The betrothed couple had no opportunity to seal the engagement with the
usual ceremonies. When they met again, fully clothed, she was so late to
her luncheon that she had to fly.
Already, after their high tragedy and their rosy romance, the little
things of existence were asserting their importance. That afternoon
Sheila had an engagement that she could not get out of, and a dinner
afterward. She had booked these dates without dreaming of what was to
happen.
It was not till late in the evening that Sheila could steal away to
Winfield, who stole across the lawn to her piazza by appointment.
The scene was perfectly set. An appropriate moon was in her place. The
breeze was exquisitely aromatic. Winfield was in summer costume of
dinner-suit and straw hat. Sheila was in a light evening gown with no
hat.
They cast hasty glances about, against witnesses, and then he flung his
arms around her, and she flung hers around him. He crushed her as
fiercely as he dared, and she him as fiercely as she could. Their lips
met in the great kiss of betrothal.
She was happy beyond endurance. She was in love and her beloved loved
her.
All the Sheilas there were in her soul agreed for once that she was
happy to the final degree, contented beyond belief, imparadised on
earth. The Sheilas voted unanimously that love was life; love was the
greatest thing in the world; that woman’s place was with her lover, that
a woman’s forum was the home; and that any career outside the walls was
a plaything to be put away and forgotten like a hobby-horse outgrown.
As for her stage career—pouf! into the attic with it where her little
tin house and the tiny tin kitchen and her knitted bear and the glueless
dolls reposed. She was going to have a real house and real children and
real life.
While she was consigning her ambitions to the old trunk up-stairs,
Winfield was refurbishing his ambitions. He was going to do work enough
for two, be ambitious for both and make Sheila the proudest wife of the
busiest husband in the husband business.
But these great resolutions were mainly roaring in the back parlors of
their brains. On the piazzas of their lips were words of lovers’
nonsense. There is no use quoting them. They would sound silly even to
those who have used them themselves.
They sounded worse than that to Roger and Polly, who heard them all.
Roger and Polly had come home from dancing half an hour before, and had
dropped into chairs in the living-room. The moon on the sea was
dazzling. They watched it through the screens that strained the larger
mosquitoes, then they put out the lights because the view was better and
because enough mosquitoes were already in the house.
The conversation of the surf had made all the necessary language and
Roger and Polly sat in the tacit comfort of long-married couples. They
had heard Sheila brought home by a young man whom she dismissed with
brevity. Before they found energy to call to her, another young man had
hurried across the grass. To their intense amazement he leaped at Sheila
and she did not scream. Both merged into one silhouette.
Polly and Roger were aghast, but they dared not speak. They did not even
know who the man was. Sheila called him by no name to identify him,
though she called him by any number of names of intense saccharinity.
At length Roger’s voice came through the gloom, as gentle as a shaft of
moonlight made audible: “Oh, Sheila.”
The silhouette was snipped in two as if by scissors.
“Ye-yes, dodther.” She had tried to say “Daddy” and “father” at the same
time.
Roger’s voice went on in its drawing-roomest drawl: “I know that it is
very bad play-writing to have anybody overhear anybody, but your mother
and I got home first, and your dialogue is—well, really, a little of it
goes a great way, and we’d like to know the name of your leading man.”
Winfield and Sheila both wished that they had drowned that morning. But
there was no escape from making their entrance into the living-room,
where Roger turned on the lights. All eyes blinked, rather with
confusion than the electric display.
The elder Kembles had met Winfield before, but had not suspected him as
a son-in-law-to-be. Sheila explained the situation and laid heavy stress
on how Winfield had rescued her from drowning. She rather gave the
impression that she had fallen off a liner two days out and that he had
jumped overboard and carried her to safety single-handed.
Winfield tried to disclaim the glory, but he managed to gulp up a
proposal in phrases he had read somewhere.
“I came to ask you for your daughter’s hand.”
