Work on the piece dragged slowly to an end. In these latter days the earnest young leading man suffered spells of concern for his employer. He was afraid that Mr. Baird in his effort to struggle out of the slough of low comedy was not going to be wholly successful. He had begun to note that the actors employed for this purpose were not invariably serious even when the cameras turned. Or, if serious, they seemed perhaps from the earnestness of their striving for the worth-while drama, to be a shade too serious. They were often, he felt, overemphatic in their methods. Still, they were, he was certain, good actors. One could always tell what they meant.
It was at these times that he especially wished he might be allowed to view the "rushes." He not only wished to assure himself for Baird's sake that the piece would be acceptably serious, but he wished, with a quite seemly curiosity, to view his own acting on the screen. It occurred to him that he had been acting a long time without a glimpse of himself. But Baird had been singularly firm in this matter, and the Montague girl had sided with him. It was best, they said, for a beginning actor not to see himself at first. It might affect his method before this had crystallized; make them self-conscious, artificial.
He was obliged to believe that these well-wishers of his knew best. He must not, then, trifle with a screen success that seemed assured. He tried to be content with this decision. But always the misgivings would return. He would not be really content until he had watched his own triumph. Soon this would be so securely his privilege that not even Baird could deny it, for the first piece in which he had worked was about to be shown. He looked forward to that.
It was toward the end of the picture that his intimacy with the Montague girl grew to a point where, returning from location to the studio late, they would dine together. "Hurry and get ungreased, Son," she would say, "and you can take an actress out to dinner." Sometimes they would patronize the cafeteria on the lot, but oftener, in a spirit of adventure, they would search out exotic restaurants. A picture might follow, after which by street-car he would escort her to the Montague home in a remote, flat region of palm-lined avenues sparsely set with new bungalows.
She would disquiet him at these times by insisting that she pay her share of the expense, and she proved to have no mean talent for petty finance, for she remembered every item down to the street-car fares. Even to Merton Gill she seemed very much a child once she stepped from the domain of her trade. She would stare into shop windows wonderingly, and never failed to evince the most childish delight when they ventured to dine at an establishment other than a cafeteria.
At times when they waited for a car after these dissipations he suffered a not unpleasant alarm at sight of a large-worded advertisement along the back of a bench on which they would sit. "You furnish the Girl, We furnish the House," screamed the bench to him above the name of an enterprising tradesman that came in time to bite itself deeply into his memory.
Of course it would be absurd, but stranger things, he thought, had happened. He wondered if the girl was as afraid of him as of other men. She seemed not to be, but you couldn't tell much about her. She had kissed him one day with a strange warmth of manner, but it had been quite publicly in the presence of other people. When he left her at her door now it was after the least sentimental of partings, perhaps a shake of her hard little hand, or perhaps only a "S'long-- see you at the show-shop!"
It was on one of these nights that she first invited him to dine with the Montague family. "I tried last night to get you on the telephone," she explained, "but they kept giving me someone else, or maybe I called wrong. Ain't these six-figured Los Angeles telephone numbers the limit? When you call 208972 or something, it sounds like paging a box-car. I was going to ask you over. Ma had cooked a lovely mess of corned beef and cabbage. Anyway, you come eat with us tomorrow night, will you? She'll have something else cooked up that will stick to the merry old slats. You can come home with me when we get in from work." So it was that on the following night he enjoyed a home evening with the Montagues. Mrs. Montague had indeed cooked up something else, and had done it well; while Mr. Montague offered at the sideboard a choice of amateur distillations and brews which he warmly recommended to the guest. While the guest timidly considered, having had but the slightest experience with intoxicants, it developed that the confidence placed in his product by the hospitable old craftsman was not shared by his daughter.
"Keep off it," she warned, and then to her father, "Say, listen, Pa, have a heart; that boy's got to work to-morrow." "So be it, my child," replied Mr. Montague with a visible stiffening of manner. "Sylvester Montague is not the man to urge strong drink upon the reluctant or the over-cautious. I shall drink my aperatif alone." "Go to it, old Pippin," rejoined his daughter as she vanished to the kitchen. "Still, a little dish of liquor at this hour," continued the host suggestively when they were alone.
