it was thus that eugene vickery found them. his gasp of astonishment ended in a fit of coughing as he came forward, trying to express his amazement and his delight.
bret seized his right hand, eldon his left. bret was horrified at the ghostly visage of his friend. already it had a post-mortem look.
vickery saw the shock in bret’s eyes. he dropped into a seat.
“don’t tell me how bad i look. i know it. but i don’t care. i’ve finished my play! incidentally my play has finished me. but what does that matter? i put into it
all there was of me. that’s what i’m here for. that’s why there’s nothing much left. but i’m glad. i’ve done all i can. j’ai fait mon possible. it’s glorious
to do that. and it’s a good play. it’s a great play—though i do say it that shouldn’t. floyd, i’ve got it!” he turned back to bret. “poor floyd here has heard
me read it a dozen times, and he’s suggested a thousand changes. i was in the vein this morning. i worked all day yesterday, and all night till sunrise. then i was up
at seven. when you called me i was writing like a madman. and when the lunch hour came i was going so fast i didn’t dare stop then even to telephone. i apologize.”
“please don’t,” said bret.
“i see you’ve had your luncheon. will you have another with me? i’m famished.”
he rang for a waiter and ordered a substantial meal and then returned to bret.
“how’s sheila?”
“she—she’s not well.”
“what a shame! she ought to be at work and i wish to the lord she were. i may as well tell you, bret, that i took the liberty of imagining sheila as the principal
woman of my play. and now that it’s finished, i can’t think of anybody who fills the bill except your wife. there are thousands of actresses starving to death, but
none of them suits my character. none of them could play it but your sheila.”
“then for god’s sake let her play it!” bret groaned. vickery, astonished beyond surprise, mumbled, “what did you say?”
bret repeated his prayer, explained the situation to the incredulous vickery, apologized for himself and his plight. vickery’s joy came slowly with belief. the red
glow that spotted his cheeks spread all over his face like a creeping fire.
when he understood, he murmured: “bret, you’re a better man than i thought you were. whether or not you’ve saved sheila’s life, you’ve certainly saved mine.” a
torment of coughing broke down his boast, and he amended, “artistically, i mean. you’ve saved my play, and that’s all that counts. the one sorrow of mine was that
when i had finished it there was no one to give it life. but what if sheila doesn’t like it? what if she refuses!”
his woe was so profound that bret reached across the table and squeezed his arm—it was hardly more than a bone. bret said, “i’ll make her like it!”
“she’s sure to,” eldon said.
vickery broke in: “you ought to hear him read it. sometimes he reads a doubtful scene to me. then it sounds greater to me than i ever dreamed. a manuscript is like an
electric-light bulb, all glass and brass and little loops of thread that don’t mean anything. when the right actor reads it it fills with light like a bowl of fire
and shines into dark places.” his mood was so grave that it influenced his language.
bret said, “let me take the manuscript to sheila.”
vickery frowned. “it’s not in shape for her eyes. it ought to be read to her.”
“come read it to her, then.”
“my voice is gone and i cough all the time, but if—”
he paused. he did not dare suggest that eldon read it for him. eldon did not dare to volunteer. bret did not dare to ask him. but at length, after a silence of crucial
distress, he overcame himself and said, with difficulty:
“perhaps mr. eldon would be—would be willing to read it.”
“i should be very glad to,” said eldon in a low tone.
it was strange how solemn and tremulous they were all three over so small a matter. a razor edge is a small thing, but a most uncomfortable place to balance.
vickery broke out with a revulsion to hope. “great!” he exclaimed. “when?”
“this afternoon would please me best,” said bret, rather sickly, now that the business had gone so far. “if mr. eldon—”
“i am free till seven,” said eldon.
“i’ll go back and ask mrs. winfield, if she hasn’t gone out,” said bret, rising.
“i’ll go fasten the manuscript together,” said vickery, rising.
“i’ll go along and glance over the new scenes,” said eldon, rising.
“telephone me at my place,” said vickery, “and let me know one way or the other as soon as you can. the suspense is killing.”
they walked out on the steps of the club, and bret hailed a passing taxicab. as he turned round he saw eldon lifting vickery into a car that was evidently his own, for
he took the wheel.
the nearer he got to the hotel the more bret repented of his rash venture, the uglier it looked from various angles. he hoped that sheila would be at the
dressmaker’s, contenting herself with rhapsodies in silk.
but she was sitting at the window. she was dressed, but her eyes were dull as she turned to greet him.
“how are you, honey?” he asked.
“i’m all right,” she sighed. the old phrase!
then he knew he had crossed the rubicon and must go forward. “why didn’t you go to your fitting?”
