II
A LOVE STORY
I had for some time been noting a slight theatrical tinge to theperiodical literature supported by the big table in the Arrowhead livingroom. Chiefly the table's burden is composed of trade journals of thesober quality of the _Stockbreeder's Gazette_ or _Mine, Quarry & Derrick_or the "Farmer's Almanac." But if, for example, one really tired of avivacious column headed "Chats on Fertilizers" one could, by shufflingthe litter, come upon a less sordid magazine frankly abandoned to theinterests of the screen drama.
The one I best recall has limned upon its cover in acceptable flesh tintsa fair young face of flawless beauty framed in a mass of curling goldenringlets. The dewy eyes, shaded to mystery by lashes of uncommon length,flash a wistful appeal that is faintly belied by the half-smiling lipsand the dimpling chin. The contours are delicate yet firm; a face ofhaunting appeal--a face in which tears can be seldom but the sprightlyrain of April, and the smile, when it melts the sensitive lips, will yetwarn that hearts are made to ache and here is one not all too merry inits gladness. It is the face of one of our famous screen beauties, and weknow, even from this tinted half-tone, that the fame has been deserved.
On one of those tired Arrowhead nights, inwardly debating the possiblediscourtesy of an early bedding after ten wet miles of trout stream, Icame again and again to this compelling face of the sad smile and theglad tears. It recalled an ideal feminine head much looked at in mynonage. It was lithographed mostly in pink and was labeled "Tempest andSunshine." So I loitered by the big table, dreaming upon the poignantperfections of this idol of a strange new art. I dreamed until awakenedby the bustling return of my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, whopaused beside me to build an after-dinner cigarette, herself glancingmeantime at the flawless face on the magazine cover. I perceivedinstantly that she also had been caught by its not too elusive charm.
"A beautiful face," I said.
Ma Pettengill took the magazine from me and studied the dainty thing.
"Yes, he's certainly beautiful," she assented. "He's as handsome as aGreek goddess." Thus did the woman ambiguously praise that famous screenstar, J. Harold Armytage. "And the money he makes! His salary is one ofthem you see compared with the President's so as to make the latter seema mere trifle. That's a funny thing. I bet at least eighteen milliongrown people in this country never did know how much they was payingtheir president till they saw it quoted beside some movie star's salaryin a piece that tells how he's getting about four times what we pay theman in the White House. Ain't it a great business, though! Here's thishorrible male beauty that would have to be mighty careful to escapeextermination if he was anything but an actor. Being that, however, henot only eludes the vengeance of a sickened populace, but he can comeout and be raw about it. Here, let me show you."
She turned to the page where J. Harold Armytage began to print a choicefew of the letters he daily received from admirers of the reputedlyfrailer sex. She now read me one of these with lamentable efforts ofvoice to satirize its wooing note: "My darling! I saw that dear face ofyours again to-night in All For Love! So noble and manly you were in thesawmill scene where first you turn upon the scoundrelly millionairefather of the girl you love, then save him from the dynamite bomb of thestrikers at the risk of your own. Oh, my dearest! Something tells me yourheart is as pure and sweet as your acting, that your dear face could notmask an evil thought. Oh, my man of all the world! If only you and Itogether might--"
It seemed enough. Ma Pettengill thought so too. The others were notunlike it. The woman then read me a few of the replies of J. HaroldArmytage to his unknown worshippers. The famous star was invariablymodest and dignified in these. Tactfully, as a gentleman must in anymagazine of wide circulation, he deprecated the worship of these adoringones and kindly sought to persuade them that he was but a man--not a god,even if he did chance to receive one of the largest salaries in thebusiness. The rogue! No god--with the glorious lines of his face thereon the cover to controvert this awkward disclaimer! His beauty flauntedto famished hearts, what avail to protest weakly that they should putaway his image or even to hint, as now and again he was stern enough todo, that their frankness bordered on the unmaidenly?
I called Ma Pettengill's attention to this engaging modesty. I said itmust be an affair of some delicacy to rebuff ardent and not too reticentfair ones in a public print, and that I considered J. Harold Armytage tohave come out of it with a display of taste that could be called unusual.The woman replied, with her occasional irrelevance, that if the partiesthat hired him should read this stuff they probably wouldn't even thentake him out on the lot and have him bitterly kicked by a succession often large labouring men who would take kindly to the task. She then oncemore said that the movies was sure one great business, and turned in themagazine to pleasanter pages on which one Vida Sommers, also a screenidol, it seemed, gave warning and advice to young girls who contemplateda moving-picture career.
Portraits of Vida Sommers in her best-known roles embellished thesepages. In all of the portraits she wept. In some the tears were visible;in others they had to be guessed, the face being drawn by anguish. Herfeminine correspondents wished particularly to be told of the snaresand temptations besetting the path of the young girl who enters thisperilous career. Many of them seemed rather vague except upon this point.They all seemed to be sure that snares and temptations would await them,and would Vida Sommers please say how these could be avoided by young andimpressionable girls of good figure and appearance who were now waitingon table at the American House in Centralia, Illinois, or acceptingtemporary employment in mercantile establishments in Chicago, or merelyliving at home in Zanesville, Ohio, amid conditions unbearably crampingto their aspirations?
And Vida Sommers told every one of them not to consider the pictures butas a final refuge from penury. She warned them that they would find thelife one of hard work and full of disappointments. It seemed that eventhe snares and temptations were disappointing, being more easily evadedthan many of her correspondents appeared to suspect. She advised them allto marry some good, true man and make a home for him. And surely none ofthem could have believed the life to be a joyous one after studying thesesorrowful portraits of Vida Sommers.
"That's my little actress friend," said Ma Pettengill. "Doesn't she crysomething grand!"
"You've been cheating me," I answered. "I never knew you had a littleactress friend. How did you get her? And doesn't she ever play anythingcheerful?"
"Of course not! She only plays mothers, and you know what that means inmoving pictures. Ever see a moving-picture mother that had a chance to behappy for more than the first ten feet of film? You certainly got to cryto hold down that job. Ain't she always jolted quick in the first reel bythe husband getting all ruined up in Wall Street, or the child gettingstole, or the daughter that's just budding into womanhood running offwith a polished shoe-drummer with city ways, or the only son robbing abank, or husband taking up with a lady adventuress that lives across thehall in the same flat and outdresses mother?
"Then it's one jolt after another for her till the last ten feet of thelast reel, when everything comes right somewhere on a ranch out in thegreat clean West where husband or son has got to be a man again bymingling with the honest-hearted drunken cowboys in their barroomfrolics, or where daughter has won back her womanhood and made a name forherself by dancing the Nature dance in the Red Eye Saloon for rough buttender-hearted miners that shower their gold on her when stewed. Only, inthis glad time of the last ten feet she still has to cry a-plenty becausethe clouds have passed and she's Oh, so happy at last! Yes, sir; theyget mother going and coming. And when she ain't weeping she has to bescared or mad or something that keeps her face busy. Here--I got someprogrammes of new pieces Vida just sent me. You can see she's a greatactress; look at that one: 'Why Did You Make My Mamma Cry?' And theseother two."
