Chapter XXI
In the whole house that night of Adair’s return to Broadway there was probably but one person in front who was even aware that the bill had been changed. That rapt little spectator waited with her heart in her mouth for the actor’s appearance, and thrilled herself with fairy tales while the play ponderously opened, and took its course. Adair would be recognized; there would be a wild demonstration of welcome; cheers, applause, yes, an ovation, with people standing up, and the gallery in an uproar!—It was a dream, of course, a phantasy, for her head was too squarely set on her shoulders to count on anything of the sort, but nevertheless it exhilarated her enough to make the reality doubly, trebly disappointing.
His entrance was unheralded by a single handclap, O’Dowd having just retired amid thunders, with part of the audience still insistently humming the refrain of Sweet Kitty O’Rourke, (words by Stevowsky; music by Cohen). Adair’s first few lines were altogether lost in consequence, the scene beginning in vehement pantomime, and the house only gradually, and with extreme unwillingness, resigning itself to the exit of the star. It must be said they had some right to regret him. Adair was anxious and forced, and so desperately in earnest to be funny that he suggested a marionette. Phyllis’ surprise turned to dismay, and dismay to an inexpressible pain. That he won many a boorish laugh only heightened her misery. It was worse than bad, it was common, and she could have bent down and cried in very shame. But in the throes of her despair she was watchful, and her pretty brows corrugated with the intensity of her attention. Poor though the part was, surely it could be done better, oh, so much better; and if only she dared—! An infinite compassion dimmed her eyes, an infinite pity, for was it not for her he had stooped to this vile clowning, debasing himself, blowing out his cheeks like a turkey-gobbler, feverishly catching at every trick to get a grin or a titter? All this sacrifice of dignity, manhood and self-respect to keep the poor little pot boiling on Fifty-eighth Street?
It was terrible to sit through the play, and to realize with more and more conviction that this sacrifice was unnecessary—that the rôle, straightforwardly acted, and the comic-policeman side of it ignored, might be made into something worth doing—not very much worth doing of course—but still redeemed from utter banality. But Phyllis knew how her husband bristled at the least touch of criticism. Ordinarily so loving and indulgent, a single word of disapprobation could set him off like an hysterical woman; before now she had inadvertently raised such storms, and looked back on them with terror. She asked herself what she was to do, and could find no answer. Everything in her revolted from lying to him, and yet she would be forced to. It was not cowardice, but the disinclination of seeing him suffer, and the dread of incurring the harshness and anger of the man she idolized. Enmity in his eyes seemed to strike her to the ground; her heart stopped beating; something seemed to die within her.—No, at any cost, she must lie, lie, lie.
She waited for him at the stage-door, a slight dejected figure under the gaslights, and conscious for the first time that her clothes were shabby, and that her gloves were old and worn. O’Dowd’s carriage stood by, and she envied the coachman his warm fur collar, and with it came the thought of all she had given up to marry Adair. This put her in better spirits, for she was pleased with everything that enhanced her love, and gave it an unusual and romantic quality—so that for a moment she seemed less cold, less sad, and a delicious heroine-feeling enshrouded her. Had it not been for the fear of what was to come she would have been altogether happy. But a pang of apprehension shot through her, and all the pretty fancies engendered by the fur collar of a sudden disappeared.—She was again standing on the wintry street, tired, frightened, and disheartened.
Adair emerged in a jubilant humor, and squeezed her arm as he passed his own through hers, and moved in the direction of the cars. Boisterous and gay, he was in no mood to notice Phyllis’ constraint, and took her approval for granted as he overflowed with talk. It was a great relief to her to remain silent, and nestle close to all that bigness and confidence, and be borne along by that strong arm. All her doubts and fears were lost in an unreasoning gladness, and what did anything matter but love?
