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CHAPTER VIII – SUE WALKS OVER A HILL

PETER joined them – a gloomy man, haunted by an anonymous letter. Sue was matter-of-fact. It seemed to Hy that she made some effort to put the well-known playwright more nearly at his ease.

They lurched, an hour’s ride out in Northern New Jersey, at a little motorists’ tavern that Hy guided them to. They sat on a shaded veranda while the men smoked cigars and the girls smoked cigarettes. After which they set forth on what was designed to be a four-hour tramp through the hills to another railroad – Sue and Peter ahead (as it turned out); Hy and Betty lagging behind.

The road curved over hills and down into miniature valleys. There were expanses of plowed fields, groves of tall bare trees, groups of farmhouses. Robins hopped beside the road. The bright sun mitigated the crisp sting in the air. A sense of early spring touched eye and ear and nostril.

Peter felt it; breathed more deeply; actually smiled.

Sue threw back her head and hummed softly.

Hy and Betty dropped farther and farther behind.

Once Sue turned and waved them on; then stood and laughed with sheer good humor at their deliberate, unrhythmical step.

“Come on,” she said to Peter “They don’t get it – the joy of it. You have to walk with a steady swing. It takes you a mile or two, at that, to get going. When I’m in my stride, it carries me along so I hate to stop at all. You know, you can’t pick it up again right off – the real swing. Walking is a game – a fine game!”

Peter didn’t know. He had never thought of walking as a game. He played golf a little, tennis a little less. It had always been difficult for him to hold his mind on these unimportant pursuits. But he found himself responding eagerly.

“You’ve gone in a lot for athletics,” said he, thinking of the lightness, the sheer ease, with which she had moved about the little Crossroads stage.

“Oh, yes – at school and college – basket ball, running, fencing, dancing and this sort of thing. Dancing especially. I’ve really worked some at that, you know.”

“Yes,” said he moodily, “I know.”

They swung down into a valley, over a bridge, up the farther slope, through a notch and out along a little plateau with a stream winding across it.

Peter found himself in some danger of forgetting his earnest purpose. He could fairly taste the fresh spring air. He could not resist occasionally glancing sidelong at his companion and thinking – “She is great in that sweater!” A new soft magic was stealing in everywhere among what he had regarded as his real thoughts and ideas. Once her elbow brushed his; and little flames rose in his spirit… She walked like a boy. She talked like a boy. She actually seemed to think like a boy. The Worm’s remark came to him, with an odd stabbing effect… “We haven’t got around to ‘the complete life’ yet!”

She quite bewildered him. For she distinctly was not a boy. She was a young woman. She couldn’t possibly be so free from thoughts of self and the drama of life, of man and the all-conquering urge of nature! As a dramatist, as a student of women, he knew better. No, she couldn’t – no more than “friend Betty” back there, philandering along with Hy, The Worm had guaranteed her innocence… but the Worm notoriously didn’t understand women. No, it couldn’t be true. For she had broken away from her folks. She did live with the regular bunch in the Village. She did undoubtedly know her Strindberg and Freud. She had taken up public dancing and acting. She did smoke her cigarettes – had smoked one not half an hour back, publicly, on the veranda of a road house! … He felt again the irritation she had on other occasions stirred in him.

He slowed down, tense with this bewilderment. He drew his hand across his forehead.

Sue went on a little ahead; then stopped, turned and regarded him with friendly concern!

“Anything the matter?”

“No – oh, no!”

“Perhaps we started too soon after lunch.”

She was babying him!

“No – no… I was thinking of something!..”

Almost angrily he struck out at a swift pace. He would show her who was the weakling in this little party! He would make her cry for mercy!

But she struck out with him. Swinging along at better than four miles an hour they followed the road into another valley and for a mile or two along by a bubbling brook.

It was Peter who slackened first. His feet began hurting: an old trouble with his arches. And despite the tang in the air, he was dripping with sweat. He mopped his forehead and made a desperate effort to breathe easily.

Sue was a thought flushed, there was a shine in her eyes; she danced a few steps in the road and smiled happily.

“That’s the thing!” she cried. “That’s the way I love to move along!”

Apparently she liked him better for walking like that. It really seemed to make a difference. He set his teeth and struck out again, saying – “All right. Let’s have some more of it, then!” And sharp little pains shot through his insteps.

“No,” said she, “it’s best to slow down for a while. I like to speed up just now and then. Besides, I’ve got something on my mind. Let’s talk.” He walked in silence, waiting.

“It’s about that other talk we had,” said she. “It has bothered me since. I told you your plays were dreadful. You remember?”

