The girl had averted her face briefly, but now turned to him again. "Of course that's so; Jeff is trying for the better things; but he's still using lots of his old people. They're all right for me, but not for you. You wouldn't last long if mother here didn't look out for you. I'm playing your dear little sister, but I'm playing your mother, too. If it hadn't been for me this bunch would have taught you a lot of things you'd better learn some other way. Just for one thing, long before this you'd probably been hopping up your reindeers and driving all over in a Chinese sleigh."

He tried to make something of this, but found the words meaningless.

They merely suggested to him a snowy winter scene of Santa Claus and his innocent equipage. But he would intimate that he understood.

"Oh, I guess not," he said knowingly. The girl appeared not to have heard this bit of pretense.

"On a comedy lot," she said, again becoming the oracle, "you can do murder if you wipe up the blood. Remember that."

He did not again refer to the beautiful young women who came from fine old Southern homes. The Montague girl was too emphatic about them.

At other times during the long waits, perhaps while they ate lunch brought from the cafeteria, she would tell him of herself. His old troubling visions of his wonder-woman, of Beulah Baxter the daring, had well-nigh faded, but now and then they would recur as if from long habit, and he would question the girl about her life as a double.

"Yeah, I could see that Baxter business was a blow to you, Kid. You'd kind of worshiped her, hadn't you?"

"Well, I--yes, in a sort of way--"

"Of course you did; it was very nice of you--" She reached over to pat his hand. "Mother understands just how you felt, watching the films back there in Gooseberry "--He had quit trying to correct her as to Gashwiler and Simsbury. She had hit upon Gooseberry as a working composite of both names, and he had wearily come to accept it--"and I know just how you felt"--Again she patted his hand--"that night when you found me doing her stuff."

"It did kind of upset me."

"Sure it would! But you ought to have known that all these people use doubles when they can--men and women both. It not only saves 'em work, but even where they could do the stuff if they had to--and that ain't so often--it saves 'em broken bones, and holding up a big production two or three months. Fine business that would be. So when you see a woman, or a man either, doing something that someone else could do, you can bet someone else is doing it. What would you expect? Would you expect a high-priced star to go out and break his leg?

"And at that, most of the doubles are men, even for the women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus acrobat.

She couldn't hardly do one of the things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he's her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if he keeps his map covered.

"Yeah, most of the doublers have to be men. I'll hand that to myself.

I'm about the only girl that's been doing it, and that's out with me hereafter, I guess, the way I seem to be making good with Jeff. Maybe after this I won't have to do stunts, except of course some riding stuff, prob'ly, or a row of flips or something light. Anything heavy comes up--me for a double of my own." She glanced sidewise at her listener. "Then you won't like me any more, hey, Kid, after you find out I'm using a double?"

He had listened attentively, absorbed in her talk, and seemed startled by this unforeseen finish. He turned anxious eyes on her. It occurred to him for the first time that he did not wish the Montague girl to do dangerous things any more. "Say," he said quickly, amazed at his own discovery, "I wish you'd quit doing all those--stunts, do you call 'em?"

"Why?" she demanded. There were those puzzling lights back in her eyes as he met them. He was confused.

"Well, you might get hurt."

"Oh!"

"You might get killed sometime. And it wouldn't make the least difference to me, your using a double. I'd like you just the same."

"I see; it wouldn't be the way it was with Baxter when you found it out."

"No; you--you're different. I don't want you to get killed," he added, rather blankly. He was still amazed at this discovery.

"All right, Kid. I won't," she replied soothingly.

"I'll like you just as much," he again a.s.sured her, "no matter how many doubles you have."

"Well, you'll be having doubles yourself, sooner or later--and I'll like you, too." She reached over to his hand, but this time she held it.

He returned her strong clasp. He had not liked to think of her being mangled perhaps by a fall into a quarry when the cable gave way--and the camera men would probably keep on turning!

"I always been funny about men," she presently spoke again, still gripping his hand. "Lord knows I've seen enough of all kinds, bad and good, but I always been kind of afraid even of the good ones. Any one might not think it, but I guess I'm just natural-born shy. Man-shy, anyway."

