When Henry told his wife that he was counting on her for brilliant ideas, he meant the compliment rather broadly; for he couldn’t imagine how a girl brought up as Anna had been brought up could supply any practical schemes for increasing the patronage of a motion-picture theatre. Indeed, when she brought him her first suggestion he laughed, and kissed her, and petted her, and while he privately appraised her as a dear little dreamer, he told her that he was ever so much obliged, but he was afraid that her plan wouldn’t work.

“You see,” he said, “you haven’t had very much experience in this business––”

“Methuselah!” she retorted, and Henry laughed again.

“That’s no way for a wife to talk. When I mention business you’re supposed to look at me with ill-concealed awe. But to get down to 170 brass tacks, I’ve watched the audiences for four or five weeks, and I am beginning to size them up. And I don’t believe you can put over any grand-opera stuff on ’em.”

“It doesn’t make the least bit of difference whether it’s grand-opera or the movies, my lord. It’ll work.”

He shook his head dubiously. “Well, even suppose it would, I still don’t like it. You don’t make friends simply to use ’em for your own purposes.”

“Why, of course not. But after you’ve made ’em, you’re silly not to let ’em help you if they can. And if they want to. And if they don’t then they aren’t really your friends, are they? It’s a good way to find out.”

Henry frowned a little. “What makes you think it would work?”

“Human nature.... Now you just think it all over from the beginning. All our friends come to the Orpheum some night, don’t they? They’d go to some picture, anyway, but they come to the Orpheum for two reasons––one’s because it’s a nice house now, and the other’s because it’s ours. And sometimes they’re in 171 time to get good seats, and sometimes they aren’t. Well, we aren’t asking any special favour of them; we’re just making sure that if they all come the same night, they’ll have the same seats, time after time. And they’ll like it, Henry.”

“But to be brutally frank, I still don’t see where we get off any better.”

“You wait.... So we sell for just one particular performance––say the 8.45 one, one night a week––season tickets. Boxes, loges, and some of the orchestra seats. And it would be like opera; if they couldn’t always come, they couldn’t return their tickets, but they could give them to somebody else. And that night we’d have special music, and––”

“Confirming today’s conversation, including brutal frankness as per statement, I still don’t see––”

“Why, you silly. It’ll be Society Night! And I don’t care whether it’s movies or opera, if you make a thing fashionable, then it gets everybody––the fashionable ones, and then the ones who want to be fashionable, and finally the ones who know they haven’t a ghost of a 172 chance, and just want to go and look at the others!”

Henry laboured with his thoughts. “Well, granted that we could herd the hill crowd in there, and all that, I still don’t––”

“Why, Henry darling! Because we’d make it Monday night––that’s our worst night in the whole week, ordinarily––and have all reserved seats that night, and then of course we’d raise the prices!”

“Oh!” said Henry. “Now I get it. I thought it was just swank.”

“And it’s true––it’s true that if you get people to thinking there’s something exclusive about a shop, or a hotel, or a club, or even a theatre, they’ll pay any amount to get in. And our friends don’t care when they come, and they’ll love all sitting together in the boxes, or even in the orchestra.”

“Who was Methuselah’s wife?” asked Henry, irrelevantly.

“Why, he had several, didn’t he?”

“Cleopatra, Portia, Minerva, Nemesis, and the Queen of Sheba,” said Henry, “and you’re 173 all five in one package. I retract everything I said. And if I may be permitted to kiss the hem of your garment, to show I’m properly humbled, why––in plain English, that idea has a full set of molars!”

He left the mechanics of it to Anna, who merely conferred with Bob Standish, and then with one of her girl-friends, and sent out a little circular among the high elect; but even Anna was amazed at the prompt response. The response was due partly to friendship, and partly to convenience, but whatever the reason, Anna brought in checks for a hundred season-tickets, and turned the worst night of the week into the best. As she had sensed, because the insiders of society were willing to commit themselves to Monday, the outsiders would have paid four times, instead of merely double, to be there, too. It was socially imperative.

