136
Then, when in the custody of the patrolman, he went out to the street, his mood was still so concentrated, his anger and depression so acute, that he was transported out of the very circumstances which caused him to be angry and depressed. He realized, with a hazy sort of perception, that a tail of small boys had attached itself to the lodestar of the policeman’s uniform; but even at this indignity, his reaction was curiously impersonal. It was as though the spiritual part of him and the material part had got a divorce; and the spiritual part, which was the plaintiff, stood coldly aloof, watching the material part tramping down Main Street, with a flat-footed policeman beside it, a voluntary escort behind, and rumour flying on ahead to all the newspapers. He was actually too humiliated to suffer from the humiliation.
To be sure, this wasn’t by any means his first entanglement with the law, but heretofore his occasions had been marked by a very different ritual. He recalled, phlegmatically, that whenever, in the old days, a member of the137motorcycle squad had shot past him, and signalled to him to stop, the man had always treated him more or less fraternally, in recognition of the fellowship of high speed. The traffic officers had cheerfully delivered a summons with one hand, and accepted a cigar with the other. There was a sort of sporting code about it; and even in Court, a gentleman who had been arrested for speeding was given the consideration which belonged to his rank, and the fine was usually doubled on the assumption that a gentleman could afford it. But this was different. A Devereux––which was almost the same thing as a Starkweather––was haled along the highway like a common prisoner. And if the Devereux hadn’t been engaged in that two-for-a-cent, low-class, revolting business,––and if Aunt Mirabelle hadn’t been Aunt Mirabelle––it couldn’t have happened. The spiritual part of him looked down at the material part, and wondered how Henry Devereux could be so white-hot with passion, and yet so calm.
What would his friends say now? What138would Bob Standish say, and Mr. Archer and Judge Barklay? And what would Aunt Mirabellenotsay? This was a grim reflection.
During the journey he spoke only once, and that was to say, brusquely, to his captor: “Court isn’t open today, is it?”
“Nope. But we’re goin’ to a Justice o’ the Peace. Might save you a night in the hoosegow. Can’t tell. Orders, anyway.”
The Justice of the Peace (or, as he took some pains to inform Henry, the Most Honourable Court of Special Sessions) was a grizzled dyspeptic who held forth in the back room of a shoemaker’s shop, while the rabble waited outside, flattening their noses against the window-glass. The dyspeptic had evidently been coached for the proceeding; on his desk he had a copy of the ordinance, and as soon as he had heard the charge, he delivered a lecture which he seemed to have by heart, and fined Henry twenty-five dollars and costs. Henry paid the fine, and turning to go, stumbled against two more policemen, each with his quarry. “Just out of curiosity,” said Henry, speaking to no one in particular, and in a voice which came so139faintly to his ears that he barely heard it, “Just out of idle curiosity, when the justice gets half the fine, isn’t this court open on Sunday for godless profit, too?” And in the same, enduring haze of unreality, he paid an additional twenty dollars for contempt, and went out to the sidewalk.
He emerged as the focus of interest for a large, exuberant crowd of loiterers. A camera clicked, and Henry saw that the man at the shutter was one of theHerald’sstaff photographers. A youthful reporter caught up with him, and asked him what he had to say for publication. “Say for publication?” repeated Henry, dully. “Why, you can say––” He walked half a block before he completed the sentence. “You can say if I said it, you couldn’t print it anyway.”
And although the reporter paced him for a quarter of a mile, Henry never opened his mouth again. He was curiously obsessed, as men under heavy mental pressure are so often obsessed, by a ridiculously trivial detail. How was he going to enter that forty-five dollars on his books?
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He had intended to go straight home to Anna, but automatically his steps led him to the Orpheum, where he went into his tiny office and sat down at his desk. There were two envelopes on his blotter; he slit them, diffidently, and found a bill from the novelty house which had supplied the souvenirs, and a supplementary statement from the decorator.
He opened a fat ledger, took up a pencil, and began to jot down figures on the back of one of the envelopes. Already, by remodelling the the theatre, he had lost two month’s headway, and spent three times too much money, and if Sunday performances were to be eliminated.... He threw down the pencil, and sat back spiritless. The good-wishes of all his friends, last night, had turned sour in his possession. To reach his goal, he should have to contrive, somehow, to fill nearly every seat at nearly every performance for the balance of the year. It was all well enough to have self-confidence, and courage, but it was better to look facts in the face. He had come to an impasse. Not only that, but overnight his property, by virtue of this Sunday enforcement141and its effect upon the trade, had seriously depreciated in value. If it had been worth thirty-seven thousand five hundred yesterday, it wasn’t worth a penny more than twenty today. And he could have had Standish’s certified check, and got out from under. And he had thrown away in improvements almost every cent that he had borrowed against the original value. He was hardly better off, today, than if he had carried through his first bargain with Mr. Mix.
He would have to go home to Anna, and confess that he was beaten by default. He would have to explain to her, as gently as he could, that the road which led to the end of the rainbow was closed to traffic. He would have to admit to her that as far as he could see, he was destined to go on living indefinitely in a jerry-built apartment, with the odour of fried onions below, and the four children and the phonograph overhead. And Anna would have to go on pinch-hitting for cook, and waitress, and chambermaid, and bottle-washer––she would have to go on with the desecration of her beautiful hands in dish-water, and the ruin142of her complexion over the kitchen-stove. The clothes that he had planned to buy for her, the jewels, the splendid car––the cohort of servants he had planned for her––the social prestige! And instead of that, he was nothing but a fragment of commercial driftwood, and he couldn’t afford, now, to buy her so much as a new hat, without a corresponding sacrifice.
