That night Sheila went to bed to sleep out sleep. When Pennock asked, on
leaving her arranged for slumber, “Will you be called at the usual hour,
please?” Sheila answered, “I won’t be called at all, please!”
This privilege alone was like a title of gentility to a tired laundress.
There would be no rehearsal on the morrow for her.
The other galley-slaves in the company must still bend to the oar, but
she had shore leave of mornings, and after Saturday she was free
altogether.
Now that she had time to be tired, old aches and fatigues whose
consideration had had to be postponed came thronging upon her, till she
wondered how she had endured the toil. Still more she wondered why.
Then she wondered nothing at all for a good many hours, until the old
habit of being called awakened her. She glanced at her watch, saw that
it was half past ten, and flung out of bed, gasping, “They’ll be
rehearsing and I’m not there!”
Then she remembered her liberty, and stood feeling pleasantly foolish.
The joy of toppling back to bed was more than payment for the fright she
had suffered. It was glorious to float like a basking swimmer on the
surface of sleep, with little ripples of unconsciousness washing over
her face and little sunbeams of dream between.
In the half-awake moods she reviewed her ambitions with an indolent
contempt. That man Winfield’s words came back to her. After all, she had
no home except her father’s summer cottage. And she had been planning no
home except possibly another such place whither she would retire in the
late spring until the early fall, to rest from last season’s hotels and
recuperate for next season’s. Yes, that was just about the home life she
had sketched out!
It occurred to her now that her plans had been unhuman and unwomanly. “A
woman’s place is the home,” she said. It was not an original thought,
but it came to her with a sudden originality as sometimes lines she had
heard or had spoken dozens of times abruptly became real.
She wanted a pretty little house where she could busy herself with
pretty little tasks while her big, handsome husband was away earning a
pretty little provender for both of them. She would be a young
mother-bird haunting the nest, leaving the male bird to forage and
fight. That was the life desirable and appropriate. Women were not made
to work. An actress was an abnormal creature.
Sheila did not realize that the vast majority of home-keeping women must
work quite as hard as the actress, with no vacations, little income, and
less applause. The picture of the husband returning laughing to his
eager spouse was a decidedly idealized view of a condition more
unfailing in literature than in life. Some of those housewives who had
grown tired of their lot, as she of hers, would have told her that most
husbands return home weary and discontented, to listen with small
interest to their weary and discontented wives. And many husbands go out
again soon after they have come home again.
Sheila was doing what the average person does in criticizing the stage
life—magnifying its faults and contrasting it, not with the average
home, but with an ideal condition not often to be found, and less often
lasting when found.
Sheila had known so little of the average family existence that she
imagined it according to the romantic formula, “And so they were married
and lived happily ever afterward.” She thought that that would be very
nice. And she lolled at her ease, weltering in visions of cozy
domesticity with peace and a hearth and a noble American citizen and the
right number of perfectly fascinating children painlessly borne and
painlessly borne with.
Anything, anything would be better than this business of rehearsing and
rehearsing and squabbling and squabbling, and then settling down into a
dismal repetition of the same old nonsense in the same old theater or in
a succession of same old theaters.
How good it was, just not to have to learn a new play for next week! It
was good that there was no opportunity to rehearse any further revisions
even of poor Vickery’s play. There was almost a consolation in the
thought that it had not succeeded with Reben. Perhaps Reben would be a
long while discovering a substitute. Sheila hoped he would not find one
till the new year. She almost hoped he would never find one.
She was awfully sorry for poor Vickery. He had suffered so cruelly, and
she had suffered with him. Perhaps he would give up play-writing now and
take up some less inhuman trade. To think that she had once dallied with
the thought of marrying him! To play plays was bad enough, but to be the
wife of a playwright—no, thank you! Better be the gambler’s wife of a
less laborious gambler or the nurse to a moody lunatic under more
restraint.
Worse yet, Sheila had narrowly escaped falling in love with an actor!
They would have been Mr. and Mrs. Traveling Forever! Mr. and Mrs. Never
Rest! To live in hotels and railroad stations, sleeping-car berths, and
dressing-rooms of about the same size; to put on a lot of sticky stuff
and go out and parrot a few lines, then to retire and grease out the
paint, and stroll to a supper-room, and so to bed. To make an ambition
of that! No, thank you! Not on your _jamais de la vie_, never!
