It wasn’t dark yet, but thick twilight shadows shrouded the bank and shimmering orange reflections from the sinking sun danced on the murky brown water. I walked slowly along the deck, feeling low, feeling lonely, trying to convince myself I was as brave and self-sufficient as I wanted to be. Although I could hear the sound of voices drifting from other parts of the boat, I seemed to have this section of the deck all to myself. The boat rocked gently. The huge paddle wheel turned slowly, water sloshing with a monotonous music. A giant white smokestack loomed up ahead, and as I moved around it I was aware of someone huddling in the shadows behind it. Startled, I paused, and a vague alarm began to grow. There was a rustle of taffeta, and the woman I had observed earlier came out of the shadows, gripping the handle of a large, unwieldy carpetbag.
“Hello,” she said. “We meet again.”
“You—you startled me.”
The woman smiled and then glanced nervously up and down the deck. “Sorry, love. I heard someone coming and I thought it might be him, so I darted behind the smokestack.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” I asked.
“You might say that. I haven’t done anything really wrong, mind you, but I could use a place to hide for a while. I thought about crawling into one of those lifeboats, but that seems terribly melodramatic.”
“I’m sure it would be terribly uncomfortable as well.”
“Got any other ideas?”
“You could come to my cabin,” I said.
“You’d let me do that?”
“I’ve plenty of room.”
“Marvelous! I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Do let’s hurry. If he finds me, there will be a very unpleasant scene. I’m not a criminal or anything like that, but—”
“It’s the gambler, isn’t it?”
“However did you guess? I was a little short of money, you see, and I met him yesterday in New Orleans and I have to be in Memphis day after tomorrow and he kindly offered to pay for my ticket and I discovered I was expected to share his cabin and well—”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I said, leading her down the narrow stairwell.
“Oh, but I want to, love. I’m not an angel, but I really don’t sleep with just anyone and he wears the most dreadful-smelling hair pomade and, anyway, he decided to fleece some suckers this afternoon and I sat in on the game and just couldn’t help myself—I beat him at his own game, won a bundle, and there wasn’t anything he could do without letting the suckers know he was cheating, too. The cards were marked, you see. Not very cleverly. I spotted it at once and I insisted on dealing myself.”
I unlocked the door to my cabin and ushered her inside. She looked around appreciatively, setting her bag on the floor.
“This is charming, love—I’ll just sleep on that couch, won’t put you out at all. Mr. Lance Sherman was livid when he kept losing and I kept winning—I let the other men win a few hands, too, just for the sake of appearances. They insisted we keep on playing, and I finally gathered up my winnings, excused myself, dashed to his cabin, grabbed my bag, and—here we are. Do you think I’m just terrible?”
“Not at all,” I told her.
The woman smiled again. It was as friendly, as dazzling, as the smile she had given me on deck when she was with the gambler.
“It’s strange,” she said. “but when I first saw you this morning, looking so sad, looking so lonely, I said to myself—there’s someone I’d like to know.”
“I—I felt the same way,” I confessed.
“It’s fate, love,” she declared. “We were meant to be friends.”
She reached for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, and never had I felt such immediate closeness, such rapport. It was as though we already were close friends and had been for some time. With her gorgeous clothes, her provocative perfume and low-pitched, musical voice, she was a fascinating creature, full of vitality and perfectly natural charm. There was worldly sophistication as well and a breezy self-confidence I longed to emulate.
“How did you become so expert at cards?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“In my profession, you have lots of time on your hands and the men are always playing cards backstage and—well, you pick things up.”
“Backstage? You—you’re an actress?”
“I’m on the stage, love. There’s a world of difference, as my dear cousin constantly reminds me. Were it not for the family connection, he’d have booted me out of the company ages ago. I’m not that good, I confess, but I’m not that bad, either, and I’m extremely ornamental. Even Jason admits that. I’m Laura Devon, by the way.”
“What a beautiful name,” I said.
“It’s a damn site better than Mabel Utterback, the name my parents gave me. Don’t ever tell anyone I told you that. Jason’s the only one who knows the awful truth, and he’s as eager to forget it as I am.”
“I’m Dana O’Malley,” I told her.
“That’s a nice name, too. What do you do?”
“I—I don’t do anything yet,” I replied. “I hope to find a job in St. Louis. A man I once met said that if I ever came to St. Louis he’d be happy to put me to work at his emporium.”
Laura studied me for a moment, as though trying to discern something.
“You’re running away from home,” she said.
“I—I don’t really have a home.”
“Family?”
I shook my head. I felt like bursting into tears. Laura sensed that, and she squeezed my hand again.
“I have an idea, love. I’m loaded. I mean, I’ve got a whole bundle in my bag—more money than I’ve ever had at one time. I can’t leave the cabin until we reach Natchez—he is getting off the boat at Natchez, has a big game set up there—but you could dash down the hall to the steward’s post and order us a bottle of champagne and some food.”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“I’m ravenous, love, and champagne is always lovely. Tell him you want a bottle of the best.”
