Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, April 8, 1923, Page 25

SUNDAY, APRIL 8, 1923. CHAPTER XLIV—Continued.) She crept into her bed at 9 when he was not kept at the stucio fot ight work. She was calied at 6 and began the day with a long and dreary puilding up of a false complexion layer um layer, line by line. She rarely saw Tom Holby’s real face. He also was painted like an In- dian brave. But for all the fatigue and the ar- tifice, there was a feeling of delight ind of friendliness on the stages. vo-operation Was necessary and it was the custom. The tegunical prob- lems were innumerable and their dis- cussions as scientific as laboratory debate. The reward of rewards was the rap- ture of creation. Nearly all the mem- vers of the company would rather act than eat, rather play feigned) sorrows than indulge in reat joys. They sought for diffscult tasks they were grateful for demands upon their ut- most resources. They sulked only when their tol! was diminished or they were left out of a scene or not taxed to their Umit, Mem’s affair with Tom Holby was settling down into the pleasant but drab relationship of two business partners, They were ag friendly al- as an old married couple with- out ever having known the initiatory rites. But in this dull fact there lurked a resentful, impatient CHAPTE! There was much skylarking on the ret—a childlike spontaneity of wit and nielsm and an inexhaustible fascin- ation of craft. Mem was becoming something of a technician, The mechanice the ar- tisanship that sustains every art, the alphabets of expression, the wireless codes for the transmission of emo- tlon, its creation ts a transmitter, its preparation for the recelvers — all these things no artist can ignore and suceeet. ‘The more eloquence the orator feels tn his heart the more he considers is tones, The more earnest the writer the more piously he aons his diction- ary. The more glorious the singer the more he studies his breath con- trol, his coups de glotte, his white notes, his transition colors. ‘The more fervid the composer the more he pon- ders acoustics and tone combinations and the inventions of new instru- ments. The more eager the painter the more he analyzes his values, the nore he seeks new tubes, new brushes, new chemistries of color. Only the amateur, the dawdier, the dilettante despises his craft and de- pends on passion or that egotistic whim which he calls insp'ration. So the ambitious actor must expert- ment always with the tools of thought —the engines of suffering. Once when Mem was shocked at a fippancy of Tom Holby’s concern'ng his art, he rebuked her earnestly: ‘You're not really well acquainted with your art unless you can joke about it. What's funnier than the idea that being funny {8 not as se- rious as being solemncholy There was never a finer actor than Nat Goodwin, and I heard him say once, speaking of his Shylock: ‘I was great in the fast act. I knew I was great because the audience was weeping and I was guying It, and when you can guy a serious scene you've got to be great.’”* Mem began to understand also, but siowly, that making fun of one’s se- rfous emotions is a form of modesty, y* covering of nakedness, a shy ro ‘6 eat behind a mask of smiles. She began to be able to talk fllp- pantly of her art and to talk of It in trade terms. One day when she was posing for a big close-up of herself asleep. the director asked her to try to squeeze a tear or two through her great clenched eyelids. She startled even him by saying, with an elfin earnest- ness: “What kind do you want? One great big slow teardrop, or a lot of Uttle shiny ones’ He was shocked but he hid his own sense of sacrilege in a careles: Give me one large tear about five- elghths of an inch in diametet “All right,” she said. And she did. It oozed through her long} Iahses and s!ipped reluctantly down her cheek Into her hair. And, knowing what he knew of its control. he felt his own eyes wet, and the jaded camera man whispered awe- somely, "Great,”” In another scene, where more tears were required of her, he noted that while she waited for the camera set- up she had her hands up to her lps and she seemed to be whis- ring to herself: Curious, he asked, up to now?” She gazed at him, “I was praying God to send me beautiful tears.” He shook his head and walked away asping. % one Peneenecn the chief financial power in Tom Holby’s company saw Mem pacing up and down by herself at a distance from the sct. He watch- her and noted that she leaned against ® canvas wall and hid her head in her arm, Hr shoulders quivered and shook with forlorn woe. ‘Him jheart was toudhed and he could not resist an impulse to go to ‘her and proffer his sympathy in her evident grief. He touched her on the arm and asked with an al- most mothering solicitude: “You poor child! What's the mat- ter?” She whirled on him in surprise and stared through a shower of tears. Then a smile broke from her blub- bering I'ps and she giggled: “Oh, I'm just getting ready a big crying scene.” Hoe fell back as if he had touched a serpent. He was disgusted with himself for making such a@ fool of himself and wasting h's precious Pity on a little trickster. ‘Tho climax of Mem's shamelessness was reached one day when Robina ‘Teale and the great Mirlam Yore visited the stud!o and stoppea for lunch fn the commissary. Mem was put on her mettio by the grandiose condescension of Miss Yore and by the suspicious jealousy of Robina Teele. The matter of tears for sale came up and Miss Yore spoke of how she got hers, ‘What are you for ‘I find that if I use