Infatuation
which he was a member, and this restricted their choice to below
Fifty-ninth Street. Heavens, what innumerable janitors they raised from
the depths, what miles and miles of stairs they climbed, what desperate
moments of indecision they endured, as, utterly spent, the precious
deposit was nearly tempted from their pockets!
At last, however, at the tail of the most offensive little man in New
York, whose questions included the likelihood or not of an increase in
the family, and who had to be specifically assured that his new tenants
meditated starting neither a bagnio nor a sweatshop, nor were going to
teach music, or keep naphtha on the premises--at the tail of this
personage, who at every step remembered some fresh prohibition, and some
fresh possibility, the ideal was reached on the seventh floor of a house
between Second and Third Avenue. It was a box of a place--sitting-room,
bedroom, kitchen and bath--but shiny new, and with every window open to
the sun, and Fifty-eighth Street to look out on instead of some dismal
rear. It was taken at twenty-one dollars a month; their trunks followed
them in; and they camped out their second night in New York on the bare
boards of their new home.
With all our talk of the value of money very few of us have any
conception of it. How many at least could believe that a small
apartment in New York could be furnished, and prettily furnished, for a
hundred and fifty dollars? On a doll-baby scale, of course, with
pictures taken from the ten cent weeklies, and framed in blue creton and
the same invaluable material accomplishing wonders over packing cases,
improvised into wash-stands, bureaus and seats. Phyllis sent Adair off
to the club, and set to work alone. She did not want him to see her
dirty, tousled, and wearing an old dressing-gown of his in that chaos of
disorder; though she presented a sweeter figure than she knew on her
knees beside the pail, and scrubbing the floor like a little stage
soubrette, or hammering creton with her mouth full of tacks and an
inspired expression that would have befitted a Madonna. She was too
girlish, too young, for anything to harm her beauty, and so gay and
charming that all who came fell under her spell. Gawky messengers
helped to move boxes, nail down matting, and elucidate the mysteries of
setting up a bed. The janitor's wife, a faded German woman with gentle
eyes and a soft voice, and all the European's respect for caste,
insisted on joining in; and when, Phyllis, with difficulty and some
shame, managed to explain she was unable to pay for such services, the
creature kissed her hand, and redoubled her exertions. Beauty is a
power everywhere, and if the poor can not pay its toll in compliments,
they can wash windows, clean up litter, and carry an offering of
frankfurters and sauerkraut up six flights of stairs; and with many an
"_Ach_" and "_lieber Gott_" urge the little "high-born" to rest and eat.
And so amid kindliness and good will, the tiny apartment was got into
shape, while the dark wild days without turned to snow, and the frosted
panes showed nothing through but white and desolation. The dormice lay
snug in their nest, and though their money ebbed, and the cupboard was
next to bare, and the household work at times weighed hardly on
unaccustomed, slender shoulders, perhaps they were too near Heaven to
complain.
Adair had never been a very respectable nor popular member of the
Thespian Club, that influential organization from which the New York
stage is so largely recruited; and the return of the lost sheep was not
accompanied by any particular enthusiasm. But Adair was too noticeable a
man, and his talent too well remembered for his presence not to cause
some stir, and soon there was comment on his extraordinary change for
the better. He was certainly no longer the loud, swaggering,
over-dressed Adair of the old days, with the dubious geniality, and the
restless eyes. He did not drink; he seemed to have lost his surly
streak; in many other ways more indefinite he had softened and improved.
The Thespians, who were nothing if not good-natured and generous, very
willingly let bygones be bygones, and some of the more important began
to suggest his name to managers.
But the managers were made of sterner stuff than the actors and
playwrights; they had longer memories, and skins that still smarted.
They brightened at the name of Adair for the unexpected pleasure it gave
them to say "No." Each had his special wrong to avenge, each his
emphatic and passionate denunciation of a man they abominated. "I've
only two rules in running my theaters," said Mr. Fielman. "The first is
to give the public the best that money can buy; the second, never to
engage Mr. Cyril Adair!"--Mr. Paw went further: "My poy, they say in our
peeziness that the box-office talks, but if it said Adair all day and
all night, I'd sooner get out and sell shoe-laces on the street than see
his damn sneering face in any broduction of mine!" Niedringer was no
more encouraging, and the Fordingham Brothers were curt and profane.
But the New York theatrical world is a big one; and these giants, while
of enormous importance, do not rule all the roost. There are always new
producers bobbing up; stars themselves make ventures into management and
branch out; many others, independent on a smaller scale, choose the
companies that support them. Then there are the second class houses,
the vaudeville houses, the stock companies--all requiring an army of
professional people. Then, too, hardly a season passes without several
incoming actors from some woolly, wild, unheard-of region, arriving,
full of eagerness to add Broadway laurels to brows already crowned in
Teepee City or Nuggetville, Nevada. Add to these, imported English
companies with the lesser parts often unfilled, and "angels," both male
and female, with barrels of money for some stagestruck pet, who,
desirous of a short cut to greatness, insists on beginning (and usually
ending) at the top;--and you will have some small conception of what New
York is--theatrically.
