Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

“America will come,” she said—and her eyes seemed to look across the sea. “She must come—and when she does——”

“Too late—for him!” The actress’s hand pointed accusingly at the still form on the cot.

“Yes, too late for him. Too late for much—but not too late for all. Meanwhile, Madame—we are here—and we care!”

“You bet we do!” It was the youngest driver.

“Your brother was a peach of a chap,” declared another, and gently the audience down in front smiled while it wiped its eyes.

“A peasch?” Fanny’s little puzzled accent was perfect.

“A hero, Madame—the bravest of the brave,” the nurse explained.

“Then—I am content!” The gesture was superb. The glittering eyes of the actress looked out over the audience, then lowered suddenly, to rest for one instant on Robert Black. It was an error, and a fatal one, if to nobody but him. Up to that moment she had had him—at that moment she lost him as an enthralled spectator. The little self-conscious action broke the spell she had woven. His gaze left her and rested upon Jane. And there it found—what made him say to himself, suddenly enraged with his own lack of discrimination:

“Have I forgotten to watch you—in watching her? Shame on me! She’s only acting. You are—real!”

His eyes, through the remaining moments of the play, never again left Jane. Now that the dazzling light no longer blinded his vision he could see the beauty which had needed neither over-enhancing make-up nor ravishing costume to set it forth. In the plain white of the nurse’s dress, with the nun-like head-veil so trying in its austerity, her face full of the exquisite compassion which is the hallmark of the profession, Jane was now for him the central figure. And when the actress had left the stage, the cot with its still figure had been removed, and the five Americans had returned for their final scene, the simple humanness of it somehow “got over,” as the phrase is, so completely that in its own way it far outshone the splendour of the tragedy that had preceded it. And this was the sure mark of Cary’s art, that he had dared to close with this.