# The Smart Set/Volume 5/Issue 1/The Picture Over the Mantel

from The Smart Set Vol 5 Iss 1, Sept 1901, pp. 139–148.
THE PICTURE OVER THE MANTEL
By Justus Miles Forman
Livingstone and I finished our bout with the foils at Clermontel's shortly before one o'clock and came out of the little Rue Coëtlogon into the noise and hurry of the Rue de Rennes. Here we quarreled fiercely about where we should lunch, for I wanted to drive out to the Bois and lunch like a Christian at d'Armenonville, and Livingstone insisted on going to Lavenues's, in the Place de Rennes.
Of course he had his way. He always does. And we lunched, on the whole, very decently at Lavenues's, after which I left Livingstone under the awning of the terrace, drinking coffee and making eyes at the female friend of a perturbed St. Cyr officer.
I crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse to the studio, for I'd some idea of going out to the Tir aux Pigeons in the Bois. There would probably be a man there whom I wanted to see, a chap I used to know in Vienna.
It was about two o'clock, I should fancy, when I finished dressing, said good-bye to the photograph on the big, gray card that stands alone over the mantel, and went out and waved my stick at a passing fiacre.
It was a gorgeous day, full of yellow sunshine that was not too hot; full of the smell of Summer, of the trees that lined the street, of a vague, faint perfume from heaven knows where—for it was July, and months late for the chestnuts and lilacs or even acacias—a perfume that came on the little breeze and filled one's head, made one take long, deep breaths, made one infinitely glad to be alive and to be in paradise, or at least in the best mundane substitute obtainable.
Are the Summer smells of Paris richer, rarer, sweeter than anywhere else in the world? Have the Boulevard trees a fresher fragrance? Has the sprinkled dust a keener aroma? Are the passing whiffs from an old, high-walled garden, or from the overflowing crimson and azure and white of a florist's doorway more intoxicating, more blood stirring? I don't know. To me they must ever seem so. Perhaps there is something beyond odors, subtler—if that be possible—that gets into one's veins, conquers one and draws one back to Paris wherever one may be—“the East a-callin'.”
We spun along the Boulevard Montparnasse and over the Pont des Invalides and up to the Étoile and out the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, while I, with the Summer in my veins, lay back on the cushion and, I fear, thought most sentimentally on the picture over the mantel.
Out by the Porte I changed my mind about the Tir aux Pigeons and told the cocher to drive over to the Allée de Longchamps, where I paid him off and set out to stroll.
There was the usual throng of loungers, old gentlemen with military-looking frock coats, bourgeois families, each with a progeny that would seem to give the lie to the story of a non-increasing population and the ever-present nou-nous in gorgeous ribbons.
I sat on a wooden bench for a half-hour, smoking cigarettes and, alas! thinking of the picture over the mantel. Then two enthusiastic young persons began spinning tops about my boots, and I retired. In France one spins tops with the aid of a furiously lashing whip, not with a mere harmless cord. I strolled back from the Allée along the network of devious and unfrequented paths that make a sort of labyrinth the trees and thick shrubbery between the avenues and riding ways. I had gone in some distance, till the beat of horses' hoofs, the screams of children and the calls of nurses were blended into a far-away hum, when very suddenly someone, just beyond the wall of shrubbery that parted my little path from the next, screamed several times for help. The voice was a woman's, and strangely enough, she was screaming “Help!” in good English, though occasionally varying it by an “Au secours!”
I suppose there is some penalty for trampling over and through flowering shrubs, but I do not believe I seriously injured those I got through so quickly.
What I saw on the other side was nothing particularly strange or blood-curdling—merely a woman, a girl, rather, struggling against the overardent advances of that familiar type of male beast, the middle-aged marcheur, the sort that sits under the awnings of the principal cafés and ogles the women who pass, the sort with whom nothing feminine is safe, to whom every petticoat is natural prey.
