hearts lie withered and fond ones are flown
O, who would inhabit this bleak world alone?’
Papa had not waited to follow, he had gone before them. His true heart lay withered in the Paddockwood graveyard and Aurora knew it was only because she was good at pretending that she could sing the song at all, hating him as she did for leaving them. Effortlessly, as if it required only to be unleashed, she let her clearest voice soar up above Clover and Bella, flying into the clouds on flown, and then sinking back to inhabit this bleak world alone.
Not alone, though. Together they were bowing, the lights dazzling in their eyes as their heads and backs dipped forward, their skirts curdled into curtseys.
Drop the Other One
A respectable amount of applause, Clover thought, but Aurora was prostrate with humiliation. She sat with her cheek down on the dressing-table, a shawl over her head to shade her eyes. So Clover took Bella with her, creeping into the wings to watch East & Verrall, the Sidewalk Conversationalists. Seeing the act from behind meant mostly the backs of their bowler hats, but from time to time one would turn to fit in some false teeth or twiddle a prop out of a pocket, and he (carrot-topped, rascally East, or darker, gentlemanly Verrall) would wink at them, which made both girls feel deliciously at home in this new world.
East was the good-natured fool, Verrall the educated man. They wore tidy black boots, and their black suits were too tight: East’s too short in the legs, Verrall’s too long.
‘Well, I don’t know nothing, Mr. Verrall,’ said East, rudely, when Verrall schooled him in some little fact or other.
‘I don’t know anything, Mr. East!’ said Verrall back, trying to teach him better grammar.
Delighted, East crowed, ‘You neither? I thought not!’
They walked along in front of a backdrop painted with a seafront scene, a promenade on a summery afternoon. Their walking was cleverly, expansively done: long legs moving in a loping stride, but each foot placed down only an inch in front of the other, so they made hardly any progress at all and could spend five minutes sauntering across the stage.
Talking about their lodgings, Verrall undertook to correct East again: ‘I say, East, you must be less noisy tonight. The sick man in the room below us is so dreadfully nervous, he jumps out of his skin at a sudden noise. When you pull off your boots, don’t drop them down the clattering way you always do! Set each one down soft.’
‘Well, I tried that, Verrall, my old companion, because I remembered you saying that. I was careful as could be, creeping upstairs, inching open the door … I read for a minute and smoke my cigar, and then, phew, I’m sleepy, so I blows out the lamp, and—’
They had reached a handy park bench and East sat, suiting the action to the words.
‘And I pulls off’—pulling off his boot with a tremendously agile flourish that took his leg nearly to vertical—‘my boot—bam!’
The boot crashed to the floor with a great bang, helped by the percussion man. Verrall flinched and jumped, as if he were the nervous man himself. ‘Ahh, but then I remembers!’ East said, calming his friend with a soothing hand on his sleeve, then attending to his second boot. ‘So I pulls the next one off easy—and slow—and sets it down so feather-soft it could not be heard at all … and off I goes to sleep.’
He arranged himself on the bench, forgetting to say his prayers, and then, poked by Verrall, murmuring and crossing himself piously. Taking off his bowler very carefully, he lay down in peaceful rest with the hat for a pillow. Then sprang bolt upright again: ‘Four in the morning there’s a terrible banging from the floor below and the sick man shouts out, Say! Pull off that other boot! I’ve been waiting for four mortal hours! I can’t sleep till you drop the other one!’ And Verrall, nodding and grimacing at the ripeness of the line, said it at the same time: ‘Drop the other one.’
Even Clover and Bella had heard that one, but they had not heard East tell it, so droll and innocent and misjudged. They laughed so loud a stagehand shushed them.
‘Enough of your nocturnal adventures!’ said Verrall. ‘We’ve been asked to keep it very clean here in Fort Macleod, because this is Refined Vaudeville at its most elegant.’
East had his boots back on and nodded, jumping