Minnie Flynn/Chapter 12
DEANE was a sympathetic confidant. Minnie called upon him often because she found so much relief in the recital of her troubles. She respected his advice though she seldom followed it. He knew all about her parting from Billy; about her increasing contempt for her family, her growing ambitions. But she told him nothing about Gilbert Carlton.
As the days passed, Deane noted the change in the pattern that was once Minnie Flynn. How rapidly she was learning the mechanics of acting, how much more facile and broad was her range of expression. Cleverly he led her out, in her acting, to express her daily experiences. Before the sting was gone from her last scene with Billy, Deane had her react it before the camera. Deftly he had woven this very scene into the story they were making, and before Minnie was aware of it she was playing upon the screen the part she had played in real life. And as she was reliving it, the sordid memories of her past came back to her; Billy's sickening desire for her; his hands red and pulpy, reaching out for her; all the past—cramped, incongruous and fouled with tenement dirt. Deane had chosen for the actor to play opposite her a type similar to Billy. Though Minnie was aware of this deliberate tricking of her emotions, when the scene was under way, she lost herself amid her memories, and the past so merged into the present that she lived again that dramatic crisis.
"How cruel a woman can be when she no longer loves a man," Deane was thinking as he watched her, mechanically repeating almost word for word what she had said to Billy. He checked a nervous impulse to laugh. How inexorable the laws of passion; she was already hurting him, and he was so much more sensitive than Billy.
"Knowledge of life is growth," he told Minnie. "Your experience with Billy has made an interesting contribution to your development as an actress. That scene we have just finished will stamp you as an 'emotional actress.' Another rubber stamp of our profession."
"Do I have to go through some terrible sorrow to express suffering?" she asked, afraid that life was to be too turbulent if success was to be bought at such a cost.
"Not necessarily," Deane answered. "There are certain elemental emotions which are more easily conveyed by situations than by individual expression. Almost infallible rules, especially on the screen. You know by now, Minnie, that it is more difficult to make an audience laugh than cry. We have certain prescribed rules which are nearly always successful. Any inexperienced actress can make a portion of the audience weep if she portrays a child at the deathbed of her mother, a youngster grieving over the death of a faithful dog, a girl bidding farewell to her soldier sweetheart, a mother whose child is torn from her. You should understand that by now, Minnie, for I have fitted you into just such situations as if I were pouring you into a mold."
She bit her lower lip. "But the audience was crying over me!"
"No, Minnie, over the situation. The audiences are as schooled to cry at these situations as they are to laugh if one man kicks the other man in the seat of the trousers, or when a fat man sits on his opera hat."
"Are you trying to discredit all that I've done?" Minnie asked rather petulantly.
He shook his head. "I only want you to realize that picture technique is knowing your mechanics and learning to photograph upon your mind every physical interpretation of the human emotions. Some day you may not have a director who studies you, who knows your limitations, who helps in the construction of a story which will avoid your deficiencies and give full scope to your acquired talents."
Minnie was thinking while he was talking that Deane was unnecessarily frank; she might do much better with a director who was more complimentary, kind. Beauregard had already hinted at a possible change. She had no idea that Beauregard attributed her indifference to him to a secret attraction to Deane.
The day Beauregard saw Minnie's dramatic scene upon the screen, he sent for her. He was excited. He saw in her a Pickford, a Gish or a Talmadge. Her development was nothing short of amazing. She would make him famous as a producer. Though his praise to Minnie was discreetly circumspect, his promises for her future filled her with joy. She was to have the star rôle in a special melodrama which he had been long advertising, her choice of directors (she preferred Bacon who was now eager to direct her), her choice of leading man and supporting cast.
