The Little Shadows

A Poor Maiden So

Coming into the dressing room Aurora took a fistful of cold cream and covered her face, rubbing it in for what seemed to Clover like a long time, and wiped it off, leaving a clean canvas. Then she began afresh, giving herself more colour by an extra screw of number 5 in the palm of her hand. Once she had her complexion perfect, she made her eyes magnificent.

Clover watched Aurora draw on her eyebrows (which she always thought too light) in delicate strokes, a long arch down to the bottom edge of her eye, and finally add two dots of crimson lake in the inner corners of her eyes to give them brilliance. She stared at herself blank-faced.

Then she re-did Clover’s eyes, which needed it, and looked about for Bella. When Mama came to adjust her lace collar she gently pushed her hand away and did it herself. A powerful pall had descended on the cozy little room. They had all heard Kavanagh cursing.

Julius Foster Konigsburg surged out of his dressing-room door and caught Clover’s wrist, delaying her, as the girls were going up for their turn. He leaned down from his height and murmured, in a richly articulated aside, ‘Listening out my door just now—that Kavanagh bag of wind is a reprobate, a degenerate, and manifestly a popinjay, if you like that sort of thing … Not the answer to a maiden’s prayer. Caution the rosy-fingered Dawn.’ He coughed and bobbed his head, winking heavily, a conspirator.

Clover smiled at him, but did not answer.

Their new number went over big, Sybil said. She and Mama had gone round to the audience to watch them close the first show. The blackboard was wheeled on at the end of the pictures, making the audience expect a dull lecture to go with the pictograph, South Sea Adventures with the Turtles. But instead Bella appeared, puzzling out the numbers while her governesses Clover and Aurora added more arithmetical riddlers—till they all gave up and danced instead, a frisky jig of frustrated abandon. The older two were prim and Bella was joyful, and her joy gradually infected them so that they all danced like mad.

Mama had added a firecracker rolling-wheel kick that looked very hard to do until you got the hang of it, and at the end Bella went twirling-whirling offstage to do her quick change, the blackboard zoomed off, and the older girls paused as the music segued, then waltzed into their sashaying dance number.

After that, there was a quick shift of mood into Early One Morning. Aurora had been wondering how that would work. Up there in the light and warmth, with the audience warm too from Bella’s charm and their tinkling Snuff-Box dance, she stood in the extended pose and thought, Well, it’s all right—I can use this. Here you are, all of you: I’ve been betrayed. She let the damage to her pride rise almost to the surface for a moment, and looked in her mind’s eye at Kavanagh’s clever, romantic face.

Clover began alone, gravely, as one who had witnessed a sad thing. ‘ … just as the sun was rising, I heard a maid singing in the valley below.’

Then Aurora stepped forward. She took a breath and thought of Gentry Fox’s maxims, let it all go, and sang about the brick-walled passage last night, and the small room upstairs at Jenny’s house, and even a tinge of how much of the punch she had drunk.

‘O, don’t deceive me, O, never leave me,

How could you use a poor maiden so?’

As she sang she dipped into the deep reservoir of how dreadful she felt, however little there was to complain of, really, in what Maurice Kavanagh had done. She had gone with him perfectly willingly. He had not forced her or even had to ask her. But she was bewildered and made miserable. And life was miserable enough already.

‘Remember the vows that you made to your Mary,

Remember the bower where you vow’d to be true …’

Of course he had not vow’d to be true, not for a second. She kept telling herself how it was her own choice and her own doing, but she was pure, plain miserable—and yet it could go into the song instead and be used. That was good.

Gentry Fox was waiting backstage when they came off, and he laid a light hand on Aurora’s shoulder. ‘That’s the ticket, my love’ was all he said.


Here You Miss

Miss Sunderland had been watching in the wings as well; she gave Gentry a cold nod, and one to Aurora. The other girls went clattering down to the dressing room with Mama and Sybil congratulating them on the Sum song, no need to be quiet since the show was over and the audience clumping obediently out above them.

Aurora followed more slowly, a bit numb now that they’d come off all right.

At the bottom of the stairs Maurice stood waiting for her, lustrous eyes beseeching her forgiveness, asking a humorous question along the lines of Isn’t all this love business droll?

