章节正文
he had only known it, and would have erased from his
mind a good many depressing visions of Jean as the
film sweetheart of those movie men whom he secretly
hated.
Jean did not hesitate five minutes before she signed
the contract which Burns presented to her the next
morning. She was human, and she had learned enough
about the business to see that, speaking from a purely
professional point of view, she was extremely fortunate.
Not every girl, surely, can hope to jump in a few weeks
from the lowly position of an inexperienced "extra"
to the supposedly exalted one of leading woman. And
to her that hundred dollars a week which the contract
insured her looked a fortune. It spelled home to her,
and the vindication of her beloved dad, of whom she
dared not think sometimes, it hurt her so.
Her book was not progressing as fast as she had
expected when she began it. She had been working at it
sporadically now for eight weeks, and she had only ten
chapters done,--and some of these were terribly short.
She had looked through all of the novels that she
owned, and had computed the average number of chapters
in each; thirty she decided would be a good,
conservative number to write. She had even divided those
thirty into three parts, and had impartially allotted ten
to adventure, ten to mystery and horror, and ten to love-
making. Such an arrangement should please everybody,
surely, and need only be worked out smoothly to
prove most satisfying.
But, as it happened, comedy would creep into the
mystery and horror, which she mentally lumped together
as agony. Adventure ran riot, and straight love-
making chapters made her sleepy, they bored her so.
She had tried one or two, and she had found it impossible
to concentrate her mind upon them. Instead, she
had sat and planned what she would do with the money
that was steadily accumulating in the bank; a pitiful
little sum, to be sure, to those who count by the thou-
sands, but cheering enough to Jean, who had never before
had any money of her own.
So she signed the contract and worked that day so
light-heartedly that Robert Grant Burns forgot his
pessimism. When the light began to fade and grow yellow,
and the big automobile went purring down the trail
to town, she rode on to the Bar Nothing to find Lite,
and tell him how fortune had come and tapped her on
the shoulder.
She did not see Lite anywhere about the ranch, and
so she did not put her hopes and her plans and her good
fortune into speech. She did see her Aunt Ella, who
straightway informed her that people were talking about
the way she rode here and there with those painted-up
people, and let the men put their arms around her and
make love to her. Her Aunt Ella made it perfectly
plain to Jean that she, for one, did not consider it
respectable. Her Aunt Ella said that Carl was going to
do something about it, if things weren't changed pretty
quick.
Jean did not appear to regard her aunt's disapproval
as of any importance whatever, but the words stung.
She had herself worried a little over the love-making
scenes which she knew she would now be called upon
to play. Jean, you will have observed, was not given
to sentimental adventurings; and she disliked the idea
of letting Lee Milligan make love to her the way he
had made love to Muriel Gay through picture after
picture. She would do it, she supposed, if she had to;
she wanted the salary. But she would hate it
intolerably. She made reply with sarcasm which she knew
would particularly irritate her Aunt Ella, and left the
house feeling that she never wanted to enter it again as
long as she lived.
The sight of her uncle standing beside Pard in an
attitude of disgusted appraisement of the new Navajo
blanket and the silver-trimmed bridle and tapideros
which Burns had persuaded her to add to her riding
outfit,--for photographic effect,--brought a hot flush
of resentment. She went up quietly enough, however.
Indeed, she went up so quietly that he started when
she appeared almost beside him and picked up Pard's
reins, and took the stirrup to mount and ride away.
She did not speak to him at all; she had not spoken to
him since that night when the little brown bird had
died! Though perhaps that was because she had managed
to keep out of his way.
"I see you've been staking yourself to a new bridle,"
Carl began in a tone quite as sour as his look. "You
must have bought out all the tin decorations they had in
stock, didn't you?"
Jean swung up into the saddle before she looked at
him. "If I did, it's my own affair," she retorted. "I
paid for the tin decorations with my own money."
"Oh, you did! Well, you might have been in better
business than paying for that kind of thing. You
might," he sneered up at her, "have been paying for
your keep these last three years, if you've got more
money of your own than you know what to do with."
Jean could not ride off under the sting of that
gratuitous insult. She held Pard quiet and looked
down at him with hate in her eyes. "I expect," she
said in a queer, quiet wrath, "to prove before long that
my own money has been paying for my `keep' these
last three years; for that and for other things that did
not benefit me in the least."
"I'd like to know what you mean by that!" Carl
caught Pard by the bridle-rein and looked up at her in a
white fury that startled even Jean, accustomed as she
was to his sudden rages that contrasted with his sullen
attitude toward the world.
"What do you think I would mean? Let go my
bridle. I don't want to quarrel with you."
"What did you mean by proving--what do you
expect to prove?" His hand was heavy on the rein,
so that Pard began to fret under the restraint. "You've
got to quit running around all over the country with
them show folks, and stay at home and behave yourself.
