Part 4

“Yes--that is, they were going to motor out to the Claremont, to try Hawley’s new machine--how is it that society people _always_ have a new machine?--and then to look at some ponies for the twins. Sheila said she’d get Hawley to drop her here before he went back to town, if there was time; she must be at the Elbert Lewises’ for tea, she said, and get home to dine early. It seems there’s a first night of something. Did you ever hear such a programme! How she keeps that pink and white look is what I can’t fathom--bridge until all hours, and then day after day of mad rushing about--all for what? I’m sure _I_ never knew, when I was doing it! Why, when I contrast that ten years of slavery with this last one----” Ellen’s great dark eyes softened happily. “And Knollys was just as miserable as I; he confesses it, now that we’ve emancipated ourselves from hotels and clubs and things. Poor Sheila! If she’d only realize--for I suppose even butterflies must get tired of flying.”

“They’re always wanting to fly just a little higher.” Patsy wagged her auburn head sagaciously. “And then they’re determined that the children shall simply _soar_--Sheila says quite naïvely that her ambition for the twins is too enormous to be taken seriously by any one else than herself. I dare say she wants Margretta to marry a duke, and Maurice to distinguish himself in polo, or something of the sort. Now all I ask for the Angel is that he sha’n’t be President; I just won’t have him bully me.”

Doromea and Ellen looked at each other; and--quickly--looked away again. They had no children.

But Doromea smoothed Timothy’s socks upon her lap with very much the same tenderness that Patsy smoothed the tiny frock. “The Angel’s a dear,” said Doromea. “So are Maurice and Margretta, even though they are society children. I shouldn’t wonder if they do other things besides dukes and polo later on. Sheila herself may get to want them to.”

Ellen shook her head. “Not as long as she remains simply a society person. It’s like running round and round in a chariot-race, always pushing desperately to get ahead, but never able to make a wide-enough swing outside the circle that’s been laid out. Poor Sheila!”

“Absolutely conventional!” In her conviction Patsy broke her needle. “Must be deadly for her. Just suppose _she’d_ slid down the banisters----!”

“It would have been a fad with the younger married set for a whole week,” supplemented Ellen. “Sheila leads them all about by the nose, her society. Well,” with a sigh, “I wish she’d come. Even her affectations are charming; it’s only to herself that she doesn’t do justice. To other people she’s delightful.”

“I wish she’d come, too,” joined in Doromea. “Somehow I never have time to go to see her--it’s such an undertaking to go in to town.”

“And it used to be such an undertaking to come out,” Ellen laughed. “I think it’s rather sweet of Sheila to bother. Ah”--as a cloud of dust came round the corner of the road--“there she is now--at least I suppose she will emerge shortly.”

And in another minute she had emerged; a tiny, wild-rose sort of creature, all fluffy chiffons and flying yellow curls--a baby, you would have said, until you saw her reach up and kiss her husband.

“Wasn’t he a darling to bring me?” she asked the other women, when he and the machine had vanished down the drive. “He had two men to see by three o’clock, and a simply terrifically important race to follow; but he brought me out just the same. And he’s coming back for me--those wretched Elbert Lewises!--but I promised Peter Butler I’d go to something of theirs; they took care of Peter when he broke his knee that time, and as long as he’s my cousin--well, what I meant to say in the very first place was, how are you all? Patsy, where’s the Angel?”

“Up-stairs on Ellen’s bed, asleep,” returned Patsy, promptly. “Want to go look at him?”

“Rather!” Sheila was tugging at the strings of her frilly blue motor-bonnet. “There!--and I’ll just shed this coat, too; then I can’t get him the least bit dusty.” She was out of the coat in a second, and more childish than ever in her simple rose-colored frock.

“Fancy Sheila thinking about getting dust on the baby!” Doromea turned to Ellen, as the two ridiculously young mothers disappeared inside the house.

“A society person with ideas on hygiene!” echoed Ellen.

* * * * *

“He does look so well and rosy.” Sheila peered wistfully at Patsy’s Angel from under her long curling eyelashes. “And in Washington, too, you can keep him always out-of-doors--there are so many squares and flowery places.”

“Oh, yes,” said Patsy, cheerfully. “There are dozens of parks for him in Washington; though I always look forward to this real country when we come to visit Timothy and Dorry.”

