CHAPTER X – PETER THE MAGNIFICENT

IF she strikes you as a girl you’d like to kiss, I should say, as a general principle – well, kiss her.”

Thus Hy Lowe, musingly, seated on the decrepit flat-top desk between the two windows of the studio, swinging his legs.

Peter Ericson Mann met this observation with contempt. “Right off, I suppose! First time you meet her – just like that!”

The expert waved his cigarette. “Sure. Kiss her.”

“She murmurs her thanks, doubtless.”

“Not at all. She hates you. Won’t ever speak to you again.”

“Oh, really!” Peter was caustic.

“She didn’t think you were that sort; and won’t for a minute permit you to think she’s that sort.”

“And then?”

Another wave of the cigarette. “Slow down. Be kind to her. If she’s a cross old thing, forgive her. Let her see that you’re a regular fellow, even if you did start from third base instead of first. Above all, keep cool. Avoid tragedy, scenes. Keep smiling. When she does swing round – well, you’ve kissed her. There you are!”

Peter surveyed his apartment mate with gloomy eyes. “Sue and Betty are two very different girls,” said he.

“My son,” replied Hy, “I am not discussing persons. I am enunciating a principle. What may have passed between friend Betty and me has nothing to do with it.” He glanced at his watch. “Though I’ll admit she is expecting me around this evening. She doesn’t hate me, Pete… Funny thing about Betty – she was telling me – there’s a man up in her town pestering her to death. Letters and telegrams. Wants to marry her. He makes gas engines. Queer about these small-town fellows – they can’t understand a free-spirited woman. Imagine Betty cooped up like that!”

“I’m not likely to be kissing Sue,” growled Peter.

“My son, you’ve as good as done it already. From your own admission. Asked her to marry you. Right off, too – just like that! Can’t you see it’s the same thing in principle – shock and reaction! She’d have preferred the kiss of course – ”

“You don’t know that?”

“The trouble with you, Pete, is that you don’t understand women. According to your own story again, you startled her so that she left you on a country road and walked ten miles alone rather than answer you. I tell you, get a woman real angry at you just once, and she can’t be indifferent to you as long as she lives. Hate you – yes. Love you – yes. Indifferent – no… You’ve started something. Give her time.”

“Time!” snorted Peter. “Time!” He paced the long room; kicked the closet door shut; gave the piano keys a savage bang.

Hy watched Peter with growing concern. His eyes roved about the smoke-dimmed, high-ceiled studio. They had lived well here – himself, Peter and the Worm. Thanks to some unknown law of personality, they had got on, this odd trio, through the years. Girls and women had drifted into and out of their individual lives (for your New York bachelor does not inhabit a vacuum) – but never before had the specter of marriage stalked with disruptive import through these dingy rooms.

“Look here, Pete,” he said, “why be so dam’ serious about it!”

Peter paused in his pacing and stared at Hy… “Serious!” He repeated the word under his breath. His long face worked convulsively behind the large horn-rimmed glasses (not spectacles) and their black ribbon. Then abruptly he rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

Hy sighed, glanced out at the weather (it was April), picked up hat, stick and gloves and sauntered forth to dine comfortably at his club as a ritualistic preliminary to a pleasant evening. That, he thought now, was the great thing about bachelor life in town. You had all the advantages of feminine companionship – in assorted varieties – and then when you preferred or if the ladies bored you you just went to the club.

Peter sat on the edge of the bed, all nerves, and thought about Sue Wilde. Also about six little bank books.

They had been his secret inner life, the bank books locked away in the middle drawer of the desk on the side next the wall. Nearly seven thousand dollars were now entered in those books – Peter’s all. He was staking it on a single throw. He had rushed in where a shrewder theatrical angel might well have feared to tread. It was the wild outbreak of a cautious impractical man.

He thought it all over, sitting there on the edge of the bed. It was terrifying, but stirring. In his plays some one was always saving a girl through an act of personal sacrifice. Now he was acting it out in life. Indicating the truth to life of his plays… He was risking all. But so had Napoleon, returning from Elba, risked all (he did not pursue the analogy). So had Henry V at Agincourt. After all, considered in this light, it was rather fine. Certain persons would admire him if they knew. It was the way big men did things. He was glad that Sue didn’t know; it was finer to take the plunge without so much as asking a return. It was magnificent.

