Jack and Susan in 1913 Read online

  “Let’s find an independent theater,” Susan suggested as they emerged into the February sunlight. “And one showing Cosmic films, if we can.”

  “Your cast and crutches,” Jack protested gently, but Susan waved away this concern for her discomfort.

  With purpose and hope in her breast, Susan felt better than she had for weeks—better, in fact, since the night when that idiot Jay Austin had thrown himself on top of her in the snow. It was true that her feet were sore, her arms ached with the unaccustomed exercise of the crutches, and some sort of grit had got into her cast and was making her mending leg itch madly, but Susan had no intention of going home yet.

  Jack went into a druggist’s shop, entered a phone booth, and called the Cosmic studio to find out at what nickelodeons they might see Mr. Mixon’s latest essay in comedy. He was told that this could be seen at an establishment called the Paragon, which was located at Sixth Avenue and Forty-third Street. This saved them a deal of trouble and walking about, and they were able to take the Sixth Avenue elevated straight up to Forty-second Street.

  The Paragon’s presentation, from the independent film companies, was a much more enjoyable bill than the first they’d seen. It began with a travelogue of the splendors of California, then was followed—in considerable contrast—by a newsreel of local disasters, including a fire in a Brooklyn factory. Next came a comedy short involving a man in blackface and wedding clothes being chased through City Hall Park by a large group of women in blackface and wedding gowns. Then Jack and Susan were mystified by an episode of The Purple Mask, which climaxed with the detective-hero locked in a steamer trunk which was then hurled off the Brooklyn Bridge. And, at the last, came Nobbin’s Nuptials, the Cosmic two-reeler featuring Manfred Mixon playing the owner of a livery stable intent on wedding the mayor’s widow. There were comic wooing scenes, a comic costume ball, a comic horse race, and, at the end, a comic wedding.

  Susan and Jack laughed, and laughed heartily, for Manfred Mixon was indeed an accomplished comedian. When it was over, Susan placed a hand on Jack’s arm and said, “May I ask you one more favor?”

  “Of course,” said Jack.

  “Could we sit through it once more?”

  The second time through, Susan watched with a sharp critical eye, and took notes on some scraps of paper that Jack found in his jacket pocket.

  When Jack Beaumont knocked on Susan’s door that evening, Tripod seemed to know who it was, and began hurling himself at the door with a ferocious barking. Susan dragged the dog into the bedroom and shut the door.

  Jack brought in a Densmore typewriting machine and placed it on Susan’s table.

  “It looks quite new!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, I cleaned it up a bit,” he admitted with a blush, which Susan again found immensely charming. “But I don’t know anything about the way typewriting is done. I’m told it’s a little like playing the piano, but I don’t know how to do that either. I came across a ream of paper, too.”

  “Thank you so very much,” said Susan earnestly, looking at the machine with ill-concealed excitement. Not that she had any great love for new-fangled gadgetry, but because this was the instrument that might change her fortune. Since they had left the Paragon late that afternoon, she’d thought of nothing else.

  “Jack, I’d ask you to stay—”

  “But you want to get right at it, I presume.”

  “Yes. In fact, I’ve already started.” She shyly touched the top of several sheets of yellow paper with handwriting scrawled all over them.

  “May I—”

  “Oh, no! Not till it’s done. But then I’m going to want your sincere opinion.”

  “I’ll be happy to give it,” said Jack. “But wouldn’t Hosmer be a better judge, since he is in the business?”

  “No, no,” said Susan. “I don’t want Hosmer to know I’m doing this. I don’t want anyone to know—in case I fail,” she added with brave candor.

  “But you’ve told me,” said Jack.

  “You’re my sole confidant in this, and I rely on your discretion.”

  “I’m honored,” said Jack. “But I’m sure that once Mr. Fane has seen your scenario—”

  “Oh, we mustn’t talk about it or we’ll jinx it.”

