He came to life the next morning, shivering under his blankets. It
must be cold outside. He glanced at his watch and reached for another
blanket, throwing it over himself and tucking it in at the foot. Then
he lay down again to screen a tense bit of action that had occurred late
the night before. He had plunged through the streets for an hour,
after leaving the pool, striving to recover from the twin shocks he had
suffered. Then, returning to his hotel, he became aware that The Hazards
of Hortense were still on. He could hear the roar of the aeroplane
propeller and see the lights over the low buildings that lined his
street.
Miserably he was drawn back to the spot where the most important of all
his visions had been rent to tatters. He went to the end of the pool
where he had stood before. Mr. Rosenblatt-hardly could he bring his mind
to utter the hideous syllables-was still dissatisfied with the sea’s
might. He wanted bigger billows and meant to have them if the company
stayed on the set all night. He was saying as much with peevish
inflections. Merton stood warming himself over the fire that still
glowed in the brazier.
To him from somewhere beyond the scaffold came now the Montague girl and
Jimmie. The girl was in her blanket, and Jimmie bore a pitcher, two
tin cups, and a package of sandwiches. They came to the fire and Jimmie
poured coffee for the girl. He produced sugar from a pocket.
“Help yourself, James,” said the girl, and Jimmie poured coffee for
himself. They ate sandwiches as they drank. Merton drew a little back
from the fire. The scent of the hot coffee threatened to make him forget
he was not only a successful screen actor but a gentleman.
“Did you have to do it again?” he asked.
“I had to do it twice again,” said the girl from over her tin cup.
“They’re developing the strips now, then they’ll run them in the
projection room, and they won’t suit Sig one little bit, and I’ll have
to do it some more. I’ll be swimming here till daylight doth appear.”
She now shot that familiar glance of appraisal at Merton. “Have a
sandwich and some coffee, Kid-give him your cup, Jimmie.”
It was Merton Gill’s great moment, a heart-gripping climax to a
two-days’ drama that had at no time lacked tension. Superbly he arose to
it. Consecrated to his art, Clifford Armytage gave the public something
better and finer. He drew himself up and spoke lightly, clearly, with
careless ease:
“No, thanks-I couldn’t eat a mouthful.” The smile with which he
accompanied the simple words might be enigmatic, it might hint of secret
sorrows, but it was plain enough that these could not ever so distantly
relate to a need for food.
Having achieved this sensational triumph, with all the quietness of
method that should distinguish the true artist, he became seized with
stage fright amounting almost to panic. He was moved to snatch the
sandwich that Jimmie now proffered, the cup that he had refilled with
coffee. Yet there was but a moment of confusion. Again he wielded an
iron restraint. But he must leave the stage. He could not tarry there
after his big scene, especially under that piercing glance of the girl.
Somehow there was incredulity in it.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to be going,” he remarked jauntily, and turned
for his exit.
“Say, Kid.” The girl halted him a dozen feet away.
“Say, listen here. This is on the level. I want to have a talk with you
to-morrow. You’ll be on the lot, won’t you?”
He seemed to debate this momentarily, then replied, “Oh, yes. I’ll be
around here somewhere.” “Well, remember, now. If I don’t run into
you, you come down to that set where I was working to-day. See? I got
something to say to you.”
“All right. I’ll probably see you sometime during the day.”
He had gone on to his hotel. But he had no intention of seeing the
Montague girl on the morrow, nor of being seen by her. He would keep out
of that girl’s way whatever else he did. She would ask him if everything
was jake, and where was his overcoat, and a lot of silly questions about
matters that should not concern her.
He was in two minds about the girl now. Beneath an unreasonable but very
genuine resentment that she should have doubled for Beulah Baxter-as
if she had basely cheated him of his most cherished ideal-there ran an
undercurrent of reluctant but very profound admiration for her prowess.
She had done some thrilling things and seemed to make nothing of it.
Through this admiration there ran also a thread of hostility because he,
himself, would undoubtedly be afraid to attempt her lightest exploit.
Not even the trifling feat he had just witnessed, for he had never
learned to swim. But he clearly knew, despite this confusion, that he
was through with the girl. He must take more pains to avoid her. If met
by chance, she must be snubbed-up-staged, as she would put it.
Under his blankets now, after many appealing close-ups of the sandwich
which Jimmie had held out to him, he felt almost sorry that he had not
taken the girl’s food. All his being, save that part consecrated to his
art, had cried out for it. Art, had triumphed, and now he was near to
regretting that it had not been beaten down. No good thinking about it,
though.
