Part 8

To the Captain this last, though, was not to be numbered among the lesser verities. It was a very great and outstanding fact and a fact indisputable by any person inclined to be in the least degree fair-minded. He had served four years as a soldier under General Lee--a private at eighteen, a company commander at twenty-one. To have been a Confederate soldier was a more splendid and a more gallant thing even than being a member of one of the old families. He told her that half a dozen times a day. He told her many men of her family had been Confederate soldiers, too; some of them officers of high rank. She began, without conscious effort, to think of them as members of her family who belonged to her and to whom, through the binder of blood ties, she belonged.

By virtue of a certain adaptability of temperament she did more than this. That flexible mimetic quality which enabled her to slip easily into any given rôle lent itself to the putting on of a passable semblance to a full-flowered creation which might never have existed at all excepting in Captain Teal's fancy, and one which we know probably doesn't exist at all nowadays but which all the same was to him very real, as being the typical well-bred Southern woman of all days and all times--a sprigged-muslin, long-ringletted, soft-voiced, ultra-maidenly vision. Physically she differed from this purely abstract picture; concretely she strove to fit herself into the frame of that canvas. To herself she had an acceptable excuse for the deception. For one thing, it was good business. Her venerable admirer should know if anybody did what real old-fashioned Southern girls were like. And to one who had modeled after his pet pattern there must, sooner or later, come an opportunity to play the rôle before the camera.

So, through three weeks of that Hollywood autumn, they waited, each of them, for the call to work; and while their funds shrank, they met regularly for meals and they took strolls together and she gave to him most of her evenings. He spun his droning reminiscences of dusty years and deplored the changes worked by a devastating modernism, and she postured and posed and, bit by bit, built up and rounded out her amended characterization--a self-adopted daughter of the Lamars and Claytons--and constantly did her level best to look and act and be the part.

This went on until the end of the third week, at which point Destiny, operating through the agency of Mr. Andrew Gillespie, took a hand in their commingled affairs.

Gillespie, coming in off the lot to the head offices, was pleasantly excited over his new notion. He revealed it with no preamble:

"Say, you two, I've got an idea for livening up that big fight scene a little bit."

The executive head gave a grunt which terminated in a groan. He craved to swear; but not even Mr. M. Lobel, of Lobel's Superfilms, Inc., dared swear now. Employees whose salaries ranged above a certain figure might be groaned at but could not, with impunity, be sworn at. The ethics forbade it; also such indulgence might result in the loss of a desired director or a popular star. And Gillespie appertained to the polar list of the high salaried. So Mr. Lobel merely groaned.

"What's the matter?" asked Gillespie sharply.

"Nothing, nothing at all, only I am thinking," rejoined Mr. Lobel, with sorrowful resignation. "I am thinking that only two days ago right here in this very room you promised me that positively without a question you would keep down the expensives from now on on this here dam' costume production which already it has run up into money something frightful."

"Who said I was going to spend any more money?"

"An idea you just mentioned, Gillespie," stated Mr. Lobel, "and with you I got to say it that ideas are usually always expensive."

"This thing won't cost anything--it won't cost a cent over a couple of hundred for salary, costumes, props and all, if it costs that much. And it'll put a little note of newness, a kind of different touch into that battle scene; that's what I'm counting on."

"Oh, well, Gillespie, in that case--" The grief was lifting from Mr. Lobel. He turned to his second in command. "Wasn't I only just now saying to you, Milton, that Gillespie is the one always for novelties?"

The director chose to disregard the compliment.

"Do you recall that handsome-looking old scout that I brought back with me here last month from the Southern trip?"

"Like a skinny Santa Claus, huh? Sure, I seen him," said Mr. Lobel, "and wondered what you was maybe going to do with him."

"Me, too," said Mr. Liebermann, affectionately known among lesser members of the staff as "Oh-yes-yes Milton." "The one with the w'ite w'iskez, you mean. Also I wondered about him."

