The Beautiful and Damned
illusion of beauty could be sustained, or preserved perhaps in celluloid
after the reality had vanished. Well--to-morrow.
The next day she felt weak and ill. She tried to go out, and saved
herself from collapse only by clinging to a mail box near the front
door. The Martinique elevator boy helped her up-stairs, and she waited
on the bed for Anthony's return without energy to unhook her brassiere.
For five days she was down with influenza, which, just as the month
turned the corner into winter, ripened into double pneumonia. In the
feverish perambulations of her mind she prowled through a house of bleak
unlighted rooms hunting for her mother. All she wanted was to be a
little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet
superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the
only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.
"ODI PROFANUM VULGUS"
One day in the midst of Gloria's illness there occurred a curious
incident that puzzled Miss McGovern, the trained nurse, for some time
afterward. It was noon, but the room in which the patient lay was dark
and quiet. Miss McGovern was standing near the bed mixing some medicine,
when Mrs. Patch, who had apparently been sound asleep, sat up and began
to speak vehemently:
"Millions of people," she said, "swarming like rats, chattering like
apes, smelling like all hell ... monkeys! Or lice, I suppose. For one
really exquisite palace ... on Long Island, say--or even in Greenwich ...
for one palace full of pictures from the Old World and exquisite
things--with avenues of trees and green lawns and a view of the blue
sea, and lovely people about in slick dresses ... I'd sacrifice a
hundred thousand of them, a million of them." She raised her hand feebly
and snapped her fingers. "I care nothing for them--understand me?"
The look she bent upon Miss McGovern at the conclusion of this speech
was curiously elfin, curiously intent. Then she gave a short little
laugh polished with scorn, and tumbling backward fell off again
to sleep.
Miss McGovern was bewildered. She wondered what were the hundred
thousand things that Mrs. Patch would sacrifice for her palace. Dollars,
she supposed--yet it had not sounded exactly like dollars.
THE MOVIES
It was February, seven days before her birthday, and the great snow that
had filled up the cross-streets as dirt fills the cracks in a floor had
turned to slush and was being escorted to the gutters by the hoses of
the street-cleaning department. The wind, none the less bitter for being
casual, whipped in through the open windows of the living room bearing
with it the dismal secrets of the areaway and clearing the Patch
apartment of stale smoke in its cheerless circulation.
Gloria, wrapped in a warm kimona, came into the chilly room and taking
up the telephone receiver called Joseph Bloeckman.
"Do you mean Mr. Joseph _Black_?" demanded the telephone girl at "Films
Par Excellence."
"Bloeckman, Joseph Bloeckman. B-l-o--"
"Mr. Joseph Bloeckman has changed his name to Black. Do you want him?"
"Why--yes." She remembered nervously that she had once called him
"Blockhead" to his face.
His office was reached by courtesy of two additional female voices; the
last was a secretary who took her name. Only with the flow through the
transmitter of his own familiar but faintly impersonal tone did she
realize that it had been three years since they had met. And he had
changed his name to Black.
"Can you see me?" she suggested lightly. "It's on a business matter,
really. I'm going into the movies at last--if I can."
"I'm awfully glad. I've always thought you'd like it."
"Do you think you can get me a trial?" she demanded with the arrogance
peculiar to all beautiful women, to all women who have ever at any time
considered themselves beautiful.
He assured her that it was merely a question of when she wanted the
trial. Any time? Well, he'd phone later in the day and let her know a
convenient hour. The conversation closed with conventional padding on
both sides. Then from three o'clock to five she sat close to the
telephone--with no result.
But next morning came a note that contented and excited her:
* * * * *
_My dear Gloria:_
_Just by luck a matter came to my attention that I think will be just
suited to you. I would like to see you start with something that would
bring you notice. At the same time if a very beautiful girl of your sort
is put directly into a picture next to one of the rather shop-worn stars
with which every company is afflicted, tongues would very likely wag.
But there is a "flapper" part in a Percy B. Debris production that I
think would be just suited to you and would bring you notice. Willa
Sable plays opposite Gaston Mears in a sort of character part and your
part I believe would be her younger sister._
_Anyway Percy B. Debris who is directing the picture says if you'll come
to the studios day after to-morrow (Thursday) he will run off a test. If
ten o'clock is suited to you I will meet you there at that time._
_With all good wishes_
_Ever Faithfully_
JOSEPH BLACK.
* * * * *
Gloria had decided that Anthony was to know nothing of this until she
had obtained a definite position, and accordingly she was dressed and
out of the apartment next morning before he awoke. Her mirror had given
her, she thought, much the same account as ever. She wondered if there
were any lingering traces of her sickness. She was still slightly under
weight, and she had fancied, a few days before, that her cheeks were a
trifle thinner--but she felt that those were merely transitory
conditions and that on this particular day she looked as fresh as ever.
She had bought and charged a new hat, and as the day was warm she had
left the leopard skin coat at home.
