Romantic proceeding5 this, but unhygienic when you consider that her rush for the closed casement was doubtless due to the fact that her bedroom, hermetically sealed during the night, must have grown pretty stuffy7 by morning. Her complexion8 was probably bad.
No such idyllic9 course marked the matin of our heroine. Her day's beginning differed from the above in practically every detail. Thus:
A—When Harrietta rose from her couch (cream[Pg 107] enamel10, full-sized bed with double hair mattress11 and box springs) she closed her casement with a bang, having slept in a gale12 that swept her two-room-and-kitchenette apartment on the eleventh floor in Fifty-sixth Street.
B—She never leaned out except, perhaps, to flap a dust rag, because lean as she might, defying the laws of gravity and the house superintendent13, she could have viewed nothing more than roofs and sky and chimneys where already roofs and sky and chimneys filled the eye (unless you consider that by screwing around and flattening14 one ear and the side of your jaw15 against the window jamb you could almost get a glimpse of distant green prominently mentioned in the agent's ad as "unexcelled view of Park").
C—The morning air wasn't perfumed for purposes of breathing deep, being New York morning air, richly laden16 with the smell of warm asphalt, smoke, gas, and, when the wind was right, the glue factory on the Jersey17 shore across the river.
D—She didn't pluck a rose, carolling, because even if, by some magic Burbankian process, Jack's bean-stalk had been made rose-bearing it would have been hard put to it to reach this skyscraper18 home.
E—If she had flung it, it probably would have ended its eleven-story flight in the hand cart of[Pg 108] Messinger's butcher boy, who usually made his first Fifty-sixth Street delivery at about that time.
F—The white rose would not have been jewelled and sparkling with the dews of dawn, anyway, as at Harrietta's rising hour (between 10.30 and 11.30 A. M.) the New York City dews, if any, have left for the day.
Spartans19 who rise regularly at the chaste20 hour of seven will now regard Harrietta with disapproval21. These should be told that Harrietta never got to bed before twelve-thirty nor to sleep before two-thirty, which, on an eight-hour sleep count, should even things up somewhat in their minds. They must know, too, that in one corner of her white-and-blue bathroom reposed22 a pair of wooden dumb-bells, their ankles neatly23 crossed. She used them daily. Also she bathed, massaged24, exercised, took facial and electric treatments; worked like a slave; lived like an athlete in training in order to preserve her hair, skin, teeth, and figure; almost never ate what she wanted nor as much as she liked.
That earlier lady of the closed casement and the white rose probably never even heard of a dentifrice or a cold shower.
The result of Harrietta's rigours was that now, at thirty-seven, she could pass for twenty-seven on Fifth Avenue at five o'clock (flesh-pink, single-mesh face veil); twenty-five at a small dinner (rose-col[Pg 109]oured shades over the candles), and twenty-two, easily, behind the amber2 footlights.
You will have guessed that Harrietta, the Heroine, is none other than Harrietta Fuller, deftest26 of comediennes, whom you have seen in one or all of those slim little plays in which she has made a name but no money to speak of, being handicapped for the American stage by her intelligence and her humour sense, and, as she would tell you, by her very name itself.
"Harrietta Fuller! Don't you see what I mean?" she would say. "In the first place, it's hard to remember. And it lacks force. Or maybe rhythm. It doesn't clink. It sort of humps in the middle. A name should flow. Take a name like Barrymore—or Bernhardt—or Duse—you can't forget them. Oh, I'm not comparing myself to them. Don't be funny. I just mean—why, take Harrietta alone. It's deadly. A Thackeray miss, all black silk mitts27 and white cotton stockings. Long ago, in the beginning, I thought of shortening it. But Harriet Fuller sounds like a school-teacher, doesn't it? And Hattie Fuller makes me think, somehow, of a burlesque28 actress. You know. 'Hattie Fuller and Her Bouncing Belles29.'"
At thirty-seven Harrietta Fuller had been fifteen years on the stage. She had little money, a small stanch30 following, an exquisite31 technique, and her[Pg 110] fur coat was beginning to look gnawed32 around the edges. People even said maddeningly: "Harrietta Fuller? I saw her when I was a kid, years ago. Why, she must be le'see—ten—twelve—why, she must be going on pretty close to forty."
A worshipper would defend her. "You're crazy! I saw her last month when she was playing in Cincinnati, and she doesn't look a day over twenty-one. That's a cute play she's in—There and Back. Not much to it, but she's so kind and natural. Made me think of Jen a little."
That was part of Harrietta's art—making people think of Jen. Watching her, they would whisper: "Look! Isn't that Jen all over? The way she sits there and looks up at him while she's sewing."
Harrietta Fuller could take lines that were stilted33 and shoddy and speak them in a way to make them sound natural and distinctive34 and real. She was a clear blonde, but her speaking voice had in it a contralto note that usually accompanies brunette colouring.
It surprised and gratified you, that tone, as does mellow35 wine when you have expected cider. She could walk on to one of those stage library sets that reek36 of the storehouse and the property carpenter, seat herself, take up a book or a piece of handiwork, and instantly the absurd room became a human, livable place. She had a knack37 of sitting, not as an[Pg 111] actress ordinarily seats herself in a drawing room—feet carefully strained to show the high arch, body posed to form a "line"—but easily, as a woman sits in her own house. If you saw her in the supper scene of My Mistake, you will remember how she twisted her feet about the rungs of the straight little chair in which she sat. Her back was toward the audience throughout the scene, according to stage directions, yet she managed to convey embarrassment38, fright, terror, determination, decision in the agonized39 twisting of those expressive40 feet.
Authors generally claimed these bits of business as having originated with them. For that matter, she was a favourite with playwrights41, as well she might be, considering the vitality42 which she injected into their hackneyed situations. Every little while some young writer, fired by an inflection in her voice or a nuance43 in her comedy, would rush back stage to tell her that she never had had a part worthy44 of her, and that he would now come to her rescue. Sometimes he kept his word, and Harrietta, six months later, would look up from the manuscript to say: "This is delightful45! It's what I've been looking for for years. The deftness46 of the comedy. And that little scene with the gardener!"
But always, after the managers had finished suggesting bits that would brighten it up, and changes that would put it over with the Western buyers,[Pg 112] Harrietta would regard the mutilated manuscript sorrowingly. "But I can't play this now, you know. It isn't the same part at all. It's—forgive me—vulgar."
Then some little red-haired ingénue would get it, and it would run a solid year on Broadway and two seasons on the road, and in all that time Harrietta would have played six months, perhaps, in three different plays, in all of which she would score what is known as a "personal success." A personal success usually means bad business at the box office.
Now this is immensely significant. In the advertisements of the play in which Harrietta Fuller might be appearing you never read:
HARRIETTA FULLER
In
Thus and So
No. It was always:
THUS AND SO
With
Harrietta Fuller
Between those two prepositions lies a whole theatrical47 world of difference. The "In" means stardom; the "With" that the play is considered more important than the cast.
