He found himself clenching his hands at his desk and whispering prayers that the play should be a complete failure. How else could they be reunited? He could not shirk his own responsibilities. It was not a man’s place to give up his career. There was only one hope—the failure of the play.
But “The Woman Pays” was a success. The Grand Rapids oracle guessed wrong. As sometimes happens, the city critics were kinder than the rural. Sheila sent Bret a double night-telegram. She said that she was sorry to say that the play had “gone over big.” She had an enormous ovation; there had been thirty curtain calls; the audience had made her make a speech. Reben had said the play would earn a mint of money. And then she added that she missed Bret “terribly,” and loved him “madly and nothing else mattered.”
The next day she telegraphed him that the critics were “wonderful.” She quoted some of their eulogies and announced that she was mailing the clippings to him. But she said that she would rather hear him speak one word of praise than have them print a million. He did not believe it, but he liked to read it.
He did not wait to receive the clippings. He gave up opposing his ravenous heart, and took train for Chicago. He could not bear to have everybody except himself acclaiming his wife in superlatives.
He decided to surprise her. He did not even telegraph a warning. Indeed, when he reached Chicago in the early evening, he resolved to see the performance before he let her know he was in town.
He could not get by Mr. McNish, who was “on the door,” without being recognized, but he asked McNish not to let “Miss Kemble” know that he was in the house. McNish agreed readily; he did not care to agitate Sheila during the performance. After the last curtain fell her emotions would be her own.
McNish was glowing as he watched the crowd file past the ticket-taker. He chuckled: “It’s a sell-out to-night I bet. This afternoon we had the biggest first matinée this theater has known for years. I told Reben two years ago that the little lady was star material. He said he’d never thought of it. She’s got personality and she gets it across. She plays herself, and that’s the hardest kind of acting there is. I discover her, and Reben cops the credit and the coin. Ain’t that life all over?”
Bret agreed that it was, and hurried to his seat. It was in the exact center of a long row. He was completely surrounded by garrulous women trying to outchatter even the strenuous coda of the band.
A fat woman on his right bulged over into his domain and filled the arm of his chair with her thick elbow. A lean woman on his left had an arm some inches too long for her space, and her elbow projected like a spur into Bret’s ribs. He could have endured their contiguity if they had omitted their conversation. The overweening woman was chewing gum and language with the same grinding motions, giving her words a kind of stringy quality.
“Jevver see this Sheilar Kemble?” she munched. “I seen her here some time ago. She didn’t have a very big part, but she played it perfect. She was simpully gurrand. I says at the time to the gempmum was with me, I says, ‘Somebody ought to star that girl.’ I guess I must ’a’ been overheard, for here she is.