The next morning that parrot, still unmurdered, woke Kedzie early. She
buried one ear deep in the pillow and covered the other with her hair
and her hand. The parrot's voice receded to a distance, but a still
smaller voice began to call to her. She was squirming deeper for a long
snooze when her foot struck another.
Her husband!--King Log, audibly a-slumber. She pouted drowsily, frowned,
slid away, and tried to commit temporary suicide by drowning herself in
sleep.
Then her stupor faded as the tiny call resounded again in her soul. She
was no longer merely Mrs. Anita Gilfoyle, the flat-dwelling nobody. She
was now Anita Adair, the screen-queen. She was needed at the studio.
She sat up, looked at her husband, her unacknowledged and
unacknowledging husband. A mysterious voice drew her from his side as
cogently as the hand of Yahweh drew the rib that became a woman from
under the elbow of Adam.
She rose and looked back and down at the man whom the law had united
her with indissolubly. Eve must have wondered back at Adam with the same
sense of escape while he lay asleep. According to one of the conflicting
legends of the two gods of Genesis, woman was then actually one with
man. Marriage has ever since been an effort to put her back among his
ribs, but she has always refused to be intercostal. It is an ancient
habit to pretend that she is, and sometimes she pretends to snuggle into
place. Yet she has never been, can never be, re-ribbed--especially not
since marriage is an attempt to fit her into the anatomy of an Adam who
is always, in a sense, a stranger to her.
Kedzie gazed on her Adam with a sense of departure, of farewell. She
felt a trifle sorry for Gilfoyle, and the moment she resolved to quit
him he became a little more attractive.
There was something pitiful about his helpless sprawl: his very
awkwardness endeared him infinitesimally. She nearly felt that
tenderness which good wives and fond mothers feel for the gawky
creatures they hallow with their devotion.
Kedzie leaned forward to kiss the poor wretch good-by, but,
unfortunately (or fortunately), a restlessness seized him, he rolled
over on his other side, and one limp, floppy hand struck Kedzie on the
nose.
She sprang back with a gasp of pain and hurried away, feeling abused and
exiled.
At the studio she was received by Garfinkel with distinction. Ferriday
came out to meet her with a shining morning face and led her to the
office of the two backers.
A contract was waiting for her and the pen and ink were handy. Kedzie
had never seen a contract before and she was as afraid of this one as if
it were her death warrant. It was her life warrant, rather. She tried to
read it as if she had signed dozens of contracts, but she fooled nobody.
She could not make head or tail of “the party of the first part” and the
terms exacted of movie actors. She understood nothing but the salary.
One hundred dollars a week! That bloomed like a rose in the crabbed
text. She would have signed almost anything for that.
The deed was finally done. Her hundred-odd pounds of flesh belonged to
the Hyperfilm Company. The partners gave her their short, warm hands.
Ferriday wrung her palm with his long, lean fingers. Then he caught her
by the elbow and whisked her into his studio. He began to describe her
first scene in the big production. The backers had insisted that she
prove her ability as a minor character in a play featuring another
woman. Kedzie did not mind, especially when Ferriday winked and
whispered: “We'll make you make her look like something the cat brought
in. First of all, those gowns of yours--”
She had told him of her ill luck the day before in finding Lady
Powell-Carewe out. He sent her flying down again in his limousine. She
stepped into it now with assurance. It was beginning to be her very own.
At least she was beginning to own the owner.
She felt less excitement about the ride now that it was not her first.
She noticed that the upholstery was frayed in spots. Other cars passed
hers. The chauffeur was not so smart as some of the drivers. And he was
alone. On a few of the swagger limousines there were two men in livery
on the box. She felt rather ashamed of having only one.
Her haughty discontent fell from her when she arrived at Lady
Powell-Carewe's shop. She wished she had not come alone. She did not
know how to behave. And what in Heaven's name did you call her--“Your
Ladyship” or “Your Majesty” or what?
She walked in so meekly and was so simply clad that nobody in the place
paid any heed to her at first. It was a very busy place, with girls
rushing to and fro or sauntering limberly up and down in tremendously
handsome gowns.
