The brand-new couple forgot problems of this and every other sort in the
raptures and supernal contentments of belonging to each other utterly
and forever.
The notifying of their parents was one of the unpleasantest of tasks.
They put it off till the next day. Sheila’s father and mother had
already begun their tour to the Coast and the news found them in the
Middle West.
Sheila telegraphed to them:
Hope my good news wont seem bad news to you Bret and I were
quietly married yesterday please keep it secret both terribly
terribly happy play opens Grand Rapids Monday best love from us
both to you both.
Her good news was sad enough for them. It filled them with forebodings.
That phrase “terribly happy” seemed uncannily appropriate. Between the
acts of their comedy that night they clung to each other and wept,
moaning: “Poor child! The poor child!”
Winfield’s situation was summed up in a telegram to his home.
Happiest man on earth married only woman on earth yesterday
please send your blessings and forgiveness and five hundred
dollars.
Bret’s mother fainted with a little wail and his father’s weak heart
indulged in wild syncopations. When Mrs. Winfield was resuscitated she
lay on a couch, weeping tiny old tears and whimpering:
“The poor boy! The poor boy!”
The father sat bronzed with sick anger. He had built up a big industry
and the son he had reared to carry it after him had turned out a loafer,
a chaser of actresses, and now the worthless dependent on one of them.
Charles Winfield pondered like an old Brutus if it were not his solemn
duty to punish the renegade with disinheritance; to divert his fortune
to nobler channels and turn over his industry to a nephew who was
industrious and loyal to the factory.
But he sent the five hundred dollars. In his day he had eloped with his
own wife and alienated his own parents and hers. But that had been
different. Now his mouth was full of the ashes of his hopes.
Reben was yet to be told. Sheila said that he had troubles enough on his
mind and was in such a state of temper, anyway, that it would be kinder
to him not to tell him. This was not altogether altruism.
She dreaded the storm he would raise and longed for a portable
cyclone-cellar. She knew that he would denounce her for outrageous
dishonor in her treatment of him, and from his point of view there was
no justifying her unfealty. But she felt altogether assured that she had
accomplished a higher duty. In marrying her true love she was fulfilling
her contract with God and Nature and Life, far greater managers than any
Reben.
She had, therefore, for her final rapture the exquisite tang of stolen
sweets. And to the mad completeness of the escapade was added the
hallowing sanction of law and the Church.
It was a honeymoon, indeed, but pitilessly interrupted by the tasks of
departure, and pitifully brief.
* * * * *
The question of whether or not her husband—how she did read that word
“husband”!—should travel on the same train with her to Grand Rapids was
a hard riddle.
Both of them were unready to publish the delirious secret of their
wedding.
There was to be a special sleeping-car for the company. For Sheila as
the star the drawing-room was reserved, while Reben had claimed the
stateroom at the other end of the coach.
To smuggle Bret into her niche would be too perilous. For her to travel
in another car with him was equally impossible. If he went on the same
train he might be recognized in the dining-car. For her to take another
train would not be permitted. A manager has to keep his flock together.
At length they were driven to the appalling hardship of separation for
the journey. Bret would take an earlier train, and arrange for their
sojourn at the quietest hotel in Grand Rapids. She would join him there,
and no one would know of her tryst.
So they agreed, and she saw him off on the noon express. Of all the
topsy-turvy households ever heard of, this was the worst! But they
parted as fiercely as if he were going to the wars.
The company car left at five o’clock in the afternoon, and was due in
Grand Rapids at one the next day. Eldon and Pennock alone knew that the
young star was a young bride. Both of them regarded Sheila with such
woeful reproach that she ordered Pennock to change her face or jump off
the train, and she shut herself away from Eldon in her drawing-room.
But she was soon routed out by Batterson for a reading rehearsal of a
new scene that Prior had concocted. She was so afraid of Eldon’s eyes
and so absent-minded with thoughts of her courier husband that Batterson
thought she had lost her wits.
Twice she called Eldon “Bret” instead of “Ned,” the name of his rôle.
That was how he learned who it was she had married.
Even when she escaped to study the new lines she could not get her mind
on anything but fears for the train that carried her husband.
After dinner Reben called on her for a chat. He alluded to the fact that
he had wired ahead for the best room in the best hotel for the new star.
Sheila was aghast at this complication, which she would have foreseen if
she had ever been either a star or a bride before.