He laughed shortly. “Oh, yes; I remember.”

“There,” said she, “I did hurt you. I must have been perfectly outrageous.”

He made no reply to this; merely mopped his forehead again and strode along. The pains were shooting above the insteps now, clear up into the calves of his legs.

“I ought to have made myself plainer,” said she. “I remember talking as if you couldn’t write at all. Of course I didn’t mean that, and I had no right to act as if I held myself superior to a man of your experience. That was silly. What I really meant was that you didn’t write from a point of view that I could accept.”

“What you said was,” observed Peter, aiming at her sort of good-humored directness, and missing, “‘the difficulty is, it’s the whole thing – your attitude toward life – your hopeless sentimentality about women, the slushy horrible Broadway falseness that lies back of everything you do – the Broadway thing, always.’… Those were your words.”

“Oh, no!” She was serious now. He thought she looked hurt, almost. The thought gave him sudden savage pleasure. “Surely, I didn’t say that.”

“You did. And you added that my insight into life is just about that of a hardened director of one-reel films.”

She was hurt now. She walked on for a little time, quite silent.

Finally she stopped short, looked right at him, threw out her hands (he noted and felt the grace of the movement!) and said —

“I don’t know how to answer you. Probably I did say just about those words.”

“They are exact… and of course, in one sense, I meant them. I do feel that way about your work. But not at all in the personal sense that you have taken it. And I recognize your ability as clearly as anybody. Can’t you see, man – that’s exactly the reason I talked that way to you?” There was feeling in her voice now. “I suppose I had a crazy, kiddish notion of converting you, of making you work for us. It was because you are so good at it that I went after you like that. You are worth going after.” She hesitated, and bit her lip. “That’s why I was so pleased when Zanin thought he needed you for our big plan and disappointed now that he can’t include you in it – because you could help us and we could perhaps help you. Yes, disappointed – in spite of – and – and don’t forget the other thing I said, that those of us that believe in truth in the theater owe it to our faith to get to work on the men that supply the plays… Can’t you see, man!”

She threw out her arms again. His eyes, something of the heady spirits that she would perhaps have called sex attraction shining in them now, could see little more than those arms, the slim curves of her body in the sweater and short skirt, her eager glowing face and fine eyes. And his mind could see no more than his eyes.

An automobile horn sounded. He caught her arm and hurried her to the roadside. There were more of the large bare trees here; and a rail fence by which they stood.

“You say Zanin has given up the idea of coming to me with his plan?” He spoke guardedly, thinking that he must not betray the confidences of Betty and Hy.

“Yes, he has had to.”

“He spoke to me about it, once.”

“Yes, I know. But the man that is going to back him wants to do that part of it himself or have his own director do it.”

Pictures unreeled suddenly before his mind’s eye – Sue, in “a pretty primitive costume,” exploited at once by the egotistical self-seeking Zanin, the unscrupulous, masterful Silverstone, a temperamental, commercial director! He shivered.

“Look here,” he began – he would fall back on his age and position; he would control this little situation, not drift through it! – “you mentioned my experience. Well, you’re right. I’ve seen these Broadway managers with their coats off. And I’ve seen what happens to enthusiastic girls that fall into their hands.”

He hesitated; that miserable letter flashed on his brain. He could fairly see it. And then his tongue ran wild.

“Don’t you know that Broadway is paved with the skulls of enthusiastic girls!.. Silverstone? Why, if I were to give you a tenth of Silverstone’s history you would shrink from him – you wouldn’t touch the man’s ugly hand. Here you are, young, attractive – yes, beautiful, in your own strange way! – full of a real faith in what you call the truth, on the edge of giving up your youth and your gifts into the hands of a bunch of Broadway crooks. You talk about me and the Broadway Thing. Good God, can’t you see that it’s girls like you that make the Broadway Thing possible!.. You talk of my sentimentality about women, my ‘home-and-mother-stuff,’ can’t you see the reason for that home-and-mother stuff, for that sentimentality, is the tens of thousands of girls, like you and unlike you who wanted to experiment, who thought they could make the world what they wanted it!”

He paused to breathe. The girl before him was distinctly flushed now, and was facing him with wide eyes – hard eyes, he thought. He had poured out a flood of feeling, and it had left her cold.

She was leaning back against the fence, her arms extended along the top rail, looking and looking at him.

“Silverstone!” he snorted, unable to keep silence “Silverstone! The man’s a crook, I tell you. Nothing that he wants gets away from him. Understand me? Nothing! You people will be children beside him… Zanin is bad enough. He’s smart! He’ll wait you out! He doesn’t believe in marriage, he doesn’t! But Zanin – why, Silverstone’ll play with him!”

