Books: Merton of the Movies

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It seemed an incredible sum. As he blotted his signature he was
conscious of a sudden pity for the manager. The Montague girl had
been hard--hard as nails, he thought--and Baird, a victim to his own
good nature, would probably lose a great deal of money. He resolved
never to press his advantage over a man who had been caught in a
weak moment.

"I just want to say, Mr. Baird," he began, "that you needn't be
afraid I'll hold you to this paper if you find it's too much money
to pay me. I wouldn't have taken it at all if it hadn't been for
her." He pointed an almost accusing finger at the girl.

Baird grinned; the girl patted his hand. Even at grave moments she
was a patter. "That's all right, Son," she said soothingly. "Jeff's
got all the best of it, and Jeff knows it, too. Don't you, Jeff?"

"Well--" Baird considered. "If his work keeps up I'm not getting any
the worst of it."

"You said it. You know very well what birds will be looking for this
boy next week, and what money they'll have in their mitts.

"Maybe," said Baird.

"Well, you got the best of it, and you deserve to have. I ain't ever
denied that, have I? You've earned the best of it the way you've
handled him. All I'm here for, I didn't want you to have too much
the best of it, see? I think I treated you well."

"You're all right, Flips." "Well, everything's jake, then?"

"Everything's jake with me."

"All right! And about his work keeping up--trust your old friend and
well-wisher. And say, Jeff--" Her eyes gleamed reminiscently. "You
ain't caught him dancing yet. Well--wait, that's all. We'll put on a
fox-trot in the next picture that will sure hog the footage."

As this dialogue progressed, Merton had felt more and more like a
child in the presence of grave and knowing elders. They had seemed
to forget him, to forget that the amazing contract just signed bore
his name. He thought the Montague girl was taking a great deal upon
herself. Her face, he noted, when she had stated terms to Baird, was
the face she wore when risking a small bet at poker on a high hand.
She seemed old, indeed. But he knew how he was going to make her
feel younger. In his pocket was a gift of rare beauty, even if you
couldn't run railway trains by it. And pretty things made a child of
her.

Baird shook hands with him warmly at parting. "It'll be a week yet
before we start on the new piece. Have a good time. Oh, yes, and
drop around some time next week if there's any little thing you want
to talk over--or maybe you don't understand."

He wondered if this were a veiled reference to the piece about to be
shown. Certainly nothing more definite was said about it. Yet it was
a thing that must be of momentous interest to the manager, and the
manager must know that it would be thrilling to the actor.

He left with the Montague girl, who had become suddenly grave and
quiet. But outside the Holden lot, with one of those quick
transitions he had so often remarked in her, she brightened with a
desperate sort of gaiety.

"I'll tell you what!" she exclaimed. "Let's go straight down town--
it'll be six by the time we get there--and have the best dinner
money can buy: lobster and chicken and vanilla ice-cream and
everything, right in a real restaurant--none of this tray stuff--and
I'll let you pay for it all by yourself. You got a right to, after
that contract. And we'll be gay, and all the extra people that's
eating in the restaurant'll think we're a couple o' prominent film
actors. How about it?" She danced at his side.

"We'll have soup, too," he amended. "One of those thick ones that
costs about sixty cents. Sixty cents just for soup!" he repeated,
putting a hand to the contract that now stiffened one side of his
coat.

"Well, just this once," she agreed. "It might be for the last time."

"Nothing like that," he assured her. "More you spend, more you make-
-that's my motto."

They waited for a city-bound car, sitting again on the bench that
was so outspoken. "You furnish the girl, we furnish the home," it
shouted. He put his back against several of the bold words and felt
of the bracelet-watch in his pocket.

"It might be the last time for me," insisted the girl. "I feel as if
I might die most any time. My health's breaking down under the
strain. I feel kind of a fever coming on right this minute."

"Maybe you shouldn't go out."

"Yes, I should."

They boarded the car and reached the real restaurant, a cozy and
discreet resort up a flight of carpeted stairs. Side by side on a
seat that ran along the wall they sat at a table for two and the
dinner was ordered. "Ruin yourself if you want to," said the girl as
her host included celery and olives in the menu. "Go on and order
prunes, too, for all I care. I'm reckless. Maybe I'll never have
another dinner, the way this fever's coming on. Feel my hand."

