Merton of the Movies Part 14

The lights jarred on; desperate gaming was filmed. "More life at the roulette tables," megaphoned Henshaw. "Crowd closer around that left-hand faro table. You're playing for big stakes." The gaming became more feverish. The mad light of pleasure was in every eye, yet one felt that the blight of Broadway was real.

The camera was wheeled forward and Merton Gill joyously quit smoking while Henshaw secured flashes of various groups, chiefly of losers who were seeing the hollowness of it all. He did not, however, disdain a bit of comedy.

"Miss Montague."

"Yes, Mr. Henshaw." The Montague girl paused in the act of sprinkling chips over a roulette lay-out.

"Your escort has lost all his chips and you've lost all he bought for you--"

The girl and her escort pa.s.sed to other players the chips before them, and waited.

"Your escort takes out his wallet, shows it to you empty, and shrugs his shoulders. You shrug, too, but turn your back on him, facing the camera, and take some bills out of your stocking--see what I mean? Give her some bills, someone."

"Never mind, Mr. Henshaw; I already got some there." The pantomime was done, the girl turned, stooped, withdrew flattened bills from one of the salmon-pink stockings and flourished them at her escort who achieved a transition from gloom to joy. Merton Gill, observing this shameless procedure, plumbed the nether depths of disgust for Broadway's night life.

The camera was now wheeled toward him and he wearily lighted another cigarette. "Get a flash of this chap," Henshaw was saying. The subject leaned forward in his chair, gazing with cynical eyes at the fevered throng. Wine, women, song, all had palled. Gambling had no charm--he looked with disrelish at the cigarette he had but just lighted.

"All right, Paul, that's good. Now get that bunch over at the c.r.a.p table."

Merton Gill lost no time in relinquishing his cigarette. He dropped it into the wine gla.s.s which became a symbol of Broadway's dead-sea fruit.

Thereafter he smoked only when he was in the picture. He felt that he was becoming screen wise. And Henshaw had remembered him. The cast of The Blight of Broadway might not be jewelled with his name, but his work would stand out. He had given the best that was in him.

He watched the entrance of Muriel Mercer, maddest of all the mad throng, accompanied by the two young men and the girl who was not so beautiful.

He watched her lose steadily, and saw her string of pearls saved by the elderly scoundrel who had long watched the beautiful girl as only the Wolf of Wall Street could watch one so fair. He saw her leave upon his arm, perhaps for further unwholesome adventure along Broadway. The lights were out, the revelry done.

Merton Gill beyond a doubt preferred Western stuff, some heart-gripping tale of the open s.p.a.ces, or perhaps of the frozen north, where he could be the hard-riding, straight-shooting, two-fisted wonder-man, and not have to smoke so many cigarettes--only one now and then, which he would roll himself and toss away after a few puffs. Still, he had shown above the mob of extra people, he thought. Henshaw had noticed him. He was coming on.

The Montague girl hailed him as he left the set. "Hullo, old trouper. I caught you actin' again to-day, right out before the white folks. Well, so far so good. But say, I'm glad all that roulette and stuff was for the up-and-down stage and not on the level. I'd certainly have lost everything but my make-up. So long, Kid!" She danced off to join a group of other women who were leaving. He felt a kindly pity for the child.

There could be little future in this difficult art for one who took it so lightly; who talked so frankly to strangers without being introduced.

At luncheon in the cafeteria he waited a long time in the hope of encountering Henshaw, who would perhaps command his further services in the cause of creative screen art. He meant to be animated at this meeting, to show the director that he could be something more than an actor who had probed the shams of Broadway. But he lingered in vain. He thought Henshaw would perhaps be doing without food in order to work on the scenario for Robinson Crusoe, Junior.

He again stopped to thank his friend, the casting director, for securing him his first chance. She accepted his thanks smilingly, and asked him to drop around often. "Mind, you don't forget our number," she said.

He was on the point of making her understand once for all that he would not forget the number, that he would never forget Gashwiler's address, that he had been coming to this studio too often to forget its location.

But someone engaged her at the window, so he was obliged to go on without enlightening the woman. She seemed to be curiously dense.

CHAPTER VII. "NOTHING TO-DAY, DEAR!"

The savings had been opportunely replenished. In two days he had acc.u.mulated a sum for which, back in Simsbury, he would have had to toil a week. Yet there was to be said in favour of the Simsbury position that it steadily endured. Each week brought its fifteen dollars, pittance though it might be, while the art of the silver screen was capricious in its rewards, not to say jumpy. Never, for weeks at a stretch, had Gashwiler said with a tired smile, "Nothing to-day--sorry!" He might have been a grouch and given to unreasonable nagging, but with him there was always a very definite something to-day which he would specify, in short words if the occasion seemed to demand. There was not only a definite something every day but a definite if not considerable sum of money to be paid over every Sat.u.r.day night, and in the meantime three very definite and quite satisfying meals to be freely partaken of at stated hours each day.

