Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen

by Anne Nesbet

  “Stop, Dan,” said Uncle Charlie. “Well done, Darleen! All right, now we’re going to try something ambitious here, at Dan’s request. Stand aside, people, if you don’t want to risk death by scenery.”

  The scenery people were shifting things around at the front of the set. A whole new set was rolled over in front of the first set, and Uncle Dan’s camera on its little square perch moved back to make some room. The idea was that beyond the door Darleen had just come through (in actual fact, this was an entirely different door, somewhat larger than the first one), the camera would catch a glimpse of extras dancing.

  “Something fancy for Episode Nine!” said Uncle Charlie with pride. “We are pulling out all the stops this week here at Matchless!”

  Darleen’s job now was to slip behind a curtain and peer out.

  At the desk on this set was none other than Mr. Williams, of course, who played Darleen’s Royal Father in the serial. He had been missing from Matchless for the last few weeks while supposedly he was imprisoned by the Salamanders. (Mr. Williams, the actor, had in fact taken a break to go to see his ailing mother in Delaware.)

  “Hello, my dear Darleen!” he said. “Ready for our happy reunion? Only I’m afraid all the old biddies are going to be sobbing into their handkerchiefs because I won’t recognize you at first, you know.”

  “They told me about that,” said Darleen. She was very fond of good old Mr. Williams — they all were. “My Royal Papa has amnesia from being hit on the head.”

  “Indeed I do! Sorry, Charlie, just having a nice warm bit of conversation with my darling princess daughter, Miss Dahlia Louise, known to all the world as Daring Darleen.”

  Uncle Charlie was beginning to look like a volcano again.

  “Are you two ready to join the rest of us?” he said. “Some of us have a photoplay to film. Time’s a-ticking. Come on.”

  Mr. Williams stroked his kingly beard and gave Darleen a wink, and then he turned back to the prop document on his desk, which a Salamander, his face hidden behind a mask, was spreading out for him to read.

  “And we’ll GO!” said Uncle Charlie. The bad waltz started up again. Uncle Dan cranked the film through his camera.

  Darleen slipped through the doorway and behind the curtain that was so conveniently draped right to one side of the door.

  Uncle Charlie stopped the action and consulted with Uncle Dan.

  “Dancers in the background are looking pretty good!” said Uncle Charlie. “We’ll just pause to move the camera in a bit now.”

  That was done so that Mr. Williams (the poor exiled king of St. Benoix) and the wicked Salamander could be the focus of the next shots in that scene.

  Mr. Williams was an old hand in the Legitimate Theater (which was what he called the kind of acting done on fancy stages in front of rich people in furs), and liked to speak his lines out loud, so once the camera started cranking again, he and the man playing the wicked Salamander (not the head of the Salamanders, fortunately, which meant not Jasper Lukes — and thank goodness for that, thought Darleen from her hiding place behind the curtain) got into a fairly entertaining discussion.

  “This is the will and testament I’m supposed to bring to you, mister, so you can sign it all pretty and fast,” said the Salamander, hamming it up. He had not come in from the Legitimate Theater. There was not a hint of Shakespeare to be heard in his twang. Of course, it didn’t matter much that his phrasing was rough and tumble, because only the occasional lip-reader in the future audience would have any idea of the words he had actually spoken when the camera was filming. Most people would see the simple title card (“SIGN NOW, OR SUFFER THE WORST!”) and fill in any gaps in the conversation themselves.

  “Oh, can it be that I asked you to bring me this document, good man?” said the poor exiled King (oh, his gorgeous vowels! not to mention his consonants! But even the future lip-readers would never know how beautiful his diction was). “But I don’t remember any of this. A will? Why, I don’t even remember . . . my own name!”

  “Never mind, never mind, mister,” said the Salamander. “See, we’ve written it all up for you nice and tidy. You don’t have to be able to remember anything. Not to worry. Just sign it here like a good fellow.”

  “I’m so sorry to be causing such trouble,” said the poor exiled King, and Mr. Williams made a show of looking at the paper, rubbing his eyes, and putting his hands to his heart, to express his confusion and emotion.

