Chapter Nine #3
“I’d think anytime a girl got a proposal, it would stay with her,” Gray said.
“Yeah. Well. But a girl like Peggy deserves more,” Royal said.
After taking a gulp of water so large Gray could hear him swallow, he added low, “More romantic and all, girls’ set store by such, you see.
I want her to say yes real bad. Don’t believe I could take it if she didn’t, though I’d understand, I guess.
So I’m sort of stacking the deck. I’m going to have to leave town now to do it right.
Then I’ll meet up with her in Aspen when I got it done.
Going to get a big ring. And fine furniture, and the best cattle,” he added with a trace of worry.
“It’s the cattie that will do it,” Gray agreed. Then he laughed and said with absolute sincerity, “If she turns you down, she’s a damn fool. And you don’t want to be married to one of those anyway, so it would be all for the best. But she won’t. Damned if I won’t miss you, friend.”
As Royal assured him that the new place wouldn’t be far, only a day’s ride—at the most an overnight where there’d always be room for him—Gray began to wonder how he’d replace him.
Oh, either Lucky or Mack Moran could do the job, and be fine foremen.
But Royal was his best friend, too, and those, he knew, were irreplaceable.
Once Royal had a wife and family, they’d be his priority.
As Gray pondered it. Royal watched him, and added the worry that he’d hurt Gray’s feelings to his biggest one: That Peggy might refuse him.
And so, when Hannah and Peggy entered the dining room of Leadville’s finest restaurant, they saw two beautifully dressed, perfectly silent, glum gentlemen awaiting them.
“Are we that late?” Hannah said gaily, as the men stood. “Oh!” she said a breath later, stopping and staring at Gray, “You look different, but very well.”
“ ‘Well?’ Is that all? It’s elegant he looks,” Peggy exclaimed, as Gray ran a finger over the naked upper lip where his mustache had been.
“Thank you, that’s more than I’d hoped for,” Gray said humbly. “I didn’t do it for praise, but because I was told that only a villain wears a mustache.”
That simple statement caused a remarkable color change in his audience: Peggy was still blushing for her forwardness, while Royal’s face grew brick red as he realized that he’d been so distracted with his own thoughts that he’d never noticed the change, and Hannah’s cheeks grew pink as she recalled the circumstances following her jest about his mustache.
Her face grew even warmer as the amused look in his eyes showed he remembered that moment very well.
Though thick and silky, the mustache had been so light as to be almost unnoticeable in certain lights, but without it, he looked more classically handsome, younger, and so somehow, more vulnerable.
Hannah’s smile slipped as her gaze did, when she realized what a dangerously nonsensical notion that was.
“Now, if I’d have known what a tumult it would cause,” Gray whispered as he held out Hannah’s chair for her, “I’d have shaved it off an hour after I met you.”
She didn’t answer that, but immediately launched into a story about the performance that had just ended.
“Yeah,” Royal put in, anxious to make amends and show he usually knew what was going on with his friend, “they get better every night. Gray. Now that they don’t do The Drunkard no more, they got that Miss Flora singing one of your favorites: ‘Father’s a Drunkard, and Mother is Dead’. It’s a treat. You should hear it.”
“If I’d know that. I’d have come,” Gray said sincerely. When Hannah stared at him, he explained, “No, it’s true. I love a little honest sentiment.”
“But that’s dishonest sentiment,” Hannah said, amazed.
“Maybe for you, but not for some of us,” he chided her.
“I suspect you sophisticated theater folks think that kind of thing is only for us rubes. But I’d always thought an actor or a singer that didn’t really feel what he was doing, even if only for the moment he was doing it, would do it badly.
So if it’s being done right, then somebody onstage must feel the way we do in the audience, right? ”
When he saw her bite her full, dusky lower lip as she considered that, he found he had to move his gaze to her lowered lashes in order to keep his mind on his words as he went on, “What’s wrong with sentiment?
Sometimes it’s pure pleasure to wallow in pain, and that’s what it’s all about.
