“It was just that!” she said. “That’s funny.”
They rode in silence for a minute.
“You were married to Minna Davis, weren’t you?” she said with a flash of intuition. “Excuse me for referring to it.”
He was driving as fast as he could without making it conspicuous.
“I’m quite a different type from Minna Davis,” she said, “- if that’s who you meant. You might have referred to the girl who was with me. She looks more like Minna Davis than I do.”
That was of no interest now. The thing was to get this over quick and forget it.
“Could it have been her?” she asked. “She lives next door.”
“Not possibly,” he said. “I remember the silver belt you wore.”
“That was me all right.”
They were northwest of Sunset, climbing one of the canyons through the hills. Lighted bungalows rose along the winding road and the electric current that animated them sweated into the evening air as radio sound.
“You see that last highest light—Kathleen lives there. I live just over the top of the hill.”
A moment later she said, “Stop here.”
“I thought you said over the top.”
“I want to stop at Kathleen’s.”
“I’m afraid I’m—”
“I want to get out here myself,” she said impatiently.
Stahr slid out after her. She started toward a new little house almost roofed over by a single willow tree, and automatically he followed her to the steps. She rang a bell and turned to say good night.
“I’m sorry you were disappointed,” she said.
He was sorry for her now—sorry for them both.
“It was my fault. Good night.”
A wedge of light came out the opening door and as a girl’s voice inquired “Who is it?” Stahr looked up.
There she was—face and form and smile against the light from inside. It was Minna’s face—the skin with its peculiar radiance as if phosphorus had touched it, the mouth with its warm line that never counted costs—and over all the haunting jollity that had fascinated a generation.
With a leap his heart went out of him as it had the night before, only this time it stayed out there with a vast beneficence.
“Oh Edna you can’t come in,” the girl said. “I’ve been cleaning and the house is full of ammonia smell.”
Edna began to laugh, bold and loud. “I believe it was you he wanted to see, Kathleen,” she said.
Stahr’s eyes and Kathleen’s met and tangled. For an instant they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was closer than an embrace, more urgent than a call.
“He telephoned me,” said Edna. “It seems he thought—” Stahr interrupted, stepping forward into the light.
“I was afraid we were rude at the studio, yesterday evening.”
But there were no words for what he really said. She listened closely without shame. Life flared high in them both—Edna seemed at a distance and in darkness.
“You weren’t rude,” said Kathleen. A cool wind blew the brown curls around her forehead. “We had no business there.”
“I hope you’ll both,—” Stahr said, “- come and make a tour of the studio.”
“Who are you? Somebody important?”
“He was Minna Davis’ husband, he’s a producer,” said Edna as if it were a rare joke, “- and this isn’t at all what he just told me. I think he has a crush on you.”
“Shut up, Edna,” said Kathleen sharply.
As if suddenly realizing her offensiveness Edna said “Phone me, will you?” and stalked away toward the road. But she earned their secret with her—she had seen a spark pass between them in the darkness.
“I remember you,” Kathleen said to Stahr. “You got us out of the flood.”
— Now what? The other woman was more missed in her absence. They were alone and on too slim a basis for what had passed already. They existed nowhere. His world seemed far away—she had no world at all except the idol’s head, the half open door.
“You’re Irish,” he said, trying to build one for her.
She nodded.
“I’ve lived in London a long time—I didn’t think you could tell.”
The wild green eyes of a bus sped up the road in the darkness. They were silent until it went by.
“Your friend Edna didn’t like me,” he said. “I think it was the word Producer.”
“She’s just come out here too. She’s a silly creature who means no harm. I shouldn’t be afraid of you.”
She searched his face. She thought, like everyone, that he seemed tired—then she forgot it at the impression he gave of a brazier out of doors on a cool night.
“I suppose the girls are all after you to put them on the screen.”
“They’ve given up,” he said.
This was an understatement—they were all there, he knew, just over his threshold, but they had been there so long that their clamoring voices were no more than the sound of the traffic in the street. But his position remained more than royal—a king could make only one queen—Stahr, at least so they supposed, could make many.
“I’m thinking that it would turn you into a cynic,” she said. “You didn’t want to put me in the pictures.”
“No.”
“That’s good. I’m no actress. Once in London a man came up to me in the Carlton and asked me to make a test but I thought awhile and finally I didn’t go.”
They had been standing nearly motionless, as if in a moment he would leave and she would go in. Stahr laughed suddenly.
“I feel as if I had my foot in the door—like a collector.”
She laughed too.
“I’m sorry I can’t ask you in. Shall I get my reefer and sit outside?”
“No.” He scarcely knew why he felt it was time to go. He might see her again—he might not. It was just as well this way.
“You’ll come to the studio?” he said. “I can’t promise to go around with you, but if you come you must be sure to send word to my office.”
A frown, the shadow of a hair in breadth, appeared between her eyes.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I’m very much obliged.”
He knew that, for some reason, she would not come—in an instant she had slipped away from him. They both sensed that the moment was played out. He must go, even though he went nowhere and left with nothing. Practically, vulgarly, he did not have her telephone number—or even her name, but it seemed impossible to ask for them now.
She walked with him to the car, her glowing beauty and her unexplored novelty pressing up against him, but there was a foot of moonlight between them when they came out of the shadow.
“Is this all?” he said spontaneously.
He saw regret in her face—but there was a flick of the lip also, a bending of the smile toward some indirection, a momentary dropping and lifting of a curtain over a forbidden passage.
“I do hope we’ll meet again,” she said almost formally.
“I’d be sorry if we didn’t.”
They were distant for a moment. But as he turned his car in the next drive and came back with her still waiting, and waved and drove on he felt exalted and happy. He was glad that there was beauty in the world that would not be weighed in the scales of the casting department.
But at home he felt a curious loneliness as his butler made him tea in the samovar. It was the old hurt come back, heavy and delightful. When he took up the first of two scripts that were his evening stint, that presently he would visualize line by line on the screen, he waited a moment, thinking of Minna. He explained to her that it was really nothing, that no one could ever be like she was, that he was sorry.
That was substantially a day of Stahr’s. I don’t know about the illness, when it started, etc., because he was secretive but I know he fainted a couple of times that month because Father told me. Prince Agge is my authority for the luncheon in the commissary where he told them he was going to make a picture that would lose money—which was something considering the men he had to deal with and that he held a big block of stock and had a profit sharing contract.
And Wylie White told me a lot which I believed because he felt Stahr intensely with a mixture of jealousy and admiration. As for me I was head over heels in love with him then and you can take what I say for what it’s worth.
Chapter 5
Episode 13
Fresh as the morning I went up to see him a week later. Or so I thought; when Wylie called for me I had gotten into riding clothes to give the impression I’d been out in the dew since early morning.
“I’m going to throw myself under the wheel of Stahr’s car, this morning,” I said.
“How about this car,” he suggested. “It’s one of the best cars Mort Flieshacker ever sold second hand.”
“Not on your flowing veil,” I answered like a book. “You have a wife in the East.”
“She’s the past,” he said. “You’ve got one great card, Celia—your valuation of yourself. Do you think anybody would look at you if you weren’t Pat Brady’s daughter?”
We don’t take abuse like our mothers would have. Nothing—no remark from a contemporary means much. They tell you to be smart they’re marrying you for your money or you tell them. Everything’s simpler. Or is it? as we used to say.
But as I turned on the radio and the car raced up Laurel Canyon to “The Thundering Beat of My Heart,” I didn’t believe he was right. I had good features except my face was too round and a skin they seemed to love to touch and
