Chapter VIII: Part 8

"What sort of sacrifices?"--Adair's tone was not unfriendly; it was rather questioning and perplexed.

"We would rather leave it to you to suggest them, though we are counting more on your concern for her welfare. Frankly, Mr. Adair, without meaning the least disrespect, and with a thorough knowledge of your honorable and straightforward conduct--do you consider you're acting rightly in holding this young lady to what most people would call a very bad bargain?"

"Being married to a starving actor?"

"Oh, that is putting it too--too--"

"Of course, she has thrown herself away--I know that."

There was a gleam in the heavy-lidded eyes.

"It could all be rectified," said Mr. Campbell soothingly. "Very easily, and very quickly rectified. It is just a question, it seems to me, of our getting together, and talking it over reasonably. In fact, some of the details might be omitted entirely. Mr. Ladd is a man of very large means, and is the soul of honor. He would see to it that your future was made easy."

"How easy?" asked Adair.

"I mean," returned Mr. Campbell, "that he would substantially recognize your honest desire to be guided by his wishes--wishes that you admit are just, and so much to the young lady's advantage that you are willing to withdraw entirely."

"Those are all words," exclaimed Adair; "let's get to figures."

Mr. Campbell looked pained. After having confined the interview so skilfully within the limits of irreproachable good taste, this brutality outraged his ear. He had not been unprepossessed by Adair, and felt sorry for him.--But here was the cloven hoof.--The fellow was just a low, mercenary adventurer after all.

"The figures are ten thousand dollars," he answered coldly.

"Why, I don't call that anything!"

"Cash," added Campbell, with a pursing of his lips.

"Of course, it's cash," cried Adair, "it's going to be that, whatever it is. Only it isn't enough. She's worth more than ten thousand dollars."

Campbell saw that his personal bias had made him err. Adair's vibrating tone had caught the note of his own; suavity and good humor were all-important, and he scurried back to them, like an incautious general flying for the batteries he has left behind. When he spoke again it was in his best lullaby manner.

"My dear fellow," he said, "the real point is that you concede the principle. That is so, is it not?"

"Hell, yes," returned Adair. "I'd concede a lot for fifty thousand dollars."

"But that is a very, very large sum of money."

Adair, with one hand in his trousers pocket, was restlessly turning over the two nickels that were there--all he had.

"I don't think so," he said. "Anyway, she's worth that, and more."

"I was hardly authorized to commit Mr. Ladd to such an amount," objected Mr. Campbell, "though I will not say right off that I might not entertain it. But you understand, Mr. Adair, that it implies you will not resist an action for divorce, and-- Well, you know we'd like to have the matter absolutely settled and done with."

"For fifty thousand dollars?"

The heavy-lidded eyes were obscured by a momentary glaze.

"We will meet you," said Mr. Campbell.

Adair rubbed the nickels together, and asked, with a slight catch of his breath, if he could have something on account.

"Certainly," assented the lawyer, producing his pocket-book. He removed a sheaf of bills, and Adair perceived that they were in denominations of a thousand dollars each. He had never seen a thousand-dollar bill before in his whole life, and here was a thick packet of twenty or more. No wonder that he was overawed. Campbell noticed his fascinated stare, and dilly-dallying with the notes, spread them out with an elaborate carelessness. To Adair, it was all a blur of $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, a green mist of money, a crisp, crinkling, dizzying affluence.--Campbell was saying something to him. There was a paper to be signed. It was a temporary memorandum to be replaced later by a more formal document. Buzz, buzz, buzz! The paper was handed to him. Buzz, buzz, buzz, and the room going round and round. He was standing on his feet, shaking with the pent-up passion that he had been so long holding back. The actor in him had been waiting for that, but the actor was lost in the man.

"You're a damned hound!" he cried hoarsely, "And the man who sent you is a damned hound, and here is your damned paper, and may it choke you both! My wife isn't for sale, do you hear that! My wife isn't for sale, whether it's for fifty thousand or fifty million! Is that plain? Do you concede the principle, or shall I boot it into you? I thought I'd lead you on; I thought I'd just see how far you'd go--you with your sable overcoat, and fat pocket-book, and your stinking respectability. I had you sized up all right, and was only giving you rope to hang yourself. Get out of here, and get out quick, or I'll kick you from here to your cab. Get out!"

It was needless to say that John Hampden Campbell did not need to be pressed. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace could have scarcely been in a bigger hurry. Cramming the notes and papers in his pockets, he sped from the visitors' room like a large, imposing projectile which had been fired from some monster cannon. A second later his flying coat-tails were deposited in his cab, and he was speeding away, considerably shaken in spirit and body, for the mountain quiet of his twenty-eight story office.

Lying on Phyllis' table, all ready for mailing, was a long letter to her father. Pride had crumbled and she had determined to seek his help. She had begun it with constraint, attempting, none too effectually, to conceal her sense of injury and injustice; but as page followed page the old tenderness returned with an irresistible force. That gray, handsome head was before her, that mellow voice was in her ears, and the wretchedness and folly of alienation came home to her with a new and piercing significance. The request for money; the cold, exact exposition of her need--was passed and forgotten in the impetuous rush of her pen. She loved her husband, she loved her father, and this estrangement was unbearable. Like many women under the stress of a deep emotion she wrote with a singular eloquence. She wept as she described Cyril--his unceasing goodness, his loyalty, his fortitude, his good humor and devotion. He was everything a woman loved best in a man; and instead of her marriage having been a mistake, a failure, it was more than she thought life could ever give her. Would not her father forget all that had passed, as she, too, would forget? Their love was too deep, too dear, to make reconciliation impossible. She would climb into his lap again, and put her arms about him--his sad, worn, desolate little girl--and they would whisper to each other what fools they had been, and kiss away the last shadow of misunderstanding.

