The song ended, the Montague girl stepped to the centre of the room, looked aimlessly about her, then seized an innocent bystander, one of the rough characters frequenting this unsavoury resort, and did a dance with him among the tables. Tiring of this, she flitted across the room and addressed the bored director who impatiently awaited the changing of lights. She affected to consider him a reporter who had sought an interview with her. She stood erect, facing him with one hand on a hip, the other patting and readjusting her blonde coiffure.

"Really," she began in a voice of pained dignity, "I am at a loss to understand why the public should be so interested in me. What can I say to your readers--I who am so wholly absorbed in my art that I can't think of hardly anything else? Why will not the world let us alone? Hold on--don't go!"

She had here pretended that the reporter was taking her at her word. She seized him by a lapel to which she clung while with her other arm she encircled a post, thus anchoring the supposed intruder into her private affairs. "As I was saying," she resumed, "all this publicity is highly distasteful to the artist, and yet since you have forced yourself in here I may as well say a few little things about how good I am and how I got that way. Yes, I have nine motor cars, and I just bought a lace tablecloth for twelve hundred bones--"

She broke off inconsequently, poor victim of her const.i.tutional frivolity. The director grinned after her as she danced away, though Merton Gill had considered her levity in the worst of taste. Then her eye caught him as he stood modestly back of the working electricians and she danced forward again in his direction. He would have liked to evade her but saw that he could not do this gracefully.

She greeted him with an impudent grin. "Why, h.e.l.lo, trouper! As I live, the actin' Kid!" She held out a hand to him and he could not well refuse it. He would have preferred to "up-stage" her once more, as she had phrased it in her low jargon, but he was cornered. Her grip of his hand quite astonished him with its vigour.

"Well, how's everything with you? Everything jake?" He tried for a show of easy confidence. "Oh, yes, yes, indeed, everything is."

"Well, that's good, Kid." But she was now without the grin, and was running a practised eye over what might have been called his production.

The hat was jaunty enough, truly a hat of the successful, but all below that, the not-too-fresh collar, the somewhat rumpled coat, the trousers crying for an iron despite their nightly compression beneath their slumbering owner, the shoes not too recently polished, and, more than all, a certain hunted though still-defiant look in the young man's eyes, seemed to speak eloquently under the shrewd glance she bent on him.

"Say, listen here, Old-timer, remember I been trouping man and boy for over forty year and it's hard to fool me--you working?"

He resented the persistent levity of manner, but was coerced by the very apparent real kindness in her tone. "Well," he looked about the set vaguely in his discomfort, "you see, right now I'm between pictures--you know how it is."

Again she searched his eyes and spoke in a lower tone: "Well, all right--but you needn't blush about it, Kid." The blush she detected became more flagrant.

"Well, I--you see--" he began again, but he was saved from being explicit by the call of an a.s.sistant director.

"Miss Montague. Miss Montague--where's that Flips girl--on the set, please." She skipped lightly from him. When she returned a little later to look for him he had gone.

He went to bed that night when darkness had made this practicable, and under his blankets whiled away a couple of wakeful hours by running tensely dramatic films of breakfast, dinner, and supper at the Gashwiler home. It seemed that you didn't fall asleep so quickly when you had eaten nothing since early morning. Never had he achieved such perfect photography as now of the Gashwiler corned-beef hash and light biscuits, the Gashwiler hot cakes and sausage, and never had Gashwiler so impressively carved the Sat.u.r.day night four-rib roast of tender beef.

Gashwiler achieved a sensational triumph in the scene, being accorded all the close--ups that the most exacting of screen actors could wish.

His knife-work was perfect. He held his audience enthralled by his technique.

Mrs. Gashwiler, too, had a small but telling part in the drama to-night; only a character bit, but one of those poignant bits that stand out in the memory. The subt.i.tle was, "Merton, won't you let me give you another piece of the mince pie?" That was all, and yet, as screen artists say, it got over. There came very near to being not a dry eye in the house when the simple words were flashed beside an insert of thick, flaky-topped mince pies with quarters cut from them to reveal their n.o.ble interiors

Sleep came at last while he was regretting that lawless orgy of the morning. He needn't have cleaned up those beans in that silly way.

He could have left a good half of them. He ran what might have been considered a split-reel comedy of the stew-pan's bottom still covered with perfectly edible beans lightly protected with Nature's own pastel-tinted shroud for perishing vegetable matter and diversified here and there with casual small deposits of ashes.

In the morning something good really did happen. As he folded his blankets in the gray light a hard object rattled along the floor from them. He picked this up before he recognized it as a mutilated fragment from the stale half--loaf of bread he had salvaged. He wondered how he could have forgotten it, even in the plenitude of his banquet. There it was, a mere nubbin of crust and so hard it might almost have been taken for a petrified specimen of prehistoric bread. Yet it proved to be rarely palatable. It's flavour was exquisite. It melted in the mouth.