Don't feel sorry for Harrietta Fuller. Thousands[Pg 113] of women have envied her; thousands of men admired, and several have loved her devotedly48, including her father, the Rev50. H. John Scoville (deceased). The H. stands for Harry51. She was named for him, of course. When he entered the church he was advised to drop his first name and use his second as being more fitting in his position. But the outward change did not affect his inner self. He remained more Harry than John to the last. It was from him Harrietta got her acting52 sense, her humour, her intelligence, and her bad luck.
When Harry Scoville was eighteen he wanted to go on the stage. At twenty he entered the ministry53. It was the natural outlet54 for his suppressed talents. In his day and family and environment young men did not go on the stage. The Scovilles were Illinois pioneers and lived in Evanston, and Mrs. Scoville (Harrietta's grandmother, you understand, though Harrietta had not yet appeared) had a good deal to say as to whether coleslaw or cucumber pickles55 should be served at the Presbyterian church suppers, along with the veal56 loaf and the scalloped oysters57. And when she decided58 on coleslaw, coleslaw it was. A firm tread had Mother Scoville, a light hand with pastry59, and a will that was adamant60. She it was who misdirected Harry's gifts toward the pulpit instead of the stage. He never forgave her for it, though he made a great success of his calling and she[Pg 114] died unsuspecting his rancour. The women of his congregation shivered deliciously when the Rev. H. John Scoville stood on his tiptoes at the apex61 of some fiery62 period and hurled63 the force of his eloquence64 at them. He, the minister, was unconsciously dramatizing himself as a minister.
The dramatic method had not then come into use in the pulpit. His method of delivery was more restrained than that of the old-time revivalist; less analytical65 and detached than that of the present-day religious lecturer.
Presbyterian Evanston wending its way home to Sunday roast and ice cream would say: "Wasn't Reverend Scoville powerful to-day! My!" They never guessed how Reverend Scoville had had to restrain himself from delivering Mark Antony's address to the Romans. He often did it in his study when his gentle wife thought he was rehearsing next Sunday's sermon.
As he grew older he overcame these boyish weaknesses, but he never got over his feeling for the stage. There were certain ill-natured gossips who claimed to have recognized the fine, upright figure and the mobile face with hair greying at the temples as having occupied a seat in the third row of the balcony in the old Grand Opera House during the run of Erminie. The elders put it down as spite talk and declared that, personally, they didn't believe[Pg 115] a word of it. The Rev. H. John did rather startle them when he discarded the ministerial black broadcloth for a natty66 Oxford67 suit of almost business cut. He was a pioneer in this among the clergy68. The congregation soon became accustomed to it; in time, boasted of it as marking their progressiveness.
He had a neat ankle, had the Reverend Scoville, in fine black lisle; a merry eye; a rather grim look about the mouth, as has a man whose life is a secret disappointment. His little daughter worshipped him. He called her Harry. When Harrietta was eleven she was reading Lever and Dickens and Dumas, while other little girls were absorbed in the Elsie Series and The Wide, Wide World. Her father used to deliver his sermons to her in private rehearsal70, and her eager mobile face reflected his every written mood.
"Oh, Rev!" she cried one day (it is to be regretted, but that is what she always called him). "Oh, Rev, you should have been an actor!"
He looked at her queerly. "What makes you think so?"
"You're too thrilling for a minister." She searched about in her agile71 mind for fuller means of making her thought clear. "It's like when Mother cooks rose geranium leaves in her grape jell. She says they gives it a finer flavour, but they don't really. You can't taste them for the grapes, so[Pg 116] they're just wasted when they're so darling and perfumy and just right in the garden." Her face was pink with earnestness.
"D'you see what I mean, Rev?"
"Yes, I think I see, Harry."
Then she surprised him. "I'm going on the stage," she said, "and be a great actress when I'm grown up."
His heart gave a leap and a lurch72. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I want to. And because you didn't. It'll be as if you had been an actor instead of a minister—only it'll be me."
A bewildering enough statement to any one but the one who made it and the one to whom it was made. She was trying to say that here was the law of compensation working. But she didn't know this. She had never heard of the law of compensation.
Her gentle mother fought her decision with all the savagery73 of the gentle.
"You'll have to run away, Harry," her father said, sadly. And at twenty-two Harrietta ran. Her objective was New York. Her father did not burden her with advice. He credited her with the intelligence she possessed74, but he did overlook her emotionalism, which was where he made his mistake. Just before she left he said: "Now listen, Harry. You're a good-looking girl, and young. You'll keep[Pg 117] your looks for a long time. You're not the kind of blonde who'll get wishy-washy or fat. You've got quite a good deal of brunette in you. It crops out in your voice. It'll help preserve your looks. Don't marry the first man who asks you or the first man who says he'll die if you don't. You've got lots of time."
That kind of advice is a good thing for the young. Two weeks later Harrietta married a man she had met on the train between Evanston and New York. His name was Lawrence Fuller, and Harrietta had gone to school with him in Evanston. She had lost track of him later. She remembered, vaguely75, people had said he had gone to New York and was pretty wild. Young as she was and inexperienced, there still was something about his face that warned her. It was pathological, but she knew nothing of pathology. He talked of her and looked at her and spoke76, masterfully and yet shyly, of being with her in New York. Harrietta loved the way his hair sprang away from his brow and temples in a clean line. She shoved the thought of his chin out of her mind. His hands touched her a good deal—her shoulder, her knee, her wrist—but so lightly that she couldn't resent it even if she had wanted to. When they did this, queer little stinging flashes darted78 through her veins79. He said he would die if she did not marry him.[Pg 118]
They had two frightful80 years together and eight years apart before he died, horribly, in the sanatorium whose enormous fees she paid weekly. They had regularly swallowed her earnings81 at a gulp82.
Naturally a life like this develops the comedy sense. You can't play tragedy while you're living it. Harrietta served her probation83 in stock, road companies, one-night stands before she achieved Broadway. In five years her deft25 comedy method had become distinctive; in ten it was unique. Yet success—as the stage measures it in size of following and dollars of salary—had never been hers.
Harrietta knew she wasn't a success. She saw actresses younger, older, less adroit84, lacking her charm, minus her beauty, featured, starred, heralded85. Perhaps she gave her audiences credit for more intelligence than they possessed, and they, unconsciously, resented this. Perhaps if she had read the Elsie Series at eleven, instead of Dickens, she might have been willing to play in that million-dollar success called Gossip. It was offered her. The lead was one of those saccharine86 parts, vulgar, false, and slyly carnal. She didn't in the least object to it on the ground of immorality87, but the bad writing bothered her. There was, for example, a line in which she was supposed to beat her breast and say: "He's my mate! He's my man! And I'm his woman!! I love him, I tell you I—love him!"[Pg 119]
"People don't talk like that," she told the author, in a quiet aside, during rehearsal. "Especially women. They couldn't. They use quite commonplace idiom when they're excited."
"Thanks," said the author, elaborately polite. "That's the big scene in the play. It'll be a knockout."