So it ran, page after page, in her fine, delicate hand, an appeal that no father could have resisted. A beautiful letter, touched with the quality of tears; full of womanly longing; heart crying to heart, across an aching void. Alas, that it never went. It was torn to pieces, and thrown passionately on the floor. Campbell had intervened, and the news of his offer was thus received in the little flat on East Fifty-eighth Street. "That's the end of it," cried Phyllis, regarding the scraps of paper. "That's the end of everything between Papa and me!"

*CHAPTER XXV*

It is one of the peculiarities of looking for a theatrical engagement that hope is never quite extinguished. There is always some one who wants you to call next week; there is always a company just short of a part they are considering you for; there is always some friendly member of the Thespians who has "mentioned your name," and gives you a scribbled address or a telephone number. This is stated to explain the fact why Adair, instead of surrendering to circumstances, as any other man would have done in any other walk of life, still snatched at straw after straw with egregious determination. His circumstances were becoming absolutely desperate. Suspension from the club was staring him in the face; in eight days his sticks of furniture and his trunks would be dumped out on the street; it was only by the most rigid parsimony that body and soul could be kept together. Phyllis said the dormice were floating on a shingle, and with tearful laughter would expatiate on the pitiful, half-drowned things, so scared and hungry on a bobbing sea. What was to happen when they slid off?--Oh, but Booful wasn't to mind. She'd hold his poor, pretty, dormouse head up, and swim him off to a lovely island where there were peanuts on peanuts, and an alabaster mousery with all modern improvements.

That lovely island seemed a terribly long way off. As the emblem of an engagement it lay so far over the horizon that Adair began to doubt its very existence. His eyes grew lack-luster; he lost his confident bearing; poverty and failure stamped him, as they stamp every man with an unmistakable mark. We instinctively move away from the unsuccessful. We see that mark, and widen our distance. Success likes success. It isn't decent to be very, very poor. Fingers tighten on pocketbooks, and respectable, prosperous legs quicken their steps.--Adair was sinking, though the dismal masquerade still went on--the immaculate cuffs, the once smart tie, the pressed clothes, shiny with constant ironing. There is many such a figure on Broadway--and in some mean room there is usually a woman who believes in him, stinting herself and starving for his sake.

One dark, wintry Sunday afternoon in early spring, as Phyllis was sitting near the frosted window, sewing and thinking and dreaming by the scanty light, she was roused by the tramp of many footsteps on the stair outside, and a confused bumping, scuffling sound, accompanied by a hoarse murmur of voices. With a horrible premonition she ran to the door and opened it, giving a cry as she recognized Adair being supported in by two companions. His face was swollen and discolored; one eye was closed in a rim of crimson; his mouth was dribbling blood; sawdust and filth befouled his clothes, and a stench of vile whisky exhaled from him like a nauseating steam. He was helped over to a sofa, and allowed to collapse, while the men hurried away as though ashamed of their task, and thankful to have done with it.

It was the first time he had ever appeared repugnant to Phyllis; he was drunk, and she knew it, and the fumes of the disgusting stuff stifled her with loathing. But she unloosened his collar, laid a couple of pillows under his head, unlaced his shoes; and bringing a basin, rinsed the oozing blood from his lip. With pity, yes, but with the raging, furious pity that goes with lost illusions, and the falling of one's little world; a pity less for him than for herself that this should be the end of a love that to her had been the very breath of life.

He regarded her stupidly with his one open eye, moaning faintly, and drawing himself laboriously near the basin, spat into it. Then he put out his hand, and tried to touch her, but she shrank from him.

"Phyllis," he said, in a raucous whisper, "Phyllis"; and then, as though overcome by the exertion, closed that single bleary eye, and dozed off. But it was not for very long. He awakened again. "They loaded me up with that cursed whisky," he whispered. "I was all in, and needed it. God, if they didn't pour a bottle of it down my throat!"--For a while he rambled on brokenly, spluttering with laughter as he held up his clenched fist as though he found a strange, childish entertainment in the action.--Little by little he pulled himself together. He was a powerful man, sound to the core, and though he was badly spent, health and nature were rallying to his side.

"Come here," he said, in the same husky whisper, but with a noticeable increase of vigor and self-command. "Come here, I wanter tellyerboutit."

Phyllis crouched by his side, so dejected and heartsick that it was well for him she hid her face.

"I was with Morty Stokes and a whole lot of them," he went on, his words running together tipsily. "Tagging on, too, you know--royal, open-handed fellow, Morty, good fren' of mine, always something to eat--gives bell-boy tip that would keep us for a week. And it was down at the Queensbury Club, pay ten dollars, and, member--one-day member, you know--though the fight we went to see was tipped off--wasn't any, you know--but we stayed on, Morty opening champagne, and Kid Kelly was there who beat Cyclone Crandall last month; and somehow Morty and the Kid got into a row about Tammany corruption, and both so blind that neither of them could have spelled Tammany for a million, and everybody had to pull them apart. Then Morty, just blazing said: 'I can't lick you, but here's a fellow that can,' and he pointed at me, and says, 'Cyril, I'll give you five hundred dollars to wipe this dirty loafer off the map!' And I took it as a joke, and said yes I would, and before I knew it they were appointing a referee, and Kid Kelly was stripping down to the skin."

