by Matt Braun
Lillian knew he was trying to escape into a bottle. His optimism about their prospects in Denver and his pride in negotiating such a lucrative engagement at the Alcazar—all that had been dashed by their meeting with Burt Tully. Her father had heard all over again that no one was interested in Shakespeare. Or Alistair Fontaine.
She felt guilty about her own good fortune. The accolades accorded the Colorado Nightingale, first in Pueblo and now in Denver, had pushed her father out of the limelight and ever deeper into the shadows. She suddenly felt guilty about her new gowns, for while she was happy, her father was drunk and disconsolate. She simply didn’t know how to erase his pain.
“Papa, listen to me,” she temporized. “You’re only hurting yourself, and I hate to see you like this. Won’t you please stop … for me?”
Fontaine grunted. “ ‘Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.’ I believe the Bard penned the line for me. Yes, indeed, quite apropos.”
Lillian was reduced to silence. She looked at Chester, and he again shook his head in dull defeat. Fontaine downed the glass of whiskey, muttering something unintelligible, and slumped deeper in the chair. His eyes went blank, then slowly closed, and his chin sank lower on his chest. The glass dropped from his hand onto the carpet.
Lillian took a seat on the divan. She stared at her father a moment, listening to his light snore. “I feel so terrible,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “Surely there’s something we can do.”
“Like what?” Chester said. “You know yourself, he lives and breathes Shakespeare. Tully might as well have hit him over the head with a hammer.”
“Yes, you’re right, he was just devastated. He thought Denver would be so much more cultured. His hopes were so high.”
“Maybe he’ll sleep it off and come to his senses. He’s always bounced back before.”
“I’m not sure sleep will solve anything.”
“You tell me then, what will?”
“Perhaps Tully was wrong about the audiences. Perhaps they will appreciate Shakespeare.”
“Anything’s possible,” Chester said with no great confidence. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow night.”
“Oh, Chet, I feel so helpless.”
“Let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best.”
Lillian thought they would need more than luck.
Denver turned out for opening night. The theater was full by seven o’clock, and men were wedged tight in the barroom. The crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk, and a police squad was brought in to maintain order. The backlit marquee blazed outside the Alcazar.
LILLY FONTAINE THE COLORADO NIGHTINGALE
Lillian complained to Burt Tully. The marquee made no reference to her father or Chester, and she was upset by the oversight. Her father had sloughed it off, but she knew he was offended and hurt. Tully told her it was no oversight and then repeated what he’d said the day before. The crowd was there to see her, not The Fontaines. She was the headliner.
Before her opening number, she stopped by the dressing room her father shared with Chester. Fontaine was attired in the costume of a Danish nobleman, and his breath reeked of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot, and though he tried to hide a tremor in his hand, he seemed in rare form. He nodded affably and inspected her outfit, the teal gown with the black pearls. He arched an eyebrow.
“What’s this?” he said. “Not wearing your new gown?”
Lillian smiled. “I’m saving it for the closing number.”
“Excellent thinking, my dear. Contrary to common wisdom, the last impression is the one most remembered.”
“Are you all right, Papa?”
“I am in fine fettle,” Fontaine said grandly. “I shall acquit myself admirably indeed.”
Lillian kissed him on the cheek. “You will always be my Hamlet.”
“And you the sweet voice in the darkness of my night.”
“I have to go.”
“Leave them enraptured, my dear. Hearts in their throats!”
A juggler came offstage as she moved into the wings. She walked to center stage, composing herself, hands clasped at her waist. The orchestra glided smoothly into Nobody’s Darling as the curtain opened to reveal her awash in a rose-hued spotlight. Her voice brought an expectant hush over the audience.
