The car was a handsomer car than their own, and in the quietest taste.
Polly had somewhat softened the truth in the matter of its tender. Roger
had protested mightily against offering the car to the Winfields, but
Sheila and Polly had taken it away from him.
He had resisted their scheme for the dinner with even greater vigor, but
Polly mocked him and gave her orders. Seeing himself committed to the
plot, he said, “Well, if we’ve got to have this try-out performance
we’ll make a production of it with complete change of costumes,
calciums, and extra people.”
Polly and Roger did not approve of Bret any more than the Winfields
approved of Sheila; but they resolved to jolt the Philistines while they
were at it.
After a day in the Kemble limousine the Winfields picked up Sheila, who
had been spending an hour on her toilet, though she apologized for the
wreckage of rehearsals.
She dazzled both of them with her beauty. She did most of the talking,
but permitted restful silences for meditation. The Winfields were as shy
and as staring as children. It was the first time they had been so close
to an actress.
The Kemble cottage on Long Island was a pleasant enough structure at any
time, but at night under a flattering moon it looked twice its
importance.
The dinner was elaborate and the guests impressive. Roger apologized for
the presence of a famous millionaire, Tilton, his wife, and their
visitor Lady Braithwaite. He said that they had been invited before,
though it would have been more accurate to say that they had been
implored at the last moment, and had consented because Roger said he
needed them.
Sheila never acted harder. She never suffered worse from stage-fright
and never concealed it more completely. She suffered both as author and
as actor. Her little comedy was, like Hamlet’s brief tragedy, produced
for an ulterior purpose. Which it accomplished.
The Kembles had succeeded in shifting the burden of discomfort to their
observers. The Winfields felt hopelessly small town. Polly and Sheila
were exquisitely gracious, and Lady Braithwaite kept my-dearing Polly,
while the millionaire called Kemble by his first name. Roger set old
Winfield roaring over his stories and, as if quite casually, he let fall
occasional allusions to the prosperity of prosperous stage people. He
referred to the fact that a certain actress, “poor Nina Fielding,” had
“had a bad season, and cleared only sixty thousand dollars.”
Tilton exclaimed, “Impossible! that’s equivalent to six per cent, on a
million dollars.”
Roger shrugged his shoulders. “Well, there are others that make more,
and if Nina is worth a million, Sheila is worth two of her. And she’ll
prove it, too. And why shouldn’t actors get rich? They do the world as
much good as your manufacturers of shoes and electricity and
automobiles. Why shouldn’t they make as much money?”
Tilton said: “Well, perhaps they should, but they haven’t done so till
recently. It’s a big change from the time when you actors were rated as
beggars and vagabonds; you’ll admit that much, won’t you?”
He had touched Kemble on a sensitive spot, a subject that he had fumed
over and studied. Roger was always ready to deliver a lecture on the
topic. He blustered now:
“That old idiocy! Do you believe it, too? Don’t you know that the law
that branded actors as vagrants referred only to actors without a
license and not enrolled in an authorized company? At that very time the
chief noblemen had their own troupes and the actors were entertained
royally in castles and palaces.
“For a time the monks and nuns used to give plays, and there was a
female playwright who was a nun in the tenth century. The Church
sometimes fought against the theater during the dark ages, but so it
fought against sculpture and painting the human form. Actors were
forbidden Christian burial once and were treated as outlaws, but so were
the Catholics in Protestant countries and Protestants in Catholic
regions, and Presbyterians and Episcopalians in each other’s realms, and
Quakers in Boston.
“The Puritans did not believe in the theater any more than the theater
believed in the Puritans, and there was a period in England when plays
had to be given secretly in private houses. But what does that prove?
Religious services had to be given the same way; and political meetings.
“There are plenty of people who hate the theater to-day. It always will
have enemies—like the other sciences and arts.
“But one thing is sure. Wherever actors have been permitted at all, they
have always gone with the best people. Several English actors have been
knighted recently, but that’s nothing new. The actor Roscius was
knighted at Rome in 50 B.C. In Greece they carved the successful actors’
names in stone.
“We made big money then, too. The actor Æsopus—Cicero’s friend—left
his good-for-nothing son so much money that the cub dissolved a pearl in
vinegar and drank it. He tossed off what would amount, in our money, to
a forty-thousand-dollar cocktail.