“The twins have only our back yard,” reflected Sheila, her wide blue eyes very serious. “Hawley got them swings and a sand-pile, but--it’s always city for them; and they’re four years old now.”

“Why don’t you send them to the Park--Central Park, I mean?” Patsy’s impulsive sympathy darted at once to the most obvious idea.

“I couldn’t go with them,” said Sheila, simply. “They would have to play with their governess, and they wouldn’t like that. You see, when we come home, either Hawley or I, we can always run down to the yard with them right away. But it’s rather grim and stiff for them, poor dears, with only trees in tubs and a fence all round. Some day perhaps we can afford to live in the country.”

“Oh!” Patsy’s glance was rather blank. If she had not known Sheila to be simply a society person, she would have suspected her of trying to make an epigram. But, as Ellen said, Sheila paid no attention to herself--it would never have occurred to her to attempt being clever.

“How was the new machine?” asked Patsy, steering away from what she did not understand.

Sheila’s lovely little face beamed. “Hawley was _so_ pleased over it! He says it’s a rip-snorter--the bulliest engine he’s had yet!” Hawley’s large enthusiasm came quaintly from the small, almost infantile mouth. “I’m so delighted; though it--it does go rather fast. I had to hold on to the rail all the way out.”

“I’m crazy over them when they go fast,” protested Patsy, relapsing into her old sportsman vernacular. “At the Vanderbilt Cup race----”

“Ah! You saw the play, then? You remember----” and the babyish features lit up with a something that made downright Patsy blink with surprise, as Sheila went on to enumerate certain scenes in the play, certain thrilling passages--quoting, explaining, mimicking--so eagerly that one had not the heart or any longer the interest to explain that one had meant the actual race itself.

Patsy listened absorbedly. “And I never had thought she could talk,” she told Doromea afterward. “But then she really didn’t talk; something just talked through her.”

The something kept on talking, until Ellen came and “shooed” them downstairs to the porch and Doromea. “Here I’ve been waiting for days to see Sheila, and now you two go off and look at a year-old baby the whole while! Tell me, Sheila, when are you going to free yourself of clubs and bridge and suffrage leagues and theatres and things?”

“When Hawley makes me,” answered Sheila, serenely. She was fumbling for something in her exquisite little gold bag--a half-finished lace collar it rolled out to be. “I’m just crocheting this bit of fluff for Margretta,” she explained, laughing a delicious, gurgling sort of laugh. “Isn’t it a joke? I carry it about with me, and work on it between acts--I did two rows in bed this morning--Fanchon was late with my breakfast--and then lots more during the lectures at the Mechanics’ Association.”

“The Mechanics’ Association?” bolted Doromea.

“Yes--every Thursday at noon, you know.” Sheila was counting stitches busily. “Air-ships it was to-day--the most _thrilling_ subject.”

“Oh!” Doromea sat back again. Air-ships; one could understand. Society was engrossed with air-ships just at present.

“I do hope Maurice will take to air-ships,” murmured Sheila, dreamily. “He’s so given over to fireworks now--some part of him’s always exploded. If he keeps it up, he’ll look a guy by the time he’s old enough to lead cotillons.” Behind Sheila’s back, Ellen and Patsy and Doromea exchanged a triumvirate “I told you so”; if it was not polo, it was less than polo; cotillons!

“And Margretta,” suggested Ellen, wondering if Sheila would have looked as absolutely charming had she been hemming dish-towels instead of crocheting Irish lace, “what is Margretta’s _raison de vivre_?”

“Margretta is going to be an actress,” said Margretta’s mother, slowly. “She is absorbed with playing Little Red Riding-hood to Peter Butler’s wolf at the moment. But later she will be playing--other things in Peter Butler’s theatres. It saves so much management, having a cousin who owns things one wants to enter.”

“And when your two offspring are at their separate vocations,” Doromea smiled above the childish curly head, “while the one is whirring furiously through the air, and the other acknowledging a triumphant series of curtain-calls, what will you be doing? Where will you and Hawley be?”

“Oh, I----!” Sheila shook her hair all into her eyes, as she laughed, gayly insouciant. “I shall be still in society, of course--simply a society butterfly! Hawley and I shall be still giving dinners and going to Elbert Lewises’ and living within call of Wall Street and our clubs. And perhaps--when we feel specially bored--we shall sneak down and play in the sand-pile. But we shall always be doing the conventional, Hawley and I--just Plain People, like the ones in Timothy’s stories” (she turned to Doromea with a little nod of homage); “it is the children who must accomplish the extraordinary. As Hawley says, we shall just be going round the same old track, taking the same old hurdles--and happy as larks at it!”