They say I am nobody’s darling
Nobody cares for me
While others are radiant and joyful
I’m lonely as lonely can be
I’m lonely indeed without you
But I know what I know in my heart
Dreaming at morning and evening
Of meeting, oh never to part
On the last note there was a moment of almost reverent silence. Then the crowd stood, everyone in the theater on their feet, their applause vibrating off the walls. She curtsied, her eyes radiant, and slowly bowed her way offstage. The uproar went on unabated, and the audience brought her back for four curtain calls. Her face was flushed with joy when at last the commotion subsided.
Fontaine was waiting in the wings. His eyes were misty and he hugged her in a fierce outpouring of pride. She again smelled liquor on his breath, and then he marched, shoulders squared, to the center of the stage. The curtain swished open, and he raised one hand in a dramatic gesture, caught in the glow of a cider spotlight. He hesitated an instant, staring out over the audience, and launched into a soliloquy from Hamlet. His rich baritone resonated across the theater.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man …
The crowd watched him with a look of dumb bemusement. There was a sense of some misguided gathering come upon a man speaking in a tongue foreign to the ear. When he delivered the last line, they stared at him as though waiting for a summation that would make it all comprehensible. Then, just as Burt Tully had predicted, they sat on their hands. Their applause was scattered, quickly gone.
Fontaine took no curtain calls. The acrobats bounded onstage as he walked, head bowed, to his dressing room to change costumes. A few minutes later he joined Lillian and Chester in the presentation of the melodrama A Husband’s Vengeance. All through the performance Lillian’s concentration was on her father rather than on the play. She knew, even if the audience never would, why he had selected that particular passage from Hamlet. He wanted to deliver the one line that personified Alistair Fontaine.
To thine own self be true.
The crowd responded favorably to the melodrama. Following the performance, Fontaine’s spirits seemed somewhat restored. He changed into his street clothes, leaving Chester backstage, and moved quickly to the door leading to the theater. Lillian came out of her dressing room just as he went through the door. She was wearing her new gown, resplendent in ivory, her hair loose to her shoulders. She saw Chester standing outside his dressing room, his face screwed up in a puzzled frown. She hurried forward.
“Chet?” she said anxiously. “Where did Papa go?”
“To the bar.” Chester appeared troubled. “He said he’d watch your performance from there. He just rushed off.”
“I’m worried about his drinking. Will you find him and stay with him?”
“The way he acted, I’m not sure he wants company. He didn’t invite me along.”
“Yes, but he shouldn’t be left alone. Not tonight.”
“You’re right. I’ll go find him.”
Chester walked away. The stage manager motioned frantically to Lillian as the chorus line pranced offstage. She moved through the wings, taking her position at center stage, and struck a coquettish pose. The curtain opened as the orchestra swung into Buffalo Gals and the spotlight made her a vision in ivory. Her cleavage and the sight of a dainty ankle brought shouts from the audience. She performe
d a cheeky dance routine as she zestfully banged out the lyrics.
Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight
Come out tonight, come out tonight
Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight
And we’ll dance by the light of the moon
Lillian twirled around the stage, her ivory slippers lightly skipping in time to the music. Her voice was animated and strong, every mirthful stanza of the song followed by the rollicking chorus. She spun about in a playful pirouette on the last line and ended with her arms flung wide and her hip cocked at a saucy angle. The uproar from the crowd rocked the theater with applause and cheers and shrill whistles of exuberance. A standing ovation drummed on through five curtain calls.
The cast surrounded her backstage. She was jubilant with the wild reception from the audience, and congratulations from the other performers made it all the more heady. Burt Tully pulled her into a smothering bear hug and told her she would play the Alcazar forever. As he let her go, she saw her father and Chester, followed by another man, come through the door from the theater. She threw herself into her father’s arms.
“Oh, Papa!” she cried. “Wasn’t it just wonderful!”
Fontaine was glassy-eyed with liquor. He kissed her with drunken affection. “You bedazzled them, my dear. You were magical.”
“I could have sung forever and ever! And Papa, five curtain calls!”
“Yes, indeed, you brought the house down.”
