He had now but to await his great moment. The final scenes of the new piece were shot. Again he was resting between pictures. As the date for showing the first piece drew near he was puzzled to notice that both Baird and the Montague girl curiously avoided any mention of it. Several times he referred to it in their presence, but they seemed resolutely deaf to his "Well, I see the big show opens Monday night."
He wondered if there could be some recondite bit of screen etiquette which he was infringing. Actors were superst.i.tious, he knew. Perhaps it boded bad luck to talk of a forthcoming production. Baird and the girl not only ignored his reference to Hearts on Fire, but they left Baird looking curiously secretive and the Montague girl looking curiously frightened. It perplexed him. Once he was smitten with a quick fear that his own work in this serious drama had not met the expectations of the manager.
However, in this he must be wrong, for Baird not only continued cordial but, as the girl had prophesied, he urged upon his new actor the signing of a long-time contract. The Montague girl had insisted upon being present at this interview, after forbidding Merton to put his name to any contract of which she did not approve. "I told Jeff right out that I was protecting you," she said. "He understands he"s got to be reasonable."
It appeared, as they set about Baird"s desk in the Buckeye office, that she had been right. Baird submitted rather gracefully, after but slight demur, to the terms which Miss Montague imposed in behalf of her protege. Under her approving eye Merton Gill affixed his name to a contract by which Baird was to pay him a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a week for three years.
It seemed an incredible sum. As he blotted his signature he was conscious of a sudden pity for the manager. The Montague girl had been hard--hard as nails, he thought--and Baird, a victim to his own good nature, would probably lose a great deal of money. He resolved never to press his advantage over a man who had been caught in a weak moment.
"I just want to say, Mr. Baird," he began, "that you needn"t be afraid I"ll hold you to this paper if you find it"s too much money to pay me. I wouldn"t have taken it at all if it hadn"t been for her." He pointed an almost accusing finger at the girl.
Baird grinned; the girl patted his hand. Even at grave moments she was a patter. "That"s all right, Son," she said soothingly. "Jeff"s got all the best of it, and Jeff knows it, too. Don"t you, Jeff?"
"Well--" Baird considered. "If his work keeps up I"m not getting any the worst of it."
"You said it. You know very well what birds will be looking for this boy next week, and what money they"ll have in their mitts.
"Maybe," said Baird.
"Well, you got the best of it, and you deserve to have. I ain"t ever denied that, have I? You"ve earned the best of it the way you"ve handled him. All I"m here for, I didn"t want you to have too much the best of it, see? I think I treated you well."
"You"re all right, Flips." "Well, everything"s jake, then?"
"Everything"s jake with me."
"All right! And about his work keeping up--trust your old friend and well-wisher. And say, Jeff--" Her eyes gleamed reminiscently. "You ain"t caught him dancing yet. Well--wait, that"s all. We"ll put on a fox-trot in the next picture that will sure hog the footage."
As this dialogue progressed, Merton had felt more and more like a child in the presence of grave and knowing elders. They had seemed to forget him, to forget that the amazing contract just signed bore his name.
He thought the Montague girl was taking a great deal upon herself. Her face, he noted, when she had stated terms to Baird, was the face she wore when risking a small bet at poker on a high hand. She seemed old, indeed. But he knew how he was going to make her feel younger. In his pocket was a gift of rare beauty, even if you couldn"t run railway trains by it. And pretty things made a child of her.
Baird shook hands with him warmly at parting. "It"ll be a week yet before we start on the new piece. Have a good time. Oh, yes, and drop around some time next week if there"s any little thing you want to talk over--or maybe you don"t understand."
He wondered if this were a veiled reference to the piece about to be shown. Certainly nothing more definite was said about it. Yet it was a thing that must be of momentous interest to the manager, and the manager must know that it would be thrilling to the actor.
He left with the Montague girl, who had become suddenly grave and quiet.
But outside the Holden lot, with one of those quick transitions he had so often remarked in her, she brightened with a desperate sort of gaiety.
"I"ll tell you what!" she exclaimed. "Let"s go straight down town--it"ll be six by the time we get there--and have the best dinner money can buy: lobster and chicken and vanilla ice-cream and everything, right in a real restaurant--none of this tray stuff--and I"ll let you pay for it all by yourself. You got a right to, after that contract. And we"ll be gay, and all the extra people that"s eating in the restaurant"ll think we"re a couple o" prominent film actors. How about it?" She danced at his side.
"We"ll have soup, too," he amended. "One of those thick ones that costs about sixty cents. Sixty cents just for soup!" he repeated, putting a hand to the contract that now stiffened one side of his coat.
"Well, just this once," she agreed. "It might be for the last time."
"Nothing like that," he a.s.sured her. "More you spend, more you make--that"s my motto."
They waited for a city-bound car, sitting again on the bench that was so outspoken. "You furnish the girl, we furnish the home," it shouted.
He put his back against several of the bold words and felt of the bracelet-watch in his pocket.
