Photoplay (Jan 1921)

9o "Who's the bird?" Powers had a quaint but by no means novel way of expressing himself. "Bird!" spluttered Wilson, very displeased. "This is not a home for canaries." "Well — er — who's the singer?" "Ah!" Wilson beamed. "Her name at the moment is Emma Hamilton, but very soon it will be Emma Wilson. My name happens to be Wilson, too." "I see," remarked Powers. "Object to me having a few words with her?" "Not a bit, if you'll tell me the topic. But perhaps it will save time if I mention that her evenings and half-days are booked from now until the end of her life. We're engaged." "So I gathered," said Powers, "and I'm married. I want to talk business. You can be in it if you like." Emma got the shock of her young life a few moments later. "So you're Bill Hamilton's girl Emma, eh?" murmured Powers, after the preliminary conversation. "Well, well ! Bill was a pal of mine, and I often heard him talk of you. What d'you mean hiding yourself in a joint like this? Why didn't you come to me?" "I didn't know you were a friend of dad's," said Emma softly. "H'm !" Powers was rubbing his finger nails on the leather cover of the chair. "Who taught you to sing comedy songs?" "I've never been taught," replied Emma. "Glad to hear it. If it's a natural gift, so much the better. Care to go on the stage?" That took Emma's breath away. She stuttered hopelessly. "It isn't a chorus job, or even a small part," continued Powers. "I want a new star for my next revue. Lottie Maynard, who's playing lead in the one running now, is getting too old. She's lost her punch." "But I've had no experience," mentioned Emma. Bill Hamilton's Girl ( Continued from page 34) Powers instantly dismissed the objection with a wave of a fat hand. "That's not important," he remarked "You've got the voice, the personality, and if I'm not mistaken, the talent. I'll supply the rest. If you tan always sing and act as you did just now, you'll have the roof on your head the first night. What the patrons of the theater are howling for now is something new, something fresh, something away from the stereotyped. So far as I can see you fill the bill. The fact that you're Bill Hamilton's girl Emma is always good enough for me. He was versatile enough, goodness knows. Bill could make a mummy laugh when he felt like it. What about it?" "I don't know," breathed Emma. "Ask — ask Jim." "Right-o!" said Powers, good-humouredly. "What's Jim got to say about it?" Wilson, however, was up in the clouds himself. This was a development that didn't please him at all ; he had a notion that his flimsy, beautiful castles in the air were on the point of tumbling about his head. Emma, as the star attraction of the Home of Music was all very well, but Emma as the leading lady at the Majestic was — was — Phew ! "Lost your tongue?" demanded Powers. "You were flippant enough a moment or so ago. What's the good word, my lad? How do you regard my proposition?" "It's a wonderful chance," said Wilson dreamily, and a little despondently. "I won't take it if you tell me not to, Jim," whispered Emma. "I'm quite satisfied here with you." "Let's get together," cried Powers. "What's the matter with you two kids? Think I'm an ogre, or what? It's a plain business deal on my part. I want a new comedienne, and Emma here is the kind I've been searching for for months. The fact that she's Bill Hamilton's daughter weighs with me a bit, too, I don't mind confessing. I'm a believer in heredity, and if she can make people smile as Bill used to there's big money for all of us." He turned and glared at Emma. "Mean to say you'd rather stop here than star at the Majestic?" "It's Jim who counts with me," said Emma. "It's a wonderful chance," said Wilson, again. "Wonderful !" "Take a couple of days to think it over," exclaimed Powers, as he rose from his chair. "Ill come in again on Friday and see what you think about it then. But if you're not too young to accept the advice of an oldtimer, you'll be all ready with your answer by Friday." He held out his hand to Emma. "Fine old sport was Bill," he said, in a quieter voice. "One of the best I ever met. He'd be glad to know I was trying to do something for his little girl. Good-bye." The people who patronized the Home of Music didn't hear much singing during the remainder of that day, nor was Emma in her usual good form the next. She was dreaming things, as a matter of fact. Wilson was so remarkably downcast that the horn-spectacled pianist immediately started the thrilling rumor that he had either repented of his bargain with Emma or else was sickening for a long illness. She was so certain