Page 34 - tender-is-the-night

V

Rosemary went to Monte Carlo nearly as sulkily as it
was possible for her to be. She rode up the rugged hill to
La Turbie, to an old Gaumont lot in process of reconstruc-
tion, and as she stood by the grilled entrance waiting for
an answer to the message on her card, she might have been
looking into Hollywood. The bizarre débris of some recent
picture, a decayed street scene in India, a great cardboard
whale, a monstrous tree bearing cherries large as basket-
balls, bloomed there by exotic dispensation, autochthonous
as the pale amaranth, mimosa, cork oak or dwarfed pine.
There were a quick-lunch shack and two barnlike stages and
everywhere about the lot, groups of waiting, hopeful, paint-
ed faces.
After ten minutes a young man with hair the color of ca-
nary feathers hurried down to the gate.
‘Come in, Miss Hoyt. Mr. Brady’s on the set, but he’s very
anxious to see you. I’m sorry you were kept waiting, but you
know some of these French dames are worse about pushing
themselves in—‘
The studio manager opened a small door in the blank
wall of stage building and with sudden glad familiar-
ity Rosemary followed him into half darkness. Here and
there figures spotted the twilight, turning up ashen fac-
es to her like souls in purgatory watching the passage of a

34 Tender is the Night