Her eyes were still on him – wide and cold. Now her lips parted, and she drew in a quick breath, “How on earth,” she said, “did you learn all this! Who told you?”

He shut his lips close together. Plainly he had broken; he had gone wild, cleared the traces. Staring at her, at that sweater, he tried to think… She would upbraid Betty. How would he ever square things with Hy!

He saw her hands grip the fence rail so tightly that her finger-tips went white.

“Tell me,” she said again, with deliberate emphasis, “where you learned these things. Who told you?”

He felt rather than saw the movement of her body within the sweater as she breathed with a slow inhalation. His own breath came quickly. His throat was suddenly dry. He swallowed – once, twice. Then he stepped forward and laid his hand, a trembling hard, on her forearm.

She shook it off and sprang back.

“Don’t look at me like that!” his voice said. And rushed on: “Can’t you see that I’m pleading for your very life! Can’t you see that I know what you are headed for – that I want to save you from yourself – that I love you – that I’m offering you my life – that I want to take you out of this crazy atmosphere of the Village and give…”

He stopped, partly because he was out of breath, and felt, besides, as if his tonsils had abruptly swollen and filled his throat; partly because she turned deliberately away from him.

He waited, uneasily leaning against the fence while she walked off a little way, very slowly; stood thinking; then came back. She looked rather white now, he thought.

“Suppose,” she said, “we drop this and finish our walk. It’s a good three hours yet over to the other railroad. We may as well make a job of it.”

“Oh, Sue,” he cried – “how can you!..”

She stopped him. “Please!” she said.

“But – but – ”

“Please!” she said again.

“But – but – ”

She turned away. “I simply can not keep up this personal talk. I would be glad to finish the walk with you, but…”

He pulled himself together amid the wreckage of his thoughts and feelings. “But if I won’t or can’t, you’ll have to walk alone,” he said for her.

“Yes, I did mean that. I am sorry. I did hope it would be possible.” She compressed her lips, then added: “Of course I should have seen that it wasn’t possible, after what happened.”

“Very well,” said he.

They walked on, silent, past the woods, past more plowed fields, up another hillside.

She broke the silence. Gravely, she said: “I will say just one thing more, since you already know so much. Zarin signs up with Silverstone to-morrow morning. Or as soon as they can finish drawing up the contracts. Then within one or two weeks – very soon, certainly – we go down to Cuba or Florida to begin taking the outdoor scenes. That, you see, settles it.”

Peter’s mind blurred again. Ugly foggy thoughts rushed over it. He stopped short, his long gloomy face workhing nervously.

“Good God!” he broke out. “You mean to say – you’re going to let those crooks take you off – to Cuba! Don’t you see…”

There was no object in saying more. Even Peter could see that. For Sue, after one brief look at his sputtering, distorted face, had turned away and was now walking swiftly on up the hill.

“Wait!” he called. “Sue!”

She reached the top of the hill, passed on over the crest. Gradually she disappeared down the farther slope – the tam o’shanter last.

CHAPTER IX – THE NATURE FILM PRODUCING CO. INC

THEN Peter, muttering, talking out loud to the road, the fence, the trees, the sky, turned back to retrace the miles they had covered so lightly and rapidly. His feet and legs hurt him cruelly. He found a rough stick, broke it over a rock and used it for a cane.

He thought of joining Hy and Betty. There would be sympathy there, perhaps. Hy could do something. Hy would have to do something. Where were they, anyway!

Half an hour later he caught a glimpse of them. They were sitting on a boulder on a grassy hillside, some little distance from the road. They appeared to be gazing dreamily off across a valley.

Peter hesitated. They were very close together. They hardly seemed to invite interruption. Then, while he stood, dusty and bedraggled, in real pain, watching them, he saw Betty lean back against the boulder – or was it against Hy’s arm?

Hy seemed to be leaning over her. His head bent lower still. It quite hid hers from view.

He was kissing her!

Blind to the shooting pains in his feet and legs, Peter rushed, stumbling, away. In his profound self-pity, he felt that even Hy had deserted him. He was alone, in a world that had no motive or thought but to do him evil, to pervert his finest motives, to crush him!

Somehow he got back to that railroad. An hour and a half he spent painfully sitting in the country station waiting for a train. There was time to think. There was time for nothing but thinking.

