She let him fill up her glass, though she did not drink again, and the conversation after that became casual and unimportant. About three o’clock she left, for she wanted a long rest before the dinner.
* * * * *
At her apartment an air-mail letter awaited her from Austen’s lawyer, Herbert Walsh, in New York. She had met him only once or twice and was surprised to hear from him. The letter said merely:
“DEAR MRS. BOND—I plan to be in your part of the country the 21st to the 25th and should like to discuss with you a certain matter. I hope, therefore, you will not be out of town, or if so, perhaps you would be good enough to let me know where I can contact you. My address will be…”
The letter gave her a chill as she read it. She had noticed lately that a great many small matters affected her in this way if they contained any element of uncertainty—a message that someone whose name she did not know had been trying to reach her on the telephone, some anonymous scurrilous letter (such as every movie personality receives occasionally), even the headlights of a car that seemed to be following her at night but was only waiting for a chance to overtake. It was a symptom of her nervous condition, she imagined, due partly to the strain of the picture-making; she was still detached enough in mind to diagnose and smile at her own foolishness. This letter from Mr. Walsh, however, put her in a state of mental spasm. She paced up and down the living-room of the apartment, reading it over and over as if the words themselves were hard to understand, then she crumpled it in sudden reasonless consternation. If someone were trying to torture her, this was the way. A minute later she was at the telephone, the note smoothed out beside the instrument as she read from it Walsh’s number. Action had quieted her. But it was too late—six-thirty in New York; Walsh had already left his office and his secretary said she had strict orders not to give anyone his home number.
Carey, still a little distraught, found a groove of relief in the memory of all the stage telephone scenes she had played—controlled emotion in voice, but an utmost betrayal to the eye—how easy it was, and how difficult audiences always thought it!… She said: “Perhaps YOU can help me then. I got a letter today from Mr. Walsh—”
“Yes, Mrs. Bond. I remember sending it. He’s going out to visit you.”
“You mean—just—just to visit ME?”
“I think so.”
“But—but if it’s so important I—I feel I can’t wait to know what it is… I MUST know… It’s not fair to have to think of these things for days ahead… Do YOU know what it’s about? I’m sure you must do —”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bond—perhaps if you were to telephone Mr. Walsh personally tomorrow… well, no, I oughtn’t to say that—he probably wouldn’t care to talk over the telephone—”
“So you DO know what it’s about?”
“No, Mrs. Bond, Mr. Walsh doesn’t discuss his cases with me.”
“CASES?” Her heart felt as if it were being lifted out of her body for a solo exhibition. “WHAT case? I’m not in any case… at least I… none that I know of…”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bond. There’s really nothing more I can say. I’m sure when Mr. Walsh gets out to see you—”
“I see, I see… Yes, I understand… I’ll wait… Goodbye…”
For a time after that she thought she would be unable to attend the dinner. But that disturbed her even more; she disliked causing commotion, and had always harboured a slight contempt for last-minute cancellers. Paul had once told her understudy: “You’re in a hopeless job. Carey goes on if she can crawl.” Somehow the recollection of that tribute gave her power now to face the evening ahead, and once the decision was made she could even raise a mild excitement. It might be fun to have people applauding her again, real live people applauding HER instead of her photographs.
She rested, changed, then drove downtown where the dinner was to be held. She was a little late, yet she drove slowly, choosing the quieter residential streets. Suddenly a dog came scampering through a gate and into the roadway in front of her car; she passed right over. She felt her heart brake sharply with the clenching of feet and hands; she pulled to the kerb, then looked back. It was true, except that the car, not the wheels, had passed over; and the dog, a black spaniel, was now back on the sidewalk, scared but unhurt, desperately trying to re-enter the gate. She got out and approached the animal, almightily angry and tender; in a deep convulsion of deliverance her heart began to hammer again as she stooped to fondle him, but he was unresponsive, merely wanting to be back in his own garden. She unlatched the gate and let him in. Then she resumed the drive. Nobody had seen the incident. How baffling was the alchemy of inches and seconds… and she thought of Norris in his jeep with that girl on the Rhineland road. And that other German girl, lovely Wanda Hessely, killed by bombs. There was hazard enough in the lives of those who wanted to live, and for those who wanted to die, was there too much—or not enough?…
At the dinner she received a warm welcome from the five or six hundred guests already congregated. She had met many of them before, casually and at other parties; some gave her the appraising welcome of those who knew she was on the upgrade in the local hierarchy, but there were others doubtless who were jealous of her success; she had been in show business long enough to accept that as one of the facts of life, not as any particular proof of evil nature. She smiled and shook hands a good deal as she found her place at the high table, next to Calvin Beckford. Greg was on his left, and Paul, to her slight surprise, some way down the table between two pretty girls. Her neighbour on the right was introduced as a Mr. Hare—a small man, sharp-eyed and friendly; he said he thought he had seen her once in a play in Boston when he was at Harvard, and someone who overheard this laughed because that made her (as she certainly was) at least forty. “I can’t remember the play, but I couldn’t forget YOU,” he said, plugging the hole in his gallantry so promptly that she wondered if he had made both remarks to fix her interest in him. Then Beckford commandeered her and would not let go throughout the first part of the meal. He was a type she had often met and knew how to get along with—showy, glib, eager to impress, to please, to be flattered in return. She much preferred the other man, and at the first chance she turned to him. “I think it must have been Quality Street you saw me in, Mr. Hare,” she said.
