Have you ever been in a small town, small time vaudeville house? Well, even if you have, and could live through it, you’ve probably never seen that mysterious region known as “backstage.” You’ve never heard warped boards creak under the lightest step. You’ve never stood in the wings waiting for your turn, trying to escape the draught that is everywhere, shivering but afraid to sneeze. You’ve never dodged misdirected tobacco juice. You’ve never endured the composite odors only a one time “opery-house,” sometime warehouse, another time stable, can produce. You’ve never done your three a day, rain, shine or blizzard, then rushed to catch a local with oil lamps swinging weirdly overhead and a jerky halt at every peach tree. But most of all, if you’re a woman, you’ve never known what it is to sit weeping in a pea-green walled dressing-room because you chose to do the darn thing yourself and won’t go back home and admit you’re beaten.
If any one of these experiences had been yours, you’d probably walk straight into the pea-green dressing-room referred to, pat Elizabeth Parsons on the shoulder and say, “I’m with you, old girl! It’s a black, black world. No sunshine anywhere! Never was, never will be!”
As it happened, those in her world at the moment were not of her world. They were a hardened lot, with hands ready to dig down and share a copper with a pal, with glib greeting in their own peculiar patois as they swung [4] through the stage entrance, but inured to creaking boards, to combined odors, to oaths and tobacco juice and icy currents that gripped more sensitive shoulders like the hand of death. Life had handed them a deal that wasn’t exactly square, perhaps. Almost any of them would have been a knock-out on Broadway! But they had reached the point where emotion, as well as indignation, expressed itself in shrugs.
They could snore peacefully in a swaying day-coach, dreaming of the hour when the flower of success would spring up by the wayside. So Elizabeth Parsons wept alone. Her make-up boxes reeled in every direction as her head went down in their midst. Her hands, pressed against her lips, tried to still the sobs she knew were cowardly. Her body shook with that least beautiful of human emotions, self-pity, and she wished she were dead.
A gale of sleet and snow tore against her little alley window. It rattled the single pane furiously. It forced its way through cracks and dripped into pools of water on the stone floor. It blurred the already dull electric globes round her dressing-table with a dank mist and soaked a chill into her bones. But it had nothing whatever to do with her tears. They were the result of an accumulation of misery and loneliness, and finally the receipt of a wire from her booking agent advising her that her route had been changed. For the next three days she must play her own home town.
It was the crowning humiliation! She had endured the disappointment of all the rest of it; but to go back to the barnlike old theater in Main Street, wedged between movies and tinsel acrobats, was too much. To [5] hear the wagging tongues and see the wagging heads of those who had warned her two years ago that New York was a pit of the devil; to let them see that even his satanic majesty had let her sink into oblivion, was more than she could bear.
From the stage at the foot of the iron stairs came a crashing chord and the voice of Jack Halloran, “The Funniest Man in the World,” singing a nasal travesty:—
“Oh, Rigoletto—give me a stiletto!”
Elizabeth raised her head, mopped away the tears, and rearranged her make-up. Her turn was next but one.
“BETTY PARSONS—FAMOUS IMITATOR OF
FAMOUS STARS
STRAIGHT FROM BROADWAY.”
So proclaimed the announcements that accompanied her pictures outside the theater. They always made Elizabeth smile. She had certainly come from Broadway—straight.
She brushed back her soft brown hair, pinned a towel round it, laid on a layer of grease-paint. A supply was needed to blot out traces of the last bad half hour. She beaded the lashes, penciled black shadows under them that made her gray eyes look green, and carmined her lips so that the slightly austere New England lines of them softened into luscious curves.
In the midst of transforming a primrose into an orchid, and with thoughts still fastened on the dreaded to-morrow, she did not hear the knock on her door. It was [6] repeated. Turning, she saw a white square of paper shoved through the crack. She picked it up wonderingly. Communications from any one but her agent were almost unknown quantities.
Dear Lizzie Parsons (she read),
I’m outside of the door waiting to come in and say hello.
Your old friend,
Lou Seabury.
In spite of her dread, in spite of her determination to die rather than face home folks, she dropped her powder puff, made one bound for the door, flung it wide.
“Oh, Rigoletti—give me a yard of spaghetti,” warbled Halloran from below.
With a little checked cry, Elizabeth reached out both hands. A plump, pink cheeked young man took them and somewhat diffidently stepped into the little square of room. But Elizabeth clung to him shamelessly and her voice caught when she tried to speak. He was the first link between two years of loneliness and the yesterdays of happy childhood.
“Lou,” came at last, “Lou Seabury!”
“I got a nerve, haven’t I,—walkin’ in on you like this?”
His pink face flushed a deeper pink as she pulled the chair from the dressing-table, thrust him into it, and stood looking down. “You’re just an angel from heaven, that’s what you are! How ever in the world did you find me?”
“I came over here yesterday to look at some threshin’ machines. Scott Brothers are sellin’ out and Dad got [7] word they’re lettin’ their stuff go dirt cheap, so he sent me to take a squint. By Jiminy, I almost dropped dead when I went past the theater this afternoon and saw your picture. Maybe I didn’t go right up to the girl in the ticket box and tell her I was an old friend of yours!”
Elizabeth’s tongue went into her cheek. “And what did she say?”
“Asked why I didn’t come in to see you perform to-night and I said I would. But first I made up my mind I’d let you know I was here. Say—what is it you do?”
“Imitations.”
“Who do you imitate?”
“Oh, Ethel Barrymore and Elsie Janis and Eddie Foy and George Cohan and Nazimova—” She reeled off a list, most of them strange to him.
“I’ll bet you’re great. Gee—Lizzie—but you’re pretty.” His round face went scarlet as the words popped out and he shifted uneasily under the loose ill-fitting coat that hung from his broad shoulders.
She met his wide-eyed admiration with a smile. “It’s the paint, Lou.”
“No, sirree! You always were pretty. I used to watch you sittin’ beside me in the choir, and when you threw back your head and sort of closed your eyes to sing, I didn’t wonder Sam Goodwin was crazy about you.”
“Is he still organist at the First Presbyterian?”
“Yep.”
“And are you still in the choir?”
“Yep.” His boyish brown eyes dropped. His plump hands twisted the brim of his wide slouch hat. “Guess that’s the most I’ll ever amount to.”
[8]
“But that beautiful voice of yours—it’s a sin!”
“My Dad don’t think so. Gimcracks, he calls it. I asked him once to give me enough to get it trained,” the eyes lifted with a twinkle, “and I never asked him again.”
She patted his arm sympathetically. “He wouldn’t understand—of course.”
“Gee, I wish I had your sand, Lizzie! To break away—and make good.”
She turned swiftly to the mirror, picked up the discarded puff, dabbed some powder on her nose, then carefully rouged her nostrils. And if a tear smudged into the shadow under her eye, he didn’t notice it.
He watched her fascinated, every move, every practiced touch to her make-up. She had unpinned the towel and her hair fluffed like a golden brown halo round her small, mobile face. And catching his rapt expression in the mirror, it flashed over her that to him she did represent success. The mere fact that she had broken the chains of New England tradition, that she had crossed the rubicon of the footlights, put her on a plane apart.
Somehow the look in his nice eyes, of wonder, of envy, of homage—the look she had so often worn when from a fifty cent seat in the gallery she had studied the methods of the stars she impersonated—gave her new courage. To-night she would not go through her ten minutes listlessly with just one idea uppermost—to get her theater trunk packed in a rush so that she might snatch a few hours’ sleep before making the train in the dull gray dawn. To-night she would be sure at least of an audience of one, of interest and enthusiasm and a thrill of [9] excitement—and these she would merit. She would do her turn for Lou Seabury in a way he’d never forget.
She drew a stool from under the dressing-table, sat down and plied him with hurried questions about the folks at home. He gave her the latest news, little intimate bits that mean nothing but are so dear to one who knows no fireside but the battered washstand and cracked basin of a third-rate hotel room.
Grand’pa Terwilliger, seventy-nine, was keeping company with the widow Bonser but was scared to marry her for fear folks would talk. Grace Perkins had a new baby. Stanley Perkins had married a stenographer in Boston and bought a flivver. He, Lou, had bought a victrola for fifteen dollars second-hand and had some crackerjack opera records for it. She ought to hear them!
