looking expectantly at the approaching Merton Gill. The three happy children who came up with him left no one in doubt of the late happening.
Merton was still the artist. He saw himself approach Dexter, vault into the saddle, put spurs to the beast, and swiftly disappear down the street. People would be saying that he should not be let to ride so fast through a city street. He was worse than Gus Giddings. But he saw this only with his artist’s eye. In sordid fact he went up to Dexter, seized the trailing bridle reins and jerked savagely upon them. Back over the trail he led his good old pal. And for other later churchgoers there were the shrill voices of friendly children to tell what had happened–to appeal confidently to Merton, vaguely ahead in the twilight, to confirm their interesting story.
Dexter, the anarchist, was put to bed without his goodnight kiss. Good old Pinto had done his pal dirt. Never again would he be given a part in Buck Benson’s company. Across the alley came the voices of tired, happy children, in the appeal for an encore. “Mer-tun, please let him do it to you again.” “Mer-tun, please let him do it to you again.”
And to the back porch came Mrs. Gashwiler to say it was a good thing he’d got that clothesline back, and came her husband wishing to be told what outlandish notion Merton Gill would next get into the thing he called his head. It was the beginning of the end.
Followed a week of strained relations with the Gashwiler household, including Dexter, and another week of relations hardly more cordial. But thirty dollars was added to the hoard which was now counted almost nightly. And the cruder wits of the village had made rather a joke of Merton’s adventure. Some were tasteless enough to rally him coarsely upon the crowded street or at the post office while he awaited his magazines.
And now there were two hundred and seventy-five dollars to put him forever beyond their jibes. He carefully rehearsed a scathing speech for Gashwiler. He would tell him what he thought of him. That merchant would learn from it some things that would do him good if he believed them, but probably he wouldn’t believe them. He would also see that he had done his faithful employee grave injustices. And he would be left, in some humiliation, having found, as Merton Gill took himself forever out of retail trade, that two could play on words as well as one. It was a good warm speech, and its author knew every word of it from mumbled rehearsal during the two weeks, at times when Gashwiler merely thought he was being queer again.
At last came the day when he decided to recite it in full to the man for whom it had been composed. He confronted him, accordingly, at a dull moment on the third Monday morning, burning with his message.
He looked Gashwiler firmly in the eye and said in halting tones, “Mr. Gashwiler, now, I’ve been thinking I’d like to go West for a while–to California, if you could arrange to let me off, please.” And Mr. Gashwiler had replied, “Well, now, that is a surprise. When was you wishing to go, Merton?”
“Why, I would be much obliged if you’d let me get off to-night on No. 4, Mr. Gashwiler, and I know you can get Spencer Grant to take my place, because I asked him yester-day.”
“Very well, Merton. Send Spencer Grant in to see me, and you can get off to-night. I hope you’ll have a good time.”
“Of course, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I may locate out there. But then again–“
“That’s all right, Merton. Any time you come back you can have your same old job. You’ve been a good man, and they ain’t so plenty these days.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gashwiler.”
No. 4 was made to stop at Simsbury for a young man who was presently commanding a meal in the palatial diner, and who had, before this meal was eaten, looked out with compassion upon two Simsbury-like hamlets that the train rushed by, a blur of small-towners standing on their depot platforms to envy the inmates of that splendid structure.
At last it was Western Stuff and no fooling.
CHAPTER IV
THE WATCHER AT THE GATE
The street leading to the Holden motion-picture studio, considered by itself, lacks beauty. Flanking it for most of the way from the boulevard to the studio gate are vacant lots labelled with their prices and appeals to the passer to buy them. Still their prices are high enough to mark the thoroughfare as one out of the common, and it is further distinguished by two rows of lofty eucalyptus trees. These have a real feathery beauty, and are perhaps a factor in the seemingly exorbitant prices demanded for the choice bungalow and home sites they shade. Save for a casual pioneer bungalow or two, there are no buildings to attract the notice until one reaches a high fence that marks the beginning of the Holden lot. Back of this fence is secreted a microcosmos, a world in little, where one may encounter strange races of people in their native dress and behold, by walking a block, cities actually apart by league upon league of the earth’s surface and separated by centuries of time.
To penetrate this city of many cities, and this actual present of the remote past, one must be of a certain inner elect. Hardly may one enter by assuming the disguise of a native, as daring explorers have sometimes overcome the difficulty of entering other strange cities. Its gate, reached after passing along an impressive expanse of the reticent fence, is watched by a guardian. He is a stoatish man of middle age, not neatly dressed, and of forbidding aspect. His face is ruthless, with a very knowing cynicism. He is there, it would seem, chiefly to keep people out of the delightful city, though from time to time he will bow an assent or wave it with the hand clutching his evening newspaper to one of the favoured lawful inmates, who will then carelessly saunter or drive an expensive motor car through the difficult portal.
Standing across the street, one may peer through this portal into an avenue of the forbidden city. There is an exciting glimpse of greensward, flowering shrubbery, roses, vines, and a vista of the ends of enormous structures painted yellow. And this avenue is sprightly with the passing of enviable persons who are rightly there, some in alien garb, some in the duller uniform of the humble artisan, some in the pressed and garnished trappings of rich overlords.
It is really best to stand across the street for this clandestine view of heart-shaking delights. If you stand close to the gate to peer past the bulky shape of the warder he is likely to turn and give you a cold look. Further, he is averse to light conversation, being always morosely absorbed–yet with an eye ever alert for intrusive outlanders–in his evening paper. He never reads a morning paper, but has some means of obtaining at an early hour each morning a pink or green evening paper that shrieks with crimson headlines. Such has been his reading through all time, and this may have been an element in shaping his now inveterate hostility toward those who would engage him in meaningless talk. Even in accepting the gift of an excellent cigar he betrays only a bored condescension. There is no relenting of countenance, no genial relaxing of an ingrained suspicion toward all who approach him, no cordiality, in short, such as would lead you to believe that he might be glad to look over a bunch of stills taken by the most artistic photographer in all Simsbury, Illinois. So you let him severely alone after a bit, and go to stand across the street, your neatly wrapped art studies under your arm, and leaning against the trunk of a eucalyptus tree, you stare brazenly past him into the city of wonders.
It is thus we first observe that rising young screen actor, Clifford Armytage, beginning the tenth day of his determined effort to become much more closely identified with screen activities than hitherto. Ten days of waiting outside the guarded gate had been his, but no other ten days of his life had seemed so eventful or passed so swiftly. For at last he stood before his goal, had actually fastened his eyes upon so much of it as might be seen through its gate. Never had he achieved so much downright actuality.
Back in Simsbury on a Sunday morning he had often strolled over to the depot at early train time for a sight of the two metal containers housing the films shown at the Bijou Palace the day before. They would be on the platform, pasted over with express labels. He would stand by them, even touch them, examine the padlocks, turn them over, heft them; actually hold within his grasp the film wraith of Beulah Baxter in a terrific installment of The Hazards of Hortense. Those metal containers imprisoned so much of beauty, of daring, of young love striving against adverse currents– held the triumphant fruiting of Miss Baxter’s toil and struggle and sacrifice to give the public something better and finer. Often he had caressed the crude metal with a reverent hand, as if his wonder woman herself stood there to receive his homage.
That was actuality, in a way. But here it was in full measure, without mental subterfuge or vain imaginings. Had he not beheld from this post–he was pretty sure he had–Miss Baxter herself, swathed in costly furs, drive a robin’s-egg-blue roadster through the gate without even a nod to the warder? Indeed, that one glimpse of reality had been worth his ten days of waiting–worth all his watching of the gate and its keeper until he knew every dent in the keeper’s derby hat, every bristle in his unkempt mustache, every wrinkle of his inferior raiment, and every pocket from which throughout the day he would vainly draw matches to relight an apparently fireproof cigar. Surely waiting thus rewarded could not be called barren. When he grew tired of standing he could cross the street and rest on a low bench that encircled one of the eucalyptus trees. Here were other waiters without the pale, usually men of strongly marked features, with a tendency to extremes in stature or hair or beards or noses, and not conspicuously neat in attire. These, he discovered, were extras awaiting employment, many of them Mexicans or strange-appearing mongrels, with a sprinkling of Negroes. Often he could have recruited there a band of outlaws for desperate deeds over the border. He did not fraternize with these waifs, feeling that his was another plane.
He had spent three days thus about the studio gate when he learned of the existence of another entrance. This was a door almost opposite the bench. He ventured through it and discovered a bare room with a wooden seat running about its sides. In a partition opposite the entrance was a small window and over it the words “Casting Director.” One of the two other doors led to the interior, and through this he observed pass many of the chosen. Another door led to the office of the casting director, glimpses of which could be obtained through the little window.
The waiting room itself was not only bare as to floor and walls, but was bleak and inhospitable in its general effect. The wooden seat was uncomfortable, and those who sat upon it along the dull-toned walls appeared depressed and unhopeful, especially after they had braved a talk through the little window with someone who seemed always to be saying, “No, nothing to-day. Yes, perhaps next week. I have your address.” When the aspirants were women, as they mostly were, the someone back of the window would add “dear” to the speech: “No, nothing to-day, dear.”
There seemed never to be anything to-day, and Clifford Armytage spent very little of his waiting time in this room. It made him uncomfortable to be stared at by other applicants, whether they stared casually, incuriously, or whether they seemed to appraise him disparagingly, as if telling him frankly that for him there would never be anything to-day.
Then he saw that he, too, must undergo that encounter at the little window. Too apparently he was not getting anywhere by loitering about outside. It was exciting, but the producers would hardly look there for new talent.
He chose a moment for this encounter when the waiting room was vacant, not caring to be stared at when he took this first step in forming a connection that was to be notable in screen annals. He approached the window, bent his head, and encountered the gaze of a small, comely woman with warm brown eyes, neat reddish hair, and a quick manner. The gaze was shrewd; it seemed to read all that was needed to be known of this new candidate.
“Yes?” said the woman.
She looked tired and very businesslike, but her manner was not unkind. The novice was at once reassured. He was presently explaining to her that he wished to act in the pictures at this particular studio. No, he had not had much experience; that is, you could hardly call it experience in actual acting, but he had finished a course of study and had a diploma from the General Film Production Company of Stebbinsville, Arkansas, certifying him to be a competent screen actor. And of course he would not at first expect a big part. He would be glad to take a small part to begin with– almost any small part until he could familiarize himself with studio conditions. And here was a bunch of stills that would give any one an idea of the range of parts he was prepared to play, society parts in a full-dress suit, or soldier parts in a trench coat and lieutenant’s cap, or juveniles in the natty suit with the belted coat, and in the storm-king model belted overcoat. And of course Western stuff–these would give an idea of what he could do–cowboy outfit and all that sort of thing, chaps and spurs and guns and so forth. And he was prepared to work hard and struggle and sacrifice in order to give the public something better and finer, and would it be possible to secure some small part at once? Was a good all-round actor by any chance at that moment needed in the company of Miss Beulah Baxter, because he would especially like such a part, and he would be ready to start to work at any time–to-morrow, or even to- day.
