They call her Dana (56 page)

I finally closed the volume and sat watching a pool of sunlight lengthening on the rose and gray carpet. After a long while I

stood up and tidied my hair and went downstairs. It was almost two o'clock now, and the dining room was empty, but perhaps I could get a cup of tea. One of the polite young waiters happened to see me and hurried over to show me to a table.

"I realize it's too late for lunch," I said, "but I thought I might be able to have some tea."

"Anything you want, Miss O'Malley," he said graciously. **The cook would be delighted to prepare something special for you."

"No, I—I don't want to be any trouble."

"You just sit here and relax. I'll bring your tea right away and see if I can rustle up a snack or two as well. It's an honor having you here, and we want you to be happy."

"You're very kind," I told him.

The youth smiled and disappeared, and I looked around at the large, empty room with its dark gold carpet and faded yellow silk damask walls. Heavy gold satin drapes hung at the windows, pulled back to let in lazy silver rays of afternoon sunlight. Filled with people and the muted clatter of silver and china, the tinkle of crystal, the hum of a dozen conversations, the discreet scurry of waiters and the delicious smells of food, the room was elegant and inviting, but now, deserted of its crowd, the atmosphere was curiously sad and lonely, matching my own mood. Lonely? Yes, I realized that I was lonely. I had tremendous friends, I was part of a merry, mercurial family, but when the play was ended and the footlights put out I had no one. No one to hold me. No one to turn long, empty nights into nights of splendor.

"Here you are!" Jason cried.

I looked up, startled. He came swaggering into the dining room, bursting with that magnificent energy and vitality, looking absolutely marvelous in his snug gray breeches and loose white shirt and multicolored silk waistcoat. His black hair was all unruly, his lean face exasperated, those gray-flecked green eyes all afire as he charged over to my table. My spirits lifted immediately. They seemed to soar. Until now, I hadn't realized just how much I had missed him since he left for Atlanta.

"Miss me?" he demanded.

"Miss you?" I asked dryly. "Why on earth should I have missed you?''

"Ungrateful wench! You certainly know how to needle a man."

' 'As a matter of fact, it's been remarkably peaceful and serene these past days. Everything has run with unusual smoothness and efficiency. Perhaps you should leave us more often."

"Just got back," he announced. "I've been looking all over for you."

He stood there in front of the table, one hand gripping a rolled-up manuscript bound in thick blue paper, the other resting lightly on his thigh. He was indeed a roguishly attractive devil with those quirkily slanting eyebrows, that crooked nose and the wide pink slash of mouth. Not handsome, no, but incredibly appealing. No wonder women threw themselves at him. During the past eight months I had seen several of them do just that, but here was one who had no intention of making a fool of herself.

"Why should you be looking all over for me?" I inquired.

"To feast my eyes on your astonishing beauty," he said.

I sighed wearily. He was, after all, the author of second-rate melodrama, and a glib scoundrel to boot. At that point the young waiter returned with a tray laden with silver teapot, a large platter of delectable-looking sandwiches and a smaller platter of iced tea cakes. He nodded to Jason, deftly placed the things on the table and set delicate china cup and saucer before me. The tea emitted a fragrant aroma and a spiral of steam as he poured it.

"There are two kinds of sandwiches. Miss O'Malley—sliced tongue and watercress. Cook made them up especially for you. Those little cakes with the white icing have raspberry spread between the layers, and the others are chocolate with almond paste. May I bring you something, Mr. Donovan?" he asked.

"No, this'U do nicely for both of us," Jason replied. "You might bring an extra cup, though."

"Certainly, sir."

The youth left, and Jason slapped the manuscript down on the table, took a sliced tongue sandwich and plopped down across from me, looking completely relaxed. The sandwich was small, the crusts daintily removed, and he ate it in two greedy bites, immediately reaching for another.

"Why so sad?" he asked.

' 'Sad? What makes you think I 'm sad?'' i^

"I saw it in your eyes. Before I made my presence known. You looked sad and lost and terribly lonely. A beautiful creature like you—ridiculous! I suspect you did miss me, wench."

' 'Don't call me that!'' I snapped.

"Why not?"

"This isn't an—an eighteenth-century melodrama, and I'm not—I 'm not a buxom barmaid or a lass fresh from the country.''

**No, you're very demure, very well-bred, very self-possessed—when you're not slugging someone, that is."

"I haven't slugged anyone but Carmelita."

