Sheila wept more as Pennock helped her to undress and drew the sleeve
tenderly over the invincible elbow. She wept into the bath and she wept
into her pillow. She ran a gamut of emotions from self-pity to
self-contempt for so unlady-like a method of extricating herself from a
predicament that no lady would have got into. She reproached herself for
being some kind of miserable reptile to have inspired either the
affection or the insolence of so loathsome another reptile as Reben.
Then she bewailed the ruin of her career. That was gone forever. She
bewailed the destruction of Vickery’s hopes—such a nice boy! If she had
not permitted Reben to be so rude to Vickery he never would have been so
rude to her. She would give up the stage and go live at her father’s
house, and die an old maid or marry a preacher or a milkman or
something.
She wept herself out so completely that she slept till one o’clock the
next afternoon. When she was up she stood at her window and gazed
ruefully across the city. On a distant roof she could just see the tall
water-tanks marked “Odeon Theater,” and a wall of the theater carrying
an enormous blazon of the play with Tom Brereton’s name in huge letters
and hers in large. She would never appear there again. She supposed
Reben would send her understudy on to-night. Of course the reading of
Vickery’s play at three o’clock was all off.
It would be of no use to go to the office. Reben wouldn’t be there. He
would doubtless be in a hospital with his face in splints.
She wondered if she had fractured his skull—and how many years they
gave you for doing that to a man. She could claim that she did it in
self-defense, of course, but she had no witnesses to prove it.
She spent hours in putting herself into all imaginable disasters. The
breakfast Pennock commanded her to eat she only dabbed at.
At half past three the telephone rang. The office-boy at Reben’s hailed
her across the wire:
“That choo, M’Skemble? This is Choey. Say, M’Skemble, Mis’ Treben wantsa
speak choo. Hola wire a min’t, please.”
Sheila reached out and hooked a chair with her foot and brought it up to
catch her when the blow fell. Reben’s voice was full of restrained
cheerfulness:
“That you, Sheila? Are you ill?”
“Why, no! Why?”
“You had an appointment here at three. We’re still waiting.”
“But you don’t want to see—me, do you?”
“And why not?”
“But last night you said—”
“Last night I was talking to you about personal affairs. This is
business. That was at your home. This is my office. Hop in a cab and
come on over. I’ll explain.”
She was in such a daze as she made ready to go that when she had her hat
on she could not find it with her hat-pin. Pennock performed the office
for her. When she reached Reben’s office she meekly edged through the
crowd of applicants waiting like the penniless souls on the wrong side
of the River Styx. She thought that Eldon must have been one of these
once. Some of these were future Eldons, future Booths.
Joey, the office-boy, hailed her with pride, swung the gate open for
her, and led her to Reben’s door. He did that only for stars or managers
or playwrights of recent success.
Reben was alone. He was dabbing his mumpsy cheek with a handkerchief he
wet at a bottle. He smiled at her with a mixture of apology and rebuke.
“There you are! the suffragette that took my face for a shop window. I
told everybody I stumbled and hit my head on the edge of a table. If you
will be kind enough not to deny the story—”
“Of course not! I’m so sorry! I lost my head!”
“Thank you. So did I. Last night I made a fool of myself. To-day I’m a
business man again. I made you a proposition or two. You declined both
with emphasis. I ought not to have insisted. You didn’t have to
assassinate me. I’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me.”
“Of course,” said Sheila, sheepishly.
Reben spoke with great dignity, yet with meekness. “We understand each
other better now, eh? I meant what I said about being crazy about you.
If you’d let me, I could love you very much. If you won’t, I’ll get over
it, I suppose. But the proposition stands. If you would marry me—”
“I’m not going to marry anybody, I tell you.”
“You promise me that?”
Sheila felt it safer not to promise forever, but safe enough to say,
“Not for a long time, anyway.”
Reben stared at her grimly. “Sheila, I’m a business man; you’re a
business woman. I’ll play fair with you if you’ll play fair with me.
I’ll make a star of you if you’ll do your share. You wouldn’t flirt with
me or let me make a fool of you. Then be a man and we’ll get along
perfectly. If you’ll stick to me, not quit me, not hamper me, not play
tricks on me, and abide by your contract, I’ll do the same for you. I’ll
put you up in the big lights. Will you stand by me, Sheila, as man to
man—on your honor as a gentleman?”
She repeated his words with a kind of amused solemnity: “As man to man,
on my honor as a gentleman, I’ll stand by you and fulfil my contract.”
“Then that’s all right. Shake hands on it.”
They shook hands. His grasp was hot and fierce and slow to let go. His
eyes burned over her with a menace that belied his icy words.
* * * * *
When the bond was sealed with the clasp of hands Reben breathed heavily
and pressed a button on his desk. “Now for the young Shakespeare. We’ve
kept him waiting long enough. He’s cooled his heels till he must have
cold feet by now. Joey, show Mr. Vickery in; and then I don’t want to be
disturbed by anybody for anything. I’ll wring your neck if you ring my
telephone—unless the building catches on fire.”
