Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

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88 The Revelations of a Star's Wife Continued from page 86 portray grief magnificently. She can't work with any one else — can't do anything else. And she's madly in love with him. What on earth can she do?" Hugh confessed that he didn't know. I wrote Roxane, asking her to come and stay with us until she made up her mind what company she would sign with, but she wired back that she would have to stay on the Coast, as she had already signed another contract. "Don't worry," she added. "Things are fine." That sounded like the old Roxane. But Kewpie, who had developed into one of the most daring stunt actresses in pictures, wrote me a long and very badly spelled letter in which she told me the truth. "Roxie's just about ready to die," she wrote. "She .says she's going to do something new, and she's making a comedy drama and it's awful. And she walks the floor and cries all night, and somebody's got to do something about it." So when we got back to the Coast I tried to do that something to the best of my ability. I found Roxane a shadow}" wraith, her great eyes hauntingly sad, her face so thin that she looked haggard and old. "I can't make a go of it without Clayton, Sally," she sobbed as she sat there in her sun parlor, huddled down in a little rocking-chair, staring out at the hills that swept in a great circle around the horizon. "Oh, I love him — why should I try to conceal it from you ? He's never cared for me ; I know that. Ever since he made 'Sin' he's known nothing but his work ; it's so big that he doesn't care what he tramples underfoot for its sake. He's mad with praise — thinks he's another Griffith. I don't know ; maybe he is. He says Griffith made Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh and Blanche Sweet, and he made me, and now he's making little Phillipa Paine — 'making her' — as he made me ! "I told him that Griffith gave all those girls real training, real technique, so that they could work with any one; that he was kind, not cruel, in his training. 'Well, I've trained you, too,' he said. 'I've taught you to understand all the troubles in the world !' " "That's it; that's what he's done for you, Roxane, only he didn't know it," I cried, jumping to my feet and running over to her. "Why can't you use what he's given you — ^this understanding of other people who are in trouble, and ability to sympathize with them? You were so sensitive, so keen to realize how they felt — don't you see that you can help people like that now ?" "But I can't," she protested. "I don't know how; there's nothing I could do for them." "Learn to do something for them," I urged. Truly, I was afraid that she'd lose her mind if she brooded over her troubles any longer. "Study nursing, and become a visiting nurse ; that'll give you all the opportunity in the world. Come on with me now, and register for the training course at the City Hospital." I wasn't really sure that she'd do it until we got there and she talked with the doctor in charge. She looked as if she were in shocking bad health, but she had really a good constitution, and he was a man keen enough in reading human nature to grasp what she could do. And so she disappeared from her world. I believe that the newspapers stated that she had gone abroad. In reality she was there at the hospital, living a life so regular that it Ijrought her back to perfect health, working so hard that she tumbled into bed at night so tired that she could hardly undress before she went to sleep. It was the best thing in the world for her. For working there, seeing how the doctors worked for people, instead of looking upon them as Clayton Greer had, she got a new point of view, and when she left the hospital at last she was far from being the girl who had enrolled there. She had not stayed long enough to graduate, but had taken a shorter course. When she left she worked as assistant to another nurse in the slums of San Francisco. Whenever I was in town I saw her, and more than once I have toiled over the windswept hills in her wake, rejoicing in the welcome which she received ever^-where. it was the warm sympathy in her eyes that won people over to her ; not even the dourest immigrant could resist. Roxane. There were others who couldn't resist her, either, and when she met me at the Ferry Building the morning Hugh and I arrived from a trip up the Coast, and told me that she was engaged to a young newspaper man I shrieked for joy till ITu.'jh threatened to choke me. "I'm as glad as you are," he exclaimed, clutching Roxane by both hands. "But somebody's recognized us, and if you shout like that the evening papers will announce that I tried to beat you in public. Come on up to the hotel and let's have breakfast together — phone yorir man to come along, Roxie, and let's have a look at him." He came — and I wanted to shout again when I saw him. He was noth ing unusual — just a fine, squareshouldered chap with a chin so firm that I hoped Clayton Greer would encounter him some day. And he adored Roxane, just as she did him. They were to be married a few days later; Roxane had just been waiting until we'd arrived to act as best man and matron of honor. We assured her that we would, of course, and she and her fiance — I'll call him Jerry Malotte — rushed away to arrange for the ceremony. "I'm glad she's doing this, of course," Hugh remarked as we went about our unpacking, after they'd gone. "But in a way it's too bad. Roxane really has wonderful talent ; I believe that with the right training and the right opportunity she'd do wonders. She has a marvelous gift, and having this little vacation from working in pictures has given her just the right angle on it; she'd be able to do things now that she never could have done before." "She says she'll never go back to the screen," I told him as I sorted out the chaotic contents of one of the suit cases. "She hates it — because she was so unhappy, I suppose — and she says that nothing on earth could ever make her go back to it." "Maybe she's right — -but I saw Greer in the lobby when we went through, and I know that he saw her. I wonder if " "Don't you tell him where she lives !" I cried, jumping up to run to him. "Don't you let him know. She's going to be happy now, and he'll spoil her life for her again. Don't tell him, Hugh I" "I won't child ; don't worry," he answered. But, as it happened, he didn't have to. For he had followed her when she and Jerry Malotte left the hotel. And at that very moment, as I learned afterward, he was asking her to come back to him for one more picture, the greatest one that either he or she had ever done. "I will never come back," she told him. "I've broken away and I'm through forever ; nothing could make me go back to pictures." Yet only a few days later she was phoning him that she would accept his offer, and was doing it eagerl}-, fearful that he might have changed his mind. Jerry had been seriousl}' injured in an autoinobile accident, and had been rushed away to a hospital. Roxane was determined that he should have the finest care that mone}' could provide for him, even if she had to go back and work with Greer to get the money. By going back she was paving the way for the best work she has ever done, yet she did it with an aching heart. TO BE CONTINUED.