Infatuation
was offensively healthy, and so limited in any interest but the theater
that he moped visibly of a Sunday. One might as well understudy the
Metropolitan Museum on the chance of its taking a night off. Adair
laughed as he signed the new contract, and hardly thought of the matter
for a day or two afterwards.
It was Kemmel who again brought it home to him.
"I'm keeping the orchestra for you to run over the Guv'nor's songs again
with them," he said. "You sing them good enough, but the leader says you
crowd the overture, and sometimes get ahead of him."
There are no people in the world so unmurmuring as actors; they will
rehearse till their voices crack and their legs drop off, and all this,
too often, under volleys of insults and reproaches. Adair had played
two performances that day, and was worn out and hungry; yet it never
occurred to him to make any objection to such an unexpected order. The
poor, weary orchestra was there, as hungry and worn out as he, but as
willing as every one connected with the stage seems always to be; they
scraped and tootled and drummed and bassooned for two mortal hours, from
a quarter past eleven till after one A.M., while Adair sang Irish
melodies to the darkened house. O'Dowd himself, in a stage-box, was the
solitary though far from silent spectator. Cigar in mouth, profane,
morose and savagely critical, he bellowed furiously from his dark
crimson cave.
"No, no, no, _no_! Hell's bells, do that again! At the second verse
there now! For God's sake, Mr. Glauber, emphasize the key-note, boom it
out on that first cornet so he can't miss it, and lam it in again on the
minor. The minor! _The minor_, damn it! And, oh Lord, Adair, call
that a brogue? Hell's bells, it's because you're in such a
hurry--Glauber will wait for you--damn it, give it again, let it stick
to your teeth--like this: 'Of owl the ma-a-a-a-ids of swate
Kilda-a-a-a-rrr--'"
Adair had an unusually tuneful voice, and the middle register of his
rather high baritone was full of warmth and charm. These catchy
melodies appealed to him, and the sentiment was of a downright, popular
kind. One rollicked the humor and quavered the pathos, and either put
in brogue or didn't as one remembered or forgot it. As a matter of
fact--except for the brogue--he did the songs more justice than the
great O'Dowd himself, and sang them more sweetly and appealingly. He
had no conception of it that night, however, as he was hectored and
bullied without cessation until his eyes smarted, and his bewildered
head was whirling. He had a whipped feeling as he went off, and a
corroding sense of defeat and failure. It was idiotic to expect him to
sing, and now that he had been tested and found wanting he hoped the
silly goats would leave him alone.
He turned as he was putting on his overcoat in the wings, and saw that
one of the silly goats had followed him. It was Mr. Kemmel, more
bleared and bleak than ever, and evidently with something disagreeable
to say.
"Oh, Adair," he exclaimed in a low voice, "hold on a minute, I want to
talk to you. I've called a full rehearsal for to-morrow at nine
o'clock, orchestra and all--for you'll have to go on in the Guv'nor's
place to-morrow night!"
"I go on?--_I_?" Adair was thunderstruck. "What do you mean, Kemmel?"
"Just that."
"But he's as well as I am."
"The climate ain't agreeing with him, hee, hee!"--Kemmel's cackle was as
cold as the draft off an iceberg.
"The climate?"
"New York state. He's got to get right out to-night, and that with us
playing a run, and with eight weeks of our lease unexpired. If it
weren't for the lease, and my Lord, the forfeit to Boaz and Gotlieb,
he'd jump us out with him, run or no run. Ain't it awful, Mabel!"
"But Kemmel, what's the matter?"
"Well, it's like this, Adair. He and Julia Garrett were divorced here
two years ago, and the dime museum freaks who tried it allowed her to
marry again, and forbade him. They do things like that in New York, and
if you kick it's contempt of court! The next day he married our Mrs.
O----, Claudia Kirkwood at Chicago. See? There's nothing they can't
forget here in two years, and so we came back, feeling pretty safe--and
would have been, too, if number one hadn't got tired of the man who was
keeping her in London, and rushed over here with her little hatchet.
We've been trying to buy it, but it wasn't for sale--at least not at any
figure we could pay--so we made a bluff offer of eight thousand, and
reserved our Pullman!"
"Are you going to try to keep the run here?"
"_You_ are!"
"And if I can't--if I don't draw?"
"Then we'll close."
"I wonder you didn't get Anderson Bailey or Henry Millard, or that man
who has just left Blanche Mortimer--what's his name?"
"Costs too much--you're cheap."
Then to take the edge off this remark, he added:
"Say, that's not a knock; we wouldn't take them, anyway; I'm not
throwing any bouquets, Adair, but you are damned good in it, really
damned good--and are exactly what we want. And don't you feel sore
about the money, either. We are paying you seventy-five salary, and
four hundred and twenty-five worth of chance to make a big hit. You
wish to get on, don't you? Well, you may be a made man in eight weeks.
We're taking a gamble, and so must you. What if you are a holy frost?
Don't go around belly-aching for money, but see if you can't win out.
We believe you can; we are sure you can; go ahead!"