I looked and believed. The dramas were variously and pithily describedas The Picture with the Punch Powerful--The Smashing Five-ReelMasterpiece--
A Play of Peculiar Problems and Tense Situations--SixGripping Reels, 7,000 Feet and Every Foot a Punch! Vida Sommers, inthe scenes reproduced from these plays, had indeed a busy face. In thepicture captioned "Why Did You Make My Mamma Cry?" the tiny golden-hairedgirl is reproaching her father in evening dress. I read the opening linesof the synopsis: "A young business man, who has been made successfulthrough his wife's money, is led to neglect her through pressure ofaffairs, falls into the toils of a dancer in a public place and becomesa victim of her habit, that of drinking perfume in her tea--"
But I had not the heart to follow this tragedy. In another, "The WomanPays--Powerful and Picturesque, a Virile Masterpiece of Red-BloodedHearts," Vida Sommers is powerfully hating her husband whom she hasconfronted in the den of a sneering and superbly gowned adventuresswho declares that the husband must choose between them. Of course therecan be no doubt about the husband's choice. No sane movie actor wouldhesitate a second. The caption says of Vida Sommers: "Her Love Has Turnedto Hate." It may be good acting, but it would never get her chosen by themale of her species--the adventuress being what is known in some circlesas a pippin.
I studied still another of these documents--"Hearts Asunder." VidaSommers has sent her beautiful daughter to the spring for a pail ofwater, though everyone in the audience must know that Gordon Balch, thedetestable villain, is lurking outside for precisely this to occur. Thesynopsis beautiful says: "The mother now goes in search of her darling,only to find her struggling in the grasp of Gordon Balch, who is tryingto force his attentions on her." This is where Vida Sommers has to lookfrightened, though in a later picture one sees that her fright changedto "A Mother's Honest Rage." The result is that Gordon Balch gets his,and gets it good. The line under his last appearance is "The End of aMisspent Life." Vida Sommers here registers pity. As Ma Pettengill hadsaid, her face seemed never to have a moment's rest.
While I studied these exhibits my hostess had not been silent upon themerits of her little actress friend. Slowly she made me curious as to theorigin and inner life of this valued member of an exalted profession.
"Yes, sir; there she is at the top, drawing down big money, with anice vine-clad home in this film town, furnished from a page in awoman's magazine, with a big black limousine like a hearse--all butthe plumes--and a husband that she worships the ground he walks on.Everything the heart can desire, even to being mother to some of thevery saddest persons ever seen on a screen. It shows what genius willdo for a woman when she finds out what kind of genius she's got and isfurther goaded by the necessity of supporting a husband in the style towhich he has been accustomed by a doting father. She's some person now,let me tell you.
"She spent a week with me in Red Gap last fall, and you'd ought to seenhow certain parties kowtowed to me so they'd get to meet her. I foundthat about every woman under fifty in our town is sure she was born forthis here picture work, from Henrietta Templeton Price to Beryl MaeMacomber, who's expecting any day to be snapped up by some shrewd managerthat her type is bound to appeal to, she being a fair young thing withbig eyes and lots of teeth, like all film actresses. Metta Bigler,that teaches oil painting and burnt wood, give Vida a reception in herBohemian studio in Red Gap's Latin Quarter--the studio having a chainof Chianti bottles on the wall and an ash tray with five burnt cigaretteends on a taboret to make it look Bohemian--and that was sure the biggestthrill our town has had since the Gus Levy All Star Shamrock VaudevilleCompany stranded there five years ago. It just shows how important mylittle actress friend is--and look what she come up from!"
I said I wouldn't mind looking what she come up from if she had startedlow enough to make it exciting.
Ma Pettengill said she had that! She had come up from the gutter. Shesaid that Vida Sommers, the idol of thousands, had been "a mere daughterof the people." Her eyes crinkled as she uttered this phrase. So I chosea chair in the shadow while she built a second cigarette.
Ten years ago I'm taking a vacation down in New York City. Along comes aletter from Aunt Esther Colborn, of Fredonia, who is a kind of a thirdcousin of mine about twice removed. Says her niece, Vida, has had a goodcity job as cashier of a dairy lunch in Boston, which is across the riverfrom some college, but has thrown this job to the winds to marry the onlycollege son of a rich New York magnate or Wall Street crook who has castthe boy off for contracting this low alliance with a daughter of thepeople. Aunt Esther is now afraid Vida isn't right happy and wants Ishould look her up and find out. It didn't sound too good, but I obliged.
I go to the address in Sixty-seventh Street on the West Side and findthat Vida is keeping a boarding house. But I was ready to cheer AuntEsther with a telegram one second after she opened the door on me--ina big blue apron and a dustcap on her hair. She was the happiest youngwoman I ever did see--shining it out every which way. A very attractivegirl about twenty-five, with a slim figure and one of these faces thatain't exactly of howling beauty in any one feature, but that sure getyou when they're sunned up with joy like this one was.
She was pleased to death when I told her my name, and of course I mustcome in and stay for dinner so I could see all her boarders that was likeone big family and, above all, meet her darling husband Clyde when he gothome from business. The cheeriest thing she was, and I adore to meetpeople that are cheery, so I said nothing would please me better. Shetook me up to her little bedroom to lay my things off and then down tothe parlour where she said I must rest and excuse her because she stillhad a few little things to supervise. She did have too. In the next hourand a half she run up and down two flights of stairs at least ten times.I could hear her sweeping overhead and jamming things round on the stovewhen she raced down to the kitchen. Yes, she had several little things tosupervise and one girl to help her. I peeked into the kitchen once whileI was wandering through the lower rooms, and she seemed to be showingthis girl how to boil potatoes. I wondered if she never run down and ifher happy look was really chronic or mebbe put on for my benefit. Still,I could hear her singing to herself and she moved like a happy person.
In looking round the parlour I was greeted on every wall by picturesof a charming youth I guessed was darling Clyde. A fine young face hehad, and looked as happy as Vida herself. There was pictures of himwith a tennis racket and on a sailboat and with a mandolin and standingup with his college glee club and setting on a high-powered horse andso forth, all showing he must be a great social favourite and one bornto have a good time. I wondered how he'd come to confer himself onthe cashier of a quick-lunch place. I thought it must be one of theseromances. Then--I'm always remembering the foolishest things--I recalleda funny little absent look in Vida's eyes when she spoke of her darlingcoming home from business. I thought now it must of been pride; that hewas performing some low job in a factory or store while she run theboarding house, and she didn't want me to know it. I thought he mustbe a pretty fine rich man's son to stand the gaff this way when castoff by his father for mixing up with a daughter of the people.
