to death, in just sitting round and waiting for some man to come home, in having nothing to spend except what you can steal out of his trousers or squeeze out of an allowance. I’d rather have Sheila an actress than a toadstool or a parasite on some man. She has one of those wild-bird natures that I had. The safest thing for her is the freedom and a lot of work and admiration, and a chance to act. The stage is no paradise, the Lord knows, but the first woman that ever knew freedom was the actress. These votes-for-women rebels are all clamoring now for what we actresses have always had. Would it break your heart, Roger, if our little Sheila went on the stage?”
Kemble followed a slow cloud of smoke with the soft words:
“My mother was an actress.”
He drew in more smoke and let it curl forth luxuriously as he murmured, “And my wife is an actress.”
It would have surprised the Farren-Kemble following to see those flippant comedians so domesticated and holding a solemn ante-vitam inquest over the future of their child. But a father is a father and a mother a mother the world over.
Polly put out her hand and squeezed Roger’s, and he lifted hers and touched it to his lips with an old comedy grace. She drew the two hands back across the little gulf between them and returned the compliment, then rested her cheek on their conjoined fingers and pondered:
“We could save Sheila the hardest part of it. She wouldn’t have to hang round the agencies or bribe any brute with herself, or barnstorm with any cheap company. And she wouldn’t have to go on the stage by way of any scandal.”
Roger growled comfortably: “That’s so. She could step right into the old-established firm of Farren & Kemble. The main thing for us to see is that she is a good actress—as her mother was and her two grandmothers and three of her four great-grandmothers, and so on back.”
Polly amended: “She mustn’t go on the stage too soon, though—or too late; and she must have a good education—French and German, and travel abroad and all that.”
“Then that’s settled,” Kemble laughed. “And as soon as we’ve got her all prepared and established and on the way to big success, she’ll fall in love with some blamed cub who’ll drag her to his home in Skaneateles.”
“Probably; but she’ll come back.”
“All right. And now, having written Sheila’s life for her to rewrite, let’s go to bed. There’ll be no sleeping in this noisy house in the morning.”
CHAPTER IV
That was a tremendous week for the children of Braywood. As some quiet bayou harbors for a time a few birds of passage restlessly resting before they fly on into the sky, so the domestic poultry of Braywood was stirred by the Kemble wild fowl.
Four generations were gathered at the Burbage home. Sheila’s great-grandmother was always there at the home of Clyde Burbage, senior, who had fallen out of the line of strollers, and become a merchant. His wife’s mother, who was Polly Farren’s mother, too, was there for a visit. The old lady and the older lady had left the stage and now spent their hours in regretting the decadence of earlier glories, as their elders had done before them, and as their children would do in their turn.
The Kembles and Farrens and Burbages were all peers in the aristocracy of the theater, which, like every other world, has its princes and peasants, its merchants and vagabonds, saints and sinners.
None of this line dated back, however, to the time when Holy Week was a period of industry for the churchly actors who prepared their miracles and moralities for the edification of the people. Nowadays Holy Week is a time when most of the theaters close, and the others entertain diminished audiences and troupes whose enthusiasm is diminished by the halving of their salaries.
It is a period when so many people desire to be seen in church or fear to be seen in the playhouse, that the receipts drop off amazingly, though the same people feel it no sin to crowd the same theater the week before or the week after the Passion sennight.
Sometimes a play is strong enough in draught to pack the theater in spite of the anniversary. This year the Farren-Kemble play was not quite successful enough to justify the risk of half-filled auditoriums. So they “rested.”
But to the children, as to the other animals, there are no holy days, or rather no unholy days. The children of Braywood made a theatrical week of it, and Sheila reveled in her opportunity. She had an audience everywhere she went.
The other children stood about her and wondered. She fascinated them, and they were eager to do as she bade, though they felt a certain uneasiness; as if they had wished for a fairy queen to play with and had got their wish.
The other children commanded in their own specialties and in their turns. At outdoor romps and sports Clyde Burbage led the way, and endangered future limbs or present lives by his fearless banter. At household games with dolls and diseases Dorothy had a matronly authority and Sheila was like a novice. In hospital games, Dorothy, the head nurse, must show her how babies should be handled, punished, and medicined.
It should be set down to Sheila’s credit that she was meek as Moses in the presence of domestic genius. But it must be added that the things she learned from Dorothy were likely to be exploited later in some drama where Sheila took full sway. In Dorothy’s games the dolls always recovered when Dr. Eugene was called in with his grandmother’s spectacles on. In Sheila’s dramas the dolls almost always perished in agony, while the desperate mother clung to the embarrassed doctor, at the same time screaming to him to save the child and whispering him to pronounce it dead.
Roger Kemble happened to be passing Mrs. Vickery’s front yard during one of these tragedies, and paused to watch it across the fence while Mrs. Vickery attended from the porch. One of those startling unconscious scandals in which children’s plays abound was suddenly developed, and Roger moved on rapidly while Mrs. Vickery vanished into the house.
All the while the young Shakespeare of Braywood wrought upon his play for Sheila. But the moment he thought he had it perfected, he would hear her toss off one of the dramatic principles that she had overheard her father and mother discussing after some rehearsal. Then Eugene would blush to realize that his drama had violated this dictum and was unworthy of the great actress. And he would steal away to unravel his fabric and knit it up again.
At last it began to shape itself according to her ideals as he had gleaned them. He sat up finishing it until he was sent to bed for the fourth time, then he worked in his room till his mother knocked on his door and ordered his light out and forbade him to leave his bed again.
He waited till he knew that his parents were asleep, then he cautiously renewed his light and, sitting up in bed, wrote with that grasshopper-legged finger of his till he could keep his eyes ajar no longer. Then he held one eye open with his left hand till the hand itself went to sleep. He never knew it when his head rolled over to the pillow. He knew nothing more till he woke, shivering, to find the daylight in the room and the light still burning expensively.
He put out the light and worked till breakfast and his play were ready. After he had spooned up his porridge and chewed down his second glass of milk he made haste toward Clyde Burbage’s house. He hesitated at the nearest corner till he found courage to proceed. He mounted the steps with his precious manuscript