You've got to quit hanging out at the Lazy A. I've
stood as much as I'm going to stand of your performances.
You get down off that horse and go into the
house and behave yourself; that's what you'll do! If
you haven't got any shame or decency--"
Jean scarcely knew what she did, just then. She
must have dug Pard with her spurs, because the first
thing that she realized was the lunge he gave. Carl's
hold slipped from the rein, as he was jerked sidewise.
He made an ineffective grab at Jean's skirt, and he
called her a name she had never heard spoken before in
her life. A rod or so away she pulled up and turned
to face him, but the words she would have spoken stuck
in her throat. She had never seen Carl Douglas look
like that; she had seen him when he was furious, she
had seen him when he sulked, but she had never seen
him look like that.
He called her to come back. He made threats of
what he would do if she refused to obey him. He shook
his fist at her. He behaved like a man temporarily
robbed of his reason; his eyes, as he came up glaring at
her, were the eyes of a madman.
Jean felt a tremor of dread while she looked at him
and listened to him. He was almost within reach of
her again when she wheeled and went off up the trail at
a run. She looked back often, half fearing that he
would get a horse and follow her, but he stood just
where she had left him, and he seemed to be still
uttering threats and groundless accusations as long as she
was in sight.
CHAPTER XVI
FOR ONCE AT LEAST LITE HAD HIS WAY
Half a mile she galloped, and met Lite coming
home. She glanced over her shoulder before she
pulled Pard down to a walk, and Lite's greeting, as he
turned and rode alongside her, was a question. He
wanted to know what was the matter with her. He
listened with his old manner of repression while she
told him, and he made no commentwhatever until she
had finished.
"You must have made him pretty sore," he said
dispassionately. "I don't think myself that you ought
to stay over to the ranch alone. Why don't you do as
he says?"
"And go back to the Bar Nothing?" Jean shivered
a little. "Nothing could make me go back there!
Lite, you don't understand. He acted like a crazy man;
and I hadn't said anything to stir him up like that.
He was--Lite, he scared me! I couldn't stay on the
ranch with him. I couldn't be in the same room with
him."
"You can't go on staying at the Lazy A," Lite told
her flatly.
"There's no other place where I'd stay."
"You could," Lite pointed out, "stay in town and
go back and forth with the rest of the bunch. It would
be a lot better, any way you look at it."
"It would be a lot worse. There's my book; I
wouldn't have any chance to write on that. And
there's the expense. I'm saving every nickel I possibly
can, Lite, and you know what for. And there's the
bunch--I see enough of them during working hours.
I'd go crazy if I had to live with them. Lite, they've
put me in playing leads! I'm to get a hundred dollars
a week! Just think of that! And Burns says that
I'll have to go back to Los Angeles with them when they
go this fall, because the contract I signed lasts for a
year."
She sighed. "I rode over to tell you about it. It
seemed to be good news, when I left home. But now,
it's just a part of the black tangle that life's made up
of. Aunt Ella started things off by telling me what
a disgrace it is for me to work in these pictures. And
Uncle Carl--" She shivered in spite of herself. "I
just can't understand Uncle Carl's going into such a
rage. It was--awful."
Lite rode for some distance before he lifted his head
or spoke. Then he looked at Jean, who was staring
straight ahead and seeing nothing save what her thoughts
pictured.
He did not say a word about her going to Los Angeles.
He was the bottled-up type; the things that hit him
hardest he seldom mentioned, so by that rule it might
be inferred that her going hit hard. But his voice was
normally calm, and his tone was the tone of authority,
mind a good many depressing visions of Jean as the
film sweetheart of those movie men whom he secretly
hated.
Jean did not hesitate five minutes before she signed
the contract which Burns presented to her the next
morning. She was human, and she had learned enough
about the business to see that, speaking from a purely
professional point of view, she was extremely fortunate.
Not every girl, surely, can hope to jump in a few weeks
from the lowly position of an inexperienced "extra"
to the supposedly exalted one of leading woman. And
to her that hundred dollars a week which the contract
insured her looked a fortune. It spelled home to her,
and the vindication of her beloved dad, of whom she
dared not think sometimes, it hurt her so.
Her book was not progressing as fast as she had
expected when she began it. She had been working at it
sporadically now for eight weeks, and she had only ten
chapters done,--and some of these were terribly short.
She had looked through all of the novels that she
owned, and had computed the average number of chapters
in each; thirty she decided would be a good,
conservative number to write. She had even divided those
thirty into three parts, and had impartially allotted ten
to adventure, ten to mystery and horror, and ten to love-
making. Such an arrangement should please everybody,
surely, and need only be worked out smoothly to
prove most satisfying.