"Well"--Merton wished the girl had stayed--"perhaps just a few drops." "Precisely, my boy, precisely. A mere dram." He poured the mere dram and his guest drank. It was a colourless, fiery stuff with an elusive taste of metal. Merton contrived an expression of pleasure under the searching glance of his host. "Ah, I knew you would relish it. I fancy I could amaze you if I told you how recently it was made. Now here"--He grasped another bottle purposely--"is something a full ten days older. It has developed quite a bouquet. Just a drop--"
The guest graciously yet firmly waved a negation.
"Thanks," he said, "but I want to enjoy the last--it--it has so much flavour." "It has; it has, indeed. I'll not urge you, of course. Later you must see the simple mechanism by which I work these wonders. Alone, then, I drink to you." Mr. Montague alone drank of two other fruits of his loom before the ladies appeared with dinner. He was clean--shaven now and his fine face glowed with hospitality as he carved roast chickens. The talk was of the shop: of what Mr. Montague scornfully called "grind shows" when his daughter led it, and of the legitimate hall-show when he gained the leadership. He believed that moving pictures had sounded the knell of true dramatic art and said so in many ways. He tried to imagine the sensations of Lawrence Barrett or Louis James could they behold Sylvester Montague, whom both these gentlemen had proclaimed to be no mean artist, enacting the role of a bar-room rowdy five days on end by reclining upon a sawdust floor with his back supported by a spirits barrel. The supposititious comments of the two placed upon the motion-picture industry the black guilt of having degraded a sterling artist to the level of a peep-show mountebank. They were frankly disgusted at the spectacle, and their present spokesman thought it as well that they had not actually lived to witness it--even the happier phases of this so- called art in which a mere chit of a girl might earn a living wage by falling downstairs for a so-called star, or the he-doll whippersnapper--Merton Gill flinched in spite of himself--could name his own salary for merely possessing a dimpled chin.
Further, an artist in the so-called art received his payment as if he had delivered groceries at one's back door. "You, I believe--"-- The speaker addressed his guest--"are at present upon a pay-roll; but there are others, your elders-possibly your betters, though I do not say that--"
"You better not," remarked his daughter, only to be ignored.
"--others who must work a day and at the close of it receive a slip of paper emblazoned 'Talent Pay Check.' How more effectively could they cheapen the good word 'talent'? And at the foot of this slip you are made to sign, before receiving the pittance you have earned, a consent to the public exhibition for the purpose of trade or advertising, of the pictures for which you may have posed. Could tradesmen descend to a lower level, I ask you?"
"I'll have one for twelve fifty to-morrow night," said Mrs. Montague, not too dismally. "I got to do a duchess at a reception, and I certainly hope my feet don't hurt me again."
"Cheer up, old dears! Pretty soon you can both pick your parts," chirped their daughter. "Jeff's going to give me a contract, and then you can loaf forever for all I care. Only I know you won't, and you know you won't. Both of you'd act for nothing if you couldn't do it for money. What's the use of pretending?" "The chit may be right, she may be right," conceded Mr. Montague sadly. Later, while the ladies were again in the kitchen, Mr. Montague, after suggesting, "Something in the nature of an after-dinner cordial," quaffed one for himself and followed it with the one he had poured out for a declining guest who still treasured the flavour of his one aperitif.
He then led the way to the small parlour where he placed in action on the phonograph a record said to contain the ravings of John McCullough in his last hours. He listened to this emotionally.
"That's the sort of technique," he said, "that the so--called silver screen has made but a memory." He lighted his pipe, and identified various framed photographs that enlivened the walls of the little room. Many of them were of himself at an earlier age.
"My dear mother-in-law," he said, pointing to another. "A sterling artist, and in her time an ornament of the speaking stage. I was on tour when her last days came. She idolized me, and passed away with my name on her lips. Her last request was that a photograph of me should be placed in her casket before it went to its final resting place."
He paused, his emotion threatening to overcome him. Presently he brushed a hand across his eyes and continued, "I discovered later that they had picked out the most wretched of all my photographs--an atrocious thing I had supposed was destroyed. Can you imagine it?"