"Well, then, here's the answer," explained Gillespie. "Just a few minutes ago it came to me. I'm going to give him a bit to play in the Gettysburg stuff. Did either of you two ever happen to hear of John Burns?"

"Let me think--the name comes familiar," said Mr. Lobel; "wasn't he a middle-weight prize-fighter here some few years back? Let's see, who was it licked that sucker?"

"No, no, no," Gillespie broke in on the revery. "I mean the John Burns of the poem."

"Sure," assented Mr. Liebermann, who prided himself that although somewhat handicapped by lack of education in his earlier days he had broadened his acquaintance with literary subjects after he quit dress findings and tailors' accessories. "What Gillespie means, Lobel, is the notorious poet, John Burns."

"Are you, by any chance, referring to Robert Burns, of Scotland?" demanded Gillespie with a burr of rising indignation in his voice. Gillespie had been born in the land of cakes and haggis.

"Robert or John or Henry, what's the odds?" countered Mr. Liebermann, and shrugged. "Are you, anyhow, so sure it was Robert? Seems to me--"

"Am I sure? Oh, Lord!" With an effort Mr. Gillespie regained control of his feelings. "The poet I am thinking of was the American poet, Bret Harte. And Harte wrote a poem about old John Burns of Gettysburg. I don't believe that even you ever read that particular poem, Milt." His elaborated sarcasm was lost, though, on Mr. Liebermann. "Anyhow, I'm going to introduce the character of John Burns into the main battle-shots. And this old-timer of mine is going to play him. We can use extracts from the poem for the sub-titles. That's what I came over to tell you, Lobel, not to discuss with our cultured friend here whether the noblest poet that ever lived--a genius that every school child in this country should be familiar with--was named Robert Burns or Oscar Burns or Isadore Burns. By the way, have either of you seen Herzog this morning? He hasn't been on the set, or if he has I missed him. I want to send him in to Hollywood to the address where the old boy's stopping."

* * * * *

Herzog may have been a capable assistant-director--the film world so acclaimed him--but as an emissary his performances might be open to criticism as lacking in some of the subtler shadings of diplomacy.

All went smoothly at the meeting in Mrs. H. Spicer's parlor until after he delivered the purport of his superior's message, Captain Teal harkening attentively.

"Very well, sir," said the Captain. "I am indebted to you, sir, for bringing me this summons. Kindly present my compliments to Mr. Gillespie and inform him that I shall report for duty tomorrow morning promptly on the hour named."

"He ain't waiting for any compliments, I guess," said Herzog. "What he wants is for you to be there on time so's we can give you the dope on the bit you're going to play and get you measured for the clothes and all. Did I mention to you that you're cast for a battle scene? Well, you are. Possibly you seen some of this here war-stuff in your day, eh?"

"Sir," said the Captain stiffly, "I had four years of service in a heroic struggle such as this world never before had seen. Permit me to ask you a question: Possibly--I say possibly--you may have heard of the War Between the Sections for the Southern Confederacy?"

"Well, if I did, it wasn't by that name," confessed the tactless Mr. Herzog. "What's the diff', if I did or I didn't?"

"None whatsoever, sir, to you," stated Captain Teal. "The difference to me is that I took part in that great conflict." But his irony was lost and spent itself on the soft California air. By clamping his hat, which he had worn throughout the interview, more firmly down upon his head, Mr. Herzog, still all tolerant affability, now indicated that he was about to take his departure.

"One moment, if you please," added Captain Teal. "There is another matter which I desire may be brought to the attention of my worthy friend, Mr. Gillespie." He spoke as one conferring favors rather than as one who just had been made the recipient of a favor. "Stopping here in this same establishment is a most gifted young Southern lady--a Miss Blossom Lamar Clayton. She has had experience of the dramatic profession; I would say she has undoubted gifts. But as yet she has been unable, through lack of suitable opportunity, to demonstrate her abilities in the local field. Personally, I am most deeply interested in her future--"

"Why, Foxy Grandpa, you old son of a gun!" exclaimed the edified Mr. Herzog. With a jovial thumb he harpooned the Captain in the ribs. "What do you mean, you old rascal, hooking up with a skirt at your age?"