“It looked to me as if you had both of them around your neck,” Roger
sighed. Then he cleared his throat and said: “What do you say, Polly? Do
we give our consent?—not that it makes any difference.”
Polly sighed. “Sheila’s happiness is the only thing to consider.”
“Ah, Sheila’s happiness!” Roger groaned. “That’s a large order. I
suppose she has told you, Mr. Wyndham, that she is an actress—or is
trying to be?”
“Oh yes, sir,” Winfield answered, feeling like a butler asking for a
position. “I fell in love with her on the stage.”
“Ah, so you are an actor, too.”
“Oh no, sir! I’m a manufacturer, or I expect to be.”
“And is your factory one that can be carried around with you, or does
Sheila intend—”
“Oh, { I’m } going to leave the stage.”
{she’s}
“Hum!” said Roger. “When?”
“Right away, I hope,” said Winfield.
“I’m off the stage now,” said Sheila. “I’ll just not go back.”
“I see,” said Roger, while Polly stared from her idolized child to the
terrifying stranger, and wrung her hands before the appalling explosion
of this dynamite in the quiet evening.
“Well, mummsy,” Sheila cried, taking her mother in her arms, “why don’t
you say something?”
“I—I don’t know what to say,” Polly whimpered.
Roger’s uneasy eyes were attracted by the living-room table, where there
was a comfortable clutter of novels and magazines. A copy of _The
Munsey_ was lying there; it was open, face down. Roger picked it up and
offered the open book to Sheila.
She and Winfield looked down at a full-page portrait of Sheila.
“Had you seen this, Mr.—Mr.—Wingate, is it? It’s a forecast of the
coming season and it says—it says—” He produced his eye-glasses and
read:
“‘The most interesting announcement among the Reben plans is the
statement that Sheila Kemble is to be promoted to stellar honors
in a new play written especially for her. While we deplore the
custom of rushing half-baked young beauties into the electric
letters, an exception must be made in the case of this rising
young artist. She has not only revealed extraordinary
accomplishments and won for herself a great following of
admirers throughout the country, but she has also enjoyed a
double heritage in the gifts of her distinguished forebears, who
are no less personages than’—et cetera, et cetera.”
Sheila and Winfield stared at the page from which Sheila’s public image
beamed quizzically at herself and at the youth who aspired to rob her
“great following” of their darling.
“What about that?” said Roger.
Winfield looked so pitiful to Sheila that she cried, “Well, my ‘great
following’ will have to follow somebody else, for I belong to Bret now.”
“I see,” said Roger. “And when does the rising young star—er—set? When
does the marriage take place?”
“Whenever Bret wants me,” said Sheila, and she added “Ooh!” for he
squeezed her fingers with merciless gratitude.
“Oh, Sheila! Sheila!” said Polly, clutching at her other hand as if she
would hold her little girl back from crossing the stile of womanhood.
Roger hummed several times in the greatest possible befuddlement. At
length he said:
“And what do your parents say, Mr. Winston?—or are they—er—living?”
“Yes, sir, both of them, thank you. They don’t know anything about it
yet, sir.”
“And do you think they will be pleased?”
“When they know Sheila they can’t help loving her.”
“It has happened, I believe,” said Roger, “that parents have not
altogether echoed their children’s enthusiasms. And there are still a
few people who would not consider a popular actress an ideal
daughter-in-law.”
“Oh, they won’t make any trouble!” said Winfield. “They ought to be
proud of—of an alliance with such—er—distinguished forebears as you.”
He tried to include Polly and Roger in one look, and he thought the
tribute rather graceful.
Roger smiled at the bungled compliment and answered, “Well, the
Montagues and the Capulets were both prominent families, but that didn’t
help Romeo and Juliet much.”
Winfield writhed at Roger’s light sarcasm. “It doesn’t matter what they
say. I am of age.”
“So I judge, but have you an income of your own?”
“No, but— Well, I can take care of Sheila, I guess!” He was angry now.
Roger rather liked him for his bluster, but he said, “In any case there
is no especial hurry, I presume.”
