it was sheila kemble’s destiny to pass like a magnet through a world largely composed of iron filings, though it was her destiny also to meet a number of silver chums on whom her powers exerted no drag whatever. her father had been greatly troubled by her growth through the various strata of her personality. he had noted with pain that she had a company smile which was not the smile that illumined her face when she was simply happy. he had begun a course of education. he kept taking her down a peg or two, mimicking her, satirizing her. her mother protested.
“let the child alone. it will wear off. she has to go through it, but she’ll molt and take on a new set of feathers in due time.”
“she’s got to,” kemble groaned. “i’d rather have her deformed than affected. if she’s going to be conscious of something, let her be conscious of her faults.”
sheila had been schooled at school as well as at home. with both father and mother earning large sums, the family was prosperous enough to give its only child the most expensive forms of education—and did. in school she tormented and charmed her teachers; she was so endlessly eager for attention. it was true that she always tried to earn it and deserve it, but the effort irritated the instructors, whose ideal for a girl was that she should be as inconspicuous as possible. that was not sheila’s ideal. not at all!
she had soon tired of her classes. she was by nature quick at study. she learned her lessons by a sort of mental photography, as she learned her r?les later. the grind of her lessons irked her, not because she wanted to be out at play like other children, but because she wanted to be in at work. as ambitious young men chafe to run away from school and begin their destinies, so young women are beginning to fret for their own careers.
but sheila’s father and mother were eager for her to stay a baby. polly farren especially was not unwilling to postpone acknowledging herself the mother of a grown-up daughter.
“you must have your childhood,” roger had said.
“but i’ve had it,” sheila declared.
“oh, you have, have you?” her father laughed. “why, you little upstart kid, you’re only a baby.”
sheila protested: “juliet was only thirteen years old when she married romeo, and eleonora duse was only fourteen when she played the part, and here i’m sixteen and i haven’t started yet.”
“help! help!” cried roger, with a sickish smile. “but you must prepare yourself for your career by first educating yourself as a lady.”
this argument had convinced her. she consented to play one more season at miss neely’s school. she came forth more zealous than ever to be an actress. polly and roger had wheedled her along as best they could, tried to interest her in literature, water-colors, needlework, golf, tennis, european travel. but her cry for “work” could not be silenced.
when the autumn drew on they had urged her to try one year more at school, pleaded that there was no opening for her in their company. she was too young, too inexperienced.
she murmured “yes?” with an impudent uptilt of inflection.
she left the house, and came home that afternoon bringing a contract. she handed it to her father with another of those rising inflections, “no?”
he looked at the paper, gulped, called, “polly!”
they looked it over together. the party of the first part was j. j. cassard.
“and who is j. j. cassard?” said polly, trying not to breathe fast. roger growled:
“one of those pacific-coast managers trying to jimmy a way into new york.”
hoping to escape the vital question by attacking the details, roger glanced through the various clauses. it was a splendid contract—for sheila. the hateful “two-weeks’ clause” by which she could be dismissed at a fortnight’s notice was omitted and in its place was an agreement to pay for her costumes and a maid.
“do you mean to say,” kemble blustered, “that cassard handed you a document like that right off the reel?”
“oh no,” perked sheila; “he gave me a regular white-slave mortgage at first.”
“where does she learn such language!” gasped polly.
sheila went on, “but i whipped him out on every point.”
“it looks almost suspicious,” said kemble, and polly protested.
“i was ten years on the stage before i got my modern costumes and a maid.”
“well,” said sheila, as blandly as if she were a traveling saleswoman describing her wares, “cassard said i was pretty, and i reminded him that i had the immense advertising value of the great roger kemble’s name, and i told him i had probably inherited some of the wonderful dramatic ability of polly farren. i told him i might take that for my stage name—farren kemble.”
father and mother cast their eyes up and shook their heads, but they could not help being pleased by the flattery implied and applied.
roger said: “well, if all that is true, we’d better keep it in the family. you’ll go with us.”
“but you said there was no part for me to play.”
“there’s the chambermaid.”
