In the beginning, Wilbur Omar Brown was a thin, saccharine gentleman whose words and deeds on remote occasions almost shed the stamp of asininity which seemed to be inherently theirs. He would, in the midst of his usual babbling, reveal a sudden shrewdness, a cunning, a knowledge perhaps of the population of Borneo, the date of the battle of Marathon, the height of the highest mountain in the world. But such unexpected illuminations from this Brown's brain served chiefly to reveal the natural darkness which inhabited it. Did he let loose one flash of humor, did he uncork one ray of intellect, it but provided vivid evidence of his general witlessness. He had two children, which, to a sensitive observer, was perhaps the most irritating thing about him.
These children, picturesque and buxom, furnished him with a fatuous pride. Himself thin, colorless, inutile Brown pointed them out as his own, spoke vaingloriously and in his squeaking voice of inherited stamina, of untainted family physique handed down from generation to generation. In their presence he swelled to heroic proportions, he assumed a faint virility of gesture, and discoursed darkly concerning primitive instincts.
"We must not disparage the primitive instincts," he would pipe, removing his thick-lensed glasses and throwing out his spavined chest.
"We must not talk sneeringly of the evidences of the brute in man," he would go on, stroking his skinny knees and regarding you with a vague, watery eye. "Yes, sir; without our primitive instincts we should be an uninteresting lot!"
Of such minor eccentricities, little derelicts knocking about within his more or less vacant soul, Brown had his fullest share. As for his vices, they were more uninteresting if possible than his virtues. He was, summing it up for the moment, one of these born wallflowers of life—
There are some people in whom virtue and vice are the direct results of cowardice. Thus you will find hypocrisy and honesty walking hand in hand; purity and nastiness occupying the same cells, nobility and meanness throbbing together within the same bosom—all forming the little empty enigma known as the bourgeoisie.
Thinking it over carefully, such a fellow was Brown.
Of his private life there is this to say. In the beginning—take shrewd notice of the dramatic value of this clause—in the beginning he was a copy reader on a Chicago newspaper. He sat at a flat-topped desk from 7 A. M. to 3 P. M. every day except Sundays. It was his duty to read a certain proportion of the stories turned in by the reporters of the paper to the city editor and handed over by that dignitary to the copy-desk. Reading these stories he would insert punctuation, correct grammar, delete dubious remarks, annihilate what might be libelous, add a few "it is saids," and "it is allegeds" to statements which seemed too strong. This done he would crown his achievements by the construction of a heading.
Thus, if it was a story concerning the coldness of the day and the misery of the poor as observed by the reporter from a bench in the County Agent's office, he, Brown, would with great concentration, counting of letters, biting of lips, inscribe:
B-R-R-R! Chicago Shivers.
Mercury Drop Brings Want.
Poor Plead for Fuel.
Woeful Scenes in County Agent's Office While One
Woman Sobs Woe.
Cold Wave to Continue.
If it were a story concerning some court proceedings, and most of them were alike, Brown would perpetrate:
Judge Raps Romeo.
Wife Sobs Woe in Court.
Sad Climax to Romantic Elopement.
Struck Her, Bride Alleges.
In the conduct of this business he was regarded, as are all unoriginal, unimaginative creatures, as a reliable and competent workman. His day's work over, Brown would gather under his arm half a dozen newspapers and depart for home. He seldom spoke to any member of the staff, although it was typical of him to pause for a few moments and listen to the ceaseless anecdoting among the men, inserting some illuminating remark before passing on, such as:
"I hardly see how that man could have attended an embassy dinner in Hong Kong. There is no embassy there."
At 4 o'clock he was home and thenceforth his life underwent a soothing expansion.
Mrs. Brown, a vivid looking, matter-of-fact minded woman of 30, was still in love with her husband. The two picturesque and buxom children greeted him loyally. Mrs. Brown kissed him, inquired if he were weary, instructed him concerning the midday doings of her neighbors, and leisurely busied herself about the preparations in the kitchen.
Her love for her husband was not a romantic fancy. Nor was it anything remotely lyrical.
She admired him in a homely way, as one admires a serviceable raincoat, a good brand of tobacco, a pleasing ride in an automobile. She was fond of his unruffled manner, was pleased with his quiet voice, his calm, his shyness in company, his modesty before friends.
Altogether, she saw in his weak effaciveness something she called dignity and reserve. In his general witlessness she saw the conservatism of a deep brain, in his impassive and unemotional conduct she perceived the respect and deference of a true gentleman.
