It took a heartbeat more, but he did raise his head. Only so far as to look her directly in the eye.
“You could have more than that, too,” he said quietly, as she tried to look away from his keen blue stare, and failed. “Now and later. Because I don’t just mean for an hour, or a day, or even a year. I’m not at all sure what I mean yet, except that I mean you no harm, believe me. I’ve never said as much before to any girl and…”
“No,” she said again, closing her eyes this time. “I can’t and won’t…please, believe me, for all that I’ve led you on, I haven’t meant to. I simply couldn’t help it, but I must now, because I can be nothing more to you.”
“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I…”
Whatever he was going to say was ended by Royal’s loud, imperative call, “Gray? Where are you at? Hey. Gray. Gray?”
Gray stepped out of the shadows and stared at where Royal stood in the center of the lobby, with Peggy at his side.
“Cattle have been called home with sweeter voices,” Gray answered with some annoyance.
“Yeah,” Royal said, his long face alight with excitement as he went on, “but you was nowhere in sight. Got news. Peggy here has done me the honor of consenting to be my wife. Soon as can be. You going to be my best man?”
“I’m not going to let anyone else be,” Gray said, coming forward to shake his friend’s hand, before he placed a light kiss on Peggy’s cheek. “He’s a good man. Miss Peggy. But I’m not altogether sure he’s good enough for you. You sure about this? He’s mighty big, but I can out-wrassel him if you want to get away.”
“Well, of course I know I’m not good enough for her,” Royal said at once, as Peggy began to blushingly protest how sure she was, until she saw Hannah, and then she left off in order to throw herself into Hannah’s outstretched arms, and they hugged hard.
“Lord,” Gray said softly to Royal, as the two women embraced. “That was fast enough. What did you do? Drag her aside, say, ‘Will you?’ and then start hollering for me?”
“Hell, no,” Royal said indignantly. “I told her my mind, and made her my offer. And I kissed her for a spell,” he admitted in low tones, before he picked up his voice and his eyes and stared at Gray, “because I’d a right to, at last. But we ain’t married yet, so I thought it would be better to get her out in the open before much more went on. She trusts me more than I do. And I got to protect her, that’s the whole idea of it, y’ see.”
Gray’s expression grew still and thoughtful as he studied his friend’s face.
“Yes. I’ll be your best man,” he finally said, “but I don’t think you need one. Because I don’t think you could do better than yourself, my friend.”
Endings are all important in the theater; finales are considered all the better for being spectacular. But even they aren’t necessarily the last word, because of the tradition of encores. And so the Harper troupe’s farewells to each other were long and various and began long before their actual departure did.
Long before their train was to leave for New York, Nelson DeWitt showed everyone his new leaflets. He’d paid a great sum to have them made up in Denver,but even at that, he said, it cost less than it would have in New York, and they’d just been delivered to him. He’d a stack of thin, ten-page brochures, with his picture on the front cover, entitled, “Nelson DeWitt, An American Thespian.” He was privately thrilled with them, but said he needed to get everyone’s opinion before he could be sure they were good enough to give away to directors, producers, and fans. That was the only polite way he could be sure his fellow performers all got a good look at them, and took a sample apiece. A man never knew where his next job was coming from, after all.
Hannah thought they were dreadful, and so exclaimed as she leafed through one, “Oh, how wonderful. You look so…ennobled as Hamlet, Nelson, you really do. I’d no idea you ever played him. Nor Charles Barlow in ‘School for Scandal’!” she cried, seeing the next photo, “I am impressed!”
She was only impressed at how badly he looked, affecting the same, jut-jawed pose in each picture, although he wore different costumes in each. Each photograph faced a page of selected reviews. He was a far better actor than the stiff, postured pictures hinted at, but he’d paid a fortune for the brochures, and they were done, so what could she say? Burn them?
“Yes, well,” he said with pleasure, looking over her shoulder as avidly as if he’d never seen them, “everybody’s saying publicity’s the newest thing. The girls can get their pictures on cigarette cards and chocolate boxes, but even men are making their faces familiar these days. They’re putting out decks of stage playing cards with theatrical faces now, too, just thought I’d get a self-start this way. A man’s got to move with the times, and a picture is worth a thousand words—though I’ve got those, too—in the reviews.”
And all those thousand words say the wrong thing, Hannah thought sadly, because although the camera didn’t lie, it couldn’t act as well as Nelson could. She flipped through the leaflet, seeing how the camera kept cheating Nelson, robbing him of his living grace and charming smile, emphasizing instead the narrow shoulders and weak chin she’d never really noticed before, and she asked, “May I keep one, please?”
Soon after, Maybelle and her gentleman tenor announced that they’d heard of aPatiencebeing done in Chicago, and so they’d be leaving the company at the Aspen train station, not at Grand Central Depot in New York. Two dancers decided to go with them and try their luck.
The day after that, Frank Dupree, their resident villain, collected his mail, and after he’d read it, announced that he’d be leaving the troupe when they got to New York, and taking the next train up to Buffalo. Where, he said with not so much of a twitch of his dark mustache, he was himself going to be married—and then, begin work with his father-in-law in the lumber business. For good, and forever, he said, the look in his eyes forbidding any jests, because he’d have a family to support, and her family felt, as well he knew, that he couldn’t do it as an actor.
There was a long, shocked silence after he’d spoken. He received hasty pats on the back from the men, and hurried hugs and quick kisses from the ladies, as they tried to hide their sobs and tears. Then they hastened away from him. They acted as though a dear friend had died. But so he had, to them.
Three days after she’d begun it, Peggy’s wedding dress was done, and she insisted that she had time, between performances and meetings with Royal, to sew a fine new one for Hannah to wear to her wedding. And heedless of Hannah’s protests, began it.
The next night. Gray tried to get Hannah to come out with him for the fourth time since Thanksgiving, and this time she’d an even better excuse than the other times, because she had to help Peggy finish the dress.
The night the troupe gave their farewell performance, they took their bows, then went out and drank and wept and told each other and themselves the usual lies about their future plans. But they didn’t stay out too late, because they knew there was a wedding in the morning they had to attend, before they got on the train to make the long trip home.
Royal and Peggy sat at a separate table and talked in low voices—that was, when they stirred themselves from their dazed content to do more than hold hands. Gray sat at a long table with all the remaining troupe, and joked and sympathized and kept everyone such good company that Hannah couldn’t claim he was her escort more than he was anyone else’s. She stole glances at his hard profile every now and again, as often as she caught him watching her, and was rewarded with his widest smile when he caught her at it. But in all, he was behaving exactly as she’d asked him to. So she’d nothing to complain about but cruel fate, and she’d done that often enough in the past; so it was hard to know why it was so hard to swallow whenever she thought of all she’d be leaving the next day.Weddings present reminded people of weddings past, she decided, and tried to let it go at that, even though she knew very well she was lying.
It was long after everyone had said good night, when she’d slipped into her nightgown and was staring out the hotel window at a crescent moon so close she thought she could reach out and hang her hat on it, that Peggy spoke to her about more than wedding plans and dresses, at last.
“Hannah, dearest,” Peggy said from the depths of her adjoining bed, and from her hesitant voice, Hannah feared she’d talk about good-byes. She sighed, because she really thought she couldn’t, not now, not tonight, not just yet.
“May I ask you a question?” Peggy asked softly. “I know I ought not, for all I want to, but you’re my best friend, even if my friends from New York were here, you’d be, you know.”