When finally she sent him round to the front of the house and hurried down the ugly iron steps, her low-heeled white slippers touched them with an eager lightness they had not known for months.
The curtain was rung down on a one-act sketch. A placard announced “Miss Betty Parsons—in her Famous Imitations.”
With a dazzling smile, Elizabeth sallied forth, cane in hand singing, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
Through her repertoire she went, changing like a chameleon from the bland grin and strut of Eddie Foy to the crumpled pleading and out-flung hands of Nazimova in “The Doll’s House.” She plunged into Nora’s final scene with her husband:
[10]
... “When your terror was over—not for what threatened me, but for yourself ... then it seemed to me—as though nothing had happened. I was your lark again, your doll just as before—whom you would take twice as much care of in future, because she was so weak and fragile. Torwald—in that moment it burst upon me that I had been living here these eight years with a strange man.... Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I could tear myself to pieces!”
The greater part of the audience had never heard of the Russian actress, knew less of the Scandinavian author. But the sob in the voice of the frail little girl on the stage, the anguish in her face got them by the throat.
There was a spontaneous burst of applause that held for a moment while Betty bowed, glance straying into the misty auditorium, heart fluttering with a gratification it had not known since the Grand Central spilled her into the bewildering maze that is New York.
She swung quickly into ragtime after that, the drawling syncopation and rolling step of a black-face comedian, and as a conclusion gave them Elsie Janis in one of the songs from her latest Broadway success.
They brought her back several times. She threw them a final kiss, disappeared into the wings and whisked up the stairs. Lou was going to see the show to its finish, then call for her. He was sure they could persuade the proprietor of the hotel where she was staying to fix up a little supper of sandwiches and milk.
She slipped out of her white dress and into a dark one, folded the former in layers of tissue paper and laid it in the top trunk tray, stuffing stockings into the corners to keep it in place. She gathered together her make-up, [11] packed it into a tin box. To-morrow another pea-green dressing-room, or perhaps, saffron-yellow. The week following, one of chalk-blue. And so on, ad infinitum. Of such her infinite variety!
A knock came at the door. She glanced at the gold watch which had been her grandmother’s. Ten-fifteen. Lou had probably tired of the show.
Pulling on her black velvet tarn, she called gaily—“Come in!”
A mellow voice answered interrogatively, “Miss Parsons?”
It was then she wheeled about. Standing framed in the doorway was a tall man with a cloud of black hair sweeping from a white forehead and a pair of intense dark eyes. Elizabeth knew him instantly.
No mistaking that face and long, lean figure.
She drew a bewildered hand across a bewildered brow. In the doorway of her dressing-room stood Oswald Kane, famous New York theatrical producer!
She made no attempt at speech, just stared at him.
He smiled. “You expected some one else, I see. May I come in?” And as she nodded, “You know me?”
She nodded again, indicated the chair and sank onto the low stool. She couldn’t have stood another instant.
“You’re wondering, of course, why I am here,” the low musical voice went on.
“Y-yes.”
“I’m very much interested in your work, Miss Parsons. I have come to see it three times—last night and twice to-day. Until to-night, however, I was not quite sure of you. There was a listless quality. Had any one, [12] perhaps, informed you that I was in front to-night?”
“If any one had, I’d probably have died of nervousness.”
He smiled again, ran a hand through his heavy hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and leaned forward. “You seem to be a very talented little girl. No technique, of course. You have the ABC’s of that to learn. But you have a flexible voice and expressive face, and you showed in that Nazimova bit emotional possibilities. Your reproduction of her tone and accent were really excellent.”
“Th—thank you,” came with difficulty.
“Of course, I have no proof that you can act. Even if you can, it will require infinite patience and training to make an actress of you. But I could do it, I believe.”
Elizabeth gulped.
He shook back his shock of hair. His burrowing eyes narrowed. His fingers hesitatingly played with the thin watch chain that spanned his high waistcoat. “The majority of actresses on the American stage are mere mummers. Those I have made are artistes. But in order to accomplish this, they have given themselves into my hands—absolutely. I have taken girls out of the chorus and made stars of them in the drama—not because they were lovely to look at, or quick or clever, but because I have worked hard with them, with infinite patience developed their personalities, injected into them the inspiration that is Oswald Kane.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
“Of course there must be ability or I would not waste my time. I must be sure the seed is there to be nursed [13] into a beautiful flower. But first and foremost, the actress I train must obliterate self. She must become so much clay for me to model. She must accept my direction without question. She must obey as a soldier obeys his commanding officer.”
“Yes,” sighed Elizabeth.
“I see you now not as you are, but as what I can make of you. No two of my stars are alike. Each has distinct and startling personality. That is why the American public looks to me for sensations. Not one is the actress she was when I discovered her. They are, one and all, Oswald Kane creations.” He leaned back, still studying her.
Elizabeth felt a sea of eyes upon her in a gaze of hypnosis. She stared back like one in a trance.
He sat for a long moment silent. Then the low, quiet voice went on, richly vibrant as the tones of a cello.
“Yes, I think I might do something with you. That Nazimova bit showed promise. But it will require training and patience—infinite patience. You will have to work hard without complaint, hours over one line, weeks over one short scene. And no recognition, perhaps, for some years to come. You must not consider mundane things. Money must count for nothing. I cannot think of money in connection with my art. You must never grow tired or disgruntled. Above all, you must not question. And in the end, a great artiste, my child,—a great artiste.”
Elizabeth nodded mechanically. She felt like screaming.
He got up slowly as if still uncertain, moved into a [14] corner of the little room, eyes still upon her. “Will you take off your hat and smooth down your hair. I must see your features at close range.”
With fingers that trembled and stiffened, she pulled off her tam, combed back her fluffy brown hair and breathlessly lifted her profile to the light. It was, as he had said, a face not beautiful, but malleable to mood as wax, with gray eyes set wide apart, a short nose, full sensitive red lips, deep-cleft chin and swift change of expression that was almost a change of feature. And there was in her slim figure with its soft suggestion of curve, the magnetism of youth, the flame of enduring energy.
He moved finally toward the door.
“You will take the 11:18 to-night to New York, cancel all bookings, and I shall expect you at my theater to-morrow at noon.”
Elizabeth found her voice at last. “If you knew how many, many times I’ve gone to your office, Mr.Kane, and begged on my knees for just one little word with you!”
He smiled once more, that charming, somewhat deprecatory smile of his. “That is not my way of engaging artistes. I must seek them, not they me. I never see those who come to my office, unless I have sent for them. No, my way is to haunt out-of-the-way places. Railroad stations, unknown stock theaters, cheap theatrical hotels, vaudeville houses like this. There, occasionally, I find my flower among the weeds. And when I do, I pluck it to transplant in my own garden. If I discover one a year, I ask no more.”
[15]
A sob broke in Elizabeth’s throat. “Oh, Mr.Kane—I—I’m so proud—and so—so grateful.”
He took her trembling hand, patted it with his own rather soft, artistic one. “You must prove a good pupil, that is all. Remember—no mention of this when you go to cancel your booking—no mention of my name to any one. For a time we must keep the agreement to ourselves. Until you have my permission, the fact that you have come under my management is to remain absolutely unknown to any but ourselves.”
She looked up at him wonderingly, “Anything you wish, of course.”
He dropped her hand, ran his fingers once more through the dark thatch that persistently fell over his eyes. “I must have absolute faith in you, little girl,—and you in Oswald Kane.”
“I—I have.”
“That is as it should be. To-morrow, then, at noon.”
He was gone.
In less than twenty minutes, after the manner of such happenings, a miracle had been wrought.
Elizabeth stood dazed an instant. Then she stumbled to the window, flung up the sash and leaned out to drink in the gale-slashed air with deep convulsive breaths.
“Oh God,” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks, “help me to make good. Help me—help me!”
And so it happened that on a biting day in January, 1917, at the stroke of twelve, Elizabeth Parsons, aged twenty-three, entered the sanctum sanctorum of Oswald Kane, was handed a pen by his business manager and [16] forthwith signed away five years of her life with an option on the next five, at the rate of fifty dollars per week for the first two years, one hundred for the third, and one hundred and fifty for each year following.
