Left to his own unguided will Adair would have gravitated to a dingy

bedroom in a dingy boarding-house. It was Phyllis who perceived the

greater freedom, and the unspeakably greater comfort and charm of a tiny

apartment. The nest-making instinct was strong in her, and also the

bred-in-the-bone belief that it was the woman's place to guard her man's

well-being, and to send him forth to work in the best of trim. She did

not know how to cook; she had never swept out a room in her life, she

had never even folded a table-cloth, yet her self-assurance and

determination never wavered. All this could be learned--pooh, it only

needed hard work and intelligence,--she would answer for its being the

nicest little flat in New York, and would dismiss Adair every morning in

his best clothes, smiling, well-fed, and happy, to look for an

engagement.

Brave, confident little heart! Intent little head absorbed in

calculations; magic the love that could cast effulgence over those

soiled green notes, and the phantom gray city, and the man, none too

good, or wise on whom such a treasure of devotion was lavished! But

some conception of it pierced his thick skin, and what there was in him

that was unselfish and noble felt disquieted at the contrast, and

strangely stirred and humbled.

"Phyllis," he said huskily, "I--I didn't know what love meant until I

met you. I guess lots of men go all their lives and never know. I've

been sitting back here, thinking how nearly I might have missed it."

"And getting quite scared and worried?--The poor precious! If it wasn't

for the conductor and that bald-headed man who's sure we're not married,

because I put my feet on the seat, and wear red stockings--I'd kiss you

right now, and give you a gurgle hug!"

"There are lots like me," Adair went on with unaffected seriousness,

"but, Phyllis, there is only one of you. I suppose people are born like

that sometimes--just one of them--and there aren't any more.--When we

get round to it, we must have children; you mustn't be allowed to die

and disappear; it wouldn't be right by the world."

Phyllis wrote down: "Pair tea-cups and saucers, thirty cents," and

announced that in the meanwhile the world would have to wait, as one

couldn't do everything at once. She added a duster to the list and a

pie-pan, while a smile hovered at the corners of her lips. It impelled

her to press her knee against Adair's, and whisper something so

sparklingly improper that he blushed. Then she returned to housekeeping

considerations with a pleased and saucy air, never so happy as when she

had embarrassed him.

Accommodation for dormice, although plentiful, left much to be desired,

except for dormice fond of grubbiness, gloom, and ill-smelling passages

and halls. For dormice willing to live on

One-hundred-and-jump-off-the-earth Street there was light and air, and

reasonably sized rooms, and even skimpy glimpses of the Hudson. But

Cyril wished to be near the theater district and the Thespian Club of

which he was a member, and this restricted their choice to below

Fifty-ninth Street. Heavens, what innumerable janitors they raised from

the depths, what miles and miles of stairs they climbed, what desperate

moments of indecision they endured, as, utterly spent, the precious

deposit was nearly tempted from their pockets!

At last, however, at the tail of the most offensive little man in New

York, whose questions included the likelihood or not of an increase in

the family, and who had to be specifically assured that his new tenants

meditated starting neither a bagnio nor a sweatshop, nor were going to

teach music, or keep naphtha on the premises--at the tail of this

personage, who at every step remembered some fresh prohibition, and some

fresh possibility, the ideal was reached on the seventh floor of a house

between Second and Third Avenue. It was a box of a place--sitting-room,

bedroom, kitchen and bath--but shiny new, and with every window open to

the sun, and Fifty-eighth Street to look out on instead of some dismal

rear. It was taken at twenty-one dollars a month; their trunks followed

them in; and they camped out their second night in New York on the bare

boards of their new home.

