The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
AN UPSET
Perhaps Wellington Bunn was disappointed that Mr. Pertell did not at once beg him to reconsider his resignation, and to stay his parting steps, for the actor had turned aside after issuing his defiance, and started toward the house, as though to carry out his threat, pack up and go back to New York.
But the manager did not call after Mr. Bunn to stay. All he said was:
"Very well, Mr. Bunn, if you resign now, without the two weeks' notice called for in your contract, you need not expect another engagement with me, nor with any of the moving picture associations with which I am connected. I am not tasking you to do anything very difficult."
"But to ride a mule! Great Scott! I can't do that, my dear sir!"
"You told me you could ride."
"Yes, a horse, perhaps; but not a mule. Why, a mule kicks!"
"Oh, I don't believe this one will kick," replied the manager. "Anyhow, I want you to ride him. There is to be a comic part to this play, and I look to you to provide it. You will blacken your face and"
"Black up and take the part of a colored man—me, Wellington Bunn who has played the classic Shakespeare—do blackface? Never!"
"You forget that Shakespeare's Othello was a colored man, I guess," laughed Mr. Pertell, "and you told me you had played that character."
"So I have, but Othello was a Moor—not a common black-faced comedian. He was brown, rather than black."
"Well, we'll go a few shades darker, and be real black, in your case," suggested Mr. Pertell. "And you'll have to ride the mule. It is necessary to make the scene a success."
Wellington Bunn sighed, as he answered:
"Very well. But when this engagement is over no more moving pictures for me! I am through with them!"
"We'll see," replied the manager, as he went on with his preparations for the new play. Nearly the whole company were to take part in this, and Tommy and Nellie had parts that pleased them very much.
"I'm to drive a little goat cart!" exclaimed the small lad, "and you're to ride with me, Nellie."
"Oh, that will be fun!" she cried, clapping her hands. "But your goat won't bite; will he?"
"I won't let him bite you, anyhow," promised Tommy, kindly.
Although Mr. Bunn had tacitly agreed to ride the mule, he had many misgivings on the subject, and several times he might have been seen standing near the animal, carefully studying it, as though it were a piece of complicated machinery that had to be mastered in detail.
"Is it a—er—a gentle beast?" the actor asked of Sandy.
"Allers has been," replied the young farmer. "'Hee-haw,' as we call him, ain't never done no harm to speak of."
"He may begin on you," predicted Pepper Sneed, gloomily.
"I wish you wouldn't say such things!" exclaimed the other actor, testily. "You are always looking for trouble."
"Well, you'll get some without looking for it, if you ride that mule," declared the "grouch," as he walked off.
"Yes, and if anything happens, I suppose you'll say 'I told you so!'" remarked Mr. Bunn, with a gloomy countenance.
Preparations for the play went on, and rehearsals were in order. Without blacking his face, which could be done when the play was actually filmed, Mr. Bunn gingerly rode the mule. He made as much of a success of it as was possible. And certainly Hee-haw showed no signs of obstreperousness.
Ruth rode in the curious old cart, which Pop Snooks had made from material found about the farm. She was to represent a country maid of a generation past—and very pretty she looked, too, in her wide skirts and poke bonnet, covered with roses. Quite in contrast to the long and lanky figure Mr. Bunn, who in a nondescript suit, rode the mule that drew the cart, after the fashion of an English postillion. The play was a comic one, without much rhyme or reason, but it was found that audiences occasionally liked things of that sort, so the films were made.
The day for the humorous film had arrived, and all went well until the scene came with the mule. Even the first part of that was successfully taken, though Mr. Bunn kept muttering to himself over the fact that he had to blacken his face.
But he rode the beast, which certainly did nothing out of the ordinary, though Mr. Sneed, with his usual gloomy forebodings, confided to Pop that the beast had a wicked look in his eyes.
Ruth had ridden in the cart along the country road and had alighted from the vehicle, her part being over. Then, just as Mr. Bunn was about to get off the mule's back a bee, or some, other insect, stung the animal.
With a "Hee-haw!" worthy of his name the mule lashed out with his hind feet and, in an instant, the frail cart that Pop Snooks had constructed was kicked to bits. It was lucky that Ruth was out of it.
As for Wellington Bunn, he fell forward on the mule's back when the animal kicked out, and there, holding on tightly, the actor clung, while the beast dashed off down the road, dragging behind him the shafts and a small part of the cart.
"There he goes! I knew something would happen to him!" cried Mr. Sneed. "To-day is Friday!"
"Oh, he'll be hurt—maybe killed!" cried Ruth, for, in spite of his rather too-tragic airs, Mr. Bunn was liked by all.
"I guess he won't get hurt much!" exclaimed. Sandy. "Hee-haw never runs far, an' he never did such a thing before."
However, all the men ran down the road to see the outcome of the happening to Mr. Bunn, and to lend help, if necessary.
