eldon resumed the livery of the taxicab-driver and spoke his two lines each night with his accustomed grace, and received his accustomed tribute of silence. he arrived on the stage just before his cue, and he went to his room just after his exit.
he avoided sheila, and she, feeling repulsed, turned her attention from him. friends of her father and mother and friends of her school days besieged her with entertainment. people who took pride in saying they knew somebody on the stage sought introductions. rich or handsome young men were presented to her at every turn. they poured their praises and their prayers into her pretty ears, but got no receipt for them nor any merchandise of favor. she was not quite out of the hilarious stage of girlhood. she said with more philosophy than she realized that she “had no use for men.” but they were all the more excited by her evasive charms. her prettiness was ripening into beauty and the glow of youth from within gave her a more shining aureole than even the ingenuities of stage make-up and lighting. homes of wealth were open to her and her growing clientèle frequented the theater. miss griffen was voted common, and left to the adulation of the fast young men.
the traveling-manager of the company was not slow to notice this. he saw that sheila had not only the rare gifts of dramatic instinct and appeal, but that she had the power of attracting the approval of distinguished people as well as of the general. men of all ages delighted in her; and this was still more important—women of all ages liked her, paid to see her. women who gave great receptions in brand-new palaces bought up all the boxes or several rows in the orchestra in honor of sheila kemble. school-girls clambered to the balcony and shop-girls to the gallery to see sheila kemble.
the listening manager heard the outgoing voices again and again saying such things as, “it’s the third time i’ve seen this. it’s not much of a play, but sheila kemble—isn’t she sweet?”
the company-manager and the house-manager and the press agent all wrote to reben, the manager-in-chief:
“keep your eye on kemble. she’s got draught. she makes ’em come again.”
and reben, who had made himself a plutocrat with twenty companies on the road, and a dozen theaters, owned or leased—reben who had grown rich by studying his public, planned to make another fortune by exploiting sheila kemble. he kept the secret to himself, but he set on foot a still hunt for the play that should make her while she seemed to be making it. he schemed how to get her signature to a five-year contract without exciting her cupidity to a duel with his own. he gave orders to play her up gradually in the publicity. the thoughts of managers are long, long thoughts.
he gave out an interview to the effect that what the public wanted was “youth—youth, that beautiful flower which is the dearest memory of the old, and the golden delight of the young.”
his chief publicity man, starr coleman, a reformed dramatic critic, wrote the interview for reben, explained it to him, and was proud of it with the vicarious pride of those strange scribes whose lives are devoted to getting for others what they deny to themselves.
reben had told coleman to play up strong his belief in the american dramatist, particularly the young dramatist. reben always did this just before he set out on his annual european shopping-tour among the foreign play-bazars. over there he could inspect the finished products of expert craftsmen; he could see their machines in operation, in lieu of buying pigs in pokes from ambitious yankees who learned their trade at the managers’ expense.
this widely copied “youth” interview brought down on reben’s play-bureau a deluge of american manuscripts, almost all of them devoid of theme or novelty, redolent of no passion except the passion for writing a play, and all of them crude in workmanship. reben kept a play-reader—or at least a play-rejector, and paid him a moderate salary to glance over submitted manuscripts so that reben could make a bluff at having read them before he returned them. this timid person surprised reben one day by saying:
“there’s a play here with a kind of an idea in it. it’s hopeless as it stands, of course, but it might be worked over a little. it’s written by a man named vicksburg, or vickery, or something like that. funny thing—he suggests that sheila kemble would be the ideal woman for the principal part. and, do you know, i’ve been thinking she has the makings of a star some day. had you ever thought of that?”
“no,” said reben, craftily.
“well, i believe she’ll bear watching.”
in after-years this play-returner used to say, “i put reben on to the idea that there was star material in kemble, before he ever thought of it himself.”
but long before either of them thought of sheila kemble as a star, that destiny had been dreamed and planned for her by sheila kemble.
frivolous as she appeared on the stage and off, her pretty head was full of sonorous ambitions. that head was not turned by the whirlwinds of adulation, or drugged by the bouquets of flattery, because it was full of self-criticism. she was struggling for expressions that she could not get; she was groping, listening, studying, trying, discarding, replacing.
she thought she was free from any nonsense of love. nonsense should not thwart her progress and make a fool of her, as it had of so many others. it should not interrupt her career or ruin it as it had so many others. she would make friends with men, oh yes. they were so much more sensible, as a rule, than women, except when they grew sentimental. and that was a mere form of preliminary sparring with most of them. once a girl made a fellow understand that she was not interested in spoony nonsense, he became himself and gave his mind a chance. and all the while nature was rendering her more ready to command love from without, less ready to withstand love from within. she was becoming more and more of an actress. but still faster and still more was she becoming a woman.
while sheila was drafting herself a future, eldon was gnashing his teeth in a pillory of inaction. he could make no step forward and he could not back out. he had taken cheap and nasty lodgings in the same boarding-house with vincent tuell, who added to his depression by his constant distress. tuell could not sleep nights or days; he filled eldon’s ears with endless denunciations of the stage and with cynical advice to chuck it while he could. eldon would probably have taken tuell’s advice if tuell had not urged it so tyrannically. in self-defense eldon would protest:
“why don’t you leave it yourself, man? you ought to be in the hospital or at home being nursed.”
