Ever After (27 page)

“Yes, ma’am. I don’t want you all to get any wrong ideas about this,” he added, and his eyes sought Cabot’s. “She’s just a nice kid Johnny and I have been sort of mothering since her brother died and threw her out of a job. It’s hard for girls like that in this town. She’s pretty and she’s decent, and so the cards are stacked against her to start with. I don’t say she’s any Lillian Russell, but she can sing and she’d look nice in the right kind of clothes. If she came here it might lead to other jobs, too. Some of your friends might want a singer sometimes, mightn’t they?”

“Often,” Eden assured him, carefully casual, for he must not think they took too much interest now that they were on the track at last. “We’ll see what we can do for her if she needs jobs.”

“Thanks,” said Fitz simply. “I think you’ll be satisfied.”

He explained the situation to Johnny the next day and Johnny agreed that it was best for Fitz to remain incognito with Gwen. “Else she might have stage-fright,” Johnny said sagaciously, and he listened with owlish approval while Fitz broke the news to Gwen at dinner that he had got her a bang-up job to sing at a society ball, where there was no danger that any of Fagan’s gang would spot her,
and
—he paused for his effect—the fee was two hundred dollars.

“For
one
night?
”
Gwen stared at him. “But that’s as though I was from Pastor’s or somewhere like that. Do they know nobody ever heard of me?”

“There’s one catch in it,” Fitz said gravely. “You have to sing my songs.”

Gwen thought she saw.

“Oh, you mean they’re friends of yours, giving your music a hearing,” she said. “Why, I’d have done that for nothing, you know I would.”

“They’re able to buy music,” said Fitz coolly. “Somebody’s going to sell it to ’em, and it might as well be us!”

“What do you get? The same?”

“Sure, I get the same,” he said without blinking.

G
WEN
shied a little when he turned her up the steps of Cabot’s house a few afternoons later.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she asked nervously.

“Yep, this is the place. People named Murray. Friends of my mother’s when she used to live up North,” he added, improvising again, as the door was opened by Eden’s English butler, who greeted Fitz with visible pleasure. “’Afternoon, Benson, we want to use the ballroom piano. You might tell Mrs. Murray we’re here.”

Gwen looked curiously around the dust-sheeted, gilded spaces of the ballroom with its shining waxed floor. There was a small platform at one end in front of a velvet curtain, and a piano and
music-racks
and gilt chairs were grouped at its foot.

“How many people does this hold?” she wanted to know.

“’Bout a hundred couples, at a pinch.”

“Have you ever seen it full?”

“Once or twice.”

“What’s this Mrs. Murray like?”

“Nice. You scared?”

“It’s not what I’m used to,” she admitted with her half smile. “I can see now why the dress went with the job. She knows I wouldn’t know what to wear here.”

“It’ll be just a dress, I reckon, like the rest of ’em,” he said
unconcernedly
, and opened the lid of the piano. His fingers melted lovingly into the keys, the way he had, and harmony stole out into the room.

“Say, you can play! Where did you learn?”

“Dunno. Just came by it naturally or somethin’. Did you think I was one of those one-finger songwriters? Let’s try this one here on the rack first—thing called
Tidewater
Rose
. I’ll run through it once, and then you come in huh?”

Gwen stood by the piano looking over his shoulder and sang obediently, giving the best she had. For an hour or so they worked absorbedly, while he interpolated low-voiced, diffident suggestions—“Take it easy, honey, these customers will be fairly sober,” he would say. “Hey, hey, don’t plug that line, it won’t stand it—here we go, now, let it out big—”

Then the door opened behind him and Eden and Sue came in. Fitz rose from the piano bench and made the introductions blandly. Eden was wearing her hat.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but I’m going round to my dressmaker’s and I thought if I had some idea of your size and your
preference in colours—” Her eyes, friendly but searching, rested on Fitz’s girl.

Gwen said the right thing, leaving it all to Eden, who observed that she and Virginia were almost of a size, which was convenient as the dressmaker could use Virginia’s patterns to start with. They made an appointment for a fitting, and Fitz said:

“Since you’re going out, Mrs. Murray, perhaps Miss Day would like to sit down and hear what we’ve decided on.” His eyelid farthest from Gwen drooped briefly at Sue as he spoke. He could never resist showing off for Sue, and he was proud of Gwen and the way she sang his songs. So when Eden had rustled away, Sue settled into an armchair drawn up to the piano and listened while Gwen went on with her singing lesson.