Thirty minutes later we were both sitting on the couch, drinking champagne and talking. I had already learned that Laura was twenty-three years old, had been with her cousin’s theatrical troupe for four years, had been visiting a retired actress friend in New Orleans when she met the gambler and that the “diamond” spray in her hair was really paste. How stunning she was with that shining black hair, those sparkling, good-humored sapphire eyes, that smooth, creamy complexion. The prominent cheekbones and slightly long nose made her face all the more interesting, I thought, and the full pink lips were beautifully shaped and seemed designed to smile. She helped herself to more of the pâté the steward had brought, spreading it on a thin sliver of toast.
“Sure you don’t want some?” she inquired.
I shook my head.
“It’s delicious. The fillet of sole was, too. I don’t know when I’ve had such a meal. When you’re traveling all over the South with a third-rate theatrical company, the food you get is hardly first-rate.”
“Your cousin’s company is third-rate?”
“Second-rate, perhaps. Jason’s very ambitious and has dreams of becoming a great theatrical entrepreneur, but the plays he produces—well, let’s just say they’re crowd pleasers. The crowds we get are rarely very discriminating. Jason writes most of the plays himself, and most of them are flagrantly cribbed from sensational French novels and English penny dreadfuls.”
“Still,” I said, “it must be a fascinating life.”
“Life upon the wicked stage is frequently hazardous to your health and always stressful—but it’s a living and, I must confess, quite a lot of fun if you don’t mind towering temperaments and constant backstage feuding. Jason is not the most amiable of men—though he’s a dear, actually. You just have to know how to handle him.”
“Did you grow up with him?” I asked.
Laura nodded, pouring herself another glass of champagne. “I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle when my parents died—I was five years old
at the time. Aunt Megan was an actress and Uncle James managed the theatrical company—just as Jason does now. I grew up on the road, so to speak, living out of a trunk, traveling from one town to another, staying in wretched hotels and frequently sleeping in train stations. I loved it, of course, even though my aunt tried to keep me from the other actors and wouldn’t dream of letting me go onstage. Jason is ten years older than I, and he was already taking an active role in the company. He considered me an insufferable pest. I was always tagging after him, and he was always pulling my pigtails or locking me up in a closet.”
“How dreadful,” I said.
“I worshiped him,” she confessed. “He was dashing and devilishly handsome even as a teenager. The women in the company spoiled him rotten. Those who didn’t want to mother him wanted to get into his pants—a great many did. We lost so many ingenues because of Jason, a number of leading ladies as well. He was an unprincipled young rogue—still is, for that matter.”
“Your aunt finally let you go onstage?” I asked.
Laura shook her head. “She was a dear, straight-laced lady, even if she was in the theater, and she was determined I was not to be corrupted by the riffraff backstage. Jason she couldn’t do anything about, but me she was going to give a proper upbringing. I was sent away to a number of schools—I hated every one of them, missed the company dreadfully. I finally ended up in a very refined finishing school in New England. It cost the moon, but Aunt Megan managed to pay the tuition. I hated it worst of all.”
She smiled a wry smile, remembering.
“I’m afraid I had already been corrupted by the riffraff. I was ‘fast’ and not at all ‘refined.’ The other girls, prim, prissy blue bloods that they were, looked down their patrician noses at me. I was constantly rebelling and defying authority. I was miserable, but there was some consolation. A man, of course. I was sixteen and quite mature and rather pretty and much more sophisticated than the other girls. He was twenty-seven, our music teacher, and I thought he was the most exciting man I’d ever met. He was handsome and sensitive and moody and, I thought, wonderfully sympathetic.”
“You fell in love with him?”
“As only a naive sixteen-year-old can. I was convinced it was love everlasting. We would run away together and get married and I would be his inspiration and he would compose great symphonies and we would live happily ever after. It didn’t work quite that way,” she said ruefully. “I let him have his way with me and it was utterly divine and I thought I was ever so grownup, ever so superior to the other girls, smug little ninnies who didn’t know beans about ‘real life.’ I found out about real life a couple of months later. We were discovered.”
“What—what happened?”
“My handsome, moody, gifted Knight in Shining Armor informed the authorities that I had seduced him. He lost his job anyway. He left without so much as a polite good-bye to me. I was expelled, in total disgrace and terrified I might be pregnant. I wasn’t, fortunately.”
“Did you go back to your aunt?”
“I was too humiliated to face her,” she said. “I ran off and managed to get a job with a rival theatrical company, even shabbier than Jason’s—he was already managing it by this time. My uncle was in poor health, had handed the reins over to Jason.”
Laura finished her champagne and set the glass down, a thoughtful look in those lovely sapphire-blue eyes. A faint smile lingered on her lips. After a moment she sighed, refilled her glass and gave me a wry look.
“So I was on the stage at last, in a rival company. I was dreadfully inexperienced, but I learned. I did dozens of small parts, gradually improving, going from abysmally bad to fairly competent. I still hadn’t learned my lesson about men,” she continued. “There was another one—an actor, God help me. Whatever you do, love, never, ever, under any circumstances, get involved with an actor. They’re totally irresponsible and completely incapable of any genuine emotion, a pack of posturing egomaniacs who spend all their free hours admiring themselves in the mirror.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her vehemence on the subject.
