Part 38

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*