"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 naïve--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