The tired little woman beyond the opening listened patiently to this, interrupting several times to say over an insistent telephone, “No, nothing to-day, dear.” She looked at the stills with evident interest and curiously studied the face of the speaker as she listened. She smiled wearily when he was through and spoke briskly.
“Now, I’ll tell you, son; all that is very nice, but you haven’t had a lick of real experience yet, have you?–and things are pretty quiet on the lot just now. To-day there are only two companies shooting. So you couldn’t get anything to-day or to-morrow or probably for a good many days after that, and it won’t be much when you get it. You may get on as an extra after a while when some of the other companies start shooting, but I can’t promise anything, you understand. What you do now–leave me your name and address and telephone number.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the applicant, and supplied these data.
“Clifford Armytage!” exclaimed the woman. “I’ll say that’s some warm name!”
“Well, you see”–he paused, but resolved to confide freely in this friendly seeming person–“you see, I picked that out for a good name to act under. It sounds good, doesn’t it? And my own right name is only Merton Gill, so I thought I’d better have something that sounded a little more–well, you know.”
“Sure!” said the woman. “All right, have any name you want; but I think I’ll call you Merton when you come again. You needn’t act with me, you know. Now, let’s see–name, age, height, good general wardrobe, house address, telephone number–oh, yes, tell me where I can find you during the day.”
“Right out here,” he replied firmly. “I’m going to stick to this studio and not go near any of the others. If I’m not in this room I’ll be just outside there, on that bench around the tree, or just across the street where you can see through the gate and watch the people go through.”
“Say!” Again the woman searched his face and broke into her friendly smile. “Say, you’re a real nut, aren’t you? How’d you ever get this way?”
And again he was talking, telling now of his past and his struggles to educate himself as a screen actor–one of the best. He spoke of Simsbury and Gashwiler and of Lowell Hardy who took his stills, and of Tessie Kearns, whose sympathy and advice had done so much to encourage him. The woman was joyously attentive. Now she did more than smile. She laughed at intervals throughout the narrative, though her laughter seemed entirely sympathetic and in no way daunted the speaker.
“Well, Merton, you’re a funny one–I’ll say that. You’re so kind of ignorant and appealing. And you say this Bughalter or Gigwater or whatever his name is will take you back into the store any time? Well, that’s a good thing to remember, because the picture game is a hard game. I wouldn’t discourage a nice clean boy like you for the world, but there are a lot of people in pictures right now that would prefer a steady job like that one you left.”
“It’s Gashwiler–that name.”
“Oh, all right, just so you don’t forget it and forget the address.”
The new applicant warmly reassured her.
“I wouldn’t be likely to forget that, after living there all those years.”
When he left the window the woman was again saying into the telephone, “No, dear, nothing to-day. I’m sorry.”
It was that night he wrote to Tessie Kearns:
Dear Friend Tessie:
Well, Tessie, here I am safe and sound in Hollywood after a long ride on the cars that went through many strange and interesting cities and different parts of the country, and I guess by this time you must have thought I was forgetting my old friends back in Simsbury; but not so, I can assure you, for I will never forget our long talks together and how you cheered me up often when the sacrifice and struggle seemed more than any man could bear. But now I feel repaid for all that sacrifice and struggle, for I am here where the pictures are made, and soon I will be acting different parts in them, though things are quiet on the lot now with only two companies shooting to-day; but more companies will be shooting in a few days more and then will come the great opportunity for me as soon as I get known, and my different capabilities, and what I can do and everything.
I had a long talk to-day with the lady out in front that hires the actors, and she was very friendly, but said it might be quite some time, because only two companies on the lot were shooting to-day, and she said if Gashwiler had promised to keep my old job for me to be sure and not forget his address, and it was laughable that she should say such a thing, because I would not be liable to forget his address when I lived there so long. She must have thought I was very forgetful, to forget that address.
There is some great scenery around this place, including many of the Rocky Mtns. etc. that make it look beautiful, and the city of Los Angeles is bigger than Peoria. I am quite some distance out of the centre of town, and I have a nice furnished room about a mile from the Holden studios, where I will be hired after a few more companies get to shooting on the lot. There is an electric iron in the kitchen where one can press their clothes. And my furnished room is in the house of a Los Angeles society woman and her husband who came here from Iowa. Their little house with flowers in front of it is called a bungalow. The husband, Mr. Patterson, had a farm in Iowa, six miles out from Cedar Falls, and he cares little for society; but the wife goes into society all the time, as there is hardly a day just now that some society does not have its picnic, and one day it will be the Kansas Society picnic and the next day it will be the Michigan Society having a picnic, or some other state, and of course the Iowa Society that has the biggest picnic of all, and Mr. Patterson says his wife can go to all these society functions if she wants, but he does not care much for society, and he is thinking of buying a half interest in a good soft-drink place just to pass the time away, as he says after the busy life he has led he needs something to keep him busy, but his wife thinks only of society.
I take my meals out at different places, especially at drug stores. I guess you would be surprised to see these drug stores where you can go in and sit at the soda counter and order your coffee and sandwiches and custard pie and eat them right there in the drug store, but there are other places, too, like cafeterias, where you put your dishes on a tray and carry it to your own table. It is all quite different from Simsbury, and I have seen oranges growing on the trees, and there are palm trees, and it does not snow here; but the grass is green and the flowers bloom right through the winter, which makes it very attractive with the Rocky Mtns. standing up in the distance, etc.
Well, Tessie, you must excuse this long letter from your old friend, and write me if any company has accepted Passion’s Perils and I might have a chance to act in that some day, and I will let you know when my first picture is released and the title of it so you can watch out for it when it comes to the Bijou Palace. I often think of the old town, and would like to have a chat with you and my other old friends, but I am not homesick, only sometimes I would like to be back there, as there are not many people to chat with here and one would almost be lonesome sometimes if they could not be at the studio. But I must remember that work and struggle and sacrifice are necessary to give the public something better and finer and become a good screen actor. So no more at present, from your old friend, and address Clifford Armytage at above number, as I am going by my stage name, though the lady at the Holden lot said she liked my old name better and called me that, and it sounded pretty good, as I have not got used to the stage name yet.
He felt better after this chat with his old friend, and the following morning he pressed a suit in the Patterson kitchen and resumed his vigil outside the gate. But now from time to time, at least twice a day, he could break the monotony of this by a call at the little window.
Sometimes the woman beyond it would be engrossed with the telephone and would merely look at him to shake her head. At others, the telephone being still, she would engage him in friendly talk. She seemed to like him as an occasional caller, but she remained smilingly skeptical about his immediate success in the pictures. Again and again she urged him not to forget the address of Giggenholder or Gooshswamp or whoever it might be that was holding a good job for him. He never failed to remind her that the name was Gashwiler, and that he could not possibly forget the address because he had lived at Simsbury a long time. This always seemed to brighten the woman’s day. It puzzled him to note that for some reason his earnest assurance pleased her.
As the days of waiting passed he began to distinguish individuals among the people who went through the little outer room or sat patiently around its walls on the hard bench, waiting like himself for more companies to start shooting. Among the important-looking men that passed through would be actors that were now reaping the reward of their struggle and sacrifice; actors whom he thrilled to recognize as old screen friends. These would saunter in with an air of fine leisure, and their manner of careless but elegant dress would be keenly noted by Merton. Then there were directors. These were often less scrupulously attired and seemed always to be solving knotty problems. They passed hurriedly on, brows drawn in perplexity. They were very busy persons. Those on the bench regarded them with deep respect and stiffened to attention as they passed, but they were never observed by these great ones.
The waiting ones were of all ages; mostly women, with but a sprinkling of men. Many of the women were young or youngish, and of rare beauty, so Merton Gill thought. Others were elderly or old, and a few would be accompanied by children, often so young that they must be held on laps. They, too, waited with round eyes and in perfect decorum for a chance to act. Sometimes the little window would be pushed open and a woman beckoned from the bench. Some of them greeted the casting director as an old friend and were still gay when told that there was nothing to-day. Others seemed to dread being told this, and would wait on without daring an inquiry. Sometimes there would be a little flurry of actual business. Four society women would be needed for a bridge table at 8:30 the next morning on Stage Number Five. The casting director seemed to know the wardrobe of each of the waiters, and would select the four quickly. The gowns must be smart–it was at the country house of a rich New Yorker–and jewels and furs were not to be forgotten. There might be two days’ work. The four fortunate ladies would depart with cheerful smiles. The remaining waiters settled on the bench, hoping against hope for another call.
Among the waiting-room hopefuls Merton had come to know by sight the Montague family. This consisted of a handsome elderly gentleman of most impressive manner, his wife, a portly woman of middle age, also possessing an impressive manner, and a daughter. Mr. Montague always removed his hat in the waiting room, uncovering an abundant cluster of iron-gray curls above a noble brow. About him there seemed ever to linger a faint spicy aroma of strong drink, and he would talk freely to those sharing the bench with him. His voice was full and rich in tone, and his speech, deliberate and precise, more than hinted that he had once been an ornament of the speaking stage. His wife, also, was friendly of manner, and spoke in a deep contralto somewhat roughened by wear but still notable.
The daughter Merton did not like. She was not unattractive in appearance, though her features were far off the screen-heroine model, her nose being too short, her mouth too large, her cheekbones too prominent, and her chin too square. Indeed, she resembled too closely her father, who, as a man, could carry such things more becomingly. She was a slangy chit, much too free and easy in her ways, Merton considered, and revealing a self-confidence that amounted almost to impudence. Further, her cheeks were brown, her brief nose freckled, and she did not take the pains with her face that most of the beautiful young women who waited there had so obviously taken. She was a harum-scarum baggage with no proper respect for any one, he decided, especially after the day she had so rudely accosted one of the passing directors. He was a more than usually absorbed director, and with drawn brows would have gone unseeing through the waiting room when the girl hailed him.
“Oh, Mr. Henshaw, one moment please!”
He glanced up in some annoyance, pausing with his hand to the door that led on to his proper realm.
“Oh, it’s you, Miss Montague! Well, what is it? I’m very, very busy.”
“Well, it’s something I wanted to ask you.” She quickly crossed the room to stand by him, tenderly flecking a bit of dust from his coat sleeve as she began, “Say, listen, Mr. Henshaw: Do you think beauty is a curse to a poor girl?”
Mr. Henshaw scowled down into the eyes so confidingly lifted to his.