When Harrietta tried to speak these lines in rehearsal she began to giggle88 and ended in throwing up the ridiculous part. They gave it to that little Frankie Langdon, and the playwright's prophecy came true. The breast-beating scene was a knockout. It ran for two years in New York alone. Langdon's sables89, chinchillas, ermines, and jewels were always sticking out from the pages of Vanity Fair and Vogue90. When she took curtain calls, Langdon stood with her legs far apart, boyishly, and tossed her head and looked up from beneath her lowered lids and acted surprised and sort of gasped91 like a fish and bit her lip and mumbled92 to herself as if overcome. The audience said wasn't she a shy, young, bewildered darling!
A hard little rip if ever there was one—Langdon—and as shy as a man-eating crocodile.
This sort of sham93 made Harrietta sick. She, whose very art was that of pretending, hated pretense94, affectation, "coy stuff." This was, perhaps, unfortunate. Your Fatigued95 Financier prefers[Pg 120] the comedy form in which a spade is not only called a spade but a slab96 of iron for digging up dirt. Harrietta never even pretended to have a cough on an opening night so that the critics, should the play prove a failure, might say: "Harrietta Fuller, though handicapped by a severe cold, still gave her usual brilliant and finished performance in a part not quite worthy of her talents." No. The plaintive97 smothered98 cough, the quick turn aside, the heaving shoulder, the wispy99 handkerchief were clumsy tools beneath her notice.
There often were long periods of idleness when her soul sickened and her purse grew lean. Long hot summers in New York when awnings100, window boxes geranium filled, drinks iced and acidulous101, and Ken69's motor car for cooling drives to the beaches failed to soothe102 the terror in her. Thirty ... thirty-two ... thirty-four ... thirty-six....
She refused to say it. She refused to think of it. She put the number out of her mind and slammed the door on it—on that hideous103 number beginning with f. At such times she was given to contemplation of her own photographs—and was reassured104. Her intelligence told her that retouching varnish105, pumice stone, hard pencil, and etching knife had all gone into the photographer's version of this clear-eyed, fresh-lipped blooming creature gazing back at her so[Pg 121] limpidly107. But, then, who didn't need a lot of retouching? Even the youngest of them.
All this. Yet she loved it. The very routine of it appealed to her orderly nature: a routine that, were it widely known, would shatter all those ideas about the large, loose life of the actress. Harrietta Fuller liked to know that at such and such an hour she would be in her dressing108 room; at such and such an hour on the stage; precisely109 at another hour she would again be in her dressing room preparing to go home. Then the stage would be darkened. They would be putting the scenery away. She would be crossing the bare stage on her way home. Then she would be home, undressing, getting ready for bed, reading. She liked a cup of clear broth110 at night, or a drink of hot cocoa. It soothed111 and rested her. Besides, one is hungry after two and a half hours of high-tensioned, nerve-exhausting work. She was in bed usually by twelve-thirty.
"But you can't fall asleep like a dewy babe in my kind of job," she used to explain. "People wonder why actresses lie in bed until noon, or nearly. They have to, to get as much sleep as a stenographer112 or a clerk or a book-keeper. At midnight I'm all keyed up and over-stimulated, and as wide awake as an all-night taxi driver. It takes two solid hours of reading to send me bye-bye."
The world did not interest itself in that phase of[Pg 122] Harrietta's life. Neither did it find fascination113 in her domestic side. Harrietta did a good deal of tidying and dusting and redding up in her own two-room apartment, so high and bright and spotless. She liked to cook, too, and was expert at it. Not for her those fake pictures of actresses and opera stars in chiffon tea gowns and satin slippers114 and diamond chains cooking "their favourite dish of spaghetti and creamed mushrooms," and staring out at you bright-eyed and palpably unable to tell the difference between salt and paprika. Harrietta liked the ticking of a clock in a quiet room; oven smells; concocting115 new egg dishes; washing out lacy things in warm soapsuds. A throw-back, probably, to her grandmother Scoville.
The worst feature of a person like Harrietta is, as you already have discovered with some impatience116, that one goes on and on, talking about her. And the listener at last breaks out with: "This is all very interesting, but I feel as if I know her now. What then?"
Then the thing to do is to go serenely117 on telling, for example, how the young thing in Harrietta Fuller's company invariably came up to her at the first rehearsal and said tremulously: "Miss Fuller, I—you won't mind—I just want to tell you how proud I am to be one of your company. Playing with you. You've been my ideal ever since I was[Pg 123] a little g—" then, warned by a certain icy mask slipping slowly over the brightness of Harrietta's features—"ever so long, but I never even hoped——"
These young things always learned an amazing lot from watching the deft, sure strokes of Harrietta's craftsmanship118. She was kind to them, too. Encouraged them. Never hogged119 a scene that belonged to them. Never cut their lines. Never patronized them. They usually played ingénue parts, and their big line was that uttered on coming into a room looking for Harrietta. It was: "Ah, there you are!"
How can you really know Harrietta unless you realize the deference120 with which she was treated in her own little sphere? If the world at large did not acclaim121 her, there was no lack of appreciation122 on the part of her fellow workers. They knew artistry when they saw it. Though she had never attained123 stardom, she still had the distinction that usually comes only to a star back stage. Unless she actually was playing in support of a first-magnitude star, her dressing room was marked "A." Other members of the company did not drop into her dressing room except by invitation. That room was neat to the point of primness125. A square of white coarse sheeting was spread on the floor, under the chair before her dressing table, to gather up dust and powder. It was regularly shaken or changed. There were[Pg 124] always flowers—often a single fine rose in a slender vase. On her dressing table, in a corner, you were likely to find three or four volumes—perhaps The Amenities126 of Book-Collecting; something or other of Max Beerbohm's; a book of verse (not Amy Lowell's).
These were not props127 designed to impress the dramatic critic who might drop in for one of those personal little theatrical calls to be used in next Sunday's "Chats in the Wings." They were there because Harrietta liked them and read them between acts. She had a pretty wit of her own. The critics liked to talk with her. Even George Jean Hathem, whose favourite pastime was to mangle128 the American stage with his pen and hold its bleeding, gaping129 fragments up for the edification of Budapest, Petrograd, Vienna, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stevens Point, Wis., said that five minutes of Harrietta Fuller's conversation was worth a lifetime of New York stage dialogue. For that matter I think that Mr. Beerbohm himself would not have found a talk with her altogether dull or profitless.
The leading man generally made love to her in an expert, unaggressive way. A good many men had tried to make love to her at one time or another. They didn't get on very well. Harrietta never went to late suppers. Some of them complained: "When you try to make love to her she laughs at you!" She[Pg 125] wasn't really laughing at them. She was laughing at what she knew about life. Occasionally men now married, and living dully content in the prim124 suburban130 smugness of Pelham or New Rochelle, boasted of past friendship with her, wagging their heads doggishly. "Little Fuller! I used to know her well."
They lied.
