Wilmot tottered.
'You are not taking up my option?' he gasped.
'No. You are at liberty to make arrangements elsewhere. I can never marry a poltroon.'
'But, Mabel ...'
'No. I mean it. Of course,' she went on more gently, 'if one day you should prove yourself worthy of my love, that is another matter. Give me evidence that you are a man among men, and then I'm not saying. But, meanwhile, the scenario reads as I have outlined.'
And with a cold, averted face she passed on into the commissary alone.
The effect of this thunderbolt on Wilmot Mulliner may readily be imagined. It had never occurred to him that Mabel might take this attitude towards what seemed to him an action of the purest altruism. Had he done wrong, he asked himself. Surely, to bring the light of happiness into the eyes of a motion-picture magnate was not a culpable thing. And yet Mabel thought otherwise, and, so thinking, had given him the air. Life, felt Wilmot, was very difficult.
For some moments he debated within himself the possibility of going back to his employer and telling him he had changed his mind. But no, he couldn't do that. It would be like taking chocolate from an already chocolated child. There seemed to Wilmot Mulliner nothing that he could do. It was just one of those things. He went into the commissary, and, taking a solitary table at some distance from the one where the haughty girl sat, ordered Hungarian goulash, salad, two kinds of pie, icecream, cheese and coffee. For he had always been a good trencherman, and sorrow seemed to sharpen his appetite.
And this was so during the days that followed. He found himself eating a good deal more than usual, because food seemed to dull the pain at his heart. Unfortunately, in doing so, it substituted another in his stomach.
The advice all good doctors give to those who have been disappointed in love is to eat lightly. Fail to do this, and the result is as inevitable as the climax of a Greek tragedy. No man, however gifted his gastric juices, can go on indefinitely brooding over a lost love and sailing into the starchy foods simultaneously. It was not long before indigestion gripped Wilmot, and for almost the first time in his life he was compelled to consult a physician. And the one he selected was a man of drastic views.
'On rising,' he told Wilmot, 'take the juice of an orange. For luncheon, the juice of an orange. And for dinner the juice –' – he paused a moment before springing the big surprise – 'of an orange. For the rest, I am not an advocate of nourishment between meals, but I am inclined to think that, should you become faint during the day – or possibly the night – there will be no harm in your taking ... well, yes, I really see no reason why you should not take the juice of – let us say – an orange.'
Wilmot stared. His manner resembled that of a wolf on the steppes of Russia who, expecting a peasant, is fobbed off with a wafer biscuit.
'But aren't you leaving out something?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'How about steaks?'
'Most decidedly no steaks.'
'Chops, then?'
'Absolutely no chops.'
'But the way I figure it out – check my figures in case I'm wrong – you're suggesting that I live solely on orange-juice.'
'On the juice of an orange,' corrected the doctor. 'Precisely. Take your orange. Divide it into two equal parts. Squeeze on a squeezer. Pour into a glass ... or cup,' he added, for he was not the man to be finnicky about small details, 'and drink.'
Put like that, it sounded a good and even amusing trick, but Wilmot left the consulting-room with his heart bowed down. He was a young man who all his life had been accustomed to take his meals in a proper spirit of seriousness, grabbing everything there was and, if there was no more, filling up with biscuits and butter. The vista which this doctor had opened up struck him as bleak to a degree, and I think that, had not a couple of wild cats at this moment suddenly started a rather ugly fight inside him, he would have abandoned the whole project.
The cats, however, decided him. He stopped at the nearest market and ordered a crate of oranges to be dispatched to his address. Then, having purchased a squeezer, he was ready to begin the new life.
It was some four days later that Mr Schnellenhamer, as he sat in conference with his fellow-magnate, Mr Levitsky – for these zealous men, when they had no one else to confer with, would confer with one another – was informed that Mr Eustiss Vanderleigh desired to see him. A playwright, this Vanderleigh, of the Little Theatre school, recently shipped to Hollywood in a crate of twelve.
'What does he want?' asked Mr Schnellenhamer.
'Probably got some grievance of some kind,' said Mr Levitsky. 'These playwrights make me tired. One sometimes wishes the old silent days were back again.'
'Ah,' said Mr Schnellenhamer wistfully. 'Well, send him in.'
Eustiss Vanderleigh was a dignified young man with tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles and flowing front hair. His voice was high and plaintive.
'Mr Schnellenhamer,' he said, 'I wish to know what rights I have in this studio.'
'Listen ...' began the magnate truculently.
Eustiss Vanderleigh held up a slender hand.
'I do not allude to my treatment as an artist and a craftsman. With regard to that I have already said my say. Though I have some slight reputation as a maker of plays, I have ceased to complain that my rarest scenes are found unsuitable for the medium of the screen. Nor do I dispute the right, however mistaken, of a director to assert that my subtlest lines are – to adopt his argot – "cheesy." All this I accept as part of the give and take of Hollywood life. But there is a limit, and what I wish to ask you, Mr Schnellenhamer, is this: Am I to be hit over the head with crusty rolls?'
'Who's been hitting you over the head with crusty rolls?'
