“My dealings with turnips have always been conducted through a cook. Has she been shocking you?”
“Ma’am,” said Carlson, “You can’t shock me. I was in the show business from eighteen sixty-nine to nineteen fourteen. I lugged a spear in the ‘Black Crook’ and I was a gladyator when the Police arrested McCullough for playin’ Spartacus in his bare legs. No, Margot can’t shock me any more’n a kitten.” He rolled a cigarette shakily, spilling tobacco on his cerise quilt. Olive held a match for him. He coughed, “But you’d ought of seen her ballyrag Mark into buyin’ this English piece—What the hell do you call it, Mark?”
“Todgers Intrudes.”
“That’s a name for you! Gurdy don’t like it. I say it’s hogwash. Maggie, she set on a table smokin’ her cheroot and just made the big calf buy it.... She did, Mark. So don’t stand there lookin’ like Charlie Thorne in ‘Camille’!”
Mark was stirring with laughter at the old man’s venom. He said, “I told Olive Margot made me buy it.”
“Oh,” Olive said, “if you let Margot run your affairs you’ll have strange creatures from darkest Chelsea mounting all your plays and flappers who’ve acted twice in a charity show playing Monna Vanna. She made my poor husband buy a cubist portrait of Winston Churchill some pal of hers painted. When he found it was meant to be Churchill he took to his bed.”
“Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Williams,” said the butler against Mark’s swift, “Ask ’em to go to the drawing room. ’Xcuse me, Olive. Got to go talk strike a minute.”
She looked about the sinless library with its severe panels and blue rug then at Mark’s patron—an exhumed Pharaoh, his yellow hawk face and bloodless hands motionless, the cigarette smoking in a corner of his mouth. He had just the pathos of oncoming death. He squeaked, “Mark’s busy as a pup with fleas. Actors strikin’! The lazy hounds! It’s enough to make Gus Daly turn in his grave!”
“You’ve no sympathy with them?”
“Not a speck! The show business is war and war’s hell. Here’s this Boyle onion Mark was married to, Bill Loeffler sends for her to come back from England and get a thousand a week to play in a French piece. Pays her passage. Then what? Minute she sets foot on land she grabs a movie contract and pikes off to California. She’s a hot baby, she is! Actors!”