CHAPTER THREE
PATRICIA TAKES HER STAND
A young man of intelligence may absorb a great many psychological truths while helping to build in pictures mock dramas more or less similar to real, human problems. Gary wore a brain under his mop of brown hair, and he had that quality of stubbornness which will adopt strategy—guile, even—for the sake of winning a fight. To-night, he chose to assume the air of defeat that he might win ultimate victory.
Gary had not the slightest intention of ruining his own future as well as Patricia’s by yielding with an easy, “Oh, very well” surrender, and going away into the wilds of Nevada to attempt the raising of cattle in a district so worthless that it had never so much as seen a surveyor’s transit. Desert it must be; a howling waste of sand and lizards and snakes. The very fact that Patricia had been able, with a few thousands of dollars, to buy out a completely equipped cattle ranch, damned the venture at once as the mad freak of a romantic girl’s ignorance. He set himself now to the task of patiently convincing Patricia of her madness.
Patricia, however, was not to be convinced. For every argument of Gary’s she found another to combat it. She repeated more than once the old range slogan that you simply can’t lose money in cattle. She told Gary that here was an opportunity, sent by a watchful Providence, for him to make good in a really worth-while business; and urged upon him the theory that pioneering brings out the best qualities in a man.
She attacked furiously Gary’s ambition to become a screen star, reminding him how cheap and paltry is that success which is based only upon a man’s good looks; and how easily screen stars fall meteorically into the hopeless void of forgotten favorites.
“It isn’t just that I’ve dreamed all my life of owning cattle and living away out in the wilderness,” she finished, with reddened cheeks and eyes terribly in earnest. “I know the fine mettle you’re made of, Gary, and I couldn’t see it spoiled while they fed your vanity at the studios.
“I had the money to buy this cattle ranch at Johnnywater—but of course I knew that I should be perfectly helpless with it alone. I don’t know the business of raising cattle, except that I know the most popular kinds of stock food and the prices and freight rates to various points. But you were born on a cattle ranch, Gary, and I knew that you could make a success of it. I knew that you could go and take charge of the ranch, and put the investment on a paying basis; which is a lot better than just leaving that money in the bank, drawing four and a half per cent. And I’ll go on with the milling company until the ranch is on its feet. My salary can go into what improvements are necessary. It’s an ideal combination, I think.”
She must have felt another argument coming to speech behind Gary’s compressed lips; for she added, with a squared chin to give the statement force,
“This isn’t threatening—a threat is always a sign of conscious weakness. I merely wish to make the statement that unless you go over and take charge of the Johnnywater ranch, I shall go myself. I absolutely refuse to sell. I don’t know anything about running a ranch, and I was never on a horse in my life, so I’d undoubtedly make a beautiful mess of it. But I should have to tackle it, just the same; because I really can’t afford to positively throw away five thousand dollars, you know. I should have to make some attempt to save it, at least. When I failed—as I probably should—I’d have to go away somewhere and get a job I hated, and develop into a sour old maid. Because, Gary, if you flatly refused to take charge over there, as you threaten to do, we certainly couldn’t marry and expect to live together happily with Johnnywater ranch as a skeleton in our closet.
“So that’s where I stand, Gary. Naturally, the prospect doesn’t appeal to you at this moment. You’re sitting here in a big, overstuffed chair, fed on good things, with a comfy cushion behind your shoulders and a shaded light over your head. You look very handsome indeed—and you know it just as well as I do. You are perfectly aware of the fact that this would make a stunning close-up of you—with the camera set to show your profile and that heart-disturbing wave over your right temple.
“Just at this minute you don’t particularly care about sitting on a wooden chair in a cabin away out in the wilderness, hearing coyotes howl on a hill and your saddle horses champing hay in a sod-roofed stable, and you thinking how it’s miles to the nearest neighbor—and an audience! You’ve reached the point, Gary, where a little mental surgery is absolutely necessary to your future mental health. I can see that your soul is beginning to show symptoms of going a tiny bit flabby. And I simply loathe flabby-souled men with handsome faces and shoulders as broad as yours!”
