Since Kedzie, by the time her marriage had reached its first
morning-after, had already found her brand-new husband odious, there was
small hope of her learning to like him or their poverty better on close
acquaintance.
When he left her for his office she missed him, and her heart
warmed toward him till he came home again. He always brought new
disillusionment with him. He spent his hours out of office in bewailing
his luck, celebrating the hardness of the times, and proclaiming the
hopelessness of his prospects.
And then one evening he arrived with so doleful a countenance that
Kedzie took pity on him. She perched herself on his lap and asked him
what was worrying him.
“Nothing much, honey,” he groaned, “except that I've lost my job.”
Kedzie was thunderstruck. She breathed the expletive she learned from
her latest companions. “My Gawd!”
Gilfoyle nodded dreadfully: “Business has been bad, anyway. Kalteyer,
with his chewing-gum, was about our only big customer, and now he's gone
bust. Yep. The bank's shut down on his loans, and he was caught with
a mountain of bills on his hands. And the Breathasweeta Chewing Gum
stopped selling. People didn't seem to take to the perfume idea.”
“I just hate people!” Kedzie growled, pacing the floor.
Gilfoyle went on, bitterly: “Remember how they all said I was such a
genius for thinking up the name 'Breathasweeta,' and the perfumery idea?
And how they liked my catch-phrase?”
Kedzie nodded.
Gilfoyle grew sarcastic: “Well, a man's a genius if he succeeds, and a
fool if he doesn't. I'm just as sure as ever that there's a fortune in
Breathasweeta. But when Kalteyer's bankers got cold feet I lost my
halo. He and Kiam have been roasting the life out of me. They blame me!
They've kept knocking me and quoting 'Kiss me again--who are you?' and
then groaning. It's funny. I loved it when everybody else said it was
great. But I didn't care much for it myself, the way they said it.”
Kedzie flung herself on the tremulous wabbly-legged divan. Kedzie didn't
like the phrase, either, now. When he had first smitten it from his
brain she had thought it an inspiration and him a king. Now it sounded
silly, coarse, a little indecent. Of course it had not succeeded. How
could he ever have been so foolish as to utter it--“Kiss me again--who
are you?” Why, it was vulgar!
Gilfoyle looked dismally incompetent as he drooped and mumbled. It is
hard to tell an autobiography of failure and look one's best.
“Didn't you tell him you was--you were married?” queried Kedzie.
“I hadn't the courage.”
“Courage! Well, I like that! So you're fired! Just like me. Funny! And
here we are, married and all. My Gaw--”
“Here we are, married and all. They'll let me finish the week, but my
goose is cooked, I guess. Jobs are mighty scarce in my line of business.
Everybody's poor except the munitions crowd. I wish I knew how to make
dynamite.”
Kedzie pushed her wet hair back from her brow and tore her waist open
a little deeper at the throat. This was carrying the joke of marriage a
little too far even for her patient soul.
Soon Gilfoyle's office was closed to him and he was at home almost all
day. That finished him with Kedzie.
He had not improved on connubial acquaintance. He was lazy and sloven of
mornings, and since he had no office to go to he grew more neglectful
of his appearance than ever. His end-to-end cigarettes got on Kedzie's
nerves and cost a nagging amount of money, especially as she could not
learn to like them herself.
He tried to write poetry for the magazines and permanently destroyed
what little respect Kedzie had for the art. Hunting for some little
love-word that was unimportant when found threw him into frenzies of
rage. He went about mumbling gibberish.
“What in hell rhymes with _heaven_?” he would snarl. “_Beven, ceven,
Devon, fevon, gevin, given_--” And so on to “_zeven_.” Then “_breven,
creven, dreven_” and “_bleven, eleven, dleven_” and “_pseven, spleven,
threven_” and so forth.
At length he would hurl his pen across the room, pull at his hair, and
light another cigarette. Cigarette always rhymed with cigarette.
After a day or two of this drivel he produced a brief lyric with a
certain fleetness of movement; it had small freight to carry. He took
it to a number of editors he knew, and one of them accepted it as a
kindness.