After much hesitancy, she decided to let Deane make another picture with her, and she cleverly made Beauregard suggest Gilbert Carlton for her leading man. At the end of the long interview, Beauregard presented her with a gold vanity case and told her that he loved her with "a deep and holy passion." Partly because she was grateful, and partly because she was happy, and also because she did not want to antagonize him at a time he seemed so ready to bring about her success, she let him draw her into his trembling arms and kiss her. Not upon the mouth! That was entirely too romantic, and how could romance go with a fat stomach and a shiny, naked head? But she turned her cheek and let him kiss her neck, though she wanted to laugh at the funny picture they made in the mirror in back of his desk. Why did men like him puff so? Easily winded—she decided— Awfully stupid and slobbery. . . . And she wondered how Gilbert Carlton kissed a woman. . . . And suddenly a warm glow moved over her—she would soon know how he kissed, for in all pictures there were love scenes, and he would hold her in his arms. Yes, she would know!
Beauregard had locked the door because he was afraid Deane would come into the office. He had a habit of doing that when Minnie was there. So the violent knocking on the door annoyed, but did not startle him. He reluctantly released Minnie, hurried across the room, then deftly turned the key in the lock. It was only a messenger boy with a telegram.
Eleanor Grant had committed suicide.
"Why in hell didn't they phone this message to my secretary?" he demanded of the boy. "Who directed you to this office?"
The boy didn't know it was Deane.
Beauregard crumpled the telegram in his hand, fired the boy out of the room, then sank trembling into his chair before the huge mahogany desk. He didn't care anything about Eleanor, but the news was stark, terrifying. When Minnie solicitously pressed him to tell her what had so upset him, he made a long story of it and in the telling whipped up a lot of false sympathy for Eleanor, so that when he came to the suicide, which he said he couldn't understand in the face of his having offered to do anything in his power to help her, he was gulping.
Minnie cried with wholesome relief. "Poor Eleanor," she kept saying over and over to herself, "and I promised to get her a part in the last picture—and I forgot all about her, and I"
"Yes, poor little Eleanor," said Beauregard huskily. "We've got to do everything in our power to make her funeral a success. I'll turn out the whole studio if necessary." He was ringing for his secretary while he was talking. "I'll spare no expense for flowers, and June, dear, you can pick out the most beautiful headstone and not have to count the cost any more than if it were for my own sister."
The secretary entered. Beauregard ordered her to send for the publicity man. "I want all the papers to run the story and give Eleanor a lot of praise, poor little Eleanor." And he drew out the vest pocket silk handkerchief this time. "I'll pay for the cuts of a two-column portrait no matter what it costs—even if I have to steal the space from you, June dear."
"Oh, I'll give it up—I'll gladly give it up," Minnie was crying warm, painless tears.
"Go to the wardrobe room," was Beauregard's last order to his secretary, "and tell Mrs. Skerrit that I want the prettiest white dress in the department, and that she can put it on the books as dead loss, because I am going to give the dress away."
There were only four people at the funeral. They sat in the chapel of the undertaking parlors, afraid to walk around the white coffin which was like a shaft of light cutting into the gloomy shadows. Minnie was terrified by the silence, broken by the drone of the minister's voice. . . . Why did the Lord's Prayer seem so much more significant than ever before? "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from all evil." . . . Why was grief so uncontrollable when the emaciated organist played "Nearer My God to Thee"? Weakness and nausea laid clammy hands upon Minnie—she wanted to scream and run away. But she sat there, transfixed, listening to the hum of the minister's voice and to the low, wheezing tones of the organ. Her flowers—a huge outjetting shower of white roses—lay still and wax-like upon the coffin. But Beauregard's enormous gay wreath leaned drunkenly against the table which held the coffin. It was the largest and most expensive wreath which the florist adjoining the undertaking parlors had ever made up, something he took pride in.
Deane knew all about Eleanor's death, and he knew what Minnie's emotional reactions would be. He ordered them at the studio to prepare for the so-called "sad scenes" to be taken the afternoon of the funeral. "She is the harp upon which I play the song of my own heart," he said to himself. And then after a contemplative pause, "What an ass I am!"