Apparently it was but the entrance of his daughter that saved him from an affecting collapse. His daughter removed the record of John McCullough's ravings, sniffed at it, and put a fox-trot in its place.
"He's got to learn to dance," she explained, laying hands upon the guest. "Dancing--dancing!" murmured Mr. Montague, as if the very word recalled bitter memories.
With brimming eyes he sat beating time to the fox-trot measure while Merton Gill proved to all observers that his mastery of this dance would, if ever at all achieved, be only after long and discouraging effort.
"You forget all about your feet," remarked the girl as they paused, swaying to the rhythm. "Remember the feet--they're important in a dance. Now!--" But it was hard to remember his feet or, when he did recall them, to relate their movements even distantly to the music. When this had died despairingly, the girl surveyed her pupil with friendly but doubting eyes.
"Say, Pa, don't he remind you of someone? Remember the squirrel that joined out with us one time in the rep show and left 'East Lynne' flat right in the middle of the third act while he went down and announced the next night's play--the one that his name was Eddie Duffy and he called himself Clyde Maltravers?" "In a way, in a way," agreed Mr. Montague dismally. "A certain lack of finish in the manner, perhaps."
"Remember how Charlie Dickman, the manager, nearly murdered him for it in the wings? Not that Charlie didn't have a right to. Well, this boy dances like Eddie Duffy would have danced."
"He was undeniably awkward and forgetful," said Mr. Montague. "Well do I recall a later night. We played Under the Gaslight; Charlie feared to trust him with a part, so he kept the young man off stage to help with the train noise when the down express should dash across. But even in this humble station he proved inefficient. When the train came on he became confused, seized the cocoanut shells instead of the sand-paper, and our train that night entered to the sound of a galloping horse. The effect must have been puzzling to the audience. Indeed, many of them seemed to consider it ludicrous. Charlie Dickman confided in me later. 'Syl, my boy,' says he, 'this bird Duffy has caused my first gray hairs.' It was little wonder that he persuaded young Duffy to abandon the drama. He was not meant for the higher planes of our art. Now our young friend here"--he pointed to the perspiring Merton Gill--"doesn't even seem able to master a simple dance step. I might say that he seems to out-Duffy Duffy--for Duffy could dance after a fashion."
"He'll make the grade yet," replied his daughter grimly, and again the music sounded. Merton Gill continued unconscious of his feet, or, remembering them, he became deaf to the music. But the girl brightened with a sudden thought when next they rested.
"I got it!" she announced. "We'll have about two hundred feet of this for the next picture--you trying to dance just the way you been doing with me. If you don't close to a good hand I'll eat my last pay-check."
The lessons ceased. She seemed no longer to think it desirable that her pupil should become proficient in the modern steps. He was puzzled by her decision. Why should one of Baird's serious plays need an actor who forgot his feet in a dance?
There were more social evenings at the Montague home. Twice the gathering was enlarged by other members of the film colony, a supper was served and poker played for inconsiderable stakes. In this game of chance the Montague girl proved to be conservative, not to say miserly, and was made to suffer genuinely when Merton Gill displayed a reckless spirit in the betting. That he amassed winnings of ninety-eight cents one night did not reassure her. She pointed out that he might easily have lost this sum.
She was indeed being a mother to the defenceless boy. It was after a gambling session that she demanded to be told what he was doing with his salary. His careless hazarding of poker-chips had caused her to be fearful of his general money sense.
Merton Gill had indeed been reckless. He was now, he felt, actually one of the Hollywood set. He wondered how Tessie Kearns would regard his progress. Would she be alarmed to know he attended those gay parties that so often brought the film colony into unfavourable public notice? Jolly dinners, dancing, gambling, drinking with actresses--for Mr. Montague had at last turned out a beer that met with the approval not only of his guests but of his own more exacting family. The vivacious brew would now and again behave unreasonably at the moment of being released, but it was potable when subdued.
It was a gay life, Merton felt. And as for the Montague girl's questions and warnings about his money, he would show her! He had, of course, discharged his debt to her in the first two weeks of his work with Baird. Now he would show her what he really thought of money.
