Books: Merton of the Movies

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

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They had used here, he saw, one of those slow cameras that seem to
suspend all action interminably, a cruel device in this instance.
And for his actual escape, when he had ridden the horse beyond
camera range at a safe walk, they had used another camera that gave
the effect of intense speed. The old horse had walked, but with an
air of swiftness that caused the audience intense delight.

Entered Marcel, the detective, in another scene Merton had not
watched. He emerged from the dance-hall to confront a horse that
remained, an aged counterpart of the horse Merton had ridden off.
Marcel stared intently into the beast's face, whereupon it reared
and plunged as if terrified by the spectacle of the cross-eyed man.

Merton recalled the horse in the village that had seemed to act so
intelligently. Probably a shot-gun had stimulated the present scene.
The detective thereupon turned aside, hastily donned his false
mustache and Sherlock Holmes cap, and the deceived horse now
permitted him to mount. He, too, walked off to the necromancy of a
lens that multiplied his pace a thousandfold. And the audience
rocked in its seats.

One horse still remained before the dance-hall. The old mother
emerged. With one anguished look after the detective, she gathered
up her disreputable skirts and left the platform in a flying leap to
land in the saddle. There was no trickery about the speed at which
her horse, belaboured with the mop-pail, galloped in pursuit of the
others. A subtitle recited--"She has watched her dear ones leave the
old nest flat. Now she must go out over the hills and mop the other
side of them!"

Now came the sensational capture by lasso of the detective. But the
captor had not known that, as he dragged his quarry at the rope's
end, the latter had somehow possessed himself of a sign which he
later walked in with, a sign reading, "Join the Good Roads
Movement!" nor that the faithful old mother had ridden up to deposit
her inverted mop-pail over his head.

Merton Gill had twice started to leave. He wanted to leave. But each
time he found himself chained there by the evil fascination of this
monstrous parody. He remained to learn that the Montague girl had
come out to the great open spaces to lead a band of train-robbers
from the "Q.T. ranche."

He saw her ride beside a train and cast her lasso over the stack of
the locomotive. He saw her pony settle back on its haunches while
the rope grew taut and the train was forced to a halt. He saw the
passengers lined up by the wayside and forced to part with their
valuables. Later, when the band returned to the ranche with their
booty, he saw the dissolute brother, after the treasure was divided,
winning it back to the family coffers with his dice. He saw the
stricken father playing golf on his bicycle in grotesque imitation
of a polo player.

And still, so incredible the revealment, he had not in the first
shock of it seemed to consider Baird in any way to blame. Baird had
somehow been deceived by his actors. Yet a startling suspicion was
forming amid his mental flurries, a suspicion that bloomed to
certainty when he saw himself the ever-patient victim of the genuine
hidalgo spurs.

Baird had said he wanted the close-ups merely for use in determining
how the spurs could be mastered, yet here they were. Merton Gill
caught the spurs in undergrowth and caught them in his own chaps,
arising from each fall with a look of gentle determination that
appealed strongly to the throng of lackwits. They shrieked at each
of his failures, even when he ran to greet his pictured sweetheart
and fell headlong. They found the comedy almost unbearable when at
Baird's direction he had begun to toe in as he walked. And he had
fallen clumsily again when he flew to that last glad rendezvous
where the pair were irised out in a love triumphant, while the old
mother mopped a large rock in the background. An intervening close-
up of this rock revealed her tearful face as she cleansed the
granite surface. Above her loomed a painted exhortation to "Use
Wizard Spine Pills." And of this pathetic old creature he was made
to say, even as he clasped the beloved in his arms--"Remember, she
is my mother. I will not desert her now just because I am rich and
grand!"

At last he was free. Amid applause that was long and sincere he
gained his feet and pushed a way out. His hoarse neighbour was
saying, "Who is the kid, anyway? Ain't he a wonder!"

He pulled his hat down, dreading he might be recognized and shamed
before these shallow fools. He froze with the horror of what he had
been unable to look away from. The ignominy of it! And now, after
those spurs, he knew full well that Baird had betrayed him. As the
words shaped in his mind, a monstrous echo of them reverberated
through its caverns--the Montague girl had betrayed him!

He understood her now, and burned with memories of her uneasiness
the night before. She had been suffering acutely from remorse; she
had sought to cover it with pleas of physical illness. At the moment
he was conscious of no feeling toward her save wonder that she could
so coolly have played him false. But the thing was not to be
questioned. She--and Baird--had made a fool of him.

