Books: Merton of the Movies

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Merton of the Movies

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"I've slept in here a lot," he volunteered. The girl went to look
through one of the windows.

"Blankets!" she exclaimed. "Well, you got the makings of a trouper
in you, I'll say that. Where else did you sleep?"

"Well, there were two miners had a nice cabin down the street here
with bunks and blankets, and they had a fight, and half a kettle of
beans and some bread, and one of them shaved and I used his razor,
but I haven't shaved since because I only had twenty cents day
before yesterday, and anyway they might think I was growing them for
a part, the way your father did, but I moved up here when I saw them
put the blankets in, and I was careful and put them back every
morning. I didn't do any harm, do you think? And I got the rest of
the beans they'd thrown into the fireplace, and if I'd only known it
I could have brought my razor and overcoat and some clean collars,
but somehow you never seem to know when--"

He broke off, eyeing her vaguely. He had little notion what he had
been saying or what he would say next.

"This is going to be good," said the Montague girl. "I can see that
from here. But now you c'mon-we'll walk slow-and you tell me the
rest when you've had a little snack."

She even helped him to rise, with a hand under his elbow, though he
was quick to show her that he had not needed this help. "I can walk
all right," he assured her.

"Of course you can. You're as strong as a horse. But we needn't go
too fast." She took his arm in a friendly way as they completed the
journey to the outside cafeteria.

At this early hour they were the only patrons of the place. Miss
Montague, a little with the air of a solicitous nurse, seated her
charge at a corner table and took the place opposite him.

"What's it going to be?" she demanded.

Visions of rich food raced madly through his awakened mind, wide
platters heaped with sausage and steaks and ham and corned-beef
hash.

"Steak," he ventured, "and something like ham and eggs and some hot
cakes and coffee and--" He broke off. He was becoming too emotional
under this golden spread of opportunity. The girl glanced up from
the bill of fare and appraised the wild light in his eyes.

"One minute, Kid-let's be more restful at first. You know-kind of
ease into the heavy eats. It'll prob'ly be better for you."

"Anything you say," he conceded. Her words of caution had stricken
him with a fear that this was a dream; that he would wake up under
blankets back in the Crystal Palace. It was like that in dreams. You
seemed able to order all sorts of food, but something happened; it
never reached the table. He would take no further initiative in this
scene, whether dream or reality. "You order something," he
concluded. His eyes trustfully sought the girl's.

"Well, I think you'll start with one orange, just to kind of hint to
the old works that something good is coming. Then--lemme see"--she
considered gravely. "Then I guess about two soft-boiled eggs--no,
you can stand three--and some dry toast and some coffee. Maybe a few
thin strips of bacon wouldn't hurt. We'll see can you make the
grade." She turned to give the order to a waitress. "And shoot the
coffee along, sister. A cup for me, too."

Her charge shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. The
juncture was critical. He might still be dreaming, but in another
moment he must know. He closely, even coolly, watched the two cups
of coffee that were placed before them. He put a benumbed hand
around the cup in front of him and felt it burn. It was too active a
sensation for mere dreaming. He put sugar into the cup and poured in
the cream from a miniature pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma.
Events thus far seemed normal. He stirred the coffee and started to
raise the cup. Now, after all, it seemed to be a dream. His hand
shook so that the stuff spilled into the saucer and even out on to
the table. Always in dreams you were thwarted at the last moment.

The Montague girl had noted the trembling and ineffective hand. She
turned her back upon him to chat with the waitress over by the food
counter. With no eye upon him, he put both hands about the cup and
succeeded in raising it to his lips. The hands were still shaky, but
he managed some sips of the stuff, and then a long draught that
seemed to scald him. He wasn't sure if it scalded or not. It was
pretty hot, and fire ran through him. He drained the cup--still
holding it with both hands. It was an amazing sensation to have
one's hand refuse to obey so simple an order. Maybe he would always
be that way now, practically a cripple.

The girl turned back to him. "Atta boy," she said. "Now take the
orange. And when the toast comes you can have some more coffee." A
dread load was off his mind. He did not dream this thing. He ate the
orange, and ate wonderful toast to the accompaniment of another cup
of coffee. The latter half of this he managed with but one hand,
though it was not yet wholly under control. The three eggs seemed
like but one. He thought they must have been small eggs. More toast
was commanded and more coffee.

"Easy, easy!" cautioned his watchful hostess from time to time.
"Don't wolf it--you'll feel better afterwards."

"I feel better already," he announced.

"Well," the girl eyed him critically, "you certainly got the main
chandelier lighted up once more."

A strange exhilaration flooded all his being. His own thoughts
babbled to him, and he presently began to babble to his new friend.

"You remind me so much of Tessie Kearns," he said as he scraped the
sides of the egg cup.

"Who's she?"

"Oh, she's a scenario writer I know. You're just like her." He was
now drunk--maudlin drunk--from the coffee. Sober, he would have
known that no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns
and the Montague girl. Other walls of his reserve went down.

"Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got some money to
go back there--"

"Gashwiler, Gashwiler?" The girl seemed to search her memory. "I
thought I knew all the tank towns, but that's a new one. Where is
it?"

