HER first picture—from a popular novel of the hour called “The Bird of Prey”—was finished and ready for cutting, except for picking up a mass of ragged ends.
Few sets had been knocked down, for there were re-takes necessary—accidents due to Shunk or to Creevy, and charged to everybody else from door-keeper to star.
The barn-like studio was in disorder and it rang all day with a hell of dissonance—infernal hammering, trample of heavy feet, the racket of hoarse voices, scrape of props and electric cables over the wood flooring, and the high-pitched, spiteful scolding of Ratford Creevy—as though a noisy mouth could ever remedy confusion resulting from mental incapacity.
Smull came every day to take Eris to lunch—such frequent consultation being both customary and advisable, he informed her.
As a result the girl was a target for gossip and curiosity, sneered at by some, leered at by others, but generally fawned on because of suspected “pull with the main guy.” Courted, flattered, deferred to by one and all, she was inexperienced enough to believe in such universal friendliness, innocent enough to entertain no suspicion of these less-fortunates who were kind to her; of Albert Smull’s unvarying and eager cordiality.
The girl was radiantly happy, despite misgivings regarding Mr. Creevy.
And, as far as that gentleman’s incompetence was concerned, although she did not know it she was learning a courage and self-reliance that had been slower coming if she had remained under the direction of Frank Donnell.
Artistically, intellectually, Eris, from sheer necessity, had made, unconsciously, a vast advance amid obstacles and conditions that always worried and sometimes dismayed her.
As a matter of fact she had taught more to Creevy than he had ever taught anybody.
Like a good field-dog, the bird-sense and instinct being there, with a little training she had begun to instruct her instructor in qualities and in technique entirely unfamiliar yet astonishingly sound.