‘I was in an unspeakable temper, forgive me,’ he said simply (but assuming, Aurora saw, that because he was an artist, there was nothing really to forgive). He held out his pale, long-boned hand, and she remembered the strength of his fingers. She gave a stiff smile, it being necessary to get along with all artistes in a company, and made to pass by. He caught at her arm, saying, ‘Sweet Dignity—so injured—but you mustn’t love me, you lovely creature. I am not at all trustworthy.’

Aurora was suddenly cleanly furious, as angry as she’d ever been in her life. All the dressing-room doors open, and the show ended, people milling about: everyone could hear. She could not look at him any longer for anger.

‘Do not turn away, sweet Modesty. Your beauty, your grace—’

And he still did not seem to know her name. She wished to hit him but felt violence would only please him, as evidence of the depth of her affliction. She could not trust herself to speak coolly, or to say something clever. Instead she removed her arm from his grip as if he were a raspberry bush, saying nothing at all.

She went into the dressing room and cold-creamed her face again with shaking hands. What was it they had done?—nothing but a kiss and a fumble in the street. Disgusting. She was disgusted with herself.

Here you miss, or there exceed the mark … She would be that cold old Duke to her stupid self. She would give commands.


Another Rat

At the beginning of the eight-thirty show, Gentry sent Mattie down to the dressing room with a message asking Aurora to put on a wrap and join him at the back of the house for the turn of Duetto Paradiso.

Surprised, but glad of distraction from unhappy consciousness, Aurora obeyed, to find Gentry on the aisle in the very back row.

‘You wait,’ he said, promising a rare treat. ‘The cavern that woman has for a mouth—talk of an upper register! Note how her head lengthens: how deeply the chest fills, how that massive jaw drops and sound comes pouring out. She is not afraid to let her face look foolish in service of sound.’

Imperious in her green satin dress, La Sunderland sailed onstage, into the small circle of respect carved by Pettibone’s applause, and held out her hands for the audience (which was not clapping) to cease. Pettibone ceased.

She began with Una Voce Poco Fa, a general audience favourite. Aurora knew it from her father’s Victrola record of Tetrazzini, who sang it with lilting lightness. Sunderland’s voice was deeper, powerful and agile. She made the most of every legato and sostenuto, and trifled archly with the trills. ‘Remarkable for a woman of her age,’ Gentry murmured.

Aurora wondered what her age might be. ‘Fifty-six,’ he said, as if she’d asked, and she blushed. ‘Since I’m seventy-six, she ought to seem youngish to me. I was fond of her once,’ he added, without much emotional investment that Aurora could hear.

The soprano was laughing ah ah ha ha ha ha ha ha, up and down the scale, turning into a viper when crossed—and her mouth did open to an amazing stretch. At the end of the aria she flung both arms wide, beaning poor Pettibone who had come forward to guide her into their duet. She flicked him away, nodded to the pianist, and dropped those marble arms into a languid pose of regret.

The opening notes started, and the hair rose slightly on the back of Aurora’s neck.

‘Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,

I heard a maid singing in the valley below …’

She was not—she could not be—singing their song, could she? Aurora turned to look at Gentry and found him leaning forward, then standing, gnarled hands gripping the back of the empty seat in front of him.

But you could not help listening. ‘How could you use a poor maiden so?’ The newly tender voice, the inflection—and the darkness underneath, or pain. Sunderland made the song heartbreaking. She did not seem to expend any technique in the singing of it. There was only the broken girl reaching through castle walls to the faithless lover. How could someone so old sing as a maid? Listening, Aurora did not think of Sunderland’s face or figure, or skill, only the sadness of the song. It was so much better than her own rendering that she could feel no jealousy.

Gentry Fox, however, was not hampered by humility. He whipped Aurora out of her seat, into the lobby, and straight up the stairs, where he threw the startled Drawbank out of his little office and slammed the door shut, without regard to noise.

‘She would, would she?’ he demanded. ‘And what was Caspar about, to play it for her?’

Aurora did not know what to reply.