Kedzie was delighted till she heard that it would bring into the
exchequer about seven dollars when the check came, which would be in two
weeks.
When Gilfoyle was not fighting at composition he was calling the editors
hard names and deploring the small remuneration given to poets by a
pork-packing nation. Or he would be hooting ridicule at the successful
poets and growing almost as furious against the persons addicted to the
fashionable _vers libre_ as he was against the wealthy classes.
It seemed to Kedzie that nothing on earth was less important than
prosody, and that however badly poets were paid, they were paid more
than they earned. She grew so lonely for some one to talk to that she
decided to call on old Mrs. Jambers at the boarding-house. She planned
to stop in at dinner-time, in the hope of being asked to sit in at a
real meal. The task of cooking what she could afford to buy robbed her
of all appetite, and she was living mainly on fumes of food and gas.
She was growing thinner and shabbier of soul, and she knew it. She put
off the call till she could endure her solitude no longer; then she
visited Mrs. Jambers. A new maid met her at the door and barred her
entrance suspiciously. Mrs. Jambers was out. So was Mrs. Bottger. So
were the old boarders that Kedzie knew. New boarders had their rooms,
Kedzie was exiled indeed.
She turned away, saying: “Tell Mrs. Jambers that Anita Adair stopped to
say hello. I was just passing.”
“Anita Adair?” said the maid. “You was Anita Adair, yes? Wait once. It
is a letter for you by downstairs.”
She closed the door in Kedzie's face. Some time later she came back and
gave Anita the letter from Charity. It was several days old. She read it
with amazement. The impulse to tear it up as she had torn up Charity's
card in Newport did not last long. She went at once to a drugstore and
looked up the telephone number and the address of the Hyperfilm Company.
She repaid the druggist with a smile and a word of thanks; then she took
a street-car to the office.
Miss Havender, who was also a scenario-writer and editor, was very busy.
She had an executive manner that strangely contradicted her abilities
to suffer under the pangs of love and unrequited idolatry. But then,
business men are no more immune to the foolish venom on Cupid's arrows
than poets--perhaps less, since they have no outlet of rhapsody. That
was one of the troubles with Kedzie's poet. By the time Gilfoyle had
finished a poem of love he was so exhausted that any other emotion was
welcome, best of all a good quarrel and the healthful exercise of his
poetic gifts for hate. He could hate at the drop of a hat.
When the office-boy brought Charity's letter of introduction to Miss
Havender with the verbal message that Miss Adair was waiting outside
Miss Havender nodded. She decided to procure this Miss Adair a good job
in order to curry favor with Mrs. Cheever. She would advise Mr. Ferriday
to pay her marked attention, too.
But when she caught sight of Kedzie running the gantlet of the battery
of authors and typists, and noted how pretty she was, Miss Havender
decided that it would not be good for Mr. Ferriday to pay marked
attention to this minx. He had a habit of falling in love with women
more ardently than with scenarios. He was a despot with a scenario, and
he could quickly make a famous novel unrecognizable by its own father
or mother. But a pretty woman could rule him ludicrously while her charm
lasted.
Miss Havender would gladly have turned Kedzie from the door, but she did
not dare. She had promised Mrs. Cheever to give the girl a job. But she
had not promised what kind of job it should be.
She received Kedzie with such brusqueness that the frightened girl
almost fell off the small rim of chair she dared to occupy. She offered
Kedzie a post as a typist, but Kedzie could not type; as a film-cutter's
assistant, but Kedzie had never seen a film; as a printing-machine
engineer or a bookkeeper's clerk, but Kedzie had no ability to do
things. She could merely look things.
Finally Miss Havender said: “I'm awfully sorry, Miss Adair, but the only
position open is a place as extra woman. There is a big ballroom scene
to be staged tomorrow, and a low dance-hall the next day, and on Monday
a crowd of starving Belgian peasants. We could use you in those, but of
course you wouldn't care to accept the pay.”