Kedzie could not pick out Lady Powell-Carewe. One of the promenaders
was so tall and so haughty that Kedzie thought she must be at least a
“Lady.” She was in a silvery, shimmery green-and-gray gown, and the man
whom the customers called “Mr. Charles” said:
“Madame calls this the Blown Poplar. Isn't it bully?”
Kedzie caught Mr. Charles's eye. He spoke to her sharply:
“Well?”
He evidently thought her somebody looking for a job as bundle-carrier.
She was pretty, but there were tons of pretty girls. They bored Mr.
Charles to death. He had a whole beagle-pack of them to care for.
Kedzie poked at him Ferriday's letter of introduction addressed to Lady
Powell-Carewe. Mr. Charles took it and, not knowing what it contained,
bore it into the other room without asking Kedzie to sit down.
He reappeared at the door and bowed to her with great amazement. She
slipped into a chaotic room where there were heaps of fabrics thrown
about like rubbish, long streamers of samples littering a desk full of
papers.
A sumptuous creature of stately manner bowed creakily to Kedzie, and
Kedzie said, trying to remember the pronunciation:
“Lady Pole-Carrier?”
A little plainly dressed woman replied: “Yes, my child. So you're the
Adair thing that Ferriday is gone half-witted over. He's just been
talking my ear off about you. Sit down. Stop where you are. Let me see
you. Turn around. I see.” She turned to the stately dame. “Rather nice,
isn't she, Mrs. Congdon? H'mm!” She beckoned Kedzie to come close. “What
are your eyes like?” She lorgnetted the terrified girl, as if she were
a throat-specialist. “Take off that horrid hat. Let me see your hair.
H'mm! Rather nice hair, isn't it, Mrs. Congdon?--that is, if she knew
how to do it. Let me see. Yes, I get your color, but it will be a job to
suit you and that infernal movie-camera. It kills my colors so! I have
to keep remembering that crimson photographs black and cream is dirty,
and blue and yellow are just nothing.”
Mr. Charles came in to say that Mrs. Noxon was outside. Kedzie
recognized the great name with terror. Lady Powell-Carewe snapped:
“Tell the old camel I'm ill. I can't see her to-day. I'm ill to
everybody to-day. I've taken a big job on.”
This was sublime. To have aristocrats turned away for her!
While Madame prowled among the fabrics and bit her lorgnon in study,
Kedzie looked over the big albums filled with photographs of the
creations of the great creatrix. For Lady Powell-Carewe was a creative
artist, taking her ideas where she found them in art or nature, and in
revivals and in inventions. She took her color schemes from paintings,
old and new, from jewels, landscapes. It was said that she went to
Niagara to study the floods of color that tumble over its brink.
She began to interest herself in Kedzie, to wish to accomplish more than
the mere selling of dress goods made up. She decided to create Kedzie as
well as her clothes.
“Do you wear that pout all the time?” she asked.
“Do I pout?” Kedzie asked, in an amazement.
“Don't pretend that you don't know it and do it intentionally. Also why
do you Americans always answer a question by asking another?”
“Do we?” said Kedzie.
Lady Powell-Carewe decided that Kedzie was as short on brains as she was
long on looks. But it was the looks that Lady Powell-Carewe was going to
dress, and not the brains.
She ordered Kedzie to spend a lot of money having her hair cared for
expertly.
She tried various styles on Kedzie, ordering her to throw off her frock
and stand in her combination while Mrs. Congdon and Mr. Charles brought
up armloads of silks and velvets and draped them on Kedzie as if she
were a clothes-horse.
The feel of the crisp and whispering taffetas, the elevation of the
brocades, the warm nothingness of the chiffons like wisps of fog, the
rich dignity of the cloths, gave Kedzie rapture on rapture. Standing
there with a burden of fabrics upon her and Lady Powell-Carewe kneeling
at her feet pinning them up and tucking them here and there, Kedzie was
reminded of those ancient days of six months gone when her mother
used to kneel about her and fit on her the home-made school-dress cut
according to Butterick patterns. Now Kedzie had a genuine Lady at her
feet. It was a triumph indeed. It was not hard now to believe that she
would have all the world at her feet one day.
