He said it. He said: “Oh, now, Pete’s sake, Miss Ravenal! Quit kidding.”
“But I was. I can’t help it. I was! Ask my mother. Ask my husband. Ask anybody. Educated by the dear Sisters in the con——”
“Oh, I know it! So does everybody else who reads the papers. And you know as well as I do that that educated-in-a-convent stuff is rubber-stamp. It ceased to be readable publicity when Mrs. Siddons was a gal. Now be reasonable. Kaufman wants a bright piece about you for the Sunday page.”
“All right. You ask intelligent questions and I’ll answer them.” Kim then leaned forward to peer intently at her own reflection in the dressing-room mirror with its brilliant border of amber lights. She reached for the rabbit’s foot and applied to her cheeks that nervous and redundant film of rouge which means that the next curtain is four minutes away.
He was a very cagey New York second-assistant dramatic critic, who did not confine his talents to second-assistant dramatic criticism. The pages of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker (locally known as the Fly Papers) frequently accepted first (assistant dramatic) aid from his pen. And, naturally, he had written one of those expressionistic plays so daringly different that three intrepid managers had decided not to put it on after all. Embittered, the second-assistant dramatic critic threatened sardonically to get a production through the ruse of taking up residence in Prague or Budapest, changing his name to Capek or Vajda, and sending his manuscript back to New York as a foreign play for them to fight over.
Though she had now known New York for many years, there were phases of its theatrical life that still puzzled Kim’s mother, Magnolia Ravenal; and this was one of them. “The critics all seem to write plays,” she complained. “It makes the life of a successful actress like Kim so complicated. And the actors and actresses all lecture on the Trend of the Modern Drama at League Luncheons given at the Astor. I went to one once, with Kim. Blue voile ladies from Englewood. In my day critics criticized and actors acted.”
Her suave and gifted son-in-law, Kenneth Cameron, himself a producer of plays of the more precious pattern (The Road to Sunrise, 1921; Jock o’ Dreams, 1924), teased her gently about this attitude of intolerance. “Why, Nola! And you a famous stage mama! You ought to know that even Kim occasionally has to do things for publicity.”
“In my Cotton Blossom days we were more subtle. The band marched down Main Street and played on the corner and Papa gave out handbills. That was our publicity. I didn’t have to turn handsprings up the levee.”
There was little that the public did not know about Kim Ravenal. There was nothing that the cagey young assistant critic did not know. He now assumed a tone of deep bitterness.
“All right, my fine lady. I’ll go back and write a pattern piece. Started in stock in Chicago. Went to New York National Theatre School. Star pupil and Teacher’s Pet while there. Got a bit in—uh—Mufti, wasn’t it?—and walked away with the play just like the aspiring young actress in a bum short story. Born on a show boat in Kentucky and Illinois and Missouri simultaneously—say, explain that to me some time, will you?—hence name of Kim. Also mother was a show-boat actress and later famous singer of coon—— Say, where is your mother these days, anyway? Gosh, I think she’s grand! I’m stuck on her. She’s the burning passion of my youth. No kidding. I don’t know. She’s got that kind of haunted hungry et-up look, like Bernhardt or Duse or one of them. You’ve got a little of it, yourself.”