But just then Elizabeth would have signed away her whole life for nothing.
[17]
CHAPTER II
On a brilliant night in January, 1920, under the sponsorship of Oswald Kane, Mme.Lisa Parsinova made her bow to an expectant New York public.
For a long time, almost a year to be exact, Mr.Kane had been letting fall gentle hints of his discovery of a rare Russian genius, driven by the war to these shores. He was having her instructed in English, the story went, and once equal to the exigencies of emotional acting in a strange tongue, she would be presented by him to an American public which could not fail to be entranced by her great art. All this had been revealed in various interviews, bit by bit—a word here, a phrase there, a subtle suggestion elsewhere. At first he had not given out her name, had been gradually prevailed upon to do so, and by the time he announced the date of her premiÈre, “Mme.Lisa Parsinova” was on the lips of all that eager theater-going throng alert for a new sensation.
Stories of a cloudy past had already gone the rounds, vaguely suggested by Mr.Kane’s press representative, not through the medium of the press. There were tales of her startling beauty, her lovers, her temper. But so far no one had been permitted even a glimpse of her.
So that when she made her appearance the opening night, the gasp of thrilled admiration that met her was very genuine. The play was “The Temptress”—Oriental in atmosphere, written for her by Kane and a young collaborator whose name didn’t particularly matter. The [18] plot was not by any means unconventional, that of a slave of early Egypt wreaking revenge through the ages upon the descendants of the master, who, because she refused to yield to him, threw her to the crocodiles.
The first act, a prologue, took place on a flagged terrace of a palace by the slow-flowing Nile. As the curtain rose, faint zephyrs of incense wafted outward, a misty aroma. The terrace glistened under a golden moon with still stars piercing a sky of emerald. The tinkle of some far-off languorous instrument sounded soft against the night. And waiting, his lustful gaze on the marble steps, sat the master.
Slowly, the slave descended. Sullen and silent, she slunk forward, like some halting panther in the night.
Her body gleamed, golden as the moon, sinuous and satiny under the transparent cestus. Her bare feet moved noiselessly, every step one of infinite grace. She came forward, eyes brooding, and stood half shrinking, half defiant before the long stone bench where sat her master. Suddenly she raised her head, tossed back her short black hair and faced him.
As by a signal, opera-glasses went up, a sigh of pleasure went through the house. The audience waited. She opened her lips and her voice, low and liquid, flowed out, thrilling through their veins. The thick contralto of it, the fascinating foreign accent, completely captivated them.
He reached out, drew her toward him. One felt the wave of terror seizing her. His big hands grasped her shoulders. She gave a smothered cry and he laughed.
[19]
She pleaded, then resisted, and finally, voice rising like a viol with strings drawn taut, defied him, calling upon the gods to save her for the man she loved.
And all the while he laughed, a chuckling laugh full of anticipation.
At last his arms closed round the golden body, his lips bent to hers. The sudden gleam of a tiny dagger, its clatter as he caught her upraised arm,—and he flung her from him, clapping his hands for the eunuchs who waited.
With one swift word he condemned her.
She crumpled at his feet. The black men lifted her. She cried out in horror, a curse upon him and his through all the ages.
A long moan as they bore her away, a pause, a splash against the silence, and the curtain descended.
For a breath the house sat motionless. Then came a surge of applause. But the curtain did not rise.
Buzz of conversation met the upgoing lights. Only a few, however, moved from their seats. Those who did came together in the lobby and discussed the new star with a wonder close to awe.
“They sure can turn them out over there,” avowed one seasoned first nighter. “Temperament, that’s the answer, Slav temperament. No little cut and dried two-by-four conventions to tie them down. They’ve got something the American woman don’t know the first thing about.”
“Well, they know how to let go, for one thing!”
The curtain rose on ActII, a modern drawing-room in the London home of an English peer, member of [20] Parliament, on the occasion of his thirty-ninth birthday. He entered, big, handsome, with his little, clinging English wife.
There was revealed the fact that for generations the oldest male of his line died before the age of forty, a violent death. They married, there were children, and always reaching the prime of manhood, they were cut down. A curse upon his family it seemed to be and the little wife trembled.
Guests dropped in to tea. With them came the announcement that a prominent barrister was bringing a French authoress who had asked to meet their host. She had heard him in the House of Lords. They spoke of her beauty, her extraordinary personality.
Then Mme. Parsinova appeared. In the brilliantly lighted set, the audience had its first good look at her. Slim, with a slenderness that made her seem tall, a mass of pitch-black hair piled high on her small head, a pair of burning eyes, dark and shadowed, creamy skin, a short nose, deep-cleft chin, and scarlet lips full and mobile, she seemed a living flame. She moved forward with gliding step, her lizard-green velvet gown clinging about her limbs, her sable cloak drooping from her shoulders. And one felt at once, as her white hand, weighted with a cabochon emerald, rested in his, the spell she would weave about the insular and very British member of Parliament.
Not so insular at that, for it developed that in his veins ran a strain, a very thin strain, of the blood of Egypt.
[21]
There followed the love story, obvious if you like, but with the everlasting thrill and appeal of a great passion, magnificently portrayed. For as the drama moved to its climax, the spirit of the slave which through the ages had visited its will upon the family of its master, found itself captive. The French woman fell madly in love with her victim and in the end gave her life that the curse might be lifted and his saved.
In the climactic love scene at the end of ActIII when passion tore from her lips, an onrushing tide, the beautiful voice ran a crescendo of emotion that was almost song. Its strange accent stirred and fascinated. Its abandon was that of a soul giving all, sweeping aside like an avalanche law, thought, ultimate penalty.
And still at the curtain, when the house rang with demands for her, Parsinova did not appear. Oswald Kane made his accustomed speech, coming before the purple velvet curtain to tell his audience in his usual reticent manner how deeply he appreciated their reception of the genius he had discovered. He thanked them—he thanked them—he thanked them. He raised a graceful hand, pushed back his weight of hair and slipped into the wings while the house resounded once more with clapping hands and stamping feet, and a full fifteen minutes elapsed before the play could go on.
All through the final act sounded the low note of tragedy, the realization that she who for centuries had ruthlessly taken toll must now once more be sacrificed that the one who had become dearer than life might endure.
When the audience finally rose after another futile [22] attempt to bring her out, the women’s eyes were red, the men’s faces white. New York was undoubtedly taken by storm. It had been more than a typical Kane first night. It had been a Kane ovation.
In the first row a man got to his feet as if shaking off a spell. He was tall, very erect, almost rawboned, with hair turning gray about the temples, a demanding jaw, sharp straight nose and eyes that somehow seemed younger than the rest of his face, younger than the bushy black brows that mounted over them. They had caught Parsinova’s gaze, those eyes, as it swept once or twice over the audience. They had held it longer than was fair to her.
“Great, isn’t she, Rand?” His companion tapped his arm as he stood gazing at the fallen curtain.
“Paralyzing,” was the laconic reply. He wheeled about and made his way up the aisle, followed by the other man.
Outside, close to the shadowy stage entrance, Oswald Kane’s car, a royal blue limousine, and a curious throng of bystanders waited.
Inside, Oswald Kane himself begged the circle of those privileged by wealth, position, influence, who clustered round the door of the star’s dressing-room, to excuse her for to-night. Madame was completely exhausted.
When both crowds, tired of waiting, had dispersed two figures hurried down the little alley that led to the stage door and entered the limousine.
The door slammed.
The car rolled out and east toward Fifth Avenue.
The man switched off the light that illumined the [23] woman’s white face. Her dark-shadowed eyes were burning with excitement. She leaned back, closing them, and heaved a great sigh. He leaned forward, hair falling over his eyes, echoed the sigh, and his hand shut tightly round her ungloved one. With a tense, almost nervous movement she drew it away, shrank imperceptibly into her corner.
“They are at your feet,” he whispered. “I have made you.”
She did not answer—merely opened her eyes and looked at him and through the darkness, something like tears glistened on the lashes.
They drove on in silence. He recaptured her hand, held it to his lips. She looked away.
The car drew up before a modest apartment building in a side street. He helped her out, entered with her, and the elevator swung them upward. He made a movement for the key she took from her bag but she unlocked the door and led the way into the foyer.