  “Not at all,” said the Salamander. “Here’s a lovely quill pen. If you’ll just add your John Hancock to this piece of paper, we’ll be all done.”

  More emotion from the exiled, amnesiac King.

  “Please, good sir,” said the King. “Give me a moment alone. I get nervous when you hover that way. And I must say that horrible waltz is going to drive me out of my mind! Wish you had a good fiddler out there instead.”

  (Sometimes even Mr. Williams liked to ham things up a bit on set. He could even say one thing with his face while saying something entirely different with his voice. Mr. Williams also preferred to have a nice bit of violin playing along, to warm up the emotions of a scene. But there was no violin today.)

  “Five minutes,” said the Salamander. “And there’d better be a signature on this form by the time I get back — or else!”

  “Excellent! Good!” called Uncle Charlie from the front of the scene. “Bad guy leaves, closing the door behind him. That’s the way! HANK, YOU CAN QUIT THE OOM-PAH-PAH NOW!”

  The horrible piano playing stopped with a bit of a bang on the keys, and Darleen could hear the extras being moved off the set behind the thin wall. No more dancing was needed now that the door was closed.

  “Right, now Darleen!” said Uncle Charlie. “Creep out from behind those curtains and come up quietly, quietly, to Mr. Williams, your Royal Father! And you’ve been oh, so worried about him!”

  Darleen’s heart gave a twist in her chest; she couldn’t help thinking of her own dear, bashed-up, real Papa, recovering as best he could in Aunt Shirley’s armchair.

  “Not too slowly, now, my girl!” said Uncle Charlie. “This is an adventure picture we’re making, not a weepie.”

  But it was too late: Darleen was actually weeping. Actual tears were actually dripping down her cheeks. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours! And when Mr. Williams turned to look up at her, astonishment lit up his face.

  “But, my heavens, what’s wrong, dear girl?” he said, quite naturally.

  “Papa,” said Darleen. And in that moment, everything that mattered in the universe was held in that one little word. A hush fell over the set and began to spread, rippling out across the studio.

  “Are you looking for your father, my dear?” said Mr. Williams, who at this moment was entirely the King in Exile of St. Benoix, and also the brave, often-imprisoned father of Crown Princess Dahlia Louise. “But tell me, pray, how do you think I can help you? What is your name, my girl?”

  Darleen jumped a little and put her hands to her face for a moment (which was, fortunately, pretty much exactly what she was supposed to do), and then she was back on track again, enjoying this juiciest part of the scene, where she got to beg, beg, beg her Royal Papa to remember her, and to say things like, “I’m your own little Dahlia Louise! Don’t you remember me? Oh, what will we do now?” and so on.

  It was a great scene! At the end, the Salamander came back (Darleen hid behind those convenient curtains again), and when he saw that the poor, amnesiac King had not yet signed the new will (having been distracted by the girl he did not recognize as his daughter, the one now hiding again behind the curtains), that bad Salamander struck the poor fellow over the head with a conveniently placed statue (made actually of some very lightweight stuff, like an egg-white meringue, so Mr. Williams would not be damaged), and that blow, by the way and of course, made all of the King’s memories return! (It always worked that way in an adventure film.) You could see Mr. Williams, the King, saying, “Dahlia! Dahlia Louise!” as he was d
ragged out the door.

  “Well done, well done!” said Uncle Charlie, while Uncle Dan repositioned his camera. “One more bit now. Darleen: grab that will from the desk and climb out the window. Don’t worry, it’s stronger than the roof was this morning, or so say the carpenters.”

  There was some laughter here and there from those who had been around earlier in the day for Darleen’s fall from the rope.

  Darleen kept her scowl hidden inside. She went to the desk, picked up the will, and leaped right through that window as if it were an insignificant hurdle.

  The extras cheered!

  “And that’s it for today,” said Uncle Charlie. “Well, except for a few doorknob shots. Excellent work all around, and tomorrow we venture abroad: trains and balloons, out in the world. Get yourselves ready for that.”

