by John Jakes
“Next time don’t make it so long between visits.”
“Listen,” Matt said with his old, sardonic grin, “working on that book, I sucked out the meat of this country, just as if was a ripe orange. There’s nothing left. I’ll come home again when I think something else might interest me. Such as the christening of a new nephew, maybe—?”
“I’m too old for fatherhood!”
“And for all that goes with it?” Matt said with a straight face. “For Julia’s sake, I sincerely hope not.” He picked up his boater, waved and left his brother musing in a dazzle of sunlight.
No, Gideon thought, he would never understand all of Eleanor’s motives, nor what deep need drove her to perform in front of an audience. But Matt seemed to understand, and to think it was an acceptable life. Uneasily, he decided to trust his brother’s judgment.
Was his daughter talented? She’d always shown off at home—and sometimes in public, when she shouldn’t have. Much to his surprise, he found himself conjuring an imaginary scene in which he and Julia sat in the front row of a great playhouse and watched an immense red velvet curtain descend. Then it rose again, and Eleanor stepped to the footlights to receive an ovation.
With his eye closed, he saw it like a painting in his mind. The image was unexpectedly a very pleasing one.
vii
Julia accompanied Matt aboard the Cunard Steamship Persia, kissed his cheek fondly, and left the ship as stewards hurried around the decks, ringing gongs to send all visitors ashore. She waved at Matt from the pier, then turned and walked toward Tenth Avenue. Mills was waiting with the calash on the other side of Tenth, unable to get closer because of the usual congestion.
Even though it was already sunset, a time of shadow and deceptive red light, this part of the West Side still swarmed with people and vehicles. Every half block or so, piers jutted into the river—ferry piers serving the rail lines operating from New Jersey, and shipping piers where the Cunarders and other seagoing vessels docked. The Jersey bluffs were all but hidden by hulls and masts. There were paddle steamers, screw steamers, even some beautiful clippers still traveling the tea routes to India and China.
Tenth Avenue was clogged with freight wagons, drays, hacks and private carriages. Passengers, seamen and longshoremen hurried past Julia as she waited for an opportunity to cross.
She was thankful Gideon had stayed behind, in bed. He desperately needed rest, and a time of peace, after the stress of the past few weeks.
Perhaps their lives were smoothing out at last. Gideon and Eleanor might never come to a complete and harmonious understanding of one another—that was almost too much to ask—but at least there’d been an armistice, and some sign of affection on Eleanor’s part, a sign Gideon had desperately needed for a long time. Now if they could only locate a suitable house—Boston looked more and more like a possibility because of Gideon’s expressed desire to delve into the affairs of Kent and Son—they might be able to look forward to a period that was free of turmoil and unhappiness.
All in all, she felt quite fine on this warm summer evening as the shadows of hurrying men lengthened around her. One halted just to her left. She glanced back from the traffic she’d been watching and saw that the man was wearing a heavy coat. Odd garb for August. The coat didn’t even fit. The sleeves were too long, and concealed the man’s hands, just as an old hat concealed most of his face.
He was one of the army of beggars still tramping the streets, she supposed. Because she felt at peace with the whole human race this evening, she started to open her reticule even before the man made his plea.
But the beggar said nothing. Her eyes opened wide as the man’s right hand rose. The cuff of the coat fell back. A sliver of metal flashed in the sunset.
He rammed the knife through Julia’s dress into her stomach, released the handle, whirled and ran before anyone moved to stop him. By then Julia had fallen to the ground.
Chapter XI
Sky Full of Stars
i
A FEW HOURS after Julia was struck down, a train carrying the Bascom troupe sped westward through the darkness and solitude of the Mohawk Valley.
Eleanor dozed awhile, then woke abruptly. She didn’t know the exact hour, but she was sure it was somewhere in the middle of the night. She just couldn’t make herself comfortable in the unfamiliar confines of an upper berth. Her restlessness was heightened by all the confusing and disappointing things that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.
