Infatuation
man in this ignorant, crass way was simply to murder him. How could he
ever bear to let her see him again in anything? He was sensitive; he
was cruelly sensitive; it was because he had temperament; and if he
couldn't please the person he liked he had no courage or heart left,
even if he set the whole house crazy. Here was one of the best things
he had ever done, killed for ever--and it was she who had killed it! It
was the penalty of loving her that he could not go on without her
approval; he knew she was wrong; in any one else he would have dismissed
it with a shrug, and forgotten it the next minute; yet with her--!
Perhaps this sounds more ignominious than it was. To Phyllis at least
there was a great pathos in the exasperated outburst that was very far
from being due to vanity alone. The revelation of her husband's
weakness, of his utter dependence on her good opinion, atoned not a
little for the violent things he said. It enlarged her understanding of
the childishness that lies so close beneath the artist-nature--of its
swift extremes of feeling--and showed her, too, the amazing intensity
that Adair put even into a small role, and taught her afresh what a life
and death matter the stage was to him. His frenzy, therefore, instead of
rousing her resentment, and worse still her scorn and anger, rather
quickened within her a tragic pity. His burning face, his dilating
eyes, his quivering twitching mouth--all the evidences of an
uncontrollable mortification--brought forth instead that womanly
feeling, so rich in generosity and indulgence, that would sacrifice
everything for the one it loved.
To prove that she was right seemed to her of much less importance just
then than to smooth down that wild, distraught man-creature who belonged
to her. With love in peril all other considerations were swept away.
No pride stood between, no sense of injustice; love was too precious for
such pettinesses to interfere.--Then with what piteous artifices she
began to eat her words! How adroitly did she argue so that her
surrender should not be too apparent, giving way by such fine gradations
that Adair hardly suspected the imposture. How contritely she confessed
herself in the wrong, her cringing little heart all submission, her
whole young body eager to atone her fault.--The wild, distraught
man-creature was by degrees coaxed back to tameness and sanity; the
thunders subsided; with kisses and caresses he was even prevailed upon
to resume his place at table, where, lecturing her masterfully as he
ate, though with a steadily lessening severity, dormice peace was at
length restored. By the time Phyllis had brought him his slippers, lit
his cigar, and snuggled herself against his knees, like a sweet little
Circassian who had disturbed her Bashaw, and had been graciously
forgiven by that dearest and best of men, Adair mellowed sufficiently to
feel some slight self-reproach. He apologized for having got so worked
up; fondled her glossy hair; called her his darling little stupid whom
he loved so well he couldn't endure her to find fault with him. Between
whiffs, mellowing even more, he admitted that he might have been
slightly unreasonable, even unkind, but put it all down to his
disappointment at failing to please her. "I worked so hard," he said.
"I just fell over myself to make them laugh. I--I had to think of the
seventy-five, you know, and holding down the job; and as the others
liked it, I--I thought you would. My sweetheart girl must try and make
some allowances. I couldn't help feeling cross and nervous and all
worked up--and, and, it's awful to fail, Phyllis."
She, at this, the naughty little hypocrite, would have eaten more humble
pie; would have protested afresh that it was only one tiny-winy thing
she had objected to--though even on that she wasn't half as sure as she
had been. But Adair cut her short. In his softened humor he was
prepared to concede something to her criticism; there was a speck of
truth in what she had said, however much it had upset him; he was going
to pull up the part a bit; he was--
Phyllis had sprung up, and darted into the bedroom, with so sparkling a
smile, and with such an air of animation and mystery that Adair hardly
knew what to make of it all. But he was accustomed to her girlish
escapades, and lay back with his cigar, listening to bureau-drawers
being hastily opened and shut, and awaiting developments with amused
anticipation. She could be such a little devil when the fancy seized
her, and rejoiced in the most shocking exhibitions for his private
delectation. He was unprepared, however, for her to bound out in a suit
of his own, the sleeves and trousers rolled up, and her hair half-hidden
beneath a jaunty cap. She had made herself up for Captain Carleton, and
the moment she opened her mouth Adair recognized the fine parody of
himself in the role. The words she had pat, her retentive memory having
caught and retained them during his laborious "study"; and while she was
less sure of the imaginary milk-maid, she paraphrased the latter's lines
with sufficient accuracy to keep her cues straight. She knew she was
playing with fire; her face was a picture of mingled roguishness and
terror, yet she was impelled by a headlong daring that was irresistible.
She flung herself into the scene with mad abandonment, mimicking his
voice, his gestures, his laugh, the very way he leaned against the
pasteboard gate--a whirlwind little figure, dancing crazily on the
egg-shells of his vanity. It was the cleverest, wickedest, most
unsparing travesty of his whole performance, carried through with
inordinate zest and mischief, and heightened by a slim young beauty that
had never seemed to him more alluring. Her little feet had never looked
so small as with the coarse trousers flapping about her ankles; the
audacious curves above intensified her sex; while the partly opened coat
displayed the ribbons and lace of her night-dress beneath--the whole a
vision of captivating girlhood.
