by Anne Nesbet
That was ridiculous, but Darleen gulped down any protest. All of tradition and all of the law, of course, would be on Aunt Shirley’s side in this matter, even though Aunt Shirley had no idea how many secrets Darleen was carrying around at this point, did she?
Darleen had to think fast. And — oh, miracle! — she did. The first hint of an idea came into her brain, and she grabbed its front paws and pulled.
“I told you, it’s not my secret,” she said. “I can’t explain it to you, but Aunt Shirley, I’ll talk to Papa about it tonight, and if he says I may go, then I’ll go. Did Madame Blaché say what time she wanted to leave tomorrow?”
Aunt Shirley huffed and puffed, but eventually she reverted to honesty and directness and answered the question.
“She said she’d come around in a motorcar for you at your father’s house at eight thirty in the morning. I told her it would be a waste of good petrol because it was hardly thinkable that Mr. Bill Darling would agree to let you go, and she said, cool as a cucumber, that she would trust Miss Darling’s powers of convincement. Now maybe that word’s in the dictionary, maybe it’s not. I asked Miss McNulty, who writes scenarios and knows a million words if she knows a dozen, and she said she thought so, but, Darleen, I am skeptical.”
There was an abrupt pause in the progress of Aunt Shirley’s train of thought; indeed, it had switched tracks and was beginning to roll in an unplanned direction. Aunt Shirley applied the brakes with force:
“Don’t you go derailing our conversation!” she said (which was, thought Darleen, unjust). “Because I have one more thing to say to you, Darleen: Couldn’t you have managed that scene yesterday without destroying Mr. Mancini’s very expensive balloon? You seem determined, dear girl, to be the ruin of Matchless, and in every possible way.”
Mr. Mancini’s balloon! Aunt Shirley’s rant seemed so unfair that Darleen, even though used to her aunt’s ways of arguing a point, had to blink back tears. And then she remembered that although the ruined balloon had not been her doing, she had indeed kept secrets and might indeed be somewhere on the far side of the law and could even possibly be said to have put the people of Matchless at some kind of risk (without meaning to, of course! By accident!), and she blinked again.
To save Victorine’s life! she reminded herself. To save Victorine!
But at what price?
And as if to rub the hurt right into the soft parts of her heart, she turned and saw her own wounded father coming across the studio floor to where the uncles were standing. He looked flustered and worried, and a moment later, the three Darling brothers seemed to be arguing about what to do about something — about something that was lost?
Oh, now Darleen caught the essential phrase: “missing footage from the Strand.”
The stolen reel, she thought, and her curious ears angled themselves toward the uncles like flowers turning toward the sun.
Aunt Shirley made an exasperated noise.
“Fine,” she said. “Pay no account to anything I say. Fine, Darleen. If you bring reckless ruin to all of us, you’ll see how you feel then. But I warn you: if I get one more telephone call about you today, I may lose my patience.”
(Which was already long gone, as far as Darleen could see.)
And then Aunt Shirley spun around and stormed back to her office at the other end of the studio.
The Darling brothers were still having a heated discussion about what to do. Uncle Dan was proposing finding a storefront in Fort Lee that they could dress up to look “at least a little bit” like a theater entrance and refilming the bit with the motorcar and the kidnappers. Uncle Charlie groaned. “But we had actual pictures of the Strand!”
“Darleen,” said a quiet voice very nearby. “Are you all right? I’m afraid your aunt seemed very angry with you.”
It was Victorine — well, Bella Mae — and as soon as Darleen heard her voice, an idea came into her head.
“Listen to that! They want pictures of the Strand. Could you run upstairs and fetch that little strip of celluloid that we saved and hid?”
“Yes!” said Victorine, and a moment later she was gone. She had impressive skills in coming and going without clomping noisily around.
After a minute or so of mental preparation, Darleen walked right up to that discussion and tugged on her Papa’s sleeve.
“Papa, wasn’t there a strip of film from the Strand hanging on the wall, that awful day when the burglars came?” she said.
