the play that sheila was surrendered to, “a friend in need,” proved a success and raised its young author to such heights of pride and elation that when his next work, an ambitious drama, was produced, he had a long distance to fall. and fell hard.
young trivett had tossed off “a friend in need” and had won from it the highest praise as a craftsman. he had worked five years on his drama, only to be accused of being “so spoiled by success as to think that the public would endure anything he tossed off.”
but the miserable collapse of his chef-d’?uvre did not even check the triumph of his hors-d’?uvre. “a friend in need” ran on “to capacity” until the summer weather turned the theater into a chafing-dish. then the company was disbanded.
in the early autumn following it was reorganized for a road tour. of the original company only four or five members were re-engaged—sheila, mrs. vining, miss griffen, and tuell.
during the rehearsals sheila had paid little attention to the new people. she was doomed to be in their company for thirty or forty weeks and she was in no hurry to know them. she was gracious enough to those she met, but she made no advances to the others, nor they to her. she had noticed that a new man played the taxicab-driver, but she neither knew nor cared about his name, his aim, or his previous condition of servitude.
the freshmen of leroy university brought him to her attention with a spectacular suddenness in the guise of a hero. the blow he struck in her supposed defense served as an ideal letter of introduction.
as soon as the curtain had fallen on the riot, cutting off the view of the battle between the police and the students, sheila looked about for the hero who had rescued her from heaven alone knew what outrage.
the neglected member of the troupe had leaped into the star r?le, the superstar r?le of a man who wages a battle in a woman’s defense. she ran to him and, seizing his hands, cried:
“how can i ever, ever, ever thank you, mr.—mr.—i’m so excited i can’t remember your name.”
“eldon—floyd eldon, miss kemble.”
“you were wonderful, wonderful!”
“why, thank you, miss kemble. i’m glad if you—if—to have been of service to you is—is—”
the stage-manager broke up the exchange of compliments with a “clear! clear! damn it, the curtain’s going up.” they ran for opposite wings.
when the play was over eldon was not to be found, and sheila went with her aunt to the train. at the hour when winfield was being released from his cell the special sleeping-car that carried the “friend in need” company was three hundred miles or more away and fleeing farther.
when sheila raised the curtain of her berth and looked out upon the reeling landscape the morning was nearly noon. yet when she hobbled down the aisle in unbuttoned shoes and the costume of a woman making a hasty exit from a burning building, there were not many of the troupe awake to observe her. her aunt, however, was among these, for old age was robbing mrs. vining of her lifelong habit of forenoon slumber. like many another of her age, she berated as weak or shiftless what she could no longer enjoy.
but sheila was used to her and her rubber-stamp approval of the past and rubber-stamp reproval of the present. they went into the dining-car together, sheila making the usual theatrical combination of breakfast and lunch. as she took her place at a table she caught sight of her rescuer of the night before.
he was gouging an orange when sheila surprised him with one of her best smiles. his startled spoon shot a geyser of juice into his eye, but he smiled back in spite of that, and made a desperate effort not to wink. sheila noted the stoicism and thought to herself, “a hero, on and off.”
later in the afternoon when she had read such morning papers as were brought aboard the train, and found them deadly dull since there was nothing about her in them, and when she had read into her novel till she discovered the familiar framework of it, and when from sheer boredom she was wishing that it were a matinée day so that she might be at her work, she saw floyd eldon coming down the aisle of the car.
he had sat in the smoking-room until he had wearied of the amusing reminiscences of old jaffer, who was always reminiscent, and of the grim silence of crumb, who was always taciturn, and of the half-smothered groans of tuell, who was always aching somewhere. at length eldon had resolved to be alone, that he might ride herd about the drove of his own thoughts. he made his face ready for a restrained smile that should not betray to sheila in one passing glance all that she meant to him.
to his ecstatic horror she stopped him with a gesture and overwhelmed him by the delightful observation that it was a beautiful day. he freely admitted that it was and would have moved on, but she checked him again to present him to mrs. vining.
mrs. vining was pleased with the distinguished bow he gave her. it was a sort of old-comedy bow. she studied him freely as he turned in response to sheila’s next confusing words:
“i want to thank you again for coming to my rescue from that horrible brute.”
eldon looked as guilty as if she had accused him of being himself the brute he had saved her from. he threw off his disgusting embarrassment with an effort at a careless shrug:
“it was nothing—nothing at all, i am sure.”
