CHAPTER IV

It was inevitable that Parsinova should meet Hubert Randolph, as Lou Seabury had prophesied. It was not inevitable that he should prove to be the man whose intent gaze had held hers from the first row. But when one considers that Randolph had determined from the moment he saw her to know her in an unprofessional capacity, his accomplishment of that end was in the natural order of things.

Hubert Randolph was not a self-made man. He had succeeded, made his name stand firm in the humming world of finance, in spite of the handicap of having been born to the purple. Early in his boyhood he had started out to forget that he was a Hamilton Randolph and he had been forgetting it satisfactorily ever since. At Harvard he had become the pal of men who tutored in their leisure hours, thereby improving his mind. Also, he had never taken the trouble to inform them to which particular Randolph family he belonged. It was unimportant. He had spent a winter in a shack in Arizona, partly for his health, but largely to familiarize himself with the workings of a matrix mine in which the Randolphs had an interest. He had chummed with the miners, chewed tobacco and acquired a red-bronze that had never quite worn off.

He had climbed Pike’s Peak, had shot big game in the Andes. And then he had come back to civilization and taken a clerkship in the brokerage offices of Parker, Gaines and McCaffery, to study banking methods from the bottom up.

At thirty-eight, or it may have been thirty-nine, he was an authority on banking, stood ace high in Washington, and was known as a patron of the arts. The Randolph family never understood why he had gone to all that bother. It was so old, so distinguished, that to have a member attempt to distinguish it further was almost an insult. However, Rand, as he was known among intimates, never troubled to consult the family as to his movements. He saw as little of them as possible.

“Don’t concern yourself about me,” he was in the habit of telling his sister when she tried to propel him in the direction of one of her parties. “I’m a hopeless sort of devil who likes to choose his own friends.”

Once she persuaded him to attend a tea and he appeared with a youth in a shiny coat and cuffs that separated from his shirt.

“He’s a coming violinist,” he whispered. “I thought you’d like him to play. But he’s hungry—give him something to eat first.”

She never attempted to persuade him after that.

Parsinova met Hubert Randolph in a funny little restaurant which years back had been a stable. It was conducted by a group of painters for the benefit of a Disabled Veteran’s Relief Fund all their own. He had arranged the party for the Sunday following her meeting with Seabury but it took her old friend another week to convince her that she could carry it through.

The occasion was not propitious. She had had a bad half hour that afternoon with Kane when he resented the omnipresence of her mother.

“She annoys me. She seems to be behind you like a shadow. You must send her away! Some one is bound to discover her.”

“That is impossible. She goes nowhere, sees no one. I shall keep her here.” Parsinova’s eyes glittered and for a moment it seemed likely that a backstage tantrum would be duplicated in fact.

So that when she fastened the short black satin dress up the front into a high collar under her ears and pulled the brim of her black satin hat in a shading dip, it was in a mood that omened no particularly cordial reception of Mr. Hubert Randolph.

Seabury called for her and Randolph met them in the cobbled courtyard that led to their unique dining place. In the dark she did not recognize him. But as they stood in the doorway where an old lantern swung, she stopped and peered at him.

“I have seen you be-fore!”

“Have you?”

“Many times—in the firs’ row. And you look’ as if—you like me.”

“I do,” came promptly with a smile.

“No—no,” her eyes gave him a piquant uptilt, “my art, I mean to say. Me—you do not know.”

“I’m going to.”

He led the way indoors. She glanced about and her mood dissolved into a new interest. First the man, then the charm of this quaint place. The stalls had been left standing and in each a table was set. Over each from the beamed ceiling swung a lantern similar to the one outside. There were no brilliant lights, no noises of clinking glass and silver.

She slid along the upholstered seat that lined the stall to the place he indicated at the table’s head. The men seated themselves at either side.

“This is great, Rand,” remarked Seabury. “How is it you never brought me here?”

“I saved it for Madame. What does she think of it?”

“Fas-scinating. I feel quite like a thorough-bred horse.” Then she looked at him gratefully. “And one is not—on ex-hibition.”

“I don’t want to exhibit you,” rejoined her host. “You’ll find that out.”

She did find it out in the weeks that followed. They dined frequently at “The Mews,” sometimes with Seabury, more often alone.