He reached again for his watch. It was seven-thirty and time to be
abroad. Once more he folded his blankets and placed them on the pile,
keeping an alert glance, the while, for another possible bit of the
delicious bread. He found nothing of this sort. The Crystal Palace Hotel
was bare of provender. Achieving a discreet retirement from the hostelry
he stood irresolute in the street. This morning there was no genial
sun to warm him. A high fog overcast the sky, and the air was chill. At
intervals he shivered violently. For no reason, except that he had there
last beheld actual food, he went back to the pool.
Evidently Mr. Rosenblatt had finally been appeased. The place was
deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of
the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr.
Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat
on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the
pitiful make-believe.
He rounded his shoulders and pulled up the collar of his coat. He knew
he should be walking, but doubted his strength. The little walk to the
pool had made him strangely breathless. He wondered how long people were
in starving to death. He had read of fasters who went for weeks without
food, but he knew he was not of this class. He lacked talent for it.
Doubtless another day would finish him. He had no heart now for visions
of the Gashwiler table. He descended tragically to recalling that last
meal at the drug store-the bowl of soup with its gracious burden of
rich, nourishing catsup.
He began to alter the scenario of his own life. Suppose he had worked
two more weeks for Gashwiler. That would have given him thirty dollars.
Suppose he had worked a month. He could have existed a long time
on sixty dollars. Suppose he had even stuck it out for one week
more-fifteen dollars at this moment! He began to see a breakfast, the
sort of meal to be ordered by a hungry man with fifteen dollars to
squander.
The shivering seized him again and he heard his teeth rattle. He
must move from this spot, forever now to be associated with black
disillusion. He arose from his seat and was dismayed to hear a hail from
the Montague girl. Was he never to be free from her? She was poised at
a little distance, one hand raised to him, no longer the drenched victim
of a capricious Rosenblatt, but the beaming, joyous figure of one who
had triumphed over wind and wave. He went almost sullenly to her while
she waited. No good trying to escape her for a minute or so.
“Hello, old Trouper! You’re just in time to help me hunt for something.”
She was in the familiar street suit now, a skirt and jacket of some
rough brown goods and a cloth hat that kept close to her small head
above hair that seemed of no known shade whatever, though it was lighter
than dark. She flashed a smile at him from her broad mouth as he came
up, though her knowing gray eyes did not join in this smile. He knew
instantly that she was taking him in.
This girl was wise beyond her years, he thought, but one even far less
knowing could hardly have been in two minds about his present abject
condition. The pushed-up collar of his coat did not entirely hide the
once-white collar beneath it, the beard had reached its perhaps most
distressing stage of development, and the suit was rumpled out of all
the nattiness for which it had been advertised. Even the plush hat had
lost its smart air.
Then he plainly saw that the girl would, for the moment at least, ignore
these phenomena. She laughed again, and this time the eyes laughed, too.
“C’mon over and help me hunt for that bar pin I lost. It must be at this
end, because I know I had it on when I went into the drink. Maybe it’s
in the pool, but maybe I lost it after I got out. It’s one of Baxter’s
that she wore in the scene just ahead of last night, and she’ll have to
have it again to-day. Now--” She began to search the ground around the
cold brazier. “It might be along here.” He helped her look. Pretty soon
he would remember an engagement and get away. The search at the end
of the pool proved fruitless. The girl continued to chatter. They had
worked until one-thirty before that grouch of a Rosenblatt would call it
a day. At that she’d rather do water stuff than animal stuff-especially
lions. “Lions? I should think so!” He replied to this. “Dangerous, isn’t
it?”
“Oh, it ain’t that. They’re nothing to be afraid of if you know ‘em, but
they’re so hot and smelly when you have to get close to ‘em. Anything
I really hate, it’s having to get up against a big, hot, hairy, smelly
lion.”
He murmured a sympathetic phrase and extended his search for the lost
pin to the side of the pool. Almost under the scaffold he saw the shine
of precious stones and called to her as he picked up the pin, a bar pin
splendidly set with diamonds. He was glad that he had found it for her.
It must have cost a great deal of money and she would doubtless be held
responsible for its safe-keeping.
She came dancing to him. “Say, that’s fine-your eyes are working, ain’t
they? I might ‘a’ been set back a good six dollars if you hadn’t found
that.” She took the bauble and fastened it inside her jacket. So the
pin, too, had been a tawdry makeshift. Nothing was real any more. As she
adjusted the pin he saw his moment for escape. With a gallant striving
for the true Clifford Armytage manner he raised the plush hat.
“Well, I’m glad you found Mrs. Rosenblatt’s pin-and I guess I’ll be
getting on.”