He met her outside the Undertaking Parlors and drove her to the studio. She had brought along a heavy veil and a black bordered handkerchief. "Props"—and he smiled. "Even in moments of consecration, passion, dismantling sorrows, a woman never forgets her 'props.'"
He let Minnie enjoy her sorrow, even carrying his pleasant cruelties so far as to let Minnie visualize herself in Eleanor's place. So intense then was her suffering that she sobbed aloud, leaning against Deane's broad shoulders. As soon as the violence of this grief had ebbed away, Deane called upon her to play the scenes which they had counted upon to bring tears to the eyes of the audience. She played them with a depth of feeling and a wistfulness which made them seem sincerely touching.
When this picture reached the public, their silent applause of tears was called a tribute to the art of the new rising star, June Day.
So Deane caught and prisoned Minnie's experiences. He sought her in her home; he made studies of her family; he dreamed and hoped and planned for her. He fought to keep Beauregard away from her; to give her a clean, sane outlook on life. Around her like eddying gusts were newfound friends, studio satellites who called themselves "exponents of the freedom of the ego." They were pulling at her—he was pulling at her—Minnie was on the rack between them.
Then Gilbert Carlton came back to the studio, playing his nasty game of studied indifference, flattering her by his well-turned compliments, pressing upon her a personality as smothering as a woolen blanket on a hot day.
"I have taught her many of the physical attributes of love, but I will never be able to show her the heights that love can reach." Deane's introspective mind worked like a shuttle, always weaving. His analyses were disconcerting even to himself. "But I'm damned if I'll let a cub like Carlton awaken that instinct in her!"
He did his best, quietly, to show up Carlton's petty vanities, his arrogance and selfishness. But to no avail. Minnie saw only the handsome face, the broad, strong shoulders, the tapering waist. She heard only his ringing laughter, so cleverly sincere at times; his charming, graceful compliments; his passionate voice that made chills like soft fingers run down her spine. What good company he was, never at a loss for a story. He could play the piano, too, and had a well-modulated singing voice.
She thought Carlton was the most amusing man she had ever met and she laughed uproariously when he called her "Pumpkin." She had once been called "Carrots"—her red hair being the magnet for nicknames, but nothing she thought so cute as "Pumpkin." The name became "Punkin" as the picture progressed. It made Deane furious, then he realized that he was beginning, like Beauregard, to want to dignify Minnie.
Carlton was clever. He never made love to Minnie, though he knew she was ready for it. He wanted to be sure of her future before he committed himself. He would play at lovemaking however; when the day came for the taking of their love scenes in the picture, he admitted to Gordon Carilla, his best friend, that he would frankly give her some thrills.
Deane, more unhappy than he ever dreamed it would make him, saw Minnie falling in love with Gilbert Carlton. Like a man putting off an operation he knew to be necessary, Deane postponed taking the love scenes until the very end of the picture. He had thought of several stupid excuses for leaving them out entirely, but he knew Beauregard would order them taken; romance, love episodes, were the necessary treacle of every movie.
He found himself pacing up and down the studio floor going in and coming out of the tent he had put up as a temporary private office, acting, so he warned himself, like a fool college boy. It wasn't reasonable that he should love a girl like Minnie, but he couldn't argue or ridicule himself out of this one absorbing passion in his life. He loved her.
When he walked on the set Carlton strolled over to him.
"What scene is this, Deane?"
He repeated his question twice before Deane answered, in a low steady voice, "The scene following the rescue, Carlton, the—" There was a noticeable hesitancy, "—the love scene."
"Oh, the love scene, is it? Umm-m."
Minnie felt a sharp sting of resentment at the note of satisfaction in Carlton's voice. She didn't quite like the manner in which he pursed up his lips, drew his tongue over them to moisten them, or the way the eyelids of his right eye closed to a slit, up-turned at the far corner like the eye of a cat. Yet the gleaming look in them seemed to hypnotize her, and she found herself moving closer to him, so close that her outstretched hand touched his arm and closed over it. She pinched it.