But, as it happened, comedy would creep into the
mystery and horror, which she mentally lumped together
as agony. Adventure ran riot, and straight love-
making chapters made her sleepy, they bored her so.
She had tried one or two, and she had found it impossible
to concentrate her mind upon them. Instead, she
had sat and planned what she would do with the money
that was steadily accumulating in the bank; a pitiful
little sum, to be sure, to those who count by the thou-
sands, but cheering enough to Jean, who had never before
had any money of her own.
So she signed the contract and worked that day so
light-heartedly that Robert Grant Burns forgot his
pessimism. When the light began to fade and grow yellow,
and the big automobile went purring down the trail
to town, she rode on to the Bar Nothing to find Lite,
and tell him how fortune had come and tapped her on
the shoulder.
She did not see Lite anywhere about the ranch, and
so she did not put her hopes and her plans and her good
fortune into speech. She did see her Aunt Ella, who
straightway informed her that people were talking about
the way she rode here and there with those painted-up
people, and let the men put their arms around her and
make love to her. Her Aunt Ella made it perfectly
plain to Jean that she, for one, did not consider it
respectable. Her Aunt Ella said that Carl was going to
do something about it, if things weren't changed pretty
quick.
Jean did not appear to regard her aunt's disapproval
as of any importance whatever, but the words stung.
She had herself worried a little over the love-making
scenes which she knew she would now be called upon
to play. Jean, you will have observed, was not given
to sentimental adventurings; and she disliked the idea
of letting Lee Milligan make love to her the way he
had made love to Muriel Gay through picture after
picture. She would do it, she supposed, if she had to;
she wanted the salary. But she would hate it
intolerably. She made reply with sarcasm which she knew
would particularly irritate her Aunt Ella, and left the
house feeling that she never wanted to enter it again as
long as she lived.
The sight of her uncle standing beside Pard in an
attitude of disgusted appraisement of the new Navajo
blanket and the silver-trimmed bridle and tapideros
which Burns had persuaded her to add to her riding
outfit,--for photographic effect,--brought a hot flush
of resentment. She went up quietly enough, however.
Indeed, she went up so quietly that he started when
she appeared almost beside him and picked up Pard's
reins, and took the stirrup to mount and ride away.
She did not speak to him at all; she had not spoken to
him since that night when the little brown bird had
died! Though perhaps that was because she had managed
to keep out of his way.
"I see you've been staking yourself to a new bridle,"
Carl began in a tone quite as sour as his look. "You
must have bought out all the tin decorations they had in
stock, didn't you?"
Jean swung up into the saddle before she looked at
him. "If I did, it's my own affair," she retorted. "I
paid for the tin decorations with my own money."
"Oh, you did! Well, you might have been in better
business than paying for that kind of thing. You
might," he sneered up at her, "have been paying for
your keep these last three years, if you've got more
money of your own than you know what to do with."
Jean could not ride off under the sting of that
gratuitous insult. She held Pard quiet and looked
down at him with hate in her eyes. "I expect," she
said in a queer, quiet wrath, "to prove before long that
my own money has been paying for my `keep' these
last three years; for that and for other things that did
not benefit me in the least."
"I'd like to know what you mean by that!" Carl
caught Pard by the bridle-rein and looked up at her in a
white fury that startled even Jean, accustomed as she
was to his sudden rages that contrasted with his sullen
attitude toward the world.
"What do you think I would mean? Let go my
bridle. I don't want to quarrel with you."
"What did you mean by proving--what do you
expect to prove?" His hand was heavy on the rein,
so that Pard began to fret under the restraint. "You've
got to quit running around all over the country with
them show folks, and stay at home and behave yourself.
You've got to quit hanging out at the Lazy A. I've
stood as much as I'm going to stand of your performances.
You get down off that horse and go into the
house and behave yourself; that's what you'll do! If
you haven't got any shame or decency--"
Jean scarcely knew what she did, just then. She
must have dug Pard with her spurs, because the first
thing that she realized was the lunge he gave. Carl's
hold slipped from the rein, as he was jerked sidewise.
He made an ineffective grab at Jean's skirt, and he
called her a name she had never heard spoken before in
her life. A rod or so away she pulled up and turned
to face him, but the words she would have spoken stuck
in her throat. She had never seen Carl Douglas look
like that; she had seen him when he was furious, she
had seen him when he sulked, but she had never seen
him look like that.
He called her to come back. He made threats of
what he would do if she refused to obey him. He shook
his fist at her. He behaved like a man temporarily
robbed of his reason; his eyes, as he came up glaring at
her, were the eyes of a madman.
Jean felt a tremor of dread while she looked at him
and listened to him. He was almost within reach of
her again when she wheeled and went off up the trail at
a run. She looked back often, half fearing that he
would get a horse and follow her, but he stood just
where she had left him, and he seemed to be still
uttering threats and groundless accusations as long as she
was in sight.