“it was wonderful,” sheila insisted. “how powerful you must be to have lifted that monster clear over the apron of the stage into the lap of the orchestra!”
a man never likes to deny his infinite strength, but eldon was honest enough to protest: “i caught him off his balance, i am afraid. and, besides, it comes rather natural to me to slug a man from leroy.”
“yes? why?”
“i am a grantham man myself. i was on our ’varsity eleven a couple of years.”
“oh!” said sheila. “sit down, won’t you?”
she felt that she had managed this rather crassly. it would have been more delicate to express less surprise and to delay the invitation to a later point. but it was too late now. he had already dropped into the place beside her, not noticing until too late that he sat upon a novel and a magazine or two and an embroidery hoop on which she had intended to work. but he was on so many pins and needles that he hardly heeded one more.
college men are increasingly frequent on the stage, but not yet frequent enough to escape a little prestige or a little prejudice, according to the point of view. in sheila’s case eldon gained prestige and a touch of majesty that put her wits to some embarrassment for conversation. it was one thing to be gracious to a starveling actor with a two-line r?le; it was quite another to be gracious to a football hero full of fame and learning.
mrs. vining, however, had played grandes dames too long to look up to anybody. she felt at ease even in the presence of this big third-baseman, or coxswain, or whatever he had been on his football nine. she said, “been on the stage long, mr. eldon?”
eldon grinned meekly, looked up and down the aisle with mock anxiety, and answered: “the stage-manager isn’t listening? this is my first engagement.”
“really?” was the only comment sheila could think of.
after his long silence in the company, and under the warming influence of sheila’s presence, the snows of pent-up reminiscence came down in a flood of confession:
“i don’t really belong on the stage, you know. i haven’t a big enough part to show how bad an actor i really could be if i had the chance. but i set my mind on going on the stage, and go i went.”
“did you find it hard to get a position?”
“well, when i left college and the question of my profession came up, dad and i had several hot-and-heavies. finally he swore that if i didn’t accept a job in his office i need never darken his door again. business of turning out of house. father shaking fist. son exit center, swearing he will never come back again. sound of door slamming heard off.”
sheila still loved life in theatrical terms. “but what did your poor mother do?” she said.
a film seemed to veil eldon’s eyes as he mumbled: “she wasn’t there. she was spared that.” then he gulped down his private grief and went on with his more congenial self-derision: “i left home, feeling like columbus going to discover america. i didn’t expect to star the first year, but i thought i could get some kind of a job. i went to new york and called on all the managers. i was such an ignoramus that i hadn’t heard of the agencies. i got to know several office-boys very well before one of them told me about the employment bureaus. well, you know all about that agency game.”
sheila had been spared the passage through this inferno on her way to the purgatory of apprenticeship. but she had heard enough about it to feel sad for him, and she spared him any allusions to her superior luck. still, she encouraged him to describe his own adventures.
he told of the hardships he encountered and the siege he laid to the theater before he found a breach in its walls to crawl through. constantly he paused to apologize for his garrulity, but sheila urged him on. she had been born within the walls and she knew almost nothing of the struggles that others met except from hearsay. and she had never heard say from just such a man with just such a determination. so she coaxed him on and on with his history, as desdemona persuaded othello to talk. with a greedy ear she devoured up his discourse and made him dilate all his pilgrimage. only, eldon was not a blackmoor, and it was of his defeats and not his victories that he told. which made him perhaps all the more attractive, seeing that he was well born and well made.
he laughed at his own ignorance, and felt none of the pity for himself that sheila felt for him. when she praised his determination, he sneered at himself:
“it was just bull-headed stubbornness. i was ashamed to go back to my dad and eat veal, and so i didn’t eat much of anything for a long while. the only jobs i could get were off the stage, and i held them just long enough to save up for another try. how these actors keep alive i can’t imagine. i nearly starved to death. it wouldn’t have been much of a loss to the stage if i had, but it wasn’t much fun for me. i wore out my clothes and wore out my shoes and my overcoat and my hat. i wore out everything but my common sense. if i’d had any of that i’d have given up.”
mrs. vining moved uneasily. “if you’d had common sense you wouldn’t have tried to get on the stage.”
