Minnie Flynn/Chapter 10
FOR Minnie's second picture, Deane chose a story in which she played the rôle of a chorus girl. In this, she was still "true to type." He had the characterization cleverly developed, and saw to it that no scenes were beyond the range of the mechanics he had taught her.
A capable cast was chosen to surround Minnie. Whenever Beauregard wanted to lend dignity to a production he always engaged a well-known actor or actress from the speaking stage. It meant that he had to pay exorbitant salaries, often four or five times as much as they earned on the stage. They believed they were selling themselves and knew that Beauregard would advertise their appearance in the picture.
Minnie insisted that Alicia Adams be given one of the minor rôles, and Mrs. Lee was to portray exactly what she was in real life, a purveyor of gossip.
For leading man, Beauregard hoped to engage Gilbert Carlton, who had been attracting considerable attention. He was the type which appeals to a certain class of audience made up of impressionable young girls. Only two years before he had left his position of salesman in a Fifth Avenue store to enter the movies. At one time he had been a haberdasher's model, and had posed for some of the well-known commercial illustrators. He was a tall, slender-bodied young man with a V-shaped torso, wide shoulders and a small waist—the type of man whom people who know nothing about athletics call an athlete. He had a round, small head, with heavy waving black hair highly polished with Coty's brilliantine. His lips were full red, and sensuous, his nose well-chiseled; his large, heavily lashed eyes were set wide apart under femininely arched brows. He presented a graceful figure on the screen, though slightly feminine despite his physique.
Deane knew and disliked Carlton, though he was amazed at his natural talent for acting. With no experience on the stage, he stepped into the motion picture business and acquired, after a year's schooling a rather dexterous facility in the portrayal of superficial emotions. Deane despised the man's arrogant personality, his conceit, his drawling, insolent speech and his attitude toward women. Women thought him handsome. He had acquired a facility of patter, which not only was mildly amusing but served as fairly good copy. Married women liked him, because he flirted with studied discretion. Young girls mistook his insolence for the charm of indifference and his curious precision of manner for the very essence of good breeding.
Minnie and Carlton met in Beauregard's office. Her heart quickened at his smile, and he held her hand in his long, warm clasp until she was conscious of the moisture of his palm, until her unquiet eyes had seen the flash of the diamond ring upon the third finger, until she noticed that his nails were pink with a thick coating of liquid nail polish. He was saying pleasantly, "Charmed, Miss Day," laying such emphasis on each word, that it gave her the impression he had inferred some subtle compliment. Al Kessler had just such a trick, but played it crudely. (At least Minnie had grown to detect its crudities.)
Gilbert Carlton was apparently always affable. His manners while not exaggerated were noticeably gallant. He kept his voice within a low range, and when he laughed he filled the room with a ripple of tones, of sharp musical resonance like a xylophone. Until you knew Carlton the laugh seemed spontaneous.
"This is the young lady we wish you to support, Carlton."
Carlton's glance rested with good-humored tolerance upon Minnie, who was suddenly aware of a strange, mounting joy.
"Indeed! How perfectly charming, Miss Day. Corking of you to ask me." Then he turned to Beauregard, giving him a searching, reproachful look: "But why didn't you 'phone a day or so sooner? I'm booked for the next picture, you know. Had no idea that it was something to do right away."
Minnie could not hide her disappointment. When Beauregard motioned her out of the room, she lingered in the hall at the door. She heard the two men talking, Carlton's words jetting forth, brutal, uncomplimentary: "Who the hell do you think I am—asking me to play opposite a nobody!—Whoever heard of this silly little fool?—your girl, I suppose!—Look here, Beauregard, I can play leads with the best of them"
"But there's money in it."
"I don't care how much money there's in it—" and then his voice dropped into the cultivated mellowness again: "No offense, Beauregard, considering that we're old friends—of course she's not a bad looking little Jane and may, as you say, have a very big future before her—sure she's pretty—but what the hell?—the woods are full of them"
Minnie shut her teeth upon a scream. She fled, her face scarlet, tears in her eyes, her heart fiercely insurgent, incoherent threats crowding into her mind, an intensive eagerness for success, only as a weapon with which to humble such a man as Gilbert Carlton.
She sought Deane and frankly told him all about it. "Don't be unhappy over Carlton," he said. "Never worry about a cad. Be glad his bad influence is kept away from you. Men like that only value women for what they get out of them. They're ruthless. They're the takers of the world, they give nothing."
"He isn't any better than Al Kessler," was Minnie's condemnation.
"No better. Smoother. Rating a little bit higher, but in exactly the same scale. I prefer Kessler. He's so obvious that he's harmless. Hams. Both of them suffering from Narcissism. Keep away from them, Minnie."
In the five weeks that passed, Minnie could not forget Carlton. She went to the cafés which she heard he frequented. She saw him several times, but he never recognized her. Some day she would be in a position to strike back. Somehow or other he gave a stinging lash to her ambition: he had called her ignorant, a nobody, a silly little fool.
