Spider Boy/Chapter 17
You cur! You contemptible cur! Abel Morris was speaking.
Ambrose immediately surrendered all ambition to live. It was apparently the culmination of his trial by fire on the Pacific Coast that Abel Morris should go mad in his presence and attempt to shoot him.
Well, snarled his persecutor, still levelling the fatal weapon, why don't you say something?
Ambrose, too, wondered why he could say nothing.
I'm going to shoot you dead, the millionaire manufacturer continued to shout, unless you promise to marry my daughter.
Ambrose sank to his knees, unable to understand why no one seemed to hear Morris's bellowing. Speech of the right sort, he was aware, might soothe the madman, but Ambrose's vocal chords were paralyzed and no succour seemed imminent. Submission to the bullet was apparently foreordained.
I'll give you five minutes to make up your mind, the maniac went on, his voice trembling with emotion. Removing his watch from his waistcoat pocket, he placed it on a table where he could easily refer to it.
Ambrose was growing steadily calmer. After all, what had he to live for? Wilhelmina, perhaps . . . but what else? His future looked black. Nothing to look forward to but fame and success, and every day he was learning more about how much one has to pay for fame and success. Why had he ever written that play? An involuntary groan of vain regret escaped from his lips.
Little did I think when I met you you were such a desperate character! Morris yelled. You groan because you're afraid I'll shoot you, but not one word do you let out about your intentions towards my daughter.
Ambrose suffered an almost uncontrollable impulse to laugh hysterically. Certainly he had read these lines somewhere. Laughter, too, would indubitably tend to shorten his period of torture. The muscles around the corners of his lips twitched nervously.
Writhe away! cried Abel Morris, evidently mistaking Ambrose's expression for one of agony. You have three minutes more to speak before I put you where you can't writhe any more. Where is she? he demanded.
Quite suddenly Ambrose found that he could speak. I don't know, he said. Indeed, I don't know. I don't know where she is, or who she is, or what you are talking about. You're making a tremendous mistake, Mr. Morris. You are shooting an innocent man.
Ambrose, who thought he had conquered fear, was surprised to discover that his teeth were chattering. What he had said, moreover, did not appear to have made any effect on Abel Morris, as that one's jaw hardened perceptibly and shot out at a dangerous angle. Just here, however, Ambrose, his back to the outside screen-door, heard a familiar voice.
Why, Papa, Wilhelmina demanded, what are you doing with that revolver?
Entering the room, she walked straight over to Morris and removed the gun from his limp fingers. Unarmed, the poor fellow sank into an arm-chair and began to sob.
Ambrose, she adjured the playwright, get up at once out of that perfectly ridiculous attitude.
Suddenly relieved of the pressure of prospective gun-fire, Ambrose was only too happy to obey her. Rising from his knees, he sat down heavily on the bed, clinging with a kind of desperate intensity to one of the footposts.
I was only trying to save you, Georgiana, Abel Morris was explaining, save you from this fiend. How could you do it, no matter how much he persuaded you? How could you?
How could I what, Papa? Have you lost your mind? What are you talking about? Clearly Georgiana was impatient.
I'll make him marry you anyhow! With this declaration Abel Morris sprang to his feet with clenched fists and a new determination published in his eyes. Threatened anew, Ambrose rolled back on the bed, his hands and feet pushing helplessly upward like the paws of a terrified puppy.
Papa . . . Wilhelmina-Georgiana's voice rang out loud and clear . . . stop this nonsense at once. Why should you try to make Ambrose marry me? I think that's a matter for Ambrose and me to decide.
The manufacturer stared in bewilderment at his daughter.
Didn't he abduct you from your home and try to seduce you? he demanded.
Georgiana howled with laughter. Papa, you too! she cried. You've been going to the movies! . . . She turned to Ambrose. . . . I wish to God you had abducted me and seduced me, she assured him. It would have been too thrilling. That would have been worth waiting for.
Ambrose was sitting up once more, but it cannot be said that he felt very comfortable.
Now, Papa . . . she again addressed her angry and perplexed parent . . . get this straight. If there's been any seducing going on it's been on my part. I left home to go into the movies and I met Ambrose on the train coming out here. I told him immediately that I might marry him and I've been telling him so ever since. Sometimes I think I mean it. Would you, Ambrose, she demanded, if I asked you tonight?
Oh, yes! he responded fervently.
Then . . . Abel Morris began.