"Oh, the love scene, is it? Umm-m." She thought she was mocking him, and in doing so was making it clear to him how aware she was of his conceit.
Neither Deane nor Carlton was fooled. Both men were rather shaken by Minnie's look of intense longing. They saw in her quivering mouth the sudden release of tumultuous passions. Her body, taut, defiant, betrayed the fight that was going on within her, a subconscious struggle against conscious desire.
Deane walked hurriedly away from them. He paused for a moment as if making up his mind what to do. He was standing now in front of the tent. Then with a nervous move, he jerked aside the flap of the tent and went inside. He sank down in a chair, and groaned audibly. Minnie was in love with this ham actor. She wanted him much more than he would ever want her.
Deane ground his teeth. He felt as if Minnie's soul had become a tangible thing and he was grappling with it, a soul which leapt and struggled in his impotent fingers, a soul, which, if it escaped him, would go plunging into impenetrable darkness, a gaudy light-struck empty thing like a child's balloon, lost forever.
He sprang to the opening of the tent. "Minnie!" he cried out, and his voice was heard above the thundering echoes of the hammers, the syncopations of the jazz band, the splutter and hiss of the powerful arc lamps. "Come in here, I want to talk to you!"
"Oh, Lord!" she said to herself. "Deane knows or he wouldn't have called me Minnie before the whole crowd."
Carlton had also caught the warning note in Deane's voice. "Look, here, Punkin," he whispered to her hurriedly. "Deane's got something up his sleeve. He's a queer nut—I can't make him out. But don't you listen to a word he says about me, because there isn't any truth in it."
"I won't, honestly. Why, no one could influence me—even if he tried to."
"He's jealous of you—that's all. I got it the moment he said that you and I were to do the love scene."
"Oh, no, he's not"
"Sure he is. You can't fool me! He's going to be stark, staring mad the moment I take you into my arms, and—" He closed his eyes, drew in his breath and made the gesture of encircling arms. "He's afraid to have me make love to you, don't you see? Yes, even in front of the camera."
"Make love to me," she mechanically repeated as if she were thinking aloud. She couldn't get away because he was holding her by the arm.
"Damn him! If he tries any of his funny stuff on me I'll go straight to the old man and shoot the whole story to him. If he thought Deane was trying to get you for himself, he'd can him in a minute."
"Minnie!"
"He's got a hell of a nerve calling you that. You'd think you belonged to him. . . . You're my little girl, aren't you?"
"Let me go, please."
"Good God! You aren't anything to him, are you, June?"
"What do you mean—'anything to him'?" What he meant was clear enough. Tears sprang to Minnie's eyes. "How dare you talk to me like that! Of course I'm nothing to him. Let go of me, please. Everybody on the stage is watching us. What'll they think, anyway?"
"I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm not ashamed of the way I like you. What's more, I respect you. I'm not afraid to have the whole world know that, if you want me to tell it to them. You can even throw that in Deane's face, if you like. Maybe it'll teach him a good lesson."
"He's going to be awfully put out if I don't go to him."
"All right, dear, but if you've got any loyalty you won't let him pull anything about me that'll frighten you away."
Minnie was bewildered. She wondered if he was making love to her. If so, why did he choose such a crowded moment? Could it be possible that he, too, like the others knew so little of romance?
"Dearest—" Now he was so close to her she could hear his irregular breathing. His breath was heavy with the sweet perfume of violets.
"As God is my judge, you are as sacred to me as my own mother. There! That's what I've kept locked in my heart,—it's out at last!"
Minnie trembled with feverish ecstasy. To have been loved so silently, so secretly. To be respected. To be such a man's ideal. Each step nearer to Deane tightened the muscles around her mouth, deepened the glint in her eyes. When she pulled aside the flap, entered the tent and faced him, there was triumphant savagery in her defiance. "Well, what do you want of me?"
Deane knew every word that Carlton had been saying. "I want you to marry me."
"To—what?"
"Marry me."