And Peter, as so often when deeply stirred either by joy or misery, found himself passing into a violent and soul-wrenching reaction. It was misery this time. He was a crawling abject thing. People would laugh. Sue would laugh…

But would she! Would she tell? Would Hy and Betty, if they ever did get home, know that she had returned alone?

Those deep-green eyes of hers, the strong little chin… She was Miss Independence herself.

Zanin was signing with Silverstone in the morning! Or as soon as the contracts could be drawn.

The train came rumbling in. Peter, in, physical and spiritual agony, boarded it.

All these painful, exciting experiences of the day were drawing together toward some new unexpected result. He was beaten – yet was he beaten! A news agent walked through the train with a great pile of magazines on his arm.

Peter suddenly thought of the moving-picture periodical he had dropped, so long, long ago, in the Tunnel Station. He bought another copy; and again turned the pages. Then he let it fall to his knees and stared out the window with eyes that saw little.

Zanin – Silverstone – Sue walking alone over a hill!.. Peters little lamp of genius was burning once more. He was thrilled, if frightened, by the ideas that were forming in that curious mind of his.

Shortly after seven o’clock of the same evening Jacob Zanin reached his mean little room in Fourth Street, after a stirring twenty-four hours at Silver-stone’s house at Long Beach and an ineffectual attempt to find Sue in her rooms. Those rooms were dim and silent. No one answered his ring. No one answered his knock when he finally succeeded in following another tenant of the building into the inner hall. Which explains why he was at his room, alone, at a quarter to eight when Peter Ericson Mann called there.

Peter, pale, nerves tense, a feverish glow in his eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, leaned heavily on a walking stick in the dark hallway, listening to the sound of heavy footsteps coming across the creaking boards on the other side of the door. Then the door opened; and Zanin, coatless, collarless, hair rumpled over his ears on either side of his head, stood there; a hulking figure of a man, full of force, not untouched with inner fire; a little grim; his face, that of a vigorously intellectual Russian peasant, scarred perceptibly by racial and personal hardship.

“Oh, hello, Mann!” said he. “Come in.” Then, observing the stick: “What’s the matter?”

“A little arch trouble. Nothing at all.” And Peter limped in.

Peter, as on former occasions, felt the power of the fellow. It was altogether in character that he should exhibit no surprise, though Peter Ericson Mann had never before appeared before him at that door. (He would never know that it was Peter’s seventh call within an hour and a half.)

Peter was at his calmest and most effective.

He looked casually about at the scant furniture, the soap boxes heaped with books, the kerosene stove, symbol of Zanin’s martyrdom to his art.

“Zanin,” he said, “two things stuck in my mind the other night when you and I had our little talk. One was the fact that you had got hold of a big idea; and that a man of your caliber wouldn’t be giving his time to a proposition that didn’t have something vital in it… The other thing is Sue Wilde.”

Zanin was tipped back in an armless wooden chair, taking Peter in with eyes that were shrewd and cold, but not particularly hostile.

“I didn’t realize at the time what an impression that girl was making on me. But I haven’t been able to shake it off. She has something distinctly unusual – call it beauty, charm, personally – I don’t know what it is. But she has it.”

“Yes,” said Zanin, “she has it. But see here, Mann, the whole situation has changed since then – ”

“Yes,” Peter broke in. “I know.”

“You know?”

Peter nodded, offhand. “Betty Deane has talked to Hy Lowe about it, and Hy has told me. I’m pretty well informed, as a matter of fact.”

“You know about – ”

“Silverstone? Yes. Tell me, have you closed with him?”

“Well” – Zanin hesitated.. He was disturbed. “Not in writing, no.”

“Don’t you do it, then.”

Zanin pursed his lips, hooked his feet around the legs of his chair and tapped on the front of the seat with his large fingers.

“It’s regular money, Mann,” he said.

“You said you could interest me. Why don’t you try?”

“Regular money is regular money.”

“Not if you don’t get it.”

“Why shouldn’t I get it?”

“Because Silverstone will. And look what he’ll do to your ideas – a conventional commercialist!” Zanin considered this. “I’ve got to risk that. Or it looks so. This thing can’t possibly be done cheap. I propose to do something really new in a feature film – new in groupings, new in lighting, new in the simplicity and naturalness of the acting. It will be a daring theme, highly controversial, which means building up publicity. It will take regular money. Sue is in just the right frame of mind. A year from now God knows what she’ll be thinking and feeling. She might turn square against our Village life, all of a sudden. I’ve seen it happen… And now, with everything right, here the money comes to me on a platter. Lord, man, I’ve got to take it – risk or no risk!”