During the course of her married life she had adjusted her ideals until they pleasantly coincided with the proportions of Wilbur, and she was happy in an aimless, unproductive manner. She had, however, observed of late a tendency of her husband to discourse concerning what he termed the primitive instincts of the race. It had begun with the war and with his planting of a patriotic garden in a patch behind their apartment building. This puny agriculture, Wilbur made known to his friends, was the grim working of the primitive instincts coming back into the world. After some slight irritation Mrs. Brown began to be vaguely proud of the idea, as she was of most of the intellectual advances made by her husband.
"They are nothing to disparage," he quoted to her. "Patriotism, love, honor, all the fine things you know, as well as the brutal things, are nothing but primitive instincts. We ought all of us to be more natural. Civilization has done that, taken away our naturalness. We ought to exercise our primitive instincts more, so to speak, wherever we can do so honestly, conveniently, without injury."
Then—I will skip the other myriad placidities of the fellow's existence—then, by one of those haphazard strokes of fortune, Brown was selected by his editor to fill a vacancy left in the staff by the departure of Mr. Joe Corbin. Mr. Corbin had been the moving-picture critic. He had departed to become a scenario writer for a corporation whose work he had, as critic, ably and consistently admired.
Thus for no reason at all, except perhaps his general worthlessness for any task involving sparkle or ingenuity, Brown found himself seated at his new desk, a pile of press-agent communications under his nose, a pass to all the movie theaters in his pocket, a new future confronting him.
It is the congenital conviction of ninety persons out of ninety-one—and I have never encountered the ninety-first—that they are peculiarly fitted for the career of dramatic critic. Your genial mono cell, hesitating over the composition of a letter to his congressman inquiring after seeds, your impassive yokel shuddering before the task of answering an invitation to the grand dinner and ball of Lodge 15, Local 21; your salt of the earth working himself into a lethal fever arranging an inquiry after some unwary domestic to be inserted in the want ad column of his favorite evening gazette, all these intricately illiterate persons will accept boldly, eagerly, merrily the position of critic of literature, art, drama on any daily, weekly, or monthly periodical, and do. Modesty, shyness, effaciveness perish in the birth of a miraculous assurance.
The anointed step forth from their oblivion. Culture, cunning, infallibility drop upon them from some Olympian height. They become, these troglodytes, by some process of cellular evolution too swift to follow with the naked eye, dictators of the nation's esthetic values. Which merely goes to show that all of us are born critics—at the rate of one a minute.
II
These remarks, though general and blurred, have yet a specific bearing upon the case of Wilbur Omar Brown.
Seated at his new desk, this Brown contemplated with a new, an almost brazen light in his little watery eyes, the future which had opened for him. Within him he felt hitherto untapped springs bouncing to the surface. He experienced in less than fifteen minutes a swift, radiant growth of power in his soul, of ability, of genius.
He had, like his innumerable counterparts, a vague notion concerning moving pictures, a vaguer notion concerning drama, an almost indistinct, unborn notion concerning art.
It was his habit to frequent the movie theaters once or twice a week and gaze with a vacuous interest upon the black-and-white animations before him, to listen with an insensible ear to the musical distortions of the orchestra whose clamor he confused with the merits of the film, to applaud with rare humor the advertisement of his favorite laundry when it was flashed upon the screen, to read aloud the significant epistle which the hero had a moment previously clutched despairingly and thrust from him in clenched fist, to rise solemnly when the aforesaid orchestra played the national anthem, to prophesy shrewdly and in whispers the fact that the villian would be exposed and the old mother saved from a consumptive’s grave by the antitoxin the hero had invented.
But these characteristics were of the past.
As he sallied from his new desk a spring was in his step. He thought of the millions awaiting his pronouncements, engaging in arguments over his opinions; he visioned his name upon ash barrels, ruined walls, and even awnings. In these speculations there was no feeling of dubiousness. He moved hungrily upon his first theater. He seated himself with dignity upon his first critical throne. He narrowed his eyes.
Undoubtedly, during those first minutes at this particular theater Brown’s temperament and critical attitudes underwent their moulding. Standards came to life in his brain, even as love dawns in the heart of the unsuspecting savage. Dogmas, prejudices, tastes all materialized with the same swift certainty.
The play, it so happened, was one in which a wealthy, doting husband returns unexpectedly home, finds his wife in the arms of a stranger, overhears her remark of her child, "and its nose is just like yours, dearest” as she strokes the nose of the stranger, contemplates murder, is thwarted by a defective shell in the revolver, departs into a cold world, becomes a lumber-jack in the Far North and is known as Silent Jim, roams the forest primeval registering anguish with long toe-dragging steps, breaks down and weeps while chopping trees, cuts off his toe and faints, is carried to a hospital by the faithful, simple lumber-jacks, finds his wife has become a nurse in the same hospital, curses her, but learns to his bewilderment that the stranger who embraced her and whose nose she said the child’s nose resembled, was none other than her long lost brother just returned from India.
