There was probably no power on the face of the earth which could have driven Henry Devereux to the operation of a picture theatre, strictly as a business venture; but when he once got it into his head that the Orpheum wasn’t so much a business as a sporting proposition, he couldn’t have been stopped by anything short of an injunction. Immediately, his attitude was normal, and from the moment that he resolved to take possession of his property, and operate it, he was indifferent to the public estimate of him. The thing was a game, a game with a great stake, and set rules, and Henry took it as he once had taken his golf and his billiards and his polo––joyously, resiliently, determinedly, and without the slightest self-consciousness, and with never an eye for the gallery.

He was inspirited, moreover, by the attitude of his friends. To be sure, they laughed, but in 101 their laughter there was no trace of the ridicule he had feared. They took the situation as a very good joke on Henry, but at the same time, because gossip had already begun to build up a theory to explain that situation, there were several of them who wished that a similar joke, with a similar nubbin, might be played on themselves. They told this to Henry, they urged him to go ahead and become a strictly moral Wallingford, they slapped him on the back and assured him that if there was justice in the Sunday-school books, he was certain to finish in the money; and Henry, who had provided himself with several air-tight alibis, found them dead stock on his hands. He had known, of course, that he could count on Bob Standish, and a few of his other intimates, but the hearty fellowship of the whole circle overwhelmed him. He knew that even when they waxed facetious, they were rooting for him; and this knowledge multiplied his confidence, and gave him fresh courage.

And yet, with all the consciousness of his loyal backing, he was considerably upset to read in the Herald, on the very morning that 102 he took control of his property, a seven column streamer headline which leaped out to threaten him.

“SUNDAY THEATRES AND AMUSEMENTS
MUST GO!”––MIX
Prominent Business Man Turns Reformer
THEODORE MIX CHOSEN TO MANAGE
CAMPAIGN OF LEAGUE
Pledges Enforcement of City Ordinances to the Letter

His first reaction was one of bewilderment, and after that, one of consternation. His friend Bob Standish tried to laugh it off for him, but Henry hadn’t a smile in his system.

“All right, then,” said Bob Standish. “Go see the judge. He’ll tell you the same thing. Mix’s nothing but a bag of wind. He’s an old blowhard.”

“Maybe he is,” conceded Henry, soberly. “But I’d be just as satisfied about it if he blew in some other direction.”

Henry took the paper to Judge Barklay, who had already seen it, and made his own deductions. “Oh, no,” he said, “I’m not astonished. 103 When a man’s in hot enough water, he’ll cut up almost any kind of caper to get out. There’s only two kinds of people who ever go into these radical movements––great successes and great failures. Never any average folks. I’d say it’s a pretty good refuge for him, and you drove him to it.”

“Well––does he mean what he says there?”

“Not too much of it. How could he? If he does half he says he will, he’ll lose his job. The town would be as pure as Utopia, and there wouldn’t be any League.”

“How about the ordinance he quotes, though?”

“Oh, that ... it’s Ordinance 147. It’s so old it’s toothless. The City Council doesn’t quite dare to repeal it––nobody’s sure enough, these days, to get up and take a chance––but they don’t want it enforced, and they haven’t for ages.”

Henry frowned. “That’s all right. But suppose they did arrest somebody under that Ordinance? What would you do?”

“Fine ’em, of course. I’d have to. But I’ve never had such a case that I can remember. 104 There haven’t been any arrests. It’s an understood thing.”

“Yes, that’s fine––as long as everybody understands it the same way. But maybe Mix doesn’t––or Aunt Mirabelle either.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry much.”

Henry continued serious. “Oh, I guess I can sleep nights all right without any paregoric, but what right have they got to butt into the only day of recreation the working people have? If their immortal souls hurt ’em as much as all that, why don’t they go off and suffer where they can do it in peace and not bother us?”

The Judge laughed quietly. “Whence all this sudden affection for the working man, Henry?”

Henry reddened. “Strictly between the two of us, I don’t like the idea of Sunday business, anyway. But unfortunately, that’s the big day.... But, if you had to work indoors, eight hours a day, six days a week, maybe you’d be satisfied to spend Sundays picking sweet violets out by the barge canal, but what would you do when it rained?”