The manner must have been defective. She looked through him and said
with great firmness, “Nothing like that, old pippin.” Again he was taken
with a violent fit of shivering. He could not meet her eyes. He was
turning away when she seized him by the wrist. Her grip was amazingly
forceful. He doubted if he could break away even with his stoutest
effort. He stood miserably staring at the ground. Suddenly the girl
reached up to pat his shoulder. He shivered again and she continued to
pat it. When his teeth had ceased to be castanets she spoke:
“Listen here, old Kid, you can’t fool any one, so quit trying. Don’t you
s’pose I’ve seen ‘em like you before? Say, boy, I was trouping while you
played with marbles. You’re up against it. Now, c’mon”--with the arm at
his shoulder she pulled him about to face her-“c’mon and be nice-tell
mother all about it.”
The late Clifford Armytage was momentarily menaced by a complete
emotional overthrow. Another paroxysm of shivering perhaps averted
this humiliation. The girl dropped his wrist, turned, stooped, and did
something. He recalled the scene in the gambling hell, only this time
she fronted away from the camera. When she faced him again he was not
surprised to see bills in her hand. It could only have been the chill he
suffered that kept him from blushing. She forced the bills into his
numb fingers and he stared at them blankly. “I can’t take these,” he
muttered.
“There, now, there, now! Be easy. Naturally I know you’re all right or
I wouldn’t give up this way. You’re just having a run of hard luck. The
Lord knows, I’ve been helped out often enough in my time. Say, listen,
I’ll never forget when I went out as a kid with Her First False
Step-they had lions in that show. It was a frost from the start. No
salaries, no nothing. I got a big laugh one day when I was late at
rehearsal. The manager says: ‘You’re fined two dollars, Miss Montague.’
I says, ‘All right, Mr. Gratz, but you’ll have to wait till I can write
home for the money.’ Even Gratz had to laugh. Anyway, the show went bust
and I never would ‘a’ got any place if two or three parties hadn’t of
helped me out here and there, just the same as I’m doing with you this
minute. So don’t be foolish.”
“Well-you see-I don’t--” He broke off from nervous weakness. In his mind
was a jumble of incongruous sentences and he seemed unable to manage any
of them.
The girl now sent a clean shot through his armour. “When’d you eat
last?”
He looked at the ground again in painful embarrassment. Even in the
chill air he was beginning to feel hot. “I don’t remember,” he said at
last quite honestly.
“That’s what I thought. You go eat. Go to Mother Haggin’s, that
cafeteria just outside the gate. She has better breakfast things than
the place on the lot.” Against his will the vision of a breakfast
enthralled him, yet even under this exaltation an instinct of the
wariest caution survived.
“I’ll go to the one on the lot, I guess. If I went out to the other one
I couldn’t get in again.”
She smiled suddenly, with puzzling lights in her eyes. “Well, of all
things! You want to get in again, do you? Say, wouldn’t that beat the
hot place a mile? You want to get in again? All right, Old-timer, I’ll
go out with you and after you’ve fed I’ll cue you on to the lot again.”
“Well-if it ain’t taking you out of your way.” He knew that the girl
was somehow humouring him, as if he were a sick child. She knew, and
he knew, that the lot was no longer any place for him until he could be
rightly there.
“No, c’mon, I’ll stay by you.” They walked up the street of the Western
village. The girl had started at a brisk pace and he was presently
breathless.
“I guess I’ll have to rest a minute,” he said. They were now before the
Crystal Palace Hotel and he sat on the steps.
“All in, are you? Well, take it easy.”
He was not only all in, but his mind still played with incongruous
sentences. He heard himself saying things that must sound foolish.
“I’ve slept in here a lot,” he volunteered. The girl went to look
through one of the windows.
“Blankets!” she exclaimed. “Well, you got the makings of a trouper in
you, I’ll say that. Where else did you sleep?”
“Well, there were two miners had a nice cabin down the street here with
bunks and blankets, and they had a fight, and half a kettle of beans and
some bread, and one of them shaved and I used his razor, but I haven’t
shaved since because I only had twenty cents day before yesterday, and
anyway they might think I was growing them for a part, the way your
father did, but I moved up here when I saw them put the blankets in, and
I was careful and put them back every morning. I didn’t do any harm,
do you think? And I got the rest of the beans they’d thrown into the
fireplace, and if I’d only known it I could have brought my razor and
overcoat and some clean collars, but somehow you never seem to know
when--”
He broke off, eyeing her vaguely. He had little notion what he had been
saying or what he would say next.
“This is going to be good,” said the Montague girl. “I can see that from
here. But now you c’mon-we’ll walk slow-and you tell me the rest when
you’ve had a little snack.”
She even helped him to rise, with a hand under his elbow, though he
was quick to show her that he had not needed this help. “I can walk all
right,” he assured her.
“Of course you can. You’re as strong as a horse. But we needn’t go too
fast.” She took his arm in a friendly way as they completed the journey
to the outside cafeteria.
