We Can\'t Have Everything

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He drank deep, but she only touched the brim. She saw that he was
drinking too much--he had had several cocktails while he waited
for her to arrive. Kedzie felt that one of the two must keep a clear
head. She found that ice-water was a good antidote for champagne.

When Ferriday sharply ordered the waiter to look to her glass she
shook her head. When he finished the bottle and the waiter put it
mouth down in the ice as an eloquent reminder Ferriday accepted
the challenge and ordered another bottle. He was just thickened
of tongue enough to say "boddle."

Kedzie spoke, quickly: "Please, no. I must go home. It's later than
I thought, and--"

"And Mrs. Gilfoyle will wonder," Ferriday laughed. "That's right,
my dear. You've got to keep good hours if you are going to succeethe
on the screen. Early to bed, for you must early-to-rise. _Garcon,
garcon, l'addition, s'il vous_ please."

While he was paying the bill Kedzie was thinking fleetly of her next
problem. He would want to take her home in his car, and it would be
just her luck to find her husband on the door-step. In any case, she
was afraid that Ferriday would be sentimental and she did not want
Ferriday to be sentimental just yet. And she would not tolerate
a sentiment inspired or influenced by wine. Love from a bottle is
the poorest of compliments.

Already she was a little disappointed in Ferriday. He was a great
man, but he had his fault, and she had found him out. If he were
going to be of use to her she must snub that vinous phase at once.

The cool air outside seemed to gratify Ferriday and he took off his
hat while the carriage-starter whistled up his car. Now Kedzie said:

"Please, Mr. Ferriday, just put me in a taxicab."

"Nonsense! I'll take you home. I'll certainly take you home."

"No, please; it's 'way out of your way, and I--I'd rather--really
I would."

Ferriday stared hard at her as if she were just a trifle blurred.
He frowned; then he smiled.

"Why, bless your soul, if you'd rather I wouldn't oppose you, I
wouldn't--not for worlds. But you sha'n't go home in any old cabby
taxishab; you'll take my wagon and I'll walk. The walk will do me
good."

Kedzie thought it would, too, so she consented with appropriate
reluctance. He lifted her in and closed the door--then leaned in
to laugh:

"Give my love to old Mrs. Gilfoyle. And don't fail to be at the
shudio bright and early. We'll have to make sun while the hay
shines, you know. Good night, Miss Adair!"

"Good night, Mr. Ferriday, and thank you ever so much for the
perfectly lovely evening."

"It has been l-l-lovely. Goo-ood night!"

The car swept away and made a big turn. She saw Ferriday marching
grandiosely along the street, with his head bared to the cool
moonlight. She settled back and snuggled into the cushions,
imagining the car her very own.

She left her glory behind her as she climbed the long stairs,
briskly preparing her lies and her defensive temper for her
husband's wrathful greeting.

He was not there.

CHAPTER IX

Kedzie had no sooner rejoiced in the fortunate absence of her
husband than she began to worry because he was away. Where was he
and with whom? She sat by the window and looked up and down the
street, but she could find none among the pedestrians who looked
like her possessor. She forgot him in the beauty of the town--all
black velvet and diamonds.

Once more she sat with her window open toward her Jerusalem and
worshiped the holy city of her desire. That night at the Biltmore
she was an ignorant country-town girl who had never had anything.
Now she had had a good deal, including a husband. But, strangely,
there was just as much to long for as before--more, indeed, for
she knew more things to want.

As the scientist finds in every new discovery a new dark continent,
in each atom a universe, so Kedzie found from each acquired desire
infinite new desires radiating fanwise to the horizon and beyond.

At first she had wanted to know the town--now she wanted to be known
by the town. Then her father stood in her way; now, her husband. She
had eloped from her parents with ease and they had never found her
again. She had succeeded in being lost.

She did not want to be lost any more; but she was lost, utterly
nobody to anybody that mattered. Now was her chance, but she could
not run away from her husband and get famous without his finding her.
If he found her he would spoil her fun and her fame. She did not
know how many public favorites are married, how many matinee idols
are managed by their wives. She had never heard of the prima donna's
husband.

She fell asleep among her worries. She was awakened by the noisy
entrance of her spouse. He was hardly recognizable. She thought
at first that her eyes were bleary with sleep, but it was his face
that was bleary. He was what a Flagg caricature of him would be,
with the same merciless truth in the grotesque.

Kedzie had never seen him boozy before. She groaned, expressively,
"My Gawd! you're pie-eyed."

He sang an old song, "The girl guessed right the very first time,
very firstime, verfirstime."