As he left the theatre, the crowd about him commented approvingly on
the picture: "Who's this new comedian?" he heard a voice inquire.
But "Ain't he a wonder!" seemed to be the sole reply.

He flushed darkly. So they thought him a comedian. Well, Baird
wouldn't think so--not after to-morrow. He paused outside the
theatre now to study the lithograph in colours. There he hurled
Marcel to the antlers of the elk. The announcement was "Hearts on
Fire! A Jeff Baird Comedy. Five Reels-500 Laughs."

Baird, he sneeringly reflected, had kept faith with his patrons if
not with one of his actors. But how he had profaned the sunlit
glories of the great open West and its virile drama! And the spurs,
as he had promised the unsuspecting wearer, had stood out! The
horror of it, blinding, desolating!

And he had as good as stolen that money himself, taking it out to
the great open spaces to spend in a bar-room. Baird's serious effort
had turned out to be a wild, inconsequent farrago of the most
painful nonsense.

But it was over for Merton Gill. The golden bowl was broken, the
silver cord was loosed. To-morrow he would tear up Baird's contract
and hurl the pieces in Baird's face. As to the Montague girl, that
deceiving jade was hopeless. Never again could he trust her.

In a whirling daze of resentment he boarded a car for the journey
home. A group seated near him still laughed about Hearts on Fire. "I
thought he'd kill me with those spurs," declared an otherwise sanely
behaving young woman--"that hurt, embarrassed look on his face every
time he'd get up!"

He cowered in his seat. And he remembered another ordeal he must
probably face when he reached home. He hoped the Pattersons would be
in bed, and walked up and down before the gate when he saw the house
still alight. But the light stayed, and at last he nerved himself
for a possible encounter. He let himself in softly, still hoping he
could gain his room undiscovered; but Mrs. Patterson framed herself
in the lighted door of the living room and became exclamatory at
sight of him.

And he who had thought to stand before these people in shame to
receive their condolences now perceived that his trial would be of
another but hardly less-distressing sort. For somehow, so dense were
these good folks, that he must seem to be not displeased with his
own performance. Amazingly they congratulated him, struggling with
reminiscent laughter as they did so.

"And you never told us you was one of them funny comedians," chided
Mrs. Patterson. "We thought you was just a beginner, and here you
got the biggest part in the picture! Say, the way you acted when
you'd pick yourself up after them spurs threw you--I'll wake up in
the night laughing at that."

"And the way he kept his face so straight when them other funny ones
was cutting their capers all around him," observed Mr. Patterson.

"Yes! wasn't it wonderful, Jed, the way he never let on, keeping his
face as serious as if he'd been in a serious play?"

"I like to fell off my seat," added Mr. Patterson.

"I'll tell you something, Mr. Armytage," began Mrs. Patterson with a
suddenly serious manner of her own, "I never been one to flatter
folks to their faces unless I felt it from the bottom of my heart--I
never been that kind; when I tell a person such-and-such about
themselves they can take it for the truth's own truth; so you can
believe me now--I saw lots of times in that play to-night when you
was even funnier than the cross-eyed man."

The young actor was regarding her strangely; seemingly he wished to
acknowledge this compliment but could find no suitable words. "Yes,
you can blush and hem and haw," went on his critic, "but any one
knows me I'll tell you I mean it when I talk that way--yes, sir,
funnier than the cross-eyed man himself. My, I guess the
neighbours'll be talking soon's they find out we got someone as
important as you be in our spare-room--and, Mr. Armytage, I want you
to give me a signed photograph of yourself, if you'll be so good."

He escaped at last, dizzy from the maelstrom of conflicting emotions
that had caught and whirled him. It had been impossible not to
appear, and somehow difficult not to feel, gratified under this
heartfelt praise. He had been bound to appear pleased but
incredulous, even when she pronounced him superior, at times, to the
cross-eyed man--though the word she used was "funnier."

Betrayed by his friends, stricken, disconsolate, in a panic of
despair, he had yet seemed glad to hear that he had been "funny." He
flew to the sanctity of his room. Not again could he bear to be told
that the acting which had been his soul's high vision was a thing
for merriment.

He paced his room a long time, a restless, defenceless victim to
recurrent visions of his shame. Implacably they returned to torture
him. Reel after reel of the ignoble stuff, spawned by the miscreant,
Baird, flashed before him; a world of base painted shadows in which
he had been the arch offender.

