IT was Sunday; and it was in May. To Whitewater Farms floated the sound of bells from three village churches, pealing alternately. With a final three strokes from each bell, Odell and Lister drove out of the horse-barn in the family carry-all. In God’s honour, Odell wore a celluloid collar. Lister’s reverence was expressed in a new scarlet bandanna.
Mazie, big, symmetrical, handsome in her trim summer clothes, appeared from the house, herding her loitering, loutish offspring—Gene, 18; Si, 17; Willis, 16; Buddy, 15; all habited in the dark, ready-made clothing and dark felt hats of rural ceremony, the gloomy similarity relieved only by ready-made satin neck-scarfs of different but primitive hues.
“Where’s Eris?” inquired Odell.
Mazie laughed: “She ain’t ready, what with her curling and her manicure set—busy ’s’a bee from fingers to toes—”
“Eris!” shouted her father, looking up at the open window, where dotted muslin curtains were blowing.
Eris peeped out, her chestnut hair dishevelled.
“Don’t wait,” she said. “I’ll walk.”
Odell gathered the reins: “G’lang!” he grunted.
For twenty minutes or more there was no sound in the House of Odell except the flutter of muslin curtains.
Under the window a lilac bush was vibrant with bumble-bees; robins ran through the grass; blue-birds drifted along the fence from post to post in soft, moth-like flight.
It was quite a while after the kitchen clock struck that light, hurried steps sounded on the stairs.
Eris stepped out on the porch, radiant and in her best.
At twenty she had the slender immaturity of a girl of sixteen. Her slim figure made her seem taller than she was.
Her hat was one of those sagging straw affairs. It tied under the chin with lilac ribbon. Her thin white gown had lilac ribbons on it, too. So did her sun-shade.
She was very late. She walked to the gate, keeping to the brick path on account of her white shoes and stockings.
Here she consulted her wrist-watch. There was no use hurrying now. She glanced up and down the road—possibility of a belated neighbour giving her a lift to the village.
No, it was too late to hurry. Almost too late to go at all.
She looked up at the gate lilacs, broke off a heavy, mauve cluster, inhaled the fragrance.
For a little while, still, she lingered on the chance of a passing vehicle. Finally she returned to her room, took a book from her pillow, took “the key to the fields,” and sauntered off through the hillside orchard, now a wilderness of pink and white bloom.
Everywhere the azure wings of blue-birds; the peach-red of a robin’s breast; the broad golden glint of a flicker flashing through high white bloom.
The breeze which had fluttered her muslin curtains was busy up here, too, blowing white butterflies out of their courses and spreading silvery streaks across tall grasses.
On the hill-top she paused, looking out over the world of May.
Below her lay Whitewater Farms, neat as a group of newly-painted toys, house, barns with their hip-gables, silos, poultry-runs, sheds, out-buildings, whitewashed fences.
A mile south, buried among elms and maples, lay White Hills Village, the spires of its three churches piercing the foliage.
All around, east, west, south, rose low hills, patched with woods, a barn or two in silhouette on some grassy ridge. Ploughed fields, pastures, squares of vivid winter wheat checkered the panorama, the tender green of hard-wood groves alternating with the dark beauty of hemlock and white pine.
Overhead a blue sky, quite cloudless; over all, May sunshine; the young world melodious with the songs of birds. And Eris, twenty, with the heart and experience of sixteen.
Sweet, thrilling came the meadow lark’s calling from the crests of tall elms. It seemed to pierce her heart.
To the breezy stillness of the hill came faintly out of the valley the distant barking of a dog, a cock-crow, answered, answered again from some remoter farm.
Eris turned and looked into the north, where bluish hills spread away into the unknown.
Below her were the Home Woods, where Whitewater Brook ran over silver gravel, under mossy logs, pouring into deep, spreading pools, gliding swiftly amid a camouflage of ferns, gushing out over limestone beds to clatter and sparkle and fling rainbow spray across every sunny glade.
Eris looked down at the woods. To venture down there was not very good for her low-heeled, white sport shoes.... Of course she could clean them after noon dinner and they’d be dry in time for—anything.... But for what?
She paused at the wood’s edge, her mind on her shoes.
“In time for what?” she repeated aloud.
She stood, abstracted, grey eyes brooding the question.
What was there to dress for—to clean her white shoes for? Evening service. A slow stroll with some neighbour’s daughter along the village street. Gossip with other young people encountered in the lamp-lit dark. Banter with boys—passing the usual group clustered on fence or wall—jests born of rural wit, empty laughter, emptier retort—the slow stroll homeward.... This was what she dressed for.... Or for a party ... where the deadly familiarity of every face and voice had long since dulled her interest.... Where there was never any mental outlook; no aspiration, no stimulation—no response to her restless curiosity—where nobody could tell her “why.”
Standing there on the wood’s edge, she wondered why she was at pains to dress becomingly for the sake of such things as these.