At this early hour they were the only patrons of the place. Miss
Montague, a little with the air of a solicitous nurse, seated her charge
at a corner table and took the place opposite him.
“What’s it going to be?” she demanded.
Visions of rich food raced madly through his awakened mind, wide
platters heaped with sausage and steaks and ham and corned-beef hash.
“Steak,” he ventured, “and something like ham and eggs and some hot
cakes and coffee and--” He broke off. He was becoming too emotional
under this golden spread of opportunity. The girl glanced up from the
bill of fare and appraised the wild light in his eyes.
“One minute, Kid-let’s be more restful at first. You know-kind of ease
into the heavy eats. It’ll prob’ly be better for you.”
“Anything you say,” he conceded. Her words of caution had stricken him
with a fear that this was a dream; that he would wake up under blankets
back in the Crystal Palace. It was like that in dreams. You seemed able
to order all sorts of food, but something happened; it never reached the
table. He would take no further initiative in this scene, whether dream
or reality. “You order something,” he concluded. His eyes trustfully
sought the girl’s.
“Well, I think you’ll start with one orange, just to kind of hint to
the old works that something good is coming. Then--lemme see”--she
considered gravely. “Then I guess about two soft-boiled eggs--no, you
can stand three--and some dry toast and some coffee. Maybe a few thin
strips of bacon wouldn’t hurt. We’ll see can you make the grade.” She
turned to give the order to a waitress. “And shoot the coffee along,
sister. A cup for me, too.”
Her charge shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. The juncture
was critical. He might still be dreaming, but in another moment he must
know. He closely, even coolly, watched the two cups of coffee that were
placed before them. He put a benumbed hand around the cup in front of
him and felt it burn. It was too active a sensation for mere dreaming.
He put sugar into the cup and poured in the cream from a miniature
pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma. Events thus far seemed normal.
He stirred the coffee and started to raise the cup. Now, after all, it
seemed to be a dream. His hand shook so that the stuff spilled into the
saucer and even out on to the table. Always in dreams you were thwarted
at the last moment.
The Montague girl had noted the trembling and ineffective hand. She
turned her back upon him to chat with the waitress over by the food
counter. With no eye upon him, he put both hands about the cup and
succeeded in raising it to his lips. The hands were still shaky, but he
managed some sips of the stuff, and then a long draught that seemed to
scald him. He wasn’t sure if it scalded or not. It was pretty hot, and
fire ran through him. He drained the cup--still holding it with both
hands. It was an amazing sensation to have one’s hand refuse to obey so
simple an order. Maybe he would always be that way now, practically a
cripple.
The girl turned back to him. “Atta boy,” she said. “Now take the orange.
And when the toast comes you can have some more coffee.” A dread load
was off his mind. He did not dream this thing. He ate the orange, and
ate wonderful toast to the accompaniment of another cup of coffee. The
latter half of this he managed with but one hand, though it was not yet
wholly under control. The three eggs seemed like but one. He thought
they must have been small eggs. More toast was commanded and more
coffee.
“Easy, easy!” cautioned his watchful hostess from time to time. “Don’t
wolf it--you’ll feel better afterwards.”
“I feel better already,” he announced.
“Well,” the girl eyed him critically, “you certainly got the main
chandelier lighted up once more.”
A strange exhilaration flooded all his being. His own thoughts babbled
to him, and he presently began to babble to his new friend.
“You remind me so much of Tessie Kearns,” he said as he scraped the
sides of the egg cup.
“Who’s she?”
“Oh, she’s a scenario writer I know. You’re just like her.” He was now
drunk--maudlin drunk--from the coffee. Sober, he would have known that
no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague
girl. Other walls of his reserve went down.
“Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got some money to go
back there--”
“Gashwiler, Gashwiler?” The girl seemed to search her memory. “I thought
I knew all the tank towns, but that’s a new one. Where is it?”
“It isn’t a town; it’s a gentleman I had a position with, and he
said he’d keep it open for me.” He flew to another thought with the
inconsequence of the drunken. “Say, Kid”--He had even caught that form
of address from her--“I’ll tell you. You can keep this watch of mine
till I pay you back this money.” He drew it out. “It’s a good solid-gold
watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester gave it to me for not
smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. He smoked, himself; he even drank
considerable. He was his own worst enemy. But you can see it’s a good
solid--gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till I pay you back,
will you?”
The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting the inscription
engraved on the case. There were puzzling glints in her eyes as she
handed it back to him. “No; I’ll tell you, it’ll be my watch until you
pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven’t any place to carry it
except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where’d we
be?”
“Well, all right.” He cheerfully took back the watch. His present
ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals.
“And say,” continued the girl, “what about this Gashweiler, or whatever
his name is? He said he’d take you back, did he? A farm?”