CHAPTER XVI
FOR ONCE AT LEAST LITE HAD HIS WAY
Half a mile she galloped, and met Lite coming
home. She glanced over her shoulder before she
pulled Pard down to a walk, and Lite's greeting, as he
turned and rode alongside her, was a question. He
wanted to know what was the matter with her. He
listened with his old manner of repression while she
told him, and he made no commentwhatever until she
had finished.
"You must have made him pretty sore," he said
dispassionately. "I don't think myself that you ought
to stay over to the ranch alone. Why don't you do as
he says?"
"And go back to the Bar Nothing?" Jean shivered
a little. "Nothing could make me go back there!
Lite, you don't understand. He acted like a crazy man;
and I hadn't said anything to stir him up like that.
He was--Lite, he scared me! I couldn't stay on the
ranch with him. I couldn't be in the same room with
him."
"You can't go on staying at the Lazy A," Lite told
her flatly.
"There's no other place where I'd stay."
"You could," Lite pointed out, "stay in town and
go back and forth with the rest of the bunch. It would
be a lot better, any way you look at it."
"It would be a lot worse. There's my book; I
wouldn't have any chance to write on that. And
there's the expense. I'm saving every nickel I possibly
can, Lite, and you know what for. And there's the
bunch--I see enough of them during working hours.
I'd go crazy if I had to live with them. Lite, they've
put me in playing leads! I'm to get a hundred dollars
a week! Just think of that! And Burns says that
I'll have to go back to Los Angeles with them when they
go this fall, because the contract I signed lasts for a
year."
She sighed. "I rode over to tell you about it. It
seemed to be good news, when I left home. But now,
it's just a part of the black tangle that life's made up
of. Aunt Ella started things off by telling me what
a disgrace it is for me to work in these pictures. And
Uncle Carl--" She shivered in spite of herself. "I
just can't understand Uncle Carl's going into such a
rage. It was--awful."
Lite rode for some distance before he lifted his head
or spoke. Then he looked at Jean, who was staring
straight ahead and seeing nothing save what her thoughts
pictured.
He did not say a word about her going to Los Angeles.
He was the bottled-up type; the things that hit him
hardest he seldom mentioned, so by that rule it might
be inferred that her going hit hard. But his voice was
normally calm, and his tone was the tone of authority,
- hesitate [´heziteit]
vi.犹豫，踌躇 (初中英语单词) - extremely [ik´stri:mli] ad.极端地；非常地 (初中英语单词)
- beloved [bi´lʌvd] a.为....所爱的 n.爱人 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- terribly [´terəbli] ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词)
- mystery [´mistəri] n.神秘；秘密；故弄玄虚 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- arrangement [ə´reindʒmənt] n.整理；排列；筹备 (初中英语单词)
- concentrate [´kɔnsəntreit] v.聚集；浓缩；全神贯注 (初中英语单词)
- steadily [´stedili] ad.坚定地；不断地 (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- supposed [sə´pəuzd] a.想象的；假定的 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- saddle [´sædl] n.鞍子 v.装鞍(于) (初中英语单词)
- insult [in´sʌlt, ´insʌlt] n.&vt.侮辱；损害 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- behave [bi´heiv] v.举止；表现；举止端正 (初中英语单词)
- throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- furious [´fjuəriəs] a.狂怒的；猛烈的 (初中英语单词)
- comment [´kɔment] n.&v.评论；评注；注意 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- disgrace [dis´greis] n.耻辱 vt.玷辱；贬黜 (初中英语单词)
- sweetheart [´swi:thɑ:t] n.爱人；情人 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- smoothly [´smu:ðli] ad.光滑地；顺利地 (高中英语单词)
- comedy [´kɔmidi] n.喜剧；喜剧场面 (高中英语单词)
- sleepy [´sli:pi] a.困的，想睡的 (高中英语单词)
- irritate [´iriteit] vt.激怒；刺激 (高中英语单词)
- bridle [´braidl] n.(马)笼头；束缚 (高中英语单词)
- resentment [ri´zentmənt] n.不满；怨恨；忿恨 (高中英语单词)
- restraint [ri´streint] n.抑制；管束；克制 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- alongside [əlɔŋ´said] ad.在旁 prep.横靠 (高中英语单词)
- nickel [´nikəl] n.镍 vt.把...镀镍 (高中英语单词)
- tangle [´tæŋgəl] n.&vt.(使)缠结；纠纷 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- sentimental [,senti´mentl] a.感伤的；多愁善感的 (英语四级单词)
- stirrup [´stirəp] n.马蹬；镫形具 (英语四级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- inexperienced [,iniks´piəriənst] a.缺乏经验的 (英语六级单词)
- photographic [,fəutə´grɑ:fik] a.摄影(术)的；逼真的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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