“That’s right, so it was.”
“Because I don’t believe I ever played in Boston in anything else. Not in those days.”
“Not so very long ago.”
“Twenty years.”
He smiled. “What does it feel like to be a well-known actress all that time and then have people behave out here as if they’d discovered you?”
She laughed and was aware of the freemasonry between them of those for whom movie standards were too important to be disregarded but too inept to be taken seriously. “It’s funny,” she said.
“I hope you’ll tell them that in your speech.”
“Oh, do I have to make a speech?” She knew she had, of course, but she had an impulse to act a part—only a small part, just to keep her mind off other things.
“I’m sure we all hope you will,” he answered. “But it needn’t be a long one. Do speeches make you nervous?”
“Other people’s do occasionally.” She was thinking of Paul; she had caught sight of him down the table; he seemed to be in the throes of not having a good time; his two neighbours were talking to each other across him, a thing that would always put him in an ill humour. She added, aware that Mr. Hare was studying her: “Paul’s especially. Paul Saffron—the director. He can be so tactless.” She wondered why she had said so much, then added hastily: “No, I’m not exactly scared to speak in public, but I find it much harder than acting. Perhaps that only means I find it hard to act the part of myself.”
“Ethel Barrymore once told me practically the same thing.”
She wondered who he was; he did not seem the kind that would say a thing like that just to let her know he knew Ethel Barrymore. Probably someone impor
tant in the picture world, otherwise he would not have been put next to her. Then a wisp of memory flicked her from somewhere—Hare— Hare—there was a lawyer named Hare who had handled something for somebody she knew… she remembered it because she had thought it sensible… a clause in a will limiting burial expenses to five hundred dollars. Every celebrity ought to have it, Hare was supposed to have said, like insurance against nuisance suits, and it had been his idea to make it mandatory so that executors and relatives wouldn’t be made to look like cheap skates… Yes, a good idea. By then she realized that Mr. Hare was saying nice things about Morning Journey. “A real triumph for you, Miss Arundel. I expect you’re already bored by people who tell you so.”
“No, I enjoy it. Thank you.”
“Of course you won’t go back to the stage again. I say that because I hope you will.”
“I might.”
“But first, I suppose, another picture?”
“No, I’ve no plans for that. I’ve no definite plans for anything, except perhaps a vacation in Ireland… By the way, Mr. Hare, you’re the lawyer, aren’t you?”
“THE lawyer? Let’s settle for A lawyer.”
“I wonder if you could help me.”
She had the sudden idea she would ask him about the letter from Walsh. What it could possibly mean. What she ought to do about it. Whether, when she met Walsh, she ought to be alone or to have another lawyer with her. She read in Mr. Hare’s attitude such personal friendliness that she felt she could tell him the whole story—if only she herself knew what the whole story was. But of course she didn’t. Then how COULD he help her? How could he possibly judge from Walsh’s letter what it meant? He would probably advise her to see Walsh and find out. It was therefore absurd to bother him about something nebulous. She changed her mind so abruptly that when he answered, “Of course. Trouble of some kind?”—she had to think fast to find any answer at all. She said: “Oh, nothing very important. I thought of sub-letting my apartment while I go to Ireland, but the lease says I can’t.”
“Be glad to help you,” he answered. “Send—or better still— bring the lease along to my office and I’ll see if anything can be done.” The chairman had risen and was trying to get silence for his opening remarks. Mr. Hare went on hurriedly: “Any time. Tomorrow morning if you like.”
“Thanks. Tomorrow morning, then,” she answered, stampeded into another absurdity, as she well realized. For she rented her apartment by the month —there was no question of sub-letting. She wondered what on earth she could say if she did visit him, or alternatively, what he would think if she made some excuse not to go. Then she thought of a better way out; she would say, when she got to his office: “I’ve decided not to sub-let, anyhow, but meeting you made me think of something you once did for someone I knew, though I can’t remember who it was, but I remember WHAT it was… a clause in a will limiting burial expenses…” Macabre but reasonable. Then she wondered whether, even with this excuse, she really needed or wanted to visit Mr. Hare at all…
The chairman was speaking. She glanced down the table and watched Paul for a moment, failing to catch his eye. His chin was sunk disconsolately in his chest; she might have thought he had drunk too much but for knowing that he never did, any more. Yet somehow, looking at him, she was apprehensive; she wished he had had a neighbour who could have given him some good conversation, instead of the two chattering starlets he had been stuck with. It occurred to her that he would doubtless consider his bad position at the table a slight; but she was fairly certain it was not, and that he had been put between two pretty girls because someone might have supposed he would enjoy himself there… Meanwhile she was planning what to say when her own turn came. After her remarks to Mr. Hare, he would probably expect her to be not so good; she would surprise him, therefore. Yet it was true; she felt uncovered, vulnerable without the protection of an imagined personality.
