Clipped Wings. Hughes Rupert
to keep it in. And it’s entirely up to you what you make of yourself. Education and good breeding and all that sort of thing help, but they don’t guarantee anything. Even religion doesn’t always protect a girl; sometimes it seems to make her more emotional and—Well, I don’t know what can protect a girl unless it’s a kind of—er—well, a sort of a—conceitedness. Call it self-respect if you want to or anything. But it seems to me that if I were a girl the thing that would keep me straightest would be just that. I shouldn’t want to sell myself cheap, or give myself away forever for a few minutes of—excitement, or throw the most precious pearl on earth before any swine of a man. That’s it, Sheila—keep yourself precious.”
“I’ll try to, dad. Don’t worry!” she murmured, timidly.
Such discussions are among the most terrifying of human experiences. Roger Kemble was trembling as he went on: “Some day, you know, you’ll meet the man that belongs to you, and that you belong to. Save yourself for him, eh?”
Then the modern woman spoke sternly: “Seems to me, daddy, that a girl ought to have some better reason for taking care of herself than just because she’s saving herself for some man.”
“Of course. You’re quite right, my dear. But I only meant—”
“I understand. I’ll try to save myself for myself. I don’t belong to any man. I belong just to me; and I’m all I’ve got.”
“That’s a much better way to put it. Much better.” And he sighed with immense relief.
The idea of the man that should make his daughter his own was an odious idea to the father. It was odious now to the girl, too, for she was not yet ready for that stormy crisis when she would make a pride of humility and a rapture of surrender.
CHAPTER VIII
The play that Sheila was surrendered to, “A Friend in Need,” proved a success and raised its young author to such heights of pride and elation that when his next work, an ambitious drama, was produced, he had a long distance to fall. And fell hard.
Young Trivett had tossed off “A Friend in Need” and had won from it the highest praise as a craftsman. He had worked five years on his drama, only to be accused of being “so spoiled by success as to think that the public would endure anything he tossed off.”
But the miserable collapse of his chef-d’œuvre did not even check the triumph of his hors-d’œuvre. “A Friend in Need” ran on “to capacity” until the summer weather turned the theater into a chafing-dish. Then the company was disbanded.
In the early autumn following it was reorganized for a road tour. Of the original company only four or five members were re-engaged—Sheila, Mrs. Vining, Miss Griffen, and Tuell.
During the rehearsals Sheila had paid little attention to the new people. She was doomed to be in their company for thirty or forty weeks and she was in no hurry to know them. She was gracious enough to those she met, but she made no advances to the others, nor they to her. She had noticed that a new man played the taxicab-driver, but she neither knew nor cared about his name, his aim, or his previous condition of servitude.
The Freshmen of Leroy University brought him to her attention with a spectacular suddenness in the guise of a hero. The blow he struck in her supposed defense served as an ideal letter of introduction.
As soon as the curtain had fallen on the riot, cutting off the view of the battle between the police and the students, Sheila looked about for the hero who had rescued her from Heaven alone knew what outrage.
The neglected member of the troupe had leaped into the star rôle, the superstar rôle of a man who wages a battle in a woman’s defense. She ran to him and, seizing his hands, cried:
“How can I ever, ever, ever thank you, Mr.—Mr.—I’m so excited I can’t remember your name.”
“Eldon—Floyd Eldon, Miss Kemble.”
“You were wonderful, wonderful!”
“Why, thank you, Miss Kemble. I’m glad if you—if—To have been of service to you is—is—”
The stage-manager broke up the exchange of compliments with a “Clear! clear! Damn it, the curtain’s going up.” They ran for opposite wings.
When the play was over Eldon was not to be found, and Sheila went with her aunt to the train. At the hour when Winfield was being released from his cell the special sleeping-car that carried the “Friend in Need” company was three hundred miles or more away and fleeing farther.
When Sheila raised the curtain of her berth and looked out upon the reeling landscape the morning was nearly noon. Yet when she hobbled down the aisle in unbuttoned shoes and the costume of a woman making a hasty exit from a burning building, there were not many of the troupe awake to observe her. Her aunt, however, was among these, for old age was robbing Mrs. Vining of her lifelong habit of forenoon slumber. Like many another of her age, she berated as weak or shiftless what she could no longer enjoy.
But Sheila was used to her and her rubber-stamp approval of the past and rubber-stamp reproval of the present. They went into the dining-car together, Sheila making the usual theatrical combination of breakfast and lunch. As she took her place at a table she caught sight of her rescuer of the night before.
He was gouging an orange when Sheila surprised him with one of her best smiles. His startled spoon shot a geyser of juice into his eye, but he smiled back in spite of that, and made a desperate effort not to wink. Sheila noted the stoicism and thought to herself, “A hero, on and off.”
Later in the afternoon when she had read such morning papers as were brought aboard the train, and found them deadly dull since there was nothing about her in them, and when she had read into her novel till she discovered the familiar framework of it, and when from sheer boredom she was wishing that it were a matinée day so that she might be at her work, she saw Floyd Eldon coming down the aisle of the car.
He had sat in the smoking-room until he had wearied of the amusing reminiscences of old Jaffer, who was always reminiscent, and of the grim silence of Crumb, who was always taciturn, and of the half-smothered groans of Tuell, who was always aching somewhere. At length Eldon had resolved to be alone, that he might ride herd about the drove of his own thoughts. He made his face ready for a restrained smile that should not betray to Sheila in one passing glance all that she meant to him.
To his ecstatic horror she stopped him with a gesture and overwhelmed him by the delightful observation that it was a beautiful day. He freely admitted that it was and would have moved on, but she checked him again to present him to Mrs. Vining.
Mrs. Vining was pleased with the distinguished bow he gave her. It was a sort of old-comedy bow. She studied him freely as he turned in response to Sheila’s next confusing words:
“I want to thank you again for coming to my rescue from that horrible brute.”
Eldon looked as guilty as if she had accused him of being himself the brute he had saved her from. He threw off his disgusting embarrassment with an effort at a careless shrug:
“It was nothing—nothing at all, I am sure.”
“It was wonderful,” Sheila insisted. “How powerful you must be to have lifted that monster clear over the apron of the stage into the lap of the orchestra!”
A man never likes to deny his infinite strength, but Eldon was honest enough to protest: “I caught him off his balance, I am afraid. And, besides, it comes rather natural to me to slug a man from Leroy.”
“Yes? Why?”
“I am a Grantham man myself. I was on our ’varsity eleven a couple of years.”
“Oh!”