Merton of the Movies Part 34

So it was that on the following night he enjoyed a home evening with the Montagues. Mrs. Montague had indeed cooked up something else, and had done it well; while Mr. Montague offered at the sideboard a choice of amateur distillations and brews which he warmly recommended to the guest. While the guest timidly considered, having had but the slightest experience with intoxicants, it developed that the confidence placed in his product by the hospitable old craftsman was not shared by his daughter.

"Keep off it," she warned, and then to her father, "Say, listen, Pa, have a heart; that boy's got to work to-morrow." "So be it, my child,"

replied Mr. Montague with a visible stiffening of manner. "Sylvester Montague is not the man to urge strong drink upon the reluctant or the over-cautious. I shall drink my aperatif alone."

"Go to it, old Pippin," rejoined his daughter as she vanished to the kitchen.

"Still, a little dish of liquor at this hour," continued the host suggestively when they were alone.

"Well"--Merton wished the girl had stayed--"perhaps just a few drops."

"Precisely, my boy, precisely. A mere dram." He poured the mere dram and his guest drank. It was a colourless, fiery stuff with an elusive taste of metal. Merton contrived an expression of pleasure under the searching glance of his host. "Ah, I knew you would relish it. I fancy I could amaze you if I told you how recently it was made. Now here"--He grasped another bottle purposely--"is something a full ten days older. It has developed quite a bouquet. Just a drop--"

The guest graciously yet firmly waved a negation.

"Thanks," he said, "but I want to enjoy the last--it--it has so much flavour."

"It has; it has, indeed. I'll not urge you, of course. Later you must see the simple mechanism by which I work these wonders. Alone, then, I drink to you."

Mr. Montague alone drank of two other fruits of his loom before the ladies appeared with dinner. He was clean--shaven now and his fine face glowed with hospitality as he carved roast chickens. The talk was of the shop: of what Mr. Montague scornfully called "grind shows" when his daughter led it, and of the legitimate hall-show when he gained the leaders.h.i.+p. He believed that moving pictures had sounded the knell of true dramatic art and said so in many ways.

He tried to imagine the sensations of Lawrence Barrett or Louis James could they behold Sylvester Montague, whom both these gentlemen had proclaimed to be no mean artist, enacting the role of a bar-room rowdy five days on end by reclining upon a sawdust floor with his back supported by a spirits barrel. The supposit.i.tious comments of the two placed upon the motion-picture industry the black guilt of having degraded a sterling artist to the level of a peep-show mountebank. They were frankly disgusted at the spectacle, and their present spokesman thought it as well that they had not actually lived to witness it--even the happier phases of this so-called art in which a mere chit of a girl might earn a living wage by falling downstairs for a so-called star, or the he-doll whippersnapper--Merton Gill flinched in spite of himself--could name his own salary for merely possessing a dimpled chin.

Further, an artist in the so-called art received his payment as if he had delivered groceries at one's back door. "You, I believe--"--The speaker addressed his guest--"are at present upon a pay-roll; but there are others, your elders-possibly your betters, though I do not say that--"

"You better not," remarked his daughter, only to be ignored.

"--others who must work a day and at the close of it receive a slip of paper emblazoned 'Talent Pay Check.' How more effectively could they cheapen the good word 'talent'? And at the foot of this slip you are made to sign, before receiving the pittance you have earned, a consent to the public exhibition for the purpose of trade or advertising, of the pictures for which you may have posed. Could tradesmen descend to a lower level, I ask you?"

"I'll have one for twelve fifty to-morrow night," said Mrs. Montague, not too dismally. "I got to do a d.u.c.h.ess at a reception, and I certainly hope my feet don't hurt me again."

"Cheer up, old dears! Pretty soon you can both pick your parts," chirped their daughter. "Jeff's going to give me a contract, and then you can loaf forever for all I care. Only I know you won't, and you know you won't. Both of you'd act for nothing if you couldn't do it for money.

What's the use of pretending?"

"The chit may be right, she may be right," conceded Mr. Montague sadly.

Later, while the ladies were again in the kitchen, Mr. Montague, after suggesting, "Something in the nature of an after-dinner cordial,"

quaffed one for himself and followed it with the one he had poured out for a declining guest who still treasured the flavour of his one aperitif.

He then led the way to the small parlour where he placed in action on the phonograph a record said to contain the ravings of John McCullough in his last hours. He listened to this emotionally.

"That's the sort of technique," he said, "that the so--called silver screen has made but a memory." He lighted his pipe, and identified various framed photographs that enlivened the walls of the little room.

Many of them were of himself at an earlier age.

"My dear mother-in-law," he said, pointing to another. "A sterling artist, and in her time an ornament of the speaking stage. I was on tour when her last days came. She idolized me, and pa.s.sed away with my name on her lips. Her last request was that a photograph of me should be placed in her casket before it went to its final resting place."

He paused, his emotion threatening to overcome him. Presently he brushed a hand across his eyes and continued, "I discovered later that they had picked out the most wretched of all my photographs--an atrocious thing I had supposed was destroyed. Can you imagine it?"

Apparently it was but the entrance of his daughter that saved him from an affecting collapse. His daughter removed the record of John McCullough's ravings, sniffed at it, and put a fox-trot in its place.

"He's got to learn to dance," she explained, laying hands upon the guest.

"Dancing--dancing!" murmured Mr. Montague, as if the very word recalled bitter memories.

With br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes he sat beating time to the fox-trot measure while Merton Gill proved to all observers that his mastery of this dance would, if ever at all achieved, be only after long and discouraging effort.

"You forget all about your feet," remarked the girl as they paused, swaying to the rhythm. "Remember the feet--they're important in a dance.