With all our talk of the value of money very few of us have any

conception of it. How many at least could believe that a small

apartment in New York could be furnished, and prettily furnished, for a

hundred and fifty dollars? On a doll-baby scale, of course, with

pictures taken from the ten cent weeklies, and framed in blue creton and

the same invaluable material accomplishing wonders over packing cases,

improvised into wash-stands, bureaus and seats. Phyllis sent Adair off

to the club, and set to work alone. She did not want him to see her

dirty, tousled, and wearing an old dressing-gown of his in that chaos of

disorder; though she presented a sweeter figure than she knew on her

knees beside the pail, and scrubbing the floor like a little stage

soubrette, or hammering creton with her mouth full of tacks and an

inspired expression that would have befitted a Madonna. She was too

girlish, too young, for anything to harm her beauty, and so gay and

charming that all who came fell under her spell. Gawky messengers

helped to move boxes, nail down matting, and elucidate the mysteries of

setting up a bed. The janitor's wife, a faded German woman with gentle

eyes and a soft voice, and all the European's respect for caste,

insisted on joining in; and when, Phyllis, with difficulty and some

shame, managed to explain she was unable to pay for such services, the

creature kissed her hand, and redoubled her exertions. Beauty is a

power everywhere, and if the poor can not pay its toll in compliments,

they can wash windows, clean up litter, and carry an offering of

frankfurters and sauerkraut up six flights of stairs; and with many an

"_Ach_" and "_lieber Gott_" urge the little "high-born" to rest and eat.

And so amid kindliness and good will, the tiny apartment was got into

shape, while the dark wild days without turned to snow, and the frosted

panes showed nothing through but white and desolation. The dormice lay

snug in their nest, and though their money ebbed, and the cupboard was

next to bare, and the household work at times weighed hardly on

unaccustomed, slender shoulders, perhaps they were too near Heaven to

complain.

Adair had never been a very respectable nor popular member of the

Thespian Club, that influential organization from which the New York

stage is so largely recruited; and the return of the lost sheep was not

accompanied by any particular enthusiasm. But Adair was too noticeable a

man, and his talent too well remembered for his presence not to cause

some stir, and soon there was comment on his extraordinary change for

the better. He was certainly no longer the loud, swaggering,

over-dressed Adair of the old days, with the dubious geniality, and the

restless eyes. He did not drink; he seemed to have lost his surly

streak; in many other ways more indefinite he had softened and improved.

The Thespians, who were nothing if not good-natured and generous, very

willingly let bygones be bygones, and some of the more important began

to suggest his name to managers.

But the managers were made of sterner stuff than the actors and

playwrights; they had longer memories, and skins that still smarted.

They brightened at the name of Adair for the unexpected pleasure it gave

them to say "No." Each had his special wrong to avenge, each his

emphatic and passionate denunciation of a man they abominated. "I've

only two rules in running my theaters," said Mr. Fielman. "The first is

to give the public the best that money can buy; the second, never to

engage Mr. Cyril Adair!"--Mr. Paw went further: "My poy, they say in our

peeziness that the box-office talks, but if it said Adair all day and

all night, I'd sooner get out and sell shoe-laces on the street than see

his damn sneering face in any broduction of mine!" Niedringer was no

more encouraging, and the Fordingham Brothers were curt and profane.

But the New York theatrical world is a big one; and these giants, while

of enormous importance, do not rule all the roost. There are always new

producers bobbing up; stars themselves make ventures into management and

branch out; many others, independent on a smaller scale, choose the

companies that support them. Then there are the second class houses,

the vaudeville houses, the stock companies--all requiring an army of

professional people. Then, too, hardly a season passes without several

incoming actors from some woolly, wild, unheard-of region, arriving,

full of eagerness to add Broadway laurels to brows already crowned in

Teepee City or Nuggetville, Nevada. Add to these, imported English

companies with the lesser parts often unfilled, and "angels," both male

and female, with barrels of money for some stagestruck pet, who,

desirous of a short cut to greatness, insists on beginning (and usually

ending) at the top;--and you will have some small conception of what New

York is--theatrically.

Adair did not despair. Not only was the atmosphere of the Thespian Club

too redolent of success for that, but he was sustained besides by a

couple of small offers which he received for the "road." Determined

though he was to appear on Broadway, it was good for his courage and

perseverence to have these engagements to refuse. They served to take

the edge off the rebuffs he constantly experienced, and gave him

something not altogether mournful to reflect on as he waited

interminable hours in agents' and managers' anterooms. Not but what

there were times when it was almost unendurable. Rejection, with an

actor, carries with it a personal mortification; and his air of fashion,

his nosegay, his smartly folded overcoat, his affected jauntiness--all

intensify by their contrast the bitterness of his lot. He slinks off

with pitiful bravado, and eyes suspiciously bright, to pull himself

together for another attempt at another place, as dispirited a figure as

any to be seen under heaven.

