The doctor stared hard at him and then asked bluntly, “What about kids?”
“What about them?” Gray asked, as he tucked in his shirt and reached for his sheepskin jacket. “You know any way to guarantee any man he’s going to have kids with any wife he takes? You do that, you’ll make your fortune, Doc.”
“Well, what about the other?” the doctor demanded. “A marriage bed’s supposed to be used for other things than sleeping—you’re a lusty man. Gray, don’t forget it.”
“I’m not. At least I hope I’m not, nor any of the experience that lustiness got me. And that’s considerable. So no matter what it turns out to be, I expect I’ve got enough experience to be able to figure out something for us to do together at night, don’t you think?” he asked on a grin as he clapped on his hat, and then offered his hand to the old doctor. “I’ll think of something,” he promised, more seriously as the doctor hesitated. “So long as I have her, the rest will take care of itself.”
The older man shook his head.
“When you were a boy, you damn near kilt yourself trying to be a man like your big brother. Damned if you didn’t make it,” he said, taking Gray’s hand at last. “You finally figured out there’s more to being a man than riding wild horses, taking crazy risks, and bedding women, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” Gray said as he shook the older man’s hand hard. “But then, if you figure that way, that means there’s a whole lot more to being a woman than what goes on in a bed and having babies, too—don’t it? Don’t worry about me, Doc,” he said, smiling widely. “And thanks. At least I know the odds now. The rest is up to me. I found my woman, I just have to go convince her of that.”
“Gray, I think you can do anything you set your mind to,” the doctor said.
“Yeah, but you don’t know her,” Gray answered, and though he was still smiling, it was certain he wasn’t joking.
He was beyond weary when he returned to his apartment in New York City. It was night and it was late, but he’d had to drive through holiday crowds all the way from Grand Central Depot. He’d passed Christmas in a welter of small towns, seen through his train window as he hurtled homeward. But at least. Gray thought with relief as he let himself in the door, it was still the old year, and with time to spare. It seemed to him that he’d been traveling long years, since birth: train,carriage, and horseback, and it wasn’t just his leg that ached and throbbed as he sat in his parlor and sorted through the mail that had been waiting for him. He didn’t bother to remove more than his hat, and sat wrapped to the ears in his sheepskin jacket as he opened his letters.
But when he came to one of them, he went no further. He sat, in his jacket and travel dust, and read and reread the theatrical bill that his brother had sent to him. It was an advertisement for a new show to premiere at the Warwick Theater that week, a production given by one Kyle Harper and Company. There was to be a comedian he knew, a somewhat famous singer he didn’t, a dance troupe, a magician, a dog act, an acrobatic troupe, and a chorus involved. All this was to be capped by a “Sensational, Heart-Wrenching, Truly Thrilling Performance of the Justly Famous and Moving Play:Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight.” The scenery was billed as being “Magnificent and New to New York,” the costumes as “Appropriate,” and the acting as no more than “Superb” and no less than “Excellent.”
It would feature a new artiste: an actress with a “Renowned” name, for it was to star a “Miss Hannah Darling-Roberts.”
Josh had circled the name with a broad pen stroke and written: “Is thisourHannah?”
And although Gray sat up in his clothes until he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion just wondering about it, he still couldn’t say. But he greatly feared he was too late, after all his haste, and that she’d found her place. And so it might well be that now she no longer was their Hannah, after all.
Chapter Eighteen
Everyone in the theater had a task to perform except for the one man who stood in the empty audience, looking up at the stage. If it were a day later and a later hour, he’d have his own part to play; he’d be one of the opening-night audience, and everyone on the stage would be playing to him. Now, they ignored him as they rehearsed and marked out their places, trying to estimate the best angles for their feet and faces. A few minutes earlier, the chorus and dancers had done a lively Christmas medley. Now they were gone, the musicians were taking their break; the tumblers and animal acts were practicing in the wings, leaving the stage to the actors. They had no costumes on, some still held pages of scripts in their hands, and yet the man in the audience soon forgot that as they got more deeply into their drama.
The lone spectator had seen many plays far better than the truncated melodrama they enacted. And he’d seen them performed by such great actors as Booth, O’Neil, Mansfield, Terry and Irving, Drew and Rehan. But there was something elemental aboutCurfew Shall Not Ring Tonight—a tale of lost love and devotion, that never failed to please him. And then too, Gray could not take his eyes from Hannah Darling-Roberts, the female star of the piece.
