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 rôle; 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.