The leisure enforced by truly creative screen art was often occupied now with really moving pictures of Metta Judson placing practicable food upon the Gashwiler table. This had been no table in a gilded Broadway resort, holding empty coffee cups and half empty wine gla.s.ses, pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed by apparently busy waiters with laden trays who never left anything of a practicable nature. Doubtless the set would not have appealed to Henshaw. He would never have been moved to take close-ups, even for mere flashes, of those who ate this food. And yet, more and more as the days went by, this old-time film would unreel itself before the eager eyes of Merton Gill. Often now it thrilled him as might have an installment of The Hazards of Hortense, for the food of his favourite pharmacy was beginning to pall and Metta Judson, though giving her shallow mind to base village gossip, was a good cook. She became the adored heroine of an apparently endless serial to be ent.i.tled The Hazards of Clifford Armytage, in which the hero had tragically little to do but sit upon a bench and wait while tempting repasts were served.

Sometimes on the little bench around the eucalyptus tree he would run an entire five-thousand-foot program feature, beginning with the Sunday midday dinner of roast chicken, and abounding in tense dramatic moments such as corned-beef and cabbage on Tuesday night, and corned-beef hash on Wednesday morning. He would pause to take superb closeups of these, the corned beef on its spreading platter hemmed about with boiled potatoes and turnips and cabbage, and the corned beef hash with its richly browned surface. The thrilling climax would be the roast of beef on Sat.u.r.day night, with close-ups taken in the very eye of the camera, of the mashed potatoes and the apple pie drenched with cream. And there were close-ups of Metta Judson, who had never seriously contemplated a screen career, placing upon the table a tower of steaming hot cakes, while a platter of small sausages loomed eloquently in the foreground.

With eyes closed he would run this film again and again, cutting here, rearranging sequences, adding trims from suddenly remembered meals of the dead past, devising more intimate close-ups, such as the one of Metta withdrawing pies from the oven or smoothing hot chocolate caressingly over the top of a giant cake, or broiling chops, or saying in a large-lettered subt.i.tle--artistically decorated with cooked foods--"How about some hot coffee, Merton?"

He became an able producer of this drama. He devised a hundred sympathetic little touches that Henshaw would probably never have thought of. He used footage on a mere platter of steak that another director might have ignored utterly. He made it gripping--the supreme heart-interest drama of his season a big thing done in a big way, and yet censor-proof. Not even the white-souled censors of the great state of Pennsylvania could have outlawed its realism, brutal though this was in such great moments as when Gashwiler carved the roast beef. So able was his artistry that Merton's nostrils would sometimes betray him--he could swear they caught rich aromas from that distant board.

Not only had the fare purveyed by his favourite pharmacy put a blight upon him equal to Broadway's blight, but even of this tasteless stuff he must be cautious in his buying. A sandwich, not too meaty at the centre, coffee tasting strangely of other things sold in a pharmacy, a segment of pie fair--seeming on its surface, but lacking the punch, as he put it, of Metta Judson's pie, a standardized, factory-made, altogether formal and perfunctory pie--these were the meagre items of his accustomed luncheon and dinner.

He had abandoned breakfast, partly because it cost money and partly because a gentleman in eastern Ohio had recently celebrated his hundred and third birthday by reason, so he confided to the press, of having always breakfasted upon a gla.s.s of clear cold water. Probably ham and eggs or corned--beef hash would have cut him off at ninety, and water from the tap in the Patterson kitchen was both clear and cold. It was not so much that he cared to live beyond ninety or so, but he wished to survive until things began to pick up on the Holden lot, and if this did bring him many more years, well and good. Further, if the woman in the casting office persisted, as she had for ten days, in saying "Nothing yet" to inquiring screen artists, he might be compelled to intensify the regime of the Ohio centenarian. Perhaps a gla.s.s of clear cold water at night, after a hearty midday meal of drug--store sandwiches and pie, would work new wonders.

It seemed to be the present opinion of other waiters on the extra bench that things were never going to pick up on the Holden lot nor on any other lot. Strongly marked types, ready to add distinction to the screen of painted shadows, freely expressed a view that the motion-picture business was on the rocks. Unaffected by the optimists who wrote in the picture magazines, they saw no future for it. More than one of them threatened to desert the industry and return to previous callings. As they were likely to put it, they were going to leave the pictures flat and go back to type-writing or selling standard art-works or waiting on table or something where you could count on your little bit every week.

Under the eucalyptus tree one morning Merton Gill, making some appetizing changes in the fifth reel of Eating at Gashwiler's, was accosted by a youngish woman whom he could not at first recall. She had come from the casting office and paused when she saw him.

"h.e.l.lo, I thought it was you, but I wasn't sure in them clothes. How they coming?"