“That’s something you won’t ever have to worry about,” he snapped, and was gone, his brows again drawn in perplexity over his work.
“You’re not angry with poor little me, are you, Mr. Henshaw?”
The girl called this after him and listened, but no reply came from back of the partition.
Mrs. Montague, from the bench, rebuked her daughter.
“Say, what do you think that kidding stuff will get you? Don’t you want to work for him any more?”
The girl turned pleading eyes upon her mother.
“I think he might have answered a simple question,” said she.
This was all distasteful to Merton Gill. The girl might, indeed, have deserved an answer to her simple question, but why need she ask it of so busy a man? He felt that Mr. Henshaw’s rebuke was well merited, for her own beauty was surely not excessive.
Her father, from the bench, likewise admonished her.
“You are sadly prone to a spirit of banter,” he declared, “though I admit that the so-called art of the motion picture is not to be regarded too seriously. It was not like that in my day. Then an actor had to be an artist; there was no position for the little he- doll whippersnapper who draws the big money to-day and is ignorant of even the rudiments of the actor’s profession.”
He allowed his glance to rest perceptibly upon Merton Gill, who felt uncomfortable.
“We were with Looey James five years,” confided Mrs. Montague to her neighbours. “A hall show, of course–hadn’t heard of movies then– doing Virginius and Julius Csesar and such classics, and then starting out with The Two Orphans for a short season. We were a knock-out, I’ll say that. I’ll never forget the night we opened the new opera house at Akron. They had to put the orchestra under the stage.”
“And the so-called art of the moving picture robs us of our little meed of applause,” broke in her husband. “I shall never forget a remark of the late Lawrence Barrett to me after a performance of Richelieu in which he had fairly outdone himself. ‘Montague, my lad,’ said he ‘we may work for the money, but we play for the applause.’ But now our finest bits must go in silence, or perhaps be interrupted by a so-called director who arrogates to himself the right to instill into us the rudiments of a profession in which we had grounded ourselves ere yet he was out of leading strings. Too often, naturally, the results are discouraging.”
The unabashed girl was meantime having sprightly talk with the casting director, whom she had hailed through the window as Countess. Merton, somewhat startled, wondered if the little woman could indeed be of the nobility.
“Hello, Countess! Say, listen, can you give the camera a little peek at me to-day, or at pa or ma? ‘No, nothing to-day, dear.'” She had imitated the little woman’s voice in her accustomed reply. “Well, I didn’t think there would be. I just thought I’d ask. You ain’t mad, are you? I could have gone on in a harem tank scene over at the Bigart place, but they wanted me to dress the same as a fish, and a young girl’s got to draw the line somewhere. Besides, I don’t like that Hugo over there so much. He hates to part with anything like money, and he’ll gyp you if he can. Say, I’ll bet he couldn’t play an honest game of solitaire. How’d you like my hair this way? Like it, eh? That’s good. And me having the only freckles left in all Hollywood. Ain’t I the little prairie flower, growing wilder every hour?
“Say, on the level, pa needs work. These days when he’s idle he mostly sticks home and tries out new ways to make prime old Kentucky sour mash in eight hours. If he don’t quit he is going to find himself seeing some moving pictures that no one else can. And he’s all worried up about his hair going off on top, and trying new hair restorers. You know his latest? Well, he goes over to the Selig place one day and watches horse meat fed to the lions and says to himself that horses have plenty of hair, and it must be the fat under the skin that makes it grow, so he begs for a hunk of horse from just under the mane and he’s rubbing that on. You can’t tell what he’ll bring home next. The old boy still believes you can raise hair from the dead. Do you want some new stills of me? I got a new one yesterday that shows my other expression. Well, so long, Countess.”
The creature turned to her parents.
“Let’s be on our way, old dears. This place is dead, but the Countess says they’ll soon be shooting some tenement-house stuff up at the Consolidated. Maybe there’ll be something in it for someone. We might as well have a look-in.”
Merton felt relieved when the Montague family went out, the girl in the lead. He approved of the fine old father, but the daughter lacked dignity in speech and manner. You couldn’t tell what she might say next.
The Montagues were often there, sometimes in full, sometimes represented by but one of their number. Once Mrs. Montague was told to be on Stage Six the next morning at 8:30 to attend a swell reception.
“Wear the gray georgette, dearie,” said the casting director, “and your big pearls and the lorgnon.”
“Not forgetting the gold cigarette case and the chinchilla neck piece,” said Mrs. Montague. “The spare parts will all be there, Countess, and thanks for the word.”
The elder Montague on the occasion of his calls often found time to regale those present with anecdotes of Lawrence Barrett.
“A fine artist in his day, sir; none finer ever appeared in a hall show.”
And always about his once superb frock coat clung the scent of forbidden beverages. On one such day he appeared with an untidy sprouting of beard, accompanied by the talkative daughter.
“Pa’s landed a part,” she explained through the little window. “It’s one of those we-uns mountaineer plays with revenooers and feuds; one of those plays where the city chap don’t treat our Nell right–you know. And they won’t stand for the crepe hair, so pop has got to raise a brush and he’s mad. But it ought to give him a month or so, and after that he may be able to peddle the brush again; you can never tell in this business, can you, Countess?”
“It’s most annoying,” the old gentleman explained to the bench occupants. “In the true art of the speaking stage an artificial beard was considered above reproach. Nowadays one must descend to mere physical means if one is to be thought worthy.”
CHAPTER V
A BREACH IN THE CITY WALLS
During these weeks of waiting outside the gate the little woman beyond the window had continued to be friendly but not encouraging to the aspirant for screen honours late of Simsbury, Illinois. For three weeks had he waited faithfully, always within call, struggling and sacrificing to give the public something better and finer, and not once had he so much as crossed the line that led to his goal.
Then on a Monday morning he found the waiting-room empty and his friend beyond the window suffering the pangs of headache. “It gets me something fierce right through here,” she confided to him, placing her finger-tips to her temples.
“Ever use Eezo Pain Wafers?” he demanded in quick sympathy. She looked at him hopefully.
“Never heard of ’em.”
“Let me get you some.”
“You dear thing, fly to it!”
He was gone while she reached for her purse, hurrying along the eucalyptus-lined street of choice home sites to the nearest drug store. He was fearing someone else might bring the little woman another remedy; even that her headache might go before he returned with his. But he found her still suffering.
“Here they are.” He was breathless. “You take a couple now and a couple more in half an hour if the ache hasn’t stopped.” “Bless your heart! Come around inside.” He was through the door and in the dimly lit little office behind that secretive partition. “And here’s something else,” he continued. “It’s a menthol pencil and you take this cap off–see?–and rub your forehead with it. It’ll be a help.” She swallowed two of the magic wafers with the aid of water from the cooler, and applied the menthol.
“You’re a dear,” she said, patting his sleeve. “I feel better already. Sometimes these things come on me and stay all day.” She was still applying the menthol to throbbing temples. “Say, don’t you get tired hanging around outside there? How’d you like to go in and look around the lot? Would you like that?”
Would he! “Thanks!” He managed it without choking, “If I wouldn’t be in the way.”
“You won’t. Go on–amuse yourself.” The telephone rang. Still applying the menthol she held the receiver to her ear. “No, nothing to-day, dear. Say, Marie, did you ever take Eezo Pain Wafers for a headache? Keep ’em in mind–they’re great. Yes, I’ll let you know if anything breaks. Goo’-by, dear.”
Merton Gill hurried through a narrow corridor past offices where typewriters clicked and burst from gloom into the dazzling light of the Holden lot. He paused on the steps to reassure himself that the great adventure was genuine. There was the full stretch of greensward of which only an edge had shown as he looked through the gate. There were the vast yellow-brick, glass-topped structures of which he had seen but the ends. And there was the street up which he had looked for so many weeks, flanked by rows of offices and dressing rooms, and lively with the passing of many people. He drew a long breath and became calculating. He must see everything and see it methodically. He even went now along the asphalt walk to the corner of the office building from which he had issued for the privilege of looking back at the gate through which he had so often yearningly stared from across the street.
Now he was securely inside looking out. The watchman sat at the gate, bent low over his paper. There was, it seemed, more than one way to get by him. People might have headaches almost any time. He wondered if his friend the casting director were subject to them. He must carry a box of the Eezo wafers.
He strolled down the street between the rows of offices and the immense covered stages. Actors in costume entered two of these and through their open doors he could see into their shadowy interiors. He would venture there later. Just now he wished to see the outside of things. He contrived a pace not too swift but business-like enough to convey the impression that he was rightfully walking this forbidden street. He seemed to be going some place where it was of the utmost importance that he should be, and yet to have started so early that there was no need for haste.
He sounded the far end of that long street visible from outside the gate, discovering its excitements to wane gently into mere blacksmith and carpenter shops. He retraced his steps, this time ignoring the long row of offices for the opposite line of stages. From one dark interior came the slow, dulled strains of an orchestra and from another shots rang out. He met or passed strangely attired people, bandits, priests, choir boys, gentlemen in evening dress with blue-black eyebrows and careful hair. And he observed many beautiful young women, variously attired, hurrying to or from the stages. One lovely thing was in bridal dress of dazzling white, a veil of lace floating from her blonde head, her long train held up by a coloured maid. She chatted amiably, as she crossed the street, with an evil-looking Mexican in a silver-corded hat–a veritable Snake de Vasquez.
But the stages could wait. He must see more streets. Again reaching the office that had been his secret gateway to these delights, he turned to the right, still with the air of having business at a certain spot to which there was really no need for him to hurry. There were fewer people this way, and presently, as if by magic carpet, he had left all that sunlight and glitter and cheerful noise and stood alone in the shadowy, narrow street of a frontier town. There was no bustle here, only an intense stillness. The street was deserted, the shop doors closed. There was a ghostlike, chilling effect that left him uneasy. He called upon himself to remember that he was not actually in a remote and desolate frontier town from which the inhabitants had fled; that back of him but a few steps was abounding life, that outside was the prosaic world passing and repassing a gate hard to enter. He whistled the fragment of a tune and went farther along this street of uncanny silence and vacancy, noting, as he went, the signs on the shop windows. There was the Busy Bee Restaurant, Jim’s Place, the Hotel Renown, the Last Dollar Dance Hall, Hank’s Pool Room. Upon one window was painted the terse announcement, “Joe–Buy or Sell.” The Happy Days Bar adjoined the General Store.
He moved rapidly through this street. It was no place to linger. At the lower end it gave insanely upon a row of three-story brownstone houses which any picture patron would recognize as being wholly of New York. There were the imposing steps, the double-doored entrances, the broad windows, the massive lines of the whole. And beyond this he came to a many-coloured little street out of Bagdad, overhung with gay balconies, vivacious with spindled towers and minarets, and small reticent windows, out of which veiled ladies would glance. And all was still with the stillness of utter desertion.
