Spider Dance (46 page)

“We can do that, Philomena,” he assured me with dramatic anxiety. “It’ll be a squeak but—”

I merely nodded miserably and put my handkerchief to my eyes.

“I can’t say the gender,” she added. “Come back tomorrow with the money and ’tis all yours.”

“Will she . . . he . . . it be healthy?”

“You’re buying a milk cow, are you? I can’t say. I suppose you’ll be able to keep it alive if you take decent care. The mothers of these young rapscallions here breed like rabbits and there’s always one desperate enough to replace a hungry new mourn with the wherewithal to feed what’s already here.

“I tell her a barren couple is desperate to give her babe a good home, and she’s quick to believe it’s for the best.” She eyed us up and down. “You look a respectable sort. I’d not trade a baby to you otherwise, but I won’t take a penny less than eighteen.”

We nodded eagerly and took our leave.

In the crowded, reeking summer street outside we breathed deeply despite everything and took stock.

“Philomena?” I demanded.

“An unusual name smells authentic. All-purpose names like John and Mary smack of deceit before the syllables peel off our lips.” Quentin frowned and spoke again. “And how will we deal with collecting the baby and Mother Hubbard’s school for scandal?”

“I’ll alert the police. That’s all I can do, that and print the truth in the newspaper.”

“And the baby she produces?”

“It will go to an orphanage, which may be more merciful than being on the open market”

“But you can’t guarantee that?”

“I can guarantee that I will expose a shocking trade in infant lives. I can’t guarantee to succor every victim! I have my mother to support, and my idle brothers and their families. I can’t do it all.”

“Hmmm,” was all he said in that irritating British way of his, and of Sherlock Holmes’s. And of Nell Huxleigh’s.

“Are you willing to abet me further in this investigation or not?”

He nodded.

“We must try another route. I must build a case that infants are easily available on the street to anyone who comes inquiring, no questions asked.”

“What will happen to the fourth Hamilton infant?”

“An orphanage, I imagine. Robert Roy certainly won’t want it. And can anyone blame him?”

“Life, and death, are cheap all over the globe, Pink. In some places the unwanted newborn are left out to die in the elements. Nature is the chosen form of execution so human hands rest easy. New York City is no worse than anywhere else.”

“But why can’t it be better?”

“Perhaps it will be, when you publish your story.”

“Maybe. For a while. Here. But the world won’t change.”

“Maybe it will. For a while. Here. And there. That is what we hope for, we spies, knowing we often hope in vain.”

Nodding, I felt it was odd to feel triumphant that I’d found Mother Hubbard and her link to infant lives. To do good I had to expose evil. Not change it, just expose it. Perhaps that wasn’t enough.

I arranged to meet Quentin again for another foray into the buying of babies.

I needed to show a pattern in order to shock the public into indignation.

I wondered if I was very much different from Jack the Ripper in that.

I see she’s having squabbles in the New World as in the Old.
She finds no peace in either. . . . It would be better if she
would stay in the fourth or fifth continent. . . . The memory
of her stay in Bavaria brings her so much income but . . .
gold doesn’t stay with her
.
—KING LUDWIG I ON HEARING OF LOLA’S
AMERICAN ADVENTURES, 1852

Two things had my long tour of Australia taught me: I no longer had the stamina for my brand of tempestuous dance nor for younger lovers.

Perhaps I was prescient when I made a will before I left California, for I’d made a quantity of money in quartz mining and other gold-field enterprises. The legacy of Dujarier’s investment on my behalf proved valuable in the long run, though his own run was cut tragically short. I still mourned him.

But I knew none of this and so was in my native good humor when I left Grass Valley and the West for the open Pacific and the new performer’s Gold Coast, Australia.

First came the long two months’ voyage from San Francisco to Sydney. Then the endless overland treks from town to town in yet another vast and unsettled continent. And the inevitable contentions within the performing company.

Also the inevitable “whipping contests” with my male detractors among the local newspapers and mining towns, for who had not heard of the speed and sting of both my temper and my whip?

And the inevitable romance with my leading actor, a tall and comely comic/romantic lead named Frank Folland. He supported an estranged wife and two children in Cincinnati, but his heart was fancy free, and his fancy soon became me.

Yet something unseen was dragging at my body and spirit. Not only could I not sustain encores during the long Australian tour but on some nights I grew faint both on and off the stage. Headaches fandangoed around my brain like whips.

As in my beloved California, Australia was awash with gold fever. The mining camps clamored for me. I won them over with my plays and the Spider Dance, which they found far less scandalous than reputed, and they ofttimes complained of that fact.

Still, it was a highly lucrative tour. When Frank and I booked the three-masted American schooner
June A. Faldkenberg
to return home, I took its Germanic last name as an omen of my changing fortunes, for Bavaria had been both home and cradle and cross for me.

Our ways might part, Frank and I knew. Ambition and something new warred within my bosom. I could tour the exotic Far East. I could retire to Grass Valley again. Frank considered rejoining his family in New York City, or even reconciling with his wife in Cincinnati.

Nothing had been set in stone; we had the endless voyage ahead of us in which to decide.

Then, it was decided for us.