He stared blankly, startled at the sudden transposition he had been compelled to make, for the gleaming knife of Gashwiler, standing up to carve, had just then hovered above the well-browned roast of beef. Then he placed the speaker by reason of her eyes. It was the Spanish girl, his companion of the gilded cabaret, later encountered in the palatial gambling h.e.l.l that ate like a cancer at the heart of New York--probably at the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

He arose and shook hands cordially. He had supposed, when he thought of the girl at all, that she would always be rather Spanish, an exotic creature rather garishly dressed, nervously eager, craving excitement such as may be had in cabarets on Broadway, with a marked inclination for the lighter life of pleasure. But she wore not so much as a rose in her smoothly combed hair. She was not only not excited but she was not exciting. She was plainly dressed in skirt and shirtwaist of no distinction, her foot-gear was of the most ordinary, and well worn, and her face under a hat of no allure was without make-up, a commonplace, somewhat anxious face with lines about the eyes. But her voice as well as her eyes helped him to recall her.

She spoke with an effort at jauntiness after Merton had greeted her.

"That's one great slogan, 'Business as Usual!' ain't it? Well, it's business as usual here, so I just found out from the Countess--as usual, rotten. I ain't had but three days since I seen you last."

"I haven't had even one," he told her.

"No? Say, that's tough. You're registered with the Service Bureau, ain't you?"

"Well, I didn't do that, because they might send me any place, and I sort of wanted to work on this particular lot." Instantly he saw himself saving Beulah Baxter, for the next installment, from a fate worse than death, but the one-time Spanish girl did not share this vision.

"Oh, well, little I care where I work. I had two days at the Bigart in a hop-joint scene, and one over at the United doin' some board-walk stuff.

I could 'a' had another day there, but the director said I wasn't just the type for a chick bathing-suit. He was very nice about it. Of course I know my legs ain't the best part of me--I sure ain't one of them like the girl that says she's wasted in skirts." She grinned ruefully.

He felt that some expression of sympathy would be graceful here, yet he divined that it must be very discreetly, almost delicately, worded. He could easily be too blunt.

"I guess I'd be pretty skinny in a bathing-suit myself, right now. I know they won't be giving me any such part pretty soon if I have to cut down on the meals the way I been doing."

"Oh, of course I don't mean I'm actually skinny--"

He felt he had been blunt, after all.

"Not to say skinny." she went on, "but--well, you know--more like home-folks, I guess. Anyway, I got no future as a bathing beauty--none whatever. And this walkin' around to the different lots ain't helpin'

me any, either. Of course it ain't as if I couldn't go back to the insurance office. Mr. Gropp, he's office manager, he was very nice about it. He says, 'I wish you all the luck in the world, girlie, and remember your job as filin' clerk will always be here for you.' Wasn't that gentlemanly of him? Still, I'd rather act than stand on my feet all day filing letters. I won't go back till I have to."

"Me either," said Merton Gill, struggling against the obsession of Sat.u.r.day-night dinner at Gashwiler's.

Grimly he resumed his seat when the girl with a friendly "So long!" had trudged on. In spite of himself he found something base in his nature picturing his return to the emporium and to the thrice-daily encounter with Metta Judson's cookery. He let his lower instincts toy with the unworthy vision. Gashwiler would advance him the money to return, and the job would be there. Probably Spencer Grant had before this tired of the work and gone into insurance or some other line, and probably Gashwiler would be only too glad to have the wanderer back. He would get off No. 3 just in time for breakfast.

He brushed the monstrous scene from his eyes, shrugged it from his shoulders. He would not give up. They had all struggled and sacrificed, and why should he shrink from the common ordeal? But he wished the Spanish girl hadn't talked about going back to her job. He regretted not having stopped her with words of confident cheer that would have stiffened his own resolution. He could see her far down the street, on her way to the next lot, her narrow shoulders switching from light to shadow as she trudged under the line of eucalyptus trees. He hoped she wouldn't give up. No one should ever give up--least of all Merton Gill.

The days wore wearily on. He began to feel on his own face the tired little smile of the woman in the casting office as she would look up to shake her head, often from the telephone over which she was saying: "Nothing to-day, dear. Sorry!" She didn't exactly feel that the motion-picture business had gone on the rocks, but she knew it wasn't picking up as it should. And ever and again she would have Merton Gill a.s.sure her that he hadn't forgotten the home address, the town where lived Gighampton or Gumwash or whoever it was that held the good old job open for him. He had divined that it was a jest of some sort when she warned him not to forget the address and he would patiently smile at this, but he always put her right about the name of Gashwiler. Of course it was a name any one might forget, though the woman always seemed to make the most earnest effort to remember it.

Each day, after his brief chat with her in which he learned that there would be nothing to-day, he would sit on the waiting-room bench or out under the eucalyptus tree and consecrate himself anew to the art of the perpendicular screen. And each day, as the little h.o.a.rd was diminished by even those slender repasts at the drug store, he ran his film of the Gashwiler dining room in action.