"And the sow certainly deserved it. You were sad."

"I was thinking," I retorted.

"Sad thoughts," he insisted.

"Go to hell!" I said testily.

"I don't know why you always give me such a hard time. Miss O'Malley. I want only to woo you. I want only to see those eyes full of stars, see those lips part with pleasure as I murmur tender words into those delicate ears."

"Purple Nights, " I said. "Act Three. Carlo's speech to Jes-samyn."

"Really?" He seemed surprised. "I'd quite forgotten. I'm utterly sincere, though."

"Of course you are. Does that line actually work?"

"Usually," he admitted.

The waiter returned with his cup. Jason nodded his thanks and poured the tea himself, waving the waiter away. He ate another sandwich, too. I watched with mounting irritation, and when he reached for his fourth sandwich I slapped his hand. He looked dismayed.

" What'd you do that foi?"

"This happens to be my lunch."

"I told you, I just got in, and I didn't eat anything on the train. They sure make skimpy little sandwiches here, don't they? Try one."

"How was your trip to Atlanta?" I inquired.

"Very successful," he said casually, taking yet another sandwich off the platter. "Things look good. They look very good indeed."

"It—it has something to do with the play you've been writing these past months?"

He nodded, pushing the manuscript across the table to me.

"I want you to read it," he told me. "I want you to read it this afternoon, in fact. We've got a lot of things to discuss."

"Did you—"

"Not another word about it until you've read the play. We'll talk about it tonight, after the performance. I'll take you to dinner. I might even buy you some champagne."

"Jason—"

"Drink your tea," he ordered.

I managed to get one of the sandwiches and two of the cakes before he ate them all. He drank the rest of the tea as well, then escorted me upstairs to my room and told me to read the play slowly and carefully—he intended to quiz me about it tonight. I gave him a look and shut the door in his face, feeling much, much better than I had earlier. For all his swagger and posturing, for all his quips, he was a very intelligent, very perceptive man. Being with Jason Donovan was always stimulating. My senses seemed to be curiously heightened, and I seemed to be—well, more alive. It was his vitality, I assured myself. One couldn't help but respond to it.

I settled down to read the manuscript, opening it at the title page. The Quadroon, by Jason Donovan. Another thundering melodrama, no doubt. He had been working on it for several months, very secretive about its plot, refusing to discuss it with anyone. I began it without any great expectations, anticipating the usual florid dialogue and larger-than-life characters. It opened in a squalid room in New Orleans where a Negro woman, Jessie, is keeping her eye on two rowdy young sons while washing a tub of clothes, looking defeated and worn-out by life. Not a typical opening. Did Jason expect to use real Negroes? I read on, caught up immediately when Rufus, Jessie's husband, entered.

Ruftis was a carpenter, and he was finding it ever more difficult to get a job. Rufus, Jessie and their children had been given their freedom when "Master Bartholomew" died, and life here in New Orleans was grim indeed, much harder than it had been on the plantation. Ruftis takes the boys out so that Jessie can finish her washing and ironing and take the clothes to "Miss Amy Sue." Janine, Jessie's daughter, enters, and it is immediately obvious that she isn't Ruftis' child. Janine is a quadroon, a "buffalo gal" who could easily pass for white. That is exactly what she has been doing. She informs her mother that "Joe" is

going to marry her and they are going to St. Louis. Jessie begs her not to do this evil thing, it is wrong, dead wrong, and can only bring unhappiness to all concerned.

"He loves me. He wants to marry me," Janine insists. "I— I'm not going to end up like the rest of my kind. Ma. I'm not going to show myself off at the Quadroon Ball and get myself a rich white lover, I'm going to marry my Joe and lead a real life—a respectable hfe—where no one knows what—what I am."

"Not even Joe," Jessie says. "He doesn't know, does he, chile?"

"He doesn't know,'' Janine replies, "and he'll never find out, either."

"What you plan to do, chile—it ain't only wrong, it's against the law, too. White folks an' colored folks, they ain't allowed to marry. You'se colored, chile. In th' eyes of th' law, just one drop of colored blood makes you as black as me or Rufus or either of yore brothers.''

Janine leaves and Jessie bows her head in grief. Scene Two finds Janine in St. Louis, deserted by the faithless Joe, who, of course, never married her. She is working as a milliner's assistant and confides to her lovely and worldly friend Lenore that she has met a wealthy young gentleman, Travis, who plans to introduce her to his parents. He is madly in love with her. He intends to marry her. Travis is charming, carefree, but essentially weak, and his parents bitterly oppose this most unsuitable marriage.

