When Sheila came off she sought him out, and cried, “Oh, you were wonderful, simply wonderful!”
And when Batterson growled at her: “You spoiled several of his best laughs by talking through ’em. You ought to know better than that,” Sheila was so pleased for Eldon’s sake that she relished the rebuke.
Mrs. Vining had warned him to nail his laughs. At the next performance he tried to repeat his exact effects. Some of them he forgot, some of them he remembered. But they did not work this time. Others went better than ever. Each point was a new battle.
And so it was with every repetition. No two audiences were alike. Each had its own individuality. He began to study audiences as individuals. The first part of his first act was his period of getting acquainted. Some houses were quick and some slow, some noisily demonstrative, some quietly satisfied. It took all his powers to play his part. And he could not tire of it because every night was a first night in a new rôle.
Success made another man of him. He was interested in his task. He was winning praise for it. The management voluntarily raised his salary a little. He held his head a trifle higher.
Sheila noted the change at once. She liked him the better for it. She repeated her invitation to tea. He accepted now, and appeared in some new clothes. They were vastly becoming. On the stage he played a middle-aged henpecked plebeian. Off the stage he was young and handsome and thoroughbred.
He was a reader, too, and Sheila, like most actresses, was an omnivorous browser. They talked books. She lent him one of hers. He cherished it as if it were a breviary. They argued over literature and life. He ventured to contradict her. He was no longer a big mastiff at heel. He was forceful and stubborn. These qualities do not greatly displease a woman who likes a man.
Mrs. Vining was amused at first by the change in Sheila. Latterly the girl was constantly quoting “Mr. Eldon.” By and by it was “As Floyd Eldon says,” and one day Mrs. Vining heard, “Last night Floyd was telling me.” Then Aunt John grew alarmed, for she did not want Sheila to be in love—not for a long while yet, and never with an actor.
And Sheila had no intention of falling in love with an actor. But this did not prevent her from being the best of friends with one. All of Eldon’s qualities charmed Sheila as she discovered them. She had leisure for the discovery. There were no rehearsals; business was good at the theater; Eldon grew better and better in his performance. Sheila kept up her pace and enlarged her following. They dwelt in an atmosphere of contentment. But as her personal public increased and as the demands on her spirits and her time increased she began to take more pleasure in the company of Eldon and to like him best alone. She began to break old engagements, or fulfil them briefly, and to refuse new invitations.