At first she protested. She could not! But in the end Randolph won out. They arrived always at six when the place was practically empty and by seven-thirty she was at the theater.

As the weather turned warmer they drove occasionally to the country and back in time for the performance. She never permitted him to call for her but arranged to meet him at the theater. They never went to conspicuous hotels or restaurants. He seemed to enjoy being with her away from the stare of the world. One Sunday in April when they had planned to lunch at an inn that dots the shore of the Hudson, he appeared with two hampers and announced that they were going to picnic. They left the car at the top of a slope, scrambled down and unpacked the baskets with the anticipation of boy and girl off for a holiday. She pulled off her hat with its floating veil and sat cross-legged on the rug he had spread under a willow tree.

Sitting there watching him, this man so intensely real, so intensely himself, a sense of infinite sadness swept over her. She wanted just for to-day to drop all sham. Not that her pose was ever difficult. Like all affectation used incessantly, she was no longer conscious of it. It was herself. But in these rare days spent with Randolph in the brimming sunlight, soft with young green things, she wanted with a ridiculously hopeless yearning to let him glimpse Elizabeth Parsons, the girl who would have let her hair fly in the wind for sheer joy of springtime, the girl who lived only in hidden moments.

Sometimes she compromised by letting Parsinova express Elizabeth’s thoughts, her ideals, separating the two women only by the breadth of an accent. Often she caught him looking at her curiously, as if trying to link some simply expressed idea of living with the reputation of the woman sitting opposite him. But more frequently they were content to enjoy the moment, tramping through the woods, discovering new sun-flecked trails, drinking in the sweetness of April and companionship.

He had suggested that he stop for her at her home but she put him off with excuses, obvious and sometimes lame.

Once he reproached her.

“Why don’t you let me come to see you?”

“You can—at any time you wish.”

“Not at the theater. When I worship you, I like it to be from the other side of the footlights.”

“Oh! Then what is it you wish to do on this side?”

“Adore you! And you haven’t even told me what street you live in.”

“Then it should be quite ea-sy. One adores that which one knows least a-bout.”

“In other words a man loves what he doesn’t understand and likes what he does?”

“That is ex-actly what I wish to say. Is it not strange?—when a man wish’ to make a woman love him, he say:—‘_Mon adorée_, you are such a my-stery to me.’ And when a woman wish’ to make a man love her, she tell him:—‘_Mon amour_, I understan’ you per-fec’ly.’”

He gave a ringing laugh, then leaned across the table.

“Your foreign men have a dozen ways of telling a woman they want her love. We Americans, when we care—the real thing—are awkward as boys and a little afraid.”

“A-fraid?” Parsinova’s eyes were wondering, while Elizabeth Parsons’ soul cried out that she, too, could know such fear. “But why?”

“Less experience.”

Her eyes laughed into his then. “The Latin in love is an art-iste,—the American an art-i-san. Is that what you wish to say?”

* * * * *

“Have you ever heard that Ade classic?—

‘I never run from the man behind the gun, Tho’ other chaps are cowards, As for me—not! But my courage fades away, And I don’t know what to say, When I meet the little girl Behind the tea-pot.’”

“Me-not. Tea-pot,” she repeated with a frown of concentration in which lurked a smile. “How ver-y droll your classics are.”

His rather severe mouth lifted with a whimsical twist. “After all, it resolves itself into this—a man fears, not what a woman is, but what she seems to be.”

Parsinova met the steady gaze with a quick startled look and bit her lip to keep it from quivering. But his next words answered the unspoken question that for a second shook her perfect poise.

“I wonder—” he said slowly, “I wonder if you’re as simple as you seem complex.”

She did not reply at once, did not lift her eyes. They wandered out through the wide window to the sheen of river and hazy Palisades in the distance. Randolph had driven her out to Longue Vue at the hour when the sun slides lazily into soft spring shadows.

“Why do you think me—as you say—com-plex?” She lifted her eyes and the sun slanted across them. Perhaps that was why he failed to give her a direct answer.

“Odd,” he observed, “I didn’t guess you had gray eyes. They look so dark from the stage. They’re wonderful eyes at close inspection, by the way.”

“Are they, too,—com-plex?”

“Full of secrets.”