It come dinnertime; about a dozen boarders straggling in, with Vida ina pretty frock anxious because darling Clyde was ten minutes late andof course something fatal must of happened to him in crossing a crowdedstreet. But nothing had. He showed up safe and sound and whistling inanother ten minutes, and became the life of the party. He looked near ashappy as Vida did when she embraced him out in the hall, a fine handsomeyoung fellow, the best-natured in the world, jollying the boarders andjollying me and jollying Vida that he called Baby Girl, or Babe. I saw,too, that I must of been mistaken about the job he was holding down. Hewas dressed in a very expensive manner, with neat little gold trinketshalf concealed about him, the shirt and collar exactly right and thesilk socks carefully matching the lavender tie.
He kept the table lively all through dinner with jokes and quips from thelatest musical comedies and anecdotes of his dear old college days, andhow that very afternoon he had won a silver cup and the pool championshipof his college club--and against a lot of corking good players, too, hedidn't mind saying. Also I noticed we wa
s eating a mighty good dinner; sodarned good you didn't see how Vida could set it up at the price boardersusually pay.
After dinner Clyde sat down to the piano in the parlour and entertainedone and all with songs of a comic or sentimental character. He knew apiano intimately, and his voice was one of these here melting tenors thatget right inside of you and nestle. He was about the most ingratiatingyoung man I'd ever met, and I didn't wonder any more about Vida's lookof joy being permanent. She'd look in on the party every once in a whilefrom the kitchen or the dining room where she was helping her Swede dothe dishes for fifteen people and set the table for breakfast.
She was about an hour at this, and when at last she'd slipped out of herbig apron and joined us she was looking right tuckered but still joyous.Clyde patted his Baby Girl's hand when she come in, and she let herselfgo into an easy-chair near him that one of the boarders got up to giveher. I got the swift idea that this was the first time all day she'd setdown with any right feeling of rest.
Then Clyde sung to her. You could tell it was a song he meant for her andnever sung till she'd got the work done up. A right pretty old song itwas, Clyde throwing all the loving warmth of his first-class tenor voiceinto the words:
Good night, good night, beloved!I come to watch o'er thee,To be near thee, to be near thee.
I forget the rest, but there was happy tears in Vida's eyes when hefinished in one climbing tenor burst. Then Clyde gets up and says hehas an engagement down to his college club because some of his dear oldclassmates has gathered there for a quiet little evening of reminiscenceand the jolly old rascals pretend they can't get along without him. Vidabeams on him brighter than ever and tells him to be sure and have a goodtime, which I'd bet money he'd be sure to.
It was a very pretty scene when they said good night. Vida pretendedthat Clyde's voice was falling off from smoking too many cigarettes atthis club. "I wouldn't mind you're going there, but I just know you spendmost of the time in the club's horrid old smoking room!" She tells himthis with a pout. Smoking room of a club! The knowing little minx! AndClyde chided her right back in a merry fashion. He lifted one of herhands and said his Baby Girl would have to take better care of thembecause the cunnun' little handies was getting all rough. Then theyboth laughed and went out for a long embrace in the hall.
Vida come back with a glowing countenance, and the boarders havingdropped off to their rooms when the life of the party went to his clubwe had a nice chat. All about Clyde. She hoped I did like him, and Ifrankly said he was about the most taking young brat I'd ever been closeto. She explained how their union had been a dream; that during theirentire married life of a year and a half he had never spoken one crossword to her. She said I couldn't imagine his goodness of heart nor hissunny disposition nor how much everyone admired him. But the tired thinggot so sleepy in ten minutes, even talking about her husband, that shecouldn't keep back the yawns, so I said I'd had a wonderful evening andwould have to go now.
But up in the bedroom, while I'm putting my things on, she gets waked upand goes more into detail about her happiness. I've never been able tofigure out why, but women will tell each other things in a bedroom thatthey wouldn't dream of telling in any other room. Not that Vida went veryfar. Just a few little points. Like how Clyde's father had cast him offwhen they married and how she had felt herself that she was nothing buta bad woman taking advantage of this youth, she being a whole year olderthan he was; but Clyde had acted stunning in the matter, telling hisfather he had chosen the better part. Also it turned out this fatherhadn't cast him off from so much after all, because the old man went flatbroke in Wall Street a couple of months later, perishing of heart failureright afterward, and about the only thing Clyde would of drawn from theestate anyway was an old-fashioned watch of his grandfather's with achain made from his grandmother's hair when she was a bride.
I gathered they had been right up against it at this time, except forthe two thousand dollars that had been left Vida by her Uncle Gideonin the savings bank at Fredonia. Clyde, when she drew this out, wantedthey should go to Newport with it where they could lead a quiet lifefor a couple of months while he looked about for a suitable openingfor himself. But Vida had been firm, even ugly, she said, on this point.She'd took the two thousand and started a boarding house that would bemore like a home than a boarding house, though Clyde kept saying he'dnever be able to endure seeing the woman bearing his name reduced to suchignoble straits.
Still he had swallowed his foolish pride and been really very nice aboutit after she got the business started. Now he was always telling her tobe sure and set a good table. He said if you were going to do a thing,even if it was only keeping a boarding house, to do it well. That was hismotto--do it well or don't do it at all! So she was buying the best cutsof meats and all fresh vegetables because of his strict ideas in thismatter, and it didn't look as if they'd ever really make a fortune atit--to say nothing of there being more persons than I'd believe that hadhard luck and got behind in their payments, and of course one couldn't bestern to the poor unfortunates.
I listened to this chatter till it seemed about time to ask what businessClyde had took up. It seemed that right at the moment he was disengaged.It further seemed that he had been disengaged at most other moments sincehe had stooped to this marriage with a daughter of the people. I mustn'tthink it was the poor boy's fault, though. He was willing at all timesto accept a situation and sometimes would get so depressed that he'dactually look for work. Twice he had found it, but it proved to besomething confining in an office where the hours were long and conditionsfar from satisfactory.
That's how she put it, with glowing eyes and flushed cheeks: "Itproved to be mere dull routine work not in the least suited to darlingClyde's talents and the conditions were far from satisfactory. I had thehardest time prevailing on him to give the nasty old places up and waitpatiently for a suitable opening. He was quite impatient with me when heconsented--but, of course, he's only a boy of twenty-four, a whole yearyounger than I am. I tell him every day a suitable opening is bound tooccur very soon. You see, he had so many grand friends, people of theright sort that are wealthy. I insist on his meeting them constantly.Just think; only last week he spent Saturday and Sunday at one of thebiggest country houses on Long Island, and had such a good time. He's aprime favourite with a lot of people like that and they're always havinghim to dine or to the opera or to their balls and parties. I miss himhorribly, of course, and the poor dear misses me, but I tell him it willsurely lead to something. His old college chums all love him too--a boymakes so many valuable friends in college, don't you think? A lot of themtry to put things in his way. I couldn't bear to have him accept asituation unworthy of him--I know it would kill him. Why, he wilts likea flower under the least depression."
