CHAPTER XIII
Eldon resumed the livery of the taxicab-driver and spoke his two lines each night with his accustomed grace, and received his accustomed tribute of silence. He arrived on the stage just before his cue, and he went to his room just after his exit.
He avoided Sheila, and she, feeling repulsed, turned her attention from him. Friends of her father and mother and friends of her school days besieged her with entertainment. People who took pride in saying they knew somebody on the stage sought introductions. Rich or handsome young men were presented to her at every turn. They poured their praises and their prayers into her pretty ears, but got no receipt for them nor any merchandise of favor. She was not quite out of the hilarious stage of girlhood. She said with more philosophy than she realized that she “had no use for men.” But they were all the more excited by her evasive charms. Her prettiness was ripening into beauty and the glow of youth from within gave her a more shining aureole than even the ingenuities of stage make-up and lighting. Homes of wealth were open to her and her growing clientèle frequented the theater. Miss Griffen was voted common, and left to the adulation of the fast young men.
The traveling-manager of the company was not slow to notice this. He saw that Sheila had not only the rare gifts of dramatic instinct and appeal, but that she had the power of attracting the approval of distinguished people as well as of the general. Men of all ages delighted in her; and this was still more important—women of all ages liked her, paid to see her. Women who gave great receptions in brand-new palaces bought up all the boxes or several rows in the orchestra in honor of Sheila Kemble. School-girls clambered to the balcony and shop-girls to the gallery to see Sheila Kemble.
The listening manager heard the outgoing voices again and again saying such things as, “It’s the third time I’ve seen this. It’s not much of a play, but Sheila Kemble—isn’t she sweet?”
The company-manager and the house-manager and the press agent all wrote to Reben, the manager-in-chief:
“Keep your eye on Kemble. She’s got draught. She makes ’em come again.”
And Reben, who had made himself a plutocrat with twenty companies on the road, and a dozen theaters, owned or leased—Reben who had grown rich by studying his public, planned to make another fortune by exploiting Sheila Kemble. He kept the secret to himself, but he set on foot a still hunt for the play that should make her while she seemed to be making it. He schemed how to get her signature to a five-year contract without exciting her cupidity to a duel with his own. He gave orders to play her up gradually in the publicity. The thoughts of managers are long, long thoughts.
He gave out an interview to the effect that what the public wanted was “Youth—youth, that beautiful flower which is the dearest memory of the old, and the golden delight of the young.”
His chief publicity man, Starr Coleman, a reformed dramatic critic, wrote the interview for Reben, explained it to him, and was proud of it with the vicarious pride of those strange scribes whose lives are devoted to getting for others what they deny to themselves.