“No, an emporium--and you forgot his name just the way that lady in the
casting office always does. She’s funny. Keeps telling me not to forget
the address, when of course I couldn’t forget the town where I lived,
could I? Of course it’s a little town, but you wouldn’t forget it when
you lived there a long time--not when you got your start there.”
“So you got your start in this town, did you?”
He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life there,
of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie-acting. Of
Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they were sure to be
later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that
he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage. Didn’t she think that
was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn’t seem to sound
like so much? Anyway, he wished he had his stills here to show her. Of
course some of them were just in society parts, the sort of thing that
Harold Parmalee played--had she noticed that he looked a good deal like
Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had.
Tessie Kearns thought he was the dead image of Parmalee. But he liked
Western stuff better--a lot better than cabaret stuff where you had
to smoke one cigarette after another--and he wished she could see the
stills in the Buck Benson outfit, chaps and sombrero and spurs and
holster. He’d never had two guns, but the one he did have he could draw
pretty well. There would be his hand at his side, and in a flash he
would have the gun in it, ready to shoot from the hip. And roping--he’d
need to practise that some. Once he got it smack over Dexter’s head, but
usually it didn’t go so well.
Probably a new clothesline didn’t make the best rope--too stiff. He
could probably do a lot better with one of those hair ropes that the
real cowboys used. And Metta Judson--she was the best cook anywhere
around Simsbury. He mustn’t forget to write to Metta, and to Tessie
Kearns, to be sure and see The Blight of Broadway when it came to the
Bijou Palace. They would be surprised to see those close--ups that
Henshaw had used him in. And he was in that other picture. No close-ups
in that, still he would show pretty well in the cage-scene--he’d had to
smoke a few cigarettes there, because Arabs smoke all the time, and he
hadn’t been in the later scene where the girl and the young fellow were
in the deserted tomb all night and he didn’t lay a finger on her because
he was a perfect gentleman.
He didn’t know what he would do next. Maybe Henshaw would want him in
Robinson Crusoe, Junior, where Friday’s sister turned out to be the
daughter of an English earl with her monogram tattooed on her left
shoulder. He would ask Henshaw, anyway.
The Montague girl listened attentively to the long, wandering recital.
At times she would seem to be strongly moved, to tears or something.
But mostly she listened with a sympathetic smile, or perhaps with
a perfectly rigid face, though at such moments there would be those
curious glints of light far back in her gray eyes. Occasionally she
would prompt him with a question.
In this way she brought out his version of the Sabbath afternoon
experience with Dexter. He spared none of the details, for he was all
frankness now. He even told how ashamed he had felt having to lead
Dexter home from his scandalous grazing before the Methodist Church. He
had longed to leap upon the horse and ride him back at a gallop, but he
had been unable to do this because there was nothing from which to climb
on him, and probably he would have been afraid to gallop the beast,
anyway.
This had been one of the bits that most strangely moved his listener.
Her eyes were moist when he had finished, and some strong emotion seemed
about to overpower her, but she had recovered command of herself, and
become again the sympathetic provider and counsellor.
He would have continued to talk, apparently, for the influence of strong
drink had not begun to wane, but the girl at length stopped him.
“Listen here, Merton--” she began; her voice was choked to a peculiar
hoarseness and she seemed to be threatened with a return of her late
strong emotion. She was plainly uncertain of her control, fearing to
trust herself to speech, but presently, after efforts which he observed
with warmest sympathy, she seemed to recover her poise. She swallowed
earnestly several times, wiped her moisture--dimmed eyes with her
handkerchief, and continued, “It’s getting late and I’ve got to be over
at the show shop. So I’ll tell you what to do next. You go out and get
a shave and a haircut and then go home and get cleaned up--you said you
had a room and other clothes, didn’t you?”
Volubly he told her about the room at Mrs. Patterson’s, and, with a
brief return of lucidity, how the sum of ten dollars was now due this
heartless society woman who might insist upon its payment before he
would again enjoy free access to his excellent wardrobe.
“Well, lemme see--” She debated a moment, then reached under the table,
fumbled obscurely, and came up with more money. “Now, here, here’s
twenty more besides that first I gave you, so you can pay the dame her
money and get all fixed up again, fresh suit and clean collar and a
shine and everything. No, no--this is my scene; you stay out.”
He had waved protestingly at sight of the new money, and now again he
blushed.
“That’s all understood,” she continued. “I’m staking you to cakes till
you get on your feet, see? And I know you’re honest, so I’m not throwing
my money away. There--sink it and forget it. Now, you go out and do what
I said, the barber first. And lay off the eats until about noon. You
had enough for now. By noon you can stoke up with meat and
potatoes--anything you want that’ll stick to the merry old slats.
