sheila was passing through the meanest phase of play production when the first enthusiasms are gone and the nagging mechanics of position, intonation, and speed are
wearing away the nerves: when those wrenches and inconsistencies of plot and character that are inevitably present in so artificial a structure as a play begin to
stick out like broken bones; when scenery and property and costumes are turning up late and wrong; and when the first audience begins to loom nearer and nearer as a
tidal wave toward which a ship is hurried all unready and aquiver to its safety or to disaster.
at such a time sheila found the presence of winfield a cool shelter in sahara sands. he was an outsider; he was real; he loved her; he didn’t want her to be an
actress; he didn’t want her to work; he wanted her to rest in his arms. his very angers and misunderstandings all sprang from his love of herself.
yet only a few days and she must leave him. the most hateful part of the play was still to come—the process of “trying it on the dog”—on a series of “dog-towns,”
where the play would be produced before small and timid audiences afraid to commit themselves either to amusement or emotion before the piece had a metropolitan
verdict passed upon it.
it was a commonplace that the test was uncertain, yet what other test was possible? there was too much danger in throwing the piece on “cold” before the new york
death-watch of the first night. that would be to hazard a great investment on the toss of a coin.
sheila was cowering before the terrors that faced her. the difficulties came rushing at her one after another. she was only a young girl, after all, and she had swum
out too far. winfield was her sole rescuer from the world. the others kept driving her farther and farther out to sea. he would bring her to land.
the thought of separating from him for a whole theatrical season grew intolerable. fatigue and discouragement preyed on her reserve of strength. fear of the public
swept her with flashes of cold sweat. she could not sleep; herds of nightmares stampeded across her lonely bed. she saw herself stricken with forgetfulness, with
aphasia; she saw the audiences hooting at her; she read the most venomous criticism; she saw herself in train wrecks and theater fires. she saw the toppling scenery
crushing her, or weight-bags dropping on her from the flies.
the production was heavy and complicated and reben believed in many scenery rehearsals. there were endless periods of waiting for stage carpenters to repair mistakes,
for property-men to provide important articles omitted from the property plot. the big set came in with the stairway on the wrong side. almost the whole business of
the act had to be reversed and learned over again. the last-act scene arrived in a color that made sheila’s prettiest costume hideous. she must have a new gown or the
scene must be repainted. a new gown was decided on; this detail meant hours more of fittings at the dressmaker’s.
the final rehearsals were merciless. sheila left bret at the stage door at ten o’clock one morning and did not put her head out of the theater till three o’clock the
next morning. and five hours later she must stand for costume photographs in a broiling gallery.
reben, utterly discouraged by the look of the play in its setting, feared to bring it into new york even after the two weeks of trial performances he had scheduled. an
opportunity to get into chicago turned up, and he canceled his other bookings. sheila was liked in chicago and he determined to make for there. the first performance
was shifted from red bank, new jersey, to grand rapids, michigan.
sheila was in dismay and bret grew unmanageable. the only excuse for the excitement of both was the fact that lovers have always been the same. romeo and juliet would
not wait for romeo to come back from banishment. they had to be married secretly at once. the world has always had its gretna greens for frantic couples.
so this frantic couple—not content with all its other torments—must inflict mutual torment. bret loved sheila so bitterly that he could not endure the ordeal she was
undergoing. the wearier and more harried she grew, the more he wearied and harrowed her with his doubts, his demands, his fears of losing her. he was so jealous of her
ambition that he made a crime of it.
he looked at her with farewell in his eyes and shook his head as over her grave and groaned: “i’m going to lose you, sheila. you’re not for me.”
this frightened her. she was even less willing to lose him than he her. when she demanded why he should say such things he explained that if she left him now he would
never catch up with her again. her career was too much for him, and her loss was more than he could bear.
she mothered him with eyes of such devoted pity that he said: “don’t stare at me like that. you look a hundred and fifty years old.”
she felt so. she was his nurse and his medicine, and she was at that epoch of her soul when her function was to make a gift of herself.
when he sighed, “i wanted you to be my wife” it was the “my” that thrilled her by its very selfishness; it was the past tense of the verb that alarmed her.
“you wanted me to be!” she gasped. “don’t you want me any more?”