Then he explored farther and felt curiously disappointed at finding that these structures were to real houses what a dicky is to a sincere, genuine shirt. They were pretentiously false.
One had but to step behind them to discover them as poor shells.
Their backs were jutting beams carried but little beyond the fronts and their stout-appearing walls were revealed to be fragile contrivances of button-lath and thin plaster. The ghost quality departed from them with this discovery.
He left these cities of silence and came upon an open space and people. They were grouped before a railway station, a small red structure beside a line of railway track. At one end in black letters, on a narrow white board, was the name Boomerville.
The people were plainly Western: a dozen cowboys, a sprinkling of bluff ranchers and their families. An absorbed young man in cap and khaki and puttees came from a distant group surrounding a camera and readjusted the line of these people. He placed them to his liking. A wagon drawn by two horses was driven up and a rancher helped a woman and girl to alight. The girl was at once sought out by the cowboys. They shook hands warmly under megaphoned directions from a man back by the camera. The rancher and his wife mingled with the group. The girl was drawn aside by one of the cowboys. He had a nobler presence than the others; he was handsome and his accoutrements seemed more expensive. They looked into each other’s eyes a long time, apparently pledging an eternal fidelity. One gathered that there would have been an embrace but for the cowboy’s watchful companions. They must say good-by with a mere handshake, though this was a slow, trembling, long-drawn clasp while they steadily regarded each other, and a second camera was brought to record it at a distance of six feet. Merton Gill thrilled with the knowledge that he was beholding his first close-up. His long study of the photo-drama enabled him to divine that the rancher’s daughter was going to Vassar College to be educated, but that, although returning a year later a poised woman of the world, she would still long for the handsome cowboy who would marry her and run the Bar-X ranch. The scene was done. The camera would next be turned upon a real train at some real station, while the girl, with a final look at her lover, entered a real car, which the camera would show moving off to Vassar College. Thus conveying to millions of delighted spectators the impression that a real train had steamed out of the station, which was merely an imitation of one, on the Holden lot. The watcher passed on. He could hear the cheerful drone of a sawmill where logs were being cut. He followed the sound and came to its source. The saw was at the end of an oblong pool in which logs floated. Workmen were poling these toward the saw. On a raised platform at one side was a camera and a man who gave directions through a megaphone; a neighbouring platform held a second camera. A beautiful young girl in a print dress and her thick hair in a braid came bringing Ms dinner in a tin pail to the handsomest of the actors. He laid down his pike-pole and took both the girl’s hands in his as he received the pail. One of the other workmen, a hulking brute with an evil face, scowled darkly at this encounter and a moment later had insulted the beautiful young girl. But the first actor felled him with a blow. He came up from this, crouchingly, and the fight was on. Merton was excited by this fight, even though he was in no doubt as to which actor would win it. They fought hard, and for a time it appeared that the handsome actor must lose, for the bully who had insulted the girl was a man of great strength, but the science of the other told. It was the first fight Merton had ever witnessed. He thought these men must really be hating each other, so bitter were their expressions. The battle grew fiercer. It was splendid. Then, at the shrill note of a whistle, the panting combatants fell apart.
“Rotten!” said an annoyed voice through the megaphone. “Can’t you boys give me a little action? Jazz it, jazz it! Think it’s a love scene? Go to it, now–plenty of jazz–understand what I mean?” He turned to the camera man beside him. “Ed, you turn ten–we got to get some speed some way. Jack”–to the other camera man–“you stay on twelve. All ready! Get some life into it, now, and Lafe”–this to the handsome actor–“don’t keep trying to hold your front to the machine. We’ll get you all right. Ready, now. Camera!”
Again the fight was on. It went to a bitter finish in which the vanquished bully was sent with a powerful blow backward into the water, while the beautiful young girl ran to the victor and nestled in the protection of his strong arms.
Merton Gill passed on. This was the real thing. He would have a lot to tell Tessie Kearns in his next letter. Beyond the sawmill he came to an immense wooden structure like a cradle on huge rockers supported by scaffolding. From the ground he could make nothing of it, but a ladder led to the top. An hour on the Holden lot had made him bold. He mounted the ladder and stood on the deck of what he saw was a sea-going yacht. Three important-looking men were surveying the deckhouse forward. They glanced at the newcomer but with a cheering absence of curiosity or even of interest. He sauntered past them with a polite but not-too-keen interest. The yacht would be an expensive one. The deck fittings were elaborate. A glance into the captain’s cabin revealed it to be fully furnished, with a chart and a sextant on the mahogany desk.
“Where’s the bedding for this stateroom?” asked one of the men.
“I got a prop-rustler after it,” one of the others informed him.
They strolled aft and paused by an iron standard ingeniously swung from the deck.
“That’s Burke’s idea,” said one of the men. “I hadn’t thought about a steady support for the camera; of course if we stood it on deck it would rock when the ship rocked and we’d get no motion. So Burke figures this out. The camera is on here and swings by that weight so it’s always straight and the rocking registers. Pretty neat, what?”
“That was nothing to think of” said one of the other men, in apparent disparagement. “I thought of it myself the minute I saw it.” The other two grinned at this, though Merton Gill, standing by, saw nothing to laugh at. He thought the speaker was pretty cheeky; for of course any one could think of this device after seeing it. He paused for a final survey of his surroundings from this elevation. He could see the real falseness of the sawmill he had just left, he could also look into the exposed rear of the railway station, and could observe beyond it the exposed skeleton of that New York street. He was surrounded by mockeries.
He clambered down the ladder and sauntered back to the street of offices. He was by this time confident that no one was going to ask him what right he had in there. Now, too, he became conscious of hunger and at the same moment caught the sign “Cafeteria” over a neat building hitherto unnoticed. People were entering this, many of them in costume. He went idly toward the door, glanced up, looked at his watch, and became, to any one curious about him, a man who had that moment decided he might as well have a little food. He opened the screen door of the cafeteria, half expecting it to prove one of those structures equipped only with a front. But the cafeteria was practicable. The floor was crowded with little square polished tables at which many people were eating. A railing along the side of the room made a passage to the back where food was served from a counter to the proffered tray. He fell into line. No one had asked him how he dared try to eat with real actors and actresses and apparently no one was going to. Toward the end of the passage was a table holding trays and napkins the latter wrapped about an equipment of cutlery. He took his tray and received at the counter the foods he designated. He went through this ordeal with difficulty because it was not easy to keep from staring about at other patrons. Constantly he was detecting some remembered face. But at last, with his laden tray he reached a vacant table near the centre of the room and took his seat. He absently arranged the food before him. He could stare at leisure now. All about him were the strongly marked faces of the film people, heavy with makeup, interspersed with hungry civilians, who might be producers, directors, camera men, or mere artisans, for the democracy of the cafeteria seemed ideal.
At the table ahead of his he recognized the man who had been annoyed one day by the silly question of the Montague girl. They had said he was a very important director. He still looked important and intensely serious. He was a short, very plump man, with pale cheeks under dark brows, and troubled looking gray hair. He was very seriously explaining something to the man who sat with him and whom he addressed as Governor, a merry-looking person with a stubby gray mustache and little hair, who seemed not too attentive to the director.
“You see, Governor, it’s this way: the party is lost on the desert– understand what I mean–and Kempton Ward and the girl stumble into this deserted tomb just at nightfall. Now here’s where the big kick comes–“
Merton Gill ceased to listen for there now halted at his table, bearing a laden tray, none other than the Montague girl, she of the slangy talk and the regrettably free manner. She put down her tray and seated herself before it. She had not asked permission of the table’s other occupant, indeed she had not even glanced at him, for cafeteria etiquette is not rigorous. He saw that she was heavily made up and in the costume of a gypsy, he thought, a short vivid skirt, a gay waist, heavy gold hoops in her ears, and dark hair massed about her small head. He remembered that this would not be her own hair. She fell at once to her food. The men at the next table glanced at her, the director without cordiality; but the other man smiled upon her cheerfully.
“Hello, Flips! How’s the girl?”
“Everything’s jake with me, Governor. How’s things over at your shop?”
“So, so. I see you’re working.”
“Only for two days. I’m just atmosphere in this piece. I got some real stuff coming along pretty soon for Baxter. Got to climb down ten stories of a hotel elevator cable, and ride a brake-beam and be pushed off a cliff and thrown to the lions, and a few other little things.”
“That’s good, Flips. Come in and see me some time. Have a little chat. Ma working?”
“Yeah–got a character bit with Charlotte King in Her Other Husband.” “Glad to hear it. How’s Pa Montague?”
“Pa’s in bed. They’ve signed him for Camillia of the Cumberlands, providing he raises a brush, and just now it ain’t long enough for whiskers and too long for anything else, so he’s putterin’ around with his new still.”
“Well, drop over sometime, Flips, I’m keeping you in mind.”
“Thanks, Governor. Say–” Merton glanced up in time to see her wink broadly at the man, and look toward his companion who still seriously made notes on the back of an envelope. The man’s face melted to a grin which he quickly erased. The girl began again:
“Mr. Henshaw–could you give me just a moment, Mr. Henshaw?” The serious director looked up in quite frank annoyance.
“Yes, yes, what is it, Miss Montague?”
“Well, listen, Mr. Henshaw, I got a great idea for a story, and I was thinking who to take it to and I thought of this one and I thought of that one, and I asked my friends, and they all say take it to Mr. Henshaw, because if a story has any merit he’s the one director on the lot that can detect it and get every bit of value out of it, so I thought–but of course if you’re busy just now–“
The director thawed ever so slightly. “Of course, my girl, I’m busy- -but then I’m always busy. They run me to death here. Still, it was very kind of your friends, and of course–“
“Thank you, Mr. Henshaw.” She clasped her hands to her breast and gazed raptly into the face of her coy listener.
“Of course I’ll have to have help on the details, but it starts off kind of like this. You see I’m a Hawaiian princess–” She paused, gazing aloft.
“Yes, yes, Miss Montague–an Hawaiian princess. Go on, go on!”
“Oh, excuse me; I was thinking how I’d dress her for the last spool in the big fire scene. Well, anyway, I’m this Hawaiian princess, and my father, old King Mauna Loa, dies and leaves me twenty-one thousand volcanoes and a billiard cue–“
Mr. Henshaw blinked rapidly at this. For a moment he was dazed. “A billiard cue, did you say?” he demanded blankly.
“Yes. And every morning I have to go out and ram it down the volcanoes to see are they all right–and–“
“Tush, tush!” interrupted Mr. Henshaw scowling upon the playwright and fell again to his envelope, pretending thereafter to ignore her.
