Jubilee Trail (27 page)

“You see, ma’am, Texas can’t take a drink like other folks. He don’t touch a drop for weeks and weeks, but when he does it’s like he’d been struck by lightning. But he don’t bother nobody while he’s drinking. He just wants to sit by himself and get it over with.”

“Yes, I see,” said Garnet, though she did not see at all. She had thought that when men got drunk they did it for fun. She had never heard of anybody who wanted to sit by himself and get it over with.

Mr. Penrose went on past her and delivered the pitcher. Florinda thanked him with an enchanting smile, and accepting the pitcher she took a long drink. Mr. Penrose sat by her on the table again and went back to strumming his guitar.

Florinda leaned nearer him. “Now stop playing those old tunes. I’ll teach you some new songs, straight from New York. Listen.” She began to hum a tune, without words. Mr. Penrose gazed up in adoration, delighted by all the attention from this beautiful lady straight from New York. But though he tried, he couldn’t get the tune right.

“That’s a hard one, Miss Florinda!”

“Yes, I know it is. It’s hard to play, and hard to sing too. There aren’t many people who can sing it.”

“I bet you can sing it,” said Mr. Penrose.

“Why of course I can. I can sing it without music. Want to hear how it goes?”

“Yes ma’am! You sing it. I bet it’s beautiful when you sing it.”

“It sure is. Come over here, Mr. Van Dorn. I don’t believe you’ve ever heard me sing.”

“Florinda sings fine,” boasted Mr. Bartlett. “When she sings, it’s beautiful.”

Silky Van Dorn poured himself another drink. “She’s beautiful doing anything.”

“Now then, Mr. Van Dorn, that’s the way I like to hear a gent talk. It sure is nice to have friends who say such things. Now you try to follow me on the guitar, Mr. Penrose.”

Florinda flashed her eyes over the assembly. She looked very lovely through the swirls of tobacco smoke, with the light of the lamps flaring on her hair. The men began to draw nearer to her. Looking straight at Silky, Florinda started to sing. Her voice was very gay and clear, and her tongue rippled over the syllables with a brilliant speed.

This unspeakable commotion on the border of the ocean

Is all caused by my devotion to a sailor from the sea,

Oh my sailor man’s the skipper of a great big Salem clipper,

She is called the Flying Shipper and she’s flying him to me!

He’s bringing me some silver shoes, he’s bringing me a shawl,

He’s bringing me a necklace and an Oriental fan,

You never would believe me if I tried to tell you all

The presents I am getting from my loving sailor man—

The noise in the room had begun to quiet down as the men stopped talking and listened. Silky Van Dorn took a step closer. Florinda went on singing. She sang faster and faster, but with every syllable still clear, and her voice went skipping up and down the music with never a false note. It was a hard song to sing, a trick song; no amateur could have managed it. But Florinda, though she had no great voice, was expert at using the voice she had. She babbled on with delicious enjoyment of her own skill.

Garnet heard Oliver say, “Why that little fool—she’s telling him!” There were other exclamations all around her, but Florinda did not pause.

Oh, sailor men go sailing and they do forget you fast,

But sailor men are mighty good providers while they last—

“My God!” shouted Silky Van Dorn. He gave a thump to the table with his fist. The wine splashed out of his cup. Florinda broke off in the middle of a note, and pulled her dress aside. The other men were demanding to know what he was so excited about. Silky was shouting in tipsy delight.

“Bartlett, you fool, why didn’t you tell me? How did you do it? And me forgetting—how did I ever do that? Me forgetting the greatest singer that ever knocked ’em over in New York! And you—” he pointed his finger at Florinda—“oh you beautiful deceiving woman, what made you keep teasing me? Teasing me and making fun of me—”

The other men were making so much noise that Garnet lost the rest of what he said. She heard Oliver ask,

“Does she know what she’s started?”

“Yes, she knows,” said Garnet. She could not take her eyes off Florinda, who was laughing at the excitement she had provoked. “Let her alone. She’s making trouble and she wants to make it.”

Florinda was not trying to say anything. But everybody else was. The men wanted to know what Silky was talking about, and he was trying to tell them. Forgetting his lordly poses of speech, he was prattling with all his might. Mr. Bartlett was trying to understand, turning his head unsteadily from Silky to Florinda and back again. Florinda still sat on the edge of the table, her ankles crossed gracefully, laughing to herself.

