Early he was up to bathe and shave. He shaved close to make it last
longer, until his tender face reddened under the scraping. Probably he
would not find another cabin in which a miner would part with his beard
for an Eastern trip. Probably he would have to go to the barber the next
time. He also succeeded, with soap and water, in removing a stain from
his collar. It was still a decent collar; not immaculate, perhaps, but
entirely possible.
This day he took eggs with his breakfast, intending to wheedle his
appetite with a lighter second meal than it had demanded the day before.
He must see if this would not average better on the day’s overhead.
After breakfast he was irresistibly drawn to view the moving picture of
his old home being dismantled. He knew now that he might stand brazenly
there without possible criticism. He found Jimmy and a companion
property-boy already busy. Much of the furniture was outside to be
carted away. Jimmy, as Merton lolled idly in the doorway, emptied the
blackened coffee pot into the ashes of the fireplace and then proceeded
to spoon into the same refuse heap half a kettle of beans upon which
the honest miners had once feasted. The watcher deplored that he had not
done more than taste the beans when he had taken his final survey of the
place this morning. They had been good beans, but to do more than taste
them would have been stealing. Now he saw them thrown away and regretted
that he could not have known what their fate was to be. There had been
enough of them to save him a day’s expenses.
He stood aside as the two boys brought out the cooking utensils, the
rifle, the miners’ tools, to stow them in a waiting handcart. When they
had loaded this vehicle they trundled it on up the narrow street of the
Western town. Yet they went only a little way, halting before one of the
street’s largest buildings. A sign above its wooden porch flaunted the
name Crystal Palace Hotel. They unlocked its front door and took the
things from the cart inside.
From the street the watcher could see them stowing these away. The room
appeared to contain a miscellaneous collection of articles needed in the
ruder sort of photodrama. Emptying their cart, they returned with it
to the cabin for another load. Merton Gill stepped to the doorway and
peered in from apparently idle curiosity. He could see a row of saddles
on wooden supports; there were kitchen stoves, lamps, painted chairs,
and heavy earthenware dishes on shelves. His eyes wandered over these
articles until they came to rest upon a pile of blankets at one side of
the room. They were neatly folded, and they were many.
Down before the cabin he could see the handcart being reloaded by Jimmie
and his helper. Otherwise the street was empty. The young man at the
doorway stepped lightly in and regarded the windows on either side of
the door. He sauntered to the street and appeared to be wondering what
he would examine next in this curious world. He passed Jimmie and the
other boy returning with the last load from the cabin. He noted at the
top of the load the mattress on which he had lain for three nights
and the blankets that had warmed him. But he was proved not to be so
helpless as he had thought. Again he knew where a good night’s rest
might be had by one using ordinary discretion.
Again that day, the fourth of his double life, he went the mad pace, a
well-fed, carefree youth, sauntering idly from stage to stage, regarding
nonchalantly the joys and griefs, the twistings of human destiny there
variously unfolded. Not only was he this to the casual public notice; to
himself he was this, at least consciously. True, in those nether regions
of the mind so lately discovered and now being so expertly probed by
Science, in the mind’s dark basement, so to say, a certain unlovely
fronted dragon of reality would issue from the gloom where it seemed to
have been lurking and force itself upon his notice.
This would be at oddly contented moments when he least feared the
future, when he was most successfully being to himself all that he must
seem to others. At such times when he leisurely walked a world of plenty
and fruition, the dragon would half-emerge from its subconscious lair
to chill him with its head composed entirely of repellent facts. Then a
stout effort would be required to send the thing back where it belonged,
to those lower, decently hidden levels of the mind--life.
