“Mr. Abbott, I remember you from some years back, do I not?”
“You have an astonishing memory, sir. It was back in aught two. I read for you for a road tour of Mr. Belasco’s The Heart of Maryland.”
“The Midwestern spring tour, I believe it was.”
“I didn’t get the part.”
“You were too young. As you might be, I fear, for this role. Keep in mind that Mr. Pool has been Mr. Hyde’s butler for over twenty years.”
“As much as it pains me to say it, sir,” said Archie Abbott, “I sincerely believe I can play a man in his fifties.”
“I have other reservations.”
“May I hear them,” asked Archie Abbott, “that I might put them to rest?”
“The way you just ‘elocuted’ that statement is my next reservation. You do call up the impression of being to a high manner born. Will we be asking too much of the audience to believe that you are a butler?”
“The best butlers I know can more easily pass for a gentleman than most so-called gentlemen. Granted, some in the audience may not know from personal experience that a gentleman’s butler is expected to bring a cool head and a keen eye to his tasks, but all will appreciate his positive attitude.”
When Henry Young still looked dubious, Abbott promised, “But I have no doubt I can give the impression of servility.”
The stage manager remained silent.
Abbott decided this conversation would have ended already if he weren’t a serious contender for the part. “You mentioned other reservations, sir?”
“I find it difficult to believe that you really want the part.”
“I want it very much, sir. I need this job.”
“But,” the stage manager said, “I’ve heard that you married well.”
“An heiress,” said Abbott.
“Extremely well.”
“A lovely heiress,” said Abbott. “Kind, generous, intelligent, extraordinarily beautiful, and destined to inherit many railroads from a doting father, who is an old man with a weak heart.”
“Then why do you want a small role in a play that is leaving godforsaken Cincinnati for ever more godforsaken points west?”
“She came to her senses.”
“The girls in the Jimmy Valentine company told me that Mr. Vietor claims he entered boarding school in Bedford in 1888,” Helen Mills reported to Isaac Bell.
“Bedford’s seventy miles north of London. Hour and a half on the train.”
“The trouble is, Mr. Bell, Vietor says he was twelve at the time.”
“Twelve?”
“He was still in school in ’ninety-one, age fifteen. Which would make him thirty-five today. Not in his forties.”
“When did he come to America?”
“First time was ’ninety-seven.”
“At twenty-three.”
“He made a name for himself in London first. Back and forth ever since, touring.”
Bell said, “I’ll cable Joel Wallace to check at the Bedford School, but it could take forever. He must be lying about his age. If Mapes was right, Vietor’s got to be in his forties.”
“And there is something else, Mr. Bell. He’s coaching Lucy Balant for a bigger part. I warned her not to be alone with any man. Including him. I’m not sure she’ll listen.”
Bell said, “I’ll tell Harry Warren to keep a close watch on him. Who else in the Valentine cast?”
“The actor who plays Detective Doyle is definitely lying about his age. He claims thirty-two. A girl who knew him well swears he’s fifty-two. And he told me he was born in Jersey City, not London.”
“How do you rate him?”
“He sounds English to me, but, like Archie says, most of them do. But he’s nowhere as young as thirty-two. Fifty, if he’s a day.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“His slow reflexes.”
38
A life in the theater, both on the stage and behind the scenes, had taught Henry Booker Young the protocol for conducting a reading for a part to be won by an angel’s protégée. An air of business as usual was expected of the stage manager. But brusque impatience was to be leavened with kindness. And talent, no matter how sparse, was to be noted and somehow praised. Particularly when the angel—the tall, handsome, and, to Young’s eye, dangerous-looking Mr. Bell—was sitting on the edge of his seat in the front row of the otherwise empty house, watching like a mother falcon.
“Can you tell me about your work on the stage, Miss Mills?”
Helen Mills answered in a rush. “I was Nora in A Doll’s House, Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest, Candida in Candida, and—”
“Where did you perform these roles?”
“Bryn Mawr.”
“The college.”
“Yes, Mr. Young.”
“Have you performed with any legitimate companies?”
“This will be my first.”
“Have you ever read for any legitimate companies?”
Helen looked flustered.
“Well, have you?”
“I read for Jimmy Valentine.”
“How did you make out there?”
“I decided against taking the part.”
Young smiled thinly. “That would jibe with a story making the rounds about Mr. Lockwood’s broken nose. Was it you, Miss Mills, who socked the star?”
“I’m afraid I lost my temper.”
Young sounded sympathetic: “It is not easy to be an attractive girl in the theater. However, I would caution you to ponder precisely how much you are willing to sacrifice to go on the stage.” He was stepping so far beyond the unspoken boundaries of awarding a job to an angel’s protégée that the angel himself stiffened visibly.
Isaac Bell made him nervous. While seemingly typical of the wealthy men who pursued actresses, something about him seemed off. He was so much more fit and alert than layabouts like the Deaver brothers. And Bell seemed truly concerned for the girl’s well-being, almost a fatherly concern—though if he were her actual father, he would have been no more than nine or ten years old when she was born. Maybe it was true that Helen Mills was the niece of one of his investors. Maybe Tennyson was thinking of stage managers when he wrote: “Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die.”
He plowed ahead, determined for some perverse and unsafe reason he could not quite put his finger on, to shield her from disappointment. “Women of privilege rarely make a
