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That was it! Not thirty, or thirty-two, or thirty-four, or thirty-seven, but young. Terribly, horribly, actually young. That was it. Harrietta Fuller was too honest not to face this fact squarely. When she went to a Thursday-night dance at the Hollywood Hotel she found herself in a ballroom full of slim, pliant, corsetless young things of eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
For that matter I think that Mr. Beerbohm himself would not have found a talk with her altogether dull or profitless. The leading man generally made love to her in an expert, unaggressive way. A good many men had tried to make love to her at one time or another. They didn't get on very well. Harrietta never went to late suppers.
"She'll probably ruin my enamel dressing table with toilet water and ring my piano top with wet glasses and spatter grease on the kitchenette wall. But I'll be earning a million," Harrietta announced, recklessly, "or thereabouts. Why should I care?"
Then some little red-haired ingénue would get it, and it would run a solid year on Broadway and two seasons on the road, and in all that time Harrietta would have played six months, perhaps, in three different plays, in all of which she would score what is known as a "personal success." A personal success usually means bad business at the box office. Now this is immensely significant.
Harrietta loved the way his hair sprang away from his brow and temples in a clean line. She shoved the thought of his chin out of her mind. His hands touched her a good deal her shoulder, her knee, her wrist but so lightly that she couldn't resent it even if she had wanted to. When they did this, queer little stinging flashes darted through her veins. He said he would die if she did not marry him.
Irish Mary looked like the mother of a girl who was earning five thousand a week. She was marcelled, silk-clad, rustling, gold-meshed, and, oh, how real in spite of it all as she beamed upon the dazzled Harrietta. "Out with ye!" trumpeted this figure, brushing aside Harrietta's proffered chair. "There'll be no stayin' here for you. You're coming along with me, then, bag and baggage."
Sundials, rose gardens, gravel paths, dwarf trees, giant trees, fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts, goldfish, statues, verandas, sleeping porches, awnings, bird baths, pergolas. Inside more Japs. Maids. Rooms furnished like the interior of movie sets that Harrietta remembered having seen.
You breakfast in the dining room, and in the winter you wear flannel underwear and galoshes." "California, then. And he can be the son of a fruit king. I'm not narrow." Harrietta was thirty-seven and a half when there came upon her a great fear. It had been a wretchedly bad season. Two failures.
They were mannerly, too, outside working hours. They treated Harrietta with boyish politeness when they noticed her at all. "Oh, won't you have this chair, Miss Fuller? I didn't notice you were standing." They didn't notice she was standing! "What are you doing, Miss ah Fuller? Yes, you did say Fuller. Names Are you doing a dowager bit?" "Dowager bit?" "I see. You're new to the game, aren't you?
He remained more Harry than John to the last. It was from him Harrietta got her acting sense, her humour, her intelligence, and her bad luck. When Harry Scoville was eighteen he wanted to go on the stage. At twenty he entered the ministry. It was the natural outlet for his suppressed talents. In his day and family and environment young men did not go on the stage.
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