She wondered why she cared for her person so scrupulously in a family where a bath a week was the rule—in a community where the drug-store carried neither orange-stick nor depilatory.
It is true, however, that with the advent of short skirts and prohibition it was now possible to purchase lipstick and powder-puff in White Hills. And State Troopers had been there twice looking for hootch.
There was a rumour in local ecclesiastical circles that the youth of White Hills was headed hellward.
As yet the sweet-fern was only in tassel; Eris could pick her way, without danger to her stockings, through the strip of rough clearing. She entered the woods, pensively, amid the dappled shadows of new leaves.
Everywhere her eyes discovered young ferns and wild blossoms. Trillium and bunch-berry were still in bloom; viburnum, too; violets, blue, yellow and white; and a few pink moccasin flowers and late anemones.
Birds, too, sang everywhere; crows were noisy in the taller pines; glimpses of wood-thrush and Veery in moist thickets; clear little ecstasies of bird-song from high branches, the strident chirring of red squirrels, the mysterious, muffled drumming of a cock-grouse far in woodland depths.
Where a mossy limestone ledge hung low over Whitewater Brook, Eris spread her handkerchief and sat down on it carefully, laying her book beside her.
Here the stillness was melodious with golden harmonies from a little waterfall.
There were no black flies or midges yet,—no exasperating deer-flies either. Only gilded ephemera dancing over the water, where, at intervals, some burly trout broke with a splash.
Green-clouded swallow-tail butterflies in floppy, erratic flight, sped through sunny glades. Overhead sailed the great yellow swallow-tail,—in aërial battle, sometimes with the Beauty of Camberwell, the latter rather ragged and faded from last summer’s gaiety, but with plenty of spirit left in her shabby wings.
Sun-spots glowed and waned; shadows flickered; water poured and glided between green banks, aglint with bubbles. The beauty of all things filled the young heart of Eris, reddened her lips, tormented her, almost hurt her with the desire for utterance.
If inexperience really has anything to express, it has no notion how to go about it.
Like vast, tinted, unreal clouds, her formless thoughts crowded her mind—guileless desire, innocent aspiration toward ineffable heights, ambition as chaste as immature.
And when in dreaming preoccupation the clouds took vague form, her unformed mind merely mirrored an unreal shape resembling herself—a magic dancing shape, ethereal, triumphant amid Olympian thunders of applause—a glittering shape, like hers, lovelier, facing the world from the jewelled splendour of the stage—a shadow-shape, gliding across the screen, worshipped in silence by a breathless multitude.
She opened her book. It was entitled: “How to Break into the Movies.” She read for a few moments, gave it up.
It was May in the world; and, in the heart of Eris, April. And a strange, ardent, restlessness in the heart of all youth the whole world over—the renaissance, perhaps, of a primitive, lawless irresponsibility curbed into discipline æons ago. And, after ages, let loose again since the Twilight of the World fell over Armageddon.
Sooner or later she felt she must free mind, heart, body of whatever hampered, and go—go on about her business in life—whatever it might be—seek it throughout the world—ask the way—ask all things unknown to her—learn all things, understand, choose, achieve.
Twenty, in the April just ended! Her time was short. The time to be about her business in life was very near.... The time was here.... It was already here ... if she only knew the way.... The way out.... The door that opened outward....
Lifting her grey eyes she saw a man across the brook. He saw her at the same moment.
He was fat. He wore short rubber boots and no coat. Creel, bait-box, and fishing rod explained his presence on Whitewater. But as to his having any business there, he himself seemed in doubt.
“Hello, sister!” he said jauntily.
“Hello,” said Eris, politely.
“Is it all right for me to fish here?” he inquired. “I’m not trespassing, am I?”
“People fish through our woods,” replied Eris.
“Oh, are they your woods?” He looked around him at the trees as though to see what kind of sylvan property this girl possessed.
“A pretty spot,” he said with condescension, preparing to bait his hook. “I like pretty spots. It’s my business to hunt for them, too. Yes, and sometimes I hunt for dreary spots. Not that I like them, but it’s in my line——” He shoved a squirming worm onto the hook and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Yes, that’s my line—I’m in all kinds of lines—even fish-lines——” He dropped his hook into the pool and stood intent, evidently indifferent to any potential applause as tribute to his wit.
He was sunburnt, fat, smooth-shaven. Thin hair partly covered his head in damp ringlets.
Presently he glanced across at Eris out of little bluish, puffy eyes which sagged at the corners. He winked at her, not offensively:
“Yes, that’s my best line, sister.... Spots! All kinds. Pretty, gloomy, lovely, dreary—oasis or desert, it doesn’t matter; I’m always in the market for spots.”
“Are you looking for a farm?” inquired Eris.
“Farm? Well, that’s in my line, too,—farms, mills, nice old stone bridges,—all that stuff is in my line,—in fact, everything is in my line,—and nothing on my line——” He lifted a dripping bait, lowered it again, winked at Eris.
“I suppose,” he said, “there isn’t a single thing in all the world that isn’t in my line. Why, even you are!” he added, laughing fatly. “What do you think of that, now?”
