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.
CHAPTER XXII
It is disappointing to chronicle that the altered and improved rendering of the English captain passed almost unnoticed. Mr. Kemmel, O'Dowd's right-hand man, indeed had objected to the change; and failing to bully Adair into submission had carried the affair up to the star. But that comedian, with a kindness that bordered on a sublime indifference, refused to interfere. "Hell, it don't matter how he plays it as long as he gets the words over," was his sage comment; and a wave of a large, fat hand dismissed the subject for ever. O'Dowd had his own private reasons for wishing to stay on good terms with Adair, which he was too regal, if not too cautious, to pass on at that moment to Mr. Kemmel. O'Dowd, being star, manager, and half-author of the piece was minting money under all three heads, and his concern for the box-office was proportionately great--so great that he could consider the choice of an understudy without irritation, and even accept a man who might "draw."
On first being commanded to understudy his principal, Adair had accepted the task much in the spirit of Mary Ann, when she is told: "Oh, I forgot to say you must do the washing, too!" It was a drudgery and a bore that he would have been well content to avoid, for one look at O'Dowd's red face and vigorous frame convinced him of the remoteness of the contingency for which he was to fit himself. He set no hopes in that direction, and it came to him as a real surprise, a couple of weeks after he was engaged, to be asked into the office and told of a new contract he was to sign.