“I want the picture to be a success for them,” she whispered. Her words were almost a prayer. “Oh, God, make the critics kind! It is for them, for Pietro and Jensie, for Old Scott Ramsey, for Soloman and—and for Tom.”
Tom had been with her on her visit to Big Black Mountain. Yes, Tom had gone, for by this time the story of the possible success of a real feature written by a Chicago boy and being filmed at Chicago’s front door had become town talk.
There had been publicity. “Ah, yes, such publicity!” she sighed. Every day for a week her picture had appeared in the paper. She had been shown among the dogwood blossoms on the movie lot, on the Enchanted Island with a hundred beautiful children crowding about her, in a gondola riding down the lagoon like a queen. Ah, yes, there had been publicity.
“And always,” she breathed, “I am not Petite Jeanne at all, but Lorena LeMar. Ah, well, what can it matter? To-day one is a queen, to-morrow she is forgotten.
“And besides—” She smiled a bit wearily. “Besides, how shall I say it? This picture may, after all, be a flop, and if it is, then it is Lorena LeMar who has failed and not I.”
Again a little tremor shot up her spine. She had caught a sound above her. She half rose as if to flee. But the night was warm. The day had been a hard one. It was good to be alone. Soon the floodlights would be turned on, the press men with their cameras would be here. To-night was the preview of that much talked of picture, “When the Dogwood Is in Bloom.” It had been arranged that the showing should take place in the Children’s Theatre on the Enchanted Island of the Fair.
“There is no one up there.” She settled back. “Only a few moments more to think.”
Strangely enough, her thoughts for a moment whirled through a score of mysteries, the hearse and the two black horses in the dark night, the organ that played its own tunes, the three-bladed knife, the long-eared Chinaman, all these remained as mysteries.
“But these,” she told herself, “these are not for to-night. To-morrow or the day after, perhaps.”
Oh, were they not, though? One may not always elect the hour for the unfolding of life’s mysteries. Fate at times takes a hand.