Minnie Flynn/Chapter 23
THE iron gates of the huge Western Studio were swung open, and a motley crowd flowed through them. Deane stood beside the watchman, searching among the unfamiliar faces for Minnie. He had a feeling that hers would be unfamiliar, too, that he would have to look twice, sharply into her eyes, before he recognized her. The human tide ebbed past him, a thousand painted faces, hers not among them. Clowns, cowboys, old men, convicts, children, wantons, preachers, models. A dull drone of voices, then sudden silence. Noon hour was scattering the extras to the nearby cafés, cafeterias, lunch counters, lunch wagons. Only late stragglers hurried past him, casting sidelong glances at him, for the face of Hal Deane was well known to them. There were flashing, beckoning smiles for him, for he was a great, influential director and each hoped to make an indelible impression on his mind. He was perhaps searching for types, or why did he bend his eager, penetrating gaze upon each up-turned face that smiled at him?
Where was Minnie Flynn? What channel of escape had she chosen? They had told him he would find her among the crowd. Had she passed him by?
Minnie was playing a small part in Bacon's picture. Bacon had dismissed the people from his set a few minutes before Deane's arrival. Letcher, fat, laughing Letcher, was still the assistant director. It galled Deane to see him unchanged. Why did Life beat its ugly bruises upon the bodies and souls of some, and pass others by?
"For the love of heaven, Deane," Letcher had said. "I didn't suppose you'd even remember her. Wait till you see her! Hand you a laugh! Looks like the breaking up of a hard winter!" When he saw Deane's face darkening, "Poor old girl, we slip her a part once in a while, but she's always kicking up a row. What do you think her latest stunt was?—sore because she couldn't have her own dressing room. Didn't want to hang out with the gang!" He laughed. "Time sure sticks a pin in their toy balloons, all right, all right. The gas can't hold out forever. They come and go. There's Alicia Adams, you remember her back in the old days. Look at her now—the talk of the whole country! Got a wise head on her, too. They say she's begun saving for a wintry day. June's finish gave her an idea to pull in the reins. When she caught Carlton cheating at cards, she kicked him out. He's been bumming around ever since, but he'll make his way—How the women do fall for those tapering legs of his, and that juicy line of bull! Adams is here. Just bought the old Day place. Bacon got a bid to some swell party she's giving—to royalty! She danced with the Prince of Wales when he was out here. Had a slant at her yet?"
Deane had seen her, but he didn't answer, he turned away to check an inclination to bury his fist in Letcher's throat and stop that idiotic laughter. As he walked hurriedly through the studio yards, he side-stepped swiftly to avoid being struck by a car, a canary yellow Rolls-Royce with a crest on the door—Alicia Adams!
Minnie hated the studio lunch room. She seldom went there because it was filled with people she had known. She hated the cafeterias; the burden of carrying her own tray, light as it was, seemed too much for her tired arms. Lunch counters—eating beside the extras—could she afford to do that, to make herself one of them, and acknowledge to everybody that her position was entirely lost?
Not far from the studio was a Chinese chop suey parlor. The main room was a dingy rococo affair, noisy with the clatter of many alien tones, but there were dark booths in back of that room curtained off by swaying rice screens. One of these booths was reserved every noon for Minnie.
"Good Chinky," she said to Tim Gow, the proprietor, "I'll give you a quarter if you'll keep the piano quiet while I'm having lunch here. Gets on my nerves, savvy?"
She was always alone, except on the days when she wasn't working. Then she couldn't afford to be alone; somebody came with her to pay the bill. How grateful she was for work, for that quiet hour in this isolated retreat. In the dark corner of the booth she could relax and think, though thoughts were cruel, mocking, half-formed things that never lived beyond their chrysalis. She liked to be there, sipping the acrid, stimulating tea, tempting her lagging appetite with pungent Chinese foods. Tim Gow often talked to her. He meant well, good fat old man, with a sagging head and inscrutable eyes lit with fanatical mysticism. Tim Gow knew. He brought every day to her table a fortune-telling game that came from Hongkong, his native home. She shook the long, bamboo shafts and let them fall one by one upon the table in front of her.
"Well, Chinky, what do you see in your silly old bamboos for me today? Plenty good luck, eh?"