Under the table she wormed her hand into his, and kept it there
until food came. "Do my eyes look very feverish?" she asked.

"Not so very," he assured her, covering an alarm he felt for the
first time. She did appear to be feverish, and the anxiety of her
manner deepened as the meal progressed. It developed quickly that
she had but scant appetite for the choice food now being served. She
could only taste bits here and there. Her plates were removed with
their delicacies almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek
his, gripping it as if in some nameless dread. He became worried
about her state; his own appetite suffered.

Once she said as her hot hand clung to his, "I know where you'll be
to-morrow night." Her voice grew mournful, despairing. "And I know
perfectly well it's no good asking you to stay away."

He let this pass. Could it be that the girl was already babbling in
delirium?

"And all the time," she presently went on, "I'll simply be sick a-
bed, picking at the covers, all blue around the gills. That'll be
me, while you're off to your old motion picture--'the so-called art
of the motion picture,'" she concluded with a careful imitation of
her father's manner.

He tried to determine whether she were serious or jesting. You never
could tell about this girl. Whatever it was, it made him uneasy.

Outside he wished to take her home in a taxi-cab, but she would not
hear to this. "We'll use the town-car, Gaston," she announced with a
flash of her old manner as she waved to an on-coming street-car.
During the long ride that followed she was silent but restless,
tapping her foot, shifting in her seat, darting her head about. The
one thing she did steadily was to clutch his arm.

During the walk from the car to the Montague house she twice
indulged in her little dance step, even as she clung to the arm, but
each Lime she seemed to think little of it and resumed a steady
pace, her head down. The house was dark. Without speaking she
unlocked the door and drew him into the little parlour.

"Stand right on that spot," she ordered, with a final pat of his
shoulder, and made her way to the dining room beyond where she
turned on a single light that faintly illumined the room in which he
waited. She came back to him, removed the small cloth hat, tossed it
to a chair, and faced him silently.

The light from the other room shone across her eyes and revealed
them to him shadowy and mysterious. Her face was set in some ominous
control. At last she looked away from him and began in a strained
voice, "If anything happens to me--"

He thought it time to end this nonsense. She might be feverish, but
it could be nothing so serious as she was intimating. He clutched
the gift. "Sarah," he said lightly, "I got a little something for
you--see what I mean?" He thrust the package into her weakly
yielding hands.

She studied it in the dusk, turning it over and over. Then with no
word to him she took it to the dining room where under the light she
opened it. He heard a smothered exclamation that seemed more of
dismay than the delight he expected, though he saw that she was
holding the watch against her wrist. She came back to the dusk of
the parlour, beginning on the way one of her little skipping dance
steps, which she quickly suppressed. She was replacing the watch on
its splendid couch of satin and closing the box.

"I never saw such a man!" she exclaimed with an irritation that he
felt to be artificial. "After all you've been through, I should
think you'd have learned the value of money. Anyway, it's too
beautiful for me. And anyway, I couldn't take it--not to-night,
anyway. And anyway--" Her voice had acquired a huskiness in this
speech that now left her incoherent, and the light revealed a
wetness in her eyes. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief. "Of
course you can take it to-night," he said in masterful tones, "after
all you've done for me."

"Now you listen," she began. "You don't know all I've done for you.
You don't know me at all. Suppose something came out about me that
you didn't think I'd 'a' been guilty of. You can't ever tell about
people in this business. You don't know me at all-not one little
bit. I might 'a' done lots of things that would turn you against me.
I tell you you got to wait and find out about things. I haven't the
nerve to tell you, but you'll find out soon enough--"

The expert in photoplays suffered a sudden illumination. This was a
scene he could identify--a scene in which the woman trembled upon
the verge of revealing to the man certain sinister details of her
past, spurred thereto by a scoundrel who blackmailed her. He studied
the girl in a new light. Undoubtedly, from her words, he saw one
panic-stricken by the threatened exposure of some dreadful
complication in her own past. Certainly she was suffering.

"I don't care if this fever does carry me off," she went on. "I know
you could never feel the same toward me after you found out--"

Again she was dabbing at her eyes, this time with the sleeve of her
jacket. A suffering woman stood before him. She who had always shown
herself so competent to meet trouble with laughing looks was being
overthrown by this nameless horror. Suddenly he knew that to him it
didn't matter so very much what crime she had been guilty of.