She said this hopefully. Kedzie answered, hopelessly:
“What's the pay?”
“Three dollars.”
“I'll take it.”
Miss Havender accepted the inevitable, gave her the address of the
studio--far up-town in the Bronx--and told her to report at eight the
next morning.
Kedzie went back to her home in a new mood. She was the breadwinner now,
if not a cake-earner. Gilfoyle was depressed by her good news, and
she was indignant because he was not happy. The poor fellow was simply
ashamed of his own inability to support her in the style she had been
accustomed to dreaming about.
Kedzie was sullen at having to get the dinner that night. The hot water
would not help to give her hands the ballroom texture. The next morning
she had to leave early. Gilfoyle was too tired of doing nothing to get
up, and she resolved to buy her breakfast ready-made outside. Her
last glance at her husband with his frowsy hair on his frowsy pillow
infuriated her.
The experience at the big studio assuaged her wrath against life. It
was something new, and there was a thrill in the concerted action of the
crowds. She wore a rented ball-gown which did not fit her. Seeing how
her very shoulders winced at their exposure, one would not have believed
that she was a graduate of the Silsby school of near to nature in next
to nothing.
She danced with an extra man, Mr. Clarence Yoder, a portly actor out of
work. He was a costume-play gentleman, and Kedzie thought him something
grand. He found her an entrancing armload. He was rather aggressive and
held her somewhat straitly to his exuberant form, but he gave her so
much information that she did not snub him. She did not even tell him
that she was married. Indeed, when at the close of a busy day he hinted
at a willingness to take her out to see a picture that evening, she
made other excuses than those that actually prevented her accepting. She
spent a doleful evening at home with her dour husband and resented him
more than ever.
On the second day Kedzie was a slum waif and did not like it. She pouted
with a sincerity that was irresistible.
Mr. Ferriday did not direct the crowd scenes in these pictures. His
assistant, Mr. Garfinkel, was the slave-driver. Mr. Yoder cleverly
called him “Simon Legree.” Kedzie did not know who Mr. Legree was, but
she laughed because Mr. Yoder looked as if he wanted her to laugh, and
she had decided that he was worth cultivating.
During the course of the day, however, Mr. Garfinkel fell afoul of Mr.
Yoder because of the way he danced with Kedzie. It was a rough dance
prettily entitled “Walking the Dog.” Mr. Yoder, who did a minuet in
satin breeches to his own satisfaction, pleased neither himself nor Mr.
Garfinkel in the more modern expression of the dancer's art.
Mr. Garfinkel called him a number of names which Mr. Yoder would
never have tolerated if he had not needed the money. He quivered with
humiliation and struggled to conform, but he could not please the
sneering overseer. He sought the last resort of those persecuted by
critics:
“Maybe you can do better yourself!”
“Well, I hope I choke if I can't,” Garfinkel said as he passed the
manuscript to the camera-man and summoned Kedzie to his embrace. “Here,
Miss What's-your-name, git to me.”
Kedzie slipped into his clutch, and he took her as if she were a sheaf
of wheat. His arms loved her lithe elasticities. He dragged her through
the steps with a wondering increase of interest. “Well, say!” he
muttered for her private consumption, “you're a little bit of all right.
I'm not so worse myself when I have such help.”
He danced with her longer than was necessary for the demonstration. Then
he reluctantly turned her over to Mr. Yoder. Kedzie did not like Mr.
Yoder any more. She found him fat and clumsy, and his hands were fat and
clammy.
Mr. Garfinkel had to show him again.
Kedzie could not help murmuring up toward his chin, “I wish I could
dance with you instead of him.”
Garfinkel muttered down into her topknot: “You can, girlie, but not
before the camera. There's a reason. How about a little roof garden this
evening, huh?”
Kedzie sighed, “I'm sorry--I can't.”