At this point in the play Brown rubbed his little watery eyes with his handkerchief and with bated breath watched while the wife and husband, (whose sore toe underwent an instantaneous cure as a result of the aforesaid revelation concerning the brother from India) walked slowly toward the horizon, while the sun, setting quickly, left her a silhouette with wind-tousled hair upon a hilltop and him a silhouette pointing with spread fingers over a valley below, the caption for this twilight reconciliation being, "A New Dawn.”
Never before, as has been perhaps painfully indicated, had Brown viewed such proceedings as at present.
"A play of primitive instincts,” he said to himself, "done with a wonderful attention to human nature, and full of fine details and thrills.”
He rambled on to himself in this vein and as he moved out of the lobby he held his head high, he walked with a peculiarly drawn-out step.
His review of this film masterpiece, as he called it, appeared in the paper the next day under his name. It was couched in those sober and pompous inanities which enrolled him at once as an able upholder of the ideals of his new profession.
III
Brown’s pride in his success, the inevitable changes in his manner, occupied little of my attention. His was the usual inflation which comes into the souls of little men when they step out of their merciful anonymity. At home this inflation expressed itself in certain formalities of speech and conduct which he seemed to acquire overnight. A curious consciousness crept into his talk, an impressiveness freighted his utterance.
As the days passed the change became less apparent. His acquaintances forgot the colorless inutile Brown of the past and took the new creature of dignity and importance for granted.
Even in his home this subtle adjustment went on.
Mrs. Brown, at first somewhat confused in the process, soon added the fellow’s new mannerisms to the other ideal qualities which he possessed. Of his writings, now appearing each day in the newspaper, she was modestly proud, clipping and pasting them in a large book, as behooved the helpmate of a literary genius. “The screen,” said Brown to her one evening (he never referred to the thing as the movies any more), “is the greatest single benefactor of the race. Art and life combine upon it. The primitive instincts of man and woman are revealed for the first time in the shadow drama. Heretofore these instincts have come to us in sugar-coated fashion through the artifices of the stage.”
Just where Wilbur Omar Brown underwent the metamorphosis which ended in his domestic ruin is hard to determine. Undoubtedly it dated from the moment he sat himself down and fastened his eye upon his first screen drama.
In a month, however, the results of this metamorphosis became apparent.
Slowly, imperceptibly, Wilbur Omar Brown faded out of existence, leaving behind in this same slow and imperceptible way an automatic gesticulator—a Francis X. Bushman, a Bryant Washburn. Day by day this strange eradication of a personality increased.
I did not see Brown to speak to for several months after he got his new position. When I did see him I almost failed to recognize him. In those three months, my little watery-eyed, colored friend, Wilbur Omar Brown, had disappeared.
He greeted me in an uncanny manner. His eyebrows shot up, his mouth opened, a light dawned slowly over his face. He suddenly thrust out his hand, seized mine, placed his other hand upon my shoulder, and thus greeted me.
When he had concluded this operation he placed both hands on my shoulders, pushed me gently from him, stared into my eye with a mysterious rapture and ejaculated my name. For the moment I was baffled. There was something irritatingly familiar about his behavior. It was not Brown, and yet...
"How is Mrs. Brown?" I asked.
His reply, or rather the manner of it, left me bewildered.
He closed his eyes even as I was asking the question, the lids fluttering. His spavined chest rose in a fearsome sigh. The look of joy utterly vanished from his face. He raised one hand and with spread fingers covered his forehead and nose. His other arm he thrust out sideways, the fist half clenched and curled back. At the same instant he staggered from me two short steps.
"What!" I stammered. "I'm sorry, Brown. I didn't know there was anything."
The spearlike fingers dragged themselves slowly from his face, the extended arm fell limply to his side, the shoulders sank, in fact collapsed. Brown's lips parted in a slanting laugh. He said nothing.
I chose to ignore the entire incident. It was a hot day. I put it out of mind. I began the conversation anew, picking out the most banal remark at my command.
"I got back two days ago," I said. "Had an ordinary trip."
Brown, who had turned slightly from me and had been staring into space with his watery eyes, wheeled abruptly. A clenched fist jumped to his right jaw; he retreated two short steps and riveted me with the exclamation, "No!!!"
"Yes!" I cried.
There was something contagious about this horseplay.
Brown dropped a stiffened arm to his desk, the fingers of his hand extended. I perceived a peculiar tension about his entire figure. It gave him uncanny proportions.
We talked, and as we talked I watched him, fascinated. He had become, in short, a theatricalism. His eyes flashed, his head turned abruptly from side to side. Strange, inexplicable emotions contorted his face. His walk was a study in absolute artifice. I could ask him no question without bringing upon me the entire business of surprise, intelligence, doubt, hesitation, fear, and even anguish. His gestures were the ludicrous exaggerations of the movies. He had, it was evident, stepped out of the colorless routine of his copy-reading days into some magnificent limbo.