"Sir," said Captain Teal, in an awful, withering voice, "it pleases you to be offensive. The young lady in question not only is my protégée, in a way of speaking, but I have the very great honor to be distantly related to her family. Do I make myself sufficiently plain to your understanding? And kindly remember also that my name to you, sir, and all your ilk is Teal, Captain Rodney Teal, sir."

But Mr. Herzog declined to wither.

"No offense," he said. "Just let me see if I get the big idea? I suppose you want Gillespie to give the gal the once-over and see whether he can use her?"

"In other words than those you use, that, sir, was the concern I had in mind," said Captain Teal.

"Well, then, why not bring her along with you in the morning?" suggested Mr. Herzog, with a placating gesture, he being now vaguely contrite over having in some utterly inexplicable way given offense to this touchy old party, and somehow impressed by the other's tremendous show of outraged dignity. "I suppose there's no harm in that. If Gillespie likes her looks he might give her a show at some little thing or other; you never can tell. And he's a great hand for making his own finds. And if he don't fall for her you pass her along to me for a screen test, and if she comes clean there I might work her in among the extras and let her pick up a little money that way to carry her along. Get me?"

Which generous avowal so mollified the old Captain that, in token of his forgiveness and his gratitude, he bestowed upon Mr. Herzog a most ceremonious handshake at parting.

As it turned out, here was one beginner who needed no rehearsals. Noting how aptly the aged novice seemed to slip into the personality of the part as soon as he had put on the costume, with its saffron vest, its curl-brimmed, bell-crowned high hat, its blue coat that was swallow-tailed and tall in the collar, "and large gilt buttons size of a dollar"--see the poem for further details--Gillespie decided that a rehearsal might be a mistake. It might make this eleventh hour addition to the cast self-conscious, which of course was what Gillespie above all things desired to avoid. He didn't want Captain Teal to try to act. As he repeatedly emphasized, he just wanted him to be himself.

Nor did it occur to Gillespie, any more than it occurred to Herzog, assisting him in the day's job, to take the old man into their confidence touching on what of theme and development had gone before in the making of this masterpiece of an historical production, or on what would follow after. Players of character bits are not supposed to know what the thing's about. Indeed, there are times when the patron of the silent drama, going to his favorite theater and viewing the completed work, is inclined to believe that some of the principal performers could have had but a hazy conception of what it was all about. Nobody, one figures, ever explained the whys and wherefores to them, either. However, that is neither here nor there, this being no critique of the technique of the motion-picture art but merely an attempt to describe an incident in the filming of one particular scene in one particular motion-picture, namely the epic entitled "Two Lovers of War-Time."

There should have been a broad sea of ripening wheat rolling upward along a hillside slope to a broken stone wall. Gillespie, usually a stickler for the lesser verities, was compelled to forego the ripening wheat because, while outdoor stagecraft has gone far in these later times and studio stagecraft has gone still farther, you cannot, in California in the fall of the year, months after the standing crop has been cut, artificially produce a plausible semblance of many acres of nodding grain all ready for the reaper. So he contented himself with a stubble field, and privately hoped no caption observer would record the error. But the traditional stone fence, which is so famous in song and story, was there. And thither the Captain was presently escorted.

"Now, here's the layout," specified Herzog, who actively was in charge of this phase of the undertaking. "You're supposed to be the only civilian"--Herzog pronounced it _civil-an_--"the only civilian in the whole town that didn't beat it when the enemy came along. All the rest of 'em took it on the run to the woods but you stuck because you ain't scared of nobody. You're one of these game old patr'ots, see? So you just loaded up your old rifle and you declared yourself in. So that makes you the hero of the whole outfit, for the time being. Get me?... Good! Well, then--now follow me clos't, because this is where the real action starts--the very next morning you happen to be out here on the edge of the town and right over yonder is where the big doings bust out. The book that the chief got the notion for these shots out of don't say how you got here in the first place but we're taking it for granted, me and Gillespie are, that you're just fiddling around looking for trouble on your own hook. The book does say, though--it's a poetry book--that your gang get a slant at you when you show up and they start in making funny cracks and asking you where you got them funny clothes you got on and asking you what you think you're going to do anyhow with that there big old musket you're lugging with you.

