Kedzie wanted to be a lady, and with the ladies stand--a tall tiara in
her hair, a lorgnette in her hand.
She had succeeded dizzily, tremendously, in her cinema career. The timid
thing that had watched the moving-picture director to see how he held
his wineglass, and accepted his smile as a beam of sunshine breaking
through the clouds about his godlike head, now found his gracefulness
“actory,” his intimacy impudent, and his association compromising.
Ferriday's very picturesqueness and artistry convinced her now that he
was not quite the gentleman.
Kedzie was beginning to imitate the upper dialect already. She who but
a twelvemonth past was dividing people into “hicks” and “swells,” and
whose epithets were “reub” and “classy,” was now a generation advanced.
Ferriday saw it and raged. One day in discussing the cast of a picture
he mentioned the screen-pet Lorraine Melnotte as the man for the
principal male role.
Kedzie sighed; “Oh, he is so hopelessly romantic, never quite the
gentleman. In costume he gets by, but in evening clothes he always
suggests the handsome waiter--don't you think?”
Ferriday roared, with disgust: “Good Lord, but you're growing. What is
this thing I've invented? Are you a _Frankenstein?_”
Kedzie looked blank and sneered, “Are you implying that I have Yiddish
blood in me?”
She wondered why he laughed, but she would not ask. Along many lines
Kedzie did not know much, but in others she was uncannily acute.
Kedzie was gleaning all her ideas of gentlemanship from Jim Dyckman. She
knew that he had lineage and heritage and equipage and all that sort of
thing, and he must be great because he knew great people. His careless
simplicity, artlessness, shyness, all the things that distressed her at
first, were now accepted as the standards of conduct for everybody.
In life as in other arts, the best artists grow from the complex to the
simple, the tortuous to the direct, from pose to poise, from tradition
to truth, from artifice to reality. Kedzie was beginning to understand
this and to ape what she could not do naturally.
Her comet-like scoot from obscurity to fame in the motion-picture sky
had exhausted the excitement of that sky, and now she was ashamed of
being a wage-earner, a mere actress, especially a movie actress.
If the studio had not caught fire and burned up so many thousands of
yards of her portraiture she would have broken her contract without
scruple. But the shock of the loss of her pretty images drove her back
to the scene. The pity of so much thought, emotion, action, going up in
smoke was too cruel to endure.
It was not necessary for Dyckman to pay the expenses of their repetition
in celluloid, as he offered. The Hyperfilm Company rented another studio
and began to remake the destroyed pictures. They were speedily renewed
because the scenarios had been rescued and there was little of that
appalling waste of time, money, and effort which has almost wrecked the
whole industry. They did not photograph a thousand feet for every two
hundred used.
Kedzie's first pictures had gone to the exchanges before the fire, and
they were continuing their travels about the world while she was at work
revamping the rest.
About this time the Hyperfilm managers decided to move their factory to
California, where the sempiternal sunlight insured better photography at
far less expense. This meant that Kedzie must leave New York only partly
conquered and must tear herself away from Jim Dyckman.
She broke down and cried when she told Dyckman of this, and for the
first time his sympathies were stampeded on her account. He petted her,
and she slid into his arms with a child-like ingratiation that made his
heart swell with pity.
“What's the odds,” he said, attempting consolation, “where you work, so
long as you work?”
“But it would mean,” she sobbed--“it would mean taking me away-ay from
you-ou.”
This tribute enraptured Dyckman incredibly. That he should mean so much
to so wonderful a thing as she was was unbelievably flattering. He had
dogged Charity's heels with meek and unrewarded loyalty until he had
lost all pride. Kedzie's tears at the thought of leaving him woke it to
life again.
“By golly, you sha'n't go, then!” he cried. “I was thinking of coming
out there to visit you, but--but it would be better yet for you to stay
right here in little old New York.”
This brought back Kedzie's smile. But she faltered, “What if they hold
me to my contract, though?”
“Then we'll bust the old contract. I'll buy 'em off. You needn't work
for anybody.”
There was enough of the old-fashioned woman of one sort left in Kedzie
to relish the slave-block glory of being fought over by two purchasers.
She spoke rather slyly:
“But I'll be without wages then. How would I live? I've got to work.”
Dyckman answered at once: “Of course not. I'll take care of you. I
offered to before, you know.” He had made a proposal of marriage some
time before; it was the only sort of proposal that he had been tempted
to make to Kedzie. He liked her immensely; she fascinated him; he loved
to pet her and kiss her and talk baby talk to her; but she had never
inflamed his emotions.