IV
At first my bewilderment and growing irritation prevented me from observing to the full the fellow’s manner. But as we moved from his desk, I having accepted more or less dazedly an invitation to accompany him home, I perceived the proportions of his mania.
When we encountered acquaintances Brown bowed low, his face registering a confusion of emotions. He was continually gripping my arm, making startling remarks, wheeling upon passers-by and fastening a fiery eye upon them.
I was, nevertheless, unable to get any information out of him. I sensed something on his mind, but he seemed incapable of voicing any sane thought.
When we arrived at his home the secret was revealed. I found Mrs. Brown wasted away. A strange harassed glint was in her eyes. She bit her lip as Brown opened the door.
As for Brown, he stared at her for a moment and then thrust forward his arms in what seemed a mute appeal. Mrs. Brown lowered her head and a tear appeared on her cheek. Brown’s arms fell to his side and he hesitated a moment. During this moment his face became contorted with emotions. Suddenly he advanced upon her, placing his left hand upon his heart, extending his other hand toward her, and exclaimed, "Good evening."
Mrs. Brown glanced at me appealingly, turned, and fled. Brown entered his home. His gesticulating, if possible, appeared now to have increased. He accented the most trifling words with vast movements of his limbs, and seemed altogether like some clown in a preposterous pantomime. Mrs. Brown appeared several times, her face pathetic in its pallor. After the dinner, which was as grotesque an affair as any I have ever attended, Mrs. Brown beckoned me aside. We left Brown sitting at his desk in the front room, composing, as he said, his critique for the morrow.
We were alone in her bedroom, whither she had led me. I noticed that a trunk stood packed against the wall, that the room was stripped.
"T'm going away," Mrs. Brown said to me, "and I want to talk to you. Wilbur has frequently told me you were his friend. Your coming tonight may prove providential. I have already sent the children away. I was afraid he might affect them. But, I can't stand it any longer. I must leave."
She commenced to weep and I waited patiently until she resumed.
"It's been this way for at least two months, and is growing worse every day. He's got so he can't do anything but strut and mimic the terrible movie actors. He wakes up like that, he comes home like that, he—he goes to sleep like that. He—he is terrible. If I could only tell you the things he does. They—they are shameful."
Again the tears, again the wait, again the resumption.
"He’s so changed I don’t know him. He’s worse than a stranger. Oh, my nerves are gone. I shall die if I stay here with him. I can’t ask him a question, I can’t kiss him, I can’t do anything but what he starts acting. It’s those terrible moving pictures that have done it, just ruined and spoiled him. Can you do anything while I am away? I am going to my mother. Please try."
She ceased and put her hat on.
Before I could summon an answer which would be sufficiently ambiguous, she had started for the street.
"Here," she said, "give this to Wilbur. I don’t want to see him again."
She handed me a letter and moved quietly out of the house.
I found Brown as I had left him, gesturing to himself, frowning and registering, in the usual ludicrous manner of the movies, "deep thought."
"Brown," I said, "your wife has just gone. She gave me this letter to give you."
He turned on me, springing to his feet. I settled back for an exhibition of unusual dramaturgy as he read the note. I was not disappointed. The fellow actually punctuated each sentence with the most insane struttings, walkings up and down and draggings of the toes, flourishings of the arms, bowings of the head, beatings of the bosom, I had ever seen.
When he had finished he collapsed into a chair and sobbed.
I approached him sympathetically. He raised his face and beckoned me away with a stiff gesture. His grief was even as his other emotions—a thing of stilted and elaborate pantomime. I perceived that the artificiality which had possessed him had eaten its way into the depths of his consciousness.
"Ah," he cried, "she is gone . . . gone . . . I should have known better than . . . to . . . release the brute in me. I must be careful. I must win her back."
He arose and paced the room, gesturing, grimacing in a preposterous manner.
"The brute in me," he murmured. "That is what comes of unleashing the primitive instincts . . . man naked . . . man unadorned . . ."
He paused trembling.
Removing his thick-lensed glasses he stroked his skinny knees, and suddenly rolled his eyes and fell forward in his chair.
I was about to spring to his assistance when I perceived that this final proceeding was merely another of his "registerings" and I paused.
Sure enough he raised himself, opened his eyes and murmured in his strange piping voice:
"Begone . . . begone . . . you are no true friend in my need. I would be alone. I would suffer alone. No one can help me. I must fight this fight alone and if I am victorious, if I succeed in killing the brute in me it will be by my own efforts."
I left him to his primitive instincts. That was a month ago. Mrs. Brown has since obtained a divorce, charging——cruelty.