He opened the door and barked at Drawbank (still gawping on the landing), ‘Get those other girls!’ Then slammed the door again. ‘Last Rose of Summer,’ he commanded Aurora, and from then to the intermission he worked her through it at half-voice—Bella and Clover too, once they appeared, terrified, at the door. They sang under the noise of Swain’s Rats & Cats and right through Kavanagh’s turn. When Gentry was satisfied he dismissed them.

Bella and Clover ran round to the stage door and relative safety.

Aurora, moving more slowly to keep the words in her head, saw Gentry climb down the steep stairs to the lobby, open the glass case and remove the photographs of Edith Sunderland, Coloratura Soprano & Thomas Pettibone, Tenor. He locked the case.

Then he opened it again, and removed the photograph of Maurice MacKenna Kavanagh, Elocutionist.


Underhand & Cheekbone

The Last Rose of Summer went over very well—it was the best turn they’d done yet, Clover and Bella agreed. Aurora was still not talking much, but some colour had come back into her face. She had not had the relief of pretending to be the wounded maiden, since that song had been cut out from under them, but the Last Rose gave vent for their general loneliness, and something about the girls appealed to the late-night house that evening. The applause was prolonged and the girls came off pink-cheeked, to be greeted by a crowing Sybil and their delighted mama. (‘Oh, if only you’d had an encore ready!’)

‘Gentry handed them their photographs, cool as you please,’ Sybil told the girls and Flora, having witnessed the dismissals after the girls went onstage. ‘Underhand & Cheekbone, No longer required at this establishment—and her without a word to say, after what she did.’

In the dressing room Aurora found a note stuck to her mirror with a bit of moustache wax. To the Fair, it read, in dashing viridian ink. Inside, a couple of lines:

It’s been a great gig. In this roistering life there are a multitude of partings and meetings—

I will look for you along the way—

M.M.K.

She looked at the handwriting for a minute, the over-curled ends on Kavanagh’s g’s; then crumpled the note and tossed it in the scrap basket. But she had liked being in the crowd at Jenny’s, she decided. The cigars and the music.


Not for Long

The bill was short the next day. Gentry told the girls to begin with Early and end with Last. The departure of Sunderland and Pettibone took up most of the backstage talk; nobody asked why Maurice Kavanagh’s run had also been cut short. Even Sybil knew nothing, beyond his photograph not being in the case.

Once the girls had gone onstage on Saturday afternoon, Flora caught Gentry. ‘Mr. Kavanagh has left the bill, I see,’ she said, gently probing.

‘Mr. Kavanagh is a limited-term engagement wherever he appears, of late,’ Gentry said. ‘He suffers from depression, never sleeps, falls indiscriminately in love with unsuitable artistes, and is too often an ugly drunk with a hair-trigger temper, which makes difficulties in the town. It was time for him to be on his way.’

It was extremely kind of him to have made the change, she knew. Even if it was also in the best interests of his theatre to have no scandal that might reach Mrs. Ackerman’s ears.

But still he made no move to pay them.

Something had to be done. After two weeks, Flora could no longer stretch the remaining coins out for porridge and milk. She had trotted around to the pawnshop with six of Arthur’s mother’s apostle spoons—that would give them an extra week. But she must get the spoons back before they had to move on, for Arthur had treasured them. That meant finding money somehow.

On Tuesday morning, instead of staying at the theatre to watch Gentry put the girls through their paces, she walked back through bright drifting sparks of snow to the Pioneer, enjoying the city’s surprising grandeur and how far from the Death Trail’s stigma the great buildings and prosperous houses seemed, to ask Mrs. Burday if she still needed a waitress. It was quickly enough arranged, as their room had been in the first place, and Flora was grateful for Mrs. Burday’s practicality and experience. It was set that Flora would work lunch and dinner sittings, and help with the last cleaning of the kitchen in the evening. She dreaded telling Aurora, but hoped that it might be a day or two before she noticed. Meals would improve, because Flora could take a dinner-can with beans or stew, whatever the most plentiful dish of the night was, and run it over to the theatre between the matinee and the seven o’clock show, to share with the girls.