"Gee, but you are certainly developing a sense of humor—or something." She started to say, "What's the big idea?" but his sober sincerity made her realize how cheap any light mockery would be.
"Look here, Minnie! I never felt so responsible for you as I do right this minute. I don't think I ever realized how desperately you need protection. I want to give you that protection. That's secondary, of course. The real reason I want you to marry me is because I love you. Not wildly or romantically, but quietly, with a sincerity which I hope you will some day understand."
A silence fell upon them. Deane was unashamed of this humbling of a fine pride. To him it would have been a false pride, had he been ashamed of it, though he sensed the ignominy of his own position; he was standing before an ignorant little girl, offering her the protection of a name proud of its family traditions, a position, a dignified home, social and moral advantages. Minnie was silent because she was frightened. She wondered if any blame would fall upon her, because in some inexplicable fashion, she had attracted to her such a love as Hal Deane was offering her. Then she was dazed because he had proposed to her, a proposal so cruelly unprepared for. She was also deeply touched by it, and began to cry.
Deane knew her tears were to be her only articulate response. He put his arms around her, and held her close to him, interminable minutes, it seemed to Minnie. She wondered how he could talk so quietly, so evenly, apparently with no passion at all, about love. There was no perceptible trembling of his body as he held her in his arms, his breath was cool, and strong of cigarette smoke. He made no attempt to seek her lips, but held her reservedly, in what seemed to her scarcely an embrace.
Her quick ears caught the shuffle of feet outside the tent, and a tall shadow fell upon it. She wondered if it were Carlton, if he had followed her, and if he were standing there waiting to hear what Deane had to say about him. A tiny shaft of triumph. . . . It was she and not Carlton who concerned Deane. Her tears stopped suddenly as if the tear ducts had contracted.
"Minnie"
Oh, that detestable name!
"You're just a youngster after all. You seem so little to me. Helpless in the midst of all this cheap, rotten trafficking. I want to get you away from it."
There came over Minnie a tingling desire to laugh hysterically; two men stirring up her emotions by talking of love: Deane's tiresome repetitions of his protective love; the thrill of Carlton's sly, meaningful glances, the magnetism of his long, caressing fingers, the promise in his rich, full voice.
Deane's own voice rang out sharply, "Look here, Minnie! You little fool, you're laughing! You're standing here facing one of the greatest crises of your life and you haven't sense enough to know it!"
"I'm not laughing. I'm hysterical, I tell you. Why have you done a thing like this, in the middle of the day, without any preparation at all, asking me such a serious question as that? And I"
"You're right, Minnie. I should have known better. To me the offer of a man's love needs no artificial background. I have made a very unfortunate choice of time and location. I'm not an actor."
"You're getting sarcastic again."
"That's my way, perhaps. It may be as much of a pose as the suaveness of others. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the truth, as much as I fear it. In trying to be so different from them, I have created a character equally as artificial."
"Are you trying to make me hate you by talking like that? Please don't, Hal."
"No, Minnie, I was only hoping that I could make you care for me."
She relaxed from the tension at once, sighing, glancing past Deane and worried because the shadow had gone.
"You will some day understand my love. Appreciate it, I think. Marry me, dear."
"I can't, Hal. I don't know why I should hesitate. Don't think for one moment I don't know that you are better than I am, that a girl like me ought to be thankful that a man like you would want to make her his wife, and that I would be looked up to as somebody the rest of my life, but I"
"It's because you think you're in love with Carlton, isn't it?"
"Oh, how can you say that, Hal, when I—How do I know if I love him or not. . . . Why, he's never even kissed me."
Deane winced at this. "Is that your ultimate test of love, Minnie?"
"Of course it isn't. But he—well, we've never once mentioned such a thing. You know yourself how indifferent he is, how he treats all of the girls who are crazy about him as if they were dust under his feet."
"Look here, Minnie, Carlton is a cad, and I detest him! A stupid, selfish rotter! He's going to make love to you—I know the symptoms. And you'll believe him. He's going to do this because you're now in a position to help him."