Meanwhile the genial tide of Adair’s discourse continued without intermission.—O’Dowd, who was a prince of good fellows, had patted him on the back. Eddie Phelps was up in the air, too, and said he had simply walked away from the other man—and oh, how good it was to be in a theater again! It was a piffling part, but after all it was something to have made the best of it, to have shown them what could be done in it by a first class man. That was the beauty of the stage—a real actor could take a janitor or an organ-grinder and create a lot out of nothing. Did she know that all that business in the second act was his?—Yes, positively—every bit of it his, and no wonder O’Dowd hugged him at the wings, and said it was great—yes, just like that—before everybody! You see, it had pulled up the whole thing where it had used to drag, giving it zip and go. Eddie Phelps said that the other fellow had never got a hand there. He had done better than that, hadn’t he? And if it hadn’t been such a damned feeder for the star—oh, well, success was success, if it were only an inch high!
In this strain of self-laudation, Adair boarded a car, and praised himself all the way home. Throughout he took Phyllis’ concurrence for granted, and his exuberance was unclouded by the least suspicion of the truth. He had half finished his supper when with that instinct which was one of the most unexpected endowments of his character, he all at once perceived something to be amiss. It wasn’t Phyllis’ fault; she had given not a hint of dissatisfaction; nothing was further from her thoughts than to mar that night.
But when he laid down his knife and fork, and stared at her across the table she knew in an instant what was coming.
“My God, Phyllis,” he exclaimed, “it is not possible you—you didn’t like it?”
She would have given worlds for the lie that would not come; her eyes shrank from his; the sincerity and conviction of his tone made deceit impossible. It was almost in a whisper that she answered: “Oh, Cyril, Cyril,—I’m afraid I didn’t.”
He pushed away his plate and got up; he could not suffer such a mortification sitting; the flat itself seemed too small to hold his sudden shame, his agitation, the staggering shock of what seemed to him his wife’s disloyalty.
“What was the matter with it?” he demanded passionately. “What was it you did not like?—No, no, you needn’t try to wriggle out of it; you’ve said too much to stop now; you’ve as good as told me it was damned bad, and I want to know why.—The words don’t matter; it isn’t a question of how you put it, nor how much I mind being knocked by the one person on earth—! My God, Phyllis, what do you mean by saying I was bad?”
She was terrified. No culprit in the dock ever trembled more guiltily, or faced a brow-beating prosecutor with so stricken a look. Her husband’s bitter and contemptuous tone cut her like a lash. But it was too late now to make excuses, to palliate the offense. There was nothing for it but to go on—to justify herself—and the better she could do it the more she would wound him! And all this on a night that surely ought to have been their happiest.
“You made the captain too—too common,” she stammered. “He is supposed to be a high-bred, aristocratic man—stupid, of course—but a gentleman through and through. In real life—”
“Oh, real life!” he interrupted roughly, “that’s where all you ignorant, criticizing people go wrong. He has nothing to do with real life—he’s a preposterous stage figure, a convention. I have to take what I’m given; I’m not the dramatist; I can’t write new lines for him, can I? My business is to hide the strings that pull his arms and legs, and make him possible—and by George, I did it!”
“But Cyril, dearest, listen—even when you first come on you’re not polite enough, not chivalrous enough. You almost burst out laughing at—”
“That’s to give contrast to him afterwards.”
“But you can do that, and still keep him a gen—I mean nice, and—”
This was all she was allowed to say. Adair towered over her, convulsed, shaking, his voice hardly governable as he stormed and raged. It was the best thing he had ever done; it was perfect; there was fifteen years of stage experience in that one creation. It was awful that it should all go for nothing; it shook his nerve; it shook his confidence in himself; he hardly knew how he could go on playing the part. He wouldn’t, he’d throw it up; he warned her to be more careful next time, or as an actor he would be done for. It wasn’t that he was afraid of criticism—intelligent criticism—he welcomed intelligent criticism—the criticism of those who knew the stage—helpful criticism. But to club a 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 rôle, 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 rôle. 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.