Adair stopped and laughed--a groaning kind of laugh, as mirthless as the wind that rattled the window-panes. "He had only been out of training ten days, and as for my standing up against him he might have been Battling Nelson. But it suddenly came into my head, why here's a chance to make something--not Morty's five hundred dollars for licking him--I'd only drunk half a glass of wine, and knew better--but a bit at the other end of it; and so I said, yes, four hundred for the winner, and a hundred for the man out, and all as insultingly as I could make it, as though that hundred was for the Kid instead of me. And finally, when it was all settled, it all wasn't--Morty standing out for two ounce gloves, and the others for sixes, he saying he wanted to mark the dirty mutt with something to stay; and that it was to be two ounces or nothing, though what was to happen to me in the mix-up wasn't mentioned, the fact being he didn't care as long as he could see the Kid pounded; and it was two shakes the Kid didn't pound _him_, it all worked up to such a hullabaloo, with some of them holding him, and others the Kid, and all of them yelling at once till at last they shoved us into the ring, with Tom Hallahan for referee, and Billy Sands holding the stakes and keeping time, and then we shook hands and squared off.

"The Kid wasn't so soused but what he had an inkling of the truth, and at the first go-off he meant to let me down easy, like the good-hearted Irish boy he was, and I could see it in his eye--(half of fighting is in the eyes, Phyllis)--and it was just a pat here, and a wallop there, and a lot of quick-stepping and stage-play, all feints and parries and pretending. But I wasn't for selling the fight, thinking Morty might sour on it, and call the whole thing off--so I walked right into the Kid, hammer and tongs; and by the time I had barked my knuckles on his teeth, and landed him a lefter on the jaw for all I was worth, he was as savage as hell, and ready to kill me; and by George, it was only bull-headed luck that he didn't--that, and the wine he had drunk, and I stood up to him for five rounds; and first it was for the hundred dollars, and then for my very life. I managed to get on my legs before I was counted out on the fifth, though the floor was heaving like a ship at sea, and I saw about eight of him, shooting out sixteen arms, and eighty-four fists; and down I went for keeps.--But I got it!"

He opened his hand, and showed two fifty dollar bills.

"They won't put us out on the street for yet a while," he said gloatingly. "We're a hundred dollars ahead, not to speak of about nine quarts of whisky! Take it, sweetheart, and, and--"

Her arms were about him, and she was sobbing, her lips seeking his, unmindful of the blood, the swollen, discolored flesh, the stale reek of whisky, every fiber in her agonizing with tenderness and remorse. Those things that but a minute before had filled her with an unutterable revulsion, that had shocked and dismayed her beyond expression were of a sudden transformed into the evidences of a tragic devotion. It was for her that he came to be lying there, disheveled, bleeding and dirty; covered with livid bruises; smashed, disfigured, and cruelest of all--misjudged. No wonder that the scorching tears fell; that the girlish arms could not hold him tight enough; that the little head snuggled down so pitifully, so guiltily, to atone for the cruel wrong.

"I guess the dormice are still on their shingle," said Adair, "though a lot of skin and fur has been rubbed off one of them. Make him a cup of tea, dearest--his little nose is hot, and I'm sure it would do him good!"

*CHAPTER XXVI*

It was a week before Adair ventured to go out except at night, and it was longer still before he outgrew the stiffness following the lost battle. He congratulated himself on having come so well out of it, for an ordinary man, however good an amateur boxer, runs a serious chance of harm in a fight with a champion pugilist. The doctor passed his ribs, passed his jaw, deliberated over his collarbone, and finally reduced the damages to a pair of broken knuckle-bones and a badly-sprained wrist. Privately he warned Phyllis that her husband had had a narrow escape, and told her to keep him out of mischief for the future. "He's the worst-mauled man I have examined for a long while," he said, "and that blow over the heart might have killed him. Next time let him agree with his adversary quickly according to the Gospel--or use a club, and use it first."

But the knuckles and the wrist were not all the damage. With lessened strength there was lessened will, lessened courage; and acquiescence in defeat succeeded the long spun-out endeavor to turn the tide of fortune. Soon it was tacitly understood between them that they could strive no longer; and when Adair, with something of a catch in his voice, said he would go round and see Heney, Phyllis made no demur. Heney represented that other stage of nonentities and fourth-raters; that maelstrom of hopelessness, cheapness and shoddy; that vast theatrical system which cadges for the public's small change, and seeks to please the factory-girl and the artisan. To go back to it was to abandon everything--ambition, reputation, future.

Yet it was pleasant to be warmly received. Heney was overjoyed, gave him a good cigar, patted him on the knee, and said he was just the chap he had been looking for to take out _The Danites_. He had been working over the piece himself to introduce Portolini's trained dogs, and incidentally to "jack it up." Heney was common and underbred and talked with a toothpick in his mouth--but he was a man not without a certain feeling. He made no allusions that might embarrass Adair, and ignored recent events. His consideration was increased perhaps by the opportunity thus given him of getting Adair for _The Danites_. He had been hoping to revivify it with the trained dogs, but here was a man who could command success, for Adair was a money-maker and the surest "draw" in the business. Terms were quickly settled. A hundred a week, and a forty weeks' contract, with the usual notice on both sides. It could be typed and signed later on; meanwhile here was a spare carbon of the play to look over; and rehearsals would begin as soon as the dogs had finished their vaudeville dates at One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street and Brooklyn.

