ambition was burning fiercely now, and after a week or two of golf, tennis, surf, and dance, at her father’s Long Island home, she joined the summer stock company in
the middle-sized city of Clinton. She did twice her usual work for half her usual salary, but she was determined1 to broaden her knowledge and hasten her experience.
The heat seemed intentionally2 vindictive3. The labor4 was almost incredible. One week she exploited all the anguishes5 of “Camille” for five afternoons and six
evenings. During the mornings of that week and all day Sunday she rehearsed the pink plights6 of “The Little Minister,” learning the r?le of Lady Babbie at such odd
moments as she could steal from her meals or her slumber7 or her shopping tours for the necessary costumes. The next week, while she was playing Lady Babbie eleven
times, she was rehearsing the masterful heroine of “The Lion and the Mouse” of mornings. While she played this she memorized the slang of “The Chorus Lady” for the
following week.
Before the summer was over she had lived a dozen lives and been a dozen people. She had become the pet of the town, more observed than its mayor, and more talked about
than its social leader.
She had established herself as a local goddess almost immediately, though she had no time at all for accepting the hospitalities of those who would fain have had her
She had no mornings, afternoons, or evenings that she could call her own. The hardest-worked Swede cook in town would have given notice if such unceasing tasks had
been inflicted9 on her; and the horniest-handed labor-unionist would have struck against such hours as she kept.
To the townspeople she was as care-free and work-free as a fairy, and as impossible to capture. After the matinées throngs10 of young women and girls waited outside the
stage door to see her pass. After the evening performances she made her way through an aisle11 of adoring young men. She tried not to look tired, though she was as weary
At first she hurried past alone. Later they saw a big fellow at her side who proved to be a new-comer—Eldon. And now the matinée girls divided their allegiance. Eldon
’s popularity quickly rivaled Sheila’s. But he had even less time for making conquests, for he had a slower memory and was not so habited to stage formulas.
Nor had he any heart for conquests. A certain number of notes came to his letter-box, some of them anonymous13 tributes from overwhelmed young maidens14; some of them
brazen15 proffers16 of intrigue17 from women old enough to know better, or bound by their marriage lines to do better.
Eldon, who had thought that vice18 was a city ware19, and that actors were dangerous elements in a small town, got a new light on life and on the theory that women are the
pursued and not the pursuers.
But these wild-oat seeds of the Clinton fast set fell upon the rock where Sheila’s name was carved. He found her subtly changed. She was the same sweet, sympathetic,
helpful Sheila that had been his comrade in art; but he could not recapture the Sheila that had shared his dreams of love.
As in the old Irish bull of the two men who met on London Bridge, they called each other by name, then “looked again, and it was nayther of us.”
The Sheila and Eldon that met now were not the Sheila and Eldon that had bade each other good-by. They had not outgrown20 each other, but they had grown away from each
The Eldon that Sheila had grown so fond of was a shy, lonely, blundering, ignorant fellow of undisclosed genius. It had delighted Sheila to perceive his genius and to
mother him. He was like the last and biggest of her dolls.
But now he was no longer a boy; he was a man whose gifts had proved themselves, who had “learned his strength” before audience after audience clear across the
continent. Dulcie Ormerod had irritated him, but she had left him in no doubt of his power.
Already he had maturity22, authority, and the confidence of a young Siegfried wandering through the forest and understanding the birds that sang him up and sang him
He was a total stranger to Sheila. She could not mother him. He did not come to her to cure his despair and kindle24 ambition. He came to her in the armor of success and
claimed her for his own.
At first he alarmed her more than Reben had. She felt that he could never truly belong to her again. And she felt no impulse to belong to him. She liked him, admired
him, enjoyed his brilliant personality, but rather as a gracious competitor than any longer as a partner.
To Eldon, however, the change endeared Sheila only the more. She was fairer and wiser and surer, worthier25 of his love in every way. He could not understand why she
loved him no longer. But he could not fail to see that her heart had changed. It seemed a treachery to him, a treachery he could feel and not believe possible.
When he sought to return to the room he had tenanted in her heart he found it locked or demolished26. He could never gain a moment of solitude27 with her. Their former
long walks were not to be thought of.
“Clinton isn’t Chicago, old boy,” Sheila said. “Everybody in this town knows us a mile off. And we’ve no time for flirting28 or philandering29 or whatever it was we
were doing in Chicago. I’m too busy, and so are you.”
Eldon’s heart suffered at each rebuff. He murmured to her that she was cruel. He thought of her as false when he thought of her at all. But that was not so often as
he thought. He was too horribly busy.
To a layman30 the conditions of a stock company are almost unbelievable: the actors work double time, day and night shifts both. Most of the company were used to the
life. In the course of years they had acquired immense repertoires31. They had educated their memories to amazing degrees. They could study a new r?le between the acts
of the current production.
Sheila and Eldon had not that advantage. They spent the intermission after one act in boning up for the next, rubbing the lines into the mind as they rubbed grease-
paint into the skin.