In Act TVo, Catherine, Travis's mother, comes to visit a radiant, blissfully happy Janine, who is living in a small, pretty house with her husband. Catherine confesses that she and her husband feared the worst and begrudgingly admits that Janine has made a new man of Travis, who has given up drinking, taken on responsibility and is now working diligently in his father's law fiirn. Janine confides that she is expecting a child. Catherine is thrilled and gives her daughter-in-law a hug. A tearful Jessie arrives two months later, telling her daughter that Rufus and the boys have died in a terrible fire. Everything is gone. Jessie would have died, too, but she was out delivering laundry when the fire broke out. Janine vows to take care of her and tells everyone Jessie is her old nanny. A stubborn Travis informs his wife that he will not have a Negro woman staying under his roof. He distrusts and despises all colored people but finally agrees to let

her stay in the shed out back, warning Janine to keep the coon out of his sight.

When Act Three opens, Janine is giving birth to a child offstage. Travis is pacing the floor anxiously as a very worried Jessie, hiding behind a column, wrings her hands. There are sounds offstage, then silence. A grave-faced doctor enters. The child is dead, stillborn. The mother is recovering. There is something else, he adds, hardly knowing how to say it. The child is black. Travis turns pale as Jessie cries, "My chile, my chile," and rushes to her daughter. Travis leaves the room. A moment later a gunshot is heard offstage. In Scene T\vo, Catherine and her husband, who have managed to keep the reasons for their son's suicide a secret, harshly banish Janine and her mother, and in the final scene a gorgeously attired Janine, back in New Orleans, is preparing herself for yet another Quadroon Ball.

I closed the manuscript, gazing into space, deeply moved. It was a beautiful play, wonderfully written, getting its message across with subtle touches. Even the more dramatic scenes were underwritten, with simple and realistic dialogue and none of the purple passages that usually marked Jason's work. There was trutii and compassion, and Janine, of course, was a dream role for an actress. I stood up, still in that world Jason had created so superbly. The play could never be produced, I realized. The public would never stand for a drama about miscegenation— Othello had never been performed in the South—and even if a producer did dare to put it on, it couldn't be done effectively without real Negroes in the cast. A Jessie in blackface would destroy the entire mood of the play. Even so, I was tremendously proud of Jason for writing it. It merely proved what he was capable of doing.

I was still thinking of the play that evening at the theater. Backstage was aswarm with Indians—locally recruited youths in breechcloths, feathers, black wigs and fierce war paint—and I was waiting in the wings in my flowered pink calico while, onstage, an obese Carmelita in purple taffeta was telling a handsomely uniformed Michael that she couldn't possibly endure another year at the fort, the engagement was off, she was leaving tomorrow. Michael told her no one was leaving the fort while there was danger of an Indian attack. Laura joined me in the wings, attired in low-cut blue and mauve silk as the command-

er's seductive and scheming daughter who hoped to steal the noble Michael from the even nobler Carmelita.

*'One of those bloody Indians pinched me," she whispered. "I think he's the one who tomahawks me in the last scene."

"What did you do?"

"I pinched him back, love. He's never had such a thrill, believe me. I suppose you know Jason's back?"

I nodded. "He's taking me to dinner after the show."

"Oh?"

"We—there's something he wants to talk about."

"Don't waste too much time talking, love," she advised. "I hope you're wearing something provocative."

"The red silk Dulcie made for next season's Lena Marlow. He hasn't seen it yet."

"But /have, love. Good thinking. It's perfect!"

My cue came and I rushed onstage to inform my brother, Michael, that Indians had been sighted on the ridge beyond the fort and the commander needed him to rally the men. He hurried off and I took Carmelita's hand and told her she mustn't think of leaving, he loved her dearly, as did everyone else here at the fort, for, after all, she was the Sweetheart of the West. That particular line got laughs the author hadn't intended, and there was a very loud "Moo!" from the balcony. Carmelita bristled but carried on like the trouper she was. During the second act I flirted with all the officers at the Cavalry Ball, primarily to make Billy, the dashing young lieutenant, jealous, and during the third act I showed my true merit when Indians attacked and overran the fort. I shot the Indian who had just tomahawked the wicked Laura and, when the bloodthirsty savages were finally defeated, huried myself into Billy's arms and vowed eternal love.