“I can’t help their troubles,” she said with a shrug of shoulder. “You told me you were going on location, and naturally I didn’t expect there would be any hurry. I had to pack my things.”
“Naturally you didn’t think there was any hurry!”
Jack Knebworth reckoned to have three fights a year. This was the third. The first had been with Stella, and the second had been with Stella, and the third was certainly to be with Stella.
“I wanted you to be here at ten. I’ve had these boys and girls waiting since a quarter of ten.”
“What do you want to shoot?” she asked with an impatient jerk of her head.
“You mostly,” said Jack slowly. “Get into No. 9 outfit and don’t forget to leave your pearl ear-rings off. You’re supposed to be a half-starved chorus girl. We’re shooting at Griff Towers, and I told the gentleman who lent us the use of the house that I’d be through the day work by three. If you were Pauline Frederick or Norma Talmadge or Lillie Gish, you’d be worth waiting for, but Stella Mendoza has got to be on this lot by ten—and don’t forget it!”
Old Jack Knebworth got up from his canvas chair and began to put on his coat with ominous deliberation, the flushed and angry girl watching him, her dark eyes blazing with injured pride and hurt vanity.
Stella had once been plain Maggie Stubbs, the daughter of a Midland grocer, and old Jack had talked to her as if she were still Maggie Stubbs and not the great film star of coruscating brilliance, idol (or her press agent lied) of the screen fans of all the world.
“All right, if you want a fuss you can have it, Knebworth. I’m going to quit—now! I think I know what is due to my position. That part’s got to be rewritten to give me a chance of putting my personality over. There’s too much leading man in it, anyway. People don’t pay real money to see men. You don’t treat me fair, Knebworth: I’m temperamental, I admit it. You can’t expect a woman of my kind to be a block of wood.”
“The only thing about you that’s a block of wood is your head, Stella,” grunted the producer, and went on, oblivious to the rising fury expressed in the girl’s face. “You’ve had two years playing small parts in Hollywood, and you’ve brought nothing back to England but a line of fresh talk, and you could have gotten that out of the Sunday supplements! Temperament! That’s a word that means doctors’ certificates when a picture’s half taken, and a long rest unless your salary’s put up fifty per cent. Thank God this picture isn’t a quarter taken or an eighth. Quit, you mean-spirited guttersnipe—and quit as soon as you darn please!”