed had objected to the change; and failing to bully Adair into submission had carried the affair up to the star. But that comedian, with a kindness that bordered on a sublime indifference, refused to interfere. "Hell, it don't matter how he plays it as long as he gets the words over," was his sage comment; and a wave of a large, fat hand dismissed the subject for ever. O'Dowd had his own private reasons for wishing to stay on good terms with Adair, which he was too regal, if not too cautious, to pass on at that moment to Mr. Kemmel. O'Dowd, being star, manager, and half-author of the piece was minting money under all three heads, and his concern for the box-office was proportionately great--so great that he could consider the choice of an understudy without irritation, and even accept a man who might "draw."

On first being commanded to understudy his principal, Adair had accepted the task much in the spirit of Mary Ann, when she is told: "Oh, I forgot to say you must do the washing, too!" It was a drudgery and a bore that he would have been well content to avoid, for one look at O'Dowd's red face and vigorous frame convinced him of the remoteness of the contingency for which he was to fit himself. He set no hopes in that direction, and it came to him as a real surprise, a couple of weeks after he was engaged, to be asked into the office and told of a new contract he was to sign.

"'The Guv'nor ain't satisfied with that fourth clause," said Mr. Kemmel. "He says it ain't plain--hey, there, don't let Phelps go, I want him and Klein for witnesses."

"Where isn't it plain?" demanded Adair, who remembered the document as one of unusual rigor, without even the usual two weeks' notice. "Do you wish to add penal servitude to my other fifty-seven penalties?"

Mr. Kemmel did not deign to smile. He was a pale, bald Jew of about thirty-six, with a peculiarly bleak way of addressing actors.

"No," he answered, "we want to clear up the understudy part of it."

"Understudy part of it? What do you mean?"

"Well, if you went on for five or six weeks, taking the Guv'nor's place every night and matinee--you might make out like it was a new engagement--and try to stick us."

Adair was too mystified to take offense.

"Stick you?" he repeated.

"Yes, sue us afterwards for three or four times the salary."--Mr. Kemmel sighed, and looked upward, as though reflecting on man's inhumanity to man. "In this business one has to be so careful," he added, as impersonally as though he were speaking to a stone pillar, "so careful--well, as I was saying, here we have iron-claded it, and you are to sign where it is penciled, and return the old contract to-morrow."

The typewritten words swam a little as Adair gazed at them; he was afraid of being tricked; he wanted to make sure that the precious seventy-five a week had not been tampered with. But there it was, all right, along with the new proviso. It was difficult to believe that this last amounted to anything, for O'Dowd's appearance precluded the least idea of illness. The man was as strong as a bull, with a voice that shook your ear-drums, and the shoulders of a negro coal-heaver. He was offensively healthy, and so limited in any interest but the theater that he moped visibly of a Sunday. One might as well understudy the Metropolitan Museum on the chance of its taking a night off. Adair laughed as he signed the new contract, and hardly thought of the matter for a day or two afterwards.

It was Kemmel who again brought it home to him.

"I'm keeping the orchestra for you to run over the Guv'nor's songs again with them," he said. "You sing them good enough, but the leader says you crowd the overture, and sometimes get ahead of him."

There are no people in the world so unmurmuring as actors; they will rehearse till their voices crack and their legs drop off, and all this, too often, under volleys of insults and reproaches. Adair had played two performances that day, and was worn out and hungry; yet it never occurred to him to make any objection to such an unexpected order. The poor, weary orchestra was there, as hungry and worn out as he, but as willing as every one connected with the stage seems always to be; they scraped and tootled and drummed and bassooned for two mortal hours, from a quarter past eleven till after one A.M., while Adair sang Irish melodies to the darkened house. O'Dowd himself, in a stage-box, was the solitary though far from silent spectator. Cigar in mouth, profane, morose and savagely critical, he bellowed furiously from his dark crimson cave.

