Indians, Gray thought sourly, had been known to move less quickly, and much less quietly.
Hannah bit her lip.
“Ah, but I thought we’d everything settled, and you wanted to spend some time with Mr. Jackson—so as to see if we have to slip his song in tomorrow night or not,” she explained, looking at Kyle.
Kyle glanced over his shoulder with a momentarily worried expression, and stared at the man he’d just left waiting for him. Jackson’s new song mightn’t be good, but it wasn’t bad, or most importantly, difficult to learn. And Jackson was willing to pay a good sum to have it included in the revue; after a few drinks, dinner, and a nice chat, he might be willing to pay even more. Especially if heheard that Harty Carstairs already had a new song in the show. This new breed of songwriters was a delight to work with—they paid to have their songs sung, on the generally correct theory that the more they were performed, the more they’d be performed in the future. Forget about talking machines and box cameras—it was familiarity, not necessarily quality, that made the public’s heart grow fonder—that was the most important discovery of the decade, as Kyle was always happy to tell songwriters interested in his shows.
“Ah, yes. Well then, but be sure to get a good night’s rest. Remember, you’ve a big day and a bigger night tomorrow,” Kyle warned her, deciding, from the look of her hesitation with Gray Dylan, that he could spend his own evening with Jackson, since Hannah clearly was his bird in the hand.
“I won’t be a minute,” Hannah told Gray, and went backstage to get her coat and hat.
Their dinner was the strangest one they’d ever had together. The food at the chophouse was excellent, but not so fine that she had to comment on it so much as she did. That was after Gray explained that his trip home had been hurried, harried, but successful, and before, having exhausted the subject of her approval of the restaurant, she told him brightly about how well the play was going, and how sure she was that she was doing the right thing this time.
“And if your father appears in the audience…?” he asked, and hated himself when he heard what he’d said, even though he was willing to say anything to erase that charming, polite, impersonal expression from her face. She was a very good actress, she’d kept him entertained through four courses, but she’d not looked him directly in the eye once since they’d sat down.
“Oh. But I haven’t told him. Still,” she said, cutting a tiny wedge from the corner of a cutlet on her plate, “if he comes, so be it. Iama ‘Darling’ by birth and right, and if I’m not good, at least I’ll be a curiosity, and Father, being an actor, will like publicity of any sort, just as Kyle says.”
“Does he?” Gray asked.
She nodded, and immediately launched into a long story to do with Polly’s debut as a young woman.
“As to that…she said when she was done, and she realized she hadn’t gotten the laughter she’d thought the story merited. “She was just asking about Peggyagain. I haven’t gotten a letter since she went back with you—how is she, and how is the family settling in?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Gray said, still gazing at her steadily. “I left them at the station. I stayed just one day and one night at home before I got on the train again. Why won’t you look at me, Hannah?”
She looked up from her plate and met his eyes at last. They were as blue and clear as she feared she’d remembered, but filled with sadness now.
“Why did you go back then?” she blurted, staring at him.
“I went to see the wisest man I know—in medicine. An old doctor who put me back together many times. I needed him to do it again. He did.”
She half rose from her seat, because her first impulse was to flee. Embarrassment made her cheeks grow pink, shame brought tears to her eyes, but her training made her sit again, and her talent made her voice calm.
“I see. Do you think he’d like a photograph?” she asked quietly. “For his records, that is, if not for his curiosity’s sake? Although I doubt you’d find a photographer willing to take such pictures, even if I’d pose for them. I’m sorry, he’ll have to wait until I’m dead and have willed my body to science. I think I’ve done now. Gray, I’d like to leave.”
“It wasn’t just your problem,” he said as quietly. “It was mine, too.”
She cocked her head to the side, “?‘Was’? Yes, perhaps it was. But it is no more. I’ve given that up, Gray. No matter what your wise doctor told you, it is no longer your problem. Now it’s just mine. Or rather, it isn’t. No more doctors, no more books—I’m like a child that’s been let out of school, aren’t I?” she said on a charming laugh. “I’ve chosen the theater. I’ll make my life there. I want nothing else, ever again. It doesn’t matter if I do well or not tomorrow night,” she said quickly, cutting him off as he began to speak, “there are other careers in the theater than acting for me. But I’ve decided my future will be in my work, I’ve done with foolish fancies and futile games.”
“You’ve decided?” he asked softly. “And what about me? I love you, Hannah,” he said. “I’ll never be done with that. Was I…am I simply a futile, foolish fancy to you?”
Her smile faded as he went on, “…By the way, my learned doctor had no answers for me. But talking to him, and only him—and he’s kept secrets deeperthan a well could—made me see there was only one answer, one I’d always known.”
She licked her lips and gazed at him, unable to speak another word—if only because a squadron of busboys came to clear the table so that another contingent of them could put a sixth course before them.
“Yes, I think we’ve finished,” Gray said, reaching for his billfold, “at least, here.”
He eyed the platters of fowl and vegetables with such distaste, the restaurant’s host sprang forward to their table.
“We have to talk,” Gray said, ignoring the commotion he’d caused, and the look in his eyes was such that the host relaxed. It was not the food, after all, that was making the gentleman leave so suddenly; it was only that he was after different delicacies tonight. It was only that he was clearly in love. And who could blame him?
They got only so far as the curb in front of the chophouse.
“Don’t call a hackney,” Hannah said quickly, as she saw him raise his hand, “I live so close by—we can talk as we walk. I can’t invite you in. My landlady’s respectable,” she hurried to explain as she saw his arm fall to his side. “It’s bad enough that I let you in the other nights—she’s been looking at me oddly ever since. I know you only stayed a few minutes, but I’m in the theater, and she’s not a theatrical landlady…I promised I’d only give lessons in my rooms during the day, and those with the doors open, but now that I’ve actually taken to the stage,” she said sadly, realizing what she said was truth, “I expect I’ll have to move. The public may be more accepting of us these days,” she added, shrugging, “but only so long as we don’t live in their houses.”
They walked down the street as a light snow fell over them. Gray shortened his stride to match the small steps Hannah had to take because of her tightly fitted, bell-shaped skirt. But she walked rapidly because she was cold, and soon was short of breath.
“Of course, when I’m rich and famous I can let far better rooms—anywhere, except in a respectable land-lady’s house,” she puffed, as she clutched her hands together in her muff and tried to ignore the cold of the snow and his eyes, “and at the Player’s Club, that is. Father belongs there, but even though he’d vouch forme, I belong to one of the only two groups that can never join or stay there: critics and females. But still…”
