PLAYING THE GAME
It was only a day or two after her arrival in New York that Fuschia
Fleming, who had been rehearsing the greater part of the night, opened
her sleepy eyes in the hotel chamber to find her maid bending above her
with a visiting card in one hand and a perplexed expression upon her
face.
"I hated to waken you, Miss Fuschia," she said, "but when I saw the
name--"
"What is the name?" Fuschia's voice was drowsily indifferent.
"Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth."
"_Mrs._ Cresswell Hepworth!" Both indifference and sleepiness were
things of the past. Miss Fleming sat up in bed with a spring. "She's in
the parlor, isn't she? Here, Martha Mary, hustle about. Get me out my
gold-colored kimono with the silver wistaria on it, and some yellow
stockings and slippers. Tell her I regret having to keep her waiting,
late at rehearsal last night. You know the proper thing. Now, go ahead
and do your prettiest and then dance back here and help me get into
things."
"Certainly no time wasted," reflected the actress standing before her
mirror, winding her long ash blonde hair round and round her head. "I
dare say it's a case of 'Gur-rl, what have you done with me husband?'
There is only one reply to that. I shall draw myself up haughtily and
say, 'Pardon, Madame, it was you who first carelessly mislaid him, not
I.' Where the deuce are my hair-pins? She'd never come to my apartments
with a cat-o'-nine-tails under her golf cape, or a bottle of acid in her
shopping bag. Sure-ly not. They always choose the foyer of the theater
for such stunts. Oh, Martha Mary," as that person whom Jim Fleming had
once designated as a "vinegar-faced-Sue" returned to the bedchamber. "I
can find nothing. Everything has crawled under the bed or the bureau.
How is the lady dressed for the part? Handsome, dark garments, rich,
dark furs, black veil over face, handkerchief handy?"
"The lady is wearing rose-colored cloth and chinchilla," replied Martha
Mary literally.
"Rose color and chinchilla. That is a note out, positively frivolous.
Oh, dear me! I am only half put together. You get more worthless every
day, Martha Mary. Put on all my moonstone rings, for luck. They may save
my life."
When Fuschia entered her temporary drawing-room, Perdita Hepworth was
standing with her back to her, gazing from the window out upon the bleak
wind-swept streets. March was departing with lion-like roars and buffets
and striving bravely but vainly to obscure his ugly countenance in
clouds of dust. Hearing a slight sound, she turned and saw advancing
down the pleasantly warmed, flower-scented room, a young woman whom she
instantly likened to a pale but radiant ray of spring sunshine.
This sunshine, yellow kimono, pale yellow hair, a cheek like the heart
of a tea-rose, gold-colored silk stockings and slippers, paused between
a jar of white lilacs and a basket of hyacinths. The lion-like roars
without seemed suddenly all hollow pretense. Spring had come to New
York and involuntarily Perdita smiled in greeting.
"Miss Fleming, please forgive this unseemly early call; but you see it
is important, this matter I wish to see you about." Perdita thus opened
the conversation.
"She can chew up the scenery about me husband all she wishes," said
Fuschia to herself, "if she just lets me look at her. Her pictures give
no idea of her. She's red roses and music and emotion. She's poetry and
romance. My Lord!"
In spite of Perdita's brave attempt, conversation languished. She
appeared to be weighing some matter which lay on her mind. At last she
looked up with a slightly ironical smile. "You will think I have come on
some affair of state, Miss Fleming, the way I am hesitating--"
Fuschia here made a violent mental protest. "Now don't you begin by
telling me that I broke up your home, because I didn't. You broke it
yourself."
Mrs. Hepworth made an impatient gesture as if at her own unusual lack of
adequate expression.
"Do you play cards at all?" she asked, "bridge or--"
Fuschia could not suppress one stare of surprise. "Play bridge!" she
murmured, wondering what that had to do with the matter. "No, I have no
card sense. Strange, too, for papa has a lot."
"The reason I asked was this," in rather diffident explanation; "I was
wondering if you could appreciate what it means to make an unexpected
play which takes several tricks--to play trumps in such a way as to make
the other players gasp with surprise, to--"
"Oh, I know what you mean," said Fuschia comprehendingly, a light
dawning in her puzzled eyes. "You are talking about playing the game.
Why, of course, I understand. That's all there is; that's what I'm on
this dizzy old planet for."
But although a basis of mutual agreement and understanding was thus
established, Dita seemed still to struggle with an unwonted
embarrassment.
It was not, however, within Fuschia to prolong a situation of this kind.
She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingers covered with
moonstone rings clasped lightly in front of her, her eyes full of a
thousand twinkles and the upturned corners of her mouth curving almost
to her eyes.
"Let's get down to cases, Mrs. Hepworth, man to man. Is it a go?"
Perdita drew a breath of relief and smiled back. She certainly was not
one of the few, the very few, who could resist the twinkles in Fuschia's
eyes.
"It's a go," she answered; "then man to man, it is this way. You have
made it easy, you see, for me to say the things I wanted to, although I
did not know in what feminine phrases I might have to clothe them. But
you and I are, at present, very much in the public eye. Now every one is
waiting to see what our attitude toward each other will be. It is
assumed openly by the newspapers, as you probably know, that there is a
sort of woman's war on between us. Now, Miss Fleming, I want--"
"Your husband," supplemented Fuschia mentally. "Well, I haven't got him;
never did have him; don't want him."
"--to design your stage costumes and to have it so announced," concluded
Perdita.