"I don't care what you've done," he said, his own voice husky. She
continued to weep.

He felt himself grow hot. "Listen here, Kid"--He now spoke with more
than a touch of the bully in his tone--"stop this nonsense. You--you
come here and give me a good big kiss--see what I mean?"

She looked up at him from wet eyes, and amazingly through her
anguish she grinned. "You win!" she said, and came to him.

He was now the masterful one. He took her protectingly in his arms.
He kissed her though with no trace of the Parmalee technique. His
screen experience might never have been. It was more like the dead
days of Edwina May Pulver.

"Now you stop it," he soothed--"all this nonsense!" His cheek was
against hers and his arms held her. "What do I care what you've done
in your past--what do I care? And listen here, Kid"--There was again
the brutal note of the bully in his voice--"don't ever do any more
of those stunts--see what I mean? None of that falling off
streetcars or houses or anything. Do you hear?"

He felt that he was being masterful indeed. He had swept her off her
feet. Probably now she would weep violently and sob out her
confession. But a moment later he was reflecting, as he had so many
times before reflected, that you never could tell about the girl. In
his embrace she had become astoundingly calm. That emotional crisis
threatening to beat down all her reserves had passed. She reached up
and almost meditatively pushed back the hair from his forehead,
regarding him with eyes that were still shadowed but dry. Then she
gave him a quick little hug and danced away. It was no time for
dancing, he thought.

"Now you sit down," she ordered. She was almost gay again, yet with
a nervous, desperate gaiety that would at moments die to a brooding
solemnity. "And listen," she began, when he had seated himself in
bewilderment at her sudden change of mood, "you'll be off to your
old motion picture to-morrow night, and I'll be here sick in bed--"

"I won't go if you don't want me to," he put in quickly.

"That's no good; you'd have to go sometime. The quicker the better,
I guess. I'll go myself sometime, if I ever get over this disease
that's coming on me. Anyway, you go, and then if you ever see me
again you can give me this--" She quickly came to put the watch back
in his hands. "Yes, yes, take it. I won't have it till you give it
to me again, if I'm still alive." She held up repulsing hands. "Now
we've had one grand little evening, and I'll let you go." She went
to stand by the door.

He arose and stood by her. "All this nonsense!" he grumbled. "I--I
won't stand for it--see what I mean?" Very masterfully again he put
his arms about her. "Say," he demanded, "are you afraid of me like
you said you'd always been afraid of men?"

"Yes, I am. I'm afraid of you a whole lot. I don't know how you'll
take it." "Take what?"

"Oh, anything--anything you're going to get."

"Well, you don't seem to be afraid of me."

"I am, more than any one."

"Well, Sarah, you needn't be--no matter what you've done. You just
forget it and give me a good big--"

"I'm glad I'm using my own face in this scene," murmured Sarah.

Down at the corner, waiting for his car, he paced back and forth in
front of the bench with its terse message--"You furnish the girl, we
furnish the house"--Sarah was a funny little thing with all that
nonsense about what he would find out. Little he cared if she'd done
something--forgery, murder, anything.

He paused in his stride and addressed the vacant bench: "Well, I've
done my part."

CHAPTER XVIII

"FIVE REELS-500 LAUGHS"

It occurred to him the next morning that he might have taken too
lightly Sarah's foreboding of illness. Reviewing her curious
behaviour he thought it possible she might be in for something
serious.

But a midday telephone call at the Montague home brought assurances
from the mother that quieted this fear. Sarah complained of not
feeling well, and was going to spend a quiet day at home. But Mrs.
Montague was certain it was nothing serious. No; she had no
temperature. No fever at all. She was just having a spell of
thinking about things, sort of grouchy like. She had been grouchy to
both her parents. Probably because she wasn't working. No, she said
she wouldn't come to the telephone. She also said she was in a bad
way and might pass out any minute. But that was just her kidding. It
was kind of Mr. Gill to call up. He wasn't to worry.

He continued to worry, however, until the nearness of his screen
debut drove Sarah to the back of his mind. Undoubtedly it was just
her nonsense. And in the meantime, that long--baffled wish to see
himself in a serious drama was about to be gratified in fullest
measure. He was glad the girl had not suggested that she be with him
on this tremendous occasion. He wanted to be quite alone, solitary
in the crowd, free to enjoy his own acting without pretense of
indifference.