the tone of Voice Intentionally which I use unin- tentionally when I am really crying, the tears come. It may he just muscle memory or {t may be that I grow very sorry for myse! Robina did not know how she got hers. “Margaret Anglin said she could cry at will over a fried egg or any- thing. So can I. I just imagine the Scene and say to myself, ‘Cry and I cry ull the director says ‘Cut! Neither gf the famous women thought to ask the rising Miss Sted- don how she manipulated her !ach- rymal art. Tom Holby, feeling that she was slighted, brought her into it by asking her her system. “Prayer and brute strength,” sai Mem. . Robina was in an assertive mood, and, as one violinist might challenge another to a concerto or an orator Propose a debate to another she called for a duel of tears. She thought she could send Miss Yore back to the grand opera she had come from, “Let's have @ crying contest,” she said. “Tt should have to have music,’ said Miss Yore. “Come over to my set, and we'll give you your favorite tune,” said Holt He dragged Remember Sted don along, though the two veterans cid not take her into acegunt. Holby exptained tq }ho tor that they were to have a field day of emotion, and he consented to de- fer the scene he was about to shoot. Miss Yore wanted the theme of the “Liebstod” played over and over. The wheezy little portable organ made a mess of Wagner’s braided ‘harmonies, but the violinist caught the cry of the melody. Robina could cry. best for “Just a Song at Twilight," but she grace fully yielded the choice of music tc Miss Yore. Mem hat never heard an opera, grand or comic. But the strangely climbing anguish of the tune caught her up on its piniona, and liftel her into that ether where the souls of imaginative artists fly in al! dig guises and assume all personalities. The rest of the company and the ‘drew food alodf and watched in amazement the two world-famed stars and the rising young asteroid Mem, began to war with their own features like athletes tuning up or shadow-boxing. The three women walked apart for a moment, grimacing and forcing themselves into a state of agany Robina achieved the first sob. She broke and flung herself on a couch and sobbed aloud. Mem jea'ously Ce elded that she was cheating, and rather looked down on her shoulder work. It was pumpy. She stared at Miriam Yore, an am- bulant statue of herdic postures, lift- ing her hands to heaven, carrying them clasped to. her fulsome bosom and indulging in the despair of a Medea or a Cornwall princess whose draperies must also weep about her beautifully. In Mem's eyes Miss Yore was ae stagy as Miss Teele was scroeny. Neither of them seemed quite hu- man. Grief to Mem was a homely unlovely, tear’ng, disordering thing to cry gracefully was not to cry at all. She was the realist, the small- town girl whose heart gives way whose features crumple, whose eyes blear and reek with bitter, Cevastat- ing brine, The onlookers called Robina won- derful. They called Miss Yore beau- tiful. They paid the untimely tribute of admiration. But when Remem ber Steddon abruptly flopped into a chair like a flung rag doll, and began to chake and gnivel, to dab at her eyes, and wrinkle her chin, to fight and hate the spurting tears, to sway her head in futile protest. to give vent to little ragping noises that seemed to saw her throat raw and to grow extraordinarily homely and pitiful, the spectators felt a some- thing famillar out of their own child- hood, out of the'r own loneliness and defeats. Their own faces puckered, their hearts were nests of pain, their eyes went dank and were blurred. They gave her the ultimate tribute of sympathy and echoed her misery. Mise Teele stopped crying to stare. Miss Yore ceased her magnificent stride. Both forgot to be artists. Be fore they realized that Mem had not really broken down in a genuine grief they had surrendered the bat- tle and were crying with her. An& sho, having! set in motion the whees of sdrrow, dould not jstop them. There is so much to regret in this world and tn any life, that it Is perilous to start the tears rolling, lest they crush the soul. Her triumph astonished Mem and all the witnesses. But she was al- most destroyed with her own victory, She was sick and ashamed of the blasphemy of her abuse of such holy tht as tears, Afterward, however, she could laugh again, and when Tom Holby told her that she had wiped the earth up with her two rivals it was a thrilling thing to hear. The contest was the talk of the whole studio, and the publicity man sent broadcast, to the enlargement of Mem's fame, her brilliant etude in tears, Tt was all working toward her glory as a mistress of emotions. CHAPTER XLVI Tho director Ken¢rick was in a Aesperate frenry to complete the pio- ture. The hard times were reducing the incomes of the producers and exhibitors at a terrifying rate, The apathy that accompanies all financial depressions sickened the public appetite for everything, The erit'ca wore enying that the empti- ness of the theatern was due to the stupldity of the plays, but just ax. stupid plays had prospered mightils when the boom wes at its height, The critics were Ukewise saying that the moving pictures were unworthy cf the patronage they were not getting. But the fault is with the public dyspepsia und not with the cooks. In any case, tho vast cinematic tn | dustry wae in as eerious a plight om the steo!, the copper, the lumber, and all the ot! : industrios, sulories, wages, sets, most of the stu- dios were declaring hdildays of a month or more, The orcers had gone forth to rush the