Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures; Or, Helping the Dormitory Fund — Themes and Context

Tom had brought the car to a stop. When the engine was shut off they could hear the director's commands:

"That's it, Hazel. Keep that pose. Got your focus, Carroll?" he called to the camera man. "Now--ready! Register fear, Miss Hazel. Say! act as though you _meant_ it! Register fear, I say--just as though you expected to fall into the water the next moment. Oh, piffle! Not at all like it! not at _all_ like it!"

He was a dreadfully noisy, pugnacious man. Finally the girl said:

"If you think I am not scared, Mr. Grimes, you are very much mistaken. I _am_. I expect to slip off here any moment----Oh!"

The last was a shriek of alarm. What she was afraid would happen came to pass like a flash. Her foot slipped, she lost her balance, and the next instant was precipitated into the river!

When the motion picture girl fell from the sycamore tree into the water, some of the members of the company, who sat or stood near by panting after their hard chase cross-lots, actually laughed at their unfortunate comrade's predicament.

But that was because they had no idea of the strength and treacherous nature of the Lumano. At this point the eddies and cross-currents made the stream more perilous than any similar stretch of water in the State.

"Oh, that silly girl!" shouted Mr. Grimes, the director. "There! she's spoiled the scene again. I don't know what Hammond was thinking of to send her up here to work with us.

"Hey, one of you fellows! go and fish her out. And that spoils our chance of getting the picture to-day. Miss Gray will have to be mollycoddled, and grandmothered, and what-not. Huh!"

While he scolded, the director scarcely gave a glance to the struggling girl. The latter had struck out pluckily for the shore when she came up from her involuntary plunge. After the cry she had uttered as she fell, she had not made a sound.

To swim with one's clothing all on is not an easy matter at the best of times. To do this in mid-winter, when the water is icy, is well nigh an impossibility.

Several of the men of the company, more humane than the director, had sprung to assist the unfortunate girl; but suddenly the current caught her and she was swerved from the bank. She was out of reach.

"And not a skiff in sight!" exclaimed Tom.

"Oh, dear! The poor thing!" cried his sister. "She's being carried right down the river. They'll never get her."

"Oh, Tom!" implored Ruth. "Hurry and start. _We must get that girl_!"

"Sure we will!" cried Tom Cameron.

He was already out of the car and madly turning the crank. In a moment the engine was throbbing. Tom leaped back behind the wheel and the automobile darted ahead.

The rough road led directly along the verge of the river bank. The picture-play actors scattered as he bore down upon them. It gave Tom, as well as the girls, considerable satisfaction to see the director, Grimes, jump out of the way of the rapidly moving car.

The friends in the car saw the actress, whom Grimes had called both "Hazel" and "Miss Gray," swirled far out from the shore; but they knew the current or an eddy would bring her back. She sank once; but she came up again and fought the current like the plucky girl she was.

"Oh, Helen! she's wonderful!" gasped Ruth, with clasped hands, as she watched this fight for life which was more thrilling than anything she had ever seen reproduced on the screen.

Helen was too frightened to reply; but Ruth Fielding often before had shown remarkable courage and self-possession in times of emergency. No more than the excited Tom did she lose her head on this occasion.

As has been previously told, Ruth had come to the banks of the Lumano River and to her Uncle Jabez Potter's Red Mill some years before, when she was a small girl. She was an orphan, and the crabbed and miserly miller was her single living relative.

The first volume of the series, entitled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill," tells of the incidents which follow Ruth's coming to reside with her uncle, and with Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was "everybody's aunt" but nobody's relative.

The first and closest friends of her own age that Ruth made in her new home were Helen and Tom Cameron, twin children of a wealthy merchant whose all-year home was not far from the Red Mill. With Helen and Mercy Curtis, a lame girl, Ruth is sent to Briarwood Hall, a delightfully situated boarding school at some distance from the girls' homes, and there, in the second volume of the series, Ruth is introduced to new scenes, some new friends and a few enemies; but altogether has a delightful time.

Ensuing volumes tell of Ruth and her chums' adventures at Snow Camp; at Lighthouse Point; on Silver Ranch, in Montana; on Cliff Island, where occur a number of remarkable winter incidents; at Sunset Farm during the previous summer; and finally, in the eighth volume, the one immediately preceding this present story, Ruth achieves something that she has long, long desired.