Then she saw a remarkable change come over the dainty, thistledown Miss
Fleming. Her mouth became an almost straight line, the gleam in her eyes
was almost uncannily shrewd. She gave Perdita's words a concentrated
consideration for a few moments and then nodded two or three times,
brief, quick, clean-cut little nods.
"Great!" she said succinctly. Then her mouth curled again, the twinkles,
like splintered diamonds, came back to her eyes. She flew across the
room and threw her arms about Perdita, enveloping her in a momentary and
rose-scented embrace. Her enthusiasm was unrestrained. "The
advertisement is above rubies," she cried. "No wonder you are such a
success."
"Oh, that is no credit to me," replied Dita carelessly. "I have a sort
of sixth sense about clothes, you know. It is my one gift. I know the
moment I put eyes on any one exactly how she, it is always she, of
course, ought to look. I see colors when I look at people. Women often
say to me, 'Oh, I can not wear this or that color,' when it is just the
one thing they should wear, it is their mental correspondence."
"And how are you going to dress me?" asked Fuschia with intense
interest.
"Principally in gold and silver," Dita answered without hesitation. "You
have on the right thing now. Most designers would put you in black,
because you are so very fair. They would try to make you striking by
force of contrast, but not I. You see very few women of your coloring
could stand the dazzle of gold and silver. It would completely eclipse
them; but you are mentally dazzling. Your personality is strong enough
to reduce anything you wear to its proper place. One must take all those
things into account in designing, you know. Now you are quicksilver,
sunlight, glimmer of day on speeding waters, and we must accentuate that
fact; not ignore it and slur it over."
"It sounds fascinating," said Fuschia. "How sweet of you to do this for
me."
"For myself, you mean." Perdita rose. "You'll do, my dear. You're new,
you're different. New York will be yours whether you can act or not."
A flame went over Fuschia's face and seemed to pass as swiftly as it had
come; but instead, it remained, focused in her eyes.
"I can act," she said briefly, "and, look here, New York may accept me
on the magnificent advertising I've had and will continue to have; or
New York may accept me on the strength of my wonderful gowns designed by
Perdita Hepworth. That's all right, that's as it should be. But I'm
going to make New York forget my press notices, and your gowns and
Fuschia Fleming, and I'm going to make it sit tight and still in its
boxes and orchestra chairs and balcony seats and laugh and cry with the
heroine on the stage who shall be the realest thing on earth to them for
the time. That's the game for me, Mrs. Hepworth. That's all the game I
care a hang about."
* * * * *
"Maudie," said Perdita to Miss Carmine, an hour or two later, "I have
just secured a new commission, a big one."
"What?" asked Maud with interest.
"Hepworth and Carmine are to design the costumes that Miss Fuschia
Fleming will wear in the repertoire of society dramas in which she will
appear after two weeks of Shakespearean roles. Paula Tangueray, Mrs.
Dane, you know the lot of them."
"Perdita! The cheek of her. To make such a request under the
circumstances."
"Maudie! The cheek of _me_," mocked Dita softly.
"You!" astonishment was beyond all bounds now. "You!"
"Yes. Did you fancy--" there were those deep vibrations in Dita's voice
which always bespoke some strong emotion, "that I was going to endure
the spectacle of Miss Fleming triumphant 'in our midst,' and every one
watching to see how I would take it, and predicting that only one course
remained open for me and that was with dignity to ignore the incident?
Not so. The world will see, and this, amusingly enough, happens to be a
fact, that Miss Fleming and Mrs. Hepworth are excellent friends, that
Mrs. Hepworth is one of Miss Fleming's warmest admirers, and that she,
still speaking of myself, has assisted in Miss Fleming's unparalleled
success in New York by designing for her some of the most wonderful
costumes ever seen on the stage."
"Unparalleled success!" scoffed Maud. "It is rather early to predict
that. New York is like a cat. You never know which way it will jump."
"It will jump Fuschia Fleming's way," replied Dita confidently. "You
haven't met her."
"Is she so beautiful then? As beautiful as you?"
"Oh, no," Perdita was smoothing out her gloves on her knee. She shook
her head decidedly. "Nothing like. She isn't beautiful at all. She's
just a slender creature with rather colorless _blonde cendre_ hair and
blue eyes."
"Oh," Maud was plainly puzzled. "Then what do you mean?"
But Perdita only smiled. "Have you and Wallace made up yet?" she asked
with what appeared to the other woman striking irrelevance.
"Impertinent, I know; but there's a reason?"
"No-o-o," said Maud reluctantly and evidently wondering if Dita had
suddenly lost her mind.
"Then do so at once," advised her business associate. "Do so before he
meets Fuschia Fleming."
"From what you say." Miss Carmine's chin was high and haughty. "I see no
cause for alarm."
"No?" Perdita tapped the table with her finger-tips, still inscrutably
smiling.
Maud rarely permitted herself to become angry, but she did so now. She
had never imagined that Perdita could be so aggravating. "Just because
Cresswell lost his head about her, you think--" she flashed out.
"He didn't," cried Perdita not with bravado, but with a confidence which
Maud realized with surprise was genuine. "I hadn't been with her three
minutes before I knew that. But take my advice," again her voice fell to
that teasing note. "If you really love Wallace make up your differences
with him to-day, to-day, before he, a playwright, meets the actress.
Then get a new steel chain, one that he can't chew through, and fasten
it securely to his collar."