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 rôle 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.