She put on her robe. Carefully, she poked her legs out between the curtains. She wiggled around until she was on her stomach, then stepped down, making sure her bare toes didn’t press too hard on the curtain of Miss Ruthven’s lower berth. If she didn’t cut her own career short with wretched acting, Miss Adelaide Ruthven would try to cut it short for her, that much she knew after only one performance.
Adelaide Ruthven was a good fifteen years older than Eleanor. She was a talented and experienced actress, with a face that resembled the blade of an ax. That was fine for character roles. For Bascom, however, she played Eliza.
The troupe’s first audience had had some difficulty accepting Miss Ruthven as a mulatto. In fact there was a great deal about Bascom’s Original Ideal Uncle Tom Combination that audiences would have difficulty accepting, Eleanor now believed.
Safely down in the aisle, she tiptoed through the swaying, clacking Pullman. The car was dimly illuminated by small, metal-shaped lamps at either end. She passed Leo’s berth. His presence was something else that troubled her. She felt the same strong attraction for him that she’d felt at the Booth Association. She was still afraid to admit it, though. Thank heavens the troupe had kept busy preparing for and playing the opening performance. She hadn’t had to deal with Leo yet. But occasionally he gave her an intense glance that said she’d have to do so soon.
Perhaps she’d be sent back to New York, and that would solve it.
She opened the door and stepped out on the platform between her car and the next. Chilly wind gusted against her cheeks and set her hair streaming behind her. The weather had turned unexpectedly cool. Dark hills went slipping by on either side of the train. Above, between the cars, she saw one of the most dazzling and breathtaking displays of stars she’d ever set eyes on.
For a moment the sight of the sky took her mind off of her miserable opening night performance, and all the other attendant difficulties. How clear the stars were! Hundreds of them, thousands—a shimmering canopy stretching from horizon to horizon. Some of the stars were brilliant white, some bluish, and a few had a red cast. Individual stars brightened or dimmed as the train kept moving and changing her perspective.
The berth had been stuffy. She welcomed the bite of the night air, even though her bare feet were cold. She clung to the platform rail, savoring the wind’s sweetness as it blew her hair against her cheek one moment, snapped it out behind her the next. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the stars. Her feelings overwhelmed her.
Feelings of shame at having accused her father of being responsible for all the trouble in the household. That terrible book she could barely stand to read had proved how mistaken she’d been.
To be sure, Gideon would always bear some of the blame. He’d said as much himself. But he hadn’t abandoned the family entirely by choice. Margaret’s schemes, the products of her sick mind, had driven him out by making it intolerable for him to stay—just as he’d told her. She hadn’t believed him then. She’d played into her mother’s hands, and unwittingly behaved exactly as Margaret wanted her to behave.
She was beset by feelings of failure, too. Feelings of having made a dreadful mistake.
And feelings of homesickness.
She’d expected to miss Will, but she hadn’t expected to miss the Fifth Avenue house with all its unhappy associations. She even found herself missing her father. The strange new longing had been with her ever since she’d impulsively embraced him on the depot platform.
She found herself a little mor
e tolerant of his relationship with Julia Sedgwick, too. She could never condone the relationship—that would be a kind of betrayal of her mother—but at least she understood why some such relationship had been necessary for her father.
The whole sorry business merely proved again that love was hurtful, and that she’d best dampen her feelings for Leo Goldman. Besides, she’d probably have no opportunity to indulge them. Considering the show in Albany earlier tonight, she’d be lucky to be with the troupe one more day.
ii
The company had arrived in Albany late on Saturday. They were to play the New Novelty Theater on Monday evening. In violation of local ordinances, the theater was surreptitiously unlocked on Sunday afternoon so Bascom could conduct a rehearsal for the benefit of the new players—Eleanor, Leo, and two older men who seemed chiefly interested in their friendship with one another.
To Eleanor’s disappointment; only she and the three new men were present for the rehearsal. And rather than walking them through the entire show, Bascom sat them in chairs and supervised a swift reading of the dialogue. He only made one or two comments to each person. Eleanor had hoped for intensive discussion of character motivation. Instead, she was given a curt “Louder there.” Or “That’s where you roll your eyes. By God, they’ll cry buckets.”