  After Jack left, Susan let Tripod out of the bedroom, boiled a pot of coffee, and set out a bowl of Oysterettes on a table beside her chair. Then with her cast arranged as comfortably as possible on an ottoman, and with a small blanket thrown over her lap and the dog squeezed in beside her, Susan began writing a new story for Manfred Mixon. She stared at the black square of window for a long while, scribbled furiously for a few minutes, stared at the blackness some more, rearranged the blanket, scribbled some more, listened to the voices coming through the thin walls of the apartment building, and scribbled on through the night.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mr. Hopwood’s Harem

  by

  SARAH LIGHT

  SCENE 1.

  Harry Hopwood (Mr. Mixon) runs a ramshackle boardinghouse in a small town in New Jersey. Hopwood has a full complement of guests, each more unpleasant than the other, and he has his apron full trying to take care of them at breakfast every morning. Each morning is a series of disasters. In the kitchen Mr. Hopwood is an inexperienced cook, and at the breakfast table Mr. Hopwood is an indifferent serving girl, despite fetching feminine costume. The guests revolt and riot, and more of them defect to the widow Filkins’s boardinghouse.

  Scene 2.

  Mrs. Filkins’s boardinghouse is in complete and noble contrast to that of Mr. Hopwood. It is the height of gentility. Her guests, even those defected from Mr. Hopwood’s establishment, are uniformly genteel and well behaved, creating a place of order and good breeding.

  Scene 3.

  Mr. Hopwood is left with only one boarder—a cantankerous old gentleman who hasn’t paid his rent for three months, and affects an illness in order not to be tossed out on his ear. Then a fresh worry: The pompous town banker arrives with a warrant of foreclosure. Mr. Hopwood gets an idea. The way out of his difficulties is to merge with Mrs. Filkins. After all, he is fat and she is thin; he is impecunious and she has money salted away; he has no idea of how to run a boardinghouse and she was born to the job.

  Scene 4.

  In Mrs. Filkins’s parlor, Mr. Hopwood declares his love to the widow and proposes marriage. But at this tender moment the widow Filkins’s young nephew, a scamp of a boy, pops Mr. Hopwood in the eye with a bean shooter. In chasing the boy about the parlor, Hopwood manages to wreck the sofa, and ends up rolled in the draperies, a goldfish bowl over his head. He is ejected by Mrs. Filkins, and told never again to darken her door.

  Scene 5.

  The end of Mr. Hopwood’s hopes has driven him insane. With wild hair and a frenzied countenance, he sets fire to his own boardinghouse. The cantankerous old invalid suddenly proves himself quite spry and rushes out at the sight of smoke and flames. A sudden rain shower puts out the fire, but Mr. Hopwood, still mad, takes a pistol and rushes off into a nearby forest with the intention of ending it all.

  Scene 6.

  In the forest, a group of chorus girls on a picnic from the city are being menaced by two hooligans intent on stealing jewelry and kisses.

  Mr. Hopwood arrives on the scene, still in a frenzy and, only half aware of what he’s doing, frightens the ruffians away. The chorus girls fall on Mr. Hopwood as their rescuer, and prevent him from carrying out his plan of suicide. They listen to his tale of woe with great sympathy.

  Scene 7.

  The girls have installed themselves in Mr. Hopwood’s boardinghouse. Not only do they perform the duties of cooks, maids, and serving girls, but they are also guests. Soon, there is a line of gentlemen outside the house, waiting for rooms in this most interesting of establishments. In the parlor, the pompous banker is soothed with the blandishments of the chorus girls, and there is no longer any danger of foreclosure.

  Scene 8.

  Mrs. Filkins’s house i
s now almost empty, and she sits at her vast dining table alone with an old deaf woman—the very last of her guests. When Mrs. Filkins’s nephew upsets a plate on the sideboard, Mrs. Filkins slaps him. Mr. Hopwood is announced, and Mrs. Filkins meets her competitor. Mr. Hopwood proposes that the two establishments be united, and Mrs. Filkins happily accepts his proposal of marriage.

  Scene 9.

