Chapter Six #4
“Done. Now, I think you ought to close those curtains,” she said as she clambered back into her own bed, “or you’ll be wishing you did when you fall asleep at breakfast.”
Peggy giggled and drew the curtains closed. Hannah heard her settle into bed, and heard the miners laughing again as well, and knew it would be awhile until they got to sleep this night, moonlight or not.
“They’re in full voice tonight,” Hannah said on a yawn.
“Speaking of which…did you hear Sally try to hit that high note tonight? Oh my, three breaths to get out one C, no wonder mountaineers yodel—they must have to,” she said, stretching in the dark, hearing the covers rustle in the most comforting way.
“I don’t know why Kyle just doesn’t stay with recitatives until we get used to the height and air here. ”
“Mr. Claxton says it’s a treat the way one beer acts like three here, because of it. He says a man can save a fortune getting drunk. And that he’d stay forever if he could just figger out a way to pay for that one beer, if he did,” Peggy said, giggling.
“ ‘Figure’ out,” Hannah corrected her absently, “and he ought not to even have that one, you know.”
“Oh, I know, none better than I know,” Peggy agreed softly, all laughter fled.
“My father’s that fond of the bottle, too.
Well, at first it was because he couldn’t get work, and then it was he couldn’t get work because of it.
Now he’s took…taken off, and who knows where…
which is why I work for Mr. Harper, you see. ”
Hannah had guessed it, because Peggy had said as much, if never so precisely before.
Their previous talks in the long, dark western nights had brought their lives out clear as either wished the other to see.
Some things, after all, couldn’t be said to any other living one, even if their relationship was increasingly becoming a big and little sister one, with Hannah in the role of the wise elder.
Only a few years actually separated them, but Hannah had a life in the theater to guide Peggy by, as well as a considerable, if limited, education in the classics.
Even more importantly, she’d been a married woman.
That gave her seniority no years could equal.
But in spite of their differences, they’d an underlying equality of gender and innocence, and more of one of temperament and morality than either did with any of the other members of the troupe.
Peggy was as grateful for Hannah’s friendship as Hannah was glad for hers.
The other women in the troupe were performers and tended to disregard Peggy.
But they looked at Hannah with awe, or suspicion, or else, and worst of all, treated her with false friendliness because of what they thought her influence might be with Kyle.
Knowing actors, the men, of course, even the most charming of them, Hannah did not trust at all.
As for Kyle…it seemed he might actually be trying to be a friend, too, but knowing the theater as well as she did, even if she didn’t know men as well, Hannah couldn’t quite trust him either.
But Peggy had no ambitions for anything but security, and and no motive for friendship but the need of a friend.
Although Hannah could wish she’d more education so that they could share more, living with Peggy showed her clearly as what she was: kind, gentle, and yet with a streak of practicality that astonished Hannah, and sometimes even tilted their relationship so that it was Peggy who was the wiser.
Stage born and bred, Hannah had never encountered the like before.
Reality was, after all, antipathetic to the very idea of theater, and to find common sense in it was as rare as finding a humble leading man.
“My father never drinks before a performance, for fear he’ll slur his words or his makeup,” Hannah said softly in reply to Peggy’s confession.
“So he almost never drinks at all. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer him getting tipsy now and then so I could see what he might be like when he’s not onstage. But then, he always is,” she sighed.
“No, no,” Peggy said emphatically, “you never mean that, Hannah, that you never do. I can tell you that. You wouldn’t want to see the drinking—nor when it takes effect—when the crockery gets tossed about as freely as hateful words do— and his eaten dinner, too, in it’s own due time,” she added sourly.
Hannah had to smile and was glad that Peggy couldn’t see it.
She was sure the girl was sincere, and that it was true.
But still, the thought of her own father raging as anything but King Lear on the heath was amusing.
He claimed to have gotten blind drunk a few times to know the way of it, but even his “Drunkard” was a mannerly, charming fellow—a “sublime and sympathetic sot” as one of the papers had written, which was why the matinee ladies, even those of the Temperance set, loved him so.