At the "Films Par Excellence" studios she was announced over the
telephone and told that Mr. Black would be down directly. She looked
around her. Two girls were being shown about by a little fat man in a
slash-pocket coat, and one of them had indicated a stack of thin
parcels, piled breast-high against the wall, and extending along for
twenty feet.
"That's studio mail," explained the fat man. "Pictures of the stars who
are with 'Films Par Excellence.'"
"Oh."
"Each one's autographed by Florence Kelley or Gaston Mears or Mack
Dodge--" He winked confidentially. "At least when Minnie McGlook out in
Sauk Center gets the picture she wrote for, she _thinks_ it's
autographed."
"Just a stamp?"
"Sure. It'd take 'em a good eight-hour day to autograph half of 'em.
They say Mary Pickford's studio mail costs her fifty thousand a year."
"Say!"
"Sure. Fifty thousand. But it's the best kinda advertising there is--"
They drifted out of earshot and almost immediately Bloeckman
appeared--Bloeckman, a dark suave gentleman, gracefully engaged in the
middle forties, who greeted her with courteous warmth and told her she
had not changed a bit in three years. He led the way into a great hall,
as large as an armory and broken intermittently with busy sets and
blinding rows of unfamiliar light. Each piece of scenery was marked in
large white letters "Gaston Mears Company," "Mack Dodge Company," or
simply "Films Par Excellence."
"Ever been in a studio before?"
"Never have."
She liked it. There was no heavy closeness of greasepaint, no scent of
soiled and tawdry costumes which years before had revolted her behind
the scenes of a musical comedy. This work was done in the clean
mornings; the appurtenances seemed rich and gorgeous and new. On a set
that was joyous with Manchu hangings a perfect Chinaman was going
through a scene according to megaphone directions as the great
glittering machine ground out its ancient moral tale for the edification
of the national mind.
A red-headed man approached them and spoke with familiar deference to
Bloeckman, who answered:
"Hello, Debris. Want you to meet Mrs. Patch.... Mrs. Patch wants to go
into pictures, as I explained to you.... All right, now, where do
we go?"
Mr. Debris--the great Percy B. Debris, thought Gloria--showed them to a
set which represented the interior of an office. Some chairs were drawn
up around the camera, which stood in front of it, and the three of
them sat down.
"Ever been in a studio before?" asked Mr. Debris, giving her a glance
that was surely the quintessence of keenness. "No? Well, I'll explain
exactly what's going to happen. We're going to take what we call a test
in order to see how your features photograph and whether you've got
natural stage presence and how you respond to coaching. There's no need
to be nervous over it. I'll just have the camera-man take a few hundred
feet in an episode I've got marked here in the scenario. We can tell
pretty much what we want to from that."
He produced a typewritten continuity and explained to her the episode
she was to enact. It developed that one Barbara Wainwright had been
secretly married to the junior partner of the firm whose office was
there represented. Entering the deserted office one day by accident she
was naturally interested in seeing where her husband worked. The
telephone rang and after some hesitation she answered it. She learned
that her husband had been struck by an automobile and instantly killed.
She was overcome. At first she was unable to realize the truth, but
finally she succeeded in comprehending it, and went into a dead faint on
the floor.
"Now that's all we want," concluded Mr. Debris. "I'm going to stand here
and tell you approximately what to do, and you're to act as though I
wasn't here, and just go on do it your own way. You needn't be afraid
we're going to judge this too severely. We simply want to get a general
idea of your screen personality."
"I see."
"You'll find make-up in the room in back of the set. Go light on it.
Very little red."
"I see," repeated Gloria, nodding. She touched her lips nervously with
the tip of her tongue.
THE TEST
As she came into the set through the real wooden door and closed it
carefully behind her, she found herself inconveniently dissatisfied with
her clothes. She should have bought a "misses'" dress for the
occasion--she could still wear them, and it might have been a good
investment if it had accentuated her airy youth.
Her mind snapped sharply into the momentous present as Mr. Debris's
voice came from the glare of the white lights in front.
"You look around for your husband.... Now--you don't see him ... you're
curious about the office...."
She became conscious of the regular sound of the camera. It worried her.
She glanced toward it involuntarily and wondered if she had made up her
face correctly. Then, with a definite effort she forced herself to
act--and she had never felt that the gestures of her body were so banal,
so awkward, so bereft of grace or distinction. She strolled around the
office, picking up articles here and there and looking at them inanely.
Then she scrutinized the ceiling, the floor, and thoroughly inspected an
inconsequential lead pencil on the desk. Finally, because she could
think of nothing else to do, and less than nothing to express, she
forced a smile.
"All right. Now the phone rings. Ting-a-ling-a-ling! Hesitate, and then
answer it."
She hesitated--and then, too quickly, she thought, picked up the
receiver.
"Hello."
Her voice was hollow and unreal. The words rang in the empty set like
the ineffectualities of a ghost. The absurdities of their requirements
appalled her--Did they expect that on an instant's notice she could put
herself in the place of this preposterous and unexplained character?
"... No ... no.... Not yet! Now listen: 'John Sumner has just been