“Ah, but there you are wrong—quite wrong, my friend. Most of their life they ’ave given to study. What secret’ could they possess?”

She hated herself while she said it, hated Kane and the stage and the success she had made. But most of all she hated Elizabeth Parsons for allowing Parsinova to dominate her. To this one man she wanted so devoutly to reveal herself as she was. Ridiculous, of course, the desire—for it was Parsinova who charmed him. That was all too evident.

The hours she loved best were those in which he told her of his travels, his life in the West. In that she could evince an interest that was sincere. She could picture him in rough flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, hobnobbing with the miners, one of them. He was the true democrat, eager to learn first-hand instead of living by proxy.

She would draw him out, welcoming the opportunity to be for the moment Elizabeth Parsons, if only as a listener.

When he left her at the theater that evening, he startled her by saying abruptly:

“I’m coming to dine with you next Sunday.”

It was just as he helped her out of the car and she stopped short, hand still in his. “You—are coming—?”

“That’s it, in your home. Oh, I’ve found out where you live. But I had a notion that I’d like you to tell me.”

“How—did you find out?”

“Had you followed, perhaps. At any rate, you can’t keep me away any longer.”

“You—you must not come.”

He regarded her closely, his thick brows coming together. “Is there any particular reason why you shut me out?”

She remembered suddenly that her hand was still in his. His tense grip was hurting her.

“Please!” She made a futile effort to draw it away.

“Is there?”

“Many—reasons.” Her lips hesitated over the words.

“Any one reason, I should say.”

In spite of herself, she looked up at him. “No—one.”

“Right, then. Sunday next.”

He dropped her hand quickly, stepped back into the car.

The next three days she spent buying high-backed cathedral chairs and carved tables and tabourets for her living-room. Down came the cretonne hangings and up went heavy purple velvet ones that shut out the blessed light of day. She selected a black rug that made the room look hideously somber and for the divan, gold cushions weighted with tassels. When she finished, she had consumed several months’ salary. But the transformation was complete. Once more Elizabeth Parsons was wiped off this mortal sphere. Soon no shadow would be left of her, not even in the sacred nook she had saved to call “home.”

With an anxiety close to terror she waited for Hubert Randolph. She was wearing white, soft, creamy, floating. There ought, at least, be some spot of light in the mysteriously shadowed room.

He came at seven. She went to the door herself and let him into the little foyer. His eyes were alight with eagerness. They had the look of a small boy’s bound for a fishing trip on Sunday.

He caught her hand. “You know how glad I am to be here.”

“You know,” she rejoined to her own surprise, “how I am glad—for you to be here.”

He followed into the living-room. “Odd,” he observed almost to himself, “I’ve pictured it often—but not like this. I’d an idea of light things—woman things about you.”

She could have laughed with sardonic glee at the thought of how she had dragged down those light, woman things and spent a small fortune to create another atmosphere.

“But on the whole,” he proceeded speculatively, “these are you, aren’t they?”

“A woman is so man-y things—so man-y moods, I wish to say—that there is no one room can express her.”

Her apartment was in one of those modern houses where dinner is cooked by a chef downstairs and sent up via the dumbwaiter. To Parsinova this had proved a convenience, saving as it did the necessity of curious servants. To-night she had arranged for one of the waiters from the restaurant below to serve them. But in spite of him, noiselessly in the background, it was a cozy, intimate little party that somehow brought them closer than all their former dinners. The small table set in a corner of the living-room, its glistening silver and lacy feminine damask, the dishes she had herself ordered, created a sense of home dangerous to the peace of mind of an actress wedded to her art.

To crown the illusion, when the _café noir_ had been served and the waiter disappeared, Randolph pulled a pipe from his pocket and asked if he might light it. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to smoke a pipe with you.”

“But I do not—smoke a pipe.”

“Don’t interpret me so literally. A pipe means fireside, something intimate and real. I’ve always thought it would be nice, one of these days, to see your face through pipe smoke. May I?”

She nodded, curled on a cushion by the fire. It was a rainy night. The logs whirred merrily. “Now—tell me more about your won-der-ful West.” She lighted a cigarette and listened, eyes partly closed, and a sweet tranquillity bathed her soul.