Well, I set and listened to a long string of this--and not a word forme to say. What could any one of said? Wasn't it being told to me bythe happiest woman I ever set eyes on? Yes, sir; I'd never believe howgentle natured the boy was. Why, that very morning, being worried aboutsomething that went wrong with breakfast, which she had to turn out atfive A. M. to get started hadn't she clean forgot to change his studs toa fresh shirt? And, to make it worse, hadn't she laid out a wrong colorof socks with his lavender tie? But had he been cross to her, as most menwould of been? Not for one second! He'd simply joked her about it whenshe brought up his breakfast tray, just as he'd joked her to-night abouther hands getting rough from the kitchen work. And so forth and so forth!
The poor thing had got so dead for sleep by this time that she was merelybabbling. She'd probably of fallen over in her clothes if I hadn't beenthere. Anyway, I got her undressed and into bed. She said Clyde'sgoodnight song always rung in her ears till she slept. It didn't ringlong this night. She was off before I got out the door. Darned if Ihadn't been kind of embarrassed by her talk, knowing it would neverdo for me to bust in with anything bordering on the vicious, such assuggesting that if Clyde now and then went into the kitchen and helpedBaby Girl with the dishes
it would make a very attractive differencein him. I took another good look at his pictures in the parlour beforeI let myself out of the house. He still looked good--but hell!
I wrote Aunt Esther the same evening not to worry one minute about Vida'shappiness, because I wished we could all be as happy as she was. All thesame I took pains to go round to that boarding house a couple times morebecause it seemed like the girl's happiness might have a bum foundation.Darling Clyde was as merry and attentive as ever and Vida was stilljoyous. I guess she kept joyous at her work all day by looking forward tothat golden moment after dinner when her boy would sing Good night, goodnight, beloved--he'd come to watch o'er her! How that song did light herface up!
She confided to me one of these times that the funny men are alwaysmaking jokes about how much it costs a woman for clothes, and shewondered why they didn't make some of their old jokes about how much itcosts for men's clothes too. She said I wouldn't believe how much theyhad to lay out on Clyde's clothes so he'd be sure to look right when asuitable opening occurred. I could take the item of shirts alone that hadto be made to order and cost seven-fifty each, to say nothing of collarsand ties and suits from what Clyde said was the only tailor in New Yorkthat could dress a gentleman so he looked like one. She said if thesefunny humourists could see what they spent on her clothes and what theyhad to spend on Clyde's, she bet they'd feel mighty cheap. She laughedlike she had a bully joke on the poor things.
She was glad, too, for Clyde's sake that a suitable opening was justabout to occur any moment, because the poor chap said himself it was adog's life he was leading, with nothing much to do every day but go tothe club and set round. And how thankful she'd ought to be that he neverdrank--the least bit of liquor made him ill--and so many young men ofhis class nowadays drank to excess.
No; nothing for me to say and nothing to do. Here was one happy lovematch. So I come home, making Vida promise to write often.
She did write about six times in the next three years. The chief factstanding out was that the right opening for Clyde hadn't opened yet--andhe was getting more impatient every day. He always had something in view.But I judged he was far-sighted. And some way when he had got his ropeover a job the hondoo wouldn't seem to render. He couldn't cinchanything. He was as full of blandishment as ever, though, and not a oneof his staunch old friends had dropped him on account of his unfortunatemarriage. He was a great diner-out and spent lots of week-ends, and justnow was on a jolly houseboat in Florida for three months with an oldcollege mate worth nine million dollars, and wasn't that nice! She couldjust see him keeping the whole party gay with his mandolin and his songs.The summer before that this same friend had let Clyde have an elegantmotor car for his own use, and the foolish boy had actually took her outin it one Sunday, there being a pongee motor coat in the car that fit herbeautifully so that none of his rich friends could have told she wasn'tdressed as smartly as they was. He not only kept her out all afternoon,but would have took her to dinner some place only she had to get back tothe boarding house because you couldn't trust these raw Swedes.
And there was one thing she was going to bring herself to confess tome, no matter if it did sound disloyal--a dreadful thing about Clyde.It was ugly of her to breathe a word against him, but she was greatlyworried and mebbe I could help her. The horrible truth was that her boywas betraying an inclination to get fat, and he'd only laugh at her whenshe warned him. Many a night her pillow had been wet with tears on thisaccount, and did I believe in any of these remedies for reducing? Wasn'tthere something she could slip into his pudding that would keep him downwithout his knowing it, because otherwise, though it was a thing no truewife ought to say, her beloved would dig his grave with his teeth.
I thought that was about enough and even ample. I started a hot answer tothis letter, saying that if darling Clyde was digging his grave with histeeth it was her own fault because she was providing the spade and theburial plot, and the quickest way to thin her darling down would be forher to quit work. But shucks! Why insult the poor thing? I got back mycomposure and wrote her a nice letter of sympathy in her hour of greattrouble. I didn't say at all that if I had been in her place Mr. Clydewould of long since had my permission to go to the devil. Yes, sir; I'dhave had that lad going south early in the second year. Mebbe not atthat! A woman never really knows how some other man might of made afool of her.
Two more years drug on, with about two letters from Vida, and then Iget a terrible one announcing the grand crash. First, the boarding househad died a lingering death, what from Vida buying the best the marketafforded and not having learned to say "No!" to parties that got behind,and Clyde having had to lend a couple hundred dollars to a fraternitybrother that was having a little hard luck. She'd run the business on anarrow trail for the last two months, trying to guard every penny, butit got so she and Clyde actually had to worry over his next club dues,to say nothing of a new dress suit he was badly needing. Then someparties she owed bills to come along and pushed her over the cliff bytaking her furniture. She was at first dreadfully worried about how herboy would stand the blow, but he'd took it like the brave, staunch manhe was, being such a help to her when they had to move to a furnishedroom near the old home where they both had been so happy. He'd fairlymade the place ring with his musical laughter and his merry jestingabout their hardships.
Then she'd got a good job as cashier in a big grocery she'd dealtwith, not getting a million dollars a year, to be sure, but they weredoing nicely, because Clyde took most of his meals with his thoughtfulfriends--and then crash out of a clear sky a horrible tragedy happenedthat for a minute darkened the whole world.