Not that she didn't count among her friends many men. She dined with them and they with her. They were writers and critics, lawyers and doctors, engineers and painters. Actors almost never. They sent her books and flowers; valued her opinion, delighted in her conversation, wished she wouldn't sometimes look at them so quizzically. And if they didn't always comprehend her wit, they never failed to appreciate the contour of her face, where the thoughtful brow was contradicted by the lovely little nose, and both were drowned in the twin wells of the wide-apart, misleadingly limpid106 eyes that lay ensnaringly between.
"Your eyes!" these gentlemen sometimes stammered131, "the lashes77 are reflected in them like ferns edging a pool."
"Yes. The mascara's good for them. You'd think all that black sticky stuff I have put on, would hurt them, but it really makes them grow, I believe. Sometimes I even use a burnt match, and yet it——"[Pg 126]
"Damn your burnt matches! I'm talking about your lashes."
"So am I." She would open her eyes wide in surprise, and the lashes could almost be said to wave at him tantalizingly133, like fairy fans. (He probably wished he could have thought of that.)
Ken never talked to her about her lashes. Ken thought she was the most beauteous, witty134, intelligent woman in the world, but he had never told her so, and she found herself wishing he would. Ken was forty-one and Knew About Etchings. He knew about a lot of other things, too. Difficult, complex things like Harrietta Fuller, for example. He had to do with some intricate machine or other that was vital to printing, and he was perfecting something connected with it or connecting something needed for its perfection that would revolutionize the thing the machine now did (whatever it was). Harrietta refused to call him an inventor. She said it sounded so impecunious135. They had known each other for six years. When she didn't feel like talking he didn't say: "What's the matter?" He never told her that women had no business monkeying with stocks or asked her what they called that stuff her dress was made of, or telephoned before noon. Twice a year he asked her to marry him, presenting excellent reasons. His name was Carrigan. You'd like him.[Pg 127]
"When I marry," Harrietta would announce, "which will be never, it will be the only son of a rich iron king from Duluth, Minnesota. And I'll go there to live in an eighteen-room mansion136 and pluck roses for the breakfast room."
"There are few roses in Duluth," said Ken, "to speak of. And no breakfast rooms. You breakfast in the dining room, and in the winter you wear flannel137 underwear and galoshes."
"California, then. And he can be the son of a fruit king. I'm not narrow."
Harrietta was thirty-seven and a half when there came upon her a great fear. It had been a wretchedly bad season. Two failures. The rent on her two-room apartment in Fifty-sixth Street jumped from one hundred and twenty-five, which she could afford, to two hundred a month, which she couldn't. Mary—Irish Mary—her personal maid, left her in January. Personal maids are one of the superstitions138 of the theatrical profession, and an actress of standing139 is supposed to go hungry rather than maidless.
"Why don't you fire Irish Mary?" Ken had asked Harrietta during a period of stringency140.
"I can't afford to."
Ken understood, but you may not. Harrietta would have made it clear. "Any actress who earns more than a hundred a week is supposed to have a[Pg 128] maid in her dressing room. No one knows why, but it's true. I remember in The Small-Town Girl I wore the same gingham dress throughout three acts, but I was paying Mary twenty a week just the same. If I hadn't some one in the company would have told some one in another company that Harrietta Fuller was broke. It would have seeped141 through the director to the manager, and next time they offered me a part they'd cut my salary. It's absurd, but there it is. A vicious circle."
Irish Mary's reason for leaving Harrietta was a good one. It would have to be, for she was of that almost extinct species, the devoted49 retainer. Irish Mary wasn't the kind of maid one usually encounters back stage. No dapper, slim, black-and-white pert miss, with a wisp of apron142 and a knowledgeous eye. An ample, big-hipped, broad-bosomed woman with an apron like a drop curtain and a needle knack that kept Harrietta mended, be-ribboned, beruffled, and exquisite from her garters to her coat hangers144. She had been around the theatre for twenty-five years, and her thick, deft fingers had served a long line of illustrious ladies—Corinne Foster, Gertrude Bennett, Lucille Varney. She knew all the shades of grease paint from Flesh to Sallow Old Age, and if you gained an ounce she warned you.
Her last name was Lesom, but nobody re[Pg 129]membered it until she brought forward a daughter of fifteen with the request that she be given a job; anything—walk-on, extra, chorus. Lyddy, she called her. The girl seldom spoke. She was extremely stupid, but a marvellous mimic145, and pretty beyond belief; fragile, and yet with something common about her even in her fragility. Her wrists had a certain flat angularity that bespoke146 a peasant ancestry147, but she had a singular freshness and youthful bloom. The line of her side face from the eye socket148 to the chin was a delicious thing that curved with the grace of a wing. The high cheekbone sloped down so that the outline was heart-shaped. There were little indentations at the corners of her mouth. She had eyes singularly clear, like a child's, and a voice so nasal, so strident, so dreadful that when she parted her pretty lips and spoke, the sound shocked you like a peacock's raucous149 screech150.
Harrietta had managed to get a bit for her here, a bit for her there, until by the time she was eighteen she was giving a fairly creditable performance in practically speechless parts. It was dangerous to trust her even with an "Ah, there you are!" line. The audience, startled, was so likely to laugh.
At about this point she vanished, bound for Hollywood and the movies. "She's the little fool, just," said Irish Mary. "What'll she be wantin' with the movies, then, an' her mother connected with the[Pg 130] theayter for years an' all, and her you might say brought up in it?"
But she hadn't been out there a year before the world knew her as Lydia Lissome151. Starting as an extra girl earning twenty-five a week or less, she had managed, somehow, to get the part of Betty in the screen version of The Magician, probably because she struck the director as being the type; or perhaps her gift of mimicry152 had something to do with it, and the youth glow that was in her face. At any rate, when the picture was finished and released, no one was more surprised than Lyddy at the result. They offered her three thousand a week on a three-year contract. She wired her mother, but Irish Mary wired back: "I don't believe a word of it hold out for five am coming." She left for the Coast. Incidentally, she got the five for Lyddy. Lyddy signed her name to the contract—Lydia Lissome—in a hand that would have done discredit153 to an eleven-year-old.
Harrietta told Ken about it, not without some bitterness: "Which only proves one can't be too careful about picking one's parents. If my father had been a hod carrier instead of a minister of the Gospel and a darling old dreamer, I'd be earning five thousand a week, too."
They were dining together in Harrietta's little sitting room so high up and quiet and bright with its[Pg 131] cream enamel and its log fire. Almost one entire wall of that room was window, facing south, and framing such an Arabian Nights panorama154 as only a New York eleventh-story window, facing south, can offer.
Ken lifted his right eyebrow155, which was a way he had when being quizzical. "What would you do with five thousand a week, just supposing?"
"I'd do all the vulgar things that other people do who have five thousand a week."