When Pennock wakened Sheila of mornings it was like dragging her out of the grave. She came up dead; desperately33 resisting the recall to life. At night she sank into
her sleep as into a welcome tomb. She was on her feet almost always. Her hours in the playmill averaged fourteen a day. She grew haggard and petulant34. Eldon feared for
her health.
Yet the theater was her gymnasium. She was acquiring a post-graduate knowledge of stage practice, supplying her mind as well as her muscles, like a pianist who
practises incessantly35. If she kept at it too long she would become a mere36 audience-pounder. If she quit in time the training would be of vast profit.
One stifling37 afternoon Eldon begged her to take a drive with him between matinée and night, out to “Lotus Land,” a tawdry pleasure-park where one could look at water
She had no sooner finished the refusal than he saw her face light up. He saw her run to meet a lank39, lugubrious40 young man. He saw idolatry in the stranger’s eyes and
extraordinary graciousness in Sheila’s. He heard Sheila invite the new-comer to buggy-ride with her to “Lotus Land” and take dinner outdoors.
Eldon dashed away in a rage of jealousy42. Sheila did not reach the theater that night till after eight o’clock.
She nearly committed the unpardonable sin of holding the curtain. The stage-manager and Eldon were out looking for her when they saw a bouncing buggy drawn43 by a lean
livery horse driven by a lean, liverish man. Up the alley44 they clattered45 and Sheila leaped out before the contraption stopped.
She called to the driver: “G’-by! See you after the performance.” She called to the stage-manager: “Don’t say it! Just fine me!” Eldon held the stage door open
for her. All she said was: “Whew! Don’t shoot!”
She had no time to make up or change her costume. She walked on as she was.
After the performance Eldon came down in his street clothes to demand an explanation. He saw the same stranger waiting for Sheila, and dared not trust himself to speak
to her.
The next morning, at rehearsal46, he said to Sheila, with laborious47 virulence48, “Where’s your friend this morning?”
“He went back to town.”
“How lonely you must feel!”
Sheila was startled at the same twang of jealousy she had heard in Reben’s voice when she and Vickery first met. It angered and alarmed her a little. She explained to
Eldon who Vickery was, and that he had run down to discuss his new version of the play. Eldon was mollified a little, but Sheila was not.
Vickery, whose health was none too good, found it tedious to make a journey from Braywood to Clinton every time he wanted to ask Sheila’s advice on a difficulty. He
suddenly appeared in Clinton with all his luggage. He put it on the ground of convenience in his work. It must have been partly on Sheila’s account.
Eldon noted49 that Sheila, who had been rarely able to spare a moment with him, found numberless opportunities to consult with this playwright50. Sheila’s excuse was that
business compelled her to keep in close touch with her next starring vehicle; her reason was that she found Vickery oddly attractive as well as oddly irritating.
In the first place, he was writing a play for her, for the celebration of her genius. That was attractive, certainly. In the second place, he was not very strong and
not very comfortable financially. That roused a sort of mother-sense in her. She felt as much enthusiasm for his career as for her own. And then, of course, he
proceeded to fall in love with her. It was so easy to modulate51 from the praise of her gifts to the praise of her beauty, from the influence she had over the general
public to her influence over him in particular.
He exalted52 her as a goddess. He painted her future as the progress of Venus over the ocean. He would furnish the ocean. He wrote poems to her. And it must be intensely
Vickery quoted love-scenes from his play and applied54 them to Sheila. He very slyly attempted to persuade her to rehearse the scenes with him as hero. But that was not
easy when they were buggy-riding.
When he grew demonstrative she could hardly elbow his teeth down his throat; for his manner was not Reben’s. It needed no blow to quell55 poor Vickery’s hopes. It
needed hardly a rebuke56. It needed nothing more than a lack of response to his ardor57. Then his wings would droop58 as if he found a vacuum beneath them.
To repel59 Reben even by force of arms had seemed the only decent thing that Sheila could do. She was keeping herself precious, as her father told her to. To keep Eldon
at a distance seemed to be her duty, at least until she could be sure that she loved him as he plainly loved her. But to fend60 off Vickery’s love seemed to her a sin.
But, dearly as she cherished Vickery, she felt no impulse to surrender, not even to that form of conquest which women call surrender. And yet she nearly loved him. Her
feeling was much, much more than liking63, yet somehow it was not quite loving. She longed to form a life-alliance with him, but a marriage of minds, not of bodies and
souls.
And Vickery proposed a very different partnership64 from the league that Eldon planned. Eldon was awfully65 nice, but so all the other women thought. And if she and Eldon
should marry and co-star together, there could be no success for them, not even bread and butter for two, unless lots and lots of women went crazy over Eldon. Sheila
had little doubt that the women would go crazy fast enough, but she wondered how she would stand it to be married to a matinée idol41. She wondered if she had jealousy
in her nature—she was afraid she had.
In complete contrast with Eldon’s life, Vickery’s would be devoted66 to the obscurity of his desk and the creation of great r?les for her to publish. If any
fascinating were to be done, Sheila would do it. She thought it far better for a man to keep his fascination67 in his wife’s name.
