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? None of that falling off streetcars or houses or anything. Do you hear?"

He felt that he was being masterful indeed. He had swept her off her feet. Probably now she would weep violently and sob out her confession.

But a moment later he was reflecting, as he had so many times before reflected, that you never could tell about the girl. In his embrace she had become astoundingly calm. That emotional crisis threatening to beat down all her reserves had pa.s.sed. She reached up and almost meditatively pushed back the hair from his forehead, regarding him with eyes that were still shadowed but dry. Then she gave him a quick little hug and danced away. It was no time for dancing, he thought.

"Now you sit down," she ordered. She was almost gay again, yet with a nervous, desperate gaiety that would at moments die to a brooding solemnity. "And listen," she began, when he had seated himself in bewilderment at her sudden change of mood, "you'll be off to your old motion picture to-morrow night, and I'll be here sick in bed--"

"I won't go if you don't want me to," he put in quickly.

"That's no good; you'd have to go sometime. The quicker the better, I guess. I'll go myself sometime, if I ever get over this disease that's coming on me. Anyway, you go, and then if you ever see me again you can give me this--" She quickly came to put the watch back in his hands.

"Yes, yes, take it. I won't have it till you give it to me again, if I'm still alive." She held up repulsing hands. "Now we've had one grand little evening, and I'll let you go." She went to stand by the door.

He arose and stood by her. "All this nonsense!" he grumbled. "I--I won't stand for it--see what I mean?" Very masterfully again he put his arms about her. "Say," he demanded, "are you afraid of me like you said you'd always been afraid of men?"

"Yes, I am. I'm afraid of you a whole lot. I don't know how you'll take it." "Take what?"

"Oh, anything--anything you're going to get."

"Well, you don't seem to be afraid of me."

"I am, more than any one."

"Well, Sarah, you needn't be--no matter what you've done. You just forget it and give me a good big--"

"I'm glad I'm using my own face in this scene," murmured Sarah.

Down at the corner, waiting for his car, he paced back and forth in front of the bench with its terse message--"You furnish the girl, we furnish the house"--Sarah was a funny little thing with all that nonsense about what he would find out. Little he cared if she'd done something--forgery, murder, anything.

He paused in his stride and addressed the vacant bench: "Well, I've done my part."

CHAPTER XVIII. "FIVE REELS-500 LAUGHS"

It occurred to him the next morning that he might have taken too lightly Sarah's foreboding of illness. Reviewing her curious behaviour he thought it possible she might be in for something serious.

But a midday telephone call at the Montague home brought a.s.surances from the mother that quieted this fear. Sarah complained of not feeling well, and was going to spend a quiet day at home. But Mrs. Montague was certain it was nothing serious. No; she had no temperature. No fever at all. She was just having a spell of thinking about things, sort of grouchy like. She had been grouchy to both her parents. Probably because she wasn't working. No, she said she wouldn't come to the telephone. She also said she was in a bad way and might pa.s.s out any minute. But that was just her kidding. It was kind of Mr. Gill to call up. He wasn't to worry.

He continued to worry, however, until the nearness of his screen debut drove Sarah to the back of his mind. Undoubtedly it was just her nonsense. And in the meantime, that long--baffled wish to see himself in a serious drama was about to be gratified in fullest measure. He was glad the girl had not suggested that she be with him on this tremendous occasion. He wanted to be quite alone, solitary in the crowd, free to enjoy his own acting without pretense of indifference.

The Pattersons, of course, were another matter. He had told them of his approaching debut and they were making an event of it. They would attend, though he would not sit with them. Mr. Patterson in his black suit, his wife in society raiment, would sit downstairs and would doubtless applaud their lodger; but he would be remote from them; in a far corner of the topmost gallery, he first thought, for Hearts on Fire was to be shown in one of the big down-town theatres where a prominent member of its cast could lose himself.

He had told the Pattersons a little about the story. It was pretty pathetic in spots, he said, but it all came right in the end, and there were some good Western scenes. When the Pattersons said he must be very good in it, he found himself unable to achieve the light fashion of denial and protestation that would have become him. He said he had struggled to give the world something better and finer. For a moment he was moved to confess that Mrs. Patterson, in the course of his struggles, had come close to losing ten dollars, but he mastered the wild impulse. Some day, after a few more triumphs, he might laughingly confide this to her.

The day was long. Slothfully it dragged hours that seemed endless across the company of shining dreams that he captained. He was early at the theatre, first of early comers, and entered quickly, foregoing even a look at the huge lithographs in front that would perhaps show his very self in some gripping scene.

With an empty auditorium to choose from, he compromised on a balcony seat. Down below would doubtless be other members of the company, probably Baird himself, and he did not wish to be recognized. He must be alone with his triumph. And the loftier gallery would be too far away.

The house filled slowly. People sauntered to their seats as if the occasion were ordinary; even when the seats were occupied and the orchestra had played, there ensued the annoying delays of an educational film and a travelogue. Upon this young actor's memory would be forever seared the information that the conger eel lays fifteen million eggs at one time and that the inhabitants of Upper Burmah have quaint native pastimes. These things would stay with him, but they were unimportant.

Even the prodigal fecundity of the conger eel left him cold.

He gripped the arms of his seat when the cast of Hearts on Fire was flung to the screen. He caught his own name instantly, and was puzzled.

