Beloved Scoundrel by Clarissa Ross

fellow could turn out to be a nuisance.”
     
    “Never!” she laughed. “I can handle him.” And she went about finding a vase for the flowers and placing some water from the commode pitcher in it. Then she busily arranged them.
     
    David stood across the room from her studying her speculatively. “I wonder,” he said.
     
    “I’m not a naive child,” she told him as she arranged the flowers.
     
    “And he is no ordinary man,” David warned her. “I heard some things about him at the party last night. He is wildly temperamental, destructive of his talents at times, has many radical political ideas and thinks he is the finest actor in all Christendom!”
     
    She laughed. “Well, he could he right in that. He is a good actor.”
     
    “The brother is better and will go further,” David said. “But even he is neurotic and drinking too much, they say. He has a sick wife whom he adores living near Boston. They claim he needs her presence to keep him in line.”
     
    “A dark-starred family,” she said, satisfied with the flowers. “What about the older brother, Junius?”
     
    “He seems the most even-balanced of the three,” her husband said. “He has played largely in the West and is said, to be a better business manager than an actor. Though he was surely competent enough last night.”
     
    “Competent without brilliance,” she said. “John Wilkes has bravado and brilliance.”
     
    “Edwin Booth has more,” her husband said. “He has a great depth the other two lack.”
     
    The went down to breakfast and then to the rehearsal hall. Most of the morning was spent discussing travel arrangements and accommodation in Philadelphia. David paid the company for their rehearsal time and advanced their train fare for the next evening. The night train was less expensive so they would take it.
     
    Peter Cortez, dressed as elegantly as ever, sought her out to ask, “I wonder if you know you made a conquest last night?”
     
    She blushed. “What do you mean?”
     
    “John Wilkes Booth is raving about your beauty,” Peter said with a wry smile. “Don’t tell me you didn’t encourage him or that you aren’t enjoying it!”
     
    “Did I encourage you?”
     
    “I’m not a Booth.”
     
    “I don’t know what he said but we had only a brief meeting. I cannot imagine anything could be made of it.”
     
    Peter said, “He went on to a saloon I frequent after the party. I told him I was going to Philadelphia to play in a company headed by you and David. That started him!”
     
    “Really?”
     
    “I’ve never heard him go on so.”
     
    “No doubt he had too much to drink.”
     
    “He did that, but I think you really impressed him. And why not, you’ve made me your devoted slave!”
     
    Fanny laughed. “There is little of the slave about you. Much more of the master!”
     
    “At any rate Booth had to leave this morning for the South. He is starring in Richmond. His reputation is big down there. So you won’t see him again for a while.”
     
    “That doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,” she said sincerely. It was true. She had liked the flamboyant John but at the moment she had no interest in any man but her husband. She was totally devoted to David and their joint careers. She did not think she would ever want more.
     
    Fanny knew that familiar feeling of melancholy again. She was standing in the shelter of the New York Station railway platform. Rain beat down on the roof and drenched everything and everyone. The storm had started in the late afternoon and was at full peak now. The actors gathered on the platform with the other late night travellers, looking cold and miserable.
     
    David had gone to the baggage master to talk about the group handling of their luggage. Old Lester Loft with a long scarf wrapped about his neck sat on his battered suitcase, his head bent and his eyes closed. Then Nancy Ray came running in, her cloak streaming rivulets of rain and her pretty face