And then Eldon was as startled at the sound of his words and their immense import as Sheila was. The little word “you” resounded softly like warning torpedoes on a railroad track signaling: “Down brakes! Danger ahead!”
CHAPTER IX
As Eldon’s words echoed back through his ears he knew that he had said too much and too soon. Sheila was afraid to speak at all; she could not improvise the exquisitely nice phrase that should say neither more nor less than enough. Indeed, she could not imagine just what she wanted to say, what she really felt or ought to feel.
The woman was never born, probably, who could find a declaration of devotion entirely unwelcome, no matter from whom. And yet Sheila felt any number of inconveniences in being loved by this man who was a total stranger yesterday and an old acquaintance to-day. It would be endlessly embarrassing to have a member of the company, especially so humble a member, infatuated with her. It would be infinitely difficult to be ordinarily polite to him without either wounding him or seeming to encourage him. She had the theatric gift for carrying on a situation into its future developments. She was silent, but busily silent, dramatizing to-morrows, and the to-morrows of to-morrows.
Eldon’s thoughts also were speeding noisily through his brain while his lips were uncomfortably idle. He felt that he had been guilty of a gross indiscretion and he wanted to remove himself from the discomfort he had created, but he could not find the courage to get himself to his feet, or the wit to continue or even to take up some other subject.
It was probably their silence that finally wakened Mrs. Vining. She opened her drowsy eyes, wondering how long she had slept and hoping that they had not missed her. She realized at once that they were both laboring under some confusion. She was going to ask what it was.
Sheila resented the situation. Already she was a fellow-culprit with this troublesome young man. An unwitting rescuer appeared in the person of the stage-manager who dawdled along the aisle in the boredom of a stage-manager, who can never quite forget his position of authority and is never allowed to forget that his flock are proud individuals who feel that they know more than he does.
Sheila was impelled to appeal to Batterson on Eldon’s behalf, but she and the stage-manager had been in a state of armed truce since a clash that occurred at rehearsals. Batterson was not the original producer of the play, but he put out the road company and kept with it.
A reading of Sheila’s had always jarred him. He tried to change it. She tried to oblige him, but simply could not grasp what he was driving at. One of those peculiar struggles ensued in which two people are mutually astounded and outraged at their inability to explain or understand.
But if Mr. Batterson was hostile to Sheila, he was afraid of Mrs. Vining, both because he revered her and because she had known him when he was one of the most unpromising beginners that ever attempted the stage. He had never succeeded as an actor, which was no proof of his inability to tell others how to act, but always seemed so to them.