  Mr. Hopwood and Mrs. Filkins are married, with the chorus girls acting as bridesmaids. At the end of the ceremony, all the chorus girls are paired with handsome young gentlemen of the town—not excepting the pompous banker and the cantankerous old gentleman—while Mr. Hopwood begins to wonder if he did not get the worst of the deal with scrawny Mrs. Filkins.

  “I think it’s quite wonderful,” Jack said admiringly, early the next morning.

  “Oh, do you really?” cried Susan happily, spinning around in a blue flannelette kimono. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  Jack nodded solemnly, as if mere words were inadequate to express the depth of his admiration for this new masterpiece of moving-picture scenario.

  “I’m so glad,” said Susan. “I was up till past three, and there were times I wanted dreadfully to pace the room. That’s what writers do, I’m told, when they’re lacking inspiration. I didn’t because I was afraid of disturbing you.”

  “As it happened, you wouldn’t have disturbed me,” Jack laughed. “I also was up half the night.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Hosmer brought home some of the cameras that were broken by the Trust ruffians, and I played with them. Took them apart to see how they worked—and didn’t work. When I get involved with something like that, I don’t much notice the time.”

  “I like writing scenarios ever so much more than conning lines,” said Susan. “Memorizing lines,” she said by way of clarification, when it was apparent that Jack hadn’t understood the theatrical jargon.

  “Do you think you have it in you to write any more of these?”

  “Oh, loads. But I don’t want to be ‘numerating the barnyard fowl.’ Don’t forget, Mr. Fane hasn’t seen this yet—and he won’t see it till I’ve typewritten it. And remember I have to figure out how that machine works.”

  Typewriting the scenario proved as much of a chore as composing the thing had been. Susan found out the rude mechanics quickly enough, as there were only a limited number of ways for the paper to fit, and the keyboard was clearly marked. But remembering where the letters were, and getting up any sort of rhythm was difficult, and the laborious erasure of errors was a trial of petty aggravation. Not till one o’clock that afternoon was the thing done—and though a bit smudged and crumpled, it was legible, and done in the same form as the one she’d stolen the day before.

  Susan had never felt such elation. Writing, she’d discovered, was different from stage acting—where one is at the mercy of a text (usually asinine), a director (often incompetent), fellow actors (invariably jealous), and an audience (generally unsympathetic). But this scenario, simple and straightforward, was an unqualified product of her mind, and it would rise or fall by merit alone.

  She stomped hard three times on the floor with her cast foot. In a few moments, she heard Jack’s tread hurrying up the stairs.

  “I’m finished with it,” she said, opening the door.

  He made a movement as if to grab her up in her elation, but then he held back. His arms seemed to quiver for a moment at his sides, and then were still. She wished he had gathered her up. There were definitely times when a young woman needed a friendly embrace, and this was one of them.

  She threw herself into his arms, but the motion was so unexpected to him, and her weight so unexpectedly heavy because of the plaster around her leg, that they both staggered backward into the hallway…just as Mrs. Jadd and her two timorous daughters were emerging for the day’s shopping.

  Mrs. Jadd grabbed her two children and spun them around so that they would not be witness to such wickedness. And just across the hall!

  Jack blushed so that Susan half-feared his eyes would fill up with blood, but she only laughed, and dragged him back inside. She smilingly closed the door in Mrs. Jadd’s scandalized face.

  “Oh dear,” Susan laughed, “I’m afraid we’ve just been branded. But I don’t care, I’m so excited, so happy—”

  Jack looked over the typewritten sheets. “Why did you put the name as Sarah Light?”

  “Just in case…”

  Jack nodded in understanding. In case she failed. “Now,” he asked, changing the subject, “how do you intend to get this to Mr. Fane?”

  Susan thought for a moment. “I shouldn’t like to mail it, for it might be mislaid, or never get to him. And I wouldn’t entrust it to Hosmer, for if Mr. Fane thinks no better of Hosmer than he indicated yesterday, he may be prejudiced against anything that Hosmer brings him. It might be best if I simply took it myself, and asked for an interview with Mr. Fane. Though—”

  “I could take it,” said Jack.