Slowly he reached up, lifted the fur toque from her black hair and the wrap from her shoulders, and his touch lingered caressingly as he turned her toward him.
“You are my creation!” he told her. “Parsinova cannot exist without me.”
Into the throat of the great Russian actress with the questionable past came a flutter of fear. Her lips quivered. She gave a convulsive choking sound. Her eyes raced the length of the hall as though she wanted to run away, then went pleading up to his. He smiled down into them, drew her firmly to him.
[24]
With a swift, hysterical laugh, a twist of her body, she was out of his arms and across the foyer.
“Come,” she called.
She opened a door at the other side. The gold flames of a log fire played upon the face of the little gray-haired woman in dusky silk who rose to greet her.
“Mother,” said Parsinova, “kiss your child and thank Mr.Kane. I think I’ve made a hit.”
Oswald Kane watched with a frown as she held out her arms adoringly to the little old woman.
For over a year the little mother had had a way of appearing in the background whenever he claimed the few sentimental hours which should have been but small acknowledgment of his new pupil’s debt to him.
[25]
CHAPTER III
Parsinova instantly became the rage.
She gave delicious interviews in which she misapplied American slang in a way that made the press chuckle. She spoke of the tragedy of Russia. She told of her struggles there. She gave her impressions of the American theater; American art; American fashions; the energy of the American man; the vitality of the American woman.
“They do not give as we foreign women,” she said. “They take. And so it is that they grow rich—in beauty—and are forever young.”
“But emotionally?” prompted the interviewer.
“I have said—they are forever young. Emotionally—they are children always.”
This statement was followed by indignant protest from American actresses and the sort of heated dramatic controversy that delighted the soul of Oswald Kane.
She received all reporters in her dressing-room at the theater. If any one save Kane knew where she lived, no one had ever crossed the sacred threshold.
“I live two lives quite a-part,” she said. “One in my home which is for me a-lone. And one in the theater which is for my dear public.”
Mr.Kane amplified this by stating that her hours at home were spent in study. Others intimated that her hours at home were given to some mysterious romance.
In spite of which she was not a hermit. Society, with [26] a capitalS, sought the privilege of entertaining her. Occasionally she accepted a dinner invitation—never on any day but Sunday, however—or permitted a tea to be given in her honor. She went nowhere during the week.
Her dressing-room was always fragrant with flowers. Kane had had it done over when she took possession. An alcove had been cut off for her make-up table, and the orchid silken drapes, black rug, suspended lights and carved chairs of the outer room gave it more the impression of a salon. Here she held court. Here she read the hysterical notes of matinÉe girls, the pleas of dilletanti youth that she dine or sup with them, the tributes of actors, the encomium of the world in general. Here, every week or so, she went into tantrums, threatening to kill her maid in a voice that caused the stage hands to tremble, until Kane himself had to be called to calm her. Here she smoked Russian cigarettes and looked over the urgent invitations that piled mountain high upon the bronze tray.
It was only at home in a cretonne hung bedroom, furnished with a rigid fourposter and dotted swiss curtains through which sunlight flowed, that she wept and sometimes felt lonely.
She played of course to packed houses. The S.R.O. sign was a common occurrence. More than once in that same place in the front row, the footlights illumined the face of the man whose intent gaze had fastened on hers the opening night. He seemed never to tire of her art.
Early in March Mrs.Collingwood Martin gave a reception for her. Mrs.Julian vanNess Collingwood [27] Martin flattered herself, with justification, that in her wide old house facing Washington Square she maintained the nearest approach to a salon that could be found this side of Paris.
Her high drawing-room brought together leading spirits of the professional, business and diplomatic worlds, and her gracefully tinted head was never troubled with fear that the wrong ones might meet. All those on her selected list were the right ones, each interested in what the other represented. Many a little coup between the artiste and the financier is consummated under the guise of drinking a cup of tea or punch. And more than one professional has amassed a neat little fortune by making wide-eyed queries of the Wall Street man about his end of the game.
On the afternoon in question the rooms on the lower floor were crowded with laughter, perfume, silks, jewels, furs and the hum of animated voices.
Bowls of early spring bloom, azaleas, jonquils, mammoth daisies, stood on tables and at either side of the arched doorway. A faint blue haze of cigarette smoke hung overhead. Twilight had sifted through sunlight before Parsinova appeared. She always came late.
As she stood, a silhouette within the white arch between the shining bowls of jonquils, there was a general hush, then a forward movement. She was gowned entirely in black—black lace trailing from her feet, a black hat shadowing her face, and drooping from it to curl against her shoulder, a black paradise. Black pearls dangled from her ears and a strand of them about her neck emphasized its whiteness.
[28]
“Isn’t she wonderful? What personality—what atmosphere!”
“There’s no one like her.”
“She fairly oozes temperament.”
“Absolutely startling!”
“By Jove—these foreigners! Naughty but—er—so promising, don’t you know!”
Mrs.Collingwood Martin bore her triumphantly to a thronelike chair and presented the guests in turn.
Parsinova’s manner was charming, a bit weary but gracious, and her efforts to carry on a conversation in colloquial English were excruciating.
“That lit-tle French gentleman by the punch bowl,—I fear he has on a biscuit,” she told the group of adorers.
They looked puzzled. Then one of them flung back his head with a laugh. “You mean he has a bun on.”
“I shall never be right,” she sighed in the chorus of laughter that followed.
From the music-room came a clear tenor singing the “Ave Maria.” Silence met the lifted voice and at the final sobbing note, gentle applause.
Mrs.Collingwood Martin swept toward her guest of honor.
“Darling,” she smiled with that touch of privileged intimacy she loved to assume, “here is some one most anxious to meet you. Let me present Signor Luigi Rogero of the Metropolitan.”
Parsinova looked up and out from under dropped lids. Then she wondered whether any one saw the start she gave. Facing her with lips bent to her outstretched hand stood Lou Seabury.
[29]
No mistaking him in spite of the close-fitting coat, carefully waxed little mustache and black-ribboned monocle! Due to a New York tailor’s art, his plump figure had grown slimmer. In place of the loose disjointed shamble of old home days, he bore himself with consummate savoir faire. But the pink cheeks and kind brown eyes were the same.
Parsinova waited breathlessly for some sign of recognition. None came. In perfect English he merely voiced his satisfaction at the meeting and joined the group about her chair. It was not until she rose to leave and he craved the honor of escorting her to her car that she met his gaze with curious question in her own. But his eyes were blank so far as any subtle meaning was concerned.
He followed down the steps, helped her into the perfectly appointed limousine. An impulse she made no attempt to curb prompted her to ask if she could drive him uptown. They had gone several blocks before either spoke. Then very low came the words:—
“Lizzie Parsons,—you’re a wonder!”
Instinctively she looked about to make sure his whisper had not been overheard. Then she gave a long, smothered laugh and clutched his hand just as she had that night in the three-a-day vaudeville theater.
“Lou,” she breathed, “I’m so glad, so glad!”
“Were you surprised to see me?”
“Surprised? I almost died.” She gave a little gasp. “Were you surprised to see me?”
“Not a bit.”
“You knew me then—at once?”
[30]
“I’ve known who you were ever since your opening. I was there. Matter of fact, I have you to thank for the brilliant idea that made me an Italian.”
“Me?”
“Yep.” He lapsed into the old lingo and she closed her eyes with a beatific smile. “You don’t think my brains would ever be equal to such an inspiration.”
“Mine weren’t either. It was Oswald Kane’s.”
“Nobody would ever guess that you’re anything but Russian from the word go.”
“You did.”
“That was only because I’d known you. And even then I mightn’t have been on if I hadn’t heard your imitations. Do you remember that night?”
“Do I remember it! That was the night that ‘made me what I am to-day.’”
He laughed.
“I did my best to please you,” she went on, “and Oswald Kane was in front and liked my act. He came back afterward and arranged to sign me.”
“So that was why you left me cold. I dated you for supper and went round after the show, to find my bird had flown. Believe me, I was the most disappointed rube in town.”
“I wouldn’t have remembered my own name after Kane saw me.”
“Is that why you canned it?”