Now, I’m not claiming it’s Shakespeare, though even he liked a good weeper every now and then, but it sure gets me every time, and that’s the sad truth. ”
He smiled, and started singing very softly in a sweet, easy tenor:
“We were so happy till Father drank rum,
Then all our sorrow and trouble begun:
Mother grew paler and wept every day,
Baby and I were too hungry to play…”
Peggy and Hannah couldn’t resist joining in:
“Slowly they faded, and one Summer’s night
Found their dear faces all silent and white;
Then with big tears slowly dropping, I said…”
Royal added his bass notes for the last line:
“Father’s a Drunkard and Mother is dead!”
They all sang the chorus together, harmonizing beautifully:
“Mother, oh! why did you leave me alone,
With no one to love me, no friends and no home?
Dark is the night when the storm rages wild,
God pity Bessie, the Drunkard’s lone child!”
Gray wasn’t the only one to wipe a tear from his eye when they’d finished.
There was total silence in the dining room.
They sat still, listening to it. Then they looked around.
They hadn’t realized how their singing had carried.
But although they were embarrassed, the look on the faces of the waiters hovering near their table made them bite their lips to keep from laughing, and a glance at the assorted expressions of the other diners and then to each other made their eyes glisten with suppressed hilarity.
When a tipsy couple at another table began to applaud, and the other well-dressed patrons in the room hesitated, and then joined in, they gave way to open, hearty laughter at last.
“Now I see the lure of the theater from the other side,” Gray said, when they’d recovered themselves.
“So, shall we see you onstage tomorrow night?” Hannah asked.
They all laughed, until she asked, “Or at least in the audience?”
But at that, both gentlemen fell as still as they’d been waiting for their escorts to join them.
Gray spoke up after that awkward moment.
“Ah, no. Afraid not. Royal has some business to finish up, and I…” he paused, thinking quickly. If Royal was gone, he’d have to ask Hannah out alone, and he’d the strangest feeling that she’d refuse, if only because she’d want to keep Peggy company. He could wait.
He’d business of his own anyway, he decided.
He’d picked up the merest hint of some disturbing rumors about silver that needed chasing down, but paying attention to hints of rumors was what made the difference between rich men and very rich men.
And in so doing, his trail would eventually lead to Aspen, dovetailing with theirs.
He’d been planning to stay at the Roaring Fork Club there, where he was an absentee member.
But a wise man’s plans were always subject to change.
Waiting to see her until she arrived in Aspen would mean a wait of weeks, and looking at her now, he wondered if he could wait another hour until he’d a chance to hold her again.
Just speaking with her gave him enormous pleasure.
Still, one week’s absence had won him a wide smile and a compliment. He’d see what more would bring, he thought, never stopping to consider why that decision brought him equal parts of relief and irritation with himself. But then, he was used to being honest with himself.
“I understand you’ll be at The Jerome in time for their grand opening,” Gray said.
“And so, I’d like to be the first to invite you ladies out to a real western Thanksgiving dinner with us there.
It happens we’ll be at the Jerome, too—I’ve got a friend who could get us rooms even if it meant rolling old J.
B. Wheeler himself out of bed—happens he is old J.
B., actually—m’ brother had a hand in getting them that railroad spur they needed a few years back,” he said as Royal gazed at him with sheerest relief and gratitude.
“So then,” he said, after Hannah looked at Peggy and both nodded instant, pleased acceptances, “a toast!”
He stood, raised his glass, and said, “To Aspen. And Success!”
—To all of us, and each according to his own desires—he added to himself, as they drank and then beamed at one another.
They were held over in Leadville. It was a roaring, prosperous town, with new money and the same old needs that men always had for entertainment.
For all its fine hotels and restaurants, the most of it, like most booming mining towns, was composed of hundreds of drab, hastily erected shacks that were the miner’s quarters, with their usual plentitude of dirty clothes, dishes, and dogs, and the absence of women and the sounds of their laughter.
So the whorehouses and theaters prospered.
The troupe was held over for weeks, and Hannah was glad of it.