“That boosts us up another fifty a week,” said Henry appreciatively. “And we must have a thousand in the bank, haven’t we?... Say, Anna, this bread and cheese racket is all right when you can’t afford anything else, but 174 honestly, won’t you just get a cook? I don’t care if she’s rotten, but to think of you giving those dishes a sitz-bath twice a day––”

“Not yet, dear. We aren’t nearly out of the woods. Society Night’s helped a lot, but we aren’t averaging over two hundred and twenty yet, are we? That’s eighty a week short. So if we don’t think up some more schemes, why, what we’re saving now’ll have to be our capital next year.”

“But when a man has this much income––”

“Yes, and you owe ten thousand on a mortgage, and the tax bills haven’t come in yet, and you’ll have an income tax to pay.... We’ll save awhile longer.”

It was greater heroism than he realized, for she had never lost, for a single instant, her abhorrence of the kitchen; nor was she willing to cater to her prejudice, and work with only the tips of her fingers. She had two principal defences––she wore rubber gloves, and she sang––but whenever she had to put her hands into greasy water, whenever she scrubbed a kettle, whenever she cleaned the sink, a series of cold chills played up and down her spine as fitfully 175 as a flame plays on the surface of alcohol. She detested every item which had to do with that kitchen; and yet, to save Henry the price of a cook––now seventy dollars a month––she sacrificed her squeamishness. There were nights when she simply couldn’t eat––she couldn’t draw a cloud over her imagination, and forget what the steak had looked like, and felt like, uncooked. There were six days in seven when the mere sight of blackened pots and pans put her nerves on edge. But she always remembered that Henry was supposed to be irresponsible, and that a penny in hand is worth two in prospect; so that she sang away, and tried to dispel her thoughts of the kitchen by thinking about the Orpheum.

It was in early December that she conceived the Bargain Matinee, which wasn’t the ordinary cut-price performance, but the adaptation of an old trick of the department stores. The Tuesday and Friday matinees were the poorest attended, so that Anna suggested––and Henry ordered––that beginning at half past four on Tuesdays and Fridays, the fifty-cent seats were reduced at the rate of a cent a minute. In other 176 words, the Orpheum challenged the public to buy its entertainment by the clock; a person who came a quarter hour late saved fifteen cents, and the bargain-hunter who could find a vacant seat at twenty minutes past five could see the last two reels for nothing. It didn’t bring in a tremendous revenue, but it caught the popular fancy, and it was worth another thirty dollars a week.

And Anna discovered, too, that the unfinished second story of the theatre had possibilities. She had it plastered and gaily papered, she put up a frieze of animals from Noah’s ark; she bought toys and games and a huge sand-box––and for a nominal fee, a mother could leave her angel child or squalling brat, as the case might be, in charge of a kindergarten assistant, and watch the feature film without nervousness or bad conscience. There was no profit in it, as a department, but it was good advertising, and helped the cause.

In the meantime Henry, who at this season of the year would ordinarily have gone to Lake Placid for the winter sports or to Pinehurst for golf, was watching the rise and fall of the 177 box-office receipts as eagerly as he would have watched the give and take of match-play in tournament finals. He kept his records as perfectly, and studied them with as much zest, as once he had kept and studied the records of the First Ten in the tennis ranking, and of all teams and individuals in first-class polo. To Henry, the Orpheum had long ceased to be a kitchen; he had almost forgotten that a few months ago, his soul had been corrugated with goose-flesh at the prospect of this probation. Since August, he had done more actual work than in all his previous life, and the return from it was approximately what his allowance had been from Mr. Starkweather, but Henry had caught the spark of personal ambition, and he wouldn’t stop running until the race was over. He wouldn’t stop, and furthermore he wouldn’t think of stopping. But now and then he couldn’t help visualizing his status when he did stop, or was ruled off the track.