Adair left the office feeling as though he had sold himself to the devil. An old nickname of his recurred to him as he walked slowly homeward: "The Four-bit Mansfield." He kept repeating it on the way, "The Four-bit Mansfield, The Four-bit Mansfield!" Yes, that was what he was; that was as near as he would ever get to the real thing; before he hadn't cared, but now it was gall and wormwood to him. Yet it was as "The Four-bit Mansfield" that he had won Phyllis. It would not do to forget that. Winning Phyllis had been the most wonderful event in his life, little though he had appreciated it at the time. Looking back at it all he was astounded at his own blindness; astounded and frightened, too, to recall how easily the affair might have had a different ending. Love was a queer business; he hadn't really cared very much for her at first; he had simply taken her because she was so bewitchingly pretty--and with such innocence had offered herself; and yet, bit by bit, it had grown to this, grown into something that was the only thing in life. He could readily conceive himself dying for Phyllis if it meant saving her or protecting her, and that with no tom-fool fuss either, or theatrics.

A fellow couldn't hope to carry away all the prizes, and he'd rather be a "Four-bit Mansfield" with Phyllis than the biggest kind of a star without her. What a gay, gentle, insinuating, clever little wretch she was! He could come home in the damnedest humor--it hurt him to think how often he had--so cranky and impatient and cross that any other woman in the world would have flounced into a fury--and little by little she would coax him and pet him and smooth him down till instead of flinging plates at each other, as most people would have done, by George, she'd be sitting on his knee, and he'd be smiling down at her, a thousand times more in love than ever, with such a pang of self-reproach, and such a new understanding of her sweetness and tenderness that his heart would swell till he could hardly speak.

When Adair left his house that afternoon to call on Heney, he noticed a large, luxurious limousine snailing along Fifty-eighth Street as though the chauffeur was searching for a number; and he wondered what so fine a car could be doing in such a mean neighborhood. Had he seen it stop in front of his own door he would have been more surprised still, for that was what it did, to the extreme gratification of the youngsters playing about the sidewalk. A gentleman alighted, rang the bell marked "Adair," pushed open the door when it began to emit mysterious clicks of welcome, and toiled up those interminable stairs till he found Phyllis awaiting him at the entrance of her little apartment.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "I'm looking for Mr. Adair?"

Phyllis saw before her a thin, dark, exceedingly well-dressed man of about forty, with an aquiline nose, a pale handsome face, and an air of noticeable distinction and importance.

"I'm sorry, but he has just gone out," she answered. "I am Mrs. Adair--will you not come in?"

He followed her into the sitting-room with a manner of such ease and good-breeding that Phyllis was suddenly transported back to her former existence, and tingled with a pleasurable curiosity.

"Perhaps I can do instead," she said, smiling, and offering the stranger a chair.

"Not only as well--but better," he returned. "If I had not heard about you I should not be here at all." He kept staring at her in a keen, questioning way with something of the penetration, and the appearance of inner mental working of some great specialist studying a patient. Though continuing to look at her, Phyllis could feel that those brilliant eyes had left nothing in the room unnoticed, and she realized with a twinge how pinched and shabby it all must seem to him.

"I am Rolls Reece, the dramatist," he observed at last. "It may be that you've never heard of me, though I hope you have--for it will facilitate matters."

Of course that name was familiar to Phyllis. Rolls Reece was the author of more successful plays than any man in America. He was the founder of a school--his own school--and to take a foreign word for which we have, no equivalent he was essentially a _feministe_. In representing nice women on the stage, women of refinement and position, he had a field in which he stood paramount. Not that he confined himself wholly to plays of this type, however. He was an indefatigable worker; with an ambition that balked at nothing; he was always reaching out, always trying experiments; a piece of his, _Money, the King_, had been strength and brutality personified.--That it was Rolls Reece who was before her filled Phyllis with a sudden and gratified astonishment.

"Certainly I know your name," she said. "Who is there that doesn't!"

He waved the compliment from him with a gesture of his hand--a hand as fine and small as a woman's. One invariably associated Rolls Reece with those fine, small hands, which, when he grew excited, gripped themselves on his chair with the tenacity of a sailor's in the rigging of a ship. It showed the importance he attached to this interview that he was already beginning to clench the furniture.

"My dear lady," he went on, "I have to be frank with you--and being frank, especially in regard to an absent husband, is neither easy nor agreeable. Perhaps I had better give you the sugar on the pill first; and that is I have outlined a play that I should like to write with the idea of Mr. Adair creating the central figure. If I could write it with him in mind, I am presumptuous enough to think I could make a big thing of it.--He could do it, of course--do it magnificently. This talk does not turn on his talent, his ability, which is immense. No, no, these are not compliments. Years ago when I was a nobody on the _Advertiser_, doing theatrical criticism with a recklessness and off-handedness that now makes my gooseflesh quiver to look back on--just a know-it-all young ass--I remember the profound impression Mr. Adair's work used to make upon me. I have often seen him since, going out of my way to do so--one has had to, you know--and that original conviction of his power has steadily grown with me."