“Of course,” admitted the Judge, “it’s a 105 poor policy to have a law on the books, and ignore it. Both of us must admit that. A good law ought to be kept; a bad one ought to be repealed; but any law that is valid oughtn’t to be winked at. And if pressure should be brought on the Mayor to enforce that ordinance, and any arrests are made, why I’ll have to do my duty.”

“Yes––and here I’m raising a mortgage and spending the money on improvements that’ll hold us up for more than two weeks––and here Anna and I are going to live in a couple of box-stalls (every time you take a long breath in that flat you create a vacuum!)––and here I’ve been going to the City Commercial School every afternoon for two solid hours, and studying like a dog every night––and here I’ve resigned from the Golf Club, and everything else but the Citizens––and if they do put the kibosh on Sunday shows, why I’ll be elected to the Hohenzollern Club. And the cream of that joke is that Aunt Mirabelle’s outfit’d get itself endowed for putting me out of commission!”

“They won’t do it, Henry. These organizations 106 always make the same mistake. They go too far. They aren’t talking reform; they’re talking revolution, and people won’t stand for it. These reform crowds always start out to be a band-wagon, and if they kept their senses, they could do some real good––and then they march so fast that pretty soon they find they’ve winded everybody else, and there isn’t any parade. All they need is rope. Give ’em enough of it, and they always hang themselves. That speech of Mix’s has done more harm to the League than it has good. You go right ahead with your improvements.”

In view of the Judge’s official position, this was in the nature of an opinion from headquarters; and yet Henry delayed for a day or two before he signed his contract for the alterations. In the meantime, he saw Mr. Archer and got an interpretation of the will; Mr. Archer was sorry, but if Sundays were ruled out, there was no provision for reducing the quota, and Henry would have to stand or fall on the exact phraseology. He had another session with the Judge, and three a day with Anna, and one with the largest exhibitor in 107 town (who pooh-poohed the League, and offered to back up his pooh-poohs with a cash bet that nothing would ever come of it) and eventually he was persuaded to execute the contract.

Through Bob Standish, he negotiated a mortgage which would cover the cost of the work, and leave a comfortable balance. “We’re not going to be as poor as I thought we were,” he said cheerfully to Anna who had put in two hectic weeks on the apartment she had chosen because it was the cheapest in the market. “We’ve got something in the bank for emergencies, and ten thousand a year is two hundred a week besides.”

Anna was horrified. “You didn’t think we’d spend what we make, did you?”

“Why not? Uncle John didn’t say we had to show them ten thousand in coin at the end of the year; he said I had to make it––on the books. We can spend every kopeck of it, if we want to. And I was about to say that with six thousand dollars left over from the mortgage money, we’ll have a maid after all. Yea, verily, even a cook.”

Anna glanced at her hands––slim, beautiful hands they were––and shook her head obstinately. “No, dear. Because what we save now might be our only capital later.”

“But we’re going to win. We’re going to exert our resistless wills to the utmost. What’s the use of being tightwads?”

“But if we shouldn’t win, look where we’d be! No, dear, we’re going to save our pennies. That’s why I picked out this apartment; that’s why I’m doing as much as I can with it myself. It’s the only safe way. And just look around––haven’t I done wonders with almost nothing at all?”

Henry looked around, not that his memory was at fault, but because he was perpetually dumbfounded by her genius. Originally, this living-room had been a dolorous cave with varnished yellow-pine woodwork, gas-logs, yellow wall-paper to induce toothache, and a stark chandelier with two anemic legs kicking out at vacancy. She had caused the Orpheum electrician to remove the chandelier; with her own hands, she had painted the woodwork a deep, 109 rich cream-colour; she had ripped out the gas-logs and found what no one had ever suspected––a practicable flue; and she had put in a basket grate which in the later season would glow with cheerful coals. Over the wall-paper she had laid a tint which was a somewhat deeper cream than the woodwork. She had made that cave attractive with a soft, dull-blue rug, and wicker furniture, with hangings of cretonne in sunny gold and an echo of the blue rug, with brass bowls which held the bulbs she had tended on the kitchen window-sill, with bookshelves, and pictures from her own home. Especially by candle-light, it was charming; and her greatest joy, and Henry’s unending marvel, was that it had cost so little, and that so much of it was her own handiwork.