"No, no, no, _no_! Hell's bells, do that again! At the second verse there now! For God's sake, Mr. Glauber, emphasize the key-note, boom it out on that first cornet so he can't miss it, and lam it in again on the minor. The minor! _The minor_, damn it! And, oh Lord, Adair, call that a brogue? Hell's bells, it's because you're in such a hurry--Glauber will wait for you--damn it, give it again, let it stick to your teeth--like this: 'Of owl the ma-a-a-a-ids of swate Kilda-a-a-a-rrr--'"

Adair had an unusually tuneful voice, and the middle register of his rather high baritone was full of warmth and charm. These catchy melodies appealed to him, and the sentiment was of a downright, popular kind. One rollicked the humor and quavered the pathos, and either put in brogue or didn't as one remembered or forgot it. As a matter of fact--except for the brogue--he did the songs more justice than the great O'Dowd himself, and sang them more sweetly and appealingly. He had no conception of it that night, however, as he was hectored and bullied without cessation until his eyes smarted, and his bewildered head was whirling. He had a whipped feeling as he went off, and a corroding sense of defeat and failure. It was idiotic to expect him to sing, and now that he had been tested and found wanting he hoped the silly goats would leave him alone.

He turned as he was putting on his overcoat in the wings, and saw that one of the silly goats had followed him. It was Mr. Kemmel, more bleared and bleak than ever, and evidently with something disagreeable to say.

"Oh, Adair," he exclaimed in a low voice, "hold on a minute, I want to talk to you. I've called a full rehearsal for to-morrow at nine o'clock, orchestra and all--for you'll have to go on in the Guv'nor's place to-morrow night!"

"I go on?--_I_?" Adair was thunderstruck. "What do you mean, Kemmel?"

"Just that."

"But he's as well as I am."

"The climate ain't agreeing with him, hee, hee!"--Kemmel's cackle was as cold as the draft off an iceberg.

"The climate?"

"New York state. He's got to get right out to-night, and that with us playing a run, and with eight weeks of our lease unexpired. If it weren't for the lease, and my Lord, the forfeit to Boaz and Gotlieb, he'd jump us out with him, run or no run. Ain't it awful, Mabel!"

"But Kemmel, what's the matter?"

"Well, it's like this, Adair. He and Julia Garrett were divorced here two years ago, and the dime museum freaks who tried it allowed her to marry again, and forbade him. They do things like that in New York, and if you kick it's contempt of court! The next day he married our Mrs. O----, Claudia Kirkwood at Chicago. See? There's nothing they can't forget here in two years, and so we came back, feeling pretty safe--and would have been, too, if number one hadn't got tired of the man who was keeping her in London, and rushed over here with her little hatchet. We've been trying to buy it, but it wasn't for sale--at least not at any figure we could pay--so we made a bluff offer of eight thousand, and reserved our Pullman!"

"Are you going to try to keep the run here?"

"_You_ are!"

"And if I can't--if I don't draw?"

"Then we'll close."

"I wonder you didn't get Anderson Bailey or Henry Millard, or that man who has just left Blanche Mortimer--what's his name?"

"Costs too much--you're cheap."

Then to take the edge off this remark, he added:

"Say, that's not a knock; we wouldn't take them, anyway; I'm not throwing any bouquets, Adair, but you are damned good in it, really damned good--and are exactly what we want. And don't you feel sore about the money, either. We are paying you seventy-five salary, and four hundred and twenty-five worth of chance to make a big hit. You wish to get on, don't you? Well, you may be a made man in eight weeks. We're taking a gamble, and so must you. What if you are a holy frost? Don't go around belly-aching for money, but see if you can't win out. We believe you can; we are sure you can; go ahead!"

Praise, opportunity, the belief of others in you--how softening they are! Kemmel, the niggardly, the fault-finding, the lean, mean jackal of the Irish lion, suddenly took on a new hue. Adair found himself shaking his hand. What a good chap Kemmel was, after all! He shook his hand cordially, effusively, all former bitterness forgotten in an intoxication of joy. Kemmel melted too, under that irresistible spell; had a spasm of expansiveness and indiscretion; went so far as to say, in a darkling, confidential manner, that Adair had sung "all round" the boss.

"That's why I went for you like I did and balled you up now and then," he confided. "It wouldn't do to have him think _that_, you know. He's funny, like all of them, and while two-thirds of him is box-office, the other third is temperament--and my, it don't do to jar it!"

