Part 17

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

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

*CHAPTER XXVI*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Better for what?"

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

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

"By speaking just as you do."

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

Phyllis smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And when may I see him?"

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

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

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

"A ring."

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

"A fairy uncle left it."

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

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

"But who is He?"

"Rolls Reece, I think his name is."

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XXVII*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is in your own hands, Adair."

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