Firmament of Beauty
One night in Lethbridge, and they reached Calgary the next afternoon: a broad, wide-open place, with not a tree to be seen, nor a paved street, the riverbanks crowded with tumbledown shacks and garbage dumps. Indians were common in the streets, walking in parties of six or seven with their horses and women. It was a raw city, Clover thought, but had everything laid out as if it one day might be as civilized as Helena, and trolley cars already zipping along the thoroughfares.
She and Bella walked the straight streets while Mama and Aurora fought through sessions with the dressmaker. The
Très Belles Aurores
would be opening at the Starland in a week. The peasant blouses, casino skirts and
Lakmé
costumes were a rush job, and much was still to be discussed: ribbon, depth of flounce, and for the
Lakmé
costumes—perfect!—short hoops like lampshades, worn over tight pantaloons, enchantingly oriental.
Clover had heard talk of a wedding dress, as well, but Aurora had put a stop to that, insisting that she would wear the peau de soie from Helena: an ice-cream vision, needing only to be hemmed. The wedding
was set for the Saturday before they opened, to garner the most press possible. Mayhew was busy sweet-talking editors from the eight newspapers; he had himself paged in hotels and restaurants, interrupting with messages of bogus urgency the lavish luncheons he gave. He’d installed the
Très Belles Aurores
in Mrs. Hillier’s, a small boarding hotel catering to respectable vaudeville, only six streets from the Starland.
The Starland itself was a plain box on 8th Avenue, not near as grand as many of the other theatres, one of a small string with theatres in Winnipeg, Brandon, Calgary and Lethbridge, and on the other side of the line, in St. Paul and Omaha. Although most were moving-picture houses, the Omaha theatre had been running vaude, and management had decided to try it in the Calgary branch. Mayhew arranged, in what seemed like a matter of hours, to helm the effort until the Muse should be ready to open in Edmonton. He seemed to have twenty irons neatly arranged at his fire, Clover thought. Twenty
she
knew of, probably another dozen he’d kept up his sleeve. He dashed in and out of the theatre, where rehearsals had begun; in the evenings, Mayhew squired the three girls to the other theatres in town to check the competition—never paying for a seat, so successfully had he established himself as an impresario to be given every entrée.
Mama begged off each time, saying that Mayhew’s escort was enough; she was working in secret, Clover knew, on an embroidered wedding veil for Aurora. Between the fire and two gas-lamps, she sat stitching late into the evening, a garden of white-on-white flowers growing under her silver needle. Clover had heard her murmuring a series of wishes, like spells, into the veil as she sewed: that Mayhew would treat Aurora well, that he would be kind to her sisters, that Aurora would be happy, or at least safe and well. Nothing more ambitious. She was careful not to prick her finger, saying blood on the veil would mean a wound or a broken marriage.
The girls wore their best lawn to the fashionable Bijou Theatre. They had carefully dressed their hair, but were overshadowed by the extravagance of dress and coiffure in the audience around them, let alone onstage. Made shy by the noise and crush and sheer number of
people, Clover felt they were country mice as they settled into red velvet seats, lights dimming and the chatter finally lessening.
The opener was a comic, Joe Whitehead. His catch-phrase was ‘squeaky good!’ and he used it every other line; Clover whispered to Bella, ‘I miss East and Verrall, and Julius.’
What the Bijou Theatre bill
did
feature was beautiful girls. Even Aurora was not a candle to them; the Avery girls could barely register in the firmament of beauty there. The Eight Palace Girls, ravishing nymphs in complicated costumes, changed three times during their number—each time into rather less. Each of the eight was equally well shaped; all seemed good-natured. While music played they stood in graceful poses, altering slowly from stance to stance. Like matched ponies at a horse show, Clover thought, and just as tedious.
The Dahlia Sisters closed the first half: two very beautiful, modestly dressed girls who sang, and did not dance at all. They wore pretty gowns, but more, they seemed to glow with good nature and kindness, and Clover wanted to sit through their number again from the beginning.
