Merton of the Movies Part 22

He had waved protestingly at sight of the new money, and now again he blushed.

"That's all understood," she continued. "I'm staking you to cakes till you get on your feet, see? And I know you're honest, so I'm not throwing my money away. There--sink it and forget it. Now, you go out and do what I said, the barber first. And lay off the eats until about noon. You had enough for now. By noon you can stoke up with meat and potatoes--anything you want that'll stick to the merry old slats.

And I'd take milk instead of any more coffee. You've thinned down some--you're not near so plump as Harold Parmalee. Then you rest up for the balance of the day, and you show here to-morrow morning about this time. Do you get it? The Countess'll let you in. Tell her I said to, and come over to the office building. See?"

He tried to tell her his grat.i.tude, but instead he babbled again of how much she was like Tessie Kearns. They parted at the gate.

With a last wondering scrutiny of him, a last reminder of her very minute directions, she suddenly illumined him with rays of a compa.s.sion that was somehow half-laughter. "You poor, f.e.c.kless dub!" she p.r.o.nounced as she turned from him to dance through the gate. He scarcely heard the words; her look and tone had been so warming.

Ten minutes later he was telling a barber that he had just finished a hard week on the Holden lot, and that he was glad to get the brush off at last. From the barber's he hastened to the Patterson house, rather dreading the encounter with one to whom he owed so much money. He found the house locked. Probably both of the Pattersons had gone out into society. He let himself in and began to follow the directions of the Montague girl. The bath, clean linen, the other belted suit, already pressed, the other shoes, the b.u.t.toned, cloth-topped ones, already polished! He felt now more equal to the encounter with a heartless society woman. But, as she did not return, he went out in obedience to a new hunger.

In the most sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized only in his first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long time. Roast beef and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he forget to drink the milk prescribed by his benefactress. Plenty of milk would make him more than ever resemble Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of dessert: lemon pie and apple pie and a double portion of chocolate cake with ice-cream. His craving for sweets was still unappeased, so at a near-by drug store he bought a pound box of candy.

The world was again under his feet. Restored to his rightful domain, he trod it with lightness and certainty. His mind was still a pleasant jumble of money and food and the Montague girl. Miles of gorgeous film flickered across his vision. An experienced alcoholic would have told him that he enjoyed a coffee "hang-over." He wended a lordly way to the nearest motion-picture theatre.

Billed there was the tenth installment of The Hazards of Hortense. He pa.s.sed before the lively portrayal in colours of Hortense driving a motor car off an open drawbridge. The car was already halfway between the bridge and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announcement: "Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture of the Century." A surprise picture indeed, if those now entering the theatre could be told what he knew about it! He considered spreading the news, but decided to retain the superiority his secret knowledge gave him.

Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, he was compelled to endure another of the unspeakable Buckeye comedies.

The cross-eyed man was a lifeguard at a beach and there were social entanglements involving a bearded father, his daughter in an inconsiderable bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social derelicts who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls also arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely follow the chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed made little effort to do so. He felt far above the audience that cackled at these dreadful buffooneries. One subt.i.tle read: "I hate to kill him--murder is so hard to explain."

This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art where earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order to give the public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he was asked to laugh at a cross--eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of the afflicted creature's image! This, surely, was not art such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial and hardship, to confer upon the public.

It was with curiously conflicting emotions that he watched the ensuing Hazards of Hortense. He had to remind himself that the slim little girl with the wistful eyes was not only not performing certain feats of daring that the film exposed, but that she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt and crazy about her husband. Yet the magic had not wholly departed from this wronged heroine. He thought perhaps this might be because he now knew, and actually liked, that talkative Montague girl who would be doing the choice bits of this drama. Certainly he was loyal to the hand that fed him.

