The car was a handsomer car than their own, and in the quietest taste. Polly had somewhat softened the truth in the matter of its tender. Roger had protested mightily against offering the car to the Winfields, but Sheila and Polly had taken it away from him.
He had resisted their scheme for the dinner with even greater vigor, but Polly mocked him and gave her orders. Seeing himself committed to the plot, he said, “Well, if we’ve got to have this try-out performance we’ll make a production of it with complete change of costumes, calciums, and extra people.”
Polly and Roger did not approve of Bret any more than the Winfields approved of Sheila; but they resolved to jolt the Philistines while they were at it.
After a day in the Kemble limousine the Winfields picked up Sheila, who had been spending an hour on her toilet, though she apologized for the wreckage of rehearsals.
She dazzled both of them with her beauty. She did most of the talking, but permitted restful silences for meditation. The Winfields were as shy and as staring as children. It was the first time they had been so close to an actress.
The Kemble cottage on Long Island was a pleasant enough structure at any time, but at night under a flattering moon it looked twice its importance.
The dinner was elaborate and the guests impressive. Roger apologized for the presence of a famous millionaire, Tilton, his wife, and their visitor Lady Braithwaite. He said that they had been invited before, though it would have been more accurate to say that they had been implored at the last moment, and had consented because Roger said he needed them.
Sheila never acted harder. She never suffered worse from stage-fright and never concealed it more completely. She suffered both as author and as actor. Her little comedy was, like Hamlet’s brief tragedy, produced for an ulterior purpose. Which it accomplished.
The Kembles had succeeded in shifting the burden of discomfort to their observers. The Winfields felt hopelessly small town. Polly and Sheila were exquisitely gracious, and Lady Braithwaite kept my-dearing Polly, while the millionaire called Kemble by his first name. Roger set old Winfield roaring over his stories and, as if quite casually, he let fall occasional allusions to the prosperity of prosperous stage people. He referred to the fact that a certain actress, “poor Nina Fielding,” had “had a bad season, and cleared only sixty thousand dollars.”
Tilton exclaimed, “Impossible! that’s equivalent to six per cent, on a million dollars.”