"Clifford Armytage--By Himself." Someone had bungled that, but no matter. Then at once he was seeing that first scene of his. As a popular screen idol he breakfasted in his apartment, served by a valet who was a hero worshipper.

He was momentarily disquieted by the frank adoration of the cross-eyed man in this part. While acting the scene, he remembered now that he had not always been able to observe his valet. There were moments when he seemed over-emphatic. The valet was laughed at. The watcher's sympathy went out to Baird, who must be seeing his serious effort taken too lightly.

There came the scene where he looked at the photograph alb.u.m. But now his turning of the pages was interspersed with close-ups of the portraits he regarded so admiringly. And these astonishingly proved to be enlarged stills of Clifford Armytage, the art studies of Lowell Hardy. It was puzzling. On the screen he capably beamed the fondest admiration, almost reverent in its intensity--and there would appear the still of Merton bidding an emotional farewell to his horse. The very novelty of it held him for a moment--Gashwiler's Dexter actually on the screen! He was aroused by the hearty laughter of an immense audience.

"It's Parmalee," announced a hoa.r.s.e neighbour on his right. "He's imitatin' Harold! Say, the kid's clever!"

The laughter continued during the alb.u.m scene. He thought of Baird, somewhere in that audience, suffering because his play was made fun of.

He wished he could remind him that scenes were to follow which would surely not be taken lightly. For himself, he was feeling that at least his strong likeness to Parmalee had been instantly admitted. They were laughing, as the Montague girl had laughed that first morning, because the resemblance was so striking. But now on the screen, after the actor's long fond look at himself, came the words, "The Only Man He Ever Loved."

Laughter again. The watcher felt himself grow hot. Had Baird been betrayed by one of his staff?

The scene with the letters followed. Clothes baskets of letters. His own work, as he opened a few from the top, was all that he could have wished. He was finely Harold Parmalee, and again the hoa.r.s.e neighbour whispered, "Ain't he got Parmalee dead, though?"

"Poor, silly little girls!" the screen exclaimed, and the audience became noisy. Undoubtedly it was a tribute to his perfection in the Parmalee manner. But he was glad that now there would come acting at which no one could laugh. There was the delicatessen shop, the earnest young cashier and his poor old mother who mopped. He saw himself embrace her and murmur words of encouragement, but incredibly there were giggles from the audience, doubtless from base souls who were impervious to pathos. The giggles coalesced to a general laugh when the poor old mother, again mopping on the floor, was seen to say, "I hate these mopping mothers. You get took with house-maid's knee in the first reel."

Again he was seized with a fear that one of Baird's staff had been clumsy with subt.i.tles. His eyes flew to his own serious face when the silly words had gone.

The drama moved. Indeed the action of the shadows was swifter than he supposed it would be. The dissolute son of the proprietor came on to dust the wares and to elicit a laugh when he performed a bit of business that had escaped Merton at the time. Against the wire screen that covered the largest cheese on the counter he placed a placard, "Dangerous. Do not Annoy."

Probably Baird had not known of this clowning. And there came another subt.i.tle that would dismay Baird when the serious young bookkeeper enacted his scene with the proprietor's lovely daughter, for she was made to say: "You love above your station. Ours is 125th Street; you get off at 59th."

He was beginning to feel confused. A sense of loss, of panic, smote him.

His own part was the intensely serious thing he had played, but in some subtle way even that was being made funny. He could not rush to embrace his old mother without exciting laughter.

The robbery of the safe was effected by the dissolute son, the father broke in upon the love scene, discovered the loss of his money, and accused an innocent man. Merton felt that he here acted superbly. His long look at the girl for whom he was making the supreme sacrifice brought tears to his own eyes, but still the witless audience snickered. Un.o.bserved by the others, the old mother now told her son the whereabouts of the stolen money, and he saw himself secure the paper sack of bills from the ice-box. He detected the half-guilty look of which he had spoken to Baird. Then he read his own incredible speech--"I better take this cool million. It might get that poor lad into trouble!"

Again the piece had been hurt by a wrong subt.i.tle. But perhaps the audience laughed because it was accustomed to laugh at Baird's productions. Perhaps it had not realized that he was now attempting one of the worth-while things. This reasoning was refuted as he watched what occurred after he had made his escape.

His flight was discovered, policemen entered, a rapid search behind counters ensued. In the course of this the wire screen over the biggest cheese was knocked off the counter. The cheese leaped to the floor, and the searchers, including the policemen, fled in panic through the front door. The Montague girl, the last to escape, was seen to announce, "The big cheese is loose--it's eating all the little ones!"

A band of intrepid firemen, protected by masks and armed with axes, rushed in. A terrific struggle ensued. The delicatessen shop was wrecked. And through it all the old mother continued to mop the floor.

Merton Gill, who had first grown hot, was now cold. Icy drops were on his chilled brow. How had Hearts on Fire gone wrong?

Then they were in the great open s.p.a.ces of the Come All Ye dance hall.

There was the young actor in his Buck Benson costume, protecting his mother from the brutality of a Mexican, getting his man later by firing directly into a mirror--Baird had said it would come right in the exposure, but it hadn't. And the witless cackled.

He saw his struggle with the detective. With a real thrill he saw himself bear his opponent to the ground, then hurl him high and far into the air, to be impaled upon the antlers of an elk's head suspended back of the bar. He saw himself lightly dust his sleeves after this feat, and turn aside with the words, "That's one Lodge he can join."