He hadn’t quite recovered, yet, from his surprise at the continuing reaction of his friends. He was deeply touched by the realization that even those who were most jocular were 178 regarding him with new respect. Instead of losing caste, he seemed to have risen higher than before; certainly he had never been made to feel so sure of his place in the affection of his own set. And almost more satisfactory than that, the older men in the Citizens Club were treating him with increasing friendliness, whereas in the past, they had treated him rather as an amusing young comedian, to be laughed at, but not with. And finally, he was flattered by the growing intimacy with Mr. Archer.

“A year ago,” Mr. Archer once said to him, “I used to think you were a spoiled brat, Henry. Now I think you’re––rather a credit to your uncle.”

Henry grinned. “And I used to think some very disrespectful things about you, and now I’d rather have you on my side than anybody I know. I must have been a raw egg.”

“You’ll win out yet, my boy––Ted Mix to the contrary notwithstanding.”

“Oh, sure!” said Henry, optimistically. “I don’t gloom much––only fifteen minutes a day in my own room. I got the habit when I was 179 taking my correspondence course on efficiency.” Even in these occasional sessions of gloom, however, (and his estimate of time was fairly accurate) he never felt any acute antagonism either towards his aunt or towards Mr. Mix, he never felt as though he were in competition with them. He was racing against time, and it was the result of his own individual effort which would go down on the record. As to his aunt, she had been perfectly consistent; as to Mr. Mix, Henry didn’t even take the trouble to despise him. He carried over to business one of his principles in sport––if the other fellow wanted so badly to win that he was willing to cheat, he wanted victory more than Henry did, and he was welcome to it. After the match was over, Henry might volunteer to black his eye for him, but that was a side issue.

Mr. Mix had said to him, sorrowfully, at the Citizens Club: “One of the prime regrets of my life, Henry, was that you––the nephew of my old friend––should have suffered––should have been in a position to suffer––from the promotion of civic integrity.”

Henry laughed unaffectedly. “Yes,” he 180 said, “it must have raised perfect Cain with you.”

“I don’t like your tone, Henry. Do you doubt my word?”

“Doubt it? After I’ve just sympathized with the awful torture you must have gone through?... Tell me something; what’s all this gossip I hear about you and Aunt Mirabelle? Somebody saw you buggy-riding last Sunday. Gay young dog!”

Mr. Mix grew red. “Buggy-riding! Miss Starkweather was kind enough to take me out to the lake in her car.”

“That’s buggy-riding,” said Henry, affably. “Buggy-riding’s a generic term. Don’t blush. I was young myself, once.”

Mr. Mix fought down his anger. “You’re very much of a joker, Henry. It seems to run in the family. Your uncle––”

“Yes, and Aunt Mirabelle, too.”

“What?”

“Oh, yes,” said Henry. “Aunt Mirabelle’s a joker, too. She advised me not to run the Orpheum in the first place; she’d rather have had me trade it and go into something more respectable, 181 and profitable. Doesn’t that strike you as funny? It does me.”

Mentally, Mr. Mix bit his lip, but outwardly he was ministerial. “I’m afraid you’re too subtle for me.”

“I was afraid of that myself.”

“Isn’t business good?” His voice was solicitous.

Henry was reminded of what Judge Barklay had twice expressed, and for a casual experiment, he tried to plumb the depths of Mr. Mix’s interest.

“Oh, with a few new schemes I’ve got, I guess I’ll clean up eleven or twelve thousand this year.”

Mr. Mix shook his head. “As much as that?”

Henry inquired of himself why, to accompany a question which was apparently one of mere rhetorical purport, Mr. Mix should have shaken his head. The action had been positive, rather than interrogative.

“Easy,” said Henry. “Come in next week, and see how we’re going to turn ’em away. I’ve got a new pianist; you’ll want to hear him. He looks like a Sealyhan terrier, but he’s got a 182 repertoire like a catalogue of phonograph records. I dare the audience to name anything he can’t play right off the bat––songs, opera, Gregorian chants, sonatas, jazz––and if he can’t play it, the person that asked for it gets a free ticket.”