Yes, it was a bitter tragedy. Clyde's two-year-old dress suit, thathe was bravely wearing without a murmur, had needed pressing and shepromised to do it; but she overslept herself till seven-thirty thatmorning, which made her late at the store, so she'd asked the girl inthis rooming house to do it down in the kitchen. The girl had beenwilling but weak-minded. She started with too hot an iron and didn'tput a damp cloth between the iron and the goods. In the midst of thejob something boiled over on the stove. She got rattled and jumped forthat, and when she come back the dress coat of darling Clyde was brandedfor fair in the middle of the back--a nifty flatiron brand that you couldof picked him out of a bunch of animals by in one second. The girl wasscared stiff and hung the clothes back in the closet without a word. Andpoor Clyde discovered the outrage that night when he was dressing for aclass reunion of his dear old Alvah Mater.
I had to read between the lines some, but I gathered that he now brokedown completely at this betrayal of his trusting nature. Vida must ofbeen suffering too keenly herself to write me all the pitiful details.And right on top of this blow comes the horrible discovery, when he takeshis mandolin out of the case, that it has been fatally injured in themoving. One blow right on another. How little we realize the sufferingthat goes on all about us in this hard world. Imagine the agony in thatfurnished room this night!
Clyde wasn't made of iron. When the first flood of grief subsided heseems to of got cold and desperate. Said Vida in this letter: "My heartstopped when he suddenly declared in cool, terrible tones: 'There'salways the river!' I could see that he had resolved to end it all, andthrough the night I pleaded with my boy."
I bet she made mistakes as a grocer's cashier next day, but it was worthit because her appeals to Clyde's better nature had prevailed. He diddisappear that day, getting his trunks from the house while she was atthe store and not being able to say good-bye because he couldn't rememberwhich store she was accepting a situation at. But he left her a nicenote. He wasn't going to end it all in the river. He was going off on theprivate steamboat of one of his dearest friends for a trip round theworld that might last a year--and she mustn't worry about the silly olddress coat, because his new dinner-jacket suit would be ample for a boattrip. Also she'd be glad to know that he had a new mandolin, though shewasn't to worry about the bill for it, because the man didn't expect hispay on time and, anyway, he could wait,
so with fondest love!
And Vida was so relieved at this good fortune. To think that herdespondent boy was once more assured of his rightful position for awhole year, while she was saving her princely wages till she got enoughto start another boarding house that would be more like a home. Wasn'tit all simply too good to be true--wasn't it always darkest just beforedawn!
I didn't trust myself to answer that letter, beyond wiring her that ifshe ever felt she was having any really hard luck to be sure and call onme. And she went on working and putting her money by. It was two yearslater when I next saw her. I looked her up the first thing when I got toNew York.
She was still accepting a position in this grocery, but of course hadchanged to a much smaller furnished room where she could be cozy and feedherself from a gas stove on the simple plain foods that one just can'tseem to get at high-priced restaurants.
She'd changed a lot. Lines in her face now, and streaks in her brownhair, and she barely thirty. I made up my mind to do something harsh,but couldn't just tell how to start. She'd had a picture card from herboy the first year, showing the Bay of Naples and telling how he longedfor her; but six months later had come a despondent letter from Japanspeaking again of the river and saying he often felt like ending itall. Only, he might drag out his existence a bit longer because anotherwealthy old chum was in port and begging him to switch over to his yachtand liven up the party, which was also going round the world--and maybehe would, because "after all, does anything in life really matter?"
That was the last line. I read it myself while Vida watched me, settingon her little iron bed after work one night. She had a plain little roomwith no windows but one in the roof, though very tastefully furnishedwith photos of Clyde on every wall. The only other luxury she'd indulgedin was a three-dollar revolver because she was deathly afraid ofburglars. She'd also bought a hammer to shoot the revolver off with,keeping 'em both on the stand at the head of her bed. Yes; she said thatwas the way the man was firing it off in the advertisement--hitting it ona certain spot with a hammer. She was a reckless little scoundrel. Shetold me all about how to shoot a revolver while I was thinking up whatto say about Clyde.
I finally said if he had ended it all she must cheer up, because itmight be for the best. She considered this sadly and said she didn'tbelieve dear Clyde had been prepared to die. I could see she wasremembering old things that had been taught her in Sabbath school aboutGod and wickedness and the bad place, so I cheered her on that point. Itold her they hadn't been burning people for about thirty years now, thesame not being considered smart any longer in the best religious circles.I also tried in a delicate manner to convince her that her boy wouldnever end it all by any free act of his. I offered to bet her a large sumof money on this at any odds she wanted--she could write her own ticket.I said I knew men well enough to be certain that with this one it wouldbe a long life but a merry one. Gee! The idea of this four-carder hurtinghimself!
And I had to cheer her up on another point. This was that she didn'thave about three babies, all the image of their father. Yes, sir; shewas grieving sorely about that. It give me a new line on her. I sawall at once she was mostly mother--a born one. Couldn't ever be anythingelse and hadn't ever really felt anything but mothersome to this herewandering treasure of hers. It give me kind of a shock. It made mefeel so queer I wanted to swear.
Well, I wrastled with that mulish female seven straight days to makeher leave that twelve-hour job of hers and come out here with me. I triedeverything. I even told her what with long hours and bum food she wasmaking herself so old that her boy wouldn't give her a second look whenhe got back. That rattled her. She took hold of her face and said thatmassage cream would take all those silly lines out when she got timeto rub it in properly; and as for the gray in her hair, she could neverbring herself to use a dye, but if Clyde come back she might apply alittle of the magic remedy that restores the natural colour. She alsosaid in plain words that to come out here with me would look likedeserting her boy. Do you get that?
"Dear Clyde is so sensitive," she says. "I couldn't bear the thought ofhis coming back and finding that I had left our home."
My work was cut for me, all right. I guess I'd failed if I hadn't beenhelped by her getting a sick spell from worry over what the good Godwould do to Clyde if he should end it all in some nasty old river, andfrom the grocery being sold to a party that had his own cashier. But Iwon, she being too sick to hunt another job just then. A least I got afair compromise.
She wouldn't come here to live with me, but she remembered that Clyde hadoften talked of Southern California, where he had once gone with genialfriends in a private car. He had said that some day when he had acquiredthe means he would keep a home there. So she was willing to go thereherself and start a home for him. I saw it was the best I could get fromher, so I applauded.
I says: "That's fine. You take this three hundred and eighty dollars yougot saved and I'll put a few dollars more with it and get you a littlecountry place down there where you can be out of doors all day and raiseoranges and chickens, and enough hogs for table use, and when the dearboy comes back he'll be awful proud of you."
"Oh, he always was that," says Vida. "But I'll go--and I'll always keepa light in the window for him."
And a lot of folks say women ought to vote!
So we start for Los Angeles, deserting Clyde just as mean as dirt. Sure,I went with her! I didn't trust her to finish the trip. As it was, shewanted to get off the train twice before we got to Chicago--thinkingof the shock to her boy's tender heart if he should come back and findhimself deserted.