Our alliance was ending. He was twenty-nine to my thirty-five (though of course I said I was but thirty). I no longer quite looked it, said my mirror. Something was draining me.

After a stop in Honolulu on July 7 for a belated Fourth of July celebration, the ship sailed on. A dinner that night honored Frank’s twenty-ninth birthday. Champagne flowed like ambrosia on Mount Olympus.

Frank went to the deck to clear his head, a young man in his prime standing under a waning crescent moon, gazing at the myriad moons reflected in the whitecaps, his mind mellow with fine wine and celebration.

The ship lurched in the dancing waves. He was not seen again on that deck or this earth.

I wailed. I raged. I beat my breast until I fell gasping to the floor. So quick. So invisibly done! So unseen. So unthinkable.

Not all the letters to the editor in the world would undo the fatal fact of it. I went quite mad for a while. What else was there to do, cooped up on that endless voyage? I called to God to take me too. He didn’t answer. I loathed myself, my selfish self. I had many long days and nights alone to contemplate my failings.

Eighteen days later the Golden Gate came looming out of the San Francisco fog, looking like a prison door opening to swallow my heart.

I could think only of notifying Frank’s parents and estranged wife, of providing for that poor woman and her children.

All that I had loved in California and Grass Valley seemed dust in view of the death of this one young, high-hearted man on his very own birthday.

I tried to go on. I rented a house, hired a maid, found my beloved dog Gip and a few other needy ones of his kind. Only the dogs cheered me. How they tilted their heads and gawked at my chatty white cockatoo from Australia, and the gorgeously feathered lyre bird whose tail was a musical instrument complete.

But even my beloved pets couldn’t console me. Why was I so shaken, so unhappy with myself?

I performed, as expected, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart wasn’t in me any longer. In two weeks, I made more than $4,000. And my heart wasn’t in it.

Sacramento clamored for me, heart in it or not. Before I steamed upriver, I hired Duncan and Company, an auction
firm. Mr. Duncan had a niece, he told me, who danced a little, named Isadora.

This I considered a happy omen, for I’d always been superstitious, like most theatrical folk.

I consigned all my jewelry, the glittering landmarks of my life and travels and travails, my successes and triumphs, for the benefit of Frank’s two young children.

I had no children of my own, save in my heart. Save Lotta and some other young performers.

The power of my name created a sensation. One newspaper said my collection was “probably not surpassed by and possessed by a single individual in the United States.” It was expected to bring $20,000 to $30,000. Five thousand souls trooped into the Duncan showrooms to gawk at my diamonds, rubies, and gold.

My heart warmed at what my past could deliver to Frank’s children’s future, the only children I would ever benefit, besides Lotta, through my tutoring.

Eighty-nine lots of my life went up for auction in San Francisco, yet the proceeds were under $10,000.

Later, it was said to be too rich a bounty for a frontier city.

My entire life seemed to be worthless now, or worth less than it should have been. I opened in Sacramento to sold-out performances, and the first night of the Spider Dance brought the highest receipts in the history of the Forrest Theater.

My body, my jewels seemed cheaply sold. I returned to Grass Valley, but the town had been leveled by fire while I was in Australia. Now it was a-building anew. And I was not. All was changed. All gone. Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

It was there, in Grass Valley, with my beloved house up for sale, that a most extraordinary gentleman called upon me.

He was as tall and powerful as any frontiersman, and rough of manner, but a woman who had toured the mining camps for years was not to be dismayed by that. Besides, I knew him.

He was also filthy rich. And I knew that.

There in my simple house filled with the glories of European decor, he presented me with my auctioned jewels.

While I gaped and stuttered, he told me that he had bought them back for me, that they were going too cheaply, that a woman as beautiful as I should not give up the things that gave her power.

I explained that I aspired to a higher role in life, and always had, than that of merely a beautiful woman.

He nodded as I spoke, not much marking my words. I think he was a man who did not much respect women. But he respected wealth, and he respected what I had amassed from nothing, as he’d also done.

He wanted one favor of me in return for his rescue of my underpriced jewels. If I did him this one simple favor, he would pay Frank’s children the $10,000 dollars he’d paid for my jewels and let me keep my “pretty baubles.”

It would be a fortune for Frank’s children, and no loss to me, but only if I did him one favor.

Although he chuckled and patted my knee, that was not the favor he required (or one that I would have granted).

No, what he wanted was very simple, and fell in perfectly with my current plans. I was to tell no one he had been in California. I was to tell no one what he asked of me. Ever.

I was melancholy in those days, and a bit hopeless for the first time in my life. What he asked didn’t violate my newfound conscience. It benefited Frank’s children. It preserved the jewels, which had sentimental value far above their monetary worth, from being sold for a song on a tin whistle.

It suited his private purposes very well. And perhaps mine.

I agreed.

He was a major personage in that country and time, and it never hurt to oblige a major personage. As long as one didn’t sell one’s soul. And my soul was feeling as weak as my body then.

My home in Grass Valley had survived the fire. I sold it. I took one last look at my rosebushes, and left. I’m told it still
stands today, but it’s far away and I no longer have the heart to chase my own past.