I take no pride whatever in referring to the very thorough mauling which this animal received at my hands; no pride, since he was shorter than I by a good many inches, sodden by virtue of his manner of life, and, moreover, fat. I pounded him because I was angry and because, of course, he needed it. I had no hope whatever of impressing on him the fact that he had been guilty of a wrong.
The girl had recovered her fallen sunshade, straightened her hat, and was standing with both hands to a panting breast when, leaving the somewhat disheveled Frenchman in a heap on the turf, I turned to face her. I met her eyes, and on my soul, I was near to joining the Frenchman.
If he had chosen to rise just at that moment and smite me, I couldn't have lifted a hand.
I think neither of us made a movement or uttered a sound for a long time. The girl, with her hands at her breast, stood there flushed and panting, trembling a little from her shock, and I—why, I also stood there flushed and panting, not from my work with the Frenchman—that was poor business—but for other reasons, flushed and panting and trembling a little from my shock. On the turf, at some distance, the Frenchman rolled and pressed his hands to his sodden face and moaned. But I—I stood like a fool and stared, and the heart inside me raced and stopped dead and leaped into my throat and raced again. What silly asses we are, the coolest of us, when Fate takes the freak to play us a momentous trick! Oh, I have lain awake many a night since that time thinking over just how I should have shown my mettle by rising to the occasion, just what I should have done, how I should have taken off my hat and dropped my eyes before her beautiful face and bowed low, very low, and said: “Miss Berkeley, I don't know what virtuous or pious act I have ever committed to deserve this good fortune, but of all the days God has given me I must always count this one the happiest, since I've been able to serve you a little. Perhaps it's because I have loved you so long. Though that is, after all, reward enough in itself without this.”
But all I actually did was to stare into her eyes, trembling absurdly, and say again and again in a whisper that she must have heard: “You—you!” and again and again: “You—you—you!”
She was the first of us to recover—to my shame—and came up to me, still shaking from her fright. She placed her two hands on my arm, and said, in that sweet, soft voice that I knew so well: “Oh, how can I ever thank you? I owe you more than—than my life. Will you take me away, please? Oh, I thought no one would ever hear me! I've never been so frightened! Please, will you take me away?”
She looked over her shoulder at the man writhing on the ground, and for a moment I thought she was going to break down into hysterics or something like that. The prospect nearly gave me hysterics myself.
We moved away up the path, but there came a scuffle behind us and a torrent of very unparliamentary French. I turned about, and there was my late antagonist on his feet at last, but with a very much damaged face. It pleased me. When I could make a little reason out of his flow of language—on my word, it wasn't language for a lady's ears at all—I found that he demanded my blood, to be yielded under tortures most terrible. He flourished a card under my nose and screamed to heaven. So I gave him my own card and told him I should be at home in an hour—his pasteboard was rather impressive when one came to read it—and hurried my charge away.
We took a short cut to the Allée de Longchamps, and I put Miss Berkeley into a waiting fiacre. “If you don't mind,” said I, “I would a little rather see you safely home. There's just the chance that the beast might follow you.”
“Please do,” she begged. “We're at the Continental.” So I got in beside her and gave the cocher the address. Miss Berkeley lay back among the cushions for a few moments, making the pluckiest fight imaginable for self-control. And she won, too, God bless her.
“Don't mind me,” she said, after a little, “I'm all right now. I haven't been so—so badly unstrung since I can remember. I was just walking about in those little paths. I thought they were quite safe enough, when I met that—that man, and he took—hold of me and tried—ah, I couldn't have escaped him much longer.” And she turned to me the face I'd stood looking into and talking secrets to so many hours as it looked down from my mantel; that I'd lain awake so many nights thinking of and worshipping.
“No man ever did so much for me,” she said, with a little low thrill in her voice. “I can't thank you—words are such poor things. You'll have just to let me be grateful to you all my life. Oh, it must be splendid to be so big and strong!”