And thus having with a drowsy royalty effaced all her plans from her
books, she burned her books. Desdemona’s occupation was gone. She might
as well get up. She bathed and dressed and breakfasted with splendid
deliberation, and then, the day proving to be fine and sunny and cool
when she raised her tardy curtains, she decided to go forth for a walk,
the dignified saunter of a lady, and not the mad rush of a belated
actress. It wanted yet an hour before she must make up for the matinée.
She had not walked long when she heard her name called from a motor-car
checked at the curb. She turned to see Eugene Vickery waving his cap at
her. Bret Winfield, at the wheel, was bowing bareheaded. They invited
her to go with them for a ride. It struck her as a providential
provision of just what she would have wished for if she had thought of
it.
Vickery stepped down to open the door for her, and, helping her in,
stepped in after her. Winfield reached back his hand to clasp hers, and
Vickery said:
“Drive us about a bit, chauffeur.”
“Yes, sir!” said Winfield, touching his cap. And he lifted the car to a
lively gait.
“Where did you get the machine?” said Sheila.
“It’s his—Bret’s—Mr. Winfield’s,” said Vickery. “He came down in
it—to see that infernal play of mine. Do you know, I think I’ve
discovered one thing that’s the matter with it. In that scene in the
first act, you know, where—”
He rambled on with intense enthusiasm, but Sheila was thinking of the
man at the wheel. He was rich enough to own a car and clever enough to
run it. As she watched he guided it through a swarm of traffic with
skill and coolness.
Now and then Winfield threw a few words over his left shoulder. They had
nothing to do with things theatrical—just commonplace high spirits on a
fine day. Sheila did like him ever so much.
By and by he drew up to the curb and got down, motioning to Vickery with
the thumb of authority. “I’m tired of letting you monopolize Miss
Kemble, ’Gene. I’m going to ask her to sit up with me.”
“But I’m telling her about my play,” said Vickery. “Now, in the middle
of the last act—”
“If you don’t mind,” said Sheila, “I should like to ride awhile with Mr.
Winfield. The air’s better.”
Winfield opened the door for her, helped her down and in again, and
resumed his place.
“See how much better the car runs!” he said.
And to Sheila it seemed that it did run better. Their chatter ran about
as importantly as the engines, but it was cheerful and brisk.
Every man has his ailment, at least one. The only flaw in Winfield’s
powerful make-up was the astigmatism that compelled him to wear glasses.
Sheila rather liked them. They gave an intellectual touch to a face that
had no other of the sort. Besides, actor-people usually prefer a touch
of what they call “character” to what they call “a straight.”
Winfield told Sheila that his glasses had kept him from playing
football, but had not hampered his work in the ’varsity crew. He could
see as far as the spinal column of the oarsman in front of him, and that
was all he was supposed to see once the race began.
He explained that his glasses had fallen from his eyes when he stepped
on the stage at Leroy. That had been one reason why Eldon had got home
on him so easily.
Evidently this unpaid account was still troubling him.
“I hate to owe a man a dollar or a kindness or a blow,” he said. “I’ve
lost my chance to pay that man Eldon what was due, and I’ll never get
another chance. Our paths will never cross again, I’m afraid.”
“I hope not!” Sheila cried.
“Why?”
“Because you’re both such powerful men. He was a football-player, you
know.”
“Oh, was he?”
“Oh yes. And he keeps himself in trim. Most actors do. They never know
when they’ll have to appear bare-armed. And then they meet such awful
people sometimes.”
“Oh, do they? And you think he would whip me, eh?”
“Oh no. I don’t think either of you could whip the other. But it would
be terrible to have either of you hurt either of you.”
Winfield laughed, but all he said was, “You’re a mighty nice girl.”
She laughed, “Thanks.”
Then both looked about guiltily to see if Vickery were listening.
Nothing important had been said, but their hearts had been fencing, or
at least feinting, at a sort of flirtation.
Vickery was gone.
“For Heaven’s sake!” said Sheila.
“He probably dropped out when we stopped some time ago to let that wagon
pass.”
“I wonder why?” Sheila said, anxiously.