That was like jabbing Gary in the back with a hatpin. He sat up with a jerk.
“Flabby-souled! Good Lord, Pat! Why pile up the insults? This is getting good, I must say!” He leaned back in the chair again, the first effect of the jab having passed. “I can stand all this knocking the movie game—I’m used to it, heck knows. I might just point out, however, that making a living by expressing the emotions of men in stories is no worse than pounding a typewriter for a living. What’s the difference whether you sell your profile or your fingers? And what do you think——”
“I think it’s ten o’clock, Gary Marshall, and I’ve said what I have to say and there’s no argument, because I simply won’t argue. I suppose you’ll need sleep if you still have to be at the studio at seven o’clock in the morning so that you can get into your painted eyebrows and painted eyelashes and painted lips for the day’s smirk.”
Gary heaved himself out of his chair and reached for his hat, forgetting to observe subconsciously how effectively he did it. Patricia’s mental surgery had driven the lance deep into his pride and self-esteem, which in a handsome young man of twenty-four is quite as sensitive to pain as an eyeball. Patricia had omitted the mental anesthetic of a little flattery, and she had twisted the knife sickeningly. Painted eyelashes and painted lips nauseated Gary quite suddenly; but scarcely more than did the thought of that ranch of a hundred cattle in a Nevada desert, which Patricia had beggared herself to buy.
“Well, good night, Pat. I must be going. Awfully pleasant evening—great little dinner and all that. I wish you all kinds of luck with your cattle ranch. ’Bye.”
Patricia did not believe that he would go like that. She thought he was merely bluffing. She did not so much as move a finger until he had shut the door rather decisively behind him and she heard his feet striking firmly on the cement walk that led to the street.
A slight chill of foreboding quivered along her spine as the footsteps sounded fainter and fainter down the pavement. She had known Gary Marshall for three years and had worn a half-carat diamond for six months. She had argued with him for hours; they had quarreled furiously at times, and he had registered anger, indignation, arrogance and hurt pride in several effective forms. But she had never before seen him behave in just this manner.
Of course he would hate that little slam of hers about the paint and the profile, she told herself hearteningly. She had struck deliberately at his pride and his vanity, though in justice she was compelled to confess to herself that Gary had very little vanity for a man so good-looking as he was. She had wanted him to hate what she said, so that he would be forced to give up the movie life which she hated. Still, his sudden going startled her considerably.
It occurred to her later that he had absent-mindedly carried off her papers. She remembered how he had stuffed them into his coat pocket—just as if they were his and didn’t amount to much anyway—while the argument was going on. Well, since he had taken them away with him he would have to return them, no matter how mad he was; and in the meantime it might do him good to read them over again. He couldn’t help seeing how she had burned her financial bridges behind her—for his sake.
Patricia brushed her eyes impatiently with her fingers and sighed. In a moment she pinned on an apron and attacked the dinner dishes savagely, wondering why women are such fools as to fall in love with a man, and then worry themselves into wrinkles over his shortcomings. Six months ago, Gary Marshall had not owned a fault to his name. Now, her whole heart was set upon eradicating faults which she had discovered.
“He shall not be spoiled—if I have to quarrel with him every day! There’s something more to him than that mop of wavy brown hair that won’t behave, and those straight eyebrows that won’t behave either, but actually talk at you—and those eyes—— That darned leading girl can’t make me believe it’s all acting, when she rolls her eyes up at him and snuggles against his shoulder. That’s my shoulder! And Gary says selling your profile is like selling your fingers! It might be—if the boss bought my fingers to kiss! And I don’t care! It was positively indecent, the way Gary kissed that girl in his last picture. If he wasn’t such a dear——”
Patricia snuffled a bit while she scraped chicken gravy off a plate. Gary’s plate. “Let him sulk. He’ll come back when he cools off. And he’ll have to give in and go to Nevada. He’ll never see me lose five thousand dollars. And those nasty little movie queens can find somebody else to roll up their eyes at. Oh, darn!”