"You wouldn't enjoy them. You don't care for small dogs or paradise aigrettes or Italian villas156 in Connecticut or diamond-studded cigarette holders157 or plush limousines159 or butlers." He glanced comprehensively about the little room—at the baby grand whose top was pleasantly littered with photographs and bonbon160 dishes and flower vases; at the smart little fire snapping in the grate; at the cheerful reds and blues161 and ochres and sombre blues and purples and greens of the books in the open bookshelves; at the squat162 clock on the mantelshelf; at the gorgeous splashes of black and gold glimpsed through the many-paned window. "You've got everything you really want right here"—his gesture seemed, somehow, to include himself—"if you only knew it."
"You talk," snapped Harrietta, "as the Rev. H. John Scoville used to." She had never said a thing[Pg 132] like that before. "I'm sick of what they call being true to my art. I'm tired of having last year's suit relined, even if it is smart enough to be good this year. I'm sick of having the critics call me an intelligent comedienne who is unfortunate in her choice of plays. Some day"—a little flash of fright was there—"I'll pick up the Times and see myself referred to as 'that sterling163 actress.' Then I'll know I'm through."
"You!"
"Tell me I'm young, Ken. Tell me I'm young and beautiful and bewitching."
"You're young and beautiful and bewitching."
"Ugh! And yet they say the Irish have the golden tongues."
Two months later Harrietta had an offer to go into pictures. It wasn't her first, but it undeniably was the best. The sum offered per week was what she might usually expect to get per month in a successful stage play. To accept the offer meant the Coast. She found herself having a test picture taken and trying to believe the director who said it was good; found herself expatiating164 on the brightness, quietness, and general desirability of the eleventh-floor apartment in Fifty-sixth Street to an acquaintance who was seeking a six months' city haven165 for the summer.
"She'll probably ruin my enamel dressing table[Pg 133] with toilet water and ring my piano top with wet glasses and spatter grease on the kitchenette wall. But I'll be earning a million," Harrietta announced, recklessly, "or thereabouts. Why should I care?"
She did care, though, as a naturally neat and thrifty166 woman cares for her household goods which have, through years of care of them and association with them, become her household gods. The clock on the mantel wasn't a clock, but a plump friend with a white smiling face and a soothing167 tongue; the low, ample davenport wasn't a davenport only, but a soft bosom143 that pillowed her; that which lay spread shimmering168 beneath her window was not New York alone—it was her View. To a woman like this, letting her apartment furnished is like farming out her child to strangers.
She had told her lessee169 about her laundress and her cleaning woman and how to handle the balky faucet170 that controlled the shower. She had said good-bye to Ken entirely171 surrounded by his books, magazines, fruit, and flowers. She was occupying a Pullman drawing room paid for by the free-handed filmers. She was crossing farm lands, plains, desert. She was wondering if all those pink sweaters and white flannel trousers outside the Hollywood Hotel were there for the same reason that she was. She was surveying a rather warm little room shaded by a dense172 tree whose name she did not know.[Pg 134] She was thinking it felt a lot like her old trouping173 days, when her telephone tinkled174 and a voice announced Mrs. Lissome. Lissome? Lesam. Irish Mary, of course. Harrietta's maid, engaged for the trip, had failed her at the last moment. Now her glance rested on the two massive trunks and the litter of smart, glittering bags that strewed175 the room. A relieved look crept into her eyes. A knock at the door. A resplendent figure was revealed at its opening. The look in Harrietta's eyes vanished.
Irish Mary looked like the mother of a girl who was earning five thousand a week. She was marcelled, silk-clad, rustling176, gold-meshed, and, oh, how real in spite of it all as she beamed upon the dazzled Harrietta.
"Out with ye!" trumpeted177 this figure, brushing aside Harrietta's proffered178 chair. "There'll be no stayin' here for you. You're coming along with me, then, bag and baggage." She glanced sharply about. "Where's your maid, dearie?"
"Disappointed me at the last minute. I'll have to get someone——"
"We've plenty. You're coming up to our place."
"But, Mary, I can't. I couldn't. I'm tired. This room——"
"A hole. Wait till you see The Place. Gardens and breakfast rooms and statues and fountains and[Pg 135] them Jap boys runnin' up and down like mice. We rented it for a year from that Goya Ciro. She's gone back East. How she ever made good in pictures I don't know, and her face like a hot-water bag for expression. Lyddy's going to build next year. They're drawin' up the plans now. The Place'll be nothin' compared to it when it's finished. Put on your hat. The boys'll see to your stuff here."
"I can't. I couldn't. You're awfully179 kind, Mary dear——"
Mary dear was at the telephone. "Mrs. Lissome. That's who. Send up that Jap boy for the bags."
Mrs. Lissome's name and Mrs. Lissome's commands apparently180 carried heavily in Hollywood. A uniformed Jap appeared immediately as though summoned by a genie181. The bags seemed to spring to him, so quickly was he enveloped182 by their glittering surfaces. He was off with the burdens, invisible except for his gnomelike face and his sturdy bow legs in their footman's boots.
"I can't," said Harrietta, feebly, for the last time. It was her introduction to the topsy-turvy world into which she had come. She felt herself propelled down the stairs by Irish Mary, who wasn't Irish Mary any more, but a Force whose orders were obeyed. In the curved drive outside the Hollywood Hotel the little Jap was stowing the last of the bags into the great blue car whose length from nose to[Pg 136] tail seemed to span the hotel frontage. At the wheel, rigid183, sat a replica184 of the footman.
Irish Mary with a Japanese chauffeur185. Irish Mary with a Japanese footman. Irish Mary with a great glittering car that was as commodious186 as the average theatre dressing room.
"Get in, dearie. Lyddy's using the big car to-day. They're out on location. Shootin' the last of Devils and Men."
Harrietta was saying to herself: "Don't be a nasty snob187, Harry. This is a different world. Think of the rotten time Alice would have had in Wonderland if she hadn't been broad-minded. Take it as it comes."
Irish Mary was talking as they sped along through the hot white Hollywood sunshine.... "Stay right with us as long as you like, dearie, but if after you're workin' you want a place of your own, I know of just the thing you can rent furnished, and a Jap gardener and house man and cook right on the places besides——"
"But I'm not signed for five thousand a week, like Lydia," put in Harrietta.
"I know what you're signed for. 'Twas me put 'em up to it, an' who else! 'Easy money,' I says, 'an' why shouldn't she be gettin' some of it?' Lyddy spoke to Gans about it. What Lyddy says goes. She's a good girl, Lyddy is, an' would you believe[Pg 137] the money an' all hasn't gone to her brains, though what with workin' like a horse an' me to steady her, an' shrewder than the lawyers themself, if I do say it, she ain't had much chance. And here's The Place."
And here was The Place. Sundials, rose gardens, gravel188 paths, dwarf189 trees, giant trees, fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts, goldfish, statues, verandas190, sleeping porches, awnings, bird baths, pergolas.
Inside more Japs. Maids. Rooms furnished like the interior of movie sets that Harrietta remembered having seen. A bedroom, sitting room, dressing room, and bath all her own in one wing of the great white palace, only one of thousands of great white palaces scattered192 through the hills of Hollywood. The closet for dresses, silk-lined and scented193, could have swallowed whole her New York bedroom.