Somewhat refreshed by this modest cheer, he climbed from the window of the Crystal Palace with his mind busy on two tracks. While the letter to Gashwiler composed itself, with especially clear directions about where the return money should be sent, he was also warning himself to remain throughout the day at a safe distance from the door of the cafeteria. He had proved the wisdom of this even the day before that had started with a bounteous breakfast. To-day the aroma of cooked food occasionally wafted from the cafeteria door would prove, he was sure, to be more than he could bear.

He rather shunned the stages to-day, keeping more to himself. The collar, he had to confess, was no longer, even to the casual eye, what a successful screen-actor's collar should be. The sprouting beard might still be misconstrued as the whim of a director sanctified to realism--every day it was getting to look more like that--but no director would have commanded the wearing of such a collar except in actual work where it might have been a striking detail in the apparel of an underworldling, one of those creatures who became the tools of rich but unscrupulous roues who are bent upon the moral destruction of beautiful young screen heroines. He knew it was now that sort of collar.

No use now in pretending that it had been worn yesterday for the first time.

CHAPTER X. OF SHATTERED ILLUSIONS

The next morning he sat a long time in the genial sunlight watching carpenters finish a scaffolding beside the pool that had once floated logs to a sawmill. The scaffolding was a stout affair supporting an immense tank that would, evidently for some occult reason important to screen art, hold a great deal of water. The sawmill was gone; at one end of the pool rode a small sail-boat with one mast, its canvas flapping idly in a gentle breeze. Its deck was littered with rigging upon which two men worked. They seemed to be getting things shipshape for a cruise.

When he had tired of this he started off toward the High Gear Dance Hall. Something all day had been drawing him there against his will. He hesitated to believe it was the Montague girl's kindly manner toward him the day before, yet he could identify no other influence. Probably it was that. Yet he didn't want to face her again, even if for a moment she had quit trying to be funny, even if for a moment her eyes had searched his quite earnestly, her broad, amiable face glowing with that sudden friendly concern. It had been hard to withstand this yesterday; he had been in actual danger of confiding to her that engagements of late were not plentiful--something like that. And it would be harder to-day. Even the collar would make it harder to resist the confidence that he was not at this time overwhelmed with offers for his art.

He had for what seemed like an interminable stretch of time been solitary and an outlaw. It was something to have been spoken to by a human being who expressed ever so fleeting an interest in his affairs, even by someone as inconsequent, as negligible in the world of screen artistry as this lightsome minx who, because of certain mental infirmities, could never hope for the least enviable eminence in a profession demanding seriousness of purpose. Still it would be foolish to go again to the set where she was. She might think he was encouraging her.

So he pa.s.sed the High Gear, where a four-horse stage, watched by two cameras, was now releasing its pa.s.sengers who all appeared to be direct from New York, and walked on to an outdoor set that promised entertainment. This was the narrow street of some quaint European village, Scotch he soon saw from the dress of its people. A large automobile was invading this remote hamlet to the dismay of its inhabitants. Rehea.r.s.ed through a megaphone they scurried within doors at its approach, ancient men hobbling on sticks and frantic mothers grabbing their little ones from the path of the monster. Two trial trips he saw the car make the length of the little street.

At its lower end, brooding placidly, was an ancient horse rather recalling Dexter in his generously exposed bones and the jaded droop of his head above a low stone wall. Twice the car sped by him, arousing no sign of apprehension nor even of interest. He paid it not so much as the tribute of a raised eyelid.

The car went back to the head of the street where its entrance would be made. "All right--ready!" came the megaphoned order. Again the peaceful street was thrown into panic by this snorting dragon from the outer world. The old men hobbled affrightedly within doors, the mothers saved their children. And this time, to the stupefaction of Merton Gill, even the old horse proved to be an actor of rare merits. As the car approached he seemed to suffer a painful shock. He tossed his aged head, kicked viciously with his rear feet, stood absurdly aloft on them, then turned and fled from the monster. As Merton mused upon the genius of the trainer who had taught his horse not only to betray fright at a motor car but to distinguish between rehearsals and the actual taking of a scene, he observed a man who emerged from a clump of near-by shrubbery.

He carried a shotgun. This was broken at the breech and the man was blowing smoke from the barrels as he came on.

So that was it. The panic of the old horse had been but a simple reaction to a couple of charges of--perhaps rock--salt. Merton Gill hoped it had been nothing sterner. For the first time in his screen career he became cynical about his art. A thing of shame, of machinery, of subterfuge. Nothing would be real, perhaps not even the art.

It is probable that lack of food conduced to this disparaging outlook; and he recovered presently, for he had been smitten with a quick vision of Beulah Baxter in one of her most daring exploits. She, at least, was real. Deaf to entreaty, she honestly braved her hazards. It was a comforting thought after this late exposure of a sham.

In this slightly combative mood he retraced his steps and found himself outside the High Gear Dance Hall, fortified for another possible encounter with the inquiring and obviously sympathetic Montague girl. He entered and saw that she was not on the set. The bar-room dance-hall was for the moment deserted of its ribald crew while an honest inhabitant of the open s.p.a.ces on a balcony was holding a large revolver to the shrinking back of one of the New York men who had lately arrived by the stage. He forced this man, who was plainly not honest, to descend the stairs and to sign, at a table, a certain paper. Then, with weapon still in hand, the honest Westerner forced the cowardly New Yorker in the direction of the front door until they had pa.s.sed out of the picture.