And I’d take milk instead of any more coffee. You’ve thinned down
some--you’re not near so plump as Harold Parmalee. Then you rest up for
the balance of the day, and you show here to-morrow morning about this
time. Do you get it? The Countess’ll let you in. Tell her I said to, and
come over to the office building. See?”
He tried to tell her his gratitude, but instead he babbled again of how
much she was like Tessie Kearns. They parted at the gate.
With a last wondering scrutiny of him, a last reminder of her very
minute directions, she suddenly illumined him with rays of a compassion
that was somehow half-laughter. “You poor, feckless dub!” she pronounced
as she turned from him to dance through the gate. He scarcely heard the
words; her look and tone had been so warming.
Ten minutes later he was telling a barber that he had just finished a
hard week on the Holden lot, and that he was glad to get the brush off
at last. From the barber’s he hastened to the Patterson house, rather
dreading the encounter with one to whom he owed so much money. He found
the house locked. Probably both of the Pattersons had gone out into
society. He let himself in and began to follow the directions of the
Montague girl. The bath, clean linen, the other belted suit, already
pressed, the other shoes, the buttoned, cloth-topped ones, already
polished! He felt now more equal to the encounter with a heartless
society woman. But, as she did not return, he went out in obedience to a
new hunger.
In the most sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized only in his
first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long time. Roast beef
and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he forget to drink the milk
prescribed by his benefactress. Plenty of milk would make him more than
ever resemble Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of dessert:
lemon pie and apple pie and a double portion of chocolate cake with
ice-cream. His craving for sweets was still unappeased, so at a near-by
drug store he bought a pound box of candy.
The world was again under his feet. Restored to his rightful domain,
he trod it with lightness and certainty. His mind was still a pleasant
jumble of money and food and the Montague girl. Miles of gorgeous film
flickered across his vision. An experienced alcoholic would have told
him that he enjoyed a coffee “hang-over.” He wended a lordly way to the
nearest motion-picture theatre.
Billed there was the tenth installment of The Hazards of Hortense. He
passed before the lively portrayal in colours of Hortense driving a
motor car off an open drawbridge. The car was already halfway between
the bridge and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announcement:
“Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture of the Century.” A
surprise picture indeed, if those now entering the theatre could be told
what he knew about it! He considered spreading the news, but decided to
retain the superiority his secret knowledge gave him.
Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, he was
compelled to endure another of the unspeakable Buckeye comedies.
The cross-eyed man was a lifeguard at a beach and there were
social entanglements involving a bearded father, his daughter in
an inconsiderable bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social
derelicts who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls also
arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely follow the
chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed made little effort
to do so. He felt far above the audience that cackled at these dreadful
buffooneries. One subtitle read: “I hate to kill him--murder is so hard
to explain.”
This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art where
earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order to give the
public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very day,
completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he was asked
to laugh at a cross--eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces
when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of the
afflicted creature’s image! This, surely, was not art such as Clifford
Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial and hardship, to confer
upon the public.
It was with curiously conflicting emotions that he watched the ensuing
Hazards of Hortense. He had to remind himself that the slim little
girl with the wistful eyes was not only not performing certain feats of
daring that the film exposed, but that she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt
and crazy about her husband. Yet the magic had not wholly departed from
this wronged heroine. He thought perhaps this might be because he now
knew, and actually liked, that talkative Montague girl who would be
doing the choice bits of this drama. Certainly he was loyal to the hand
that fed him.
Black Steve and his base crew, hirelings of the scoundrelly guardian who
was “a Power in Wall Street,” again and again seemed to have encompassed
the ruin, body and soul, of the persecuted Hortense. They had her
prisoner in a foul den of Chinatown, whence she escaped to balance
precariously upon the narrow cornice of a skyscraper, hundreds of
feet above a crowded thoroughfare. They had her, as the screen said,
“Depressed by the Grim Menace of Tragedy that Impended in the Shadows.”
They gave her a brief respite in one of those gilded resorts “Where the
Clink of Coin Opens Wide the Portals of Pleasure, Where Wealth Beckons
with Golden Fingers,” but this was only a trap for the unsuspecting
girl, who was presently, sewed in a plain sack, tossed from the stern
of an ocean liner far out at sea by creatures who would do anything for
money--who, so it was said, were Remorseless in the Mad Pursuit of Gain.
At certain gripping moments it became apparent to one of the audience
that Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt herself was no longer in jeopardy. He knew
the girl who was, and profoundly admired her artistry as she fled along
the narrow cornice of the skyscraper. For all purposes she was Beulah
Baxter. He recalled her figure as being--not exactly stubby, but at
least not of marked slenderness. Yet in the distance she was indeed
all that an audience could demand. And she was honest, while Mrs.
