Coleman arranged interviews with Sheila, wrote them and gave them to dramatic editors and the gush-girls of the press. Coleman compiled what he called the “Sheila Kemble cocktail” and demanded it at the bars to which he led the arid newspaper men. He did not object to the recipe being mentioned.
Sheila won the audiences, and if Brereton omitted her at a curtain call the audience kept on applauding stubbornly till he was forced to lead her out. She was always waiting. She was greedy for points, and kept building her scenes, encroaching little by little.
Brereton sulked awhile, then protested formally to the stage-manager, who gave him little sympathy. Eventually Brereton tried to repress Sheila’s usurpations.
Little unpleasantnesses developed into open wrangles. It was purely a business rivalry, and Sheila had no right to expect gallantry in a field where she condescended to put herself on an equality with men. But she expected it, none the less. The labor-unions show the same jealousy of women when they trespass on their profits in the mills or the coal-mines.
Sheila began to hate Brereton with a young woman’s vivacity and frankness, and to torment him mischievously. In one scene he had to embrace her with fervor. She used to fill her belt with pins and watch him wince as he smiled. He retaliated with as much dignity as he could muster. He could not always muster much. His heart was full of rage.
He visited Reben in his office and demanded his rights or his release. Reben tried to appease him; business was too good to be tampered with. Reben promised him complete relief—next season. Then he would put somebody else in Sheila’s place.
He could afford to be gracious because he felt that the hour had come to launch Sheila as a star. Her success in a character rôle of peculiarly American traits led him to abandon hope of finding a foreign success to float her in. Besides, he had lost so much money on Incledon’s London triumph that he was an intense partisan for the native drama—till the next American play should fail, and the next importation succeed.
One evening, during the second entr’acte, he led a tall and scholarly-looking young man down the side aisle and back of a box to the stage. He left the uneasy alien to dodge the sections of scenery that went scudding about like sails without hulls. Then he went to dressing-room “No. 2” and tapped.
Old Pennock’s glum face appeared at the door with a threatening, “We-ell?”