Reben was in a mood of hope. The voyage to new scenes heartened
everybody except Sheila. Reben kept trying to cheer her up. He could
best have cheered her by leaving her. He imputed her distracted manner
to stage-fright. It was everything but that.
That night Sheila knew for the first time what loneliness really means.
She pined in solitude, an early widow.
The train was late in arriving and the company was ordered to report at
the theater in half an hour. The company-manager informed Sheila that
her trunk would be sent to her hotel as soon as possible. She thanked
him curtly, and he growled to Batterson:
“She’s playing the prima donna already.”
She was all befuddled by this new tangle. How was she to smuggle her
trunk from the hotel to her husband’s lodgings, and where were they? He
had arranged to leave a letter at the theater instructing her where they
were to pitch their tent. She went directly to the theater.
She found a corpulent envelope in the mail-box at the stage door. It was
full of mourning for the lost hours and full of enthusiasm over the cozy
nook Bret had discovered in the outer edge of town. He implored her to
make haste.
As she set out to find a telephone and explain to him the delay for
rehearsal, she was called back by Reben to the dark stage where
Batterson and Prior and Eldon were gathered under the glimmer of a few
lights on an iron standard. They were discussing a new bit of business.
Sheila was aflame with impatience, but she could not leave. Before the
council of war was finished the general rehearsal was called—a
distracting ordeal, with the company crowded to the footlights and
struggling to remember lines and cues in the battle-like clamor of
getting the scenery in, making the new drops fast to the ropes and
hoisting them away to the flies. Hammers were pounding, canvases going
up, stage-hands shouting and interrupting.
The rehearsal was vexatious enough in all conscience, but its crudities
were aggravated by the icy realization that this was the final rehearsal
before the production. In a few hours the multitude of empty chairs
would be occupied by the big jury.
Under this strain the actors developed disheartening lapses of memory
that promised complications at night. When the lines had been parroted
over, Reben spoke a few words like a dubious king addressing his troops
before battle. The stage-manager sang out with unwonted comradery:
“Go to it, folks, and good luck!”
* * * * *
Sheila dashed to the stage door, only to be called again by Reben. He
offered to walk to the hotel with her. She dared not refuse. He invited
her to dine with him. She said that she would be dining in her room. In
the lobby of the hotel he had much to say and kept her waiting. He was
trying to cheer up a poor fluttering girl about to go through the fire.
He found her peculiarly ill at ease.
At last she escaped him and flew to her room to telephone Bret. She knew
he must be boiling over by now. Pennock met her with exciting news.
Certain articles of her costume had not arrived as promised. Shopping
must be done at once, since the stores were about to close.
All things must yield to the battle-needs, and Sheila postponed
telephoning Bret; it was the one postponable duty. By the time she had
finished her purchases it was too late to make the trip out to the cozy
nook he had selected. She was bitterly disappointed on his account—and
her own.
She reached the telephone at last, only to learn that he had gone out,
leaving a message that if his wife called up she was to be told to come
to their lodgings at once. But this she could not do. And she could not
find him to explain why.
He found her at last by telephone, and when she described her plight to
him he was furious with disappointment and wrath. He had bought flowers
lavishly and decorated the rooms and the table where they were to have
had peace at last for a while. Nullified hope sickened him.
He could not visit her at the theater during her make-up periods or
between the acts. He had to skulk about during the performance, dodging
Reben, who watched the play from the front and shifted his position from
time to time to get various points of view, and overhear what the people
said.
Numberless mishaps punctuated the opening performance of “The Woman
Pays,” as the play had been relabeled for the sixth time at the eleventh
hour. Lines were forgotten and twisted, and characters called out of
their names.
In the scene where Eldon was to propose to Sheila and she to accept him,
the distraite Sheila, unable to remember a line exactly, gave its
general meaning. Unfortunately she used a phrase that was one of Eldon’s
cues later on. He answered it mechanically as he had been rehearsed, and
then gave Sheila the right cue for the wrong scene. Her memory went on
from there and she heard herself accepting Eldon before he had proposed.
He realized the blunder at the same time.
They paused, stared, hesitated, wondering how to get back to the
starting-point, and improvised desperately while the prompter stood
helpless in the wings, not knowing where to throw what line. Reben swore
silently and perspired. The audience blamed itself for its bewilderment.
