|IF she strikes you as a girl you'd like to kiss, I should say, as a
general principle--well, kiss her.”
Thus Hy Lowe, musingly, seated on the decrepit flat-top desk between the
two windows of the studio, swinging his legs.
Peter Ericson Mann met this observation with contempt. “Right off, I
suppose! First time you meet her--just like that!”
The expert waved his cigarette. “Sure. Kiss her.”
“She murmurs her thanks, doubtless.”
“Not at all. She hates you. Won't ever speak to you again.”
“Oh, really!” Peter was caustic.
“She didn't think you were that sort; and won't for a minute permit you
to think she's that sort.”
“And then?”
Another wave of the cigarette. “Slow down. Be kind to her. If she's a
cross old thing, forgive her. Let her see that you're a regular fellow,
even if you did start from third base instead of first. Above all,
keep cool. Avoid tragedy, scenes. Keep smiling. When she does swing
round--well, you've kissed her. There you are!”
Peter surveyed his apartment mate with gloomy eyes. “Sue and Betty are
two very different girls,” said he.
“My son,” replied Hy, “I am not discussing persons. I am enunciating a
principle. What may have passed between friend Betty and me has nothing
to do with it.” He glanced at his watch. “Though I'll admit she is
expecting me around this evening. She doesn't hate me, Pete.... Funny
thing about Betty--she was telling me--there's a man up in her town
pestering her to death. Letters and telegrams. Wants to marry her. He
makes gas engines. Queer about these small-town fellows--they can't
understand a free-spirited woman. Imagine Betty cooped up like that!”
“I'm not likely to be kissing Sue,” growled Peter.
“My son, you've as good as done it already. From your own admission.
Asked her to marry you. Right off, too--just like that! Can't you
see it's the same thing in principle--shock and reaction! She'd have
preferred the kiss of course--”
“You don't know that?”
“The trouble with you, Pete, is that you don't understand women.
According to your own story again, you startled her so that she left you
on a country road and walked ten miles alone rather than answer you.
I tell you, get a woman real angry at you just once, and she can't be
indifferent to you as long as she lives. Hate you--yes. Love you--yes.
Indifferent--no.... You've started something. Give her time.”
“Time!” snorted Peter. “Time!” He paced the long room; kicked the closet
door shut; gave the piano keys a savage bang.
Hy watched Peter with growing concern. His eyes roved about the
smoke-dimmed, high-ceiled studio. They had lived well here--himself,
Peter and the Worm. Thanks to some unknown law of personality, they had
got on, this odd trio, through the years. Girls and women had drifted
into and out of their individual lives (for your New York bachelor does
not inhabit a vacuum)--but never before had the specter of marriage
stalked with disruptive import through these dingy rooms.
“Look here, Pete,” he said, “why be so dam' serious about it!”
Peter paused in his pacing and stared at Hy.... “Serious!” He repeated
the word under his breath. His long face worked convulsively behind the
large horn-rimmed glasses (not spectacles) and their black ribbon. Then
abruptly he rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
Hy sighed, glanced out at the weather (it was April), picked up hat,
stick and gloves and sauntered forth to dine comfortably at his club as
a ritualistic preliminary to a pleasant evening. That, he thought
now, was the great thing about bachelor life in town. You had all the
advantages of feminine companionship--in assorted varieties--and then
when you preferred or if the ladies bored you you just went to the club.
Peter sat on the edge of the bed, all nerves, and thought about Sue
Wilde. Also about six little bank books.
They had been his secret inner life, the bank books locked away in
the middle drawer of the desk on the side next the wall. Nearly seven
thousand dollars were now entered in those books--Peter's all. He
was staking it on a single throw. He had rushed in where a shrewder
theatrical angel might well have feared to tread. It was the wild
outbreak of a cautious impractical man.
He thought it all over, sitting there on the edge of the bed. It was
terrifying, but stirring. In his plays some one was always saving a girl
through an act of personal sacrifice. Now he was acting it out in life.
Indicating the truth to life of his plays.... He was risking all. But
so had Napoleon, returning from Elba, risked all (he did not pursue the
analogy). So had Henry V at Agincourt. After all, considered in this
light, it was rather fine. Certain persons would admire him if they
knew. It was the way big men did things. He was glad that Sue didn't
know; it was finer to take the plunge without so much as asking a
return. It was magnificent.
The word, popping into his thoughts, gave Peter a thrill. Yes, it was
magnificent. He was doing a magnificent thing. All that remained was to
carry it off magnificently.
