The Double Act

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

The Double Act

A Romance of the Theatre. By MARION TOMLINSON (Author of "THE BELOVED SINNER," etc.)

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 her 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 him 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 XL A First Night Success. Grenoble's publicity • campaign to launch his new "find" had penetrated at last even into the little sanctuary in Bloomsbury, where Antony Carson, in a golden mist of thought, had woven his dreams about Marigold into a play. In a newspaper, bought by chance, he read a highly coloured account of the new Grenoble actress and shuddered. He knew all about Grenoble, and his stars. Hβ had read, the autobiography of Dolores Monclair with fastidious didtaste. Would tljegirl he had seen kick off her slippers and run about the edge of the fountain in her secluded garden as if she longed to paddle in the clear water prove to be another Dolores? Might her disregard of the gaping populace be a cleverly calculated effect? There was a good deal of the. puritan about Antony, although his puritanisin was not of the moral, but of the artistic sort. He hated any insincerity and pose; he loathed any cheapening of beauty. He was' in despair to learn that the girl he had conceived as infinitely remote from any taint, as so pure and lovely that even his own adoration must be kept at a distance, unperceived by her— was only an actress whom anyone might admire, "Not x even an accress," muttered Antony to himself——. "A Grenoble star. No doubt these pretty graces are all carefully manufactured to net iu fools like me."

In this Antony was unfair. Even the most exquisite of human beings must eat, and are sometimes obliged to earn their own food. He realised this as soon as the first rage of his disappointment had worn off, and laughed at himself. Hβ even glanced at the manuscript on his table with a mounting hope. Perhaps it might be played after all, and by the very woman for whom he had written it. ... ■

Antony must not be misjudged here. There was in his mind none of the petty suspicion with • which unsophisticated people sometimes regard actresses. There were several actresses among his acquaintance whom he admired greatly as sincere artists. He wrote for the theatre and hoped that such artists would do him the honour, one day, of embodying his conceptions for the stage.

Marigold had been different. The play about her had been conceived more as poetry than as drama. He had not hoped ever to have it presented. If he had first seen Rosemary on the stage, proving herself an artist according to his high ideals, he would have been delighted. But —a Grenoble.star! Antony thought again of Dolores Monclair, and of the life she flaunted, and shuddered.

Unconscious of her unknown lover's torment, Rosemary prepared for the first night of the Grenoble revue, "Shower O , Gold." Little by little, as he realised Rosemary's capacities, the producer had come to build the whole revue about her and her glorious hair. Dolores ground her teeth and waited. Grenoble had kept her in the cast, but she foresaw that Rosemary was going to outshine her.

She had no chance, however, to speak to Rosemary during rehearsals. Grenoble, wise in the ways of jealous actresses, saw to that.

On the first night tile name of Dolores Monclair still flamed in electric light outside the theatre, but it was the golden beauty of the unknown that flamed inside, and dazzled the eyes of the audience. Next day the papers were full of praise for the mysterious "Marigold. ,,

But Grenoble, when he called at the little house in the afternoon, found Rosemary sitting discontented in the midst of a heap of newspapers.

"They like my looks," she admitted, "but they all talk about me as if I were part of the hangings. Listen to this:

"'The effect of that incredible gold hair against a curtain changed by some subtle lighting device from rose to violet, from violet to green, was one of the most beautiful scenic arrangements ever produced in the English theatre,' —and so on, paragraphs of it."

"You're hard to please, little girl," said Grenoble, trying to disguise the fact that the notices were immensely Satisfactory to him. "When before has a newcomer had three-quarters of every review given over to ecstatic praise of her beauty?"

"You see," explained Rosemary hesitantly, "I've done nothing to earn any praise,, except merely to do what you've told me. I'm not ungrateful to you, please believe that, but —for 17 years of my life, my father ga,ve his whole self to training me to be a real artist — to act. In throwing away all that he taught me, iand just becoming part of the scenery, I feel I'm being ungrateful to him."

"Well," said Grenoble, feigning indifference, "you can always • free yourself, you know. Go out - and. proclaim yourself no fairy, princess,. at all, but only a little actress from. the t'hree-a-day. Then you t migh"t.get,a shop in the chorus if you hung about agents' offices long enough. Or, if you'd rather, you can sever your contract with me by cutting off your hair, or developing a squint." .> Rosemary said nothing. She had in spit" of herself become accustomed to the luxury with which Grenoble had surrounded her. ' And she would not have been human if she had; not been pleased at the tributes to her beauty she had received, though her feeling that she was betraying 'her ideals of art was sincere.

Grenoble, seeing her hesitation, said shrewdly: "Don't make yourself unhappy, child. The way to'fame is often a road paved by broken ideals. You- can act, HI admit that sincerely. Your playing of that Cockney boy in Layton'e playlet was a little gem. But I've met a dozen people who can act, out 'of hundreds who thought they could, and only once in all'my experience'of beautiee have I cpme'UjJOjo itajk md -$ym and skin like-

yours. They're things to dreain of, and 111 set the whole civilised world dreaming of them if you'll only do as I direct."