While Adair, with an effort as clumsy as it was touching, strove to hide

his disappointment from his wife, and put by in their little home a

steadily deepening sense of failure--she, on her side, was keeping him

in ignorance of a matter that troubled her exceedingly. Her father had

begun to write to her, but in such a way that a reconciliation, instead

of becoming nearer, seemed more remote and impossible than ever. With

all his tenderness and longing, and almost pathetic appeal "to be

friends again," he was unable to resist taking flings at Adair. His

hatred for the man came out in implications and covert allusions Phyllis

could not forgive. Ostensibly holding out the olive branch, his letters

served instead to heighten the estrangement, for behind everything was

his conviction it was simply her pride that kept them apart; that having

made a mess of her life, and committed an irreparable folly, she was

defiantly accepting the misery she had brought down upon herself. That

she was insanely happy--that she adored her husband--that neither

poverty nor hardship counted a jot in her decision--all these to Mr.

Ladd were incredibilities.--Yet the same story dressed up for him on the

stage or in a book, would have won his sympathy, and reached his

heart.--Of such inconsistencies are we made, and the poor puppets are

cried over when flesh and blood is denied.

Of course, Phyllis was abnormally sensitive. Had her husband secured a

good engagement, and some recognition she would have been in a more

receptive mind to receive her father's advances. But Adair's unspoken

anxiety, their diminishing money, their meager meals and the need that

they had to take account of every penny--here were so many reasons to

accentuate her critical faculties.--And this to be held as a proof that

she had been "dragged down" was altogether too much. At first, full of

eagerness and over many a closely-written page she had tried to explain

matters to her father; but his disbelief was chilling, and from

hopelessness her feelings gradually changed to anger. For a couple of

weeks she had kept the thousand-dollar check he had sent her, hoping

that he would so far relent toward Adair that she might accept it

without disloyalty. Then, chagrined, she had returned it, though her

extremity was bitter, and the tears dripped over the letter that bore it

back. No reconciliation was possible that did not include her husband,

or that was offered to him contemptuously and grudgingly. If this were

impossible she begged her father to write no more, and spare her further

suffering. His answer was as unreasonable as the others, and he

contrived to wound even while he thought he was conceding everything.

His next letter she sent back unopened, and also the one after that.

Then there were no more, and the postman's whistle presaged nothing

after that but a post card from Tommy. These, with pictures of a local

court house, or a new Masonic building, or some bald park, were almost

daily visitors. But they spoke of affection and remembrance, and to a

sad heart were not without their comfort.