"But I figure that would kind of slow up the action, so I've changed it around some from the way the book's got it. The way it's going to be is the battle gets going good before you join in. One gang--one army, I mean--is behind that fence and the other army comes running up towards 'em from down at the foot of that hill yonder, whooping and yelling and shooting and all. And with that, you cut in right between 'em, all by your lonesome, and take a hand. That brings you out prominent because you're the only guy in sight that's dressed different from everybody else. All the rest of these guys are in soldier's clothes. So this gives you your chance to hog the picture for a w'ile. It's good and fat for you along here.

"Well, then, that other army that I've just been telling you about comes charging on right up to the wall and there's close-in fighting back and forth--hand-to-hand stuff, what I mean--for two or three minutes before the break comes and the gang that is due to be licked decide they've had enough and start retreating. And all this time you're right in the thick of it, shooting first, and then when your gun's empty you club it by the barrel and fight with it that way. Don't be afraid of being too rough, neither. These extras are under orders to go at one another raw, so it'll be more like a battle ought to be. Them that puts the most steam into it will get a finnuf slipped to 'em. They know that, and I wouldn't be surprised but what probably a couple of dozen of 'em should get laid out in earnest; so you needn't feel backward about wading in and doing your share. Just put yourself right into it, that's the idea, and cut loose regardless. I'll be off to one side cueing you through my megaphone which way to go when they first pick you up for the long shots, but after that it's all up to you. Don't think about the camera nor nothing else. Don't look at a camera. Don't look around, even to see where any of the cameras are. But then, seeing you told me yourself only last week about having fought in one of them regular wars, I guess I don't need to tell you how to go to it. It'll all come back to you in less than a minute, I'll bet you.... Now then, come on over here and let me get you set."

Herzog's optimistic prediction was justified. In less than a minute it did come back to Captain Teal. The first preliminary crackle of musketry fire brought it back to him with a mighty surge of clamoring, swirling memories. The first whiff of acrid powder smoke in his nostrils, the first sight of those ragged gray uniforms, those dusty blue uniforms, changed the memories into actualities. The weight of sixty years slipped off his shoulders; the rich saps of youth mounted for a little passing time into his pithy marrows, giving swiftness to his rickety legs and strength to his withered arms. It was proof of what an imagination fired by vivid reminders of clanging bygone things could do for an ancient's body.

Headlong once more into battle went Captain Teal, and as he did he uttered sundry long-drawn wolfish yells, one yell right behind another, until you would have thought, had you been there to listen, that his throat surely must split itself wide open.

In he went, and he took sides. He took the wrong side. That is to say, and speaking from strictly a technical standpoint, he took the wrong side. But from Captain Teal's standpoint he took the right side and the only side which with honor he might take. To be sure, no one beforehand had advised him specifically in this matter of taking sides. It had been Herzog's oversight that he had not dwelt more clearly upon this highly important point, which he had assumed his venerable pupil would understand. And now it was Herzog's handicap, as the Captain's intention became plain, that Herzog's hoarsely bellowed commands--commands at the outset but merging swiftly into harsh and agonized outcries--should fall upon that ear of Captain Teal which was his deafer ear.