He would buy her a gift whose presentation should mark a certain great occasion. It should occur on the eve of his screen debut, and would fittingly testify his gratitude. For the girl, after all, had made him what he was. And the first piece was close to its premiere. Already he had seen advance notices in the newspapers. The piece was called Hearts On Fire, and in it, so the notices said, the comedy manager had at last realized an ambition long nourished. He had done something new and something big: a big thing done in a big way. The Montague girl would see that the leading man who had done so much to insure the success of Baird's striving for the worth-while drama was not unforgetful of her favours and continuous solicitude.
He thought first of a ring, but across the blank brick wall of the jewellery shop he elected to patronize was an enormous sign in white: The House of Lucky Wedding Rings. This staring announcement so alarmed him that he not only abandoned the plan for a ring-any sort of ring might be misconstrued, he saw-but in an excess of caution chose another establishment not so outspoken. If it kept wedding rings at all, it was decently reticent about them, and it did keep a profusion of other trinkets about which a possible recipient could entertain no false notions. Wrist watches, for example. No one could find subtle or hidden meanings in a wrist watch.
He chose a bauble that glittered prettily on its black silk bracelet, and was not shocked in the least when told by the engaging salesman that its price was a sum for which in the old days Gashwiler had demanded a good ten weeks of his life. Indeed it seemed rather cheap to him when he remembered the event it should celebrate. Still, it was a pleasing trifle and did not look cheap. "Do you warrant it to keep good time?" he sternly demanded.
The salesman became diplomatic, though not without an effect of genial man-toman frankness. "Well, I guess you and I both know what women's braceletwatches are." He smiled a superior masculine smile that drew his customer within the informed brotherhood. "Now here, there's a platinum little thing that costs seven hundred and fifty, and this one you like will keep just as good time as that one that costs six hundred more. What could be fairer than that?" "All right," said the customer. "I'll take it." During the remaining formalities attending the purchase the salesman, observing that he dealt with a tolerant man of the world, became even franker. "Of course no one," he remarked pleasantly while couching the purchase in a chaste bed of white satin, "expects women's bracelet-watches to keep time. Not even the women."
"Want 'em for looks," said the customer.
"You've hit it, you've hit it!" exclaimed the salesman delightedly, as if the customer had expertly probed the heart of a world-old mystery.
He had now but to await his great moment. The final scenes of the new piece were shot. Again he was resting between pictures. As the date for showing the first piece drew near he was puzzled to notice that both Baird and the Montague girl curiously avoided any mention of it. Several times he referred to it in their presence, but they seemed resolutely deaf to his "Well, I see the big show opens Monday night."
He wondered if there could be some recondite bit of screen etiquette which he was infringing. Actors were superstitious, he knew. Perhaps it boded bad luck to talk of a forthcoming production. Baird and the girl not only ignored his reference to Hearts on Fire, but they left Baird looking curiously secretive and the Montague girl looking curiously frightened. It perplexed him. Once he was smitten with a quick fear that his own work in this serious drama had not met the expectations of the manager.
However, in this he must be wrong, for Baird not only continued cordial but, as the girl had prophesied, he urged upon his new actor the signing of a long-time contract. The Montague girl had insisted upon being present at this interview, after forbidding Merton to put his name to any contract of which she did not approve. "I told Jeff right out that I was protecting you," she said. "He understands he's got to be reasonable."
It appeared, as they set about Baird's desk in the Buckeye office, that she had been right. Baird submitted rather gracefully, after but slight demur, to the terms which Miss Montague imposed in behalf of her protege. Under her approving eye Merton Gill affixed his name to a contract by which Baird was to pay him a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a week for three years.
It seemed an incredible sum. As he blotted his signature he was conscious of a sudden pity for the manager. The Montague girl had been hard--hard as nails, he thought--and Baird, a victim to his own good nature, would probably lose a great deal of money. He resolved never to press his advantage over a man who had been caught in a weak moment.
"I just want to say, Mr. Baird," he began, "that you needn't be afraid I'll hold you to this paper if you find it's too much money to pay me. I wouldn't have taken it at all if it hadn't been for her." He pointed an almost accusing finger at the girl. Baird grinned; the girl patted his hand. Even at grave moments she was a patter. "That's all right, Son," she said soothingly. "Jeff's got all the best of it, and Jeff knows it, too. Don't you, Jeff?"