The girl seemed to be unaware that she had lost his attention. “And you see the villain is very wealthy; he owns the largest ukelele factory in the islands, and he tries to get me in his power, but he’s foiled by my fiance, a young native by the name of Herman Schwarz, who has invented a folding ukelele, so the villain gets his hired Hawaiian orchestra to shove Herman down one of the volcanoes and me down another, but I have the key around my neck, which Father put there when I was a babe and made me swear always to wear it, even in the bath-tub, so I let myself out and unlock the other one and let Herman out and the orchestra discovers us and chases us over the cliff, and then along comes my old nurse who is now running a cigar store in San Pedro and she–” Here she affected to discover that Mr. Henshaw no longer listened.
“Why, Mr. Henshaw’s gone!” she exclaimed dramatically. “Boy, boy, page Mr. Henshaw.” Mr. Henshaw remained oblivious.
“Oh, well, of course I might have expected you wouldn’t have time to listen to my poor little plot. Of course I know it’s crude, but it did seem to me that something might be made out of it.” She resumed her food. Mr. Henshaw’s companion here winked at her and was seen to be shaking with emotion. Merton Gill could not believe it to be laughter, for he had seen nothing to laugh at. A busy man had been bothered by a silly girl who thought she had the plot for a photodrama, and even he, Merton Gill, could have told her that her plot was impossibly wild and inconsequent. If she were going into that branch of the art she ought to take lessons, the way Tessie Kearns did. She now looked so mournful that he was almost moved to tell her this, but her eyes caught his at that moment and in them was a light so curious, so alive with hidden meanings, so eloquent of some iron restraint she put upon her own emotions, that he became confused and turned his gaze from hers almost with the rebuking glare of Henshaw. She glanced quickly at him again, studying his face for the first time. There had been such a queer look in this young man’s eyes; she understood most looks, but not that one.
Henshaw was treating the late interruption as if it had not been. “You see, Governor, the way we got the script now, they’re in this tomb alone for the night–understand what I mean–and that’s where the kick comes for the audience. They know he’s a strong young fellow and she’s a beautiful girl and absolutely in his power–see what I mean?–but he’s a gentleman through and through and never lays a hand on her. Get that? Then later along comes this Ben Ali Ahab–“
The Montague girl glanced again at the face of the strange young man whose eyes had held a new expression for her, but she and Mr. Henshaw and the so-called governor and all those other diners who rattled thick crockery and talked unendingly had ceased to exist for Merton Gill. A dozen tables down the room and nearer the door sat none other than Beulah Baxter. Alone at her table, she gazed raptly aloft, meditating perhaps some daring new feat. Merton Gill stared, entranced, frozen. The Montague girl perfectly understood this look and traced it to its object. Then she surveyed Merton Gill again with something faintly like pity in her shrewd eyes. He was still staring, still rapt.
Beulah Baxter ceased to look aloft. She daintily reached for a wooden toothpick from the bowl before her and arose to pay her check at the near-by counter. Merton Gill arose at the same moment and stumbled a blind way through the intervening tables. When he reached the counter Miss Baxter was passing through the door. He was about to follow her when a cool but cynical voice from the counter said, “Hey, Bill–ain’t you fergittin’ somepin’.”
He looked for the check for his meal; it should have been in one hand or the other. But it was in neither. He must have left it back on his tray. Now he must return for it. He went as quickly as he could. The Montague girl was holding it up as he approached. “Here’s the little joker, Kid,” she said kindly.
“Thanks!” said Merton. He said it haughtily, not meaning to be haughty, but he was embarrassed and also fearful that Beulah Baxter would be lost. “Exit limping,” murmured the girl as he turned away. He hurried again to the door, paid the check and was outside. Miss Baxter was not to be seen. His forgetfulness about the check had lost her to him. He had meant to follow, to find the place where she was working, and look and look and look! Now he had lost her. But she might be on one of those stages within the big barns. Perhaps the day was not yet lost. He crossed the street, forgetting to saunter, and ventured within the cavernous gloom beyond an open door. He stood for a moment, his vision dulled by the dusk. Presently he saw that he faced a wall of canvas backing. Beyond this were low voices and the sound of people moving. He went forward to a break in the canvas wall and at the same moment there was a metallic jar and light flooded the enclosure. From somewhere outside came music, principally the low, leisurely moan of a ‘cello. A beautiful woman in evening dress was with suppressed emotion kneeling at the bedside of a sleeping child. At the doorway stood a dark, handsome gentleman in evening dress, regarding her with a cynical smile. The woman seemed to bid the child farewell, and arose with hands to her breast and quivering lips. The still-smiling gentleman awaited her. When she came to him, glancing backward to the sleeping child, he threw about her an elaborate fur cloak and drew her to him, his cynical smile changing to one of deceitful tenderness. The woman still glanced back at the child, but permitted herself to be drawn through the doorway by the insistent gentleman. From a door the other side of the bed came a kind-faced nurse. She looked first at the little one then advanced to stare after the departing couple. She raised her hands tragically and her face became set in a mask of sorrow and despair. She clasped the hands desperately.
Merton Gill saw his nurse to be the Montague mother. “All right,” said an authoritative voice. Mrs. Montague relaxed her features and withdrew, while an unkempt youth came to stand in front of the still-grinding camera and held before it a placard on which were numbers. The camera stopped, the youth with the placard vanished. “Save it,” called another voice, and with another metallic jar the flood of light was turned off. The ‘cello ceased its moan in the middle of a bar.
The watcher recalled some of the girl’s chat. Her mother had a character bit in Her Other Husband. This would be it, one of those moving tragedies not unfamiliar to the screen enthusiast. The beautiful but misguided wife had been saying good-by to her little one and was leaving her beautiful home at the solicitation of the false friend in evening dress–forgetting all in one mad moment. The watcher was a tried expert, and like the trained faunal naturalist could determine a species from the shrewd examination of one bone of a photoplay. He knew that the wife had been ignored by a husband who permitted his vast business interests to engross his whole attention, leaving the wife to seek solace in questionable quarters. He knew that the shocked but faithful nurse would presently discover the little one to be suffering from a dangerous fever; that a hastily summoned physician would shake his head and declare in legible words, “Naught but a mother’s love can win that tiny soul back from the brink of Eternity.” The father would overhear this, and would see it all then: how his selfish absorption in Wall Street had driven his wife to another. He would pursue her, would find her ere yet it was too late. He would discover that her better nature had already prevailed and that she had started back without being sent for. They would kneel side by side, hand in hand, at the bedside of the little one, who would recover and smile and prattle, and together they would face an untroubled future.
This was all thrilling to Merton Gill; but Beulah Baxter was not here, her plays being clean and wholesome things of the great outdoors. Far down the great enclosure was another wall of canvas backing, a flood of light above it and animated voices from within. He stood again to watch. But this drama seemed to have been suspended. The room exposed was a bedroom with an open window facing an open door; the actors and the mechanical staff as well were busily hurling knives at various walls. They were earnest and absorbed in this curious pursuit. Sometimes they made the knife penetrate the wall, oftener it merely struck and clattered to the floor. Five knives at once were being hurled by five enthusiasts, while a harried-looking director watched and criticised.
“You’re a clumsy bunch,” he announced at last. “It’s a simple thing to do, isn’t it?” The knife-throwers redoubled, their efforts, but they did not find it a simple thing to do.
“Let me try it, Mr. Burke.” It was the Montague girl still in her gipsy costume. She had been standing quietly in the shadow observing the ineffective practice.
“Hello, Flips! Sure, you can try it. Show these boys something good, now. Here, Al, give Miss Montague that stickeree of yours.” Al seemed glad to relinquish the weapon. Miss Montague hefted it, and looked doubtful.
“It ain’t balanced right,” she declared. “Haven’t you got one with a heavier handle?”
“Fair enough,” said the director. “Hey, Pickles, let her try that one you got.” Pickles, too, was not unwilling to oblige.
“That’s better,” said the girl. “It’s balanced right.” Taking the blade by its point between thumb and forefinger she sent it with a quick flick of the wrist into the wall a dozen feet away. It hung there quivering.
“There! That’s what we want. It’s got to be quivering when Jack shoots at Ramon who threw it at him as he leaps through the window. Try it again, Flips.” The girl obliged and bowed impressively to the applause.
“Now come here and try it through the doorway.” He led her around the set. “Now stand here and see can you put it into the wall just to the right of the window. Good! Some little knife-thrower, I’ll say. Now try it once with Jack coming through. Get set, Jack.”
Jack made his way to the window through which he was to leap. He paused there to look in with some concern. “Say, Mr. Burke, will you please make sure she understands? She isn’t to let go of that thing until I’m in and crouched down ready to shoot–understand what I mean? I don’t want to get nicked nor nothing.”
“All right, all right! She understands.”
Jack leaped through the window to a crouch, weapon in hand. The knife quivered in the wall above him as he shot.
“Fine and dandy. Some class, I’ll say. All right, Jack. Get back. We’ll gun this little scene right here and now. All ready, Jack, all ready Miss Montague–camera!–one, two, three–come in, Jack.” Again the knife quivered in the wall above his head even while he crouched to shoot at the treacherous Mexican who had thrown it.
“Good work, Flips. Thanks a whole lot. We’ll do as much for you some time.”
“You’re entirely welcome, Mr. Burke. No trouble to oblige. How you coming?”
“Coming good. This thing’s going to be a knockout. I bet it’ll gross a million. Nearly done, too, except for some chase stuff up in the hills. I’ll do that next week. What you doing?”
“Oh, everything’s jake with me. I’m over on Number Four–Toys of Destiny–putting a little pep into the mob stuff. Laid out for two hours, waiting for something–I don’t know what.”
Merton Gill passed on. He confessed now to a reluctant admiration for the Montague girl. She could surely throw a knife. He must practise that himself sometime. He might have stayed to see more of this drama but he was afraid the girl would break out into more of her nonsense. He was aware that she swept him with her eyes as he turned away but he evaded her glance. She was not a person, he thought, that one ought to encourage.
He emerged from the great building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both men and women, and they were not beautiful. The gowns of the women were grotesque and the men were lawless appearing, either as to hair or beards or both. He divined the dreadful thing he was stumbling upon even before he noted the sign in large letters on the back of a folding chair: “Jeff Baird’s Buckeye Comedies.” These were the buffoons who with their coarse pantomime, their heavy horse-play, did so much to debase a great art. There, even at his side, was the arch offender, none other than Jeff Baird himself, the man whose regrettable sense of so-called humour led him to make these low appeals to the witless. And even as he looked the cross-eyed man entered the scene. Garbed in the weirdly misfitting clothes of a waiter, holding aloft a loaded tray of dishes, he entered on roller skates, to halt before Baird with his uplifted tray at a precarious balance.
“All right, that’s better,” said Baird. “And, Gertie, listen: don’t throw the chair in front of him. That’s out. Now we’ll have the entrance again. You other boys on the rollers, there–” Three other basely comic waiters on roller skates came to attention.
