Infatuation
hullabaloo, with some of them holding him, and others the Kid, and all
of them yelling at once till at last they shoved us into the ring, with
Tom Hallahan for referee, and Billy Sands holding the stakes and keeping
time, and then we shook hands and squared off.
"The Kid wasn't so soused but what he had an inkling of the truth, and
at the first go-off he meant to let me down easy, like the good-hearted
Irish boy he was, and I could see it in his eye--(half of fighting is in
the eyes, Phyllis)--and it was just a pat here, and a wallop there, and
a lot of quick-stepping and stage-play, all feints and parries and
pretending. But I wasn't for selling the fight, thinking Morty might
sour on it, and call the whole thing off--so I walked right into the
Kid, hammer and tongs; and by the time I had barked my knuckles on his
teeth, and landed him a lefter on the jaw for all I was worth, he was as
savage as hell, and ready to kill me; and by George, it was only
bull-headed luck that he didn't--that, and the wine he had drunk, and I
stood up to him for five rounds; and first it was for the hundred
dollars, and then for my very life. I managed to get on my legs before
I was counted out on the fifth, though the floor was heaving like a ship
at sea, and I saw about eight of him, shooting out sixteen arms, and
eighty-four fists; and down I went for keeps.--But I got it!"
He opened his hand, and showed two fifty dollar bills.
"They won't put us out on the street for yet a while," he said
gloatingly. "We're a hundred dollars ahead, not to speak of about nine
quarts of whisky! Take it, sweetheart, and, and--"
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.