And yet––involuntarily, he stiffened––and yet he’d be hanged if he went back and acted like a whipped pup. No, he was supposed to be a man, and his friends and Anna believed in him, an he’d be hanged if he went back and confessed anything at all, admitted anything. It was all well enough to look facts in the face, but it was better still to keep on fighting until the gong rang. And when he was fighting against the cant purity and goodness of Mr. Mix, and the cold astigmatism of Aunt Mirabelle, he’d be hanged if he quit in the first round. No, even if Henry himself knew that he was beaten, nobody else was going to know it, and Anna least of all.
At five o’clock, he came blithely into his living-room: and as he saw Anna’s expression, his143own changed suddenly. He had thought to find her in tears; but she was coming to him with her usual welcome, her usual smile.
Henry didn’t quite understand himself, but he was just the least bit offended, regardless of his relief. You simply couldn’t tell from one minute to the next what a woman was going to do. By all precedent, Anna should have been enjoying hysterics, which Henry had come prepared to treat.
“Well,” he said, “you’d better cancel that order for golden pheasants, old dear.” She stopped short, and stared at him curiously, as though the remark had come from a stranger.
“We’ve got lamb chops tonight,” said Anna, with whimsical relevance, “and fresh strawberry ice-cream. And pheasants are awfully indigestible, anyway.”
Henry returned her stare. “What have you been doing all the afternoon––reading Marcus Aurelius?”
“No, I haven’t been reading anything at all. I tidied up the kitchen. What happened toyou?”
There were two different ways of presenting144the narrative, and Henry chose the second. He made it a travesty: and all the time that he was talking, Anna continued to gaze at him in that same curious, thoughtful fashion, as if she were noting, for the first time, a subtle variation in his character.
“And––aren’t you evenmad?” she demanded. “I thought you’d be furious. I thought you’d be tearing your hair and––andeverything.”
Henry laughed explosively. “Impatience, as I’ve pointed out so often to Aunt Mirabelle, dries the blood more than age or sorrow. Yes, I’m mad, but I’ve put it on ice. I’m trying to work out some scheme to keep us in the running, and not give Mix too good an excuse to hoot at us. No––they say it’s darkest just before the dawn, so I’m trying to fix it so we’ll be sitting on the front steps to see the sunrise. Only so far I haven’t had a mortal thought.”
“As a matter of fact,” she confided, “I loathed the idea of our running the Orpheum on Sundays. Didn’t you?”
“Naturally. Also on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, Fridays, Wednesdays and Tuesdays.145But Sundays did sort of burrow a little further under my tough hide. And you know that’s quite an admission for anybody that was brought up by Aunt Mirabelle.” He smiled in reminiscence. “She used to make virtue so darned scaly and repulsive that it’s a wonder I’ve got a moral left. As it is, my conscience may be all corrugated like a raisin, but I’m almost glad wecan’trun Sundays. That is, I would be if my last remaining moral weren’t going to be so expensive.”
“Don’t you think they’ll probably change that ordinance now, though? Don’t you think people will insist on it? After today?”
“Guess work,” said Henry. “Pure guesswork. Butmyguess is that we’re ditched.”
“Well, why don’t you join the Exhibitors Association, and fight?”
He shook his head. “No, because that’s just what Mix and Aunt Mirabelle expect me to do. This campaign of theirs is impersonal towards everybody else, but it’s slightly personal towards me. I mean, Aunt Mirabelle’s sore on general principles, and Mix is sore because I wouldn’t come up and eat out of his hand and146get myself sheared. We won’t fight. We’ll outwit ’em.”
“Buthow?”
“Now that question,” he said reproachfully, “was mighty tactless.Idon’t know how. But I know I’m not going to stick my head over the ramparts for ’em to shoot at. I’m no African Dodger––I’m an impresario. Maybe they’ll hit me in the eye, all right, but I’m not going to give ’em a good cigar for it.”
“I know, dear, but how are we going to make up all that tremendous loss?”
“Sheer brilliance,” said Henry, easily. “Which is what I haven’t got nothing but, of. So I’m banking on you.... And in the meantime, let’s go ahead with the orgy of lamb chops you were talking about. I’m hungry.”
They spent the evening in a cheerful discussion of ways and means, during which she was continually impressed by Henry’s attitude. From earlier circumstances she had gathered that when he was under fire, his rash impulsiveness would remain constant, and that only his jocular manner would disappear; furthermore, she knew that in spite of that manner, he was147a borrower of trouble. And yet Henry, who had a pretty legitimate reason to be bristling with rancour, sat and talked away as assuredly as though this hadn’t been his doomsday.
She left him, once, to answer the telephone, and when she came back, she caught him off guard, and saw his face in repose. Henry wasn’t aware of it; and when he heard her footsteps, he looked up with an instantaneous re-arrangement of his features. But Anna had seen, and Anna had understood; she sensed that Henry, for a generous purpose, had merely adopted a pose. Secretly, he was quite as tormented, quite as desperate, as she had expected him to be.
Her heart contracted, but for Henry’s sake, she closed her eyes to the revelation, and resumed the discourse in the same key which Henry had set for it. Far into the night they exchanged ideas, and half-blown inspirations, but when Henry finally arose, with the remark that it was time to wind the clock and put out the cat, they had come to no conclusion except that something would certainly have to be done about it. “Oh, well,” said Henry, indulgently,148“a pleasant evening was reported as having been had by all, and nothing was settled––so it was just as valuable as a Cabinet Meeting.”
The sight of the silver tea-service, however, sent him to bed with renewed determination.
In the morning, he dreaded to open his newspaper, but when he had read through the story twice, he conceded that it wasn’t half as yellow as he feared. No, it was really rather conservative, and the photograph of him wasn’t printed at all; he read, with grim satisfaction, that another culprit, somewhat more impetuous, had smashed the camera, and attempted to stage a revival of his success upon the photographer.