Adair did not despair. Not only was the atmosphere of the Thespian Club
too redolent of success for that, but he was sustained besides by a
couple of small offers which he received for the "road." Determined
though he was to appear on Broadway, it was good for his courage and
perseverence to have these engagements to refuse. They served to take
the edge off the rebuffs he constantly experienced, and gave him
something not altogether mournful to reflect on as he waited
interminable hours in agents' and managers' anterooms. Not but what
there were times when it was almost unendurable. Rejection, with an
actor, carries with it a personal mortification; and his air of fashion,
his nosegay, his smartly folded overcoat, his affected jauntiness--all
intensify by their contrast the bitterness of his lot. He slinks off
with pitiful bravado, and eyes suspiciously bright, to pull himself
together for another attempt at another place, as dispirited a figure as
any to be seen under heaven.
While Adair, with an effort as clumsy as it was touching, strove to hide
his disappointment from his wife, and put by in their little home a
steadily deepening sense of failure--she, on her side, was keeping him
in ignorance of a matter that troubled her exceedingly. Her father had
begun to write to her, but in such a way that a reconciliation, instead
of becoming nearer, seemed more remote and impossible than ever. With
all his tenderness and longing, and almost pathetic appeal "to be
friends again," he was unable to resist taking flings at Adair. His
hatred for the man came out in implications and covert allusions Phyllis
could not forgive. Ostensibly holding out the olive branch, his letters
served instead to heighten the estrangement, for behind everything was
his conviction it was simply her pride that kept them apart; that having
made a mess of her life, and committed an irreparable folly, she was
defiantly accepting the misery she had brought down upon herself. That
she was insanely happy--that she adored her husband--that neither
poverty nor hardship counted a jot in her decision--all these to Mr.
Ladd were incredibilities.--Yet the same story dressed up for him on the
stage or in a book, would have won his sympathy, and reached his
heart.--Of such inconsistencies are we made, and the poor puppets are
cried over when flesh and blood is denied.
Of course, Phyllis was abnormally sensitive. Had her husband secured a
good engagement, and some recognition she would have been in a more
receptive mind to receive her father's advances. But Adair's unspoken
anxiety, their diminishing money, their meager meals and the need that
they had to take account of every penny--here were so many reasons to
accentuate her critical faculties.--And this to be held as a proof that
she had been "dragged down" was altogether too much. At first, full of
eagerness and over many a closely-written page she had tried to explain
matters to her father; but his disbelief was chilling, and from
hopelessness her feelings gradually changed to anger. For a couple of
weeks she had kept the thousand-dollar check he had sent her, hoping
that he would so far relent toward Adair that she might accept it
without disloyalty. Then, chagrined, she had returned it, though her
extremity was bitter, and the tears dripped over the letter that bore it
back. No reconciliation was possible that did not include her husband,
or that was offered to him contemptuously and grudgingly. If this were
impossible she begged her father to write no more, and spare her further
suffering. His answer was as unreasonable as the others, and he
contrived to wound even while he thought he was conceding everything.
His next letter she sent back unopened, and also the one after that.
Then there were no more, and the postman's whistle presaged nothing
after that but a post card from Tommy. These, with pictures of a local
court house, or a new Masonic building, or some bald park, were almost
daily visitors. But they spoke of affection and remembrance, and to a
sad heart were not without their comfort.
Early one afternoon the sound of the key in the lock warned her that
Adair had unexpectedly returned. His face announced his good news
before he could so much as utter a word, and then the facts came out in
a panting, breathless torrent. Shamus O'Dowd--she knew Shamus O'Dowd,
the Irish comedian?--No?--What, never heard of Shamus O'Dowd?--Well,
anyway, O'Dowd was at the Herald Square--big business--seats selling
three weeks in advance--_A Broth of a Boy_, you know--and the fellow who
was playing Captain Carleton had dropped out, and the understudy wasn't
satisfactory--and--and--it was seventy-five dollars a week--and here
were the lines--and you could have knocked him over with a feather when
O'Dowd came right up to him at the club, and fixed it up in five
minutes, and they had run through a rehearsal to give him a notion of
the business, and it was a damned good character part, and--then, I
wonder if that twenty-one dollar apartment had ever seen the like--with
Phyllis sitting in Booful's lap, and her arms tight around his neck, and
talking two to his one, all rapture and exclamations as though he had
done something extraordinary instead of merely getting a job; and
Booful, no less proud and foolish and excited felt, too, he had done
something extraordinary, holding to the lines as though they were a
patent of nobility, and crazy to begin the study of them; and describing
the play with such humor and absurdity that his little wife thought she
had never heard anything so funny in her life, her teeth shining as she
laughed and laughed--especially at O'Dowd, who was described as fifty,