“Gone now,” said Papa. “Fellow was thorough.”
“But Papa,” said Darleen. “I was just talking to one of the extras, and she told me she’d found something, just by chance, you know. Oh, here she is now! I asked her to run and fetch the thing she’d found.”
Victorine was hurrying toward them across the floor, a bit of folded paper in her hand.
“Here you are, Miss Darling,” she said. “I do hope it’s useful in some way.”
Darleen unfolded the paper, and there it was: a small but very clear image of the kidnapper turning around to stare at the camera while Darleen tumbled into the seat of the motorcar.
“Oh, look at this, Uncle Charlie!” she said. “And Uncle Dan! And Papa! This is Bella Mae Goodwin, one of the extras. Look what she has found!”
“Found” was only very approximately the truth, so Darleen hurried to push forward the little piece of film, framed in her hand, before her uncles could think of follow-up questions they might want to be asking.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Bill Darling. He held it up to the light. “Look, Dan! That’s the outside of the Strand Theatre it’s showing, isn’t it? Thief must have dropped it.”
“Too bad the thief didn’t drop the whole reel,” said grumpy Uncle Charlie. “This doesn’t do us much good. All right, let’s get back to —”
“But we could use this, couldn’t we?” said Darleen. All the men (and Victorine) turned to look at Darleen in some amazement. Everyone knew better than to interrupt Uncle Charlie. Darleen had probably never intentionally interrupted Uncle Charlie since she’d precociously reached the age of reason at about four.
The advantage to breaking a rule like that the first time is that everyone is stunned for a moment, leaving, as it were, the door of opportunity swinging: Darleen pushed on through.
“I’ve thought about it. Uncle Dan, couldn’t we turn this into one of those intertitles that looks like, you know, a newspaper? Call it The Observer or The Post or something and then have a headline — no, two headlines! ‘EXILED PRINCESS KIDNAPPED OUTSIDE STRAND!’ with this picture, right? And then ‘WHO IS THIS MAN?’ Something like that?”
“Ah!” said Victorine (standing a little behind Darleen). That word was enough to let Darleen know Victorine had understood instantly the cleverness of this plan. Here was a way to get the kidnappers into trouble without going directly to the police.
People were so starry-eyed about the photoplays. They wanted to believe they were as true as true. If you ran the picture of someone like this in The Dangers of Darleen, Episode Nine, then you could be quite certain that people would be contacting the police with tips every time they saw a similar face. Most of the time, that would be a bit of unfair awfulness for the poor, innocent actor involved. But for once, this was no “poor, innocent actor.” Let him see his own face, labeled in a photoplay as what he really was, a kidnapper, and let him sweat!
Darleen’s heart swelled a little with pride, and that was even before her Papa’s face and her Uncle Dan’s face and even her Uncle Charlie’s face lit up with what you might call creative hope. They weren’t thinking about exposing kidnappers, of course, but they seemed to like what they’d heard.
“Could do that, Charlie,” said Uncle Dan. “What do you think?”
“Hmm,” said Uncle Charlie. “I figure we could open Episode Nine with a title like that. Then go to the attic scenes. Hmm. All right, let’s try it. Bill, you up for putting the title card together?”
“Sure,” said Darleen’s Papa, and he beamed
at Darleen — and then looked more closely at Victorine (who was standing right behind Darleen) and blinked a couple of times.
Uncle Charlie went back to shouting orders: “ALL RIGHT! EVERYONE BACK TO WORK! Darleen, five minutes!”
Everyone in this part of the studio began to find their places again. Darleen’s Papa now had the piece of film in his hands. He was cradling it, but he was looking at Victorine.
“Excuse me,” said Darleen’s Papa to Victorine. “My head’s a little fuddled ever since the thief conked me. What’s your name again, miss?”
“Goodwin,” said Victorine. “Bella Mae Goodwin. At least, that’s what my Matchless Photoplay form says. I’m an extra here, you know. Your daughter has been showing me how things are done. Oh, and I’m awfully glad you are mending, Mr. Darling!”