And the dragon was cunning. From hour to hour, growing more restive, it
employed devices of craft and subtlety. As when Merton Gill, carefree
to the best of his knowledge, strolling lightly to another point of
interest, graciously receptive to the pleasant life about him, would
suddenly discover that a part of his mind without superintendence had
for some moments been composing a letter, something that ran in effect:
“Mr. Gashwiler, dear sir, I have made certain changes in my plans since
I first came to sunny California and getting quite a little homesick for
good old Simsbury and I thought I would write you about taking back my
old job in the emporium, and now about the money for the ticket back to
Simsbury, the railroad fare is--”
He was truly amazed when he found this sort of thing going on in
that part of his mind he didn’t watch. It was scandalous. He would
indignantly snatch the half-finished letter and tear it up each time he
found it unaccountably under way.
It was surely funny the way your mind would keep doing things you didn’t
want it to do. As, again, this very morning when, with his silver coin
out in his hand, he had merely wished to regard it as a great deal of
silver coin, a store of plenty against famine, which indeed it looked
to be under a not-too-minute scrutiny. It looked like as much as two
dollars and fifty cents, and he would have preferred to pocket it again
with this impression. Yet that rebellious other part of his mind had
basely counted the coin even while he eyed it approvingly, and it had
persisted in shouting aloud that it was not two dollars and fifty cents
but one dollar and eighty--five cents.
The counting part of the mind made no comment on this discrepancy; it
did not say that this discovery put things in a very different light. It
merely counted, registered the result, and ceased to function, with an
air of saying that it would ascertain the facts without prejudice and
you could do what you liked about them. It didn’t care.
That night a solitary guest enjoyed the quiet hospitality of the Crystal
Palace Hotel. He might have been seen--but was not--to effect a late
evening entrance to this snug inn by means of a front window which had,
it would seem, at some earlier hour of the day, been unfastened from
within. Here a not-too-luxurious but sufficing bed was contrived on the
floor of the lobby from a pile of neatly folded blankets at hand, and a
second night’s repose was enjoyed by the lonely patron, who again at
an early hour of the morning, after thoughtfully refolding the blankets
that had protected him, was at some pains to leave the place as he had
entered it without attracting public notice, perchance of unpleasant
character.
On this day it would not have been possible for any part of the mind
whatsoever to misvalue the remaining treasure of silver coin. It had
become inconsiderable, and even if kept from view could be, and was,
counted again and again by mere blind fingertips. They contracted,
indeed, a senseless habit of confining themselves in a trouser’s pocket
to count the half-dollar, the quarter, and the two dimes long after the
total was too well known to its owner.
Nor did this total, unimpressive at best, long retain even these poor
dimensions. A visit to the cafeteria, in response to the imperious
demands of a familiar organic process, resulted in less labour, by two
dimes, for the stubbornly reiterative fingertips.
An ensuing visit to the Holden lot barber, in obedience to social
demands construed to be equally imperious with the physical, reduced all
subsequent counting, whether by fingertips or a glance of the eye, to
barest mechanical routine. A single half-dollar is easy to count. Still,
on the following morning there were two coins to count. True, both were
dimes.
A diligent search among the miscellany of the Crystal Palace Hotel had
failed to reveal a single razor. The razor used by the miner should in
all reason have been found, but there was neither that nor any other.
The baffled seeker believed there must have been crooked work somewhere.
Without hesitation he found either Jimmie or his companion to be guilty
of malfeasance in office. But at least one item of more or less worried
debate was eliminated. He need no longer weigh mere surface gentility
against the stern demands of an active metabolism. A shave cost a
quarter. Twenty cents would not buy a shave, but it would buy at the
cafeteria something more needful to any one but a fop.
He saw himself in the days to come--if there were very many days to
come, of which he was now not too certain--descending to the unwholesome
artistic level of the elder Montague. He would, in short, be compelled
to peddle the brush. And of course as yet it was nothing like a
brush--nothing to kindle the eye of a director needing genuine brushes.
In the early morning light he fingered a somewhat gaunt chin and
wondered how long “they” would require to grow. Not yet could he be
taken for one of those actors compelled by the rigorous exactions of
creative screen art to let Nature have its course with his beard. At
present he merely needed a shave.
