He led the way into the lobby. She was intensely disturbed, but she
could not find the courage to quarrel with him in the presence of the
hall-boys. Those who had suites of rooms were permitted to receive
guests in them. Reben was the first man that had come alone to Sheila’s
rooms, and she felt that the elevator-boy was trying to disguise his
cynical excitement.
What could she say to him? how rebuke an unexpressed comment? She hoped
that Pennock would be there or would come along speedily to save the
situation. She was angry and discomfited as she unlocked her door,
switched on the lights, and offered Reben a chair in her little parlor.
Sheila saw that Reben’s eyes were eagerly searching the apartment for
signs of a third person. She was tempted to go to Pennock’s room and
call some message to her imaginary presence. But she resented her own
cowardice and her need of a duenna. She laid off her hat, seated herself
with smiling hospitality, and waited for Reben to say his say.
He indicated his cigar with a querying lift of the eyebrows, and she
nodded her consent.
Then the business man of him began at the beginning as if he had much to
say in a short time and did not want to lose the momentum of his
emotion:
“Sheila, you’re a wonderful girl. If you weren’t I shouldn’t be taking
you up from the army of actresses that are just as ambitious as you are.
I’d be very blind not to see what the whole public sees and not to feel
what everybody feels.
“This cub Vickery felt your fascination when you were a child. He never
forgot you. He’s trying to put something of you into his play. That
other fellow he told you about has made a vow to get to you. You have
draught, and all that it means.
“But the brighter the light, the firmer its standard must be. The
farther your lantern shines, the bigger and stronger and taller a
lighthouse it needs. You know there’s such a thing as hiding a light
under a bushel.
“Now, I’m already as big a manager as you’ll ever be a star. I can give
you advantages nobody else can give you. I’ve given you some of them
already. I can give you more. In fact, nobody else can give you any, for
I’ve got you under a contract that makes it possible for me to keep
anybody else from exploiting you. But I’m willing and anxious to do
everything I can for you. The question is, what are you willing to do
for me?”
Sheila knew what he meant, but she answered in a shy voice: “Why, I’ll
do all I can—of course. I’ll work like a slave. I’ll try to make you
all the money I’m able to.”
“Money? Bagh!” he sneered. “What’s money to me? I love it—as a game,
yes. But I don’t mind losing it. You’ve known me to drop forty or fifty
thousand at a throw and not whimper, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll do all you can, you say. But will you? There’s something in life
besides money, Sheila. There’s—there’s—” He tried to say “love,” but
it was an impossible word to get out at once. Instead he groped for her
hand and took it in his hot clench.
She drew her cold, slim fingers away with a petulant, girlish, “Don’t!”
He sighed desperately and laughed with bitterness. “I knew you’d do
nothing for me. You’d let me work for you, and make you famous and rich,
and squander fortunes on your glory, and you’d let me die of loneliness.
You’d let me eat my heart out like a love-sick stage-door Johnny and you
wouldn’t care. But I tell you, Sheila, even a manager is a man, and I
can’t live on business alone. I’ve got to have some woman’s
companionship and tenderness and devotion.”
Sheila could not refrain from suggesting, “I thought Mrs. Rhys—”
“Mrs. Rhys!” he snarled. “That worn-out, burned-out volcano? She’s an
old woman. I want youth and beauty and—Oh, I want you, Sheila.”
“I—I’m sorry,” she almost apologized, trying not to insult such ardor.
“Oh, I know I’m not young or handsome, but I’ll surround you with youth.
I’ll buy that play of your friend Vickery’s; I’ll get the biggest man in
the country to whip it into shape; I’ll give it the finest production
ever a play had; I’ll make the critics swallow it; I’ll buy the ones
that are for sale, and I’ll play on the vanity of the others. If it
fails, I’ll buy you another play and another till you hit the biggest
success ever known. Then I’ll name a theater after you. I’ll produce you
in London, get you commanded to court. I’ll make you the greatest
actress in the world. These young fellows may be pretty to play with,
but what can they do for you except ruin your career and interfere with
your ambition and make a toy of you? I can give you wealth and fame
and—immortality! And all I ask you to give me is your—your”—now he
said it—“your love.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Sheila mumbled.
“You mean you won’t?” he roared.
“How can I?” she pleaded, still apologetic. “Love isn’t a thing you can
just take and give to anybody you please, is it? I thought it was
something that—that takes you and gives you to anybody it pleases.
Isn’t that it? I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what love is. But
that’s what I’ve always understood.”
He grunted at the puerility of this, and said, brusquely, “Well, if you
can’t give me love, then give me—you.”
“How do you mean—give you me?”
“Oh, you’re no child, Sheila,” he snarled. “Don’t play the ingenue with
me. You know what I mean.”
Her voice grew years older as she answered, icily: “When you say I’m no
child, it makes me think I understand what you mean. But I can’t believe
that I do.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’ve known my father and mother so long and they like you so
much, and—well—it doesn’t seem possible that you would mean me any
harm.”