Either it was the same with her, or she had purposely controlled herself
and him from policy, or had been restrained by coldness or by a certain
decency, of which she had a good deal, after all and in spite of all.
Throughout their relations they had deceived Ferriday and other cynics.
For all their indifference to appearances, they had behaved like a
well-behaved pair of young betrothed Americans, with a complete freedom
from chaperonage, and a considerable liberality of endearments, but no
serious misdemeanor.
Kedzie knew what he meant, but she wanted to hear him propose again. So
she murmured:
“How do you mean, take care of me?”
“I mean--marry you, of course.”
“Oh!” said Kedzie. And in a whirlwind of pride she twined her arms about
his neck and clung to him with a desperate ardor.
Dyckman said: “This isn't my first proposal, you know. You said you
wanted time to think it over. Haven't you thought it over yet?”
“Yes,” Kedzie sighed, but she said no more.
“Well, what's the answer?” he urged.
“Yes.”
She whispered, torn between rapture and despair.
Any woman might have blazed with pride at being asked to marry Jim
Dyckman. The little villager was almost consumed like another Semele
scorched by Jupiter's rash approach.
In Dyckman's clasp Kedzie felt how lonely she had been. She wanted to be
gathered in from the dangers of the world, from poverty and from work.
She had not realized how tiny a thing she was, to be combating the big
city all alone, until some one offered her shelter.
People can usually be brave and grim in the presence of defeat and peril
and hostility. It is the kind word, the sudden victory, the discovery of
a friend that breaks one down. Even Kedzie wept.
She wept all over Jim Dyckman's waistcoat, sat on his lap and swallowed
throat-lumps and tears and tugged at his cuff-links with her little
fingers.
Then she looked up at him and blushed and kissed him fiercely, hugging
him with all the might of her arms. He was troubled by the first frenzy
she had ever shown for him, and he might have learned how much more than
a merely pretty child she was if she had not suddenly felt an icy hand
laid on her hands, unclasping them.
A cold arm seemed to bend about her throat and drag her back. She slid
from Dyckman's knees, gasping:
“Oh!”
She could not become Mrs. Jim Dyckman, because she was Mrs. Thomas
Gilfoyle.
Dyckman was astounded and frightened by her action. He put his hand out,
but she unclenched his fingers from her wrist, mumbling:
“Don't--please!”
“Why not? What's wrong with you, child?”
How could she tell him? What could she do? She must do a lot of
thinking. On one thing she was resolved: that she would not give Dyckman
up. She would find Gilfoyle and get quit of him. They had been married
so easily; there must be an easy way of unmarrying.
She studied Dyckman. She must not frighten him away, or let him suspect.
She laughed nervously and went back to his arms, giggling:
“Such a wonderful thing it is to have you want me for your wife! I'm not
worthy of your name, or your love, or anything.”
Dyckman could hardly agree to this, whatever misgivings might be
shaking his heart. He praised her with the best adjectives in his scant
vocabulary and asked her when they should be wed.
“Oh, not for a long while yet,” she pleaded.
“Why?” he wondered.
“Oh, because!” It sickened and alarmed her to put off the day, but how
could she name it?
When he left her at last the situation was still a bit hazy. He had
proposed and been accepted vaguely. But when he had gallantly asked her
to “say when” she had begged for time.
Dyckman, once outside the spell of Kedzie's eyes and her warmth, felt
more and more dubious. He was ashamed of himself for entertaining any
doubts of the perfection of his situation, but he was ashamed also of
his easy surrender. Here he was with his freedom gone. He had escaped
the marriage-net of so many women of so much brilliance and prestige,
and yet a little movie actress had landed him.
He compared Anita Adair with Charity Coe, and he had to admit that his
fiancee suffered woefully in every contrast. He could see the look
of amazement on Charity's face when she heard the news. She would be
completely polite about it, but she would be appalled. So would his
father and mother. They would fight him tremendously. His friends would
give him the laugh, the big ha-ha! They would say he had made a fool of
himself; he had been an easy mark for a little outsider.
He wondered just how it had happened. The fact was that Kedzie had
appealed to his pity. That was what none of the other eligibles had ever
done, least of all Charity the ineligible.
He went home. He found his father and mother playing double Canfield and
wrangling over it as usual. They were disturbed by his manner. He
would not tell them what was the matter and left them to their game. It
interested them no more. It seemed so unimportant whether the cards fell
right or not. The points were not worth the excitement. Their son was
playing solitaire, and it was not coming out at all. They discussed the
possible reasons for his gloom. There were so many.
“I wish he'd get married to some nice girl,” sighed Mrs. Dyckman.
A mother is pretty desperate when she wants to surrender her son to
another woman.