“What is your line?” she inquired, inclined to smile.
“Can’t you guess, girlie?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Well, I come out this way on location. The bunch is over at Summit. I’m just scouting out the lay over here. To-day’s Sunday, so I’m fishing. I can’t hunt spots every minute.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Eris.
“Why, we’re shooting the sanitarium over at Summit,” he explained, gently testing his line. As there was nothing on it he looked over at Eris.
“You don’t get me, sister,” he said. “It’s pictures. See?”
“Moving pictures?”
“Yeh, the Crystal Film outfit. We’re shooting the ‘Wild Girl.’ It’s all outside stuff now. We’re going to shoot ‘The Piker’ next. Nature stuff. That’s why.”
Once more he drew out and examined his bait. “Say,” he demanded, “are there any fish in this stream?”
“Trout.”
“Well, they seem to be darned scarce——”
“I want to ask you something,” interrupted the girl, breathlessly.
“Shoot, sister.”
“I want to know how people—how a girl——”
“Sure. I get you. I’m glad you asked me. They all ask that. You want to know how to get into pictures.”
“Yes——”
“Of course. So does every living female in the United States. That’s what sixty million women, young and old, want to know——”
He looked up, prepared to wink, but something in her flushed expression modified his jocose intention:
“Say, sister,” he drawled, “you don’t want to go into pictures.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What for?”
“Why are you in pictures?” she asked.
“God knows——”
“Will you please tell me why?”
“I like the job, I guess.”
“So do I.”
“Oh, very well,” he said, laughing, “go to it, girlie.”
“How?”
“Why, I can’t tell you——”
“You can!”
He lifted his bait and flopped it into another place.
“Now, listen,” he said, “some men would take notice of your pretty face and kid you along. That ain’t me. If you break loose and go into pictures it’s a one to a million shot you make carfare.”
“I want to try.”
“I can’t give you a job, sister——”
“Would the Crystal Film management let me try?”
“Nobody would let you try unless they needed an extra.”
“What is an extra?”
“A day’s jobber. Maybe several days. Then it’s hoofing it after the next job.”
“Couldn’t they let me try a small part?”
“We’re cast. You got to begin as an extra, anyhow. There’s nothing else to it, girlie——”
Something jerked his line; gingerly he lifted the rod, not “striking”; a plump trout fell from the hook into the water.
“Lost him, by jinx!” he exclaimed. “What the devil did I do that I hadn’t oughto I dunno?”
“You should jerk when a trout bites. You just lifted him out. You can’t hook a trout that way.... I hope you will be kind enough to give me your name and address, and help me to get into pictures.”
For a while he stood silent, re-baiting his hook. When he was ready he cast the line into the water, laid the rod on the bank, drew out and lighted a large, pallid cigar.
“Of course,” he remarked, “your parents are against your going into pictures.”
“My mother is dead. My stepmother only laughs at me.”
“How about papa?”
“He wouldn’t like it.”
“Same old scenario,” he said. “And I’ll give you the same old advice: if you got a good home, stay put. Have you?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t want to stay put?”
“No.”
“You want to run away and-be-a-great-actress?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Try to do what?”
“Find out what I can do and do it!” she replied hotly, almost on the verge of tears.
He looked up at the delicate, flushed beauty of her face.
It wasn’t a question of talent. Most women have the actress in them. With or lacking intelligence it can be developed enough for Broadway use.
“You young girls,” he said, “expect to travel everywhere on your looks. And some of you do. And they last as long as their looks last. But men get nowhere without brains.”
“I have brains,” she retorted unsteadily.
“Let it go at that. But where’s your experience?”
“How can I have it unless I—I try?”
“You think acting is your vocation, sister?”
“I intend to find out.”
“You better listen to me and stick to a good home while the sticking’s good!”
“I’m going into pictures,” she said slowly. “And that’s that!”
Wearying of bad luck the fat man started to move down stream toward another pool.
The girl rose straight up on her mossy rock, joining both hands in classic appeal, quite unconscious of her dramatic attitude.
“Please—please tell me who you are and where you live!” she beseeched him.
He was inclined to laugh; then her naïveté touched him.
“Well, sister,” he said, “if you put it that way—my name is Quiss—Harry B. Quiss. I live in New York—Hotel Huron. You can find me there when I’m not on location or at the studio.... The Crystal Films Corporation. We’re in the telephone book.”
Mr. Quiss might have added that the Crystal Films Corporation was also on its beam-ends. But he couldn’t quite do that. All he could say was: “Better stick to papa while the sticking’s good, girlie. There’s no money in pictures. They all bust sooner or later. Take it from one who’s been blown sky-high more’n twice. And expects to go up more’n twice more.”
He went slowly toward the pool below, gesticulating with his rod for emphasis:
“There’s no money in pictures—not even for stars. I don’t know where it all goes to. Don’t ask me who gets it. I don’t, anyway.”