Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (18 page)

James Whittaker had his shoulder. “You saw the tremor coming — tell them, son!”

Darius Moore’s eyes ignited. Matthew didn’t care for the endearment either. He was no man’s son.

“Saw it? No, sir.”

“So literal! Felt it, then! Why else does a strapping man go white in the cool dampness of a wine cellar?”

“My tie —”

“Wasn’t that tight.”

“Mr. Whittaker, if I had powers of prognostication, I’d of been under that arch
before
the ground started shaking.”

Darius Moore raised his champagne. “Moreover, had you second sight you’d be mining the vast stores of wealth out from under your wilderness, not charting endless forests, eh, Hart?”

Matthew tried to keep the smile on his face. Impossible. Olana had promised him. She couldn’t have told anyone about the marble in the cave’s stream bed. She was not part of all this scheming, all these layers. Moore was fishing, just fishing. Matthew made his tight smile go slack. “The forests are anything but endless. I would think a modern man of science like yourself would know that.”

Amused eyes, even the women’s, were cast as one toward his adversary.

“Now, now, do not seek to turn the attentions of these illustrious guests on me, sir! I am a mere middleman! It’s of you we require knowledge.”

Matthew Hart looked from the gold brocade of Darius Moore’s vest to the greed in his small eyes. What had Sidney said about middlemen? That they were the most dangerous of all? He didn’t understand, but he knew Moore’s look from his own mining days. This man had it for his trees and ’Lana both.

“Mr. Hart knows exactly how to add to his mystique. The less he speaks, the more he’s spoken about.” Sidney Lunt made his appraisal languidly. He drew amused nods.

Matthew Hart didn’t give a damn about his mystique. Why didn’t Sidney dedicate as much time to his attacks on corruption as he did on his wit? Conversation swirled around him. Pay attention.

“— Mr. Hart?”

“Ma’am?”

“I asked if your hair is worn in emulation of the lamented General George Armstrong Custer, your fellow guardian of the land?”

“Custer? Hell, no!”

Olana was returning to his side. She’d heard. It was time to turn backwoods clown again. His stance eased, his speech drawled. “I keep my hair this way to spare you the sight of my ears. Now my blasphemy has offended yours. I beg your pardon.”

Olana was hiding her growing smile behind her fan. But her mother was not amused.

“Are we to understand, from your extreme reaction to being placed, however superficially, on the plane of the late General, that your sympathies lie not only with the rough-hewn natural landscape, but its savage inhabitants as well, sir?” she demanded.

“The Indians don’t need our sympathy, Mrs. Whittaker,” he replied softly. “It’s we who need their forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Darius Moore could scarcely disguise his delight as he took up Mrs. Whittaker’s cause. “For fighting hard-won campaigns to free the wilderness for settlement? For bringing them the opportunities of salvation and democracy, only to be thwarted by laziness, drunkenness, and, if the ladies will excuse me, unspeakable violence?”

A slow smile spread across the ranger’s face. But his eyes stayed hard. “Your description fits an outpost army garrison perfectly.”

Olana’s eyes closed slowly. Sidney Lunt sat up straight in his chair. How in hell did he get into any of this? Dora Whittaker faced him, a steel rod running through her already upright figure, her anger causing her carefully powdered face to glow pink. Darius Moore was her knight beside her.

“I take exception to your remarks, sir,” she said. “Were I a man, I would extend a challenge!”

“Were you a man, I’d have to remind you that dueling is outlawed in the civilized society you prize so highly, Mrs. Whittaker. Ladies,” he nodded, then hoped he was walking out the right door.

Olana found Matthew wandering on a stairway, his tie loosened, his collar opened. He’d been doing so well, until Darius Moore
pulled him into an argument. But it was he who’d offended the guests.

“Matthew, really!”

He glared past her. “Just show me how to get out of here.”

“Not until you apologize to Mother.”

“Apologies even you won’t prompt from me this time.”

Olana inhaled slowly. Nothing was going to spoil her evening. She smiled. “Never mind. Papa will tend to her. Only do come back! It’s such a lovely —”

“For you, maybe,” he said like a truant boy deprived of his supper, “you’ve been dancing.”

She tapped his chest lightly with her fan. “And you’ve made every woman wild with jealousy because you’ve not asked a single one.”

