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 passed the High Gear, where a four-horse stage, watched by two
cameras, was now releasing its passengers 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. Rehearsed 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 spaces 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 passed 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 passed 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 mufflers.”
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 shore by a crew of helpers--that ran to the top of
its mast. Thus had the storm been produced.
A spidery, youngish man from one of the platforms built out from the
scaffold, now became sharply vocal through a megaphone to assistants
who were bending the elements to the need of this particular hazard of
Hortense. He called directions to the men who tugged the rope, to the
men in control of the lights, and to another who seemed to create the
billows. Among other items he wished more action for the boat and more
water for the billows. “See that your tank gets full-up this time,”
he called, whereupon an engine under the scaffold, by means of a large
rubber hose reaching into the pool, began to suck water into the tank
above.
The speaker must be Miss Baxter’s director, the enviable personage who
saw her safely through her perils. When one of the turning reflectors
illumined him Merton saw his face of a keen Semitic type. He seemed to
possess not the most engaging personality; his manner was aggressive,
he spoke rudely to his doubtless conscientious employees, he danced
in little rages of temper, and altogether he was not one with whom the
watcher would have cared to come in contact. He wondered, indeed, that
so puissant a star as Beulah Baxter should not be able to choose her own
director, for surely the presence of this unlovely, waspishly tempered
being could be nothing but an irritant in the daily life of the
wonder-woman. Perhaps she had tolerated him merely for one picture.
Perhaps he was especially good in shipwrecks.
If Merton Gill were in this company he would surely have words with this
person, director or no director. He hastily wrote a one-reel scenario in
which the man so far forgot himself as to speak sharply to the star, and
in which a certain young actor, a new member of the company, resented
the ungentlemanly words by pitching the offender into a convenient pool
and earned even more than gratitude from the starry-eyed wonder-woman.
The objectionable man continued active, profuse of gesture and
loud through the megaphone. Once more the storm. The boat rocked
threateningly, the wind roared through its slack rigging, and giant
billows swept the frail craft. Light as from a half-clouded moon broke
through the mist that issued from a steam pipe. There was another lull,
and the Semitic type on the platform became increasingly offensive.
Merton saw himself saying, “Allow me, Miss Baxter, to relieve you of
the presence of this bounder.” The man was impossible. Constantly he had
searched the scene for his heroine. She would probably not appear until
they were ready to shoot, and this seemed not to be at once if the
rising temper of the director could be thought an indication.
The big hose again drew water from the pool to the tank, whence, at a
sudden release, it would issue in billows. The big lights at last seemed
to be adjusted to the director’s whim. The aeroplane propeller whirred
and the gale was found acceptable. The men at the rope tugged the boat
into grave danger. The moon lighted the mist that overhung the scene.
Then at last Merton started, peering eagerly forward across the length
of the pool. At the far end, half illumined by the big lights, stood
the familiar figure of his wonder--woman, the slim little girl with the
wistful eyes. Plainly he could see her now as the mist lifted. She was
chatting with one of the pirates who had stepped ashore from the boat.
The wonderful golden hair shone resplendent under the glancing rays of
the arcs. A cloak was about her shoulders, but at a word of command from
the director she threw it off and stepped to the boat’s deck. She was
dressed in a short skirt, her trim feet and ankles lightly shod and
silken clad. The sole maritime touch in her garb was a figured kerchief
at her throat similar to those worn by the piratical crew.
“All ready, Hortense--all ready Jose and Gaston, get your places.”
Miss Baxter acknowledged the command with that characteristic little
wave of a hand that he recalled from so many of her pictures, a
half-humorous, half-mocking little defiance. She used it often when
escaping her pursuers, as if to say that she would see them in the next
installment.
The star and the two men were now in the cabin, hidden from view. Merton
Gill was no seaman, but it occurred to him that at least one of the crew
would be at the wheel in this emergency. Probably the director knew no
better. Indeed the boat, so far as could be discerned, had no wheel.