He tried to take her into his arms. She slapped his hands away. He
laughed and flopped into a chair, giggling. She studied him with
almost more interest than repugnance. He was idiotically jovial,
as sly as an idiot and as inscrutable.

Without waiting to be asked he began a recital of his chronicles.
He was as evidently concealing certain things as boasting of others.
Kedzie rather hoped he had done something to conceal, since that
would be an atonement for her own subtleties.

"I have been in Bohemia," he said, "zhenuine old Bohemia where hearts
are true and eyes are blue and ev'body loves ev'body else. Down
there a handclasp is a pledzh of loyalty. There's no hypocrisy
in Bohemia--not a dambit. No, sirree. The idle rish with their
shnobberies and worship of mere--mere someshing or oth' have no
place in Bohemia, for in Bohemia hearsh are true and wine is blue
and--"

"Oh, shut up!" said Kedzie.

"Thass way you're always repressin' me. You're a hopeless
Philisterine. But I have no intentions of shuttin' up, my darlin'
Anita--Anita--Shh! shh!"

He was hushing himself. He was very patently remembering something
and conspicuously warning himself not to divulge it. Kedzie loathed
him too much to care. Now that he was safely housed he ceased to
interest her. She went to bed. He spiraled into a chair to meditate
his wickedness. He felt that he was as near to being a hypocrite
as was possible in Bohemia.

He had met two talented ladies at the dinner, one was a sculptress
from Mr. Samuel Merwin's Washington Square and the other was a
paintress from Mr. Owen Johnson's Lincoln Square. Neither lady
had had any work accepted by the Academy or bought by a dealer.
Both were consequently as fierce against intrenched art as Gilfoyle
was against intrenched capital and literature.

They were there in the company of two writers. One of these could not
get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid
little and late and died early. The other writer could get published,
but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons
on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being
cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would
be in their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of
younger apprentices. They were at present in the same stage as any
other new business--they were building up custom in a neighborhood
of strangers.

But at present they were suppressed, all four, men and women;
suppressed and smothered as next June's flowers and weeds are held
back by the conspiracy of December's snows and the harsh criticisms
of March.

The sculptress's first name was Marguerite and Gilfoyle longed to
call her by it, after his second goblet of claret-and-water. He had
a passion for first names. He had the quick enthusiasm of a lawyer
or an advertising-man for a new client. Before he quite realized
the enormity of his perfidy he was pretending to compose a poem to
Marguerite. He wrote busily on an old bill of fare which had already
been persecuted by an artist or two. And he wrote his Anita poem
over again in Marguerite's honor, _mutatis mutandis_.

Pretty maid, pretty maid, may I say Marguerita?
Your last name is sweet, but your first name is sweeter.

And so on to the bitter end.

He slipped the lyric to Marguerite and she read it with squeals of
delight, while Gilfoyle looked as modest as such a genius could.
The other girl had to read it, of course, while Gilfoyle tried to
look unconscious. He was as successful as one is who tries to hold
a casual expression for a photograph.

The other girl's reward was a shrug and the diluted claret of
a "Very nice!" Gilfoyle said, "You're no judge or else you're
jealous." The two men read it, and said, "Mush!" and "Slushgusher!"
but Marguerite's eyes belonged to Gilfoyle the rest of the evening,
also her hands now and then.

Remembering this, Gilfoyle was uneasy. One ought to be careful to
keep an aseptic memory at home. Yet if this was not infidelity, what
would be? In a rich man Gilfoyle would have called it a typical
result of the evil influence of wealth. In the absence of wealth it
was a gay little Pierrot-perfidy of the _vie de Boheme_. Still,
poets have to be like that. An actor must make love to whatever
leading lady confronts him, and so must poets, the lawyers and press
agents of love.

But when he got home Gilfoyle repented as he remembered. He suffered
on a rack of guilty bliss, but he managed to hold back the secret
which was bubbling up in him with a bromo-seltzer effervescence.
Incidentally his "pretty maid, pretty maid, Marguerite" had kept
back the fact that she had a husband in the hardware business in
Terre Haute. What the husband was keeping back is none of this
history's business.

It was all as old and unoriginal as original sin. The important thing
to Kedzie was the fact that shortly after the poem had been revamped
a stranger had joined, first in song with Gilfoyle's table-load and
then in conversation. He had ended by introducing his companion and
bringing her over. Had it not been for the fine democracy of Bohemia
they would have cut the creature dead. She was a buyer, one of Miss
Ferber's Emma McChesneys on a lark.