Not that it would have made any difference to Captain Teal had he been able to hear. With his head back and his parted white whiskers flowing rearward over his shoulders, with the Rebel yell still shrilly and constantly issuing from him, he went in and he took command of those onrushing supernumeraries who wore the gray, and he bade them go with him and give the Yankees hell, and he led them on up the hill to where the blue-clad forces held its crest. Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do or die; which, as may be recalled, was once upon a time precisely and identically the case with other doughty warriors taking part in an earlier onslaught upon the serried field of battle. If, at the last moment their overlords chose to amend the preordained course of events, so be it. Since confusion and chaos were to rule the hour, why then in that case might the best man win. Behold, now, how all drilled plans had suddenly been tossed aside; but at least they had a fit commander to follow after. And at least they knew the purport of that most dwelt-upon and salient order--to smite and spare not. They were lusty lads, these extras, no lustier perhaps than the Unionists yonder awaiting the clash and grapple, but better captained.

And so, while the obedient camera-men kept on grinding, and while Herzog shrieked and impotently danced and finally, casting his megaphone from him, stood and profaned his Maker's name, Long John Burns led Pickett's charge, and Gettysburg, after sanguinary losses on both sides, was a Confederate victory, and American history most wondrously was remade.

* * * * *

"Ow!" Mr. Lobel heaved the sorrowful expletive up from his lower stomach spaces. "All them extras to pay for all over again! All them re-takes to be retook. All that money wasted because a crazy old loafer must run--must run--" He grasped for the proper word.

"Run amuck," supplied Liebermann, proud of his erudition.

"--Must run a regular muck. Yes, if you should ask me, one of the worst mucks ever I have seen in my whole life," continued Mr. Lobel. "And you it was, Gillespie, that stood right here in this office only last Toosday of this week and promised me you should keep down expensives. Who's a man going to believe in this picture business? I ask you!"

"What of it?" said Gillespie. "It was worth a little money to let the old laddy-boy get the smoke of battle in his nose once more before he dies and have a thrill. I didn't think so awhile ago when he was rampaging through that flock of extras, but I'm beginning to think so now. We'll tell him he's just a trifle too notionate for this game and pay him off--with a wee something on the side for a bonus. If you won't do it I'll do it myself out of my own pocket. And then we'll ship him back to that sleepy little town where he came from. Anyhow, it's not a total loss, Lobel, remember that. We're going to salvage something out of the wreck. And we owe the old boy for that."

"What do you mean, salve something out of it?" inquired Mr. Lobel.

"We grab off that little Clayton girl--the one I tried out in those interior shots yesterday. She's got it in her, that kid has. I don't mean brains, although at that I guess she's about as smart as the average fluffy-head that's doing ingénues along this coast. But she's got the stuff in her to put it over. Tell her a thing once and she's got it. And she screens well. And she's naturally camera-wise. She'll go a good way, I predict. And if it hadn't been for the old man we wouldn't have her. He practically rammed her down my throat. It seems she's his cousin, eight or ten times removed, and nothing would do him but that I must hitch her onto the payroll. To get him in the proper humor I had to take her on. But now I'm glad of it. I'll be wanting a little contract soon for this Clayton, Lobel, so we'll have her tied up before somebody else begins to want her. Because, sooner or later, somebody else will."

* * * * *

Traffic swirled past the two Southerners where they stood in a side eddy in the train shed. They were saying good-by, and now all at once the girl felt a curious weakness in her knees as though she were losing a dependable prop.

"I must get aboard," he said, looking down at her from his greater height. "We'll be leaving in a minute or so. You need not distress yourself about me, my dear. I could never have been happy for very long in this place--it's not like our country. These Northern people mean well no doubt; but after all they're not our people, are they? And this avocation was not suited for one of my years and--and antecedents; that I also realize. I have no regrets. In fact"--a flare lit in his faded old eyes--"in fact, I greatly enjoyed the momentary excitement of once more facing the enemies of our beloved land--even in make-believe. Indeed, I enjoyed it more than I can tell. I shall have that to look back on always--that and the very great pleasure of having known you, my dear."

He lifted her hand and kissed it and started away, and she saw him going--a picture out of a picture book--through a sudden mist of tears. But he came back for one more farewell passage: