Edmund laughed raucously, his dark eyes flashing. “Looks like you have an admirer, little Fortune.”
Fortune’s blush deepened. “My name is Fortune,” she said tersely. “Plain Fortune.”
Edmund smiled. “He doesn’t think you’re plain.”
“Now, Edmund,” clucked Mrs. Watson. “Leave the girl alone. Of course she has admirers. Why, when I was her age, the boys were flocking around me.”
“Mrs. Watson!” said Aaron admiringly. “What a memory you have!”
The actress flared. “I remember that in my day young men had manners,” she said imperiously. “You’d better tend to them, Master Aaron, or young Fortune might start looking at that Jamie the way she looks at you.”
Walter covered his laugh with a snort and tried to pretend it was a sneeze.
I’d like to crawl under the table and die, thought Fortune as her blush continued to deepen. She was deeply grateful when Mr. Patchett cleared his throat and loudly asked if everyone was ready for a rehearsal later that evening.
At once the troupe launched into a vigorous argument over the merits of The Widow’s Daughter, the quality of their parts, and the stupidity of the anticipated audience. Fortune silently thanked Mr. Patchett for changing the subject.
Except for the fact that she was in an agony of embarrassment, the dinner was better than Fortune had expected. The Widow Halleck was such a fierce hawk of a woman it had seemed unlikely anything pleasant could come out of her kitchen Yet the chicken was tasty, the biscuits light and fluffy, the gravy smooth and savory.
She wondered if Jamie had really helped make them. She was also bothered by the knowledge that she herself could not do it half so well.
Jamie returned from the kitchen with another platter. The hungry group around the table fell upon it like vultures.
Fortune averted her eyes. When she had teased Jamie in the store, it had seemed unlikely she would have any close contact with him again. Except for the time the men spent in the saloons, Plunkett’s Players lived pretty much to themselves when they were on the road. It hadn’t occurred to her that the awkward young man would be their host here in Busted Heights. Mr. Patchett had been quite upset with her, too; he was anticipating enough trouble with their landlady as it was.
Indeed, even as Jamie disappeared back into the kitchen, they could hear the shrill voice of Mrs. Halleck complaining to the hired girl. “I don’t know why I let those people in here. Actors? Tools of the devil is more like it. Frivolators, I call ’em—”
Then the door was closed and they could hear no more. Yet it almost seemed it had been left open longer than necessary. Fortune wondered if Jamie had hesitated on purpose, just to make sure the troupe could hear his mother’s opinion of them.
She shrugged. What difference did it make? She certainly didn’t care what Jamie Halleck or his mother thought of them.
She bit her lip. The problem was, she did care, and she knew it. Try as she might, she could never convince herself that the people who looked down on actors didn’t matter.
Fortune swatted the thought away. She had no time for such nonsense. They were going to rehearse after dinner, and she had to go over her lines. Muttering an “Excuse me,” she pulled away from the table and headed upstairs for the room she shared with Mrs. Watson.
Closing the door to her room behind her, Fortune looked around and wondered again why her father had started them on this westward trek.
When she was honest with herself, she knew why. John Plunkett had always been a restless man. When the discovery of gold in California had been announced in 1849, he had ached to head for the goldfields—not to mine ore, but to mine the audiences he knew were gathering there.
Unfortunately for his wandering soul, Fortune’s mother, Laura, would have nothing of it. But in June of 1851 Laura Plunkett had been struck down swiftly and silently by one of the thousand diseases that made life in the mid-1800s chancy at best.
With the loss of his wife John Plunkett had gone a little bit crazy. A year later, no longer tied down by Laura’s need for a regular home, he had packed up his daughter and the rest of his acting troupe to join the westward trek.
Fortune had not argued; at the time she had been more than willing to leave Charleston, to flee the memories, happy and sad, that seemed to haunt her on those streets.
Thus the troupe had become Plunkett’s Traveling Players, and Fortune Plunkett had become a virtual gypsy. And as they traveled from town to town, moving ever westward, she had discovered that despite the hardships her father was right about one thing: Wherever there were people, there was a need for entertainment.
“The whole country is growing westward,” he would tell Fortune. “And the ones who get there first are going to do the best.”
These remarks were usually prompted by his reading some article about how San Francisco had become a booming city, eager for new experiences, for “culture” to come to its western wildness. When he read that the Chapman Family’s performances were sometimes rewarded by miners flinging bags of gold dust onto the stage, their course was fixed. The city beckoned to him like a distant dream.
Fortune sighed. In the past her dreams and her father’s had been in conflict. But with his death she had had to make his dreams her own.
She shook her head and forced herself out of her reverie. San Francisco might be a booming city, but right now she was in Busted Heights. She looked around again. The small room was clean enough, but that was about all that could be said for it. The walls were bare except for a cracked mirror hanging above a small stand that held a basin and pitcher for washing up. The lone bed, sagging in the middle, was scarcely wide enough for two. Sharing it with Mrs. Watson, who not only tossed and turned but tended to snore, was going to be an ordeal. A single, spindly chair provided the only other resting place. The one spot of brightness in the room was a beautiful handmade quilt that covered the bed. Fortune wondered if Mrs. Halleck had made it.