He had been fully prepared to find himself singled out for publicity, and he was greatly relieved. To be sure, there was a somewhat flippant mention of his relationship to Mirabelle, but it wasn’t over-emphasized, and altogether, he had no justification for resentment––that is, at theHerald. TheHeraldhad merely printed the news; what Henry resented was the fact.
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He turned to the editorial page and found, as he had imagined, a solid column of opinion; but to his amazement, it made no protest of yesterday’s event––on the contrary, it echoed Judge Barklay. It said half a dozen times, in half a dozen different ways, that a bad law ought to be repealed, a good law ought to be preserved, and that all laws, good or bad, as long as they were written on the books, ought to be enforced. Henry was mystified; for theHeraldhad always professed to be in utter sympathy with the workingman.
Later in the day, however, he saw the leading exhibitor in town, who winked at him. “Clever stuff, Devereux, clever stuff. ’Course, if we put up a roar, they’ll say it’s because we’ve got an ax to grind. Sure we have. But theHeraldwants thepeople––the people that come to our shows––to get up and blat. Then it wouldn’t be the League against the Association––it’d be the people against the League, and the laugh’d be on the other foot.”
“What’s the betting?”
“Searchme. But Mayor Rowland told me if150we got up a monster petition with a thousand or two names on it, he’ll bring it up to the Council. We’re puttin’ up posters in the lobby.”
Henry’s heart jumped. “But suppose the people don’t sign?”
“Well then we’d be out o’ luck. But there’s other ways o’ goin’ at that damn League, and we’re goin’ to useallof ’em. And that reminds me, Devereux––ain’t it about time for you to join the Association?”
“I’m afraid not. I ought to, but––you see, you’re going to make things as hot as you can for the League––personalities, and all that, and when my aunt is president of it––”
“But great guns! What’s she done toyou?”
“I know, but I can’t help that. You go ahead and rip things up any way you want to, but I’d better stay out. It may be foolish, but that’s how I feel about it.”
“It’s your own affair.Ithink you’re too blamed easy, but you suit yourself.... And about the big noise, why I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens.”
Miss Starkweather, who met him on the151street that morning, told him the same thing. “Somepeople,” she remarked, altitudinously, “are always getting their toes stepped on, aren’t they? Well, there’s another way to look at it––the toes oughtn’t to have been there.”
“Oh, give us time,” said Henry, pleasantly. “Even the worm turns, you know.”
“Humph!” said Aunt Mirabelle. “Let a dozen worms do adozenturns! I never thought I’d see the day when a Devereux––almost the same thing as a Starkweather––’d figure in a disgrace such as yours. You’ve heaped muck on your uncle’s parlour-carpet. But some day you’ll see the writing on the wall, Henry.”
He was tempted to remind her of another city ordinance against bill-posting, but he refrained, and saved it up for Anna.
“I’ll watch for it,” he said.
“Well, you better. AllI’ve got to say is this: you just wait and see what happens.”
And then, to complete the record, he got identically the same suggestion from Bob Standish.
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“I suppose,” said Standish, “maybe you’re wishing you’d taken that check.”
“Not that, exactly––but I’ve thought about it.”
“Strikes me that you’re in the best position of anybody in town, Henry. You’ve got a following that’ll see you through, if it’s humanly possible.”
“Sounds like passing the hat, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, no. And the side that scores first doesn’t always win the game, either––I dare say you’ve noticed it. It’ll come out all right––you just wait and see what happens.”
Henry waited, and he saw. And to Henry’s dismay, and to the Mayor’s chagrin, and to Miss Mirabelle Starkweather’s exceeding complacence, nothing happened at all.
The public petition, which had been advertised as “monstrous,” caught hardly five hundred names, and two thirds of them were Mr. A. Mutt, Mr. O. Howe Wise, Mr. O. U. Kidd, and similar patronymics, scribbled by giggling small boys. The blue-law was universally unpopular, and no doubt of it, but the citizenry hesitated to attack it; the recent landslide for153prohibition showed an apparent sentiment which nobody wanted to oppose––Why, if a man admitted that he was in favour of Sunday tolerance, his friends (who of course were going through exactly the same mental rapids) might put him down in the same class with those who still mourned for saloons. Each man waited for his neighbour to sign first, and the small boys giggled, and filled up the lists. Besides, there was a large amusement park just beyond the city line, and the honest workingman proceeded to pay his ten-cent fare, and double the profit of the park.
The Exhibitors Association put up its fists to the Mayor, and the Mayor proposed a public hearing, with the Council in attendance. At this juncture the Reform League sent a questionnaire to each Councillor, and to each member of the Association. The phraseology was Socratic (it was the product of Mr. Mix’s genius) and if any one answered Yes, he was snared: if he said No, he was ambushed, and if he said nothing he was cooked. It reminded the Mayor of the man who claimed that in a debate, he would answer every question of his154adversary with a simple No or Yes––and the first question was: “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
The Exhibitors held a meeting behind closed doors, and gave out the statement that nothing was to be gained by a public hearing. But they launched a flank attack on the Council only to discover that the Council was wide awake, and knew that its bread was buttered on one side only.
“We are listening,” said the Chairman, with statesmanlike dignity, “for the voice of the people, and so far we haven’t heard a peep. It looks as if they don’twantyou fellows to run Sunday’s, don’t it?”
The spokesman of the Exhibitors cleared his throat. “Statistics prove that every Sunday, an average of six thousand people––”
“That’s all right. We’ve seen your petition. And Mr. Mutt and Mr. Kid and most of the rest of your patrons don’t seem to be registered voters. How about it?”
The Council burst into a loud laugh, and the spokesman retreated in discomfiture.
