The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays

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The fight between the two forces was staged some distance away from the
hospital, and the guns soon began to rattle and to roar again. The girls
did not mind them by this time, however.

This skirmish had no particular part in the general story, but it was
filmed just the same, as it could be spliced in with the other fighting
scenes.

"And you can't get too much of that," Mr. Pertell said.

Russ, with some helpers, was taking the fighting pictures preliminary to
the hospital act. He was nearing the end of the reel in his machine
when, to his dismay, he found he had forgotten to bring a spare one.

"Here, you!" he called to one of the extra soldiers lying lazily on the
grass near the camera, "hop over and ask Pop Snooks to give you an extra
reel for me."

The man did not answer.

"Don't you hear me?" yelled Russ, grinding away at the film which was
being quickly used up. "Go and get me that reel!"

Still no response.

"Are you deaf?" shouted Russ, and then he thought perhaps the discharge
of so many cannon had made the man unable to hear.

"Go over and punch that fellow!" cried Russ to Paul. "Wake him up, and
tell him to get me that extra reel."

"All right," Paul assented. "I'd go myself only I have to carry a
message to headquarters in a minute or two."

He ran over and kicked the soldier, who seemed to be asleep.

"Hi! What's the idea?" demanded the rudely awakened one.

"The camera man wants you to go to get him some film."

"Who--me?"

"Yes--you! Skip!"

"I can't go get no film!"

"You can't? Why not?"

"'Cause I'm dead, that's why! I was told to be killed, and I was. I fell
off my hoss dead, an' I'm deader'n a door nail. I dassn't git up to git
no film for nobody. I'm dead!"

And the man rolled over and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER XVI

A RETAKE

"What's the matter over there?" called Russ to Paul. "Is he going to get
my film?"

"He says he can't."

"Can't? Why not? Has he lost his legs?"

"No. But he's dead. This is carrying realism to the extreme."

"Oh, good-night!" cried Russ. "I haven't but a few feet left. Make him
go."

"I won't go I tell you," the man cried. "I was told to play dead, and
I'm goin' to," and he stuck to the instructions he had received.

Fortunately, one of Russ' helpers was free a moment later, and he went
for the extra roll of film, while the dead man enjoyed his part to his
satisfaction.

"Well, he did just right," said Mr. Pertell, when told of the incident
afterward. "I wish more performers would do exactly as they are told. Of
course, I don't mean to say a player must slavishly do just as I tell
him. But in some cases a dead man's coming to life might spoil a big
scene."

Matters were now in readiness for the preliminary hospital scene. A ward
had been fitted up in a shed where electric lights could be used to get
the necessary illumination, the current being brought from town. In the
shed were ranged white beds, in which a number of wounded men were
reposing. Other men were in wheeled chairs, while still others sat up as
if recovering from a long and dangerous siege from wounds. All were
picturesquely bandaged.

The preliminary scenes had been taken. The doctor had made his rounds of
the wounded on the cots. He had taken their temperature and had felt
their pulses, while the other women of the company, as nurses,
accompanied the surgeon on his journey. Other wounded were brought in.

Night settled down in the hospital. The big, hissing electric lights
were turned off, and from outside a window "moonlight" streamed in. The
moonlight, of course was made by another electric light, properly
shaded.

"Now, I think we're ready for you, Ruth," said the director. "You are on
duty alone in the ward when the emergency occurs."

In the glow of the beams of light from the window Ruth, on duty alone,
took her place.

"All ready now!" called Mr. Pertell, from where he was standing behind
Russ, who was grinding away at the camera. "You start from your
half-doze, Ruth, and listen. Then you approach one of the cots and
discover that the bandage has slipped and that the man is bleeding to
death. You press on the artery, and finally rouse another of the
hospital patients--one not badly wounded--and send him for the surgeon."

Ruth carried out the instructions perfectly. Her acting was so very
natural that afterward, when the film was shown, more than one person
found himself holding his breath lest Ruth should remove her thumb from
the severed artery.

The slightly wounded man limped out to get the surgeon, who came rushing
in, and the artery was tied. Then followed words of praise for Ruth.
This laid the foundation for her summons to a larger hospital when the
proper time came.

The next day more battle views were the order of the day. In one of
these Estelle had to do some fast riding, to leap her horse across a
ditch and speed away from pursuing troopers.

"Aren't you nervous for fear you'll fall?" asked Ruth, as the young
horsewoman was making ready.

