Infatuation
his, and listen, listen, Cyril, he believes in you, and says you have an
immense talent, and says he is going to write you play after play, and,
oh, my darling, my darling, my darling--!"
*CHAPTER XXVII*
Rolls Reece returned and redeemed his ring, and attested his sincerity
in manifold and delightful ways. He did not mince matters with Adair,
however, and put it to him straight, in a man-to-man talk that lasted
but twenty minutes yet in which everything was said, accepted, and
agreed on. The actor, dosed alternately with home-truths and praise,
emerged triumphantly from the ordeal.
He was told he had missed a magnificent career; that it was only his own
unmitigated folly he had to thank for it; that the number of successful
dramatists who were willing to write plays for him was reduced to
precisely one--and that one was none too sure of his, Adair's,
reformation--though as confident as ever, more than ever, of his genius.
That word, like charity, covered a multitude of sins, if Rolls Reece
could say that nothing else mattered. Adair, in fact, let the whole case
against him go by default.
"I'm changed," he said simply. "That's all behind me, Reece. The
reason for it is in the other room there--and I should think the sight
of her is worth all the denials and protestations I could make."
"Yes, indeed, it is, Adair," said Rolls Reece.
"I suppose there are men who can get along by themselves, and be
decent," remarked Adair. "But I need girl-ballast in my little ship,
and if I had had it earlier I shouldn't have made such a confounded ass
of myself."
"Then we can count it as all arranged--and I'm going to start at work on
the play to-morrow."
"It may sound commonplace," said Adair, "but apart from your play, and
success, and all that--I'd like to make her, well, you know--feel that
she hadn't drawn such an awful blank in the husband-raffle. Oh, God,
Reece, I've pulled her down to this--look at this place I've made her
live in, will you?--And I shan't breathe a free breath till I get her
out of it."
"It is in your own hands, Adair."
"Perhaps you overestimate my--well, what I can do?"
"No, I don't, and I'm not alone in that either. Fielman, Fordingham,
Taylor, Niedringer--it's common talk with all of them. You can pull it
off if you want to."
"Oh, Lord, don't say that again, Reece. If anybody on this mortal earth
ever wanted to, it's me."
"Not another word then. You're satisfied and so am I; and if you should
ever feel discouraged, remember there are only about thirteen men in
America who can act, and you are one of them, and not the last, either.
Let's call in that charming wife of yours, and see if she doesn't agree
with me."
Rolls Reece secured a six weeks' engagement for Adair in a play of his
called _The Upstarts_, that was touring Washington, Baltimore, Syracuse,
Cincinnati, and what are called the near-by cities. The hundred and
fifty dollars a week seemed a veritable fortune, though it was judged
wiser to husband it by letting Phyllis remain in New York, and thus save
the heavy traveling expenses that would otherwise have been incurred for
her. The dormice had learned the value of money with a vengeance. Adair
himself, once the most careless of spenders, now showed an economy that
was laughable and pathetic. He foreswore cigars; lived in the cheapest
of cheap boarding-houses; grudged every penny that could be saved.
There was to be no more shingle for dormice, but a warm little nest
lined with green bills, from which, in hard times, they could put out
their little noses unafraid.
Rolls Reece expected to secure him another engagement with a western
company to fill in the summer months; and with such an agent enlisted in
his service the most spendthrift of actors needed to have taken no
thought for the future. But Adair, who never did anything by halves,
was cautious to the point of penury. He was determined Phyllis should
never suffer such privations again, and those who called him miserly and
mean little suspected the reasons that made him appear so. Phyllis
herself was kept in the dark lest she should emulate his example; and
the savings-bank account rose and rose without her having the least
knowledge of it. The equivalent of cabs, good dinners, cigars, wine,
expensive rooms, and Pullman berths stacked themselves in that yellow
pass-book, and bore witness to a stoical self-denial. No more shingles
for dormice, thank you!
In spite of the separation Phyllis was not unhappy during those long,
silent days. Spring was in the air, and her heart, too, basked in that
inner sunshine of contentment and hope. Like a weary little soldier she
was glad to rest on the battlefield beside the parked cannon, and enjoy
the contemplation of victory. Body and soul had been sorely tried; the
reaction left both in a sweet languor; it was pleasant to do nothing; to
lie back dreaming.
Rolls Reece came often to see her, and many a day they spent in his big
motor racing over the snowy landscape of Long Island or Westchester
County. He sent her flowers; he was assiduous in the little attentions
women like; he was always so cheerful, so helpful, so kind. For him it
was an intimacy that might have had a dangerous ending. He was
perilously near falling desperately in love with Phyllis, and the latter
never showed more address than in the way she guided him past the rock
on which their friendship might have foundered. She was quite frank
about it--disarmingly frank. She liked him too well to lose him, and
told him so, and was prettily imperious with him, and yet never
provocative nor coquettish. A man and woman friendship is nothing
without sentiment, but it has to be a loyal, tender sentiment, that can
cause neither the least self-reproach. Rolls Reece slipped by the rock
unhurt, admiring as he did so the adroitness of the young beauty whom he
knew had grown so fond of him. As to that there was never any
question--it was self-confessed--and being a man he was naturally
flattered and pleased.