“no, you don’t!” said sheila. “you don’t hide me in any of those ‘did you rings?’ and ‘won’t you sit down, ma’ams?”?’
“we’ll have the author build up the part a little, and there’s a bit in the third act that’s really quite interesting.”
sheila refused flatly. but her mother cried all that night, and her father looked so glum the next morning that she consented to chaperon them for one more year.
she revealed a genuine gift for the stage, and she had a carrying personality. when she entered as the chambermaid and said, “did you ring?” the audience felt a strangely vivid spark of reality at once. she needed nothing to say. she just was. like some of the curiously alive figures in the paintings of the little dutch masters, she was perfectly in and of the picture, and yet she was rounded and complete. she was felt when she entered and missed when she left.
two or three times when her mother fell ill sheila played her part—that of a young widow. she did not look it yet, of course, but there was that same uncanny actuality that had stirred the people who watched her as an infantile ophelia.
seeing that she meant to be a star and was meant to be one, her parents gave her the best of their wisdom, taught her little tricks of make-up, and gesture, and economy of gesture; of emphasis by force and of emphasis by restraint; the art of underlining important words and of seeming not to have memorized her speeches, but to be improvising them from the previous speech or from the situation. they taught her what can be taught of the intricate technique of comedy—waiting for the laugh while seeming to hurry past it; making speed, yet scoring points; the great art of listening; the delicate science of when to move and when not to move, and the tremendous power of a turn of the eyes. and, above all, they hammered into her head the importance of sincerity—sincerity.
“there are hundreds of right ways to read any line,” roger would say, “and only one way that’s wrong—the insincere way. insincerity can be shown as much by exaggeration as by indifference. let your character express what you feel, and the audience will understand you, if it’s only a slow closing of the eyes once or a little shift of the weight. be sincere!”
two seasons later, roger’s manager brought over from europe a well-tried success that suited roger and polly to a t, but included no r?le at all for sheila. she simply could not play the fat old dowager, and she simply would not play the laconic housemaid. the time had come for the family to part.
fathers are always frightened to death of their daughters’ welfares in this risky, woman-trapping world. roger kemble knew well enough what dangers sheila ran. whether they were greater than they would have been in any other walk of life or in the most secluded shelter, he did not know. he knew only that his child’s honor and honesty were infinitely dear to him, and that he could not keep her from running along the primrose path of public admiration. he could not be with her always.
he managed to get sheila an engagement with the production called “a friend in need.” the part was not important, but she could travel with her great-aunt, mrs. vining, who could serve as her guardian and teach her a vast deal about acting as an art and a business. also polly decided to give sheila her own maid, nettie pennock, a slim, prim, grim old spinster whose very presence advertised respectability. pennock had spent most of her life in the theater, and looked as if she had never seen a play. polly said that she “looked like all the hard-shell baptist ministers’ wives in the world rolled into one.”
but pennock was broad-hearted and reticent, and as tolerant as ministers’ wives ought to be. she was efficient as a machine, and as tireless. she could be a tyrant, and her faultfindings were sparse and sharp as drops of vinegar from a cruet. polly was more afraid of them than of all the thumps of the bladder-swatting critics.
yet that frosty face could smile with the sudden sweetness of sunlight on snow, and sheila’s arms about her melted her at once, except when she had done some mischief or malice. and then pennock could be thawed only by a genuine and lengthy penance.
roger urged polly to fill sheila’s ears with good counsel, but polly farren knew how little impression advice makes on those whom no inner instinct impels to do the right thing anyway.
after the usual rehearsals in new york, “a friend in need” had the usual preliminary weeks on the road before it was submitted to new york.
when the time came for sheila to leave home and strike out for herself, it fell to roger to take her to the train. polly was suffering from one of those sick headaches of hers which prostrated her when she was not at work, though they never kept her from giving a sparkling performance. indeed, kemble used to say that if the angel gabriel wanted to raise polly from the grave on judgment morning, all the trumpets of the apocalypse would fail to rouse the late sleeper. but if he murmured “overture!” she would be there in costume with all her make-up on.