On this the bored director of the day before called loudly, "Now, boys, in your places. You've heard a shot--you're running outside to see what's the matter. On your toes, now--try it once." From rear doors came the motley frequenters of the place, led by the elder Montague.

They trooped to the front in two lines and pa.s.sed from the picture. Here they milled about, waiting for further orders.

"Rotten!" called the director. "Rotten and then some. Listen. You came like a lot of children marching out of a public school. Don't come in lines, break it up, push each other, fight to get ahead, and you're noisy, too. You're shouting. You're saying, 'What's this? What's it all about? What's the matter? Which way did he go?' Say anything you want to, but keep shouting--anything at all. Say 'Thar's gold in them hills!'

if you can't think of anything else. Go on, now, boys, do it again and pep it, see. Turn the juice on, open up the old m.u.f.flers."

The men went back through the rear doors. The late caller would here have left, being fed up with this sort of stuff, but at that moment he descried the Montague girl back behind a light-standard. She had not noted him, but was in close talk with a man he recognized as Jeff Baird, arch perpetrator of the infamous Buckeye comedies. They came toward him, still talking, as he looked.

"We'll finish here to-morrow afternoon, anyway," the girl was saying.

"Fine," said Baird. "That makes everything jake. Get over on the set whenever you're through. Come over tonight if they don't shoot here, just to give us a look-in."

"Can't," said the girl. "Soon as I get out o' this dump I got to eat on the lot and everything and be over to Baxter's layout--she'll be doing tank stuff till all hours--shipwreck and murder and all like that. Gosh, I hope it ain't cold. I don't mind the water, but I certainly hate to get out and wait in wet clothes while Sig Rosenblatt is thinking about a retake."

"Well"--Baird turned to go--"take care of yourself--don't dive and forget to come up. Come over when you're ready."

"Sure! S'long!" Here the girl, turning from Baird, noted Merton Gill beside her. "Well, well, as I live, the actin' kid once more! Say, you're getting to be a regular studio hound, ain't you?"

For the moment he had forgotten his troubles. He was burning to ask her if Beulah Baxter would really work in a shipwreck scene that night at the place where he had watched the carpenters and the men on the sailboat; but as he tried to word this he saw that the girl was again scanning him with keen eyes. He knew she would read the collar, the beard, perhaps even a look of mere hunger that he thought must now be showing.

"Say, see here, Trouper, what's the shootin' all about, anyway? You up against it--yes." There was again in her eye the look of warm concern, and she was no longer trying to be funny. He might now have admitted a few little things about his screen career, but again the director interrupted.

"Miss Montague--where are you? Oh! Well, remember you're behind the piano during that gun play just now, and you stay hid till after the boys get out. We'll shoot this time, so get set."

She sped off, with a last backward glance of questioning. He waited but a moment before leaving. He was almost forgetting his hunger in the pretty certain knowledge that in a few hours he would actually behold his wonder-woman in at least one of her daring exploits. Shipwreck!

Perhaps she would be all but drowned. He hastened back to the pool that had now acquired this high significance. The carpenters were still puttering about on the scaffold. He saw that platforms for the cameras had been built out from its side.

He noted, too, and was puzzled by an aeroplane propeller that had been stationed close to one corner of the pool, just beyond the stern of the little sailing-craft. Perhaps there would be an aeroplane wreck in addition to a shipwreck. Now he had something besides food to think of.

And he wondered what the Montague girl could be doing in the company of a really serious artist like Beulah Baxter. From her own story she was going to get wet, but from what he knew of her she would be some character not greatly missed from the cast if she should, as Baird had suggested, dive and forget to come up. He supposed that Baird had meant this to be humorous, the humour typical of a man who could profane a great art with the atrocious Buckeye comedies, so called.

He put in the hours until nightfall in aimless wandering and idle gazing, and was early at the pool-side where his heroine would do her sensational acting. It was now a scene of thrilling activity. Immense lights, both from the scaffolding and from a tower back of the sailing-craft, flooded its deck and rigging from time to time as adjustments were made. The rigging was slack and the deck was still littered, intentionally so, he now perceived. The gallant little boat had been cruelly buffeted by a gale. Two sailors in piratical dress could be seen to emerge at intervals from the cabin.

Suddenly the gale was on with terrific force, the sea rose in great waves, and the tiny ship rocked in a perilous manner. Great billows of water swept its decks. Merton Gill stared in amazement at these phenomena so dissonant with the quiet starlit night. Then he traced them without difficulty to their various sources. The gale issued from the swift revolutions of that aeroplane propeller he had noticed a while ago. The flooding billows were spilled from the big tank at the top of the scaffold and the boat rocked in obedience to the tugging of a rope--tugged from the sh.o.r.e by a crew of helpers--that ran to the top of its mast. Thus had the storm been produced.