But even amid such confusion Sheila was fascinating. There was no doubt
of that. When she appeared the spectators sat forward, the whole face of
the house beamed and smiled “welcome” with instant hospitality. Reben
recognized the mysterious power and told Starr Coleman and the
house-manager that Kemble was a gold-mine.
Bret felt his heart go out to the brave, pretty thing she was up there,
sparkling and glowing and making people happy. He was proud that she
belonged to him. He felt sorry for the public because it had to lose
her. But he was not the public’s keeper. He was glad he had made her cut
out that embrace with Eldon—both of the embraces.
The last curtain fell just before the lovers moved into each other’s
open arms. This was the “artistic” effect that Sheila had persuaded
Reben to try. Even Bret felt a lurch of disappointment in the audience.
There was applause, but the rising curtain disclosed the actors bowing.
There was something wanting. Bret would have regretted it himself if he
had not been the husband of the star.
He was aching with impatience to see her and tell her how wonderful she
was. He did not dare go back on the stage, lest his presence in Grand
Rapids should require explaining. He must wait in the alley—he, the
owner of the star, must wait in the alley!
He hated the humiliation of his position, and thanked Heaven that after
this season Sheila would be at home with him. He hoped that it would not
take her long to slip into her street clothes.
He was the more eager to see her as he had prepared a little banquet in
their rooms. In his over-abundant leisure he had bought a chafing-dish
and the other things necessary to a supper. Everything was set out,
ready. He chuckled as he trudged up and down the alley and pictured
Sheila’s delight, and the cozy housewifeliness of her as she should
light the lamp and stir the chafing-dish. They would begin very light
housekeeping at once, with never a servant to mar their communion.
But Sheila did not come. None of the company emerged from the stage
door. It was long after twelve and nobody had appeared. He did not know
that the company had been held after the performance for criticism.
Aligned in all its fatigue and after-slump, it waited to be harangued by
Reben while the “grips” whisked away the scenery. Reben read the copious
notes he had made. He spared no one. Every member in turn was rebuked
for something, and he carefully refrained from any words of approval
lest the company should become conceited.
Reben believed in lashing his horses to their tasks. Others believe
otherwise and succeed as well, but Reben was known as a “slave-driver.”
He paid good prices for his slaves and it was a distinction to belong to
him; but he worked them hard.
Batterson and Prior had also made notes on the performance and the
dismal actors received spankings one after another. Sheila was not
overlooked. Rather she was subjected to extra severity because she
carried the success or failure on her young shoulders.
As usual, the first performance found the play too long. The first rough
cuts were announced and a rehearsal called for the next morning at ten.
It was half past twelve when the forlorn and worn-out players were
permitted to slink off to their dressing-rooms.
Sheila knew that her poor Bret must have been posting the alley outside
like a caged hyena. She was so tired and dejected that she hardly cared.
She sent Pennock out to explain. Pennock could not find him. She did not
look long. She did not like him. When at length Sheila was dressed for
the street she found Reben waiting for her with the news that he had
ordered a little supper in a private room at the hotel, so that she and
Batterson, Prior and Eldon and the company-manager and the press agent,
Starr Coleman, and the house-manager, might discuss the play while it
was fresh in their minds.
Sheila had never sat on one of these inquests before, and she had not
foreseen the call to this one. Such conferences are as necessary in the
theater as a meeting of generals after a hard day’s battle. Long after
the critics have turned in their diatribes or eulogies and gone home to
bed, the captains of the drama are comparing notes, quoting what the
audience has said, searching out flaws and discussing them, often with
more asperity than the roughest critic reveals.
* * * * *
In these anxious night-watches the fate of the new play may be settled,
and advance, retreat, or surrender decided upon.
Sheila, thinking of her poor husband, asked Reben to excuse her from the
conference.
His look of amazement and his sharp “Why?” found her without any
available excuse. She drearily consented and was led along.
During and after the cold supper everybody had much to say except
Sheila. Endless discussions arose on minutely unimportant points or upon
great vague principles of the drama and of public appeal. At three
o’clock Sheila began to doze and wake in short agonies. There was a hint
of daybreak in the sky when the meeting broke up. She was too sleepy to
care much whether she lived or died or had a husband or had just lost
one. She made a somnambulistic effort to search for Bret, but Reben and
the others had adjourned to the hotel lobby for further debate and she
dared not challenge their curiosity.
She went to the room the manager had reserved for her and slept there
like a Juliet on her tomb.