Infatuation
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,