The careless, rippling voice stopped; for some reason Ellen and Doromea had caught up their sewing again, and were stitching away at a hectic pace. Patsy decided with great suddenness that she must go up and wake the baby. Dumbness seemed to have seized everybody--except Sheila. But then a society person is expected to keep on talking.

“That reminds me--I meant to speak of it when I first came--can’t you come with me one night to see this play, _The Rut_, that Peter’s putting on? He’s given me a box for all next week, knowing how I’ve always remained the matinée girl!”--Sheila’s face looked up for a moment from Margretta’s collar with an appealing ingenuousness--“and it would be jolly if we could all go; you two and Knollys and Timothy. Patsy, too, if she could be persuaded while Warren is away, and if she’ll leave the Angel. I don’t know much about the play’s merits,” added Sheila, indifferently. “But--they say it’s being talked about a good deal.”

“Timothy says it’s the most subtle satire of our generation,” put in Doromea, eagerly. “He’s been trying to get seats for us all week, but it was quite impossible. You see, a critic took him the first night, but they had to stand the whole time--it _is_ good of you to ask us, Sheila!”

“That play is absolutely the only thing that could get me to town on a June night,” chimed in Ellen. “But that--why, it’s been running only ten days, and already it is a classic; what a pity the author can’t be here to receive his ovation! Mr. Butler gave it out that the man who wrote it is abroad, and won’t even allow his identity to be divulged. So extraordinary, in this day of the fame-greedy!”

“Perhaps he didn’t write the play for fame,” suggested Sheila, always continuing to count stitches. “Perhaps he wrote it just because he couldn’t help it; and now he wants to stay a Plain Person, with his home and children and all.”

“He has children, then? But, yes--of course; it said in the papers that that had been the most phenomenal part of his creation--introducing two perfectly natural children in a satire of society! And then they say he has the most remarkable range--that he handles theories of electricity and deepest economical problems with the same piercing ease that he does feminine psychology. _The Rut!_--you can’t know what a treat you’ll be giving us, Sheila.”

“Then we’ll say Monday night, shall we?” Sheila had a trick of reflecting other people’s eagerness--a quick little turn of the head, that was compelling of still more enthusiasm. “Hawley will be able to go Monday night, and we will motor you out in the new machine afterward.”

“Heavenly!” Doromea forgot that she had ever felt--vaguely--uncomfortable, and dropped her work again.

“You are such satisfactory society people,” sighed Ellen. “Except when you have to go away,” she added, as a siren blew its warning up the drive.

Sheila jumped up. “It’s the bondage of our rut,” she said, lightly, once more tying on the frilly bonnet; “you see, it is us this new playwright has satirized--and idealized a bit as well, perhaps? Doesn’t he show that we never go or stay, just as we please--that we’re forever doing the things we don’t want to do; just because we fit our groove so exactly? I think that’s it--awfully serious, isn’t it?” Her laugh rang softly amused as she went out to meet her husband. “Till Monday, then--you’ll meet us at the theatre at half past eight, and, oh--do bring Patsy--where is she?”

“Coming!” Patsy’s pretty auburn head appeared at the door--over the Angel whom she was holding. “Where am I to be brought, Sheila?”

“To see two perfectly natural children!” The blue eyes under the motor-hood sought her husband’s. “But society children, I suppose, Hawley--in _The Rut_, you know?”

“Yes, m’ dear, certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” He looked down at her with the benignity of a large Newfoundland.

“To the Elbert Lewises’, then--good-by, good-by!” And Sheila’s fluffy curls swirled round, hiding her face, as she was carried smoothly away.

“In the groove,” Ellen reminded Patsy and Doromea. “The man who wrote _The Rut_ was right when he called it bondage, because the people fit it so exactly. Poor little Sheila!--there’s something very pathetic about her at times.”

“It’s because of her blind satisfaction with surface things,” said Doromea.

“Because she’s simply a society person,” said Patsy.