He stopped, giving her that curious look of his, so grave, and yet with what might be called a smile in suspension.

It swiftly lit up his face as Phyllis remarked: "Now for the pill?"

"Yes, the pill," faltered Rolls Reece, gripping the arms of his chair, and appearing acutely uncomfortable. "Ahem, the pill is--I suppose it isn't grammatical to say are--well, in fact, some of Mr. Adair's characteristics that those who admire him most, must deprecate and deplore--characteristics that have unhappily hampered, or rather so far have ruined his career. Please, please, Mrs. Adair, do not stop me! This is not a question of personalities at all. Regard me simply as a contractor, looking for a first-class workman--Bill, we'll call him; and it having reached me in a round-about way that Bill has married and pulled up, I've dropped in on Mrs. Bill to make sure."

"Are you not afraid Mrs. Bill may be prejudiced in her husband's favor?"

"My dear lady, it is remarkable to find any one prejudiced in Bill's favor! That it should be his wife is all the better."

"Better for what?"

"I've told you I want to write that play for him."

At this Phyllis' rising ill-will died away. There was too much of the little Frenchwoman in her for her not to become diplomatic and cool when her husband's interests were at stake. Instead of making a hot rejoinder, she replied, with a frankness not at all easy under the circumstances: "I understand perfectly what you mean, Mr. Reece. It is true he has spoiled everything, and has an awful lot to live down. I ought to be grateful to you as the first person--the first important person--who has realized that he has changed. But how am I to convince you of it?"

"By speaking just as you do."

"Oh, I can hardly hope that a wife's word will count for much. Yet, Mr. Reece, it is absolutely true."

"It is not his past that bothers me," went on Rolls Reece. "Everybody has a past, and I was a theatrical critic once myself--but what I want to be assured of is that he won't begin a new one. Really, Mrs. Adair, if I put him in a big Broadway production can I be guaranteed that he will--behave?"

"Yes."

"And neither drink, nor quarrel with anybody, nor punch anybody's head--(including mine)--or calmly leave us in the lurch because he doesn't like the pattern, say, of the dressing-room carpet?"

"Wait and talk with him yourself.--All that folly is over and done with."

"The longer I live," observed Rolls Reece, "the more I appreciate that women are the power behind the throne. Every man, in a queer, subtle sort of way, reflects some woman. I came here to see whom Adair was reflecting, and if I hadn't been satisfied I shouldn't have stayed. My interest is selfish, of course. My unwritten play to me is much more important than Mr. Adair; otherwise--to me, I mean--his peculiarities of character would be of supreme unimportance.--May I say he reflects an unusually charming and delightful one?"

Phyllis smiled.

"I hope that means it is all settled?" she asked.

"If you'll go bond for him--yes."

She clapped her hands. "Oh, I'm so glad," she cried. "Oh, Mr. Reece, I can not tell you how poor we are, how desperate. It has been such a heart-breaking struggle, and we had almost reached the giving-up place.--But tell me, you say the play is not written yet?"

"Oh, no, we're talking of an October opening."

October! They were then in early April. The joy, the elation died under that crushing blow. What was to become of them during the intervening months? Phyllis could scarcely speak, the disappointment was so keen. "It will be very hard for us to wait," she said at last. "Mr. Adair has to go back to the cheap theaters, and from what he said I am afraid he will have to sign a long contract."

Under any other circumstances Rolls Reece would have laughed. Adair, that disreputable genius, as a scrupulous respecter of contracts, foregoing the star part in a New York production at the dictates of honor and conscience was sublimely incredible. But nevertheless Phyllis' own sincerity impressed him. Her beauty was of a fine, sensitive, aristocratic type, the kind that the dramatist, of all men, would recognize and appreciate the most. The proud yet touching air, the exquisite girlishness, the arch, appealing, pretty manners--all disturbed him with a feeling that verged on jealousy. No doubt Adair had altered. To be believed in by such a woman surely counted for something; to be put on a pedestal by her was to stay there, of course; it was impossible to conceive anything low or underhanded being confided to one who struck him as the embodiment of candor. The surprise was how Adair had ever got her.

"I have thought of all that," he said, referring to her last remark. "If Mr. Adair will be satisfied with modest roles, and will consent to go on the road, I can contrive to keep him busy the whole summer." In the mouth of any other man, what he added would have sounded intolerably conceited; but he had been successful too long, and had grown too used to it, for the sentence to be anything but matter-of-fact. "I have eight companies out, you know, and whether my managers like it or not, they'll have to find room for your husband."

His tone was so considerate, so kind, and his eyes gave such a sense of dawning friendship that Phyllis' reserve melted. She spoke eagerly, with a little tremor of emotion, and a delicious consciousness of sympathy and responsiveness. "I want to tell you about him," she said. "I couldn't do it before when it seemed in doubt whether you'd risk your play with him or not. It would have seemed, oh, as though I were trying to plead with you, and debasing myself and him to win you over. But now that it is settled I am not ashamed--no, Mr. Reece, I am proud to make you realize how you have misjudged him."