“Yes, but pause and reflect a minute,” said Henry. “I’ve sold the big car and bought a tin-plated runabout. I’ve sold my horse. I’ve sold ten tons of old clothes and priceless jewels. Financially speaking, I’m as liquid as a pellucid pool in a primeval forest. And there’s another grand thing to consider; I’m keeping 110 my own books, so nobody’s going to crack the till, the way they did with grandfather. Can’t we even have a cook?”

“No, dear. Nobody but me. We’ve got to play safe. It’s all part of the game. Don’t you see it is?”

Eventually, he agreed with her, and went back to the Orpheum, where a score of workmen were busy remodelling the interior, and patching up the faÇade. He stood for a moment to watch the loading of a truck with broken-seats, jig-saw decorations, and the remains of a battered old projector; he looked up, presently to the huge sign over the entrance: “Closed During Alterations, Grand Opening Sunday Afternoon, August 20th. Souvenirs.” There was no disputing the fact that all his eggs were in one basket, and that if the Reform League started to throw stones at it, they would find it a broad mark. But Henry had plenty of assurances that he didn’t need to worry, and so he sponged away the last of his doubts, and set to work to learn his business with all possible speed.

It was his first experience with the building 111 trades, and he was innocent enough to believe in schedules and estimates. In less than a fortnight, however, he came home to his wife in a mood which she was quick to detect, no matter how carefully he disguised it.

“Oh, I’m just peevish,” said Henry. “The contractor says it’ll take four weeks instead of three, and cost six thousand instead of forty-five hundred. But there’s no use wearing a long face about it. If I did, I didn’t mean to.”

Anna slipped out of her big apron, and rearranged her hair. “Of course you didn’t. I just knew.”

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “my face feels long enough to fit in a churn. Only I was under the impression that I’d put on a mask of gaiety that was absolutely impenetrable.... Well, what’s happened in the ancestral home today?”

She had burned a steak and both thumbs; there was a leak in the plumbing, and the family overhead had four children and a phonograph. Henry kissed the thumbs, cursed the kitchen range, and forgot his troubles.

“You’re going to ruin your hands,” he said, 112 sympathetically. “Darn it, we can afford a cook, Anna. Come on; be reasonable.”

She shook her head. “Oh! And I meant to tell you the wall-paper’s peeling off in the dining room, and the most awful smell of fried onions keeps coming up the dumb-waiter shaft.”

Henry gathered her into his arms. “Dearest, in a year you can have a dipperful of attar of roses for every fried onion. And we’ll be so rich you can mingle practically on equal terms with the plumber’s wife.... Now let’s go put on the feed-bag. And by the way, I prefer my steak slightly burned––it’s more antiseptic.”

He never suspected that ninety-nine percent of her difficulties were imaginary, and that she had invented them as soon as she saw his face.

A week later, the contractor brought in still another schedule, and another estimate; Henry became Chesterfieldian in his politeness, and wanted to know if a contract were a contract, or merely a piece of light literature. The contractor was apologetic, but wages were going 113 up––materials were high––labour was scarce––transportation was uncertain––shipments were slow––

Henry was angry and disillusioned, but he knew that belligerence would gain him nothing. “In other words,” he said, genially, “there’s something the matter with everything but the Orpheum, and everybody but me. I congratulate myself. Well, when I do get the job finished, and what does it cost––not to a minute and a fraction of a cent, of course, but a general idea––what year, and––”

“Mr. Devereux!”

“And a guess that’s within say, a couple of thousand dollars of the real price.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m making any big profit out of this. To tell the truth––”

“Oh, I know,” said Henry. “You’re losing money. Don’t deny it, you eleemosynary rascal, don’t deny it.”

The man felt himself insulted, but Henry was smiling, and of course that strange word might be something technical. “Well, to tell the truth, we––”

“Come on, now. I know you’re an altruist, 114 but be a sport. You’re losing money, and the children are moaning with hunger in their little trundle-beds, but when do I get the job done?”

“The second week in September.”