“auntie!” sheila gasped. but she put up her old hand like a decayed czarina:
“and if you have common sense you’ll never succeed, now that you’re here.”
when this bewildered eldon, she added, with the dignity of a priestess: “acting is an art, not a business; and people come to see artists, not business men. half of the actors are just drummers traveling about; but the real successes are made by geniuses who have charm and individuality and insight and uncommon sense. i think you’re probably just fool enough to succeed. but go on.”
eldon felt both flattered and dismayed by this pronouncement. he began to talk to hide his confusion.
“i’m a fool, all right. whether i’m just the right sort of a fool—well, anyway—my money didn’t last long, and i owed everybody that would trust me for a meal or a room. the office-boys gave me impudence until i wore that out too, and then they treated me like any old bench-warmer in the park. the agents grew sick of the sight of me. they sent me to the managers until they had instructions not to send me again. but still i stuck at it, the lord knows why.
“one day i went the rounds of the agencies as usual. when i came to the last one i was so nauseated with the idiocy of asking the same old grocery-boy’s question, ‘anything to-day?’ i just put my head in at the door, gave one hungry look around, and started away again. the agent—mrs. sanchez, it was—beckoned to me, but i didn’t see; she called after me, but i didn’t hear; she sent an office-boy to bring me back.
“when i squeezed through the crowd in the office it was like being called out of my place in the bread-line to get the last loaf of the day. i felt ashamed of my success and i was afraid that i was going to be asked to take the place of some broadway star who had suddenly fallen ill.
“mrs. sanchez swung open the gate in the rail and said: ‘young man, can you sing?’
“my heart fell to the floor and i stepped on it. i heard myself saying, ‘is caruso sick?’
“mrs. sanchez explained: ‘it’s not so bad as all that. but can you carry a tune?’
“i told her that i used to growl as loud a bass as the rest of them when we sang on the college fence.
“?‘that’s enough,’ said mrs. sanchez. ‘they’re putting on a civil war play and they want a man to be one of a crowd of soldiers who sing at the camp-fire in one of the acts. the part isn’t big enough to pay a singer and there is nothing else to do but get shot and play dead in the battle scene.’
“i told her i thought i could play dead to the satisfaction of any reasonable manager and she gave me a card to the producer.
“then she said, ‘you’ve never been on the stage, have you?’
“i shook my head. she told me to tell the producer that i had just come in from the road with a play that had closed after a six months’ run. i took the card and dashed out of the office so fast i nearly knocked over a poor old thing with a head of hair like a bushel of excelsior. it took me two days to get to the producer, and then he told me that it had been decided not to send the play out, since the theatrical conditions were so bad.”
mrs. vining interpolated, “theatrical conditions are like the weather—always dangerous for people with poor circulation.”
“i went back to the office,” said eldon, “and told mrs. sanchez the situation. the other members of the company had beaten me there. the poor old soul was broken-hearted, and i don’t believe she regretted her lost commissions as much as the disappointment of the actors.
“a lot of people have told me she was heartless. she was always good to me, and if she was a little hard in her manner it was because she would have died if she hadn’t been. agents are like doctors, they’ve got to grow callous or quit. her office was a shop where she bought and sold hopes and heartbreaks, and if she had squandered her sympathy on everybody she wouldn’t have lasted a week. but for some reason or other she made a kind of pet of me.”
mrs. vining murmured, “i rather fancy that she was not the first, and won’t be the last, woman to do that.”
eldon flushed like a young boy who has been told that he is pretty. he realized also that he had been talking about himself to a most unusual extent with most unusual frankness, and he relapsed into silence until sheila urged him on.
it was a stupid sunday afternoon in the train and he was like a traveler telling of strange lands, under the insatiable expectancy of a fair listener. there are few industries easier to persuade a human being toward than the industry of autobiography. eldon described the dreary sahara of idleness that he crossed before his next opportunity appeared.
as a castaway sits in the cabin of a ship that has rescued him and smiles while he recounts the straits he has escaped from, and never dreams of the storms that are gathering in his future skies, so eldon in the pullman car chuckled over the history of his past and fretted not a whit over the miseries he was hurrying to.
the only thing that could have completed his luxury was added to him when he saw that sheila, instead of laughing with him, was staring at him through half-closed eyelids on whose lashes there was more than a suspicion of dew. there was pity in her eyes, but in her words only admiration:
“and you didn’t give up even then!”