"Lay down," said Irish Mary, "an' get easy. Lyddy won't be home till six if she's early, an' she'll prob'bly be in bed by nine now they're rushin' the end of the picture, an' she's got to be on the lot made up by nine or sooner."
"Nine—in the morning!"
"Well, sure! You soon get used to it. They've got to get all the daylight they can, an' times the fog's low earlier, or they'd likely start at seven or[Pg 138] eight. You look a little beat, dearie. Lay down. I'll have you unpacked194 while we're eatin'."
But Harrietta did not lie down. She went to the window. Below a small army of pigmy gardeners were doing expert things to flower beds and bushes that already seemed almost shamelessly prolific195. Harrietta thought, suddenly, of her green-painted flower boxes outside the eleventh-story south window in the New York flat. Outside her window here a great scarlet196 hibiscus stuck its tongue out at her. Harrietta stuck her tongue out at it, childishly, and turned away. She liked a certain reticence197 in flowers, as in everything else. She sat down at the desk, took up a sheet of lavender and gold paper and the great lavender plumed198 pen. The note she wrote to Ken was the kind of note that only Ken would understand, unless you've got into the way of reading it once a year or so, too:
Ken, dear, I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole, and yet—and yet—it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life.
Two weeks later, when she had begun to get used to her new work, her new life, the strange hours, people, jargon199, she wrote him another cryptic200 note:
Alice—"Well, in our country you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as I've been doing."[Pg 139]
Red Queen—"Here it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place."
In those two weeks things had happened rather breathlessly. Harrietta had moved from the splendours of The Place to her own rose-embowered bungalow201. Here, had she wanted to do any casement work with a white rose, like that earlier heroine, she could easily have managed it had not the early morning been so feverishly202 occupied in reaching the lot in time to be made up by nine. She soon learned the jargon. "The lot" meant the studio in which she was working, and its environs. "We're going to shoot you this morning," meant that she would be needed in to-day's scenes. Often she was in bed by eight at night, so tired that she could not sleep. She wondered what the picture was about. She couldn't make head or tail of it.
They were filming J. N. Gardner's novel, Romance of Arcady, but they had renamed it Let's Get a Husband. The heroine in the novel was the young wife of twenty-seven who had been married five years. This was Harrietta's part. In the book there had been a young girl, too—a saccharine miss of seventeen who was the minor203 love interest. This was Lydia Lissome's part. Slowly it dawned on Harrietta that things had been nightmarishly tampered204 with in the film version, and that the change in[Pg 140] name was the least of the indignities205 to which the novel had been subjected.
It took Harrietta some time to realize this because they were not taking the book scenes in their sequence. They took them according to light, convenience, location. Indoor scenes were taken in one group, so that the end of the story might often be the first to be filmed.
For a week Harrietta was dressed, made up, and ready for work at nine o'clock, and for a week she wasn't used in a single scene. The hours of waiting made her frantic206. The sun was white hot. Her little dressing room was stifling207. She hated her face with its dead-white mask and blue-lidded eyes. When, finally, her time came she found that after being dressed and ready from nine until five-thirty daily she was required, at 4:56 on the sixth day, to cross the set, open a door, stop, turn, appear to be listening, and recross the set to meet someone entering from the opposite side. This scene, trivial as it appeared, was rehearsed seven times before the director was satisfied with it.
The person for whom she had paused, turned, and crossed was Lydia Lissome. And Lydia Lissome, it soon became evident, had the lead in this film. In the process of changing from novel to scenario208, the Young Wife had become a rather middle-aged209 wife, and the Flapper of seventeen had[Pg 141] become the heroine. And Harrietta Fuller, erstwhile actress of youthful comedy parts for the stage, found herself moving about in black velvet210 and pearls and a large plumed fan as a background for the white ruffles211 and golden curls and sunny scenes in which Lydia Lissome held the camera's eye.
For years Harrietta Fuller's entrance during a rehearsal always had created a little stir among the company. This one rose to give her a seat; that one made her a compliment; Sam Klein, the veteran director, patted her cheek and said: "You're going to like this part, Miss Fuller. And they're going to eat it up. You see." The author bent212 over her in mingled213 nervousness and deference and admiration214. The Young Thing who was to play the ingénue part said shyly: "Oh, Miss Fuller, may I tell you how happy I am to be playing with you? You've been my ideal, etc."
And now Harrietta Fuller, in black velvet, was the least important person on the lot. No one was rude to her. Everyone was most kind, in fact. Kind! To Harrietta Fuller! She found that her face felt stiff and expressionless after long hours of waiting, waiting, and an elderly woman who was playing a minor part showed her how to overcome this by stretching her face, feature for feature, as a dancer goes through limbering exercises in the wings. The woman had been a trouper in the old[Pg 142] days of one-night stands. Just before she stepped in front of the camera you saw her drawing down her face grotesquely215, stretching her mouth to form an oval, dropping her jaw, twisting her lips to the right, to the left, rolling her eyes round and round. It was a perfect lesson in facial calisthenics, and Harrietta was thankful for it. Harrietta was interested in such things—interested in them, and grateful for what they taught her.
She told herself that she didn't mind the stir that Lydia Lissome made when she was driven up in the morning in her great blue limousine158 with the two Japs sitting so straight and immobile in front, like twin Nipponese gods. But she did. She told herself she didn't mind when the director said: "Miss Fuller, if you'll just watch Miss Lissome work. She has perfect picture tempo216." But she did. The director was the new-fashioned kind, who spoke softly, rehearsed you almost privately217, never bawled218 through a megaphone. A slim young man in a white shirt and flannel trousers and a pair of Harvard-looking glasses. Everybody was young. That was it! Not thirty, or thirty-two, or thirty-four, or thirty-seven, but young. Terribly, horribly, actually young. That was it.
Harrietta Fuller was too honest not to face this fact squarely. When she went to a Thursday-night dance at the Hollywood Hotel she found herself in[Pg 143] a ballroom219 full of slim, pliant220, corsetless young things of eighteen, nineteen, twenty. The men, with marcelled hair and slim feet and sunburnt faces, were mere132 boys. As juveniles221 on the stage they might have been earning seventy-five or one hundred or one hundred and fifty dollars a week. Here they owned estates, motor cars in fleets, power boats; had secretaries, valets, trainers. Their technique was perfect and simple. They knew their work. When they kissed a girl, or entered a room, or gazed after a woman, or killed a man in the presence of a woman (while working) they took off their hats. Turned slowly, and took off their hats. They were mannerly, too, outside working hours. They treated Harrietta with boyish politeness—when they noticed her at all.
"Oh, won't you have this chair, Miss Fuller? I didn't notice you were standing."
They didn't notice she was standing!
"What are you doing, Miss—ah—Fuller? Yes, you did say Fuller. Names—— Are you doing a dowager bit?"