Black Steve and his base crew, hirelings of the scoundrelly guardian who was "a Power in Wall Street," again and again seemed to have encompa.s.sed the ruin, body and soul, of the persecuted Hortense. They had her prisoner in a foul den of Chinatown, whence she escaped to balance precariously upon the narrow cornice of a skysc.r.a.per, hundreds of feet above a crowded thoroughfare. They had her, as the screen said, "Depressed by the Grim Menace of Tragedy that Impended in the Shadows."

They gave her a brief respite in one of those gilded resorts "Where the Clink of Coin Opens Wide the Portals of Pleasure, Where Wealth Beckons with Golden Fingers," but this was only a trap for the unsuspecting girl, who was presently, sewed in a plain sack, tossed from the stern of an ocean liner far out at sea by creatures who would do anything for money--who, so it was said, were Remorseless in the Mad Pursuit of Gain.

At certain gripping moments it became apparent to one of the audience that Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt herself was no longer in jeopardy. He knew the girl who was, and profoundly admired her artistry as she fled along the narrow cornice of the skysc.r.a.per. For all purposes she was Beulah Baxter. He recalled her figure as being--not exactly stubby, but at least not of marked slenderness. Yet in the distance she was indeed all that an audience could demand. And she was honest, while Mrs.

Rosenblatt, in the Majestic Theatre at Peoria, Illinois, had trifled airily with his faith in women and deceived him by word of mouth.

He applauded loudly at the sensational finish, when Hortense, driving her motor car at high speed across the great bridge, ran into the draw, that opened too late for her to slow down, and plunged to the cruel waters far below.

Mrs. Rosenblatt would possibly have been a fool to do this herself. The Montague girl had been insistent on that point; there were enough things she couldn't avoid doing, and all stars very sensibly had doubles for such scenes when distance or action permitted. At the same time, he could never again feel the same toward her. Indeed, he would never have felt the same even had there been no Rosenblatt. Art was art!

It was only five o'clock when he left the picture theatre, but he ate again at the luxurious cafeteria. He ate a large steak, drank an immense quant.i.ty of milk, and bought another box of candy on his way to the Patterson home. Lights were on there, and he went in to face the woman he had so long kept out of her money. She would probably greet him coldly and tell him she was surprised at his actions.

Yet it seemed that he had been deceived in this society woman. She was human, after all. She shook hands with him warmly and said they were glad to see him back; he must have been out on location, and she was glad they were not to lose him, because he was so quiet and regular and not like some other motion-picture actors she had known.

He told her he had just put in a hard week on the Holden lot, where things were beginning to pick up. He was glad she had missed him, and he certainly had missed his comfortable room, because the accommodations on the lot were not of the best. In fact, they were pretty unsatisfactory, if you came right down to it, and he hoped they wouldn't keep him there again. And, oh, yes--he was almost forgetting. Here was ten dollars--he believed there were two weeks' rent now due. He pa.s.sed over the money with rather a Clifford Armytage flourish.

Mrs. Patterson accepted the bill almost protestingly. She hadn't once thought about the rent, because she knew he was reliable, and he was to remember that any time convenient to him would always suit her in these matters. She did accept the bill, still she was not the heartless creature he had supposed her to be.

As he bade her good-night at the door she regarded him closely and said, "Somehow you look a whole lot older, Mr. Armytage."

"I am," replied Mr. Armytage.

Miss Montague, after parting with her protege had walked quickly, not without little recurrent dance steps--as if some excess of joy would ever and again overwhelm her--to the long office building on the Holden lot, where she entered a door marked "Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird, Manager." The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent low over certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, rather phlegmatic looking man, with a parrot-like crest of gray hair. He did not look up as the girl entered. She stood a moment as if to control her excitement, then spoke.

"Jeff, I found a million dollars for you this morning."

"Thanks!" said Mr. Baird, still not looking up. "Chuck it down in the coal cellar, will you? We're littered with the stuff up here."

"On the level, Jeff."

Baird looked up. "On the level?"

"You'll say so."

"Shoot!"