The chairman sat down, having said nothing that she had really heard, and during the applause Mr. Hare turned to her again. “Are you by any chance going on to the Fulton-Griffins’ when this thing is over?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I was asked, but I understand there’s such a crowd always there, and I hate crowds.”
She had never been to a Fulton-Griffin party, though Paul had been once and told her what it was like. She had known then that she wouldn’t enjoy it.
“So do I,” Mr. Hare said, “but a Fulton-Griffin party is something you ought to see if you haven’t been to one before. I thought if you were going I’d have a chance to talk to you without all these interruptions.”
“Oh yes, I’d like that, but I really think I ought to go home. I’ve been rather tired since the picture finished and—”
The chairman was introducing the next speaker, Calvin Beckford. After his first half-dozen words she glanced at Paul with renewed apprehension, sure that he would dislike the man fiercely and progressively. For Beckford had the kind of fruity voice that Paul could not stand, even when an actor assumed it for a part; “Be an undertaker, not an actor,” Paul had once said, to a youth whose natural voice had been of that kind, “and change the funeral service to read ‘O Passing On, where is Thy Sting?’” Now why did she recall that?… She looked at Paul again and noted every sign that he was in a profound gloom. Beckford’s voice droned on, the lard-like face falsely radiant as the compliments poured forth. “Unforgettable career fittingly climaxed” was one of them, aimed at herself. Paul would hate that too, and for a number of reasons, one of which was that he hated the word ‘unforgettable’. It was a radio word, he always said, meaning ‘forgettable’.
At last the orator reached his point, which was the presentation of the plaques; she took hers, bowed to the applause, then made her little speech and forgot to congratulate Mr. Beckford on his approaching seventieth birthday, though she did remember to mention Majestic Studios as the alma mater that had nourished Morning Journey in its bosom. All very pretty, and over in exactly three and a half minutes.
“Bravo,” Mr. Hare whispered, when she sat down. “You did very well.”
She smiled and felt that he had been duly impressed.
Then the presentation to Greg, who took even less time to get on his feet and off again.
Then Paul.
She knew from the outset, from the look on his face, from the set of his jaw, from the way he strode to a microphone and focused himself, as it were, into the centre of a silence, that he was going to be impossible. He took the plaque without a smile, and Carey, guessing what was ahead, bit her lip and stared at the table. Then it began… practically all the things he had said to her that afternoon. They had either simmered in his mind since then, or in a subconscious way he had been trying them out on her as he so often did… a weapon not necessarily to be used, but kept sharpened in readiness. She knew that his decision on such matters was almost always last-minute and capricious—that perhaps if he had been given a better place at the table, if one of his neighbours had been interesting, or if Calvin Beckford had been Jack Benny… then he might well have said his thank-you like a gentleman, like the little gentleman he sometimes looked but never actually was.
When it was over she got up from the table and left, slipping out by a side door without a word to anyone. Nobody tried to stop her; she had an impression that Paul’s speech had made everything else, for the moment, unnoticed. She ran down the road to the car park, not waiting for the boy to take her ticket. She was full of that curious vacuum of sensation that comes after one has been hurt and before one can really feel anything.
* * * * *
Back at the apartment she entered by a tradesmen’s side door that bypassed the desk; she did not want to be told there had been any messages for her. When she reached her rooms the telephone was ringing. The desk usually gave the name of a caller, but this time she lifted the receiver to hear a woman’s voice mentioning the name of a newspaper and asking what she thought of Paul Saffron’s speech at the Critics’ Dinner. She answered, in a
flustered way: “Oh, I don’t know—I haven’t much of an opinion about it.”
“But Miss Arundel, what do you think of his remark that Morning Journey is the worst picture he ever made?”
“I—I don’t know. I—I—”
“Do YOU think it’s the worst picture he ever made?”
“Well, no—or rather I don’t know—I can’t say—I haven’t seen all the pictures he ever made…”
A laugh at the other end seemed to show that her answer had been considered adequate.
“Just one more question, Miss Arundel, what did you think about Mr. Saffron’s statement that—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, “that’s all I can tell you. I must hang up. I’m very sorry.”
She hung up. As she stepped from the instrument she tried to remember what little she had said. Question: “Do you think it’s the worst picture he ever made?” Answer: “I can’t say—I haven’t seen all the pictures he ever made.”—Oh, what a snide remark, the way it would look in print. She felt a heart-constriction, then a surge of anger against Paul for getting into this mess and dragging her into it with him. The telephone rang again. This time she lifted it off the hook and ignored it. She heard the intermittent clicking and wondered how soon the desk clerk would send someone up to see what was the matter. Abruptly, as if challenged to face some issue with every final scrap of strength she had, she made up her mind to go to the Fulton-Griffins’. She would startle everyone there, would make a stage entrance, act the unruffled queen, show everyone that she did not care for anything that had happened, that Paul could go to the devil his own way. An impulse of such magnitude demanded either enthusiasm or quick extinction; she was able to muster the former as she chose a new dress, changed quickly, and left by the same side entrance.