The session lasted about two hours. Then they spent another hour following Bascom around while he showed them where the various flats, flown backdrops, and pieces of special machinery would be positioned for each scene. Eleanor made frantic notes on her sides of dialogue. So did Leo. The older men didn’t bother.
She had already been warned that Bascom never arranged stage pictures, or directed entrances and exits, let alone whole scenes. If the actors formed a pleasing picture, or played a scene with special skill, it was solely by accident—and if the picture or the performance was duplicated on another evening, it was due solely to the effort of the cast.
Late on Monday, Bascom did call the whole company together for another line rehearsal, this one with the actors and actresses sitting or lounging around the stage wherever they wished while they clipped off the dialogue at top speed. Even reciting that way, Eleanor drew spontaneous applause for Eva’s death scene—and her first looks of animosity from Miss Ruthven. What a pity Monday night’s show hadn’t matched the intensity, or the success, of the rehearsal.
In addition to playing St. Clare’s daughter, Eleanor doubled in brass as a female spectator at the slave auction in act five. And, wearing men’s clothing, she was a supernumerary patron in the tavern scenes, including that in the first act in which Eliza appeared with her young son Harry. The role of Harry was unrealistically played by a midget named Elmer Fiddler. During the rest of the show, Fiddler, who was thirty or so, supervised the movement of scenery. A white midget made up as a mulatto boy was only one of many anomalies in Mr. J. J. Bascom’s tawdry and slapdash production.
Before Eliza—Miss Ruthven—escaped from the riverside tavern, Eleanor was already drawing glares from the older actress. She had to suffer through the rest of the show before she found out why. And “suffer” was none too extreme a word. The evening quickly became a disaster for everyone.
The first trouble came during the pursuit of Eliza across the painted ice floes. Dan Prince’s two Borzois had been off the boards for about six weeks. They were not yet reaccustomed to the stage lights. While the piano in the orchestra pit thundered out its menacing music, Nicolette jerked on her leash and began barking. She wouldn’t stop. Then Nicolai looked stage left, instead of stage right at the fleeing Eliza, and relieved himself.
The audience howled. But worse was in store.
Leo Goldman was far too young to play Eleanor’s father, St. Clare. Even with his stirring voice, he couldn’t carry it off, and the audience let the players know it. Loudly. Eleanor was so unnerved, her opening scene as Eva totally lacked the conviction she’d given the part in rehearsal. She knew she was floundering and doing a lackluster job, and the more she fretted while she was onstage, the more nervous she became.
Then, behind the scenes, she found herself cornered in semidarkness by J. J. Bascom. He insisted he needed help getting into his Legree coat. That turned out to be a pretext for pawing her. She made him cross by repeatedly pulling away.
“Your coat fits perfectly, Mr. Bascom.” She yanked it smooth around his collar, again dodged his groping hand and hurried off.
Either Bascom was still angry with her when he made his first entrance, or bombast was his regular style. Whatever the reason, he roared and foamed and overacted dreadfully in the part of the overseer. Dan Prince, on the other hand, was surprisingly good as Tom, even though he reeked of whiskey during the entire six acts—something that reminded Eleanor of her late mother, and further unsettled her.
One of the other actors derisively told Eleanor that Prince drank to make his slurred dialect that much more realistic. She thought it was a nasty, vindictive thing for an actor to say about a member of his own company. Probably the man was just jealous of Prince’s talent. It was another jolting lesson. The theater certainly wasn’t the glamorous and idealistic place she’d imagined.
Drunk or not, Prince drew loud and spontaneous applause when he ascended to heaven in the final tableau.
The applause might have lasted longer but for another mishap. Eva—Eleanor—was seated on a cutout dove hung beside the gates of heaven. One of the wires supporting the dove suddenly broke. With a surprised screech, Eleanor fell to the stage. She landed in a graceless sprawl, discovering a moment later that her wig of yellow curls had tumbled off. Dazed, she thought she should retrieve it as fast as possible. She started crawling toward it but was frozen in place by the booming sound of laughter.