Again and again he tried to make clear to himself just why his own
acting should have caused mirth. Surely he had been serious; he had
given the best that was in him.

And the groundlings had guffawed!

Perhaps it was a puzzle he could never solve. And now he first
thought of the new piece.

This threw him into fresh panic. What awful things, with his high
and serious acting, would he have been made to do in that?
Patiently, one by one, he went over the scenes in which he had
appeared. Dazed, confused, his recollection could bring to him
little that was ambiguous in them. But also he had played through
Hearts on Fire with little suspicion of its low intentions.

He went to bed at last, though to toss another hour in fruitless
effort to solve this puzzle and to free his eyes of those flashing
infamies of the night. Ever and again as he seemed to become
composed, free at last of tormenting visions, a mere subtitle would
flash in his brain, as where the old mother, when he first punished
her insulter, was made by the screen to call out, "Kick him on the
knee-cap, too!"

But the darkness refreshed his tired eyes, and sun at last brought
him a merciful outlet from a world in which you could act your best
and still be funnier than a cross-eyed man.

He awakened long past his usual hour and occupied his first
conscious moments in convincing himself that the scandal of the
night before had not been a bad dream. The shock was a little dulled
now. He began absurdly to remember the comments of those who had
appeared to enjoy the unworthy entertainment. Undoubtedly many
people had mentioned him with warm approval. But such praise was
surely nothing to take comfort from. He was aroused from this
retrospection by a knock on his door. It proved to be Mr. Patterson
bearing a tray. "Mrs. P. thought that you being up so late last
night mebbe would like a cup of coffee and a bite of something
before you went out." The man's manner was newly respectful. In this
house, at least, Merton Gill was still someone.

He thanked his host, and consumed the coffee and toast with a novel
sense of importance. The courtesy was unprecedented. Mrs. Patterson
had indeed been sincere. And scarcely had he finished dressing when
Mr. Patterson was again at the door.

"A gentleman downstairs to see you, Mr. Armytage. "He says his name
is Walberg but you don't know him. He says it's a business matter."

"Very well, I'll be down." A business matter? He had no business
matters with any one except Baird.

He was smitten with a quick and quite illogical fear. Perhaps he
would not have to tear up that contract and hurl it in the face of
the manager who had betrayed him. Perhaps the manager himself would
do the tearing. Perhaps Baird, after seeing the picture, had decided
that Merton Gill would not do. Instantly he felt resentful. Hadn't
he given the best that was in him? Was it his fault if other actors
had turned into farce one of the worth-while things?

He went to meet Mr. Walberg with this resentment so warm that his
greeting of the strange gentleman was gruff and short. The caller,
an alert, businesslike man, came at once to his point. He was, it
proved, not the representative of a possibly repenting Baird. He
was, on the contrary, representing a rival producer. He extended his
card--The Bigart Comedies.

"I got your address from the Holden office, Mr. Armytage. I guess I
routed you out of bed, eh? Well, it's like this, if yon ain't sewed
up with Baird yet, the Bigart people would like to talk a little
business to you. How about it?"

"Business?" Mr. Armytage fairly exploded this. He was unhappy and
puzzled; in consequence, unamiable.

"Sure, business," confirmed Mr. Walberg. "I understand you just
finished another five-reeler for the Buckeye outfit, but how about
some stuff for us now? We can give you as good a company as that one
last night and a good line of comedy. We got a gag man that simply
never gets to the end of his string. He's doping out something right
now that would fit you like a glove--and say, it would be a great
idea to kind a' specialize in that spur act of yours. That got over
big. We could work it in again. An act like that's good for a
million laughs."

Mr. Armytage eyed Mr. Walberg coldly. Even Mr. Walberg felt an
extensive area of glaciation setting in.

"I wouldn't think of it," said the actor, still gruffly.

"Do you mean that you can't come to the Bigart at all--on any
proposition?"

"That's what I mean," confirmed Mr. Armytage.

"Would three hundred and fifty a week interest you?"

"No," said Mr. Armytage, though he gulped twice before achieving it.

Mr. Walberg reported to his people that this Armytage lad was one
hard-boiled proposition. He'd seen lots of 'em in his time, but this
bird was a wonder.

