Part 12

"Oh, it was so cold--I thought I wouldn't to-night."

"Jump up!"

"It's so cosy here with you--and you ought to have said it sooner--and anyhow, I won't."

"Jump up!"

"Oh, Cyril, that hurts!"

"Of course, it hurts."

"It's wicked to pinch as hard as that."

"It's wickeder not to say your prayers."

"Oh, Cyril, don't, _don't_!"

"Jump up, then."

"I'm not in the right frame of mind now--you have pinched it all away.--All right, all right, don't--I'll do it! Though I don't think a pinch-prayer would be as good as a real one. Do you?"

"This is the prayer-rush time--God won't notice it."

"Not even if I am black and blue? Why, the angels will be shocked."

"They are that already with the fuss you have made. Roll out, you bad little chap,--out with you!"

Sometimes Adair was sharp with her--impatient and fretful. He made very little effort to control his moods, which, as with most artists, were as changeable and capricious as those of a child. Nine women out of ten would have retorted in kind, and the honeymoon period would have insensibly passed, and with it much of the charm and rapture of their union. It was due to no help of Adair's that they did not descend to the ordinary plane of married life, with its deliquescence of nearly everything beautiful and romantic--occasional harshness on one side, tears and pin-prickings on the other, and departing illusions on both. People can still get along very tolerably in this manner, and remain fairly fond and faithful, but no one can contend it is the poet's ideal. It was certainly not Phyllis', and she was determined to avoid such a catastrophe.

In her ambitious little head the honeymoon was to be only the beginning of a sweeter intimacy beyond. She saw, lying latent in Adair, a capacity to love as great as her own (she was presumptuous enough to think that no one could love any better), and her one consuming endeavor was to draw it forth. Whether or not the prize was worth the winning never occurred to her. This big, splendid, untamed man-animal was hers, with all his weaknesses and defects, with all his fine qualities and bad, and she had accepted the responsibility of him with naive self-confidence. To love was her vocation, and she set herself to it with delight.

Her unfailing gaiety, her pretty artifices to amuse and cajole him, her constant study of means to give him pleasure--all were as the drops that wear away the stone. High-spirited, quick-tempered, and with a sensitiveness that a glance could wound, she yet put such a rein upon herself that no provocation could draw from her an unkind word. She might grow suddenly silent, her mouth might quiver, her eyes glisten, but no sharp retort ever passed her lips. There are many men with whom this would not have answered. To some, indeed, an exquisite gentleness and forbearance almost tempts their harshness. Feeling themselves in the wrong their vanity is insulted, and with morbid perversity they go from bad to worse. But Adair was not of this sort. With all his faults he was a man of generous instincts, and capable of quick and headlong repentances. He could come in like a thunder-cloud, on edge with nerves, snappish, morose, ready to fly off the tangent at a trifle--and five minutes later would be sitting at Phyllis' feet, his face in her lap, conquered, contrite, declaiming hotly against himself, his ill-temper all striking inward.

These lapses of his helped his love much more than they hurt it, and through them he began to acquire some self-control, some degree of consideration--some shame. In him devotion brought out devotion. Instead of resenting Phyllis' strategems to keep him good-humored and happy, he was touched to the quick. It was a new idea, this of keeping love alight; of consecrating thought and care to it and guarding the precious flame from extinction. It dawned upon him as something entirely novel and unheard-of. Yet it was beautiful; he approved of it heartily. He innocently ascribed the invention to Phyllis, and as usual was tremendously impressed. It made him wonder whether she ever thought of anything else but love. As he grew to know her better he saw that it inspired all she did--that every impulse and every action sprang from it.

Had he been a king, and she the transient, pretty butterfly of the moment, she could not have striven harder to fascinate and hold him. Her saucy tongue, her fancifulness, her audacity, her often-declared determination to be as much sweetheart as wife--all were as spice to a love that might otherwise have cloyed. To adore a man is not enough--there is nothing the poor darling silly animal gets tired of so soon as being adored.--One had to keep him interested, captivated, filling in one's own little person all his complicated needs of passion, comradeship, entertainment, variety, and mental recreation. But how well one was repaid! If one gave a whole harem's worth of love, one received a whole harem's worth back, and sweetest of all one could watch the unfolding and ripening of a really fine nature. She was sure her infatuation had guided her truly in that respect; that her choice had fallen on a man with heart and soul big enough to repay her devotion. He might be rough, but she had never a moment's doubt as to the diamond, nor as to her ability to shape and polish it.

It was a process, unfortunately, that could not be hurried. Against her in the endeavor were the ingrained habits and wilfulness of twenty years. From his boyhood up Adair had lived in an atmosphere of unrestraint, a Bohemian of Bohemians, without ties, care-free, the whim of the moment his only guide. Some backslidings on his part were inevitable and Phyllis, with all her illusions, was sane and cool enough to foresee them. It was hardly a surprise to her, therefore, though frightening and dismaying, when late one night, after awaiting him in vain, Tommy Merguelis appeared unexpectedly in his stead. Any stranger to the young man would have judged him to be in high spirits; his shrill, nervous laugh was louder than usual; and he stammered and giggled as though bubbling over with an unextinguishable good nature. To Phyllis' practised eyes, however, these were ominous signs, and her breath came a little quickly, as she asked news of her husband.

"Oh, he's all right," said Tommy, standing with one hand on the door-knob, and showing no inclination to enter the room. "Oh, Mr. Adair is all right--and hee, hee, don't you worry about him. He's detained, that's all, and he sent me to say he might be late, and, and--"

"And what?"

"They've got him into a game down at Mr. Feld's--the owner of the theater, hee, hee--and he couldn't well refuse, or at least--"

"Oh, Tommy, please--I don't understand."

"Just a little game of draw."

"Cards?"

"Yes--poker."

This did not strike Phyllis as anything very terrible.

"And he sent you to tell me he would be late?" she inquired, much reassured.

Tommy lied manfully. As a matter of fact he had invented the message--and the errand--to shield Adair, who had forgotten everything in the absorption of the game. "Yes," he said, "he can't manage to be back to supper with you, and is awful sorry about it, and hopes you won't mind." Though Tommy could lie, he could not act. His anxiety was obvious; he wriggled uncomfortably; and his silly, convulsive smile presaged some disagreeable revelation. Phyllis, now thoroughly alarmed, and with characteristic directness went straight for the truth.

"Tommy, has he been drinking?"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, he has."

"And they are playing high?"

"A dollar limit."

"And you came here to warn me? Don't deny it,"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, I did, Mrs. Adair."--As Phyllis paused, troubled, uncertain, full of distress, Tommy added: "I don't know as it wouldn't be a good plan for you to come along with me and get him."

"Would he come?"

"Anybody would come for you, Mrs. Adair."

"Surely he doesn't often gamble, Tommy. He has never spoken to me of it?"

"Oh, there's nothing he don't do when the fit takes him. Hee, hee, he's that kind, you know--temperamental."

The word, and the woebegone indulgence with which it was uttered made Phyllis smile. Her humor was always close to the surface, even when there were tears between.

"You are a dear, good fellow," she said, "and I'll never forget your kindness to-night, though as for doing anything, I am going to stay here."

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."