The Double Act

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 133, 7 June 1929, Page 14

The Double Act

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

ROSEMARY MARTIN, a young actress playing the part of a Cockney boy in a ' second-rate theatre, has her wig knocked off one night, during her act, disclosing her unusually beautiful masses of long golden hair. The effect of this, combined with hor boy's costume is ridiculous, and the audience laugh her off the stage. LIONEL GRENOBLE, a producer of West End revues, however, Is In the audience, and invites her to call on hiui the following morning. Rosemary keeps the engagement, and succeeds in obtaining a contract to act in Grenoble's new revue with NELL FORREST, an old friend, as her companion. CHAPTER IX.—(Continued.) Rosemary runted her hair till her small face looked out whimsically from the mass of gold. ■ ■

"He doesn't care if I've got the brains of an oyster so long as I make my hair look like a haystack. Oh, I'd like to work a bit for a change."

But at a-quarter to three a big grey limousine came to the door, and Rosemary, in, a frock of white silk embroidered in gold, sat obediently on its blue velvet cushions opposite a severely composed black silk Nell. At the stage door a respectful stage manager met her, and she was led to where a carefully prepared setting awaited her. as its centre. And instead ot an abrupt, "Take up your cue a little quicker, can't you, Miss Gail? I can't stand hero on one foot all day," she heard. "If Madame would raise her chin a little higher, and turn a bit to the left ..' . ? The effect is charming against the black'"'velvet. Thank you."

Most of Rosemary's rehearsing was done at home in a room which Grenoble had fitted up to resemble the stage. He trained her himself and the hours were arduous in a ' way" new to Rosemary's

experience. "He makes a kind "of artist's model out of me," she complained one day to Nell. "I just pose and pose and pose. Even when I sing I. have to turn this way and that for effects he has in mind, and stretch out my arms with a dieaway smile on my face." "He's making a legend out of you," said Nell wisely, "and a legend's place is not to contradict itself, but to go on being what people want to believe it

"Oh, well, I suppose I'm lucky," returned Rosemary,' "but I can't help feeling father would hate it. There's no brains in it —except Grenoble's of course. As for me, the less I think the better I do what he requires of me. I feel grumpy. Nell, I'm going out to feed the goid fish. Ask cook to give me some crumbs, will you, darling?" "It's not four o'clock yet," said Nell, "the people know by now to expect you at' four."

"All the better," said Rosemary, obstinately, "I'm tired of the populace. Just for once I'm going to walk in the garden without feeling a thousand eyes staring through the fence." So it happened that a young man walking along the pavement absorbed in his thoughts, looked up suddenly to see, through a row of close set iron palings, a thing that made him stop suddenly and hold his breath.

Coming directly toward him in a floating frock of pale green organdie that reached to her ankles was a girl. For a moment he could not believe it was a girl at all, but rather a dreaming princess out of some old tale. On her feet were ridiculous high-heeled silver slip-pei-s that surely could not support a human being, but on which she seemed to float. A silver ribbon tied in the erisp folds of apple green at her waist. The girl kicked off her shoes and ran round and round the cement rim of the fountain. She looked as if she would have liked to take off her stocking, too, and paddle, but an elderly woman in black silk came out and made her put her slippers on again. But her face! And that marvellous mist of gold hair that just showed under her garden hat! They seemed so beautiful to him that Antony Carson, a well, behaved young man lately down from Cambridge, and hoping to sell his first play, found himself gripping the iron palings of the fence, and staring between them like any yokel. Rosemary did not look up. She had accustomed herself to the realisation that every time she walked in her garden there would be rows and rows of staring eyes all about her. But she had found it easier not to face them. Grenoble approved her shyness for reasons of his own.

• "You must be something not quite human to them," he advised. "If you see them and bow and smile or look selfi conscious, the spell will be broken." In this carefully calculated effect— though not calculated by Rosemary herself —Antony Cai ; son had been caught. Ho stayed clinging to the paling till at last the wilful princess, who had laughed when the elderly woman in black 'spoke to her severely, went back into the house. She had not sent a single look his way, but his heart was uplifted. As he turned away in a daze a voice at his elbow made him start. He looked down to see a shabby man with his hand held out ingratiatingly. p "You'd like to know who she is, wouldn't you, sir ?" said the shabby man, ingratiatingly. "I can tell you all about her, and I will sir, if you'll just give a poor man the price of a drink. I've got inside information, I have." Antony shuddered and turned away. Impossible to hear news of his princess | from that dreadful wreck! ]

The man persisted, for lie knew a smitten young man when he saw one. At last, with a definite, "There's nothing I want to hear, thanks very much, good day," the man was got rid of, the richer 'by sixpence. This was not true. There was much that Antony longed to hear, though not from such a source. But he would have learned nothing but a series of crude inventions even if he had been able to bring himself to listen, for the man knew no more than any other in the daily crowds that jostled about the locked'gate where was the single word "Marigold" in copper letters. His inventions were profitable, however. He had sold them many times to smitten young men and heroine-worshipping women. ,' iY . No one, in fact, had the inside information that the shabby man claimed. The padlocked gate was never opened except to let the limousinepass. Tradesmen rang a bell that brought a housemaid to the locked wicket gate at the back. Once or twice enterprising Pressmen took advantage of a servant's day off to extract an interview. But the servants knew nothing and saw little more of their mistress than did the public. She was far too well guarded! by the vigilant Nell. AH the inquiring