Holby picture to a conclusion. The big night storm scenes had been scheduled for the final takes. ‘They would appear early in the story, but too many accidents might happen if they were shot in sejuence. It would be lamentable if any of the actors were injured at any time, but it would be disastrous to huye an arm or ® head broken or case of pneu- monia i: the middle of the work. It had happened. Actors occasionally died with extravagant Incbportunity, or broke bones. or marred counte- pances that cou!d not be matched or replaced. The expense of some of these mishaps was appalling, with an overhead of $2,000 a day. y On the final morning the first scenes were begun promptly at 9. Kendrick promised to let the odm- pany go at three to rest for the all- night grind, but delays of every sort occurred. A light would flicker dur- ing an important scene. In a close- up one of the characters would swerve outside the narrow space al- loted. When the actors were again at tuned and the director was impa- tient to cry “Camera!” one of the camera men would find that he had not film enough and a new maga- zine must be fetched. Such inevitable, incessant delays were peculiarly irritating to a com- pany on the razor edge af emotion, but there was rarely an outburst. Emotion, being property, was con- served. There {s probably no class of people who act so rarely as ac- tors. The general opinion to the con- trary Js like most general apinions, based on ignorance, At 3 o'clock there were still many scenes unshot. The work continued and it was not until half past seven that the day's work was done. The “rushes” of the day before were sti!l to be inspected in the projection- room whither the edmpany scam pered, It was 8 o'clock before anyone could stop for dinner. ‘The actors were not considered, but the work crews had to be humored. Some of them were members of unions and t was a legal peril also to keep extra People at work more than eight hours in a day. Tom Holby and Mem sought their dinner tn a little shack near tho atu: aio. They perched on stools and ate T-bone steaks, fried potatoes, dough- nuts and coffee with the voracity of longshoremen, At 9 they went to the first of the ets. The Californian night was black and bitter cold. The night in the story was one of tempest and battle. Tom Holby must run an automobile into a ditch and make a desperate war against four~ brutes who were instructed to put up a gocel tight. ‘The pubic would not stand a mock engagement. Fists had to land. Heads had to rock, and when a man fell _he must fall. He must go over with @ crash wherever the blow sent him. The actors wanted it so. Tom Holby expected to end the night bleeding, bruised, tattered, and Casper Sunday Morning Cribune “SOULS FOR SALE’---A Great Novel of Hollywood Life and sent its three showers from over- head. ‘The wind machine was set in mo- tion and thq alr was filled with sheets of driven rain. The Ughtning machine added the thunder of its leaping sparks to the turmoil. Kendrick, in high boots and a trench coat he had worn in France, went to the porch to test the storm. In his hand he carried an electric button with a cable to the lightning machine. This rang a bell for the man in charge of it. The noisy wind machine was controlled by wilgwas signals. The director was a god in little. He coulé bid tho rain rain, the wind road, and the Mghtning blaze. He rode upon the storm he created. At first the storm was too mild for his taste. At his command {t was ag- gravated until he could not stand up before it, Gradually he achieved the exact magnitude of violence, and the men {in control of tha forces of im!- tated nature understood that thus far they must go and no farther. Under a yast umbrella, and be- hind shields of black flats calle¢} “niggers,” the battery of camera men stood arranging fdcuses and lights. Two of them. used lenses that would make close-ups, while the oth- ers caught the long shots, for there would be no chance of taking spe- cial closeups, After an hour or more of harrow- ing delay the army was ready for the battle. Mem climbed up the scat- folding back of the palatial front door and porch. The assistant dirce- tor explained the signal he was to relay from the director, and the storm was orderec: to begin. A gentle rain fell from the pipes. The fire hose, aimed up in the air, exided its volume. The wind ma- ching set up its mad clatter. The rain became a deluge of flying wn- ter and the lightning filled it with shattering fire. Then Mem was called forth. She clutched her cloak about her and thrust into the tempest. It was like driving through a slightly rarefied cataract. She hardly reached the pitlar at the edgo of the porch, clutched it for a moment, caught a quick breath, and flung down the steps. And that wag that. All this preparation for one minute of action —save for a brief return to the porch to pose for still photdgraphs, She was dripping and so lost that she ran into one of the property men who checked her. Kendrick came to her and gave her an accolade of ap- proval. He patted her sapping shoulder and said: “Fine! But in the next acene hold your cloak about you a little tighter. The wind was so stormy and your clothes so wet that there wasn't much of you left to the imagination In some of the states the censors may cut the whole scene out. But We won't retake it.” When, two daya later, Mem saw the rushes in the projection room, she could hardly betieve that the storm was a matter of such clumsy artifice. The reality of it fairly ter- rified her. The rain-swept porch ani the fury