Now!--" But it was hard to remember his feet or, when he did recall them, to relate their movements even distantly to the music. When this had died despairingly, the girl surveyed her pupil with friendly but doubting eyes.

"Say, Pa, don't he remind you of someone? Remember the squirrel that joined out with us one time in the rep show and left 'East Lynne' flat right in the middle of the third act while he went down and announced the next night's play--the one that his name was Eddie Duffy and he called himself Clyde Maltravers?"

"In a way, in a way," agreed Mr. Montague dismally. "A certain lack of finish in the manner, perhaps."

"Remember how Charlie d.i.c.kman, the manager, nearly murdered him for it in the wings? Not that Charlie didn't have a right to. Well, this boy dances like Eddie Duffy would have danced."

"He was undeniably awkward and forgetful," said Mr. Montague. "Well do I recall a later night. We played Under the Gaslight; Charlie feared to trust him with a part, so he kept the young man off stage to help with the train noise when the down express should dash across. But even in this humble station he proved inefficient. When the train came on he became confused, seized the cocoanut sh.e.l.ls instead of the sand-paper, and our train that night entered to the sound of a galloping horse. The effect must have been puzzling to the audience. Indeed, many of them seemed to consider it ludicrous. Charlie d.i.c.kman confided in me later.

'Syl, my boy,' says he, 'this bird Duffy has caused my first gray hairs.' It was little wonder that he persuaded young Duffy to abandon the drama. He was not meant for the higher planes of our art. Now our young friend here"--he pointed to the perspiring Merton Gill--"doesn't even seem able to master a simple dance step. I might say that he seems to out-Duffy Duffy--for Duffy could dance after a fas.h.i.+on."

"He'll make the grade yet," replied his daughter grimly, and again the music sounded. Merton Gill continued unconscious of his feet, or, remembering them, he became deaf to the music. But the girl brightened with a sudden thought when next they rested.

"I got it!" she announced. "We'll have about two hundred feet of this for the next picture--you trying to dance just the way you been doing with me. If you don't close to a good hand I'll eat my last pay-check."

The lessons ceased. She seemed no longer to think it desirable that her pupil should become proficient in the modern steps. He was puzzled by her decision. Why should one of Baird's serious plays need an actor who forgot his feet in a dance?

There were more social evenings at the Montague home. Twice the gathering was enlarged by other members of the film colony, a supper was served and poker played for inconsiderable stakes. In this game of chance the Montague girl proved to be conservative, not to say miserly, and was made to suffer genuinely when Merton Gill displayed a reckless spirit in the betting. That he ama.s.sed winnings of ninety-eight cents one night did not rea.s.sure her. She pointed out that he might easily have lost this sum.

She was indeed being a mother to the defenceless boy. It was after a gambling session that she demanded to be told what he was doing with his salary. His careless hazarding of poker-chips had caused her to be fearful of his general money sense.

Merton Gill had indeed been reckless. He was now, he felt, actually one of the Hollywood set. He wondered how Tessie Kearns would regard his progress. Would she be alarmed to know he attended those gay parties that so often brought the film colony into unfavourable public notice?

Jolly dinners, dancing, gambling, drinking with actresses--for Mr.

Montague had at last turned out a beer that met with the approval not only of his guests but of his own more exacting family. The vivacious brew would now and again behave unreasonably at the moment of being released, but it was potable when subdued.

It was a gay life, Merton felt. And as for the Montague girl's questions and warnings about his money, he would show her! He had, of course, discharged his debt to her in the first two weeks of his work with Baird. Now he would show her what he really thought of money.

He would buy her a gift whose presentation should mark a certain great occasion. It should occur on the eve of his screen debut, and would fittingly testify his grat.i.tude. For the girl, after all, had made him what he was. And the first piece was close to its premiere. Already he had seen advance notices in the newspapers. The piece was called Hearts On Fire, and in it, so the notices said, the comedy manager had at last realized an ambition long nourished. He had done something new and something big: a big thing done in a big way. The Montague girl would see that the leading man who had done so much to insure the success of Baird's striving for the worth-while drama was not unforgetful of her favours and continuous solicitude.

He thought first of a ring, but across the blank brick wall of the jewellery shop he elected to patronize was an enormous sign in white: The House of Lucky Wedding Rings. This staring announcement so alarmed him that he not only abandoned the plan for a ring-any sort of ring might be misconstrued, he saw-but in an excess of caution chose another establishment not so outspoken. If it kept wedding rings at all, it was decently reticent about them, and it did keep a profusion of other trinkets about which a possible recipient could entertain no false notions. Wrist watches, for example. No one could find subtle or hidden meanings in a wrist watch.

He chose a bauble that glittered prettily on its black silk bracelet, and was not shocked in the least when told by the engaging salesman that its price was a sum for which in the old days Gashwiler had demanded a good ten weeks of his life. Indeed it seemed rather cheap to him when he remembered the event it should celebrate. Still, it was a pleasing trifle and did not look cheap.

"Do you warrant it to keep good time?" he sternly demanded.

The salesman became diplomatic, though not without an effect of genial man-to-man frankness. "Well, I guess you and I both know what women's bracelet-watches are." He smiled a superior masculine smile that drew his customer within the informed brotherhood. "Now here, there's a platinum little thing that costs seven hundred and fifty, and this one you like will keep just as good time as that one that costs six hundred more. What could be fairer than that?"

"All right," said the customer. "I'll take it." During the remaining formalities attending the purchase the salesman, observing that he dealt with a tolerant man of the world, became even franker. "Of course no one," he remarked pleasantly while couching the purchase in a chaste bed of white satin, "expects women's bracelet-watches to keep time. Not even the women."

"Want 'em for looks," said the customer.

"You've hit it, you've hit it!" exclaimed the salesman delightedly, as if the customer had expertly probed the heart of a world-old mystery.