But then, right after we left Chicago, she got interested. In the sectionacross from us was a fifty-five-year-old male grouch with a few graybristles on his head who had been snarling at everyone that come nearhim ever since the train left New York. The porters and conductors hadgot so they'd rush by him like they was afraid of getting bit on the arm.He had a gray face that seemed like it had been gouged out of stone. Itwas like one of these gargles you see on rare old churches in Europe. Hewas just hating everyone in the world, not even playing himself afavourite. And Vida had stood his growling as long as she could. Havingat last give up the notion of tracking back to New York, she plumpedherself down in the seat with this raging wild beast and begged for histroubles. I looked to see her tore limb from limb, instead of which inthree minutes he was cooing to her in a rocky bass voice. His troublewas lumbago or pleurisy or some misery that kept him every minute inthis pernickety state.
That was all old mother Vida needed to know. She rustled a couplehot-water bags and kept 'em on the ribs of this grouch for about twothousand miles, to say nothing of doping him with asperin and quinineand camphor and menthol and hot tea and soothing words. He was the onlyson in sight, so he got it good. She simply has to mother something.
The grouch got a little human himself the last day out and begun toask Vida questions about herself. Being one that will tell any personanything at all, she told him her life history and how her plans was nowunsettled, but she hoped to make a home out on this coast. The grouchcome right out and asked her how big her roll was, saying he lived outhere and it cost something to make a home. Vida told him she had her twoyears' savings of three hundred and eighty good dollars and that I hadpromised to loan her a few dollars to piece out with. At this the old boylooked me over carefully and could see no signs of vast wealth because Inever wear such in Pullman cars, so he warns her that I'll have to pieceout her savings with a few thousand instead of a few dollars if she's tostart anything worth keeping, because what they do to you in taxes downthere is a-plenty.
After which he goes to sleep.
Vida moves over and asks what I meant by saying I'd only have to put in afew dollars when I must of known it would take a few thousand, and didn'tI realize that Clyde would be hurt to the quick if he come back and foundshe hadn't been independent? She indignantly said she'd have to give upthe country place and work till she had enough to start another home forpaying guests.
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I was so mad at this truthful grouch for butting in on my game thatI up and told her flat she could never run a boarding house and makeit pay; that no woman could who hadn't learned to say "No!" and she wastoo much of a mush-head for that. She was quite offended by this and saysfirmness has always been considered a strong point in her personality. Afirst-class palmist had told her this only two weeks before. While we aresquabbling back and forth the grouch wakes up again and says that he's inthe moving-picture business and will give her a good job in the wardrobedepartment of the company he's with, so she must show up there at eighto'clock the next morning. Just like that! He didn't ask her. He told her.
Vida is kind of took off her feet, but mumbles "Yes, sir!" and puts hiscard in her bag. Me? I was too mad to talk, seeing the girl get into themill again when I'd tried so hard to get her out. But I swore to myselfI'd stick round and try to get some sense into the cup-custard she calledher brain.
So the next morning I took her out to this moving-picture joint that theycall a studio--not a bit like Metta Bigler's studio in Red Gap--and sureenough here's the grouch ready to put Vida on a job. The job is in a roomabout ninety feet long filled with boxes and sewing machines and shelvesfull of costumes, and Vida is to be assistant wardrobe mistress. Yes,sir; a regular title for the job. And the pay is twenty-five a week,which is thirteen more than she'd ever dreamed of making before. Thegrouch is very decent to her and tells everybody she's a friend of his,and they all pay polite attention to him because he's someone importantin the works. It seems he's a director. He stands round and yells at theactors how to act, which I had always supposed they knew already but itseems not. Anyway, I left Vida there to get on to her new duties.
She was full of good reports that night about how well she'd got along,and how interesting the work was, and how she'd helped doctor up anotherboy. She said he was one of the world's greatest actors, because if theygive him four or five stiff drinks first he would fall off a forty-footcliff backwards into the ocean. She'd helped bandage a sprained wrist forhim that he got by jumping out of a second-story window in a grippingdrama replete with punch and not landing quite right.
I said to myself it must be a crazy joint and she'd soon give up andlet me get her a nice little place on the edge of town that I'd alreadylooked over. So I let her go three days more, but still she stuckthere with great enthusiasm. Then I had to be leaving for home, so theafternoon of the fourth day I went out to see for myself how thingslooked.
Vida is tickled to see me and takes me right in where they're beginningto act a gripping feature production. Old Bill Grouch is there in frontof a three-legged camera barking at the actors that are waiting roundin their disguises--with more paint on 'em than even a young girl willuse if her mother don't watch her. The grouch is very polite to Vida andme and shows us where to stand so we won't get knocked over by otheractors that are carrying round furniture and electric light stands andthings.
They got a parlour in a humble home where the first scene is to be.There's a mother and a fair-haired boy of twenty and a cop that's cometo pinch him for a crime. The play at this point is that the mother hasto plead with the cop not to drag her boy off to a prison cell, and shehas to do it with streaming eyes. It was darned interesting. The boy isstanding with bowed head and the cop is looking sympathetic but firm, andmother is putting something into her eyes out of a medicine dropper. Iwhisper to Vida and she says it's glycerine for the tears. She holds herhead back when she puts 'em in and they run down her cheeks very lifelikewhen she straightens up.
So mother comes forward with her streaming face and they're all readyto act when the grouch halts things and barks at the boy that he ain'tstanding right. He goes up and shows him how to stand more shamefully.But the tears on mother's face have dripped away and have to be renewed.She was a nice, kind-appearing mother all right, but I noticed she lookedpeeved when this delay happened. Vida explains that glycerine don'tdamage the eyes really, but it makes 'em smart a lot, and this actress,Miss St. Clair, has a right to feel mad over having to put in some more.
But she does it, though with low muttering when the grouch calls "Allright, Miss St. Clair!" and is coming forward to act with this heresecond batch of tears when the grouch stops it with another barking fit.He barks at the policeman this time. He says the policeman must do moreacting.
"You know you have a boy of your own," says he, "and how you'd hate tohave him arrested for this crime, but you're also remembering that lawis law and you're sworn to uphold it. Try to get that now. All ready,Miss St. Clair--we're waiting for you, Miss St. Clair!"
I'd watched this actress the second time her tears was spoiled and herexpression didn't fit a loving mother's face one bit. Her breath come asin scenes of tense emotion, but she hotly muttered something that mademe think I must of misunderstood her, because no lady actress would sayit, let alone a kind old mother. However, she backs off and for the thirdtime has this medicine dropper worked on her smarting eyes. Once moreshe comes forward with streaming eyes of motherly love, and I'm darnedif this grouch don't hold things up again.
This time he's barking about a leather sofa against the far wall of thehumble home. He says it's an office sofa and where in something is thered plush one that belongs to the set? He's barking dangerously ateveryone round him when all at once he's choked off something grand bythe weeping mother that has lost her third set of tears. She was wipingglycerine off her face and saying things to the grouch that must of givehim a cold chill for a minute. I'm sometimes accused of doing things withlanguage myself, but never in my life have I talked so interestingly--atleast not before ladies. Not that I blamed her.