"Heap plenty good luck bimeby. Maybe."
"Always maybe."
"Velly solly. Heap luck come bimeby. Bamboo say catchem velly good man. You savvy velly good man?"
"If I ever saw a good man again, Chinky, I'd drop dead. They don't make 'em good these days, somebody broke the mold."
"No savvy. Bamboo, he say, velly good man, him come. China bamboo, him no tell lie. Missy wait, him come. Likee noodle? I catchem good noodle now—sub gum."
"All right, and lots of tea, Chinky. Don't forget, quarter if you keep that damned piano off. I'm nervous today, savvy?"
When Tim Gow slippered softly away from her she leaned wearily against the cool wall. A strange disordered figure. Close to her the hum of voices, yet how remote they seemed. Every living thing now seemed remote to Minnie Flynn. Footsteps, passing and repassing her hiding place, but no one would ever stop outside her door and knock, demanding friendly hospitality; she had nothing to give, nothing.
The bamboo shafts lay scattered upon the table before her. Fortune tellers' witchcraft, but not more obscure than life itself. What had been more uncertain than the tumbling promising thin shafts of years that had fallen to such lowly fortune?
Minnie was conscious of a slight effort to raise the gay blue bowl to her lips. "How tired I am." She scarcely glanced up when Tim Gow entered. "What you want, Chinky?"
There was a musical cadence in Tim Gow's thin voice, like half-notes on a Chinese reed harp. "Missy Day, man him come. Him askee, Missy Day. Me say, bimeby, she come, maybe. Tim Gow come fetchum say-so, Missy Day. Tell man go? Tell man come? Maybe lich, him pay. How you wantem?"
"Oh, Lord, I don't want to see anybody. Is it one of the gang, Chinky?"
"No, Missy Day."
"You didn't think to ask his name? What in the devil do you suppose he wants of me? Did he look like one of those yellow belly collectors, you know, Chinky, man comes, get money pronto! Talkee loud voice."
Tim Gow beamed. "Man say, name Bean."
"Bean? Bean? I don't know anybody by that fool name." Then she went white. "It's not—Deane!"
Tim Gow's smile widened until it closed his oblique eyes. "Him Bean. Melican Bean. Savvy? Me ketchum now?"
She sprang to her feet. Her hands swept out, the blue bowl spilled its tea, rolled and fell clattering to the floor. "For God's sake, Chinky, don't let him know I'm here. I don't want to see him. Send him away!"
Tim Gow was picking up the fragments of the broken bowl. He did not answer.
"Send him away, I tell you!" She was rummaging in her frayed pocketbook for her powder puff and rouge box. "I don't want to see him! Hal Deane! I look like a fright! Chinky, push this damn table over, I want to see in the mirror."
Tim Gow's movements were slow with a heavy grace. "Hurry up, he'll get out of here! Oh, this rotten unbecoming hat! No, I don't want to see him! Swing that lantern around, Chinky, throw more light on the mirror."
How kind the soft-glowing yellow lanterns were. "I'm glad he didn't get me out in the sunlight! Take a look, Chinky. He's still there, isn't he?"
With exaggerated caution Tim Gow parted the shimmering rice curtains. He nodded, smiling with his infinite wisdom of human nature. The man who wanted to see her would never leave until he had found her, there was longing like pain in the man's eyes as they searched for her. The good man, whose footsteps crossed the threshold of Tim Gow's chop suey parlor, had been promised by the light shadows of tumbling bamboo shafts.
Tim Gow felt a great compassion for this wretched white girl whose tears had fallen upon the little inlaid mother-of-pearl table he had carried to brighten the booth. Whose tears had wetted the gay paper napkins.
"Do I look like a fright? This lipstick's no good. Bring me another pot of tea before you tell him I'm here, savvy, Chinky? Got a cigarette?"
Deane came into the booth, saw the girl that was Minnie Flynn, gathered her into his arms and held her close until, exhausted by sobbing, he felt her weakening, then he lowered her quietly onto the stool. "Don't cry like that, Minnie, my poor little Minnie. Don't cry, sweetheart. We've found each other at last."
Long, throbbing minutes with no words spoken between them, Deane's arms aching because of the unreleased desire to crush her to him in cruel ecstasy—she was his at last!