Thus the young woman debated in her heart the merits of the rival claimants. So doubtless every woman does who has rival claimants.
Sometimes when Vickery was unusually harrowing in his inability to write the play right, and Eldon was unusually successful in a performance, Sheila would say that,
after all, the better choice would be the great, handsome, magnetic man.
Playwrights68 and things were pretty sure to be uncertain, absent-minded, moody69, querulous. She had heard much about the moods of creative geniuses and the terrible
lives they led their wives. Wasn’t it Byron or Bulwer Lytton or somebody who bit his wife’s cheek open in a quarrel at the breakfast-table or something? That would
be a nice thing for Vickery to do in a hotel dining-room.
He might develop an insane jealousy of her and forbid her to appear to her best advantage. Worse yet, he might devote some of his abilities to creating r?les for other
women to appear in.
He might not always be satisfied to write for his wife. In fact, now and then he had alluded70 to other projects and had spoken with enthusiasm of other actresses whom
Sheila didn’t think much of. And, once—oh yes!—once he spoke71 of writing a great play for Mrs. Rhys, that statue in cold lava72 whom even Reben could endure no longer.
A pretty thing it would be, wouldn’t it, to have Sheila’s own husband writing a play for that Rhys woman? Well—humph! Well! And Sheila had wondered if jealousy were
part of her equipment!
Between the actor and the playwright there was little choice.
A manager also had offered himself to Sheila. She could have Reben for the asking. If he were not so many things she couldn’t endure the thought of, he might make a
very good husband. He at least would be free from temperament73 and personality. Two temperaments74 in one family would be rather dangerous.
These thoughts, if they were distinct enough to be called thoughts, drifted through her brain like flotsam on the stream of the unending demands of her work. This was
wearing her down and out till, sometimes, she resolved that whoever it might be she married he needn’t expect her to go on acting75.
This pretty well cleared her slate76 of suitors, for Reben, as well as the other two, had never suggested anything except her continuance in her career. As if a woman
had no right to rest! As if this everlasting77 battle were not bad for a woman!
In these humors her fatigue78 spoke for her. And fatigue is always the bitter critic of any trade that creates it. Frequently Sheila resolved to leave the stage. Often,
as she fell into her bed and closed her lead-loaded eyelashes on her calcium-seared eyes and stretched her boards-weary soles down into the cool sheets, she said that
she would exchange all the glories of Lecouvreur, Rachel, Bernhardt, and Duse for the greater glory of sleeping until she had slept enough.
When Pennock nagged79 her from her Eden in the morning Sheila would vow80 that as soon as this wretched play of that brute81 of a Vickery was produced she would never enter
a theater again at the back door. If the Vickery play were the greatest triumph of the cycle, she would let somebody else—anybody else—have it. Mrs. Rhys and Dulcie
Ormerod could toss pennies for it.
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1
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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intentionally
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| ad.故意地，有意地 | |
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vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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anguishes
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| v.（尤指心理上的）极度的痛苦( anguish的第三人称单数 ) | |
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plights
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| n.境况，困境( plight的名词复数 ) | |
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7
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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8
luncheons
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| n.午餐，午宴( luncheon的名词复数 ) | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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throngs
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| n.人群( throng的名词复数 )v.成群，挤满( throng的第三人称单数 ) | |
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11
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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12
overtime
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| adj.超时的，加班的；adv.加班地 | |
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13
anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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14
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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proffers
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| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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19
ware
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| n.(常用复数)商品，货物 | |
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outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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kindle
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| v.点燃，着火 | |
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worthier
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| 应得某事物( worthy的比较级 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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26
demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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27
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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28
flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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philandering
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| v.调戏，玩弄女性( philander的现在分词 ) | |
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layman
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| n.俗人，门外汉，凡人 | |
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31
repertoires
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| 全部节目( repertoire的名词复数 )； 演奏曲目 | |
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32
barge
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| n.平底载货船，驳船 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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petulant
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| adj.性急的，暴躁的 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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arbor
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| n.凉亭；树木 | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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lugubrious
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| adj.悲哀的，忧郁的 | |
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41
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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45
clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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rehearsal
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| n.排练，排演；练习 | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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virulence
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| n.毒力，毒性；病毒性；致病力 | |
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49
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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51
modulate
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| v.调整，调节(音的强弱)；变调 | |
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52
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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53
sonnet
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| n.十四行诗 | |
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54
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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quell
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| v.压制，平息，减轻 | |
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56
rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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57
ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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58
droop
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| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
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repel
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| v.击退，抵制，拒绝，排斥 | |
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fend
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| v.照料（自己），（自己）谋生，挡开，避开 | |
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quenching
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| 淬火，熄 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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partnership
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| n.合作关系，伙伴关系 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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67
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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68
playwrights
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| n.剧作家( playwright的名词复数 ) | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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72
lava
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| n.熔岩，火山岩 | |
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73
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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temperaments
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| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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75
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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76
slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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77
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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78
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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79
nagged
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| adj.经常遭责怪的；被压制的；感到厌烦的；被激怒的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的过去式和过去分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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