December–May
Aurora asked Mayhew to take her backstage at intermission, if he was able. He laughed at the notion that anyone would try to keep him out, and they trooped down.
The Dahlia girls were even lovelier, close to. Aurora found she could not look them in the eyes for long, as if she were drinking in too much light. The fair-haired girl’s cheek was flushed with apricot; her eyes were grey or green or blue, pale brows giving an odd impression of vulnerability to her open regard. She seemed unknowable. The dark-haired girl’s sprinkling of tiny freckles could be counted, this close. Her eyes were bright and sad at the same time, perhaps some trick of birth, the lift in the upper lid coming at the exact point for tragedy. Her underlying sorrow gave a sombre quality to their songs.
Thoroughly humbled, Aurora saw that she and her sisters had been mistaken to think themselves anything out of the common run. And
she had been lucky to hook Mayhew, it now seemed to her. He was dallying with the fair Dahlia Sister but he kept Aurora in the corner of his eye, and from time to time gave her a warm look.
The orchestra pit door opened, and through it came a creased squirrel-face that was pleasingly familiar: Mendel, the bandleader from the old Empress, with a bundle of music. Aurora remembered how he had tried to help them. It seemed like such a long time ago.
‘Miss—Aurora,’ he said, after the briefest of pauses. Then he added, ‘Looking like a dozen roses—I see vaudeville has been good to you!’
She smiled, too broadly, tickled that he could see the shine on her. ‘You gave us a good steer,’ she said, nodding quickly. ‘We worked with Gentry Fox down there, you know.’ She stopped herself before she said ‘for free.’ No one should know that.
‘I can see you’ve prospered—and your sisters, your mama, all well?’
‘Oh yes! And you are here at the Bijou?’
‘Yes, found I couldn’t stomach Cleveland any longer. There’s plenty of work at theatres in Calgary, and many old pals. Eleanor Masefield’s company is at the Orpheum now, with Jimmy Battle, you’d remember him. Coming along a treat as a hoofer and a juvenile tenor. He’ll branch out from the Masefield troupe one of these days.’
She nodded again. Cast a quick eye to where Mayhew was immersed with Cleveland.
‘Are they touring the same play?’
‘No,
The Undertow
now—December–May romance kind of thing, turned upside down, you know, because the man is the younger. A tragedy, I believe. He walks into the sea at the end, or maybe it’s the woman who does.’
‘Yes,’ Aurora said, as if she knew all about the play, and the relationship, and the general tendency of the world to pair people who were completely unsuited to each other in the name of various conveniences. She found herself about to weep.
A Cage-Bird
The next night the Belle Auroras attended the Orpheum, though Bella felt tired almost to frailty from rehearsals, and was glad when Clover suggested that they stay at home for a night. But Mayhew had arranged for a box, and would not hear of missing it.
The Orpheum’s melodrama was
The Undertow
. Bella, who seldom bothered with the printed word, was taken by surprise when the curtain rose on the drawing-room set of the play and Jimmy Battle was discovered sitting at a writing desk. She jumped, and clutched at Aurora’s arm excitedly—then, as quickly, let go and sat abruptly back.
‘What’s to do?’ Mayhew asked.
Eleanor Masefield was making her entrance just then, so Clover gestured towards her and said, ‘We shared a bill with Miss Masefield long ago.’ Which made Mayhew smile indulgently.
Bella did not dare turn her head to look at Aurora. Instead, she watched as Jimmy and Miss Masefield circled each other. It was a tedious, hackneyed play, only elevated by the tension that emanated from the thin young man and the wilder, darker woman, who did not look at all old until she chose to do so. Eleanor Masefield—Evaline Burton, in the play—confessed with fitting and beautiful shame that she had lost her heart to him, in a light, drawing-room comedy sort of way, until suddenly her deeper heart was revealed.
EVALINE:
And so I—must ask you to leave, Jerry.