Adair at first made no sign at all except to stare at her in a sort of
stupefaction. His face grew so dark that she felt shivers running down
her back, and for a moment she wondered if she had not mortally offended
him. The first smile she wooed from him set her pulses dancing with
relief. Yes, he was smiling, he was laughing, he was clapping his
hands; and then, oh, the joy of it, he was bursting out with great, deep
"Ha, ha's" of delight! Thus encouraged, she redoubled her exertions;
she outdid herself; she was in the second scene now, and was tearing it
to pieces like a puppy with a rag-doll, panting with excitement and
success, and rapturous with victory. Adair jumped up, and in a paroxysm
of admiration, passion, exultation and self-reproach, ran and crushed
her in his arms. Phyllis felt the filmy lace-stuff rip asunder, and his
lips seeking her flesh, while all incoherent he breathed out that he
loved her, loved her, loved her, and that she was right; yes, he had
been playing it all wrong; never would he go against her judgment again,
and then and there took back every word he had said! He was just a
vain, silly, conceited, swollen-up jackass, not even worth her
finger-tip; and he couldn't forgive himself for the way he had treated
her; and the only thing he could think of doing to show how badly he
felt was to plump down and kiss her little slippers, which he forthwith
did with a humility that would have been more impressive had there been
a less frantic flurry of kicks and protests.
Thus the evening that had begun so ill ended in tenderness and profound
accord. The very last thing Mr. Dormouse murmured as he lay locked in
his wife's arms was that she was the cleverest little actress in the
world, and pretty enough to eat, and a million times too good for
him--which on the whole was the truest thing Dormouse had said for a
long while, and showed that his ideas were improving. Little though he
knew it he was improving in every way, and could he have set himself
back six months he would have been astounded at the contrast. Women
make men in other senses than the physical, and this robust lump of
egoism, selfishness, ignorance and conceit was being slowly and
unconsciously transformed. Something of Phyllis was passing into him,
and in the magic of that soul-infiltration the grosser side of him had
begun to crumble.
*CHAPTER XXII*
It is disappointing to chronicle that the altered and improved rendering
of the English captain passed almost unnoticed. Mr. Kemmel, O'Dowd's
right-hand man, indeed had objected to the change; and failing to bully
Adair into submission had carried the affair up to the star. But that
comedian, with a kindness that bordered on a sublime indifference,
refused to interfere. "Hell, it don't matter how he plays it as long as
he gets the words over," was his sage comment; and a wave of a large,
fat hand dismissed the subject for ever. O'Dowd had his own private
reasons for wishing to stay on good terms with Adair, which he was too
regal, if not too cautious, to pass on at that moment to Mr. Kemmel.
O'Dowd, being star, manager, and half-author of the piece was minting
money under all three heads, and his concern for the box-office was
proportionately great--so great that he could consider the choice of an
understudy without irritation, and even accept a man who might "draw."
On first being commanded to understudy his principal, Adair had accepted
the task much in the spirit of Mary Ann, when she is told: "Oh, I forgot
to say you must do the washing, too!" It was a drudgery and a bore that
he would have been well content to avoid, for one look at O'Dowd's red
face and vigorous frame convinced him of the remoteness of the
contingency for which he was to fit himself. He set no hopes in that
direction, and it came to him as a real surprise, a couple of weeks
after he was engaged, to be asked into the office and told of a new
contract he was to sign.
"'The Guv'nor ain't satisfied with that fourth clause," said Mr. Kemmel.
"He says it ain't plain--hey, there, don't let Phelps go, I want him and
Klein for witnesses."
"Where isn't it plain?" demanded Adair, who remembered the document as
one of unusual rigor, without even the usual two weeks' notice. "Do you
wish to add penal servitude to my other fifty-seven penalties?"
Mr. Kemmel did not deign to smile. He was a pale, bald Jew of about
thirty-six, with a peculiarly bleak way of addressing actors.
"No," he answered, "we want to clear up the understudy part of it."
"Understudy part of it? What do you mean?"
"Well, if you went on for five or six weeks, taking the Guv'nor's place
every night and matinee--you might make out like it was a new
engagement--and try to stick us."
Adair was too mystified to take offense.
"Stick you?" he repeated.
"Yes, sue us afterwards for three or four times the salary."--Mr. Kemmel
sighed, and looked upward, as though reflecting on man's inhumanity to
man. "In this business one has to be so careful," he added, as
impersonally as though he were speaking to a stone pillar, "so
careful--well, as I was saying, here we have iron-claded it, and you are
to sign where it is penciled, and return the old contract to-morrow."
The typewritten words swam a little as Adair gazed at them; he was
afraid of being tricked; he wanted to make sure that the precious
seventy-five a week had not been tampered with. But there it was, all
right, along with the new proviso. It was difficult to believe that
this last amounted to anything, for O'Dowd's appearance precluded the
least idea of illness. The man was as strong as a bull, with a voice
that shook your ear-drums, and the shoulders of a negro coal-heaver. He