Baby and I were too hungry to play…”
Peggy and Hannah couldn’t resist joining in:
“Slowly they faded, and one Summer’s night
Found their dear faces all silent and white;
Then with big tears slowly dropping, I said…”
Royal added his bass notes for the last line:
“Father’s a Drunkard and Mother is dead!”
They all sang the chorus together, harmonizing beautifully:
“Mother, oh! why did you leave me alone,
With no one to love me, no friends and no home?
Dark is the night when the storm rages wild,
God pity Bessie, the Drunkard’s lone child!”
Gray wasn’t the only one to wipe a tear from his eye when they’d finished. There was total silence in the dining room. They sat still, listening to it. Then they looked around. They hadn’t realized how their singing had carried. But although they were embarrassed, the look on the faces of the waiters hovering near their table made them bite their lips to keep from laughing, and a glance at the assorted expressions of the other diners and then to each other made their eyes glisten with suppressed hilarity. When a tipsy couple at another table began to applaud, and the other well-dressed patrons in the room hesitated, and then joined in, they gave way to open, hearty laughter at last.
“Now I see the lure of the theater from the other side,” Gray said, when they’d recovered themselves.
“So, shall we see you onstage tomorrow night?” Hannah asked.
They all laughed, until she asked, “Or at least in the audience?”
But at that, both gentlemen fell as still as they’d been waiting for their escorts to join them.
Gray spoke up after that awkward moment.
“Ah, no. Afraid not. Royal has some business to finish up, and I…” he paused, thinking quickly. If Royal was gone, he’d have to ask Hannah out alone, and he’d the strangest feeling that she’d refuse, if only because she’d want to keep Peggy company. He could wait.
He’d business of his own anyway, he decided. He’d picked up the merest hint of some disturbing rumors about silver that needed chasing down, but paying attention to hints of rumors was what made the difference between rich men and very rich men. And in so doing, his trail would eventually lead to Aspen, dovetailing with theirs. He’d been planning to stay at the Roaring Fork Club there, where he was an absentee member. But a wise man’s plans were always subject to change. Waiting to see her until she arrived in Aspen would mean a wait of weeks, and looking at her now, he wondered if he could wait another hour until he’d a chance to hold her again. Just speaking with her gave him enormous pleasure.
Still, one week’s absence had won him a wide smile and a compliment. He’d see what more would bring, he thought, never stopping to consider why that decision brought him equal parts of relief and irritation with himself. But then, he was used to being honest with himself.
“I understand you’ll be at The Jerome in time for their grand opening,” Gray said. “And so, I’d like to be the first to invite you ladies out to a real western Thanksgiving dinner with us there. It happens we’ll be at the Jerome, too—I’ve got a friend who could get us rooms even if it meant rolling old J. B. Wheeler himself out of bed—happens he is old J. B., actually—m’ brother had a hand in getting them that railroad spur they needed a few years back,” he said as Royal gazed at him with sheerest relief and gratitude. “So then,” he said, after Hannah looked at Peggy and both nodded instant, pleased acceptances, “a toast!”
He stood, raised his glass, and said, “To Aspen. And Success!”
—To all of us, and each according to his own desires—he added to himself, as they drank and then beamed at one another.
They were held over in Leadville. It was a roaring, prosperous town, with new money and the same old needs that men always had for entertainment. For all its fine hotels and restaurants, the most of it, like most booming mining towns, was composed of hundreds of drab, hastily erected shacks that were the miner’s quarters, with their usual plentitude of dirty clothes, dishes, and dogs, and the absence of women and the sounds of their laughter. So the whorehouses and theaters prospered. The troupe was held over for weeks, and Hannah was glad of it.
It mean money for Kyle and the troupe, it meant ample time to rehearse theirMidsummer Nightsfor Aspen, and since Gray Dylan seemed to have vanished into the West with the suddenness that he’d come out of it, it also meant Hannah was free to go about her business all day without interruption. The fact that her nights were shaken by memories of him—and if she was lucky enough to fall asleep at last, splintered by dreams of him—was another story. An old one, and one she hoped she’d forget with time, as she’d forgotten all her other old hurts. But the problem wasn’t that he brought all the old pain back along with the physical pleasure she’d found in his arms. It was that she’d felt that pleasure; that was what kept her awake almost as much as the memory of his words did.
There’d been a great deal of pain as well as shame in her marriage, but at the beginning there had been pleasure, too. Not the kind of searing, aching, terrifying pleasure she’d discovered at Gray Dylan’s hands and lips, but something very like, something that had promised that. She’d managed to forget that by remembering the worst of her times in her marriage bed. She’d hugged the memories of John’s blaming her, his curses, his bruising hands, and then, the slap that had finally ended it all. Because, she saw now, however bad it was, it had obscured the other part, the best part: the early days when he’d kissed her gently and most of all, had held her close and handled her tenderly. It was only toward the end, when he’d tried his hardest to “have” her in the way he told her he’d had so many others he’d loved less or not at all before, and not succeeded, of course, that he’d grown brutal.
He’d only slapped her the once, that last time, when he’d tried and failed again to make her his wife. But she’d used his words to beat herself with ever since: “You’re not a real woman,” he said. “How am I ever going to have children?” he’d asked her. When she hadn’t answered, but only laid there, shaking, after pulling her nightgown down again to cover herself decently, he’d staggered off the bedand cried, “The doctor said you were imperfect when I told him about us, but I didn’t want to believe him, oh damnation, what am I going to do?” And so even if he hadn’t slapped her in that drunken flurry, she’d have left him, if he hadn’t left her then. He’d just made it simpler—if the death and burial of all her hopes for a normal life could be called simple.
Gray Dylan had brought it all back again. Now he was gone, and she saw he was right. Sometimes there was pleasure in wallowing in pain, especially if it made you forget unattainable pleasures. But this was more than enjoying a good cry, it went beyond tears and never seemed to end. Days and nights passed, and yet it still kept her up and cast her down. The worst of it was that there was no use to it. Because even if she got him to like her more than he obviously desired her when he saw her again, it wouldn’t change a thing.
She ought never to have gone along with him for more than the look of it for Peggy’s sake, she knew that. She should be delighted at this chance to resolve things with dignity, and not the embarrassing confession she’d have to make if she’d led him on any further. That was perhaps the worst of it, because she knew she had led him on, despite all her best intentions. She had no control when he touched her. Twice now, his lips had silenced her good sense. There couldn’t be a third time, so she should be pleased at this reprieve. She knew that, too. But just as she’d told him: knowing a thing wasn’t the same as feeling it.