Lady Powell-Carewe used Kedzie's frame as a mere standard to fly banners
from. Leaving the head and shoulders to stand out like the wax bust of
a wistful doll, she started a cloud of fabric about her in the most
extravagant fashion. She reined it in sharply at the waist, but again
it flared to such distances on all sides that Kedzie could never have
sailed through any door but that of a garage without compression.
On this vast bell of silk she hung streamers of rosettes, flowers of
colors that would have been strident if they had been the eighteenth of
a shade stronger. As it was, they were as delicious as cream curdled in
a syrup of cherries. The whole effect would have been burlesque if it
had not been the whim of a brilliant taste. Men would look it at and
say, “Good Lord!” Women would murmur, enviously, “Oh, Lord!” Kedzie's
soul expanded to the ultimate fringe of the farthest furbelow.
When the fantasy was assured Lady Powell-Carewe had Kedzie extracted
from it. Then pondering her sapling slenderness, once more she caught
from the air an inspiration. She would incase Kedzie in a sheath of
soft, white kid marked with delicate lines and set off with black gloves
and a hat of green leaves. And this she would call “The White Birch.”
And that was all the creating she felt up to for the day. She had
Kedzie's measure taken in order to have a slip made as a model for use
in the hours when Kedzie should be too busy to stand for fitting.
It was well for Kedzie that there was a free ride waiting for her. Her
journey to the studio was harrowed by the financial problem which
has often tortured people in limousines. She did not like to ask Mr.
Ferriday for money in advance. He might think she was poor. There
is nothing that bankrupts the poor so much as the effort to look
unconcerned while they wait for their next penny.
Kedzie was frantic with worry and was reduced to prayer. “O Lord, send
me some money somehow.” The number of such prayers going up to heaven
must cause some embarrassment, since money can usually be given to
one person only by taking it from another--and that other is doubtless
praying for more at the very moment.
To Kedzie's dismay, when she arrived at the studio and asked for Mr.
Ferriday, Mr. Garfinkel appeared. He was very deferential, but he was,
after all, only a Garfinkel and she needed a Ferriday. He explained that
his chief was very busy and had instructed Garfinkel to teach Miss Adair
the science of make-up for the camera, to take test pictures of her, and
give her valuable hints in lens behavior.
Late in the afternoon Ferriday came in to see the result of the first
lesson. He said, “Much obliged, Garfinkel” and Garfinkel remembered
pressing duty elsewhere.
His departure left Kedzie alone with Ferriday in a cavern pitch black
save for the cone of light spreading from the little hole in the wall
at the back to the screen where the spray of light-dust became living
pictures of Kedzie.
Kedzie did not know that the operator behind the wall could peek and
peer while his picture-wheel rolled out the cataract of photographs.
Ferriday was careful of her--or of himself. He held her hand, of course,
and murmured to her how stunning she was, but he made no effort to make
love, to her great comfort and regret.
At length he invited her to ride home in his limousine, but he did
not invite her to dinner. She told herself that she would have had to
decline. But she would have liked to be asked.
While he rhapsodized once more about her future she was thinking of
her immediate penury. As she approached the street of her residence she
realized that she must either starve till pay-day or borrow. It was a
bad beginning, but better than a hopeless ending. After several gasps of
hesitation she finally made her plea:
“I'm awfully sorry to have to trouble you, Mr. Ferriday, but I'm--Well,
could you lend me twenty-five dollars?”
“My dear child, take fifty,” he cried.
She shook her head, but it hurt her to see the roll of bills he dived
for and brought up, and the careless grace with which he peeled two
leaves from the cabbage. Easy money is always attended with resentment
that more did not come along. Kedzie pouted at her folly in not
accepting the fifty. If she had said, “Lend me fifty,” he would have
offered her a hundred. But the twenty-five was salvation, and it would
buy her food enough to keep her and her useless husband alive, and to
buy her a pair of shoes and some gloves.