“Oh, I say,” I cried—very red in the face, I've no doubt, for I hate praise—“don't, don't take it that way. And for heaven's sake, don't give me credit for knocking over that cur. He was poor stuff, you know. Please don't think,” I went on, quietly, “that I undervalue being of service to you, Miss Berkeley—” she looked up in a flash at the name; I suppose I had no right to call her by it—“for, as a matter of fact, there's nothing on God's green earth that I wouldn't give to do anything for you, even the littlest thing, but—but—well, you see, you paid me in advance for anything I could do by the—pleasure—I“ll say pleasure—there ought to be bigger words—you have given me so long.”
“What do you mean?” asked the girl, looking up at me with round eyes. “And what did you mean in the Bois by crying 'You, you, you!' under your breath?”
“I mean your acting,” said I. “It has meant—well, a good deal to me. It has shown me what a girl, a woman, can be. I didn't know before.”
“Oh,” said the girl. Then: “Thank you,” she added, after a little. It wasn't quite a conventional expression; I think she meant it.
“And you?” she asked, presently. “What are you doing in Paris? Are you a traveler, like father and me? You can't live here, or you wouldn't have seen—my acting.”
“Oh, I live here about half the time,” said I. “I'm in America a good deal. I write little tales in a dilettante sort of fashion, big ones, too, occasionally, and make pictures for them. People are fairly decent about the things.”
“Will you tell me your name?” she asked. “You know mine already.”
I told her.
“What?” she cried, softly, “you, you? Why, you wrote 'The King's Heart!'” And she looked up with eyes that were the sweetest praise ever given me.
“Do you know,” she went on, “I have always thought that 'The King's Heart' would make a tremendously fine play? Didn't you have that in mind when you wrote it?”
I admitted the crime.
“The girl in 'The King's Heart,'” mused Miss Berkeley, “has always seemed curiously familiar to me, lovelier, of course, than anyone I know, but familiar some way, I don't know how or why.”
“That,” said I, looking into her eyes, “is not at all remarkable.”
The eyes showed a sudden, startled gleam, then something else, then a divine softness. Then they dropped, and the loveliest face in the world flushed deeply from chin to soft brown hair, and bent to hide itself.
“Do you mean—?” she murmured, “you don't mean—?” But she left the sentence unfinished, and fell to folding and stroking the sunshade on her knees.
“You look shockingly young to have written novels and things,” she said at length.
I considered this unkind. “Oh, I don't know,” I cried, indignantly, “I'm four years out of my 'varsity, a good twenty-six. And besides, I have written but one novel and not so many other things. Anyhow, I'm four or five years older than you. Aren't you shockingly young to be a star with a reputation in two countries?”
The girl laughed. “Oh, well,” she protested, “I was, after a fashion, born on the stage, you see. I come of stage people. No, it's not remarkable at all.”
Then she was silent again for a while. I fancied she was thinking of that novel.
“Why,” she demanded, after a long time, “did you and that—that brute exchange cards? And what did you mean with all your talk about friends, and that sort of thing?”
“Oh,” I explained, thoughtlessly, like a fool, “he wants his satisfaction, of course.”
She turned to me swiftly and caught my arm. Her eyes were full of terror.
“You—you're going to fight him?” she cried. “You're going to fight a duel?”
Then I saw what an ass I'd been, and I tried to laugh it off, and told her French duels never hurt anyone, but she wouldn't be deceived.
“Why, you may be killed!” she said—I'd have been killed twice over for the look in her eyes just then.
“You must let my father go on with it,” she said, finally. “You have done enough, heaven knows. It's his place to defend me. You must let him do it.”
“Not I!” I cried, stoutly. “it's my affair. I tell you it won't amount to anything. But no one shall get it away from me, anyhow. I've just a little more punishment to deal out to that chap before I'm through.”