Praise, opportunity, the belief of others in you--how softening they
are! Kemmel, the niggardly, the fault-finding, the lean, mean jackal of
the Irish lion, suddenly took on a new hue. Adair found himself shaking
his hand. What a good chap Kemmel was, after all! He shook his hand
cordially, effusively, all former bitterness forgotten in an
intoxication of joy. Kemmel melted too, under that irresistible spell;
had a spasm of expansiveness and indiscretion; went so far as to say, in
a darkling, confidential manner, that Adair had sung "all round" the
boss.
"That's why I went for you like I did and balled you up now and then,"
he confided. "It wouldn't do to have him think _that_, you know. He's
funny, like all of them, and while two-thirds of him is box-office, the
other third is temperament--and my, it don't do to jar it!"
Phyllis had been sent home alone long before this, and Adair found her
sound asleep in bed. A considerate husband would have let her lie
undisturbed, and would have kept his great news till the morning. But
Adair had no more compunction in waking her up than if she had been a
pet puppy; and rolled her over, and tumbled her about almost as roughly,
and with the same clenched-teeth zest in her drowsiness, beauty and
helplessness. And she, woman-like, loved it, roughness and all--which
goes to show how stupid consideration is at times, and how misplaced.
Adair never gave it a thought, and his selfishness was rewarded by two
bare, satiny arms reaching for his neck, and the eagerest little mouth
in the world begging kisses and taking them.
And the news?
Don't blame him if it had grown a little. It was so truly-truly big
that there could be no harm in making it a trifle bigger. Is it not
permissible, with your adoring little wife nestling beside you in her
nightie, and holding you fast lest you might suddenly be snatched away
by some envious and ruthless agency--is it not permissible, I say, to
add a stick and a cocked hat to some ordinary, very plainly-dressed
facts? The whole rehearsal, thus gloriously reviewed in the retrospect,
was brought up to the key of Kemmel's appreciation. The unexpired lease
of the theater was seen to be a subterfuge, and no doubt O'Dowd had gone
away to organize a number two company--the shrewd fellow; he and Kemmel
mighty well knew they had made a "find"--they weren't in that business
for nothing--and both were up in the air about it. The next thing would
be a two years' contract, with a real salary and percentages! Cyril
Adair, the Irish comedian, ha, ha! Well, why not? It would bring him
back to Broadway in the right way, the big way! Bring him back to stay,
by George, for with this as a stepping-stone they'd never get him off
the grand old street again. And once solid--
With unloosened imagination they soared the sky, vying ecstatically with
each other in that ethereal azure where everything is possible, two
little children before the opening doors of paradise, and hardly less
simple and naive--big hand on little, voice outstripping voice,
girl-heart and man-heart blended in an idyllic love. But alas, closer
than paradise, oh, so much closer--on the next floor, in fact--was an
honest motorman of the Metropolitan Street Railway, who lumbered out of
bed, and hammered loudly on the floor for silence. On East Fifty-eighth
Street this was a hint not to disturb a sleeping toiler. Bang, bang,
bang, and the creaking springs and bedposts as the stalwart Brother of
the Ox again sought repose. He got it all right; he often had to
hammer, but never had to hammer twice; Phyllis had a great deal of
humorous tenderness for her working-men neighbors--those decent, silent
men who used to pass her so respectfully on the stairs; who played cheap
phonographs on Sunday nights, raised families and canaries, owned dogs
and took in boarders, till one wondered their apartments didn't bulge
out and burst!--So McCarthy returned to the Land of Nod, and the
dormice, reduced to whispers, soon kissed each other sleepily, and took
their own road thither.
*CHAPTER XXIII*
One wonders sometimes why almost anybody can not be a successful Irish
comedian? Given a good figure, a pleasing, sympathetic voice, and a
face naturally inclined to smile--and the rest seems as easy as taking
pennies from a blind man. Certainly Adair caught his house as surely as
ever did O'Dowd, and moved through the piece amid the same thunders of
applause. Younger, handsomer, and an incomparably better actor, and
with that charm, so baffling to describe, which yet was ever-present and
ever-compelling, he measured himself against his predecessor, and never
for a moment had the least doubt of the outcome. It is not often that
fairy tale came as bravely true; that the dream of overnight turned as
quickly into the fact of to-day. Small wonder that Adair, standing
there on the stage when all was done, his ears still ringing with the
applause of that departing audience, was too exalted, and much too
self-sure to fret at Kemmel's misgivings.
"Oh, you did fine," cried Kemmel. "You were splendid, splendid! But
will they ever come back?" He jerked his head in the direction of the
curtain.--"It was O'Dowd that brought them--not you; they already had
their tickets; the pinch comes to-morrow, day after to-morrow. Can you
draw them then, ah, that's the point?--No, no, don't misunderstand me,
Adair. I'm all up in the air about you; you justified all we hoped;
more than we hoped; you don't need to be told how you hit them to-night.
But I'm scared--scared of your success--and I'm that nervous that I--!"
Again he turned towards the curtain, and his voice was almost a wail.
"Oh, my God, Adair, will they ever come back?"
The astonishing thing was that they did--crowded back, swarmed back,
breaking all the records of the piece. Business rose by leaps and
bounds till they were playing to capacity; till the thrilling words
"sold out" were posted almost nightly on the box-office window; till a
ravening horde of speculators took possession of the sidewalk in front,
alternately delighting Kemmel with their advertising value, and wringing
his soul with anguish at the money he saw going astray. Not that these
were his only preoccupations; he was too loyal to his employer's