Deane saw the rapid progress Minnie was making under Mrs. Lowell's tutelage, and regretted it. He despised her new affectations, especially when he caught their reflections in her work. Part of his job was retaining his first impressions of Minnie, holding her to the very gestures she was learning so rapidly to discard.
The first picture reached the public. It opened Sunday at one of the Broadway theaters. The Flynn family was there when the doors of the theater opened. They sat in loge seats, spellbound, all the afternoon, nor did they leave for dinner, though Michael Flynn protested faintly that he was hungry.
The only thing about the picture Mrs. Flynn, Nettie and Elsie did not like were the cheap, drab dresses Minnie wore in her character of shop girl. "Lord, Minnie," whispered her mother, "you'd think you was as poverty-stricken as them Russians down our block. Don't you never put on one of your new outfits?"
Minnie shook her head. "No," she answered, angrily. "Deane would't let me. That's the old tam I got with the first money he gave me. And that sleazy old sweater! I begged him to let me wear my new blue velvet, but do you think that he would?"
Nettie eagerly took up Minnie's criticism of Deane. "He's only got something against you, Minnie. I didn't like that bird the only time I met him. Lord, you would think he was the police judge the way he laid you out stinkin' for just bein' an hour late."
"She won't have to put up with him long," whispered Pete, leaning over to smile upon Minnie. "You've got 'em all skinned, I'll tell the world. Look the way you make the people in this theayter laugh and cry. Honest, Minnie, I never knew it was in you. What do you think about her, papa? Ain't she the berries?"
Michael Flynn was studying the screen as the image of his daughter flickered on and off. "I guess it's all right, Pete. It looks a lot like Minnie up there on the wall, but I somehow can't get used to her bein' in two places at once. I think it's makin' my head ache a little."
Even in the darkness he felt rather than saw his family's sharp critical eyes upon him. His lips moved soundlessly. He knew they were thinking that he hadn't given her enough praise. He said, hurried and confused, "I'd like to have that new pipe fitter down to our place see it. He's a smart fellow. He goes a lot to the movies. They never did make very much sense to me."
Mrs. Flynn sighed. "Your papa was always that backward, Minnie. I've put up with a lot in my life."
"Papa's all right," said Minnie with fond concern. "When I dress him up and take him around with me a little bit, he'll brighten up. You learn most of what you know from other people, anyway. That's what Deane says. You just wait until I get papa out of that rotten old plumbing shop."
A frightful chill passed over Michael Flynn as if Minnie had opened a door and let a brisk cold wind sweep around him. She had become such a force, that she had completely absorbed the others. They followed her blindly, obeyed her implicitly, all but Billy, who was groping for a foothold, struggling to remain himself in spite of Minnie's dominance.
Michael Flynn was more afraid of his children than ever. All Minnie's caresses—her happiness found an outlet in demonstrative affection—drew her away rather than to him. He saw already, with a father's eyes, the ill effects of too much unearned money upon Jimmy and Pete. Neither of them attempted now to look for a steady job. Jimmy never got up before ten o'clock. Introduced to Alicia Adams he spent his evenings, either in her apartment or, when Minnie provided him with enough money, at a vaudeville show, and a cabaret afterwards. He held himself in abeyance, however, for Minnie's calls on the evenings that she wanted to be seen in public. They were generally the evenings following a shopping expedition. Billy never went with them, not after that unhappy evening at Shanley's where Minnie had given her first party to celebrate Nettie's birthday. Billy had humiliated all of them. In the first place he wouldn't let Minnie buy him a new suit of clothes, or even rent him a dinner coat, as she had done for Pete and her father. (Mrs. Lowell had made it clear to Minnie that all gentlemen wore dinner jackets.) And Minnie was so eager to acquire gentility that it was a mortal blow to have around her anyone so unwilling to learn as Billy.
He had sat all through that gay dinner, stonily indifferent to her flushed success, for Minnie was pointed out by several groups of people who recognized her as the girl they had seen so lately on the screen.
Minnie had ordered the dinner, oyster stew, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, ice cream and cake, and two bottles of claret. The claret made her voice rise higher and higher in shrill falsetto. She laughed with no excuse for laughter. Billy had whispered to her father that Minnie was playing the fool. Minnie overheard. They quarreled, and Billy left the table. Michael Flynn, sitting there, rigidly encased in his first stiff shirt, thrust out his head, his wrinkled neck like a turtle's, and cried out in vain to Billy to return.
That evening Minnie would have gone home to sleep if there had been room for her. She and Nettie spent the night in a lower Broadway hotel.
This very hotel room was responsible for another step in Minnie's upward climb. It was the most attractive bedroom Minnie had ever slept in. The wallpaper was blue and the coverlet on the brass bed was blue. The curtains were a blue figured cretonne, faded though still effective. A plain blue rug covered an inlaid polished floor.
