There will always be two schools of preventive hygiene for women. One
would protect girls from themselves and their suitors by high walls,
ignorance, seclusion, and a guardian in attendance at every step. The
other would protect them by encouraging high ideals through knowledge,
self-respect, liberty, and industry.
Neither school ever succeeded altogether, or ever will. The fault of the
former is that what is forbidden becomes desirable; high walls are
scalable, ignorance dangerous, seclusion impossible, and guardians
either corruptible or careless.
The fault of the latter is that emotions alter ideals and subdue them to
their own color; that knowledge increases curiosity, self-respect may be
overpowered or undermined, and that liberty enlarges opportunity.
It always comes back to the individual occasion and the individual soul
in conflict with it. There has been much viciousness in harems and in
more sacred inclosures. And there has been much virtue in dual
solitudes, Liberty is not salvation, but at least it encourages
intelligence, it enforces responsibility, and it avoids the infinite
evils of tyranny. For that reason, while actresses and other women are
not always so good as they might be, they are not often so bad as they
might be.
Sheila, the actress, was put upon her mettle. She had no duenna to play
tricks upon. She had herself to take care of, her preciousness to waste
or cherish. Sometimes women respond to these encounters with singular
dignity: sometimes with singular indifference.
The town of Clinton was almost all asleep. The very houses seemed tucked
up in sheeted moonlight. And soon Sheila and her cavalier—or
engineer—were beyond the point where the streets were subtly changed to
roads. The last car on the suburban line growled and glittered past,
lurching noisily on its squealing rails. And then they were alone under
the moony vastitude of sky, with the dream-drenched earth revolving
around them in a huge, slow wheel.
The car purred with the contentment of a great house-cat and lapped up
the glimmering road like a stream of milk.
Sheila felt the spirit of the night, and felt that all the universe was
in tender rapport with itself. She felt as never before the grace of
love, the desire, the need of love. For years she had been exerting
herself for her ambition, and now her ambition was tired. The hour of
womanhood was striking, almost silently, yet as unmistakably as the
distant town clock that published midnight, so far away as to be less
overheard than felt in the slow throb of the air.
Bret Winfield’s response to the mood of the night was pagan. Sheila was
a mighty nice girl and darned pretty and she had consented to take a
midnight spin with him. But many darned pretty girls had done the same.
A six-cylinder motor-car is a very winsome form of invitation.
In place of inviting a young man to a cozy corner in a parlor or a
hammock on a piazza, the enterprising maiden of the day accepts his
invitation—and seats herself in a flying hammock. Seclusion is secured
and concealment attained by way of velocity.
A wonderful change had taken place in the world of lovers in the last
ten years. For thousands of years before—ever since, indeed, the first
man invented the taming of the first horse and took his cave-girl
buggy-riding on a pair of poles or in a square-wheeled cart—lovers had
been kept to about the same pace. Suddenly they were given a buggy that
can go sixty miles an hour or better; so fast, indeed, that it is veiled
in its own speed and its own dust. Even the naughty gods and the
goddesses of Homer never knew any concealment like it.
Winfield was an average young man who had known average young women
averagely well. He had found that demoiselles either would not motor
with him at all or, motoring with him, expected to be paid certain
gallant attentions. He always tried to live up to their expectations.
They might struggle, but never fiercely enough to endanger the
steering-wheel. They might protest, but never loudly enough to drown the
engine.
Such was his experience with the laity. Sheila was his first actress,
not including a few encounters with those camp-followers of the theater
who are only accepted as “actresses” when they are arrested, and who
have as much right to the name as washwomen for a convent have the right
to be called “nuns,” when they drink too much.
But Winfield had reasoned that if the generality of pretty girls who
motored with men were prepared for dalliance, by so much more would an
actress be. Consequently, when he reached a hilltop where there was a
good excuse for pausing to admire the view of a moon-plated river laid
along a dark valley, he shut off the power and slid his left arm back of
Sheila.
She sat forward promptly and his heart began to chug.
Making love is an old and foolish game, but strangely exciting at the
time. Winfield was more afraid to withdraw his arm than to complete the
embrace.
Sheila’s heart was spinning, too. She had thrilled to the love-croon of
the night. The landscape before her and beneath her seemed to be filled
with dreams. But she was in love with love and not with Bret Winfield.
When she recognized that he was about to begin to initiate her by a
familiar form of amorous hazing into the ancient society whose emblem is
a spoon, she abruptly decided that she did not want to belong. Winfield
became abruptly more of a stranger than ever.
Sheila did not want to hate this nice young man. She did not want to
quarrel with her chauffeur so far from home at so compromising an hour.
