Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

There was the American surgeon, come over at first because he wanted to study the methods of the French and English surgeons, but staying out of sheer pity, and grimly working now to the last limit of his endurance, unwilling to desert while the need was so great, calling with every eloquent word he could find time to write back to his brothers in the profession to come and help him stay the flood of suffering. Drivers and nurses and doctors—these were the characters whom Cary had chosen with which to make his appeal to the laggard nation of us at home.

The Englishwoman, the Belgian mother with her little starving children, the French officer, the dying French poilu—these were the foils for the actress, torn from her stage by a message brought by one of the American ambulance men to the hospital that her brother was passing. It was her part to create the scene with which to stir the blood, hers to cry to the French officer: “Why are the Americans not here to prevent his dying? Did not our Lafayette and his men go to them at their call? Does America owe us nothing, then? See, he is only a boy—too young to die! Could they not have made it impossible?”

Well, Fanny did it gloriously. All that had gone before led up to her entrance, her gorgeous fur-lined cloak slipping from her shoulders, her eyes imploring surgeon and nurses to say that the boy was not yet gone. When she fell upon her knees beside the cot where lay the limp figure of the brother she was a figure to draw every eye and thought. All the colour, all the light of the scene seemed to centre in her, the bare hospital ward and the people in it turning instantly to a dull background for her extravagant beauty, her enchanting outlines, her anguish of spirit, her heroic effort—after that one accusing cry—at composure. It was impossible not to say that here was amateur acting of a remarkable and compelling sort. If the pounding heartbeats of the supposedly dying soldier under his torn uniform might have been taken as an index of the pulses of the audience, the general average must have been that of high acceleration under the spell of Cary’s art and Fanny’s cleverness.

Could it be called more than cleverness? Robert Black was wondering, as he watched her from down in front. Of course he watched her, he would have been hardly human if he had not, or if he had not also come, for the moment, at least, under her spell. Cleverness or real dramatic power—it was difficult to judge, as it is always difficult when the eyes are irresistibly attracted by fascination of face and form. In her dress Fanny had copied to the life the extravagantly revealing outlines of a certain daring and popular vaudeville actress. When Nan Lockhart had suggested that for the conservative American suburb a trifle less frank a showing might be better taste Fanny had laughed and shrugged her shoulders, and said she didn’t intend to spoil the part by prudery. She vowed that Cary Ray was the sort who would be furious with her if she came to his stage looking like a modest maiden on her day of graduation from school! “He’s no infant prodigy,” she had added, “he’s a full-grown man-genius, and I’m going to play up to him. Just watch me get away with it!”

She was getting away with it. Even Nan—who had wanted to shake her from the moment of her first entrance with that effect of being shyly reluctant to appear at all—had to admit that Fanny had the audience in the hollow of her pretty hand, not to mention the male portion of her fellow actors, and, yes, even herself, as well. It was impossible for Nan not to be fond of Fanny, and to forgive her many of her sins, because of her personal charm and her originality of speech and action. Whatever else she was, no doubt but Fanny was always interesting. Generous Nan was more than glad to have her friend distinguish herself to-night, and looked on from her own unexacting rôle, with a full pride in Fanny’s achievement.

There arrived a moment in the play, however, when to the discerning there came a sudden shifting of the honours. It was almost at the last, when the scourging indictment of the French actress had reached its height. It was then, when the silence following her bitter cry had continued till it had become painful, that the ambulance drivers and the surgeon and nurse one by one came forward, till they had surrounded the weeping Frenchwoman. Then the nurse touched her on the shoulder:

“Madame,” she said, “see. We are Americans!”

The actress looked up. The youngest of the drivers was bending a little toward her—a tall, slim boy, with his left sleeve torn, a long cut down his cheek.

“It’s a damned shame!” he said.

The other drivers clenched their fists, murmuring fierce assent. The surgeon drew his hand across his tired eyes—one could see that they were blurred. The nurse, her eyes deep and wonderful with pity, put her arm about the bare, shaking shoulders: