Part 14

Phyllis, naturally, was touched and flattered.

"Why, we just pour it anyhow," she said, smiling.

"Precisely," exclaimed Adair, "and now let me do it our way!" He drew nearer the table, put his hand to the tea-pot, and grimacing at an imaginary company, proceeded to pour and pass several imaginary cups with a grotesque affectation of grace and elegance. "Two lumps, dear Sir James?--Patricia, the Bishop is famishing for some almond cake.--Oh, mercy me, and what's become of the Dook?" It was an admirable bit of mimicry, and so gay and captivating in its satire that Phyllis thought she had never seen anything so clever. She laughed with delight and clapped her hands.

"Though you shock me, too," she protested. "Correze mustn't do things like that--it isn't in keeping."

"Correze?"

"Yes, you are not Mr. Adair to me, though I know that's your name, and I have invited you. I can only think of you as Correze."

"Was I as good as that in the part?"

"I told you what I thought of it in my note."

"And you really meant it?"

"Would I have written if I hadn't? It was an awful thing to do. I can't think of it without burning with shame.--How can you say you are not a gentleman, Mr. Adair? Only a gentleman would have put the right construction on it."

He was questioning her face with his fine eyes. His intuition again stood him in good stead. This was not provocation, it was innocence. To himself he said: "No, it is impossible."

Then aloud: "It was the only construction--and I felt childishly pleased. We're great children, you know, we actors; and after all, are we to blame for liking approbation? Just think a moment. How close it all is to the ridiculous, our standing up there and declaiming all sorts of red-hot emotions, with painted paper on one side, and bald-headed fiddlers on the other! Doesn't it sometimes come over a man--sort of shoot through him--the feeling of what a monkey-spectacle he is making of himself? You go ahead and play Lady Macbeth in a nightgown; rage and strut before those cold, scornful faces. Then let one amongst them cry: 'Bravo, bravo,' and give you a hand!--My Lord, you'd give him your watch and chain, your diamond pin--don't you see, he returns you your self-respect, makes your work worth the doing?--and that's what your note did for me, Miss Ladd."

"Oh, Mr. Adair, don't talk to me about the cold, scornful faces at your performance. I was there twice, and saw how they called you out!"

"Miss Ladd," he said, his strong, handsome, eager face whimsically alight, "let me confess the honest truth--an actor simply can't have enough admiration!"

"You worry me for fear I didn't make mine warm enough! For really, Mr. Adair, in all sincerity, I--"

"Well, go on."

"Bravo, bravo!" Her lips parted mockingly over her white teeth as she pretended to applaud madly. It was the daintiest teasing, and more charming in the intimacy it implied than any downright praise. Adair glowed with a pleasure so honest and boyish that Phyllis might be forgiven for not suspecting the baser depths he hid so well.

"I'm a conceited ass," he admitted, "and after all, isn't it enough to turn a man's head to be here with you, and feel I owe it to the ginger I put into Correze? Most people get their friends by introductions and all that, but I just snatched you out of a whole theater full of strangers. For you are my friend, aren't you, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, Correze."

"You'll be making me jealous of the chap," he cried running his hands through his hair with make-believe exasperation. "I think he is a good deal of a whining humbug myself, and the sly way he throws bouquets at himself is disgusting. Miss Ladd, I am ever so much nicer than he is--really I am--though I see I shall never be able to convince you."

"No reason why you shouldn't try."

"Perhaps I am ashamed to," he returned, with an intensity of expression that became him well. "You find me in a wretched little theater, the cheapest of cheap stars--the hoodlum's pet, the shop-girl's dream--and how can it help coloring your whole idea of me? You admire my Correze, but for me myself how can you have anything but contempt? No, no--listen--it's true--and the more you knew of my history the more contemptuous you'd be. I've been rated very high; I've had every chance in the world; I've played with the biggest kind of people, and--succeeded. Yet I have always been the dog who hanged himself. No, there is no mystery about it--there never is with a man who is sinking--a man of ability. It's his own fault every time--every, every time."

His earnestness made Phyllis thrill. Adair was playing his best role--himself, and playing it with the fire and eloquence he could always bring to it. His voice, incomparable in the beauty and range of its tones, was never so effective as when tinged with emotion. Nothing was more manly, more sincere, more moving. It rose and fell in cadences that lingered in the ear after the words themselves were spoken--veritable music, affecting not only the listener, but the musician as well. Under the spell of it he now found himself tempted into strange confidences. Never before had he spoken of his childhood and early life except to lie, to brag, to romance. Yet here, to his own wonder, and impelled by he hardly knew what, he was unbosoming himself of the whole ignoble truth. That instinct of his, so often wiser than himself, so diabolically helpful, was showing him the right road. Had Phyllis been some little milliner this would have been no road at all; such a one would have been too familiar with the seamy side of life to find any glamour in the tale; such a one would have preferred the bogus palaces and bogus splendors his instinct would then have indicated. Phyllis' intelligence was too keen thus to be deceived; even genuine splendors would have interested her less than this pitiful story of the slums; it not only touched her sensibility to the quick, but enhanced Adair in her tender and sympathetic eyes.