The word, popping into his thoughts, gave Peter a thrill. Yes, it was magnificent. He was doing a magnificent thing. All that remained was to carry it off magnificently.

He dragged his trunk from the closet. The lower tray and the bottom were packed with photographs and with letters tied in flat bundles – letters in various feminine hands. He stirred the bundles about. Some were old – years old; others less so.

Peter regarded them with the detachment of exaltation. They could not possibly mean anything to him; his life had begun the day he first saw Sue Wilde.

He carried them into the studio, great armsful, and piled them about the hearth. In the bottom drawer of the bureau were other packets of intimate documents. He brought those as well. Then he set to work to burn, packet by packet, that curiously remote past life of his. And he smiled a little at this memory and that.

Closely packed papers do not burn easily. He was seated there on the floor before the fireplace, stirring up sheets at which the flames had nibbled, when Jacob Zanin came in.

Zanin stared and laughed.

“Bad as that?” said he.

Peter met this sally with dignified silence. He urged his caller to sit down.

Zanin dropped his hat on the desk and disposed his big frame in the Morris chair. His coat was wrinkled, his trousers baggy. Under his coat was an old gray sweater. The head above the sweater collar was big and well-poised. The face was hard and strong; the eyes were alight with restlessness.

“I’m dog tired,” said Zanin. “Been rehearsing six hours straight.” And he added: “I suppose you haven’t had a chance to go over my scenario.”

“I’ve done more than that,” replied Peter calmly; “I’ve written a new one.” And as Zanin’s brows came down questioningly he added: “I think you’ll find I’ve pointed up your ideas. The thing was very strong. Once I got to thinking about it I couldn’t let go. What it needed was clarifying and rearranging and building for climaxes. That’s what makes it so hard for our people to understand you Russians – you are formless, chaotic.”

“Like life,” said Zanin.

“Perhaps. But not like our stage traditions. You wanted me to help you reach a popular audience. That’s what I’m trying to do for you.”

“Fine!” said Zanin doubtfully. “Let me take it along. I’ll read it to-night – go over it with Sue, perhaps.”

Peter shook his head.

“But I’ll have to see it, Mann.”

“I’ll read it to you – to you and Sue,” said Peter.

Zanin looked at him, faintly surprised and thinking.

Peter went back to the hearth, dropped on his knees and threw another bundle of letters into the fire.

“The fact is,” said Zanin, hesitating, “I had some work planned for Sue this evening.”

“No hurry,” remarked Peter.

“Ah, but there is.” Zanin hitched forward in his chair. The eager hardness came again into his eyes. His strong, slightly husky voice rose a little.

“Why? How so?” Peter settled back on his heels and poked the fire.

“Look here, Mann – everything’s just right for us now. I’ve interested the Interstellar people – that’s partly what I came to say – they’ll supply studio stuff for the interior scenes and a camera man. Also they’ll stand a third of the expense. They’re ready to sign whenever you are. And what’s more important – well, here’s the question of Sue.”

“What’s the question?”

“It’s delicate – but I’ll be frank.”

“Better be. You and I are going into this as business men, Zanin.”

“Exactly. As business men. Well – Sue’s a girl, after all. In this thing we are staking a lot on her interest and enthusiasm – pretty nearly everything.”

“Of course.

“Well, she’s ready – eager. I know her pretty thoroughly, Mann. I’ve studied her. We have no real hold on her. She isn’t a professional actress, to be hired at so much a week. Her only reason for going into it at all, is that she believes, with you and me, that the thing ought to be done. Now that’s all right. It’s fine! But it’s going to take delicate handling. A girl acts as she feels, you know. Right now Sue feels like doing my Nature film with all her might.” He spread out his hands. In his eyes was an eager appeal. “God, Maun, that’s all we’ve got! Don’t you see? Just Sue’s feelings!”

“I see,” Peter replied. He threw the last heap of photographs on the fire. “But what was the frank thing?”

Zanin hesitated; drummed nervously on the chair-arm. “I’m coming to that. It’s a bit awkward, Mann. It’s – well, I am more or less in Sue’s confidence, you know. I’m with her so much, I can sense her moods… The fact is, Mann, if you’ll let me say so, you don’t seem to understand women.”