We were crossing the Place de la Concorde by this time, and soon we turned the corner of the Rue Castiglione and drew into the court of the Continental.
I helped her out of the fiacre and she stood looking into my eyes.
“I won't have you killed,” she said. Her hand lay in mine a moment. “If a girl's hopes and prayers can bring you through safely you'll not be harmed. When will it probably be?”
“I shall do myself the honor of calling to see if you've quite recovered by to-morrow afternoon,” said I.
“That means it will be in the morning,” murmured the girl to herself. “Ah, I shall be waiting—and hoping.”
I climbed back into the fiacre and drove rattling across the Tuileries and over the river and up the narrow Rue du Bac, with a whole choir singing glorias and jubilates in my head Fight? I'd have fought all Paris and gone to the battle with a laugh. I thought of her beautiful eyes and of how they had looked at me, and on my faith, I wonder I didn't die of heart disease!
Crossing the Rue de Sèvres I happened on the very man I wanted to see, or at least one of the two men—Paul Hervieu, as fine a young Frenchman as ever did his military service. I gathered him into the fiacre and explained things swiftly while we whirled up the Rue de Rennes to the Boulevard Montparnasse and the studio.
Once at home we crossed the court to Livingstone's atelier, and somewhat to our shock found that gentleman in, refereeing a fight between Jimmy Rogers's bulldog and a large and able-bodied cat belonging to the concierge. He came across to my studio at once and we talked the matter over.
“Of course he'll challenge,” said Livingstone, in great delight. “That will give you your choice of weapons. Paul and I will try to make it sharpened foils; failing that, swords.”
There came a knock at the door, and two very solemn Frenchmen entered.
“I'll go play with the cat and the dog,” said I, and left the four of them together.
I have no wish to dwell on what occurred the next morning at sunrise. I take no silly pride in it. It was not even good sport. My mind holds most vividly the rising at an unchristian hour, the long three or four mile drive in a sweet, gray morning, through streets deserted save by a swaggering, wide-breeched ouvrier or a chance carter with his great leather sombrero and his long whip, the meeting at the edge of a certain wood with a small party of formal and excessively polite gentlemen, and half an hour later the long drive back to the city.
The Frenchman was perhaps a bit more formidable with a sword in his hand than he had been the day before, for every Latin is a swordsman by inheritance and training, but forty years of debauchery make a dull eye and a poor wrist. I easily ran him through the right shoulder. It was a matter of punishment, as I looked at it—after having received, by my own absurd carelessness, a dragging scratch, like that of a good-sized pin, across one cheekbone. It was done by chance, on the recovery from a parried riposte. So much for a very foolish business.
In the afternoon at three o'clock I presented my somewhat marred countenance at the Hôtel Continental. I made a turn through the glass-faced palm corridor, thinking that she might be there, and ran on her father, who was on the lookout for me—a merry old gentleman with a handsome face and a god-like figure. Did I say “old?” He's not above middle age and looks less. For years he had been familiar to me from across the footlights.
He greeted me very warmly and said a great many silly things about my service to his daughter, and congratulated me on coming out of it so nicely. Well, at any rate, I'd made a friend of him for life, and that fact was not to be despised.
“Evelyn's waiting for you up stairs in a great state of mind,” he said at length. “I mustn't keep you any longer. I'll just show you the rooms and then I've got to go over to 'Henry's bar' to see a man.” We went up to their suite, and he pushed open the door and said: “Here comes the conquering hero,” and went off down the corridor with a jolly laugh.
The girl came swiftly across the room and took my hand, looking up into my face.
“You're not hurt?” she cried, in a little breathless voice. “Oh, you're not hurt?” And I turned very red with sheer delight, and became, of course, immensely confused and quite idiotic, but she dragged me over to the windows and looked at that miserable scratch across my cheekbone.