Everyone kept still with horror till she run down; it seems it's a fiercecrime in that art to give a director what's coming to him. The policemanand the erring son was so scared they just stood there acting theirparts and the grouch was frozen with his mouth half open. Probably hehadn't believed it at first. Then all at once he smiled the loveliestsmile you ever seen on a human face and says in chilled tones: "Thatwill be all, Miss St. Clair! We will trouble you no further in thisproduction." His words sounded like cracking up a hunk of ice for thecocktail shaker. Miss St. Clair then throws up her arms and rushes off,shrieking to the limit of a bully voice.
It was an exciting introduction for me to what they call the silentdrama.
Then I looked at Vida and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it wasfrom sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at herwith his gimlet eyes and says:
"Here, don't you waste any tears on her. That's all in the day's work."
"I--wasn't thinking of her," sobs Vida.
"Then what you crying for?" says he.
"For that poor dear boy that's being dragged from his mother to prisonfor some childish prank," she blubbers.
Me, I laughed right out at the little fool, but the director didn'tlaugh.
"Well, I'll be damned!" says he in low, reverent tones.
Then he begins to look into her face like he'd lost something there. Thenhe backed off and looked into it a minute more. Then he went crazy allover the place.
"Here," he barks at another actress, "get this woman into your dressingroom and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part,understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satinwaist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room,where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! Wecan't be on this scene all day."
Then, when everybody run off, he set down on the red plush sofa that wasnow in place, relighted a cigar that smelled like it had gone out threedays before, and grinned at me in an excited manner.
"Your little friend is a find," he says. "Mark my words, Mrs. Pettijohn,she's got a future or I don't know faces. She'll screen well, and she'sone of the few that can turn on the tears when she wants to. I alwaysdid hate glycerine in this art. Now if only I can get her camerawise--and I'll bet I can! Lucky we'd just started on this piece when St.Clair blew up. Only o
ne little retake, where she's happy over her boy'spromotion in the factory. She's bound to get away with that; then if shecan get the water again for this scene it will be all over but signingher contract."
I was some excited myself by this time, you'd better believe. Nervous asa cat I found myself when Vida was led out in the sad mother's costume bythis other actress that had made her up. But Vida wasn't nervous theleast bit. She was gayly babbling that she'd always wanted to act, andonce she had played a real part in a piece they put on at Odd Fellows'Hall in Fredonia, and she had done so well that even the Methodistminister said she was as good as the actress he saw in Lawrence Barrett'scompany before he was saved; and he had hoped she wouldn't be led away byher success and go on the real stage, because he could not regard it as asafe pursuit for young persons of her sex, owing to there being so littlehome life--and now what did she do first?
This director had got very cold and businesslike once more.
"Stop talking first," says he. "Don't let me hear another word from you.And listen hard. You're sitting in your humble home sewing a button onyour boy's coat. He's your only joy in life. There's the coat and thebutton half sewed on with the needle and thread sticking in it. Sit downand sew that button on as if you were doing it for your own son. Nopretending, mind you. Sew it on as if--"
He hesitated a minute and got a first-class inspiration.
"Sew it on as if it was a button on your husband's coat that you told meabout. Every two or three stitches look up to show us how happy you are.When you get it sewed, take the coat up this way and hug it. You lookstill happier at that. Then you walk over to the mantel, pick up thephotograph of your boy that's there by that china dog and kiss it. Iwon't tell you how to do that. Remember who he is and do it your ownway, only let us see your face. Then put back the picture slowly, go getthe coat, and start to the left as if you were going to hang it up in hisroom; but you hear steps on the stair outside and you know your boy hascome home from work. We see that because your face lights up. Stand happythere till he comes in.
"You expect him to rush over to you as usual, but he's cast down;something has happened. You get a shock of fright. Walk over tohim--slow; you're scared. Get your arms round him. He stiffens atfirst, then leans on you. He's crying himself now, but you ain't--notyet. You're brave because you don't know about this fight he's had withthe foreman that's after your boy's sweetheart for no good purpose.
"Now go through it that far and see if you remember everything I toldyou. When we get down to the crying scene after the officer comes on,I'll rehearse you in that too, only for God's sake don't cry in therehearsal! You'll go dry. Now then! Coat--button--sewing. Goon!"
Well, sir, I stood there trembling like a leaf while she went throughwhat he'd told her like she'd been at it all her life--or rather like itwas her dear Clyde's coat and her dear Clyde's photo and her dear Clydethat come in the door. Then he rehearsed her in the end of the scenewhere the cop comes on, and she got that, too, though alarming himbecause she couldn't even rehearse it without crying. I could see thisdirector was nervous himself by this time, thinking she was too good tobe true. But he got her into the chair sewing again, all ready for thereal work.
"Remember only three things," he says: "Don't look at this machine, moveslowly when you move at all, and don't try to act. Now then! Camera!"
It was a historic occasion, all right. The lad at the camera begun toturn a crank and Vida begun to act like she wasn't acting at all. Thedirector just give her a low word when she had to move. He didn't barknow. And say, that crying scene! Darned if I didn't near cry myselflooking at her, and I heard this stonefaced director breathing mightyshort when she had to stand there with her hands clenched and watchher boy go out the door with this cop.
Vida was too excited to sleep that night. She said the director hadadvised her privately not to make a contract just yet, because she wouldget better terms when she'd showed 'em what she could really do. Forthis picture she would get paid seventy-five dollars a week. A week, mindyou, to a girl that had been thinking herself lucky to get twelve in NewYork.
She was very let down and happy, and cried a little bit out of workinghours for me because it was all so wonderful, and her drowned boy mightbe resting on some river bottom at that very moment. I said it was a safebet he was resting, wherever he was; but she didn't get it and I didn'tsay it twice.
And such was the beginning of Vida Sommers' glittering sob career inthe movies. She's never had but one failure and they turned that into asuccess. It seems they tried her in one of these "Should a Wife Forgive?"pieces in which the wife did not forgive, for a wonder, and she made ahorrible mess of it. She was fine in the suffering part, of course, onlywhen it come to not forgiving at the end--well, she just didn't know howto not forgive. They worked with her one whole day, then had to changethe ending. She's said to be very noble and womanly in it.
I went home next day, leaving her in pursuit of her art. But I gotglowing letters from her about every week, she doing new pictures and hersalary jumping because other film parties was naturally after so gooda weeper. And the next year I run down to see her. She was a changedwoman all right. She had a home or bungalow, a car, a fashionable dog, aJap cook, a maid and real gowns for the first time in her life. But thechanges was all outside. She was still the same Vida that wanted tomother every male human on earth. She never seemed to worry about girlsand women; her idea is that they're able to look out for themselves, butthat men are babies needing a mother's protection as long as they live.