“No, a man who’s a boozer’s no good to himself or his loved ones—and a woman who’s one? Faugh!” Peggy spat. “They don’t bear speaking of, they don’t.”
“Ah, but,” Hannah said in a dark, wheedling voice, “a drop of fine French champagne, my dear, can never do a girl a bit of harm.”
After she got over the shock of hearing what had seemed to be a vile seducer’s voice in her own bedroom, Peggy giggled, only stopping to breathlessly exclaim, “Ah, Hannah, if you’d only take to the boards, you’d make Miss Lottie look like yesterday’s porridge, you would, I swear it, you would.”
“I offer the girl a sip of champagne, and she offers me a life of sin upon the stage,” Hannah said mournfully. Then added, in Peggy’s exact accents, “Och! What’s this world comin’ to, I ask you?”
It was several minutes before Peggy could speak again, but after her yelps of glee subsided to chuckles, she was silent for a moment, and then said, in a very different grave little voice, “Hannah, my dear friend, ‘tis about sin I wish to speak to you.”
It took a moment for Hannah to realize no jest was forthcoming, and that gave Peggy time to phrase the question she finally dared to ask.
“I need your advice,” Peggy said seriously. “ ‘Tis about a gentleman.”
Hannah swallowed hard. It would be a pity if Peggy had fallen for the blandishments of John, the reedy tenor that had been in the habit of intercepting her in the backstage shadows, worse if it was their womanizing leading man, for though a charming fellow, he was far less serious about the women he used than he was about the makeup he put on and off each night.
But whoever it was, Hannah thought sadly, he would end this lovely friendship she’d found.
For she knew that when a girl found a fellow, the last thing she needed was the company of another girl, until, that was, the fellow either married her or shabbed her off; and in this world the latter was the rule, and the former, not much better.
But Peggy deserved some luck, Hannah thought, and hoped for the best as she waited for her to go on.
“Y’ see,” Peggy said carefully, “this gentleman’s been asking me out of late, and though at first I said no, as well I knew I should, he keeps after asking, and asking, and well, with all the way he’s gone about it, polite and kind…
He don’t ask for me to come with him at night—well, surely not after the piece of mind I gave him the first time he asked that!
” Peggy declared with satisfaction, before her voice gentled and she went on, “He asked for me to come walking, or riding with him in the broad daylight, on Sundays and such. Just to talk. And I believe him.
“I know that sounds pure folly,” Peggy said defensively, though Hannah hadn’t said a word, “for I’m well aware that I’m just a poor dab of a seamstress, in an acting company, far from home and hope of fair play from any rogue or devil, or so they think!
But I’m no fool, and he’s a gentleman to his fingertips, and only asking after my company.
And I only want to say yes—just for a day that I can remember for always after.
Because I am just a poor seamstress, and I know it, and know such an invitation will not come my way again. What do you think, Hannah dear?”
“Why, I think that would depend entirely upon who he is,” Hannah said carefully. Then she prompted, “Who is he?”
“Well, but you don’t know him,” Peggy said, “for he’s not in the company.
No. He lives here. Not just here,” she said in pretty confusion, “he’s from Wyoming Territory, he says.
And he’s no miner or common cowboy, that I’ll swear.
But he’s no Johnny Backstage, neither!” she cried.
“That I’ll take me vows on, too. He came backstage back in Denver, and here I thought he was lost and looking for some girl in the dressing room, because that’s where I’d seen him the night before, with Miss Lottie and all, when I was with you.
But no, he says he was looking for me. Because he’d seen me and couldn’t forget me. Me! Aye, imagine that!
“Well, I couldn’t. And so after he tells me what for, no, I says, of course.
What sort of girl did he take me for? To step out with a backstage admirer like a tart!
” she scoffed. “But he was back the next night, and the next. He’s even here now.
He followed us…me. Imagine that,” Peggy breathed wonderingly.
“And always so polite and soft-spoke’, and well dressed, and marvelous handsome, too.
And for all I keep saying no, all he keeps saying he wants is my company for a few hours in the daylight. Imagine!”