This last volume, called "Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies; Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace," tells of an automobile trip which Ruth and her present companions, Helen and Tom Cameron, took through the hills some distance beyond the Red Mill and Cheslow, their home town.

They fall into the hands of Gypsies and the two girls are actually held captive by the old and vindictive Gypsy Queen. Through Ruth's bravery Helen escapes and takes the news of the capture back to Tom. Later the grandson of the old Gypsy Queen releases Ruth.

While at the camp Ruth sees a wonderful pearl necklace in the hands of the covetous old Queen Zelaya. Later, when the girls return to Briarwood, they learn that an aunt of one of their friends, Nettie Parsons, has been robbed of just such a necklace.

Ruth, through Mr. Cameron, puts the police on the trail of the Gypsies. The Gypsy boy, Roberto, is rescued and in time becomes a protégé of Mr. Cameron, while the stolen necklace is recovered from the Gypsy Queen, who is deported by the Washington authorities.

In the end, the five thousand dollars reward offered by Nettie's aunt comes to Ruth. She is enriched beyond her wildest dreams, and above all, is made independent of the niggardly charity of her Uncle Jabez who seems to love his money more than he does his niece.

Unselfishness was Ruth's chief virtue, though she had many. She could never refuse a helping hand to the needy; nor did she fear to risk her own convenience, sometimes even her own safety, to relieve or rescue another.

In the present case, none knew better than Ruth the treacherous currents of the Lumano. It had not been so many months since she and her uncle, Jabez Potter, out upon the Lumano in a boat, had nearly lost their lives. This present accident, that to the young moving-picture actress, was at a point some distance above the Red Mill.

"If she is carried down two hundred yards farther, Tom, she will be swept out into mid-stream," declared Ruth, still master of herself, though her voice was shaking.

"And then--good-night!" answered Tom. "I know what you mean, Ruth."

"She will sink for the last time before the current sweeps her in near the shore again," Ruth added.

"Oh, don't!" groaned Helen. "The poor girl."

Tom had driven the automobile until it was ahead of the struggling Hazel Gray. An eddy clutched her and drew her swiftly in toward the bank. Immediately Tom shut off the power and he and Ruth both leaped out of the car.

A long branch from an adjacent tree had been torn off by the wind and lay beside the road. Tom seized this and ran with Ruth to the edge of the water; but he knew the branch was a poor substitute for a rope.

"If she can cling to this, I'll get something better in a moment, Ruth!" he exclaimed.

Swinging the small and bushy end of the branch outward, Tom dropped it into the water just ahead of the imperiled girl. Ruth seized the butt with her strong and capable hands.

"Cut off a length of that fence wire, Tommy," she ordered. "You have wire-cutters in your auto kit, haven't you?"

"Sure!" cried Tom. "Never travel without 'em since we were at Silver Ranch, you know. There! She's got it."

Hazel Gray had seized upon the branch. She was too exhausted to reach the bank of the river without help, and just here the eddy began to swing her around again, away from the shore.

The men of the company came running now, giving lusty shouts of encouragement, but--that was all! The director had allowed the girl to get into a perilous position on the leaning tree without having a boat and crew in readiness to pick her up if she fell into the river. It was an unpardonable piece of neglect, and there might still serious consequences arise from it.

For the girl in the water was so exhausted that she could not long cling to the limb. It was but a frail support between her and drowning.

When the men arrived Ruth feared to have them even touch the branch she held, and she motioned them back. She knew that the girl in the stream was almost exhausted and that a very little would cause her to lose her hold upon the branch altogether.

"Don't touch it! I beg of you, don't touch it!" cried Ruth, as one excited man undertook to take the butt of the branch.

"You can't hold it, Miss! you'll be pulled into the water."

"Never fear for me," the girl from the Red Mill returned. "I know what I am about----Oh, goody! here comes Tom!"

She depended on Tom--she knew that he would do something if anybody could. She gazed upon the wet, white face of the girl in the water and knew that whatever Tom did must be done at once. Hazel Gray was loosing her hold.

"Oh! oh! oh!" screamed Helen, standing in the automobile with clasped hands. "Don't let her drown, Tommy! Don't let her go down again--_don't_!"

