That was a tremendous week for the children of Braywood. As some quiet bayou harbors for a time a few birds of passage restlessly resting before they fly on into the sky, so the domestic poultry of Braywood was stirred by the Kemble wild fowl.
Four generations were gathered at the Burbage home. Sheila’s great-grandmother was always there at the home of Clyde Burbage, senior, who had fallen out of the line of strollers, and become a merchant. His wife’s mother, who was Polly Farren’s mother, too, was there for a visit. The old lady and the older lady had left the stage and now spent their hours in regretting the decadence of earlier glories, as their elders had done before them, and as their children would do in their turn.
The Kembles and Farrens and Burbages were all peers in the aristocracy of the theater, which, like every other world, has its princes and peasants, its merchants and vagabonds, saints and sinners.
None of this line dated back, however, to the time when Holy Week was a period of industry for the churchly actors who prepared their miracles and moralities for the edification of the people. Nowadays Holy Week is a time when most of the theaters close, and the others entertain diminished audiences and troupes whose enthusiasm is diminished by the halving of their salaries.
It is a period when so many people desire to be seen in church or fear to be seen in the playhouse, that the receipts drop off amazingly, though the same people feel it no sin to crowd the same theater the week before or the week after the Passion sennight.
Sometimes a play is strong enough in draught to pack the theater in spite of the anniversary. This year the Farren-Kemble play was not quite successful enough to justify the risk of half-filled auditoriums. So they “rested.”
But to the children, as to the other animals, there are no holy days, or rather no unholy days. The children of Braywood made a theatrical week of it, and Sheila reveled in her opportunity. She had an audience everywhere she went.
The other children stood about her and wondered. She fascinated them, and they were eager to do as she bade, though they felt a certain uneasiness; as if they had wished for a fairy queen to play with and had got their wish.
The other children commanded in their own specialties and in their turns. At outdoor romps and sports Clyde Burbage led the way, and endangered future limbs or present lives by his fearless banter. At household games with dolls and diseases Dorothy had a matronly authority and Sheila was like a novice. In hospital games, Dorothy, the head nurse, must show her how babies should be handled, punished, and medicined.
It should be set down to Sheila’s credit that she was meek as Moses in the presence of domestic genius. But it must be added that the things she learned from Dorothy were likely to be exploited later in some drama where Sheila took full sway. In Dorothy’s games the dolls always recovered when Dr. Eugene was called in with his grandmother’s spectacles on. In Sheila’s dramas the dolls almost always perished in agony, while the desperate mother clung to the embarrassed doctor, at the same time screaming to him to save the child and whispering him to pronounce it dead.