“So––to use a colloquialism––you’re going very strong?”

“To use another colloquialism,” said Henry, “we fairly reek with prosperity, and we’re going to double our business. That is, unless you Leaguers stop all forms of amusement but tit-tat-toe and puss-in-the-corner.”

Mr. Mix smiled feebly. “One expects to be rallied for one’s convictions.”

Henry nodded, engagingly. “I certainly got rallied enough for mine. That justice of the peace rallied me for twenty-five to start with, and followed it up with twenty more.... But if you want my opinion, Mr. Mix, you’ll lay off trying to promote civic integrity with a meat-ax. All you did with that Sunday row was to take a lot of money away from the picture houses, and give it to the trolley company and the White City––white when it was painted. 183 And if you don’t behave, I won’t vote for you next election.”

Mr. Mix ignored the threat. “Come to a meeting of the League some time, Henry, and we’ll give you a chance to air your views.”

He reported the interview to Anna, and she seemed to find in it the material for reflection. She asked Henry if he thought that Mr. Mix was deliberately making up to Mirabelle. Henry reflected, also.

In January, Henry had an interview with Mr. Archer, who went over his books with a fine-tooth comb, and praised him for his accomplishment.

“But it only goes to show how the best intentions in the world can get all twisted up,” said Mr. Archer, gravely. “Here you’ve done what you were supposed to do––you’ve done it better than you were supposed to do it––and then because of that cussed enforcement that neither your uncle nor I ever dreamed about, you’re liable to get punished just as badly as if 184 you’d made a complete failure. It’s a shame, Henry, it’s a downright shame!”

“We’re packing ’em in pretty well,” said Henry. “I figured out that if we sold every seat at every performance we’d collect fourteen hundred a week gross. We’re actually taking in about eight fifty. That’s a local record, but it isn’t good enough.”

“No, you seem to be shy about––three thousand to date. You’ve got to make that up, and hit a still higher average for the next seven months, and I’m blessed if I can see how you’re going to do it.”

“Oh, well, I’ll have the theatre. That’s something.”

“Yes, it’ll bring you a good price. But not a half of what you should have had. One thing, Henry, I wish your uncle could know how you’re taking it. As far as I know, you haven’t swung a golf club or sat a horse for six months, have you?”

“Oh, shucks!... When Uncle John went to a ball game, he always liked to see a man run like fury on a fly ball. Nine times out of ten an outfielder’d catch it and the batter’d get a 185 big hoot from the grand-stand. The other time he’d drop it, and the batter’d take two bases. That’s all I’m doing now. Playing the percentage. And golf takes too much time––even if there weren’t snow on the ground––and stable feed’s so high I can’t afford it. The fool horse would cost more to feed than I do myself.”

“And even if the percentage beats you, you’ve got something you never had before, Henry, and that’s the solid respect of your community. Everybody knows you hated this job. Everybody’s back of you.”

“Up on the farm,” said Henry, thoughtfully. “There was a field-hand with a great line of philosophy. Some of it was sort of crude, but––one day Uncle John was saying something about tough things we all have to do, and this fellow chimed in and said: ‘Yes, sir, every man’s got to skin his own skunk.’”

Mr. Archer smiled and nodded. “Your year won’t have been wasted, Henry. And when it’s over, if you want to get out of the picture business, you’ll find that you can get a dozen first-rate jobs from men who wouldn’t have taken you in as their office-boy a season ago.... 186 Give my love to your wife, Henry, and tell her for me that I’m proud of you.”

“I’ll tell her,” said Henry, “but I won’t be proud until I’ve nailed that skin over the barn-door.”

On his way out, he dropped in for a moment to see Bob Standish. Bob was at his old tricks again; and while his competitors in realty, and insurance, and mortgage loans, made the same mistake that once his classmates and instructors and the opposing ends and tackles had made, and argued that his fair skin and his innocent blue eyes, his indolent manner and his perfection of dress all evidenced his lack of wit and stamina, he had calmly proceeded to chase several of those competitors out of business, and to purchase their good-will on his own terms. It was popularly said, in his own circle, that Standish would clear a hundred thousand dollars his first year.