“In the Roman Empire actors like Paris stood so high at court that
Juvenal said, ‘If you want to get the royal favor ask an actor, not a
lord.’ When Josephus went to Rome to plead for the lives of some
priests, a Jewish actor named Aliturus introduced him to Nero and his
empress and got him his petition. It seems funny to think of a Jewish
actor at the court of Nero. The Roman emperor Justinian married an
actress and put her on the throne beside him.
“In Italy after the Renaissance one of the actresses—I forget her
name—was so much honored that when she came to a town she was received
with a salute of cannon.
“Louis XIV. loved Molière, stood godfather to his child, and suggested a
scene for one of his plays. One of Napoleon’s few intimate friends was
the actor Talma.
“David Garrick was in high favor at court and he sold his interest in
Drury Lane, when he retired, for one hundred and seventy-five thousand
dollars. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
“And if I may speak of my own ancestors, Mrs. Siddons was one of the
most highly esteemed and irreproachable women of her time. Sir Joshua
Reynolds was proud to paint her as the Tragic Muse and old Dr. Samuel
Johnson wrote his autograph on the canvas along the edge of her robe
because he said he wanted his name to go down to posterity on the hem of
her garment.
“Her brother, John Philip Kemble, was so successful that he bought a
sixth share in Covent Garden for over one hundred thousand dollars. When
it burned down it would have ruined him if the Duke of Northumberland
had not made him a loan of fifty thousand dollars. And later he refused
repayment.
“Take an actress of our own time, Sarah Bernhardt. What woman in human
history has had more honor, or made more money? Or take—”
Polly felt it time to intervene. “For Heaven’s sake, ring down! You’re
not at Chautauqua, you know.”
Kemble started and blinked like a sleep-walker abruptly wakened. “I beg
your pardon,” he said. “I was riding my hobby and he ran away.”
The Winfields were plentifully impressed and Mrs. Winfield completely
overwhelmed when Lady Braithwaite said:
“He’s quite right, my dear. There’s no question of the social position
of the stage. So many actresses have married into our peerage that you
can’t tell which is the annex of which; and no end of young peers are
going on the stage. They can’t act, but it keeps them out of mischief in
a way. And I can’t see that stage-marriages are any less permanent than
the others. Can you? I mean to say, I’ve known most charming cases. My
poor friend the Duchess of Stonehenge had a son who was a hopeless
little cad and rotter—and he married an actress—you know the one I
mean—from the Halls she was, too. And you know she’s made a man of
him—a family man, too, she has, really! And she’s the most devoted of
mothers. Really she is!”
Somehow the character Lady Braithwaite gave the stage made more
impression on Mrs. Winfield than all of Roger’s history.
On the long, late ride back to their hotel the old couple were meek,
quite whipped-out. They had come to redeem an actress from perdition or
bribe her not to drag their son to her own level; they returned with
their ears full of stage glories and a bewildered feeling that an
alliance with the Kemble family would be the making of them.
As the train bore them homeward, however, their old prejudices resumed
sway. They began to feel resentful. If Sheila had been more lowly,
suppliant, and helpless they might have stooped to her. But a
daughter-in-law who could earn over fifty thousand dollars a year was a
dangerous thing about the house. Sheila’s scenario had worked just a
little too well.
Young Winfield met his parents at the train and searched their faces
eagerly. They looked guilty and almost pouting. They said nothing till
they were in their own car—it looked shabby after the Kemble turnout.
Then Bret pleaded:
“Well, what do you think of Sheila?”
“She’s very nice,” said his mother, stingily.
“Is that all? She wrote me that you were wonderful. She said my father
was one of the most distinguished-looking men she ever saw, and as for
my mother, she was simply beautiful, so fashionable and aristocratic—an
angel, she called you, mother.”
One may see through these things, but they can’t be resisted. As Roger
Kemble used to put it: “Say what you will, a bouquet beats a brickbat
for comfort no matter what direction it comes from.”
The Winfields blushed with pride and warmed over their comments on
Sheila. In fact, they went so far as to say that she would never give up
the fame and fortune and admiration that were waiting for her, just to
marry a common manufacturer’s son.
This threw the fear of love into Bret and made him more than ever
frantic to see Sheila and be reassured or put out of his misery. There
was no restraining him. His father protested that he was needed at home.
But it was mating-season with the young man, and parents were only in
his way, as their parents had been in theirs.