For several days, Henry was fairly besieged155by his friends, who joked him about his arrest, and then, out of genuine concern, wanted to know if his prospects were seriously damaged. To each interrogatory, Henry waved his hand with absolute nonchalance. As far as he knew, only six people were in the secret––himself, his wife, Judge Barklay, Standish, Mr. Archer and Aunt Mirabelle––and he wasn’t anxious to increase the number. His aunt might not have believed it, but this was more on her account than on his own.
“Lord, no,” said Henry, casually. “Don’t worry aboutme. I’m only glad there’s some news for theHerald. It was getting so dry you had to put cold cream on it or it’d crack.”
By the time that Judge Barklay returned from his vacation, the subject had even slipped away from the front page of the newspapers. The flurry was over. And out of a population of fifty thousand, ninety-nine per cent of whom were normal-minded citizens, neither ultra-conservative nor ultra-revolutionary, that tiny fraction which composed the Ethical Reform League had stowed its propaganda down the throats of the overwhelming majority.
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The Judge shrugged his shoulders. “Organization,” he said. “They’ve got a leader, and speakers, and a publicity bureau. That’s all. I hear they’re going to use it to boom Mix for a political job. But you wait––wait, and keep on paying out the rope.”
“That’s all I’ve got left to pay out,” said Henry, amiably.
“Aren’t you doing pretty well, considering?”
Henry nodded. “We’re doing great business––I mean, anybody else would think so. About a hundred and fifty a week net, for the first three weeks. And Anna’s salting away a hundred and ten of it. Every morning I draw a clean handkerchief, and a dime for dissipation, and she keeps a clutch on the rest.”
“Hm! A hundred and fifty. That’s good money, Henry.”
“Well, that’s the only kind we take. But you can see for yourself what this thing’s done to us. We ought to be averaging two twenty-five. And we’d have done it, too.”
The Judge appeared contrite. “I’m afraid you’re blaming me for bad advice, Henry.”
“No, sir. If I blamed anybody, I’d just157blame myself for taking it. But I don’t. You see, even if I fall down on the first prize, I’ve got a pretty good business under way. Eight thousand a year.”
“Would you keep on with it?”
“I’d think it over. It isn’t particularly joyous, but it sure does pay the rent. Oh, I suppose I’d try to sell it, if I could get a price for it, but Bob says I couldn’t expect a big one, because so much of the trade sort of belongs tous––and wouldn’t necessarily patronize the chap that bought me out. He tells me it was worth twenty when I took it, and thirty now, and if it weren’t for this law, it would be worth fifty. That’s all due to the improvements, and you advised me to put ’em in, and you engineered the mortgage. So I’m not huffy at you. Hardly.”
“Still, you want the big prize if you can get it.... Notice what Mix is giving out to the papers? He’ll hang himself yet, and if he does, you won’t be too far behind to catch up. That’s a prophecy. But by George, I can’t help feeling that Mix isn’t in that outfit for his health. It just don’t smell right, somehow.”
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The Reform League had jubilantly explained to Mr. Mix that he was a liberator and a saviour of humanity from itself, and Mr. Mix had deftly caught whatever bouquets were batted up to him. He had allowed the fragrance of them to waft even as far as theHeraldoffice, to which he sent a bulletin every forty-eight hours. Mr. Mix’s salary was comforting, his expense accounts were paid as soon as vouchers were submitted, he was steadily advancing in Miss Starkweather’s good books, and he considered himself to be a very clever man indeed.
At the very least, he was clever enough to realize that his position was now strategically favourable, and that as long as he moved neither forward nor backward, he was in no danger from any source. He had a living salary, and he was saving enough out of it to reduce his indebtedness; in a year he could snap his fingers at the world. Furthermore, he could see no possibility of legislating himself out of his job before that time––certainly not if he played his cards craftily, and didn’t push his success too far. And by the end of the159year, he could select a future to fit the circumstances.
For the time being, however, it seemed advisable to Mr. Mix to make haste slowly; he had turned an impending personal catastrophe into a personal triumph, but the triumph could be spoiled unless he kept it carefully on ice. The failure of the public to rise up and flay the League had lifted Mr. Mix into a position of much prominence, and conveyed the very reasonable supposition that he was individually powerful. When a man is supposed to possess power, he can travel a long distance on the effect of a flashing eye, and an expanded chest; also, it is a foolhardy man who, regardless of his reputation, engages to meet all-comers in their own bailiwick.
He had committed himself to the preparation of an amendment to the ordinance, which should be more definite, and more cerulean, than the original, but he knew that if he pressed it too soon, it might topple back and crush him. The people could be led, but they couldn’t be driven. And therefore Mr. Mix, who had naturally160made himself solid with the reactionaries and the church-going element (except those liberals who regarded him as an officious meddler), and who had actually succeeded in being mentioned as the type of man who would make a good Mayor, or President of Council, followed out a path which, unless his geography of common-sense was wrong, could hardly end at a precipice.
He became, overnight, a terror to the boys and young men who rolled dice in the city parks, and on the alley sidewalks in the business district; and this was held commendable even by the church-goers who played bridge at the Citizens Club for penny points. He headed a violent onslaught upon the tobacconists who sold cigarettes to minors, and this again was applauded by those who in their youth had avoided tobacco––because it was too expensive––and smoked sweet-fern and cornsilk behind the barn. He nagged the School Board until there went forth an edict prohibiting certain styles of dress; and the mothers of several unattractive maidens wrote letters to him, and called him a Christian. The parents of other161girls also wrote to him, but he didn’t save the letters. He made a great stir about the Sanitary Code, and the Pure Food regulations, and although the marketmen began to murmur discontentedly––and why, indeed, should the grocery cat not sleep in a bed of her own choosing; and why should not the busy, curious, thirsty fly have equal right of access with any other insect?––yet Mr. Mix contrived to hold himself up to the public as a live reformer, but not a radical, and to the League as a radical but not a rusher-in where angels fear to tread. It required the equilibrium of a tight-rope walker, but Mr. Mix had it. Indeed, he felt as pleased with himself as though he had invented it. And he observed, with boundless satisfaction, that the membership of the League was steadily increasing, and that the Mayoralty was mentioned more frequently. He was aware, of course, that a reform candidate is always politically anemic, but he was hoping that by the injection of good-government virus, he might be strong enough to catch a regular nomination, to boot, and to run on a fusion ticket. From present indications, it162wasn’t impossible. And Mr. Mix smirked in his mirror.