JERRY:
But, Evaline! Miss Burton! I thought we were having such a ripping time.
EVALINE:
Like seabirds, cavorting in the wind! But—
JERRY:
But what?
EVALINE:
Society—does not like—
JERRY:
Is Society to dictate to our hearts?
EVALINE:
You are in your first youth, Jerry. I am—in my second.
An uneasy laugh from the audience. Bella heard Clover whisper in Aurora’s ear, ‘Her
third
, more like.’
But Jimmy’s graceful kindness would not allow them to laugh at Mrs. Masefield. He knelt at her feet, the picture of rational adoration.
JERRY:
Ten years means nothing to people in love!
‘Ten!’ Bella said. ‘Try thirty!’ Then she shot a scared glance at Mayhew.
Onstage, Jimmy the Bat knelt again at the actress’s feet and begged her not to consider the world’s judgement, ‘
When Love is at stake!
’ (‘Good title for a vampire play,’ thought Bella) but marry him instead.
The instant they became engaged, a gentleman entered: her lawyer, come about her father’s will. He shooed off Jimmy the Bat and wormed it out of Miss Masefield that she was planning to marry. They moved to the other end of the room to discuss the papers he had brought for her to sign, and Jimmy, who had been listening at the door, had a dramatic monologue where he spoke to her photograph:
JERRY:
I cannot be the ruin of you. (ruefully) And I cannot live without money. I am no seabird, happy to wheel in the wind. I’m one who needs a gilded cage.
He stared out to the ocean, looking terribly romantic in his tennis flannels and faintly nautical blazer. A rotter, an adventurer, a cad. (‘I do like him,’ Bella whispered to Clover.) The lawyer came back to question the cad’s motives, while the woman watched in silence, posed in a frozen tableau, one arm along the mantelpiece, head bent but her glorious chest still heaving, diamond pendant flashing—usually during the lawyer’s speeches, Bella noticed—drawing focus.
Then Miss Masefield sent Jerry away and gave the lawyer what-for, magnificent in defence of her lover. But the lawyer had the parting shot, telling her that she would ruin the young man.
‘That
is your real sin,’ he said, and Bella concurred.
Evaline bowed her head and called Jerry in, to renounce him by pretending to care for money.
JERRY:
I see now that I was your plaything.
EVALINE:
Yes. And the time has come to put away childish things. To put away the toys …
He looks at her, in hurt rage, then whirls and leaves the room
.
EVALINE:
… And go to bed.
She walks out the French doors, towards the cliff
.
There was, some seconds later, a muted splash. Bella had to stifle a giggle—after all, the audience could have had no doubt as to what Evaline was planning, with that tragedy-face she’d pulled as she went out. She was a seabird, after all.
Nobody’s Fault
Aurora knew they must go backstage. Mayhew’s consequence demanded it, and business contracted during the backstage crush was their whole purpose for being at the theatre. Clover and Bella walked one each side of Aurora, closing her off from Mayhew until he reached back to take her arm.
She went forward, eyes and mouth well controlled, prepared to see Jimmy Battle. He would not be prepared to see her—that worried her a little. But in the event it was all right. Mayhew knew Eleanor Masefield—Norie, he called her—and she flew to his side and took all his attention, giving no sign of recognizing Aurora.
Detached from Mayhew by Miss Masefield, Aurora watched Bella run ahead to where Jimmy was receiving a velvet box from one of Eleanor’s admirers. Bella waited till Jimmy turned, then kissed him and clapped her arms around him in childish pleasure, whispering something in his ear. Then Clover pulled Bella along and they melted away.
Aurora stood alone in a shadowy part of the hall, spectators and artistes milling around them, and Jimmy Battle came down the hall to
find her. She was angry, without the least right to be. The privacy of the noisy crowd let her speak without restraint.
‘We did not fall in love,’ she said. ‘Back then.’
‘No.’ Jimmy’s chin, his cheeks, were thinner. ‘Did we not?’