As the car drew near her corner she cried that she had some shopping to
do and escaped again at the drug-store.
She found her husband at home. There was an unwonted authority about his
greeting:
“Well, young woman, you may approach and kiss my hand. I am a gentleman
with a job. I am a Chicago gentleman with a job.”
“You don't mean it!” Kedzie gasped; and kissed him from habit with more
respect than her recent habit had shown.
“I mean it,” said Gilfoyle. “I am now on the staff of the Deshler
Advertising Agency. I was afraid when Mr. D. offered me an unsolicited
position (he could say it to-day) that it was the red wine and not the
real money that was talking, but he was painfully sober this noon, took
me out to lunch, and told me that he would be proud to avail himself of
my services.”
“Splendid!” said Kedzie, with sincere enthusiasm. It is always pleasant
to learn that money is setting toward the family.
But something told Kedzie that her late acquisition of twenty-five
dollars would not be with her long. Easy come, easy go. “How much is the
fare to Chicago?” she asked, in a hollow voice.
“Twenty-two dollars is the fare,” said Gilfoyle, “with about eight
dollars extra. I couldn't borrow a cent. I've got only five dollars.”
“I thought so,” said Kedzie.
“Thought what so?” said Gilfoyle.
“Nothing,” said Kedzie. “Well, I happen to have twenty-five dollars.”
“That's funny,” said Gilfoyle. “Where did you get it?”
“Oh, I saved it up.”
“From what?”
“Well, do you want the twenty-five, or don't you?”
Gilfoyle pondered. If he questioned the source of the money he might
find it out, and be unable to accept it. He wanted the money more than
the hazardous information; so he said:
“Of course I want the twenty-five, darling, but I hate to rob you. Of
course I'll send for you as soon as I can make a nest out there, but how
will you get along?”
“Oh, I'll get along,” said Kedzie; “there'll be some movie-money coming
to me Saturday.”
“Well, that's fine,” Gilfoyle said, feeling a weight of horrible guilt
mingled with superior wings of relief. He hesitated, hemmed, hawed,
perspired, and finally looked to that old source of so many escapes, his
watch. “There's a train at eight-two; I could just about make it if I
scoot now.”
“You'd better scoot,” said Kedzie. And she gave him the money.
“I'd like to have dinner with you,” Gilfoyle faltered, “but--”
“Yes, I'd like to have you, but--”
They looked at each other wretchedly. Their love was so lukewarm already
that they bothered each other. There was no impulse to the delicious
bitter-sweet of a passionate farewell. She was as eager to have him gone
as he to go, and each blamed the other for that.
“I'll write you every day,” he said, “and I'll send the fare to you as
soon as I can get it.”
“Yes, of course,” Kedzie mumbled. “Well, good-by--don't miss your train,
darling.”
“Good-by, honey.”
They had to embrace. Their arms went out about each other and clasped
behind each other's backs. Then some impulse moved them to a fierce
clench of desperate sorrow. They were embracing their dead loves, the
corpses that lay dead in these alienated bodies. It was an embrace
across a grave, and they felt the thud of clods upon their love.
They gasped with the pity of it, and Kedzie's eyes were reeking with
tears and Gilfoyle's lips were shivering when they wrenched out of that
lock of torment.
He caught her back to him and kissed her salt-sweet mouth. Her kiss
was brackish on his lips as life was. She felt a kind of assault in the
fervor of his kiss, but she did not resist. He was a stranger who sprang
at her from the dark, but he was also very like a poet she had loved
poetically long, long ago.
Then they wrung hands and called good-bys and he caught up his suit-case
and rushed through the door.
She hung from the window to wave to him as he ran down the street to the
Subway, pausing now and again to wave to her vaguely, then stumbling on
his course.
At last she could not see him, whether for the tears or for the
distance, and she bowed her head on her lonely sill and wept.
She had a splendid cry that flushed her heart clean as a new whistle.
She washed her eyes with fine cold water and half sobbed, half laughed,
“Well, that's over.”