of lightnings about the pi lars gave no hint of human devi ing. She felt a surge of pity at the bravery of the Uttle figure she made plunging into the wrack on her er- mud smeared. He had cracked many ® bone and lost a tooth or two on such gala occasions; anc, once he had splintered the bones of his © right hand when his fist missed the tace it was aimed at and struck the stone beneath it, Mems’ share in the hurricane was ‘o run through the wildest of the storm and bring rescue. Such scenes in the movies are often railed at as cheap sensational- ism, yet they are heroic art. In an epic poem, or a classic drama, they are accounted the height of achisve- ment. Winslow Homer's high seas, Conrad's gorgeous simooma, are !aud. ed 4g triumphs of genius. The au- thor rifles the dictionary and guts his thesaurus, the painter wrecks his palette and his trushes, and is cel- ebrated as of the grand school. When the moving-picture geniuses Ukewise exhaust a vocabulary of mechanical effects, and spread before the worl visions of beautiful drama, the cri- tes pass by with averted gaze. Mem had five scenes to dash through, Her pilgrimage was to be a sort of “Pippa Passes,” but she was not to go singing; she was to be stormed upon as Sebald and Ot- tima were, Each bit of scenery through which she was to fiash had been made ready the day before. ‘Three Jong perforated rain pipes were ererted on scaffolds and ednnected with the standpipes, and they were reinforced by men who would play a fire hose or two upon the hapless actress. The galo was to be provided by an air- plane engine and propelier mounted on a truck. Mem, suffering the chill of the night especially because of fatigue and gxcitement, dnspected the set tings she was #0 briefly to adorn. “Why do they bulld that fence ardund the wind machine " she ask- ed Kendrick. “To keep people from walking in- to the propeller and getting chopped to mincemeat,’’ sald Kendrick. “My assistant was engaged on three pic- tures where airplane propellers were used, and a man was killed in each one of them. In one of them an air. ship caught fire anc fell during a night picture. He was the first man to reach the aviator. He picked up the poor fellow's hot hand and his arm came off. It wag charred Iike— Excuse me." Mem gasped and retreated from the rest of !t, and she kept as far as possib'e from the giant fan. ‘The propeller made a deafening uproar when it was set tn motion, and it churned the alr into a small vertical cyclone, Caught in tho first guat of it, Mem was driven like an autumn leaf with skirts whipping away from her. In her first scene she was to dash from a house and down ita step: First, the men with the fire hose sonked the shell of the house, the Porch, and the steps, and the ground about them till they were all floodedt the rain machine was tested Then rand of rescue, The gale flung her cloak and her skirts about her in fleeting sculptures of Grecian beau- ty. But when she paused at the steps and staggered under the buf- fetes of the wind, she was aghast to @e herself modeled in the least de- tai! like the clay of a statue, all the more nude for the emphasis of a few wrinkles in a framing drapery. She felt her first sympathy for Miss Bevans’ prudery and blushed in the dark projection room She did not at all approve the groan df the di- rector. “Wondarful! It’s lke an tvory statuue on an ebony background. To think that the dirty-minded censors will call it indecent ,the black- guards!” ‘Mem hoped that the company’s own censors would excise it before the outside world saw {it but sho said nothing. She belonged td her art, body as well as soul. But this revelation was for a tater day. For the present, the director's caution to keep her cloak about her was alarming enough. She was taken to a warm room and wrappec in blankets whie the next scene was prepared. This was a matter of another hour's delay. Rain pipes had already been erect- ed, but the Ilghts had to be trun- dled into place, the cameras placed and protcted, and a hundred details made ready before she was called out again. Holby and Kendrick were solici- tous for her and asked {ff she was chilled. She laughed. ‘The adven- ture kindied her youthful arteries. ‘It was not, so pleasant to stand BY RUPERT HUGHES stil and have the fire hose lifted above her, She was supposed to have run a long distance between the porch steps and this scene, and she must enter it wet. Sho had a bit of chill in this show- rbath and there was a hitch in starting. But at length she gdt her signal and went forward again, hea@ down, into the wild storm. The pro- Peller ran too fast and she could not proceed. She clung to a wall and tugged in vain. The blast carried her cloak entirely away and she had no protection from the scrutiny of the lightning or the un- edited records of the camer The noise was so appalling that the director ripped his throat in vain. He had to run to the wind machine and chock it. The picture had to be taken over, Mem‘s cloak was recoy- ered, and the mud washed from St. Then {t was Iaid ciammily about her fey stoulders and she made another tes. This ting the result was better. and she returned to the room and her hinakets for enother hour, She could not seem to get warm, Her bones were like pipes in which the marrow fron. When she went out asain Ken- @rick asked her how she was, Her teeth chattered together am she said: ‘All right-ttt" He looked at her ruthless / with sympathy and admiration, and he decided to cut out one of the most promising scenes, lest it gvertax her strength, During her absence