To the young lovers there seemed to be the most enormous necessity of
haste to forsake the world and build their own nest in their own tree.
Roger was silent and Polly was silent. Winfield felt called upon to
speak. At last he managed to extort a few words from his embarrassment:
“Anyway, I can count on your consent, can I?”
“Our consent!” laughed Roger. “What have we to say? We’re only the
parents of a young American princess. If Sheila says yes, your next
trouble is your own parents, for you are only an American man.”
“Anyway, you won’t oppose us?” Winfield urged.
“My boy, I would no more oppose Sheila than I would oppose the Twentieth
Century Limited in full flight.”
Sheila pouted. “That’s nice! Now he’ll think I’m something terrible.”
Roger put his arm about his daughter, who was nearly taller than he was.
“My child,” he said, “I think you are the finest woman in the world
except your own mother. And if it would make you happy and keep you
happy I’d cut off my right arm.” Then he kissed her, and his eyes were
more like a sorrowful boy’s than a father’s. There was a lull in the
conversation and he escaped with the words: “Mother, it’s time for the
old folks to go to bed. The young people have a lot to talk over and
we’re in the way. Good night, Mr. Win—my boy, and good luck to
you—though God alone knows good luck when He sees it.”
When the veterans had climbed the stairs to the shelf on which younger
romance had put them, Bret and Sheila resumed that interrupted embrace,
but deliberately and solemnly. It was a serious matter, this getting
married and all.
* * * * *
The next morning brought a flood of sunlight on an infinitely cheerful
ocean and the two lovers’ thoughts flew to each other from their remote
windows like carrier-pigeons.
Sheila was perturbed, and as she watched Winfield approach she thought
that his very motor seemed to be a trifle sullen. Then she ran down to
the piazza to meet him. She carried a letter in her left hand. She waved
him welcome with the other.
As he ran up the walk he took from his pocket a telegram. They vanished
into the house to exchange appropriate salutes, but Pennock was there as
housemaid, and she was giving orders to Roger’s valet, who doubled as
the butler in summer-time.
So they returned to the porch embraceless. This began the morning wrong.
Then Winfield handed Sheila his telegram, a long night letter from his
father, saying that his health was bad and he might have to take a rest.
He added, vigorously:
“You’ve fooled away time enough. Get back on the job; learn your
business and attend to it.”
Winfield shook his head dolefully. “Isn’t that rotten?”
“Mate it with this,” said Sheila, and handed him her letter.
DEAR SHEILA KEMBLE,—Better run in town and see me to-morrow.
I’ve got a great play for you from France. Rehearsals begin
immediately. Trusting your rest has filled you with ambition for
a strenuous season, I am,
Yours faithfully,
HY. REBEN.
This threw Winfield into a panic. “But you promised me—”
“Yes, dear,” she cooed, “and I’ve already written the answer. How’s
this?” She gave him the answer she had worked over for an hour, trying
to make it as business-like as possible:
Letter received regret state owing change plans shall not return
stage this season best wishes.
SHEILA KEMBLE.
Even this did not allay Winfield’s alarm. “Why do you say ‘this
season’?” he demanded. “Are you only marrying me for one season?”
“For all eternity,” she cried, “but I wanted to let poor old Reben down
easy.”
* * * * *
Sheila found that Reben was not so easily let down as stirred up. An
answer to the telegram arrived a few hours later, just in time to spoil
the day:
You gave me word of honor as gentleman you would keep your
contract better look it over again you will report for rehearsal
Monday ten A.M. Odeon Theater.
REBEN.
Winfield stormed at Reben’s language as much as at the situation:
“How dares he use such a tone to you? Are you his servant or are you my
wife?”
“I’m neither, honey,” Sheila said, very meekly. “I’m just the darned old
public’s little white slave.”
“But you don’t belong to the public. You belong to me.”