* * * * *

Monday night, and, at Peter Butler’s Theatre, _The Rut_ was nearing its big scene. Doromea and Timothy, Ellen and Knollys, sat well toward the front of the box--breathless with anticipations realized; Sheila and her big, immovable husband were farther back--out of sight almost, against the box door.

Timothy looked back at them anxiously. “I don’t suppose they’re thinking much about it,” he sighed; “they look a good deal more taken up with each other. And it’s the greatest play of our age--such a shame Patsy didn’t come--nobody will ever do anything that can touch it; unless, of course, the same author----”

“Sheila says the author doesn’t care to write any more,” said Doromea, as the curtain went down on the first act. “Mr. Butler told Sheila that if only the man would keep on, he could make a fortune and anything else he liked out of plays. But he seems a strange creature, the author; he prefers to remain just a Plain Person. No one even knows his name, except Peter Butler.”

“Then how do they know he’s a man?” asked Timothy, suddenly. “Very probably, you know, he isn’t---- I say, Dorry, Mr. Butler’s coming into the box. After this next act I’m going to ask him.”

“Are you enjoying it?” Sheila called, her smile including Ellen and Knollys. She was a veritable bit of froth to-night, Sheila, a Dresden shepherdess in a cloud of chiffons.

“It’s splendid!” Ellen answered for them all. “But we want to know about the author, Sheila--Timothy thinks it may be a woman, and----”

“I want to ask Mr. Butler,” said Timothy, looking at the manager, who was absorbed in conversation with Hawley. “You see,” he smiled at Sheila, “I’ve gone quite foolish over this play; it has stirred me so enormously that----”

“Wait until after this second act.” Sheila’s small, frivolous head was bent over an unruly glove-button. “Peter has an announcement to make then, something or other about this author creature, and it might throw some light on what you want to know. I think I’ll go outside for a bit,” she added, as the curtain went up. “One gets so warm--and I’ve seen the play before.”

Ellen and Doromea looked after her. Then they looked at each other. “If only she could be brought to realize herself,” was in their eyes. “Overlooking the big scene in the biggest play of her time because one gets warm--and she has seen it before! Poor Sheila!”

Then the scene was on, and they forgot all about Sheila. Doromea sat close to the box rail, and when once in a while she came to, stole a second to look at Timothy, whose eyes were round and sending out little sparks behind his glasses. Knollys and Ellen sat on the edge of their chairs, oblivious even of each other. But in the back of the box was a man who paid the deepest attention of them all; who watched the stage with only less interest than he ordinarily watched Sheila. His big thumbs held a book, which he followed closely as he followed the play; a conscientious creature, Hawley, though perhaps not like Warren, or Knollys, or Timothy.

When the curtain went down, he sat back and wiped his forehead exhaustedly; though he had come every night, it was always the same. The others were sitting back too, limp with the wonder of the playwright’s conception.

“And now for the announcement.” Timothy drew a long breath.

Peter Butler had come out before the footlights: his clever, shrewd face was very keen. “Playgoers,” he began, slowly, “have certain rights that are all their own; one right is to adore the star, another to hear the author make a speech. This play has been running two weeks now, and still the author has not satisfied the theatregoer’s curiosity about--herself.” He paused a moment to let the revelation sink in--“herself.” “To-night, however, she has decided to break her silence. I will let her tell you why.”

He stepped back into the wings; there was an excited buzz--which grew into an uproar, and cries of “Author!” “Author!” followed each other with an enthusiasm headed by the group in Sheila’s box. They were on the _qui vive_, impatient, insistent; all except Hawley, who simply sat quietly stolid, like an excellent husband-person.

“I could shake him!” declared Ellen to Doromea, her eyes always on the stage. “This dazzling play--and now the author, and--oh!” She stopped with a quick gasp, as once more the curtains parted and out in front stepped--Sheila! “Why, what--what----” Sheila’s two friends fell back speechless. It was the small butterfly creature who spoke now--deliberately, and with a faintly smiling friendliness. She stood scarcely five feet in her tiny, frivolous French slippers, a wide-eyed rose-leaf doll, in a halo of golden curls and gossamer rose fluff, before the dark dignity of the velvet curtain.

“Yes, I wrote it,” she confessed, looking out over the crowd without an atom of self-consciousness. “I didn’t want to tell, because I’ve always wanted the twins to do the extraordinary. I wanted to stay just their mother. But Mr. Butler says it will help the play if people know who wrote it; and I want to help the play. It’s a good play?” Like Peter Pan, she searched their faces eagerly. “You think it’s a good play, don’t you?”