Rosenblatt, in the Majestic Theatre at Peoria, Illinois, had trifled
airily with his faith in women and deceived him by word of mouth.
He applauded loudly at the sensational finish, when Hortense, driving
her motor car at high speed across the great bridge, ran into the draw,
that opened too late for her to slow down, and plunged to the cruel
waters far below.
Mrs. Rosenblatt would possibly have been a fool to do this herself. The
Montague girl had been insistent on that point; there were enough things
she couldn’t avoid doing, and all stars very sensibly had doubles for
such scenes when distance or action permitted. At the same time, he
could never again feel the same toward her. Indeed, he would never have
felt the same even had there been no Rosenblatt. Art was art!
It was only five o’clock when he left the picture theatre, but he ate
again at the luxurious cafeteria. He ate a large steak, drank an immense
quantity of milk, and bought another box of candy on his way to the
Patterson home. Lights were on there, and he went in to face the woman
he had so long kept out of her money. She would probably greet him
coldly and tell him she was surprised at his actions.
Yet it seemed that he had been deceived in this society woman. She was
human, after all. She shook hands with him warmly and said they were
glad to see him back; he must have been out on location, and she was
glad they were not to lose him, because he was so quiet and regular and
not like some other motion-picture actors she had known.
He told her he had just put in a hard week on the Holden lot, where
things were beginning to pick up. He was glad she had missed him, and he
certainly had missed his comfortable room, because the accommodations on
the lot were not of the best. In fact, they were pretty unsatisfactory,
if you came right down to it, and he hoped they wouldn’t keep him there
again. And, oh, yes--he was almost forgetting. Here was ten dollars--he
believed there were two weeks’ rent now due. He passed over the money
with rather a Clifford Armytage flourish.
Mrs. Patterson accepted the bill almost protestingly. She hadn’t once
thought about the rent, because she knew he was reliable, and he was to
remember that any time convenient to him would always suit her in
these matters. She did accept the bill, still she was not the heartless
creature he had supposed her to be.
As he bade her good-night at the door she regarded him closely and said,
“Somehow you look a whole lot older, Mr. Armytage.”
“I am,” replied Mr. Armytage.
* * * * * * *
Miss Montague, after parting with her protege had walked quickly, not
without little recurrent dance steps--as if some excess of joy would
ever and again overwhelm her--to the long office building on the Holden
lot, where she entered a door marked “Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird,
Manager.” The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to
another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent low over
certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, rather phlegmatic
looking man, with a parrot-like crest of gray hair. He did not look up
as the girl entered. She stood a moment as if to control her excitement,
then spoke.
“Jeff, I found a million dollars for you this morning.”
“Thanks!” said Mr. Baird, still not looking up. “Chuck it down in the
coal cellar, will you? We’re littered with the stuff up here.”
“On the level, Jeff.”
Baird looked up. “On the level?”
“You’ll say so.”
“Shoot!”
“Well, he’s a small-town hick that saved up seventy-two dollars to
come here from Goosewallow, Michigan, to go into pictures-took a
correspondence course in screen--acting and all that, and he went broke
and slept in a property room down in the village all last week; no eats
at all for three, four days. I’d noticed him around the lot on different
sets; something about him that makes you look a second time. I don’t
know what it is-kind of innocent and bug-eyed the way he’d rubber at
things, but all the time like as if he thought he was someone. Well, I
keep running across him and pretty soon I notice he’s up against it. He
still thinks he’s someone, and is very up-stage if you start to kid him
the least bit, but the signs are there, all right. He’s up against it
good and hard.
“All last week he got to looking worse and worse. But he still had his
stage presence. Say, yesterday he looked like the juvenile lead of a
busted road show that has walked in from Albany and was just standing
around on Broadway wondering who he’d consent to sign up with for forty
weeks--see what I mean?-hungry but proud. He was over on the Baxter set
last night while I was doing the water stuff, and you’d ought to see him
freeze me when I suggested a sandwich and a cup o’ coffee. It was grand.
“Well, this morning I’m back for a bar pin of Baxter’s I’d lost, and
there he is again, no overcoat, shivering his teeth loose, and all in.
So I fell for him. Took him up for some coffee and eggs, staked him to
his room rent, and sent him off to get cleaned and barbered. But
before he went he cut loose and told me his history from the cradle to
Hollywood.