“i tried to, but i was too weak. i don’t need any new clothes. how was your business talk?”
“i can’t tell yet,” he said, and, after a battle with his stage-fright, broached the most serious business of his life. he had a right to be a bad actor and he read
wretchedly the lines he improvised on his own scenario. “by the way, i stumbled across eugene vickery this afternoon.”
“oh, did you? how is he?”
“pretty sick. he’s just finished a new play.”
“oh, has he?”
“he says it’s the work of his life.”
“poor boy!”
“i don’t think he’ll write another.”
“great heavens! is he so bad?”
“terribly weak. i told him you were in town and he was anxious to see you.”
“why didn’t you invite him up?”
“i did. he said he’d like to come this afternoon if you were willing.”
“by all means. better call him up at once.”
bret went to the telephone, but turned to say, trying to be casual, “he asked if you’d be interested in hearing his play.”
“indeed i would!” there was distinct animation in this. “ask him to bring it along.”
bret cleared his throat guiltily. “i told him i was sure you’d be dying to hear it, and he said he wondered if you would mind if he—er—brought along a friend to
read it. vick’s voice is so weak, you know.”
“i’m not in the mood for strangers, but if vickery wants it, why—of course. did he say who it was?”
“floyd eldon.”
that name had a way of dropping into the air like a meteor. when two lovers have fought over an outsider’s name that name always recurs with all its battle clamor. it
is as hard to mention idly as “gettysburg” or “waterloo.”
sheila knew what bret had said of eldon, what he had thought of him and done to him. she was amazed, and it is hard not to look guilty when old accusations of guilt
are remembered. bret saw the sudden tensity in her hands where they held the arms of her chair. he felt a miserable return of the old nausea, the incurable regret of
love that it can never count on complete possession of its love, past, present, and future. but he was committed now to the conviction that he could not keep sheila
behind bars, and had no right to try. he had given her back to herself and the world, as one uncages a bird, hoping that it will hover about the house and return, but
never sure what will draw it, or whither, once it has climbed into the sky.
to escape the ordeal of watching sheila, and the ordeal of being questioned, he called up vickery’s’ number and told him to come over at once, and added, “both of
you.”
then he hung up the receiver and went forward to face sheila’s eyes. he told her all that had happened except his appeal to eldon and their conspiracy to get her back
on the stage.
she was agitated immensely, and risked his further suspicion by setting to work to primp and to change her gown to one that her nature found more appropriate to such
an audition.
eldon and vickery arrived while she was in the dressing-room, and bret whispered to them:
“i haven’t told her that the play is for her. don’t let her know.”
this threw eldon and vickery into confusion, and they greeted sheila with helpless insincerity.
she saw how feeble vickery was and how well eldon was, and both saw that she was not the sheila that had left the stage. eldon felt a resentment against winfield for
what time and discontent had wrought to sheila, but he knew what the theater can do for impaired beauty with make-up and artifice of lights.
after a certain amount of small talk and fuss about chairs the reading began. to bret it was like a death-warrant; to vickery and eldon it was a writ of habeas corpus;
to sheila it was like the single copy of a great romance that she could never own.
eldon read without action or gesticulation and with almost no attempt to indicate dialect or characterization. but he gave hint enough of each to set the hearers’
imagination astir and not enough to hamper it.
outside in the far-below streets was a muffled hubbub of motors and street-cars. and within there was only the heavy elegance of hotel furniture. but the listeners
felt themselves peering into the lives of living people in a conflict of interests.
the light in the room grew dimmer and dimmer as eldon read, till the air was thick with the deep crimson of sunset straining across the roofs. it served as the very
rose-light of daybreak in which the play ended, calling the husband and wife to their separate tasks in the new manhood and the new womanhood, outside the new home to
which they should return in the evening, to the peace they had earned with toil.
bret hated the play because he loved it, because he felt that it had a right to be and it needed his wife to give it being; because it seemed to command him to
sacrifice his old-fashioned home for the sake of the ever-demanding world.
sheila made no comment at all during the reading. she might have been an allegory of attention.
even when eldon closed the manuscript and the play with the quiet word “curtain” sheila did not speak. the three men watched her for a long hushed moment, and then
they saw two great tears roll from the clenched eyes.
she murmured, feebly: “who is the lucky woman that is to—to create it?”
“you!” said bret.
woman-like, sheila’s first emotion at the vision of her husband urging her to go back on the stage was one of pain and terror. she stared at bret through the tears
evoked by vickery’s art, and she gasped: “don’t you love me any more? are you tired of me?”
“oh, my god!” said bret.
but when he collapsed vickery took the floor and harangued her till she yielded, to be rid of him and of eldon, that she might question her husband.
