Kedzie lay extended on her _chaise longue_, looking as much unlike
Madame Recamier as one could look who was so pretty a woman. A Sunday
supplement dropped from her hand and joined the heap of papers on the
floor. Kedzie was tired of looking at pictures of herself.
She had had to look over all the papers, since she was in them all. At
least her other self, Anita Adair, was in them.
In every paper there was a large advertisement with a large picture
of her and the names of the theaters at which she would appear
simultaneously in her new film. In the critical pages devoted to the
moving-picture world there were also pictures of her and at least a
little text.
In two or three of the papers there were interviews with the new comet;
in others were articles by her. These entertained her at first, because
she had never seen the interviewers or the articles. She had not thought
many of the thoughts attached to her name. The press agent of the
Hyperfilm Company had written everything. He reveled in his new star,
for the editors were cordial toward her “press stuff.” They “ate it up,”
“gave it spread.”
This was the less surprising since the advertising-man of the Hyperfilm
Company was so lavish with purchase of space that the publishers could
well afford to throw in a little free reading matter--especially since
it did not cost them a cent for the copy.
The press agent unaided has a hard life, but when the advertising-man
gives him his arm he is welcome to the most select columns.
In some of the interviews Kedzie gave opinions she had never held on
themes she had never heard of. When she read that her favorite poet was
Rabindranath Tagore she wondered who that “gink” was. When she read that
she owed her figure to certain strenuous flexion exercises she decided
that they might be worth trying some day. Her advice to beginners in the
motion-picture field proved very interesting. She wondered how she had
ever got along without it.
She was greatly excited by an article of hers in which she told of the
terrific adventures she had had in and out of the studio; there was one
time when an angry tiger would have torn her to pieces if she had not
had the presence of mind to play dead. She read of another occasion when
she had either to spoil a good film or endanger her existence as the
automobile she was steering refused to answer the brake and plunged
over a cliff. Of course she would not ruin the film. By some miracle she
escaped with only a few broken bones, and after a week in the hospital
returned to the interrupted picture. These old stories were told with
such simple sincerity that she almost believed them. But she tossed them
aside and sneered:
“Bunc!”
She yawned over her own published portraits--and to be able to do that
is to be surfeited indeed.
Suddenly Kedzie stopped purring, thought fiercely, whirled to her flank;
her hands went among the papers. She remembered something, found it at
last, an article she had glanced at and forgotten for the moment.
She snatched it up and read. It discussed the earning powers of several
film queens. It credited them with salaries ten or twenty times as much
as hers. Two or three of them had companies of their own with their
names at the head of their films.
Kedzie groaned. She rose and paced the floor, shamed, trapped, humbled.
The misers of the Hyperfilm Company paid her a beggarly hundred dollars
a week! merely featured her among other stars of greater magnitude,
while certain women had two thousand a week and were “incorporated,”
whatever that was!
Kedzie longed to get at Ferriday and tell him what a sneak he was to
lure her into such a web and tie her up with such cheap ropes. She would
break her bonds and fling them in his face.
She slid abruptly to the floor and began to go over the film pages
again, comparing her portraits with the portraits of those higher-paid
creatures. She hated vanity and could not endure it in other women; it
was a mere observation of a self-evident fact that she was prettier than
all the other film queens put together. She sat there sneering at the
presumptuousness of screen idols whom she had almost literally worshiped
a year before.
Then something gave her pause. The celluloid-queens had certain pages
allotted to them, the actresses certain pages.
But there was another realm where women were portrayed in fashionable
gowns--debutantes, brides, matrons. And their realm was called “The
Social World.” These women toiled not, earned not; they only spent money
and time as they pleased. They were in “society,” and she was out of it.
They were ladies and she was a working-woman.
Now Kedzie's cake was dough indeed. Now her pride was shame. She did not
want to be a film queen. She did not want to work for any sum a week.
She wanted to be a debutante and a bride and a matron.
She had never had a coming-out party, and never would have. She studied
the aristocrats, put their portraits on her dressing-table and tried
to copy their simple grandeur in her mirror. But she lacked a certain
something. She didn't know a human being who was swell to use as a
model.
Oh yes, she did--one--Jim Dyckman.
A dark design came to her to dally with him no longer. He had dragged
her out of that pool at Newport; now he must drag her into the swim.
The telephone-bell rang. The hall-boy said:
“A gen'leman to see you--Mistoo Ferriday.”
“Send him along.”
“He's on the way now.”
“Oh, all right.”
