Anything, anything would be better than this business of rehearsing and rehearsing and squabbling and squabbling, and then settling down into a dismal repetition of the same old nonsense in the same old theater or in a succession of same old theaters.
How good it was, just not to have to learn a new play for next week! It was good that there was no opportunity to rehearse any further revisions even of poor Vickery’s play. There was almost a consolation in the thought that it had not succeeded with Reben. Perhaps Reben would be a long while discovering a substitute. Sheila hoped he would not find one till the new year. She almost hoped he would never find one.
She was awfully sorry for poor Vickery. He had suffered so cruelly, and she had suffered with him. Perhaps he would give up play-writing now and take up some less inhuman trade. To think that she had once dallied with the thought of marrying him! To play plays was bad enough, but to be the wife of a playwright—no, thank you! Better be the gambler’s wife of a less laborious gambler or the nurse to a moody lunatic under more restraint.
Worse yet, Sheila had narrowly escaped falling in love with an actor! They would have been Mr. and Mrs. Traveling Forever! Mr. and Mrs. Never Rest! To live in hotels and railroad stations, sleeping-car berths, and dressing-rooms of about the same size; to put on a lot of sticky stuff and go out and parrot a few lines, then to retire and grease out the paint, and stroll to a supper-room, and so to bed. To make an ambition of that! No, thank you! Not on your jamais de la vie, never!
And thus having with a drowsy royalty effaced all her plans from her books, she burned her books. Desdemona’s occupation was gone. She might as well get up. She bathed and dressed and breakfasted with splendid deliberation, and then, the day proving to be fine and sunny and cool when she raised her tardy curtains, she decided to go forth for a walk, the dignified saunter of a lady, and not the mad rush of a belated actress. It wanted yet an hour before she must make up for the matinée.
She had not walked long when she heard her name called from a motor-car checked at the curb. She turned to see Eugene Vickery waving his cap at her. Bret Winfield, at the wheel, was bowing bareheaded. They invited her to go with them for a ride. It struck her as a providential provision of just what she would have wished for if she had thought of it.
Vickery stepped down to open the door for her, and, helping her in, stepped in after her. Winfield reached back his hand to clasp hers, and Vickery said:
“Drive us about a bit, chauffeur.”
“Yes, sir!” said Winfield, touching his cap. And he lifted the car to a lively gait.
“Where did you get the machine?” said Sheila.