And of course one of these men she had mothered down there had took abase advantage of her--this same ugly old grouch of a director. Shelocked the bedroom door and told me about it in horrified whispers thefirst night I got there. She said it might of been her fault, that hemight of misunderstood something she had said about Clyde. And anywayshe'd ought to of remembered that some men are beasts at heart.
Anyway, this infamous brute had come to the house one night and insultedher in the grossest manner, and it was all true about moving-picturedirectors having designs on unprotected females that work for 'em.Yielding to his lowest brute instincts he had thrown decency to the windsand made her such an evil proposition that she could hardly bear to putit in words. But she did. It seems that the scoundrel had listened tosome studio gossip to the effect that she had divorced the husband whodeserted her, and so he come right out and said he had been deeply inlove with her ever since that first day on the train, and now that shewas free, would she marry him?
Of course she was insulted to the limit and told him so in what wouldprobably of made a gripping scene of a good woman spurning the advancesof a moral leper. She overwhelmed him with scorn and horror for his foulwords. How dared he say her Clyde had deserted her, or think she wouldever divorce him! That showed, what a vile mind he must have. She said hegot awful meek and apologetic when he learned that she still clung to thememory of Clyde, who would one day fight his way back to her if he hadn'tended it all. She told him fully what a perfect man Clyde was, and shesaid at last the ugly old wretch just grinned weakly at her in a verypainful way, like it hurt him, and said: "Oh, my dearest, you must try toforgive me. I didn't know--I didn't know half the truth." Then he pattedher hand and patted her cheek and choked up and swallowed a couple oftimes, and says he:
"I was an old man dreaming and dreams make fools of old men!"
Then he swallowed again and stumbled out through her garden where theorange blossoms had just come. She said he'd never been offensive sincethat time, barking as nasty to her as to any of the others when she wasacting, so that no one would dream what a foul heart he had, except thathe always kept a bunch of white roses in her dressing room. But shehadn't cared to make him trouble about that because maybe he washonestly trying to lead a better life.
Some entertainment Vida give me, telling this, setting on her bed under alight that showed up more lines than ever in her face. She was lookingclose to forty now--I guess them crying scenes had told on her, and heryearning
for the lost Clyde--anyway she was the last woman on earth couldof got herself insulted even if she had tried her prettiest, only shedidn't know that. And she'd had her little thrill. We've all dreamed ofhow we'd some day turn down some impossible party who was overcome by ourmere beauty.
I said I'd always known this director was an unspeakable scoundrel,because he insisted on calling me Mrs. Pettijohn.
Then we had a nice talk about Clyde. She'd had no word for a year now,the last being a picture card saying he would spend the winter in Egyptwith some well-known capitalists that wouldn't take no for an answer.And did I believe he might now be wandering over the face of the earth,sick and worn, and trying to get back to her; didn't I think some day hewould drag himself to her door, a mere wreck of his former self, to besoothed at last on her breast? That was why she kept a light burning inthe front window of this here bungalow. He would know she had waited.
Well, I'd never said a word against Clyde except in conversation withmyself, and I wasn't going to break out now. I did go so far as to hintthat an article that had come out about her in this same magazine mightdraw Clyde back a little quicker than the light in the window. Thearticle said her salary was enormous. I thought its rays might carry.
So I come home again and near a year later I get a telegram from Vida:"Happy at last--my own has come home to me." I threw up my hands andswore when I read this. The article had said her salary was seven hundredand fifty dollars a week.
The next winter I run down to see the happy couple. Vida was now lookinga good forty, but Clyde was actually looking younger than ever; not aline nor a wrinkle to show how he had grieved for her, and not a sign ofwriter's cramp from these three picture cards he had sent her in fiveyears. She'd been afraid he'd come back worn to the bone.
But listen! By the time I got there Clyde was also drawing money. He'dfelt a little hurt at first to find his wife a common actress, and askedto see her contract because you couldn't believe what you see in thesemagazines. Then he'd gone round the lot and got to be an actor himself.I gathered that he hadn't been well liked by the men at first, and two orthree other directors, when Vida insisted he should have a chance to act,had put him into rough-house funny plays where he got thrown downstairsor had bricks fall on him, or got beat up by a willing ex-prize fighter,or a basket of eggs over his head, or custard pies in his perfectfeatures, with bruises and sprains and broken bones and so forth--Ibelieve the first week they broke everything but his contract.
Anyway, when he begun to think he wasn't meant for this art, who steps inbut this same director that had made such a beast of himself with Vida?He puts Clyde into a play in which Vida is the mother and Clyde is thenoble son that takes the crime on his shoulders to screen the brother ofthe girl he loves, and it was an awful hit. Naturally Vida was never sogood before and Clyde proved to be another find. He can straighten up andlook nobler when he's wrongfully accused of a crime than any still actorI ever see. He's got now to where they have to handle him with glovesor he'd leave 'em flat and go with another company. Vida wrote me onlylast week that they had a play for him where he's cast off on a desertisland with a beautiful but haughty heiress, and they have to live therethree months subsisting on edible foods which are found on all desertislands. But Clyde had refused the part because he would have to growwhiskers in this three months. He said he had to think of his public,which would resent this hideous desecration. He thought up a bully wayto get out of it. He said he'd let the whiskers grow for a few scenes andthen find a case of safety razors washed ashore, so he could shavehimself just before the haughty millionaire's daughter confessed that shehad loved him from the first and the excursion steamer come up to rescue'em. I believe he now admits frankly that he wrote most of the play, orat least wrote the punch into it. A very happy couple they are, Clydehaving only one vice, which is candy that threatens his waistline. Vidakeeps a sharp watch on him, but he bribes people to sneak chocolatecreams into his dressing room. The last night I was there he sung"Good-night, Good-night, Beloved!" so well that I choked up myself.
Of course women are crazy about him; but that don't bother Vida a littlebit. She never wanted a husband anyway--only a son. And Clyde must havehad something wake up in his brain them years he was away. He had a queerlook in his eyes one night when he said to me--where Vida couldn't hear:"Yes, other women have loved me, but she--she knows me and loves me!"It's the only thing I ever heard him utter that would show he might beabove a pet kitten in intellect.
And, of course, these letters he gets don't mean anything in his life butadvertising--Oh, yes! I forgot to tell you that his stage name is J.Harold Armytage. He thought it up himself. And the letters coming inby the bushel really make Vida proud. In her heart she's sorry for thepoor fools because they can't have as much of dear Clyde as she has. Shesays she's never deserved her present happiness. I never know whether Iagree with her or not.
She's a queer one. Darned if she don't make a person thinksometimes--listening to her chatter--that there must be somethingkind of decent about human nature after all!