“This September? And the bill?”

“Shaved down so close there’s hardly any––”

“Shave it every morning; it’s being done. But what’s your figure?”

“Seventy-six fifty.”

There was nothing for Henry to do but to have a new date painted on the sign, and to draw on his reserve fund, but at bottom he was vastly perturbed. He had counted on a running start, and every week of delay was a vicious handicap. If he had remotely imagined how elastic a contractor’s agreement could be, he would certainly have thought twice about ordering so many changes––he would have steered a middle course, and been satisfied with half the improvement––but as it was, he had put himself in a trap. Now that the work was partly done, it would have to be completed. There was no way out of it. And from day to day, as the arrears of labour heaped up, 115 and cost was piled on cost, Henry began to lose a trifle of his fine buoyancy and optimism.

Also, it was amazing to discover that Anna was much less self-reliant than he had thought her. Almost every night she displayed some unsuspected trait of helplessness, so that he simply had to shelve his worries, and baby her out of her own. He adored her, and therefore he never questioned her ingenuousness; he didn’t see that by monopolizing his thoughts, and turning them entirely upon herself, she prevented him from wasting his energy in futile brooding, even if he had inclined to it.

He planned to open in mid-September, but a strike among the carpenters added a few days to the time, and, by virtue of a compromise, a few dollars to the account. The building inspector wouldn’t pass the wiring, and the electricians took a holiday before they condescended to return. When the last nail was driven, the last brushful of paint applied, the final item added to the long statement, the day was the last Friday in the month, and the total bill amounted to more than nine thousand dollars.

“Anna,” said Henry, reflectively, “it’s a lucky thing for us this world was all built before we were born. Know that? Because if they’d ever started it under modern conditions, there wouldn’t be anything to it yet but the Garden of Eden and Atlantic City and maybe Gopher Prairie.... Well, I wonder what’s next?”

“There won’t be any next, dear. Nothing can happen now. And aren’t you glad I’ve made us economize? Aren’t you? Say your prayers! Say––’bless Anna’!”

“Not Anna––Pollyanna. Glad we economized! Why don’t you say you’re glad it took two months to do two weeks’ work because that gave me so much more time to study the game, and find out how to run the theatre? No, it goes back farther than that. I’m glad you caught me while I was so young.”

“Henry!”

“What? Don’t you remember how you pursued me, and vamped me, and took away my volition, so I was helpless as a babe––”

“Oh, Henry!”

“Sure you did. Funny you don’t remember 117 that. Or else––was it the other way around?”

“Well––”

“Well, anyhow,” he said, in a slightly lower key. “I’m glad it happened.... And you stick to me, and you’ll wear diamonds yet. Great hunks of grit, strung all over you. I’ll make you look as vulgar as a real society woman. That’s the kind of man I am. A good provider––that is, of course, providing.”

And on Saturday morning, the Herald told them that a committee from the Reform League had waited on the Mayor for the third time, and delivered an ultimatum.

“Oh, bother!” said Anna. “There’s been something in the paper every two or three days. It doesn’t amount to a row of pins. Dad says so.”

Henry inhaled deeply. “Did you see who’s on that committee? Mix and Aunt Mirabelle, of course, and if they’ve got it in for anybody special, I’m it. Bob says Mix is a grand little hater; he’s seen him in action, and he says to keep an eye on him: says Mix had lined up a buyer for the Orpheum, so naturally he’s sore at me.... And then a flock of old men just 118 under par––I’d say they average about ninety-seven and a half––but they’re a pretty solid lot; too solid to be booted out of any Mayor’s office. And if they should get the Mayor stirred up, why, we wouldn’t have the chance of a celluloid rat in a furnace.... I wish the Judge were where I could get at him. He’d know what’s going on.”

“Couldn’t you ask the Exhibitors Association?”

“They don’t know. The Judge is on the inside. Do you know when he’s coming back from his vacation?”

“Not for two or three weeks yet. But I’ve an intuition, dear––”

“Sure. So have I. A year from now we’ll be eating our golden pheasants off our golden plates with our gold teeth. But in the meantime, you better keep your eye on the butcher’s bill.... They tell me hash is a great nerve-food.”