Tom came, with grimly set lips, dragging about twenty feet of fence wire behind him. Luckily it was smooth wire--not barbed. He quickly made a loop in one end of it and wriggled the other end toward Ruth and the excited men.

"Catch hold here!" he ordered. "Make a loop as I have, and don't let it slip through your hands."

"Oh, Tom! you're never going into that cold water?" Ruth gasped, suddenly stricken with fear for her friend's safety.

But that was exactly what Tom intended to do. There was no other way. He had seen, too, the exhaustion of the girl in the water and knew that if her hands slipped from the tree branch, she could never get a grip on the wire.

Without removing an article of clothing the boy leaped into the stream. It was over his head right here below the bank, and the chill of the water was tremendous. As Tom said afterward, he felt it "clear to the marrow of his bones!"

But he came up and struck out strongly for the face of the girl, which was all that could be seen above the surface.

Hazel Gray's hold was slipping from the branch. She was blue about the lips and her eyes were almost closed. The current was tugging at her strongly; she was losing consciousness. If she was carried away by the suction of the stream, now dragging so strongly at her limbs, Tom Cameron would be obliged to loose his own hold upon the wire and swim after her. And the young fellow was not at all sure that he could save either her or himself if this occurred.

Yet, perilous as his own situation was, Tom thought only of that of the actress.

Helen, greatly excited, stood on the seat of the tonneau and cheered her brother on at the top of her voice. That, in her excitement, she thought she was "rooting" at a basket-ball game at Briarwood, was not to be wondered at. Ruth heard her chum screaming:

"S.B.--Ah-h-h! S.B.--Ah-h-h Sound our battle-cry Near and far! S.B.--All! Briarwood Hall! Sweetbriars, do or die---- This be our battle-cry---- Briarwood Hall! _That's All!_"

At the very moment the excited Helen brought out the "snapper" of the rallying cry of their own particular Briarwood sorority, Ruth let the limb go, for Tom had seized the sinking actress by the shoulder.

"He's got her!" the men shouted in chorus.

"And that's all those fellows were," Ruth said afterwards, in some contempt. "Just a _chorus_! They were a lot of tabby-cats--afraid to wet their precious feet. If it hadn't been for Tom, Miss Gray would have been drowned before the eyes of that mean director and those other imitation men. Ugh! I de-_test_ a coward!"

This was said later, however. Until they drew Tom and his fainting burden ashore, neither Ruth nor Helen had time for criticism. Then they bundled Hazel Gray in the automobile rugs, while Tom struggled into an overcoat and cranked up the machine. The director came to inquire:

"What are you going to do with that girl?"

"Take her to the Red Mill," snapped Ruth. "That's down the river, opposite the road to Cheslow. And don't try to see her before to-morrow. No thanks to _you_ that she isn't drowned."

"You are a very impudent young lady," growled the director.

"I may be a plain spoken one," said Ruth, not at all alarmed by the man's manner. "I don't know how you would have felt had Miss Gray been drowned. I should think you would think of _that_!"

But the man seemed more disturbed about the delay to the picture that was being taken.

"I shall expect you to be ready bright and early in the morning, Miss Gray!" he shouted as the automobile moved off. The young actress, half fainting in the tonneau between the Briarwood Hall girls, did not hear him.

It was several miles to the Red Mill, and Ruth, worried, said: "I'm afraid Tom will catch cold, Helen."

"And--and this po--poor girl, too," stammered Tom's sister, as the car jounced over a particularly rough piece of road.

Hazel Gray opened her eyes languidly, murmuring: "I shall be all right, thank you! Just drive to the hotel----"

"What hotel?" asked Ruth, laughing.

"In Cheslow. I don't know the name of it," whispered Hazel Gray. "Is there more than one?"

"There is; but you'll not go all the way to Cheslow in your condition," declared Ruth. "We're taking you to the Red Mill. Now! no objections, please. Hurry up, Tommy."

"But I am all wet," protested the girl.

"I should say you were," gasped Helen.

"Nobody knows better than I," said Ruth, "that the water of the Lumano river is at least _damp_, at all seasons."

"I will make you a lot of trouble," objected Miss Gray.

"No, you won't," the girl of the Red Mill repeated. "Aunt Alvirah will snuggle you down between soft, fluffy blankets, and give you hot boneset tea, or 'composition,' and otherwise coddle you. To-morrow morning you will feel like a new girl."