“Oh,” Winfield laughed, “’Gene’s such an omni—om—he reads so much he’s
probably read that two’s company and three’s a crowd.”
This was a trifle uncomfortable for Sheila, so she said, “What time is
it, please?”
“Half past one, or worse,” said Winfield, pointing with his toe to the
auto-clock. “That’s usually slow.”
“Good Lord! I ought to be in the shop this minute. Turn round and fly!”
They were far out in the country. Winfield looked regretfully at the
vista ahead. Turning round in a narrow road was a slow and maddening
process, and Sheila’s nerves grated like the clutch. Once faced
townward, they sped ferociously. She doubted if she would ever arrive
alive. There were swoops and skids and flights of chickens and narrow
escapes from the murder of dogs who charged ferociously and vanished in
a diminuendo of yelps.
There followed an exciting race with the voice of a motor-cycle coming
up from the rear. Winfield laughed it to scorn until Sheila, glancing
back, saw that it carried a policeman.
“He’s waving to us. Stop!”
“If I do we’ll never make it. I’ll put you in the theater on time if I
go to jail for life.”
“No, no; I won’t get you into trouble. Please stop. He looks like a nice
policeman. I’ll tell him you’re a doctor and I’m a trained nurse.”
Winfield slowed down, and the policeman came up, sputtering like his own
blunderbuss. Sheila tried to look like a trained nurse, but missed the
costume and the make-up. She began at once:
“Oh, please, Mr. Officer, it’s all my fault. You see, the doctor has a
dying patient, and I—I—”
“Why, it’s Sheila Ke— Miss Kemble! Ain’t you playin’ this afternoon?”
“Oh yes, it’s me—and I ought to be, but I was detained, and that’s
why—”
“Well, you better hurry up or you’ll keep folks waitin’. My wife’s there
this afternoon. I seen you myself last night.”
“Did you? Oh, thank you so much! Good-by!”
As Winfield’s car slid forward they heard the policeman’s voice: “Better
go kind o’ slow crossing Fifth Street. McGonigle is stricter ’n I am.”
Winfield was greatly impressed by the fame of his passenger. He carried
Calphurnia; no harm could come to him. They crossed Fifth Street at such
a pace that the car-tracks sent Sheila aloft. As she came down she
remembered Officer McGonigle. She saw that he or a vague film of him was
saluting her with admiring awe. The grinding toil of the stock actress
has its perquisites, after all.
She made Winfield let her out at the alley and ran with all her might.
Once more she was met at the stage door by the anxious Eldon. But now
she resented his presence. His solicitude resembled espionage. But it
was not he that had changed.
Pennock was in a furious mood and scolded Sheila roundly when she helped
her into her costume at a speed a fireman would have envied. As she made
up her face while Pennock concocted her hair, Sheila was studying some
new lines that Vickery had determined to try out that afternoon.
The performance went excellently well. Sheila was refreshed by her sleep
and the forced ventilation her soul had had. She dined with Vickery and
Winfield. Vickery was aflame with new ideas that had come to him in
Winfield’s car. He had dropped out, not to leave them alone, but to be
alone with his precious thoughts.
Sheila’s ambitions, however, were asleep. She was more interested in the
silent admiration of Winfield. The light on his glasses kept her from
seeing his eyes, but she felt that they were soft upon her, because his
voice was gentle when he spoke the few words he said.
* * * * *
It irritated Sheila to have to hurry back to the theater after dinner to
repeat again the afternoon’s repetition. The moon seemed to call down
the alley to her not to give herself to the garish ache of the calcium;
and the breeze had fingers twitching at her clothes and a voice that
sang, “Come walk with me.”
She played the play, but it irked her. When she left the theater at half
past eleven she found Winfield waiting, in his car. Vickery was walking
at her side, jabbering about his eternal revisions. Winfield offered to
carry them to their hotels. He saw to it that he reached Vickery’s
first. When they had dropped Jonah overboard Winfield asked Sheila to
take just a bit of the air for her health’s sake.
She hesitated only a moment. The need of a chaperon hardly occurred to
her. She had been living a life of independence for months. She had no
fear of Winfield or of anybody. Had she not overpowered the ferocious
Reben? She consented—for the sake of her health.