He glowed with a confession of his own. "You know, I'm that way, too.

Girl-shy. I felt awful awkward when I had to kiss you in the other piece. I never did, really--" He floundered a moment, but was presently blurting out the meagre details of that early amour with Edwina May Pulver. He stopped this recital in a sudden panic fear that the girl would make fun of him. He was immensely relieved when she merely renewed the strength of the handclasp.

"I know. That's the way with me. Of course I can put over the acting stuff, even vamping, but I'm afraid of men off-stage. Say, would you believe it, I ain't ever had but one beau. That was Bert Stacy. Poor old Bert! He was lots older than me; about thirty, I guess. He was white all through. You always kind of remind me of him. Sort of a f.e.c.kless dub he was, too; kind of honest and awkward--you know. He was the one got me doing stunts. He wasn't afraid of anything. Didn't know it was even in the dictionary. That old scout would go out night or day and break everything but his contract. I was twelve when I first knew him and he had me doing twisters in no time. I caught on to the other stuff pretty good. I wasn't afraid, either, I'll say that for myself. First I was afraid to show him I was afraid, but pretty soon I wasn't afraid at all.

"We pulled off a lot of stuff for different people. And of course I got to be a big girl and three years ago when I was eighteen Bert wanted us to be married and I thought I might as well. He was the only one I hadn't been afraid of. So we got engaged. I was still kind of afraid to marry any one, but being engaged was all right. I know we'd got along together, too, but then he got his with a motorcycle.

"Kind of funny. He'd do anything on that machine. He'd jump clean over an auto and he'd leap a thirty-foot ditch and he was all set to pull a new one for Jeff Baird when it happened. Jeff was going to have him ride his motorcycle through a plate-gla.s.s window. The set was built and everything ready and then the merry old sun don't shine for three days.

Every morning Bert would go over to the lot and wait around in the fog.

And this third day, when it got too late in the afternoon to shoot even if the sun did show, he says to me, 'c'mon, hop up and let's take a ride down to the beach.' So I hop to the back seat and off we start and on a ninety-foot paved boulevard what does Bert do but get caught in a jam?

It was an ice wagon that finally b.u.mped us over. I was shook up and sc.r.a.ped here and there. But Bert was finished. That's the funny part.

He'd got it on this boulevard, but back on the lot he'd have rode through that plate-gla.s.s window probably without a scratch. And just because the sun didn't shine that day, I wasn't engaged any more. Bert was kind of like some old sea-captain that comes back to sh.o.r.e after risking his life on the ocean in all kinds of storms, and falls into a duck-pond and gets drowned."

She sat a long time staring out over the landscape, still holding his hand. Inside the fence before the farmhouse three of the New York villains were again engaged in athletic sports, but she seemed oblivious of these. At last she turned to him again with an illumining smile.

"But I was dead in love once before that, and that's how I know just how you feel about Baxter. He was the preacher where we used to go to church. He was a good one. Pa copied a lot of his stuff that he uses to this day if he happens to get a preacher part. He was the loveliest thing. Not so young, but dark, with wonderful eyes and black hair, and his voice would go all through you. I had an awful case on him. I was twelve, and all week I used to think how I'd see him the next Sunday.

Say, when I'd get there and he'd be working--doing pulpit stuff--he'd have me in kind of a trance.

"Sometimes after the pulpit scene he'd come down right into the audience and shake hands with people. I'd almost keel over if he'd notice me. I'd be afraid if he would and afraid if he wouldn't. If he said 'And how is the little lady this morning?' I wouldn't have a speck of voice to answer him. I'd just tremble all over. I used to dream I'd get a job workin' for him as extra, blacking his shoes or fetching his breakfast and things.

"It was the real thing, all right. I used to try to pray the way he did--asking the Lord to let me do a character bit or something with him.

He had me going all right. You must 'a' been that way about Baxter.

Sure you were. When you found she was married and used a double and everything, it was like I'd found this preacher shooting hop or using a double in his pulpit stuff."