He took up the card at her wrist, scanned the names. “I don’t understand all this.”

She felt herself softening further. How he could do that? “Of course. Of course you don’t. Dancing is more straightforward where you come from, isn’t it?” Tell me anything from that place you come from, Matthew. But he only looked beyond the warm amber wood as the frosted glass doors opened.

Mrs. William Hunt, her diminutive husband in tow, came through them. “I was sure I recognized — there!” she called, her eyes lighting on them. “There he is! Matt! Is it you?”

“Coretta?” Matthew whispered.

Mrs. Hunt reached out for his hands. “I knew it! No one else could put such life into a waltz! What are you doing here? Wasn’t it you who said nothing short of a divine command could get you into the city limits of San Francisco again?”

“Was … something like that. You look real fine, Coretta.”

William Hunt tugged on his wife’s sleeve.

“Darling!” Mrs. Hunt laughed that full, hearty laugh that had kept her off Dora Whittaker’s A list of guests until tonight. “William, I’m so very pleased to introduce you to the man who is the reason I’m alive and on your arm!”

Soon a swarm of people entered, and Olana was pulled away
by the mayor of Sacramento’s son. As they danced, she watched the Comstock silver baron’s wife and Matthew in the room’s shadows. Olana suddenly hated the candles’ lesser brilliance, longed for the electroliers to be restored. By the time the dance ended, Matthew and Coretta Hunt had disappeared.

Sidney Lunt tossed his head toward the small door that led to the servants’ stairway. Dear Sidney. Her spy. But her mother urged Olana onto the floor in the grip of another man with eyes brightened by her father’s champagne and his own importance. Olana made sure they finished dancing near the servants’ door, quickly excused herself, and slipped through.

The kitchen was a steamy factory of rushing. At another time Olana might have been fascinated by the turmoil, having never been below stairs while a social function was going on above. But now she was only grateful that it was easy to descend the stairs unnoticed. The servants were busy in furious conversation that matched their activity. Mrs. Cole had the room’s attention.

“I never met a gentleman who could joke, be respectful to me after he’d tied a good one on. But that was —”

“Whist!”

Silence. Olana looked down at her crimson skirts and how they’d swirled into the kitchen staff’s sight. She raised her head and turned the corner. “I’m sorry,” she found herself saying, “I’m looking for Mr. Hart. His name is next … on my card, and I —”

How dare they make her apologize to them, in her own house? And now, what was in their eyes, pity? The sound of Mrs. Hunt’s raucous laughter. Olana strode to the downstairs parlor doors, knocked lightly, before she opened them. On the small table papers were scattered, white papers that blurred behind Coretta Hunt’s fingers caressing Matthew’s face as they kissed.

fifteen

Olana couldn’t move, as much as she wanted to. The woman’s lips left Matthew’s. She took his hand, squeezed. “Hellfire and damnation,” she muttered. “Olana. Child, listen. I want —”

Olana turned, not at all interested what Coretta Hunt and her too bright, too clinging gown wanted. She rushed madly through the door the delivery men used.

It put her out, confused, almost on the street. It was cold, damp, so dark. She walked, shivering, until Matthew’s formal coat dropped on her shoulders.

“Where you going?”

She turned and slapped him so hard his face yanked toward the moon and his mouth froze in pain. But there was no anger in his light eyes.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“No. My hand hurts.”

“My jaw’s had better days as well.”

They stared at each other a long moment. She didn’t know if she started laughing or crying, but she found herself doing it into his chest, as if he were someone else, someone who had not been
the cause of her humiliation. And he held her quietly, patiently, as if he were that someone else.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

“For what?” she asked, yanking herself out of his hold. He shifted his feet, as he always did when she confused him.

“Don’t put the burden of it on Coretta, now. She’ll be your friend, if you let her. Help Sidney look after you when I’m gone.”

She spun out of his arms. “I hardly need looking after! And certainly not from a disreputable, fortune-hunting —”

He took her arm. “’Lana. Stop that.”

“She was a whore!”

“Stop,” he warned again.

“It’s common knowledge. She was one of your whores, in the Klondike, wasn’t she?”

