One wonders sometimes why almost anybody can not be a successful Irish comedian? Given a good figure, a pleasing, sympathetic voice, and a face naturally inclined to smile--and the rest seems as easy as taking pennies from a blind man. Certainly Adair caught his house as surely as ever did O'Dowd, and moved through the piece amid the same thunders of applause. Younger, handsomer, and an incomparably better actor, and with that charm, so baffling to describe, which yet was ever-present and ever-compelling, he measured himself against his predecessor, and never for a moment had the least doubt of the outcome. It is not often that fairy tale came as bravely true; that the dream of overnight turned as quickly into the fact of to-day. Small wonder that Adair, standing there on the stage when all was done, his ears still ringing with the applause of that departing audience, was too exalted, and much too self-sure to fret at Kemmel's misgivings.
"Oh, you did fine," cried Kemmel. "You were splendid, splendid! But will they ever come back?" He jerked his head in the direction of the curtain.--"It was O'Dowd that brought them--not you; they already had their tickets; the pinch comes to-morrow, day after to-morrow. Can you draw them then, ah, that's the point?--No, no, don't misunderstand me, Adair. I'm all up in the air about you; you justified all we hoped; more than we hoped; you don't need to be told how you hit them to-night. But I'm scared--scared of your success--and I'm that nervous that I--!" Again he turned towards the curtain, and his voice was almost a wail. "Oh, my God, Adair, will they ever come back?"
The astonishing thing was that they did--crowded back, swarmed back, breaking all the records of the piece. Business rose by leaps and bounds till they were playing to capacity; till the thrilling words "sold out" were posted almost nightly on the box-office window; till a ravening horde of speculators took possession of the sidewalk in front, alternately delighting Kemmel with their advertising value, and wringing his soul with anguish at the money he saw going astray. Not that these were his only preoccupations; he was too loyal to his employer's interest, and too expert a theatrical man to let a success run along without a guiding hand. Adair's name went up in electric letters; pictures and paragraphs were scattered broadcast; an option was secured on another theater to continue the run, and, what seemed to him the best of all, he had Adair securely tied up by a new contract. Kemmel, in his own words, was "on to his job," and in his letters to O'Dowd he was already urging a number two company, and submitting estimates and names.
The new contract, of course, was a marvel of one-sidedness; on-to-his-job Kemmel naturally saw to that, and paid a legal iron-worker twenty-five dollars to make it of seamless steel. But on the running out of the existing contract at seventy-five dollars a week, it assured Adair two hundred and fifty as long as it pleased O'Dowd to employ him. Seamless steel could not accomplish everything, and a substantial increase of salary had to be accorded. Adair would have stood out for more; but Phyllis, with feminine caution, prevailed on him, to make no demur. Booful's day would come; stick to her and he would wear diamonds--not to speak of bells on his darling fingers and toes; but just now money was secondary to cementing his position till he was stuck up so high on Broadway that they'd have to feed him with a ladder.--Besides, two hundred and fifty dollars a week was an awful lot of money. Forty weeks at two hundred and--
"Forty weeks, you goose!" expostulated Adair. "I'd be the last person to object if it were forty weeks. But down there, on that smudgy blue place, they can cancel everything in forty seconds."
"People aren't cancelled who are playing to capacity."
"I know, but the utter damned meanness that--"
"Poor little Booful mustn't worry, and if he'll stop damning and rampaging, I'll take him down to his Uncle Macy's, and show him that lovely fur coat I want him to buy as soon as we have some money."
"I suppose you are right, Phyllis, but it galls me to--"
"My darling, sweetheart love," she broke in with pretty seriousness, "nothing is so important as your success, and once make that secure, money follows as a matter of course. Let Booful keep shinning up the pole, even if they do pick his pockets, and never think of anything but the gilt ball at the top, and--and me."