Mirabelle said, with a rolling-up of her mental shirt-sleeves: “Well, now let’s get after somethingdrastic. I’ve heard lots of people say you ought to get elected to office; well, show ’em what you can do. Of course, what we’ve been doing is allright, but it’s kind of small potatoes.”
Mr. Mix looked executive. “Mustn’t go too fast, Miss Starkweather. Can’t afford to make people nervous.”
“Humph! People that don’t feel guilty, don’t feel nervous. I say it’s about time to launch something drastic. Next thing for us to do is to make the League a state-wide organization, and put through a Sunday law with teeth in it. That amusement park’s got to go. Maybe we’d better run over to the capital and talk to the Governor.”
Mr. Mix was decisively opposed, but he couldn’t withstand her. He had a number of plausible arguments, but she talked them into jelly, and eventually dragged him to an interview163with the Governor. When it was over, she beamed victoriously.
“There! Didn’t I tell you so? He’s with us.”
Mr. Mix repressed a smile. “Yes, he said if we draft a bill, and get it introduced and passed, he’ll sign it.”
“Well, what more could he say?”
He wanted to ask, in turn, what less could be said, but he contained himself. “You know,” he warned her, “as soon as we put out any really violent propaganda, we’re going to lose some of our new members, and some of our prestige.”
“Good! Weed out the dead-wood.”
“That’s all right, but after what we’ve done with the food laws and stopping the sale of cigarettes to boys, and so on, people are looking at us as a switch to chastise the city. But we don’t want them to look at us as a cudgel. And this state law you’ve got in mind hits too many people.”
“Let it hit ’em.”
“Well, anyway,” he pleaded, “there’s no164sense in going out and waving the club so everybody’s scared off. We ought to take six months or a year, and do it gradually. And we ought to pass a model ordinance here first, before we talk about statutes. I’d suggest a series of public lectures, and a lot of educational pamphlets for a start. I’ll write them myself.”
She was impatient, but she finally yielded. “Well, we’ll see how it works. Go ahead and do it.”
“I will––I’ll have the whole thing done by late this spring.”
“Not ’tillthen?” she protested, vigorously.
Mr. Mix shook his head. “Perfect the organization first, and begin to fight when we’ve got all our ammunition. It’ll take me three months to get that ready. So far, all we’ve had is a battle, but now we’re planning a war. I want to be prepared in every detail before we fire a single more shot.”
She regarded him admiringly. “Sounds reasonable at that. You do it your own way.”
He was feeling a warm sense of power, and yet he had his moments of uncertainty, did Mr.165Mix, for even with his genius for hypocrisy, he sometimes found it difficult to be a hypocrite on both sides of the same proposition. His status was satisfactory, at the moment, but he mustn’t let Mirabelle get the bit in her teeth, and run away with him. As soon as ever she got him on record as favouring the sort of legislation which she herself wanted, Mr. Mix’s power was going to dwindle. And Mr. Mix adored his power, and he hated to think of losing it by too extravagant propaganda.
There were moments when he wished that Henry were more belligerent, so that special measures could be taken against him, or that Mirabelle were more seductive, so that Mr. Mix could be more spontaneous. He knew that he was personally responsible for the present enforcement; he believed that because of it, Henry Devereux didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance; he knew that if Mirabelle got her legacy, she would have Mr. Mix to thank for it. But Henry was too cheerful, and Mirabelle was too coy, and the two facts didn’t co-ordinate.
Certainly there was no finesse in hailing Mirabelle as an heiress until Henry’s failure166was more definitely placarded. To be sure, she had plenty of money now, and she was spending it like water, but he knew that it included the income from the whole Starkweather estate. She probably had––oh, a hundred thousand or more of her own. And that wasn’t enough. Yes, it was time for Mr. Mix to think ahead; he had identified himself so thoroughly with the League that he couldn’t easily withdraw, and Mirabelle still held his note. Of course, if the League could furnish him with a stepping-stone to the Mayoralty, or the presidency of Council, Mr. Mix didn’t care to withdraw from it anyway; nor would he falter in his allegiance as long as he had a chance at an heiress. He wished that Henry would show fight, but Henry hadn’t even joined the Exhibitors Association. It was so much easier to fight when the other fellow offered resistance. Henry merely smiled; you couldn’t tell whether he were despondent or not. But if he wouldn’t fight, there was always the thin possibility that he might be satisfied with his progress. And that would be unfortunate for Mr. Mix.
167
There was something else; suppose Mirabelle got her legacy, and Mr. Mix volunteered to share it with her. He was reasonably confident that she would consent; her symptoms were already on the surface. But how, in such event, could Mr. Mix regulate the habits which were so precious to him? How could he hide his fondness for his cigar, and his night-cap, his predilection for burlesque shows and boxing bouts and blonde stenographers? It was difficult enough, even now, and he had eaten enough trochees and coffee beans to sink a frigate, and he had been able only once to get away to New York––“to clean up his affairs.” How could he manage his alternative self when Mirabelle had him under constant and intimate supervision?