that the former theory was correct that her hair quickly went back to the Pearl White style of dressing. She even hinted that she might be induced to sing a few songs herself. Wilson, however, strangled that suggestion at its birth. He had enough to worry him as it was. It was generally remarked however that for the first time in his life he seemed to have something on his mind — something that weighed at least a ton. His old happy-go-lucky flippancy of speech and his sunniness had been swamoed by (Continued on page 105) feii^. "You will follow him?" "I gotta. Can you bunk me for the night?" "I suppose so. Have you another man with you on the case?" "Yes, Texas Darcy, but he's handling the New York end." '•Watching Martin's wife?" "Sure." Ill Above the gray sea of their prison uniforms the faces of more than twelve hundred men stared through the semi-darkness toward the screen, the magic cloth upon which was being brought to them the great outside world with all its beauty of sunshine and shadow, satin sky and snowy piling clouds, bending trees, running rivers, pleasant roads and golden romance. The feature film of the evening was a love story with one of the most beautiful and accomplished actresses of the silent drama in the leading role. In the audience were men who had not felt the touch of a woman's hand in thirty years, men whose hearts had ached and whose hot tears had scalded their palms in their cells at the distant sounds of feminine visitors. A dry little cackle escaped the lips of David Martin. Tomorrow he would be out, and all these blessed treasures would be his for the taking. Other people might own the graceful fountain-like elm trees shown in the story unfolding before his eyes, the meadows where the morning breeze The Gossamer Web (Continued from page 60) idled, the pasture so sweetly lying between the low hills, the sleek cattle and the brook tumbling its way through woods and fields, but it would be no crime for him to pause in the public highway and feast his eyes upon their, until all the hurt was gone from his heart. And there would be his woman ! The convict at his right felt the arm touching his tremble. He turned and stared at the lucky one. "That's right," he whispered. "You go out tomorrow. Good luck to you!" Tomorrow ! David's body grew hot and cold by turns. The screen story had reached its climax. The woman, slender as a jonquil, had finished spinning her gossamer web for the man she wanted. He was shorn of strength and helpless with love before his Delilah. He trembled as if from the thundering of his heart within him. On the lashes of her shining eyes tears balanced like sunlit dew brinking the petals of a flower. The silence of death was upon the assembly of felons. Memory, suddenly quickened, swept away the years for David Martin. Sixteen years ago his Adele had given herself to him thus, one midsummer's day out in the country when they were boy and girl, working side by side for a bare living, hopeful newcomers to the great Gotham. Beyond the prison walls it was Spring again. The geranium beds beneath the warden's window were bright with color and the river banks were velvet green. To go to her now when all that was truly beautiful in the world was at resurrection, when even the memory of the bleak and dark days of winter was fading and the coming of summer was nigh; to hear the sound of the little silver bells, which was her laugh, and to catch the glisten of amethysts, which were her eyes, as she spread her arms for him, would be to enter heaven. The coming of their only child had not marred her beauty. Rather it had given fullness to it. A softer and more alluring light had crept to her eyes and added sweetness to her smile. And then, too. in the wisdom gathered during the years of struggle, she had seen the value of preserving and caring for those charms nature had given her, so that when she was compelled to go back to work among men the doors were not closed against her as a dowd. In the pretty play of love in which the charm of the girl on the screen was given full scope he saw Adele once more. Every pretty woman weaves her web of the same -ilken strands and in much the same design. The happiness of the love-blinded hero of make-believe would be his in reality in a short while, perhaps with the sinking of tomorrow's sun, perhaps a precious golden hour earlier. When he last saw her and dun bed her hand, she was approaching the height of her womanly power, her girlish body a receptacle for the final fires of love. a full-spread blossom trembling in the ultimate ecstasy of the joy of life. (Continued on page 118)