But after tallying again she saw that it was still not enough. Money never was, in her experience. The hotel bill could be paid (would definitely be paid, since Mrs. Burday would stop it out of her pay) and meals managed, but Bella’s boot-soles were worn through, and in winter that was serious business. They’d padded them with cardboard and a piece of moleskin cut from a coat lining, but that would not last, and she could not dance without boots. Clover’s would last another few months. They needed slippers for dancing—white kid with a stacked Louis heel, button or bow strap, that didn’t matter—at least $1 a pair. Perhaps the ones in the window of the New York Store they passed every day, going to and from the theatre. Her locket would have to go, Flora decided. It ought to bring enough to buy new boots for Bella and three pairs of kid slippers, and perhaps fresh collars for the girls, and also to redeem the apostle spoons, which had lately not been letting her sleep.

Of course Aurora discovered the whole the first night. She was surprised when Flora arrived with a nice can of stewed chicken and dumplings. Mrs. Burday had been generous with the ladle, most likely knowing perfectly well that it fed the four of them. Flora hurried them through it and snatched back the forks. The younger girls had been hungry enough to eat without question but Aurora followed her up the stairs to the stage door, and pulled on her sleeve to say, ‘What? Have you pawned more spoons?’

‘No!’ Flora played indignant, but did not manage to fool Aurora.

‘Where did the money come from, then? Has Gentry decided to pay us?’

Mama’s oh-ed mouth made Aurora laugh. ‘Well, I knew he was not paying us, or we’d have had cash in hand. It was a very good plan to work for free. Did you suggest it?’

Flora nodded, relieved to have that out, and let her guard down enough that when Aurora asked, ‘Have you taken a job?’ she had no time to dissemble.

‘Are you maiding at the hotel?’ Aurora pressed her.

‘No!’ Indignant again, but weak this time.

‘Then—cook? No, that can’t be it, you would not have time to run back here.’

Flora was glad the afternoon had clouded, so if she had reddened Aurora would miss it. ‘I am waitressing, lunch and suppers,’ she said. ‘But truly, truly, it is not bad, my dear, I’m not run off my feet and the boys are very cheerful. I quite enjoyed myself today.’

Biting one cheek, Aurora looked at her in the dimming light.

‘Don’t be angry,’ Flora begged. ‘I don’t mind it, really. It’s a bit like being onstage.’

They stood in the cold alley behind the theatre, both of them getting colder, and then Aurora leaned forward and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘We’ll do well,’ she said. ‘It won’t be for long.’

Flora nodded, and turned and ran over the icy streets to the back door of the Pioneer Hotel.


Unusually Wide Awake

When Sybil—who had missed Flora the night before and tracked her down at the Pioneer to pry the whole tale out of her—told Julius that the girls were not being paid, he at once went up in flames and announced to Clover, and anyone else who would listen, that he was on a dumb strike. For the seven o’clock show the next evening he did a mad scenario, enlisting Mattie the placard boy, and paying him ostentatiously for his work. As the music swelled and the curtain rose, Julius was revealed asleep in a dishevelled heap against a potted palm in front of the painted drop of a Georgian terrace.

In tattered costume and beard, he snored operatically, the newspaper over his face flying up and down like sheets snapping on a line, like sails filling on a brigantine. After a full minute of virtuoso log-sawing from Julius, Mattie appeared from stage right, sans placard-boy jacket and hat, an imp on roller skates. He whisked past the sleeping tramp, communicated to the audience by a wide dawning grin the gag he had in mind, and bent down to untie his skates and re-tie them on Julius’s feet.

Then he pulled a brown paper bag out of his pocket, blew the bag up, scrumpled the neck tight, and smacked it with the other hand, to make a great explosion in Julius’s ear. The tramp started awake, leaped to his feet in a flurry of newsprint, and sailed on the roller skates straight into the orchestra pit—

But no! He veered left at the very verge, one leg swinging out over the pit, then whirling him in a fancy spin while he batted newspaper here and everywhere, except the sheet which covered his eyes, to the delight of the audience and of Mattie—until Julius fell spectacularly on his commodious behind, arms and legs clutching to retain his prizes. Since there came an enormous crash of cymbals at exactly that moment, either the timpanist had been forewarned, or he was unusually wide awake, thought Gentry, watching from the observation window.