Garfinkel realized that the crowd was sitting up and taking notice, and
so he flung Kedzie back to Yoder and proceeded with the picture. He was
angry at himself and at Kedzie, but Kedzie was angered at her husband,
who was keeping her from every opportunity of advancement. Even as he
loafed at home he prevented her ambitions. “The dog in the manger!” she
called him.
Garfinkel paid her no further attention except to take a close-up of her
standing at a soppy table and drinking a glass of stale beer with a look
of desperate pathos. She was supposed to be a slum waif who had never
had a mother's care. Kedzie had had too much of the same.
The next day was a Saturday. Kedzie did not work. She was lonely for
toil, and she abhorred the flat and the neighbors. The expressive
parrot was growing tautological. Kedzie went out shopping to be rid of
Gilfoyle's nerves. He was in travail of another love-jingle, and his
tantrums were odious. He kept repeating _love_ and _dove_ and _above_,
and _tender, slender, offend her, defender_, and _kiss_ and _bliss_ till
the very words grew gibberish, detestable nonsense.
Kedzie wandered the shops in a famine of desire for some of the new
styles. Her pretty body cried out for appropriate adornment as its
birthright. She was ashamed to go to the studio a third time in the same
old suit. She ordered one little slip of a dress sent home “collect.”
She had hoarded the remnant of her Silsby dollars. When she reached home
the delivery-wagon was at the curb and the man was up-stairs. Gilfoyle
greeted Kedzie with resentment.
“What's this thing? I've got no money to pay it. You know that.”
“Oh, I know that well,” said Kedzie, and she went to the kitchen,
where she surreptitiously extracted the money from the depths of the
coffee-canister.
She paid for the dress and put it on. But she would not let Gilfoyle see
her in it. She did not mind buying his cigarettes half so much as she
minded paying for her own clothes. It outraged the very foundation
principles of matrimony to have to pay for her own clothes.
Sunday was an appallingly long day to get through. She was so frantic
for diversion that she would have gone to church if she had had anything
fashionable enough to worship in. In the afternoon she went out alone
and sat on a bench in upper Riverside Drive. A number of passers-by
tried to flirt with her, but it was rather her bitterness against men
than any scruple that kept her eyes lowered.
She would have been excited enough if she had known that the pictures in
which she played a small part were being run off in the projection-room
at the studio for Mr. Ferriday's benefit.
Everybody was afraid of him. The heads of the firm were hoping that
he would approve the reels and not order them thrown out. They were
convinced that they would have to break with him before he broke them.
Mr. Garfinkel was hoping for a word of approval from the artistic
tyrant.
But Ferriday was fretful and sarcastic about everything. Suddenly Miss
Havender noted that he was interested, noted it by the negative proof
of his sudden repose and silence. She could tell that he was leaning
forward, taut with interest. She saw that Anita Adair was floating
across the screen in the arms of Mr. Yoder.
There followed various scenes in which Kedzie did not appear, close-up
pictures of other people. Ferriday fell back growling. Then he came bolt
upright as the purring spinning-wheel of the projection machine poured
out more of Kedzie.
Suddenly he shouted through the dark: “Stop! Wait! Go back! Give us
the last twenty feet again. Who is that girl--that dream? Who is she,
Garfinkel?”
“I don't know her name, sir.”
“Don't know her name! You wouldn't! Well, the whole world will know her
name before I get through with her. Who is she, anyway?”
Miss Havender spoke. “Her name is Adair--Anita Adair.”
“Anita Adair, eh? Well, where did she come from? Who dug her up?”
“I did,” said Miss Havender.
“Good for you, old girl! She's just what I need.” And now he studied
again the scene in which Kedzie took down the draught of bitter beer,
and there was a superhuman vividness in the close-up, with its magnified
details in which every tiny muscle revealed its soul.
“Look at her!” Ferriday cried. “She's perfect. The pathos of her! She
wants training, like the devil, but, Lord, what material!”
He was as fanatic as a Michelangelo finding in a quarry a neglected
block of marble and seeing through its hard edges the mellow contours
of an ideal. He was as impatient to assail his task and beat off the
encumbering weight.