On ran the mule, seemingly not slackening Speed, and to his neck, so that he should not fall off, clung the actor. His long legs flapped up and down, and swayed from side to side, while his cries of wild distress floated back to his friends.
"Stop him! Don't let him run! Grab him, somebody!" pleaded Mr. Bunn. But there was no one who could stop the animal.
However, the ride was not destined to be a long one. The mule ran along the highway, leaped a roadside ditch, and then stopped short in front of a grassy bank. So sudden was the halt that Mr. Bunn shot over the animal's head, his hold around the neck being broken, and he was thus neatly upset, coming down amid the luxurious growth of grass.
He sat there dazed for a moment, his face being now curiously streaked, for some of the powdered carbon had rubbed off on the mule's neck. As for Hee-haw, he began quietly cropping the grass, as if he had done his part of the entertainment
"Oh, if I had only been able to get that on the film!" cried Russ, as he and the others ran up. "Maybe we can get him to do it over again, Mr. Pertell."
"What—do that again! Never! I resign here and now!" exclaimed the actor. "I am through with the moving picture business forever!"
But as he had often said that before, and as he was in the habit of resigning at least once every day, no one took him seriously.
"Are you hurt, my dear sir?" asked the manager, solicitously, as he reached Mr. Bunn's side.
"If I am not, it is not due to you," was the retort. "But I believe I have escaped with my life."
He arose gingerly, and discovered that he had not even a scratch. The soft grass had saved him from everything but a jolt.
"I never knew Hee-haw to act so before," said Sandy, as he came up and took charge of the mule.
"Well, he'll never get the chance to act so with me again," declared Mr. Bunn, with great decision. "Now, as soon as I get this detestable black from my face, I am going to New York. I am through with moving pictures."
Mr. Pertell did not attempt to argue with the actor, well knowing that the threat would not be carried out. Nor was it. A little later, when clothed in his accustomed garb, with his tall hat, which he seldom omitted from his costume, Mr. Bunn walked out, studying a new part that he was to take in the next play.
But for several days after that, if anyone said "mule" to him, or even imitated the braying of that beast, Mr. Bunn scowled fiercely and strode off.
In one of the scenes Mr. Pertell needed a number of farm hands to pose in the background, representing a scene in a wheat field, that was being mowed with the old fashioned scythes. Sandy undertook to get the characters, and a number of rather shy and awkward young men presented themselves at Oak Farm one morning.
"Now we'll try this," said the manager, when all was in readiness. "You young farmers are supposed to be working in the wheat field. Just act naturally—as if you were working. Don't pay any attention to the camera. Talk among yourselves, and swing your scythes. My actors will do the main work in front of you. But I want a truly artistic background for the film.
"Now, Mr. Sneed, you and Miss Pennington are the main characters in this scene. You, Mr. Sneed, are supposed to be one of the reapers, and Miss Pennington comes out to bring the workers a jug of lemonade. She also has a letter for you to read. You lean on your scythe as you read it—you know, a nice, graceful pose."
"I know," answered the actor.
"And you, Miss Pennington, you are supposed to be in love with one of the young farmers."
"Me! Me!" cried several of the lads Sandy had engaged.
"Now, not all at once, please!" begged Mr. Pertell, with a smile. "I appreciate your interest in Miss Pennington, but this must be worked out according to the scenario."
He went on to explain how he wanted the action carried out, and Russ was ready with the camera.
"Attention!" called the manager, as he stepped back to get a general view of the scene. "That will do, I think," he added. "Go!" he cried, and the action of the play was on, Russ clicking away at the camera.
First the reapers were shown, swaying as they walked along, each one cutting his "swath," or path, through the standing grain. Mr. Sneed was one of these. Then the view changed, so as to show Miss Pennington, dressed as a country lass, coming along with a jug on her shoulder, and a letter in her hand.
She reached the scene of the mowing, and there was a little "business," or acting, as she handed over the letter. Some of the farmers drank from the jug, and all of them had hard work to keep their eyes from the camera.
"Not that way! Not that way!" cried the manager, as one young reaper took a position directly in front of the clicking machine and stared straight into the lens. "You're not posing in a beauty contest. Go on with your reaping, if you please, young man!"
"I can cut a foot or so out," said Russ. "That won't spoil the film."
"Now then, Mr. Sneed, lean your arm on the scythe, and read your letter," directed the manager. "Miss Pennington, you stand off a little to one side, and talk to one of the reapers. The rest of you swing your scythes."
The action went on, and Mr. Sneed, taking as graceful an attitude as was consistent with his character, began to read the missive, which would be photographed, much enlarged, later, and thrown on the screen for the audience to read.
Made nervous by something to which they were unaccustomed, the farmer-actors were perhaps a little self-conscious. One of them, swinging his scythe, came too near Mr. Sneed. In an instant he had knocked from under the actor's arm the crooked scythe handle on which Mr. Sneed was leaning, and the next instant the "grouch" went down in a heap, fortunately falling in such a way that he was not cut by the sharp blade.