She was entirely different from the girl he’d once held in his arms. The Hannah on the stage was beautiful in a new way; everything about her seemed to be magnified, however far from him she was now. Her dark hair drank up the spotlight, her eyes sparkled in it, her voice was pitched to the ears of those-who would love her from yards away. She wore an everyday dress and no stage makeup, but there was something newly seductive about her, even in the way she moved. Gray’s first brush with the stirrings of adult sexuality had come from looking at a set of much fingeredcartes-de-visitea French photographer had taken of the actress Ada Isaacs Menken that some drifter had left behind in the bunkhouse. He’d been transfixed by the sight of the reclining beauty’s flimsy skirt hiked high to reveal white thighs and long, plump female legs in high-laced boots. He’d never seen anything so erotic before, and seldom since, not even in the best bordellos in NewOrleans. Yet now, Hannah, in her ordinary walking gown, high above him on the stage, radiated such sensuality as to leave him as breathless as that ten-year-old boy had been as he’d studied the sensational cards he’d found. No, he thought with growing fear and sorrow, not precisely ‘our Hannah’ now, at all.
And yet, even so, he was happy for her. Because she was very good. And seemed to know it.
Her voice was clear and confident, her movements smooth and natural, for all their exaggeration. There was nothing of the girl who’d laid in his arms in the wings of a western music hall that cold night, declaring she was brave enough to go onstage even as she trembled from the fear of it. He’d loved that girl, and now wondered if he was selfish enough to love her more than this self-assured, newly emerged professional actress before him. But then she glanced down, and seeing him, flashed a swift grin of recognition and welcome—even though her character was weeping—and he knew that nothing had changed for him, no matter what had become of her in the days since he’d last seen her.
Gray sat back to watch the play. He was amused when he finally realized the lovely little sister of the piece was the erstwhile “Little Polly,” and was embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that the only reason he hadn’t recognized her immediately was the interesting way she now displayed in her simple gingham gown. But his amusement faded as he thought about it and realized how time was literally flying. It wasn’t only Polly’s startling new femininity, it was the fact that a new year and a new decade, was only days away. And as the play unfolded, he began to see that his chances might be fading as rapidly. She was good, he thought with equal parts of pride and dismay—she was very good indeed. And all he could offer her was himself. For he began to see that she could win her own fortune.
“I have not forgotten. Shall I forget the spring? Could I forget my beating heart? Oh, Father, let me go. I cannot stay, I must leave now. More depends on this than you can know…,” Hannah pleaded.
“Yes…,” Hannah’s portly “Father” said absently, taking out his pocket watch and studying it. “God Almighty!” he exclaimed. “Look at the time! If you don’t let us go to eat now, we’ll never make it to opening night,” he shouted to the darkened audience. “Here, Kyle, how long do you intend to keep us at it? We had to skimp breakfast, passed up luncheon, and dinner’s on the hob now. I can’t hear my lines for the way my stomach’s growling!”
“Little danger of you wasting away, Renfrue,” Kyle said distractedly from the orchestra pit, as he looked up from some papers a cigar-smoking man was urging on him. “What time is it anyway? Ah, yes, well,” he said, glancing at a watch the man held up. “The question is if you have it down, my children—and down perfectly? Remember, if you skimp on practice, it will go far worse than skimping on a dozen breakfasts. Hannah, my dear,” he called, “I leave it to you. Are you all indeed, done for the day, and ready for the big night as well?”
“We all know our parts and marks,” Hannah said, “as for our performances, that’s for you to judge. But I don’t think we’d know them any better if we practiced all night into the morning.”
“Then you are free, good night, get some rest, and we’ll see you dewy-fresh first thing in the morning,” Kyle said, and no one protested, knowing his “morning” would be long after noon, as any good actor’s was.
The actors began drifting off the stage, calling advice and comment to each other, and Gray stood and came up to the apron. He gazed up at Hannah as she stared down at him.
“Dinner? Please,” he said urgently, “I only just got back to town late last night. I have to speak with you. Yes?”
She hesitated.
“We might have some last-minute things to go over, we’ll not have the chance for any major changes as of tomorrow,” Kyle cautioned her from where he’d appeared at Gray’s side.