“Miss Goodwin,” said Darleen’s Papa. “But, dear child, have we met before? I feel somehow that we have. It seems to me — in a dream — you were kind, when I was ill, or perhaps I am mixing things up terribly . . .”
“Oh, Papa!” said Darleen, because she could see the puzzlement fogging up her father’s eyes. She could see also that Victorine was tongue-tied from the pressure of staying as close to the truth as possible despite leading a life now that was almost entirely based on deception — or at least “acting,” which may not be deception exactly but can feel like it’s coming pretty close. “Papa, you are right to think well of Miss Goodwin! She is kind! Oh, Papa, may she stay with us at our house tonight? She has had some misfortunes, and she has been a good friend to me these past few days while I was all alone and worried about you!”
“But of course, of course!” said Darleen’s father. He blinked a last time and came back, as it were, into focus.
“And now,” he said, “I’d better get to work on this clever idea of yours, Darleen. I’ll have one of the scenery people draw up a bit of fake newspaper for me if they aren’t too busy.”
“You know who also does a lovely job with writing and drawing?” said Darleen in a second fit of inspiration. “Miss Goodwin!”
Darleen’s Papa looked again at Victorine, this time with businesslike seriousness.
“Could you imitate a spot of newsprint, dear girl? I can show you some other title cards we’ve done in the past, along these lines.”
“Yes, Mr. Darling,” said Victorine. “I’m sure I can manage what you describe, with the help of pen and ink and paper.”
“We can rustle together all of that! Come with me, then. I’ll show you some of the ropes, since you’re a friend of my Darleen’s.”
And off they went, each being so very kind to the other, like a child and a grandpa in a photoplay, and Darleen’s heart felt a little more settled than it had in a long while. Now at least Victorine would have to hide a little less of herself.
And then Uncle Charlie’s voice rolled over their heads like a tidal wave and ended that peaceful moment:
“DARLEEN!” he was shouting. “TIME FOR YOUR DAYDREAM ABOUT THE LOST KING!”
One more little scene, that’s all I ask,” said Uncle Charlie. “We’ll get this done, and then I think Episode Nine will be ready to be chopped, dried, and served out on fine china!”
That was his odd way of saying developed and edited.
“All right, back into your ropes. This is a tender moment from your lonely captivity in the Salamanders’ attic.”
“Before the balloon rescues me, all on its own, with no person in it,” said Darleen.
“Correct,” said Uncle Charlie. “Now, is that exactly how the ropes went when you were tied up yesterday?”
“Day before,” said Uncle Dan.
“Day before yesterday, then,” said Uncle Charlie. “I’m just asking for us to be careful so that the foolish ropes don’t jump all over the place when we cut from one shot to the next. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? To want things to be smooth?”
The crew fussed with the ropes, and Darleen thought little hungry thoughts about luncheon while tamping down other, more fretful thoughts about how she would explain to her father that evening that she and Victorine would be heading into New York City the next day with Madame Alice Guy Blaché.
Meanwhile, Uncle Dan was fiddling with his camera. He had added a kind of bracket right in front of the lens, and into that bracket he was fixing a small dark card.
“What are you doing?” Darleen called over from her attic set to Uncle Dan, perched on his little ledge with the camera.
“Well, you’ll see!” said Uncle Dan. “It’s for the daydream!”
“But what do daydreams have to do with cards in front of the lens?”
Uncle Dan smiled from ear to ear.
“Saving a place for it,” he said. “Saving a place for the dream.”
That seemed more like poetry than an explanation, as far as Darleen was concerned. But Uncle Charlie was ready to get things underway. The set was almost the same as it had been two days ago, but the props and scenery people had tacked a black-velvet cloth over the whole of the attic back wall, and Uncle Dan’s camera was positioned a little differently, so that Darleen (tied up in those annoying ropes and slumped in that foolish chair) would now be in the left-hand part of the frame, against the black-velvet wall.
“All right, Darleen, dear,” said Uncle Charlie. “For this scene, all I need you to do is think about what you want most in the world.”