Phyllis had been sent home alone long before this, and Adair found her sound asleep in bed. A considerate husband would have let her lie undisturbed, and would have kept his great news till the morning. But Adair had no more compunction in waking her up than if she had been a pet puppy; and rolled her over, and tumbled her about almost as roughly, and with the same clenched-teeth zest in her drowsiness, beauty and helplessness. And she, woman-like, loved it, roughness and all--which goes to show how stupid consideration is at times, and how misplaced. Adair never gave it a thought, and his selfishness was rewarded by two bare, satiny arms reaching for his neck, and the eagerest little mouth in the world begging kisses and taking them.

And the news?

Don't blame him if it had grown a little. It was so truly-truly big that there could be no harm in making it a trifle bigger. Is it not permissible, with your adoring little wife nestling beside you in her nightie, and holding you fast lest you might suddenly be snatched away by some envious and ruthless agency--is it not permissible, I say, to add a stick and a cocked hat to some ordinary, very plainly-dressed facts? The whole rehearsal, thus gloriously reviewed in the retrospect, was brought up to the key of Kemmel's appreciation. The unexpired lease of the theater was seen to be a subterfuge, and no doubt O'Dowd had gone away to organize a number two company--the shrewd fellow; he and Kemmel mighty well knew they had made a "find"--they weren't in that business for nothing--and both were up in the air about it. The next thing would be a two years' contract, with a real salary and percentages! Cyril Adair, the Irish comedian, ha, ha! Well, why not? It would bring him back to Broadway in the right way, the big way! Bring him back to stay, by George, for with this as a stepping-stone they'd never get him off the grand old street again. And once solid--

With unloosened imagination they soared the sky, vying ecstatically with each other in that ethereal azure where everything is possible, two little children before the opening doors of paradise, and hardly less simple and naive--big hand on little, voice outstripping voice, girl-heart and man-heart blended in an idyllic love. But alas, closer than paradise, oh, so much closer--on the next floor, in fact--was an honest motorman of the Metropolitan Street Railway, who lumbered out of bed, and hammered loudly on the floor for silence. On East Fifty-eighth Street this was a hint not to disturb a sleeping toiler. Bang, bang, bang, and the creaking springs and bedposts as the stalwart Brother of the Ox again sought repose. He got it all right; he often had to hammer, but never had to hammer twice; Phyllis had a great deal of humorous tenderness for her working-men neighbors--those decent, silent men who used to pass her so respectfully on the stairs; who played cheap phonographs on Sunday nights, raised families and canaries, owned dogs and took in boarders, till one wondered their apartments didn't bulge out and burst!--So McCarthy returned to the Land of Nod, and the dormice, reduced to whispers, soon kissed each other sleepily, and took their own road thither.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

One wonders sometimes why almost anybody can not be a successful Irish comedian? Given a good figure, a pleasing, sympathetic voice, and a face naturally inclined to smile--and the rest seems as easy as taking pennies from a blind man. Certainly Adair caught his house as surely as ever did O'Dowd, and moved through the piece amid the same thunders of applause. Younger, handsomer, and an incomparably better actor, and with that charm, so baffling to describe, which yet was ever-present and ever-compelling, he measured himself against his predecessor, and never for a moment had the least doubt of the outcome. It is not often that fairy tale came as bravely true; that the dream of overnight turned as quickly into the fact of to-day. Small wonder that Adair, standing there on the stage when all was done, his ears still ringing with the applause of that departing audience, was too exalted, and much too self-sure to fret at Kemmel's misgivings.

"Oh, you did fine," cried Kemmel. "You were splendid, splendid! But will they ever come back?" He jerked his head in the direction of the curtain.--"It was O'Dowd that brought them--not you; they already had their tickets; the pinch comes to-morrow, day after to-morrow. Can you draw them then, ah, that's the point?--No, no, don't misunderstand me, Adair. I'm all up in the air about you; you justified all we hoped; more than we hoped; you don't need to be told how you hit them to-night. But I'm scared--scared of your success--and I'm that nervous that I--!" Again he turned towards the curtain, and his voice was almost a wail. "Oh, my God, Adair, will they ever come back?"