Still, all that could be arranged. For twenty years he had gone to New York, regularly, on irregular business and not a soul in town was any the wiser; it was simply necessary to discover what “business” could summon him if he were married, independent, and a professional reformer. Mr. Mix, who was always a few168lengths ahead of the calendar, procured the addresses of a metropolitan anti-cigarette conference, and a watch-and-ward society, and humbly applied by mail for membership. An alibi is exactly the opposite of an egg; the older it is, the better.
169CHAPTER X
When Henry told his wife that he was counting on her for brilliant ideas, he meant the compliment rather broadly; for he couldn’t imagine how a girl brought up as Anna had been brought up could supply any practical schemes for increasing the patronage of a motion-picture theatre. Indeed, when she brought him her first suggestion he laughed, and kissed her, and petted her, and while he privately appraised her as a dear little dreamer, he told her that he was ever so much obliged, but he was afraid that her plan wouldn’t work.
“You see,” he said, “you haven’t had very much experience in this business––”
“Methuselah!” she retorted, and Henry laughed again.
“That’s no way for a wife to talk. When I mention business you’re supposed to look at me with ill-concealed awe. But to get down to170brass tacks, I’ve watched the audiences for four or five weeks, and Iambeginning to size them up. And I don’t believe you can put over any grand-opera stuff on ’em.”
“It doesn’t make the least bit of difference whether it’s grand-opera or the movies, my lord. It’ll work.”
He shook his head dubiously. “Well, even suppose it would, I still don’t like it. You don’t make friends simply to use ’em for your own purposes.”
“Why, ofcoursenot. But after you’ve made ’em, you’re silly not to let ’em help you if they can. And if they want to. And if they don’t then they aren’t really your friends, are they? It’s a good way to find out.”
Henry frowned a little. “What makes you think it would work?”
“Human nature.... Now you just think it all over from the beginning. All our friends come to the Orpheumsomenight, don’t they? They’d go tosomepicture, anyway, but they come to the Orpheum for two reasons––one’s because it’s a nice house now, and the other’s because it’s ours. And sometimes they’re in171time to get good seats, and sometimes they aren’t. Well, we aren’t asking any special favour of them; we’re just making sure that if they all come the same night, they’ll have the same seats, time after time. And they’ll like it, Henry.”
“But to be brutally frank, I still don’t see whereweget off any better.”
“You wait.... So we sell for just one particular performance––say the 8.45 one, one night a week––season tickets. Boxes, loges, and some of the orchestra seats. And it would be like opera; if they couldn’t always come, they couldn’t return their tickets, but they could give them to somebody else. And that night we’d have special music, and––”
“Confirming today’s conversation, including brutal frankness as per statement, I still don’t see––”
“Why, you silly. It’ll beSociety Night! And I don’t care whether it’s movies or opera, if you make a thing fashionable, then it getseverybody––the fashionable ones, and then the ones whowantto be fashionable, and finally the ones who know they haven’t a ghost of a172chance, and just want to go and look at the others!”
Henry laboured with his thoughts. “Well, granted that we could herd the hill crowd in there, and all that, Istilldon’t––”
“Why, Henry darling! Because we’d make itMondaynight––that’s our worst night in the whole week, ordinarily––and haveallreserved seats that night, and then of course we’d raise the prices!”
“Oh!” said Henry. “Now I get it. I thought it was just swank.”
“And it’s true––it’struethat if you get people to thinking there’s something exclusive about a shop, or a hotel, or a club, or even a theatre, they’ll payanyamount to get in. Andourfriends don’t care when they come, and they’llloveall sitting together in the boxes, or even in the orchestra.”
“Who was Methuselah’s wife?” asked Henry, irrelevantly.
“Why, he had several, didn’t he?”
“Cleopatra, Portia, Minerva, Nemesis, and the Queen of Sheba,” said Henry, “and you’re173all five in one package. I retract everything I said. And if I may be permitted to kiss the hem of your garment, to show I’m properly humbled, why––in plain English, that idea has a full set of molars!”
He left the mechanics of it to Anna, who merely conferred with Bob Standish, and then with one of her girl-friends, and sent out a little circular among the high elect; but even Anna was amazed at the prompt response. The response was due partly to friendship, and partly to convenience, but whatever the reason, Anna brought in checks for a hundred season-tickets, and turned the worst night of the week into the best. As she had sensed, because the insiders of society were willing to commit themselves to Monday, the outsiders would have paid four times, instead of merely double, to be there, too. It was socially imperative.
“That boosts us up another fifty a week,” said Henry appreciatively. “And we must have a thousand in the bank, haven’t we?... Say, Anna, this bread and cheese racket is all right when you can’t afford anything else, but174honestly, won’t you just get a cook? I don’t care if she’s rotten, but to think of you giving those dishes a sitz-bath twice a day––”
“Not yet, dear. We aren’tnearlyout of the woods. Society Night’s helped a lot, but we aren’t averaging over two hundred and twenty yet, are we? That’s eighty a week short. So if we don’t think up some more schemes, why, what we’re saving now’ll have to be our capitalnextyear.”
“But when a man has this much income––”
“Yes, and you owe ten thousand on a mortgage, and the tax bills haven’t come in yet, and you’ll have an income tax to pay.... We’ll save awhile longer.”
It was greater heroism than he realized, for she had never lost, for a single instant, her abhorrence of the kitchen; nor was she willing to cater to her prejudice, and work with only the tips of her fingers. She had two principal defences––she wore rubber gloves, and she sang––but whenever she had to put her hands into greasy water, whenever she scrubbed a kettle, whenever she cleaned the sink, a series of cold chills played up and down her spine as fitfully175as a flame plays on the surface of alcohol. She detested every item which had to do with that kitchen; and yet, to save Henry the price of a cook––now seventy dollars a month––she sacrificed her squeamishness. There were nights when she simply couldn’t eat––she couldn’t draw a cloud over her imagination, and forget what the steak had looked like, and felt like, uncooked. There were six days in seven when the mere sight of blackened pots and pans put her nerves on edge. But she always remembered that Henry was supposed to be irresponsible, and that a penny in hand is worth two in prospect; so that she sang away, and tried to dispel her thoughts of the kitchen by thinking about the Orpheum.