He pulled his chair closer. Unconsciously, perhaps, her head dropped against the arm. If a moment later she felt a hand lightly caress her hair, she gave no sign. Parsinova fans would undoubtedly have been amazed at the scene—the Russian actress curled like a kitten at the foot of a man’s chair while he painted with broad strokes pictures of prairie life.

It was what he did just as he was leaving that shattered her serenity like an explosion. They were standing in the foyer and she had given him her hand with her “Good-night,” when suddenly she was in his arms. They closed round her, swept her to him and his lips were on hers. For a long moment they stood so. Then, without a word, he put her at arm’s length, held her eyes with a look whose intensity she found impossible to read. An instant later she was alone.

But those few moments brought her up sharp. Hours afterward she felt the vice of his arms gripping her, the thrill of his kiss, and knew that she loved him. Subconsciously she had known it a long time. But she had never faced the issue. Content with a comradeship dear to both Elizabeth Parsons and Lisa Parsinova, she had drifted without any forward look, without taking count of what payment the future might exact. And now the hour had come. Elizabeth Parsons, who had never loved before, loved Hubert Randolph. Hubert Randolph loved Parsinova who, according to all report, had loved many times and with not too much reserve. Long hours she lay staring into the blank darkness of her room. Out of it she could draw nothing but misery.

Heretofore she had accepted Parsinova’s manufactured past without question. Now it was a lurid flame, flaring through the smoke of all reasoning, torturing her—more real because it was unreal. Had it been fact, there would be no problem. As things were, it was the ghost at the banquet, a ghost of that which had never been. And there was no solution! There never would be!

Elizabeth Parsons was New England. It was part of her plan of life to marry when she loved. That was as fundamental as the blood in her veins. The very intensity of emotion of which she was capable was reëxpressed in her intensity of adherence to the moral conduct generations of upright-living ancestors had laid down for her. From that there could be no swerving. It was part of her.

Throughout the dragging hours of that night she tried desperately to read into the embrace of the man who had taken her love, some interpretation other than the obvious. And suddenly it came to her that even granted he might possibly be willing to give her his name, it was impossible for her to accept it. He did not know Elizabeth Parsons—would not, if he did, evince the slightest interest in her. It was the Russian actress he adored, the woman she was not. If he wanted her and she dared to marry him, she would have to live day and night a lie she could not—and what was more, would not—carry through. In love she would have to be herself. Brilliant as was her Slav rendering of it on the stage, in life she was just an American girl who wanted to live it with all her soul. When he took Parsinova in his arms, he would be holding Lizzie Parsons. The sophisticated Russian lips against his would be giving him New England kisses. Well—not quite that! But one certainty she must face. To the man who had fallen in love with the Russian actress, the American girl would mean less than nothing. She hated her! In the confusion of her soul she did not know which hated the other more.

Had there been any doubt in her mind as to the hopelessness of her situation, Oswald Kane himself pounded the last nail in the coffin a few days later. A chatty little sheet given to imparting information about important people had got wind of Randolph’s devotion. It announced subtly that the walls the Russian actress had built up between herself and American men had evidently been shattered by one who heretofore had evinced but slight interest in the beauties of his own set. It hinted at their runs in his car out of New York and wondered amiably whether he intended converting his bungalow up Westchester way into a dovecote.

The day it appeared on the news-stands Oswald Kane paid her an early visit. For the first time she saw him with his smooth exterior ruffled. It was a matinée day and she was having an eleven o’clock breakfast when he arrived. A note from Randolph asking why she had refused to see him the day before lay on the table beside her plate. She looked tired and her eyes needed no artificial shadows.

Kane came into the room, then turned and stared at the new furnishings.

“Do you like it?” she asked. “I’ve had it done over.”

“Why?”

“I thought it safe—in case any one should find me out and drop in.”

“Some one has found you out.” He handed her the society sheet, open at the pointed paragraph that concerned her.

“I should like to know,” he began, his mellow voice going sharp, “who the man is.”

She hastily slipped Randolph’s note into the pocket of her dress. “I should like to be able to tell you.”

“You mean he does not exist.”

“I mean that if he did, it would be quite my own affair, wouldn’t it?”

“No. If you play a dangerous game and lose, Oswald Kane loses with you. If any man discovers the truth about you, it means your professional death as well as mine.”

“You need never worry—about that.”