The Pattersons, of course, were another matter. He had told them of
his approaching debut and they were making an event of it. They
would attend, though he would not sit with them. Mr. Patterson in
his black suit, his wife in society raiment, would sit downstairs
and would doubtless applaud their lodger; but he would be remote
from them; in a far corner of the topmost gallery, he first thought,
for Hearts on Fire was to be shown in one of the big down-town
theatres where a prominent member of its cast could lose himself.

He had told the Pattersons a little about the story. It was pretty
pathetic in spots, he said, but it all came right in the end, and
there were some good Western scenes. When the Pattersons said he
must be very good in it, he found himself unable to achieve the
light fashion of denial and protestation that would have become him.
He said he had struggled to give the world something better and
finer. For a moment he was moved to confess that Mrs. Patterson, in
the course of his struggles, had come close to losing ten dollars,
but he mastered the wild impulse. Some day, after a few more
triumphs, he might laughingly confide this to her.

The day was long. Slothfully it dragged hours that seemed endless
across the company of shining dreams that he captained. He was early
at the theatre, first of early comers, and entered quickly,
foregoing even a look at the huge lithographs in front that would
perhaps show his very self in some gripping scene.

With an empty auditorium to choose from, he compromised on a balcony
seat. Down below would doubtless be other members of the company,
probably Baird himself, and he did not wish to be recognized. He
must be alone with his triumph. And the loftier gallery would be too
far away.

The house filled slowly. People sauntered to their seats as if the
occasion were ordinary; even when the seats were occupied and the
orchestra had played, there ensued the annoying delays of an
educational film and a travelogue. Upon this young actor's memory
would be forever seared the information that the conger eel lays
fifteen million eggs at one time and that the inhabitants of Upper
Burmah have quaint native pastimes. These things would stay with
him, but they were unimportant. Even the prodigal fecundity of the
conger eel left him cold.

He gripped the arms of his seat when the cast of Hearts on Fire was
flung to the screen. He caught his own name instantly, and was
puzzled. "Clifford Armytage--By Himself." Someone had bungled that,
but no matter. Then at once he was seeing that first scene of his.
As a popular screen idol he breakfasted in his apartment, served by
a valet who was a hero worshipper.

He was momentarily disquieted by the frank adoration of the cross-
eyed man in this part. While acting the scene, he remembered now
that he had not always been able to observe his valet. There were
moments when he seemed over-emphatic. The valet was laughed at. The
watcher's sympathy went out to Baird, who must be seeing his serious
effort taken too lightly.

There came the scene where he looked at the photograph album. But
now his turning of the pages was interspersed with close-ups of the
portraits he regarded so admiringly. And these astonishingly proved
to be enlarged stills of Clifford Armytage, the art studies of
Lowell Hardy. It was puzzling. On the screen he capably beamed the
fondest admiration, almost reverent in its intensity--and there
would appear the still of Merton bidding an emotional farewell to
his horse. The very novelty of it held him for a moment--Gashwiler's
Dexter actually on the screen! He was aroused by the hearty laughter
of an immense audience.

"It's Parmalee," announced a hoarse neighbour on his right. "He's
imitatin' Harold! Say, the kid's clever!"

The laughter continued during the album scene. He thought of Baird,
somewhere in that audience, suffering because his play was made fun
of. He wished he could remind him that scenes were to follow which
would surely not be taken lightly. For himself, he was feeling that
at least his strong likeness to Parmalee had been instantly
admitted. They were laughing, as the Montague girl had laughed that
first morning, because the resemblance was so striking. But now on
the screen, after the actor's long fond look at himself, came the
words, "The Only Man He Ever Loved."

Laughter again. The watcher felt himself grow hot. Had Baird been
betrayed by one of his staff?

The scene with the letters followed. Clothes baskets of letters. His
own work, as he opened a few from the top, was all that he could
have wished. He was finely Harold Parmalee, and again the hoarse
neighbour whispered, "Ain't he got Parmalee dead, though?"

"Poor, silly little girls!" the screen exclaimed, and the audience
became noisy. Undoubtedly it was a tribute to his perfection in the
Parmalee manner. But he was glad that now there would come acting at
which no one could laugh. There was the delicatessen shop, the
earnest young cashier and his poor old mother who mopped. He saw
himself embrace her and murmur words of encouragement, but
incredibly there were giggles from the audience, doubtless from base
souls who were impervious to pathos. The giggles coalesced to a
general laugh when the poor old mother, again mopping on the floor,
was seen to say, "I hate these mopping mothers. You get took with
house-maid's knee in the first reel."