Then, Papa, you're an ass, and so I think is Ambrose. I don't understand myself at all. The man's not handsome or amusing or charming. His kiss is like a Sunday at sea or faded roses. Maybe I'm fond of him. Maybe I've got a front-page complex. I don't know why I should want to marry him except he's so successful and he doesn't want me.
I do! I do! cried Ambrose, and he suddenly realized that he actually did. He saw her at last as a haven. His life as a famous man in the future would be sure to be full of extravagant complications and this extraordinarily efficient girl of seventeen would be of great assistance to him in solving them. Besides, indubitably she was extremely pretty.
Mr. Deacon, will you ever forgive me? Abel Morris inquired penitently, extending his hand.
Ambrose clasped the proffered hand and replied. It was a natural mistake. Then he passed the box of Meridiana Kohinoors.
Abel Morris stared at the box in amazement.
My God, he exclaimed, where did you get these? Do you know how much they cost?
Inexplicably, Georgiana chose this moment to burst into tears.
I hate you both! she avowed, as she rushed from the room.
For the next few days Ambrose existed practically in a state of trance. Naturally there were innumerable things to do, but they all seemed to get done somehow without his making an effort. He scarcely saw Georgiana at all. She was too fully occupied in arranging her trousseau for a wedding which had been set exactly one week ahead from the night when Abel Morris had pointed a revolver at Ambrose's heart. His prospective father-in-law spent a good deal of time with him, so apologetic about his awkward behaviour that he seemed somewhat silly, extremely curious ostensibly to learn the details of how moving pictures were made, but inclined on the lot to pay more attention to trim ankles than to the methods of the various directors. Mrs. Morris, it became known almost immediately, would be unable to attend the wedding as the present state of her health was too uncertain to permit of her travelling. Abel Morris did not seem to regret his wife's absence.
After Morris had been introduced to Griesheimer and Philip Lawrence, his respect for Ambrose's ability increased enormously.
A man who can do what you have done with these hard-boiled fellows out here can do anything, he confided to the playwright. You would be a treasure for any concern. I got no doubts about you.
When he was alone, which was seldom, Ambrose considered the situation in almost complete bewilderment. So much had happened in the brief period since his exodus from New York. To all intents and purposes he had become a different individual. That is to say that his feelings, his emotions, his thoughts, and his desires were essentially what they had always been, but everything else had changed. His external gestures, his manner of living, his conversation, all were confusedly in contradiction with his convictions. He had, he reflected sadly, actually learned to smoke cigars.
When he left New York, it had been with the feeling that perhaps his writing days were over and he had discovered that seemingly, so far as profit was concerned, they had only just begun. The subject of matrimony had never before sufficiently interested him for him to give it a serious thought and yet he now found himself engaged to be married imminently and actually not dreading it, for Wilhelmina-Georgiana had somehow not only persuaded him of her glamour, she had also made him dependent upon her to an extraordinary degree, dependent upon her decisions, upon her tastes, and more than anything else on her protection. Pleasant as it would be to bask in the charming society of the beautiful Kansas City girl, Ambrose realized that he was inclined to rely on her as a shield, and to think of her in terms of that symbol.
She had become for him so protective a figure, indeed, that social contacts no longer alarmed him. To be exact, they were no longer actually contacts. He scarcely permitted these creatures to touch him. He walked among them, smiling, indeed, as if he were in a dream, conversing, laughing, making all the gestures they demanded without essential compromise on his part. There were even times, so accustomed had he become to hearing it spoken of as his, that he actually believed that he had written the script of a film called Spider Boy. Certainly every one else seemed to believe that he had. In an environment where the second personal pronoun was seldom or never heard, perversely it was applied aplenty here. And Ambrose was aware that if the picture turned out to be a failure it would be applied aplenty more.
As has been intimated, none of the onerous obligations of preparation for the holy rites were left for Ambrose to fulfil. The fact was that when Griesheimer had heard of the engagement, which he did the morning after it was contracted, he insisted that the ceremony be celebrated on his ranch in the desert, while he was to be permitted to arrange all the details. There was no arguing with him, or what there was was feeble, consisting for the most part of protestations from Abel Morris who exhibited great fistfuls of bills of fabulous amounts, crying that the father of the bride should have the privilege of paying her wedding expenses. All his arguments, however, were waved away impatiently by the determined Griesheimer, who informed the heads of the various departments on his lot that he wanted a swell wedding in a certain place on a certain day, and then forgot all about it.