“Yes, sir; no, sir,” said Joey; and, holding the door ajar, he beckoned
and whistled to Vickery, and, having admitted him, dispersed the rabble
outside with brevity: “Nothin’ doin’ to-day, folks. Mis’ Treben’s went
home.”
Sheila, Vickery, and Reben regarded one another with the utmost anxiety.
They were embarking on a cruise to the Gold Coast. Success would mean a
fortune for all; the failure of any would mean disaster to all.
Usually it was next to impossible to persuade Reben to give three
consecutive hours of his busy life to an audition; but, once engaged, he
listened with amazing analysis. He tried to sit with an imaginary
audience. He listened always for the human note. He criticized, as a
woman criticizes with reference not to art or logic or truth, but to
etiquette, morality, and attractiveness.
The virtuous and scholarly Vickery, as he read his masterwork, was
astounded to find his ideals of conduct riddled by a manager, and
especially by a Reben. He blushed to be told that his hero was a cad and
his heroine a cat. And he could hardly deny the justice of the criticism
from Reben’s point of view, which was that of an average audience.
Sheila, feeling that Vickery needed support, gave him only her praise,
whatever she felt; little giggles of laughter, little gasps of
“Delicious!” and cries of, “Oh, charming!” When with the accidental
rarity of a scholar he stumbled into the greatness of a homely
sincerity, he was amazed to see that tears were pearling at her eyelids
suddenly.
His heart was melted into affection by the collaboration of her
sympathy. Without it he would have folded up his manuscript and slunk
away, for Reben’s comments were more and more confusingly cynical.
When he finished the ordeal Vickery was exhausted, parched of throat and
of heart. Sheila flung him adjectives like flowers and his heart went
out toward her, but Reben was silent for a long and cruelly anxious
while. Then he spoke harshly:
“A manager’s main business is to avoid producing plays. It’s my business
to imagine what faults the public would find and then beat ’em to ’em.
There will be plenty of faults left. And don’t forget, Mr. Vickery, that
every compliment I pay a playwright costs me a thousand dollars or more.
Frankly, Mr. Vickery, I don’t think your play is right. The idea is
there, but you haven’t got it.”
Vickery’s heart sickened. Reben revived it a little.
“Maybe you can fix it up. If you can’t I’ll have to get somebody to help
you. It’s too late to produce it this season, anyway. Hot weather is
coming on. You have all summer to work at it.”
Vickery wondered if he should live so long.
Reben went on: “I—I’ve been thinking, Sheila—Miss Kemble, that it
might be a good idea to try this play out in a stock company. Then Mr.
Vickery could see its faults.”
Sheila protested, “Oh, but I couldn’t let anybody else play it first.”
“You could join the company as a guest for a week and play the part
yourself.”
“Fine!” Sheila exclaimed. “I’ve been planning to put in a good hard
summer in stock. It’s such an education—limbers your mind up so, to
play all sorts of parts. See if you can find me a good, coolish sort of
town with a decent stock company that will let me in.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” said Reben, with a salute. “And now, Mr. Vickery, you’ve
got your work cut out, too. See if you can get your play into shape for
a stock production.”
Reben was attempting to scare Vickery just enough to make him toil, but
he would have given up completely if Sheila had not begged him to go on,
asked him to come to see her now and then and “talk things over.”
He promised with gratitude and went, carrying that burden of delay which
weighs down the playwright until he reaches the swift judgment of the
critics. When he had gone Reben spoke more confidently of the play. He
was already considering the cast. He mentioned various names and
discarded this actor or that actress because he or she was a blond or
too dark, too tall, or too short, lean, fat, commonplace, eccentric.
Nobody quite fitted his pictures of Vickery’s people. At length he said:
“I’ll tell you a man I’ve had in mind for the lead. He’d be ideal, I
think. He’s young, handsome, educated; he’s got breeding; he can wear a
dress-suit; and he hasn’t been on the stage long enough to be spoiled by
the gush of fool women. He’s tall and athletic and a gentleman.”
“And who’s all that?” said Sheila. “The angel Gabriel?”
“Young fellow named—er—Elmore—no, Eldon; that’s it. You must know
him. He was with you in the ‘Friend in Need’ company.”
“Oh yes,” Sheila murmured, “I know him.”
“How do you think he would do?”
“I think he would be—he would be splendid.”
“All right,” said Reben. “The stock experience would be good for him,
too. He might make a good leading man for you. You could practise
team-work together. If he pans out, I could place him with the company
we select for you.”
“Fine!” said Sheila.
Reben could never have suspected from her tone how deeply she was
interested in Eldon. Unwittingly he had torn them asunder just as their
romance was ripening into ardor; unwittingly he was bringing them
together.
As soon as she left Reben’s office Sheila hurried to her room to write
Eldon of their reunion. She wrote glowingly and quoted their old
phrases. When she had sent the letter off she had a tremor of anxiety.
“What if he finds me changed and doesn’t like me any more? How will he
have changed after a season of success and—Dulcie Ormerod?”