As Kedzie hung up the receiver it occurred to her that this little
interchange was about the un-swellest thing she had ever done. She had
been heedless of the convenances. Her business life made her responsible
only to herself, and she felt able to take care of herself anywhere.
Now it came over her that she could not aspire to aristocracy and
allow negro hall-boys to send men up in the elevator and telephone her
afterward. She snatched up the telephone and said:
“That you?”
“Yassum, Miss Adair.”
“How dare you send anybody up without sending the name up first?”
“Why, you nevva--”
“Who do you think I am that I permit anybody to walk in on me?”
“Why, we alwiz--”
“The idea of such a thing! It's disgraceful.”
“Why, I'm sorry, but--”
“Don't ever do it again.”
“No'm.”
She slapped the receiver on the hook and fumed again, realizing that a
something of elegance had been lacking in her tirade.
The door-bell rang, and she did not wait for her maid, but answered it
in angry person. Ferriday beamed on her.
“Oh, it's you. You didn't stop to ask if I was visible. You just came
right on up, didn't you?”
He whispered: “Pardon me. Somebody else is here. Exit laughingly!”
That was insult on insult.
“Stop it! There is not anybody else. Come back. What do you want?”
He came back, his laughter changed to rage.
“Look here, you impudent little upstart from nowhere! I invented you,
and if you're not careful I'll destroy you.”
“Is that so?” she answered; then, like Mr. Charles Van Loan's baseball
hero, she realized with regret that the remark was not brilliant as
repartee.
Ferriday was too wroth to do much better:
“Yes, that's so. You little nobody!”
“Nobody!” she laughed, pointing to the newspapers spangled with her
portraits.
Ferriday snorted, “Paid for by Jim Dyckman's money.”
“What do you mean--Jim Dyckman's money?”
“Oh, when I saw how idiotic he was over you, and how slow you were in
landing him, and when I realized that the Hyperfilm Company was going to
slide your pictures out with no special advertising, I went to him and
tried to get him into the business.”
“You had a nerve!”
“Praise from Lady Hubert!”
“Whoever she is! Well, did he bite?”
“Yes and no. He's not such a fool as he looks in your company. He has a
hard head for business; he wouldn't invest a cent.”
“I thought you said--”
“But he has a soft head for you. He said he wouldn't invest a cent in
the firm, but he'd donate all I could use for you. It was to be a little
secret present. He told me you refused to accept presents from him. Did
you?”
Kedzie blushed before his cynic understanding.
He laughed: “You're all right. You know the game, but you've got to
quicken your speed. You're taking too much footage in getting to the
climax.”
Kedzie was still incandescent with the new information:
“And Jim Dyckman paid for my advertising?”
“On condition that his name was kept out of it. That's why you're
famous. You couldn't have got your face in a paper if you had been fifty
times as pretty if he hadn't swamped the papers with money. And he would
never have thought of it if I hadn't gone after him. So you'd better
waste a little politeness on me or your first flare will be your last.”
Kedzie acknowledged his conquest, bowed her head, and pouted up at him
with such exquisite impudence that he groaned:
“I don't know whether I ought to kiss you or kill you.”
“Take your choice, my master,” Kedzie cooed.
He snarled at her: “I guess the news I bring will do for you. There was
a fire in the studio last night. You didn't know of it?”
Kedzie, dumbly aghast, shook her head.
“If you'd read any part of the newspapers except your own press stuff
you'd have seen that there was a war in Europe yesterday and a fire in
New York last night. I was there trying to save what I could. I got
a few blisters and not much else. Most of your unfinished work is
finished--gone up in smoke.”
“You don't mean that my beautiful, wonderful films are destroyed?”
He nodded--then caught her as her knees gave way. He felt a stab of pity
for her as he dragged her to her _chaise longue_ and let her fall there.
She was dazed with the shock.
She had been indifferent to the destruction of fortresses and
cathedrals--even of Rheims, with its titanic granite lace. She had read,
or might have read, of the airship that dropped a bomb through the great
fresco in Venice where Tiepolo revealed his unequaled mastery of aerial
perspective, taking the eye up through the dome and the human witnesses,
cloud by cloud, past the hierarchies of angels, past Christ and the
Mother of God, on up to Jehovah himself, bending down from infinite
heights. The eternal loss of this picture meant nothing to her. But
the destruction of her own recorded smiles and tears and the pretty
twistings and turnings of her young body--that was cataclysm.