“Follow him in and pile up on him when he makes the grand spill–see what I mean? Get your trays loaded now and get off. Now you other people, take your seats. No, no, Annie, you’re at the head, I told you. Tom, you’re at the foot and start the rough-house when you get the tray in the neck. Now, all set.”
Merton Gill was about to leave this distressing scene but was held in spite of himself by the voice of a newcomer.
“Hello, Jeff! Atta boy!”
He knew without turning that the Montague girl was again at his elbow. He wondered if she could be following him.
“Hello, Flips! How’s the kid?” The producer had turned cordially to her. “Just in time for the breakaway stuff. See how you like it.”
“What’s the big idea?”
“Swell reception at the Maison de Glue, with the waiters on roller skates in honour of rich Uncle Rollo Glue. The head waiter starts the fight by doing a fall with his tray. Tom gets the tray in the neck and soaks the nearest man banquet goes flooey. Then we go into the chase stuff.”
“Which is Uncle Rollo?”
“That’s him at the table, with the herbaceous border under his chin.”
“Is he in the fight?”
“I think so. I was going to rehearse it once more to see if I could get a better idea. Near as I can see now, everybody takes a crack at him.”
“Well, maybe.” Montague girl seemed to be considering. “Say, how about this, Jeff? He’s awful hungry, see, and he’s begun to eat the celery and everything he can reach, and when the mix-up starts he just eats on and pays no attention to it. Never even looks up, see what I mean? The fight spreads the whole length of the table; right around Rollo half-a-dozen murders are going on and he just eats and pays no attention. And he’s still eating when they’re all down and out, and don’t know a thing till Charlie or someone crowns him with the punch-bowl. How about it? Ain’t there a laugh in that?” Baird had listened respectfully and now patted the girl on a shoulder.
“Good work, Kid! That’s a gag, all right. The little bean’s sparking on all six, ain’t it? Drop around again. We need folks like you. Now, listen, Rollo–you there, Rollo, come here and get this. Now, listen–when the fight begins–“
Merton Gill turned decisively away. Such coarse foolery as this was too remote from Beulah Baxter who, somewhere on that lot, was doing something really, as her interview had put it, distinctive and worth while.
He lingered only to hear the last of Baird’s instructions to Rollo and the absurd guests, finding some sinister fascination in the man’s talk. Baird then turned to the girl, who had also started off.
“Hang around, Flips. Why the rush?”
“Got to beat it over to Number Pour.”
“Got anything good there?”
“Nothing that will get me any billing. Been waiting two hours now just to look frenzied in a mob.”
“Well, say, come around and see me some time.”
“All right, Jeff. Of course I’m pretty busy. When I ain’t working I’ve got to think about my art.”
“No, this is on the level. Listen, now, sister, I got another two reeler to pull off after this one, then I’m goin’ to do something new, see? Got a big idea. Probably something for you in it. Drop in t’ the office and talk it over. Come in some time next week. ‘F I ain’t there I’ll be on the lot some place. Don’t forget, now.”
Merton Gill, some distance from the Buckeye set, waited to note what direction the Montague girl would take. She broke away presently, glanced brazenly in his direction, and tripped lightly out the nearest exit. He went swiftly to one at the far end of the building, and was again in the exciting street. But the afternoon was drawing in and the street had lost much of its vivacity. It would surely be too late for any glimpse of his heroine. And his mind was already cluttered with impressions from his day’s adventure. He went out through the office, meaning to thank the casting director for the great favour she had shown him, but she was gone. He hoped the headache had not driven her home. If she were to suffer again he hoped it would be some morning. He would have the Eezo wafers in one pocket and a menthol pencil in the other. And she would again extend to him the freedom of that wonderful city.
In his room that night he tried to smooth out the jumble in his dazed mind. Those people seemed to say so many things they considered funny but that were not really funny to any one else. And moving-picture plays were always waiting for something, with the bored actors lounging about in idle apathy. Still in bis ears sounded the drone of the sawmill and the deep purr of the lights when they were put on. That was a funny thing. When they wanted the lights on they said “Kick it,” and when they wanted the lights off they said “Save it!” And why did a boy come out after every scene and hold up a placard with numbers on it before the camera? That placard had never shown in any picture he had seen. And that queer Montague girl, always turning up when you thought you had got rid of her. Still, she had thrown that knife pretty well. You had to give her credit for that. But she couldn’t be much of an actress, even if she had spoken of acting with Miss Baxter, of climbing down cables with her and falling off cliffs. Probably she was boasting, because he had never seen any one but Miss Baxter do these things in her pictures. Probably she had some very minor part. Anyway, it was certain she couldn’t be much of an actress because she had almost promised to act in those terrible Buckeye comedies. And of course no one with any real ambition or capacity could consider such a thing– descending to rough horse-play for the amusement of the coarser element among screen patrons.
But there was one impression from the day’s whirl that remained clear and radiant: He had looked at the veritable face of his heroine. He began his letter to Tessie Kearns. “At last I have seen Miss Baxter face to face. There was no doubt about its being her. You would have known her at once. And how beautiful she is! She was looking up and seemed inspired, probably thinking about her part. She reminded me of that beautiful picture of St. Cecelia playing on the piano. . . .”
CHAPTER VI
UNDER THE GLASS TOPS
He approached the office of the Holden studios the following morning with a new air of assurance. Formerly the mere approach had been an adventure; the look through the gate, the quick glimpse of the privileged ones who entered, the mingling, later, with the hopeful and the near-hopeless ones who waited. But now his feeling was that he had, somehow, become a part of that higher life beyond the gate. He might linger outside at odd moments, but rightfully he belonged inside. His novitiate had passed. He was one of those who threw knives or battled at the sawmill with the persecuter of golden- haired innocence, or lured beautiful women from their homes. He might be taken, he thought, for an actor resting between pictures.
At the gate he suffered a momentary regret at an error of tactics committed the evening before. Instead of leaving the lot by the office he should have left by the gate. He should have strolled to this exit in a leisurely manner and stopped, just inside the barrier, for a chat with the watchman; a chat, beginning with the gift of a cigar, which should have impressed his appearance upon that person. He should have remarked casually that he had had a hard day on Stage Number Four, and must now be off to a good night’s rest because of the equally hard day to-morrow. Thus he could now have approached the gate with confidence and passed freely in, with a few more pleasant words to the watchman who would have no difficulty in recalling him.
But it was vain to wish this. For all the watchman knew this young man had never been beyond the walls of the forbidden city, nor would he know any reason why the besieger should not forever be kept outside. He would fix that next time.
He approached the window of the casting office with mingled emotions. He did not hope to find his friend again stricken with headache, but if it chanced that she did suffer he hoped to be the first to learn of it. Was he not fortified with the potent Eezo wafers, and a new menthol pencil, even with an additional remedy of tablets that the druggist had strongly recommended? It was, therefore, not with any actual, crude disappointment that he learned of his friend’s perfect well-being. She smiled pleasantly at him, the telephone receiver at one ear. “Nothing to-day, dear,” she said and put down the instrument.
Yes, the headache was gone, vanquished by his remedies. She was fine, thank you. No, the headaches didn’t come often. It might be weeks before she had another attack. No, of course she couldn’t be certain of this. And indeed she would be sure to let him know at the very first sign of their recurrence.
He looked over his patient with real anxiety, a solicitude from the bottom of which he was somehow unable to expel the last trace of a lingering hope that would have dismayed the little woman–not hope, exactly, but something almost like it which he would only translate to himself as an earnest desire that he might be at hand when the dread indisposition did attack her. Just now there could be no doubt that she was free from pain.
He thanked her profusely for her courtesy of the day before. He had seen wonderful things. He had learned a lot. And he wanted to ask her something, assuring himself that he was alone in the waiting room. It was this: did she happen to know–was Miss Beulah Baxter married?
The little woman sighed in a tired manner. “Baxter married? Let me see.” She tapped her teeth with the end of a pencil, frowning into her vast knowledge of the people beyond the gate. “Now, let me think.” But this appeared to be without result. “Oh, I really don’t know; I forget. I suppose so. Why not? She often is.”
He would have asked more questions, but the telephone rang and she listened a long time, contributing a “yes, yes,” of understanding at brief intervals. This talk ended, she briskly demanded a number and began to talk in her turn. Merton Gill saw that for the time he had passed from her life. She was calling an agency. She wanted people for a diplomatic reception in Washington. She must have a Bulgarian general, a Serbian diplomat, two French colonels, and a Belgian captain, all in uniform and all good types. She didn’t want just anybody, but types that would stand out. Holden studios on Stage Number Two. Before noon, if possible. All right, then. Another bell rang, almost before she had hung up. “Hello, Grace. Nothing to-day, dear. They’re out on location, down toward Venice, getting some desert stuff. Yes, I’ll let you know.”
Merton Gill had now to make way at the window for a youngish, weary- looking woman who had once been prettier, who led an elaborately dressed little girl of five. She lifted the child to the window. “Say good-morning to the beautiful lady, Toots. Good-morning, Countess. I’m sure you got something for Toots and me to-day because it’s our birthday–both born on the same day–what do you think of that? Any little thing will help us out a lot–how about it?”
He went outside before the end of this colloquy, but presently saw the woman and her child emerge and walk on disconsolately toward the next studio. Thus began another period of waiting from which much of the glamour had gone. It was not so easy now to be excited by those glimpses of the street beyond the gate. A certain haze had vanished, leaving all too apparent the circumstance that others were working beyond the gate while Merton Gill loitered outside, his talent, his training, ignored. His early air of careless confidence had changed to one not at all careless or confident. He was looking rather desperate and rather unbelieving. And it daily grew easier to count his savings. He made no mistakes now. His hoard no longer enjoyed the addition of fifteen dollars a week. Only subtractions were made.
There came a morning when but one bill remained. It was a ten-dollar bill, bearing at its centre a steel-engraved portrait of Andrew Jackson. He studied it in consternation, though still permitting himself to notice that Jackson would have made a good motion-picture type–the long, narrow, severe face, the stiff uncomprising mane of gray hair; probably they would have cast him for a feuding mountaineer, deadly with his rifle, or perhaps as an inventor whose device was stolen on his death-bed by his wicked Wall Street partner, thus leaving his motherless daughter at the mercy of Society’s wolves.
But this was not the part that Jackson played in the gripping drama of Merton Gill. His face merely stared from the last money brought from Simsbury, Illinois, and the stare was not reassuring. It seemed to say that there was no other money in all the world. Decidedly things must take a turn. Merton Gill had a quite definite feeling that he had already struggled and sacrificed enough to give the public something better and finer. It was time the public realized this.