What? Darleen stared at him, and for a moment her head felt like all the ideas in it had been emptied out and replaced by black velvet.
“No, no, no! What kind of expression is that?” said Uncle Charlie (but with a smile, because Uncle Dan hadn’t been cranking the camera yet). “I mean, what I need you to do is to look like you’re thinking about what you want most in the world. Can you do that? We’ll do this scene three times, just to make sure we get a good one for Dan to work with. Ready, Dan?”
“Yep,” said Dan.
“All right, let’s go! Darleen, you’re trapped in that attic, you’re thinking about what you want, what you long for most in your life.”
And somehow those words sent Darleen’s brain spinning. Because, really, when she thought about it: What did she want most in life?
She knew her father’s answer, the dream he had had, and lost, and longed to have again: a quiet cottage; a little farm; roses; feet on the ground.
At the very thought of it all, the feeling gave a rebellious wriggle from somewhere deep inside. She pushed it back down.
Of course she wanted to be a good daughter.
Or at least not to be a bad one.
She knew, she knew: her Papa’s happiness depended on her.
“Feet on the ground,” she said to herself, and she made her inner self very stern. In fact, she scolded herself.
And the feeling kicked against all the secret ropes she had wound around it inside her soul, and it said a terribly wicked word: no.
Because it wanted her to be free; it wanted her to be real; it wanted her to want things that were not just everybody else’s dreams. It told her all of this without even bothering to use words; it just opened its wings the slightest bit, and she saw.
Try as she might, Darleen could never be an onion. No. She couldn’t be one clear thing, all the way through. She had been trying so hard to be good, but she couldn’t help it. It looked like she would always have secrets rustling inside her, wanting to come out and change her world.
The feeling danced a little in her heart — yes! yes! — but then it sagged again, like a balloon weighed down by sandbags, and the sandbags were all the reasons that that feeling of hers could never be allowed to soar off and take her wherever it wanted to go. She had promised her Papa she would not fly away.
“And maybe shed a tear or something, thinking of your Royal Father,” Uncle Charlie was saying.
That brought Darleen back to Matchless studios with a jolt. Oh, yes! For example, a better actress, a better daughter, a better person, would have been thinking of her Royal Father. Or at least of her unr
oyal Papa.
“Good!” said Uncle Charlie.
He had them do the scene three times over, and then finally Darleen could wriggle out of those ropes and be slightly freer once again, someone who could at least stand up and sit down and walk about whenever she wanted, even if sandbags still weighed down her wobbly heart.
They moved the camera very carefully over to the desk and wall of the mansion set, where the King was supposed to be suffering from amnesia and imprisoned by the wicked Salamanders.
Uncle Dan set up the camera just so, looking at Mr. Williams from a somewhat greater distance than he had used in the attic set. He switched out the card stuck in front of the lens too. Now it was three-quarters of a card, covering up all the bits of the frame that the previous card had left clear. Then he checked the camera’s position one last time while Mr. Williams strolled about, getting into his kingly persona.
“What’s the plan, Dan?” said Mr. Williams.
“You’ll sort of float,” said Uncle Dan. “Like a thought balloon in the comics, you know.”
Mr. Williams raised a kingly eyebrow and settled into his chair, his body positioned at an angle to the desk so that his kingly face could be seen to its best advantage by the camera lens.
“Here we go,” said Uncle Charlie. “Who’s running my stopwatch?”
That was a young man from the sets department.
“Thirty seconds,” said Uncle Charlie. “Shout out every ten, boy, you hear me? And . . . START!”
Uncle Dan cranked his film. Mr. Williams tried to look as much like a tender father as he could manage (considering he had no children of his own).
“Ten seconds!” said the young man with the watch.
“Good! And now, Mr. Williams, why don’t you stretch your arms longingly out to the right of you and down a bit?”
“Twenty!”
“That’s the way! It will look like you’re reaching for dear Darleen.”
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!”
Uncle Dan stopped cranking.
“That’s one done,” he said. “Two more chances.”