Gilfoyle did not tell Kedzie any of this. He told what followed as
he toiled at the fearfully complicated problem of his shoe-laces,
a problem rendered almost insuperable by the fact that he could not
hold his foot high very long and dared not hold his head low at all.

"Wonnerful thing happent t'night, Anita. Just shows you never know
where your lucksh goin' to hit you. I'm down there with--er--er--
couple of old frensh, you know, and who comes over to our table but
big feller from out Wesh--Chicago--Chicago--Gobbless Ch'cag! His name
is entitled Deshler. In coursh conv'sation I mention Breathasweeta
Shewing Gum--see?--he says he knew that gum and he'd sheen the
advershments, bes' ol' ad-vershments ever sheen, thass what Mr.
Beshler said and I'm not lyin' to you, Anita. No, sir.

"Whereupon--whereupon I modesly remark, 'Of course they're clever
--nashurally they're clever, because they were written by l'i'l
Mr. ME!' He says, 'You really wrote 'em?' and I say, 'I roally
wretem!' And Mr. Keshler says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'.' Then he
says, 'Who coined that name Breathasweeta?' And I says, 'I did!'
and he says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'!'

"Anyway, to make long shory stort, Mr. Nestor he says, 'What you
doin' now? Writen copy for the Kaiser or the K-zar?' and I says,
'I am a gen'leman of leisure,' and he says, 'There's a good job
waitin' fer lad your size out in Ch'cag! Would you come 'way out
there?' and I says, 'I fear nothing!'

"So Mr. Zeisselberg wrote his name on a card, and if I haven't los'
card, or he doesn't change his old mind, I am now Mr. John J. Job
of Chicago. And now I got a unsolishited posish--imposishible
solishion--solution--unpolusion solishible--you know what I mean.
So kiss me!"

Kedzie escaped the kiss, but she asked, with a sleepy eagerness,
"Did you tell him you were married?"

"Nashurly not, my dear. It was stric'ly business conv'sation.
I didn' ask him how many shildren he had and he didn' ask me if
I was a Benedictine or a--or a pony of brandy--thass pretty good.
Hope I can rememmer it to-mor'."

Kedzie smiled, but not at his boozy pun. She seemed more comfortable.
She fell asleep. Next to being innocent, being absolved is the most
soothing of sensations.

CHAPTER X

The next morning that parrot, still unmurdered, woke Kedzie early.
She buried one ear deep in the pillow and covered the other with
her hair and her hand. The parrot's voice receded to a distance,
but a still smaller voice began to call to her. She was squirming
deeper for a long snooze when her foot struck another.

Her husband!--King Log, audibly a-slumber. She pouted drowsily,
frowned, slid away, and tried to commit temporary suicide by
drowning herself in sleep.

Then her stupor faded as the tiny call resounded again in her soul.
She was no longer merely Mrs. Anita Gilfoyle, the flat-dwelling
nobody. She was now Anita Adair, the screen-queen. She was needed
at the studio.

She sat up, looked at her husband, her unacknowledged and
unacknowledging husband. A mysterious voice drew her from his side
as cogently as the hand of Yahweh drew the rib that became a woman
from under the elbow of Adam.

She rose and looked back and down at the man whom the law had united
her with indissolubly. Eve must have wondered back at Adam with
the same sense of escape while he lay asleep. According to one of
the conflicting legends of the two gods of Genesis, woman was then
actually one with man. Marriage has ever since been an effort to
put her back among his ribs, but she has always refused to be
intercostal. It is an ancient habit to pretend that she is, and
sometimes she pretends to snuggle into place. Yet she has never been,
can never be, re-ribbed--especially not since marriage is an attempt
to fit her into the anatomy of an Adam who is always, in a sense,
a stranger to her.

Kedzie gazed on her Adam with a sense of departure, of farewell.
She felt a trifle sorry for Gilfoyle, and the moment she resolved
to quit him he became a little more attractive.

There was something pitiful about his helpless sprawl: his very
awkwardness endeared him infinitesimally. She nearly felt that
tenderness which good wives and fond mothers feel for the gawky
creatures they hallow with their devotion.

Kedzie leaned forward to kiss the poor wretch good-by, but,
unfortunately (or fortunately), a restlessness seized him, he
rolled over on his other side, and one limp, floppy hand struck
Kedzie on the nose.

She sprang back with a gasp of pain and hurried away, feeling
abused and exiled.

At the studio she was received by Garfinkel with distinction.
Ferriday came out to meet her with a shining morning face and led
her to the office of the two backers.