Rosemary had only half listened to Grenoble's speech. Through her mind had been running the memory of the dreadful inon.tiis after her father's death, when she had been thrown out alone to wander desperately from one agent's office to another. What good had her ability to act done her then? There had 'been comments on her beauty. Some of them it sickened her to remember. She had had weeke without enough to eat, when at last Layton had engaged her.

"All right, I'll carry on," she said, "and truly, truly, I'm grateful for all this." ltosemary indicated the dainty drawing room, with its panels of pale blue satin painted with e prays of peach blossom. "You didn't know it, but I hadii't a penny when I went to see you that morning."

Grenoble did not seem surprised by the news. He knew the precariousnesa of Rosemary's profession even better than Rosemary did. He smiled the attractive smile he could assume at times, and changed the subject.

"Well, your future is rosy now, anyway," he said. "By the way, you're the' second of my people I've seen since the notices of last night appeared. Monclair didn't wait for me to caJl on her. She was in my office at eleven this morning in a fearful temper. She's tora up her contract!" "Have you lost hex 1" cried Rosemary, genuinely concerned.

"Heavens, no, child I" returned Grenoble. "Tearing up a contract is only a gesture. It's magnificent, but it's not English. Dolores merely wanted to infer that she disapproved of you."

"Why j Have I done something to offend her?" asked Rosemary. "I knew of course that she didn't want you to engage me, especially since she had overheard you say uncomplimentary things about her to me, but after all, you have to have more than, one woman in your cast. Why not ine?"

Grenoble looked at her with suspicion that changed to incredulity, then to something like amusement. It was hard to believe, but it eeeined that Rosemary really was as innocent as that. After all, he- reflected, hers had been the most unusual life he had known in the theatre. She had had more, artistic experience than most actresses twice her age, but it had been gained under the careful protection of a father who fed her with dreams and kept her from all ordinary contracts.

Such inexperience of reality might have been fatal to her after she had been thrown out alone into the .rough and tumble world of the theatre, but, except for some months of hardship and a few weeks' work with Layton, she had evidently not yet had time for the pettiness and jealousies of others to penetrate her rampart dreams. Grenoble, as he considered her, experienced a new feeling. It was a sort of protecting tenderness for the girl before hiin. He had pretended such a fatherly attitude more than once. By this time it was sincere, and it was good to feel it. •

"You're safe with me, my dear," he said unexpectedly, and as Rosemary looked up at him inquiringly, he made a gesture that was almost appealing. "I'm glad you never thought you weren't. You are best here. I don't like to think what might happen to you if you had to fight your way —you with those trusting eyes and that 'beauty you don't seem even yet to realise. As for Dolores, she doesn't matter. She'll play out the run of this piece, and then she can do as she likes. I'll keep her away from you if I can."

Grenoble had a visitor that afternoon. It was a young man who rushed upon him with agony in his eyes, still wearing the dress clothes he had put on for the opening of "Shower o' Gold" the night before.

Antony had gone to see the revue in spite of himself. He had feared What he might see, bμt it was impossible for him to keep away from where he kifew he should see Marigold. So, from a stall which !he had obtained with infinite difficulty and much more money than he could afford, he had watched the exhibition of the girl of his dreams before thousands of eyes. :

To the rest of the enthusiastic audience the display of Rosemary's charms in scenes of sensuous beauty was, though some wondered how the Lord Chamberlain could allow certain parts of it, not a personal matter. . They had not idealised her through fervent weeks as the essence of youth and loveliness and innocence. Her beauty broke upon them as something new, and they accepted it for what it seemed to be.

But to Antony the performance was sheer agony. Rosemary was too inexperienced to have any notion of what the attitudes that Grenoble had taught her must look like from the front of the house. Grenoble himself, to do him justice, was far from realising the horror that a young man, in love with idealised innocence, would feel at the sight. Extreme innocence and extreme sophistication meet curiously in-this.

Antony had rushed from the theatre sick with horror, and passed the night walking feverishly from street to street. By morning he had found himself far from town without knowing how he got there. He had spent the morning in a dingy tea-shop consuming innumerable" cigarettes,- and staring blindly at an untouched' cup of tea. By afternoon he had decided what to do. He would go straight to Grenoble. "He'll tell me what she is if I have' to wring it out of his throat," he said to himself, as, oblivious of the curious glances that followed a young man in evening clothes, high hat and white silk muffler at two o'clock in the afternoon, he made his way through Piccadilly. "If she's good, I'll kill him. If she's not —if she's not . . ." The agony of it made him walk unsteadily. Antony was not only in love, but he had worked at high pressure for weeks writing a poetic drama about the woman whom he had seen in what he, with a lover's exaggeration, had thought shameful conditions the night before. Grenoble certainly thought him wholly insane as he faced him across the desk in his office. "Tell me what she is!" demanded Antony savagely. "I tell you I want to know all about her-" (To be continued daily.)