He winked lazily at Henry, and indicated a chair. “Set!” said Standish. “Glad you came 187 in. Two things to ask you. Want to sell? Want to rent?”

“If you were in my shoes, would you sell, Bob?”

“I can get you twenty-eight thousand.”

“That’s low.”

“Sure, but everybody knows you’ve got a clientele that nobody else could get. Are you talking?”

“I––guess not just yet.”

“Want to rent? I just had a nibble for small space; you could get fifty a month for that attic you’re using for a nursery.”

“I––hardly think so, Bob. That’s a pet scheme of Anna’s, and besides, we need it. It’s good advertising.”

His friend’s eyes were round and childlike. “Made any plans for the future, Henry? Know what you’ll do if you stub your toe?”

“Sell out and strike you for a job, I guess.”

“Don’t believe it would work, old man.”

“Don’t you think so?”

“One pal boss another? Too much family.”

Henry looked serious. “I’m sorry you think so. I wouldn’t have kicked.”

“No, I’m afraid I couldn’t give you a job, old dear. I like you too well to bawl you out. But maybe we’ll do business together some other way.”

As he drove his tin runabout homeward, Henry was unusually downcast. He didn’t blame Standish––Standish had showed himself over and over to be Henry’s best friend on earth. But it was dispiriting to realize how Standish must privately appraise him. Henry recalled the justification, and grew red to think of the ten years of their acquaintance––ten years of continuous achievement for Standish, and only a few months of compulsory display for himself. But he wished that Standish hadn’t thrown in that last remark about doing business together some other way. That wasn’t like Bob, and it hurt. It was too infernally commercial.

He found the apartment deserted. His shout of welcome wasn’t answered: his whistle, in the private code which everybody uses, met with dead silence. Henry hung up his hat with considerable pique, and lounged into the living-room. What excuse had Anna to be missing at 189 the sacred hour of his return? Didn’t she know that the happiest moment of his whole day was when she came flying into his arms as soon as he crossed the threshold? Didn’t she know that as the golden pheasants fled further and further into the thicket of unreality, the more active was his need of her? He wondered where she had gone, and what had kept her so late. Was this a precedent, and had the first veneer of their companionability worn off so soon––for Anna?

A new apprehension seized him, and he hurried from room to room to see if instead of censuring Anna, he ought to censure himself. There were so many accidents that might have happened to her. Women have been burned so severely as to faint: they have drowned in a bathtub: they have fallen down dumb-waiter shafts: they have been asphyxiated when the gas-range went out. And to think that only a moment ago, he had been vexed with her. The sight of each room, once so hideously commonplace, now so charming with Anna’s artistry and the work of her own hands––her beautiful hands which ought to be so cared for––filled 190 him with contrition and fresh nervousness.

No, she had escaped these tragedies––yet she was missing. Missing, but now half an hour late. And downtown there were dangerous street-crossings, and dangerous excavations, and reckless motorists.... Once in a while a structural-iron worker dropped a rivet from the seventh story; and there were kidnappers abroad.... The key turned in the lock, and Henry dropped noiselessly into a chair, and caught up day-before-yesterday’s paper.

He greeted her tenderly, but temperately. “Well, where’ve you been?”

She had to catch her breath. “Oh, my dear, I’ve had the most wonderful time! I’ve––oh, it’s been perfectly gorgeous! And I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

He had never seen her keyed to such a pitch, and manlike, he attempted to calm her instead of rising to her own level. “Got what? St. Vitus’ dance?”

“No! The scheme! The scheme we were looking for!”

Henry discarded his paper. “Shoot it.”

She waved him off. “Just wait ’till I can 191 breathe.... Do you remember what you told me a long time ago about a talk you had with your aunt? And she said bye-and-bye you’d see the writing on the wall?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve seen it!”