Still he waited, not even again reaching the heart of things, for his friend beyond the window had suffered no relapse. He came to resent a certain inconsequence in the woman. She might have had those headaches oftener. He had been led to suppose that she would, and now she continued to be weary but entirely well.
More waiting and the ten-dollar bill went for a five and some silver. He was illogically not sorry to be rid of Andrew Jackson, who had looked so tragically skeptical. The five-dollar bill was much more cheerful. It bore the portrait of Benjamin Harrison, a smooth, cheerful face adorned with whiskers that radiated success. They were little short of smug with success. He would almost rather have had Benjamin Harrison on five dollars than the grim-faced Jackson on ten. Still, facts were facts. You couldn’t wait as long on five dollars as you could on ten.
Then on the afternoon of a day that promised to end as other days had ended, a wave of animation swept through the waiting room and the casting office. “Swell cabaret stuff” was the phrase that brought the applicants to a lively swarm about the little window. Evening clothes, glad wraps, cigarette cases, vanity-boxes–the Victor people doing The Blight of Broadway with Muriel Mercer–Stage Number Four at 8:30 to-morrow morning. There seemed no limit to the people desired. Merton Gill joined the throng about the window. Engagements were rapidly made, both through the window and over the telephone that was now ringing those people who had so long been told that there was nothing to-day. He did not push ahead of the women as some of the other men did. He even stood out of the line for the Montague girl who had suddenly appeared and who from the rear had been exclaiming: “Women and children first!”
“Thanks, old dear,” she acknowledged the courtesy and beamed through the window. “Hullo, Countess!” The woman nodded briefly. “All right, Flips; I was just going to telephone you. Henshaw wants you for some baby-vamp stuff in the cabaret scene and in the gambling hell. Better wear that salmon-pink chiffon and the yellow curls. Eight- thirty, Stage Four. Goo’-by.”
“Thanks, Countess! Me for the jumping tintypes at the hour named. I’m glad enough to be doing even third business. How about Ma?”
“Sure! Tell her grand-dame stuff, chaperone or something, the gray georgette and all her pearls and the cigarette case.”
“I’ll tell her. She’ll be glad there’s something doing once more on the perpendicular stage. Goo’-by.”
She stepped aside with “You’re next, brother!” Merton Gill acknowledged this with a haughty inclination of the head. He must not encourage this hoyden. He glanced expectantly through the little window. His friend held a telephone receiver at her ear. She smiled wearily. “All right, son. You got evening clothes, haven’t you? Of course, I remember now. Stage Four at 8:30. Goo’-by.”
” I want to thank you for this opportunity–” he began, but was pushed aside by an athletic young woman who spoke from under a broad hat. “Hullo, dearie! How about me and Ella?”
“Hullo, Maizie. All right. Stage Four, at 8:30, in your swellest evening stuff.”
At the door the Montague girl called to an approaching group who seemed to have heard by wireless or occult means the report of new activity in the casting office. “Hurry, you troupers. You can eat to-morrow night, maybe!” They hurried. She turned to Merton Gill. “Seems like old times,” she observed.
“Does it?” he replied coldly. Would this chit never understand that he disapproved of her trifling ways?
He went on, rejoicing that he had not been compelled to part, even temporarily, with a first-class full-dress suit, hitherto worn only in the privacy of Lowell Hardy’s studio. It would have been awkward, he thought, if the demand for it had been much longer delayed. He would surely have let that go before sacrificing his Buck Benson outfit. He had traversed the eucalyptus avenue in this ecstasy, and was on a busier thoroughfare. Before a motion-picture theatre he paused to study the billing of Muriel Mercer in Hearts Aflame. The beauteous girl, in an alarming gown, was at the mercy of a fiend in evening dress whose hellish purpose was all too plainly read in his fevered eyes. The girl writhed in his grasp. Doubtless he was demanding her hand in marriage. It was a tense bit. And to-morrow he would act with this petted idol of the screen. And under the direction of that Mr. Henshaw who seemed to take screen art with proper seriousness. He wondered if by any chance Mr. Henshaw would call upon him to do a quadruple transition, hate, fear, love, despair. He practised a few transitions as he went on to press his evening clothes in the Patterson kitchen, and to dream, that night, that he rode his good old pal, Pinto, into the gilded cabaret to carry off Muriel Mercer, Broadway’s pampered society pet, to the clean life out there in the open spaces where men are men.
At eight the following morning he was made up in a large dressing room by a grumbling extra who said that it was a dog’s life plastering grease paint over the maps of dubs. He was presently on Stage Four in the prescribed evening regalia for gentlemen. He found the cabaret set, a gilded haunt of pleasure with small tables set about an oblong of dancing floor. Back of these on three sides were raised platforms with other tables, and above these discreet boxes, half masked by drapery, for the seclusion of more retiring merry- makers. The scene was deserted as yet, but presently he was joined by another early comer, a beautiful young woman of Spanish type with a thin face and eager, dark eyes. Her gown was glistening black set low about her polished shoulders, and she carried a red rose. So exotic did she appear he was surprised when she addressed him in the purest English.
“Say, listen here, old timer! Let’s pick a good table right on the edge before the mob scene starts. Lemme see–” She glanced up and down the rows of tables. “The cam’ras’ll be back there, so we can set a little closer, but not too close, or we’ll be moved over. How ’bout this here? Let’s try it.” She sat, motioning him to the other chair. Even so early in his picture career did he detect that in facing this girl his back would be to the camera. He hitched his chair about.
“That’s right,” said the girl, “I wasn’t meaning to hog it. Say, we was just in time, wasn’t we?”
Ladies and gentlemen in evening dress were already entering. They looked inquiringly about and chose tables. Those next to the dancing space were quickly filled. Many of the ladies permitted costly wraps of fur or brocade to spill across the backs of their chairs. Many of the gentlemen lighted cigarettes from gleaming metal cases. There was a lively interchange of talk.
“We better light up, too,” said the dark girl. Merton Gill had neglected cigarettes and confessed this with some embarrassment. The girl presented an open case of gold attached to a chain pendent from her girdle. They both smoked. On their table were small plates, two wine glasses half filled with a pale liquid, and small coffee-cups. Spirals of smoke ascended over a finished repast. Of course if the part called for cigarettes you must smoke whether you had quit or not.
The places back of the prized first row were now filling up with the later comers. One of these, a masterful-looking man of middle age– he would surely be a wealthy club-man accustomed to command tables– regarded the filled row around the dancing space with frank irritation, and paused significantly at Merton’s side. He seemed about to voice a demand, but the young actor glanced slowly up at him, achieving a superb transition–surprise, annoyance, and, as the invader turned quickly away, pitying contempt.
“Atta boy!” said his companion, who was, with the aid of a tiny gold-backed mirror suspended with the cigarette case, heightening the crimson of her full lips.
Two cameras were now in view, and men were sighting through them. Merton saw Henshaw, plump but worried looking, scan the scene from the rear. He gave hurried direction to an assistant who came down the line of tables with a running glance at their occupants. He made changes. A couple here and a couple there would be moved from the first row and other couples would come to take their places. Under the eyes of this assistant the Spanish girl had become coquettish. With veiled glances, with flashing smiles from the red lips, with a small gloved hand upon Merton Gill’s sleeve, she allured him. The assistant paused before them. The Spanish girl continued to allure. Merton Gill stared moodily at the half-empty wine glass, then exhaled smoke as he glanced up at his companion in profound ennui. If it was The Blight of Broadway probably they would want him to look bored.
“You two stay where you are,” said the assistant, and passed on.
“Good work,” said the girl. “I knew you was a type the minute I made you.”
Red-coated musicians entered an orchestra loft far down the set. The voice of Henshaw came through a megaphone: “Everybody that’s near the floor fox-trot.” In a moment the space was thronged with dancers. Another voice called “Kick it!” and a glare of light came on.
“You an’ me both!” said the Spanish girl, rising.
Merton Gill remained seated. “Can’t,” he said. “Sprained ankle.” How was he to tell her that there had been no chance to learn this dance back in Simsbury, Illinois, where such things were frowned upon by pulpit and press? The girl resumed her seat, at first with annoyance, then brightened. “All right at that,” she said. “I bet we get more footage this way.” She again became coquettish, luring with her wiles one who remained sunk in ennui.
A whistle blew, a voice called “Save it!” and the lights jarred off. Henshaw came trippingly down the line. “You people didn’t dance. What’s the matter?” Merton Gill glanced up, doing a double transition, from dignified surprise to smiling chagrin. “Sprained ankle,” he said, and fell into the bored look that had served him with the assistant. He exhaled smoke and raised his tired eyes to the still luring Spanish girl. Weariness of the world and women was in his look. Henshaw scanned him closely.
“All right, stay there–keep just that way–it’s what I want.” He continued down the line, which had become hushed. “Now, people. I want some flashes along here, between dances–see what I mean? You’re talking, but you’re bored with it all. The hollowness of this night life is getting you; not all of you–most of you girls can keep on smiling–but The Blight of Broadway shows on many. You’re beginning to wonder if this is all life has to offer–see what I mean?” He continued down the line.
From the table back of Merton Gill came a voice in speech to the retreating back of Henshaw: “All right, old top, but it’ll take a good lens to catch any blight on this bunch–most of ’em haven’t worked a lick in six weeks, and they’re tickled pink.” He knew without turning that this was the Montague girl trying to be funny at the expense of Henshaw who was safely beyond hearing. He thought she would be a disturbing element in the scene, but in this he was wrong, for he bent upon the wine glass a look more than ever fraught with jaded world-weariness. The babble of Broadway was resumed as Henshaw went back to the cameras.
Presently a camera was pushed forward. Merton Gill hardly dared look up, but he knew it was halted at no great distance from him. “Now, here’s rather a good little bit,” Henshaw was saying. “You, there, the girl in black, go on–tease him the way you were, and he’s to give you that same look. Got that cigarette going? All ready. Lights! Camera!” Merton was achieving his first close-up. Under the hum of the lights he was thinking that he had been a fool not to learn dancing, no matter how the Reverend Otto Carmichael denounced it as a survival from the barbaric Congo. He was also thinking that the Montague girl ought to be kept away from people who were trying to do really creative things, and he was bitterly regretting that he had no silver cigarette case. The gloom of his young face was honest gloom. He was aware that his companion leaned vivaciously toward him with gay chatter and gestures. Very slowly he inhaled from a cigarette that was already distasteful–adding no little to the desired effect–and very slowly he exhaled as he raised to hers the bored eyes of a soul quite disillusioned. Here, indeed, was the blight of Broadway.
“All right, first rate!” called Henshaw. “Now get this bunch down here.” The camera was pushed on.
“Gee, that was luck!” said the girl. “Of course it’ll be cut to a flash, but I bet we stand out, at that.” She was excited now, no longer needing to act.