The astonishing thing was that they did--crowded back, swarmed back, breaking all the records of the piece. Business rose by leaps and bounds till they were playing to capacity; till the thrilling words "sold out" were posted almost nightly on the box-office window; till a ravening horde of speculators took possession of the sidewalk in front, alternately delighting Kemmel with their advertising value, and wringing his soul with anguish at the money he saw going astray. Not that these were his only preoccupations; he was too loyal to his employer's interest, and too expert a theatrical man to let a success run along without a guiding hand. Adair's name went up in electric letters; pictures and paragraphs were scattered broadcast; an option was secured on another theater to continue the run, and, what seemed to him the best of all, he had Adair securely tied up by a new contract. Kemmel, in his own words, was "on to his job," and in his letters to O'Dowd he was already urging a number two company, and submitting estimates and names.

The new contract, of course, was a marvel of one-sidedness; on-to-his-job Kemmel naturally saw to that, and paid a legal iron-worker twenty-five dollars to make it of seamless steel. But on the running out of the existing contract at seventy-five dollars a week, it assured Adair two hundred and fifty as long as it pleased O'Dowd to employ him. Seamless steel could not accomplish everything, and a substantial increase of salary had to be accorded. Adair would have stood out for more; but Phyllis, with feminine caution, prevailed on him, to make no demur. Booful's day would come; stick to her and he would wear diamonds--not to speak of bells on his darling fingers and toes; but just now money was secondary to cementing his position till he was stuck up so high on Broadway that they'd have to feed him with a ladder.--Besides, two hundred and fifty dollars a week was an _awful_ lot of money. Forty weeks at two hundred and--

"Forty weeks, you goose!" expostulated Adair. "I'd be the last person to object if it were forty weeks. But down there, on that smudgy blue place, they can cancel everything in forty seconds."

"People aren't cancelled who are playing to capacity."

"I know, but the utter damned meanness that--"

"Poor little Booful mustn't worry, and if he'll stop damning and rampaging, I'll take him down to his Uncle Macy's, and show him that lovely fur coat I want him to buy as soon as we have some money."

"I suppose you are right, Phyllis, but it galls me to--"

"My darling, sweetheart love," she broke in with pretty seriousness, "nothing is so important as your success, and once make that secure, money follows as a matter of course. Let Booful keep shinning up the pole, even if they do pick his pockets, and never think of anything but the gilt ball at the top, and--and _me_."

This was good advice and Booful acted on it. The two hundred and fifty, too, looked less despicable as every day drew it nearer; and as it became, not an abstraction to be argued over and theoretically scorned, but a tidy little bundle of greenbacks that would go far to ease life, both on the spending side of it and the saving. Oh, yes, half of it was to be laid by in the bank for a rainy day. Meanwhile, they lived up to the last cent of the seventy-five, which once so much, now suddenly grew meager by contrast, and by the greater inroads made upon it. Booful rolled home in cabs; there were little restaurant suppers with a fizzling pint of wine; Phyllis bought a coveted peignoir, made out of pale blue fluffy-nothingness, and with a hand-embroidered collar delicately touched with gold.--Well, why not? The nearing future was too bright not to discount it a little in the present.

We have said that Kemmel kept his press agent busy; and in the same thoroughgoing spirit that placarded every garbage-can from Twenty-sixth Street to Harlem, strove by a thousand means to get Adair's name prominently into the papers. If he succeeded beyond all expectations he ascribed it to his own astuteness, instead of to the fact that Adair, for the moment, was an extremely spectacular figure in the theatrical world. It was one of the remarkable things about this man that he impressed himself so indelibly in the recollection of every one who had ever known him. It was too often a disagreeable recollection; he had sown hatred with a royal hand; yet, in a queer, negative, altogether unprofitable way he had fascinated everybody. Others might make a disagreeable impression and be forgotten. But no one ever forgot Adair. Magnetism, personality, genius--whatever word one chose to call it--he had the peculiar faculty of arresting attention, of exciting interest, of making people talk and speculate about him.

It was indubitably at times a most unlucky gift. 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; and it showed Phyllis' power over him, and the change generally in his disposition that the police courts were untroubled by his presence.