“Oh, did he do that you to you?” she mourned, like a grieving angel. “It isn't a bit pretty—I mean—I don't mean that it looks—bad, you know,” she cried, hastily. “On the whole, I—I rather like it,” she added, inspecting me with her head on one side. “What did you do to him?”
“Oh, I made a little hole in him,” said I. “Are you all fit again after your fright? That's the real point, you know.”
“I shall be now,” she declared. And I, like a fool, turned red with delight again.
“You've got to stay and dine with us to-night,” she said, presently. “If you like you can run home and dress, after a while—after a very long while and come back again. We'll go over to Voisin's or Larue's.”
Then for a time neither of us spoke, while she sat looking out of the window with a little half-smile on her lips, and I—of course I watched her face, feasted on every creamy tint of it, reveled in every sweet, firm line from her round throat to her soft brown hair, and wished that the sun might break into the window for a moment, only a little moment, to wake that light brown to gold, as it had done yesterday all the way from the Bois de Boulogne to the Rue Castiglione.
I suppose her eyes are the loveliest thing about her, though, by my soul, it's hard business choosing, and they were turned from me now. Ah, but didn't I know what they could say?—how they could soften and darken and grow infinitely deep and tender and sweet, till one quite lost one's self there? I hadn't loved them all this time for nothing. But though her eyes were turned from me, that soft downward curve of cheek and chin was left, and her little nose, that started out so bravely high and fine, and stopped so soon. It's the most ridiculously pretty nose a girl ever owned. Sometimes she wrinkles it when she wants to show a lofty scorn. I wish she wouldn't. I think she knows it is tantalizing. And her mouth—I don't dare try to talk about her mouth, but the upper lip is short, and curls a bit, and has quite a deceptive and pathetic droop at the corners; and when she is thinking about something she cares for, or when she is very earnest, and those eyes of hers grow soft and dark, why, then her lips part a little and the droop at the corner goes deeper—but I said I wouldn't talk about her mouth.
She turned her eyes back to me. “I have been thinking of something,” she smiled.
“Come, now, be generous,” said I, “tell a chap.”
“What did you mean,” she began, “yesterday in the fiacre, by saying that my acting had shown you what a girl could be, and that you didn't know before? It's such a vague way of putting things.”
“It's a clearer way of putting things than if I should go into details,” said I. “I've known for a long time that a girl could be beautiful and lovely and tender and all that, for I've been falling mildly in love with girls—dozens of them—from the day I commenced on the young person in the white cap who pushed me about in a carriage. But when I came to know you—across the footlights—I found I had been all those years sadly mistaken about what beauty and loveliness and the rest were. It was something of a revelation. I've been a good bit of a loafer, not of much account in any way; I've done precious little as an excuse for living, but I give you my word of honor that if it weren't for you I should never have done anything at all. What you've shown me of a girl's wonderful possibilities for beauty, for sympathy, for—love, has waked me up. It has shamed me a bit. I'm not a loafer any more. I've worked hard for the last year or two—oh, but I say, you're making me talk like a Salvation Army recruit. All this doesn't interest you.”
The girl was looking out of the window again, with her chin in her hand.
“It's impossible,” said she, “that just my acting should have done all that. You must be in love with some girl. Oh, you must be. Tell me, aren't you?”
I thought my heart had stopped permanently. On my word, I wonder it didn't.
“In love with her?” I cried, stammering. “I am in love with her. She's in everything I do or say or think. She's the breath of heaven. She's with me every hour of the day and night. In love with her? Why—why—” and I broke off, stammering again for very want of words.
“I knew it,” said the girl, nodding her brown head at me with a little smile. But for some reason or other she didn't look overjoyed. “You see, you can't deceive a woman,” she said, looking out of the window once more. Then I saw her face change and grow bit puzzled. “But—but yesterday,” she wondered, “your book, 'The King's Heart'—you said—I thought you meant—oh, nothing, nothing!” and she stared at the chimneypots across the street.
