"And so the old trouper had to start out Monday morning to peddle the brush. Took him three days to land anything at all, and then it's nothing but a sleeping souse in a Western bar-room scene. In here now he is--something the Acme people are doing. He's had three days, just lying down with his back against a barrel sleeping. He's not to wake up even when the fight starts, but sleep right on through it, which they say will be a good gag. Well, maybe. But it's tough on his home. He gets all his rest daytimes and keeps us restless all night making a new kind of beer and tending his still, and so on. You bet Ma and I, the minute he's through with this piece, are going pronto to get that face of his as naked as the day he was born. Pa's so temperamental--like that time he was playing a Bishop and never touched a drop for five weeks, and in bed every night at nine-thirty. Me? Oh, I'm having a bit of my own in this Acme piece--God's Great Outdoors, I think it is--anyway, I'm to be a little blonde hussy in the bar-room, sitting on the miners' knees and all like that, so they'll order more drinks. It certainly takes all kinds of art to make an artist. And next week I got some shipwreck stuff for Baxter, and me with bronchial pneumonia right this minute, and hating tank stuff, anyway. Well, Countess, don't take any counterfeit money. So long."She danced through a doorway and was gone--she was one who seldom descended to plain walking. She would manage a dance step even in the short distance from the casting--office door to the window. It was not of such material, Merton Gill was sure, that creative artists were moulded. And there was no question now of his own utter seriousness. The situation hourly grew more desperate. For a week he had foregone the drug-store pie, so that now he recalled it as very wonderful pie indeed, but he dared no longer indulge in this luxury.
An occasional small bag of candy and as much sugar as he could juggle into his coffee must satisfy his craving for sweets.
Stoically he awaited the end--some end. The moving-picture business seemed to be still on the rocks, but things must take a turn.
He went over the talk of the Montague girl. Her father had perhaps been unfairly treated, but at least he was working again. And there were other actors who would go unshaven for even a sleeping part in the bar-room scene of God's Great Outdoors. Merton Gill knew one, and rubbed his shaven chin. He thought, too, of the girl's warning about counterfeit money. He had not known that the casting director's duties required her to handle money, but probably he had overlooked this item in her routine. And was counterfeit money about? He drew out his own remaining bill and scrutinized it anxiously. It seemed to be genuine. He hoped it was, for Mrs.
Patterson's sake, and was relieved when she accepted it without question that night.
Later he tested the handful of silver that remained to him and prayed earnestly that an increase of prosperity be granted to producers of the motion picture. With the silver he eked out another barren week, only to face a day the evening of which must witness another fiscal transaction with Mrs. Patterson. And there was no longer a bill for this heartless society creature. He took a long look at the pleasant little room as he left it that morning. The day must bring something but it might not bring him back that night.
At the drug store he purchased a bowl of vegetable soup, loaded it heavily with catsup at intervals when the attendant had other matters on his mind, and seized an extra half--portion of crackers left on their plate by a satiated neighbour. He cared little for catsup, but it doubtless bore nourishing elements, and nourishment was now important. He crumpled his paper napkin and laid upon the marble slab a trifling silver coin. It was the last of his hoard.
When he should eat next and under what circumstances were now as uncertain as where he should sleep that night, though he was already resolving that catsup would be no part of his meal. It might be well enough in its place, but he had abundantly proved that it was not, strictly speaking, a food.
He reached the Holden studios and loitered outside for half an hour before daring the daily inquiry at the window. Yet, when at last he did approach it, his waning faith in prayer was renewed, for here in his direst hour was cheering news. It seemed even that his friend beyond the window had been impatient at his coming.
"Just like you to be late when there's something doing!" she called to him with friendly impatience. "Get over to the dressing rooms on the double-quick. It's the Victor people doing some Egyptian stuff--they'll give you a costume. Hurry along!"And he had lingered over a bowl of soggy crackers soaked, at the last, chiefly in catsup! He hurried, with a swift word of thanks.
In the same dressing room where he had once been made up as a Broadway pleasure seeker he now donned the flowing robe and burnoose of a Bedouin, and by the same grumbling extra his face and hands were stained the rich brown of children of the desert. A dozen other men of the paler race had undergone the same treatment. A sheik of great stature and noble mien smoked an idle cigarette in the doorway. He was accoutred with musket and with pistols in his belt.
An assistant director presently herded the desert men down an alley between two of the big stages and to the beginning of the oriental street that Merton had noticed on his first day within the Holden walls. It was now peopled picturesquely with other Bedouins. Banners hung from the walls and veiled ladies peeped from the latticed balconies. A camel was led excitingly through the crowded way, and donkeys and goats were to be observed. It was a noisy street until a whistle sounded at the farther end, then all was silence while the voice of Henshaw came through the megaphone.
It appeared that long shots of the street were Henshaw's first need.