  The technical crew huddled to figure out what needed to be transported for the next day’s shooting. Uncle Charlie and Uncle Dan slapped each other and Mr. Williams on the back. Most of the extras wandered away.

  Except for one extra extra, who was smiling from ear to ear at Darleen.

  “Do you know, Miss Darling, this has been the most extraordinary day of my life!” said ‘Bella Mae.’

  “More extraordinary than the Alps?” said Darleen.

  “I’m not sure whether Bella Mae would admit to having been to the Alps,” said Victorine, looking around briefly to see if anyone was within earshot. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be. “Pardon me, but may I see that paper in your hand?”

  It was the will. Darleen handed it over, and Victorine eyed it carefully, turning it over and over in her hands as if it were telling her some sort of secret.

  “I have to go back to Aunt Shirley’s now,” said Darleen. “I’ll be back later with some more food and things. Are you going to be all right?”

  “Absolutely fine,” said Victorine. “Perhaps better than fine. Oh, Darleen, I think I have the beginnings of what may prove to be a truly excellent idea — no, no, I won’t say a single word more about it, not yet. I’m thinking it all through!”

  Darleen checked in with her father (who was sitting up and looking much more like himself, though Aunt Shirley said she was keeping him out of circulation for one more day), and when she told him about the little trouble with the roof, it was like a balm for her spirit to be laughing about studio adventures again with her own dear Papa. Then she stayed for some supper and made off with some thick ham sandwiches for Victorine. She wasn’t going to sleep in her own comfortable bed at home and leave poor Victorine camping out alone at Matchless Photoplay. And when she got back to her dressing room at the studio, she found that Victorine had been at work, making improvements. She had borrowed a rug from somewhere, and their nest in the corner was at least half again as soft and cozy as it had been.

  And Victorine appreciated the sandwiches! In fact, she was quite radiant about them — but, as it turned out, not only about the sandwiches.

  “Dearest Darleen,” she said, very earnestly. “I don’t think any kidnapping in the history of kidnappings ever led to as lovely an adventure as I’ve been having. I meant what I said earlier: this has been one of the grandest days I can ever remember! I realize now how small my world has become since the death of my poor Grandmama.”

  Dar squeezed Victorine’s hand in sympathy and showed her the newspaper that had been waiting all day on the shelf here, along with the savory biscuits it had been used to wrap up. The biscuits were no longer as fresh as they had once been, but they tasted pretty fine all the same.

  “See this, Victorine? Your cousins are already saying you’ve drowned. They showed the police a pair of soggy shoes!”

  “So they wish!” said Victorine, looking like someone who would, in fact, be very hard to drown. “All those Brownstones care about is my Grandmama’s fortune, and not the fate of my Grandmama’s granddaughter, by whom I mean, you know, me. I wonder how long we have before everyone begins to believe their awful lies.”

  Darleen felt a great wave of indignant sympathy rise up in her heart.

  “Honestly, Victorine, you were practically kidnapped already, the way your relatives were treating you.”

  Victorine clapped her hands together.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And that has made me think most seriously about what my Grandmama said to me when she grew so very sick and it became clear that she . . . that she . . . wouldn’t be able to stay with me much longer, you know. It was the scene you were acting in today, Darleen, that made me think of it. Because, you know what? She was dictating to me the latest version of her last will and testament, and I was writing it down for her, all very neatly. She insisted I do it, not her. She wanted it in my handwriting, you see. She even had me sign her name for her. She was very firm about it.”

  “But isn’t that strange?” asked Darleen. “I mean, that’s not usual, is it, for wills?”

  “What you must understand about my Grandmama,” said Victorine, leaning forward as if she were sharing a great secret, “is that she was exceedingly intelligent and brilliantly eccentric, both at once. I don’t think I’ll ever know anyone quite like her. And she loved me to a wonderful degree.”

  “Of course she did!” said Darleen out of sheerest sympathy. “I mean, you’re intelligent and eccentric, too, aren’t you?”