She picked up the quilt and examined it. The stitches were tiny and even. The pattern, one she did not recognize, was lively and intricate. It was hard to think of that harsh, angry woman doing such lovely work. But if Fortune had learned anything from her years in the theater, it was that people often had many sides.
Mrs. Watson, for example: She liked to present herself as a woman of the world—strong, independent, and sophisticated. Yet sometimes at night, when she thought Fortune was sleeping, she would cry quietly for hours at a time. And once Fortune had seen her throw a vase of flowers through a plate-glass window in reaction to a bad review.
Fortune put down the quilt and wandered to the window.
In the street below she saw Aaron leaning against a fence post, talking to a pretty young girl. Fortune felt her hands tighten on the sill. Why did he look so interested in the stranger? And why did he persist in treating her, Fortune, like nothing but a kid sister?
“Men!” she said in disgust and turned back to the room. Opening the carpetbag that sat next to the door, she drew out the worn script she shared with Mrs. Watson and sat on the bed to review her lines for The Widow’s Daughter.
After a moment she threw the script to the floor. She knew her lines perfectly well; they had done the play more times than she cared to remember, and she hated it more every time they performed it. It was a ridiculous story about a poor widow who was being hounded by two men who wanted to marry her daughter. One was rich and rotten, naturally; the other, poor but honest and upright.
Fortune played the daughter. Mrs. Watson had been playing her mother for the last year and a half, and to Fortune’s dismay, she seemed to be taking the role to heart. Lately she had been trying to provide Fortune with more offstage mothering than she could stand.
Fortune also played three other roles in the play—the minister’s wife, a farmer’s son, and the town drunk. She wished they had some other actors. It was difficult to change parts so often. Sometimes she had to wear one costume under another so she could make her changes fast enough.
Fortune cut off the thought. Grabbing a shawl, she hurried down the stairs.
Mrs. Watson was waiting in front of the boardinghouse, talking with—or, more likely, at—a dark-haired little girl who was leaning against a post and staring up at her with wide and fascinated eyes.
“Ah, here you are,” said Mrs. Watson when she spotted Fortune.
The child took her finger out of her mouth long enough to say, “You’re pretty!” then popped it back between her lips again.
“So are you,” said Fortune, kneeling in front of her. That wasn’t entirely true; the child had a pinched, crabbed look that made Fortune suspect that she didn’t get enough to eat. But it made the child smile.
“What’s your name?” asked Fortune.
The girl shook her head.
“It’s Nancy Conaway,” said Mrs. Watson.
“You told!” said the girl accusingly.
Mrs. Watson gasped. “I forgot it was a secret!” she exclaimed, overacting as usual.
Nancy Conaway giggled, then went running down the street.
Mrs. Watson does make a good Mother Hen, thought Fortune. Too bad she. doesn’t have about a dozen more chicks. Then she could spread her attention around a little and leave me alone.
“I was waiting for you,” said Mrs. Watson, taking Fortune’s arm. “I thought we should walk over together. It’s not good for us ladies to be out alone.”
Several men stopped to stare admiringly at them as they walked across the rutted dirt road and then down to the general store. Fortune wasn’t surprised. Mrs. Watson was extremely good looking for a woman in her thirties. And while the dress she was wearing, perfect for an afternoon tea in Charleston, was totally out of place in a dreary little town like Busted Heights, it was a real attention-grabber.
Aaron, looking smug and self-satisfied, was waiting for them at the general store. “It’s about time you got here,” he said. “Mr. Patchett’s about to have kittens.”
Mrs. Watson laughed. “Get along with you, Aaron. Here, take me up the stairs.”
She extended an arm, which Aaron took with only the slightest show of reluctance. He was used to such requests.
Fortune followed them around the side of the store, where an outside stairway led to the second floor.
She was pleased with the playing space. The oil lamps that Walter and Mr. Patchett had lit revealed the loft to be spacious, with an unexpectedly high ceiling. Better yet, there were several windows to allow them some fresh air. Sometimes it got so stifling when they were acting! She noticed a makeshift stage at the far end of the room and guessed that they probably used it for the musicians when they had dances here.
Walter, Edmund, and Mr. Patchett were standing at the front of the room waiting for them. They had already carried up the trunk that held most of the properties they would need for the play. Mr. Patchett was tapping his foot and looking impatient.
As Fortune turned to finish her survey of the room, she became aware of one more person. Jamie Halleck was sitting in a chair against the side wall.
“What are you doing here?” she asked disapprovingly.
He looked startled by the tone in her voice. “I…I just wanted to listen. I asked Mr. Patchett if it was all right.”
“Well, wait till tomorrow night and pay, like everyone else,” she said sharply. She turned away from him and headed for the front of the loft.
“I had intended to,” said Jamie coldly. Fortune stopped. His voice, which had seemed childish, almost afraid, was suddenly deep and masculine. She turned back toward him.
Before she could speak, he cut her off.
