Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

86 The Revelations of a Star's Wife Continued from page 71 to act that way, intently and devotedly interested in every woman they meet, while Danny would defend himself with "Well, you should have seen Jim Blank the other day — that's the way he did it. And every girl who went out of the theater, clasping an autographed picture of him, was wearing a pussy-cat smile." Presently Carol came back, and ushered us into the dining room, which was even more horrible than the living room. I tripped over the head of a bearskin rug and bumped my head smartly on a statue of "The Dying Gaul" on the way out, and Philip St. Mark was most solicitous, but Mrs. Burnet murmured fervently from the depths of the gloom that enveloped her : "It's a mercy you weren't killed," and I, remembering the way the Gaul had teetered on his onyx pedestal, heartily agreed with her. When I had bade them all farewell and was waiting for the elevator, hoping that I could remember all the details until I met Hugh, she came scuttling down the hall after me and clutched me by the arm. "It's awful, isn't it?" she whispered. "You know the way he glared at her when she spilled the tea on the table — well, she bought that table with her own money ; she bought all these things in this place ; no heirloom about 'em ! And he treats me perfectly awful ; I just hate to stay here, in my own daughter's house. Can't you do something to get her away from him ? She's just crazy about him — says he's a master artist." "I'll try — I'll think of something." I assured her, as the elevator door clanged open for me. But on the way down to the street my heart seemed to sink faster than the car did. What on earth could anybody think of to straighten out such a situation as that ? CHAPTER XXII. "The only thing that will cure Carol of her infatuation for Philip St. Mark will be marrying him," Hugh declared when I had finished the description of my call. "If any one separates her from him now. she'll feel like a martyr. She'll be madder about him than ever. But let her marry him and find out just how he'll treat her when she can't get away, and she'll get jarred out of all her illusions." "But she can't marry him, Hugh," I protested, watching the Italian babies who were tumbling about on the back porches near us, and wondering how on earth they ever lived to grow up. The care I take of Junior seemed ludicrous by compari son. "He already has a wife and family." "I know it — but that's the only cure nevertheless," he insisted. "Say, dear, wouldn't this place make a good setting for a picture — no need to go to Italy for locations, with this right at hand. I'd like to try one some time and see if I could make as good an Italian as Bert Lytell does." I agreed with him about the value of that restaurant as a good set ; it would have been marvelous, and the people who were dining at the little tables could have walked right on to the screen as atmosphere. But I was more interested in Carol Burnet than I was even in the thought of Hugh's doing an Italian role. I'd never been particularly fond of her, of course ; in the days when she was playing fast and loose with Danny's heart I had absolutely loathed her. It was impossible not to feel sorry for her now, though. She was a little fool not to see what "making a home" for Philip would do to her reputation, and giving him her money was sheer idiocy, of course. I had al\va_\s thought that if her character was to develop it would be through suffering, yet I hated to think that she might be on lier wa} to that development now. "I suppose we could ask them out to the house." I began tentatively. "Oh, Sally, do we have to do that?" Hugh's voice slid down the scale of despondency. "I'll do anything but have that St. Mark man underfoot right now — but with the picture where it is. and the cutting and titling coming — oh. Sal. think of something el^e !" We met Claudia and Danny at the uptown hotel where they had been dining ; Claudia adores our Italian restaurant, but she can't go to places like that because she's always recognized and a crowd gathers, and the last time she went there she was nearly mobbed, and the proprietor thought he'd have to call the police before she could get away. She's almost as unlucky that way as Mary Pickford. Danny was fairly bursting with news ; he could hardly wait till we were seated before he burst forth with it. "Who do you suppose is in town?" he demanded. "Guess " "Oh, they never could, Danny!" exclaimed his wife. "It's Philip St. Mark's wife and children — yes, honestlv, Hugh, it is." "Oh, no!" I doubled up with mirth at the thought of a family of rampageous children in that apartment. "Surely they're not going to stay with him?" "The children are, all four of them. Danny met them in the Claridge, and Mrs. St. Mark said that she was going to her home in Wilmington for a rest and leave the children with him to get some new clothes." "Poor little Carol!" -^said Hugh. "She's going to get her disillusionment sooner than I'd expected." But strangely enough, it didn't affect Carol that way at all. I was buying Junior a new sweater a fewdays later, and met her with the four St. Mark children, getting them everything they needed. They were making the most of it, too ; I could picture their mother telling them to get everything they could out of their father. The oldest girl bought no less than six pairs of new shoes, and when the next oldest one, a boy, remonstrated, "Why, you've got a pair of shoes like that now, brandnew," she silenced him with, "Well, they'll wear out, won't they?" Little Carol, in another of the hideous dresses that she had made for herself, beamed on them and bought clothes and still more clothes, and they treated her as if she might have been a nurse girl. She had everything charged to herself, and as I saw the bills mounting higher and higher — she had begged me to stay with them and have luncheon — I finally remonstrated. "Oh, but they're Philip's children; it's a pleasure to return in this way, some of the good he's done for me," she retorted. "Besides, he's going to pay me back ; this is just a temporary arrangement, because having things charged is so much quicker than paying cash for everything." Obviously I could do nothing to bring her to her ::enses, so I left the small cavalcade trailing its way into Maillard's and beat a hasty retreat to my own peaceful little home. I pictured it as I rode out on the train ; the two terraces of flowers that rose to its white walls, its solid blue awnings, its window boxes that made vivid lines of color beneath the sheer, blowing curtains, the honeysuckle that tossed fragrant sprays up over the sleeping porch that overlooked the Sound. It was true that Hugh and I led a complicated, unsettled life, dependent largely on the whims of the public for its success. We were passing through a critical stage of his career, which might mark his success or failure. Yet our home was a retreat from the tawdriness of the world in which we had to move. Sometimes I wished that Hugh was a lawyer or an engineer or something like that, so that we could spend our days in the sort of Continned on page 88