‘You were under contract.’
‘Yes, I was. I am.’ He was angry himself. He must see that she was with Mayhew, now twenty feet away, deep in flirtatious conversation with Eleanor Masefield.
His anger melted her own. In an instant she was nothing but brokenhearted, that the infant thing between them must be squashed. She wanted to comfort him.
‘Sometimes these things just do not work out,’ she said. ‘It is nobody’s fault.’
He bit his lip, and fumbled with his cuff, his wrist. Then he handed her something, his fingers pressing it into her hand. She looked at the shape of them, strong and narrow, well groomed, nails trimmed very short. No hair on them, brown as if from sun.
‘Keep that for me.’
She met his anxious eyes, and managed a smile.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘We do what we must do. But keep that, anyway.’
She looked down at what he’d given her: a plain silver chain bracelet, not at all the sort of thing she would have thought he’d wear.
‘It was my mother’s. I’ll come and get it back from you one day.’
‘All right,’ she said.
The crowd was breaking, and Mayhew and Eleanor were louder.
So Aurora and Jimmy separated, each taking the arm of a patron, and laughed at what was said. Whatever it was.
On the Starland Bill
Flora was pleased to see that dodgers for the Starland Theatre already littered the streets, advertising the starting bill, headlined by
The Très Belles Aurores de Nouvelle France
. Mayhew sent a packet to Mrs. Hillier’s boarding house so the girls could see themselves written up:
… widely-known through Europe for their excellent singing and the very best in stage dancing in the flamboyant French style, the three very
jolie Très Belles Aurores
are making their first American tour.
The other artistes on this first bill were impressive, Flora had to credit Mayhew, and his write-ups hit the heights of hyperbole. Paul Conchas, The Military Hercules, for example: Mayhew had penned a startling tale to go with his title, about Conchas serving in the German army, his magnificent physique drawing the personal attention of the Kaiser. ‘
When his term of service expired he came to America and since then has been a marvel and inspiration to thousands of young men.’
‘As long as he is not in the vein of the Tusslers,’ said Clover. ‘But listen:
The Ioleen Sisters, twin Amazons from Australia with a double set of accomplishments, slack-wire walking and sharp-shooting
. Why those two skills? For crossing a river as an alligator attacks?’
Flora frowned at her to stop, lest Mayhew take offence. Clover seemed so quiet, but she had a vein of humour that could deflate the fragile male.
Jolly Banjophiends were the dumb act opener
(‘from the most raggy of the popular and up-to-date music to the highest classical selections’)
, and Alberick Heatherton, Romantic Violin
(‘experience the passionate intensity of his selections’)
was to play between the melodrama and themselves in the second half.
Turning the dodger over, Clover exclaimed to the others, ‘East & Verrall!’
Bella shrieked, and read it out: ‘The
Sidewalk Conversationalists, vivacious vagabonds of the road, contracted to this engagement at considerable expense.’
Mayhew came tearing up the stairs to the hotel sitting room at that moment, vivid and energetic in a new plaid suit. Bella ran to thank him for booking East & Verrall.
‘Now I can still do the hotel number! And we were working on a golf sketch.’
‘Not golf, in this cowtown,’ Mayhew declared. ‘Nobody’d get the gag. I want to bring our own melodrama,
The Casting Couch
, along here,
and the boys will save us rehearsing. But that East is a champion dickerer. I’ll be paying them twice over when the play goes up.’
Paying for things had been a repeated refrain in the last week, Flora thought with some dismay. Clover glanced at Aurora, and went back to the dodger.
Flora gathered her courage and said, ‘The pretty dresses for
Lakmé
are ready, dear Fitz, but the dressmaker won’t deliver them here without payment. Shall I …?’ She let the words die away, and sat rather tense while Mayhew stared out the window to 8th Street.
‘Hmm?’ he said, seeming to wake to her inquiry. ‘Dresses? Have her send them to the theatre, tell her to make up an invoice for the package. The fellow there will deal with it.’
Flora had been awake all night, obsessively counting over the dollars they had left, extremely reluctant to part with sixty to take possession of the new outfits. She ought to have been more prudent, she knew, scolding herself in the darkness, but what was to be done?