A contract was waiting for her and the pen and ink were handy. Kedzie
had never seen a contract before and she was as afraid of this one
as if it were her death warrant. It was her life warrant, rather.
She tried to read it as if she had signed dozens of contracts, but
she fooled nobody. She could not make head or tail of "the party of
the first part" and the terms exacted of movie actors. She understood
nothing but the salary. One hundred dollars a week! That bloomed like
a rose in the crabbed text. She would have signed almost anything
for that.

The deed was finally done. Her hundred-odd pounds of flesh belonged
to the Hyperfilm Company. The partners gave her their short, warm
hands. Ferriday wrung her palm with his long, lean fingers. Then he
caught her by the elbow and whisked her into his studio. He began
to describe her first scene in the big production. The backers had
insisted that she prove her ability as a minor character in a play
featuring another woman. Kedzie did not mind, especially when
Ferriday winked and whispered: "We'll make you make her look like
something the cat brought in. First of all, those gowns of yours--"

She had told him of her ill luck the day before in finding Lady
Powell-Carewe out. He sent her flying down again in his limousine.
She stepped into it now with assurance. It was beginning to be
her very own. At least she was beginning to own the owner.

She felt less excitement about the ride now that it was not her
first. She noticed that the upholstery was frayed in spots. Other
cars passed hers. The chauffeur was not so smart as some of the
drivers. And he was alone. On a few of the swagger limousines there
were two men in livery on the box. She felt rather ashamed of having
only one.

Her haughty discontent fell from her when she arrived at Lady
Powell-Carewe's shop. She wished she had not come alone. She did
not know how to behave. And what in Heaven's name did you call
her--"Your Ladyship" or "Your Majesty" or what?

She walked in so meekly and was so simply clad that nobody in
the place paid any heed to her at first. It was a very busy place,
with girls rushing to and fro or sauntering limberly up and down
in tremendously handsome gowns.

Kedzie could not pick out Lady Powell-Carewe. One of the promenaders
was so tall and so haughty that Kedzie thought she must be at least
a "Lady." She was in a silvery, shimmery green-and-gray gown, and
the man whom the customers called "Mr. Charles" said:

"Madame calls this the Blown Poplar. Isn't it bully?"

Kedzie caught Mr. Charles's eye. He spoke to her sharply:

"Well?"

He evidently thought her somebody looking for a job as bundle-carrier.
She was pretty, but there were tons of pretty girls. They bored Mr.
Charles to death. He had a whole beagle-pack of them to care for.

Kedzie poked at him Ferriday's letter of introduction addressed to
Lady Powell-Carewe. Mr. Charles took it and, not knowing what it
contained, bore it into the other room without asking Kedzie to
sit down.

He reappeared at the door and bowed to her with great amazement. She
slipped into a chaotic room where there were heaps of fabrics thrown
about like rubbish, long streamers of samples littering a desk full
of papers.

A sumptuous creature of stately manner bowed creakily to Kedzie,
and Kedzie said, trying to remember the pronunciation:

"Lady Pole-Carrier?"

A little plainly dressed woman replied: "Yes, my child. So you're
the Adair thing that Ferriday is gone half-witted over. He's just
been talking my ear off about you. Sit down. Stop where you are.
Let me see you. Turn around. I see." She turned to the stately dame.
"Rather nice, isn't she, Mrs. Congdon? H'mm!" She beckoned Kedzie
to come close. "What are your eyes like?" She lorgnetted the
terrified girl, as if she were a throat-specialist. "Take off that
horrid hat. Let me see your hair. H'mm! Rather nice hair, isn't it,
Mrs. Congdon?--that is, if she knew how to do it. Let me see. Yes,
I get your color, but it will be a job to suit you and that infernal
movie-camera. It kills my colors so! I have to keep remembering that
crimson photographs black and cream is dirty, and blue and yellow
are just nothing."

Mr. Charles came in to say that Mrs. Noxon was outside. Kedzie
recognized the great name with terror. Lady Powell-Carewe snapped:

"Tell the old camel I'm ill. I can't see her to-day. I'm ill to
everybody to-day. I've taken a big job on."

This was sublime. To have aristocrats turned away for her!

While Madame prowled among the fabrics and bit her lorgnon in
study, Kedzie looked over the big albums filled with photographs
of the creations of the great creatrix. For Lady Powell-Carewe was
a creative artist, taking her ideas where she found them in art
or nature, and in revivals and in inventions. She took her color
schemes from paintings, old and new, from jewels, landscapes. It
was said that she went to Niagara to study the floods of color that
tumble over its brink.