She laughed then, her low, rich contralto. “That was all his plan. I was as amazed when he told me about it as if he’d asked me to change my skin. He’s never told [31] me why he did it—he doesn’t trouble to tell you why. But I suppose he thought the public needed a thrill, something new, something different. And my impersonations gave him the idea. I think I might have made good if he had let me go on as just plain Parsons. But of course, not half the hit that Parsinova has made.”
“They sure are crazy about you. I wondered often how you were getting on.”
“You didn’t guess that somebody was making a new woman of me, did you?”
His gaze, as it traveled from her dark-rimmed eyes shadowed by the drooping hat, to the long white hands and slim black-swathed body, held the same look of awe it had worn the night he had seen her make up.
“Lordy, girl!” he gasped. “How you must have worked to accomplish it!”
“Work!” came in a breath. “I worked like a galley slave—never stopping, except for sleep. Even while I ate I studied—Russian and French, and gesture and movement. I even learned to eat herring. And all the time he was teaching me to act. In four years—almost—I’ve seen no one, talked to no one but him. I’ve had to obliterate self completely. He has in reality created Lisa Parsinova.”
“He had to have the material to do it. The stuff was there.”
“But he is a genius, Lou. He knows his public just as a magician knows his bag of tricks.”
The traffic at Thirty-fourth Street halted them. They spoke in whispers, and every now and then her eyes [32] rested with a look of caution on the inexpressive back of her chauffeur.
“Do you think he can hear?” she asked.
“’Course not.”
“I have to be so careful.”
She turned to him, eyes alight with interest as they started on up the Avenue. “Tell me about yourself. You’re another man, too.”
“Dad died shortly after I saw you,” he explained. “Apoplexy. And I thought of you, the break you had made, the gamble you took. So I gathered together what he left me, sold out to my brother Jim, and came to New York to stake everything on that voice you took such stock in. I went to Fernald and he thought he could do something with it. I’ve been in training so to speak ever since. And this season he got me the job with the Metropolitan.”
“If only I could hear you!”
“Oh, I haven’t done much—not yet. A few matinÉes and one or two Saturday nights. Next year, though, they’ve promised me a go at leads.”
“I knew if ever you had the chance you’d prove yourself.”
“I owe a great part of that chance to Randolph,—you know, Hubert Randolph. He’s one of the directors of the Metropolitan. I met him at Fernald’s studio last winter and it was through him that Fernald pushed me. He’s interested in you, by the way,—thinks you’re the greatest actress of the century.”
“The century is very young,” she smiled.
“Well, Rand’s seen them all in the last fifteen or [33] twenty years and knows what he’s talking about. We were at your opening together and he said then you were paralyzing.”
“Did I do that to you, too?”
“Paralyze me? Bet your life you did! When you walked out on that stage and raised your head, a ramrod went up my back. ‘That’s Lizzie Parsons,’ I said to myself, ‘or I’ll be shot.’ Then I thought I must be loony, that when I’d see you in a better light without the short wig, I’d laugh at my mistake. But in the second act I knew I was right, in spite of the black hair—”
“It’s dyed, Lou.” She made the confession haltingly. “At first I didn’t want to. My hair seemed sort of part of me—the color, I mean. But that’s just why he made me do it; it was a question of personality, he said. I begged him to let me wear a wig but he was afraid it would be detected. And he was right, I dare say. He’s always right.”
“Don’t you worry about the way it looks, either. You used to be just pretty. Now you’re a beauty!”
“Am I—really?” There was a childish earnestness in the query.
“Should have heard Randolph rave! Say, I’m dining with him to-night. Why not come along? He’s crazy to meet you and he won’t go to any of those society fandangles to do it.”
“Meet a stranger—with you around? Oh—I couldn’t! I’d burst into straight English as naturally as you burst into song. And that would ruin me.”
He patted her hand and his kind brown eyes beamed. “Nonsense! You’re too clever an actress for that.”
[34]
There was something pathetic in the way she clung to his handclasp. “It’s so good finding you this way. I haven’t any friends—no one to whom I can actually talk. With me it isn’t a case of acting behind the footlights. I’m acting all the time, except when I’m alone.”
“But it’s not acting any more—this Russian business, is it?”
“No—it’s myself, the greater part of self, I dare say. But Lizzie Parsons isn’t all dead yet and I don’t want her to die—” She blinked up at him. “Don’t make me cry, please,—or the shadows will all come off my eyes.”
His eyes took in the luxurious appointment of the car, mauve enameled vanity apparatus on one side, smoking outfit on the other, gilt vase with its spray of fresh orchids, soft tan cushions and robe of fur. He gave her a warming look of satisfaction.
“I should say the exchange was all for the better. You must be making a mint.”
“One hundred and fifty a week.”
“One hundred and fifty—?”
“That’s my contract.”
“But good Lord—”
“Oh, I made it with my eyes open. It extends over the first five years—with an option on the next five.”
“But all this—” He waved his arm, bewildered, through the air.
“All this he gives me—my clothes, my car and its upkeep, my jewels, though they’re mostly paste, everything except my home. I wouldn’t let him give me that.”
He made an attempt to conceal the swift suspicion that [35] would have clouded any man’s eyes. Instantly she saw and answered it.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand! It’s purely a matter of business. I’ve got to be equipped to play my part off the stage and I don’t earn enough to do it on my own.”
“Then why doesn’t he give you enough?”
“I should probably grow too independent. This way he holds the reins. That’s only supposition, of course. I’ve never discussed it. One can’t discuss money with Oswald Kane.”
“It’s a damned outrage!”
“Oh, no it isn’t. He took a sporting chance. He staked time and effort and money on a venture that might have proved a hopeless failure. I had everything to gain. And now that I’ve made good under his guidance, it’s only fair that he should reap the harvest.”
“Indefinitely?”
“For six years to come, at any rate,—until my contract expires.” She leaned back, eyes closed, and an intensely weary look dropped the corners of her red, mobile mouth.
They drew near the park. She urged him to ride with her a bit and they drove into the blue velvet dusk, past the shimmer of lake curled among the bushes. The car glided on swiftly through cool dark silence.
“You haven’t told me yet how I inspired you to become an Italian,” she prompted.
“Oh, that—simple enough! Randolph remarked the night of your premiÈre that there was an aura of romance about artistes from the other side, particularly when they [36] hailed from Southern Europe; sort of Oriental, you understand. The next day I went to Fernald. ‘Can’t you change me to something Italian?’ I said. ‘Seabury’s a rotten name for an opera singer.’ Well, he did it. Of course, I make no attempt at accent—I couldn’t handle that job in conversation. But the people I’ve met don’t look for it; they understand the fact that I was brought up in England. All I have to be careful of is my grammar.”
They laughed together. As her laugh bubbled girlishly into the quiet night, she halted it with a swift movement of hand to lips and once more sent that look of caution at her chauffeur’s back.
He reminded her of his dinner engagement with Randolph. “He’s made up his mind to know you informally. And that’s all he has to do to get what he wants. He’s a human dynamo, that man. Never knew anybody with his finger in so many pies and able to put over whatever he tackles. Sooner or later you’re bound to meet him in his own way. Might as well be to-night.”
“What good would it do? He’ll never know me—the real me.”
“He’ll know a fascinating woman, any way you look at it.”
But she dropped him at the bachelor apartment on Park Avenue in spite of his pleas.
“Come and see me, Lou, often,” she murmured, giving him her address as he stepped out of the car. “You don’t know what a joy it is to play at being myself.”
It was inevitable that Parsinova should meet Hubert Randolph, as Lou Seabury had prophesied. It was not inevitable that he should prove to be the man whose intent gaze had held hers from the first row. But when one considers that Randolph had determined from the moment he saw her to know her in an unprofessional capacity, his accomplishment of that end was in the natural order of things.
Hubert Randolph was not a self-made man. He had succeeded, made his name stand firm in the humming world of finance, in spite of the handicap of having been born to the purple. Early in his boyhood he had started out to forget that he was a Hamilton Randolph and he had been forgetting it satisfactorily ever since. At Harvard he had become the pal of men who tutored in their leisure hours, thereby improving his mind. Also, he had never taken the trouble to inform them to which particular Randolph family he belonged. It was unimportant. He had spent a winter in a shack in Arizona, partly for his health, but largely to familiarize himself with the workings of a matrix mine in which the Randolphs had an interest. He had chummed with the miners, chewed tobacco and acquired a red-bronze that had never quite worn off.
