Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

Tom, gazing his eyes out at her lovely shoulders, as she preceded him along the narrow corridor to the stairs, keeping her scarlet silken skirts well away from the walls—he helped her solicitously in that—answered in eager assurance: “Why, of course you can! And—my word!—looking at you would be enough, if you couldn’t act at all. My word! I never saw you——”

“Oh, but Tom, looking a part is nothing—and I’m not even sure I can do that. But acting it! That’s another story. And you’re so wonderful in yours——”

“Me? Why, I just have to die! That’s easy!”

“But you do it so realistically—you’re absolutely true to life. When I bend over you—yes, I do feel that you’re actually my brother, and my heart—— Well, if that can help, you do help me. And I’ll do my best. But—I’m simply scared to pieces. Feel my hand, it’s freezing!” She stretched back one bare arm, and Tom willingly caught her hand in his. His own was so cold it is doubtful if he could have detected chill in hers, but he held it fast, chafing it in both his own, and murmuring tenderly: “You’ll be all right, I know you will. Why, you’ll have the audience from the minute you go on—they can’t get away from you—any more than I can!” The last was a whisper.

Fanny turned. They were at the top of the stairway now, with the wings close at hand. “Tom, tell me! Do you really think I can do it? Will you just keep thinking about me every minute while you’re lying there?” She pressed one hand over her heart with a little gesture of fear which simply finished Tom. “Oh, if it would stop beating so fast——”

Tom slipped his arm about her shoulders. “Don’t be afraid, dear,” was what he began to say. But she was away from him in an instant, and he could only recall with tingling pulses that instant’s touch in which at least two of his fingers had come into fleeting contact with the satiny bare arm. The next minute he had rallied and rushed after her upon the stage, to watch with a jealous pleasure the looks which fell upon her from all sides.

At sight of the “star” Cary Ray came forward. All he said was, “I’m mighty glad you’re here, Miss Fitch. Real actresses never can be depended upon, you know—and you certainly look temperamental enough to give your stage manager some trouble!” But his eyes and his smile said that he was well satisfied with her as a member of his caste, and that as a girl of his acquaintance he was immensely glad he knew her. There was promise in Cary’s look as well. All Fanny had to do now was to play that part as she knew she could play it, and Cary Ray would fall before her. Going out to take a drink, after the play should be over—the thing he would naturally want most to do—would pale into insignificance before the stimulus she could offer him, if she but let him take her home and come in for an hour’s talk and coffee by the fire.

But Tom Lockhart and Cary Ray were not the stakes for which Fanny Fitch meant to play that night. There was a tall figure in the wings of which she was well aware, and though she did not look toward it she was very sure that Robert Black was watching her. How, indeed, could he do anything else? Belgian orphans, ambulance drivers, French officers, Englishwomen, Red Cross nurses—how could they all be anything but a background for the lovely “star?” Does not the eye watch the point of high light in any scene?

And then they were all in their places. Cary rushed about giving last warnings, the orchestra music dropped to a low murmur of mystery, and the curtain rose. Black, with a last word to the waiting children, slipped out of the wings, down the stairs, up through the orchestra door, and into a seat held for him by a group of young men who were now his special friends. It was Cary’s expressed wish that he should see the play from the front, and then come back, with the falling of the curtain, to tell the amateur actor-manager how it had gone.

No need to relate the whole story of the play. It is not with the stage performance that we are most concerned, but with that other play, quite out of sight of the audience in the little theatre that night, which is to us more interesting than the scenes they acted behind the footlights. The stage play dealt with one of those thrilling situations with which we have all since then, through printed page and photograph and drama, become familiar. We know now how those who went across to help, months—a year—two years—before America came into the war, felt about us who lagged behind. The young American ambulance drivers who left their colleges and rushed over because they couldn’t stand it that we weren’t remembering our debt to France, and who threw themselves and all they had to give into the breach, angry and proud and absolutely forgetful of self, just to do their little part—these had Cary pictured in his play, chafing with impatience because they couldn’t make all America understand and care. The American girl whose schooldays had been spent in Paris, who had many friends there, and who wanted to put aside everything promised her at home and go back to the country she had learned to love, to nurse the Frenchmen who since the war began had taught her what true gallantry might be—Cary had sketched her in his rarest colours, a thing of beauty and of love, her heart as tender as her spirit was dauntless.