"They won't put us out on the street for yet a while," he said gloatingly. "We're a hundred dollars ahead, not to speak of about nine quarts of whisky! Take it, sweetheart, and, and--"
Her arms were about him, and she was sobbing, her lips seeking his, unmindful of the blood, the swollen, discolored flesh, the stale reek of whisky, every fiber in her agonizing with tenderness and remorse. Those things that but a minute before had filled her with an unutterable revulsion, that had shocked and dismayed her beyond expression were of a sudden transformed into the evidences of a tragic devotion. It was for her that he came to be lying there, disheveled, bleeding and dirty; covered with livid bruises; smashed, disfigured, and cruelest of all--misjudged. No wonder that the scorching tears fell; that the girlish arms could not hold him tight enough; that the little head snuggled down so pitifully, so guiltily, to atone for the cruel wrong.
"I guess the dormice are still on their shingle," said Adair, "though a lot of skin and fur has been rubbed off one of them. Make him a cup of tea, dearest--his little nose is hot, and I'm sure it would do him good!"
CHAPTER XXVI
It was a week before Adair ventured to go out except at night, and it was longer still before he outgrew the stiffness following the lost battle. He congratulated himself on having come so well out of it, for an ordinary man, however good an amateur boxer, runs a serious chance of harm in a fight with a champion pugilist. The doctor passed his ribs, passed his jaw, deliberated over his collarbone, and finally reduced the damages to a pair of broken knuckle-bones and a badly-sprained wrist. Privately he warned Phyllis that her husband had had a narrow escape, and told her to keep him out of mischief for the future. "He's the worst-mauled man I have examined for a long while," he said, "and that blow over the heart might have killed him. Next time let him agree with his adversary quickly according to the Gospel--or use a club, and use it first."
But the knuckles and the wrist were not all the damage. With lessened strength there was lessened will, lessened courage; and acquiescence in defeat succeeded the long spun-out endeavor to turn the tide of fortune. Soon it was tacitly understood between them that they could strive no longer; and when Adair, with something of a catch in his voice, said he would go round and see Heney, Phyllis made no demur. Heney represented that other stage of nonentities and fourth-raters; that maelstrom of hopelessness, cheapness and shoddy; that vast theatrical system which cadges for the public's small change, and seeks to please the factory-girl and the artisan. To go back to it was to abandon everything--ambition, reputation, future.
Yet it was pleasant to be warmly received. Heney was overjoyed, gave him a good cigar, patted him on the knee, and said he was just the chap he had been looking for to take out The Danites. He had been working over the piece himself to introduce Portolini's trained dogs, and incidentally to "jack it up." Heney was common and underbred and talked with a toothpick in his mouth--but he was a man not without a certain feeling. He made no allusions that might embarrass Adair, and ignored recent events. His consideration was increased perhaps by the opportunity thus given him of getting Adair for The Danites. He had been hoping to revivify it with the trained dogs, but here was a man who could command success, for Adair was a money-maker and the surest "draw" in the business. Terms were quickly settled. A hundred a week, and a forty weeks' contract, with the usual notice on both sides. It could be typed and signed later on; meanwhile here was a spare carbon of the play to look over; and rehearsals would begin as soon as the dogs had finished their vaudeville dates at One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street and Brooklyn.
Adair left the office feeling as though he had sold himself to the devil. An old nickname of his recurred to him as he walked slowly homeward: "The Four-bit Mansfield." He kept repeating it on the way, "The Four-bit Mansfield, The Four-bit Mansfield!" Yes, that was what he was; that was as near as he would ever get to the real thing; before he hadn't cared, but now it was gall and wormwood to him. Yet it was as "The Four-bit Mansfield" that he had won Phyllis. It would not do to forget that. Winning Phyllis had been the most wonderful event in his life, little though he had appreciated it at the time. Looking back at it all he was astounded at his own blindness; astounded and frightened, too, to recall how easily the affair might have had a different ending. Love was a queer business; he hadn't really cared very much for her at first; he had simply taken her because she was so bewitchingly pretty--and with such innocence had offered herself; and yet, bit by bit, it had grown to this, grown into something that was the only thing in life. He could readily conceive himself dying for Phyllis if it meant saving her or protecting her, and that with no tom-fool fuss either, or theatrics.
A fellow couldn't hope to carry away all the prizes, and he'd rather be a "Four-bit Mansfield" with Phyllis than the biggest kind of a star without her. What a gay, gentle, insinuating, clever little wretch she was! He could come home in the damnedest humor--it hurt him to think how often he had--so cranky and impatient and cross that any other woman in the world would have flounced into a fury--and little by little she would coax him and pet him and smooth him down till instead of flinging plates at each other, as most people would have done, by George, she'd be sitting on his knee, and he'd be smiling down at her, a thousand times more in love than ever, with such a pang of self-reproach, and such a new understanding of her sweetness and tenderness that his heart would swell till he could hardly speak.
When Adair left his house that afternoon to call on Heney, he noticed a large, luxurious limousine snailing along Fifty-eighth Street as though the chauffeur was searching for a number; and he wondered what so fine a car could be doing in such a mean neighborhood. Had he seen it stop in front of his own door he would have been more surprised still, for that was what it did, to the extreme gratification of the youngsters playing about the sidewalk. A gentleman alighted, rang the bell marked "Adair," pushed open the door when it began to emit mysterious clicks of welcome, and toiled up those interminable stairs till he found Phyllis awaiting him at the entrance of her little apartment.