Chapter Twelve
“We, like the phoenix, have ended only to rise up again,” Kyle said, “but our new incarnation will be much brighter.”
Hannah stirred uneasily in her chair. It was partially because she was weary with sitting, the train ride had been long, although it had gotten her back to the reality of her circumstances too quickly. It was also because Kyle was promising something.
“I see you doubt me,” he sighed, and looked around the crowded restaurant in Grand Central Depot as though he expected a horde of travelers to leave off what they were doing to stare in amazement at what he’d said.
But, as usual, he said it with such conviction that Hannah looked with him, half expecting them to, too.
“I asked you to stay a moment, after the others left, because I’d a proposition to put to you that I didn’t want them to hear.
About the future. Not that some of them won’t find a home with me again in the near future—but because some of them will not.
Ah well, but as Mr. Darwin says, ‘only the fittest will survive, such is life,’ ” Kyle shrugged and turned his attention to Hannah again.
They sat at a small table in the tearoom at the depot, their traveling cases all around them.
“I’ve put away more than a bit of money, it was, if not the most glorious, then certainly a most successful tour,” he said smugly, neglecting to mention that a large part of the profits had been made larger as the salaries he had to pay had shrunken as his troupe had done.
But it had been successful nevertheless, and more so because he’d learned a few lessons in the West, lessons he meant to put to the test now that he was back East. He only needed the usual: luck and opportunity.
And this time, in order to do it faster, the unusual: a lovely, knowledgeable, honorable, and clever well-connected assistant—Hannah.
“I’ve some ideas,” he said. “What we did was good, but it could be better. Far better. I’d prefer to do drama, only drama, but I’ve learned that variety is the spice of theater.
Not just vaudeville: music, dance, magic, animal acts, and spectacle, but vaudeville with a tidbit of drama thrown in.
Four or five acts culminating in a drama—fun for the kiddies and the weak-minded, with a morsel of the heavier stuff for those who have pretensions.
It will work. It did work. But I know a way to make it work better,” he said, his lean, dark face alight with liveliness.
“There are too many lost opportunities,” he said as Hannah listened, caught up in his enthusiasm.
“The solution needs vision. I have that. You see, much of the profit we made was eaten up, not by our charming troupe, but by rentals. Theater rentals. The Silver Circuit and all the other trouping companies accept that as part of their natural expenses. But it’s unnatural, really.
For if a man owned those theaters, and could send his troupe touring through a chain of them as they wended their way cross-country, it would be pure profit.
A simple idea, but a revolutionary one. But also an idea that needs the right people to implement it. ”
Hannah sighed. Now she understood. She had suspected Kyle might offer her another position with him when they got home, and had been half-hoping he would. But now the other half she’d not, had shown up—the reason why he’d offered.
“That would take a fortune,” she commented.
“Yes,” he said musingly.
“No, she said, rising and gripping her pocketbook, “I will not put in a word with Graham Dylan, even if I ever see him again. Which I doubt. Nor will I with Royal, because if he’s got money, he needs it for Peggy and her family. And I will not—never, with my father. Because the truth is,” she said, swallowing hard, for it was as hard a truth to swallow at last as it was to say, “that he doesn’t care much for me, or my opinion.
The whole point of living on my own is to be sure I’ll not owe him anything anymore. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Kyle said, taking her hand so that she couldn’t leave, “for you. But not for me. I don’t need your father’s influence,” he said, though he would have liked it, but now he knew it was as impossible to have as it would eventually be unnecessary.
As Hannah sank down in her chair again, he said vehemently, clutching her hand hard, “Nor do I want Gray Dylan’s, I assure you!
” That was true enough, the Dylans had a history of raiding his company, and a look at Gray Dylan’s face as they’d left him showed him that history might repeat itself if he wasn’t very careful.
“And though I believe Royal Atkins has enough money to support Peggy and an entire city block with her. I’ve no need of his support.
I can get the investors. I need you for another kind of help.
“This time,” he said, with a look in his dark eyes that showed Hannah he’d have dearly loved to pace around the crowded tearoom and made her grateful he couldn’t, because he was irresistible once he got to his feet and started emoting, “I’ll need a proper office, in a good district.
Letterhead paper and a telephone,” he said, his eyes glowing, as Hannah caught her breath, because the only man she knew personally with a telephone was her father, “and a secretary—you can play one until we get one,” he said offhandedly, “and then we can put a company together again.
“A very good one, this time. But that’s not the main thing.
No. The main thing is the investors I will interest in our company, and my plan.
And I will, because I believe I know how to now.
The odd thing,” he said thoughtfully, “is that theater itself isn’t the main thing anymore.
Publicity is. Fame itself is. And then, too, there are new ways to make money whilst we try to make money.
I understand from some of the other troupers I met that there are now songwriters here in New York who’ll pay you to sing their songs.
Anywhere. Isn’t that astonishing?” he asked with wonder.
“That way you can make money two ways: singing for the writers and for the audience. Lovely,” he sighed.
“But that’s all to be,” he said with more energy. “That’s the point. I need someone like you behind me in this, doing exactly what you’ve done so well all these past weeks: holding the troupe together, assisting me. Are you with me, Hannah? I’ll pay well, better, when I can,” he added quickly.
“Well, I…” Hannah began. Then he went on, “It will be here, in New York, if that’s what’s bothering you.
We won’t need to follow the tour until I get it together and that may take a while…
Or,” he asked, with a great show of disdain, “are you thinking that as you might be marrying soon, you wish to cut your connection with the theater as soon as you can? Or is it that you feel the wedding’s so imminent that you don’t need to work for your keep any longer? ”
“What wedding?” Hannah gasped.
“To Gray Dylan?” he asked sweetly.
“Kyle,” Hannah said, as she snatched her hand from his so he wouldn’t feel it shaking, for he’d said the thing she could never allow herself to even fantasize about in order to court sleep.
“That will, and can never be. Even if he’d the slightest interest in such a thing with me, which I promise you, he has not.
The thing is,” she said, and turned her head so that he couldn’t see how it hurt her to say it, “that I had a very bad marriage. Very bad. You cannot know the whole of it—and that is literally so. So no matter who asks me in the future. I’m resolved: I will never marry again.
I’m not being coy. If you never believe another thing I say, believe this: it is for the best. Nor will I ever approximate that state with any man, even though I have been brought up in the theater, I will not and cannot,” she said severely.
“Ah, well,” he said softly, “that takes care of the next question I was about to ask, so I’ll forget it, as you say.”
Of course, he never specified which of the two he was going to ask of her.
She might have said she’d no intention of either matrimony or being a mistress, but since the point was now moot, it was better unspoken.
It was a disappointment to him, either way.
But he didn’t doubt her. She was a great actor’s daughter and a fair actress herself, but to a man who dealt in daily fictions, truth was such a rarity that he knew it immediately when he saw it.
And regretted it, for whatever reasons it was so.
She was lovely, even in her distress. Her averted face showed him the side view of long lashes closed over those speaking eyes, a straight nose, and those incredible lips, as tempting in profile as they were in any other view.
A downward glance showed him a different, equally entrancing profile.
He sighed. But accepted it. She was not touchable, he could only hope she was still employable in other ways.
“I understand. I rue it, but will honor it. But why should that change our relationship? I still need you and want you. Will you be my assistant, Hannah?” he asked solemnly as he’d ask her to be his wife.
For if it were all true, that position would also link her to him for life—or until he was done with her.
“Yes, Kyle, I will,” she said.