Upon arising, Minnie opened the window and looked out over the roof tops. "Classy beds, aren't they," she remarked to Nettie when the latter turned over and rubbed her eyes. "I like blue in a bedroom, it sets off my hair. I was just thinking to myself that with all the money I make I ought to be living in a better place than Schultz's old rooming house."
"I should say you ought to."
"What I should have is an uptown place, an apartment. Somewhere I wouldn't be ashamed to ask the crowd at the studio. I wouldn't have them know the kind of a hole I am living in for anything in the world."
"I don't blame you, Min, with all of your money."
"I've just stayed in that place because of Billy, and he thinks it's nice because he doesn't know any better."
"Honest, Min, how you can stand for that stick-in-the-mud is more than I can see."
"Billy's not so bad, Nettie, he's just stubborn."
"Stubborn, rats! He's pig-headed. I wouldn't have him for a gift, and you, with all of your money, that could pick and choose"
"The only thing I've got against Billy is that he just simply won't try to learn anything. You don't know how hard I've tried to teach Billy little things like saying, 'I' instead of 'me,' and 'did' instead of 'done,' and not to eat with his knife, but switch his fork over from one hand to another. I've found it all simple enough if only you put your mind to it."
Nettie grunted.
"I don't know why I ever took him away from that poor Madge Connors. She's still stuck on him."
"Let her have him then, Minnie"
"Don't forget, Nettie, I ain't—I'm not the only one that's got money. Madge Connors' father can't live forever with that kidney trouble he's got. He's going to leave her a lot of money. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she invested it in Hesselman's. Billy mentioned the other night that she was in to see him about it. He says it's as safe as in a bank. Wanted me to put my money into it. Can you imagine, Net, doing a fool thing like that with my money?"
Nettie laughed scornfully. "Sounds crooked to me," she said. "What's his idea? He won't take little things from you, does he want to hog it all?"
Every one in her family except her father had urged her to leave Billy. But their attack resulted in fostering a protective feeling in her heart. She went back to Billy without protest after he had promised to move from their rooming house.
Minnie found an apartment on Ninety-seventh Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. She paid sixty-five dollars a month for it. It was a long, narrow, dark apartment, with small coffin-shaped rooms. The rear outlook was dingy yards webbed with clotheslines, but through the front room windows was a glimpse of more pretentious house fronts than Minnie had ever known. A negro, in faded spotted livery, stood in the entrance hall. He opened the door, operated the house telephone exchange, and ran the elevator. To the Flynns, he was the very symbol of luxury.
When Minnie and Billy moved in, she asked Elsie and Pete to live with them. Minnie would have preferred Nettie, but the arrangements were made with Pete and Elsie because Elsie could cook and keep house, and Nettie had never learned to do either.
For the first two weeks, Elsie studied Minnie's appetites and tried to serve them. But when Pete kicked about the diet she forgot her obligations to Minnie and sought to please her husband.
Billy seemed no part of the household. He came home, sat silently through dinner, read the evening paper and went to bed, often long before Minnie.
"If Billy didn't look at me with eyes like a dog that's been hurt, I would clear right out and leave him flat," she confided to Elsie one night.
Elsie always thought that Pete would have a better hold on Minnie if Billy were out of the way. "That ain't a dog look," she retorted. "It's just rank stupidity. Billy hasn't got sense enough to get out of his own way. He sits around here all evening as unsociable as if you was nobody at all—hardly answering you when you talk to him. When I showed him your photo in the morning paper and the article about you bein' finished with your second picture, do you think that Billy MacNally read it? I should say not. He laid it over to one side and on my word of honor, he never picked it up again. Pete says he don't give a damn about you, that it's a lucky thing your own family loves you the way it does. Why, look at the way Billy acted tonight when Pete asked him to go down to shoot pool. Told him he couldn't afford to gamble with somebody else's money. Said it so insinuating as if he thought me and Pete didn't work like dogs for every cent we get."
Elsie had a terrible breath. When she got excited she always seemed to cough her words. Minnie drew away from her and went into her own room. She saw she had made a mistake having them there, but it was too late. Elsie served her purpose fairly well, and Pete was going to be of great use to her. Minnie was already looking at second-hand automobiles, and Pete, who had once driven a truck, was going to drive for her. She would buy him a uniform and a cap, and no one at the studio would know that he was her brother. The few who had been at her apartment had never seen Elsie and Pete; part of the arrangement was that they were to remain hidden in the background. Minnie gave them their board and Pete his spending money.
On the day that Minnie signed a year's contract with Beauregard for two hundred and fifty dollars a week she bought a large bright red second-hand Winton.
Minnie never forgot the thrill of driving to the studio in her own car, of her arrival before them all, or of the moment when Pete opened the door for her, stood aside, touched his fingers to his cap and said:
"Shall I wait, miss?"