He turned away from her. Olana stared at his back, at the way his vest harnessed his broad shoulders. She’d known, from the first, there were others. She’d begged him to tell her about them. But she never wanted to meet one. She wanted them all to be dead, like Lottie.

Inside, another waltz started. Matthew turned, touched the card on her wrist. “Who’s this one for?” he asked.

She checked. “Darius Moore.”

“Come away. Dance with me.”

“Where?” A laugh she meant to be wicked escaped girlish, giddy.

“Not far.”

Her dancing shoes were not meant for city streets. He led her to one she’d never been, even in passing. A large ramshackle wooden building vibrated with the force of the music inside. Its doorway erupted with color and laughter.

“What place is this?” she demanded, wondering if his face still smarted from her slap.

“Where we can do some real dancing. You game?”

His eyes held a fierce challenge. He was smarting, all right. Was this his revenge? Olana wanted to go home. But Matthew
Hart knew how to get her to try something that she had no desire to do. A Dance Hall. Is that where they were? She nodded. They entered a cavern of peeling paint, rough floorboards, music. And dancers who did not have the advantage of skylights to keep them from getting overheated.

She looked around. “We’re overdressed.”

“Nobody will mind.” The dance ended and several of the patrons waved as he lifted his coat from her shoulders.

“Matthew, they know you. How —”

“I do have Thursdays off.”

The band, as heavy with brass instruments as her house’s was heavy with strings, began to play again. Matthew took her hand, drawing her on the dark wood dance floor.

She had to shout above the music, the further din of couples dancing in coarse, cobble-heeled boots and workshoes. “I don’t know how!”

“Follow me!” he shouted back.

He held her close. She stumbled, then yanked up her train defiantly. The music had a rollicking rhythm she’d never heard before. It was as if the piano player’s right and left hand were arguing, no, challenging each other to stay within the same tune. The other musicians did not bring any order to the chaos, they echoed it.

Matthew danced with her the same way, much closer than was proper in her father’s house, and challenging her to find the elusive rhythm. He arched his arm so she had to sail under it, then pulled her in tighter. He skipped through a beat, she matched it. He stepped, then hopped, she followed as he watched. He held the small of her back and made her bend so far she saw the ceiling’s garish blue paint and gaslight bums. The dance got faster, the figures around them fewer, until the music stopped. They were surrounded by smiling faces pointing down to a crudely chalked number — forty-two, at their feet. Other couples crowded in, laughing, clapping. Olana clung to him, her corset stays hampering each breath.

“Matthew, what was that?” she asked.

“Ragtime. And we’ve just won the cakewalk.”

“That was walking?”

“Naw, the waltz —”

“I know,” she breathed harder against his chest, “that’s walking.” Laughter mixed with the fading applause. When she turned, his arm remained around her waist. Now all but the women’s eyes were on a man in a chefs hat and drooping mustache. He held a confection piled high with whipped cream. The women’s eyes were on Matthew Hart, just as the women’s eyes at her house had been. This was, the thought birthed in Olana’s mind, something that wouldn’t change were she to spend her lifetime with him. She felt his warm breath next to her ear.

“Take it, or you’ll hurt his feelings.”

“The cake?”

“
Oui, le gateau!”
the chef explained, as if she were the immigrant.

“But what in heaven’s name will we —”

“It’s the prize, ’Lana. Take it.”

She reached out her arms. Matthew made no attempt to help her, though the whipped cream was soiling her gloves.

“
Merci beaucoup
,” she said.

The chef took off his billowy hat and bowed low. The dark curls that framed his face were absent from his head. It shone like a billiard ball. Matthew gave her waist a squeeze.

Outside, he finally took up his half of the burden. “Now perhaps you’ll tell me what we’re to do with this
object d’art?
” Olana demanded.

“You’ve got cream on your nose.”

“What?”

“Right there.” He pointed, as he always did, with his chin. “Very becoming.”

“Get it off.”

“Please.”

He leaned across the confection between them and licked the side of her nose with one swipe of his tongue. “Delicious,” he pronounced.
“How do you say that in French?”

“Almost the same,” she heard herself answer. “
Delicieuse.”

“Delicieuse,”
he repeated, drawing the syllables out, making them dip as he’d made her dip when they were dancing.

“My nose is cold,” she said vaguely, her irritation evaporating like the high peaked cream.

