They Call Me Carpenter Part 15

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We turned the corner, and soon I saw what was before us, and almost cried out with glee. It was really too good to be true! Carpenter, in the course of his talks with strikers, had learned where their soup-kitchen was located, the relief-headquarters where their families were being fed; and he now had the sublime audacity to take the picture magnate to lunch among them!

The place was an empty warehouse, fitted with long tables, and benches made of planks that were old and full of splinters. Here in rows of twenty or thirty were seated men and women and children, mixed together; before each one a bowl of not very thick soup, and a hunk of bread, and a tin cup full of hot brown liquid, politely taken for coffee. It was a meal which would have been spurned by any of the "studio b.u.ms" of T-S's mob-scenes; but now T-S was going to be a good sport, and sit on a splintery plank and eat it!

Nor was that all. As we pushed our way into the place, Carpenter turned to the magnate, and without a trace of embarra.s.sment, said: "You understand, Mr. T-S, I have no money. But we must pay--"

"Oh, sure!" said T-S, quickly. "I'll pay!"

"Thank you," said the other; and he turned to an official of the union with whom he had got acquainted in the course of the morning.

He introduced us all, not forgetting the secretary, and then said: "Mr. T-S is the moving picture producer, and wants to have lunch with you, if you will consent."

"Oh, sure!" said the official, cordially.

"He will pay for it," added Carpenter. "He has brought along a thousand dollars for that purpose."

T-S started as if some one had struck him; and the official started too. "WHAT?"

"He will pay a thousand dollars," declared Carpenter. "It is a fact, and you may tell the people, if you wish."

"My Gawd, no!" cried T-S wildly.

But the official did not heed him. He faced the crowd and stretched out his arms. "Boys! Boys! This is Mr. T-S, the picture producer, and he's come to lunch with us, and he's going to pay a thousand dollars for it!"

There was a moment of amazed silence, then a roar from the company.

Men leaped to their feet and yelled. And there stood poor T-S-not enjoying the ovation!

"Give it to them," whispered Carpenter; and the magnate, thus held up, took out the roll of bills, and turned it over to the trembling official, who leaped onto a chair and waved the miracle before the crowd. "A thousand dollars! A thousand dollars!" He counted it over before their eyes and called, louder than ever, "A thousand dollars!"

Carpenter, followed by T-S and the secretary and myself, went down the line of tables, shaking hands with many on the way, and being patted on the back by others. Also T-S shook hands, and was patted.

Seats were found for us, and food was brought--double portions of it, as if to make the plight of the poor magnate even more absurd! I watched him out of the corner of my eye; he enjoyed that costly meal just about as much as Carpenter had enjoyed the one at Prince's last night!

However, he was game, and spilled no tears into his soup; and Carpenter ate with honest appet.i.te, having had no breakfast. The strikers about us ate as if they had missed both breakfast and supper; they laughed and chatted and made jokes with us--you would have thought they were celebrating the winning of the strike and the end of all their troubles. In the midst of the meal I noted two well-dressed young men by the door, asking questions; I chuckled to myself, seeing more head-lines--double ones, and extra size:

PROPHET OF G.o.d VAMPS MOVIE KING MAGNATE OF SCREEN PAYS THOUSAND FOR LUNCH

But I knew that T-S had never yet paid a thousand dollars without getting something for it, and I was not surprised when, after he had gulped down his meal, he turned to his host and, disregarding the company and the excitement, demanded, "Now, Mr. Carpenter, tell me, do I git de contract?"

Carpenter had had his jest, and was through with it. He answered, gravely: "You must understand me, Mr. T-S. You don't want a contract with me."

"I don't?"

"If I were to sign it, it would not be a week before you would be sorry, and would be asking me to release you."

"Vy is dat, Mr. Carpenter?"

"Because I am going to do things which will make me quite useless to you in a business way."

"Dat can't be true, Mr. Carpenter!"

"It is true, and you will realize it soon. I a.s.sure you, it won't be a day before you will be ashamed of having known me."

T-S was gazing at the speaker, not certain whether this was something very terrible, or only a polite evasion. "Mr. Carpenter,"

he answered, "if all de vorld vas to give you up, I vouldn't!"

Said Carpenter: "I tell you, before the c.o.c.k crows again, you will deny three times that you know me." And then, without awaiting response from the amazed T-S, he turned to speak to the man on the other side of him.

The magnate of the pictures sat silent, evidently frightened. At last he turned to me and asked, "Vot you tink he meant by dat, Billy?"

I answered: "I think he meant that you are to play the part of Peter."

"Peter? Peter Pan?"

"No; St. Peter, who denied his master."

"Veil," said T-S, patiently, "you know, I ain't vun o' dese litry fellers."

"I'll tell it to you some time," I continued. "It's kind of funny.