My heart had not stopped permanently. It was racing at a most dangerous speed. In another moment I must have done something desperate, for I was fast losing control. But I pulled together with a jerk and stood up.
“I'm going home to dress,” said I. “I'll be back at six or seven, as you like, if you really want me to dine with you. It's tremendously jolly of you, you know,” and somehow I got out of the room and down stairs.
“Lord Headley is coming over on to-night's Dover boat,” announced Miss Berkeley at the dinner table. “A letter came from him this evening.” I spilled the larger portion of a glass of Burgundy over my shirt bosom. Lord Headley had been prominent among the dozen or so well-known Englishmen and Americans to whom an enthusiastic press had, from time to time, announced Miss Berkeley's engagement.
“That'll be very jolly!” cried Berkeley père. “Headley's a ripping good sort of fellow! Know him?” to me. I admitted never having met Lord Headley, and noted with no joy whatever a glance of inquiry, surprise, slight confusion, and some thoughtfulness which was exchanged by my two companions. Indeed, during the rest of the evening Miss Berkeley was undeniably distraite and the least bit nervous. The atmosphere was a trifle charged. I went home early.
If there had been any means short of out-and-out boorishness by which I could have avoided keeping my engagement to lunch at the hotel the next day, I should have seized on it and stopped at home. I crossed the river in a most unwilling spirit.
They were waiting for me in the lounge, and presented me at once to Lord Headley, whom, to my disgust, I found myself liking immediately.
“Awfully glad to meet you,” said he, pumping at me with vigor. I believe my governor and yours used to be great pals a hundred years ago, shooting in Africa together, and all that.”
“I believe they did,” said I.
“No big game for me,” continued Headley. “It's too jolly hard work. I'll take the birds. I'm not keen on jungles and lions and fevers.”
I fear I was not very entertaining at luncheon. I was wondering miserably how much there might have been, how much there might yet be, in the reports of Evelyn Berkeley's engagement to Headley. Her mood of the evening before was still on her—a half-embarrassment, a sort of soberness, of uncertainty. Headley's attitude was all too obvious. It was frankly and unashamedly adoring.
I had promised to let the Berkeleys see my studio in the immediate future—why do people so love to poke about in studios?—and so I took this occasion to ask them for the next day, since they expected to cross the Channel toward the end of the week.
Headley couldn't come, had some “beastly business” to keep him, but the others promised, and I fled back across the river. I had gathered in all the day just one lone grain of comfort. With Miss Berkeley's gloves and veil, on a seat under one of the palms, I had caught sight of a copy of “The King's Heart,” apparently a new copy. She must have been to Brentano's for it. “But curiosity, merely curiosity, me boy,” said I, bitterly. “It is strong in all women. Don't you go digging encouragement out of that.” And I stood a long time with my elbows on the mantel, staring into the face of the picture there and asking it silly questions that it wouldn't answer. It only looked back at me, head tipped a little to one side, big eyes gazing with that grave, questioning, almost childish steadiness, lips just trembling toward a smile. Lord, Lord! how I loved it, from the rosebuds in the soft hair to the great sweep of white tulle or muslin or lace or whatever other mysterious thing that skirt may have been!
I had Jerry Livingstone come over the next afternoon, and on the Berkeleys' arrival I delivered Berkeley père to him with some firmness. One corner of Jerry's expressive mouth drooped for an instant.
Evelyn seemed to have left at the Continental every trace of her past mood. She was in a state of most absurd levity, fairly kittenish, and poked her dear little head into every corner and cover and recess of the place, with that way women have in bachelor quarters. I became used to it long ago in college days.
“It's all simply delightful!” she cried. “It's—it's—you don't mind my saying that it's just like a curio shop, do you?—a very nice curio shop,” she pleaded, “without any sixpenny counter. What's this? This isn't antique. It looks perfectly new. Why don't you scrub that stain off the blade? You aren't a bit tidy.”
