Remembering this, Gilfoyle was uneasy. One ought to be careful to keep an aseptic memory at home. Yet if this was not infidelity, what would be? In a rich man Gilfoyle would have called it a typical result of the evil influence of wealth. In the absence of wealth it was a gay little Pierrot-perfidy of the _vie de Boheme_. Still, poets have to be like that. An actor must make love to whatever leading lady confronts him, and so must poets, the lawyers and press agents of love.

But when he got home Gilfoyle repented as he remembered. He suffered on a rack of guilty bliss, but he managed to hold back the secret which was bubbling up in him with a bromo-seltzer effervescence. Incidentally his "pretty maid, pretty maid, Marguerite" had kept back the fact that she had a husband in the hardware business in Terre Haute. What the husband was keeping back is none of this history's business.

It was all as old and unoriginal as original sin. The important thing to Kedzie was the fact that shortly after the poem had been revamped a stranger had joined, first in song with Gilfoyle's table-load and then in conversation. He had ended by introducing his companion and bringing her over. Had it not been for the fine democracy of Bohemia they would have cut the creature dead. She was a buyer, one of Miss Ferber's Emma McChesneys on a lark.

Gilfoyle did not tell Kedzie any of this. He told what followed as he toiled at the fearfully complicated problem of his shoe-laces, a problem rendered almost insuperable by the fact that he could not hold his foot high very long and dared not hold his head low at all.

"Wonnerful thing happent t'night, Anita. Just shows you never know where your lucksh goin' to hit you. I'm down there with--er--er--couple of old frensh, you know, and who comes over to our table but big feller from out Wesh--Chicago--Chicago--Gobbless Ch'cag! His name is ent.i.tled Deshler. In coursh conv'sation I mention Breathasweeta Shewing Gum--see?--he says he knew that gum and he'd sheen the advershments, bes' ol' ad-vershments ever sheen, tha.s.s what Mr. Beshler said and I'm not lyin' to you, Anita. No, sir.

"Whereupon--whereupon I modesly remark, 'Of course they're clever--nashurally they're clever, because they were written by l'i'l Mr. ME!' He says, 'You really wrote 'em?' and I say, 'I roally wretem!'

And Mr. Keshler says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'.' Then he says, 'Who coined that name Breathasweeta?' And I says, 'I did!' and he says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'!'

"Anyway, to make long shory stort, Mr. Nestor he says, 'What you doin'

now? Writen copy for the Kaiser or the K-zar?' and I says, 'I am a gen'leman of leisure,' and he says, 'There's a good job waitin' fer lad your size out in Ch'cag! Would you come 'way out there?' and I says, 'I fear nothing!'

"So Mr. Zeisselberg wrote his name on a card, and if I haven't los'

card, or he doesn't change his old mind, I am now Mr. John J. Job of Chicago. And now I got a unsolis.h.i.ted posish--imposishible solishion--solution--unpolusion solishible--you know what I mean. So kiss me!"

Kedzie escaped the kiss, but she asked, with a sleepy eagerness, "Did you tell him you were married?"

"Nashurly not, my dear. It was stric'ly business conv'sation. I didn' ask him how many shildren he had and he didn' ask me if I was a Benedictine or a--or a pony of brandy--tha.s.s pretty good. Hope I can rememmer it to-mor'."

Kedzie smiled, but not at his boozy pun. She seemed more comfortable.

She fell asleep. Next to being innocent, being absolved is the most soothing of sensations.

CHAPTER X

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 n.o.body. 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 G.o.ds 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 n.o.body.

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 a.s.surance. 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 p.r.o.nunciation:

"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 alb.u.ms 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.