"Well, no. I don't think about that part. All I am afraid of is that I
may get out of range of the camera. You see I'm not very old at this
business."

"Just how did you come to get into it?" asked Alice.

"Why, it was a sort of accident. I was on a boat one day, leaning over
the rail looking at the water, when a gentleman came up, begged my
pardon for speaking without being introduced, and asked me if I had ever
been in the movies.

"I hadn't, though I had often thought I would like to be, and I told him
so. He asked me to call at his studio, and I did. They gave me a 'try
out,' found I photographed well, and they cast me for small parts. Then
they found out I could ride and they let me do some outdoor stuff. From
then on I did very well, and when I heard your company was going to make
a big war play, I applied to Mr. Pertell. He took me, I'm glad to say."

"And we're glad you're here," ejaculated Alice.

"We'll go out and watch you jump; it fascinates me, though it makes me
afraid," Ruth declared. "My sister and I did some riding while we were
at Rocky Ranch, but it was nothing to what you do."

"Oh, it takes practice, that's all," answered Estelle.

There were some animated scenes previous to the one in which Estelle
took part. There was a fight over the possession of a bridge, and the
Confederates, having driven off their enemies, prepared to blow it up to
prevent the Union army from using it.

Estelle was to try to reach the bridge before it was destroyed, but,
failing in that, she was to ride her horse to a narrow part of the
stream and leap over.

All went well, and the time came for her to take her swift ride to try
to reach the bridge. On and on she galloped, until she was met by a
colored man who warned her of the fact that in another moment the bridge
would be destroyed.

"She's going pretty close!" murmured Mr. Pertell, as he stood near Russ,
who was filming the scene. "Some of those timbers may fall pretty near
her."

But Estelle seemed to know no fear. She rode straight for the bridge,
and she was only a short distance away when it blew up, the planks and
rails flying high into the air.

Then she turned her horse to reach, ahead of her pursuers, the place she
was to jump the stream. So near was she to the bridge that she had to
swerve her horse quickly to avoid being struck by a fragment of the
falling wood.

"Plucky girl, that!" murmured Mr. DeVere.

While Estelle was being filmed down by the stream, one of the assistant
camera men, a new hand, prepared to take a scene where a Southern farmer
rides up to warn the Confederate cavalry of Estelle's escape, so they
may take after her. Maurice Whitlow was the farmer.

"Here, you!" cried Mr. Pertell to Whitlow, "ride down there and deliver
the message--that's your part in this scene."

There was a small automobile which Mr. Pertell had been using standing
near, and Maurice leaped into this and started across the field toward a
detachment of the Southern cavalry.

Away rattled Maurice in the car, and the camera man ground away, showing
the farmer on his way to give the warning. Suddenly Mr. Pertell turned
and saw what was going on.

"For the love of gasoline, stop!" he cried. "The whole scene is spoiled.
There'll have to be a retake! Of all the stupid pieces of work this is
the worst! Stop that camera!"

CHAPTER XVII

ESTELLE'S STORY

"What's the matter?" cried Russ Dalwood, running back from the stream
where he had been to see that an assistant was successfully getting the
scene after Estelle had leaped to the other bank.

"Matter! Look!" cried the director, and he pointed to Maurice, speeding
to carry his message in the small runabout.

"Good-night!" gasped Russ, who understood at once.

"Why, what's wrong with it?" asked Paul. "Isn't he running the machine
all right?"

"Oh, he's running it all right," said Mr. Pertell in tones of disgust.
"And that's just the trouble! I told him to jump on a horse with that
dispatch, and he goes in the auto!"

"I suppose he thought it was quicker," commented Paul.

"Quicker! Yes, I should say it was! But I'll get him out of there
quicker than he can shake a stick at a dead mule. The idea of riding in
an auto to carry a message in Civil War days. Why, there wasn't a real
auto in the whole world then. How would it look in a film to see an
up-to-date runabout butting in on a scene of sixty-three. Get him back
here and make him start over again on a horse as he ought to," went on
the director. "An auto in sixty-three! Next he'll be sending wireless
telephone messages about fifty years before they were ever dreamed of!"

Fortunately, not much of the film had been reeled off, and the scene was
one that could easily be made over. Estelle's leap was not spoiled, nor
was the blowing up of the bridge.

"Huh! I didn't think anything about there not being autos in those
days," said Maurice, when he had been brought back and mounted on a
horse.