“Whereabouts?”

“Wait.... And remember your talking to Mr. Mix, when he said you ought to go to a League meeting and air your views?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I went!”

He gazed at her. “You what?”

She nodded repeatedly. “It was a big public meeting. I was going past Masonic Hall, and I saw the sign. So I went in ... oh, it was so funny. The man at the door stared at me as if I’d been in a bathing suit, or something, and he said to me in a sort of undertaker’s voice: ‘Are you one of us?’ And I said I wasn’t, but I was thinking about it, and he said something about the ninety and nine, and gave me a blank to fill out––only I didn’t do it: I used it for something lots better: I’ll show you in a minute––and then I sat down, and 192 pretty soon Mr. Mix got up to talk,––and you should have seen the way your aunt looked at him; as if he’d been a tin god on wheels––and he bragged about what the League was doing, and how it had already purified the city, but that was only a beginning––and what a lot more it was going to do––oh, it was just ranting––but everybody clapped and applauded––only the man next to me said it was politics instead of reform––and then he went on to talk about that ordinance 147, and what it really meant, and how they were going to use it like a bludgeon over the heads of wrong-doers, and all that sickening sort of thing––and the more he talked the more I kept thinking.... My dear, all that ordinance says––at least, all they claim it says––is that we can’t keep open on Sunday for profit, isn’t it?”

Henry was a trifle dizzy, but he retained his perspective. “Yes, but who’d want to keep open for charity?”

She gave a little cry of exultation. “But that’s exactly what we want to do! That’s what we are going to do. And they can’t prevent us, either. We’re going to keep open for 193 a high, noble purpose, and not charge a cent. And the more I thought, and Mr. Mix bragged, the more I ... so I wrote it all down on the back of that blank the man gave me––and there it is––and I think it’s perfectly gorgeous––even if it is mine. Now who’s Methuselah’s wife?”

On the back of the blank there was written, in shaky capitals, what was evidently intended as the copy for an advertisement. She watched Henry eagerly as he read it, and when at first she could detect no change in his expression, her eyes widened, and her lips trembled imperceptibly. Then Henry, half-way down the page, began to grin: and his grin spread and spread until his whole face was abeam with joy. He came to the last line, gasped, looked up at Anna, and suddenly springing towards her, he caught her in his arms, and waltzed her madly about the living-room.

When he released her, her hat was set at a new and rakish angle, and she had lost too many hair-pins, but to Henry she had never looked half so adorable.

“Of course,” he panted, “everybody else’ll 194 do it too, as soon as we’ve showed ’em how––”

“What––what difference does that make?”

“That’s right, too....” He fairly doubled himself with mirth. “Can’t you just see Mix’s face when he sees this writing on the wall––of the Orpheum?”

“I––I’ve been seeing it all afternoon. When can we start?”

“Right away. Now.” He stopped, rigid. “No, we won’t either. No we won’t. First, we’ve got to see the Judge––we’ve got to make sure there’s no flaw in it. And then––we won’t let anybody copy us!”

“But how can you stop them?”

Henry was electric. “What’s a movie theatre worth on Sunday? When they can’t give a show anyway? I’ll rent every house in town for every Sunday from now ’till August! I’ll have to go slow, so nobody’ll suspect. It may take a month, or two months, but what do we care? We’ll play it sure. It won’t cost too much, and we’ve got the cash in the bank. We’ve––” He paused again, and looked down at her, and his voice fell a semi-tone. “I don’t know where I get all this we stuff. I’d have 195 spent two-thirds of it by this time. You’re the one that’s saved it––and earned it too, by gosh!” He lifted her hands, and while she watched him, with shining eyes, he deliberately kissed the tip of each of her ten fingers. “That’s where the money’s come from,” said Henry, clearing his throat. “Out of dish-water. Only tonight we’re going out to a restaurant and eat ourselves logy, and you won’t wash a damn dish. It’s my party.”