"Well, he's a small-town hick that saved up seventy-two dollars to come here from Goosewallow, Michigan, to go into pictures-took a correspondence course in screen--acting and all that, and he went broke and slept in a property room down in the village all last week; no eats at all for three, four days. I'd noticed him around the lot on different sets; something about him that makes you look a second time. I don't know what it is-kind of innocent and bug-eyed the way he'd rubber at things, but all the time like as if he thought he was someone. Well, I keep running across him and pretty soon I notice he's up against it. He still thinks he's someone, and is very up-stage if you start to kid him the least bit, but the signs are there, all right. He's up against it good and hard.

"All last week he got to looking worse and worse. But he still had his stage presence. Say, yesterday he looked like the juvenile lead of a busted road show that has walked in from Albany and was just standing around on Broadway wondering who he'd consent to sign up with for forty weeks--see what I mean?-hungry but proud. He was over on the Baxter set last night while I was doing the water stuff, and you'd ought to see him freeze me when I suggested a sandwich and a cup o' coffee. It was grand.

"Well, this morning I'm back for a bar pin of Baxter's I'd lost, and there he is again, no overcoat, shivering his teeth loose, and all in.

So I fell for him. Took him up for some coffee and eggs, staked him to his room rent, and sent him off to get cleaned and barbered. But before he went he cut loose and told me his history from the cradle to Hollywood.

"I'd 'a' given something good if you'd been at the next table. I guess he got kind of jagged on the food, see? He'd tell me anything that run in his mind, and most of it was good. You'll say so. I'll get him to do it for you sometime. Of all the funny nuts that make this lot! Well, take my word for it; that's all I ask. And listen here, Jeff--I'm down to cases. There's something about this kid, like when I tell you I'd always look at him twice. And it's something rich that I won't let out for a minute or two. But here's what you and me do, right quick:

"The kid was in that cabaret and gambling-house stuff they shot last week for The Blight of Broadway, and this something that makes you look at him must of struck Henshaw the way it did me, for he let him stay right at the edge of the dance floor and took a lot of close-ups of him looking tired to death of the gay night life. Well, you call up the Victor folks and ask can you get a look at that stuff because you're thinking of giving a part to one of the extras that worked in it. Maybe we can get into the projection room right away and you'll see what I mean. Then I won't have to tell you the richest thing about it.

Now!"--she took a long breath--"will you?"

Baird had listened with mild interest to the recital, occasionally seeming not to listen while he altered the script before him. But he took the telephone receiver from its hook and said briefly to the girl: "You win. h.e.l.lo! Give me the Victor office. h.e.l.lo! Mr. Baird speaking--"

The two were presently in the dark projection room watching the scenes the girl had told of.

"They haven't started cutting yet," she said delightedly. "All his close-ups will be in. Goody! There's the lad-get him? Ain't he the actin'est thing you ever saw? Now wait-you'll see others."

Baird watched the film absorbedly. Three times it was run for the sole purpose of exposing to this small audience Merton Gill's notion of being consumed with ennui among pleasures that had palled. In the gambling-hall bit it could be observed that he thought not too well of cigarettes. "He screens well, too," remarked the girl. "Of course I couldn't be sure of that."

"He screens all right," agreed Baird.

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think he looks like the first plume on a hea.r.s.e."

"He looks all of that, but try again. Who does he remind you of? Catch this next one in the gambling h.e.l.l--get the profile and the eyebrows and the chin--there!"

"Why--" Baird chuckled. "I'm a Swede if he don't look like--"

"You got it!" the girl broke in excitedly. "I knew you would. I didn't at first, this morning, because he was so hungry and needed a shave, and he darned near had me bawling when he couldn't hold his cup o' coffee except with two hands. But what d'you think?--pretty soon he tells me himself that he looks a great deal like Harold Parmalee and wouldn't mind playing parts like Parmalee, though he prefers Western stuff.

Wouldn't that get you?"

The film was run again so that Baird could study the Gill face in the light of this new knowledge.

"He does, he does, he certainly does--if he don't look like a No.

9 company of Parmalee I'll eat that film. Say, Flips, you did find something."