“Oooo, I’m so excited!”
“I’d like you to meet someone.” Fontaine motioned the other man forward. “Permit me to introduce Otis Gaylord. I’ve invited him to join us for supper.”
Gaylord was a man of imposing stature. He was tall, lithely built, with sandy hair and pale blue eyes. He took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. He caressed it with a kiss.
“I am your most ardent admirer, Miss Fontaine. Your performance left me thoroughly bewitched.”
Lillian smiled graciously. He wasn’t the handsomest man she’d ever seen. But he was devilishly good-looking, strongly virile, with a cleft chin and rugged features. She thought she might drown in his pale blue eyes.
“Otis favors Irish whiskey,” Fontaine said with a tipsy chortle. “I can think of no finer attribute in a friend. And lest I betray a secret, my dear—he is smitten with you.”
Gaylord laughed. “I would be a liar if I said otherwise.”
Lillian sensed they would celebrate more than her triumph tonight.
CHAPTER 23
LILLIAN WAS the toast of Denver. Her first week at the Alcazar Variety Theater was a sellout every night. The Colorado Nightingale was front-page news.
Articles appeared in the Denver Tribune and the Rocky Mountain News. The stories gushed with accolades and adjectives, unanimous agreement that she was a sensation, a singer with the voice of an angel. She was the talk of the town.
The response was overwhelming. Loads of flowers were delivered to her dressing room every night, with notes expressing adulation and all but begging her attention. Every man in Denver was seemingly a rabid admirer and intent on becoming a suitor. She was an object of adoration, the stuff of men’s dreams.
Otis Gaylord was the envy of her many admirers. He managed to monopolize her time and squired her around town at every opportunity. Today, she joined him for lunch in the restaurant at the Brown Palace, and the maître d’ greeted them with the fanfare reserved for the hotel’s resident celebrity. Heads turned as they were led to their table.
Lillian was taken with Gaylord’s urbane manner. He was courteous, thoughtful, and attentive to her every wish. His wit amused her, and if he was not the handsomest man she’d ever known, he was nonetheless the most attractive. So much so that she declined dozens of invitations every night, for she was drawn to him by an emotional affinity she’d never before felt. And apart from all that, he was enormously wealthy.
Gaylord was a mining investor. As he explained it, he owned blocks of stock in several gold mines in Central City, which was located some thirty miles west of Denver. The mining camp was called the richest square mile on earth, and upward of a hundred thousand dollars a week was gouged from the mountainous terrain. A shrewd financier might easily quadruple his investment in a year or less.
For Lillian, Otis Gaylord seemed the answer to a girl’s prayers. Nor was she alone in that sense, for fortune had smiled on Chester as well. Earlier in the week he’d met Ethel Weaver, who kept the books at her father’s store, Weaver’s Mercantile. The girl was cute as a button, and to hear Chester tell it, she was one in a million. He spent every spare moment in her company, and he acted like a man who had fallen hard. He talked of nothing else.
Lillian’s one concern was her father. His spirit seemed broken by the theater crowd’s yawning indifference to Shakespeare and to him as an actor. His drinking had grown worse over the past week, starting in the morning and ending only when he fell into bed at night. His mind was fogged with alcohol, and on two occasions he’d forgotten his lines in the course of the melodrama. His escape into a bottle, just as Lillian had feared, was sapping him mentally and physically. He seemed a shell of his former self.
Gaylord tried to write it off as a momentary lapse. He enjoyed Fontaine’s sardonic wit, and even more, he respected his integrity as an actor. Gaylord counseled Lillian to patience, and today, when she seemed particularly distressed, he assured her that her father, given time, would come to grips with the problem. No more had he offered his assurances than James Clark, the manager of the Brown Palace, interrupted their luncheon. He rushed into the dining room.
“Pardon the intrusion,” he said earnestly. “Miss Fontaine, your father has been injured. Your brother asked that you come immediately to the suite.”