"Minnie, darling, I love you. What does it matter what the years have done to you—or me. I love you. I want you—to protect you, my darling. Oh, God, why have I left you so alone—so long! Minnie, say that you forgive me."
She began laughing, an unnatural choking sound as if hands were closing on her throat. "Oh, Hal, what a fool I am, going all to pieces like this. I didn't dream I'd be such an idiot, but when I saw you, I don't know why, but I expected you to be changed, too, and when you came in you looked—just like you did years ago—and the past came back so vividly—the rush of years—you—I—I just lost my balance, Hal." She buried her face in her hands and sagged against the wall. "Don't look at me," she cried suddenly. "No—no, I can't bear to have you look at me!"
He sat there silent, uneasy before the challenge of his own conscience, and looked at her, seeing beyond the crumbling, material shell, the crushed, bruised spirit of Minnie Flynn. There was something pitifully childlike about a failure. He had a feeling that he should talk to her as if she were a very little girl. He would have liked to rock her in his arms, croon to her. But he could think of nothing kind enough to ease her heartache.
Tim Gow, wagging his head, smiling as he communed with his thoughts on the great prophetic wisdom of bamboos, entered the booth and set his most ornate tea service before them. He brought them bowls of white rice, pineapple and mushroom chop suey, sweet almond and rice cakes, and lichee nuts. It was a farewell feast to Missy Day, for she would never come again to his chop suey parlor. He knew, he had studied the meager gestures of humanity, their moves were as transparent to him as her tears that had lain upon his table. The man would take her away with him, the man's eyes were covering her with a veil of love, so the world would never see her again, and she would be hidden from all eyes save his.
"Take it away!" Minnie said to him. "We don't want any food, Chinky. Bring us tea—fresh and strong."
Tim Gow bowed and left them. But he didn't take the feast away with him, he knew that life must be fed, and hunger which always mocks at emotions would make her taste of these dishes which he had prepared with his own hands.
After she had eaten, she felt as if she had a saner grip on herself. She wanted to talk to Hal, about everything, not so much of the past, but of the future which stretched out before her like the road to Calvary. Calvary. What was it that Gilbert Carlton had said to her so many years ago? . . . He wouldn't forgive her if she crawled on her knees clear to Calvary.
"I don't have to go over it all, Hal. You know what's happened. But what does the future hold for me?"
"Me, dear," with a smile, trying to speak lightly so the situation would seem less hectic. "It's not much to offer, but it's all I've got. I'm a pretty important person to me! Not touched the heights that my youthful vanity pointed out as my pinnacle, but keeping my head up—and my feet on the ground."
He held her hand in both of his. It was damp and cold. She was smiling wanly. "A man thinks he's darned sufficient unto himself," said Deane, still trying to keep up the pretense of perfect ease in the presence of Minnie, who grew each long minute more of a stranger to him. "It hurts his vanity when he realizes that his lack of real success in life is because it takes two to make him a perfect unit. I've gone on alone so long, I've gotten in a rut. Only half of me is working. The batteries are running down. I can no longer find stimulus in my own self. Thank God, Minnie, you've come along in time to save me. We'll work this thing out together, I can amount to something with your help."
He saw a fierce spasm of pain pass through her. What he had said was cruel, and he had meant to be kind. Dismissing any hope for her, he had acknowledged to her that there was no hope other than the serving of his future. "Minnie, dear, forgive me. I've been talking at random. I believe I'm more hysterical than you are, and all I want to say is that I've always loved you, and will always love you, and that we need each other. Let us be married today."
She sat there transfixed, staring straight ahead, dry-eyed. She was weeping, but the tears within were dripping onto her heart. Nature was cruel to give them no release.