"That's just it," commented Mr. Pertell. "You've got to think in these
days of moving pictures. The audiences are more critical than you would
suppose. Even the children now laugh at fake scenes and incongruities.
And as for using a dummy in danger scenes, it's getting harder and
harder every day to get by with it. You stick to horses or to Shank's
mules, young man, when it comes to transportation in this war film. No
autos where they are going to show in the film."

That was only one of the many details the director and his assistants
had to look after. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, it is
much more so the price of good films. The camera sees everything in a
pitiless light. It exaggerates faults and it refuses to shut its eye to
anything at which it is pointed. The absolute truth is told every time.

Of course, there are trick films, but even then the camera tells the
truth fearlessly. It is only the on-lookers' eyes that are deceived. The
camera can not be fooled. And though a man may be seen to be shaking
hands with himself or cutting off his own head, it is done by double
exposure, and could not be accomplished were it not for the fact that
the camera and the film are so fearlessly honest and truth-telling.

"What's the matter, Estelle?" asked Alice of the rider that afternoon,
when they were in Ruth's room resting after the work of the day. "You
seem to be in pain."

"I am. I strained my side a little in that water jump. Petro slipped a
bit on the muddy bank."

"Did you do much jumping out West?" asked Ruth, while Alice was getting
a bottle of liniment.

"In the West? I don't know that I ever jumped there. I can't
remember----"

Estelle paused, and passed her hand across her eyes as though to shut
out some vision.

"Are you faint?" asked Ruth.

"No--no, it isn't that. It--it is just that I--that I---- Oh, I wonder
if I can tell you?" and Estelle seemed in such distress that the two
sisters hastened to her.

"What is it? Tell me, are you badly hurt?" asked Ruth. For she had known
of performers who concealed injuries that they might not be laid off,
and so lose a day's work. "What is the matter, Estelle?"

"It is my--my head."

"Did you fall? I didn't hear them say anything about it!" exclaimed
Alice.

"No, it isn't that," and the girl looked from one sister to the other.
"Oh, I wonder if I dare tell you?"

"If there is anything in which we can help you, tell us, by all means!"
answered Ruth, warmly--sympathetically. "But we don't want to force
ourselves----"

"Oh, no! It isn't that. I'm only wondering what you will think of me
afterward."

"We shall love you just the same!" cried impulsive Alice.

"Don't be too sure. But I feel that I must tell some one. I have borne
all I can alone. It is getting to the point where I fear I shall scream
my secret to the cameras--or some one!"

Then Estelle had a secret!

"Do tell us. Perhaps we can help you--or perhaps my father can,"
suggested Ruth.

"I don't believe any one can help me," said Estelle. "But at least it
will be a relief to tell it. I--I am living under false pretenses!" she
blurted out desperately.

"False pretenses!" repeated Alice. At once her mind flashed back to Miss
Dixon's ring. Was it the taking of this that Estelle was hinting at? The
girl must have guessed what was in the mind of her hearers, for she
hastened to add:

"Oh, it isn't anything disgraceful. It's just a misfortune. You remember
you have been asking me where I learned to ride--whether I didn't use to
live on a ranch--questions like that. Well, you must have noticed that I
didn't answer."

"Yes, we did notice, and we spoke about it," said truthful Ruth.

"We thought you didn't wish to tell," added Alice.

"Wish to tell! Oh, my dears, I would have been only too glad to tell if
I could."

"Why can't you?" asked Ruth. "Are you bound by some vow of secrecy? Is
it dangerous for you to reveal the past?"

"No, it is simply impossible!"

"Impossible!" the two sisters exclaimed.

"Yes, I can no more tell you what life I lived, where I lived, who I
was, or what I was doing, up to a time of about three or four years ago,
than I can fly."

"Why not?" asked Alice, puzzled.

"Because the past--up to the time I named--is a perfect blank to me. My
mind refuses absolutely to tell me who I was or where I lived--who my
people were--anything of the past. My mind is like a blank sheet of
paper. I can remember nothing. Oh, isn't it awful!" and she burst into
tears.

CHAPTER XVIII

"WHAT CAN WE DO?"

"You poor dear!" cried Alice, and she knelt down on the floor beside
Estelle and put her arms about the weeping girl. Ruth, too, with an
expression of sympathy, stroked the bowed head.

"We want so much to help you," Ruth murmured.

"Let me get you something," begged Alice. "Some smelling salts--some
ammonia--shall I call any one--the doctor----?"

"No, I--I'll be all right presently," said Estelle in a broken voice.
"Just let me alone a little while--I mean stay with me--talk to me--tell
me something. I want to get control of my nerves."