“Look here,” Silky was demanding, “is this a joke on me? Did everybody but me know who she was? Am I the only damn fool in Santa Fe who didn’t know? Say, sweetheart, what made you change your name?”

In the hubbub Mr. Bartlett protested, “Changed her name when she got married. Widow lady. Lost her husband last winter—”

“Trouble with you, Bartlett, is that you’ve been drinking. Her a widow lady? Don’t make me laugh any more than I’m laughing.”

“You’re drunk!” announced Mr. Bartlett.

“Me drunk? No, no. Just had enough to make me sharp. Why didn’t you tell me, you fellows?”

Florinda reached out and put her hand on his elbow. When Florinda had something to say, she could say it so it could be heard. “Nobody knew, Silky. It was a secret.”

“What? You mean—Bartlett, you mean you’ve been keeping it to yourself all this time? Believe me, if I’d had Charline of the Jewel Box—but you brought her all the way out here and told nobody? You’re a selfish pig, Bartlett, that’s what you are.” Silky looked him up and down, and laughed uproariously. “But you’re better than I thought you were! How’d you do it? Her with every masher from the Battery to Washington Square at the stage door, and you—” Silky swallowed his drink at a gulp. “
You
!”

The other men stared at Bartlett with new respect. Bartlett blinked. The men were crowding around Silky and Florinda, begging to know more. Oliver and John had both stood up. John was asking, “What on earth is this about?” Even Texas was sitting up straight, saying something incoherent to the air. Oliver took Garnet’s arm.

“You’d better let me get you out of here, Garnet.”

“No, no! We’re not going yet! She might need some help.”

Silky was talking. Bartlett, still bewildered, was making some drunken protests. Florinda took Silky’s arm again, and he looked up at her. Florinda laughed, and in a clear voice that could have been heard in the back of a theater balcony, she said to him,

“He didn’t know either, Silky. He was such a country bumpkin, I thought it would be fun to see how long I could keep him fooled.”

Silky burst out into mocking laughter. The other men began to laugh too. They looked at Florinda, and they looked at Bartlett, and as the idea dawned on more and more of them, their merriment got louder. Florinda said,

“Go on, Silky. Tell them.”

Silky needed no permission. He was already telling them.

“—and there I was, just a common card-player from Park Row, saying, ‘I’ve got to meet that girl, what do you have to do to get acquainted?’ And they said to me, they said, ‘You have to have a diamond necklace and your arms full of sables, no less, why man, she’s got Bleecker Street on its knees, what would she be doing with a bum from Park Row? What can you give her that she wants, you—’”

Garnet saw Mr. Bartlett. He was drunk. But he was not too drunk to understand that everybody was laughing at him now. His face turned white, and slowly began turning red again. Garnet closed her hand on Oliver’s elbow. “Oliver! Go out there near her! She’s going to need you!”

Oliver was half amused and half exasperated. Florinda had started this herself and he thought she should have known better. But he said, “All right. Come on, John. You stay here, Garnet.”

She stood up and they pushed past her between the bench and the table, and got free. They began making slow headway through the mob packed around Florinda. Silky was still talking.

“But I was clean knocked over, flat as a pancake I was, and boys, you’d have been there with me if you’d seen her do that dance in the black lace! So I went around to the stage door, heart pounding like a kid’s in the springtime, and boys, they were right in all they’d said. Men six deep on all sides. And out she comes, wrapped up in ten thousand dollars’ worth of furs, and on each elbow a gent, a real gent in a silk hat, and another gent making way for her like they would for a queen. I couldn’t get near. She never even saw me. And there stands a carriage with purple curtains and matched black horses, and in she goes, and as she gets in I catch the sparkle of a bracelet that must have sent one of those gents howling from his bank, but that’s what she cost and I guess she was worth it, and they all—”

The other voices drowned his again. The men were full of awe at Florinda, and vastly amused at Bartlett’s sputtering embarrassment. In his far corner of the room, Texas was blinking and trying to stand up. He was very drunk. Florinda sat quietly on the table, watching Silky as though she were the audience and he the show. She was smiling a little, as though enjoying the performance.

“Of course you never saw anybody like her!” Silky shouted in derision. “Where’d a bunch of yokels like you ever expect to see anything like the star of the Jewel Box? You’ve never been to New York. You nor Bartlett either. Think of her pulling a joke like that on Deacon Bartlett. What she’ll have to tell them when she gets back to St. Louis, about the holiest hell-chaser in town!”