"It might be the last time for me," insisted the girl. "I feel as if I might die most any time. My health"s breaking down under the strain. I feel kind of a fever coming on right this minute."
"Maybe you shouldn"t go out."
"Yes, I should."
They boarded the car and reached the real restaurant, a cozy and discreet resort up a flight of carpeted stairs. Side by side on a seat that ran along the wall they sat at a table for two and the dinner was ordered. "Ruin yourself if you want to," said the girl as her host included celery and olives in the menu. "Go on and order prunes, too, for all I care. I"m reckless. Maybe I"ll never have another dinner, the way this fever"s coming on. Feel my hand."
Under the table she wormed her hand into his, and kept it there until food came. "Do my eyes look very feverish?" she asked.
"Not so very," he a.s.sured her, covering an alarm he felt for the first time. She did appear to be feverish, and the anxiety of her manner deepened as the meal progressed. It developed quickly that she had but scant appet.i.te for the choice food now being served. She could only taste bits here and there. Her plates were removed with their delicacies almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek his, gripping it as if in some nameless dread. He became worried about her state; his own appet.i.te suffered.
Once she said as her hot hand clung to his, "I know where you"ll be to-morrow night." Her voice grew mournful, despairing. "And I know perfectly well it"s no good asking you to stay away."
He let this pa.s.s. Could it be that the girl was already babbling in delirium?
"And all the time," she presently went on, "I"ll simply be sick a-bed, picking at the covers, all blue around the gills. That"ll be me, while you"re off to your old motion picture--"the so-called art of the motion picture,"" she concluded with a careful imitation of her father"s manner.
He tried to determine whether she were serious or jesting. You never could tell about this girl. Whatever it was, it made him uneasy.
Outside he wished to take her home in a taxi-cab, but she would not hear to this. "We"ll use the town-car, Gaston," she announced with a flash of her old manner as she waved to an on-coming street-car. During the long ride that followed she was silent but restless, tapping her foot, shifting in her seat, darting her head about. The one thing she did steadily was to clutch his arm.
During the walk from the car to the Montague house she twice indulged in her little dance step, even as she clung to the arm, but each Lime she seemed to think little of it and resumed a steady pace, her head down.
The house was dark. Without speaking she unlocked the door and drew him into the little parlour.
"Stand right on that spot," she ordered, with a final pat of his shoulder, and made her way to the dining room beyond where she turned on a single light that faintly illumined the room in which he waited. She came back to him, removed the small cloth hat, tossed it to a chair, and faced him silently.
The light from the other room shone across her eyes and revealed them to him shadowy and mysterious. Her face was set in some ominous control.
At last she looked away from him and began in a strained voice, "If anything happens to me--"
He thought it time to end this nonsense. She might be feverish, but it could be nothing so serious as she was intimating. He clutched the gift.
"Sarah," he said lightly, "I got a little something for you--see what I mean?" He thrust the package into her weakly yielding hands.
She studied it in the dusk, turning it over and over. Then with no word to him she took it to the dining room where under the light she opened it. He heard a smothered exclamation that seemed more of dismay than the delight he expected, though he saw that she was holding the watch against her wrist. She came back to the dusk of the parlour, beginning on the way one of her little skipping dance steps, which she quickly suppressed. She was replacing the watch on its splendid couch of satin and closing the box.
"I never saw such a man!" she exclaimed with an irritation that he felt to be artificial. "After all you"ve been through, I should think you"d have learned the value of money. Anyway, it"s too beautiful for me.
And anyway, I couldn"t take it--not to-night, anyway. And anyway--"
Her voice had acquired a huskiness in this speech that now left her incoherent, and the light revealed a wetness in her eyes. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief. "Of course you can take it to-night," he said in masterful tones, "after all you"ve done for me."
"Now you listen," she began. "You don"t know all I"ve done for you.
You don"t know me at all. Suppose something came out about me that you didn"t think I"d "a" been guilty of. You can"t ever tell about people in this business. You don"t know me at all-not one little bit. I might "a"
done lots of things that would turn you against me. I tell you you got to wait and find out about things. I haven"t the nerve to tell you, but you"ll find out soon enough--"
The expert in photoplays suffered a sudden illumination. This was a scene he could identify--a scene in which the woman trembled upon the verge of revealing to the man certain sinister details of her past, spurred thereto by a scoundrel who blackmailed her. He studied the girl in a new light. Undoubtedly, from her words, he saw one panic-stricken by the threatened exposure of some dreadful complication in her own past. Certainly she was suffering.
"I don"t care if this fever does carry me off," she went on. "I know you could never feel the same toward me after you found out--"
Again she was dabbing at her eyes, this time with the sleeve of her jacket. A suffering woman stood before him. She who had always shown herself so competent to meet trouble with laughing looks was being overthrown by this nameless horror. Suddenly he knew that to him it didn"t matter so very much what crime she had been guilty of.
"I don"t care what you"ve done," he said, his own voice husky. She continued to weep.