Outside an enclosed carriage waited, and the copper stuffed Ginger into it, the parents climbed in, the father slammed the lacquered door, and a hack driver pulled away with its human contraband.
Charles followed the carriage, step by step by step, before it vanished in the darkness.
40
THE BIG copper carried Ginger, under the watchful eye of her mother, to her room in the spacious house. The copper left. The maid, Maude, stripped away Ginger’s clothes, without Ginger’s cooperation, and finally got Ginger into a nightdress.
There was nothing to say, so Ginger kept her silence.
The maid removed every bit of clothing from the armoire while Ginger’s mother watched.
“There,” she said. “There’s not a slipper or shoe or coat or dress anywhere about. Just in case you try to leave. There’s snow on the ground, and it’s cold.”
“You have taken my life from me.”
“Exactly.”
“Where’s Father?”
“He’s off at the paper, putting out fires. The paper will understand that you were abducted by the vaudeville company, and we have rescued you and restored you to your rightful life. That will quiet that reporter.”
“It’s not true.”
“Now it is.”
“I will tell everyone it’s not true.”
“You won’t be here. Tomorrow you will be on a private car, carrying you to the American Academy of Symphonic Arts in New York, where you will study voice. It will take some arranging, getting a car here isn’t easy, and a chaperone and a guard. But he has ways.”
“I will never sing a note as long as I am not free.”
Her mother smiled, her lips curling upward. “Time will tell,” she said. “And by the way, never use the name Ginger again. That’s gone and buried. It’ll take some effort to escape the blot on your reputation—vaudeville! Vaudeville! Cheap shows, cheap people, mostly off the immigrant boats.”
“They’re the best people I’ve ever met.”
“Who assaulted you, demeaned you, and exploited you. Like that fake husband.”
“Charles…,” Ginger started to defend him, and gave up. Whatever she said would be ignored.
Her mother suddenly turned cheerful. “Good night, Penelope. You’re back.”
She clicked off the electrical light. Penelope lay in fragrant darkness. Her mother was a great one for sachets, and the house always had a pleasant scent of exotic spices.
So there it was. In the space of an hour or so, she had been abducted, imprisoned, returned to the life she had fled, and reduced to nothingness. No amount of fragrant spice in the air could conceal the odor rising from this house overlooking Pocatello. The blankets covering her felt like shrouds.
She was weary beyond words. The night of travel, the new town, the show, the longing for sleep, deep sleep, sleep until she might wake rested, all of it weighed her down. The temptation was to crawl under those clean, fresh covers, and fall instantly into oblivion, and accept whatever fate awaited her.
But she couldn’t. And there was no time. A private car, actually a prison, carrying her away, carrying her to a distant place across a continent, silencing her, forcing her into the life her mother planned for her. Even now, her father was out in the night, summoning a railcar, wiring people in New York, putting it all together.
She crawled wearily from bed, drew aside the curtain, and stared into the wintry night, the snow cover giving ghostly light to the scene. It would be a long way to the hotel. In a nightdress. Without a scarf or coat or anything for her bare feet. And she might be picked up and returned by that big copper. And when she got to the hotel, she would be wearing her nightdress, and they would stop her.
She could freeze to death. That was one way to die. But she would die a worse death in a railcar under the eyes of an armed guard.
The house was not yet quiet. She heard her mother, and the servants. They were making sure she had nothing to cover her feet or body, making very sure, making the wayward daughter a slave once again. Even as her father was busy at The Tribune giving them a monstrous lie, quieting the sensation.
She would wait an hour. And she would freeze her feet, if that’s what it took. And she would wrap herself in her Hudson’s Bay blanket, which covered her bed. And she would find a way to wrap bathroom towels about her feet.
So she waited. She heard her father return, and the houseman take away his hack, and the doors click shut. She heard muffled voices. She watched the moon rise, turning the snow silver. She waited in the silence. She discovered she had no good way to wrap towels about her feet, so she would go barefoot, and if her feet were frostbitten, she would pay the price.
She wrapped the blanket about her, headed downstairs, and gently tried the door. It was bolted, and she could not grasp how to release the lock. She tried the rear door, and found it was locked also. She gently pushed the sash on a downstairs window, and it wouldn’t move. The generous house was more a fortress than she had known or imagined.
She returned to her room, opened the sash, which slid upward easily, and crawled out on the roof of the generous verandah, wondering if she could find the courage to jump. She could hurt herself badly. But her liberty was worth the risk. She edged through patched snow, down the slippery shingles, and reached the edge. The frozen ground was a long way down. It was bitter cold. Her feet were already numb. Doubts flooded her. And a renewed weariness. A bed would be so welcome.
“Ginger.”
The voice floated upward.
“Ginger. Harry Grabowski. Me and Art, we came to help out.”
“Oh!”
“You sit down on the edge, feet over the edge, and I’ll be ready to catch you. Then just push off.”
She needed no invitation. She slipped to the edge, sat slowly, slid her bare legs over, discovered massive Harry, dressed darkly, waiting, a welcome shadow.
“All right,” she said, and pushed off.