a telephone pote and a tree had been brought down by the storm and photograph- ed as they fell, It was her business now to clamber across the pole and push through the branches of the tree, and so fight her way out of the picture. The rain pipes had been brought forward and set up in a new posi-| tion. The cameras were aligned. Next that was the lightning ma- chine, abreast of it the wind ma- chine, - In the preliminary tests it had/ been hard to find the right angle for/ the gale to blow from and the wind! machine had been shifted several| times. The wind man in his con- fusion, forgdt to notice that the Property men had forgotten, in their) confusion, to set up the fence before the propeller. It was after mid- night now and everybody was numb with cold, drenched with the promis. ! cuous rain, and a little irresponsible. Their working day was already fif. teen hours old and it would last at least five hours more. The spectators who had gathered to watch the first scenes had been driven from the lot by the cold their thick cloaks and overcoats could not overcome. Tom Holby had been pho- tographed in a climb up the wet sides of a ravine, and was half frozen in his soaked clothes, but he stayed to watch Mem through this sccene. He was palsied in the bundled wraps about him and his heart ached as he saw Mem in her little wet dress throw off her blankets, put on the dreadful mantle of the wet cape, and go out into the distant qark be yond the range of the cameras, ‘The storm broke out anew at the director's signal. The wind bellowed and slashed the branches of the pros- trate tree, The lightning snapped and flared and its flare winnowed the rain in flaming wraiths. Then from the dark the little sor- rowful figure of Remember Steddon appeared, a ghost materiallzing from the night. She struggled with the maniac hurricano, stumbled and fell across the telephone pole, thrust aside the wires, lifted herself and breasted the wind again, drove into the wreck of the fallen tree. The branches whipped her wet flesh cruelly. The lightning just ahead of her bifstered her vision like the white hot {rons driven into the eyes of Shakespeare's Prince Clarence. The wind blew her breath back into her lungs. If she had not gained a lit- tle support from one stout bough of the tree she could never have reach- ed the margin of the picture. Kendrick's heart was glad with triumph as he saw her pass out of the camera's range. He called ‘Cut!* and the camera men were jubiliant as each of them shouted “O. K. for me!" Then Kendrick heard screams of terror, wild howis of fear. He ran forwaré and saw the blinded little figure of Mem sti!l pressing on straight into the blur of the airplane propeller. His heart sickened. She would be sliced to shreds. She could not hear the yelled warnings in the noise of the machine. CHAPTER XLVII ‘The operator shut off his engine, where he was supposet: to leave the arms of his sweetheart in ber de- fense Fj In the topsy-turvydom of film con- struction the scene in which Mem and Holby were set upon by a pack of ruffians had not yet been taken, though Mem had already almost com- pleted the scenes in which she ran to call distant strangers to Tom's rescue. After a long while of puzzling Ken- drick decided to make an effort to photograph Holby so that his dam- aged jowl should be hidden by Mem's face or by shadows. It would be hard to manage and the men who had promised to beat Holby up to the best of their ability would hesitate to pummel a man already so hurt. But to put the fight off til the cheek was healed would cost the com- pany @ thousand dollars at least. When Mem understood all the trouble {t had cost to snatch her from destruction, she said: “Ym not worth it.” Kendrick was in no mood for po- lite denials, but Tom Holby gave her a look that made the fishing worth} while. | Mem was blanketed Mxe a race) horse and taken to her dressingroom| once more. Sho slipped her wet] clothes off and drieG them and her-) self by tho fire while she walted| fur the next foray into the storm. After that was to come the attack flight] by the desperadoes and her for help. She had seen many plo- tures in which the heroine stood| about wringing her hands idly while} her lover fought for her with some| worthless brute, She had always des-| pised a heroine who would not take up a chair or something and bash/| in the head of her lover's opponent instead of piaying the wall paper. She protested now against having to run away from the scene but Ken- drick grew a trifle sarcastic: ‘The company doesn’t require you to rewrite the scenarios, Miss Sted: Con; only to act in them. Besides, there are half a dozen villains here, and I really think you'd better run out of the scene, seeing that wo've! already spent half the night and al of our nerves showing you going for rescuers.” Mem was suffictently snubbed and apologized so meekly that Kendrick was still furtous. “And for God's sake don’t play the worm! The story is rotten and your criticiam is perfectly just, but wa! directors and actors have to do our best with the putrid stuff the of-| fice hands us."" Mem stood about and watched the| fight. It was magnificent, or a loathsome spectacle, accorCing to the critic. When Vergi! describes an old fashioned battle with wooden boxing] gloves macerating the opposing rons | tures it 1s accepted as of epic nobil-| ity. The movies give the real blood instead of nouns and knock our teeth with primeval dentistry. The actors who assaulted Holby were tonder of his raw cheek at first, but both he and Kendrick demanded