It was Mrs. Neff, of all people--and she loved Charity Coe dearly--who caused her public shame and suffering. Mrs. Neff had defended Charity from the slanderous a.s.sumptions of Prissy Atterbury and had refused to listen to Pet Bettany's echoes.

She had, indeed, a bad reputation for rebuking well-meaning disseminators of spice. This att.i.tude discouraged several persons who would otherwise have told her all sorts of interesting things about Charity's husband's _entente cordiale_ with Zada.

Charity had dwelt in a fool's paradise of trust in Peter Cheever for a while, then had dropped back into a fool's purgatory of doubt, where she wandered bewildered. Now she was thrown into the fool's h.e.l.l. She knew that her love had been betrayed. Everybody else knew it and was wondering how she would act.

Charity was sick. This was really more than she had bargained for. As before, she felt it immodest to expose her emotions in public, so she said:

"Yes, I've seen her. She is very attractive, isn't she? I don't know if she is dancing in public any more, but I'll find out."

Mrs. Neff sat back triumphantly and let the meeting proceed. But there was a gray pall on the occasion. Women began to look at their wrist-watches and pretend to be shocked at the lateness of the hour, and all of them shook hands solemnly with Charity. There was a poorly veiled condolence in their tone.

Charity carried it off pluckily, but she was in a dangerous humor. She really could not endure the patronizing mercy of these women.

That night Cheever made again his appearance at the dinner-table. He had some notion of putting Charity off her guard or of atoning to her in part for his resumed alliance with Zada. He could not have told what his own motives were, for he was in a state of bewilderment between his duties to Mrs. Charity Tweedledum and Miss Zada Tweedledee. He could not tell which one had the greater claim on his favors.

Charity studied him across the table and wondered what he really was, faun or traitor, Mormon or weakling. He was certainly handsome, but the influence of Zada L'Etoile seemed to hang about him like a green slime on a statue.

She could not find any small talk to carry the meal along. At length Cheever asked:

"What you been up to all day?"

"Oh, committee stuff--that movie thing, you know."

"How's it coming on? Got a manager yet?"

"Not yet. We were talking about getting some professionals in to brighten up the evening."

"Good work! Those amateurs make me sick."

"Mrs. Neff proposed that we get some stunning dancer to do a turn."

"Not a bad idea. For instance--"

He emptied his gla.s.s of Chablis and the butler was standing by to refill it when Charity answered:

"Mrs. Neff suggested a dancer I haven't seen on the stage for some time.

You used to admire her."

"Yes?" said Cheever, pushing his gla.s.s along the table toward the butler, who began to pour as Charity slid home her _coup de grace_.

"Zada L'Etoile. What's become of her?"

Cheever's eyes gaped and his jaws dropped. The butler's expression was the same. He poured the Chablis on the back of Cheever's hand and neither noticed it till Charity laughed hysterically and drove the sword a little deeper:

"Is she still alive? Have you seen her?"

Cheever glared at her, breathed hard, swore at the butler, wiped his hand on his napkin, gnawed his lips, twisted his mustache, threw down the napkin, rose, and left the table.

Charity's smile turned to a grimace. She saw that the butler was ashamed of her. He almost told her that she ought to have known better than subject him and the other servants to such a scene.

Charity caught herself about to say, "I beg your pardon, Hammond."

She felt as if she ought to beg the pardon of everybody in the world.

She could not stand the lonely dining-room long. She rose and walked out. It seemed that she would never reach the door. It was a _via crucis_ to her. Her back ached with the sense of eyes upon it.

The hall was lonely. The thud of the front door jarred her. She went into the library. It was a dark and frowning cavern. She went into the music-room, approached the piano, looked over the music, turned up "Go, Lovely Rose." The rose that Jim Dyckman said she was had been thrown into the mud. She went up to her room. The maid was arranging her bed for the night. She had turned down one corner of the cover, built up one heap of pillows, set one pair of slippers by the edge.

Charity felt like a rejected old spinster. She sat and mused and her thoughts were bitter. She remembered Doctor Mosely's sermon and wondered if he would preach what he preached if he knew what she knew. She would go to him and tell him.

But what did she know? Enough to convince herself, but nothing at all that even a preacher would call evidence.

She must have proof. She resolved to get it. There must be an abundance of it. She wondered how one went at the getting of evidence.

CHAPTER XV

While Charity was resolving to tear down her life Kedzie Thropp was building herself a new one on the foundations that Charity had laid for her with a card of introduction to Miss Havender.

In the motion-picture world Kedzie had found herself. Her very limitations were to her advantage. She would have failed dismally in the spoken drama, but the flowing photograma was just to her measure.

The actor must not only know how to read his lines and express emotions, but must keep up the same spontaneity night after night, sometimes for a thousand performances or more. The movie actor is expected to respond to a situation once or twice for rehearsal, and once or twice for the camera. There is no audience to struggle against and listen for--and to.

The director is always there at the side calling, reminding, pleading, encouraging, threatening, suggesting the thoughts, the lines, and the expression, doing all the work except the pantomime.

That was Kedzie's salvation. Tell her a story and make her the heroine of it, and her excitable heart would thrill to the emotional crisis.

Take a snapshot of her, and the picture was caught.

Ferriday soon learned this and protected her from her own helpless vice of discontent. She lapsed always from her enthusiasm after it was once cold. As an actress she would have been one of those frequent flashers who give a splendid rehearsal or two and then sink back into a torpor. She might have risen to an appealing first-night performance.

Thereafter, she would have become dismal. The second week would have found the audiences disgusted and the third would have found her breaking her contract and running away with somebody. A horse that has run away once is likely to run away again. Kedzie had run away twice.

But the movie life was just the thing for her. She did not play always the same set scenes in the same scene sets. She was not required even to follow the logic of the story. For a while she would play a bit in a tiny angle representing a drawing-room. When that was taken she would play, not the next moment of the story, but the next scene in that scene. It might be a year further along in the story. It was exciting.

Her second picture had great success. She played the girl brought up as a boy by a cruel Italian padrone who made her steal. Her third picture was as nearly the same as possible.

Now she was a ragged waif, a girl, who dressed as a boy and sold newspapers so as to keep her old father in liquor. The garret was a rickety table, a rusty stove, a broken chair, and a V of painted canvas walls with a broken window and a paper snowstorm falling back of it.

There Kedzie was found in very becoming ragged breeches, pouting with starvation. Her father drove her out for gin.

She walked out of the set, picked up a bottle, and brought it back. The scene in the saloon would be taken later: also the street scenes to and from.

An officer of the "Cruelty" came and took her from the garret. That was the beginning of a series of adventures culminating in a marriage with a multimillionaire. While the garret was set, the finish of the story was taken.

She ran and changed her costume to one of wealth with ermine. She came in with the handsome young millionaire. It was the next winter. Her father was dying. He asked her forgiveness and gave her his blessing.

Then Kedzie changed back to her first costume and went in the motor to a dismal street where she was shown coming out of the tenement, and going back to it gin-laden, and again with the officer of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

She changed once more to her wealthy garb with the ermine and was photographed going in with her young millionaire.

The next day the scene in the Cruelty office was built and she acted in it. The drawing-room in the millionaire's home was a.s.sembled and she acted in that. Then she went out in rags and sold newspapers on a corner. So it went. The chronology hopelessly jumbled, but the change incessant.