Minnie flung herself into a rigid pose again. Deane talked quickly: "Let me tell you something about Carlton. He's worse than Beauregard. Beauregard takes, but he gives something in exchange. It's rotten salvage, but at least it's something. Carlton takes, but gives nothing. He's without decency, honor. He's just a petty cheat!"
Minnie struck out with her fists blindly. Her face was convulsed. Finally she managed to gasp: "You keep your mouth shut, Hal Deane! You don't know what you're talking about!"
"I thought so, Minnie. I'm sorry for you."
"Then if you're so sorry for me, you'd better watch your step and not be insulting people who've been as nice to me as Gilbert Carlton. Yeh, you'd better watch your step if you and me—and I—are going to be friends. Do you get me?"
Strange that at a time like this he should make a mental note of how quickly in these unguarded moments Minnie degenerated into old habits of gesture and speech.
"What proof have you got that he's what you say he is?" sputtering incoherently. "Yeh, come on now, with your damned old preaching. Where's your proof!"
"He talks about women who have been foolish. He intimates about the ones who have not. And here's something you ought to know, and probably don't—he has a wife and baby hidden away somewhere in Connecticut."
"It's a lie!"
"A rather foolish defense, Minnie. It's the truth. I happen to know it."
"You're trying to turn me against him."
"Of course I am. For your sake."
"No—for yours! You're like all the rest of them! You want something and you're damned if you won't get it no matter what it costs the other fellow. You—with your nagging old protection stuff! You're not as good as he is! I hate you, I tell you! You've tormented me long enough. It's a rotten lie about Gilbert Carlton! That's all it is! I know it! I'm going to ask him! To hell with you, that's what I think about you!"
Again she struck out blindly, her fists cutting through the air. He reached out and seized one of her hands. She whipped it from his grasp. He wanted to grip her by the wrists, force her into a chair and hold her there until she steadied herself. She screamed when he touched her, flung his hands away, thwarted his attempt to reach the opening of the tent first, and was gone.
"Poor little kid," he said to himself as he stood there swaying slightly, looking at the long uneven deepening red line on the back of his hand where Minnie had scratched him. He suddenly felt as if he had appeared ridiculous, and a slow blush mounted to his forehead. He was too numb with pain to feel conscious of any heartbreak.
A few moments later, outwardly calm, Deane left the tent and walked out on the stage. Weaver was busy giving orders, the musicians had been cued to choose from their portfolios only sentimental songs for the love scenes, the electricians stood in position behind their lamps, the carpenters were nailing up their last boards on the scaffolding holding up the walls of the set. Deane glanced around quite casually. "Where is Miss Day?" he asked Weaver with no perceptible quaver in his voice, though he was conscious of a muscular tugging at his throat.
"Maybe in her dressing room. I saw her running across the stage a few minutes ago. She seemed to be looking for somebody,—you, I guess."
"Go to her dressing room and tell her that I'm ready to take the scene."
"Yes, sir."
"Where is Carlton?"
"Right in back of the set, touching up his make-up," Weaver began to chuckle. "This may hand you a laugh, Deane," he said, "but when I walked around there a few minutes ago he was spraying his throat with some kind of a pinkish stuff which smelled like peppermints and perfume mixed together. If one of these he-men electricians don't drop a lamp on that bird's head some day, I'll miss my guess!"
Deane had heard little of what Weaver was telling him. He was rubbing his hands together nervously, wringing them, though he felt a slight stinging pain where the scratch streaked across the back of his hand. "Call both of them quickly. I want to get the love scene over with and move into the boarding house set. Carlton doesn't work in that, does he?"
Weaver reached for the thumbed script, turned over a few pages, then shook his head. "Carlton doesn't work any more today after the love scene." Weaver laughed again. He was unusually talkative. Deane wanted to silence him, but was afraid of betraying his own agitation. He felt suddenly self-conscious under the sharp scrutiny of Weaver's little ferret eyes. "It ought to be some love scene, if I can read the cards. She's off her head about him as far as I can see. If she isn't, she will be after today. Lovemaking is his dish, all right. Poor little kid."