action, and after Holby had smash- ed a few noses with the effect of knocking corks out of claret bottles, there was anger enough. The one caution Kendrick shrieked through his megaphone was not to knock Holby senseless anc: not to| knock him out af the oamera’s range. but the propollers still swirled at a speed that made them only a whorl of ight. The witnesses were para- lyzed by the horror of the moment. Tom Holby broke from a nightmare that outran the immediate beauty of the Itt!e woman walking forward to a hideous fate. He ran and dived for her lke a football tackler, hcok- ed his left arm about her knees and flung her backward, thrusting hi right arm and his head beneath her, so that when she struck, her shou Cors were upon his breast, her drenched hair fell across his face ke seaweed, She opened her eyes in a chaos of bewilderment. Just above her the flying propeller blades were glisten- ing in the light of the sun arc. They were still revolving when the wind machine man, leaping from the post where he had stood expoct- ing her fate and his own eternal re morse, ran to lift her from the ground. Others helped up Tom Holby had knockdd himself uncon- scious when his head struck a rock in the road. His cheek was ripped and gushing blood Hoe came to his senres at once and forced a ghastly laugh. Mem screamed with fear for him. She had not yet realized her own es- cape. She was all pity for Tom Hol- by, and anxiety, “It's nothing,” he said. ‘Then he staggered with dread of what Mem would have looked like now !f he had waited an instant longer or missed his aim at her knees, He drew her from the vortex of the propeller, which was subsiding with the dying snarl of a leopard thet has missed its pounce. Now Mens understood what her own enture had been, and her knees weakened with an ex post facto alarm. Kendrick came up, and after a de cent wait for the incident to have its dignity and move on, he thanked and congratulated Holby on retrieving the girl from massacre. “It wouldn't have meant only the horrible death of this beautiful child, but {t would have meant also the hor- rible death of this beautiful pictur for hardly anybody would have want- ed to see it If it were stained with blood.”” “And all my beautiful art would have perished with me! sald Mem, with only partial frony. She had reached tho estate of the creative soul who longs for the immortality of its work more than {teelf, and feels it a death indeed, n death entire, to have its record lost. Just to have a book in a Ibrary, even if it is never read; juust to have a painting on some wall: a tune in somebod: 4 eis, a solentific discov: ery rece*4od somewhore— that in honey enough in the ashes that fil! the montis of the mortturt. | Kendrick’s next thought wan one of dismay, Tom Holby had not yet fought hia big fight, and yet hia! face was torn, How wns this to be ‘The camera men were tilting and) panning their machines to keep the) action within the picture, and they wero howling contradictory mes- sages to the fighters, ‘There was none of the arena ar- dor !n Mem’s soul. She was nono of the girls who watched gladiators Dutchered, or thrilled to Inquisitiona! processions, or went to modern prize fights. She was s0 sickened by the noise of the blows, and the spurt of blood, and that most desperate drama of all: when strong men batter each other in rage, that she had to re treat into the cold morning alr out of sight and hearing of tho buffets that seemed to land on her own ten- cer flesh. The dawn was just pinking the sky when the last of the night work was over. Everybody was dead-| beaten. The crews would have to re- main after the actors had gone, and the actors had finished a twenty-ono- hour day of grilling emotion and physical tofl. The chauffeur who took Mem home in an automobile told her that he had already hac! twenty-four hours of driving and would have four or five hours more. She expected him to cotlide with almost anything, but his eyes still attended their of- fice. It was 7 o'clock when Mem crept into her bed, an hour later than she had usually wakened. Her alarm clock stared at her with rebuke, but she gave it a day off and slept till nightfall, The next day the company gath- éred to see the rushes of the night stuff, Almost all of them were per- fect, vivid, dramatic with the chiaro- souro of lightning upon midnight storm, and incredibly real. vA feeling came over her and over others when they saw the various takes of the scene in which she clambere’ across the fallen tele- phone pole, pushed through branches of the toppled tree, and pressed on into the teeth of the gale. For just beyond the point of her exit from the picture the wind machine was waiting: She had been hurrying headlong to destruction and never dreamed of her peril. Kendrick sighed, ‘That came near being a portrait of you walking! out of this world.” Tom Holby did not speak, but he reached out and seizing Mem‘s hancy, wrung {t with an eloquence beyond words. He seemed to be squeez- ing her heart with clinging hands, ‘There were five takes of this bit, and Mem began only now to under: stand the hazard she had incurred, to comprehend how close she was to annihilation, to the end of her days upon this beautiful world, It cnme upon her like a oonfron- tation of death. What an unbollev- able thing {t waa! for al! of being the most familiar thing in life the) one experience that nobody could en) cape, man, animal, plant. As that explained in the preceding scene tree hed fallen 60 she would have! ; shames, each tang of existence. lost her rcots in the good