He dragged his trunk from the closet. The lower tray and the bottom were
packed with photographs and with letters tied in flat bundles--letters
in various feminine hands. He stirred the bundles about. Some were
old--years old; others less so.
Peter regarded them with the detachment of exaltation. They could not
possibly mean anything to him; his life had begun the day he first saw
Sue Wilde.
He carried them into the studio, great armsful, and piled them about
the hearth. In the bottom drawer of the bureau were other packets of
intimate documents. He brought those as well. Then he set to work to
burn, packet by packet, that curiously remote past life of his. And he
smiled a little at this memory and that.
Closely packed papers do not burn easily. He was seated there on the
floor before the fireplace, stirring up sheets at which the flames had
nibbled, when Jacob Zanin came in.
Zanin stared and laughed.
“Bad as that?” said he.
Peter met this sally with dignified silence. He urged his caller to sit
down.
Zanin dropped his hat on the desk and disposed his big frame in the
Morris chair. His coat was wrinkled, his trousers baggy. Under his coat
was an old gray sweater. The head above the sweater collar was big and
well-poised. The face was hard and strong; the eyes were alight with
restlessness.
“I'm dog tired,” said Zanin. “Been rehearsing six hours straight.” And
he added: “I suppose you haven't had a chance to go over my scenario.”
“I've done more than that,” replied Peter calmly; “I've written a new
one.” And as Zanin's brows came down questioningly he added: “I think
you'll find I've pointed up your ideas. The thing was very strong.
Once I got to thinking about it I couldn't let go. What it needed was
clarifying and rearranging and building for climaxes. That's what makes
it so hard for our people to understand you Russians--you are formless,
chaotic.”
“Like life,” said Zanin.
“Perhaps. But not like our stage traditions. You wanted me to help you
reach a popular audience. That's what I'm trying to do for you.”
“Fine!” said Zanin doubtfully. “Let me take it along. I'll read it
to-night--go over it with Sue, perhaps.”
Peter shook his head.
“But I'll have to see it, Mann.”
“I'll read it to you--to you and Sue,” said Peter.
Zanin looked at him, faintly surprised and thinking.
Peter went back to the hearth, dropped on his knees and threw another
bundle of letters into the fire.
“The fact is,” said Zanin, hesitating, “I had some work planned for Sue
this evening.”
“No hurry,” remarked Peter.
“Ah, but there is.” Zanin hitched forward in his chair. The eager
hardness came again into his eyes. His strong, slightly husky voice rose
a little.
“Why? How so?” Peter settled back on his heels and poked the fire.
“Look here, Mann--everything's just right for us now. I've interested
the Interstellar people---that's partly what I came to say--they'll
supply studio stuff for the interior scenes and a camera man. Also
they'll stand a third of the expense. They're ready to sign whenever you
are. And what's more important--well, here's the question of Sue.”
“What's the question?”
“It's delicate--but I'll be frank.”
“Better be. You and I are going into this as business men, Zanin.”
“Exactly. As business men. Well--Sue's a girl, after all. In this thing
we are staking a lot on her interest and enthusiasm--pretty nearly
everything.”
“Of course.
“Well, she's ready--eager. I know her pretty thoroughly, Mann. I've
studied her. We have no real hold on her. She isn't a professional
actress, to be hired at so much a week. Her only reason for going into
it at all, is that she believes, with you and me, that the thing ought
to be done. Now that's all right. It's fine! But it's going to take
delicate handling. A girl acts as she feels, you know. Right now Sue
feels like doing my Nature film with all her might.” He spread out his
hands. In his eyes was an eager appeal. “God, Maun, that's all we've
got! Don't you see? Just Sue's feelings!”
“I see,” Peter replied. He threw the last heap of photographs on the
fire. “But what was the frank thing?”
Zanin hesitated; drummed nervously on the chair-arm. “I'm coming to
that. It's a bit awkward, Mann. It's--well, I am more or less in Sue's
confidence, you know. I'm with her so much, I can sense her moods....
The fact is, Mann, if you'll let me say so, you don't seem to understand
women.”
“So I've been told,” remarked Peter dryly. “Go on with it.”
“Well, Sue's got it into her head that you don't get the idea of
intelligent radicalism. That you're...
“That I'm a reactionary.”
“Yes--that you're a reactionary. She's worried about the
scenario--afraid you'll miss the very point of it.” Again he spread out
his large strong hands. “So don't you see why I'm eager to get hold of
it and read it to her”--he hesitated again, and knit his brows--“so I
can reassure her... You see, Mann, Sue just doesn't like you. That's the
plain fact. You've hit her all wrong.” He raised a hand to ward off
Peter's interruption. “Oh, we'll straighten that out all right! But
it'll take delicate handling--just now, while we're working out the
scenario and planning the trip south--and so, meantime...”