Lies about herself Phyllis could bear with some fortitude, but Adair's earlier life, as thus revealed by the sensation-mongers, cost her many a bitter pang.--The woman who had tried to shoot him at the Cafe Martin, and the whole revelation of that horrid affair--the Burt-Wauchope scandal, where rather than save himself by compromising an unknown girl, he had gone to prison for contempt; and that, not quietly and nobly, but with a vain-glorious satisfaction in his martyrdom--the discreditable spree on Tim Bartlett's yacht--how horrible, how unendurable it was--this graveyard resurrection of bygone years!

Adair never justified himself to her, never tried to palliate or explain away the incidents of his outrageous past. That instinct, which in all his relations with her invariably guided him aright, served him as well now as it had always before. He was more gentle, more tender, trusting to kisses rather than words. "Don't let this hurt you," he once said to her, the only time he had ever ventured to speak to her, "that wasn't me, Phyllis. There wasn't any me until you came. You know that, don't you? No me at all, but just a big brute, and if he didn't have a soul it was because it was in your bureau drawer along with your stockings and handkerchiefs, and I guess you thought it was a sachet bag or something, and never looked at it twice."

The most jealous, dismayed and heart-sick of women could not have resisted such pleading; not if she were in love, that is, and her lover's voice was as appealing, and his eyes as convincing and sincere.--In a divine commingling of wife-love and mother-love, so pure, so uplifting that it transcended all physical expression, save alone what the breast could give, she drew his head to her bosom, comforting him, comforting herself in an act emblematic of all that is most beautiful in humanity.

The more one studies the stage the more one is surprised by its disregard of principles that govern every-day, ordinary affairs. Perhaps it is because actors are all children, who have clung tenaciously to playing Indian in the hall, and shooting tigers under the parlor sofa long after the rest of us have grown up. It is a good thing for the world that "temperament" is so largely confined to the paste-board walls of the theater; or we might see our grocer sulking over his butter, or railway presidents impetuously ordering off trains because they had taken a sudden distaste to the landscape of some state. Self-interest, that sheet anchor of society, is but a kedge to the theatrical ship, and many plow the main without even that. Caprice often outweighs all money-making considerations; and though we are far from decrying those who sacrifice dollars to art (and there are many), may one not be a little peevish with the others, whose vanity and wilfulness often take such spiteful forms?

It certainly cost Shamus O'Dowd all of twelve thousand dollars, if not double or treble that amount to close the run at the Herald Square Theater and bring it to a peremptory conclusion. From his Rocky Mountain ranch he had watched, with a grinding and increasing anger, the success of the man to whom he had left his role. The swelling royalty returns exasperated him; the laudatory notices, sent in such profusion by Kemmel (who was innocent enough to think they would please)--were as tongues of flame leaping up the legs of a captive at the stake (such fat legs as they were, and with such an ample scorching surface), and all the talk of another theater and a second company clogged his eyes with blood, and seared his low, coarse face with the furrows of an intolerable indignation.

Nightly for twenty-five years he had been taking others' crimes on his brawny shoulders--murder, arson, embezzlement, forgery--he grabbed for them all, never so happy as when misjudged, with only the audience in the secret of his sacrifice; nobody on the stage could do anything wrong without his making a rush to take the blame--and the oaths he kept with an incredible fidelity; the superb impulses that started from him as freely as perspiration; his goodness, chivalry, and almost insensate honor--! Oh, the irony of reality as contrasted with those affecting fictions!

"Dear Kemmel," he wrote, in his ugly, sprawling, impatient hand. "Take the bloody show right off, and fire Adair, and keep the others on half-salary till you can fix me up a route outside of New York. In God's name, what do you think I'm made of, that I'm to play a number two company all around the clock while he's starring my hit on Broadway? And don't you put up any back-talk about it, either, for I mean every word of it if it takes my last red--though you must see that it don't. If we have to go forfeit on the theater, hell's bells, pay the bloody cormorants, and do you hear, Get Out!!! For I'm sick of the whole business. Fix it up with Mallory to send out something like this, even if you have to pay space rates for it, and I want it featured:--'The substitution of Mr. Cyril Adair for Mr. Shamus O'Dowd in the star-role of _A Broth of a Boy_ has resulted so disastrously to the management that the Herald Square Theater will be dark on Monday night, and all outstanding tickets refunded at the box-office. The experiment was an unfortunate one for all parties, for Mr. O'Dowd, previous to his departure from New York, owing to his doctor's orders, was playing to enormous business, and bade fair to remain all the season. In Mr. O'Dowd's hands _A Broth of a Boy_ has been a record money-maker, and friends of the genial star will be enthusiastic to learn of his early return to harness. The old adage of the lion's skin is thus verified again, and we are not disparaging Mr. Cyril Adair when we say he was unlucky to be cast for the Donkey.'