“So I’ve been told,” remarked Peter dryly. “Go on with it.”

“Well, Sue’s got it into her head that you don’t get the idea of intelligent radicalism. That you’re…

“That I’m a reactionary.”

“Yes – that you’re a reactionary. She’s worried about the scenario – afraid you’ll miss the very point of it.” Again he spread out his large strong hands. “So don’t you see why I’m eager to get hold of it and read it to her” – he hesitated again, and knit his brows – “so I can reassure her… You see, Mann, Sue just doesn’t like you. That’s the plain fact. You’ve hit her all wrong.” He raised a hand to ward off Peter’s interruption. “Oh, we’ll straighten that out all right! But it’ll take delicate handling – just now, while we’re working out the scenario and planning the trip south – and so, meantime…”

“You would like me to keep out of Sue’s way as much as possible.”

“And leave everything to me, Mann. As it stands now, here she is, keen, all ready, once she’s solid in her mind about the right spirit of the scenario, to start south with me…”

Peter waved the poker in a series of small circles and figure eights; then held it motionless and sighted along it with squinted-up eyes.

“Why go south?” he asked.

Zanin gave a start and stared at him; then controlled himself, for the expenses of that little trip, two-thirds of them, at least, must be paid out of the funds entered in Peter’s six little bank books.

“Why go south?” Zanin repeated, gropingly; then came back at Peter with a rush of words. “Good lord, Mann, don’t you see that we’re putting over a big piece of symbolism – the most delicate and difficult job on earth. This isn’t Shore Acres! It isn’t the Doll’s House! It’s a realized dream, and it’s got to be put across with such quality and power that it will fire a new dream in the public mind. I propose to spring right out at ‘em, startle ‘em – yes, shock ‘em; and all the time keep it where they can’t lay their vulgar hands on it. We can’t show our Nature effects – primitive, half-nude people – against a background of a New Jersey farm land with a chestnut tree and a couple of oaks in the middle distance!”

“Pretty fine trees, those!” observed Peter.

“Not for a minute!” Zanin sprang to his feet; his voice rang. “Got to be remote, exotic – dream quality, fantasy all through. Florida or California – palm trees and such. Damn it, the thing’s a poem! It’s got to be done as a poem.”

He strode down the room and back.

Peter got up, very calm, rather white about the mouth and watched him… Dream quality? His thoughts were woven through and through with it at this moment. A voice at his inner ear, a voice curiously like Hy’s, was murmuring over and over: “Sure! Kiss her.”

“Don’t you see?” cried Zanin, confronting him, and spreading out those big hands. Peter wished wildly that he would keep them in his pockets, put them behind his back – anything to get them out of sight!.. “Lets be sensible, Maun. As you said, we’re business men, you and I. You let me take the scenario. I’m to see Sue this evening – I’ll read it to her. I’m sure it’s good. It’ll reassure her. And it will help me to hold her enthusiasm and pave the way for a better understanding between her and you.”

Quite unforeseen by either, the little matter of reading the scenario had struck up an issue between them. All was not harmony within the directorate of The Nature Film Producing Co., Inc., Jacob Zanin, Pres’t.

“No,” said Peter. “I won’t let you have it now.”

“But – good lord! – ”

“I will think it over.”

Magnificent was the word. Zanin gulped down a temperamental explosion and left.

Peter, as he came slowly back from the elevator to the apartment, discovered that he still held the poker tightly in his right hand, like a sword. He thought again of Napoleon and Henry V.

He stood motionless, by the window, staring out; moved by the histrionic emotionalism that was almost his soul to stiffen his shoulders like a king’s. Out there – beyond old Washington Square where the first buds of spring tipped the trees – beyond the glimpse, down a red-brick vista of the Sixth Avenue Elevated – still beyond and on, were, he knew, the dusty wandering streets, the crumbling houses with pasts, the flimsy apartment buildings decorated in front with rococo fire escapes, the bleak little three-cornered parks, the devastating subway excavations of Greenwich Village. Somewhere in that welter of poverty and art, at this very moment (unless she had walked up-town) was Sue Wilde. He tried to imagine just where. Perhaps in the dim little rear apartment she shared with Betty Deane, waiting for Zarin.