Stewart kept alert for Patton as he made
his way down and to the rear entrance of the hotel. There was no sign of the younger man, to
Stewart’s relief, and he was able to slip out of the hotel without, it seemed,
anyone noticing him.
As he stepped across the street to the livery
stable the Prince Arthur shared with the gigantic Custom House, Stewart felt a
prickling at the back of his neck. No
one had chased after him from the hotel, though. So presumably if his senses were trying to
alert him about something, it was the mysterious shadow he and Patton had
noticed their first morning in this city.
Whether the person following him was a criminal, a Federal spy, or an
agent of the Canadian government didn’t matter nearly as much as the man’s
constant near-presence bothered him.
For fun as much as for any other reason,
Stewart walked past the stable and along the massive frontage of the Custom
House, easily the largest of the big, white, stone buildings that gave New
Orleans its uniform look when seen from the river. Though it was dinner-hour, one set of doors
into the building was open, because the business of the Custom House paid no
notice of the clock. Stewart let himself
in, walked quickly to the lakeside exit, and crossed to the livery stable
without any sense that he was being followed.
Perhaps his spy didn’t know that the Custom House and the hotel shared
the stable. Stewart kept his eye on the
street while his horse was saddled, but no one was watching him.
Placide’s Varieties Theater turned out to be
a well-built, modern building just a few blocks from the hotel. It would have been easy to walk, were it not
so oppressively humid here. The outside
of the building seemed a perfect compromise between authority and friendliness,
with the latter quality significantly enhanced by the yellow glow of gaslight
from the street-lamps. Inside, though,
the theater was a revelation. Stewart
doubted he’d ever seen a place as pretty and welcoming as Placide’s Varieties. The contrast with Booth’s Theater in Richmond
was striking; where Booth’s was fussy and crowded, Placide’s was perfectly
proportioned, with just enough gilding and fresco-work to show the heavy
draperies and velvet-upholstered seats to best advantage.
He arrived after the curtain had gone up and
so missed the first number on the bill.
Based on what followed, though, Stewart doubted he’d missed much. Overall, the show was about as subtle as a
whipping. Booth’s Theater might not be
the most welcoming of places, but its resident writer was Edgar Poe and the
plays he wrote could raise the hairs on the back of your neck. This show was more like a succession of
freshman pranks set to music. But as the
evening progressed he had to admit that was having a good time, even if he
didn't laugh quite as much as his fellow-attendees.
Though he was wearing his fatigue jacket, an
un-ornamented, plain thing in Confederate Army-issue white cotton, he found
himself drawing plenty of attention.
Most of it was politely curious at worst and favorable at best; the
artisans and workers who frequented Placide's Varieties obviously didn't think
much of the United States, and were more than willing to applaud anyone who was
prepared to accept Anglo-Canadian help in keeping the Yankees down. Interestingly, many of the people who came up
to speak with Stewart during the intervals between acts turned out to be
immigrants to Louisiana from the Carolinas or Georgia or even Virginia. Stewart didn't know quite how to take that;
on the one hand, he felt a small sense of betrayal that these people would
leave perfectly good homes to chance their future under the English crown. At the same time he had to admit that it was
the United States that these people had left—which was exactly what Virginia
was now defending its right to do.
Fortunately, as the evening progressed the numbers of well-wishers
dropped, leaving Stewart free to concentrate on the performances.
They were less than ordinary, by his limited
experience. The main item on the bill
was a one-act comedy called "His Good Intentions," starring somebody
named Robert Robey. Mr. Robey was more
of a prat-falling buffoon than an actor, and his performance was broad enough
that a blind man could have seen it. But
in the final scene, Robey was saved by the timely appearance of a young cousin,
and that cousin was played to tremendous effect by Pauline Martin. Stewart was convinced that Miss Martin was
going to become a fine actress indeed; he found himself unable to look away
from her the entire time she was on stage.
He was somewhat startled to realize, watching
her glide across the stage with salvation in the letter she carried, that
merely seeing her was generating an uncomfortable sense of desire in him. It was even more startling to realize that
this desire was achingly similar to that which he'd felt so many years ago,
watching Edgar Poe's mother on stage.
He'd always thought that children were innocent of feelings such as
this; now he wondered: Was carnal desire
a sin if you weren't aware that that's what you were feeling?
As opposed to tonight, he thought, when you're very much aware.
At one point it seemed that Miss Martin
actually looked directly at him—through him—and the shock
he felt was almost physical in nature.
Until that moment he’d been trying to persuade himself to try and gain
admittance backstage, once the show was over, in order to see her.
Now he abandoned those plans, unwilling to
risk himself in her presence. If just
seeing her felt this way, what would happen to him if she actually spoke to
him? Or touched him?
Stewart left the theater at the next
interval. As he rode back to the hotel
he wished there was someone he could talk to about Miss Martin. If he were back home, he’d be expected to
talk with Mother and Father. He was
pretty sure, though, that their advice wouldn’t be all that helpful right now,
in this situation.
The Prince Arthur was quiet when he let
himself back in. The desk clerk eyed him
with suspicion as Stewart passed: He was
supposed to return his room key to the clerk whenever he left the
building. “Just out for a breath of
air,” he said to the man, who simply furrowed his brows and glared at him.
In his room, Stewart eyed the laudanum flask
as he undressed. He didn’t pick it up;
instead, he sat on the bed and tested his knee.
It hardly hurt at all, now that he was forcing himself to think about
it. So why consider laudanum? Because it’s an easy solution? There’s no more time for easy solutions.
He lay in bed for what seemed like hours before sleep finally came.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three
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