  And then Dar blushed, because it did perhaps seem a forward thing to say. But Victorine didn’t look irritated at all. She seemed, in fact, pleased.

  “She was hoping for the best — hoping that Mr. Ridge, her lawyer, would prove a forceful advocate on my behalf, and hoping that whatever persons he deemed most suitable to help raise me would turn out to be kind. But she couldn’t help but realize that these hopes might be . . . unrealistic. And she worried about that quite a bit. Do you know what she said to me as I was writing out her will?”

  “No,” said Darleen, feeling almost as if she were watching a melodrama unfold on the stage or screen. “Tell me, please do. What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘Listen to me, Victorine. I do not trust any of them — I do not trust anyone in this great, wide world of ours — as much as I trust you.’”

  “Oh!” said Darleen. “How sweet of her!”

  “Not merely sweet,” said Victorine. “She was trying to tell me something very important, I think now. I think it was a kind of hidden message, a sort of code.”

  “Really?” said Darleen. This story was sounding more and more like a photoplay.

  “Really,” said Victorine. “Because listen to what she said after that. She said that the problem with wills is that their writers are, naturally, absent from the scene when the wills go into action. ‘And documents can be misused,’ she said. She said she was doing her best to leave a will that would protect me from ‘the greedy sharks already circling our little ship’ — though, to be honest, she stopped at that moment and added, ‘No, I’m misspeaking, of course. Our ship is not little. But it has felt small and cozy because you and I have shared it all these happy years. Our ship is large, and thus the sharks are many.’”

  “Do you actually have a ship, Victorine?” asked Dar. She was beginning to get lost in the tangles of Victorine’s story, or perhaps it was just the lateness of the hour that was making her eyelids flicker.

  “No ship,” said Victorine. “It’s a figurative expression. And so are the sharks. The sharks are actually, for instance, my awful cousins, who care not a fig for me but are after the Berryman fortune.”

  Darleen made herself sit up a little so as to pay attention properly.

  “They are sharks,” she said. “Horrible, kidnapping sorts of sharks. But we won’t let them have you.”

  “Thank you, Darleen,” said Victorine. “Your courage has already saved my life several times over.”

  (That, thought Darleen, really was an exaggeration.)

  “And I have grown more determined to be bold, as bold — as daring — as you are!”

  (Goodness! More exaggeration!)

  “I’m sure
you’re actually very daring already,” said Darleen. “And anyway, I don’t understand what being daring has to do with your grandmother’s will.”

  “But that’s the thing, exactly: Grandmama trusted me to be daring enough to take care of myself,” said Victorine. “Grandmama said as much at one point, though I didn’t understand her properly at the time. She said, ‘I’m trying my best to make this a will that will protect you, but if it fails to do so — or if, heaven forbid, it becomes a cage — then I count on you, Victorine, to do whatever is necessary to make it better.’ She said that, Darleen.”

  Darleen eyed the cracks and swirls in the boards of the dressing room wall. She was thinking about how complicated life was — how complicated even a single tree was when you turned it into planks and saw all of its secret inner patterns. But the thing was, you couldn’t change the pattern on a board once it was part of a wall. You couldn’t make it, for instance, better.

  “But, Victorine,” she said. “How can you do that? How can you make the will better? Oh!”

  A big thought had suddenly come into Darleen’s head.

  “Like the photoplay, you said,” she whispered. “They had rewritten the will in the photoplay. Are you saying —”

  “Yes, Darleen. My Grandmama had me write out her will in my own hand,” said Victorine. “And I think I finally understand why.”

  Darleen couldn’t help herself; for a moment she sounded just like her own Papa.

  “But that would be against the law. That would be forgery, and forgery is not just against the law, it’s — it’s —”

  “It’s a kind of lie, you mean to say,” said Victorine. “I know.”

  Darleen blinked in surprise, but Victorine’s truth-telling eyes looked as clear as they had always been.

  “I have been thinking about this so very seriously, Darleen,” said Victorine. “About why my Grandmama might want me to break my promise to tell only the plain truth — or worse, to do something against the law. And I think, you know, she loved me very much.”