“We’re almost there,” he assured her.

“Where?”

“The Dunstan Home.”

“Where?”

“It’s one of your mother’s charities. There,” he backed her into a doorway. “The bell’s right behind you. Give it a tug, darlin’.”

“I’m not your —”

“Aw, ’Lana, get off your high horse. It’s Christmas.”

“And I’ve been abducted from my own gala, and forced to dance to barbaric music, then labored like a slave through dark streets to a destination — Matthew Hart, don’t you dare!”

But he had already lost a firm hold on the cake as he doubled over with laughter. She lowered her side to match his collapsing grip, but he stepped on her foot, as he hadn’t once done during their strange dance. Not hard, just enough to startle them both into sitting on the sidewalk with their legs splayed out beneath them. Matthew’s shirtfront was decorated with swans and letters pronouncing the cakewalk event. Tiny beads of silver nonpareils mixed with the cream in Olana’s hair. But the cake landed squarely in their laps. They looked at each other and laughed. A glow came to the door’s sidelights. A woman in her nightclothes stared down at them.

“Mr. Hart? Is that you?”

Matthew scrambled to his feet leaving the cake to balance between Olana’s knees.

“Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Mack, this here’s Olana Whittaker, Mrs. Whittaker’s daughter? We were wondering if the children might like some cake.”

Mrs. Mack looked from Matthew to Olana to the cake.
“They’ve already been put to bed. But this I think we could rouse them for.”

Even with a few silver nonpareils left in her hair, the orphans of the Dunstan Home stared at Olana as she ate, giving them proof of her mortality. With Matthew, even in his formal clothes, they were much more at ease, so much that Mrs. Mack had to scold them for interrupting themselves to talk to him.

“Did Santa Clause give you the cake to bring us?”

He leaned over and whispered a question in Olana’s ear before he answered. “A fellow named
Pere Noël
did,” he explained. “Close relative to Santa. Curly hair, big drooping mustache, bald head. If you see him around, you’d best be good.”

“Tell us a story.”

“About what?” he asked the one, a girl of about seven, who had been brave enough to make the request.

“About her,” she said. “The queen.”

He closed his eyes. “All right,” he agreed. Olana watched, from her place closest the fire, as the children gathered around him, some of the older ones pulling the younger under arms of their identical threadbare sleeping gowns.

How many Thursdays has he been coming here? Why didn’t he tell her about these children? They needed new nightclothes. They needed Christmas presents, not a bashed-in whipped cream cake.

“Her name is Snow Woman,” he began. “I found her in a cave.”

“A cave?”

“Yes. She was so white. The ice sparkled like diamonds from her hair, her face, her clothes. I was afraid.”

“Why?” Olana heard her mouth form the word as the girl said it.

“I was afraid the cold had gone straight through, that she was ice, right down to her heart. But I took Snow Woman home, found her heart beating there, under the ice. And she found mine.”

“That’s not hard. It’s in your name. And Mrs. Mack says you wear it on your sleeve.”

“Is that right?” he asked the child in his lap, casting a sideways glance at the blushing matron.

“How did you find her heart?” an older boy pulled him back into his story.

“Same way you’re finding yours. Eating, reading, helping each other. Taking a piece of each other with you when you leave this place. Remembering. This night. Mrs. Mack’s hand on your head when you’re sick. The warmth you lend each other as the nights grow cold. Look at Snow Woman now. See how red her dress is? She is Christmas — happiness in the dead of winter. Her heart is as pulsing as the water that flows beneath the ice in her cave. It flows through a bed of marble almost as beautiful as her own skin. When I brought her back to her father, living in his castle of warm woods, he gave me the cave, the marble. You can come and see it, it’s yours now, too.”

Olana enjoyed the silence between them as they walked. The empty streets were almost like his woods, where she’d once been contented to spend this Christmas Eve night.

“Olana,” he said quietly. “Mrs. Mack. She’s got a cancer. She’s dying, and is trying to place all the children in homes, or other places before she can’t take care of them anymore. Would you tell your mother? Maybe she’ll help?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry we didn’t get along better. I’m truly sorry.”

“There’s time, Matthew.”

“No, darlin’, there isn’t.” Then he looked down at her shoes, frowned. “We’d best get a cab.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Your shoes are ruined.”