Jack and Susan in 1913 (11 page)

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.

S
HE 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.”

Susan stared at the long white envelope in her lap. With trembling fingers she picked it up, pulled out the flap and peered inside.

“Greenies,” said Jack.

Wonderingly, Susan counted: seven five-dollar notes.

“But this is more than—”

Jack shrugged. “I told you I wasn't certain it was twenty dollars. Do you want to send back the extra fifteen? I'm sure the Cosmic Film Company will be pleased to receive it.”

Susan took a long breath and with eyes wide as saucers, counted the bills again. It seemed scarcely possible that they were hers.

“Are you at all interested in what else Mr. Fane had to say?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Of course! It's just that I'm—tell me everything, please!”

“Well, he said the scenario was perfect for the company and for Mr. Mixon, and he wondered if Miss Light hadn't written for the moving pictures before.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you hadn't. Then he asked who you were, and I told him you were a friend, who for the moment wished her identity to remain a secret. He said he didn't care if your name was Apple Brown Betty and you looked like the missing link, as long as you could give him another like this.”

“Another one!”

“As soon as possible—another two-reeler for Mr. Mixon and, if you can come up with something appropriate, a two-reeler for Miss Conquest. Something in which she gets to give up everything for her man and wear pretty frocks, he suggested.”

Susan leaned back in the chair, stunned. Laughing, Jack leaned down, took hold of her cast, and lifted her leg carefully on to the ottoman.

“Is it really this easy?” Susan asked softly.

“You provided Mr. Fane with what he needed,” said Jack. “He paid you for your trouble and your talent, and now he's asking you to repeat the performance. That's what business is all about—or so I'm told, for I must say it never seems to go in so straightforward a manner for me.”

Jack's tone reminded Susan that the main reason for his visit to Mr. Fane had not been made to proffer the Manfred Mixon scenario. “Did you speak to Mr. Fane about your ideas for his cameras?”

“Yes,” said Jack, leaning against the table opposite her. His legs really did seem most absurdly long. “He thought they were very interesting, and felt that I should go forward with my experiments.” Jack smiled a melancholy smile.

“But he didn't give you any money,” said Susan.

“No. But he said he'd be happy to see how I was progressing at any time.”

“I'm sorry,” said Susan. “You know, I don't really know what it is you're doing with those cameras.” It was difficult to center her attention on Jack's project, when what she really wanted to do was jump into the air, spin around, and clutch seven five-dollar bills to her breast in an agony of relief, pride, and hope. Nevertheless, she gazed at him with what she hoped was interest on her face.

“I've thought of a small device to go
inside
the camera. You know how sometimes the moving pictures are jerky?”

“They are always jerky,” said Susan with perhaps more enthusiasm than she strictly felt about this technical matter. “And I've always wondered why someone didn't do something about it.”

“Well, once I'd looked inside the cameras, I realized what the trouble was. What's needed is something that will steady the film as it passes behind the lens—something that will make the speed absolutely uniform, which it isn't now. If I were to come up with something like that, it would be an improvement for every camera in the moving-picture business.”

“It sounds simple,” said Susan, “but I'm sure it's not.”

“So what I would like to do is develop the device, patent it, sell it to all the moving-picture companies, and retire from tinkering on a fabulous income. But I make a living now making small repairs, such as on your typewriting machine. That takes all my time, and I've none left over for the work that might bring in real money.”

Without thinking what she was doing, Susan took two of her precious five-dollar bills and proffered them to Jack.

He held up his hands. “Oh no, please, I won't.”

“Why not?”

“Because that is your hard-earned money.”

“But it's more than I need.”

Jack shook his head. “No. I won't take money from you. I'm not destitute, and I'm young and strong and my constitution will be able to stand a few late nights of work. While the rest of the city is asleep, you'll be up here going
scribble
,
scribble
,
scribble
on your next scenario, and I'll be down below,
grind-
,
grind-
,
grind
ing away at some broken moving-picture camera. So you can pace and dance and act out all the parts to your heart's content without fear of keeping me from sleep.”

“You're certain you won't take the money?”

“Positive. It would make me ashamed.”

For the next weeks Susan was in heaven. She could think of no other situation that would compare to her present one. She sat all day in the great comfortable chair in her sitting room, with her mending leg propped up on the ottoman and Tripod squeezed in beside her. She wrote and wrote and wrote. While she dressed, bathed, and prepared her little meals, her imagination was in another place. She daydreamed as she had not daydreamed since she was a little girl staring at the dusty road that led out of Winter River and wondering where it would take her. She dreamed now of impossibly sweet romances, improbably comic weddings, and exciting adventures fraught with danger to the hero. She even imagined a beautiful young woman, kidnapped, sequestered, and threatened in a lonely house in a forbidding landscape. But the difference between her childhood imaginings and these sweeping fancies was that these would bring Susan money, if she was able to dream them in enough detail, and could put that detail on to paper, and get that paper into the hands of Mr. Junius Fane of the Cosmic Film Company in time.

