Part 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Better for what?"

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

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

"By speaking just as you do."

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

Phyllis smiled.

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

"If you'll go bond for him—yes."

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

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

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

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