And the collar had not improved with usage. Also, as the day wore on,
coffee with one egg proved to have been not long-enduring fare for
this private in the army of the unemployed. Still, his morale was but
slightly impaired. There were always ways, it seemed. And the later
hours of the hungry afternoon were rather pleasantly occupied in
dwelling upon one of them.
The sole guest of the Crystal Palace Hotel entered the hostelry that
night somewhat earlier than was usual; indeed at the very earliest
moment that foot traffic through the narrow street seemed to have
diminished to a point where the entry could be effected without
incurring the public notice which he at these moments so sincerely
shunned. After a brief interval inside the lobby he issued from
his window with certain objects in hand, one of which dropped as he
clambered out. The resulting clamour seemed to rouse far echoes along
the dead street, and he hastily withdrew, with a smothered exclamation
of dismay, about the nearest corner of the building until it could be
ascertained that echoes alone had been aroused.
After a little breathless waiting he slunk down the street, keeping well
within friendly shadows, stepping softly, until he reached the humble
cabin where so lately the honest miners had enacted their heart-tragedy.
He jerked the latch-string of the door and was swiftly inside, groping a
way to the fireplace. Here he lighted matches, thoughtfully appropriated
that morning from the cafeteria counter. He shielded the blaze with one
hand while with the other he put to use the articles he had brought from
his hotel.
Into a tin cooking pot with a long handle he now hastily ladled
well-cooked beans from the discarded heap in the fireplace, by means of
an iron spoon. He was not too careful. More or less ashes accompanied
the nutritious vegetables as the pot grew to be half full. That was a
thing to be corrected later, and at leisure. When the last bean had
been salvaged the flame of another match revealed an unsuspected
item--a half-loaf of bread nestled in the ashes at the far corner of the
fireplace. It lacked freshness; was, in truth, withered and firm to the
touch, but doubtless more wholesome than bread freshly baked.
He was again on his humble cot in the seclusion of the Crystal Palace
Hotel. Half-reclining, he ate at leisure. It being inadvisable to light
matches here he ate chiefly by the touch system. There was a marked
alkaline flavour to the repast, not unpleasantly counteracted by a
growth of vegetable mould of delicate lavender tints which Nature had
been decently spreading over the final reduction of this provender to
its basic elements. But the time was not one in which to cavil about
minor infelicities. Ashes wouldn’t hurt any one if taken in moderation;
you couldn’t see the mould in a perfectly dark hotel; and the bread was
good.
The feast was prolonged until a late hour, but the finger--tips that
had accurately counted money in a dark pocket could ascertain in a dark
hotel that a store of food still remained. He pulled the blankets about
him and sank comfortably to rest. There was always some way.
Breakfast the next morning began with the promise of only moderate
enjoyment. Somehow in the gray light sifting through the windows the
beans did not look as good as they had tasted the night before, and the
early mouthfuls were less blithesome on the palate than the remembered
ones of yesterday. He thought perhaps he was not so hungry as he had
been at his first encounter with them. He delicately removed a pocket
of ashes from the centre, and tried again. They tasted better now. The
mould of tender tints was again visible but he made no effort to avoid
it. For his appetite had reawakened. He was truly hungry, and ate with
an entire singleness of purpose.
Toward the last of the meal his conscious self feebly prompted him to
quit, to save against the inevitable hunger of the night. But the voice
was ignored. He was now clay to the moulding of the subconscious. He
could have saved a few of the beans when reason was again enthroned, but
they were so very few that he fatuously thought them not worth saving.
Might as well make a clean job of it. He restored the stewpan and spoon
to their places and left his hotel. He was fed. To-day something else
would have to happen.
The plush hat cocked at a rakish angle, he walked abroad with something
of the old confident swagger. Once he doubtfully fingered the sprouting
beard, but resolutely dismissed a half-formed notion of finding out how
the Holden lot barber would regard a proposition from a new patron to
open a charge account. If nothing worse than remaining unshaven was
going to happen to him, what cared he? The collar was still pretty good.