I suppose my face must have gone red. I hadn't meant her to see that sword. At any rate, she stared at me an instant and then dropped the thing with a clatter and a little scream.
It's what you—used the other day?” she faltered, rather pale. Then she picked it up again and patted it.
“It saved your life,” she murmured. “Oh, but it is rather ghastly!”
She was good enough to be politely enthusiastic over the sketches and other alleged works of art about the place—illustrative drawings, for the most part. Indeed, she was more than polite. But then, as I have said, she was in great spirits.
I was reaching down a fifteenth-century poignard from high on the wall to show her, when she suddenly disappeared. There was but one place for her to go, and I followed at once into the sleeping-room that opened on the studio. There was little to see in it—a brass bed, a curtained-off bath, a chiffonier or two, a marble mantel, and what was on the mantel.
She stood looking at the picture, her hands clasped at a quickened breast. She turned at my step. What her face held, now that I come to write it, I find I cannot say. It was very flushed. There was surprise, certainly—more than that, an astonishment, a sort of shock. I think there was no displeasure, no regret, but rather a great dawning of something quite opposite—I cannot say.
“Where did you get this? How long have you had this?” she cried, softly
“Ever since they were taken,” said I. “Ever since you commenced to star, last Autumn, and had those pictures made. I was in New York at the time. Don't be angry at me! They're for sale—anyone can buy them. Let me keep it. It's the dearest thing I own. Let me keep it. It goes everywhere with me, I—I can't do without it. It's the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning. I tell my troubles to it and my good luck, too. It's the girl I—it's the girl—” and I faltered and stammered and looked down. I couldn't meet those eyes.
“Will you lend me a pencil?” she said, very low. She took the pencil and the photograph and wrote across the broad gray margin: “To the bravest gentleman in all the world.—Evelyn Berkeley.”
“We'll pretend I gave it to you,” she said, with a little, unsteady laugh. “Ah, no, no; not here!” as I moved toward her.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said I, as I sat facing the Berkeleys in the carriage, “I had a letter this morning from Mr. Freeman, the great, saying that he wanted to have 'The King's Heart' dramatized at once, and requesting me to come over in a month to revise the version before it was given to—whom do you think?—you! I am also to be present at rehearsals in September to make suggestions. There is talk of further plays. He seems in love with 'The King.'”
The girl was clapping her hands. “Oh, oh!” she cried, “it's gorgeous! simply gorgeous! Never was there such luck! Just wait till you see what I shall do with 'The King's Heart!' Oh, why don't you cheer, or something?”
“I've read the book,” said Berkeley, “and it will make one of the finest plays ever put on in New York. It's an acting story. It'll fall of itself into scenes and acts.” He shook my hand very heartily. “Congratulations,” he said; “I envy you your future. Do you know,” he went on, “I couldn't keep feeling as if I'd known that girl in 'The King's Heart!' She was curiously familiar. Of course, I couldn't place her. Queer thing!”
His daughter, very pink as to countenance, turned suddenly to admire the façade of a singularly uninteresting line of shops.
On the morrow I went to the Hôtel Continental to say good-bye, for the Berkeleys were crossing that night to England, “accompanied by the enslaved Headley, of course,” said I to myself. None of them was in the lounge, so I went up to their own parlor.
She was alone there. She came across the room with her face turned up to mine, every line of it softened, its cream wakening to rose. But I hardened my silly heart to it.
“Where's Lord Headley?” I asked. I tried to say it politely, naturally, just in the way of a civil commonplace, but I fear it was ill done.
“Oh, Headley's gone back to London,” said she, in a rather careless tone, I thought. “He left last night.” And then she looked at me with a half-humorous, half-severe eye, and shook her head reprovingly, as if I had been a naughty little boy stealing jam.
“But you're going yourself to-night,” I cried, sullenly.
“We sha'n't see Headley,” said she, still shaking her brown head. “He's leaving at once for Norway. We're going up the river to our houseboat,” and I understood at last, though it cost me a blush of honest shame.