Apparently when a storm came up all hands went down into the cabin to
get away from it.
The storm did come up at this moment, with no one on deck. It struck
with the full force of a tropic hurricane. The boat rocked, the wind
blew, and billows swept the deck. At the height of the tempest Beulah
Baxter sprang from the cabin to the deck, clutching wildly at a
stanchion. Buffeted by the billows she groped a painful way along the
side, at risk of being swept off to her death.
She was followed by one of the crew who held a murderous knife in his
hand, then by the other sailor who also held a knife. They, too, were
swept by the billows, but seemed grimly determined upon the death of
the heroine. Then, when she reached midships and the foremost fiend was
almost upon her, the mightiest of all the billows descended and swept
her off into the cruel waters. Her pursuers, saving themselves only by
great effort, held to the rigging and stared after the girl. They leaned
far over the ship’s rocking side and each looked from under a spread
hand.
For a distressing interval the heroine battled with the waves, but her
frail strength availed her little. She raised a despairing face for an
instant to the camera and its agony was illumined. Then the dread waters
closed above her. The director’s whistle blew, the waves were stilled,
the tumult ceased. The head of Beulah Baxter appeared halfway down the
tank. She was swimming toward the end where Merton stood.
He had been thrilled beyond words at this actual sight of his heroine in
action, but now it seemed that a new emotion might overcome him. He felt
faint. Beulah Baxter would issue from the pool there at his feet. He
might speak to her, might even help her to climb out. At least no one
else had appeared to do this. Seemingly no one now cared where Miss
Baxter swam to or whether she were offered any assistance in landing.
She swam with an admirable crawl stroke, reached the wall, and put up
a hand to it. He stepped forward, but she was out before he reached her
side. His awe had delayed him. He drew back then, for the star, after
vigorously shaking herself, went to a tall brazier in which glowed a
charcoal fire.
Here he now noticed for the first time the prop-boy Jimmie, he who
had almost certainly defaulted with an excellent razor. Jimmie threw
a blanket about the star’s shoulders as she hovered above the glowing
coals. Merton had waited for her voice. He might still venture to speak
to her--to tell her of his long and profound admiration for her art. Her
voice came as she shivered over the fire:
“Murder! That water’s cold. Rosenblatt swore he’d have it warmed but I’m
here to say it wouldn’t boil an egg in four minutes.”
He could not at first identify this voice with the remembered tones of
Beulah Baxter. But of course she was now hoarse with the cold. Under
the circumstances he could hardly expect his heroine’s own musical
clearness. Then as the girl spoke again something stirred among his more
recent memories. The voice was still hoarse, but he placed it now.
He approached the brazier. It was undoubtedly the Montague girl. She
recognized him, even as she squeezed water from the hair of wondrous
gold.
“Hello, again, Kid. You’re everywhere, ain’t you? Say, wha’d you think
of that Rosenblatt man? Swore he’d put the steam into that water and
take off the chill. And he never.” She threw aside the blanket and
squeezed water from her garments, then began to slap her legs, arms, and
chest.
“Well, I’m getting a gentle glow, anyhow. Wha’d you think of the scene?”
“It was good--very well done, indeed.” He hoped it didn’t sound
patronizing, though that was how he felt. He believed now that Miss
Baxter would have done it much better. He ventured a question. “But how
about Miss Baxter--when does she do something? Is she going to be swept
off the boat, too?”
“Baxter? Into that water? Quit your kidding!”
“But isn’t she here at all--won’t she do anything here?”
“Listen here, Kid; why should she loaf around on the set when she’s
paying me good money to double for her?”
“You--double for Beulah Baxter?” It was some more of the girl’s
nonsense, and a blasphemy for which he could not easily forgive her.
“Why not? Ain’t I a good stunt actress? I’ll tell the lot she hasn’t
found any one yet that can get away with her stuff better than what I
do.”
“But she--I heard her say herself she never allowed any one to double
for her--she wouldn’t do such a thing.”