She was still again, looking back upon this tremendous episode.

"Yes, that's about the way I felt," he told her. Already his affair with Mrs. Rosenblatt seemed a thing of his childhood. He was wondering, rather, if the preacher could have been the perfect creature the girl was now picturing him. It would not have displeased him to learn that this refulgent being had actually used a double in his big scenes, or had been guilty of mere human behaviour at odd moments. Probably, after all, he had been just a preacher. "Uncle Sylvester used to want me to be a preacher," he said, with apparent irrelevance, "even if he was his own worst enemy." He added presently, as the girl remained silent, "I always say my prayers at night." He felt vaguely that this might raise him to the place of the other who had been adored. He was wishing to be thought well of by this girl.

She was aroused from her musing by his confession. "You do? Now ain't that just like you? I'd have bet you did that. Well, keep on, son. It's good stuff."

Her serious mood seemed to pa.s.s. She was presently exchanging tart repartee with the New York villains who had perched in a row on the fence to be funny about that long--continued holding of hands in the motor car. She was quite unembarra.s.sed, however, as she dropped the hand with a final pat and vaulted to the ground over the side of the car.

"Get busy, there!" she ordered. "Where's your understander--where's your top-mounter?" She became a circus ringmaster. "Three up and a roll for yours," she commanded. The three villains aligned themselves on the lawn. One climbed to the shoulders of the other and a third found footing on the second. They balanced there, presently to lean forward from the summit. The girl played upon an imaginary snare drum with a guttural, throaty imitation of its roll, culminating in the "boom!" of a ba.s.s-drum as the tower toppled to earth. Its units, completing their turn with somersaults, again stood in line, bowing and smirking their acknowledgments for imagined applause.

The girl, a moment later, was turning hand-springs. Merton had never known that actors were so versatile. It was an astounding profession, he thought, remembering his own registration card that he had filled out at the Holden office. His age, height, weight, hair, eyes, and his chest and waist measures; these had been specified, and then he had been obliged to write the short "No" after ride, drive, swim, dance--to write "No" after "Ride?" even in the artistically photographed presence of Buck Benson on horseback!

Yet in spite of these disabilities he was now a successful actor at an enormous salary. Baird was already saying that he would soon have a contract for him to sign at a still larger figure. Seemingly it was a profession in which you could rise even if you were not able to turn hand-springs or were more or less terrified by horses and deep water and dance music.

And the Montague girl, who, he now fervently hoped, would not be killed while doubling for Mrs. Rosenblatt, was a puzzling creature. He thought his hand must still be warm from her enfolding of it, even when work was resumed and he saw her, with sunbonnet pushed back, stand at the gate of the little farmhouse and behave in an utterly brazen manner toward one of the New York clubmen who was luring her up to the great city.

She, who had just confided to him that she was afraid of men, was now practically daring an undoubted scoundrel to lure her up to the great city and make a lady of her. And she had been afraid of all but a clergyman and a stunt actor! He wondered interestingly if she were afraid of Merton Gill. She seemed not to be.

On another day of long waits they ate their lunch from the cafeteria box on the steps of the little home and discussed stage names. "I guess we better can that 'Clifford Armytage' stuff," she told him as she seriously munched a sandwich. "We don't need it. That's out. Merton Gill is a lot better name." She had used "we" quite as if it were a community name.

"Well, if you think so--" he began regretfully, for Clifford Armytage still seemed superior to the indistinction of Merton Gill.

"Sure, it's a lot better," she went on. "That 'Clifford Armytage'--say, it reminds me of just another such f.e.c.kless dub as you that acted with us one time when we all trouped in a rep show, playing East Lynne and such things. He was just as wise as you are, and when he joined out at Kansas City they gave him a whole book of the piece instead of just his sides. He was a quick study, at that, only he learned everybody's part as well as his own, and that slowed him. They put him on in Waco, and the manager was laid up, so they told him that after the third act he was to go out and announce the bill for the next night, and he learned that speech, too.