"Oh, dear!" groaned Miss Gray. "I wish I _were_ a new girl."

A very few minutes later they came in sight of the Red Mill, with the rambling, old, story-and-a-half dwelling beside it, in which Jabez Potter's grandfather had been born. Although the leaves had long since fallen from the trees, and the lawn was brown, the sloping front yard of the Potter house was very attractive. The walks were swept, the last dead leaf removed, and the big stones at the main gateway were dazzlingly white-washed.

The jar and rumble of the grist-mill, and the trickle of the water on the wheel, made a murmurous accompaniment to all the other sounds of life about the place. From the rear of the old house fowls cackled, a mule sent his clarion call across the fields, and hungry pigs squealed their prayer for supper. A cow lowed impatiently at the pasture bars in answer to the querulous blatting of her calf.

Tom was going on home to change his clothes; but when Ruth saw the fringe of icicles around the bottoms of his trouser legs, she would not hear to it.

"You come right in with us, Tom. Helen will drive the car home and get you a change of clothing. Meanwhile you can put on some of Uncle Jabez's old clothes. Hurry on, now, children!" and she laughingly drove Tom and Hazel Gray before her to the porch of the old house, where Aunt Alvirah, having heard the automobile, met them in amazement.

"What forever has happened, my pretty?" cried the little old lady, whose bent back and rheumatic limbs made her seem even smaller than she naturally was. "In the river? Do come in! Bring the young lady right into the best room, Ruthie. You strip off right before the kitchen fire, Master Tom. I'll bring you some things to put on. There's a huck towel on the nail yonder. Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"

Thus talking, Aunt Alvirah hobbled ahead into the sitting room. The girl who had fallen into the river was now shivering. Ruth and the old lady undressed her as quickly as possible, and Aunt Alvirah made ready the bed with the "fluffy" blankets in the chamber right off the sitting room.

"Do get one of your nighties for her, my pretty," directed Aunt Alvirah. "She wouldn't feel right sleepin' in one o' _my_ old things, I know."

Ruth was excited. In the first place, as to most girls of her age, a "real live actress" was as much of a wonder as a Great Auk would have been; only, of course, Hazel Gray was much more charming than the garfowl!

Ruth Fielding was interested in moving pictures--and for a particular reason. Long before she had gained the reward for the return of the pearl necklace to Nettie Parsons' aunt, Ruth had thought of writing a scenario. This was not a very original thought, for many, many thousand other people have thought the same thing.

Occasionally, when she had been to a film show, Ruth had wondered why she could not write a playlet quite as good as many she saw, and get money for it. But it had been only a thought; she knew nothing about the technique of the scenario, or how to go about getting an opinion upon her work if she should write one.

Here chance had thrown her into the company of a girl who was working for the films, and evidently was of some importance in the moving picture companies, despite the treatment she had received from the unpleasant director, Mr. Grimes.

Ruth remembered now of having seen Hazel Gray upon the screen more than once within the year. She was regarded as a coming star, although she had not achieved the fame of many actresses for the silent drama who were no older.

So Ruth, feeling the importance of the occasion, selected from her store the very prettiest night gown that she owned--one she had never even worn herself--and brought it down stairs to the girl who had been in the river. A little later Hazel Gray was between Aunt Alvirah's blankets, and was sipping her hot tea.

"My dear! you are very, very good to me," she said, clinging to Ruth's hand. You and the dear little old lady. Are you as good to every stranger who comes your way?"

"Aunt Alvirah is, I'm sure," replied Ruth, laughing and blushing. Somehow, despite the fact that the young actress was only two or three years older than herself, the girl of the Red Mill felt much more immature than Miss Gray.

"You belittle your own kindness, I am sure," said Hazel. "And that _dear_ boy who got me out of the river--Where is he?"

"Unseeable at present," laughed Ruth. "He is dressed in some of Uncle Jabez's clothing, a world too big for him. But Tom _is_ one of the dearest fellows who ever lived."

"You think a great deal of him, I fancy?"

"Oh, yes, indeed!" cried Ruth, innocently. "His sister is my very dearest friend. We go to Briarwood Hall together."

"Briarwood Hall? I have heard of that. We go there soon, I understand. Mr. Hammond is to take some pictures in and around Lumberton."