The nurse would not let her stay long and forbade Vickery to talk, but he managed to whisper, brokenly:
“Don’t worry about me. Don’t think about me. Work for yourself and the play. That will be working for me. If it succeeds, it’s a kind of a little immortality for me; if it fails—well, don’t worry, I won’t mind—then. Go and rest now. I’ve no strength to give you, or I’d make you as strong as a giant—you poor, brave, beautiful little woman! God bless you! Good luck!”
CHAPTER LVII
Eight o’clock and a section of Broadway is a throng of throngs, as if all the world were prowling for pleasure. At this theater or that, parts of the crowd turn in. Where many go there is success; but there are sad doorways where few cabs draw up and few people march to the lonely window; and that is a home of failure, though as much work has been done and as much money deserved. Only, the whim of the public is not for that place.
Eight o’clock and Sheila sits in her dressing-room in an ague of dread, painting her face and wondering why she is here, a lone woman fighting a mob for the sake of a dying man’s useless glory, and for the ruin of a living man’s schedule of life. Why is she not where Bret Winfield said a woman’s place was—at home?
She wonders about Bret. If she fails, if she succeeds, what does it mean to him and her? She understands that he has left her alone till now because he could not help her. But no flowers, no telegram, nothing? She looks over the heap of telegrams—no, there is nothing from him.
Then a note comes. He is there. Can he see her? Her heart leaps with rapture, but she dares not see him before the play. She would cry and mess her make-up, and she must enter with gaiety. She sends Pennock with word begging him to come after the play is over—“if he still wants to—if he’s not ashamed of me; tell him that.”
She thinks of him wincing as he is turned away from the stage door. Then she banishes the thought of him, herself, everybody but the character she is to play.
Outside the curtain is a throng eager to be entertained, willing to pay a fortune for entertainment, but merciless to those who fail. There is no active hostility in the audience—just the passive inertia of a dull, dreary, anxious mob afraid of being bored and cheated of an evening.
“Here are our hearts,” it says; “we are sick of our own lives. We do not care what your troubles are or your good intentions. We have left our homes to be made happy, or to be thrilled to that luxurious sorrow for some one else that is the highest happiness. We have come here at some expense and some inconvenience. We have a hard day ahead of us to-morrow. It is too late to go elsewhere. You have said you have a good show. Show us!”