She was like everybody else, in that no multiplication of other people's
torments could be so vivid as the catching of her own thumb in a door.
Kedzie was too crushed to weep. This little personal Pompeii brought
to the dust all the palaces and turrets of her hope upon her head. She
whispered to Ferriday:
“What are you going to do? Must you make them over again?”
He shook his head. “The Hyperfilm Company will probably shut up shop
now.”
“And let my pictures die?”
He nodded.
She beckoned him close and clung to him, babbling: “What will become
of me? Oh, my poor pictures! My pretty pictures! The company owes me a
week's salary. And I had counted on the money. What's to become of me?”
Ferriday resented her eternal use of him for her own advantages. “Why do
you appeal to me? Where's your friend Dyckman?”
“I was to see him this evening--dine with him.”
“Well, he can build you ten new studios and not feel it. Better ask him
to set you up in business.”
Kedzie revolted at this, but she had no answer. Ferriday saw the papers
folded open at the society pages. He stared at them, at her, then
sniffed:
“So that's your new ambition!”
“What?”
“'In the Social World!' You want to get in with that gang, eh? Has
Dyckman asked you to marry him?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, if he does, don't ever let him take you into his own set.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just to warn you. Those social worldlings wouldn't stand for you, Anita
darling. You can make monkeys of us poor men. But those queens will make
a little scared worm out of you and step on you. And they won't stop
smiling for one minute.”
“Is that so?” Kedzie snarled. There it was again.
The telephone rang. Kedzie answered it. The hall-boy timidly announced:
“Mistoo Dyckman is down year askin' kin he see you. Kin he?”
“Send him up, please,” said Kedzie. Then she turned to Ferriday. “He's
here--at this hour! I wonder why.”
“I'd better slope.”
“Do you mind?”
“Not in the least. I'll go up a flight of stairs and take the elevator
after His Majesty has finished with it. Good-by. Get busy!”
He slid out, and Kedzie scurried about her primping. The bell rang.
She sent her maid to the door. Dyckman came in. She let him wait
awhile--then went to him with an elegiac manner.
She accepted his salute on a martyr-white brow. He said:
“I read about the fire. I was scared to death for you till I learned
that all the people were safe. I motored up to see the ruins. Some
ruins! Like to see'em?”
“I don't think I could stand the sight of them. They're my ruins, too.”
“How so?”
“Because the company won't rebuild or go on, and most of my pictures
were destroyed.”
“Your pretty, beautiful, gorgeous pictures gone! Oh, God help us! That's
too terrible to believe.”
She sighed, “It's true.”
“Why, I'd rather lose the Metropolitan Art Gallery than your films.
Can't they be made over?”
“They could, but who's to stand the expense?”
“I will, if you'll let me.”
“Mr. Dyckman!”
“I thought we'd agreed that my name was Jim.”
“Jim! You would do that for me!”
“Why not?”
“But why so?”
“Because--why, simply--er--it's the most natural thing in the world,
seeing that--Well, you're not sitting there pretending that you don't
know I love you, are you?”
“Oh dear, oh dear! It's too wonderful to believe, you angel!”
And then for the first time she flung her arms about his neck and kissed
him and hugged him, knelt on his lap and clasped him fiercely.
He felt as if a simoom of rapture had struck him, and when she told him
a dozen times that she loved him he could think of nothing to say but,
“Say, this is great!”
She forgave him the banality this time. When she had calmed herself a
little she said:
“But it would mean a frightful lot of money.”
“Whatever it costs, it's cheap--considering this.” He indicated her arm
about his neck. “I wouldn't let the world be robbed of the pictures of
you, Anita, not for any money.” He told her to tell Ferriday to make the
arrangements and send the estimates to him. And he said, “I won't ask
you to quit being photographed, even when we are married.”
“When we are married?” Kedzie parroted.
“Of course! That's where we're bound for, isn't it? Where else could
we pull up--that is, of course, assuming that you'll do me the honor of
anchoring a great artist like you up to a big dub like me. Will you?”
“Why--why--I'd like to think it over; this is so sudden.”
“Of course, you'd better think it over, you poor angel!”
Kedzie could not think what else to say or even what to think. The word
“marriage” reminded her that she had what the ineffable Bunker Bean
would have called “a little old last year's husband” lying around in the
garret of her past.
She went almost blind with rage at that beast of a Gilfoyle who had
dragged her away and married her while she was not thinking. He must
have hypnotized her or drugged her. If only she could quietly murder
him! But she didn't even know where he was.