She did not want to wreck the heavenly night with idiotic combat. She
hated the insincerity and perfunctoriness that must be the effect of any
protest. She was actress enough to realize that the lines the situation
required of her had long ago lost their effectiveness and their very
sincerity.
But she did not want to be hugged. She loathed the thought of being
touched by this man’s arm. She felt herself as precious and her body as
holy as the lofty emotion of the night. Still, how could she protest
till he gave her cause? He gave her cause.
Her very shoulder-blades winced as she felt Winfield’s arm close about
her; she shivered as his big hand folded over her shoulder.
Sheila groped for appropriate words. Winfield’s big handsome face with
the two dim lenses over his eyes was brought nearer and nearer to her
cheek. Then, without giving him even the help of resistance, she
inquired, quite casually:
“Is it true that they can send you to the penitentiary if you hit a man
in the face when he’s wearing glasses?”
* * * * *
Sheila was as astounded as Winfield was at this most unexpected query.
His lips paused at her very cheek to stammer:
“I don’t know. But why? What about it?”
“Because if it is true I want you either to take your arm away or take
your glasses off.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. All you have to understand is that I don’t want your
arm around me. I’d rather go to the penitentiary than have you kiss me.”
“For the Lord’s sake!” Winfield gasped, relaxing his clutch.
Sheila went on with that sarcasm which is cold poison to romance: “I
don’t blame you for attempting it. I know it’s the usual thing on such
occasions. But I don’t like it, and that ought to be enough.”
Winfield sighed with shame and regret. “It’s quite enough! I beg your
pardon very humbly. Shall we turn back now?”
“If you please.”
The very engine seemed to groan as Winfield started it up again. It
clucked reprovingly, “Ts! ts! ts!”
Winfield was more angry than sorry. He had made a fool of himself and
she had made another fool of him. He was young enough to grumble a
little, “Are you in love with that man Eldon?”
“He’s very nice.”
“You love him, then?”
“Not at all.”
“Well, then, if you keep me at such a distance, why do you—how can you
let him put his arms round you and kiss you twice a day before
everybody?”
“He gets paid for it, and so do I.”
“That makes it worse.”
“You think so? Well, I don’t. Actors are like doctors. They have special
privileges to do things that would be very wrong for other people.”
Winfield laughed this to scorn. Sheila was furious.
“If there weren’t any actors there wouldn’t be any Shakespeare or any of
the great plays. Doctors save people from death and disease. Actors save
millions from melancholy and from loneliness, and teach them sympathy
and understanding. So it is perfectly proper for an actress to be kissed
and hugged on the stage. Acting is the noblest profession in the world,
the humanest and the most fascinating. And a woman can do just as much
good and be just as good on the stage as she can anywhere else. If you
don’t think so, then you have no right to speak to an actress. And I
don’t want you to speak to me again—ever! for you come with an insult
in your heart. You despise me and I despise you.”
Winfield was in a panic. He had sought this girl out to square himself
with her, and he had wounded her deeper than before.
“Oh, please, Miss Kemble, I beg you!” he pleaded. “I don’t blame you for
despising me, but I don’t despise you. I think you are wonderful. I’m
simply crazy about you. I never saw a girl I—I liked so much. I didn’t
mean anything wrong, and I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. I just
thought—”
Sheila felt a little relentment. “I know what you thought, and I suppose
I oughtn’t to blame you. Actresses ought to get used to being
misunderstood, just as trained nurses are. But I hoped you were
different. I know I am. I’ve had so much stage loving that it doesn’t
mean anything to me. When I get the real I want it to be twice as real
as it would have to be for anybody else. Just because I pretend so much
I’d have to be awfully in love to love at all.”
“Haven’t you ever loved anybody?” Winfield asked, quite inanely.
She shook her head and answered, with a foolish solemnity. “I thought I
was going to, once or twice, but I never did.”
“That’s just like me. I’ve never really loved anybody, either.”
There was such unqualified juvenility in their words that they
recognized it themselves. Sheila could not help laughing. He laughed,
too, like a cub.
Then Sheila said, with the earnestness of a child playing doll’s house:
“You’re too young to love anybody, and I haven’t time yet. I’ve got much
too much work ahead of me to waste any time on love.”
“I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, too,” said Winfield.
“You have?” said Sheila. “What is your work—doctor, lawyer, merchant,
chief?”
She was surprised to realize that she had come to know this man pretty
well before she knew anything at all about him. She was discussing
Winfield’s future before she had heard of his past. Vickery’s
introduction had been his only credentials, his only history. And yet
she had already rested briefly in his arms. She was surprised further
when he said:
“I’m a— That is, my father is— We are Winfield’s Scales.”