Early one afternoon the sound of the key in the lock warned her that

Adair had unexpectedly returned. His face announced his good news

before he could so much as utter a word, and then the facts came out in

a panting, breathless torrent. Shamus O'Dowd--she knew Shamus O'Dowd,

the Irish comedian?--No?--What, never heard of Shamus O'Dowd?--Well,

anyway, O'Dowd was at the Herald Square--big business--seats selling

three weeks in advance--_A Broth of a Boy_, you know--and the fellow who

was playing Captain Carleton had dropped out, and the understudy wasn't

satisfactory--and--and--it was seventy-five dollars a week--and here

were the lines--and you could have knocked him over with a feather when

O'Dowd came right up to him at the club, and fixed it up in five

minutes, and they had run through a rehearsal to give him a notion of

the business, and it was a damned good character part, and--then, I

wonder if that twenty-one dollar apartment had ever seen the like--with

Phyllis sitting in Booful's lap, and her arms tight around his neck, and

talking two to his one, all rapture and exclamations as though he had

done something extraordinary instead of merely getting a job; and

Booful, no less proud and foolish and excited felt, too, he had done

something extraordinary, holding to the lines as though they were a

patent of nobility, and crazy to begin the study of them; and describing

the play with such humor and absurdity that his little wife thought she

had never heard anything so funny in her life, her teeth shining as she

laughed and laughed--especially at O'Dowd, who was described as fifty,

with a bull-neck, and ever too much of him in front and behind, with a

very short coat, and bounding fat legs, and such a Broth of a Boy that

he was ready to fight or dance or sing or make love at the drop of a

hat, and generally to caper from sheer exuberance of Irish youth.--Then

Booful turned suddenly serious, and got up, and said that on no, no

account was he to be disturbed, and began to pace like a lion up and

down the doll-baby sitting-room, mumbling his part to himself with a

far-away expression, and an occasional frown and swear as he missed a

word; while Phyllis, pretending to sew, squeezed herself into a corner,

and made as though she was not watching him, which she did in timid

little peeps, thinking how handsome he was and noble and manly and

splendid, with such returning recollections of his devotion, and

gentleness, and simple, unrepining courage in the hard days now fast

finishing, that she could have swooned from very tenderness.

_A Broth of a Boy_ was a typical Irish drama. The central figure was a

rollicking imbecile, with a tuneful voice and the customary shillelah,

who foils the wicked mortgager, chucks colleens under the chin, does a

hair-raising leap over a waterfall, and is altogether so Brothy and gay

that no one can resist him. The usual British officer, condemned to

carry out an unpalatable order, and falling under the spell of a pair of

saucy Irish eyes, is found not to be half so bad a fellow as we had

anticipated; and though a good deal of a booby, and the target for

sarcasms that he is too obtusely English to perceive, gradually wins the

toleration and even the affection of the gallery. In real life he would

probably have been court-martialed for his arrant disregard of

instructions, nor would a bare-legged milk-maid have been considered

quite the prize the dramatist deemed her.--But one mustn't criticize

this dreamy region too harshly. That great baby, the public, loves

it,--and in the theater-world there is plenty of room for this grotesque

Ireland, and always will be; and baby's patronage feeds many worthy and

deserving people, who otherwise might have not a little trouble of it to

live.

Yes, let us be lenient toward the Irish drama. It brought seventy-five

dollars a week to that little apartment high up in East Fifty-eighth

Street, and hope and courage to hearts that were beginning to falter.

*CHAPTER XXI*

In the whole house that night of Adair's return to Broadway there was

probably but one person in front who was even aware that the bill had

been changed. That rapt little spectator waited with her heart in her

mouth for the actor's appearance, and thrilled herself with fairy tales

while the play ponderously opened, and took its course. Adair would be

recognized; there would be a wild demonstration of welcome; cheers,

applause, yes, an ovation, with people standing up, and the gallery in

an uproar!--It was a dream, of course, a phantasy, for her head was too

squarely set on her shoulders to count on anything of the sort, but

nevertheless it exhilarated her enough to make the reality doubly,

trebly disappointing.

His entrance was unheralded by a single handclap, O'Dowd having just

retired amid thunders, with part of the audience still insistently

humming the refrain of _Sweet Kitty O'Rourke_, (words by Stevowsky;

music by Cohen). Adair's first few lines were altogether lost in

consequence, the scene beginning in vehement pantomime, and the house

only gradually, and with extreme unwillingness, resigning itself to the

exit of the star. It must be said they had some right to regret him.

Adair was anxious and forced, and so desperately in earnest to be funny

that he suggested a marionette. Phyllis' surprise turned to dismay, and

dismay to an inexpressible pain. That he won many a boorish laugh only

heightened her misery. It was worse than bad, it was common, and she

could have bent down and cried in very shame. But in the throes of her

despair she was watchful, and her pretty brows corrugated with the

intensity of her attention. Poor though the part was, surely it could

be done better, oh, so much better; and if only she dared--! An

infinite compassion dimmed her eyes, an infinite pity, for was it not

for her he had stooped to this vile clowning, debasing himself, blowing

out his cheeks like a turkey-gobbler, feverishly catching at every trick

to get a grin or a titter? All this sacrifice of dignity, manhood and

self-respect to keep the poor little pot boiling on Fifty-eighth Street?

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?"

[Illustration: It is not possible you--you didn't like it?--Page 287]

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."

"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.