She began to interest herself in Kedzie, to wish to accomplish more
than the mere selling of dress goods made up. She decided to create
Kedzie as well as her clothes.

"Do you wear that pout all the time?" she asked.

"Do I pout?" Kedzie asked, in an amazement.

"Don't pretend that you don't know it and do it intentionally. Also
why do you Americans always answer a question by asking another?"

"Do we?" said Kedzie.

Lady Powell-Carewe decided that Kedzie was as short on brains as
she was long on looks. But it was the looks that Lady Powell-Carewe
was going to dress, and not the brains.

She ordered Kedzie to spend a lot of money having her hair cared
for expertly.

She tried various styles on Kedzie, ordering her to throw off her
frock and stand in her combination while Mrs. Congdon and Mr.
Charles brought up armloads of silks and velvets and draped them
on Kedzie as if she were a clothes-horse.

The feel of the crisp and whispering taffetas, the elevation of
the brocades, the warm nothingness of the chiffons like wisps
of fog, the rich dignity of the cloths, gave Kedzie rapture on
rapture. Standing there with a burden of fabrics upon her and Lady
Powell-Carewe kneeling at her feet pinning them up and tucking them
here and there, Kedzie was reminded of those ancient days of six
months gone when her mother used to kneel about her and fit on her
the home-made school-dress cut according to Butterick patterns.
Now Kedzie had a genuine Lady at her feet. It was a triumph indeed.
It was not hard now to believe that she would have all the world
at her feet one day.

Lady Powell-Carewe used Kedzie's frame as a mere standard to fly
banners from. Leaving the head and shoulders to stand out like
the wax bust of a wistful doll, she started a cloud of fabric
about her in the most extravagant fashion. She reined it in sharply
at the waist, but again it flared to such distances on all sides that
Kedzie could never have sailed through any door but that of a garage
without compression.

On this vast bell of silk she hung streamers of rosettes, flowers of
colors that would have been strident if they had been the eighteenth
of a shade stronger. As it was, they were as delicious as cream
curdled in a syrup of cherries. The whole effect would have been
burlesque if it had not been the whim of a brilliant taste. Men
would look it at and say, "Good Lord!" Women would murmur, enviously,
"Oh, Lord!" Kedzie's soul expanded to the ultimate fringe of the
farthest furbelow.

When the fantasy was assured Lady Powell-Carewe had Kedzie extracted
from it. Then pondering her sapling slenderness, once more she caught
from the air an inspiration. She would incase Kedzie in a sheath of
soft, white kid marked with delicate lines and set off with black
gloves and a hat of green leaves. And this she would call "The White
Birch."

And that was all the creating she felt up to for the day. She had
Kedzie's measure taken in order to have a slip made as a model
for use in the hours when Kedzie should be too busy to stand
for fitting.

It was well for Kedzie that there was a free ride waiting for her.
Her journey to the studio was harrowed by the financial problem
which has often tortured people in limousines. She did not like to
ask Mr. Ferriday for money in advance. He might think she was poor.
There is nothing that bankrupts the poor so much as the effort to
look unconcerned while they wait for their next penny.

Kedzie was frantic with worry and was reduced to prayer. "O Lord,
send me some money somehow." The number of such prayers going up
to heaven must cause some embarrassment, since money can usually
be given to one person only by taking it from another--and that
other is doubtless praying for more at the very moment.

To Kedzie's dismay, when she arrived at the studio and asked for
Mr. Ferriday, Mr. Garfinkel appeared. He was very deferential, but
he was, after all, only a Garfinkel and she needed a Ferriday. He
explained that his chief was very busy and had instructed Garfinkel
to teach Miss Adair the science of make-up for the camera, to take
test pictures of her, and give her valuable hints in lens behavior.

Late in the afternoon Ferriday came in to see the result of the
first lesson. He said, "Much obliged, Garfinkel" and Garfinkel
remembered pressing duty elsewhere.

His departure left Kedzie alone with Ferriday in a cavern pitch
black save for the cone of light spreading from the little hole in
the wall at the back to the screen where the spray of light-dust
became living pictures of Kedzie.

Kedzie did not know that the operator behind the wall could peek and
peer while his picture-wheel rolled out the cataract of photographs.
Ferriday was careful of her--or of himself. He held her hand,
of course, and murmured to her how stunning she was, but he made
no effort to make love, to her great comfort and regret.

At length he invited her to ride home in his limousine, but he did
not invite her to dinner. She told herself that she would have had
to decline. But she would have liked to be asked.