The question of whether or not her husband—how she did read that word “husband”!—should travel on the same train with her to Grand Rapids was a hard riddle.
Both of them were unready to publish the delirious secret of their wedding.
There was to be a special sleeping-car for the company. For Sheila as the star the drawing-room was reserved, while Reben had claimed the stateroom at the other end of the coach.
To smuggle Bret into her niche would be too perilous. For her to travel in another car with him was equally impossible. If he went on the same train he might be recognized in the dining-car. For her to take another train would not be permitted. A manager has to keep his flock together.
At length they were driven to the appalling hardship of separation for the journey. Bret would take an earlier train, and arrange for their sojourn at the quietest hotel in Grand Rapids. She would join him there, and no one would know of her tryst.
So they agreed, and she saw him off on the noon express. Of all the topsy-turvy households ever heard of, this was the worst! But they parted as fiercely as if he were going to the wars.
The company car left at five o’clock in the afternoon, and was due in Grand Rapids at one the next day. Eldon and Pennock alone knew that the young star was a young bride. Both of them regarded Sheila with such woeful reproach that she ordered Pennock to change her face or jump off the train, and she shut herself away from Eldon in her drawing-room.
But she was soon routed out by Batterson for a reading rehearsal of a new scene that Prior had concocted. She was so afraid of Eldon’s eyes and so absent-minded with thoughts of her courier husband that Batterson thought she had lost her wits.
Twice she called Eldon “Bret” instead of “Ned,” the name of his rôle. That was how he learned who it was she had married.