It was in early December that she conceived the Bargain Matinee, which wasn’t the ordinary cut-price performance, but the adaptation of an old trick of the department stores. The Tuesday and Friday matinees were the poorest attended, so that Anna suggested––and Henry ordered––that beginning at half past four on Tuesdays and Fridays, the fifty-cent seats were reduced at the rate of a cent a minute. In other176words, the Orpheum challenged the public to buy its entertainment by the clock; a person who came a quarter hour late saved fifteen cents, and the bargain-hunter who could find a vacant seat at twenty minutes past five could see the last two reels for nothing. It didn’t bring in a tremendous revenue, but it caught the popular fancy, and it was worth another thirty dollars a week.
And Anna discovered, too, that the unfinished second story of the theatre had possibilities. She had it plastered and gaily papered, she put up a frieze of animals from Noah’s ark; she bought toys and games and a huge sand-box––and for a nominal fee, a mother could leave her angel child or squalling brat, as the case might be, in charge of a kindergarten assistant, and watch the feature film without nervousness or bad conscience. There was no profit in it, as a department, but it was good advertising, and helped the cause.
In the meantime Henry, who at this season of the year would ordinarily have gone to Lake Placid for the winter sports or to Pinehurst for golf, was watching the rise and fall of the177box-office receipts as eagerly as he would have watched the give and take of match-play in tournament finals. He kept his records as perfectly, and studied them with as much zest, as once he had kept and studied the records of the First Ten in the tennis ranking, and of all teams and individuals in first-class polo. To Henry, the Orpheum had long ceased to be a kitchen; he had almost forgotten that a few months ago, his soul had been corrugated with goose-flesh at the prospect of this probation. Since August, he had done more actual work than in all his previous life, and the return from it was approximately what his allowance had been from Mr. Starkweather, but Henry had caught the spark of personal ambition, and he wouldn’t stop running until the race was over. He wouldn’t stop, and furthermore he wouldn’t think of stopping. But now and then he couldn’t help visualizing his status when he did stop, or was ruled off the track.
He hadn’t quite recovered, yet, from his surprise at the continuing reaction of his friends. He was deeply touched by the realization that even those who were most jocular were178regarding him with new respect. Instead of losing caste, he seemed to have risen higher than before; certainly he had never been made to feel so sure of his place in the affection of his own set. And almost more satisfactory than that, the older men in the Citizens Club were treating him with increasing friendliness, whereas in the past, they had treated him rather as an amusing young comedian, to be laughed at, but not with. And finally, he was flattered by the growing intimacy with Mr. Archer.
“A year ago,” Mr. Archer once said to him, “I used to think you were a spoiled brat, Henry. Now I think you’re––rather a credit to your uncle.”
Henry grinned. “And I used to think some very disrespectful things about you, and now I’d rather have you on my side than anybody I know. Imusthave been a raw egg.”
“You’ll win out yet, my boy––Ted Mix to the contrary notwithstanding.”
“Oh, sure!” said Henry, optimistically. “I don’t gloom much––only fifteen minutes a day in my own room. I got the habit when I was179taking my correspondence course on efficiency.” Even in these occasional sessions of gloom, however, (and his estimate of time was fairly accurate) he never felt any acute antagonism either towards his aunt or towards Mr. Mix, he never felt as though he were in competition with them. He was racing against time, and it was the result of his own individual effort which would go down on the record. As to his aunt, she had been perfectly consistent; as to Mr. Mix, Henry didn’t even take the trouble to despise him. He carried over to business one of his principles in sport––if the other fellow wanted so badly to win that he was willing to cheat, he wanted victory more than Henry did, and he was welcome to it. After the match was over, Henry might volunteer to black his eye for him, but that was a side issue.
Mr. Mix had said to him, sorrowfully, at the Citizens Club: “One of the prime regrets of my life, Henry, was that you––the nephew of my old friend––should have suffered––should have been in apositionto suffer––from the promotion of civic integrity.”
Henry laughed unaffectedly. “Yes,” he180said, “it must have raised perfect Cain with you.”
“I don’t like your tone, Henry. Do you doubt my word?”
“Doubt it? After I’ve just sympathized with the awful torture you must have gone through?... Tell me something; what’s all this gossip I hear about you and Aunt Mirabelle? Somebody saw you buggy-riding last Sunday. Gay young dog!”
Mr. Mix grew red. “Buggy-riding! Miss Starkweather was kind enough to take me out to the lake in her car.”
“That’s buggy-riding,” said Henry, affably. “Buggy-riding’s a generic term. Don’t blush. I was young myself, once.”
Mr. Mix fought down his anger. “You’re very much of a joker, Henry. It seems to run in the family. Your uncle––”
“Yes, and Aunt Mirabelle, too.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes,” said Henry. “Aunt Mirabelle’s a joker, too. She advised me not to run the Orpheum in the first place; she’d rather have had me trade it and go into something more respectable,181and profitable. Doesn’t that strike you as funny? It does me.”
Mentally, Mr. Mix bit his lip, but outwardly he was ministerial. “I’m afraid you’re too subtle for me.”
“I was afraid of that myself.”
“Isn’t business good?” His voice was solicitous.
Henry was reminded of what Judge Barklay had twice expressed, and for a casual experiment, he tried to plumb the depths of Mr. Mix’s interest.