If he's right, you are going to be the first pope, and sit at the golden gate, holding the keys of heaven."

"My Gawd!" said T-S.

"And you've made a record in the movies." I added. "You've played Satan and St. Peter, both on the same day! That is 'doubling' with a vengeance!"

x.x.xI

When I got back to the Labor Temple, I learned that there was to be a ma.s.s-meeting of the strikers this Sat.u.r.day evening. It had been planned some days ago, and now was to be turned into a protest against police violence and "government by injunction." There was a cheap afternoon paper which professed sympathy with the workers, and this published a manifesto, signed by a number of labor leaders, summoning their followers to make clear that they would no longer submit to "Cossack rule."

It appeared now that these leaders were considering inviting Carpenter to become one of the speakers at their meeting. Two of them came up to me. I had heard this stranger speak, and did I think he could hold an audience? I gave a.s.surance; he was a man of dignity, and would do them credit. They were afraid the newspapers would represent him as a freak, but of course their meeting would hardly fare very well in the papers anyhow. One of them asked, cautiously, how much of an extremist was he? Labor leaders were having a hard time these days to hold down the "reds," and the employers were not giving them any help. Did I think Carpenter would support the "reds"? I answered that I didn't know the labor movement well enough to judge, but one thing they could be sure of, he was a man of peace, and would not preach any sort of violence.

The matter was settled a little later, when Mary Magna drove up to the Labor Temple in her big limousine. Mary, for the first time in the memory of anyone who knew her, was without her war-paint; dressed like a Quakeress--a most uncanny phenomenon! She had not a single jewel on; and before long I learned why--she had taken all she owned to a jeweler that morning, and sold them for something over six thousand dollars. She brought the money to the fund for the babies of the strikers; nor did she ask anyone else to hand it in for her. It was Mary's fashion to look the world in the eye and say what she was doing.

T-S was still hanging about, and at first he tried to check this insane extravagance, but then he thought it over and grinned, saying, "I git my tousand dollars back in advertising!" When I pointed out to him what would be the interpretation placed by newspaper gossip on Mary's intervention in the affairs of Carpenter, he grinned still more widely. "Ain't he got a right to be in love vit Mary? All de vorld's in love vit Mary!" And of course, there was a newspaper reporter standing by his side, so that this remark went out to the world as semi-official comment!

You understand that by this time the second edition of the papers was on the streets, and it was known that the new prophet was at the Labor Temple. Curiosity seekers came filtering in, among them half a dozen more reporters, and as many camera men. After that, poor Carpenter could get no peace at all. Would he please say if he was going to do any more healing? Would he turn a little more to the light--just one second, thank you. Would he mind making a group with Miss Magna and Mr. T-S and the "wealthy young scion"? Would he consent to step outside for some moving pictures, before the light got too dim? It was a new kind of mob--a ravening one, making all dignity and thought impossible. In the end I had to mount guard and fight the publicity-hounds away. Was it likely this man would go out and pose for cameras, when he had just refused fifteen hundred dollars a week from Mr. T-S to do that very thing? And then more excitement! Had he really refused such an offer? The king of the movies admitted that he had!

We live in an age of communication; we can send a bit of news half way round the world in a few seconds, we can make it known to a whole city in a few hours. And so it was with this "prophet fresh from G.o.d"; in spite of himself, he was seized by the scruff of the neck and flung up to the pinnacle of fame! He had all the marvels of a lifetime crowded into one day--enough to fill a whole newspaper with headlines!

And the end was not yet. Suddenly there was a commotion in the crowd, and a man pushed his way through--Korwsky, the secretary of the tailor's union, who, learning of Carpenter's miracles, had rushed all the way home, and got a friend with a delivery wagon, and brought his half-grown son post-haste. He bore him now in his arms, and poured out to Carpenter the pitiful tale of his paralyzed limbs.

Such a gentle, good child he was; no one ever heard a complaint; but he had not been able to stand up for five years.

So, of course, Carpenter put his hands upon the child, and closed his eyes in prayer; and suddenly he put him down to the ground and cried: "Walk!" The lad stared at him, for one wild moment, while people caught their breath; then, with a little choking cry, he took a step. There came a shout from the spectators, and then--Bang!--a puff as if a gun had gone off, and a flash of light, and clouds of white smoke rolling to the ceiling.

Women screamed, and one or two threatened to faint; but it was nothing more dangerous than the cameraman of the Independent Press Service, who had hired a step-ladder, and got it set up in a corner of the room, ready for any climax! A fine piece of stage management, said his jealous rivals; others in the crowd were sure it was a put up job between Carpenter and Korwsky. But the labor leaders knew the little tailor, and they believed. After that there was no doubt about Carpenter's being a speaker at the ma.s.s-meeting!