on the way to the station with sheila, who was as excited as a boy going to sea, roger was mightily troubled over her. she was indeed going to sea, and in a leaky boat, the frail barge of dreams. he felt that he must speak to her on the importance of being good. the frivolous comedian suffered anguishes of stage-fright, but finally mustered the courage to deliver himself as polonius might have done if it had been ophelia instead of laertes who was setting out for foreign travel.
it was a task to daunt a preachier parent than roger kemble, and it was not easy to talk first principles of behavior to a sophisticated young woman who knew as much about things as sheila did.
roger made a dozen false starts and ended in gulps, till sheila finally said: “what’s the matter, old boy? you’re trying to say something, but i can’t make out what it is. tell me, and i may be able to throw you the line.”
“it’s about you, honey. i’m—that is, polly is—at least your mother and i—well, anyway—”
“yes, and then?” said sheila.
roger got the bit in his teeth and bolted. “the fact is, young woman, you are all the daughters of your father’s and mother’s house. we’re awfully proud of you, of course. and we know you’re going to be a big actress. but we’d rather have you just a good girl than all the stars in the milky way squeezed into one. do you still say your prayers at night, honey?”
“sometimes,” she sighed, “when i’m not too sleepy.”
“well, say ’em in the mornings, then, when you first get up.”
“i’m pretty sleepy, then, too.”
“well, for heaven’s sake, say ’em sometimes.”
“all right, daddy, i promise. was that all?”
“yes! no! that is—you see, sheila, you’re starting out by yourself and you’re awfully pretty, and you’re pretty young, and the men are always after a pretty girl, especially on the stage. and being on the stage, you’re sure to be misjudged, and men will attempt—will say things they wouldn’t dare try on a nice girl elsewhere. and you must be very much on your guard.”
“i’ll try to be, daddy, thank you. don’t you worry.”
“you know you’ll have to go to hotels and wait in railroad stations and take cabs and go about alone at all hours, and you must be twice as cautious as you’d be otherwise.”
“i understand, dear.”
“you see, sheila honey, every woman who is in business or professional life or is an artist or a nurse or a doctor or anything like that has to stand a lot of insult, but so long as she realizes that it really is an insult for a man to be familiar or anything like that, why, she’s all right. but the minute she gets to feeling too free or to acting as if she were a man, or tries to be a good fellow and a bohemian and all that rot—she’s going to give men a wrong impression. and then—well, even a man that is the very decentest sort is likely to—to grow a little too enterprising if a girl seems to encourage him, or even if she doesn’t discourage him right at the jump.”
“i know.”
that little “i know” alarmed him more than ever. he went on with redoubled zeal.
“i want you to remember one thing always, sheila—you’ve got only one life to live and one soul to take care of and only one body to keep it in. and it’s entirely up to you what you make of yourself. education and good breeding and all that sort of thing help, but they don’t guarantee anything. even religion doesn’t always protect a girl; sometimes it seems to make her more emotional and—well, i don’t know what can protect a girl unless it’s a kind of—er—well, a sort of a—conceitedness. call it self-respect if you want to or anything. but it seems to me that if i were a girl the thing that would keep me straightest would be just that. i shouldn’t want to sell myself cheap, or give myself away forever for a few minutes of—excitement, or throw the most precious pearl on earth before any swine of a man. that’s it, sheila—keep yourself precious.”
“i’ll try to, dad. don’t worry!” she murmured, timidly.
such discussions are among the most terrifying of human experiences. roger kemble was trembling as he went on: “some day, you know, you’ll meet the man that belongs to you, and that you belong to. save yourself for him, eh?”
then the modern woman spoke sternly: “seems to me, daddy, that a girl ought to have some better reason for taking care of herself than just because she’s saving herself for some man.”
“of course. you’re quite right, my dear. but i only meant—”
“i understand. i’ll try to save myself for myself. i don’t belong to any man. i belong just to me; and i’m all i’ve got.”
“that’s a much better way to put it. much better.” and he sighed with immense relief.
the idea of the man that should make his daughter his own was an odious idea to the father. it was odious now to the girl, too, for she was not yet ready for that stormy crisis when she would make a pride of humility and a rapture of surrender.
