Brave, confident little heart! Intent little head absorbed in calculations; magic the love that could cast effulgence over those soiled green notes, and the phantom gray city, and the man, none too good, or wise on whom such a treasure of devotion was lavished! But some conception of it pierced his thick skin, and what there was in him that was unselfish and noble felt disquieted at the contrast, and strangely stirred and humbled.
"Phyllis," he said huskily, "I--I didn't know what love meant until I met you. I guess lots of men go all their lives and never know. I've been sitting back here, thinking how nearly I might have missed it."
"And getting quite scared and worried?--The poor precious! If it wasn't for the conductor and that bald-headed man who's sure we're not married, because I put my feet on the seat, and wear red stockings--I'd kiss you right now, and give you a gurgle hug!"
"There are lots like me," Adair went on with unaffected seriousness, "but, Phyllis, there is only one of you. I suppose people are born like that sometimes--just one of them--and there aren't any more.--When we get round to it, we must have children; you mustn't be allowed to die and disappear; it wouldn't be right by the world."
Phyllis wrote down: "Pair tea-cups and saucers, thirty cents," and announced that in the meanwhile the world would have to wait, as one couldn't do everything at once. She added a duster to the list and a pie-pan, while a smile hovered at the corners of her lips. It impelled her to press her knee against Adair's, and whisper something so sparklingly improper that he blushed. Then she returned to housekeeping considerations with a pleased and saucy air, never so happy as when she had embarrassed him.
Accommodation for dormice, although plentiful, left much to be desired, except for dormice fond of grubbiness, gloom, and ill-smelling passages and halls. For dormice willing to live on One-hundred-and-jump-off-the-earth Street there was light and air, and reasonably sized rooms, and even skimpy glimpses of the Hudson. But Cyril wished to be near the theater district and the Thespian Club of which he was a member, and this restricted their choice to below Fifty-ninth Street. Heavens, what innumerable janitors they raised from the depths, what miles and miles of stairs they climbed, what desperate moments of indecision they endured, as, utterly spent, the precious deposit was nearly tempted from their pockets!
At last, however, at the tail of the most offensive little man in New York, whose questions included the likelihood or not of an increase in the family, and who had to be specifically assured that his new tenants meditated starting neither a bagnio nor a sweatshop, nor were going to teach music, or keep naphtha on the premises--at the tail of this personage, who at every step remembered some fresh prohibition, and some fresh possibility, the ideal was reached on the seventh floor of a house between Second and Third Avenue. It was a box of a place--sitting-room, bedroom, kitchen and bath--but shiny new, and with every window open to the sun, and Fifty-eighth Street to look out on instead of some dismal rear. It was taken at twenty-one dollars a month; their trunks followed them in; and they camped out their second night in New York on the bare boards of their new home.
With all our talk of the value of money very few of us have any conception of it. How many at least could believe that a small apartment in New York could be furnished, and prettily furnished, for a hundred and fifty dollars? On a doll-baby scale, of course, with pictures taken from the ten cent weeklies, and framed in blue creton and the same invaluable material accomplishing wonders over packing cases, improvised into wash-stands, bureaus and seats. Phyllis sent Adair off to the club, and set to work alone. She did not want him to see her dirty, tousled, and wearing an old dressing-gown of his in that chaos of disorder; though she presented a sweeter figure than she knew on her knees beside the pail, and scrubbing the floor like a little stage soubrette, or hammering creton with her mouth full of tacks and an inspired expression that would have befitted a Madonna. She was too girlish, too young, for anything to harm her beauty, and so gay and charming that all who came fell under her spell. Gawky messengers helped to move boxes, nail down matting, and elucidate the mysteries of setting up a bed. The janitor's wife, a faded German woman with gentle eyes and a soft voice, and all the European's respect for caste, insisted on joining in; and when, Phyllis, with difficulty and some shame, managed to explain she was unable to pay for such services, the creature kissed her hand, and redoubled her exertions. Beauty is a power everywhere, and if the poor can not pay its toll in compliments, they can wash windows, clean up litter, and carry an offering of frankfurters and sauerkraut up six flights of stairs; and with many an "Ach" and "lieber Gott" urge the little "high-born" to rest and eat.
And so amid kindliness and good will, the tiny apartment was got into shape, while the dark wild days without turned to snow, and the frosted panes showed nothing through but white and desolation. The dormice lay snug in their nest, and though their money ebbed, and the cupboard was next to bare, and the household work at times weighed hardly on unaccustomed, slender shoulders, perhaps they were too near Heaven to complain.
Adair had never been a very respectable nor popular member of the Thespian Club, that influential organization from which the New York stage is so largely recruited; and the return of the lost sheep was not accompanied by any particular enthusiasm. But Adair was too noticeable a man, and his talent too well remembered for his presence not to cause some stir, and soon there was comment on his extraordinary change for the better. He was certainly no longer the loud, swaggering, over-dressed Adair of the old days, with the dubious geniality, and the restless eyes. He did not drink; he seemed to have lost his surly streak; in many other ways more indefinite he had softened and improved. The Thespians, who were nothing if not good-natured and generous, very willingly let bygones be bygones, and some of the more important began to suggest his name to managers.