“I had been with the company for over a year when our new leading man arrived. He was even handsomer, even more exciting than the music teacher. I was eighteen by that time, extremely ornamental and receiving considerable attention from the eager chaps who hang around the stage doors. I ignored them all. Once burned, you stay away from the fire. Right? Not me, love. Like an idiot I went rushing straight into the flames. Oh, I was really in love this time—at least that’s what I told myself. The son of a bitch could charm the birds off the trees, and he had me eating out of his hand.”
“How did it end?”
“It ended with me out on my ass, love. His wife arrived. He hadn’t mentioned a wife. Wifey dear was nobody’s fool. She saw what was going on immediately. She marched into the manager’s office and informed him that I was to be dismissed instantly or she’d haul hubby back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Guess what? I was dismissed instantly. The company moved on to the next stop, and I was stranded in Macon, Georgia, without a cent to my name and owing two weeks’ rent for my room in the fleabag boardinghouse we’d been staying in. The manager was supposed to take care of that. He didn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“I charmed the landlord and wrote to Jason. My uncle had died of the flu the year before, and Aunt Megan had passed on a few months later. I’ll always believe she died of a broken heart. I wasn’t at all sure Jason would be willing to help me.”
“Did he?”
Laura nodded. “He came to Macon, paid my bill, called me every kind of a fool and shook me until my teeth literally rattled. Then he tracked down the company, bloodied the nose of the manager who had fired me and beat the bejesus out of the leading man who had so heartlessly despoiled me—Jason didn’t know about the music teacher. Violence dutifully done and my honor revenged, my dear cousin took me back with him to Jackson, Mississippi, where his company was performing Lord Roderick’s Revenge, a thundering melodrama he’d penned the previous summer. The ingenue came down with the hives. I took her place, and I’ve been with the company ever since.”
“And—you got over the leading man?”
“In record time, love. One does. I learned my lesson, though. There’ve been other men, of course, but I haven’t been burned again. A girl soon finds out how to handle such matters.”
I stood up and stepped over to the porthole, peering out into the night. The bank was shrouded in velvety black shadow, tiny pinpoints of golden light glimmering here and there. The Mississippi was dull pewter gray now, spangled with silvery flecks of moonlight. The boat seemed to be standing still as the river and bank went drifting by.
“Want to tell me about him, love?” Laura asked.
I turned. “How did you know?”
“I saw the sad, lost look in your eyes this morning. I saw the tremulous smile. I’ve been there. I know all the signs.”
“It’s a long story,” I said quietly.
“We have nothing but time, love. I’ve babbled on and on, telling you all about me. I’d like to hear about you, but—I don’t want to pry, love. If you’d rather not talk about it, I’d certainly understand.”
“There was a man,” I said.
And I told her my story. I told her about the swamps and Ma and Clem and Julian, about Delia and the Quarter and how the people there thought me a harlot, an adventuress. I told her about Raoul and my reception at Conti Street, and finally I told her about Charles. Laura sat quietly, her eyes filled with sympathy and understanding as she listened to my tale. My voice broke once or twice, but I carried on, telling her about the house on Rampart Street and the fire and Charles’ final words to me.
“So you see, I—I had to leave,” I said.
Laura nodded in agreement. “There was nothing else you could do, love,” she told me.
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but—the situation was impossible. Julian must have read my letter by now and he must be
desolate, but—I couldn’t have married him, Laura. Not after sleeping with his brother.”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
“I know he won’t understand—Charles won’t tell him. He’ll think me ungrateful. He’ll think I—” I cut myself short, staring across the room without seeing. “He’ll get over it,” I said finally.
“So will you, love. I promise.”
“I—I’ll go on.”
“I’ll tell you a little secret,” Laura said. “That’s what life is all about—going on. Coping. Forging ahead. We’re brought up on fairy tales, love, and we believe in them, we believe life is that way, too. It isn’t. We all find that out eventually. The weak give up and accept defeat. The strong face facts for what they are and—make the best of things.”
I looked at my new friend, and I knew what she said was true. Her illusions had been lost at an early age, too, as had mine. She had had her share of sorrow and disappointments, yet she had managed to retain her vitality, her warmth, her strength and good humor. She was strong and she was a realist. I admired her for that. I wished I could be like her. Laura sighed and pointed to the bottle of champagne resting in its bucket of melting ice.
“We might as well finish it,” she said.
“We might as well.”
“I’ll pour. Here you are, love. Goodness, the bottle’s almost empty and you’ve only had the one glass? There, that’s the last of it. You know, love, we really should have a toast. Don’t you think?”
“By all means.”
Laura lifted her glass and smiled again. “To the men in our lives—may they all rot in hell. No, that’s too negative. To Going On. Too self-consciously dramatic. How about—to friendship?”
They Call Her Dana Page 37