Yet Mr. Armytage was not really so granitic of nature as the Bigart
emissary had thought him. He had begun the interview with a
smouldering resentment due to a misapprehension; he had been
outraged by a suggestion that the spurs be again put to their
offensive use; and he had been stunned by an offer of three hundred
and fifty dollars a week. That was all.

Here was a new angle to the puzzles that distracted him. He was not
only praised by the witless, but he had been found desirable by
certain discerning overlords of filmdom. What could be the secret of
a talent that caused people, after viewing it but once, to make
reckless offers?

And another thing--why had he allowed Baird to "sew him up"? The
Montague girl again occupied the foreground of his troubled musings.
She, with her airs of wise importance, had helped to sew him up. She
was a helpless thing, after all, and false of nature. He would have
matters out with her this very day. But first he must confront Baird
in a scene of scorn and reprobation.

On the car he became aware that far back in remote caverns of his
mind there ran a teasing memory of some book on the shelves of the
Simsbury public library. He was sure it was not a book he had read.
It was merely the title that hid itself. Only this had ever
interested him, and it but momentarily. So much he knew. A book's
title had lodged in his mind, remained there, and was now curiously
stirring in some direct relation to his present perplexities.

But it kept its face averted. He could not read it. Vaguely he
identified the nameless book with Tessie Kearns; he could not divine
how, because it was not her book and he had never seen it except on
the library shelf.

The nameless book persistently danced before him. He was glad of
this. It kept him at moments from thinking of the loathly Baird.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TRAGIC COMEDIAN

Penetrating the Holden lot he was relieved to find that he created
no immediate sensation. People did not halt to point derisive
fingers at him; he had half feared they would. As he approached the
office building he was almost certain he saw Baird turn in ahead of
him. Yet when he entered the outer room of the Buckeye offices a
young woman looked up from her typewriter to tell him that Mr. Baird
was not in.

She was a serious-eyed young woman of a sincere manner; she spoke
with certainty of tone. Mr. Baird was not only out, but he would not
be in for several days. His physician had ordered him to a
sanitarium.

The young woman resumed her typing; she did not again, glance up.
The caller seemed to consider waiting on a chance that she had been
misinformed. He was now sure he had seen Baird enter the building,
and the door of his private office was closed. The caller idled
outside the railing, absently regarding stills of past Buckeye
atrocities that had been hung upon the walls of the office by
someone with primitive tastes in decoration. He was debating a
direct challenge of the young woman's veracity.

What would she say if told that the caller meant to wait right there
until Mr. Baird should convalesce? He managed some appraising side-
glances at her as she bent over her machine. She seemed to believe
he had already gone.

Then he did go. No good talking that way to a girl. If it had been a
man. now--"You tell Mr. Baird that Mr. Gill's got to see him as soon
as possible about something important," he directed from the open
door.

The young woman raised her serious eyes to his and nodded. She
resumed her work. The door closed. Upon its closing the door of
Baird's private office opened noiselessly to a crack that sufficed
for the speaking voice at very moderate pitch to issue.

"Get Miss Montague on the 'phone," directed the voice. The door
closed noiselessly. Beyond it Mr. Baird was presently speaking in
low, sweet tones.

"'Lo, Sister! Listen; that squirrel just boiled in here, and I
ducked him. I told the girl I wasn't to be in unless he was laughing
all over, and he wasn't doing the least little thing that was
anywheres near laughing. See what I mean? It's up to you now. You
started it; you got to finish it. I've irised out. Get me?"

On the steps outside the rebuffed Merton Gill glanced at his own
natty wrist-watch, bought with some of the later wages of his shame.
It was the luncheon hour; mechanically he made his way to the
cafeteria. He had ceased to rehearse the speech a doughtier Baird
would now have been hearing.

Instead he roughly drafted one that Sarah Nevada Montague could not
long evade. Even on her dying bed she would be compelled to listen.
The practising orator with bent head mumbled as he walked. He still
mumbled as he indicated a choice of foods at the cafeteria counter;
he continued to be thus absorbed as he found a table near the centre
of the room.

He arranged his assortment of viands. "You led me on, that's what
you did," he continued to the absent culprit. "Led me on to make a
laughing-stock of myself, that's what you did. Made a fool of me,
that's what you did."

"All the same, I can't help thinking he's a harm to the industry,"
came the crisp tones of Henshaw from an adjoining table. The
rehearsing orator glanced up to discover that the director and the
sunny-faced brown and gray man he called Governor were smoking above
the plates of their finished luncheon.