We sat down near the window where we had been two days before, but she did not look out at the chimneypots to-day; she looked at me, with a steadfast little smile that put a catch in my breath.
“Tell me something,” she said, with that blessed little smile. “The other day and—yesterday, you hinted—you said that I had been influencing you for a long time, that I had meant a good deal to you—heaven knows why—that I had made you go to work and accomplish something. You must know that there is nothing sweeter to any woman than to be able to believe just that, to know that she has been one man's good influence, has made him. But why, during all this time you say you were in New York when I began to star—you must have been in America, in college, indeed, when I was playing little parts in my uncle's company—why didn't you try to meet me? Why didn't you let me know that—that you thought I was—nice? Why didn't you tell me that I was helping you? Ah, why did you leave it all to accident this way? Didn't you want ever to know me?”
“How could I meet you?” I broke in. “Think a moment of what I was! A good-for-nothing young chap, fresh from his 'varsity and a year or two of study—or loafing, over here. I'd no name, no reputation, no money.”
“But—but your family,” she cried. “Everyone knows about them!”
“My family?” said I, “what of it? Of course, they've more money than is good for them, but that doesn't give it to me; and some position, I suppose, but it's not the sort of position I want. I had nothing at all—nothing but the right sort of birth and breeding and education. You were so infinitely above me, beyond my reach!”
“An actress!” she cried, bitterly; “a girl who has to give the very best of her, every night, to any brute who can pay for a seat; a girl whose pictures are for sale to any marcheur who wants to buy them and gloat over them; an actress who has to receive silly little notes sent by silly little boys that think they're in love with her and hang about the stage door till their mamnas find them out and drag them away, and probably spank them; who's annoyed everywhere she goes by things that that I couldn't even tell you about; an actress above you?”
“Ah, but you see,” I protested, “you're such a very exceptional sort of an actress. You aren't the ordinary thing in actresses at all. An actress who goes to the best teas and afternoon things in New York in the Wintertime, and spends her Summers on an English houseboat and at country houses that would make those mammas you speak of gasp, is such a very hard person to classify, also to approach. No, I swore I wouldn't come near you till I could do so with at least a little excuse of worthiness, a little beginning of success. The success in sight now, thank God! And you see it will come through you, after all, just as its foundations have been through you. You'll make me famous with 'The King's Heart'—but oh, don't imagine that it's been easy keeping away from you! Still, I had the picture.”
“Ah, the picture!” she murmured. “Oh, I'm glad you had that, I'm glad! But don't you think—” she added, after a moment, turning a little pink, “don't you think it was a bit improper having it in that room?”
“Oh, not a bit,” I assured her, hastily; “it—it was always most decorously turned to the wall when I—when it was necessary. Always!”
She looked relieved. Then for a while she said nothing, but sat smiling contentedly at something beyond me.
“I'm thinking of the work we've got to do together in September,” said she.
I, too, thought of it, those days and weeks together, making perfect the thing that meant so much to both of us. I think she saw in my eyes what must have been immediately on my tongue, for she leaned over toward me quickly, with her wonderful smile, and those soft eyes that were a caress.
“Ah, wait!” she whispered. “Not now, not now! Wait till we've worked and played together, till you know me. Come to me in New York—I think you must go now, for I've my things to pack. It's a month and week, isn't it? Five weeks—not so very long. Ah, nor very short, either! It won't seem short, believe me. I shall be thinking of you.” And she put out both her slim hands to me where we were standing by the window “It isn't good-bye,” she said, softly.
I took her hands, and I'll swear they lifted a little in mine, so that I bent over them and kissed them both. They were cool and sweet to my hot face.
At the door I looked back. She was standing where I had left her, with the hands I had kissed clasped to her breast, and the sweetest, tenderest smile in all the world flushing over her beautiful face.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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