Silver Screen (Jun-Oct 1940)

86 Silver Screen for September 1940 Small Town Boy [Continued from page 85] his engagement to Helena, I mean. But none of us had taken it seriously. Bob had rushed so many girls and after a while his interest had lagged and he'd started on the quest for a new love. Sometimes men are such fools about love and girls. Of all the ones he'd thought he was in love with Bob couldn't have chosen anyone worse for him than Helena. She'd come out here a contest winner and she hadn't clicked. But she'd stayed on doing extra work and had somehow managed to hold on to the fringe of Hollywood. She was inordinately ambitious and she had a way of Mattering people so they liked her. A born sycophant, she'd managed to worm herself into a friendship with one of the most gullible stars out here and for months she'd been a guest at her home. That's how Bob met her. Helena was aware of the way Madge felt about Bob. I knew that when I saw her look at Madge when Bob announced the engagement. Her triumph flashed from her baby blue eyes that for once weren't guarded and secretive. And I saw that she hated Madge, too, and was afraid of her, for I know she resented her place in Bob's affections and life. Madge didn't break even at the wedding. She had the sort of pride I take my hat off to, the quiet, deeply instilled respect for herself and her own feelings that has no trace of vanity at all. It wasn't until the week after Bob brought his bride home from their honeymoon that Madge came to me. "I've got to talk to someone," she said simply. "I'm so worried about Bob. Helena doesn't love him, I know that, and she treats him as if he's a puppy she's got attached to a leash. She takes such advantage of his adoration. And it's silly I know, but I hate seeing her in Bob's house. She doesn't belong. And she's beginning to change it already and it's just as if she's hurting a child I've borne. I love that house so." There came the day when Helena tried to make Bob get rid of Madge. But for once he refused to bow down to her. And it was after that she insisted Madge give up her small apartment in town and live with them. It was obvious why she did it. She began treating Madge as if she were her personal maid, ordering her around in front of guests and being generally obnoxious. Of course, she wanted Madge to quit. But she didn't. Madge wasn't the quitting sort. Not when she knew Bob needed her. All of us saw soon enough that Helena wasn't playing the game fairly at all. We'd all seen her, at one time or another, lunching with men at out-of-the-way restaurants or having cocktails with them or caught glimpses of her car heading towards the desert with some new flame on the seat beside her. Of course, Bob didn't know that. Neither did Madge, at first. I'll never forget the day she found out about it. She came to me, her gray eyes blazing in her fury. ''He mustn't ever know," she said and her voice sounded hard and dry as if she had been crying. "He adores her so. Isn't it funny how blind men can be? He can't see beyond her soft little baby face. He's always telling me how gentle and sweet she is and how he couldn't go on without her. And she's just making a laughing stock of him." It was a few weeks after that Bob went on location. He'd begged Helena to go with him, but she pleaded a headache though Madge said the moment he was gone she was all over it. Then the next day she told Madge she wouldn't be needing her and she could have a couple of days' vacation. Madge had dinner with me that evening. At first, she managed to hold herself in check, then suddenly she broke. "I can't bear to have Bob disillusioned," she sobbed. "He's really just a kid who still believes in Santa Claus and the silver angel on top of the Christmas tree. And Helena is that angel. He worships her. And if he ever loses that belief, he won't be Bob any more." "You love him, don't you?" I said. "Yes." The word came as if it had been torn out of her breast. Only that one word spoken so proudly and with no excuses for it at all. Madge would never pretend about anything, even her own heart. We had just finished dinner when the telephone call came from the studio. They'd been trying to get in touch with Helena and her telephone didn't answer and knowing my friendship with Madge they thought I might know where she was. Bob had left location and they thought he was on the way home and they needed him for some retakes. Madge looked stricken when I told her. "Of course, he's coming back," she said slowly. "It's just the sort of thing he would do, wanting to surprise Helena. I'll have to go to her right away. I've got to be sure everything is all right. She must have let all the servants go if the phone didn't answer." Afterwards, Madge told me what had happened. The house was dark when she got there. But after she'd gone in and turned on the lights she knew there was someone in the house. The ashtrays in front of the sofa were heaped high with cigarette butts and ashes and two half filled scotch and soda glasses stood beside them. Then suddenly she heard Helena's voice and looked up to see her standing in the doorway. Her eyes looked like two slits of fury and she didn't look at all pretty even in the filmy pink negligee that would ordinarily have been so becoming to her. She was so mad she didn't hear the automobile turning into the driveway, but Madge heard it. "Listen," she said taking a quick step forward. "Is someone here with you?" Helena looked at her superciliously. "Of course you know we can't keep you on after this impertinance," she be gan, but Madge didn't pay any attention to her. "This isn't any time for quibbling," she said urgently. "Bob is coming and he'll see anyone leaving the house. You'll have to tell me if someone is here." Helena didn't have to answer. Her frightened eyes told the truth for her and Madge, after that one quick glance at her, took her hand and pulled her upstairs. So when Bob came running up the stairs it was Madge he found in Helena's negligee, lying back on the chaise longue with one of Hollywood's best known play boys sitting beside her in a dressing gown. Helena came after a minute or so, fully dressed. She'd slipped down the servant's stairs and come around to the front of the house again. But she couldn't play the game squarely even "then, after Madge had compromised herself to save her. "Of all the impertinance," she began. Then she stopped at the look in Bob's eyes. He was staring at Madge as if the end of the world had come. There was horror in his eyes and fury. But more than anything else there was jealousy as he looked at Madge. Afterwards, he told me it was as if he were seeing her for the first time in that moment, seeing her and knowing he loved her and that he had loved her all his life, but had never realized it before he saw her this way with another man. He wanted to kill her. But instead to his horror, he felt the tears come to his eyes and he could only stand there looking at her shaken with horror. Helena made her big mistake then. "Please leave our home at once," she said to Madge. "It certainly isn't very pleasant for me to come home and find this going on." Bob turned to her furiously and it was then he saw the pink satin mules on her small feet. The satin mules that went with the pink negligee Madge was wearing now. In her hurry Helena had forgotten to change them. He didn't say a word as he walked over to the chaise longue and leaning over Madge, pulled the long trailing skirt of her negligee up far enough to show the walking shoes Madge was still wearing. That was when he .broke completely. Kneeling on the floor beside her, his head cradled in her lap, his arms holding her as if they would never let her go again and begging her to forgive him for ever having doubted her, even for that moment. It's funny, but there were a few people in Hollywood who thought Madge was a love pirate and she never said a word in her own defense. Even when Helena went around looking so pathetic after the divorce for all that she had taken practically every penny of Bob's savings, Madge kept quiet about the stories that were going the rounds. And there were others who didn't think his marriage to Madge would last, remembering the way he'd rushed one girl after the other when he first came to Hollywood. But, of course, they don't know what Bob knows now, that it was Madge he was looking for all the while, the Madge who had been lost to him in the commonplaces of a lifelong friendship.