I was ambitious, and I told her I would take the other. I wanted to create—that was the big word I used—I wanted to ‘create’ a new part. She told me that the first thing for an actor to do was to connect with a steady job, but I wouldn’t listen to her till finally she happened to mention something that changed my mind.”
He flushed with an excitement that roused Sheila’s curiosity. When he did not go on, she said:
“But what was it that changed your mind?”
Eldon smiled comfortably, and, emboldened by the long attention of his audience, ventured to murmur the truth: “I had seen you act—in New York—in this play, and I—I thought that you were a wonderful actress, and more than that—the most—the most—Well, anyway, Mrs. Sanchez happened to mention that you would be with this company, so I took the part of the taxicab-driver. But I found I was farther away from you than ever—till—till last night.”
And then Eldon was as startled at the sound of his words and their immense import as Sheila was. The little word “you” resounded softly like warning torpedoes on a railroad track signaling: “Down brakes! Danger ahead!”
CHAPTER IX
As Eldon’s words echoed back through his ears he knew that he had said too much and too soon. Sheila was afraid to speak at all; she could not improvise the exquisitely nice phrase that should say neither more nor less than enough. Indeed, she could not imagine just what she wanted to say, what she really felt or ought to feel.
The woman was never born, probably, who could find a declaration of devotion entirely unwelcome, no matter from whom. And yet Sheila felt any number of inconveniences in being loved by this man who was a total stranger yesterday and an old acquaintance to-day. It would be endlessly embarrassing to have a member of the company, especially so humble a member, infatuated with her. It would be infinitely difficult to be ordinarily polite to him without either wounding him or seeming to encourage him. She had the theatric gift for carrying on a situation into its future developments. She was silent, but busily silent, dramatizing to-morrows, and the to-morrows of to-morrows.
Eldon’s thoughts also were speeding noisily through his brain while his lips were uncomfortably idle. He felt that he had been guilty of a gross indiscretion and he wanted to remove himself from the discomfort he had created, but he could not find the courage to get himself to his feet, or the wit to continue or even to take up some other subject.
It was probably their silence that finally wakened Mrs. Vining. She opened her drowsy eyes, wondering how long she had slept and hoping that they had not missed her. She realized at once that they were both laboring under some confusion. She was going to ask what it was.
Sheila resented the situation. Already she was a fellow-culprit with this troublesome young man. An unwitting rescuer appeared in the person of the stage-manager who dawdled along the aisle in the boredom of a stage-manager, who can never quite forget his position of authority and is never allowed to forget that his flock are proud individuals who feel that they know more than he does.
Sheila was impelled to appeal to Batterson on Eldon’s behalf, but she and the stage-manager had been in a state of armed truce since a clash that occurred at rehearsals. Batterson was not the original producer of the play, but he put out the road company and kept with it.
A reading of Sheila’s had always jarred him. He tried to change it. She tried to oblige him, but simply could not grasp what he was driving at. One of those peculiar struggles ensued in which two people are mutually astounded and outraged at their inability to explain or understand.
But if Mr. Batterson was hostile to Sheila, he was afraid of Mrs. Vining, both because he revered her and because she had known him when he was one of the most unpromising beginners that ever attempted the stage. He had never succeeded as an actor, which was no proof of his inability to tell others how to act, but always seemed so to them.
As he would have passed, Mrs. Vining, quite as if Sheila had prompted her, made a gesture of detention:
“Oh, Mr. Batterson, will you do me a great favor?” He bowed meekly, and she said, “Be a good boy and give Mr. Eldon here a chance to do some real work the first opportunity you get.”
Batterson sighed. “Good Lord! has he been pestering you, too?”
“He has been telling me of his struggles and his ambitions,” Mrs. Vining answered, with reproving dignity, “and I can see that he has ability. He is a gentleman, at least, and that is more than can be said of some of the people who are given some of the rôles.”
Batterson did not relish this. He had had one or two battles with Mrs. Vining over some of her stage business and had been withered by her comments on his knowledge of what really went on in real drawing-rooms. She had told him that they were as different as possible from stage drawing-rooms, and he had lacked information to answer. All he said now was:
“I’ve promised Eldon a dozen times that he should have a try at the first vacancy. But you know this old guard; they never surrender and they never die.”
“Except when they get a cue,” was Mrs. Vining’s drop of acid.
Batterson renewed his pledge and moved on, with a glance in which Eldon felt more threat than promise. But he thanked Mrs. Vining profusely and apologized to Sheila for taking so much of her time talking about himself. This made a good exit speech and he retired to his cell, carrying with him a load of new anxieties and ambitions.
Triply happy was Eldon now. He had been commended to the stage-manager and promised the first opportunity. He was getting somewhere. He had established himself in the good graces of the old duchess of the troupe. He had put his idol, Sheila, under obligations to him. He had ventured to let her know that he had joined the company on her account, and she had not rebuked him. This in itself was a thousand miles on his journey.
The meter of the train had hitherto been but a dry, monotonous clickety-click like the rattle bones of a dolorous negro minstrel. Now it was a jig, a wedding jig. The wheels and the rails fairly sang to him time after tune. The amiable hippety-hop fitted itself to any joyful thought that cantered through his heart.
By and by a town came sliding to the windows—Milton, a typical smallish city with a shabby station, a stupid hotel, no history, and no sights; it had reached the gawky age and stopped growing. But Eldon bade it welcome. He liked anybody and any place. He set out for the hotel, swinging his suit-case as if it were the harp of a troubadour. He walked with two or three other men of the company.
Old Jaffer had said: “The Mansion House is the only hotel. It’s three blocks to the right from the station and then two blocks to the left.” Jaffer knew the least bad hotel and just how to find it in hundreds of towns. He was a living gazetteer. “I’ve been to every burg in the country, I think,” he would say, “and I’ve never seen one yet that had anything to see.” The highest praise he could give a place was, “It’s a good hotel town.”
But they were all paradises to Eldon. He had fed so dismally and so sparsely, as a man out of a job, that even the mid-Westem coffee tasted good to him. Besides, to-day he had fed on honey dew and drunk the milk of paradise.
He was so jubilant that he offered to carry the hand-bag of Vincent Tuell, who labored along at his side, groaning.
