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22
The Revelations of a Star's Wife
minute at the hotel. People keep pointing me out as a motion-picture actress, and Danny and I never have a chance really to talk because some one's always rushing up to ask if we can't get them into the movies."
"And Mrs. Burnet is coming to-night on the New York flyer, so we've got a lot of things to settle this afternoon," Danny added, with an appealing glance at me that was anything but difficult to fathom. Hughie junior gave me an excuse to leave them alone, but the house was so tiny that I couldn't get very far away from them, so finally I settled down on the side veranda with the baby. They could see that I was there, and would know that I could overhear their conversation, but I knew that they'd tell me about it later, anyway.
"You'll simply have to decide, Carol," I heard Danny say. "If we wait for your mother's permission we'll both be too old for anything but character parts by the time we get married. Come on — let's get a license and get Hugh and Sally to stand up with us this afternoon !"
"Oh, Danny, dearest," Carol cooed, "I'd love to, of course — but truly, it wouldn't be fair to mamma. You know how she's slaved for me ; I'd still be standing around in the backgrounds of comedies if she hadn't worked so to get me out and into something better. And now she's got this starring contract for me — if I married yon that would never go through."
"No — but you wouldn't lose much. In the first place, you aren't going to look like a kid much longer, Carol ; you're nearly twenty now, and even though you are so little, you can't get away with that stuff forever." (That was an awful mistake, telling her that; I wished I could have stopped him.) "Then, too, after you've had three years of that sweet-and-sissy stuff you won't be good for anything else. Why not stay on and do the kind of thing you're doing now; learn to act, and when you are starred, in a year or so, you'll deserve it because you really have ability, not just because you're pretty. That way you'll last as long as you want to make pictures. Hugh's helped you a lot since you've been working with him — he'd teach you no end of things. Come on, honey — be sensible."
Well, Carol wanted to, of course, but she couldn't quite see doing it. She loved Danny more than anything else, but she didn't feel that she ought to disappoint her mother. And as she prattled on and 011 I saw the whole thing so clearly. She wanted to hang on to Danny, because she knew that he was looked on as a comer. She wanted to keep him on the string. If it would help her she'd marry him — but she couldn't see that it would. I
HAVE YOU RECOGNIZED
was reminded of a girl Hugh and I had known several years before, a girl who had come out of comedies and started in straight pictures a good deal as Carol had. She'd married a man she thought could help her.
just for what he could do for her, and then she'd discovered that he couldn't do much -'but teach her to act. So she learned all she could from him and then left him. That seemed to be all the incentive he needed; he pitched in and worked, and a month or so ago, in New York, I went to see one of his pictures one afternoon, at the Rialto, and saw her sitting in a back seat, alone, so forlorn that I felt sorry for her.
any of the characters as yet? It is possible that you may be able to penetrate behind the veil with which the writer has shrouded the persons and events about which she has written, for you will find, as the succeeding chapters are unfolded, that since the narrative touches upon almost every phase of the experience of a motion-picture actor's wife, it brings in an endless procession of players, some of whom you must already know on the screen. But, whether or not you succeed in identifying the different persons whose stories are woven into these reminiscences, you will be convinced, before you reach the end, that you have been taken behind the screen and into the real lives which the picture people live.
After a while I heard Danny say, "But, honey, even if you left the screen, we'd get along. I'll have a big chance soon now — I know it's coming to me. It takes just one big picture to make a man; look at Tom Meighan and 'The Miracle Man.' And I think this thing we're doing now is the one for me ; Hugh says it is. Of course, he's done it ; he should have had that big jungle scene, but he deliberately played it into my hands — he's the best fellow I've ever known ! Come on, dear — let me take care of you."
I couldn't hear what Carol answered, but I could picture her, with her golden curls flying, and her big, floppy pink hat drooping down so that it made a bewitching background for her pretty little face. She talked luite a lot, and then I heard a wicker chair creak as Danny slumped down into it. I could see him, too — dear, boyish Danny, who was almost as tall as my Hugh, and who kept his crisp black hair cut so tight it looked shingled, because he hated the way it curled. Danny was an Irishman, with blue-gray eyes that could charm the heart right out of anybody but a selfish little thing like Carol. Hugh and I had known and loved him for two years, ever since they took him out of the ranks of the extras and cast him as Hugh's younger brother in a comedy drama. Danny 'd gone through many hard times with us. When we were way off in the mountains on location, and Hughie junior woke up one night almost choking to death with croup, it was Danny who rode ten miles to the nearest town for a doctor, at breakneck speed. It was Danny who always went along on our little vacation trips between pictures, and who saved us one time in a San Francisco hotel when a mob of souvenir-hunting fans camped outside our suite and refused to leave till Hugh came out and gave them each something to remember him by — the fact that it was one o'clock in the morning and he'd been working like a slave since ten o'clock the night before made no difference to them. Danny had to turn in a fire alarm to get rid of them.
And Hugh and I had nursed him through grippe, and became so attached to him that that afternoon I felt my eyes filling with tears when I heard him finally say to Carol :
"If that's what you really want, sweetie, I guess we're through." His deep voice dragged like a dog that's been hurt. "I can see how it looks to you, of course — this seems like your big chance, and I'm not worth giving it up for. Well, go ahead, and we'll say good-by. You've got only a few more scenes here, and then you'll be going back to New York; I'll take that offer to make a serial, and go to the Coast, and then on to China, where they're going to shoot most of it, so we won't see each other for a good while."
To me it was simply heartbreaking. My tears brimmed over when I saw him tramp down the path to the street, his hat jammed down over his eyes, but when Carol joined me a moment later, and sat down on the top step and began powdering her nose, she was as calm as a May morn.
She explained her point of view to me, and. of course, I ought not to have blamed her so much — she had one of those professional mothers whose job would be gone if their daughters married and put them out