Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

George Hare (of Hare, Briggs, Burton, and Kurtnitz) met Carey Arundel for the first time at the annual Critics’ Dinner at Verino’s. She was to receive a plaque for the best actress performance of the year, Greg Wilson was to get the actor’s, and Paul Saffron the director’s. These dinners were rather stuffy affairs, but the awards were worth getting; this year Morning Journey was the picture that had swept the board, all the winners having scored in it. George had seen the picture and thought it good, if a trifle tricky. He was far more concerned with his luck in being next to Carey at the dinner, for his own well-concealed importance in the movie world did not always receive such rewards. George had an eye for beauty which, combined with a somewhat cynical nose for fame, made him take special notice of her. Of course he had seen her on the stage as well as on the screen, but he thought she looked best of all in real life—which meant, even more remarkably, that she looked really alive at a party such as this, not merely brought to life by ambition or liquor.

George left her to her other neighbour for a while; he was lazy socially, content often to talk with those who would seek him out, which many people did, liking him personally and eager for any titbit of scandal that might slip from his legally acquired store. He never spilled anything worth much, but always seemed about to, and nobody realized that he picked up far more than he let drop. He was so shrewd in business that people thought his air of innocence could not possibly be real, but there was a sense in which it was, and thus he often fooled and foiled his adversaries. It was this innocence that had made him say, when introduced to Carey at the table: “You played in Boston once when I was at Harvard—I can’t remember the play, but I couldn’t forget YOU.” She had laughed, and somebody who had overheard said later that nobody had ever pinned an age on an actress more securely (though that had not been George’s intention at all). But now, turning to him again more than half-way through the meal, she said: “I think it must have been Quality Street you saw me in, Mr. Hare.”

George was surprised she had even caught his name, and this was not modesty so much as an awareness that in a community where big names are a dime a dozen, some of the higher price tags are on the big nameless.

He said: “That’s right, so it was.”

“Because I don’t believe I ever played in Boston in anything else. Not in those days.”

“Not so very long ago,” he commented gallantly.

“Twenty years.”

He smiled. “What does it feel like to be a well-known actress all that time and then have people behave out here as if they’d discovered you?”

She laughed. “It’s funny.”

“I hope you’ll tell them that in your speech.”

She seemed a little perturbed. “Oh, do I have to make a speech?”

“I’m sure we all hope you will. But it needn’t be a long one. Do speeches make you nervous?”

“Other people’s do, occasionally.” He thought it was just a witticism till she added: “Paul’s especially, Paul Saffron—the director. He can be so tactless.” She went on hastily: “No, I’m not exactly scared to speak in public, but I find it much harder than acting. Perhaps that only means I find it hard to act the part of myself.”

“Ethel Barrymore once told me practically the same thing.” He proceeded to compliment her on Morning Journey, her first picture and such a success, and she thanked him with a genuine pleasure that lit her face like a girl’s, but with life rather than mere youthfulness. George wondered (as one always must with an actress) whether the transfigurement was natural or a practised artifice; frankly he could not judge, and admiringly he did not care— it was quite remarkable either way.

“Of course, you won’t go back to the stage again,” he said, and continued: “I say that because I hope you will.”

“I might.”

“But first, I suppose, another picture?”

“No, I’ve no plans for that. I’ve no definite plans for anything, except perhaps a vacation in Ireland… By the way, Mr. Hare, you’re the lawyer, aren’t you?”

“THE lawyer? Let’s settle for A lawyer.”

“I wonder if you could help me.”

“Of course. Trouble of some kind?”

He guessed she must have some other lawyer or lawyers somewhere, together with the usual outfit of agents, business managers, tax-consultants, and so on; he knew also how impulsively actors get themselves into a mess and how capriciously they can turn on those whom they pay to get them out. Maybe she was in a mood for such a change. He himself had tried to winnow down his clientele into those who were his personal friends and who, if they did get into trouble, would give him the pleasure as well as the task of extrication. He wondered if he would want Carey Arundel as such a client, even if she asked him. Possibly.

She was answering his question: “Oh, nothing very important. I just thought of sub-letting my apartment while I go to Ireland, but the lease says I can’t.”

George might well have replied that if the lease said she couldn’t, then very probably she couldn’t; or he might have tactfully conveyed that he was a busy and expensive lawyer and that any financial advantage of sub-tenancy could easily turn out to be less than his fees if she got into trouble over it. But simply because he continued to like the look of her, and also the sound of her voice, he said instead: “Be glad to help you. Send—or better still—bring the lease along to my office and I’ll see if anything can be done.” The chairman was pounding his gavel for silence, so he hastened to add: “Any time. Tomorrow morning if you like.”

“Thanks. Tomorrow morning, then,” she said hurriedly, fixing her face for the degree of attention that was appropriate in one about to be honoured.

The chairman made a very dull speech about the significance of motion pictures in the national life, and during the applause that followed George said: “Are you by any chance going on to the Fulton-Griffins’ when this thing is over?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I was asked, but I understand there’s such a crowd always there, and I hate crowds.”

“So do I, but a Fulton-Griffin party is something you ought to see if you haven’t been to one before. I thought if you were going I’d have a chance to talk to you without all these interruptions.”

“Oh yes, I’d like that, but I really think I ought to go home. I’ve been rather tired since the picture finished and—”

The chairman was introducing the next speaker, a local politician who would present the awards. He was her neighbour on the other side, so the mechanics of it would be simple. But he talked too long, though he was easier to listen to and told a few mildly amusing stories. Presently he veered his remarks in her direction and announced her as the winner of the actress award.

George applauded with more than his usual fervour when she accepted the plaque. Then she made a short but charming speech in which there was no discernible trace of nervousness at all. He wondered if it were concealed, or whether she had made a habit of telling people about it in advance and then surprising them. George, however, was not surprised. He had seen tricks like that before, and had sometimes practised them in court with much success. But he admired the total effect of her performance and was more than sincere in his whispered “Bravo” when she sat down. “You did very well,” he commented.

“Did I? Who’s next? Is it Greg?”

It was Greg. He was a handsome fellow, invariably cast for heroic parts; not a great actor, not even in his own estimation. Sufficient that in a few ill-chosen sentences he could mumble thanks and work off a laboured gag about golf, which was his passion and pastime; any eloquence, even too much coherence, would have been almost disconcerting from such a source.