She watched as Aurora went to the window and touched Mayhew’s arm. ‘I believe we will need summer frocks as well, Fitz. We could make them ourselves, if Mama and I—’
He pulled out his money-roll, and peeled off several bills. ‘New dresses, new hats, new buckles to my lady’s shoes. Outfit yourselves with this, my dear. Next week we’ll be raking in receipts at the Starland hand over fist, and you’ll have to look the part.’ He closed her hand over the money. ‘Now let me listen to your rehearsals for a moment, and then I’m off to meet the
Herald
editor, at his club—
club!
In this pioneer place! Never mind, I’ll invite him to the wedding. Two more days!’ He sat on the window-ledge in the weak May sunshine, and waved a hand for them to begin.
The wedding was another worry, Flora thought, moving to the piano (a boarding-house nag, tinny but in tune) to play for the girls. Two days! Mayhew had booked the ballroom at the new Palliser Hotel, very imposing, and was issuing invitation cards to every pressman he encountered. The whole thing had the air of a stunt, but Flora could not remonstrate with him; she could not even mention it to Aurora,
who had sequestered herself in silence. She sang at rehearsal, and shopped and stood for fittings; but she was … remote.
Nobody seemed at ease any more. Clover and Bella did not take to Mayhew’s company, as they had East and Verrall’s, say, or Julius Foster’s. That was unfair of them—Mayhew always had a joke for Bella and a greeting for Clover, no matter how busy and distracted he became, thought Flora, as her tinkling accompaniment flowed without ceasing, as the girls sang on. She had a constant feeling, lately, of holding her breath.
Milk, Honey, Cream
Mayhew sat on the window-ledge with the light behind him, intending to listen critically; but he became fascinated by the three mouths moving at the same time, the shape of their mouths so much the same although their faces differed. When all three sang together, it was richer, deeper—a surprise that three young sylphs like these could produce that tone. Gentry Fox, that training showed. Their bird-waists and the small cages of their ribs, and then the pleasure of pretty girls’ profiles: milk-pale skin on Clover, warm honey on Bella, full cream on Aurora.
Mayhew found himself pitifully aroused by her, and wished it were not so. He thought for a moment of the Irish girl they had found lying in the snow.
The complications of his business interests were extreme, but would be solvable without this baggage. The mirror over the piano showed him the backs of their heads, the coils and rolls they had pinned carefully into each others’ coiffure. They were darlings, and he was as happy as he’d ever been, in fact. And they would help with the Starland, no question.
Oughtn’t to have handed Aurora so much of the roll, though.
‘I’m off,’ he murmured, in the middle of verse two. He grabbed his hat and was out the door before the piano’s notes had ebbed away.
A Sudden Fall of Snow
On the night before the wedding it snowed. Silent, constant, nickel-sized snowflakes fell all night, in no wind, and in the morning when Clover awoke the light in the room was blue.
Mama gasped when Clover pulled open the curtain to show snow heaped halfway up the window. Snow covered the entire landscape like fondant on a wedding cake, smoothing definition of curbs and corners. The street was deserted, and snow was still falling, fifteen inches already on the ground—late May, and the worst blizzard of the year. A shell of ice waited on the water jug.
Clover’s first feeling was relief. We’ll never get there, she thought. Now they can’t be married. Bella had jumped out of the blankets and come to join Clover at the window. She said out loud: ‘Aurora! A blizzard has come—you’ll miss your wedding!’
But Mrs. Hillier knocked on their door soon afterwards with an offer from her son to take them to the Palliser in the draycart. His big horse Clem had famously got through to the train station in the worst storm of 1910, and Hillier was itching to match the feat today.
The girls and Mama spent the morning washing and putting up their hair; in the afternoon they dressed in their wedding clothes—and all the time the snow fell.
The draycart’s wheels shrieked and the snow squealed as they lurched along, but it was a pretty drive, through slow-falling flakes that dazzled in occasional spears of sun. Mama raised her white lawn parasol to shield Aurora’s veil. When the wedding party disembarked at the Grain Exchange building, where the justice of the peace had his office, it was to silence. No streetcars were running, no carriages or cars rolled through the streets.
The Grain Exchange lobby was icy cold—no furnaceman had come to make the furnaces up. They left their galoshes by the door and climbed the stone stairs to the third floor, and there was Mayhew waiting in the hall, as if nothing were amiss with the world.