Whether it was the hopeless note in her voice or the look in her eyes, his voice softened. He went close to her.

“There is just one,” he whispered, “who knows you as you are. Lisa Parsinova has the right to no man’s love but Oswald Kane’s. Forget those New England prejudices!”

She dropped quickly into a chair. “Lisa Parsinova has the right to no man’s love _at all_.”

Her eyes closed. Her voice went on monotonously.

“You see, I’ve thought it all out. I’ve swamped the girl I was and it’s as final as if I’d killed her. One of these days, perhaps—when my contract with you has been filled—Parsinova will sail back to Russia or be drowned or something, and out of her ashes will rise a spinster named Lizzie Parsons who doesn’t really matter, who’ll just pass out—alone. But until then you are quite safe. Only—please—never speak again of—of loving me.”

Kane bowed. “You are a great artiste, in spite of that. And at least you cannot deny me the joy of the creator.”

“I shall never forget what you’ve done for me. I shall never betray you in any way.”

She kept her word to the letter. Had she followed inclination she would have gone through her performances mechanically. A numbness had taken hold of her, of utter misery, utter futility. But her work did not fall off in brilliance. Particularly in the love scenes and in the final tragic sacrifice, did her beautiful voice shake with a suffering so intense that it was real.

Randolph she saw several times a week in his accustomed place in the first row. But his efforts to see her she ignored. A scene with him would be unbearable, leading as it must nowhere. So she left his notes unanswered, knowing he would eventually conclude that his passion the night of their last meeting had been unwelcome, that she was choosing the simplest means of telling him so. He wrote at first anxiously, then demandingly, and when she failed to answer—stopped. When the notes ceased to come she felt more miserably alone than ever in her life, reaching back into the past for their hours together as groping thoughts reach for memories of the dead.

She grew thin as a rail and her pallor was no longer creamy. It was dead white, with unbecoming lines traced from nose to mouth. Seabury remarked the change and suggested that she needed a change of air.

“You’ve been working too hard and you show it. When does your season close?”

“Sometime in June.”

“Why don’t you get Kane to let you off the end of this month?”

“I don’t want to be let off. I’d like to play all summer.”

“Good Lord, it would kill you!”

“It will kill me if I don’t work.”

“Look here!” He went over to her chair, looked at her closely. “What’s the matter?”

He had dropped in to tea at her apartment. She was seated behind the copper samovar, white face emphasized against the dark hangings, fingers moving restlessly among the tea things.

“Something’s wrong,” he persisted as she did not answer. “What is it?”

“Oh, a million things,—a million little things that don’t count.”

“Looks to me if it was one big thing that does.” He drew her out of the chair—toward the window. “Come on—’fess up to papa!”

“Well, for one thing—” she bit her lip, woman-wise trying in her own soul to veer away from the big issue by concentrating on a lesser. “My mother’s blackmailing me.”

“Your—what?”

She looked up, met his stare of dismay. “The little old lady you see around here sometimes.”

“I thought she was a maid. Look here—I don’t understand. You—why, Lizzie Parsons, you’ve been an orphan for years!”

“I know I have. But I had to have some one—mother preferred—to protect me.”

“I see—” A light dawned.

“So I engaged her. She looked the part and seemed a gentle, pathetic soul—and now she’s blackmailing me.”

He grinned in spite of the seriousness of it. “Is she likely ever to squeal?”

“Not as long as I give her all the money she wants. But it’s getting on my nerves. She makes my life miserable by threatening to take my story to the newspapers.”

“Next time she does it, send for me and I’ll bully her into keeping quiet.” He made a move toward the door. “Is she here? I’ll do it now.”

“No—no!” She stopped him. “Let well enough alone.”

He took her hand. “Poor kid, you are in a mess!”

“I’ve committed suicide, Lou,” she said abruptly.

He looked at her silently, then shook his head. “What else is bothering you?”

“What—what makes you ask that?”

“A blackmailing mama might make you look tired and worried but she wouldn’t put all that sorrow into your eyes. Why, you look like Isolde—by Jove, that’s it! Love stuff!”

“How absurd!” She looked away. “Whom could I be in love with?”

“Not with me, that’s a sure thing. Though, of course you know I’m in love with you.”