“god knows there’s nothing else i want in the world. but i can’t have you. my mother said that i couldn’t get you; she said that your ambition and the big money
ahead of you would keep you from giving yourself to me.”
the primeval feud between a man’s mother and his wife surged up in her. she said, less in irony than she realized: “oh, she said that, did she? well, then, i’ll
marry you just for spite.”
“if you only would, then i’d feel sure of you. i’d have no more fears.”
“all right. i’ll marry you.”
“when?”
“whenever you say.”
“now?”
“this minute.”
it was more like a bet than a proposal. he seized it.
“i’ll take you.”
they had snapped their wager at each other almost with hostility. they glared defiantly together; then their eyes softened. laughter gurgled in their throats. his
hands shot across the table; she put hers in them, in spite of the waiters.
a fierce impulse to make certain of possession caught them to their feet. he paid his bill standing up, and would not wait for change. they found a jewelry-shop and
bought the ring. they took the subway to city hall; a taxicab would be too slow.
there was no difficulty about the license. every facility is offered to those who take the first plunge into marriage. the ascent into paradise is as easy as the
descent into avernus. it is the getting back to earth that is hard in both cases.
“shall we be married here in the city hall?” said the licentiate. “it’s quicker.”
“i—i had rather hoped to be married in church,” sheila pouted. “but whatever you say—”
“it will make you late to rehearsal,” he said. he was very indulgent to her career now that he was sure of her.
“who cares?” she murmured. “let’s go to the little church around the corner.”
and so they did, and waited their turn at the busy altar.
then there was a furious scurry back to the theater. mrs. winfield kissed her husband good-by and dashed into the stage door to take her scolding. but mr. winfield was
laughing as he rode away to arrange for their lodging for the remaining two days. also his wife had made him promise to break the news to pennock. her father and
mother were traveling now in the mid-west.
if bret had known pennock he might not have promised so glibly.
when pennock finished with winfield there was nothing further to say in his offense. she told him he was a monstrous brute and sheila was a little fool to trust him.
she declared that he had blighted the happiness of the best girl in the world, and ruined her career just as it was beginning. then pennock locked him out and went to
packing sheila’s things. she wept all over the child’s clothes as if sheila were buried already. then she took to her bed and cried her pillow soppy.
sheila, all braced for a tirade from batterson for her truancy, found that she had not been missed. the carpenters had the scenery spread on the floor of the stage
like sails blown over, and the theater was a boiler-factory of noise. shortly after her appearance batterson called the company into the lobby for rehearsal. he took
up the act at the place where they had stopped in the forenoon—a point at which eldon caught sheila’s hands in his and lifted them to his lips.
now, as eldon took those two beloved palms in his and bent his gaze on her fingers it fell on sheila’s shining new wedding-ring. the circlet caught his eye; he
studied it with vague surprise.
“a new ring?” he whispered, casually, not realizing its significance.
sheila blushed so ruddily and snatched her hand away with such guilt that he understood. he groaned, “my god, no!”
“i beg you!” she whispered.
“what’s that?” said batterson, who had been speaking to prior.
“i lost the line,” said eldon, looking as if he had lost his life. batterson flung it to him angrily.
there was nothing for sheila to do but throw herself on eldon’s mercy at the first moment when she could steal a word with him alone.
he did not say, “you had no mercy on me.”
she knew it. it was more eloquent unsaid. he was a gallant gentleman, and sealed away his hopes of sheila in a tomb.
at dinner sheila told bret about the incident, and he was secure enough in the stronghold of her possession to recognize the chivalry of his ex-rival.
“mighty white of him,” he said. “didn’t anybody else notice it?”
“i put my gloves on right afterward,” said sheila, “but i—i don’t dare wear it again.”
“don’t dare wear your wedding-ring!” winfield roared. “say, what kind of a marriage is this, anyway?”
“i hope it’s not dependent on a piece of metal round my finger,” sheila protested. “your real wedding-ring is round my heart.”
this was not enough for winfield. she explained to him patiently (and gladly because of the importance he gave the emblem) that she played an unmarried girl in the
comedy. and the audience would be sure to spot the wedding-ring.
it simply had to come off, and she begged him to understand and be an angel and take it off himself.
he drew it away at last. but he did not like the omen. she put it on a ribbon and he knotted it about her neck. then she remembered that she wore a dinner gown in the
play, and it had to come off the ribbon. she would have to carry it in her pocketbook.
the omens were hopelessly awry.
