IV
Yes, that was the truth about this bright luminary of the screen, as Bunny came to observe it; she had a literal mind. All the poetry and romance the public imagined about her—that was in the public’s eye, so to say. All that Annabelle had to contribute was a youthful figure and a pliable face; the highly paid directors did the rest. She produced pictures as a matter of business, and her talk was of production costs, and percentages on foreign sales, just as if it had been an oil well. That was why she got along with Vernon Roscoe, who also had a literal mind. A primrose by the river’s brim a yellow primrose was to him, and to Annabelle it was a decoration for an “interior,” or a background on “location.”
There was a certain grim honesty about this, as Bunny discovered; it was Annabelle’s desire to be an actress rather than a mistress. “By Jees,” Verne would proclaim to his guests, “it’s cost me eight million dollars to make a movie queen out of this baby.” And the thirty year old baby had the dream that some day she would achieve a masterpiece, that would earn this eight million and vindicate her honor. Meantime, she paid installments by taking care of Verne—so publicly that it was quite touching, and respectable according to the strictest bourgeois standards. If the oil magnate had ever had the idea that in taking to his bosom a movie star he was going to lead a wild and roystering life, he had made a sad mistake, for he was the most hen-pecked of all “butter and egg men.”
“Now, Papa,” Annabelle would say, “you’ve had enough to drink. Put that down.” She would say it before a company assembled in their gladdest rags for a dinner-party; and Verne would protest, “My God, baby, I ain’t got started yet!”
“Well, you stop before you start tonight. Remember what Doctor Wilkins says about your liver.”
Verne would bluster, “To hell with livers!” and the answer would be, “Now, Papa, you told me to make you obey! Have I got to make you ashamed before all this company?”
“Me ashamed? I’d like to see anybody make me ashamed!”
“Well, Papa, you know you’ll be ashamed if I tell what you said to me the last time you were drunk.”
Verne paused, with his glass half-way in the air, trying to remember; and the company burst into clamor, “Oh, tell us! Tell us!”
“Shall I tell them, Papa?” It was a bluff, for Annabelle was very prim, and never indulged in vulgarity. But the bluff went, and the great man set down his glass. “I surrender! Take the stuff away.” Whereat everybody applauded, and it gave the party a merry start.
Strange as it might seem, Annabelle was a pious Catholic. Just how she managed to fix things up with her priests Bunny never knew, but she gave freely to charity, and you would find her featured at benefits for Catholic orphan asylums and things of that sort. At the same time her little head was as full of superstitions as an old Negro mammy. She would not have started a picture on a Friday for the whole of Vernon’s eight million dollar endowment. When you spilled the salt, she not merely advised you to throw some of it over your shoulder, she did it for you, if necessary. Once, at luncheon, she made a girl-friend eat at a side table, because otherwise there would have been thirteen, and this girl, being the youngest, would have fallen the victim.
At the same time she was very good. She really liked you, and liked to have you around, and when she begged you to come back, she meant it. Nor would she make unkind remarks about you after you were gone. Along with the ecstasies of the artistic temperament, she had escaped its gnawing jealousies; she was one of the few lady-stars before whom it was safe to praise the work of other lady-stars, Bunny found. Also, she had an abiding respect for him, because he had read books, and had ideas about public questions. The fact that Bunny had got his name on the front pages of the newspapers as a dangerous “pink,” served to lend him that same halo of mystery and romance, which the public assigned to Annabelle as a luminary of the screen world, and the mistress of a monastery!