and tuell would snarl: “oh, i’d chuck it quick enough if i could. but i’ve got no other trade, and there’s the pair of kiddies in school—and the wife. she’s sick, too, and i’m here. god! what a business! it wouldn’t be so bad if i were getting anywhere except older. but i’ve got a rotten part and i’m rotten in it. every night i have to breeze in and breeze out and fight like the devil to keep from dying on the job. and never a laugh do i get. it’s one of those parts that reads funny and rehearses the company into convulsions and then plays like a column from the telephone-book. i’ve done everything i could. i put in all the old sure-fire business. i never lie down. i trip over rugs, i make funny faces, i wear funny clothes, but does anybody smile?—nagh! i can’t even fool the critics. i haven’t had a clipping i could send home to the wife since i left the big town.”
eldon had been as puzzled as tuell was. he had watched the expert actor using an encyclopedia of tricks, and never achieving success. tuell usually came off dripping with sweat. the moment he reached the wings his grin fell from him like a cheap comic mask over a tragic grimace of real pain and despair. in addition to his mental distress, his physical torment was incessant. in his boarding-house tuell gave himself up to lamentations without end. eldon begged him to see a doctor, but tuell did not believe in doctors.
“they always want to get their knives into you,” he would growl. “they’re worse than the critics.”
one day eldon made the acquaintance of a young physician named edie, who had recently hung a sign in the front window and used the parlor as an office during certain morning hours. patients came rarely, and the physician berated his profession as violently as tuell his. eldon persuaded the doctor to employ some of his leisure in examining tuell. he persuaded tuell to submit, and the doctor’s verdict came without hesitation or delicacy:
“appendicitis, old man. the quicker you’re operated on the better for you.”
“what did i tell you?” tuell snarled. “didn’t i say they were like critics? their only interest in you is to knife you.”
the young doctor laughed. “perhaps the critics turn up the truth now and then, too.”
but tuell answered, bitterly: “well, i’ve got to stand them. i haven’t got to stand for you other butchers.”
eldon apologized for his friend’s rudeness, but the doctor took no offense: “it’s his pain that’s talking,” he said. “he’s a sick man. he doesn’t know how sick he is.”
one matinée day tuell was like a hyena in the wings. he swore even at batterson. on the stage he was more violently merry than ever. after the performance eldon looked into his dressing-room and asked him to go to dinner with him. tuell refused gruffly. he would not eat to-day. he would not take off his make-up. the sweat was everywhere about his greasy face. his jaw hung down and he panted like a sick dog. eldon offered to bring him in some food—sandwiches or something. tuell winced with nausea at the mention. then an anguish twisted through him like a great steel gimlet. he groaned, unashamed. eldon could only watch in ignorant helplessness. when the spasm was over he said:
“you’ve got to have a doctor, old man.”
“i guess so,” tuell sighed. “get that young fellow, edie. he won’t rob me much. and he’ll wait for his fee.”
eldon made all haste to fetch edie from the boarding-house. they returned to find tuell on the floor of his room, writhing and moaning, unheeded in the deserted theater. the doctor gave eldon a telephone number and told him to demand an ambulance at once.
tuell heard the word, and broke out in such fierce protest that the doctor countermanded the order.
“i can’t go to any hospital now,” tuell raged. “haven’t you any sense? you know there’s an evening performance. get me through to-night, and i can rest all day to-morrow. i’ve got to play to-night. i’ve got to! there’s no understudy ready.”
he played. they set a chair for him in the wings and the physician waited there for him, piercing his skin with pain-deadening drugs every time he left the stage. there was sympathy enough from the company. even batterson was gentle, his fierce eyes fiercer with the cruelty of the situation. the house was packed, and “ringing down on capacity” is not done.
tuell sat in a stupor, breathing hard like a groggy prize-fighter. but whenever his cue came it woke him as if a ringside gong had shrilled. he flung off his suffering and marched out to his punishment. only, to-night, somehow, he lacked his usual speed. the suffering and the bromides dulled him so that in place of dashing on the stage he sauntered on; in place of slamming his lines back he just uttered them.
and somehow the laughter came that had never come before—the laughter the author had imagined and had won from the company at the first reading from the script.
from the wings they could see tuell’s knuckles whiten where he clung to a chair to keep from falling.
the audience loved tuell to-night, never suspected his anguishes, and waited for him, laughed when he appeared. for his final exit he had always stumbled off, whooping with stage laughter. it had always resounded unaccompanied. to-night he was so spent that he was capable only of a dry little chuckle. to his ears it was the old uproar. to the audience it was the delicious giggle of this spring’s wind in last year’s leaves. it tickled the multitude and all those united titters made a thunder.
tuell staggered past the dead-line of the wings and fell forward into eldon’s arms, whispering:
“i got ’em that time. damn ’em, i got ’em at last.”
eldon helped him to his chair, helped lift him in his chair and carry him to the ambulance. tuell didn’t know whither they were taking him. he clawed at eldon’s arm and muttered:
“i must write to the wife and tell her how i killed ’em to-night. and i’ve got the trick now. i’ve just found the secret—just to-night. of course there wouldn’t be a critic there. oh no, of course not.”
but there was a critic there.