  “You?”

  “I have an appointment with Mr. Fane in only a couple of hours. I’m going to talk to him about an improvement I have in mind for his cameras—all that work I was doing last night. And I’ll be happy to show him your scenario, say that it is the product of a friend of mine, and see what he says.”

  Susan waited on tenterhooks in Jack’s absence that afternoon, and though she knew it nonsense, she still labored under the conviction that Mr. Fane’s yes or no would determine the course of the rest of her life. She was not given to great enthusiasms, with the exception of her one great decision to move from Winter River to New York to become an actress. Since then, nothing had fired her determination and her hope as much as this essay into the peculiar field of writing stories for moving pictures.

  Actually, she thought she’d done her work well on the vehicle for Mr. Mixon. It was exactly like all his other moving-picture comedies. It didn’t require very much in the way of outdoor scenes or camera tricks. Most of the work could easily be mounted and filmed in the West Twenty-seventh Street studio. The scenario provided ample opportunity for Mr. Mixon to do the business he liked so well—he invariably wrecked a room in the course of each of his features, invariably appeared at least once dressed as a woman, and invariably smashed a piece of furniture by sitting down or leaning too hard on it. Susan’s only real innovation was the inclusion of the chorus girls, but she thought that this was an inspired idea—the trotting-out of a great number of snappily dressed, pretty girls did wonders for the most dreadful plays on the stage. Why should it not do the same for moving-picture features?

  After enumerating to herself all these felicities of her composition, Susan dropped into an instant blue funk, thinking, Oh I’m such a little fool to think that Mr. Fane will pay twenty dollars for three typewritten pages that I, with no experience whatever, wrote in the course of a single night.

  In a sudden state of nerves, Susan took a brush, a pailful of water, some Fairbanks Gold Dust cleansing powder, and scrubbed at everything that could be attacked with impunity. When she was done with that, she danced with Tripod, humming “She’s My Lady of the Nile.” Then she sat down and scanned the last half-dozen issues of The Modern Priscilla, hoping that maybe one of the articles or stories would suggest an idea for her next scenario.

  But then she threw even that aside, and clapped her hands. Tripod flew up from the floor into her arms, and Susan hugged him close. “Oh, Tripod,” she cried in exasperation, “when is he coming back?”

  At that very moment, Tripod barked and began to wail. He struggled out of Susan’s arms on to the top of the chair. From there, he hurled himself at the door to the hallway.

  Jack Beaumont was back—Jack, with her fate in his hands.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHE FLUNG open the door.

  Tripod rushed out and leapt at Jack’s throat, but only caught his teeth in the thick woolen scarf around Jack’s neck.

  Tripod swung like a pendulum, his teeth embedded in the end of
the scarf.

  “Tripod is really the smartest dog I ever knew,” said Susan, “but I do think he’s taken an undeserving disliking to you.”

  “Of that I’m convinced,” said Jack, unwinding his scarf. This seemed the only way of separating himself from the growling terrier.

  When Tripod was safely, though not quietly, sequestered in the bedroom, Susan sat on the edge of a chair. “You saw Mr. Fane?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to disguise her anxiety.

  Jack nodded slowly.

  “And you showed him the scenario?”

  Jack nodded again.

  “And he promised to read it?”

  Once more.

  “And he will phone me if he decides to buy it?” Jack hesitated.

  “I don’t understand,” said Susan.

  “He said there was no need to wait for his phone call.”

  Susan dropped into the chair where she’d written the scenario the night before. Suddenly she was very tired, and realized how little sleep she’d gotten, and how much energy she’d expended in her excitement. Her leg itched madly inside the cast. She wanted to go to sleep for a long time. Till her leg was healed, till she had another role on the stage, till this long period of penury and helplessness was past, and by some unknown means her dreary life was flooded with light and gold.

  Something dropped into her lap.

  “The reason you needn’t wait for his phone call,” explained Jack, “is that he bought it on the spot.”