. A Romance of the Theatre. I

By MARION TOMLINSON j (Author of "THE BELOVED SINNER," etc.) J

pressmen got was an ecstatic, "Oh, she's lovely, sir, so sweet and gay—when one can get a sight of her past, that Mrs. Forrest. . . No, I never heard any but the name 'Marigold.' No surname, nor nothing. Seems funny, but she's lovely. No, no letters come. Only one gentleman, sir, and Mrs. Eorrest always meets him at the door." At last one enterprising Sunday paper risked making itself ridiculous or a possible libel suit by printing an article headed: — "WHO IS MARIGOLD?" "For weeks past crowds of admiring and adoring sightseers ha,ve stood about the palings of a certain garden not far from Hyde Park Corner, waiting for the appearance of a beautiful.and mysterious young girl who walks there ■every afternoon about four o'clock.' The fact that no one seems to know anything about her only increases her magnetic appeal. Her beauty is extraordinary." The article went on to describe Rosemary's beauty in words that were hardly sustained by the picture on the same page. It had been snapped surreptitiously through the palings, and Rosemary, unconscious that she was being photographed, had moved at the wrong moment. The result was a blur that conveyed nothing to those who had not seen her. Grenoble, however, read the article and chuckled. It was just what ho wanted.. A few more of such mystery stories and his own publicity campaign would find the ground well prepared. CHAPTER X. A New Admirer. Meanwhile Rowmary was beginning to work really hard, though it was work that did not give her the satisfaction she had had in former roles, however small. The fact is, it was hai-dly a role at all that Grenoble wanted her to present in his revue. He bad seen in her marvellous , hair and eyes and colouring, her slim j body, points that he wished to exploit' for themselves.

Ho did not want Rosemary to be an actress. He wanted her to be a personality that would attract all London. He found much to correct in her. Her movements were too spontaneous and boyish, her eyes too frank, her. speech was too direct. Ho worked with her for long hours till he had taught her to melt from one languorous phase into another, to lift her lashes slowly and drop them again. If Rosemary had been mora self-con-scious she would have realised what he was doing, and either rejected or accepted his point of view. But she listened with docility to his directions, and succeeded in time in pleasing him more than he admitted to her. Occasionally, worn out with being a siren, she protested.

"I feel such an ass!" she would cry, and go off into a burlesque of the languishing movements he bad taught her. But even as she mimicked herself, her flowing hair gave her a sensuous beauty. Grenoble looked at her with appreciation.

"Clever child," he said soothingly. "Be good and do as I tell you till you have learned how to make the most of yourself, and some day I will give you a part that vou can act."

So Rosemary went dutifully through the motions Grenoble taught her until she had made herself into the. golden siren the producer required for his purpose. Many people, of all ranks, and both men and women, were dreaming of the mysterious Marigold whom they had glimpsed through the palings of her garden fence during these w-eeks. There was that in her carefully guarded beauty and remoteness that stirred the imagination.

But to one young man in a little room in Bloomsbury she had become life itself. Antony Carson thought of her every moment of the day and dreamed of her at night. And because he was a creative artist, his dreamings took shape, and for clays he would forget to eat, forget to sleep, while he covered pages with a new play of which she was the heroine. The nlav he had written at Cambridge, and had brought to London hoping to sell, ] ay neglected in a drawer. He had had high hopes of it. but now it was nothing to liim because it did not remind him of her.

And though he forgot to eat and forgot to sleep, when four o'clock in the afternoon approached there came a call, to him' that he could not ignore, and he hurried out- to the street in which the little.house stood. There with countless others he. watched through the palings for'as long as Rosemary could be seen.

Now and then murmurs in the. crowd reached him. He listened to them because he could not help it, but they were so contradictory he soon realised that no one knew anything more about the girl of his dreams than he did himself. In time the vapourings of the crowd annoyed him, so that he moved away abruptly when he overheard her name spoken.

He would have learned something if he had listened, however, for Grenoble, deeming the time was ripe, started his publicity campaign on behalf of his newly-discovered actress. Pictures of Marigold were in all the papers, and fictitious accounts of ber, all originating in the fertile brain of Grenoble's agent, were everywhere. "' - l : 1 -Antony was absorbed in his play and his dream. He never looked at a newspaper. He ignored his friends and never went near his club. His days revolved about the one hour when he could stand on the' pavement, before a little house, and watch a young girlwith golden hair walk through a garden massed with marigolds. The rest of his hours were largely spent at a table in his room, devising exquisite dialogue in a play worthy of his princess. His letters home were pervaded with Marigold. His father, who was a vicar in a small village in Kent, read them aloud to Antony's mother in consternation.

" I cannot live without her," wrote Antony, "yet she is as far beyond my reach as the farthest star. ' I know nothing of her, but her beauty and her frank clear' laugh that I have heard sometimes. Even my play, which is nearly finished and is better than anything I had ever hoped to write, can never be presented on the stage, because there could never be found an actress worthy of impersonating her. I am tormented by the fear that she may be whisked away any moment ajid I shall never again have even the sight of her. If that should happen life would be finished for-me." ;' "'.'...

Mrs. Carson looked across the rectory breakfast table at her husband with frightened eyes. " This doesn't sound like Antony,' she whispered. "The boy has made himself ill with overwork and uncertainty. I am afraid for him, _Petcr. Who do you suppose this woman is ?" The Reverend Peter Carson shook his head gravely. " Some rich heiress, perhaps—or some adventuress even. It seems very strange that a young girl should be living alone with no surname, no companions but an elderly servant . . ." he said. "Do you think I should go up to London, Grace?" " I don't see what you could do," answered his wife 'wisely. "Antony is so intense and so proud. He would resent interference. Oh, I do hope there is nothing wrong with her. Wait a little and see what Tony's next news may be." Antony's next letter was not pervaded with Marigold. It was short and dry, and the writer, to his mother's understanding sense, seemed to have forced himself to discuss commonplace things, while his whole mind was revolving tormented about something else. There was a scrawled postscript to the letter. "The play is done. I have found out who 'Marigold' is." ' (To bo continued daily.)