“I’d ‘a’ given something good if you’d been at the next table. I guess
he got kind of jagged on the food, see? He’d tell me anything that run
in his mind, and most of it was good. You’ll say so. I’ll get him to
do it for you sometime. Of all the funny nuts that make this lot! Well,
take my word for it; that’s all I ask. And listen here, Jeff--I’m down
to cases. There’s something about this kid, like when I tell you I’d
always look at him twice. And it’s something rich that I won’t let out
for a minute or two. But here’s what you and me do, right quick:
“The kid was in that cabaret and gambling-house stuff they shot last
week for The Blight of Broadway, and this something that makes you look
at him must of struck Henshaw the way it did me, for he let him stay
right at the edge of the dance floor and took a lot of close-ups of
him looking tired to death of the gay night life. Well, you call up the
Victor folks and ask can you get a look at that stuff because you’re
thinking of giving a part to one of the extras that worked in it. Maybe
we can get into the projection room right away and you’ll see what
I mean. Then I won’t have to tell you the richest thing about it.
Now!”--she took a long breath--“will you?”
Baird had listened with mild interest to the recital, occasionally
seeming not to listen while he altered the script before him. But he
took the telephone receiver from its hook and said briefly to the girl:
“You win. Hello! Give me the Victor office. Hello! Mr. Baird speaking--”
The two were presently in the dark projection room watching the scenes
the girl had told of.
“They haven’t started cutting yet,” she said delightedly. “All his
close-ups will be in. Goody! There’s the lad-get him? Ain’t he the
actin’est thing you ever saw? Now wait-you’ll see others.”
Baird watched the film absorbedly. Three times it was run for the sole
purpose of exposing to this small audience Merton Gill’s notion of
being consumed with ennui among pleasures that had palled. In the
gambling-hall bit it could be observed that he thought not too well
of cigarettes. “He screens well, too,” remarked the girl. “Of course I
couldn’t be sure of that.”
“He screens all right,” agreed Baird.
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think he looks like the first plume on a hearse.”
“He looks all of that, but try again. Who does he remind you of? Catch
this next one in the gambling hell--get the profile and the eyebrows and
the chin--there!”
“Why--” Baird chuckled. “I’m a Swede if he don’t look like--”
“You got it!” the girl broke in excitedly. “I knew you would. I didn’t
at first, this morning, because he was so hungry and needed a shave, and
he darned near had me bawling when he couldn’t hold his cup o’ coffee
except with two hands. But what d’you think?--pretty soon he tells me
himself that he looks a great deal like Harold Parmalee and wouldn’t
mind playing parts like Parmalee, though he prefers Western stuff.
Wouldn’t that get you?”
The film was run again so that Baird could study the Gill face in the
light of this new knowledge.
“He does, he does, he certainly does--if he don’t look like a No.
9 company of Parmalee I’ll eat that film. Say, Flips, you did find
something.”
“Oh, I knew it; didn’t I tell you so?”
“But, listen--does he know he’s funny?”
“Not in a thousand years! He doesn’t know anything’s funny, near as I
can make him.”
They were out in the light again, walking slowly back to the Buckeye
offices.
“Get this,” said Baird seriously. “You may think I’m kidding, but only
yesterday I was trying to think if I couldn’t dig up some guy that
looked more like Parmalee than Parmalee himself does--just enough more
to get the laugh, see? And you spring this lad on me. All he needs is
the eyebrows worked up a little bit. But how about him--will he handle?
Because if he will I’ll use him in the new five-reeler.”
“Will he handle?” Miss Montague echoed the words with deep emphasis.
“Leave him to me. He’s got to handle. I already got twenty-five bucks
invested in his screen career. And, Jeff, he’ll be easy to work,
except he don’t know he’s funny. If he found out he was, it might queer
him--see what I mean? He’s one of that kind--you can tell it. How will
you use him? He could never do Buckeye stuff.”
“Sure not. But ain’t I told you? In this new piece Jack is stage struck
and gets a job as valet to a ham that’s just about Parmalee’s type,
and we show Parmalee acting in the screen, but all straight stuff, you
understand. Unless he’s a wise guy he’ll go all through the piece and
never get on that it’s funny. See, his part’s dead straight and serious
in a regular drama, and the less he thinks he’s funny the bigger scream
he’ll be. He’s got to be Harold Parmalee acting right out, all over the
set, as serious as the lumbago--get what I mean?”
“I got you,” said the girl, “and you’ll get him to-morrow morning. I
told him to be over with his stills. And he’ll be serious all the time,
make no mistake there. He’s no wise guy. And one thing, Jeff, he’s as
innocent as a cup--custard, so you’ll have to keep that bunch of Buckeye
roughnecks from riding him. I can tell you that much. Once they started
kidding him, it would be all off.”
“And, besides--” She hesitated briefly. “Somehow I don’t want him
kidded. I’m pretty hard-boiled, but he sort of made me feel like a
fifty-year-old mother watching her only boy go out into the rough world.
See?”
“I’ll watch out for that,” said Baird.