Ruth did not seem to know what to say, but Alice pulled a small bottle
from her pocket, and held it under Estelle's nose.

"It's the loveliest new scent," she said. "I bought a sample in town."

Estelle burst into a laugh, rather a hysterical laugh, it is true, but a
laugh nevertheless. It showed that the strain and tension were relaxing
to some extent.

"Isn't it sweet?" Alice asked.

"It is, dear. Let me smell it again. It makes me feel better," and
Estelle breathed in deep of the odorous scent.

"How silly I was to give way like that," she went on. "But I simply
couldn't help it. This has been going on for so long, and it got so I
couldn't stand it another minute. How would you like it not to know who
you are?"

"Not very much, I'm afraid," said Ruth, softly.

"That, in a way, is why it has been such a relief to be in the moving
pictures," Estelle went on. "I could be so many different characters,
and, at times, I thought perhaps, by chance, I might be cast for the
very part I have lost--cast for my real self, as it were."

"You must have had a hard time," said Alice.

"I haven't told you half the story yet," Estelle went on. "Would you
like to hear the rest?"

"Indeed we would!" exclaimed Ruth. "Not from any idle curiosity, but
because we want to help you."

"And I do need some one to help me," murmured Estelle. "I am all alone
in the world."

"You must have relatives somewhere!" insisted Alice.

"None that I ever heard of. But then, who knows what might have happened
in the life that is a blank to me--in the life that lies beyond that
impenetrable wall of the past?

"But I mustn't get hysterical again. Just let me think for a moment, so
I may tell you my story clearly. I shall be all right in a moment or
two."

"Let me make you a cup of tea," proposed Ruth. "I'll make some for all
of us," and presently the little kettle was steaming over the spirit
lamp, and the girls were sipping the fragrant beverage.

"Thank you. That was good!" murmured Estelle. "I feel better now. I'll
tell the rest of my miserable story to you."

"Don't make it too miserable," and Alice tried to make her laugh a gay
one.

"I won't--not any more so than I can help. I think it will do me good to
let you share the mystery with me."

"Then it is a mystery?" asked Ruth.

"Somewhat, yes. You may think it strange, but I can not think back more
than three years--four at the most. I am not at all certain of the time.
But go back as far as I can, all I remember is that I was on a large
steamer."

"On the ocean?" asked Alice.

"No, on the Great Lakes. I was going to Cleveland, which I learned when
I asked one of the officers."

"And didn't you know where you were going before you asked?" Ruth
questioned.

"I hadn't the least idea, my dear. I might just as well have been going
to Europe. In fact, when I first looked out and saw the water, I thought
I was on the ocean."

"But where did you come from, what were you doing there, where were your
people?" cried Ruth.

"That's it, my dear. Where were they? I didn't know. No one knew. All I
could grasp was the fact that I was there on the boat."

"Alone?"

"Yes, all alone."

"But who bought your ticket--who engaged your stateroom?" questioned
Ruth.

"That is the queer part of it. I did it myself. When I first became
conscious that I was in a strange place I was so shocked that I wanted
to scream--to cry out--to ask all sorts of questions. Then I realized if
I did that I might be taken for an insane person and be locked up. So I
just shut myself in my stateroom and did some thinking.

"The first thing I wanted to know was how I got on the steamer, but how
to find that out without asking questions that the steamship people
would think peculiar, was a puzzle to me. Finally, I decided to pretend
to want to change my room, and when I went to the purser I asked him if
that was the only room to be had.

"'Why no, Miss,' he said, 'but when you came on board and I told you
what rooms I had, you insisted on taking that one.' That was enough for
me. I realized then that I had come on board alone, and of my own
volition, though I had not any recollection of having done so, and I
knew no more of where I came from than you do now."

"How very strange!" murmured Alice. "And what did you do?"

"Well, I pretended that I had been tired and had not made a wise choice
of a room, and asked the purser to give me another.

"'I thought, when you picked it out, you wouldn't like that one,' he
said to me, 'but you looked like a young lady who was used to having her
own way, so I did not interfere.'

"That was another bit of information. Evidently, I looked prosperous, a
fact that was borne out when I examined my purse. I had a considerable
sum in it, and the large valise I found in my room was filled with
expensive clothes and fittings. Yet where I had obtained it or my money
or my clothes I could not tell for the life of me. All I knew was that
I was there on board the ship."

"And did you change your stateroom?" asked Ruth.