earth. As the telephone wires of the prostrate pole had gone dead, so the thrill would have ebbed out of her nerves; everything ‘beautiful gractous, vol- uptuous, would have been denied her. She would have been void even of the precious privilege of pain. The old Greeks joked about the simpleton, the philosopher, who had wanted to know how he looked when he was asleep and had held a mirror before him and shut his ey; But she had seen herself asleep on the screen, and now she had seen herself marching into her grave. The vision was intolerable to her.) It assailed her like a nightmare. It) drove her frantic to make the most} of life, to taste every ons of its sweets, its bitters, its glories and| To experience and to make others ex: perience! She must be quick about it, for who could tell what moment would be the last? For the sake of| other people she must live at full! speed from now on, act many pie: tures, briskly, brilliantly, hurriedly so that she should not waste a grain of sand speeding through the hour} glass. As she watched the last of the takes her heart surged with anguish | for that strange girl she was there,| struggling against the wind, fighting her way out of a little inconvenience Into destruction | It seemed to her that sho typified all girlkind, all womanhood, all hu-| manhood, passion swept, love surged, braving obstacies, defying every re- straint and stumbling on into the lightning, into the lurking horror, running blithely, blindly into the am- bush that every path prepares, She was consumed with an impa-| tience to begin a new picture at once and to be very busy with life and love, beauty and delight And yet—there is always an “and yet.” The yets follow in incessant| procession, treading one another’s| heels, And yet, when Tom Holby, after they had left the lot, asked her to| ride with him for a bit of air, and wept her to the perfect opportunity of bliss, her soul balked. He was handsome, brave, mag- netic, chivatrous, Gevoted. He had leaped into danger to seize her out of it. He bore in his check a scar that would mar him for life, per- haps, as his badge of courage. His big racing car, like a fleet stallion, had galloped them far from the eyes of witnesses into a sunset of colossal tenderness, with a sky fluushed as delicately as a girl's cheek, yet as huge as a universe. They sped along “the rim of the world” with desert on one side and the whole Pacific sea on the other. The world was below them for their! observation and they were concealed! | by distance. And yet, when Tom Holby told her he adored her and that she was adorable, when ho courted her with deference and meekness and pleaded jfor a Ittle kindness — her heart froze in her. She could not even ac- | cept a proffered beatitude. She looked at him and thought— and sald: “Too many people love you, Tom: my. You belong to the public, and you couldn't bring yourself down to really loving Mttte me.” “Oh, but I,could! I Co! he cried. ‘Damn my public! I don't care for anything but you." She was not quite serfous and not quite insincere when she answered: “But I haven't had my public yet, and I love it. I want it. If I ever grow as tired of it as you have done of yours, then we might seg each other. But just now the only love I can feel is acted love.” “Then let's have a rehearsal,” he suggested, cynically. But she shovk her head and laughed. She could not tell why sho !aughed, but, hav- ing tasted mirth, sho decided that| was what she had chiefly missed in life and what she needed most. Her home had been nearly devoid of gayety, except of an infantile, éc- clesinstical sort. Hor father had been one of those who could never think of Christ as wearing any smile but one of pity or forg! ness. Al laughing Messiah was incredible, hor- rible. And as her father’s chief aim in life was to fill life with roligion, hilarity with its inevitable skepticism had no part at home. Since she had !eft her home on the most dismal of pilgrimages, Mem bad given herself chiefly to the earnest, the passionate emotions. And now she felt like a desert mud- denly dreaming of rain. “T want to laugh, Tommy," she cried. “Amuse me, make me laugh.” But Holby was no wit. He had @n abundance of wholesome fun in Nis nature, and he roared when he was tickled, but he was not a come- dian, a humorist, or an inventor of risible material, He shook his head and could not even think of a funny story, at least of none that he dared tell Mem. He was as willing to escape from her in her present mood as she from him, and } 1a: “There's new Charlie Chaplin comedy. “Let's try,” said Mem. ‘I've just Tealizod that what I'm really dying for is a good laugh, lots of good wild laughs at I don't care what.” Holby swung his oar round and the We might get in.” returned toward Los Angeles. “Tommy,” said Mem, “what is com- edy? What is it that makes a thing arch me!’ said Holby. “T don't ither do I,’ Mem pondered. “But I'm sick of all these crying scenes and emoting all over the place. I want to be a comedienne, Do you think I could be one?” “I don't think so," said Hotby with selentific candor. “You never made ™me laugh. You don't laugh much.” “No,’ but I'm going to. I think if I ever love anybody really, it will be a great comedian, Do you know any comedians who aren't married, Tommy?" “Lets of ‘em," said Holby. “A sense of humor keops a man from getting married—or staying married long.” Mom laughed at that. She did not know why. Perhaps because ho had }emn editorials prociatmed PAGE THREE eae it was a sudden tipping over of something solemn. She had spent her