“Ah!” Kyle cried as he entered the car and startled them back to reality. “Not rehearsing! So you’ve all got your parts inHer Fatal Charmdown pat. And so speedily! I can scarcely wait to hear you.” He settled himself on the edge of a chair and looked up at them with great expectation.
“We haven’t,” Maybelle admitted, “we were merely…taking a break.”
“Breaking your hearts, more like. What is this? Come, come,” Kyle said, rising and pacing down the center of the long aisle before he swung back to confront them again. “My songbirds in the next car are in as high spirits as they are in voice right now. Ah, but I see…” he said wisely, cocking his head to the side, “that’s just it. We’ve the singers and the comedians, the magicians and the dancers in there. All the lively arts. You, my poor fellow tragedians, are likely exhausted in spirit after enacting the trials of those you portray. Such, such is the price of drama, my friends,” he said sympathetically.
Since none of them, not even Polly, felt the smallest twinge of sympathy for the stock characters they played inHer Fatal Charm—a playlet to do with the tribulations of an erring daughter, a drunken husband, and a greedy landlord, that they all agreed wasn’t a patch onEast Lynne, although it was stolen from it as deftly as copyright laws would allow—they fell still again.
Kyle still wore his outsize look of sympathy when Hannah spoke up.
“We…we were taking a break and observing the twilight, merely,” she said.
“We were wondering whether we’d have anything in our audience but tumbleweeds,” Frank said.
“We were thinking of New York,” John Wills, their lead middle-aged male, said.
“Pollywas learning her lines,” Mrs. Jenkins volunteered, earning her a sour look from everyone, even Kyle.
“Ah,” Kyle said on a long, audible sigh, “I am lucky that none of you were my forefathers or mothers.”
He let them regard him doubtfully before he went on.
“I’d never have tasted oysters if you had been. Imagine!” he said in a such a thrilling tone that they all were willing to imagine whatever he proposed, even the possibility that he was being sincere. “If any of you had been the first man or woman, upon seeing your first oyster—a rock, some of you might say, or a barnacle, another would guess—and then whatever you thought it was, you’d have tossed it away. Because it was an ugly thing, ridged, hard, and shelled, covered with a beard of weed, brine, and sand. If you’d seen a gull cracking one open and feasting on it, you’d certainly not have bothered to try one once you’d seen the naked, pulpy thing within. But what you’d have missed! What I’d have missed! Something rich, meaty, and tangy. And nourishing. And some say, ah—in deference to dear Polly—invigorating.”
They smiled as he went on, “Now look at what you’re doing! The same thing. You look out the window and see nothing but brush and grass, and are immediately prepared to fly back to the city, where everything is apparent, where the spirit of adventure means crossing a street against traffic. Oh dear!” He sank to a seat and seemed to lapse into a despondency so profound that even those who knew his usual gambits began to worry for him. Then he bounded up again and pointed a long finger at them.
“Tell me!” he demanded. “If you lived out there, in among the rocks and the mountains and the grass, what would you want most in life?”
“Ah…, company,” Hannah said, seeing the finger aimed at her.
“Entertainment,” Maybelle added immediately in turn.
Kyle pointed at each of them, and they each responded in their turn and according to their own temperament, or what they thought he was after them tosay; “Excitement,” “Civilization,” “Friends,” “Crowds,” “People,” One even putting in a weak: “Umm—interesting things,” when all other city pleasures had been mentioned.
“Exactly,” Kyle beamed upon them. “Just so: theater,” he said triumphantly.
“All of those things mean theater, and they need theater,” he said. “Out there— somewhere beyond your eyes, are people who need you, and who are willing to pay—and well—to see you. Oh, my friends,” he said rhapsodically, “I have seen the theaters they’ve built to entice you. As fine as any in any city I’ve seen—no, some are finer. Tabor’s Opera House in Denver—a gem worthy of London town. Red plush and gold curtains, a stage that an elephant could waltz upon, the audience swagged in gilt and hung with velvet, electric lights and a backstage—” He kissed his fingers to the sky, as though bereft of words to describe its wonders. But not for long. “And the opera house in Leadville! Not to mention the new jewel in the crown of the new West—the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen…friends, they are thronged every night of the week, no matter who’s playing there, because they’re starved for us.
“Who is starved? All the people of the West you cannot see from this train. Those too wealthy to want to live on the tracks—where I believe you expect them to,” he said on a laugh as they smiled with him, “since, as you haven’t seen them, you don’t believe in them. And others who must live in the new cities: those who run mines and refineries, and the fortunes made from them. And all the other men and women the new prosperity has brought together. Now, do you wish to look out the window and pine for the city you know, or accept that I’ve seen the ones you will know, the ones that breathlessly await you?”
But now the landscape outside the train was obscured by the blackness of night, and only their own dimly reflected images could be seen, ghostlike, on the windows. The only visible reality was within the brightly lit, onrushing train.
“I think we can go over that renunciation scene again, Lottie. I’m willing if you are,” Nelson said.
“Oh yeah… Oh yes, certainly,” Lottie said, rising and taking up her script again.
Kyle smiled and watched them for a while before he ambled down the aisle and off into the next car again.
Only then did Maybelle leave off pleading for her husband not to throw their erring daughter out into the storm to say excitedly, “I didn’t know we were going to play the Wheeler! It’s the latest thing!”
“Or the Denver Tabor,” Lottie said with her eyes wide.
“But we won’t play any if we don’t get it right,” Frank said. Then he doused his radiant smile and growled, “Not another day, my beauty! The mortgage is due tomorrow—unless my payment is collected…tonight.”
Kyle stood outside the door to their compartment and smiled, before he slid the door to the adjoining car aside. He heard the silence long before he saw all the woebegone faces before him.
“What’s this?” he cried at once, striding into the car. “My songbirds molting and my dancers wilting? Come, where is your magic, Mr. Howard? And your jests, Mr. Claxton? Or like Yorick, have you expired? Look at your long faces! Ah, I see what it is. I’ve just come from the tragedians, and they’re merry as the day is long, but then, my fellow variety stars, I know how hard it is to be gay all the time. Such, such is the fate of the clown—you must smile, though your heart be cracked. But why ever on earth should it be?”
“We were thinking about New York,” one little dancer said softly.