Why let his beard be an incubus? He forgot it presently in noticing that
the people arriving on the Holden lot all looked so extremely well fed.
He thought it singular that he should never before have noticed how many
well-fed people one saw in a day.
Late in the afternoon his explorations took him beyond the lower end of
his little home street, and he was attracted by sounds of the picture
drama from a rude board structure labelled the High Gear Dance Hall. He
approached and entered with that calm ease of manner which his days on
the lot had brought to a perfect bloom. No one now would ever
suppose that he was a mere sightseer or chained to the Holden lot by
circumstances over which he had ceased to exert the slightest control.
The interior of the High Gear Dance Hall presented nothing new to his
seasoned eye. It was the dance-hall made familiar by many a smashing
five-reel Western. The picture was, quite normally, waiting.
Electricians were shoving about the big light standards, cameras were
being moved, and bored actors were loafing informally at the round
tables or chatting in groups about the set.
One actor alone was keeping in his part. A ragged, bearded, unkempt
elderly man in red shirt and frayed overalls, a repellent felt hat
pulled low over his brow, reclined on the floor at the end of the bar,
his back against a barrel. Apparently he slept. A flash of remembrance
from the Montague girl’s talk identified this wretched creature. This
was what happened to an actor who had to peddle the brush. Perhaps for
days he had been compelled to sleep there in the interests of dance-hall
atmosphere.
He again scanned the group, for he remembered, too, that the Montague
girl would also be working here in God’s Great Outdoors. His eyes
presently found her. She was indeed a blonde hussy, short-skirted,
low-necked, pitifully rouged, depraved beyond redemption. She stood
at the end of the piano, and in company with another of the dance-hall
girls who played the accompaniment, she was singing a ballad the refrain
of which he caught as “God calls them Angels in Heaven, we call them
Mothers here.”
The song ended, the Montague girl stepped to the centre of the room,
looked aimlessly about her, then seized an innocent bystander, one of
the rough characters frequenting this unsavoury resort, and did a dance
with him among the tables. Tiring of this, she flitted across the room
and addressed the bored director who impatiently awaited the changing
of lights. She affected to consider him a reporter who had sought an
interview with her. She stood erect, facing him with one hand on a hip,
the other patting and readjusting her blonde coiffure.
“Really,” she began in a voice of pained dignity, “I am at a loss to
understand why the public should be so interested in me. What can I
say to your readers--I who am so wholly absorbed in my art that I can’t
think of hardly anything else? Why will not the world let us alone? Hold
on--don’t go!”
She had here pretended that the reporter was taking her at her word. She
seized him by a lapel to which she clung while with her other arm she
encircled a post, thus anchoring the supposed intruder into her private
affairs. “As I was saying,” she resumed, “all this publicity is highly
distasteful to the artist, and yet since you have forced yourself in
here I may as well say a few little things about how good I am and how
I got that way. Yes, I have nine motor cars, and I just bought a lace
tablecloth for twelve hundred bones--”
She broke off inconsequently, poor victim of her constitutional
frivolity. The director grinned after her as she danced away, though
Merton Gill had considered her levity in the worst of taste. Then her
eye caught him as he stood modestly back of the working electricians and
she danced forward again in his direction. He would have liked to evade
her but saw that he could not do this gracefully.
She greeted him with an impudent grin. “Why, hello, trouper! As I live,
the actin’ Kid!” She held out a hand to him and he could not well refuse
it. He would have preferred to “up-stage” her once more, as she had
phrased it in her low jargon, but he was cornered. Her grip of his hand
quite astonished him with its vigour.
“Well, how’s everything with you? Everything jake?” He tried for a show
of easy confidence. “Oh, yes, yes, indeed, everything is.”
“Well, that’s good, Kid.” But she was now without the grin, and was
running a practised eye over what might have been called his production.
The hat was jaunty enough, truly a hat of the successful, but all below
that, the not-too-fresh collar, the somewhat rumpled coat, the trousers
crying for an iron despite their nightly compression beneath their
slumbering owner, the shoes not too recently polished, and, more than
all, a certain hunted though still-defiant look in the young man’s eyes,
seemed to speak eloquently under the shrewd glance she bent on him.