Lillian pushed back her chair. “What kind of injury?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t any details. I saw your brother and several men carry your father in from the street. He asked me to find you.”
Lillian hurried from the restaurant. Gaylord escorted her upstairs, and three men came out of the suite as they arrived. They found Chester nervously pacing around the sitting room. He turned as they entered.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said. “Dad got run over by a lumber wagon. I was on the way to lunch with Ethel and I saw it. He just stepped off the curb into the path of the horses.”
“How bad is he?” Lillian demanded. “Have you sent for a doctor?”
“There was a doctor there. On the street, on his way to lunch, I mean. He and some other men helped me carry Dad back here.”
“The doctor’s here, now?”
“Dr. Macquire.” Chester motioned to the closed bedroom door. “Dad was unconscious when we brought him in. He didn’t look good.”
Lillian sagged and Gaylord put his arm around her shoulders. “Steady now,” he said. “No need to think the worst.”
“Oh, Otis, I feel so terrible. Drinking the way he does, he shouldn’t have been on the street. I should have known better.”
Chester grimaced. “We would have to keep him under lock and key. Or hide the whiskey.”
The bedroom door opened. Dr. Thomas Macquire moved into the sitting room, his features solemn. He nodded to Lillian and Chester. “Your father has the constitution of an ox. Of course, in a way, being drunk was a lucky thing. Drunks can absorb more damage than a sober man.”
Lillian stepped forward. “Are you saying he’ll be all right?”
“There are no broken bones, and so far as I can tell, there’s no internal injuries. I’ll have to keep an eye on him for a few days.”
“Has he regained consciousness?”
“Miss Fontaine, not only is he awake, he asked for a drink.”
Lillian walked to the bedroom. Her father’s features were ashen, a discolored bruise on his jaw and a large knot on his forehead. His eyes were rheumy and his breathing raspy. He looked at her with a forlorn expression.
“ ‘If I must die,’ ” he said in a slurred voice, �
�� ‘I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms.’ Send for a priest, my dear.”
“You aren’t going to die, Papa. Not as long as you can quote Shakespeare.”
“ ‘The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch’! I could quote the Bard from my grave.”
“Dr. Macquire says you’ll live.”
“What do doctors know?” Fontaine said dismissively. “I need a drink and a priest. Would you oblige me, my dear?”
“Try to get some rest,” Lillian said, turning away. “We’ll talk later, Papa.”
She closed the door on her way out.
Lillian carried on the show by herself. She was forced to cancel the melodrama, as well as the Shakespearean act, for the immediate future. Neither could be performed without her father.
Burt Tully was almost deliriously happy. The crowds jamming the Alcazar shared the sentiment to a man. Lillian was now singing five songs a night, and the theater was sold out a week in advance. A cottage industry sprang up with street hustlers hawking tickets for triple the box office price.
Chester, much to Lillian’s surprise, took it all in stride. He told her he was available to resume stage work whenever their father recovered. But he promptly obtained a job as a clerk in Weaver’s Mercantile and seemed content to spend his days in close proximity to Ethel Weaver. His nights were spent in her company as well.
Dr. Macquire, at Fontaine’s insistence, got the clergy involved. The Reverend Titus Hunnicut, pastor of the First Baptist Church, became a regular at Fontaine’s bedside. The actor and the minister sequestered themselves, talking for hours at a time. A male nurse was hired to tend to Fontaine’s physical needs, and Reverend Hunnicut tended to his spiritual needs. Fontaine, to Lillian’s utter shock, stopped drinking.
Three days after the accident, Fontaine was on the mend. Dr. Macquire pronounced his recovery remarkable, for he’d been trampled by the horses and the lumber wagon had passed over his right leg. He was alert and sober, his cheeks glowing with health, and positively reveling in all the attention. Even more remarkable, he’d taken a vow of abstinence, swearing off demon rum forever. He basked in the glory of the Lord.
