Chapter Fifteen #4
A half day. That was all she’d promised them, and so they had to drop Hannah off at Kyle’s offices after luncheon.
When she urged Peggy to come up and see Kyle again, Peggy only smiled and said, “Later. When we come to pick you up for dinner. Why Hannah Roberts! You haven’t forgot, have you?
” Peggy asked, her amusement turning to hurt as Hannah began to shake her head.
As she saw it, Hannah turned the negative shake into a nod, and hoped she didn’t look like an idiot with her head bobbing every which way, as she said, “No, that is to say ‘no, I haven’t forgotten’ and ‘yes. I’ll come. ’ Until six, then.”
She was rewarded as well as punished by Gray’s look of amusement tinged with sorrow as she waved them good-bye, and they drove off down the avenue.
A half day and a dinner, Hannah thought wearily, remembering the look in his eyes as she walked up the stair to Kyle’s offices.
It was their color, she decided, that—and not the fact that those incredible azure eyes seemed to see to the bottom of her soul.
After all, she reasoned, she was used to dark brown looking back at her from her mirror and her parents’ faces all these years, even John had had brown eyes.
It was the shocking color, that was all there was to it.
And with luck, courage, and a special blessing, she’d get through tonight and tomorrow and the days that followed, and then be free of those incredible eyes forever, except in her memory, forever.
She was almost knocked down the stair by the woman rushing past her. She spun around to see who could be so rude, when the whiff of heavy perfume left in the woman’s wake told her who it was as surely as the bright hair beneath the oversize hat did.
“Lottie!” she exclaimed, as she clung to the stair rail.
Lottie turned around, gave her one fulminating stare, cried, “Be damned to you, too!” and then, head high, pushed open her parasol and flounced out the door.
“Yes,” Kyle said from where he stood at the office door looking down.
“That was our delightful Lottie, back from the West with an offer of her services—her less desirable ones—for she offered to act for us again. Her silver king already had an ironfisted queen, it seems. She was tossed out and is back. But not with us. We can do better,” he said as Hannah came into the office, removed her hat, and took her place at the front desk.
“I’d hoped,” Kyle said idly, as he perched on the desk and pretended great interest in a pen he’d found there, “to do much better.”
There was that in his voice that made Hannah avoid his eyes as she fussed with unnecessary things on the desk.
“I realize that other old acquaintance has not been forgotten, either,” he said far too casually. “That was Mr. Gray Dylan who just dropped you off here, was it not?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. She then said with much less hesitation, “That was Peggy and Royal with him, too. They’ve more shopping and sight-seeing to do, but they’ll be by tonight, to say hello to you.”
“Be still my heart,” Kyle said, “I can scarce wait. Somehow, I will endeavor to. But I was only asking after Mr. Dylan because it seems that you two are still sharing billing—and cooing. Are you, I wonder?”
“See here, Kyle,” she said vehemently, “I don’t care for such aspersions, not that it is any of your business, in any event.
But no,” she added when he began to apologize, almost sincerely, “I’m only seeing him because I wish to see Peggy and Royal.
There’s nothing more,” she said with all the finality of someone who has finally accepted the truth of her words.
“I only said it because I cared, but I must ever say things I care about flippantly, you see,” Kyle said quietly, toying with the pen and avoiding her gaze so well she wondered if he really meant it.
“Hannah,” he said again, after a moment, so spontaneously that she knew this, at least, was rehearsed, “I’ve been thinking.
We’ve interviewed so many girls for our lead female, and so far, so few have been so much as interesting: Miss Hart is given to simpering, Mrs. Davenport is a bit long in the tooth, and Miss Wood, although charming, is a redhead—just as Miss Kingston, our premiere singer is.
That would be a deathly redundancy. No, we need a contrast, a raven-haired beauty would be perfect,” he said, and slipped off the desk to prowl the room.
Hannah shut her eyes, but couldn’t stop her ears.
“We can’t do Shakespeare, not in New York where the best Shakespeareans are—including your dear father,” he went on, as if they hadn’t discussed this days ago.
“You yourself said that Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight would be splendid abridged, and so it is…Everyone else has been cast…Hannah, my dear,” he said, “have you come to a decision? Time grows short. We must be running by Christmas week. We’re already in rehearsals.
Not that we really need them but for timing now.
As it’s a revue, everyone knows their act, except for the one-act drama.
And you’re such a quick study. It’s true anything can get an audience that week, but there’s no reason not to start our run fat with holiday revelers.
As Lester so often says, ‘cheap laughs sound as good as deserved ones, do they not?’
“It’s not such a great thing, after all,” he said in a different, eager voice.
“Just a part in a revue, in a short drama. You seemed interested just the other day. What do you say? Can you do it? This time with a full heart? You can, if you wish, you know,” he said with sincerity.
“I believe it would be a great loss to us, and to you, if you did not. Will you?”
She dared to look at him then, because she’d her answer.
“May I have just a few days more to think on it?” she asked. “As you say, I must be sure this time. I will be, I promise, when I know. Just a few days more, please. It may be you’ll find someone better by then, anyway.”
“Never,” he said. “But of course. Think on.”
He left her then. And, as he requested, she thought on.
But not about the lead in Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight.
Instead, she drew ever diminishing circles with the pen he’d left on the desktop, and thought about a pair of sad blue eyes that seemed to know, precisely, the depth and measure of her sorrow.
Foolishness itself, she finally decided.
When there was nothing to be done, the only thing to do was nothing, until it was all over.
And it would be soon. Ah well, she thought, dabbing her eyes with her last clean handkerchief, suffering was supposed to maketh the artist, as Kyle always said.
Well, she decided, as she tried to smile, it ought to maketh something aside from a great pile of wet wash.
Perhaps suffering maketh a great laundress, if nothing else, she thought.
She wished she could share the joke with someone.