"Well--" Baird considered. "If his work keeps up I'm not getting any the worst of it."
"You said it. You know very well what birds will be looking for this boy next week, and what money they'll have in their mitts.
"Maybe," said Baird.
"Well, you got the best of it, and you deserve to have. I ain't ever denied that, have I? You've earned the best of it the way you've handled him. All I'm here for, I didn't want you to have too much the best of it, see? I think I treated you well." "You're all right, Flips." "Well, everything's jake, then?"
"Everything's jake with me."
"All right! And about his work keeping up--trust your old friend and well-wisher. And say, Jeff--" Her eyes gleamed reminiscently. "You ain't caught him dancing yet. Well--wait, that's all. We'll put on a fox-trot in the next picture that will sure hog the footage."
As this dialogue progressed, Merton had felt more and more like a child in the presence of grave and knowing elders. They had seemed to forget him, to forget that the amazing contract just signed bore his name. He thought the Montague girl was taking a great deal upon herself. Her face, he noted, when she had stated terms to Baird, was the face she wore when risking a small bet at poker on a high hand. She seemed old, indeed. But he knew how he was going to make her feel younger. In his pocket was a gift of rare beauty, even if you couldn't run railway trains by it. And pretty things made a child of her.
Baird shook hands with him warmly at parting. "It'll be a week yet before we start on the new piece. Have a good time. Oh, yes, and drop around some time next week if there's any little thing you want to talk over--or maybe you don't understand."
He wondered if this were a veiled reference to the piece about to be shown. Certainly nothing more definite was said about it. Yet it was a thing that must be of momentous interest to the manager, and the manager must know that it would be thrilling to the actor.
He left with the Montague girl, who had become suddenly grave and quiet. But outside the Holden lot, with one of those quick transitions he had so often remarked in her, she brightened with a desperate sort of gaiety.
"I'll tell you what!" she exclaimed. "Let's go straight down town-- it'll be six by the time we get there--and have the best dinner money can buy: lobster and chicken and vanilla ice-cream and everything, right in a real restaurant--none of this tray stuff--and I'll let you pay for it all by yourself. You got a right to, after that contract. And we'll be gay, and all the extra people that's eating in the restaurant'll think we're a couple o' prominent film actors. How about it?" She danced at his side. "We'll have soup, too," he amended. "One of those thick ones that costs about sixty cents. Sixty cents just for soup!" he repeated, putting a hand to the contract that now stiffened one side of his coat.
"Well, just this once," she agreed. "It might be for the last time."
"Nothing like that," he assured her. "More you spend, more you make- -that's my motto."
They waited for a city-bound car, sitting again on the bench that was so outspoken. "You furnish the girl, we furnish the home," it shouted. He put his back against several of the bold words and felt of the bracelet-watch in his pocket.
"It might be the last time for me," insisted the girl. "I feel as if I might die most any time. My health's breaking down under the strain. I feel kind of a fever coming on right this minute."
"Maybe you shouldn't go out."
"Yes, I should."
They boarded the car and reached the real restaurant, a cozy and discreet resort up a flight of carpeted stairs. Side by side on a seat that ran along the wall they sat at a table for two and the dinner was ordered. "Ruin yourself if you want to," said the girl as her host included celery and olives in the menu. "Go on and order prunes, too, for all I care. I'm reckless. Maybe I'll never have another dinner, the way this fever's coming on. Feel my hand."
Under the table she wormed her hand into his, and kept it there until food came. "Do my eyes look very feverish?" she asked.
"Not so very," he assured her, covering an alarm he felt for the first time. She did appear to be feverish, and the anxiety of her manner deepened as the meal progressed. It developed quickly that she had but scant appetite for the choice food now being served. She could only taste bits here and there. Her plates were removed with their delicacies almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek his, gripping it as if in some nameless dread. He became worried about her state; his own appetite suffered.
Once she said as her hot hand clung to his, "I know where you'll be to-morrow night." Her voice grew mournful, despairing. "And I know perfectly well it's no good asking you to stay away."
He let this pass. Could it be that the girl was already babbling in delirium? "And all the time," she presently went on, "I'll simply be sick a- bed, picking at the covers, all blue around the gills. That'll be me, while you're off to your old motion picture--'the so-called art of the motion picture,'" she concluded with a careful imitation of her father's manner.
