The thud of the fist, the grunt of Bret’s effort, the shriek of Sheila,
the clatter of Eldon’s fall, the hubbub of the startled spectators, were
all jumbled.
When Eldon, dazed almost to unconsciousness, gathered himself together
for self-defense and counter attack, the stage was revolving about him.
Instinctively he put up his guard, clenched his right fist, and shifted
clear of the table.
Then his anger flamed through his bewilderment. He realized who had
struck him, and he dimly understood why. A blaze of rage against this
foreigner, this vandal, shot up in his soul, and he advanced on Winfield
with his arm drawn back. But he found Winfield struggling with Batterson
and McNish, who had flung themselves on him, grappling his arms. Eldon
stopped with his fists poised. He could not strike that unprotected
face, though it was gray with hatred of him.
An instant he paused, then unclenched his hand and fell to straightening
his collar and rubbing his stinging flesh. Sheila had run between the
two men in a panic. All her thought was to protect her husband. Her eyes
blazed against Eldon. He saw the look, and it hurt him worse than his
other shame. He laughed bitterly into Bret’s face.
“We’re even now. I struck you when you didn’t expect it because you
didn’t belong on the stage. You don’t belong here now. Get off! Get off
or—God help you!”
This challenge infuriated Bret, and he made such violent effort to reach
Eldon that Batterson, Prior, McNish, and an intensely interested and
hopeful group of stage-hands could hardly smother his struggles. He bent
and wrestled like the withed Samson, and his hatred for Eldon could find
no word bitter enough but “You—you—you actor!”
Eldon laughed at this taunt and answered with equal contempt, “You
thug—you business man!” Then, seeing how Sheila urged Bret away, how
dismayed and frantic she was, he cried in Bret’s face: “You thought you
struck me—but it was your wife you struck in the face!”
Sheila did not thank him for that pity. She silenced him with a glare,
then turned again to her husband, put her arms about his arms, and clung
to them with little fetters that he could not break for fear of hurting
her. She laid her head on his breast and talked to his battling heart:
“Oh, Bret, Bret! honey, my love! Don’t, don’t! I can’t bear it! You’ll
kill me if you fight any more!”
The fights of men and dogs are almost never carried to a finish. One
surrenders or runs or a crowd interferes.
Winfield felt all his strength leave him. His wife’s voice softened him;
the triumph of his registered blow satisfied him to a surprising degree;
the conspicuousness of his position disgusted him. He nodded his head
and his captors let him go.
The reaction and the exhaustion of wrath weakened him so that he could
hardly stand, and Sheila supported him almost as much as he supported
her.
* * * * *
And now Reben began on him. An outsider had invaded the sanctum of his
stage, had attacked one of his people—an actor who had made good.
Winfield had broken up the happy family of success with an omen of
scandal.
Reben denounced him in a livid fury: “Why did you do it? Why? What right
have you to come back here and slug one of my actors? Why? He is a
gentleman! Your wife is a lady! Why should you be—what you are? You
should apologize, you should!”
“Apologize!” Bret sneered, with all loathing in his grin.
Eldon flared at the look, but controlled himself. “He doesn’t owe me any
apology. Let him apologize to his wife, if he has any decency in him.”
He sat down on the table, but stood up again lest he appear weak. Again
Sheila threw him a look of hatred. Then she began to coax Winfield from
the scene, whispering to him pleadingly and patting his arms soothingly:
“Come away, honey. Come away, please. They’re all staring. Don’t fight
any more, please—oh, please, for my sake!”
He suffered her to lead him into the wings and through the labyrinth to
her dressing-room.
* * * * *
And now the stage was like a church at a funeral after the dead has been
taken away. Everybody felt that Sheila was dead to the theater. The look
in her eyes, her failure to rebuke her husband for his outrage on the
company, her failure to resent his attitude toward herself—all these
pointed to a slavish submission. Everybody knew that if Sheila took it
into her head to leave the stage there would be no stopping her.
The curtain went up, disclosing the empty house with all the soul gone
out of it. In the cavernous balconies and the cave of the orchestra the
ushers moved about banging the seats together. They went waist-deep in
the rows, vanishing as they stooped to pick up programs and rubbish.
They were exchanging light persiflage with the charwomen who were
spreading shrouds over the long windrows. The ushers and the
scrub-ladies knew nothing of what had taken place after the curtain
fell. They knew strangely little about theatrical affairs.
They were hardly interested in the groups lingering on the stage in
quiet, after-the-funeral conversation. But the situation was vitally
interesting to the actors and the staff. Without Sheila the play would
be starless. How could it go on? The company would be disbanded, the few
weeks of salary would not have paid for the long rehearsals or the
costumes. The people would be taken back to New York and dumped on the
market again, and at a time when most of the opportunities were gone.
It meant a relapse to poverty for some of them, a postponement of
ambitions and of loves, a further deferment of old bills; it meant
children taken out of good schools, parents cut off from their
allowances; it meant all that the sudden closing of any other factory
means.
The disaster was so unexpected and so outrageous that some of them found
it incredible. They could not believe that Sheila would not come back
and patch up a peace with Reben and Eldon and let the success continue.
Successes were so rare and so hard to make that it was unbelievable that
this tremendous gold-mine should be closed down because of a little
quarrel, a little jealousy, a little rough temper and hot language.
Eldon alone did not believe that Sheila would return. He had loved her
and lost her. He had known her great ambitions, how lofty and beautiful
they had been. He had dreamed of climbing the heights at her side; then
he had learned of her marriage and had seen how completely her art had
ceased to be the big dream of her soul, how completely it had been
shifted to a place secondary to love.
No, Sheila would not make peace. Sheila was dead to this play, and this
play dead without her, and without this play Sheila would die. Of this
he felt solemnly assured.
Therefore when the others expressed their sympathy for the attack he had
endured, or made jokes about it, he did not boast of what he might have
done, or apologize for what he had left undone, or try to laugh it off
or lie it off.
He could think only solemnly of the devastation in an artist’s career
and the deep damnation of her taking off.
Batterson said, “Say, that was a nasty one he handed you.”
Eldon confessed: “Yes, it nearly knocked my head off; but it was coming
to me.”
“Why didn’t you hand him one back?”
“How could I hit him when you held his hands? How could I hit him when
his wife was clinging to him? And what’s a blow? I’ve had worse ones
than that in knock-down and drag-out fights. I’ll get a lot more later,
no doubt. But I couldn’t hit Winfield. He doesn’t understand. Sheila has
trouble enough ahead of her with him. Poor Sheila! She’s the one that
will pay. The rest of us will get other jobs. But Sheila is done for.”
By now the scenery was all folded and stacked against the walls. The
drops were lost in the flies. The furniture and properties were
withdrawn. The bare walls of the naked stage were visible.
The electrician was at the switchboard, throwing off the house lights in
order. They went out like great eyes closing. The theater grew darker
and more forlorn. The stage itself yielded to the night. The footlights
and borders blinked and were gone. There was no light save a little glow
upon a standard set in the center of the apron.
Eldon sighed and went to his dressing-room.