"Yes; the purser gave me another one. And then I sat down and tried to
puzzle it out. Why was I going to Cleveland? I knew no one there, and
yet I had bought a ticket to that port--or some one had bought it for
me."

"Did that occur to you?" asked Alice. "That some one might have had an
object in getting you out of the way."

"Well, if they had, they took a very public and expensive method of
doing it," Estelle said. "I was on one of the best boats on Lake Erie,
and I had plenty of money."

"Did you find in what name your room was taken?" asked Ruth. "That might
have given you a clue."

"The name given was Estelle Brown," was the answer. "I gave that name
myself, for I recognized my handwriting on the envelope in which I
sealed some of my jewelry before handing it to the purser to put in his
safe. Estelle Brown was the name I gave."

"And was it yours?" asked Alice.

"I haven't any reason to believe that it was not. In fact, as I looked
back then, and as I look back now, the name Estelle Brown seems to be
my very own--it is associated closely with me. So I'm sure I'm Estelle
Brown--that is the only part I am sure about."

"But what did you do?" asked Ruth. "Didn't you make some inquiries?"

"I did; as soon as I reached Cleveland. At first I hoped that my memory
would come back to me when I reached that place. I thought I might
recognize some of the buildings. In fact, I hoped it would prove to be
my home, from which I had, perhaps, wandered in a fit of illness.

"But it was of no help to me. I might just as well have been in San
Francisco or New York for all that the place was familiar to me. So I
gave that up. Then I began to look over the papers to see if any Estelle
Brown was missing. But there was nothing to that effect in the news
columns. All the while I was getting more and more worried.

"I went to a good hotel in Cleveland and stayed two or three days. Then
I happened to think that perhaps my clothes might offer some clue. I
examined them all carefully, and the only thing I found was the name of
a Boston firm on a toilet set. At once it flashed on me that I belonged
in Boston. I seemed to have a dim recollection of a big monument in the
midst of a green park, of narrow, crooked streets and historical
buildings.

"Then, in a flash it came to me--I did belong in Boston. How I had come
from there I could not guess, but I was sure I lived there. So I bought
a ticket for there and went as fast as the train could take me.

"But my hopes were dashed. Even the sight of Bunker Hill monument did
not bring the elusive memory, nor did viewing the other places of
historic interest. Yet, somewhere in the back of my brain, I was sure I
had been in that city before. I went to the place where my toilet set
was bought, but the man had sold out and the new owner could give me no
information.

"I did not know what to do. My money was running low, and I had not a
friend to whom to turn. I happened to go in to see some moving pictures,
and the idea came to me that perhaps I could act. I had rather a good
face, so some one had hinted."

"You do photograph beautifully," said Alice.

"That's what one of the managers in Boston told me when I applied to
him," said Estelle. "He gave me a small part, and then I learned that
New York was really the place to go to get in the movies, so I came on,
with a letter to a manager from the Boston firm.

"It must have been my face that got me my first engagement, for now I
know I couldn't act. But, somehow or other, I made good, and then I got
this engagement with Mr. Pertell.

"And that is my story. You can see what a strange one it is--for me not
to know who I am. I'm almost ashamed to admit it, and that is why I have
been avoiding all references to my past. But now I have told you, what
do you think?"

"I think it's just terrible!" cried Alice. "The idea! Not to know who
you are."

"The question is," said Ruth, "what can we do to help you? This must not
be allowed to go any further. Valuable time is being lost. We want to
help you, Estelle. What can we do? We must try to find out who you are."

"Yes, but how can you?" asked the strange girl.

CHAPTER XIX

A BIG GUN

Ruth did not answer for several seconds. She seemed to be thinking
deeply, and Alice, who was fairly bursting with numberless questions she
wanted to ask, respected her sister's efforts to bring some logical
queries to the fore.

"Then your hopes that Boston would prove to be your home were not borne
out?" asked Ruth, after a bit.

"No, but even yet I feel sure that I have lived at least part of my life
in Boston, or near there. One doesn't have even shadowy memories of big
monuments and historic places without some basis; and it was not the
memory of having seen pictures of them. It was a real vision."

"And the name Estelle Brown?"

"Oh, I'm sure that belongs to me. It seems a very part of myself."

"Did you tell any of this to Mr. Pertell or to the other moving picture
managers?" asked Alice.

"No. You are the first persons to whom I have told my secret," Estelle
said. "I was afraid if I mentioned it they might make it public for
advertising purposes, you know. They might make public the fact that a
young actress was looking for herself and her parents. I never could
bear that!"

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