and so completely relaxed the solemnity they had revealed on the boards that the elder laity chiefly listened and smiled among themselves.
Mrs. Jerrems studied Roger Kemble and his wife, “Miss” Farren, surreptitiously, as one would study a Thibetan or a Martian. Knowing in advance that they were actors, she felt sure that she found in them odd and characteristic mannerisms, for it is easy to find proofs when we have the facts. And once a man is known to be an actor it is easy to see the marks of the grease-paint, though, not knowing it, one is as likely to think him a preacher or a prize-fighter or whatever else he may suggest. The talk of Mr. Kemble and Miss Farren was normal; their manners polished, as became a class with so much leisure and culture. But Mrs. Jerrems felt that she could see the glamour of the footlights in everything they said or did.
She had seen them both in some of their plays. On her excursions to New York, a visit to their theater was hardly less important, and much more likely to be accomplished, than a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When “Farren and Kemble,” as they were apt to be called, left New York for a tour they rarely visited Braywood, or if they did the prices at the opera-house were sure to be advanced and all Braywood put on its best clothes.
For one thing, Polly Farren and Roger Kemble were pre-eminently fashionable. Their plays dealt with the fashionable people of Europe and America. They were generally English, and Roger Kemble was likely to be Lord Somebody, and Polly Farren at least an Honorable Miss This-or-That. Or, if they appeared in an American manuscript, they usually owned country houses and yachts and had titles for guests. Their clothes were sure to be a sort of prospectus of the next season’s modes. Roger Kemble was never a fop, and always kept on the safe side of ostentation, yet he was always scrupulously a pace ahead of the style and groomed to flawlessness. He represented Piccadilly patterns and his clock was about five hours ahead of New York time. Polly was a little braver. She was beautiful, lithe, and dashing, and she was not afraid of anything that French taste and caprice might prophesy.
Everybody knew, too, that Polly Farren and Roger Kemble “went with” the smartest people. Those who knew they were married knew that their summer cottage was among the handsomest in the Long Island groups. Their manners were smart, too, with just the right flippancy and just the right restraint. It was a school of etiquette to see them enter a drawing-room or sip tea importantly, or tear a passion to embroidery.
Polly had made her first sensation in a play in which she was supposed to have imbibed more champagne than her pretty head could carry. The critics raved over her demonstration of the fine art of being tipsy in a ladylike manner. Roger Kemble’s rôles frequently compelled him to be “as drunk as a lord,” and young men of bibulosity tried to remember him in their cups.
So now Mrs. Jerrems, watching the husband and wife at the homely task of stowing away a small-city supper, seemed to be watching a scene on the stage. She dreaded them, yet she tried to copy them. Faithful church-member that she was, she abhorred the stage theoretically, and practically followed its influence more than the church’s. She kept taking notes on Polly Farren’s costume and carriage, and her husband would later be admonished that many, many things he did were pitiably below the standard of Roger Kemble.
The Kembles were not unaware of the inspection they underwent. They were used enough to it, yet it irked them in this small community whither they had retired during the Holy Week closing of their company. They were glad to be gone as soon as they could decently take their leave and carry off their wonder-child.
Sheila was so exhausted by her labors as editress, directress, and actress that she had yawned even in the midst of her prettiest thank-yous for the praise she battened on. On the way she clung to her father’s hand in a sleep-walking drowse, and lurched into him until he caught her into his bosom and carried her home and up the stairs to her bed. She slept while her mother undressed her, and there was no waking her to her prayers. Even in her heavy slumbers she fell into an attitude of such grace that it seemed almost conscious.
Roger and Polly looked at her and smiled; and shook their heads over her.
“She is hopelessly ours,” said Kemble. “I’m afraid there’ll be no keeping her off the stage when she grows up.”
Kemble was in his bath-robe in the bath-room before his wife, who had not moved from her posture of contemplation, suddenly thought aloud:
“After all, why not?”
Kemble paused with the tooth-paste tube above his tooth-brush to query, “Why not what?”
“What better chance is there for a woman?”
Kemble moved close enough to her to nudge her out of her muse and demand again, “What woman are you talking about?”
“That one,” said Polly. “That little understudy of life. You say we sha’n’t be able to keep her off the stage. Why should we try to?”
“Well, knowing what we do of the stage, my dear—it isn’t exactly the ideal place for a girl, now is it?”
“No, of course not. But where is the ideal place for a girl? Is there such a thing? We know all too well how much suffering and anxiety and disappointment and wickedness there is on the stage; but where will you go to escape it? Look at the society wives and daughters we know, in town and out in the country. Look at the poor girls in the shops and factories.”
“That’s so,” Kemble spluttered across his shuttling tooth-brush. “I rather fancy a smaller city is better.”
His wife laughed softly: “You ought to have heard what I’ve been hearing about this town! You’d think it was the home of all villainy. There’s enough scandal and tragedy here to fill a hundred volumes. There are problem-plays here—among busy church-members, too—that make Ibsen read like a copy of St. Nicholas.”
She put out the light in Sheila’s room and went into her own, lighted herself a cigarette from the cigar her husband had left in her hair-pin tray, and sat down before the cold radiator as before a fireplace to talk about life. People were all rôles to her and their histories were scenarios that interested her more or less as she saw herself playing them.
“When I look around at my old school friends and relatives off the stage,” she said, “I can’t see that they’ve found any recipe for happiness. Clara Gaines is a domestic soul and her husband is a druggist, but he leaves her to be domestic all by herself, and she tells me he never spends a minute at home that he can spend outside. Ella Westover has divorced two husbands in Terre Haute already. Marjorie Cranford tells me that her home town out in—in the Middle West somewhere—has a fast set that makes the Tenderloin look stupid. Clarice—What’s her name now?—well, she has married an awfully good man, but she has to wheedle every cent she gets out of him or cheat him out of it, and she says she wants to scream at his hypocrisy. She thinks she’ll run off and leave him any day now.”
Kemble drew a chair to her side and put his feet on the radiator alongside hers. He found his cigar out, and relighted it with difficulty from her cigarette as he laughed:
“Polly is a bit of a pessimist to-night, eh? Is it the quietness of this little burg? I was rather enjoying the peace and repose and all that sort of thing.”
“So was I. But that’s because it’s a change for us to have an evening off. Think of the women who never have anything else. They’re not happy, Roger. You can’t find one of them that will say she is.”
“You don’t fancy small-town respectability for your daughter, then?”
“I hope