"I wouldn't worry too much," suggested the cheerful governor.

"But see what he does: he takes the good old reliable, sure-fire
stuff and makes fun of it. I admit it's funny to start with, but
what'll happen to us if the picture public ever finds that out?
What'll we do then for drama--after they've learned to laugh at the
old stuff?"

"Tush, tush, my boy!" The Governor waved a half--consumed cigarette
until its ash fell. "Never fear. Do you think a thousand Jeff Bairds
could make the picture public laugh at the old stuff when it's
played straight? They laughed last night, yes; but not so much at
the really fine burlesque; they guffawed at the slap-stick stuff
that went with it. Baird's shrewd. He knows if he played straight
burlesque he'd never make a dollar, so notice how he'll give a bit
of straight that is genuine art, then a bit of slap-stick that any
one can get. The slap-stick is what carries the show. Real burlesque
is criticism, my boy; sometimes the very high-browest sort. It
demands sophistication, a pretty high intelligence in the man that
gets it.

"All right. Now take your picture public. Twenty million people
every day; not the same ones every day, but with same average
cranial index, which is low for all but about seven out of every
hundred. That's natural because there aren't twenty million people
in the world with taste or real intelligence--probably not five
million. Well, you take this twenty million bunch that we sell to
every day, and suppose they saw that lovely thing last night--don't
you know they'd all be back to-night to see a real mopping mother
with a real son falsely accused of crime--sure they'd be back, their
heads bloody but unbowed. Don't worry; that reliable field marshal,
old General Hokum, leads an unbeatable army."

Merton Gill had listened to the beginning of this harangue, but now
he savagely devoured food. He thought this so--called Governor was
too much like Baird.

"Well, Governor, I hope you're right. But that was pretty keen stuff
last night. That first bit won't do Parmalee any good, and that Buck
Benson stuff--you can't tell me a little more of that wouldn't make
Benson look around for a new play."

"But I do tell you just that. It won't hurt Parmalee a bit; and
Benson can go on Bensoning to the end of time--to big money. You
keep forgetting this twenty-million audience. Go out and buy a
picture magazine and read it through, just to remind you. They want
hokum, and pay for it. Even this thing of Baird's, with all the
saving slapstick, is over the heads of a good half of them. I'll
make a bet with you now, anything you name, that it won't gross two
thirds as much as Benson's next Western, and in that they'll cry
their eyes out when he kisses his horse good-bye. See if they don't.
Or see if they don't bawl at the next old gray-haired mother with a
mop and a son that gets in bad.

"Why, if you give 'em hokum they don't even demand acting. Look at
our own star, Mercer. You know as well as I do that she not only
can't act, but she's merely a beautiful moron. In a world where
right prevailed she'd be crowned queen of the morons without
question. She may have an idea that two and two make four, but if
she has it's only because she believes everything she hears. And
look at the mail she gets. Every last one of the twenty million has
written to tell her what a noble actress she is. She even believes
that.

"Baird can keep on with the burlesque stuff, but his little old two-
reelers'll probably have to pay for it, especially if he keeps those
high-priced people. I'll bet that one new man of his sets him back
seven hundred and fifty a week. The Lord knows he's worth every cent
of it. My boy, tell me, did you ever in all your life see a lovelier
imitation of a perfectly rotten actor? There's an artist for you.
Who is he, anyway? Where'd he come from?" Merton Gill again
listened; he was merely affecting to busy himself with a fork. It
was good acting.

"I don't know," replied Henshaw. "Some of the crowd last night said
he was just an extra that Baird dug up on the lot here. And, on the
subject of burlesque, they also said Baird was having him do some
Edgar Wayne stuff in a new one."

"Fine!" The Governor beamed. "Can't you see him as the honest,
likable country boy? I bet he'll be good to his old mother in this
one, too, and get the best of the city slickers in the end. For
heaven's sake don't let me miss it! This kid last night handed me
laughs that were better than a month's vacation for this old carcass
of mine. You say he was just an extra?"

"That's what I heard last night. Anyway, he's all you say he is as
an artist. Where do you suppose he got it? Do you suppose he's just
the casual genius that comes along from time to time? And why didn't
he stay 'straight' instead of playing horse with the sacred
traditions of our art? That's what troubled me as I watched him.
Even in that wild business with the spurs he was the artist every
second. He must have tricked those falls but I couldn't catch him at
it. Why should such a man tie up with Baird?"

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