"It isn't a town; it's a gentleman I had a position with, and he
said he'd keep it open for me." He flew to another thought with the
inconsequence of the drunken. "Say, Kid"--He had even caught that
form of address from her--"I'll tell you. You can keep this watch of
mine till I pay you back this money." He drew it out. "It's a good
solid-gold watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester gave it to me
for not smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. He smoked, himself; he
even drank considerable. He was his own worst enemy. But you can see
it's a good solid--gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till I
pay you back, will you?"

The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting the
inscription engraved on the case. There were puzzling glints in her
eyes as she handed it back to him. "No; I'll tell you, it'll be my
watch until you pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven't any
place to carry it except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose
it, and then where'd we be?"

"Well, all right." He cheerfully took back the watch. His present
ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals.

"And say," continued the girl, "what about this Gashweiler, or
whatever his name is? He said he'd take you back, did he? A farm?"

"No, an emporium--and you forgot his name just the way that lady in
the casting office always does. She's funny. Keeps telling me not to
forget the address, when of course I couldn't forget the town where
I lived, could I? Of course it's a little town, but you wouldn't
forget it when you lived there a long time--not when you got your
start there."

"So you got your start in this town, did you?"

He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life
there, of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie-
acting. Of Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they
were sure to be later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer,
and the stills that he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage.
Didn't she think that was a better stage name than Merton Gill,
which didn't seem to sound like so much? Anyway, he wished he had
his stills here to show her. Of course some of them were just in
society parts, the sort of thing that Harold Parmalee played--had
she noticed that he looked a good deal like Harold Parmalee? Lots of
people had.

Tessie Kearns thought he was the dead image of Parmalee. But he
liked Western stuff better--a lot better than cabaret stuff where
you had to smoke one cigarette after another--and he wished she
could see the stills in the Buck Benson outfit, chaps and sombrero
and spurs and holster. He'd never had two guns, but the one he did
have he could draw pretty well. There would be his hand at his side,
and in a flash he would have the gun in it, ready to shoot from the
hip. And roping--he'd need to practise that some. Once he got it
smack over Dexter's head, but usually it didn't go so well.

Probably a new clothesline didn't make the best rope--too stiff. He
could probably do a lot better with one of those hair ropes that the
real cowboys used. And Metta Judson--she was the best cook anywhere
around Simsbury. He mustn't forget to write to Metta, and to Tessie
Kearns, to be sure and see The Blight of Broadway when it came to
the Bijou Palace. They would be surprised to see those close--ups
that Henshaw had used him in. And he was in that other picture. No
close-ups in that, still he would show pretty well in the cage-
scene--he'd had to smoke a few cigarettes there, because Arabs smoke
all the time, and he hadn't been in the later scene where the girl
and the young fellow were in the deserted tomb all night and he
didn't lay a finger on her because he was a perfect gentleman.

He didn't know what he would do next. Maybe Henshaw would want him
in Robinson Crusoe, Junior, where Friday's sister turned out to be
the daughter of an English earl with her monogram tattooed on her
left shoulder. He would ask Henshaw, anyway.

The Montague girl listened attentively to the long, wandering
recital. At times she would seem to be strongly moved, to tears or
something. But mostly she listened with a sympathetic smile, or
perhaps with a perfectly rigid face, though at such moments there
would be those curious glints of light far back in her gray eyes.
Occasionally she would prompt him with a question.

In this way she brought out his version of the Sabbath afternoon
experience with Dexter. He spared none of the details, for he was
all frankness now. He even told how ashamed he had felt having to
lead Dexter home from his scandalous grazing before the Methodist
Church. He had longed to leap upon the horse and ride him back at a
gallop, but he had been unable to do this because there was nothing
from which to climb on him, and probably he would have been afraid
to gallop the beast, anyway.

This had been one of the bits that most strangely moved his
listener. Her eyes were moist when he had finished, and some strong
emotion seemed about to overpower her, but she had recovered command
of herself, and become again the sympathetic provider and
counsellor.

He would have continued to talk, apparently, for the influence of
strong drink had not begun to wane, but the girl at length stopped
him.

"Listen here, Merton--" she began; her voice was choked to a
peculiar hoarseness and she seemed to be threatened with a return of
her late strong emotion. She was plainly uncertain of her control,
fearing to trust herself to speech, but presently, after efforts
which he observed with warmest sympathy, she seemed to recover her
poise. She swallowed earnestly several times, wiped her moisture--
dimmed eyes with her handkerchief, and continued, "It's getting late
and I've got to be over at the show shop. So I'll tell you what to
do next. You go out and get a shave and a haircut and then go home
and get cleaned up--you said you had a room and other clothes,
didn't you?"

Volubly he told her about the room at Mrs. Patterson's, and, with a
brief return of lucidity, how the sum of ten dollars was now due
this heartless society woman who might insist upon its payment
before he would again enjoy free access to his excellent wardrobe.

"Well, lemme see--" She debated a moment, then reached under the
table, fumbled obscurely, and came up with more money. "Now, here,
here's twenty more besides that first I gave you, so you can pay the
dame her money and get all fixed up again, fresh suit and clean
collar and a shine and everything. No, no--this is my scene; you
stay out."

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 gratitude, 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
compassion that was somehow half-laughter. "You poor, feckless dub!"
she pronounced 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 buttoned, 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 passed 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 subtitle 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
encompassed 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 skyscraper,
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 skyscraper. 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 quantity 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 passed 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?"

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