Motion Picture Magazine (Feb-Jul 1921)

(pWSSSWX "I'm going to marry him, ability of eighteen to be solemn Father," said Zoe. He could i . vv u ~ lone;. not believe his ears. The ° . # world should suit the will of 'All his life it has been like Jean Jacques Barbille! that," nodded Jean Jacques' wife, "but it will not always be so ! A man cannot play God. A man cannot command love. Love must be given freely. Love is the great gift. Love is — listen !" She took up the guitar from the table and swept the strings, and the room was full of a splendid unease of sound. She sang in her native language which Zoe did not understand, but even the untouched, maiden heart of the girl understood the meanings of the song, thru which the strings throbbed like the beating of a heart. The plainly furnished provincial room was suddenly wide as the world, small as the heart, filled with all the pain and all the joy of the ages. It was more than a love song. It was a confession. Zoe's faintly tinted cheeks crimsoned with sweet shame which was not for herself to whom love had not yet come, but for all the brave, unwise, splendidly spendthrift lovers who had counted the world well lost that they might have each other. The blood that ran thru her young veins was cool, unhurried, but it was the fierce blood of two nations of fierce lovers, and there was latent in her the possibilities of a Thais or a Melisande. She did not know why, but she was frightened — for her mother, for herself. She clutched the older woman's knees. "Maman, what do you mean ? What is it ?" The golden fires flickered in Carmen's eyes, went out. "It is nothing, child." Eighteen years she had lived in this dull house in this strange, dull land where the rioting roses of her native Seville would have been chilled and blasted (T\by the cold Northern winds. Eighteen years, for her fa P64 lAfifi ther's sake, she had denied her heart, starved her nature, hungered. Eighteen years! They had given her Zoe, to be sure. But she was not content to be merely a mother. She was still young, still able to awaken love. She touched the soft hair at her knee. "Z o e," she said fiercely, "Zoe, if you ever have love offered you, take it ! No matter who would refuse it to you. It is your right, it is the reason for your being in this world. It is beyond all laws, beyond all other rights. If love comes to you, take it ! Do you hear?" At supper that evening the master of the house was silent. Under the great, strong beard his jaws were set grimly, and a vein in his forehead twitched. So he always looked when anyone had dared oppose him. The women had learned to know that it meant trouble for someone, that look. They too, sat silent, Zoe trembling, her mother brooding on something very far away, until, finally, he pushed back his chair with a great, rude scraping noise, and said to his wife, without looking at her, roughly : "Tell Bienville to go the rounds tonight. I am going to town. I shall not be back until very late." A friend from the next farm called to take Zoe to the movies. The great house grew silent. Lights winked among the outbuildings and disappeared. Carmen Barbille smiled very softly and set a candle in the window of the parlor. Then she sat down beside it to wait. Eighteen years. She had met Jean Jacques Barbille on the ship coming from France. He was a new thing to her, the sea was new, and the life before her thrilling, glamorous and unknown. She could hear her father moving about his room overhead. A grandee of Spain, but the hero blood had grown sluggish in his veins. He whined and whimpered because life did not give him his due. He had urged his daughter's marriage with this wealthy French provincial, with a greedy eye upon an easy chair and plenty of tobacco for the rest of his life. And Jean Jacques was not an uncouth figure ; a great, virile, masterful creature with a laugh like a bull's bellow and sanguine blood ruddy in his cheeks. So she had let herself be taken. Eighteen years ! This stupid, pent-up life — no music, no color, no dancing! And he had not loved her ; merely possessed her, owned her as he owned everything else as far as eye could see. And now there was the sound of footsteps in the darkness. A man's figure, slim, boyish, young, loomed out of the shadows. Carmen laughed low. "Georges ! The candle brought thee !" George Masson caught at her hands. "Carmen ! This