On the morning of the great day, all the studios were closed in honour of the event because everybody in the moving picture world had been invited. It was a pretty sight to see them driving forth in great caravans of high-priced cars. Once on the desert the train of moving vehicles extended forward as far as the eye could reach. Leaving the waste of sand, the party entered a gate in a high wall and immediately was transported into a rich garden. With groves of orange trees on either hand, stately, formal rows of cypresses guarded an avenue that led straight up to an imperial Italian villa, approached by a wide terrace set with huge marble jars of blue hydrangeas and classic statues. This terrace soon resembled a painting by Veronese come to life, peopled as it was with the marionettes of moviedom in brilliant, rich renaissance costumes.
As Griesheimer so fittingly put it: I think Roy did it pretty good, but these tights ain't so comfortable.
Ambrose and Georgiana, somewhat overcome by the splendour of the prepared fete, strayed off into an enormous chamber on the second floor where the presents had been laid out. Imperia had sent a tea-service of solid gold; Auburn Six, a clock of jade; Abel Morris, a cheque for one hundred thousand dollars; Martell Hallam, an embossed silver refrigerator. Two large console tables were completely devoted to Dunhill lighters of malachite, platinum, gold, onyx, alligator-skin, ostrich-skin, enamel, and ebony. There were more costly presents from Capa Nolin, Harold Edwards, Herbert Ringrose, Dick Ruby, Zoë Claire, Stella Which, Lucile Logan, Denis Harvey, Scandia Cortland, and dozens of others.
Standing by the window, Ambrose was aware of a cloud of dust far out on the plain. In its swirl a troop of horsemen was rapidly approaching. As they came nearer he heard the joyous cries of an Indian tribe and he recognized the leader of this wild band as Marna Frost. It was at the moment that the aborigines solemnly rode up the drive that the property man at L.L.B. had the inspiration of sending up a flight of flamingos.
Ambrose was blind and deaf, and all but dumb, during the celebration of the wedding ceremony, but he recovered somewhat as the richly clad guests, many of whom he recognized as moving picture extras, requisitioned no doubt to make a richer background, filed by to congratulate him and his bride, and remarked to his astonishment that he stood in a chamber completely smothered in flowers and green leaves. Indeed, the entire ceiling was hidden under orchids.
Georgiana at length led him forth, through the private bar, which had been set up in a room at least one hundred feet long, behind which uniformed attendants were opening bottles of champagne so rapidly that the popping of corks created a din above which any conversation was difficult.
The great event of the day was the wedding supper served at four o'clock on the terrace. The principal table and the costumes of the guests who sat there, had been arranged to represent Veronese's painting. The Marriage at Cana, although there was certainly no present necessity for converting the water into wine. The board was heaped high with flowers and fruit in silver and gold vessels. The elaborately embroidered cloth was shining with silver and glass. Cigarette cases of platinum and cobra-skin and fans with turquoise sticks were the favours beside each guest's plate. Back and forth on the terrace below this table servitors in purple and cerise doublet and hose led leopards and panthers attached to silver chains. A band played minuets and pavanes alternately with fox-trots and tangos. There were daylight fireworks and a parade of white peacocks and baboons on the lawn.
Sometime during these kaleidoscopic proceedings Ambrose had wit enough to note, among the myriads of long tables set out on the sward, that a special table seemed to be devoted to the mamas. At the exact moment that he made this astounding discovery, he caught the roving eye of Mama Starling and that eye appeared to be winking at him. Had he, he wondered, been drinking too much champagne?
Just before Ambrose left the supper-table—to depart with Georgiana on the prescribed honeymoon—Griesheimer leaned across his bride to say, By the way, Ambrose, your picture's great, one of the best we done, but we thought of one change we should make if you don't care.
Ambrose avowed truthfully that he didn't care. A little later, as he waited in an ante-room for Georgiana to change her dress, Philip Lawrence found an opportunity to speak to him.
Did Griesheimer explain to you about the title? Lawrence demanded. As Ambrose looked blank, he went on: You see, it's like this. It's a question of malignant insects: you know, cockroaches, bedbugs . . . spiders. Well, certain people in Grand Rapids and Des Moines and Galesburg just wouldn't stand far a title like that. You know housewives hate spiders and housewives are our best customers in the tank towns. So we decided—I'm sure you won't mind—to use your other lovely old title.
I don't seem to quite remember what that was, Ambrose remarked suavely.
Love and Danger. Good-bye, you lucky fellow! You won't be here for the preview, but I'll see you at the opening.