His father had been an Englishman--a remittance man named Mayne--George Cyril Augustus Fitzroy Mayne. Whether his pretensions were justified or not, and they were inordinate, including "Wales" and "Cambridge," he was beyond all doubt a gentleman, with grand manners, a back like a ramrod, and a curt, military directness in speaking. He used to say "dammy"; was fond of alluding to himself as "an old Hussar"; was wont to remark that a gentleman could always be told by his hat and his boots; and once, when attacked on the street, had shown extraordinary courage and adroitness in defending himself with a light cane. This was about all Adair remembered of him, except that he drank hard; had recurring fits of delirium tremens in which he raged and fought like a wild beast; and finally, dying in a hospital ward, was buried like a dog in the Potter's Field.

Adair's mother had been an Irish peasant girl. She was kind and warm-hearted, and spoke with a brogue; she was always laughing and singing, even under circumstances when a right-minded person would have thrown himself into the East River. She drank, too. Everybody drank. He used to be given sips from her glass, and knew what it was to be tipsy before he was eight. It was about that time he began to sell papers on the streets, for his father was dead, and his mother-- Well, he wouldn't go into that. But in her way she had always been good to him. She wouldn't let the men beat him. When she was sent to the Island for the second time he thought his little heart would break. She didn't last long after that. How could she, gone as she was in consumption, and drinking like a fish? Oh, what a hell it was--what a hell! His pennies were all his own now, though he often had to fight to keep them. He was always fighting to keep them--first in desperation, then by degrees with some coolness and science. The bigger boys coached him; egged him on; he became a regular little bantam. They'd make up a purse--a quarter or something--and set two little wretches to pounding each other. Anything was allowed, you know--biting, kicking, scrooging, hair pulling! There was only one rule, and that was to win.

Well, so it went on, till he was sixteen or thereabouts, the toughest young tough you could see on Avenue A. He was nicknamed Fighting Joe, and they used to get up cheap little matches for him in the back rooms of saloons--real fighting, stripped to the waist, and four ounce gloves. His only ambition was to get into the prize ring, and in his dreams at night he would see his picture in the Police Gazette. Then the Settlement workers came--a pale-looking outfit, with Mission furniture and leaflets. They were regarded as a great infliction--as an insult to an honest tough neighborhood. It was the correct thing to break their windows, and lambast their followers. Fighting Joe took a prominent part in this righteous task. What did it matter that several of them were women? What did such brutes care for that? If ever there was a young savage on earth it was he.

One of the women was tall and pretty--not very young--twenty-eight or twenty-nine perhaps. Miss Cooke, she was--Miss Grace Cooke. She would never see him but what she would turn white with anger and fear. You see, everything was put down to him, all that he did do, and all that he didn't--and totaling up both sides of it, it ran to a lot. He couldn't begin to remember the caddish things he was answerable for; he didn't care to try; my God, what a brute he was, what a brute! And yet he admired this woman; guessed he was in love with her in a calfy way; took every chance to see her--and insult her! Of course, there wasn't the faintest reason why he shouldn't have walked into the Settlement, said he was sorry, and have been received with open arms. But people like that can't say they are sorry--they don't know how. Besides, the social disgrace of it would have been awful! Joe Mayne running with that gospel gang! The thing was incredible.

Late one winter afternoon he saw her in the midst of a crowd of hobbledehoys, hooting and jeering at her. She was walking as fast as she dared, looking straight ahead of her, and pretending not to notice. It was dark; the street was empty; and if she was scared she had mighty good reason for it. One of the fellows lurched against her, and down she went on the sidewalk; as she tried to rise another rolled her over, and tore her hat off. Of course, it was a great joke, and they were all roaring with laughter. Then it was he came running up--Joe--and when she saw him she gave him a look he would remember to the day he died. Oh, the terror of it--the shrinking! But he smashed one on the jaw, caught another between the eyes, and lifted her up, half fainting as she was, and tried with his dirty hands to smooth her hair, and put on her hat again.--That's how they came to be friends; that's how he came to be landed in the Settlement; everything real in his life dated from that moment.