Susan first wrote another comedy for Manfred Mixon, and was a bit chagrined that it was so close in its outline to the first one, but that appeared to be exactly what Mr. Fane wanted, and Jack brought back another envelope, and once again it contained thirty-five dollars. From being in a position of wondering where the next meal was coming from, Susan was now in the happy position of wondering whether it was wise to keep so much money about the house.

Next she went to work on a romance in which Ida Conquest figured as a well-bred orphan deprived of her fortune by an unscrupulous guardian, who intended to marry her off to a degenerate English aristocrat. Just when the hour seems blackest, Ida is carried off by her chauffeur, whom she'd once scorned as beneath her. She falls in love with the man despite his lowly station, and gives up all in order to marry him for true love. On the wedding day—with the guardian and the profligate aristocrat in the custody of the police—an astonished Ida discovers that the chauffeur is actually a rich cousin (through marriage) who was keeping an eye on his beautiful relative, whom he has loved since they were children.

The story was more romantic than probable, of course, but the whole thing could be filmed on the premises of the Cosmic studio, and Ida would get to wear any number of splendid gowns.

Susan, fearing she was taking advantage of the good nature of her neighbor, begged Jack to seek the services of the neighborhood errand boy for the delivery of the scenario to the Cosmic studios. Jack said he would not hear of it. For one thing it was far too valuable a document to be entrusted to such an unreliable courier; for another, he liked staying in touch with Mr. Fane, and it gave him pleasure to field the man's probings into the true identity of the wonderful and mysterious Sarah Light.

So Susan let Jack go, though she had some misgivings about this third scenario. The Mixon comedies were so formulaic that it would have been difficult
not
to produce something useful, but a romantic scenario was entirely different. Perhaps she hadn't the knack for it.

But Jack returned with a third envelope—again with seven five-dollar notes inside.

“Mr. Fane says that he has never read the work of anyone with such a grasp of what was needed by a film company working on a small budget and a tight schedule. He says that Miss Sarah Light would be welcome at any time on the premises, and that he would even be pleased to treat her to luncheon. But he says that if she prefers to remain distant from the operation he is eager to respect that as well.”

“I see no reason to keep up the pretense,” said Susan. “Now that he's taken three of my stories.”

Jack made no reply, but instead looked at Susan with a hesitant expression.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is there something I don't know? Is there a reason for this to remain secret?”

“I think perhaps there is…”

“Then tell me, please,” she said, a touch of concern in her voice.

He shook his head. “Despite your infirmity, could I persuade you to accompany me on a short walk?”

“Why, yes you may, Mr. Beaumont,” she said, now very curious. “I feel that with over a hundred dollars' income in the past week, I can afford a bit of recreation. Besides, I feel the exercise would do me good.”

She could get along now inside the apartment on just one crutch, but she still felt safer outside with both. It was nearly three o'clock on a gray and blustery afternoon, and Jack, making small talk, suggested they head in the direction of Columbus Circle.

The wide circular intersection was filled with traffic—automobile, horse-drawn, and pedestrian—all day long, and around it were ranged restaurants, theaters, and clothing emporia. At the corner of Sixtieth Street and Broadway, Jack paused. Susan, unable to contain her curiosity, said, “Could you please tell me the destination and purpose of this excursion?”

“This is our destination, as a matter of fact,” said Jack.

Susan looked around, and saw nothing but the old Circle Theater, which three years ago had gone from being a legitimate theater to one exhibiting moving pictures. It was more expensive than the nickelodeons, charging twenty-five cents for the best seats, but it showed very much the same programs. And then Susan looked up at the theatre's marquee. She gave a small lurch and grabbed for Jack Beaumont's arm as she read:

Susan hardly saw the travelogue, the newsreel, or the one-reel comedy that preceded
Hopwood's Harem
. She was so nervous and excited that Jack laid a hand on her arm, as if he feared that she might get up and begin pacing the theater aisles. His hand was warm on the sleeve of her blouse, and she thought alternately of his touch, and the astonishing fact that she was sitting in a moving-picture theater a scant block and a half from her home, about to witness her own story translated into celluloid pictures.