“Yes!”

“Well, rather!”

“You betcherlife!”

Sheila dimpled. “Then it’s all right. I don’t mind your knowing; and I can stay on in ‘The Rut’--it’s not such a bad rut,” she pleaded. “I’ve dug it to pieces for you, but for myself I have had to put it together again, since the groove of it is my life. After all, you see, the author is just a plain, ordinary person!” With a gay little nod she slipped back behind the scenes, and so to Hawley.

“That _is_ all I am, isn’t it, Hawley?” she asked, hiding herself behind his bigness, as the applause rose more and more enthusiastic. “Simply a society person and your wife--the mother of the twins.”

“Yes, darlin’--certainly; jus’ ’s you say.” But this time Hawley’s expression was quite satisfactory to Ellen and Doromea.

“And we said she didn’t realize herself”--Doromea turned to Ellen--“we said she could never swing wide enough to get outside the circle! Ellen!”

“Just shows we have a rut all our own, doesn’t it?” Ellen was wiping her eyes joyously. “We hadn’t the sense to see that she was staying in hers voluntarily--that she was creating an ideal society person!”

“And they’re the most rarely plain people of all,” added Timothy--not without reverence.

V

WARNER--WHAT ELSE BUT A WAG?

“ ... Just as I was telling Timmie the other night, when a man’s serious--and only then--his trouble begins! Well, I must be tripping along; promised to help Sheila give Lady Trotworthy tea--the dear old soul’s mind isn’t so light on its feet any more, you know. Bye-bye, Hawley. Bye, Plunkett.” Warner threw his coat over his shoulder and departed.

Hawley moved his feet still an inch higher on one of the Club’s red leather chairs. “Awful’ good fellow, Warner,” he vouchsafed, as intelligibly as his cigar would let him.

“Fine,” agreed Plunkett (respectfully speaking, Mr. Knollys Verplanck) from the depths of another red leather chair.

“Er--awfully _funny_, and all that, you know. Keeps things goin’. I don’t know what Sheila’d do if it wasn’t for Warner, since she has that old English Someone to stop. Nice old lady, y’know, but--well, her mind _is_ a bit heavy on its feet, just as Warner said. Don’t know what he’d say if he knew there was another coming to-morrow--another Englishwoman I mean, but nothing like Lady Trot; Sheila says this one’s young and tremendously good-looking. Well, I’m glad--for Warner. He deserves some kind of reward after a week of Lady Trot. Deuced good of him to help Sheila; he’s so--so funny, don’ che know.”

“Very funny,” agreed Verplanck again.

“But--but I say, Plunkett”--uneasily the substantial tan boots drew themselves down from comfort, and Hawley’s big, solid body bent confidentially toward his friend--“I wouldn’t have any of these other chaps hear me, you know, not for worlds; but I’ve often wondered--d’ye think Warner’s anything _besides_ funny, Plunkett? D’ye think--well, what else but a wag is he, eh? _I_ dunno.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Verplanck, frankly; and he stared out across the crowded Avenue, with an expression that paid Warner no little compliment--by its regret. “I tell you candidly, Deverence, I’ve known Jim Warner now for nearly twelve years, and I’ve never yet heard him say anything but a joke. By George, the other night at Treadham’s, when that girl’s dress was on fire, I could have _killed_ Warner! There the girl was, in flames, and Warner, _with his eyes right on her_, sitting still on the other side of the room, _telling a funny story_! Why half the people in the room didn’t know she was on fire, even. I tell you, it made me mad--so mad, I’ve scarcely been civil to Jim since.”

“D’you say anything to him about it?” Hawley’s cigar had gone out. His big, good-humored face looked almost earnest.

“I told him--I couldn’t help telling him--I thought he might have made some pretence at least, at aiding the girl, as long as he saw----”

“And what d’ he say?”

“He said ‘my dear boy, there were five of you aiding her already. I never deliberately make myself inconspicuous!’ Yes, sir, that was just exactly what he said!”

Hawley swore; plentifully. “And d’ye know,” he added, plaintive through his disgust, “Sheila told me that was the funniest story she ever heard in her life; told me about it after we got home, and by Gad, it _was_ funny! Began with----”