Vickery tried to restore the conversation to safer generalities. “Actors talk about their personality sometimes because that is what they are putting on the market. But did you ever hear traveling-men talk about their line of goods? or clergymen about the church? or manufacturers about what they are making? Do you ever talk shop yourself?”
“Oh no!” Sheila laughed ironically, and now Bret flushed.
“Shop talk is merely a question of manners,” said Vickery. “Some people know enough not to talk about themselves, and some don’t. There are lots of old women that will talk you to death about their cooks and their aches. I’m one of those who jaw about themselves all the time. It’s not because I’m conceited, for the Lord knows I have too much reason for modesty. It’s just a habit. Eldon hasn’t got it. He’ll talk about a rôle, or about an audience, but you’ll never hear him praise himself. And there are plenty of actors like him.”
Bret grunted his disbelief.
“You don’t know enough of them to be a judge,” Vickery insisted.
“No, and I don’t want to,” Bret growled. “I prefer good, honest, wholesome, normal, real men—men like Jim Greeley and other friends of mine.”
A little shiver passed through Sheila. Bret felt it, and assumed that she was distressed at hearing Eldon’s name taken in vain. Vickery was not impressed with the choice of his brother-in-law as an ideal. Dorothy had told him too much about Jim. He did not suspect, however, that Sheila had cause to loathe him. He continued to talk his own shop, and to praise Eldon, to celebrate his progress, his increasing science in the dynamics of theatricism.
“He’s becoming a great comedian,” he said. “And comedy requires brains. Pathos and tragedy are more or less matters of emotion and temperament, but comedy is a science.”
As Vickery chanted Eldon up, Sheila’s eyes began to glow again. Bret fumed with jealousy, imputing that glow of hers to enthusiasm for Eldon.
The fact was that she was thinking of Eldon without a trace of affection. She was thinking of him as a successful competitor, as a beginner who was forging ahead and growing expert, growing famous while she had fallen out of the race.