Here sounded a scornful laugh from Jimmie, the prop--boy. “Bunk!”
said he at the laugh’s end. “How long you been doublin’ for her, Miss
Montague? Two years, ain’t it?--I know it was before I come here, and I
been on the lot a year and a half. Say, he ought to see some the stuff
you done for her out on location, like jumpin’ into the locomotive
engine from your auto and catchin’ the brake beams when the train’s
movin’, and goin’ across that quarry on the cable, and ridin’ down
that lumber flume sixty miles per hour and ridin’ some them outlaw
buckjumpers--he’d ought to seen some that stuff, hey, Miss Montague?”
“That’s right, Jimmie, you tell him all about me. I hate to talk of
myself.” Very wonderfully Merton Gill divined that this was said with
a humorous intention. Jimmy was less sensitive to values. He began to
obey.
“Well, I dunno--there’s that motorcycle stuff. Purty good, I’ll say.
I wouldn’t try that, no, sir, not for a cool million dollars. And that
chase stuff on the roofs down town where you jumped across that court
that wasn’t any too darned narrow, an’ say, I wisht I could skin up a
tree the way you can. An’ there was that time--”
“All right, all right, Jimmie. I can tell him the rest sometime. I don’t
really hate to talk about myself--that’s on the level. And say, listen
here, Jimmie, you’re my favourite sweetheart, ain’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” assented Jimmie, warmly. “All right. Beat it up and get me
about two quarts of that hot coffee and about four ham sandwiches, two
for you and two for me. That’s a good kid.”
“Sure!” exclaimed Jimmie, and was off.
Merton Gill had been dazed by these revelations, by the swift and utter
destruction of his loftiest ideal. He hardly cared to know, now, if
Beulah Baxter were married. It was the Montague girl who had most
thrilled him for two years. Yet, almost as if from habit, he heard
himself asking, “Is--do you happen to know if Beulah Baxter is married?”
“Baxter married? Sure! I should think you’d know it from the way that
Sig Rosenblatt bawls everybody out.”
“Who is he?”
“Who is he? Why, he’s her husband, of course--he’s Mr. Beulah Baxter.”
“That little director up on the platform that yells so?” This
unspeakable person to be actually the husband of the wonder-woman, the
man he had supposed she must find intolerable even as a director. It was
unthinkable, more horrible, somehow, than her employment of a double. In
time he might have forgiven that--but this!
“Sure, that’s her honest-to-God husband. And he’s the best one out of
three that I know she’s had. Sig’s a good scout even if he don’t look
like Buffalo Bill. In fact, he’s all right in spite of his rough ways.
He’d go farther for you than most of the men on this lot. If I wanted
a favour I’d go to Sig before a lot of Christians I happen to know. And
he’s a bully director if he is noisy. Baxter’s crazy about him, too.
Don’t make any mistake there.”
“I won’t,” he answered, not knowing what he said.
She shot him a new look. “Say, Kid, as long as we’re talking, you seem
kind of up against it. Where’s your overcoat a night like this, and when
did you last--”
“Miss Montague! Miss Montague!” The director was calling.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I got to go entertain the white folks again.”
She tucked up the folds of her blanket and sped around the pool to
disappear in the mazes of the scaffolding. He remained a moment staring
dully into the now quiet water. Then he walked swiftly away.
Beulah Baxter, his wonder-woman, had deceived her public in Peoria,
Illinois, by word of mouth. She employed a double at critical junctures.
“She’d be a fool not to,” the Montague girl had said. And in private
life, having been unhappily wed twice before, she was Mrs. Sigmund
Rosenblatt. And crazy about her husband!
A little while ago he had felt glad he was not to die of starvation
before seeing his wonder-woman. Reeling under the first shock of
his discoveries he was now sorry. Beulah Baxter was no longer his
wonder-woman. She was Mr. Rosenblatt’s. He would have preferred death,
he thought, before this heart-withering revelation.