He sighed and began the long climb down the stairs on swollen and aching legs.

Julius struggled to his feet but fell again, again and again, wheels rolling out from under him no matter how he placed them.

Clover, watching all this in the wings, believed he’d have to stop, but then would come another attempt, another roll. Mattie was laughing so hard he could barely stand up, this being the first time he’d done the turn, his hilarity pitched the higher since he could not know how badly Drawbank was going to take all this.

‘In what way is this to blackmail me?’ Gentry asked Julius interestedly, as he came offstage.

‘My voice shall not ring out in this Ephesus, this Delphi of the mind,’ whispered Julius into Gentry’s ear, crepe beard tickling considerably, ‘until the Bella–Clovers are compensated commensurate with their endeavours! I say this to your ear alone,’ he added prudently, gesturing with one fan-shaped hand to make Clover recede behind a curtain-leg.

‘Well, Julius,’ Gentry confided, ‘the awkward thing is, you are compensated commensurate with your windage, due to your unexpected arrival like an orphan on my doorstep, and Syb’s skilful playing on my heartstrings …’

‘You! You have no heart to string,’ Julius pronounced.

‘… and therefore the exchequer is entirely empty, my dear old boy—and since the busting of Sunderland and the Irishman I am merely going into a fraction less debt, daily. There is no more compensation to be had, unless you would like me to direct Johnny Drawbank to divvy up your allotment and hand a portion over to the delightful girls. No? Ah, I thought not. Good day to you then.’

Not cowed, but pensive, Julius did his German professor at the nine o’clock show.


A Tenderfoot Act

After watching Julius cavort in their cause, Aurora gathered her courage and went to Gentry herself that evening. Her mother had not come to bed till after midnight the night before, and her hands were red and split in the morning. Aurora calculated the odds of Gentry firing them on the spot, and concluded that on balance, he would want to keep them. But it was clear that the theatre had no money to spare, and possible that Drawbank was pressing Gentry to reduce the numbers on the bill. The matter needed delicate handling.

She found him putting on his topcoat in his cubbyhole office.

‘I believe my mother is shy to speak to you, sir,’ she said, trying not to halt in her delivery. ‘But I know there was a plan to revisit our arrangement, and I hope we have been—’ She couldn’t say giving satisfaction as if they were parlourmaids. ‘I think we have been pleasing the crowds.’

Gentry looked hunted.

‘Here’s my proposal,’ Aurora said. ‘Your lessons are worth a great deal to us, at least half of what we might expect to get, I think $60 or $70 a week for a tenderfoot act. If you’ll keep teaching us, we’ll work for you for $30 a week, and keep that arrangement to ourselves—but you’d have to let us have the Act 1 closer spot, and more time for dancing.’

‘That’s the second-best spot.’

Did he think she didn’t know that? She waited, trying not to reveal anything. Like a game of beggar-your-neighbour with Papa and Mr. Dyment.

His discomfort seemed to express itself in a stiff neck. He rolled his grizzled head wildly, staring up at her. Then he sidled crab-wise a step or two to his door, and closed it. ‘$20 a week is the outside I can stretch to,’ he said. ‘But you’ve worked hard, you are good girls. As a consideration for your efforts, I will give you the opener.’

‘But—Julius—’

‘No, no, no need to fret about Julius. I’m moving him and Syb to open the second act, with their ventriloquy number. She pinned me down for that one months ago.’

Aurora had not realized they had a double act. She had not paid the least attention to Sybil, but now remembered that she’d been wearing a pink tulle costume when they first met her, at Cleveland’s—all that time ago, it now seemed.

‘Done,’ she said, and gave Gentry her hand.

‘And the ghost will walk on Saturday, as usual,’ he said, only faintly sighing.

After she’d gone, Gentry pulled out his watch, a beautiful gold turnip from his father on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday, lost now in the mists of time, and polished it once more on his sleeve. Only 9:18. Time, still, to knock on Hiram’s door. He picked up his watch and the old French ebony carriage clock from the tiny mantel, then looked into his bowler hat, its rich silk lining agleam in the lamplight. He set it on his head and, pleased with the conceit, went round to the pawnshop to see what could be got for the time he had left.