He caught her easily, so easily she marveled. One moment she was falling, the next, his strong hands caught her at the waist, and gently settled her.
“Barefoot, are you? It figures,” he said. “In the old country, keep ’em barefoot. That’s how they ruled.”
“All clear,” said Art, who was keeping watch.
Harry lifted her up, tightened the blanket about her, picked his way carefully to the drive where broad carriage tracks would obscure footprints, even as Art whisked away the footprints in the snow around the veranda, obscuring everything.
“Hey, Ginger, you mind walking in the snow a while?” Art asked.
“I would be proud to.”
Harry eased her to the ground, and she felt the snow bite her bare feet, and she walked artfully, now and then in the carriage tracks, but now and then leaving small, feminine prints which Art did not touch. She wanted each print in the snow to be an indelible record, a signature, of her will. For all the world to see, including the reporter at the paper. So she walked, and walked, and oddly her feet did not go numb because it was a record of her flight, a record of her determination.
And then, when they reached the end of the drive, Harry swept her up and carried her along moonlit lanes, and into the slumbering town. Near the hotel, Art eased ahead, checking things out. He entered the hotel, looked around, stepped out, and nodded. A few moments later, Harry tapped on a familiar hotel door, and Ginger found herself peering into the face of her distraught husband. His gaze ran deep and gentle.
Charles reached out, touched Ginger’s cheek, and nodded.
Harry gently lowered her to the bed, and drew the red blanket tight about her.
“We were right,” Art said. “Nothing holds this lady in a cage.”
Charles shook hands heartily with The Grab Bag, and the brothers slipped into the peaceful corridor, clicking the door behind them.
Then he held her, warmed her, pressed her to his solid body, and finally eased her to the bed and settled her in it.
She told him about the escape. A
nd about her parents’ plans for her. And about the barefoot prints she left in the snow, a mark of everything she was and intended to be.
“Those prints may tell the world the truth,” Charles said.
He found her feet and began massaging them, warming them, awakening the circulation in them, and she enjoyed the sensation.
“Your father went to the paper? With a story that we abducted you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I’ll talk to August.”
“I’m so tired.”
“We have one matter to decide,” he said. “Shall we slip you out? To Boise?”
“I’ve already decided it. I’ll sing tonight. I will sing right here, before this city. I want the world to know it’s my choice.”
He smiled. “I knew it. I knew it when I proposed,” he said. “Who you are. I saw it.”
Sleep crept up once again. And this time, she slept the night through. And there was no one hammering on the hotel door. She didn’t hear Charles, who was up and down, and she didn’t hear when he got dressed and left the room in the night, or hear him return at dawn, or feel him slide into the double bed beside her.
And yet when sunlight at last teased her awake, she sensed at once that her new husband was taut with worry.
Yet he smiled. “How’s my girl?” he asked.
“I could sleep for days.” She watched him pull out fresh clothing from his satchel.
“You’re worried about something.”
“Worried about your parents, yes.”
“What is it?”
“He’s been telling the paper that we abducted you, and they rescued you.”
She was puzzled.
He didn’t elaborate. “There’s trouble in it,” he said.
Indeed, when they saw The Tribune that morning, the headline read, “Singer Rescued,” and the story was about the Joneses and their success in rescuing their daughter, Penelope, from a notorious vaudeville company that had captured and exploited her. A vivid description of the rescue, penned by their ace reporter, Studs Parkinson, put Miss Penelope Jones back in her ancestral home, with help from the city police. She was reported to be at rest in the bosom of her home, grateful to be freed from vile servitude. And Jones was reported as saying he intended to take legal action against the vaudeville company.
No wonder Charles was restless.
He sipped coffee and sighed. “It’s the lawsuit part that’s worrying August and me,” he said.
She felt blue. Her flight had triggered all this. And yet, maybe some good would come of it. “I’ll sing tonight, Charles. Just put me on, and let me sing. Let them see me, singing. Let them see me smile. That’ll say what needs saying.”
“Lay low today?”
“No. I’ll be here. I’ll be with the troupe. And if anyone asks, I’ll tell them I left, of my own free will.”
He smiled suddenly. “What else did I marry?”
“Most of an iceberg’s below water,” she said.
“You’re more of a volcano,” he said.
It proved to be a quiet day. She moved freely about, window-shopped, looked at ready-made dresses, lunched with some of the troupe, and showed up early at the Grand Opera House. But it wasn’t quite normal; a line of people stood at the box office, thirty, forty, plunking down cash to see the show. And not a one recognized her. She wondered how that could be, and remembered that any publicity, good or bad, would sell seats.
Backstage, August eyed her sharply, noting her new blue dress, purchased that afternoon.
“We’ve got a full house,” he said. “Thanks to you.”
“Are my parents out there?”
“No one’s seen them, and the word is, they wouldn’t set foot in the opera house as long as we’re billed.”
She thought that was true. Maybe it was all over. But when she thought of her mother, she thought it wasn’t over.
41
AUGUST BEAUSOLEIL couldn’t remember when he had felt so melancholic before. He was often a little blue; that was his nature. The melancholia was a sort of thermometer that registered how well his life was going. He had learned that when he was particularly blue, something bad was looming. He had an intuitive understanding: the blues heralded trouble.