With this as a beginning she told him of their coming to New York; of their struggles and privations; of Adair's unshaken, unwavering devotion during those bitter days. With poverty love had not flown out of the window; no, it had drawn them closer together than ever before. She might never have known otherwise the depth of the noblest and tenderest heart that ever beat; he had never complained, never railed--had borne himself throughout with a sort of silent fortitude, and oh, all this with such an effort to be cheerful, to make light of things that were grinding them to pieces. She told him of her father's offer, of Adair's passionate rejection of it at a moment when he was next to starving; of the fight with Kid Kelly, and the hundred dollars he had earned at such a cost. Through her mist of tears she saw that Rolls Reece was not unmoved; his eyes, too, were moist; once he took her hand, and pressed it to his lips, with something about their being friends--always friends. Throughout he had perceived the other side of the story, the side she had not dwelt on, and indeed was scarcely aware of--her own intrepid part in that comradeship, her own sustaining courage and love. The picture she drew of Adair conjured up for the dramatist another even more touching; and old bachelor that he was, and pessimist of pessimists on the marriage question he momentarily turned traitor to all his convictions.

When she stopped, with a sudden shame at having unbosomed herself to a stranger, and in a confusion that was all the prettier for the blush that accompanied it, and the air at once so deprecating and scared as though she were disgraced for ever--Rolls Reece hastened to save her from the ensuing embarrassment.

"You mustn't regret having taken me into your confidence," he said. "I'm just an old sentimentalist, and belong more than anybody to that world that loves a lover. It is worth all those stairs to hear anything so really affecting and beautiful, and when I said I wanted to be friends, I meant it."

"I'm afraid you're almost as impulsive as I am, and as indiscreet."

"Oh, my dear lady, if it wasn't for indiscretion what a dreary planet this would be to live in.--Imagine the heartrending effect if everybody thought before they spoke, and men were all wise, and women were all prudent! Why, what would happen to dramatists?"

"You are nice," she said, giving him a candid, smiling look in which there was a lurking roguishness; "and I'm glad we're going to be friends; and I'm not a bit sorry I gave you a peep into an awfully hidden place--a girl's heart, you know--though, of course, you mustn't expect to make a habit of it; and I'm glad you're the great, famous, splendid Rolls Reece, and are going to like me, and write Cyril a wonderful play, and be our fairy uncle for ever and ever; and some day, when you are accused of plagiarism or something, and they put you in jail, I'll come down to the prison and bring you a loaf of bread with a file in it, or change clothes with you in your cell, and then it will come home to you how very lucky you were ever to know me, and you will skip off to South America bursting with gratitude."

"In the meanwhile I'm afraid the fairy uncle had better bring his call to an end," remarked Rolls Reece. "It's less spectacular--though I can still be grateful, mayn't I? Indeed, I am so happy, Mrs. Adair, for you have convinced me in more ways than you are aware of that we have been unjust to your husband, and that I may safely trust the play to him."

"I can't help doubting whether you'll ever come back?" she said, as they stood confronting each other. "It's a dream, and you are a dream-dramatist, and I'll wake up from a nap, and will find everything more miserable than before because of it.--Some day you will know what this means to us," she added poignantly. "Some day when--when it's long, long passed, and we can talk about it like ordinary people.--You have to get a little way off to be sorry for yourself, don't you? I am just beginning to see how unspeakably wretched and forlorn we were, that poor boy and I, though I should probably have never found it out if it hadn't been for you."

"Well, that's over," said Rolls Reece comfortingly. "If he'll work hard, and do his best, I'll back Mr. Adair through thick and thin. He has an unquestionable talent; it will be a pleasure, an inspiration to write for him; if he'll do his share, I'll engage to do mine, and between us we'll keep at it, play on play, till we land a winner. Only--" and here he paused, and raised a warning finger.

"He'll be as good as gold," said Phyllis, filling in the interval. "Don't let the fairy uncle worry about that."

"And when may I see him?"

An appointment was forthwith made for the same evening; and the dramatist shook hands, and was about to go when Phyllis exclaimed again that it was a dream, and that it simply couldn't, couldn't, couldn't be true, and asked him laughingly to leave his umbrella as something tangible to show Adair. Rolls Reece caught at the notion, but instead of anything as prosaic as an umbrella, slipped off a superb ruby ring instead, and laid it on the table.

"There's the pledge of the fairy uncle's return," he said gaily, and hurried away before it could be restored to him.

"Good Heavens, Phyllis," cried Adair, "what's that thing?"

"A ring."

"But it's a ruby--why, it's valuable--where on earth did it come from?"

"A fairy uncle left it."

"Left it?"--Adair stared at her astounded.

"Yes, I was afraid he wouldn't keep his promise to come back, so he said I could hold it by way of a pledge."

"But who is He?"

"Rolls Reece, I think his name is."

In an instant he was by her side, clutching at her arm.

"Phyllis--my God--it wasn't really Rolls Reece?"

"Yes, Booful-love-darling, it just was, and I've adopted him as our fairy uncle, and he has adopted us, and he's coming back at nine this evening to talk things over, and he wants to star you in a new play of his, and listen, listen, Cyril, he believes in you, and says you have an immense talent, and says he is going to write you play after play, and, oh, my darling, my darling, my darling--!"

*CHAPTER XXVII*

Rolls Reece returned and redeemed his ring, and attested his sincerity in manifold and delightful ways. He did not mince matters with Adair, however, and put it to him straight, in a man-to-man talk that lasted but twenty minutes yet in which everything was said, accepted, and agreed on. The actor, dosed alternately with home-truths and praise, emerged triumphantly from the ordeal.