“You needn’t put on such airs,” he said icily. “You’re not the first actress I ever saw. But I love the theater, and we don’t get much of it here in Busted Heights.”
Something about the way he said “the theater”—a sense of reverence tinged by longing—reminded Fortune of her father.
“Don’t be so hard on the boy, dear,” said Mrs. Watson, stepping up beside her. She lowered her voice and added, “Remember, it never hurts to have a handsome young man around. It might even keep that scamp Aaron on his toes.”
Giving Fortune a wink, she patted her shoulder, then turned away.
Fortune looked back toward the door. Jamie was on his way out. “Oh, all right—you can stay. But don’t interrupt! And I expect you to buy that ticket tomorrow night!”
He turned back, and Fortune caught her breath at the radiant smile that wreathed his face.
“Can we get started, please?” she shouted, partly to cover her own confusion.
Walter, who acted as her stage manager, scratched his beard. “Sure thing, Miss Fortune.” Raising his voice he bellowed, “Take your places, everyone!”
There was a muted grumbling and a moment of confusion as the troupe shuffled into place for Act One, Scene One of The Widow’s Daughter. Fortune took her position stage right and waited for her first entrance, which was some fifteen minutes into the play. Walter barked out a direction, and they began.
Fortune found herself yawning as Mr. Patchett launched into his big opening speech. She had always thought it was twice as long as it should be. She looked around and spotted Jamie watching the play with rapt attention. She studied his face more closely than she had been able to this afternoon in the store. He certainly is handsome, she found herself thinking, almost against her will. I wonder why he’s so interested in theater? It seems funny for such a …
“Fortune…Fortune!”
She came to with a start. She had missed her entrance! Feeling extremely foolish, she leaped to her feet and raced to her position. A snort of amusement from Jamie made her skin begin to color.
Determined to recover from the blunder and show Jamie what she could do, she threw herself into the scene, crying out in despair over her mother’s distress and reacting with terror to the advances of the wicked landlord. She ended by flinging herself over Mrs. Watson’s knees and breaking into hysterical sobs.
Her performance earned a burst of wild applause from Jamie. “Wonderful!” he cried. “That was wonderful!”
Aaron broke into laughter. “You’re an easy target.”
Fortune started to flare at the insult to her performance.
Jamie beat her to it. “What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
“That was a lot of things, but it was hardly wonderful. You ought to see a real show someday.”
“I’d love to.”
Again Fortune caught that sense of breathless appreciation in his voice. Then she realized what Aaron was saying. “Wait a minute,” she said angrily. “We’re not that bad.”
“Well, we’re not that good,” said Aaron. “If we were, we wouldn’t be playing a hick town like this.”
“This isn’t a hick town!” bristled Jamie. “Just because people here don’t have everything you city people might, it doesn’t mean we’re stupid!”
“Can we begin Act Two?” asked Walter. “If we finish this rehearsal early, we can all get a good night’s sleep. You’re welcome to stay,” he added, turning to Jamie. “But please don’t interrupt anymore.”
Jamie opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. “Thank you, sir,” he said mildly.
They began the second act. Again Jamie watched with shining eyes. Fortune caught herself playing directly to him, then felt foolish about it.
Well, why not? she asked herself. An audience is an audience, after all. It’s good practice. But she also knew she was enjoying his wide-eyed reaction.
They got through the rest of the play without incident, Jamie applauding enthusiastically after each scene.
“I think that will do it for now,” said Mr. Patchett when they finished the run-through. “We’re all set for tomorrow night. Edmund and Aaron, I’ll need you to help me prepare the stage in the afternoon.”
“Ah, the stage,” said Walter, plopping his derby onto his head. “Our home away from home.” He looked around the loft with an expression of distaste. “Of course, home is getting a little shabby these days. Oh, well. The immortal bard tells us that all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
“Actors,” said Aaron.
“What?”
“Actors, Walter. The line is from As You Like It, and it says ‘actors,’ not ‘players.’”
“It does not,” said Walter indignantly. He turned to Mr. Patchett for verification. “It’s ‘players’—right, Henry?”
“I think so,” said Mr. Patchett, obviously not certain himself.
“Actors,” said Aaron.
“It’s ‘players,’” said Jamie. He came striding forward, his face glowing with excitement.
Chapter Three
Aaron looked at Jamie angrily. “Why don’t you stay out of this? Besides, how would you know?”
“Because I know the speech. It goes:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.”
Jamie went on. His voice was soaring, powerful in its range of tone and expression. Fortune and the others stared at him in astonishment. He seemed not to notice, caught up as he was in the beauty of Shakespeare’s words. At the same time that Fortune wondered how he knew the speech, she found herself resisting another thought: The boy was good!
His voice dwindled with sorrow as he reached the mournful concluding words:
“…second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
“Bravo!” cried Walter, obviously delighted both at being correct and at Jamie’s masterful rendition of the lines.
Mr. Patchett looked at Jamie with new respect. “Where did you learn that?”
“My father taught me. He loved Shakespeare.”
Fortune's Journey Page 2