“But I gave him my word first, honey,” Sheila pleaded. “If it were just
an ordinary contract, I could break it, but we shook hands on it and I
gave him my word as a gentleman. If I broke that I couldn’t be trusted
to keep my word to you, could I, dear?”
It was a puzzling situation for Winfield. How could he demand that the
woman in whose hands he was to put his honor should begin their compact
by a breach of honor? How could he counsel her to be false to one solemn
obligation and expect her to be true to another assumed later?
Reben followed up his telegram by a letter of protest against Sheila’s
bad faith. He referred to the expense he had been at; he had bought a
great foreign play, paying down heavy advance royalties; he had given
large orders to scene-painters, lithographers, and printers, and had
flooded the country with her photographs and his announcements. The cast
was selected, and her defection would mean cruelty to them as well as
disloyalty to him.
She felt helpless. Winfield was helpless. She could only mourn and he
rage. They were like two lovers who find themselves on separate ships.
Winfield went back to his father’s factory in a fume of wrath and grief.
Sheila went to Reben’s factory with the meekness of a mill-hand carrying
a dinner-pail.
* * * * *
Sheila made a poor effort to smile at the stage-door keeper, who lifted
his hat to her and welcomed her as if she were the goddess of spring.
The theater had been lonely all summer, but with the autumn was
burgeoning into vernal activity.
The company in its warm-weather clothes made little spots of color in
the dimly lighted cave of the stage. The first of the members to greet
Sheila was Floyd Eldon.
Eldon seized both of Sheila’s hands and wrung them, and his heart cried
aloud in his soft words: “God bless you, Sheila. We’re to be together
again and I’m to play your lover again. You’ve got to listen to me
telling you eight times a week how much I—”
“Why, Mr. Batterson, how do you do?”
The director—Batterson again—came forward with other troupers, old
friends or strangers. Then Reben called to Sheila from the night beyond
the footlights. She stumbled and groped her way out front to him, and he
scolded her roundly for giving him such a scare.
The director’s voice calling the company together rescued her from
answering Reben’s questions as to the mysterious “change of plans” that
had inspired her telegram.
“I guess you must have been crazy with the heat,” he said.
“Call it that,” said Sheila. And she rejoined the company, trying not to
be either uppish or ’umble in her new quality as the star.
The author of the play was a Parisian plutocrat whose wares had
traversed all the oceans, though he had never ventured across the
English Channel. So he was not present to read the play aloud. Ben
Prior, the adapter, was a meek hack afraid of his own voice, and
Batterson was not inclined to show the company how badly their director
read. His assistant distributed the parts, and the company, clustered in
chairs, read in turn as their cues came.
Each had hefted his own part, and judged it by the number of its pages.
One might have guessed nearly how many pages each had by the vivacity or
the dreariness of his attack.
“Eight sides!” growled old Jaffer as he counted his brochure.
It is a saddening thing to an ambitious actor to realize that his
business for a whole season is to be confined to brief appearances and
unimportant speeches.
People congratulated old Jaffer because he was out of the play after the
first act. But, cynic as he was, he was not glad to feel that he would
be in his street mufti when the second curtain rose. It is pleasant to
play truant, but it is no fun to be turned out of school when everybody
else is in.
Of all the people there the most listless was the one who had the
biggest, bravest rôle, the one round which all the others revolved, the
one to whom all the others “fed” the words that brought forth the witty
or the thrilling lines.
Sheila had to be reminded of her cue again and again. Batterson’s voice
recalled her as from a distance.
It is as strange as anything so usual and immemorial can be, how madly
lovers can love; how much agony they can extract from a brief
separation; what bitter terror they can distil from ordinary events. As
the tormented girl read her lines and later walked through the positions
or stood about in the maddening stupidities of a first rehearsal, she
had actually to battle with herself to keep from screaming aloud:
“I don’t want to act! I don’t want the public to love me! I want only my
Bret!”
The temptation to hurl the part in Reben’s face, to mock the petty
withes of contract and promise, and to fly to her lover, insane as it
was, was a temptation she barely managed to fight off.