He was told he had missed a magnificent career; that it was only his own unmitigated folly he had to thank for it; that the number of successful dramatists who were willing to write plays for him was reduced to precisely one--and that one was none too sure of his, Adair's, reformation--though as confident as ever, more than ever, of his genius. That word, like charity, covered a multitude of sins, if Rolls Reece could say that nothing else mattered. Adair, in fact, let the whole case against him go by default.

"I'm changed," he said simply. "That's all behind me, Reece. The reason for it is in the other room there--and I should think the sight of her is worth all the denials and protestations I could make."

"Yes, indeed, it is, Adair," said Rolls Reece.

"I suppose there are men who can get along by themselves, and be decent," remarked Adair. "But I need girl-ballast in my little ship, and if I had had it earlier I shouldn't have made such a confounded ass of myself."

"Then we can count it as all arranged--and I'm going to start at work on the play to-morrow."

"It may sound commonplace," said Adair, "but apart from your play, and success, and all that--I'd like to make her, well, you know--feel that she hadn't drawn such an awful blank in the husband-raffle. Oh, God, Reece, I've pulled her down to this--look at this place I've made her live in, will you?--And I shan't breathe a free breath till I get her out of it."

"It is in your own hands, Adair."

"Perhaps you overestimate my--well, what I can do?"

"No, I don't, and I'm not alone in that either. Fielman, Fordingham, Taylor, Niedringer--it's common talk with all of them. You can pull it off if you want to."

"Oh, Lord, don't say that again, Reece. If anybody on this mortal earth ever wanted to, it's me."

"Not another word then. You're satisfied and so am I; and if you should ever feel discouraged, remember there are only about thirteen men in America who can act, and you are one of them, and not the last, either. Let's call in that charming wife of yours, and see if she doesn't agree with me."

Rolls Reece secured a six weeks' engagement for Adair in a play of his called _The Upstarts_, that was touring Washington, Baltimore, Syracuse, Cincinnati, and what are called the near-by cities. The hundred and fifty dollars a week seemed a veritable fortune, though it was judged wiser to husband it by letting Phyllis remain in New York, and thus save the heavy traveling expenses that would otherwise have been incurred for her. The dormice had learned the value of money with a vengeance. Adair himself, once the most careless of spenders, now showed an economy that was laughable and pathetic. He foreswore cigars; lived in the cheapest of cheap boarding-houses; grudged every penny that could be saved. There was to be no more shingle for dormice, but a warm little nest lined with green bills, from which, in hard times, they could put out their little noses unafraid.

Rolls Reece expected to secure him another engagement with a western company to fill in the summer months; and with such an agent enlisted in his service the most spendthrift of actors needed to have taken no thought for the future. But Adair, who never did anything by halves, was cautious to the point of penury. He was determined Phyllis should never suffer such privations again, and those who called him miserly and mean little suspected the reasons that made him appear so. Phyllis herself was kept in the dark lest she should emulate his example; and the savings-bank account rose and rose without her having the least knowledge of it. The equivalent of cabs, good dinners, cigars, wine, expensive rooms, and Pullman berths stacked themselves in that yellow pass-book, and bore witness to a stoical self-denial. No more shingles for dormice, thank you!

In spite of the separation Phyllis was not unhappy during those long, silent days. Spring was in the air, and her heart, too, basked in that inner sunshine of contentment and hope. Like a weary little soldier she was glad to rest on the battlefield beside the parked cannon, and enjoy the contemplation of victory. Body and soul had been sorely tried; the reaction left both in a sweet languor; it was pleasant to do nothing; to lie back dreaming.

Rolls Reece came often to see her, and many a day they spent in his big motor racing over the snowy landscape of Long Island or Westchester County. He sent her flowers; he was assiduous in the little attentions women like; he was always so cheerful, so helpful, so kind. For him it was an intimacy that might have had a dangerous ending. He was perilously near falling desperately in love with Phyllis, and the latter never showed more address than in the way she guided him past the rock on which their friendship might have foundered. She was quite frank about it--disarmingly frank. She liked him too well to lose him, and told him so, and was prettily imperious with him, and yet never provocative nor coquettish. A man and woman friendship is nothing without sentiment, but it has to be a loyal, tender sentiment, that can cause neither the least self-reproach. Rolls Reece slipped by the rock unhurt, admiring as he did so the adroitness of the young beauty whom he knew had grown so fond of him. As to that there was never any question--it was self-confessed--and being a man he was naturally flattered and pleased.

But he was high-bred, sensitive, clever, and innately a gentleman, with an unusual perception, and a taste for the rarer and finer qualities of women. Others in his place might have persevered harder, and then turned sullen. He did neither. Indeed, Phyllis' whole love-story, as it came out by degrees, touched him profoundly. Her audacity, her daring, her blind reckless headlong surrender to the man that had captivated her--all these to him were more than moving. A woman that could stake everything for love was altogether to Rolls Reece's taste. And Phyllis had not only staked everything, but had succeeded in the more difficult task of making love endure and grow. There were many subjects on which she knew nothing; she could not have told the name of the vice-president, and she thought the Balkans were in South America, but when it came to love the dramatist was amazed at her profundity. On this topic, however, the one topic that seriously interested her, she had an insight and a knowledge, not to speak of a whole whimsical vocabulary that made Reece appreciate his own shortcomings. Love, passion, sex--these were the real things of life and that demure brown head was insatiably concerned with them.

