We Can't Have Everything Part 40

"But I mustn't keep you. I heard somebody say that you were to lie down and rest up."

"Oh, that was only Mr. Ferriday. I'm not tired a bit."

"Ferriday. Oh yes, I'm forgetting him. He's the feller I've come to see."

"He can't be approached when he's working. Sit down, won't you?"

He sat down on an old bench and she sat down, too. She had never felt quite so contented as this. And Dyckman had not felt so teased by beauty in a longer time than he could remember.

Kedzie was as exotic to him as a j.a.panese doll. Her face was painted in picturesque blotches that reminded him of a toy-shop. Her eyes were made up with a delicate green that gave them an effect unknown to him.

She was dressed as a young farm girl with a sunbonnet a-dangle at the back of her neck, her curls trailing across her rounded shoulders and down upon her dreamy bosom. She sat and swung her little feet and looked up at him sidewise.

He forgot all about Ferriday, and when Ferriday came along did not see him. Kedzie did not tell him. She pretended not to see Ferriday, though she enjoyed enormously the shock it gave him to find her so much at ease with that big stranger.

Ferriday was so indignant at being snubbed in his own domain by his own creation that he sent Garfinkel to see who the fellow was and throw him out. Garfinkel came back with Dyckman, followed by Kedzie.

Before Garfinkel could present Dyckman to the great Ferriday, Kedzie made the introduction. Dyckman was already her own property. She had seen him first.

Ferriday was jolted by the impact of the great name of Dyckman. He was restored by the suppliant att.i.tude of his visitor. He said that he doubted if he could find the time to direct an amateur picture. Dyckman hastened to say:

"Of course, money is no object to us...."

"Nor to me," Ferriday said, coldly.

Dyckman went on as if he had not heard: "... Except that the more the show costs the less there is for the charity."

"I should be glad to donate my services to the cause," said Ferriday, who could be magnificent.

"Three cheers for you!" said Dyckman, who could not.

Ferriday had neither the time nor the patience for the task. But when the chance came to dazzle the rich by the rich generosity of working for nothing, he could not afford to let it pa.s.s. To tip a millionaire! He had to do that.

He saw incidentally that Kedzie was fairly hypnotized by Dyckman and Dyckman by her. His first flare of jealousy died out. To be cut out by a prince has always been a kind of enn.o.blement in itself.

Also one of Ferriday's inspirations came to him. If he could get those two infatuated with each other it would not only take Kedzie off his heart, but it might be made to redound to the further advantage of his own genius. A scheme occurred to him. He was building the scenario of it in the back room of his head while his guest occupied his parlor.

He wanted to be alone and he wanted Dyckman and Kedzie to be alone together. And so did Kedzie. Ferriday suggested:

"Perhaps Mr. Dyckman would like to look over the studio--and perhaps Miss Adair would show him about."

Kedzie started to cry, "You bet your boots," but she caught herself in time and shifted to, "I should be chawmed." Millionaires did not use plain words.

Then Dyckman said, "Great!"

He followed Kedzie wherever she led. He was as awkward and out of place as a school-boy at his first big dance. Kedzie showed him a murder scene being enacted under the bluesome light. She took great pains not to let any of it stain her skin. She showed him a comic scene with a skeletonic man on a comic bicycle. Dyckman roared when the other comedian lubricated the cyclist's joints with an oil-can.

Kedzie showed him the projection-room and told the operator to run off a bit of a scene in which she was revealed to no disadvantage. She sat alone in the dark with a million dollars that were crazy about her. She could tell that Dyckman was tremendously excited.

Here at last was her long-sought opportunity to rebuff the advances of a wicked plutocrat. But he didn't make any, and she might not have rebuffed them. Still, the air was a-quiver with that electricity generated almost audibly by a man and a woman alone in the dark.

Dyckman was ashamed of himself and of his arm for wanting to gather in that delectable partridge, but he behaved himself admirably.

He told her that she was a "corker," a "dream," and "one sweet song,"

and that the picture did not do her justice.

Kedzie showed him the other departments of the picture-factory and he was amazed at all she knew. So was she. He stayed a long while and saw everything and yet he said he would come again.

He suggested that it might be nice if Mr. Ferriday and Miss Adair would dine with him soon. Ferriday was free "to-morrow," and so they made it to-morrow evening at the Vanderbilt.

Kedzie was there and Dyckman was there, but a boy brought a note from Mr. Ferriday saying that he was unavoidably prevented from being present.

Dyckman grinned: "We'll have to bear up under it the best we can. You won't run away just because your chaperon is gone, will you?"

Kedzie smiled and said she would stay. But she was puzzled. What was Ferriday up to? One always suspected that Ferriday was up to something and thinking of something other than what he did or said.

Kedzie was not ashamed of her clothes this time. Indeed, when she gave her opera-cloak to the maid she came out so resplendent that Jim Dyckman said:

"Zowie! but you're a--Whew! aren't you great? Some change-o from the little farm girl I saw up at the studio. I don't suppose you'll eat anything but a little bird-seed."

She was elated to see the _maitre d'hotel_ shake hands with her escort and ask him how he was and where he had been. Jim apologized for neglecting to call recently, and the two sauntered like friends across to a table where half a dozen waiters bowed and smiled and welcomed the prodigal home.

When they were seated the headwaiter said, "The moosels vit sauce mariniere are nize to-nide."

Dyckman shook his head: "Ump-umm! I'm on the water-wagon and the diet kitchen. Miss Adair can go as far as she likes, but I've got to stick to a little thick soup, a big, thick steak, and after, a little French pastry, some coffee, and a bottle of polly water--and I'll risk a mug of old musty." He turned to Kedzie: "And now I've ordered, what do you want? I never could order for anybody else."

Kedzie was disappointed in him. He was nothing like Ferriday. He didn't use a French word once. She was afraid to venture on her own.

"I'll take the same things," she said.

"Sensible lady," said Jim. "Women who work must eat."

Kedzie hated to be referred to as a worker by an idler. She little knew how much Jim Dyckman wished he were a worker.

She could not make him out. Her little hook had dragged out Leviathan and she was surprised to find how unlike he was to her plans for her first millionaire. He ate like a hungry man who ordered what he wanted and made no effort to want what he did not want. He had had so much elaborated food that he craved few courses and simple. He said what came into his head, without frills or pose. He was sincerely delighted with Kedzie and made neither secret nor poetry of it.

Toward the last of the dinner Kedzie ceased to try to find in him what was not there. She accepted him as the least affected person she had ever met. He could afford to be unaffected and careless and spontaneous.

He had nothing to gain. He had everything already. Kedzie would have said that he ought to have been happy because of that, as if that were not as good an excuse for discontent as any. In any case, Kedzie said to herself:

"He's the real thing."

She wanted to be that very thing--that most difficult thing--real. It became her new ambition.

After the dinner Dyckman offered to take her home. He had a limousine waiting for him. She did not ask him to put her into a taxicab. She was not afraid to have him ride home with her. She was afraid he wouldn't.

She was not ashamed of the apartment-house she was living in now. It was nothing wonderful, but all the money had been spent on the hall. And that was as far as Dyckman would get--yet.

Kedzie had acquired a serenity toward all the world except what she called "high society." In her mind the word _high_ had the significance it has with reference to game that has been kept to the last critical moments, and trembles, exquisitely putrid, between being eaten immediately and being thrown away soon.

There is enough and to spare of that high element among the wealthy, but so there is among the poor and among all the middlings. Kedzie had met with it on her way up, and she expected to find it in Dyckman. She looked forward to a thrilling adventure.