As they did now. He shouldn’t be melancholic at all. The young star of his show, Ginger, had weathered a brutal confrontation with her family. All her fears had been justified; they were quite ready to imprison her and deny her the life she had chosen. And somehow, at a tender age, she had weathered it. She was singing with a richness that he ascribed to adulthood; the girl had vanished in a leap from a roof; the woman was now walking out on the stage.
All the uproar had been duly chronicled in the Pocatello paper, The Tribune. At first readers were treated to a colorful story about a girl from a prominent family who had been abducted and used by Beausoleil’s Follies. And how her enterprising parents had freed her from her degraded estate and returned her to the bosom of her family. But the story hadn’t ended there. Next, readers learned that she had been kept a prisoner in her family’s home, deprived of clothing and footwear, but had escaped barefoot, with only a blanket against the wintry night, to return to the life she had chosen on the variety theater stage. “Jones Girl Returns to Stage,” was the first headline. “Married to Owner,” was the subhead.
All of which generated intense interest. The Joneses were Pocatello’s first family; he ran the railroad. Their daughter was a prodigy, destined for great things. And then, it seemed, she wished to live a life of her own. And she was packing the house. There was not a ticket to be had to any performance. Lucky people got to see her twice, thrice, if they could find the tickets. With each performance, August looked out upon a jammed house, with standing room only. It was all a miracle.
Charles had left for Boise after making sure his bride was well and weathering the worst ordeal of her tender years. He had the usual advance work to complete, and could delay no further.
Then, one bright December morning, a man with a sheriff’s badge pinned to him thrust some papers into August’s hand. It was a summons issued by Bannock County District Court. Notice! You Are Being Sued, it said. It was accompanied by a complaint. The Follies, Charles Pomerantz, and August Beausoleil were being sued by the Joneses. The complaint was a lengthy one, and August skimmed quickly over it. It had to do with damaged reputation, theft of property, alienation of a family member, and a lot more. It was a legal mishmash, likely to be dismissed, but that was not the real purpose.
The defendants would need to appear the next day. The court would place a heavy cash bail on the vaudeville company to prevent flight.
The real purpose was to wreck the company, prevent it from playing its next engagements, and require surety so drastic that it would drain the company of its last cent. It was a very old game. Want to destroy a traveling show? Lower an enormous performance bond on the entire show and its performers. Lawsuits like this were the Achilles’ heel of any touring company. It didn’t matter if the complaint had merit; the idea was to disrupt the show’s schedule, destroy its income. In most cases, the odds were stacked against a touring company being sued by a local citizen, with the case heard by a local judge.
Suddenly August Beausoleil needed a lawyer, and a lot more money than he had in his cashbox. More than those things, he needed liberty; the freedom to move his company to its next billets, keep the income rolling in, day after day, town after town.
The sadness that engulfed him was old and familiar. It harkened back to the days when he was a boy so alone he scarcely knew his mother and had never known his father. He could go find a lawyer, or he could go to the Joneses’ lawyer. He had, actually, a stronger suit than the Joneses did. They had kidnapped his star, the wife of his business partner, who was of age, and they had done great damage.
But he knew better. Lawsuits would mire the company. The Beausoleil Brothers Follies would be stalled in Pocatello, and swiftly starve to death, its
players unpaid, its bills unmet, its credit run into the ground. A company on the road had to fix its troubles in other ways.
Charles had gone ahead to Boise. August would wire him; they had a code word, RED, which meant emergency, return at once. But that would be tomorrow. And the Follies was due to open in Boise in three days. Tickets were on sale there. August was on his own, alone, as he had been from his earliest memories. The stage-door errand boy would depend on his own resources once again.
Jones himself operated from his superintendent’s office in the railroad station. Their lawyer, whose name was Brophy, was also a Union Pacific lawyer in the same offices. August could go there, three blocks distant, and endure the test of manhood.
Instead, he collected his worn topcoat, hoping it would do against the sharp cold, and headed toward the generous house on the heights, the house that overlooked much of Pocatello, and was meant to be seen from below, by lesser people.
The long driveway up the grade was caked with ice, and treacherous, so August walked carefully, as much in snow beside the road as on it. But he did not fall, and eventually found himself stepping to the front door, located at the center of a broad verandah.
The door opened even before he knocked. A manservant, tall, with slicked-back hair, confronted him.
“Mrs. Jones said to talk to their lawyer, if you must,” the manservant said.
“Please tell Mrs. Jones I’m not here to argue, but to listen. I wish to know what her grievances might be, and how I might be of assistance.”
The manservant debated that, and finally vanished into the gloomy interior.
When he returned, he had a simple message: “Madam says you cannot be of assistance, and good day.”
“Very well, tell her I’m on my way, but I’d hoped to hear all about her daughter. A remarkable young woman, sir.”
The door closed in August’s face, and he turned to leave, his next stop being Superintendent Jones himself. But then, suddenly, the door opened. It was Mazeppa Jones, looking thin and waspish.
Anything Goes Page 27