Bartlett had elbowed his way to stand in front of Florinda. He stood there, swaying on his feet. Florinda laughed at him softly. Bartlett was blind with rage. John and Oliver were trying to shove through the mob toward him, but before they could reach him Bartlett made an inarticulate noise in his throat. Having found his voice, he let go a string of sizzling words, and gave Florinda a blow on the side of her head that sent her toppling sideways.

It almost knocked her to the floor. But Mr. Penrose, with a roar of wrath, caught her with one arm and with the other aimed a blow at Bartlett’s head. The blow glanced off the side of his cheek, but by this time John and Oliver had reached him. Oliver grabbed one of Bartlett’s arms and John the other. The rest of the men surged between him and Florinda. They were all yelling at once. Florinda was an American woman, rare and precious in this foreign land, and they would have been glad to tear Bartlett to pieces for striking her. Bartlett staggered between John and Oliver, struggling to get free and swearing in wild anger. Texas was on his feet now, swearing by various gods that he’d kill that brute Bartlett if he dared hit that lady again. Above the pandemonium Silky was exclaiming,

“What did I do? Wasn’t I supposed to tell them? Charline—Florinda—I didn’t mean to start anything!”

Florinda had straightened up. Penrose had his arm around her. She smiled her thanks to him, while she pushed back the hair that Bartlett’s blow had sent falling around her face. Her gloves were blue silk; they glimmered against her bright hair. Her clear warm voice answered,

“It’s all right, Silky. He hasn’t hurt me.”

Garnet stood pressed back against the wall. John and Oliver did not need to protect Florinda now, they had to protect Bartlett. In this gathering, Florinda’s sex and her beauty and her nationality were all the protection she needed, but Bartlett had to have help if he was going to get out alive. John and Oliver were dragging him out of the crowd. Bartlett was kicking. John used his fist to give him a well-aimed crack on the head. Bartlett crumpled up like a doll.

Garnet had never seen a riot before. She was frightened. But she saw Florinda turn her head, looking for her. Their eyes met, and Florinda gave her a cool private smile.

Garnet lowered her head and bit her lips to keep from laughing. All of a sudden, that little smile had told her why Florinda had wanted her to be here tonight. Florinda had meant this to happen, just as it had happened, but nobody knew this except the two of them. And Florinda was an actress. When she did a scene, she needed an audience who could appreciate it.

Without any visible excitement, John said to the man next to him,

“Here, Reynolds, give me a hand. Oliver, we’ll get Bartlett out of here. You’d better take care of Mrs. Hale.”

Garnet had been so quiet the others had forgotten she was there. But hearing her name, two men moved over to stand on either side of her. Oliver handed his side of Bartlett to Reynolds, and began to make his way back to her. John and Reynolds dragged Bartlett toward the door.

Dismay had shocked Silky into something like sobriety. He moved over to Florinda again. Mr. Penrose still had a sheltering arm around her. Silky, almost in tears, was pleading with her to forgive him. Florinda tweaked Silky’s mustache, forgivingly.

Her eyes followed John and Reynolds as they dragged Bartlett to the door. John called over his shoulder,

“He’s out, boys. We’ll take him home and lock him in.”

The door banged shut behind them. There was a sudden uncomfortable silence. Nobody knew how to go on from here. The men’s heads turned back to Florinda questioningly.

Florinda smiled at them, a brilliant smile, warm and friendly. She reached up to feel her cheek, still red from Bartlett’s blow. She shrugged, and her clear voice spoke to them all.

“I wonder,” she said, “who’s going to make a cold pack for his head in the morning.”

All of a sudden, from the corner of the room, they heard applause. It was Texas. Drunk as he was, Texas knew triumph when he saw it.

He clapped his hands. As though it had been a signal, the others joined him. They clapped, they shouted, one or two of them began to cheer. It was as though Florinda had appeared on the stage.

Florinda began to laugh. This was a noise she was used to.

In another minute she had got out of Mr. Penrose’s sheltering arm and was standing on the table. She laughed, and kissed her hands to them, over and over, as she had laughed and kissed her hands to hundreds of other audiences before them. She was simply dressed, in a printed muslin gown she and Garnet had stitched in Señora Silva’s parlor, but her vigor and richness needed no special costume to make it real. Her vitality flashed through the dingy room as it had flashed through the Jewel Box.