"Dowager bit?"
"I see. You're new to the game, aren't you? I saw you working to-day. We always speak of these black-velvet parts as dowager bits. Just excuse me. I see a friend of mine——" The friend of mine would be a willow222 wand with golden curls, and[Pg 144] what Harrietta rather waspishly called a Gunga Din6 costume. She referred to that Kipling description in which:
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind.
"They're wearing them that way here in Hollywood," she wrote Ken. She wrote Ken a good many things. But there were, too, a good many things she did not write him.
At the end of the week she would look at her check—and take small comfort. "You've got everything you really want right here," Ken had said, "if you only knew it."
If only she had known it.
Well, she knew it now. Now, frightened, bewildered, resentful. Thirty-seven. Why, thirty-seven was old in Hollywood. Not middle-aged, or getting on, or well preserved, but old. Even Lydia Lissome, at twenty, always made them put one thickness of chiffon over the camera's lens before she would let them take the close-ups. Harrietta thought of that camera now as a cruel Cyclops from whose hungry eye nothing escaped—wrinkles, crow's-feet—nothing.
They had been working two months on the picture. It was almost finished. Midsummer. Harrietta's[Pg 145] little bungalow garden was ablaze223 with roses, dahlias, poppies, asters, strange voluptuous224 flowers whose names she did not know. The roses, plucked and placed in water, fell apart, petal225 by petal, two hours afterward226. From her veranda191 she saw the Sierra Madre range and the foothills. She thought of her "unexcelled view of Park" which could be had by flattening one ear and the side of your face against the window jamb.
The sun came up, hard and bright and white, day after day. Hard and white and hot and dry. "Like a woman," Harrietta thought, "who wears a red satin gown all the time. You'd wish she'd put on gingham just once, for a change." She told herself that she was parched227 for a walk up Riverside Drive in a misty228 summer rain, the water sloshing in her shoes.
"Happy, my ducky?" Irish Mary would say, beaming upon her.
"Perfectly," from Harrietta.
"It's time, too. Real money you're pullin' down here. And a paradise if ever there was one."
"I notice, though, that as soon as they've completed a picture they take the Overland back to New York and make dates with each other for lunch at the Claridge, like matinée girls."
Irish Mary flapped a negligent229 palm. "Ah, well, change is what we all want, now and then." She[Pg 146] looked at Harrietta sharply. "You're not wantin' to go back, are ye?"
"N-no," faltered230 Harrietta. Then, brazenly231, hotly: "Yes, yes!" ending, miserably232, with: "But my contract. Six months."
"You can break it, if you're fool enough, when they've finished this picture, though why you should want to——" Irish Mary looked as belligerent233 as her kindly234 Celtic face could manage.
But it was not until the last week of the filming of Let's get a Husband that Harrietta came to her and said passionately235: "I do! I do!"
"Do what?" Irish Mary asked, blankly.
"Do want to break my contract. You said I could after this picture."
"Sure you can. They hired you because I put Lyddy up to askin' them to. I'd thought you'd be pleased for the big money an' all. There's no pleasin' some."
"It isn't that. You don't understand. To-day——"
"Well, what's happened to-day that's so turrible, then?"
But how could Harrietta tell her? "To-day——" she began again, faltered, stopped. To-day, you must know, this had happened: It was the Big Scene of the film. Lydia Lissome, in black lace night[Pg 147]gown and ermine negligee, her hair in marcel waves, had just been "shot" for it.
"Now then, Miss Fuller," said young Garvey, the director, "you come into the garden, see? You've noticed Joyce go out through the French window and you suspect she's gone to meet Talbot. We show just a flash of you looking out of the drawing-room windows into the garden. Then you just glance over your shoulder to where your husband is sitting in the library, reading, and you slip away, see? Then we jump to where you find them in the garden. Wait a minute"—He consulted the sheaf of typewritten sheets in his hand—"yeh—here it says: 'Joyce is keeping her tryst236 under the great oak in the garden with her lover.' Yeh. Wait a minute ... 'tryst under tree with'—well, you come quickly forward—down to about here—and you say: 'Ah, there you are!'"
Harrietta looked at him for a long, long minute. Her lips were parted. Her breath came quickly. She spoke: "I say—what?"
"You say: 'Ah, there you are.'"
"Never!" said Harrietta Fuller, and brought her closed fist down on her open palm for emphasis. "Never!"
It was August when she again was crossing desert, plains, and farmlands. It was the tail-end of a[Pg 148] dusty, hot, humid August in New York when Ken stood at the station, waiting. As he came forward, raising one arm, her own arm shot forward in quick protest, even while her glad eyes held his.
"Don't take it off!"
"What off?"
"Your hat. Don't take it off. Kiss me—but leave your hat on."
She clutched his arm. She looked up at him. They were in the taxi bound for Fifty-sixth Street. "She moved? She's out? She's gone? You told her I'd pay her anything—a bonus——" Then, as he nodded, she leaned back, relaxed. Something in her face prompted him.
"You're young and beautiful and bewitching," said Ken.
"Keep on saying it," pleaded Harrietta. "Make a chant of it." ...
Sam Klein, the veteran, was the first to greet her when she entered the theatre at that first September rehearsal. The company was waiting for her. She wasn't late. She had just pleasantly escaped being unpunctual. She came in, cool, slim, electric. Then she hesitated. For the fraction of a second she hesitated. Then Sam Klein greeted her: "Company's waiting, Miss Fuller, if you're ready." And the leading man came forward, a flower in his buttonhole, carefully tailored and slightly yellow as a lead[Pg 149]ing man of forty should be at 10:30 A. M. "How wonderful you're looking, Harrietta," he said.
Sam Klein took her aside. "You're going to make the hit of your career in this part, Miss Fuller. Yessir, dear, the hit of your career. You mark my words."
"Don't you think," stammered Harrietta—"don't you think it will take someone—someone—younger—to play the part?"
"Younger than what?"
"Than I."
Sam Klein stared. Then he laughed. "Younger than you! Say, listen, do you want to get the Gerry Society after me?"
And as he turned away a Young Thing with worshipful eyes crept up to Harrietta's side and said tremulously: "Oh, Miss Fuller, this is my first chance on Broadway, and may I tell you how happy I am to be playing with you? You've been my ideal ever since I was a—for a long, long time."