"Marry me, sweetheart." Deane was pleading with her. "And we'll clear out of Hollywood. Forget it. Shake it like dust off our feet. We can take the train to San Francisco tonight, boats leave there every few days for Honolulu, the Philippines, China. . . . Think of it, Minnie—all the golden romance and mystery of old China will be ours. We'll go on to Java, India, Egypt. I know Egypt now. I'll lead you out to the vast desert into sunsets that are more fiery than the very crucibles of life. We'll find a little boat and drift down the Nile on those silvered, moonlight nights of Egypt. When spring comes, we'll cross the Mediterranean into Spain and see April burst into blossoms under the very ivory walls of the Alhambra. Minnie, my darling, there is so much beauty in the world for eyes that can see it, we can't go groping through the darkness forever. You believe your world has tumbled upon you, just because the dust from these crumbling ruins are in your eyes. But life is infinite, Minnie—it can't be penned up in the narrow confines of one little house. Hollywood is a little, narrow house, Minnie, and some of us have made of it a cell."
His words came breathlessly, mounting and falling with the beating of his heart, strange words filled with poetic imagery that had ever been a part of his latent dreams, but never before a part of his cryptic, colorless speech.
"There are the blue skies of Italy, Minnie dear, skies that seem so close to you, so deep and transparent, you can almost see God's face shining upon you. When summer comes, we will run away to Switzerland, and you will laugh with joy at the little, precise farms, the quaint, intimate villages huddled together like gnarled old peasant women, gossiping about the white-haired men mountains above them."
When Minnie laughed, something gripped Deane's heart. She was opening her eyes to see the beauty of the pictures he was painting. Thank God, the sight was not gone.
"—Like old peasant woman gossiping," she repeated in a dazed, far-away voice, as if it were an echo from her thoughts which had traversed the world in the wake of Hal Deane. "I've seen those little leaning houses in studio sets, with swinging shutters and roofs like shaggy, grass hats. There's one village over in the Pickford Studio—I was working there, doing a little bit in Mary's picture last week, and I said to mama,—she was doing some extra work—how I wished I could travel and see the world before I died." Her face lighting, she bent forward, "Tell me, Hal, is England wonderful?"
He wanted to draw Minnie into his arms, but he was afraid a sympathetic touch, tinged with pity as it would be, might arouse her from the peace of this moment's detachment.
"Wonderful, Minnie dear! The meadows, the vast estates —there is something so charming about the polite little towns that fringe the Thames. And London, Minnie! You won't love it until you know it. London is like the beautifully, ugly face of Abraham Lincoln. Tremendous features, massive, imposing, but not until you look deep into the eyes of London will you find the twinkling humor emanating from a poet's heart."
"Wonderful!" echoed Minnie. "Think of it, Hal. To be married to you, to travel away, far away."
"And I'll teach you to love me, sweetheart."
She leaned wearily against him. "I have always loved you," she said simply. "Not until we have suffered much do we know the real meaning of love. I've been a fool, Hal. I thought it was only friendship."
"Friendship and love and companionship, they will sustain us through the long life ahead of us, for we're still young, Minnie, we've lived only a little span"
"But it was our youth," she interrupted, the bitterness creeping back, "the cream of our lives—soured, and spilled. Ugh!" she shuddered, then shook herself as though awakening from a heavy sleep. "That thought brings me back to earth again!" She faced him, her restless, burning eyes plunging into his. "Hal!" she cried out, "I can't marry you! I won't marry you! I—I've got nothing to give in return for your love."
"Yes, you have, Minnie, your love. You have just told me that you loved me."
"I do, Hal—I love you so much I'll never let you make the sacrifice you're willing to."
"Don't speak of it as a sacrifice—it makes so little of a great passion."
"Oh, yes, it is sacrifice. And all through the years those nasty memories in my past will rise up between us like fearful ghosts—phantoms more tangible than even you or me."
"The past is forgotten, Minnie. I know all you've been through—the ugly things—I'm more to blame than you, knowing the pitfalls, always being away at those moments when you needed me most."
Minnie closed her eyes. How sweet it would be to lay the ghosts of yesterday, to fly from the old life as if from the plague, to be the wife of a man who loved you, whose protection would forever shut away the sordid contacts that had so scarred the past. To find peace.
But what right had she to peace? she asked herself. To contentment? To forgiveness? Had she ever done anything to earn this respite? She who had met all blessings so carelessly, who had gone on so ruthlessly passing the fine things by, living only for greed, and gain, and wanton pleasures, and satisfied desires. Deane would never know all she had been through—he believed he knew—but he didn't—she realized that he was thinking only of Beauregard . . . but what of the others? He would never know about the other men unless she told him—told him how she had broken off her life, piece by piece, and given to so many men to devour—men she had looked upon as steps that would help her climb back to the mocking goal reaching high above her. And they had proven steps, but steps that had led her down, down, down. . . .