“no,” said eldon; “it is mighty hard knocking intelligence into as thick a skull as mine. i went back to the garage where i had worked as a helper. i had learned something about automobiles when i ran the one my father bought me. but i kept nagging the agencies. awful idiot, eh?”
to his great surprise the cynical mrs. vining put in a word of implied approval:
“we are always reading about the splendid perseverance of men who become leading dry-goods merchants of their towns or prominent politicians or great painters, but the actors know as well as anybody what real perseverance is. and nobody gives them credit for being anything but a lot of dissipated loafers.”
sheila was not interested in generalizations. she wanted to know about the immediate young man before her. she was still child enough to feel tremendous suspense over a situation, however well she knew that it must have a happy ending. when she had been littler the story of jack the giant-killer had enjoyed an unbroken run of forty nights in the bedtime repertoire of her mother. and never once had she failed to shiver with delicious fright and suffer anguishes of anxiety for poor jack whenever she heard the ogre’s voice. at the first sound of his leit motiv, “fee, fi, fo, fum—” her little hands would clutch her mother’s arm and her eyes would pop with terror. yet, without losing at all the thrill of the drama, she would correct the least deviation from the sacred text and rebuke the least effort at interpolation.
it was this weird combination of childish credulity, fierce imagination, and exact intelligence that made up her gift of pretending. so long as she could keep that without outgrowing it, as the vast majority do, she would be set apart from the herd as one who could dream with the eyes wide open.
when she looked at eldon she saw him as the ragged, hungry beggar at the stage door. she saw him turned away and she feared that he might die, though she knew that he still lived. there was genuine anxiety in her voice when she demanded, “how on earth did you ever manage to succeed?”
“i haven’t succeeded yet,” said eldon, “or even begun to, but i am still alive. it’s hard to get food and employment in new york, but somehow it’s harder still to starve there. one way or another i kept at work and hounded the managers. and one day i happened in at a manager’s office just as he was firing an actor who thought he had some rights in the world. he snapped me up with an offer of twenty-five dollars a week. if he had offered me a million it wouldn’t have seemed any bigger.”
mrs. vining had listened with unwonted interest and with some difficulty, for sleep had been tugging at her heavy old eyelids. as soon as she heard that eldon had arrived in haven at last she felt no further necessity of attention and fell asleep on the instant.
sheila sighed with relief, too. and the train had purred along contentedly for half a mile before she realized that after all eldon was not with that company, but with this. seeing that her aunt was no longer with them in spirit, she lowered her voice to comment:
“but if you went with the other troupe, what are you doing here?”
“well, you see, i thought i ought to tell mrs. sanchez the good news. i thought she would be glad to hear it, and i was going to offer her the commission for all the work she had done and all the time she had spent on me. she looked disappointed when i told her, and she warned me that the manager was unreliable and the play a gamble. she had just found me a position with a company taking an assured success to the road. it was this play of yours. the part was small and the pay was smaller still, but it was good for forty weeks.
“but i was ambitious, and i told her i would take the other. i wanted to create—that was the big word i used—i wanted to ‘create’ a new part. she told me that the first thing for an actor to do was to connect with a steady job, but i wouldn’t listen to her till finally she happened to mention something that changed my mind.”
he flushed with an excitement that roused sheila’s curiosity. when he did not go on, she said:
“but what was it that changed your mind?”
eldon smiled comfortably, and, emboldened by the long attention of his audience, ventured to murmur the truth: “i had seen you act—in new york—in this play, and i—i thought that you were a wonderful actress, and more than that—the most—the most—well, anyway, mrs. sanchez happened to mention that you would be with this company, so i took the part of the taxicab-driver. but i found i was farther away from you than ever—till—till last night.”
and then eldon was as startled at the sound of his words and their immense import as sheila was. the little word “you” resounded softly like warning torpedoes on a railroad track signaling: “down brakes! danger ahead!”