He had climbed Pike’s Peak, had shot big game in the Andes. And then he had come back to civilization and taken a clerkship in the brokerage offices of Parker, [38] Gaines and McCaffery, to study banking methods from the bottom up.
At thirty-eight, or it may have been thirty-nine, he was an authority on banking, stood ace high in Washington, and was known as a patron of the arts. The Randolph family never understood why he had gone to all that bother. It was so old, so distinguished, that to have a member attempt to distinguish it further was almost an insult. However, Rand, as he was known among intimates, never troubled to consult the family as to his movements. He saw as little of them as possible.
“Don’t concern yourself about me,” he was in the habit of telling his sister when she tried to propel him in the direction of one of her parties. “I’m a hopeless sort of devil who likes to choose his own friends.”
Once she persuaded him to attend a tea and he appeared with a youth in a shiny coat and cuffs that separated from his shirt.
“He’s a coming violinist,” he whispered. “I thought you’d like him to play. But he’s hungry—give him something to eat first.”
She never attempted to persuade him after that.
Parsinova met Hubert Randolph in a funny little restaurant which years back had been a stable. It was conducted by a group of painters for the benefit of a Disabled Veteran’s Relief Fund all their own. He had arranged the party for the Sunday following her meeting with Seabury but it took her old friend another week to convince her that she could carry it through.
The occasion was not propitious. She had had a bad [39] half hour that afternoon with Kane when he resented the omnipresence of her mother.
“She annoys me. She seems to be behind you like a shadow. You must send her away! Some one is bound to discover her.”
“That is impossible. She goes nowhere, sees no one. I shall keep her here.” Parsinova’s eyes glittered and for a moment it seemed likely that a backstage tantrum would be duplicated in fact.
So that when she fastened the short black satin dress up the front into a high collar under her ears and pulled the brim of her black satin hat in a shading dip, it was in a mood that omened no particularly cordial reception of Mr.Hubert Randolph.
Seabury called for her and Randolph met them in the cobbled courtyard that led to their unique dining place. In the dark she did not recognize him. But as they stood in the doorway where an old lantern swung, she stopped and peered at him.
“I have seen you be-fore!”
“Have you?”
“Many times—in the firs’ row. And you look’ as if—you like me.”
“I do,” came promptly with a smile.
“No—no,” her eyes gave him a piquant uptilt, “my art, I mean to say. Me—you do not know.”
“I’m going to.”
He led the way indoors. She glanced about and her mood dissolved into a new interest. First the man, then the charm of this quaint place. The stalls had been left standing and in each a table was set. Over [40] each from the beamed ceiling swung a lantern similar to the one outside. There were no brilliant lights, no noises of clinking glass and silver.
She slid along the upholstered seat that lined the stall to the place he indicated at the table’s head. The men seated themselves at either side.
“This is great, Rand,” remarked Seabury. “How is it you never brought me here?”
“I saved it for Madame. What does she think of it?”
“Fas-scinating. I feel quite like a thorough-bred horse.” Then she looked at him gratefully. “And one is not—on ex-hibition.”
“I don’t want to exhibit you,” rejoined her host. “You’ll find that out.”
She did find it out in the weeks that followed. They dined frequently at “The Mews,” sometimes with Seabury, more often alone.
At first she protested. She could not! But in the end Randolph won out. They arrived always at six when the place was practically empty and by seven-thirty she was at the theater.
As the weather turned warmer they drove occasionally to the country and back in time for the performance. She never permitted him to call for her but arranged to meet him at the theater. They never went to conspicuous hotels or restaurants. He seemed to enjoy being with her away from the stare of the world. One Sunday in April when they had planned to lunch at an inn that dots the shore of the Hudson, he appeared with two hampers and announced that they were [41] going to picnic. They left the car at the top of a slope, scrambled down and unpacked the baskets with the anticipation of boy and girl off for a holiday. She pulled off her hat with its floating veil and sat cross-legged on the rug he had spread under a willow tree.
Sitting there watching him, this man so intensely real, so intensely himself, a sense of infinite sadness swept over her. She wanted just for to-day to drop all sham. Not that her pose was ever difficult. Like all affectation used incessantly, she was no longer conscious of it. It was herself. But in these rare days spent with Randolph in the brimming sunlight, soft with young green things, she wanted with a ridiculously hopeless yearning to let him glimpse Elizabeth Parsons, the girl who would have let her hair fly in the wind for sheer joy of springtime, the girl who lived only in hidden moments.
Sometimes she compromised by letting Parsinova express Elizabeth’s thoughts, her ideals, separating the two women only by the breadth of an accent. Often she caught him looking at her curiously, as if trying to link some simply expressed idea of living with the reputation of the woman sitting opposite him. But more frequently they were content to enjoy the moment, tramping through the woods, discovering new sun-flecked trails, drinking in the sweetness of April and companionship.
He had suggested that he stop for her at her home but she put him off with excuses, obvious and sometimes lame.
Once he reproached her.
“Why don’t you let me come to see you?”
“You can—at any time you wish.”
[42]
“Not at the theater. When I worship you, I like it to be from the other side of the footlights.”
“Oh! Then what is it you wish to do on this side?”
“Adore you! And you haven’t even told me what street you live in.”
“Then it should be quite ea-sy. One adores that which one knows least a-bout.”
“In other words a man loves what he doesn’t understand and likes what he does?”
“That is ex-actly what I wish to say. Is it not strange?—when a man wish’ to make a woman love him, he say:—‘Mon adorÉe, you are such a my-stery to me.’ And when a woman wish’ to make a man love her, she tell him:—‘Mon amour, I understan’ you per-fec’ly.’”
He gave a ringing laugh, then leaned across the table.
“Your foreign men have a dozen ways of telling a woman they want her love. We Americans, when we care—the real thing—are awkward as boys and a little afraid.”
“A-fraid?” Parsinova’s eyes were wondering, while Elizabeth Parsons’ soul cried out that she, too, could know such fear. “But why?”
“Less experience.”
Her eyes laughed into his then. “The Latin in love is an art-iste,—the American an art-i-san. Is that what you wish to say?”
“Have you ever heard that Ade classic?—
‘I never run from the man behind the gun,
Tho’ other chaps are cowards,
As for me—not!
But my courage fades away,
And I don’t know what to say,
[43]When I meet the little girl
Behind the tea-pot.’”
“Me-not. Tea-pot,” she repeated with a frown of concentration in which lurked a smile. “How ver-y droll your classics are.”
His rather severe mouth lifted with a whimsical twist. “After all, it resolves itself into this—a man fears, not what a woman is, but what she seems to be.”
Parsinova met the steady gaze with a quick startled look and bit her lip to keep it from quivering. But his next words answered the unspoken question that for a second shook her perfect poise.
“I wonder—” he said slowly, “I wonder if you’re as simple as you seem complex.”
She did not reply at once, did not lift her eyes. They wandered out through the wide window to the sheen of river and hazy Palisades in the distance. Randolph had driven her out to Longue Vue at the hour when the sun slides lazily into soft spring shadows.
“Why do you think me—as you say—com-plex?” She lifted her eyes and the sun slanted across them. Perhaps that was why he failed to give her a direct answer.
“Odd,” he observed, “I didn’t guess you had gray eyes. They look so dark from the stage. They’re wonderful eyes at close inspection, by the way.”
“Are they, too,—com-plex?”
“Full of secrets.”
“Ah, but there you are wrong—quite wrong, my friend. [44] Most of their life they ’ave given to study. What secret’ could they possess?”
She hated herself while she said it, hated Kane and the stage and the success she had made. But most of all she hated Elizabeth Parsons for allowing Parsinova to dominate her. To this one man she wanted so devoutly to reveal herself as she was. Ridiculous, of course, the desire—for it was Parsinova who charmed him. That was all too evident.
The hours she loved best were those in which he told her of his travels, his life in the West. In that she could evince an interest that was sincere. She could picture him in rough flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, hobnobbing with the miners, one of them. He was the true democrat, eager to learn first-hand instead of living by proxy.