But he was high-bred, sensitive, clever, and innately a gentleman, with
an unusual perception, and a taste for the rarer and finer qualities of
women. Others in his place might have persevered harder, and then turned
sullen. He did neither. Indeed, Phyllis' whole love-story, as it came
out by degrees, touched him profoundly. Her audacity, her daring, her
blind reckless headlong surrender to the man that had captivated
her--all these to him were more than moving. A woman that could stake
everything for love was altogether to Rolls Reece's taste. And Phyllis
had not only staked everything, but had succeeded in the more difficult
task of making love endure and grow. There were many subjects on which
she knew nothing; she could not have told the name of the
vice-president, and she thought the Balkans were in South America, but
when it came to love the dramatist was amazed at her profundity. On
this topic, however, the one topic that seriously interested her, she
had an insight and a knowledge, not to speak of a whole whimsical
vocabulary that made Reece appreciate his own shortcomings. Love,
passion, sex--these were the real things of life and that demure brown
head was insatiably concerned with them.
Of course, the new play, too, came in for an endless amount of talk and
discussion. It was to be called _The Firebrand_, and every few days
Rolls Reece had a little sheaf of manuscript to read to her. It dealt
with a young man, who, in the whirl of politics, had secured the place
of a police-court magistrate in a low quarter of Chicago. The
suffering, misery and injustice thus passing in review before him, first
startles and then rouses a nature passionately sympathetic and humane.
His decisions are original, picturesque, and conventions are torn to
pieces. He clashes with the boss who has put him into office, and
defies him. The young judge makes enemies right and left; alienates the
family of the girl he is engaged to; is sold up at auction through
liabilities assumed on behalf of a children's society he has started.
The boss leads in the machinations to ruin him, which is made the easier
by the firebrand's own hot-headedness and indiscretion; the third act is
in an assignation house where the judge is trapped. He explains his
innocence to his triumphant tormentors; he tells of the half-grown girl
he has trailed there, and appeals, with a fine outburst, to their
humanity to help him save her; the boss refuses, and taunts him with the
scandal that next day will shake Chicago. Then the judge plays his
trump card, and tells them what he had been trying to hold back, that
the girl is no other than the boss' own daughter; and smashing open a
door discloses her and the satyr, who has brought her there. This, in
brief, was the play, shorn of all its externals--an intense, powerful,
essentially modern play, brutally real, and yet animated by a burning
purpose, and a resentment no less fiery against the diabolical
misgovernment of our large cities.
Rolls Reece labeled it "dangerous goods," which in truth it was, and was
correspondingly uplifted. He said he was tired of writing sugar-candy
plays, and wished to show his detractors that he could grapple with big
emotions as well as the lesser, pink-tea femininities with which his
name was always associated. "And remember, Mrs. Adair," he explained,
"I don't want a goody-goody young man with a benevolent forehead and a
spotless past, and a Y.M.C.A. accent--but an impatient,
chip-on-his-shoulder, impulsive fellow, who would like to get off the
bench and fight somebody. It's a Cyril Adair play, and I am going to
fit him as carefully as a Fifth Avenue tailor. And on the police-court
judge side of it, I am going to show the public the colossal power those
men have for good or evil. They can blight more human lives in one
morning than the whole Supreme Court could do in ten years. In their
dingy little field they are absolute monarchs, from which there is no
appeal. We owe thousands of criminals to their crass stupidity, and
when they work in collusion with corrupt politicians they are a scourge
and a terror to every decent man or woman in their midst."
The dramatist had referred several times to a friend of his, Andrew
Hexham, whom he particularly wished Phyllis and Adair to meet.
Ordinarily so frank he was somewhat hazy and mysterious in his
references to this personage, who apparently was a man of large fortune,
and of considerable importance in theatrical affairs. Once Reece
dropped his play, and went off for three days--an extraordinary lapse
from his habit of persistent industry--and on his return mentioned he
had been, staying with Hexham, smiling in a queer, guilty kind of way
that tantalized Phyllis' curiosity. But nothing could be got out of
him--at least nothing that could explain his singular entertainment
whenever Hexham's name came up. It seemed, however, that this man had
to be won over; that _The Firebrand_ was in some dim manner dependent on
his good will; that he was a fussy, troublesome, dictatorial person, not
a little prejudiced against Adair. This had to be overcome at a
meeting; and Phyllis, especially, was commanded to go out of her way to
be "nice to him"--"You're such an irresistible little baggage when you
choose," said Rolls Reece. "I want you to tie him up in bow-knots, just
as you tied me, to dazzle him, and then we'll sign the contract right
there before he can undazzle himself."
"I'm not much good at fascinating people unless I like them," returned
Phyllis ingenuously and doubtfully.
"Oh, you'll like him," protested Reece. "I'll answer for that, you
know."
"Well, I'll do my best," said Phyllis, wondering to herself what it all