Part 14

He was amazed at the gentleness of her tone.

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

Tommy's scandalized face again made her laugh.

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

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

CHAPTER XIX

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

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

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

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

She faltered and trembled in asking him what he meant.

He burst out with a scornful laugh.

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

The vulgarity of the conception stung her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still no answer.

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

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

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

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

"It's for you to decide."

His mumbling reply turned into a groan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Out where, dearest?"

Adair grew overcast.

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

Phyllis hesitated, but at last the words came.

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

His only reply was a shake of the head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We'll be starvation poor."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You can help a little."

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

"We'll bolster up each other."

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

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

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

"You darling!"

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

"Do sit up—it's important."

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

"Cyril?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

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

"I am good—in my own kind of work."

"You've no dread of failure?"

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

"In your New York days?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Come in," cried Adair.

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

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

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

"Where do I go, officer?"

"The city hall, police court number one."

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

The functionary unbent genially.

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

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

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

"Good morning, sorr."

"Good morning, officer."

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

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

"Jolly? Oh, how can you—"

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

"But this awful police court!"

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

From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190—.

AMUSING SCENE IN JUDGE DUNN'S COURT

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