Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
But it was not until the last week of the filming of Let's get a Husband
that Harrietta came to her and said passionately: "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 nightgown 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 tryst 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 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." ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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