Bella and Clover were ahead, climbing the stairs, but they parted and let Aurora go through, and Clover was touched to see how Mayhew’s face changed and steadied when he saw his bride.
The justice of the peace, a hardy man who laughed at the thought of a little snow keeping him from his work, dispensed the marriage proper within three minutes; it was little more than a quick ‘Any reason they cannot be joined?’ and a stamp, and signatures.
Mama shed a crystal tear, but at Clover’s nudge and Aurora’s impatient glance, she caught it in a lace hanky and put it tidily away. Then the party trooped down two flights of stairs (the elevator, like the furnace, being out of commission due to the storm), cut cater-corner across the deserted, snow-blown street and up more stairs into the Palliser lobby.
Nobody waited there but one greatcoated major domo, and one stick-thin bellhop in a hat too large for him. Mayhew gave a great snort, shook snow off his coat and divested himself, then assisted the women to take off their wraps. The bellhop disappeared behind a mountain of steaming wool.
‘Well! On to the feast,’ Mayhew exclaimed, as if expecting trumpets to strike up.
Silence prevailed. Clover stole a look at Aurora: her face seemed frozen. They walked across the marble hall and up the marble stairs. At the door of the Maple Leaf Room they were met by a fatly smiling waiter and not another single soul.
Inside, a dozen tables stood spread with white cloths, and a head table heavy with flowers. No guests were waiting here, either.
Space had been left clear on the glossy parquet floor for dancing; four members of the Starland orchestra sat at the ready. The bandleader, Tony Carrera, lifted his baton and applied himself, and a ragged-up rendition of Mendelssohn split the peaceful air.
‘Mrs. Smarty gave a party,’ Mama said. ‘No one came.’
‘Then her brother gave another, just the same,’ said Bella.
Clover could not help laughing, then Bella and Mama joined in.
Aurora twiddled her ridiculous parasol and took Mayhew’s arm where he stood, stiff as a poker, by the door. ‘You know, Fitz,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I was ever at a handsomer wedding feast. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll have a good time.’
They were accustomed to making light of disaster. As chief attendant, Clover had two funny stories to tell about Aurora’s childhood; Bella rose next, to compliment Mr. Mayhew on his accomplishments, not least of which was the winning of her dear sister’s hand. Then they all did their best to drink a jeroboam of champagne. At least the waiters had turned up, and presumably, somewhere in the bowels of the hotel, the cooks.
Intermittent waiters served them turtle soup and roast capon with hot-house peas, a fine spring menu. Plates were set on all twelve tables, and carried away again untouched. Bella whispered to Clover that she was tempted to run down and eat a pea from each plate—such a scandalous waste!
A great cake was wheeled in on a trolley. Mayhew and Aurora stepped down to have their picture taken cutting it—and then Mayhew saw that the photographer had failed to appear. He turned to the cake, picked up the top layer and dashed it down to the floor. Icing roses slumped into the pale floor, petals smudged.
‘Take the thrice-damned thing away!’ he shouted, and the two waiters did so, as fast as their canter-wheeled trolley could go. Mayhew ran a few steps after it as if he would kick it, beside himself with rage.
Aurora stood still, keeping her peau de soie skirt out of the crumple of cake and cream. Clover held Bella’s hand tightly under the high table’s cloth.
Mama stood up (very nobly, Clover thought) and proposed, in a bravely raised voice, a toast. ‘To Fitz and Aurora,’ she cried. ‘The best of good fellows, as I know you’ll all agree, and the loveliest of girls. And so say all of us! Join me in
three rousing cheers for the happy couple!’
No doubt when Mama had planned that phrasing, she had expected a genial, well-fed crowd of pressmen to shout
Hurrah
along with her. Clover was too frightened to speak, and Bella had bent her head in ferocious concentration so as not to giggle with nerves; Aurora and Mayhew could not very well cheer for themselves, and the four bandsmen, addressing their dinners, had forgotten to pay attention. So it was only Mama’s single nervous
Hurrah!
that rang through the ballroom, at
least as far as it could reach. She said again,
Hurrah!
and, not being able to stop,
Hurrah!
and then sat and drank down her champagne punch—and then, without noticing it, Clover’s.