Above the weaving of her conscience she heard Deane's voice saying brokenly, "I knew you needed me—I feared for you when Beauregard left for the coast—I betrayed my trust and stayed away from you—how easy to make mistakes when we are forsaken. Poor little Minnie."
She never knew until her confession poured out of her, how much she loved Hal Deane. But she told him, unfalteringly, with a courage born of her awakened love, of each bitter, heart-breaking step downward.
"After Beauregard— How I hated him!—it—it wasn't so difficult to yield—it seemed as if I had given my soul away to him—after that, what did it matter what became of the empty shell? Giving for a single jewel—for a transient position—for an unpaid bill—for money enough to pay our rent—for just a job!"
"Oh, my God, Minnie, don't tell me that! I can't bear it—I can't—you're lying to me!"
"It's the truth, Hal, as only a great love can make you unafraid of truth."
"You're telling me this because you want to send me away—No, Minnie, no—it can't be true. You're mad—you're drugged by your own emotions. Tell me that you're lying to me."
She was thinking it was strange that it should now be she who was reaching out her arms in pitying comfort. She saw him standing there weeping amid the ruins of his fallen ideals, crushed under them. "Hal, darling, don't feel like that, I can't bear it. I love you so. . . . I wanted you to know the truth only because of my love. The truth—coming through clean—before—before I had lost my courage. It's so little—so terribly little—but it is all I have to give. Can you forgive me?"
That she should ask his forgiveness when he believed himself to blame
They clung to each other. "It's dreadful, Minnie. I feel as if something inside of me had died—but it isn't my love. That still lives. I'm not a coward, Minnie, neither am I a brave man. But I'm strong enough to fight, fight for my happiness and yours. I'm still asking you to be my wife."
She did not answer, but leaned over and rang the tinkling bell that would summon Tim Gow. "Hand me my hat, Hal, and my pocketbook. My face must be shining like an apple."
"Minnie, you haven't answered me."
She was searching through her pocketbook for the mirror. "I will never marry you, Hal. I couldn't do it and keep faith with my love, which is the only holy thing left me. If you care deeply as you say you do, please do not speak of it again. I cannot bear any more pain."
Deane stared at her as she pulled the turban over her bobbed hair, now graying at the temples. He sat there in strange quiet, while she drew a powder puff over her face, whiter than the powder itself, and painted scarlet lips upon her mouth. And he knew by the look in her eyes that no pleading would swerve her from her self-sacrifice. He knew also that never again would they speak of their love, but would count their friendship the holy thing that would ever inspire and sustain them. He reached out and kissed her upon the lips, and that caress was a bond they would carry to eternity.
Tim Gow slippered softly into the room. He smiled. He saw writ in the woman's eyes her exaltation. Only her voice, husky, sometimes inarticulate, remained unchanged.
"Bring us the bill, Chinky, we've got to toddle along."
Tim Gow told her there was to be no bill, it was his gift of farewell to his patron, Missy Day.
"Oh, don't worry about it's being my last meal here, Chinky. You're wrong about that. I'll be in tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day."
Why was she laughing? Tim Gow wondered.
"Catchem noodles the same hour every day, do you savvy, Chinky? So hand us over the bill. I can't ride along on any more false pretenses."
Deane left while Tim Gow was still there piling up the little gay bowls. Minnie's eyes had begged him to leave then. He understood. He wanted to spare her the pain of parting.
When he was gone, her eyes closed wearily, and her arms fell heavily upon the table. . . They scattered the bamboo shafts still lying there. Tim Gow picked up the fallen ones that had sifted to the floor under Minnie's feet. "China bamboo no lie. Missy Day catchem good man. Velly good man. Missy Day got happy look in eye. Tim Gow, him got Melican dolla. You get China bamboos tellum tomollow, maybe?"
"Tomorrow—maybe. . . ."
Minnie sat there a long time in a stupor looking at Deane's card lying on the table. His address. And under it written: "Come to me when you need me. I will be always waiting."
The End