She would draw him out, welcoming the opportunity to be for the moment Elizabeth Parsons, if only as a listener.
When he left her at the theater that evening, he startled her by saying abruptly:
“I’m coming to dine with you next Sunday.”
It was just as he helped her out of the car and she stopped short, hand still in his. “You—are coming—?”
“That’s it, in your home. Oh, I’ve found out where you live. But I had a notion that I’d like you to tell me.”
“How—did you find out?”
“Had you followed, perhaps. At any rate, you can’t keep me away any longer.”
“You—you must not come.”
[45]
He regarded her closely, his thick brows coming together. “Is there any particular reason why you shut me out?”
She remembered suddenly that her hand was still in his. His tense grip was hurting her.
“Please!” She made a futile effort to draw it away.
“Is there?”
“Many—reasons.” Her lips hesitated over the words.
“Any one reason, I should say.”
In spite of herself, she looked up at him. “No—one.”
“Right, then. Sunday next.”
He dropped her hand quickly, stepped back into the car.
The next three days she spent buying high-backed cathedral chairs and carved tables and tabourets for her living-room. Down came the cretonne hangings and up went heavy purple velvet ones that shut out the blessed light of day. She selected a black rug that made the room look hideously somber and for the divan, gold cushions weighted with tassels. When she finished, she had consumed several months’ salary. But the transformation was complete. Once more Elizabeth Parsons was wiped off this mortal sphere. Soon no shadow would be left of her, not even in the sacred nook she had saved to call “home.”
With an anxiety close to terror she waited for Hubert Randolph. She was wearing white, soft, creamy, floating. There ought, at least, be some spot of light in the mysteriously shadowed room.
He came at seven. She went to the door herself and let him into the little foyer. His eyes were alight with [46] eagerness. They had the look of a small boy’s bound for a fishing trip on Sunday.
He caught her hand. “You know how glad I am to be here.”
“You know,” she rejoined to her own surprise, “how I am glad—for you to be here.”
He followed into the living-room. “Odd,” he observed almost to himself, “I’ve pictured it often—but not like this. I’d an idea of light things—woman things about you.”
She could have laughed with sardonic glee at the thought of how she had dragged down those light, woman things and spent a small fortune to create another atmosphere.
“But on the whole,” he proceeded speculatively, “these are you, aren’t they?”
“A woman is so man-y things—so man-y moods, I wish to say—that there is no one room can express her.”
Her apartment was in one of those modern houses where dinner is cooked by a chef downstairs and sent up via the dumbwaiter. To Parsinova this had proved a convenience, saving as it did the necessity of curious servants. To-night she had arranged for one of the waiters from the restaurant below to serve them. But in spite of him, noiselessly in the background, it was a cozy, intimate little party that somehow brought them closer than all their former dinners. The small table set in a corner of the living-room, its glistening silver and lacy feminine damask, the dishes she had herself ordered, created a sense of home dangerous to the peace of mind of an actress wedded to her art.
[47]
To crown the illusion, when the cafÉ noir had been served and the waiter disappeared, Randolph pulled a pipe from his pocket and asked if he might light it. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to smoke a pipe with you.”
“But I do not—smoke a pipe.”
“Don’t interpret me so literally. A pipe means fireside, something intimate and real. I’ve always thought it would be nice, one of these days, to see your face through pipe smoke. May I?”
She nodded, curled on a cushion by the fire. It was a rainy night. The logs whirred merrily. “Now—tell me more about your won-der-ful West.” She lighted a cigarette and listened, eyes partly closed, and a sweet tranquillity bathed her soul.
He pulled his chair closer. Unconsciously, perhaps, her head dropped against the arm. If a moment later she felt a hand lightly caress her hair, she gave no sign. Parsinova fans would undoubtedly have been amazed at the scene—the Russian actress curled like a kitten at the foot of a man’s chair while he painted with broad strokes pictures of prairie life.
It was what he did just as he was leaving that shattered her serenity like an explosion. They were standing in the foyer and she had given him her hand with her “Good-night,” when suddenly she was in his arms. They closed round her, swept her to him and his lips were on hers. For a long moment they stood so. Then, without a word, he put her at arm’s length, held her eyes with a look whose intensity she found impossible to read. An instant later she was alone.
[48]
But those few moments brought her up sharp. Hours afterward she felt the vice of his arms gripping her, the thrill of his kiss, and knew that she loved him. Subconsciously she had known it a long time. But she had never faced the issue. Content with a comradeship dear to both Elizabeth Parsons and Lisa Parsinova, she had drifted without any forward look, without taking count of what payment the future might exact. And now the hour had come. Elizabeth Parsons, who had never loved before, loved Hubert Randolph. Hubert Randolph loved Parsinova who, according to all report, had loved many times and with not too much reserve. Long hours she lay staring into the blank darkness of her room. Out of it she could draw nothing but misery.
Heretofore she had accepted Parsinova’s manufactured past without question. Now it was a lurid flame, flaring through the smoke of all reasoning, torturing her—more real because it was unreal. Had it been fact, there would be no problem. As things were, it was the ghost at the banquet, a ghost of that which had never been. And there was no solution! There never would be!
Elizabeth Parsons was New England. It was part of her plan of life to marry when she loved. That was as fundamental as the blood in her veins. The very intensity of emotion of which she was capable was reËxpressed in her intensity of adherence to the moral conduct generations of upright-living ancestors had laid down for her. From that there could be no swerving. It was part of her.
Throughout the dragging hours of that night she tried [49] desperately to read into the embrace of the man who had taken her love, some interpretation other than the obvious. And suddenly it came to her that even granted he might possibly be willing to give her his name, it was impossible for her to accept it. He did not know Elizabeth Parsons—would not, if he did, evince the slightest interest in her. It was the Russian actress he adored, the woman she was not. If he wanted her and she dared to marry him, she would have to live day and night a lie she could not—and what was more, would not—carry through. In love she would have to be herself. Brilliant as was her Slav rendering of it on the stage, in life she was just an American girl who wanted to live it with all her soul. When he took Parsinova in his arms, he would be holding Lizzie Parsons. The sophisticated Russian lips against his would be giving him New England kisses. Well—not quite that! But one certainty she must face. To the man who had fallen in love with the Russian actress, the American girl would mean less than nothing. She hated her! In the confusion of her soul she did not know which hated the other more.
Had there been any doubt in her mind as to the hopelessness of her situation, Oswald Kane himself pounded the last nail in the coffin a few days later. A chatty little sheet given to imparting information about important people had got wind of Randolph’s devotion. It announced subtly that the walls the Russian actress had built up between herself and American men had evidently been shattered by one who heretofore had evinced but slight interest in the beauties of his own set. It hinted at their runs in his car out of New York and wondered [50] amiably whether he intended converting his bungalow up Westchester way into a dovecote.
The day it appeared on the news-stands Oswald Kane paid her an early visit. For the first time she saw him with his smooth exterior ruffled. It was a matinÉe day and she was having an eleven o’clock breakfast when he arrived. A note from Randolph asking why she had refused to see him the day before lay on the table beside her plate. She looked tired and her eyes needed no artificial shadows.
Kane came into the room, then turned and stared at the new furnishings.
“Do you like it?” she asked. “I’ve had it done over.”
“Why?”
“I thought it safe—in case any one should find me out and drop in.”
“Some one has found you out.” He handed her the society sheet, open at the pointed paragraph that concerned her.
“I should like to know,” he began, his mellow voice going sharp, “who the man is.”
She hastily slipped Randolph’s note into the pocket of her dress. “I should like to be able to tell you.”
“You mean he does not exist.”
“I mean that if he did, it would be quite my own affair, wouldn’t it?”
“No. If you play a dangerous game and lose, Oswald Kane loses with you. If any man discovers the truth about you, it means your professional death as well as mine.”
“You need never worry—about that.”
[51]
Whether it was the hopeless note in her voice or the look in her eyes, his voice softened. He went close to her.
“There is just one,” he whispered, “who knows you as you are. Lisa Parsinova has the right to no man’s love but Oswald Kane’s. Forget those New England prejudices!”
