The thud of the fist, the grunt of Bret’s effort, the shriek of Sheila, the clatter of Eldon’s fall, the hubbub of the startled spectators, were all jumbled.
When Eldon, dazed almost to unconsciousness, gathered himself together for self-defense and counter attack, the stage was revolving about him. Instinctively he put up
his guard, clenched his right fist, and shifted clear of the table.
Then his anger flamed through his bewilderment. He realized who had struck him, and he dimly understood why. A blaze of rage against this foreigner, this vandal, shot
up in his soul, and he advanced on Winfield with his arm drawn back. But he found Winfield struggling with Batterson and McNish, who had flung themselves on him,
grappling his arms. Eldon stopped with his fists poised. He could not strike that unprotected face, though it was gray with hatred of him.
An instant he paused, then unclenched his hand and fell to straightening his collar and rubbing his stinging flesh. Sheila had run between the two men in a panic. All
her thought was to protect her husband. Her eyes blazed against Eldon. He saw the look, and it hurt him worse than his other shame. He laughed bitterly into Bret’s
face.
“We’re even now. I struck you when you didn’t expect it because you didn’t belong on the stage. You don’t belong here now. Get off! Get off or—God help you!”
This challenge infuriated Bret, and he made such violent effort to reach Eldon that Batterson, Prior, McNish, and an intensely interested and hopeful group of stage-
hands could hardly smother his struggles. He bent and wrestled like the withed Samson, and his hatred for Eldon could find no word bitter enough but “You—you—you
actor!”
Eldon laughed at this taunt and answered with equal contempt, “You thug—you business man!” Then, seeing how Sheila urged Bret away, how dismayed and frantic she
was, he cried in Bret’s face: “You thought you struck me—but it was your wife you struck in the face!”
Sheila did not thank him for that pity. She silenced him with a glare, then turned again to her husband, put her arms about his arms, and clung to them with little
fetters that he could not break for fear of hurting her. She laid her head on his breast and talked to his battling heart:
“Oh, Bret, Bret! honey, my love! Don’t, don’t! I can’t bear it! You’ll kill me if you fight any more!”
The fights of men and dogs are almost never carried to a finish. One surrenders or runs or a crowd interferes.
Winfield felt all his strength leave him. His wife’s voice softened him; the triumph of his registered blow satisfied him to a surprising degree; the conspicuousness
of his position disgusted him. He nodded his head and his captors let him go.
The reaction and the exhaustion of wrath weakened him so that he could hardly stand, and Sheila supported him almost as much as he supported her.
And now Reben began on him. An outsider had invaded the sanctum of his stage, had attacked one of his people—an actor who had made good. Winfield had broken up the
happy family of success with an omen of scandal.
Reben denounced him in a livid fury: “Why did you do it? Why? What right have you to come back here and slug one of my actors? Why? He is a gentleman! Your wife is a
lady! Why should you be—what you are? You should apologize, you should!”
“Apologize!” Bret sneered, with all loathing in his grin.
Eldon flared at the look, but controlled himself. “He doesn’t owe me any apology. Let him apologize to his wife, if he has any decency in him.”
He sat down on the table, but stood up again lest he appear weak. Again Sheila threw him a look of hatred. Then she began to coax Winfield from the scene, whispering
to him pleadingly and patting his arms soothingly:
“Come away, honey. Come away, please. They’re all staring. Don’t fight any more, please—oh, please, for my sake!”
He suffered her to lead him into the wings and through the labyrinth to her dressing-room.
And now the stage was like a church at a funeral after the dead has been taken away. Everybody felt that Sheila was ............