'One of your executives. A man named Mulliner. The incident to which I allude occurred to-day at the luncheon hour in the commissary. I was entertaining a friend at the meal, and, as he seemed unable to make up his mind as to the precise nature of the refreshment which he desired, I began to read aloud to him the various items on the bill of fare. I had just mentioned roast pork with boiled potatoes and cabbage and was about to go on to Mutton Stew Joan Clarkson, when I was conscious of a violent blow or buffet on the top of the head. And turning I perceived this man Mulliner with a shattered roll in his hand and on his face the look of a soul in torment. Upon my inquiring into his motives for the assault, he merely muttered something which I understood to be "You and your roast pork," and went on sipping his orange-juice – a beverage of which he appears to be inordinately fond, for I have seen him before in the commissary and he seems to take nothing else. However, that is neither here nor there. The question to which I desire an answer is this: How long is this going on? Must I expect, whenever I enter the studio's place of refreshment, to undergo furious assaults with crusty rolls, or are you prepared to exert your authority and prevent a repetition of the episode?'
Mr Schnellenhamer stirred uneasily.
'I'll look into it.'
'If you would care to feel the bump or contusion ... ?'
'No, you run along. I'm busy now with Mr Levitsky.'
The playwright withdrew, and Mr Schnellenhamer frowned thoughtfully.
'Something'll have to be done about this Mulliner,' he said. 'I don't like the way he's acting. Did you notice him at the conference yesterday?'
'Not specially. What did he do?'
'Well, listen,' said Mr Schnellenhamer, 'he didn't give me the idea of willing service and selfless co-operation. Every time I said anything, it seemed to me he did something funny with the corner of his mouth. Drew it up in a twisted way that looked kind of... what's that word beginning with an "s"?'
'Cynical?'
'No, a snickle is a thing you cut corn with. Ah, I've got it. Sardinic. Every time I spoke he looked Sardinia'
Mr Levitsky was out of his depth.
'Like a sardine, do you mean?'
'No, not like a sardine. Sort of cold and sneering, like Glutz of the Medulla-Oblongata the other da
y on the golf-links when he asked me how many I'd taken in the rough and I said one.'
'Maybe his nose was tickling.'
'Well, I don't pay my staff to have tickling noses in the company's time. If they want tickling noses, they must have them after hours. Besides, it couldn't have been that, or he'd have scratched it. No, the way it looks to me, this Mulliner has got too big for his boots and is seething with rebellion. We've another story-conference this afternoon. You watch him and you'll see what I mean. Kind of tough and ugly he looks, like something out of a gangster film.'
'I get you. Sardinic.'
'That's the very word,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'And if it goes on I'll know what to do about it. There's no room in this corporation for fellows who sit around drawing up the corners of their mouths and looking sardinical.'
'Or hitting playwrights with crusty rolls.'
'No, there you go too far,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Playwrights ought to be hit with crusty rolls.'
Meanwhile, unaware that his bread-and-butter – or, as it would be more correct to say, his orange-juice – was in danger, Wilmot Mulliner was sitting in a corner of the commissary, glowering sullenly at the glass which had contained his midday meal. He had fallen into a reverie, and was musing on some of the characters in History whom he most admired ... Genghis Khan ... Jack the Ripper ... Attila the Hun ...
There was a chap, he was thinking. That Attila. Used to go about taking out people's eyeballs and piling them in neat heaps. The ideal way, felt Wilmot, of getting through the long afternoon. He was sorry Attila was no longer with us. He thought the man would have made a nice friend.
For the significance of the scene which I have just described will not have been lost on you. In the short space of four days, dieting had turned my distant connection Wilmot from a thing of almost excessive sweetness and light to a soured misanthrope.
It has sometimes seemed to me (said Mr Mulliner, thoughtfully sipping his hot Scotch and lemon) that to the modern craze for dieting may be attributed all the unhappiness which is afflicting the world to-day. Women, of course, are chiefly responsible. They go in for these slimming systems, their sunny natures become warped, and they work off the resultant venom on their men-folk. These, looking about them for someone they can take it out of, pick on the males of the neighbouring country, who themselves are spoiling for a fight because their own wives are on a diet, and before you know where you are war has broken out with all its attendant horrors.
This is what happened in the case of China and Japan. It is this that lies at the root of all the unpleasantness in the Polish Corridor. And look at India. Why is there unrest in India? Because its inhabitants eat only an occasional handful of rice. The day when Mahatma Gandhi sits down to a good juicy steak and follows it up with roly-poly pudding and a spot of Stilton you will see the end of all this nonsense of Civil Disobedience.
Till then we must expect Trouble, Disorder ... in a word, Chaos.
However, these are deep waters. Let us return to my distant connection, Wilmot.
In the brief address which he had made when prescribing, the doctor, as was his habit, had enlarged upon the spiritual uplift which might be expected to result from an orange-juice diet. The juice of an orange, according to him, was not only rich in the essential vitamins but contained also mysterious properties which strengthened and enlarged the soul. Indeed, the picture he had drawn of the soul squaring its elbows and throwing out its chest had done quite a good deal at the time to soothe the anguish that had afflicted Wilmot when receiving his sentence.