"I hope this is all clear, and that I have not overlooked anything. Perhaps when you are about it you had better fire Grace Farquar, too. Pretty girls are cheap, and I should like another more come-on, preferably a blonde this time. Received your check for $1,182.40. No more for the present. Cordially yours, Shamus O'Dowd."

*CHAPTER XXIV*

The right girl's cheek against his own is usually worth more to a man than all the philosophy to be found in books. Adair was stunned; he was too helpless, too hurt even to murmur. When one is struck by a thunderbolt, one lies where one falls. He expected Phyllis to fall also, and in a dull, heart-broken way was surprised by her intrepidity. She picked up the great, despairing creature; kissed him, petted him, crooned over him like a baby, smiling through her tears, and exerting all her pretty fancifulness to make him smile, too. Men may excel in marching up to cannon and saving people from burning buildings, and descending to the bottom of the sea in submarines; but in the forlorn hopes of life it is most often the women who lead.

After a while Adair was revived; on examination it seemed that he wasn't seriously damaged at all, only scared--oh, yes--just scared all out of his poor Booful wits; and a fairy potion called: "What does anything matter as long as we have each other?" was extraordinarily effective in pulling him together again. Then Phyllis jumbled up all the swear-words she had ever heard, and hurled them indiscriminately at Shamus O'Dowd, with such piquancy and humor, coming as they did from that sweet mouth, and with such a delicious lady-intonation that Adair was convulsed, and a tiny bit shocked--which was precisely what she had schemed for, the daring little wretch.

Thus began a new era of looking for an engagement; and it must be said it was a very sad, anxious, bitter era, for they were dreadfully poor--hungry-poor--and every time there was a knock at the door it was a dun who had to be coaxed and persuaded into going away. Adair's recent prominence had done little to incline managers towards him, and though they were more civil, and he generally got greater consideration at their hands, it was evident that their former hostility still persisted. But his professional reputation now stood pretty high; and occasionally one, bolder than the rest, would coquette with him, keeping him on tenter-hooks while a frantic search was made "for somebody that would do as well." This somebody was always found, and Adair would be told politely that "the vacancy had been filled."

Incidentally he learned that his parting from O'Dowd had been grossly misrepresented by that "genial star," who had spread it about broadcast that Adair was as impossible as ever, and so inflated and top-lofty that it had been cheaper to break the run of the piece than to stand his vagaries any longer. This was in such accord with Adair's former character that it found ready credence up and down Broadway; and the great Mr. Fielman himself enunciated the general sentiment when he said to Rolls Reece, the dramatist: "If that fellow Adair only had the manners and decency of a common hod-carrier, I'd give him a five years' contract, and make a fortune out of him; but the stage is on too high a level nowadays for men like that to get a second chance to disgrace it--at least from me!"

No one appreciates more than an actor the need for being well-dressed when seeking an engagement. His appearance is a considerable part of his capital, both on the boards and off; he may have had little breakfast, and less lunch, but his clothes must be good, and his linen immaculate, and in a "profession" judged so largely by superficialities, it behooves him, poor dog, to affect at any cost an air of fashion that but too often is the most pathetic of masquerades.

It was now that Phyllis rose to the occasion with an unexpected capacity that showed she was, indeed, her father's daughter. She got the janitress to teach her how to wash and iron white shirts; and in a short time could glaze a bosom better than her instructress, and almost as well as a French laundry-man. She learned how to press Adair's coats and trousers; she turned his ties; she ironed his collars; she cleaned his gloves with gasolene. No man was ever valeted with more assiduous care, or sent out every morning looking sprucer or better-groomed. When she kissed him good-by for the day it was always with a playful admonition, for Adair bore adversity none too well, and though he tried to hide his despondency he was beginning to break down under the long continued strain.

