eventually vickery’s play was ready for production. at least reben told him, with job’s comfort:
“we’ve all worked at it till we don’t know what it’s about. we’ve changed everything in it, so let’s put it on and get rid of it.”
the weather of the rehearsal week for the vickery play was barbarously hot. the theater at night was a sea of rippling fans. the house was none the less packed; the
crowd was almost always the same. people had their theater nights as they had their church nights. the prices were very low and a seat could be had for the price of an
ice-cream soda. people were no hotter in the theater than on their own porches, and the play took their minds off their thermometers.
reben had come down for the rehearsals. there were to be few of them—five mornings and sunday. there was no chance to put in or take out. the actors could do no more
than tack their lines to their positions.
still reben found so much fault with everything that vickery was ready for the asylum. sheila simply had to comfort him through the crisis. eldon proceeded to
complicate matters by developing into a fiend of jealousy. fatigue and strain and the weather were all he could bear. the extra courtesies to vickery were the final
back-breaking straws.
he told sheila he had a mind to throw the play. the distracted girl, realizing his irresponsible and perilous state, tried to tide him over the ordeal by adopting him
and mothering him with melting looks and rapturous compliments. this course brought her into further difficulties with the peevish author.
while they were rehearsing vickery’s play they were of course performing another.
by some unconscious irony the manager had chosen to revive a melodrama of arctic adventure, thinking perhaps to cool the audience with the journey to boreal regions.
the actors were forced to dress in polar-bear pelts, and each costume was an ambulant turkish bath. the men wore long wigs and false beards. the spirit gum that held
the false hair in place frequently washed away from the raining pores and there were astonishingly sudden shaves that sent the audience into peals of laughter.
eldon congratulated himself that his face at least was free, for he was a faithful eskimo. but in one scene, which had been rehearsed without the properties, it was
his duty to lose his life in saving his master’s life. on the first night of the performance the hero and the villain struggled on two big wabbly blocks of blue
papier-maché supposed to represent icebergs. eldon, the eskimo, was slain and fell dead to magnificent applause. but his perspiratory glands refused to die and his
diaphragm continued to pant.
and then his grateful master delivered a farewell eulogy over him. and as a last tribute spread across his face a great suffocating polar-bear skin! there were fifteen
minutes more of the act, and sheila in the wings wondered if eldon would be alive or completely desdemonatized when the curtain fell.
he lived, but for years after he felt smothered whenever he remembered that night.
during the rest of the week his master’s farewell tribute was omitted at eldon’s request. but it was impossible to change the scene to florida and the arctic
costumes had to be endured. sheila’s own costumes were almost fatal to her.
and that was the play they played afternoons and evenings while they devoted their mornings to whipping vickery’s drama into shape.
and now reben, goaded by the heat as by innumerable gnats, and fuming at the time he was wasting in the dull, hot town where there was nothing to do of evenings but
walk the stupid streets or visit a moving-picture shed or see another performance of that detestable arctic play—reben proceeded to resent sheila’s graciousness to
both actor and author and to demand a little homage for the lonely manager.
sheila said to pennock: “i’m going to run away to some nice quiet madhouse and ask for a padded cell and iron bars. i want to go before they take me. if i don’t i’
ll commit murder or suicide. these men! these men! these infernal men! why don’t they let me alone?”
all pennock could say was: “there, there, there, you poor child! let me put a cold cloth on your head.”
“if you could pour cold water on the men i’d be all right,” sheila would groan. she had hysterics regularly every night when she got to her room. she would scream
and pull her hair and stamp her feet and wail: “i vow i’ll never act again. or if i do, i’ll never marry; or if i marry, i’ll marry somebody that never heard of
the stage. i’ll marry a methodist preacher. they don’t believe in the theater, and neither do i!”
thus sheila stormed against the men. but her very excitement showed that love was becoming an imperious need. she was growing up to her mating-time. just now she was
like a bird surrounded by suitors, and they were putting on their sunday feathers for her, trilling their best, and fighting each other for her possession. she was the
mistress of the selection, coy, unconvinced, and in a runaway humor.
three men had made ardent love to her, and her heart had slain them each in turn. she was a veritable countess of monte cristo. she had scored off “one!” “two!”
and “three!”
this left her with nothing to wed but her career. and she was disgusted with that.
only her long training and her tremendous resources of endurance could have carried her through that multiplex exhaustion of every emotion.
numbers of soldiers desert the firing-line in almost every battle. occasional firemen refrain from dashing into burning and collapsing buildings. policemen sometimes
feel themselves outnumbered beyond resistance. but actors do not abstain from first-night performances. even a death-certificate is hardly excuse enough for that
treachery.
so on the appointed night sheila played the part that vickery wrote for her, and played it brilliantly. she stepped on the stage as from a bandbox and she flitted from
scene to scene with the volatility of a humming-bird.
eldon covered himself with glory and lent her every support. the kiln-dried company danced through the other r?les with vivacity and the freshness of débutancy. they
had had the unusual privilege of a monday afternoon off.
the big face of the audience that night glistened with joy and perspiration, and found the energy somewhere to demand a speech from the author and another from sheila.
vickery was in the seventh heaven. if there were an eighth it would belong to playwrights who see the chaos of their manuscripts changed into men and women applauded
by a multitude. vickery could not believe the first howl of laughter from the many-headed, one-mooded beast. the second long roll of delight rendered him to the
clouds. he went up higher on the next, and when a meek little witticism of his was received with an earthquake of joy, followed by a salvo of applause, he hardly
recognized the moon as he shot past it.
later, there were moments of tautness and hush when the audience sat on the edge of its seats and held its breath with excitement. that was heroic bliss. but when from
his coign of espionage in the back of a box he saw tears glistening on the eyes of pretty girls, and old women with handkerchiefs at their wet cheeks, and hard-faced
business men sneaking their thumbs past their dripping lashes, the ecstasy was divine. when the tension was relaxed and the audience blew its great nose he thought he
heard the music of the spheres.
the play was almost an hour too long, but the audience risked the last street-cars and stuck to its post till the delightful end. then it lingered to applaud the
curtain up three times. as the amiable mob squeezed out, vickery wound his way among it, eavesdropping like a spy, and hearing nothing but good of his work and of its
performers.
as soon as he could he worked his way free and darted back to the stage. there he found sheila standing and crying her heart out with laughter, while eldon held one
hand and reben the other.
vickery thrust in between them, caught her hands away from theirs, and gathered her into his arms. and kissed her. both were laughing and both were crying. it was a
very salty kiss, but he found it wonderful.