“Now do the one I always liked best,” Sue said when they seemed to have finished. “Sing
Sun
goin’
Down
On
Me.
”

Gwen said she didn’t know that one.

“It’s in his musical comedy. Hasn’t he sung it for you?”

Gwen said she didn’t know there was a musical comedy.

“Well, there is, but he’s bashful about it. Play
Sun
Goin’
Down
before you stop, won’t you?” she pleaded, refraining carefully from using Fitz’s name when she spoke to him.

Without any visible embarrassment, but not altogether willingly, Fitz began the song. He didn’t think much of his own singing voice, especially after bossing Gwen around the way he had been doing all afternoon. He hummed along to himself at first, crooned a phrase or two, and finally let out his fine, clear baritone. Gwen stood there beside the piano, wide-eyed and silent. His playing was good, but his voice took her completely by surprise.

Sue watched them thoughtfully, trying to see with Sedgwick’s eyes and not her own blindly prejudiced ones. This was the opportunity she and Eden had been hoping for, as Eden freely admitted she had only accepted Fitz’s singer in order to get a look at her. So far as Sue could tell, Fitz was just the same as always—casual, relaxed, serene. But the girl was in love. Her gaze rested on him revealingly while he played. Her dark shadowed eyes seemed to be memorizing him, from the deeply waved forelock to his thin, strong hands on the keyboard. There was no possessiveness in that look, and not much happiness either. It was as though she took leave of him as she stood there, Sue thought; as though she might never see him again, and wanted to remember him as he looked now, playing the piano to them in the empty ballroom.

She’s breaking her heart for him, Sue thought, with a feeling almost of eavesdropping, so defenceless and young the girl’s face had become—so
resigned.
Fitz doesn’t know, Sue thought. It hasn’t occurred to him. Will it ever? What would Sedgie think
of her? What’s she like, I wonder, to know? Decent, he said, I think she is, but there’s red on her mouth. Awfully pretty. Awfully pathetic. Fitz ought not to go round breaking people’s hearts like this, but nobody could help loving him, I reckon. She looks at him like—well, not like a dog, no, dogs haven’t got souls, they say. I know how she feels. I must have looked at Sedgie that way,
hundreds
of times, when I thought nobody would notice. Oh, Lordy, yes, I know how she feels! Would she make him a good wife, I wonder? Perhaps he won’t ask her. She’s not—not quite our kind. I wonder who her people were….

The song came to an end and Gwen only stood there, looking at him with her heart in her eyes.

“What’s the matter? No good?” he asked, glancing up.

“I’m surprised, that’s all.”

“Didn’t think I could write songs, huh? I’ll show you yet.”

“B-but your voice—” she stammered. “You could do anything you liked on the stage, singing like that!

“Oh, shucks, honey, I’m no he-actor,” he said easily. “Me, I write the stuff. Somebody else has got to sing it.”

“Could I use that song, instead of one of the others?”

“Sure, anything I’ve got you can sing if you want to.” He struck a few questioning chords. “What key do you want?”

“Lower.”

He slid down one. Gwen’s rich voice took up the song, and Sue sat listening with an ache in her throat. It didn’t matter, she decided, who the girl was or where Fitz had found her. All that mattered was the way she felt about him. But would Eden see that? Or Sedgie? Provided, of course, that Fitz himself ever saw it….

Gwen suffered acutely from nerves the night of the ball. Not even the beautiful dress Eden had provided nor the knowledge that the songs she was going to sing were good comforted her much while she changed in an upstairs room and waited for Fitz’s knock on the door. She had never dreamed of such a dress. It was made of black sequined net over rose-coloured satin, with a swathed low bodice and large puffed elbow sleeves of stiffened net glittering with sequins. Long white gloves and a sequin fan went with it. Eden’s maid had dressed Gwen’s hair high, with an ornament. The effect was subtly sophisticated and theatrical, and yet the girl’s fresh beauty enlivened by her carmined lips was
ingénue
. She stood before a long mirror and gazed at her reflection with impersonal delight. He wouldn’t be ashamed of her, anyway.

Hired performers were not supposed to mingle with the guests so she and Fitz were to sit in the library until it was time for them
to appear. When he came for her they looked at each other in frank admiration, for evening dress became him too.

“My, my, they have sure turned you out handsome,” he
murmured
.