They were about to come to grips. Peter felt his skin turning cold. His throat went dry again, as in the afternoon.

“How much” – he asked, outwardly firmer than he would have dared hope – “how much do you need?”

Zanin really started now, and stared at him.

“See here,” he said, “I’ve gone pretty far in with Silver stone.”

“But you haven’t signed?”

“No.”

“Nor taken his money?”

“No.”

Peter laughed shortly. “Do you think he would consider himself bound by anything you may have said! Silverstone!”

This was a point. He could see Zanin thinking it over.

“How much do you need?” he asked again.

“Well – ”

“What do you think will happen the minute Sue really discovers the sort of hands she’s in? Even if she would want to stick to you!”

This was another point.

“Well” – said Zanin, thinking fast – “it needn’t be lavish, like these big battle films and such. But it will take money.”

“How much money?”

“Three or four thousand. Maybe five or six. It means going south for the outdoor scenes. I want tropical foliage, so my people won’t look frozen. And publicity isn’t cheap, you know.”

Peter gulped; but plunged on. “I’ll tell you what you do, Zanin. Get another man – a littler producer than Silverstone – and have him supply studio, operators, and all the plant necessary, on a partnership basis, you to put in some part of the cash needed.”

“Great!” said Zanin. “Fine! And where’s the cash to come from?”

“From me.”

The front legs of Zanin’s chair came to the floor with a bang.

“This is new stuff, Mann.”

“New stuff. I’m not rich, but I believe you’ve got a big thing here, and I stand willing to put up a few thousand on a private contract with you. This can be just between ourselves. All I ask is a reasonable control of the expenditure.”

Zanin thought – and thought. Peter could see the shifting lights in his cold clear eyes.

He moved over to the window and stared out into the area-way, where electric lamps and gas flames twinkled from a hundred other rear buildings. He came back to his chair and lit a cigarette.

“You’re on!” he finally said. “If you want to know, I am worried about Silverstone. And I’m certainly in no position to turn down such an offer as this.”

Which was the genesis of The Nature Film Producing Co., Inc., Jacob Zanin, Pres’t. They talked late, these new partners.

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when Peter limped into the rooms.

He found Hy pitting by the window in his pajamas, gazing rapturously at a lacy handerchief.

“Aha!” said Hy, “he comes! Never mind the hour, my boy! I take off my hat. You’re better than I am – better than I! A soupçon of speed, ol’ dear!”’

Peter dropped limply into the Morris chair. “What’s the matter?” said Hy, observing him more closely. “You look done. Where’s Sue?” Peter composed himself. “I left Sue a long while ago. Hours ago.”

“What on earth have you been doing?”

“Exactly what I promised you I’d do.”

This was a new, an impressive Peter.

“I don’t get you – ”

“You said Sue might not listen to my warning.”

“Oh – and she didn’t?”

“She did not.”

“And you – oh, you said you’d go to Zanin…”

“As man to man, Hy.”

“Good lord, you haven’t… Pete, you’re limping! You didn’t fight!..”

Peter solemnly shook his head. “It wasn’t necessary, Hy,” he said huskily; then cleared his throat. “What was the matter with his throat to-day, anyway?”

He sank back in his chair. His eyes closed.

Hy leaned forward with some anxiety. “Pete, what’s the matter? You’re white!”

Peter’s head moved slowly. “Nothing’s the matter.” He slowly opened his eyes. “It has been a hard day, Hy, but the job is done.”

“The job…?”

“I have saved her, Hy.”

“But the pictures?”

“They will be taken under my direction.”

“And Silverstone?”

“Silverstone is out. I control the company.” He closed his eyes again and breathed slowly and evenly in a deliberate effort to calm his tumultuous nerves. “Well!” said Hy, big-eyed. “Well!”

“Something to drink, Hy,” Peter murmured. “I put it over, Hy! I put it over!” He said this with a little more vigor, trying to talk down certain sudden misgivings regarding six thin little books with pasteboard covers that lay at the moment in the middle drawer of the desk, next the wall.

Hy got slowly to his feet; stood rubbing his head and staring down in complete admiration at the apparently triumphant if unmistakably exhausted Peter.

“It’s a queer time for them,” Hy remarked, solemn himself now. “But in this case cocktails are certainly indicated.”

He picked up the telephone. “John,” he said to the night man below, “some ice!”

Then he shuffled to the closet, struck a match and found the shaker.

In the amber fluid they pledged the success of The Nature Film Producing Co., Inc., these Seventh-Story Men! Dwelling, the while, each in his own thoughts, on the essential nobility of sacrificing one’s self to save another.