She dropped quickly into a chair. “Lisa Parsinova has the right to no man’s love at all.”
Her eyes closed. Her voice went on monotonously.
“You see, I’ve thought it all out. I’ve swamped the girl I was and it’s as final as if I’d killed her. One of these days, perhaps—when my contract with you has been filled—Parsinova will sail back to Russia or be drowned or something, and out of her ashes will rise a spinster named Lizzie Parsons who doesn’t really matter, who’ll just pass out—alone. But until then you are quite safe. Only—please—never speak again of—of loving me.”
Kane bowed. “You are a great artiste, in spite of that. And at least you cannot deny me the joy of the creator.”
“I shall never forget what you’ve done for me. I shall never betray you in any way.”
She kept her word to the letter. Had she followed inclination she would have gone through her performances mechanically. A numbness had taken hold of her, of utter misery, utter futility. But her work did not fall off in brilliance. Particularly in the love scenes and in the final tragic sacrifice, did her beautiful voice shake with a suffering so intense that it was real.
[52]
Randolph she saw several times a week in his accustomed place in the first row. But his efforts to see her she ignored. A scene with him would be unbearable, leading as it must nowhere. So she left his notes unanswered, knowing he would eventually conclude that his passion the night of their last meeting had been unwelcome, that she was choosing the simplest means of telling him so. He wrote at first anxiously, then demandingly, and when she failed to answer—stopped. When the notes ceased to come she felt more miserably alone than ever in her life, reaching back into the past for their hours together as groping thoughts reach for memories of the dead.
She grew thin as a rail and her pallor was no longer creamy. It was dead white, with unbecoming lines traced from nose to mouth. Seabury remarked the change and suggested that she needed a change of air.
“You’ve been working too hard and you show it. When does your season close?”
“Sometime in June.”
“Why don’t you get Kane to let you off the end of this month?”
“I don’t want to be let off. I’d like to play all summer.”
“Good Lord, it would kill you!”
“It will kill me if I don’t work.”
“Look here!” He went over to her chair, looked at her closely. “What’s the matter?”
He had dropped in to tea at her apartment. She was seated behind the copper samovar, white face emphasized [53] against the dark hangings, fingers moving restlessly among the tea things.
“Something’s wrong,” he persisted as she did not answer. “What is it?”
“Oh, a million things,—a million little things that don’t count.”
“Looks to me if it was one big thing that does.” He drew her out of the chair—toward the window. “Come on—’fess up to papa!”
“Well, for one thing—” she bit her lip, woman-wise trying in her own soul to veer away from the big issue by concentrating on a lesser. “My mother’s blackmailing me.”
“Your—what?”
She looked up, met his stare of dismay. “The little old lady you see around here sometimes.”
“I thought she was a maid. Look here—I don’t understand. You—why, Lizzie Parsons, you’ve been an orphan for years!”
“I know I have. But I had to have some one—mother preferred—to protect me.”
“I see—” A light dawned.
“So I engaged her. She looked the part and seemed a gentle, pathetic soul—and now she’s blackmailing me.”
He grinned in spite of the seriousness of it. “Is she likely ever to squeal?”
“Not as long as I give her all the money she wants. But it’s getting on my nerves. She makes my life miserable by threatening to take my story to the newspapers.”
“Next time she does it, send for me and I’ll bully her [54] into keeping quiet.” He made a move toward the door. “Is she here? I’ll do it now.”
“No—no!” She stopped him. “Let well enough alone.”
He took her hand. “Poor kid, you are in a mess!”
“I’ve committed suicide, Lou,” she said abruptly.
He looked at her silently, then shook his head. “What else is bothering you?”
“What—what makes you ask that?”
“A blackmailing mama might make you look tired and worried but she wouldn’t put all that sorrow into your eyes. Why, you look like Isolde—by Jove, that’s it! Love stuff!”
“How absurd!” She looked away. “Whom could I be in love with?”
“Not with me, that’s a sure thing. Though, of course you know I’m in love with you.”
“Lou—!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I know I haven’t a chance. But I care enough to be darned upset by your condition. Now, come along, let papa fix things for you.”
“They can’t be fixed, Lou, ever. When you’ve chosen to be two people in one, you’ve got to stand up and take the consequences if God ordains that two’s company and three’s a crowd.” She gave him a smile, whimsical but without mirth. “Have you ever heard that saying: ‘Je suis ce que je suis, mais je ne suis pas ce que je suis?’”
Seabury’s brow wrinkled. “I sing French. I don’t speak it.”
“It’s a play on verbs: ‘I am what I am, but I am not what I follow,’” she translated. “Well, that’s me!”
[55]
He tried to persuade her to give him her confidence but she smiled and told him there was nothing further to confide.
A few weeks later just before her season closed, he asked what plans she had made for the summer. Kane was arranging to send her on tour with “The Temptress” before opening in New York in a play being written for her. She would have July and part of August to rest.
“I shall stay in town,” she told him, “and study.”
He protested vehemently.
“No use, Lou! I couldn’t bear being among people and this is the best place to hide away. Besides, there’s my mother to consider. I can’t risk having her run loose in New York without me.”
“But you must rest!”
“I must keep going, with as much work as I can manage.”
He bent over her, his kind brown eyes troubled.
“You’ll kill yourself.”
“On the contrary, I wish that I weren’t so intensely alive.” Then she smiled and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry about Lisa Parsinova. She’s in fine shape.”
“But Lizzie Parsons?” he put in.
“She doesn’t count.”
“Seen Rand lately?” he asked casually as he got up to go.
“A number of times.” She had seen him only too frequently from the far side of the footlights. “Have you?”
[56]
“No. He’s busy. Getting ready to go to Arizona. But of course you know about that.”
“Y—yes. Has he told you when he leaves?”
“Tuesday of next week. May be gone a year. Don’t know why.”
She turned her back to the light so that her face was blurred and misty and he could not read its expression. “Do you—do you think he looks quite well?” she prompted, eager for some news, any news of him.
“Well, it struck me he looked a bit seedy last time I saw him—not just up to the mark, that is. Probably spring fever. How does he impress you?”
“I—I hadn’t noticed any change.”
When he had gone, she picked up the calendar on her desk and stared at the day and date. Friday! By this time next week, a stretch of continent would rush between her and Hubert Randolph. She shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh. What mattered miles when worlds stretched between them now!
She went into her bedroom, locked the door. Lizzie Parsons leaned close to her mirror, stared into it. The white face and black-rimmed eyes of Lisa Parsinova stared back. A frenzy seized her. She caught hold of the first object her hand touched—a hair brush—and flung it full force at the reflected face. The glass splintered. Then she stepped back in trembling terror. Good heavens! Was she actually becoming that Russian fiend?
On Monday night her gaze wandered instinctively toward Hubert’s accustomed place in the orchestra. He [57] was not there. Of course she had expected that, but she would have liked just one more look at him. Women have a strange way of wanting that which tortures them.
After the final curtain Kane appeared in her dressing-room and suggested that they take a drive up Riverside and a bite of supper somewhere along the road. He wanted to talk to her about the new play, about her route for the coming season and a date for her New York opening. His attitude had become thoroughly friendly and businesslike. He was too much the artist to allow failure in a lesser game to interfere with success in a greater.
It was nearing one when they drove back through the soft summer night. The air touched her face like velvet but brought no drowsiness to her eyes, no balm to the realization of blankness ahead—not of weeks or months, but of years.
With the passing of those years it was inevitable that she become Parsinova—with nothing left of poor, defunct Lizzie Parsons but the recollection of a love that had touched her life like the moon on a summer sea.
The Drive was still dotted with strolling couples oblivious of passers-by. Cars sped past them, wheels expertly manipulated by one hand. Mingled young laughter rang out like bells.
Kane’s rich voice flowed on, dwelling now on this, now on that scene of the play. She listened absently, eyes straying in a way that was absurd toward the magic of a June night, the enviable good fortune of those who could become part of it.
[58]
“I shall give you even greater opportunities than you have had. I shall produce a piece of work that will be epoch-making,” he told her.
She told him how pleased she was.
When they arrived at her apartment she asked him not to trouble getting out of the car, and stood and watched it swing round the corner. Then slowly she turned and went indoors.
