Jack and Susan in 1913

by Michael McDowell

  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-, grinding 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.

&nb
sp; “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:

  HOPWOOD’S HAREM

  A Cosmic Film Company Production

  featuring

  That Favorite Fat and Funny Fellow

  Manfred Mixon

  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.

  She had no thought that what she’d written was in any way equivalent to a real play—even to such a piece of sentimental tripe as He and She. It had to be true—didn’t it?—that the worst legitimate play ever mounted on a creaking stage was inherently superior to the most ambitious screen drama. Be that as it may, Susan was as full of pride in her production as if what she’d written was about to be mounted on the stage of the Eltinge or the Shubert theater.

  When it came time for Hopwood’s Harem, Susan grasped Jack’s hand in excitement and fear and squeezed it tight.

  A filigree-bordered announcement appeared on the screen, displaying the title and Mr. Mixon’s name and caricatured face—exactly the same as all the other Manfred Mixon photoplays. Next appeared a second card bearing the names of the other players in the piece, headed by the inscription: “The Cosmic Players.” And after that came a third card, which read:

  This Photo-Drama

  was written expressly

  for the

  Cosmic Film Company

  by a

  Young Lady in High Society

  Who Wishes

  Her Identity to be Kept Secret

  Owing to the Possible Censure

  of Her Parents and Friends

  Susan turned and stared at Jack in the semidarkness: “What on earth did you tell Mr. Fane about me?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  OUTSIDE THE THEATER again, Susan stared about her as if she’d been dropped at Columbus Circle directly from the Argentine pampas. Everything was now different in her life. Until now, she had never really quite believed that the words she had sat in her chair writing would actually be translated into real moving pictures, and that complete strangers would then gather in darkened rooms and pass judgment on their worth. The audience in the Circle Theater seemed to have been favorably impressed, it was true—but what if they had hissed? How would Susan have felt then?

  “Are you not feeling well?” Jack asked.

  “Thank you,” said Susan uncertainly, “perhaps if we could…”

  Directly on Columbus Circle was Faust’s Restaurant and Café, and Jack huddled Susan inside. The backs of the booth he secured for them were high and protective, and Susan leaned against the dark wood as if she were exhausted.

  “That certainly came as a…surprise,” she said falteringly.

  “A pleasant one, I hope,” said Jack. “May I please order you a restorative?” She nodded, and he asked the waiter to bring two glasses of brandy and water.

  “It was pleasant,” said Susan. “But what if the audience hadn’t laughed?”

  “But they did. In fact, it was the funniest Mixon comedy I’ve ever seen. And you just watch—every comedy from now on will have a dozen chorus girls straight off the music hall stage.”

  “‘Young Lady in High Society’?” Susan quoted suddenly, remembering the card at the beginning of the picture. “What did you tell Mr. Fane about me?”

  “I did a little embroidery on Miss Light’s identity, that’s all,” explained Jack. “When I first spoke to him of your scenario he was going to dismiss it. After all, who was I to recommend a writer to him? All I’d done was to fix a gear on one of his cameras. So I begged his pardon, but told him that what I held in my hand had been written by a lady in society who much admired Mr. Mixon and was of a literary turn of mind and wished to try her hand at formulating a scenario for a moving picture. I made you sound very top-of-the-brow.”

  The waiter brought the drinks. After nodding to Jack over the rim of the glass, Susan sipped at the light-colored liquid. It burned—and it made her feel better almost immediately.

  “Did Mr. Fane ask how you came to be acquainted with a young lady of such exalted station? And how you gained her confidence?”

  “He did. I said that I had once been engaged as a mathematical tutor to the young lady, and that I still had entree to the house as a tutor to her younger brothers. Twins, I said. And that on my last visit, while waiting for the twins to return from an amateur sporting match, I had fallen into conversation in the conservatory with the young lady, and she had confessed her infatuation with moving pictures and Mr. Mixon. When she discovered that I lived in the same apartment house as Hosmer Collamore, a gentleman actually acquainted with Mr. Mixon, she confided the manuscript to my care.”

  “I think you’re the one with the imagination at this table,” said Susan. “Perhaps you and not I should be writing scenarios. Did Mr. Fane believe you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “But he looked at the scenario, and he bought it.”

  “And you don’t think he would have if he had known it was written by an out-of-work actress living on West Sixtieth Street with a three-legged dog and a broken limb?”

  “I think that Mr. Fane saw an opportunity for some publicity in producing a moving-picture written by a society lady who does not wish her name to be known. I don’t believe that the writers of these photoplays are usually mentioned at all—and Mr. Fane wrote an entire story up there about the mysterious Miss Light.”

  Susan grimaced.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but please don’t,” said Jack.

/>   “What am I thinking?” said Susan.

  “You’re thinking that he didn’t buy the story on its merits as a story. But I can assure you he did.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Did Mr. Fane change any of it?”

  “No,” said Susan.

  “Did he ask for others?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he buy your others?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Hosmer tells me they’ve already gone out to some great rolling farm in New Jersey to shoot the outdoor scenes for the second Mixon play. Mr. Fane might have bought one scenario from the society lady for the novelty of the thing—but he would not have bought three.”

  Susan realized that Jack was right, but she felt that she’d duped the Cosmic Film Company somehow. As if her success were not due wholly to her talent, but due—at least in some part—to Jack Beaumont’s smooth story.

  “But you think,” she said, “that it would not be wise to confide the truth to Mr. Fane?”

  Jack pondered the question for a moment, taking a big sip of his brandy and soda and dribbling a fair amount on to his shirtfront in the process. “I think that you should wait till Mr. Fane and the Cosmic Film Company are so dependent on your services that Miss Sarah Light could come forward as the kaiser himself and Mr. Fane would accept her.”

  Susan leaned across the table and dabbed at Jack’s shirt with her napkin.

  “Mr. Fane wants more,” said Jack. “He says you are his steadiest, most reliable writer.”

  Susan positively beamed with pride, and in all her vocabulary couldn’t come up with words to do justice to her happiness. She leaned against the windowsill and tilted her head back and looked up into the cloud-filled early March sky above.

  Jack slouched in her armchair, legs stretched out halfway across the room, turning his hat around and around on his lap. He was safe, for Tripod was roaming the streets.

  “He thinks I leave the studio and take the bus uptown for a clandestine meeting with the young lady in society. We meet at a restaurant where she wears a black veil, and she hands me the latest scenario in an envelope beneath the table. He says that you should think of making that into a picture.”