He tried to determine whether she were serious or jesting. You never could tell about this girl. Whatever it was, it made him uneasy.
Outside he wished to take her home in a taxi-cab, but she would not hear to this. "We'll use the town-car, Gaston," she announced with a flash of her old manner as she waved to an on-coming street-car. During the long ride that followed she was silent but restless, tapping her foot, shifting in her seat, darting her head about. The one thing she did steadily was to clutch his arm.
During the walk from the car to the Montague house she twice indulged in her little dance step, even as she clung to the arm, but each Lime she seemed to think little of it and resumed a steady pace, her head down. The house was dark. Without speaking she unlocked the door and drew him into the little parlour. "Stand right on that spot," she ordered, with a final pat of his shoulder, and made her way to the dining room beyond where she turned on a single light that faintly illumined the room in which he waited. She came back to him, removed the small cloth hat, tossed it to a chair, and faced him silently.
The light from the other room shone across her eyes and revealed them to him shadowy and mysterious. Her face was set in some ominous control. At last she looked away from him and began in a strained voice, "If anything happens to me
-"
He thought it time to end this nonsense. She might be feverish, but it could be nothing so serious as she was intimating. He clutched the gift. "Sarah," he said lightly, "I got a little something for you--see what I mean?" He thrust the package into her weakly yielding hands.
She studied it in the dusk, turning it over and over. Then with no word to him she took it to the dining room where under the light she opened it. He heard a smothered exclamation that seemed more of dismay than the delight he expected, though he saw that she was holding the watch against her wrist. She came back to the dusk of the parlour, beginning on the way one of her little skipping dance steps, which she quickly suppressed. She was replacing the watch on its splendid couch of satin and closing the box.
"I never saw such a man!" she exclaimed with an irritation that he felt to be artificial. "After all you've been through, I should think you'd have learned the value of money. Anyway, it's too beautiful for me. And anyway, I couldn't take it-not to-night, anyway. And anyway--" Her voice had acquired a huskiness in this speech that now left her incoherent, and the light revealed a wetness in her eyes. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief. "Of course you can take it to-night," he said in masterful tones, "after all you've done for me."
"Now you listen," she began. "You don't know all I've done for you. You don't know me at all. Suppose something came out about me that you didn't think I'd 'a' been guilty of. You can't ever tell about people in this business. You don't know me at all-not one little bit. I might 'a' done lots of things that would turn you against me. I tell you you got to wait and find out about things. I haven't the nerve to tell you, but you'll find out soon enough--"
The expert in photoplays suffered a sudden illumination. This was a scene he could identify--a scene in which the woman trembled upon the verge of revealing to the man certain sinister details of her past, spurred thereto by a scoundrel who blackmailed her. He studied the girl in a new light. Undoubtedly, from her words, he saw one panic-stricken by the threatened exposure of some dreadful complication in her own past. Certainly she was suffering.
"I don't care if this fever does carry me off," she went on. "I know you could never feel the same toward me after you found out--"
Again she was dabbing at her eyes, this time with the sleeve of her jacket. A suffering woman stood before him. She who had always shown herself so competent to meet trouble with laughing looks was being overthrown by this nameless horror. Suddenly he knew that to him it didn't matter so very much what crime she had been guilty of.
"I don't care what you've done," he said, his own voice husky. She continued to weep.
He felt himself grow hot. "Listen here, Kid"--He now spoke with more than a touch of the bully in his tone--"stop this nonsense. You--you come here and give me a good big kiss--see what I mean?"
She looked up at him from wet eyes, and amazingly through her anguish she grinned. "You win!" she said, and came to him.
He was now the masterful one. He took her protectingly in his arms. He kissed her though with no trace of the Parmalee technique. His screen experience might never have been. It was more like the dead days of Edwina May Pulver. "Now you stop it," he soothed--"all this nonsense!" His cheek was against hers and his arms held her. "What do I care what you've done in your past--what do I care? And listen here, Kid"--There was again the brutal note of the bully in his voice--"don't ever do any more of those stunts--see what I mean?