“Lou—!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I know I haven’t a chance. But I care enough to be darned upset by your condition. Now, come along, let papa fix things for you.”

“They can’t be fixed, Lou, ever. When you’ve chosen to be two people in one, you’ve got to stand up and take the consequences if God ordains that two’s company and three’s a crowd.” She gave him a smile, whimsical but without mirth. “Have you ever heard that saying: ‘_Je suis ce que je suis, mais je ne suis pas ce que je suis?_’”

Seabury’s brow wrinkled. “I sing French. I don’t speak it.”

“It’s a play on verbs: ‘I am what I am, but I am not what I follow,’” she translated. “Well, that’s me!”

He tried to persuade her to give him her confidence but she smiled and told him there was nothing further to confide.

A few weeks later just before her season closed, he asked what plans she had made for the summer. Kane was arranging to send her on tour with “The Temptress” before opening in New York in a play being written for her. She would have July and part of August to rest.

“I shall stay in town,” she told him, “and study.”

He protested vehemently.

“No use, Lou! I couldn’t bear being among people and this is the best place to hide away. Besides, there’s my mother to consider. I can’t risk having her run loose in New York without me.”

“But you must rest!”

“I must keep going, with as much work as I can manage.”

He bent over her, his kind brown eyes troubled.

“You’ll kill yourself.”

“On the contrary, I wish that I weren’t so intensely alive.” Then she smiled and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry about Lisa Parsinova. She’s in fine shape.”

“But Lizzie Parsons?” he put in.

“She doesn’t count.”

“Seen Rand lately?” he asked casually as he got up to go.

“A number of times.” She had seen him only too frequently from the far side of the footlights. “Have you?”

“No. He’s busy. Getting ready to go to Arizona. But of course you know about that.”

“Y—yes. Has he told you when he leaves?”

“Tuesday of next week. May be gone a year. Don’t know why.”

She turned her back to the light so that her face was blurred and misty and he could not read its expression. “Do you—do you think he looks quite well?” she prompted, eager for some news, any news of him.

“Well, it struck me he looked a bit seedy last time I saw him—not just up to the mark, that is. Probably spring fever. How does he impress you?”

“I—I hadn’t noticed any change.”

When he had gone, she picked up the calendar on her desk and stared at the day and date. Friday! By this time next week, a stretch of continent would rush between her and Hubert Randolph. She shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh. What mattered miles when worlds stretched between them now!

She went into her bedroom, locked the door. Lizzie Parsons leaned close to her mirror, stared into it. The white face and black-rimmed eyes of Lisa Parsinova stared back. A frenzy seized her. She caught hold of the first object her hand touched—a hair brush—and flung it full force at the reflected face. The glass splintered. Then she stepped back in trembling terror. Good heavens! Was she actually becoming that Russian fiend?

On Monday night her gaze wandered instinctively toward Hubert’s accustomed place in the orchestra. He was not there. Of course she had expected that, but she would have liked just one more look at him. Women have a strange way of wanting that which tortures them.

After the final curtain Kane appeared in her dressing-room and suggested that they take a drive up Riverside and a bite of supper somewhere along the road. He wanted to talk to her about the new play, about her route for the coming season and a date for her New York opening. His attitude had become thoroughly friendly and businesslike. He was too much the artist to allow failure in a lesser game to interfere with success in a greater.

It was nearing one when they drove back through the soft summer night. The air touched her face like velvet but brought no drowsiness to her eyes, no balm to the realization of blankness ahead—not of weeks or months, but of years.

With the passing of those years it was inevitable that she become Parsinova—with nothing left of poor, defunct Lizzie Parsons but the recollection of a love that had touched her life like the moon on a summer sea.

The Drive was still dotted with strolling couples oblivious of passers-by. Cars sped past them, wheels expertly manipulated by one hand. Mingled young laughter rang out like bells.

Kane’s rich voice flowed on, dwelling now on this, now on that scene of the play. She listened absently, eyes straying in a way that was absurd toward the magic of a June night, the enviable good fortune of those who could become part of it.

“I shall give you even greater opportunities than you have had. I shall produce a piece of work that will be epoch-making,” he told her.

She told him how pleased she was.

When they arrived at her apartment she asked him not to trouble getting out of the car, and stood and watched it swing round the corner. Then slowly she turned and went indoors.