life getting ready for the holi- ness of matrimony. She had made @ wreck of her ideal and had dwelt in a hel! of shame and remorse for the sacrilege. And now Tommy had implied that {t wasn’t so sacred after all. He had slipped @ banana peel under a Cismal ideal and it had hit the sround with a bump. Tho whole world looked gayer to her, as if some one had flashed on a light. She hoped the automobile would not be wrecked before she had this huge laugh that was waiting for her. And somewhere in a clown’s uniform Was waiting, she was sure, the man or the career that would {!luminate all her existence. A good laugher would make a good lover. Making people cry and educating them in the agonies of sympathy was a silly sort of ambition. What | fools people were to pay money to be tortured! But to be made to Inugh—that was worth any price. To make people laugh in the little while between the two glooms before birth and after death—to love and live laughing— that was to Cefy sorrow and to make a juke of fate, CHAPTER XLVIIT Yothing could reveal the extreme uth and the swifth maturity of the moving pictures like the career of Charles Chaplin. For a few years he was a byword of critical condem- nation for his buffoonery, a proof of the low public taste. Suddenly he was hailed as one cf the master ar- lists of time. It was not that he had improved, or the public. It was tho critics who were educated in spite of themselves to the loftiness of but- foonery and the fino genius of Chap- lin, The public had loved him from tho start. He was at this moment in Europe meeting such a welcome as few other visiting monarchs ever govt. Mobs blocked the streets where he Progressed until the police had to rescue him. Their Eminences of lit- erature and statecraft pleaded with him for interviews. Lloyd George begged for a comedy of Charlie's to help him, as Abraham Lincoln leaned on Artemus Ward, And yet he was just out of his twenties and. only a dozen years or so before he had left England as the humblest of acrobats and the least known of her emigrants, as ignored as he was himself ignorant of the new-born American-made art that was to lift him to universal glory. His picture, “The Kid," had been. hailed as a work of the noblest qual- ity, rich in pathos as in hilarity. So} him the supreme dramatic artist of his gen- eration. He was a household word about the world, a millionaire, and as fa- |millar to the children as Santa | Claus. He haf become a Santa Chap- Ma to the grown-ups. Yet numberless raucous asses who were quite as solemn as Charlie, but not #0 profitably or amusingly asi- | nine, were still hee-hawing the old \ bray that the moving pictures were | not an art, but only an industry. Of course it all depended on one’s own private definition of the indefinable word “art,” and {t was quite over looked by those who denied the word to the Movia that if it were only an industry it was a glorious industry. Mark Twain decided that if Shakes peare’s plays were not written by Shakespeare, they were written by some one else of the same name. So if the movies are not an art, they are Something else quite as artistic. To Remember Steddon they were her first language for expressing her turbulent self. To her they were Philosophy and criticism of life; painting and sculpture given motion and infinite velocity with perfect re cord. They were many wonderful things to Men as to the myriads of bright spirits that had flocked to this new banner, golden calf, or brazen serpent, as you will. And now Mem, having tasted of the sor- rows of the movies, was athirst for the Ught wine. Clowning at its best {9 a supernal wisdom, and Chaplin's “The Idle Class." was full of laugh- ter that had an edge—a comment on humanity, a rejoinder, ff not an an- swer, to the riddles of existence and its conduct. He played a dual role tn this plo ture, both a swell and the tramp he had made as classic as Plerrot. Ac- cording to what plot there was, the aristocratic loafer and tippler of the first impersonation forgot to meet his wife at the train, the train on which the tramp had stolen a ride to his favorite resort, There was mockery not only of pompous toffery, but of serious emo- tion as well. When the besotted young swell receives from his neg: d wife a letter saying that she never seo him agnin until he stops drinking, he turns away, and his shoulders seem to be agitated wit hsobs of remorse. But when he turns round {t {s seen to be a cock- tall that he ts shakking. The jester was tweaking the nose of love and repentance and bringing all the high {deals off the shelf with a bang. The audience, bullied a little too well by trite nobilities, roared with emancipation Again when he dresses In a suit of armor for the costume ball, he can- not resist one more cocktail, But just as he lifts it to drain the glass the visor of his helmet snaps down and it will not be opened for all his fran- tie struggles and the painful efforts of those who come to his ald. The leant intellectual spectator shouting at his antics could not but feel the satirica! allegory of all life, wherein the visor always falis and locks wher. the brim is at the lip. But the triumph of joyous cynicism was the last flash. The big brute who has roughly handled and des pised the ragged tramp repents of his cruelty and runs to humble him- self in apology. The tramp listens to his beautiful self-abasement and everyone expects a gracious finish, but the fncorrigible clown gives the penitent a kick in the behind and runs away. said it so dolefully, Perhaps because (Continued Next Sunday)