“Oh, with a few new schemes I’ve got, I guess I’ll clean up eleven or twelve thousand this year.”
Mr. Mix shook his head. “As much as that?”
Henry inquired of himself why, to accompany a question which was apparently one of mere rhetorical purport, Mr. Mix should have shaken his head. The action had been positive, rather than interrogative.
“Easy,” said Henry. “Come in next week, and see how we’re going to turn ’em away. I’ve got a new pianist; you’ll want to hear him. He looks like a Sealyhan terrier, but he’s got a182repertoire like a catalogue of phonograph records. I dare the audience to name anything he can’t play right off the bat––songs, opera, Gregorian chants, sonatas, jazz––and if he can’t play it, the person that asked for it gets a free ticket.”
“So––to use a colloquialism––you’re going very strong?”
“To use another colloquialism,” said Henry, “we fairly reek with prosperity, and we’re going to double our business. That is, unless you Leaguers stop all forms of amusement but tit-tat-toe and puss-in-the-corner.”
Mr. Mix smiled feebly. “One expects to be rallied for one’s convictions.”
Henry nodded, engagingly. “I certainly got rallied enough for mine. That justice of the peace rallied me for twenty-five to start with, and followed it up with twenty more.... But if you want my opinion, Mr. Mix, you’ll lay off trying to promote civic integrity with a meat-ax. All you did with that Sunday row was to take a lot of money away from the picture houses, and give it to the trolley company and the White City––white when it was painted.183And if you don’t behave, I won’t vote for you next election.”
Mr. Mix ignored the threat. “Come to a meeting of the League some time, Henry, and we’ll give you a chance to air your views.”
He reported the interview to Anna, and she seemed to find in it the material for reflection. She asked Henry if he thought that Mr. Mix was deliberately making up to Mirabelle. Henry reflected, also.
In January, Henry had an interview with Mr. Archer, who went over his books with a fine-tooth comb, and praised him for his accomplishment.
“But it only goes to show how the best intentions in the world can get all twisted up,” said Mr. Archer, gravely. “Here you’ve done what you were supposed to do––you’ve done it better than you were supposed to do it––and then because of that cussed enforcement that neither your uncle nor I ever dreamed about, you’re liable to get punished just as badly as if184you’d made a complete failure. It’s a shame, Henry, it’s a downright shame!”
“We’re packing ’em in pretty well,” said Henry. “I figured out that if we sold every seat at every performance we’d collect fourteen hundred a week gross. We’re actually taking in about eight fifty. That’s a local record, but it isn’t good enough.”
“No, you seem to be shy about––three thousand to date. You’ve got to make that up, and hit a still higher average for the next seven months, and I’m blessed ifIcan see how you’re going to do it.”
“Oh, well, I’ll have the theatre. That’s something.”
“Yes, it’ll bring you a good price. But not a half of what youshouldhave had. One thing, Henry, I wish your uncle could know how you’re taking it. As far as I know, you haven’t swung a golf club or sat a horse for six months, have you?”
“Oh, shucks!... When Uncle John went to a ball game, he always liked to see a man run like fury on a fly ball. Nine times out of ten an outfielder’d catch it and the batter’d get a185big hoot from the grand-stand. The other time he’d drop it, and the batter’d take two bases. That’s all I’m doing now. Playing the percentage. And golf takes too much time––even if there weren’t snow on the ground––and stable feed’s so highIcan’t afford it. The fool horse would cost more to feed than I do myself.”
“And even if the percentage beats you, you’ve got something you never had before, Henry, and that’s the solid respect of your community. Everybody knows you hated this job. Everybody’s back of you.”
“Up on the farm,” said Henry, thoughtfully. “There was a field-hand with a great line of philosophy. Some of it was sort of crude, but––one day Uncle John was saying something about tough things we all have to do, and this fellow chimed in and said: ‘Yes, sir, every man’s got to skin his own skunk.’”
Mr. Archer smiled and nodded. “Your year won’t have been wasted, Henry. And when it’s over, if you want to get out of the picture business, you’ll find that you can get a dozen first-rate jobs from men who wouldn’t have taken you in as their office-boy a season ago....186Give my love to your wife, Henry, and tell her for me that I’m proud of you.”
“I’ll tell her,” said Henry, “butIwon’t be proud until I’ve nailed that skin over the barn-door.”
On his way out, he dropped in for a moment to see Bob Standish. Bob was at his old tricks again; and while his competitors in realty, and insurance, and mortgage loans, made the same mistake that once his classmates and instructors and the opposing ends and tackles had made, and argued that his fair skin and his innocent blue eyes, his indolent manner and his perfection of dress all evidenced his lack of wit and stamina, he had calmly proceeded to chase several of those competitors out of business, and to purchase their good-will on his own terms. It was popularly said, in his own circle, that Standish would clear a hundred thousand dollars his first year.
He winked lazily at Henry, and indicated a chair. “Set!” said Standish. “Glad you came187in. Two things to ask you. Want to sell? Want to rent?”
“If you were in my shoes, would you sell, Bob?”
“I can get you twenty-eight thousand.”
“That’s low.”
“Sure, but everybody knows you’ve got a clientele that nobody else could get. Are you talking?”
“I––guess not just yet.”
“Want to rent? I just had a nibble for small space; you could get fifty a month for that attic you’re using for a nursery.”
“I––hardly think so, Bob. That’s a pet scheme of Anna’s, and besides, we need it. It’s good advertising.”
His friend’s eyes were round and childlike. “Made any plans for the future, Henry? Know what you’ll do if you stub your toe?”
“Sell out and strike you for a job, I guess.”
“Don’t believe it would work, old man.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“One pal boss another? Too much family.”
Henry looked serious. “I’m sorry you think so.Iwouldn’t have kicked.”