Of course, the new play, too, came in for an endless amount of talk and discussion. It was to be called _The Firebrand_, and every few days Rolls Reece had a little sheaf of manuscript to read to her. It dealt with a young man, who, in the whirl of politics, had secured the place of a police-court magistrate in a low quarter of Chicago. The suffering, misery and injustice thus passing in review before him, first startles and then rouses a nature passionately sympathetic and humane. His decisions are original, picturesque, and conventions are torn to pieces. He clashes with the boss who has put him into office, and defies him. The young judge makes enemies right and left; alienates the family of the girl he is engaged to; is sold up at auction through liabilities assumed on behalf of a children's society he has started.

The boss leads in the machinations to ruin him, which is made the easier by the firebrand's own hot-headedness and indiscretion; the third act is in an assignation house where the judge is trapped. He explains his innocence to his triumphant tormentors; he tells of the half-grown girl he has trailed there, and appeals, with a fine outburst, to their humanity to help him save her; the boss refuses, and taunts him with the scandal that next day will shake Chicago. Then the judge plays his trump card, and tells them what he had been trying to hold back, that the girl is no other than the boss' own daughter; and smashing open a door discloses her and the satyr, who has brought her there. This, in brief, was the play, shorn of all its externals--an intense, powerful, essentially modern play, brutally real, and yet animated by a burning purpose, and a resentment no less fiery against the diabolical misgovernment of our large cities.

Rolls Reece labeled it "dangerous goods," which in truth it was, and was correspondingly uplifted. He said he was tired of writing sugar-candy plays, and wished to show his detractors that he could grapple with big emotions as well as the lesser, pink-tea femininities with which his name was always associated. "And remember, Mrs. Adair," he explained, "I don't want a goody-goody young man with a benevolent forehead and a spotless past, and a Y.M.C.A. accent--but an impatient, chip-on-his-shoulder, impulsive fellow, who would like to get off the bench and fight somebody. It's a Cyril Adair play, and I am going to fit him as carefully as a Fifth Avenue tailor. And on the police-court judge side of it, I am going to show the public the colossal power those men have for good or evil. They can blight more human lives in one morning than the whole Supreme Court could do in ten years. In their dingy little field they are absolute monarchs, from which there is no appeal. We owe thousands of criminals to their crass stupidity, and when they work in collusion with corrupt politicians they are a scourge and a terror to every decent man or woman in their midst."

The dramatist had referred several times to a friend of his, Andrew Hexham, whom he particularly wished Phyllis and Adair to meet. Ordinarily so frank he was somewhat hazy and mysterious in his references to this personage, who apparently was a man of large fortune, and of considerable importance in theatrical affairs. Once Reece dropped his play, and went off for three days--an extraordinary lapse from his habit of persistent industry--and on his return mentioned he had been, staying with Hexham, smiling in a queer, guilty kind of way that tantalized Phyllis' curiosity. But nothing could be got out of him--at least nothing that could explain his singular entertainment whenever Hexham's name came up. It seemed, however, that this man had to be won over; that _The Firebrand_ was in some dim manner dependent on his good will; that he was a fussy, troublesome, dictatorial person, not a little prejudiced against Adair. This had to be overcome at a meeting; and Phyllis, especially, was commanded to go out of her way to be "nice to him"--"You're such an irresistible little baggage when you choose," said Rolls Reece. "I want you to tie him up in bow-knots, just as you tied me, to dazzle him, and then we'll sign the contract right there before he can undazzle himself."

"I'm not much good at fascinating people unless I like them," returned Phyllis ingenuously and doubtfully.

"Oh, you'll like him," protested Reece. "I'll answer for that, you know."

"Well, I'll do my best," said Phyllis, wondering to herself what it all meant. "I'll sit very close, and make dachshund eyes at him, and encourage him to talk about himself. That's the secret of woman's charm when you analyze it. See how it caught you!"

It was too bad, though, that Rolls Reece should have chosen the Sunday that Adair ran over from Philadelphia, where _The Upstarts_ was booked for a week. The pair had been separated for nearly four weeks, and Phyllis wanted her husband all to herself. Rolls Reece, Andrew Hexham, even _The Firebrand_ itself, were very secondary things when weighed against the rapture of Adair's return. She pleaded with Rolls Reece to postpone the meeting until Monday afternoon, but the dramatist with unexpected obstinacy stood out for Sunday evening. Hints were lost on him, and even some pink-cheeked, shy, half-murmured things merely made him laugh instead of relenting.--Sunday night it had to be.

But to do him justice, the dramatist tempered severity with his usual generosity. He sent a prodigal amount of flowers, as well as a case of champagne, and would have contributed his colored butler had he been allowed--which he wasn't. Phyllis said that the Pest Person (as all that day she hotly called Mr. Hexham)--the Pest Person had to take them as they were, and if there was one thing worse than a hired butler, it was a borrowed one. If the Pest Person didn't like the way he was treated--if he were the sort of Pest Person who judged people by striped nigger-trousers and gilt chandeliers, why, he could just go to the devil.--Which went to show, incidentally, how good that four weeks' rest had been for Phyllis, and how fast she was getting back her former spirit.