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casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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idyllic
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| adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的 | |
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enamel
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| n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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flattening
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| n. 修平 动词flatten的现在分词 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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laden
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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skyscraper
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spartans
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chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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neatly
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massaged
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| 按摩，推拿( massage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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deftest
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| adj.熟练的，灵巧的( deft的最高级 ) | |
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mitts
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burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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belles
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| n.美女( belle的名词复数 )；最美的美女 | |
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stanch
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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gnawed
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| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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stilted
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| adj.虚饰的；夸张的 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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36
reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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37
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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38
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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39
agonized
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| v.使（极度）痛苦，折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 )；苦斗；苦苦思索；感到极度痛苦 | |
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40
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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41
playwrights
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| n.剧作家( playwright的名词复数 ) | |
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42
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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43
nuance
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| n.(意义、意见、颜色)细微差别 | |
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44
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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45
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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46
deftness
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47
theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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48
devotedly
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| 专心地； 恩爱地； 忠实地； 一心一意地 | |
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49
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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50
rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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51
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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52
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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53
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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54
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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55
pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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56
veal
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| n.小牛肉 | |
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57
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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58
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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59
pastry
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| n.油酥面团，酥皮糕点 | |
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60
adamant
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| adj.坚硬的，固执的 | |
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61
apex
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| n.顶点，最高点 | |
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62
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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63
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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64
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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65
analytical
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| adj.分析的；用分析法的 | |
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66
natty
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| adj.整洁的，漂亮的 | |
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67
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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68
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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69
ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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70
rehearsal
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| n.排练，排演；练习 | |
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71
agile
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| adj.敏捷的，灵活的 | |
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72
lurch
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| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 | |
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73
savagery
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| n.野性 | |
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74
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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75
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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76
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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77
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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78
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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79
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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80
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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81
earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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82
gulp
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| vt.吞咽，大口地吸（气）；vi.哽住；n.吞咽 | |
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83
probation
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| n.缓刑(期)，(以观后效的)察看；试用(期) | |
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84
adroit
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| adj.熟练的，灵巧的 | |
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85
heralded
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| v.预示( herald的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布（好或重要） | |
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86
saccharine
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| adj.奉承的，讨好的 | |
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87
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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88
giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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89
sables
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| n.紫貂( sable的名词复数 )；紫貂皮；阴暗的；暗夜 | |
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90
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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91
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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92
mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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93
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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94
pretense
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| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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95
fatigued
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| adj. 疲乏的 | |
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96
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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97
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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98
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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99
wispy
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| adj.模糊的；纤细的 | |
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100
awnings
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| 篷帐布 | |
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101
acidulous
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| adj.微酸的；苛薄的 | |
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102
soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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103
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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104
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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105
varnish
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| n.清漆；v.上清漆；粉饰 | |
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106
limpid
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| adj.清澈的，透明的 | |
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107
limpidly
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| adv.清澈地，透明地 | |
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108
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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109
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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110
broth
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| n.原(汁)汤(鱼汤、肉汤、菜汤等) | |
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111
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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112
stenographer
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| n.速记员 | |
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113
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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114
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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115
concocting
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的现在分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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116
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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117
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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118
craftsmanship
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| n.手艺 | |
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119
hogged
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| adj.（船）中拱的，（路）拱曲的 | |
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120
deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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121
acclaim
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| v.向…欢呼，公认；n.欢呼，喝彩，称赞 | |
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122
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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123
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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124
prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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125
primness
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| n.循规蹈矩，整洁 | |
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126
amenities
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| n.令人愉快的事物；礼仪；礼节；便利设施；礼仪( amenity的名词复数 )；便利设施；（环境等的）舒适；（性情等的）愉快 | |
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127
props
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| 小道具； 支柱( prop的名词复数 )； 支持者； 道具； （橄榄球中的）支柱前锋 | |
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128
mangle
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| vt.乱砍，撕裂，破坏，毁损，损坏，轧布 | |
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129
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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130
suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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131
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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132
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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133
tantalizingly
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| adv.…得令人着急，…到令人着急的程度 | |
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134
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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135
impecunious
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| adj.不名一文的，贫穷的 | |
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136
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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137
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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138
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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139
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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140
stringency
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| n.严格，紧迫，说服力；严格性；强度 | |
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141
seeped
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| v.（液体）渗( seep的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出 | |
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142
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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143
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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144
hangers
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| n.衣架( hanger的名词复数 )；挂耳 | |
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145
mimic
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| v.模仿，戏弄；n.模仿他人言行的人 | |
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146
bespoke
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| adj.（产品）订做的；专做订货的v.预定( bespeak的过去式 )；订（货）；证明；预先请求 | |
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147
ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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148
socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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149
raucous
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| adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的 | |
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150
screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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151
lissome
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| adj.柔软的；敏捷的 | |
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152
mimicry
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| n.（生物）拟态，模仿 | |
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153
discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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154
panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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155
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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156
villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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157
holders
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| 支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物 | |
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158
limousine
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| n.豪华轿车 | |
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159
limousines
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| n.豪华轿车( limousine的名词复数 )；（往返机场接送旅客的）中型客车，小型公共汽车 | |
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160
bonbon
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| n.棒棒糖；夹心糖 | |
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161
blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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162
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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163
sterling
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| adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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164
expatiating
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| v.详述，细说( expatiate的现在分词 ) | |
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165
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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166
thrifty
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| adj.节俭的；兴旺的；健壮的 | |
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167
soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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168
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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169
lessee
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| n.（房地产的）租户 | |
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170
faucet
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| n.水龙头 | |
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171
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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172
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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173
trouping
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| 巡回演出（troupe的现在分词形式） | |
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174
tinkled
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| （使）发出丁当声，（使）发铃铃声( tinkle的过去式和过去分词 )； 叮当响着发出，铃铃响着报出 | |
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175
strewed
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| v.撒在…上( strew的过去式和过去分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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176
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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177
trumpeted
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| 大声说出或宣告（trumpet的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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178
proffered
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| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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179
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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180
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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181
genie
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| n.妖怪，神怪 | |
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182
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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183
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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184
replica
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| n.复制品 | |
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185
chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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186
commodious
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| adj.宽敞的；使用方便的 | |
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187
snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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188
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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189
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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190
verandas
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| 阳台，走廊( veranda的名词复数 ) | |
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191
veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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192
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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193
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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194
unpacked
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| v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的过去式和过去分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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195
prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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196
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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197
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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198
plumed
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| 饰有羽毛的 | |
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199
jargon
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| n.术语，行话 | |
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200
cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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201
bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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202
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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203
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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204
tampered
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| v.窜改( tamper的过去式 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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205
indignities
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| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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206
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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207
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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208
scenario
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| n.剧本，脚本；概要 | |
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209
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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210
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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211
ruffles
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| 褶裥花边( ruffle的名词复数 ) | |
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212
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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213
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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214
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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215
grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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216
tempo
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| n.(音乐的)速度；节奏，行进速度 | |
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217
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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218
bawled
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的过去式和过去分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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219
ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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220
pliant
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| adj.顺从的；可弯曲的 | |
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221
juveniles
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| n.青少年( juvenile的名词复数 )；扮演少年角色的演员；未成年人 | |
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222
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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223
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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224
voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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225
petal
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| n.花瓣 | |
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226
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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227
parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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228
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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229
negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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230
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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231
brazenly
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| adv.厚颜无耻地；厚脸皮地肆无忌惮地 | |
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232
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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233
belligerent
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| adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者 | |
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234
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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235
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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236
tryst
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| n.约会；v.与…幽会 | |
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