She took this so blankly that he gasped, “Good heavens! didn’t you ever
hear of Winfield’s Scales?”
“I never did,” said Sheila.
“I’ll bet you were weighed in one of ’em when you were born.”
“I couldn’t read when I was born,” said Sheila.
“And you’ve never heard of them since?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Winfield shook his head amiably over her childlike ignorance. But then,
what information could one expect of theatrical people? He went on:
“Well, anyway, my father is one of the biggest manufacturers of scales
and weighing-machines and such things that there is. He’s about the only
independent one left out of the trust. Haven’t you heard of the
tremendous fight we’ve been putting up?”
Sheila was less interested in the war than in the soldier.
“We?” she said.
“Well, I’m not in the firm yet, but my father expects me to step in
right away, so that he can step out. He’s not very well. That makes him
rather cranky. He didn’t want me to come down here, but I wanted to see
Vickery’s play and square myself with you. And I’ve made a mess of
that.”
“Oh no! we’re square now, I fancy,” said Sheila.
“Then I ought to be at home,” he sighed.
“Instead of sowing wild oats with actresses,” said Sheila.
“These oats are not very wild,” Winfield grumbled, not quite cured of
regret.
“Rather tame, eh?” Sheila laughed. “Well, you’ll find that most
actresses are. We’re such harness-broken, heart-broken hacks, most of
us, there’s not much excitement left in us. So you’re to be a scale
manufacturer. You’re awfully rich, I suppose.”
“When the market’s good, Dad makes a pile of money. When it’s bad—whew!
And it’s expensive fighting the trust.”
“Is it anything like the theatrical trust?”
“Is there a theatrical trust?”
“Good heavens! Haven’t you read about the war?”
“Was there a war?”
“For years. Millions of dollars were involved.”
“Is that so?”
“Why, yes! and Reben was right in the thick of it. Both sides were
trying to get him in.”
“Who’s Reben?” said Winfield. “What does he manufacture?”
Sheila laughed, shocked at his boundless ignorance. It was like asking,
“What does St. Peter do for a living?”
“You don’t know much about the theater, do you?”
“No,” he laughed, “and you don’t know much about weighing-machines.”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I’ve got to learn.”
“Then you’d better be hurrying home. I wouldn’t for worlds interfere
with your career.”
She felt quite grandmotherly as she said it. She did not look it,
though, and as he stole a glance at her beauty, all demure and moonlike
in the moon, he sighed: “But I can’t bear to leave you just as I’m
beginning to—” he wanted to say “to love you,” but he had not prepared
for the word, so he said, “to get acquainted with you.”
She understood his unspoken phrase and it saddened her. But she
continued to be very old and extremely sage. “It’s too bad; but we’ll
meet again, perhaps.”
“That’s so, I suppose. Well, all right, we’ll be sensible.”
And so, like two extremely good children, they put away temptation and
closed the door of the jam-closet. Who can be solemner than youth at
this frivolous age? What can solemnize solemnity like putting off till
to-morrow the temptation of to-day?
The moment Sheila and Winfield sealed up love in a preserve-jar and
labeled it, “Not to be opened till Christmas,” and shelved it, that love
became unutterably desirable.
Nothing that they could have resolved, nothing that any one else could
have advised them, could have mutually endeared them so instantly and so
pathetically as their earnest decision that they must not let themselves
grow dear to each other.
They finished their ride back in silence, leaving behind them a moon
that seemed to drag at their flying shoulders with silver
grappling-hooks. The air was humming forbidden music in their ears and
the locked-up houses seemed to order them to remain abroad.
But he drew up at her little apartment-hotel and took her to the door,
where a sleepy night-clerk-plus-elevator-boy opened the locked door for
her and went back to sleep.
Sheila and Winfield defied the counsel of the night by primly shaking
hands. Sheila spoke as if she were leaving a formal reception.
“Thank you ever so much for the lovely ride. And—er— Well, good
night—or, rather good-by, for I suppose you’ll be leaving to-morrow.”
“I ought to,” he groaned, dubiously. “Good night! Good-by!”
He climbed in, waved his hat to her, and she her gloves at him. Far down
the street he turned again to stare back and to wave farewell again. He
could not see her, but she was there, mystically sorrowing at the lost
opportunity of happiness, the unheeded advice of nature—in the mood of
Paul Bourget’s elegy as Debussy set it to music:
“_Un conseil d’être heureux semble sortir des choses_
_Et monter vers le cœur troublé,_
_Un conseil de goûter le charme d’être au monde_
_Cependant qu’on est jeune et que le soir est beau;_
_Car nous nous en allons, comme s’en va cette onde—_
_Elle à la mer, nous au tombeau._”