From the table back of Merton came the voice of the Montague girl: “Yes, one must suffer for one’s art. Here I got to be a baby-vamp when I’d rather be simple little Madelon, beloved by all in the village.”
He restrained an impulse to look around at her. She was not serious and should not be encouraged. Farther down the set Henshaw was beseeching a table of six revellers to give him a little hollow gayety. “You’re simply forcing yourselves to have a good time,” he was saying; “remember that. Your hearts aren’t in it. You know this night life is a mockery. Still, you’re playing the game. Now, two of you raise your glasses to drink. You at the end stand up and hold your glass aloft. The girl next to you there, stand up by him and raise your face to his–turn sideways more. That’s it. Put your hand up to his shoulder. You’re slightly lit, you know, and you’re inviting him to kiss you over his glass. You others, you’re drinking gay enough, but see if you can get over that it’s only half-hearted. You at the other end there–you’re staring at your wine glass, then you look slowly up at your partner but without any life. You’re feeling the blight, see? A chap down the line here just did it perfectly. All ready, now! Lights! Camera! You blonde girl, stand up, face raised to him, hand up to his shoulder. You others, drinking, laughing. You at the end, look up slowly at the girl, look away–about there–bored, weary of it all–cut! All right. Not so bad. Now this next bunch, Paul.”
Merton Gill was beginning to loathe cigarettes. He wondered if Mr. Henshaw would mind if he didn’t smoke so much, except, of course, in the close-ups. His throat was dry and rough, his voice husky. His companion had evidently played more smoking parts and seemed not to mind it.
Henshaw was now opposite them across the dancing floor, warning his people to be gay but not too gay. The glamour of this night life must be a little dulled.
“Now, Paul, get about three medium shots along here. There’s a good table–get that bunch. And not quite so solemn, people; don’t overdo it. You think you’re having a good time, even if it does turn to ashes in your mouth–now, ready; lights! Camera!”
“I like Western stuff better,” confided Merton to his companion. She considered this, though retaining her arch manner. “Well, I don’t know. I done a Carmencita part in a dance-hall scene last month over to the Bigart, and right in the mi’st of the fight I get a glass of somethin’ all over my gown that practically rooned it. I guess I rather do this refined cabaret stuff–at least you ain’t so li’ble to roon a gown. Still and all, after you been warmin’ the extra bench for a month one can’t be choosy. Say, there’s the princ’ples comin’ on the set.”
He looked around. There, indeed, was the beautiful Muriel Mercer, radiant in an evening frock of silver. At the moment she was putting a few last touches to her perfect face from a make-up box held by a maid. Standing with her was another young woman, not nearly so beautiful, and three men. Henshaw was instructing these. Presently he called through his megaphone: “You people are excited by the entrance of the famous Vera Vanderpool and her friends. You stop drinking, break off your talk, stare at her–see what I mean?–she makes a sensation. Music, lights, camera!”
Down the set, escorted by a deferential head-waiter, came Muriel Mercer on the arm of a middle-aged man who was elaborately garnished but whose thin dyed mustaches, partially bald head, and heavy eyes, proclaimed him to Merton Gill as one who meant the girl no good. They were followed by the girl who was not so beautiful and the other two men. These were young chaps of pleasing exterior who made the progress laughingly. The five were seated at a table next the dancing space at the far end. They chatted gayly as the older man ordered importantly from the head-waiter. Muriel Mercer tapped one of the younger men with her plumed fan and they danced. Three other selected couples danced at the same time, though taking care not to come between the star and the grinding camera. The older man leered at the star and nervously lighted a gold-tipped cigarette which he immediately discarded after one savage bite at it. It could be seen that Vera Vanderpool was the gayest of all that gay throng. Upon her as yet had come no blight of Broadway, though she shrank perceptibly when the partially bald one laid his hand on her slender wrist as she resumed her seat. Food and wine were brought. Vera Vanderpool drank, with a pretty flourish of her glass.
Now the two cameras were moved forward for close-ups. The older man was caught leering at Vera. It would surely be seen that he was not one to trust. Vera was caught with the mad light of pleasure in her beautiful eyes. Henshaw was now speaking in low tones to the group, and presently Vera Vanderpool did a transition. The mad light of pleasure died from her eyes and the smile froze on her beautiful mouth. A look almost of terror came into her eyes, followed by a pathetic lift of the upper lip. She stared intently above the camera. She was beholding some evil thing far from that palace of revels.
“Now they’ll cut back to the tenement-house stuff they shot last week,” explained the Spanish girl.
“Tenement house?” queried Merton. “But I thought the story would be that she falls in love with a man from the great wind-swept spaces out West, and goes out there to live a clean open life with him– that’s the way I thought it would be–out there where she could forget the blight of Broadway.”
“No, Mercer never does Western stuff. I got a little girl friend workin’ with her and she told me about this story. Mercer gets into this tenement house down on the east side, and she’s a careless society butterfly; but all at once she sees what a lot of sorrow there is in this world when she sees these people in the tenement house, starving to death, and sick kids and everything, and this little friend of mine does an Italian girl with a baby and this old man here, he’s a rich swell and prominent in Wall Street and belongs to all the clubs, but he’s the father of this girl’s child, only Mercer don’t know that yet. But she gets aroused in her better nature by the sight of all this trouble, and she almost falls in love with another gentleman who devotes all his time to relieving the poor in these tenements–it was him who took her there–but still she likes a good time as well as anybody, and she’s stickin’ around Broadway and around this old guy who’s pretty good company in spite of his faults. But just now she got a shock at remembering the horrible sights she has seen; she can’t get it out of her mind. And pretty soon she’ll see this other gentleman that she nearly fell in love with, the one who hangs around these tenements doing good– he’ll be over at one of them tables and she’ll leave her party and go over to his table and say, ‘Take me from this heartless Broadway to your tenements where I can relieve their suffering,’ so she goes out and gets in a taxi with him, leaving the old guy with not a thing to do but pay the check. Of course he’s mad, and he follows her down to the tenements where she’s relieving the poor–just in a plain black dress–and she finds out he’s the real father of this little friend of mine’s child, and tells him to go back to Broadway while she has chosen the better part and must live her life with these real people. But he sends her a note that’s supposed to be from a poor woman dying of something, to come and bring her some medicine, and she goes off alone to this dive in another street, and it’s the old guy himself who has sent the note, and he has her there in this cellar in his power. But the other gentleman has found the note and has follered her, and breaks in the door and puts up a swell fight with the old guy and some toughs he has hired, and gets her off safe and sound, and so they’re married and live the real life far away from the blight of Broadway. It’s a swell story, all right, but Mercer can’t act it. This little friend of mine can act all around her. She’d be a star if only she was better lookin’. You bet Mercer don’t allow any lookers on the same set with her. Do you make that one at the table with her now? Just got looks enough to show Mercer off. Mercer’s swell-lookin’, I’ll give her that, but for actin’–say, all they need in a piece for her is just some stuff to go in between her close-ups. Don’t make much difference what it is. Oh, look! There comes the dancers. It’s Luzon and Mario.”
Merton Gill looked. These would be hired dancers to entertain the pleasure-mad throng, a young girl with vine leaves in her hair and a dark young man of barbaric appearance. The girl was clad in a mere whisp of a girdle and shining breast plates, while the man was arrayed chiefly in a coating of dark stain. They swirled over the dance floor to the broken rhythm of the orchestra, now clinging, now apart, working to a climax in which the man poised with his partner perched upon one shoulder. Through the megaphone came instructions to applaud the couple, and Broadway applauded–all but Merton Gill, who stared moodily into his coffee cup or lifted bored eyes to the scene of revelry. He was not bored, but his various emotions combined to produce this effect very plausibly. He was dismayed at this sudden revelation of art in the dance so near him. Imogene Pulver had once done an art dance back in Simsbury, at the cantata of Esther in the vestry of the Methodist church, and had been not a little criticised for her daring; but Imogene had been abundantly clad, and her gestures much more restrained. He was trying now to picture how Gashwiler would take a thing like this, or Mrs. Gashwiler, for that matter! One glimpse of those practically unclad bodies skipping and bounding there would probably throw them into a panic. They couldn’t have sat it through. And here he was, right up in front of them, and not turning a hair.
This reflection permitted something of the contemptuous to show in the random glances with which he swept the dancers? He could not look at them steadily, not when they were close, as they often were. Also, he loathed the cigarette he was smoking. The tolerant scorn for the Gashwilers and his feeling for the cigarette brought him again into favourable notice. He heard Henshaw, but did not look up.
“Get another flash here, Paul. He’s rather a good little bit.” Henshaw now stood beside him. “Hold that,” he said. “No, wait.” He spoke to Merton’s companion. “You change seats a minute with Miss Montague, as if you’d got tired of him–see what I mean? Miss Montague–Miss Montague.” The Spanish girl arose, seeming not wholly pleased at this bit of directing. The Montague girl came to the table. She was a blithesome sprite in a salmon-pink dancing frock. Her blonde curls fell low over one eye which she now cocked inquiringly at the director.
“You’re trying to liven him up,” explained Henshaw. “That’s all– baby-vamp him. He’ll do the rest. He’s quite a good little bit.”
The Montague girl flopped into the chair, leaned roguishly toward Merton Gill, placed a small hand upon the sleeve of his coat and peered archly at him through beaded lashes, one eye almost hidden by its thatch of curls. Merton Gill sunk low in his chair, cynically tapped the ash from his tenth cigarette into the coffee cup and raised bored eyes to hers. “That’s it–shoot it, Paul, just a flash.”
The camera was being wheeled toward them. The Montague girl, with her hand still on his arm, continued her wheedling, though now she spoke.
“Why, look who’s here. Kid, I didn’t know you in your stepping-out clothes. Say, listen, why do you always upstage me? I never done a thing to you, did I? Go on, now, give me the fishy eye again. How’d you ace yourself into this first row, anyway? Did you have to fight for it? Say, your friend’ll be mad at me putting her out of here, won’t she? Well, blame it on the gelatin master. I never suggested it. Say, you got Henshaw going. He likes that blighted look of yours.”
He made no reply to this chatter. He must keep in the picture. He merely favoured her with a glance of fatigued indifference. The camera was focused.
“All ready, you people. Do like I said, now. Lights, camera!”
Merton Gill drew upon his cigarette with the utmost disrelish, raised the cold eyes of a disillusioned man to the face of the leering Montague girl, turned aside from her with every sign of apathy, and wearily exhaled the smoke. There seemed to be but this one pleasure left to him.
“Cut!” said Henshaw, and somewhere lights jarred off. “Just stick there a bit, Miss Montague. We’ll have a couple more shots when the dancing begins.”
Merton resented this change. He preferred the other girl. She lured