But now it was Elise who began to plan. "When your play is produced, we'll run away somewhere. Do you remember the place you always talked about--up in the hills?"

He looked at her through his round gla.s.ses. "I can't get away from this"--he waved his hand toward the stage.

"If it's a success you can, Jimmie."

"It will be a success. Ursula Simms is a wonder. Look at her, Elise.

Look at her!"

Duncan and I could look at nothing else. As many times as I had seen her in the part, I came to it always eagerly. It was her great scene--where the girl, breaking free from all that has bound her, takes the hand of her vagabond lover and goes forth, leaving behind wealth and a marriage of distinction, that she may wander across the moors and down on the sands, with the wild wind in her face, the stars for a canopy!

It tugged at our hearts. It would tug, we knew, at the heart of any audience. It was the human nature in us all which responded. Not one of us but would have broken bonds. Oh, youth, youth! Is there anything like it in the whole wide world?

I do not think that it tugged at the heart of Elise. Her heart was not like that. It was a stay-at-home heart. A workaday-world heart. Elise would never under any circ.u.mstance have gone forth with a vagabond on a wild night.

But here was Ursula doing it every day. On the evening of the first dress-rehearsal she wore clothes that showed her sense of fitness. As if in casting off conventional restraints, she renounced conventional attire; she came down to her lover wrapped in a cloak of the deep-purple bloom of the heather of the moor, and there was a pheasant's feather in her cap.

"_May you never regret it, my dear, my dear_," said the lover on the stage.

"_I shall love you for a million years_," said Ursula, and we felt that she would, and that love was eternal, and that any woman might have it if she would put her hand in her lover's and run away with him on a wild night!

And it was the genius of Jimmie Harding that made us feel that the thing could be done. He sat forward in his chair, his arms on the back of the seat in front of him. "Jove!" he kept saying under his breath. "It's the real thing. It's the real thing--"

When the scene was over, he went on the stage and stood by Ursula. Elise from her seat watched them. Ursula had taken off the cap with the pheasant's feather. Her glorious hair shone like copper, her hand was on her hip, her little swagger matched the swagger that we remembered in the old Jimmie. I wondered if Elise remembered.

I am not sure what made Ursula care for Jimmie Harding. He was no longer a figure for romance. But she did care. It was, perhaps, that she saw in him the fundamental things which belonged to both of them, and which did not belong to Elise.

As the days went on I was sorry for Elise. I should never have believed that I could be sorry, but I was. Jimmie was always punctiliously polite to her. But he was only that.

"She's getting what she deserves," Duncan said, but I felt that she was, perhaps, getting more than she deserved. For, after all, it was she who had kept Jimmie at it, and it was her keeping him at it which had brought success.

Neither Duncan nor I could tell how Jimmie felt about Ursula. But the thought of her troubled my sleep. Stripped of her art, she was not in the least the heroine of Jimmie's play. She was of coa.r.s.er clay, commoner. And Jimmie was fine. The fear I had was that he might clothe her with the virtues which he had created, and the thought, as I have said, troubled me.

At last Duncan and I had to go home, although we promised to return for the opening night. Ursula gave a farewell supper for us. She lived alone with a housekeeper and maid. Her apartment was furnished in good taste, with, perhaps, a touch of over-emphasis. The table had unshaded purple candles and heather in gla.s.s dishes. Ursula wore woodland green, with a chaplet of heather about her glorious hair. Elise was in white with pearls. She was thirty-five, but she did not look it. Ursula was older, but she would always be in a sense ageless, as such women are--one would thrill to Sara Bernhardt were she seventeen or seventy.

Jimmie seemed to have dropped the years from him. He was very confident of the success of his play. "It can't fail," he said, "with Ursula to make it sure--"

I wondered whether it was Ursula or Elise who had made it sure. Could he ever have written it if Elise had not kept him at it? Yet she had stolen his youth!

And now Ursula was giving his youth back to him! As I saw the c.o.c.k of his head, heard the ring of his gay laughter, I felt that it might be so. And suddenly I knew that I didn't want Jimmie to be young again. Not if he had to take his youth from the hands of Ursula Simms!

There were many toasts before the supper ended--and the last one Jimmie drank "To Ursula"! As he stood up to propose it, his gla.s.ses dangled from their ribbon, his shoulders were squared. In the soft and shaded light we were spared the gray in his hair--it was the old Jimmie, gay and gallant!

"To Ursula!" he said, and the words sparkled. "To Ursula!"

I looked at Elise. She might have been the ghost of the woman who had flamed in the old house in Albemarle. In her white and pearls she was shadowy, unsubstantial, almost spectral, but she raised her gla.s.s. "To Ursula!" she said.

All the way home on the train Duncan and I talked about it. We were scared to death. "Oh, he mustn't, he must not," I kept saying, and Duncan snorted.

"He's a young fool. She's not the woman for him--"

"Neither of them is the woman," I said, "but Elise has made him--"

"No man was ever held by grat.i.tude."

"He'd hate Ursula in a year."

"He thinks he'd live--"

"And lose his soul--"

Jimmie's play opened to a crowded house. There had been extensive advertising, and Ursula had a great following.

Elise and Duncan and I had seats in an upper box. Elise sat where she was hidden by the curtains. Jimmie came and went unseen by the audience.

Between acts he was behind the scenes. Elise had little to say. Once she reached over and laid her hand on mine.

"I--I think I'm frightened," she said, with a catch of her breath.

"It can't fail, my dear--"

"No, of course. But it's very different from what I expected."

"What is different?"

"Success."

As the great scene came closer, I seemed to hold my breath. I was so afraid that the audience might not see it as we had seen it at rehearsal. But they did see it, and it was a stupendous thing to sit there and watch the crowd, and know that Jimmie's genius was making its heart beat fast and faster. When Ursula in her purple cloak and pheasant's feather spoke her lines at the end of the third act, "_I shall love you for a million years_," the house went wild. Men and women who had never loved for a moment roared for this woman who had made them think they could love until eternity. They wanted her back and they got her. They wanted Jimmie and they got him. Ursula made a speech; Jimmie made a speech. They came out for uncounted curtain-calls, hand-in-hand.

The play was a success!

The last act was, of course, an anti-climax. Before it was finished, Elise said to me, in a, stifled voice, "I've got to get back to Jimmie."

It seemed significant that Jimmie had not come to her. Surely he had not forgotten the part she had played. For fifteen years she had worked for this.

We found ourselves presently behind the scenes. The curtain was down, the audience was still shouting, everybody was excited, everybody was shaking hands. The stage-people caught at Elise as she pa.s.sed, and held her to offer congratulations. I was not held and went on until I came to where Jimmie and Ursula stood, a little separate from the rest. Although I went near enough to touch them, they were so absorbed in each other that they did not see me. Ursula was looking up at Jimmie and his head was bent to her.

"Jimmie," she said, and her rich voice above the tumult was clear as a bell, "do you know how great you are?"

"Yes," he said. "I--I feel a little drunk with it, Ursula."

"Oh," she said, and now her words stumbled, "I--I love you for it. Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, let's run away and love for a million years--"

All that he had wanted was in her words--the urge of youth, the beat of the wind, the song of the sea. My heart stood still.

He drew back a little. He had wanted this. But he did not want it now--with Ursula. I saw it and she saw it.

"What a joke it would be," he said, "but we have other things to do, my dear."