No amount of heroics could have shamed him like that. His eyes rolled
like a cornered wolf’s. He shut them, and with one deep breath seemed to
absolve himself and purify his soul. He mumbled, “I—I want you to—to
marry me, Sheila!”
Sheila seemed to breathe a less stifling air. She felt sorry for him
now; but he asked a greater charity than she could grant. She answered:
“Oh, I couldn’t marry anybody; not now. I don’t want to marry—at all.”
She sought for the least-insulting explanation. “It—it would hurt me
professionally.”
His self-esteem blinded him to her tact. He persisted: “We could be
married secretly. No one needs to know.”
She protested, “You can’t keep such a thing secret.”
He retorted: “Of course you can. They never found out that Sonia
Eccleston was married to her manager.”
“She never was!”
“I saw her with their child in Switzerland.”
“Then it was true! I’ve heard so many people say so. But I never could
be sure.”
“It’s true. Our marriage could be kept just as secret as that.”
“Just about!” she laughed, with sudden triumph.
He was too earnest to realize that he had set a trap and stepped into it
till he sprung it.
He was suddenly enraged at her and at himself. He would not accept so
farcical a twist to his big scene. He broke out into a flame of wrathful
desire, and rose threateningly:
“Marriage or no marriage, Sheila, you’ve got to belong to me, or—or—”
“Or what?”
“Or you’ll never be a star. You’ll never play that play of Vickery’s or
anybody else’s. You’ll play whatever part I select for you, as your
contract says, or you’ll play nothing at all.”
He only kindled Sheila’s tindery temper. She leaped to her feet and
stormed up in his face: “Is this a proposal of marriage or a piece of
blackmail? I signed a contract, you know, not a receipt for one slave.
Marry you, Mr. Reben? Humph! Not if you were the last man on earth! Not
if I had to black up and play old darky women.”
The passion that overmastered him resolved to overmaster her.
“You can’t get away from me. I love you!”
He thrust his left arm back of her and enveloped her in a huge embrace,
seizing her right arm in his hand. Sheila had been embraced by numerous
men in her stage career. She had stood with their arms about her at
rehearsal and before the public. She had replied to their ardors
according to the directions of the manuscript—with shyness, with
boldness, with rapture.
At one of the rehearsals of “Uncle Dudley,” indeed, Reben himself, after
complaining of Brereton’s manner of clasping Sheila, had climbed to the
stage and demonstrated how he wanted Sheila embraced. She had smiled at
his awkwardness and thought nothing of it.
But that was play-acting, with people looking on. This was reality, in
seclusion. Intention is nearly everything. Then it was business. Now the
touch of his hand upon her elbow made her flesh creep; the big arm about
her was as repulsive as a python’s coil. She fought away from him in a
nausea of hatred. While his muscles exerted all their tyranny over her
little body, his lips were pleading, maundering appeals for a little
pity, a little love.
She fought him in silence, dreading the scandal of a scream. She wanted
none of that publicity. Her silence convinced him that her resistance
was not sincere; he thought it really the primeval instinct to put up an
interesting struggle and sweeten the surrender.
With a chuckle of triumph he drew her to his breast and thrust his head
forward toward the cheek dimly aglow. But just as he would have kissed
her she twisted in his clutch and lurched aside, wrenched her right arm
free, and bent it round her head to protect her precious flesh. Then as
he thrust his head forward again in pursuit of her, she swung her arm
back with all her might and drove her elbow into his face.
Some Irish instinct of battle inspired her to swing from waist and
shoulder and put her whole weight into the blow. Only his Reben luck
saved him from having a mouthful of loose teeth, a broken nose, or a
squashed eye. As it was, the little bludgeon fell on his eminent
cheek-bone with an impact that almost knocked him senseless amid a
shower of meteors.
Reben’s heartache was transferred to his head. His arms fell from her
and romance departed in one enormously prosaic “Ouch!”
The victorious little cave-woman cowered aside and rubbed her bruised
elbow, and pouted, and felt ashamed of herself for a terrible brute.
Then, as the ancient Amazons must undoubtedly have done after every
battle, she began to cry.
Reben was too furious to weep. He nursed his splitting skull in his
hands and thought of the Mosaic law “an eye for an eye.” He longed for
surcease of pain so that he might devise a perfect revenge against the
little beast that had tried to murder him just because he paid her the
supreme honor of loving her. He could not trust himself to speak. He
found his hat and went out, closing the door softly.
The elevator that took him down returned shortly with Pennock. She had
seen Reben cross the hotel lobby, and she came in with a glare of
horror. She sniffed audibly the cigar-smoke in the precincts. Her wrath
was so dire that she stared at Sheila weeping, and made no motion toward
her till Sheila broke out in a clutter of sobs:
“I—I—want some witch-hazel for my elbow. I think I b-b-broke it on old
Reben’s j-j-jaw.”
Then the amazing Pennock caught her in her arms and laughed aloud. It
was the first time Sheila had heard her laugh aloud. But when she looked
up Pennock was weeping as well, the tears sluicing down into her smile.