Again he was seized with a fear that one of Baird's staff had been
clumsy with subtitles. His eyes flew to his own serious face when
the silly words had gone.

The drama moved. Indeed the action of the shadows was swifter than
he supposed it would be. The dissolute son of the proprietor came on
to dust the wares and to elicit a laugh when he performed a bit of
business that had escaped Merton at the time. Against the wire
screen that covered the largest cheese on the counter he placed a
placard, "Dangerous. Do not Annoy."

Probably Baird had not known of this clowning. And there came
another subtitle that would dismay Baird when the serious young
bookkeeper enacted his scene with the proprietor's lovely daughter,
for she was made to say: "You love above your station. Ours is 125th
Street; you get off at 59th."

He was beginning to feel confused. A sense of loss, of panic, smote
him. His own part was the intensely serious thing he had played, but
in some subtle way even that was being made funny. He could not rush
to embrace his old mother without exciting laughter.

The robbery of the safe was effected by the dissolute son, the
father broke in upon the love scene, discovered the loss of his
money, and accused an innocent man. Merton felt that he here acted
superbly. His long look at the girl for whom he was making the
supreme sacrifice brought tears to his own eyes, but still the
witless audience snickered. Unobserved by the others, the old mother
now told her son the whereabouts of the stolen money, and he saw
himself secure the paper sack of bills from the ice-box. He detected
the half-guilty look of which he had spoken to Baird. Then he read
his own incredible speech--"I better take this cool million. It
might get that poor lad into trouble!" Again the piece had been hurt
by a wrong subtitle. But perhaps the audience laughed because it was
accustomed to laugh at Baird's productions. Perhaps it had not
realized that he was now attempting one of the worth-while things.
This reasoning was refuted as he watched what occurred after he had
made his escape.

His flight was discovered, policemen entered, a rapid search behind
counters ensued. In the course of this the wire screen over the
biggest cheese was knocked off the counter. The cheese leaped to the
floor, and the searchers, including the policemen, fled in panic
through the front door. The Montague girl, the last to escape, was
seen to announce, "The big cheese is loose--it's eating all the
little ones!"

A band of intrepid firemen, protected by masks and armed with axes,
rushed in. A terrific struggle ensued. The delicatessen shop was
wrecked. And through it all the old mother continued to mop the
floor. Merton Gill, who had first grown hot, was now cold. Icy drops
were on his chilled brow. How had Hearts on Fire gone wrong?

Then they were in the great open spaces of the Come All Ye dance
hall. There was the young actor in his Buck Benson costume,
protecting his mother from the brutality of a Mexican, getting his
man later by firing directly into a mirror--Baird had said it would
come right in the exposure, but it hadn't. And the witless cackled.

He saw his struggle with the detective. With a real thrill he saw
himself bear his opponent to the ground, then hurl him high and far
into the air, to be impaled upon the antlers of an elk's head
suspended back of the bar. He saw himself lightly dust his sleeves
after this feat, and turn aside with the words, "That's one Lodge he
can join."

Then followed a scene he had not been allowed to witness. There
swung Marcel, the detective, played too emphatically by the cross-
eyed man. An antler point suspended him by the seat of his trousers.
He hung limply a moment, then took from his pocket a saw with which
he reached up to contrive his release. He sawed through the antler
and fell. He tried to stand erect, but appeared to find this
impossible. A subtitle announced: "He had put a permanent wave in
Marcel."

This base fooling was continuously blown upon by gales of stupid
laughter. But not yet did Merton Gill know the worst. The merriment
persisted through his most affecting bit, the farewell to his old
pal outside--how could they have laughed at a simple bit of pathos
like that? But the watching detective was seen to weep bitterly.

"Look a' him doin' Buck Benson," urged the hoarse neighbour
gleefully. "You got to hand it to that kid--say, who is he, anyway?"

Followed the thrilling leap from a second-story window to the back
of the waiting pal. The leap began thrillingly, but not only was it
shown that the escaping man had donned a coat and a false mustache
in the course of his fall, but at its end he was revealed slowly,
very slowly, clambering into the saddle!

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