“You would like me to keep out of Sue's way as much as possible.”
“And leave everything to me, Mann. As it stands now, here she is, keen,
all ready, once she's solid in her mind about the right spirit of the
scenario, to start south with me...”
Peter waved the poker in a series of small circles and figure eights;
then held it motionless and sighted along it with squinted-up eyes.
“Why go south?” he asked.
Zanin gave a start and stared at him; then controlled himself, for the
expenses of that little trip, two-thirds of them, at least, must be paid
out of the funds entered in Peter's six little bank books.
“Why go south?” Zanin repeated, gropingly; then came back at Peter with
a rush of words. “Good lord, Mann, don't you see that we're putting over
a big piece of symbolism--the most delicate and difficult job on earth.
This isn't _Shore Acres!_ It isn't the _Doll's House!_ It's a realized
dream, and it's got to be put across with such quality and power that it
will fire a new dream in the public mind. I propose to spring right out
at 'em, startle 'em--yes, shock 'em; and all the time keep it where
they can't lay their vulgar hands on it. We can't show our Nature
effects--primitive, half-nude people--against a background of a New
Jersey farm land with a chestnut tree and a couple of oaks in the middle
distance!”
“Pretty fine trees, those!” observed Peter.
“Not for a minute!” Zanin sprang to his feet; his voice rang. “Got to
be remote, exotic--dream quality, fantasy all through. Florida or
California--palm trees and such. Damn it, the thing's a poem! It's got
to be done as a poem.”
He strode down the room and back.
Peter got up, very calm, rather white about the mouth and watched
him.... Dream quality? His thoughts were woven through and through with
it at this moment. A voice at his inner ear, a voice curiously like
Hy's, was murmuring over and over: “Sure! Kiss her.”
“Don't you see?” cried Zanin, confronting him, and spreading out those
big hands. Peter wished wildly that he would keep them in his pockets,
put them behind his back--anything to get them out of sight!... “Lets be
sensible, Maun. As you said, we're business men, you and I. You let me
take the scenario. I'm to see Sue this evening--I'll read it to her.
I'm sure it's good. It'll reassure her. And it will help me to hold her
enthusiasm and pave the way for a better understanding between her and
you.”
Quite unforeseen by either, the little matter of reading the scenario
had struck up an issue between them. All was not harmony within the
directorate of The Nature Film Producing Co., Inc., Jacob Zanin, Pres't.
“No,” said Peter. “I won't let you have it now.”
“But--good lord!--”
“I will think it over.”
Magnificent was the word. Zanin gulped down a temperamental explosion
and left.
Peter, as he came slowly back from the elevator to the apartment,
discovered that he still held the poker tightly in his right hand, like
a sword. He thought again of Napoleon and Henry V.
He stood motionless, by the window, staring out; moved by the histrionic
emotionalism that was almost his soul to stiffen his shoulders like a
king's. Out there--beyond old Washington Square where the first buds of
spring tipped the trees--beyond the glimpse, down a red-brick vista of
the Sixth Avenue Elevated--still beyond and on, were, he knew, the dusty
wandering streets, the crumbling houses with pasts, the flimsy apartment
buildings decorated in front with rococo fire escapes, the bleak little
three-cornered parks, the devastating subway excavations of Greenwich
Village. Somewhere in that welter of poverty and art, at this very
moment (unless she had walked up-town) was Sue Wilde. He tried to
imagine just where. Perhaps in the dim little rear apartment she shared
with Betty Deane, waiting for Zarin.
His gaze wandered down to the Square. There was Zanin, crossing it,
under the bare trees.
His grip on the poker relaxed. He moved toward the telephone; glanced
out again at the swift-striding Zanin; then with dignity, replaced the
poker by the fireplace, consulted the telephone book and called up Sue's
apartment.
Sue herself answered.
“This is Eric Mann,” he told her. “I want very much to talk with
you”--his voice was none too steady--“about the scenario.”
“Well”--over the wire he could feel her hesitation--“if it is
important....”
“I think it is.”
“Any time, almost, then...
“Are you busy now?”
“Why--no.”
“Perhaps you'd dine with me.”
“Why--all right. At Jim's, say.”
The color came rushing to Peter's face.
“Right away?” he suggested, controlling his voice. “All right. I'll meet
you there.”
Peter hung up the receiver and smiled. So Zanin was to see Sue this
evening, was he? “He'll need a telescope,” mused Peter with savage joy
as he hurried out.