An echo of Deane's own words, but they sounded patronizing, coming from Weaver's lips, and Deane resented them. "She can take care of herself, Weaver. Get them on the set."
Minnie had been crying. The mascara on her lashes had run, and the black tears had trickled in tiny grooves down her cheeks. Her mouth was still working convulsively. Weaver found her trying to repair her make-up. "You don't have to worry about it," he said to her consolingly. "It's after he's rescued you from drowning, and you're supposed to look all topsy-turvy." He was wondering why she had been crying. Deane had probably given her a call-down. "The boss is waiting for you. He seems impatient. When you're ready, call me. I've got to have somebody hose you down, you come into the scene all wet. You know—continuation of the drowning sequence."
Minnie shuddered. "I hate to have that water thrown all over me. I'm going to catch my death of cold."
Weaver laughed. "Don't worry, Carlton will keep you warm, he's all primed up for it. Perfume, atomizer, breath of violets. . . ."
"You keep quiet," she said evenly. A few seconds later: "I'm ready now."
Carlton was furious because he had to stand under the hose until he was dripping wet. But walking back to the set he passed in front of a long cheval glass and caught sight of himself. The wet clothes clung to his body, revealing the muscles on his arms and legs. Intriguing. He tightened his fists, pressing his fingers well into the palms of his hands and watched smilingly the rippling play of muscles. And as he stood there looking at himself he wondered if Minnie's wet clothes would be so pleasantly revealing of charms, hitherto half hidden.
Minnie's dress was of a sleazy material, which clung to her body in limp drapes as she emerged from the cascade of water. Her hair fell to her waist. Pulled from off her forehead, revealing her ears, her hair became a mysteriously dark frame as if it were carved from rosewood. Her face was the color of old ivory. The scarlet mouth eager for the soothing caress of Carlton's. Eyes like two velvet pansies.
"Do I really love this girl?" Carlton asked himself, amazed. "Hell, no! I mustn't let myself slip like this. There's too much at stake."
"I love you, I love you." The wail of the music. The hum of the lights. Deane's white face peering over the shoulder of the cameraman. Carlton. Minnie in his arms. The warmth of their two bodies, Minnie's heart pounding wildly. A thin vapor of steam arising from their wet clothes.
"Do you mean it, Gilbert, with all your heart? Oh, I love you so!"
"Of course I mean it. Kiss me. Kiss me, darling." She lay back in his arms, swaying lightly.
"Kiss me again, Gilbert, it's just—as I dreamed it would be. I love you so. I—I've never loved before . . . never loved before."
He laid his lips upon hers. "Sweetheart," he said, "I'm crazy about you, too. And that's no lie. I'm not acting now. It's the real thing"
Not acting now? Acting! Yes, it was so—they were acting—in front of the camera. Deane was directing the scene. A hundred people were looking on. And she had forgotten. She had felt as if they were a thousand miles away.
Acting! Were his burning words of love only a part of the paint and pretense?
"Gilbert!" He was startled when she clutched him in taut, trembling arms. "Tell me the truth—do you love me—I mean outside of this scene? I mean—oh, I don't know what I'm talking about"
His mouth sought hers again, pressed hard upon it in a long embrace.
Weaver laughed. "Putting the works on her, all right. Is she falling?"
One of the musicians, drawing the bow of his 'cello over the sobbing strings, laughed and winked. "I'll say she is—like a ton of bricks!"
The wink traveled from the property boys to the electricians straddling the beams high over the set. The cameraman read aloud: "Two hundred and fifty feet, Deane—running out of film"
"Might as well cut it now—they'll cut it in Philadelphia," said Weaver facetiously.
Deane cried, "Lights out!" The studio was plunged in darkness. Deane was glad. No one saw his face, which he knew was livid with shame and grief.