After all, the young man had felt, unpleasant though it might be to suffer the physical torments of a starving python, it was jolly to think that one was going to become a sort of modern St Francis of Assisi.
And now, as we have seen, the exact opposite had proved to be the case. Now that he had been called upon to convert himself into a mere vat or container for orange-juice, Wilmot Mulliner had begun to look on his fellow-man with a sullen loathing. His ready smile had become a tight-lipped sneer. And as for his eye, once so kindly, it could have been grafted on to the head of a man-eating shark and no questions asked.
The advent of a waitress, who came to clear away his glass, and the discovery that he was alone in the deserted commissary, awoke Wilmot to a sense of the passage of time. At two o'clock he was due in Mr Schnellenhamer's office, to assist at the story-conference to which the latter had alluded in his talk with Mr Levitsky. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was time to be moving.
His mood was one of sullen rebellion. He thought of Mr Schnellenhamer with distaste. He was feeling that, if Mr Schnellenhamer started to throw his weight about, he, Wilmot Mulliner, would know what to do about it.
In these circumstances, the fact that Mr Schnellenhamer, having missed his lunch that day owing to the numerous calls upon him, had ordered a plateful of sandwiches to be placed upon his desk takes upon itself no little of the dramatic. A scenario-writer, informed of the facts of the case, would undoubtedly have thought of those sandwiches as Sandwiches of Fate.
It was not at once that Wilmot perceived the loathsome objects. For some minutes only the familiar features of a story-conference penetrated to his consciousness. Mr Schnellenhamer was criticising a point that had arisen in connection with the scenario under advisement.
'This guy, as I see it,' he was saying, alluding to the hero of the story, 'is in a spot. He's seen his wife kissing a fellow and, not knowing it was really her brother, he's gone off to Africa, shooting big game, and here's this lion has got him down and is starting to chew the face off him. He gazes into its hideous eyes, he hears its fearful snarls, and he knows the end is near. And where I think you're wrong, Levitsky, is in saying that that's the spot for our big cabaret sequence.'
'A vision,' explained Mr Levitsky.
'That's all right about visions. I don't suppose there's a man in the business stronger for visions than I am. But only in their proper place. What I say is what we need here is for the United States Marines to arrive. Aren't I right?'
He paused and looked about him like a hostess collecting eyes at a dinner-party. The Yessers yessed. The Nodders' heads bent like poplars in a breeze.
'Sure I am,' said Mr Schnellenhamer. 'Make a note, Miss Potter.'
And with a satisfied air he reached out and started eating a sandwich.
Now, the head of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation was not one of those men who can eat sandwiches aloofly and, as it were, surreptitiously. When he ate a sandwich there was no concealment or evasion. He was patently, for all eyes to see, all ears to hear, a man eating a sandwich. There was a brio, a gusto, about the performance which stripped it of all disguise. His sandwich flew before him like a banner.
The effect on Wilmot Mulliner was stupendous. As I say, he had not been aware that there were sandwiches among those present, and the sudden and unexpected crunching went through him like a knife.
Poets have written feelingly of many a significant and compelling sound ... the breeze in the trees; the roar of waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast; the coo of doves in immemorial elms; and the song of the nightingale. But none of these can speak to the very depths of the soul like the steady champing of beef sandwiches when the listener is a man who for four days has been subsisting on the juice of an orange.
In the case of Wilmot Mulliner, it was as if the sound of those sandwiches had touched a spring, releasing all the dark forces within him. A tigerish light had come into his eyes, and he sat up in his chair, bristling.
The next moment those present were startled to observe him leap to his feet, his face working violently.
'Stop that!'
Mr Schnellenhamer quivered. His jaw and sandwich fell. He caught Mr Levitsky's eye. Mr Levitsky's jaw had fallen, too.
'Stop it, I say !' thundered Wilmot. 'Stop eating those sandwiches immediately!'
He paused, panting with emotion. Mr Schnellenhamer had risen and was pointing a menacing finger. A
deathly silence held the room.
And then, abruptly, into this silence there cut the shrill, sharp, wailing note of a syren. And the magnate stood spellbound, the words 'You're fired!' frozen on his lips. He knew what that sound meant.
One of the things which have caused the making of motion pictures to be listed among the Dangerous Trades is the fact that it has been found impossible to dispense with the temperamental female star. There is a public demand for her, and the Public's word is law. The consequence is that in every studio you will find at least one gifted artiste, the mere mention of whose name causes the strongest to tremble like aspens. At the Perfecto-Zizzbaum this position was held by Hortensia Burwash, the Empress of Molten Passion.
Temperament is a thing that cuts both ways. It brings in the money, but it also leads to violent outbursts on the part of its possessor similar to those so common among the natives of the Malay States. Every Hortensia Burwash picture grossed five million, but in the making of them she was extremely apt, if thwarted in some whim, to run amok, sparing neither age nor sex.
A procedure, accordingly, had been adopted not unlike that in use during air raids in the War. At the first sign that the strain had become too much for Miss Burwash, a syren sounded, warning all workers on the lot to take cover. Later, a bugler, blowing the 'All Clear,' would inform those in the danger zone that the star had now kissed the director and resumed work on the set.
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