“Say, listen here, Old-timer, remember I been trouping man and boy for
over forty year and it’s hard to fool me--you working?”
He resented the persistent levity of manner, but was coerced by the
very apparent real kindness in her tone. “Well,” he looked about the set
vaguely in his discomfort, “you see, right now I’m between pictures--you
know how it is.”
Again she searched his eyes and spoke in a lower tone: “Well, all
right--but you needn’t blush about it, Kid.” The blush she detected
became more flagrant.
“Well, I--you see--” he began again, but he was saved from being
explicit by the call of an assistant director.
“Miss Montague. Miss Montague--where’s that Flips girl--on the set,
please.” She skipped lightly from him. When she returned a little later
to look for him he had gone.
He went to bed that night when darkness had made this practicable, and
under his blankets whiled away a couple of wakeful hours by running
tensely dramatic films of breakfast, dinner, and supper at the Gashwiler
home. It seemed that you didn’t fall asleep so quickly when you had
eaten nothing since early morning. Never had he achieved such perfect
photography as now of the Gashwiler corned-beef hash and light biscuits,
the Gashwiler hot cakes and sausage, and never had Gashwiler so
impressively carved the Saturday night four-rib roast of tender beef.
Gashwiler achieved a sensational triumph in the scene, being accorded
all the close--ups that the most exacting of screen actors could wish.
His knife-work was perfect. He held his audience enthralled by his
technique.
Mrs. Gashwiler, too, had a small but telling part in the drama to-night;
only a character bit, but one of those poignant bits that stand out in
the memory. The subtitle was, “Merton, won’t you let me give you another
piece of the mince pie?” That was all, and yet, as screen artists say,
it got over. There came very near to being not a dry eye in the
house when the simple words were flashed beside an insert of thick,
flaky-topped mince pies with quarters cut from them to reveal their
noble interiors
Sleep came at last while he was regretting that lawless orgy of the
morning. He needn’t have cleaned up those beans in that silly way.
He could have left a good half of them. He ran what might have been
considered a split-reel comedy of the stew-pan’s bottom still covered
with perfectly edible beans lightly protected with Nature’s own
pastel-tinted shroud for perishing vegetable matter and diversified here
and there with casual small deposits of ashes.
In the morning something good really did happen. As he folded his
blankets in the gray light a hard object rattled along the floor from
them. He picked this up before he recognized it as a mutilated fragment
from the stale half--loaf of bread he had salvaged. He wondered how he
could have forgotten it, even in the plenitude of his banquet. There it
was, a mere nubbin of crust and so hard it might almost have been taken
for a petrified specimen of prehistoric bread. Yet it proved to be
rarely palatable. It’s flavour was exquisite. It melted in the mouth.
Somewhat refreshed by this modest cheer, he climbed from the window of
the Crystal Palace with his mind busy on two tracks. While the letter to
Gashwiler composed itself, with especially clear directions about where
the return money should be sent, he was also warning himself to remain
throughout the day at a safe distance from the door of the cafeteria. He
had proved the wisdom of this even the day before that had started with
a bounteous breakfast. To-day the aroma of cooked food occasionally
wafted from the cafeteria door would prove, he was sure, to be more than
he could bear.
He rather shunned the stages to-day, keeping more to himself. The
collar, he had to confess, was no longer, even to the casual eye, what
a successful screen-actor’s collar should be. The sprouting beard
might still be misconstrued as the whim of a director sanctified
to realism--every day it was getting to look more like that--but no
director would have commanded the wearing of such a collar except in
actual work where it might have been a striking detail in the apparel of
an underworldling, one of those creatures who became the tools of
rich but unscrupulous roues who are bent upon the moral destruction of
beautiful young screen heroines. He knew it was now that sort of collar.
No use now in pretending that it had been worn yesterday for the first
time.