“You’re turned out kind of handsome yourself,” she replied with her little half smile.

“Oh, me, I’m just one of the waiters. But you sure dazzle the eye, Gwen, I wish Johnny was here!”

A footman came to say would they please go down now. With a nasty sickening of the heart, she walked at Fitz’s side down the staircase to the ballroom floor. The dancing had stopped. As they were crossing the hall outside the ballroom door they were
intercepted
by an ample matron hung with ropes of pearls, who cried in a penetrating voice, “Ah, there you are Fitz, my dear boy! Eden says we are going to hear some of your own music tonight at last!”

Gwen felt as though someone had kicked her in the stomach.
Eden
says.
My
Aunt
Eden
. It wasn’t a name you could forget. These were his people, then, and this was where he had lived—over the other side of Fifth.

“Well, yes, thanks to Miss Maguire, here, she’s found a couple she’s willing to take a chance on singing,” Fitz was saying with his imperturbable courtesy.

“How do you do, Miss Maguire, can you sing Tosti’s
Goodbye,
by any chance?”

“Why, yes, I—think so—I haven’t got the music—”

“Oh, not tonight, my dear, I wouldn’t dream of upsetting your programme at the last minute! But I wondered if you’d come and sing at my house two weeks from Sunday, we’re having a little party—it’s my husband’s favourite song, and I’m sure you’d sing it beautifully. You have your own accompanist, of course?”

“Well, no, I—”

“I am Miss Maguire’s accompanist tonight, Mrs. Palmer,” Fitz interposed quietly. “Maybe you’d give me a job too, if I can learn to play
Goodbye
during the next two weeks.”

Mrs. Palmer shook with laughter and slapped him with her fan.

“Darling Fitz, if you can, you may consider yourself hired!” she said, and turned away to find Eden and tell her what her ridiculous nephew had said now.

With Fitz’s hand at her elbow Gwen threaded the crowded room and arrived at the platform. Mr. Herbert’s pianist surrendered the instrument to Fitz with a little bow, and there was a continuous murmur and rustle as people found their places and settled into them. Fitz was improvising in soft, insistent, soothing chords to get them quiet, while Gwen stood with every painful heartbeat zigzagging
up behind her eyes; her knees were water, the roof of her mouth was dry, her tongue was stiff and cold, her finger-tips were numb—
Eden
says
—
my
Aunt
Eden
—well, what difference does it make, you knew you never had a chance—he’s used to this, he
belongs
here, this is his home—if only we hadn’t met that awful woman till
afterwards
—but you knew he wasn’t yours, it’s no different, really—Johnny should have warned me—I can’t sing like this, I can’t sing a note—pretending to be my accompanist so I wouldn’t feel the only outsider—oh, my dear, my dear, I know it’s no use, but why must you try to be so
kind
….

The room had gone silent, waiting. Gwen’s feet carried her to the front of the platform, she glanced down towards the piano where Fitz was looking up, serene, smiling, confident, proud of her. His hands moved again on the keyboard. She heard her own voice, strong and sure and sweet, obeying his hands….

When it was over, and they had taken bow after bow, and Mr. Herbert had resumed his baton, they found themselves back in the library, where a wood fire burned and a tray awaited them with sandwiches and a bottle of champagne.

Gwen sat down on the sofa near the hearth and Fitz popped the cork in a silence stretched tight over the waltz music across the hall. He came to the sofa, a glass in each hand.

“Well,” he said gently as she accepted one of them, and he raised his own, “here’s to Tosti two weeks from Saturday!

“Goodbye,” said Gwen, and drank.

“You aren’t sore, are you?” he asked anxiously, and when she did not reply he sat down on the sofa beside her, holding his glass. “About Mrs. Palmer, I mean. You meet all sorts of people at places like this.”

“Do you think your Aunt Eden will let me use this dress at Mrs. Palmer’s?” Gwen asked carefully.

“Oh, sure, you’re to keep the dress, she wouldn’t—” He paused, looking trapped. “Who said she was my aunt?”

“Too late, Fitz. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Why did you think it would?”

“Well, I dunno, reckon I wanted you to think I could earn my own living like other people,” he said humbly. “All the same, Uncle Cabot is tough. I don’t think he’d keep me on the pay-roll now if I was too much of a drawback. Of course anybody can do what I do down at the Shop, I don’t give myself any airs about that!”