the right. ‘Three to one, one to eight!’ The arm described a wide circle over his head, flung down and back, then reached out yearningly to the middle left as if begging a coin from a passing king. She had seen him doing movements like these before, alone on the empty stage after the band call. ‘All the community comes pouring out into the garden in the yellow-green light of spring to convey unearthly concepts. Is he at an upstairs window, laughing at his foolish followers? But the movements feel wonderful. Eight to four, four to twelve, twelve to seven!’ he continued, reaching to different points, like da Vinci’s drawing in her father’s book, a trebled man inside a globe.
‘But is it a code?’ Clover demanded. ‘What are you saying now?’
‘I am attracted to you, as to a vast electromagnet!’ Victor answered as he swept through the compass. ‘You are the light and warmth upon which life depends, the glow of the ray of creation—in the magnetic economy of the universe nothing is lost, ten to six, and the energy that entwines us, six to eleven, having finished its work on this plane, will go to another—and eleven to three!’
The scale complete, Victor pulled her down onto the overcoat which he had flung on the bank, sinking them into the drift as into a feather bed.
He pointed up. ‘Man cannot tear free from the moon, Galichen says. All our movements and actions are controlled by her. If one kills a man, the moon does it. If one sacrifices himself for others, the moon does that also. All evil deeds, all crimes, all heroic exploits, all the actions of an ordinary life, are due to the influence of the moon on our minds and hearts.’
She stared at the monstrous moon and then at Victor’s face.
He caught her eyes and stopped playing the lunatic. ‘So says Galichen, and I love him for his madness, but it is not true. You are the moon for me, Clover.’
They turned together in the warmth of his coat, as if true magnets were pulling them—no need to be apart. No outdated falseness, no propriety could keep them from each other. No buttons, no belts, no cold, no hollow, wall-eyed moon could slow their snowy marriage.
A Pair of Scissors
Across the fields, upstairs in Mrs. Ardmore’s boarding house, Aurora lay in a trapezoid of moonlight, half awake. Mama and Bella had stayed to play cards with East and the others, but she had found herself unaccountably sleepy, and had slipped away. She ached underneath, as if from riding, and she did not know why. She held herself cupped in her hand, unable not to, needing comfort or company, somehow, in this new loneliness.
Clover was out walking with Victor, in the snow, but that was all right. Although Aurora could not imagine loving the Eccentric herself, he and Clover were as well matched as fireplace dogs, or the two halves of a pair of scissors. Neither useful without the other, it seemed, now that they had found each other.
No need to weep, Aurora told herself. But she had time before the others came up to bed, so she did.
A Drop Too Much
A few days later, with East and Verrall but without Victor, they disembarked at the train station in Swift Current. A hilly place, pretty in the noonday sun. Motes of snow fell through still air. Clover was relieved to be out of the train and felt somehow freed by the height of the cloud-straddled blue sky, clouds like cotton batten pulled thin.
The Lyric had a woman in charge. Calm, barrel-bodied, Lyddie ran the place with an iron thumb strong upon the neck of all; she had even rented out the basement of the theatre for the drilling and training of soldiers, so there was a martial stir about the place. Lyddie slapped East’s shoulder and gave Verrall an arm, and put them all straight to work. Her stagehands were well trained, and everybody involved in The Casting Couch relaxed, knowing it would go well that night.
It was a good house, too, the people of Swift Current being starved for entertainment with only two theatres open. At the end of the play, when the cast stood together to bow, the audience looked to Clover, peeking from the wings, like people who have been to an unexpected feast. Pleased and full, grateful to the cooks. That is what we are, she thought.
But Mrs. O’Hara’s boarding house, booked on Julius’s recommendation,