"And he knows he's a great, big, handsome, splendid Booful?"

"Oh, he's sure of it!"

"And he's going to step out like a Crown Prince going down to see his Emperor-Papa at the club?"

"You bet he is."

"And swing his cane as though he owned all Broadway--and throw back his head like a Greek statue, and swagger into their horrid old offices like a millionaire? For he _is_ a millionaire, you know--not a money-one, but a Love-Millionaire--for don't I love him millions and millions?"

It took a kiss to answer that; and then the Love-Millionaire, laughing a little tremulously, would hurry away, whistling with much bravado as he went down the stairs, two at a time, as suited a great, big, handsome, splendid Booful; who, whatever his demerits in the past, was fast retrieving himself before the Great Judge.--And if, on his departure, Phyllis would lay her head on her arm and give way to uncontrollable tears, you would be wrong to feel too sorry for her. For the misfortune that draws a man and woman together, and extorts from each their noblest qualities is not really a misfortune at all, but a precious and beautiful thing that it would become us more to envy.

Thus the days passed in a deadening, cowing, unutterably depressing search for work. Adair was rebuffed, put off, told to call again; he abased himself to men he despised; he forced his presence with hungry persistence on dramatists and stars who were putting on new plays, affecting a good fellowship that was a transparent, dismal lie. He tried to buy them wine, cigars--inveigle them into promises, and his lunch often went in a tip to some greedy understrapper who guarded their portals.

It is strange the mile-wide demarcation that divides the real stage--the stage of Sothern, John Drew, Faversham, Maude Adams, etc., from that other to which Adair had so long associated himself. This other had no representative save Adair in the whole Thespian Club. It was a region apart, and a region that Adair was determined never to return to. It would have called him back willingly enough, and in his desperation he might have returned to it had it not been for Phyllis. It was she who kept his resolution alive; she was too confident of his talent to let him throw it back into that Dead Sea; it meant the abandonment of every serious ambition;--artistically speaking, suicide, death.--Booful belonged to the top, and it was his business and hers to get him there.

Brave words, but how about fulfilment? The end of the month would find them turned out of doors. Phyllis dreaded to see herself in the glass, she was becoming so pale and wan; in the unequal battle everything was going except her courage; sometimes, alone in the silent apartment, even that seemed to droop, and a daunting terror would overwhelm her--less for herself than for Adair. He was drinking again, and justified himself with a bitter vehemence. "They all say, 'Have a drink'!" he exclaimed. "Nobody ever says 'Have an eat'!"--His harsh, despairing humor recurred to her, as well as his sudden resentment at her pity. He had made atonement, but the sting remained--or rather a foreboding of something somber and evil that in spite of herself she could not shake off.

One day at the club a card was brought Adair, inscribed Mr. John H. Campbell; and the boy told him the gentleman was waiting to see him in the visitors' room. Adair knew no such person, but he went out to greet him with mingled curiosity and hope, for here perhaps was the long-sought engagement. An imposing, distinguished looking, very well-dressed man of fifty rose from the sofa, and asked him, with much suavity, whether he had the pleasure of addressing Mr. Cyril Adair. This question being quickly and politely settled, the imposing gentleman begged for a few words of conversation; and indicating a place for Adair beside him, he reseated himself with a bland, kind air which yet was not without an underlying seriousness, not to say solemnity.

"I have come on a very confidential matter," he said, fixing Adair with his shrewd, keen, heavy-lidded eyes. "A matter, Mr. Adair, so delicate that it is not easy to convey it except in a round-about form. May I explain I have sought you out at the request of--Mr. 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. But he could shoot straight, nevertheless, and it was hardly a satisfaction to the victim to hear that murmur of "poor devil!" as the eminent counsel laid aside the smoking weapon.

"My father-in-law!" exclaimed Adair in amazement.

"He would be happier if he could cease to bear that name," said Mr. Campbell.

"He can hardly very well help himself," retorted Adair bluntly.

"No, but you could," put in the lawyer, with a vagueness that was intentional. "By this time you must realize that it is a union that is scarcely to your own best interests nor the young lady's."

"Haven't noticed it," said Adair, staring at him queerly.

"Mr. Ladd would be prepared to make very heavy sacrifices to put back things as they were before."