Considering all the flaws in the show, the audience was surprisingly generous with its applause at the final curtain. Prince took the last bow, Bascom the penultimate one, and Martha Prince the one before his. Despite her age, the actor’s wife was marvelous as Topsy. She’d danced the character’s breakdowns with a liveliness that startled and enthralled Eleanor as she watched from the wings.
While the sets were struck and crated under the profane supervision of the midget stage manager, ladies of the town came in with hampers containing a cold supper for the company. Several adolescents—so Eleanor thought of them, having gotten through one complete professional engagement, albeit wretchedly—lingered on the sidelines. The young people watched the actors enviously, but were too shy to speak to them. For a brief moment she felt vastly superior. Then she remembered her poor performance and decided she was being an arrogant ninny.
On top of that, she noticed Miss Ruthven staring at her in a hostile way. After that, Eleanor couldn’t eat so much as one piece of cold chicken.
The moment the townspeople left, Miss Ruthven again collared Bascom and yelled her complaint. In the first tavern scene, Eleanor had been sitting upstage near a cutout window. She’d done her best to pantomime the part of a lively, convivial rustic. Too convivial! Miss Ruthven screamed to the manager. Eleanor had deliberately upstaged her—and then done miserably in her own part.
Eleanor tried to apologize and tell Miss Ruthven the first crime was unintentional. The actress turned her back. She threatened to quit the company and return to New York to accept an ingénue role unless Bascom discharged Eleanor, who by then was ready to burst into tears.
Abruptly, Dan Prince came lurching onstage, his neck still stained by his blackface makeup. Rings of it surrounded his red-rimmed eyes as well. He could barely stand upright as he passed Leo Goldman. He gave the young man an affectionate pat, then moved on to Eleanor and put his arm around her. He acted drunk but he sounded sober.
“Addie, shut your mouth. We all know—that is, those of us who are experienced in this troupe know—that you insist on initiating all newcomers. Very well, you’ve done it. Miss Kent was brilliant in rehearsal and rotten onstage. You’ve had the same experience a hundred times, I’ll wager. So let her alone and stop those silly th
reats. You know full well that no New York manager is going to hire you to play an ingénue any more than he’s going to hire me to play a romantic lead.”
He glowered. So did she. Then Miss Ruthven whirled and stamped offstage. Prince squeezed Eleanor again, belched softly, and staggered away. That ended the battle, but she suspected the war would continue.
There on the swaying platform, Eleanor asked herself whether it was worth staying in the company and struggling against Miss Ruthven’s obvious enmity. She just didn’t know. In one evening, she’d lost her enthusiasm for trouping. The applause from the audience seemed ludicrous in view of the production’s excesses, miscastings, and mistakes. The scenery showed its age. So did the costumes. Altogether, Bascom’s was a third-rate troupe. No, tenth-rate—or worse.
She gazed at the starry arch of sky in a forlorn way, letting the night wind spread her hair like a dark flag again. She felt small. Frightened. She wanted to go home—
The door of her car crashed open. In terror, she pressed against the rail. For a moment she saw no one in the dark rectangle. But she was certain it was the troupe’s proprietor, come to find and discharge her.
A cloud of whiskey fumes floated out, followed by Daniel Prince in a quilted dressing gown with a large hole in one elbow.
He shut the door behind him. A sudden sway of the train hurled him sideways. Eleanor shrieked softly, grabbed the dressing gown and kept Prince from tumbling down the steps and over the chain to the rocky embankment.
“Mmm,” Prince muttered. “Damn rough roadbed. Guess I’d better hang on.”
He reached for the rail and missed. On the next attempt, Eleanor guided his hand.
“Thank you,” he said, using the words as the cue for sliding his left arm around her shoulders. He felt her stiffen. “Martha woke me. She heard you leave the car and thought I should see whether you were all right.” He was sounding surprisingly sober all at once. “Care to tell me your troubles?”