A Masque of Chameleons Read online

  A MASQUE OF CHAMELEONS

  Joan Van Every Frost

  © Joan Van Every Frost 1981

  Joan Van Every Frost has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1968, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1981 by Fawcett Crest Books.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  For my long-suffering chief medical adviser,

  Dr. Bruce Wightman, and backup team of Walt Shore, Dr. Bert Miller, and Dr. David Van Every

  CHAPTER I

  1843

  Will took her in his arms, and the moment she always dreaded came yet again as he kissed her searchingly. She was aware of the tiny beads of perspiration that stood out on his wide painted brow, the crow’s-feet of laughter that fanned out along the corners of his eyes, the small shaving cut on his cheek. A distant part of her registered the muffled clang and hoof clops of the horsecars on the New York street outside, the angry shout of a drayman anxious to get home, then all was blanked out except the feel of his arms around her, his mouth on hers.

  She returned his embrace, almost eagerly, knowing his passionate gaze and hungry kiss were not really for her but for the figment of a mediocre playwright’s imagination. As the curtain came down to a polite spatter of applause, he patted her affectionately on the fanny and grinned.

  “You got more feeling into it that time, lass. If you don’t look out, you’ll be an actress yet.” His curling hair gleamed a rich red, the scattering of silver threads touched up so that they were invisible.

  If he only knew, Roberta thought wildly, it was the most difficult acting she had ever done not to put all of her heart into that embrace. Will was some twenty years older than she, yet she loved him with a desperate, hopeless fervor that sometimes threatened to shake her to pieces. She thought of his wife, Jessica, and wondered how it would be if she just, well, miraculously disappeared. Roberta felt sorry for Jessica rather than hated her, but she did hate what the woman and her drinking were doing to Will. It was sickening to think that Jessica could have been one of the great actresses of her time instead of a periodic common drunk.

  Hugh would often have Jessica read a difficult scene to show them how it should be done, and suddenly one forgot her sagging skin and its network of fine lines as her voice would incredibly become that of a teenage Juliet, an imperious Cleopatra, a merry Maid Marian. She could almost make one forget who she was, what she was, where she was, just with that marvelous voice aided by an uncanny ability for pantomime. There were many nights, however, when she was simply too drunk to perform and a substitute would have to be found. Most of the time it was Hugh's wife Daphne who filled in, since she was prompter for the troupe and knew everyone's lines.

  Hugh bustled up to them as the curtain closed, his gray hair flying wildly. “Thank God we didn’t commit ourselves to more than a week's run of that dog. If Mrs. Holstein hadn't bribed us so handsomely, I wouldn't have played it at all. Just shows that bad playwrights should always marry rich women.” He slapped Will on the back. “So it’s off to Mexico now, mes enfants”

  “Mexico! Surely you're joking, Hugh,” Will protested. “I hardly know a word of Spanish.”

  “Not to worry, dear boy. This time we'll be doing mainly pantomimes anyway, and for the rest, you won’t even be involved.”

  Having dismissed Will's fears as far as he was concerned, Hugh turned to plead another matter with Roberta. “I don't care about Will’s Spanish, but can't you work with him on his French, Robbie? Anything would be an improvement. I’m tired of having to scrape up another leading man every time we go to France.”

  Roberta shrugged ruefully. “I’m afraid it’s hopeless,” she said. “When are we going to Mexico?”

  “We leave a week from tomorrow, God willing. I’m told there’s room on a packet named Priscilla that’s headed for Havana. We’ll play there for two weeks, and then on to Veracruz.”

  Veracruz... The very name brought to Roberta’s mind a vision of feathery coconut palms lining a golden, shell-strewn beach where white breakers frothed out of a sapphire sea and the aroma of coffee, vanilla, ginger, and cocoa perfumed the air.

  She saw the frangipani and flame trees, mango and banana groves that ringed the city, and somewhere out of the moonlight came the sad plaint of a lone guitar.

  Her reverie was interrupted by the entrance back-stage of a striking couple. The man, easily six feet tall, walked with a slight but definite limp. He wore a top hat and a black evening cape lined with dove-gray silk. There was a scar on his face that ran from the edge of his cheekbone down to the corner of his finely cut mouth and ended in the clipped black beard. His nose was bold and looked as if it might have at some time been broken. The astounding eyes of a brilliant blue seemed to penetrate with their gaze. The woman was equally spectacular in her scarlet dress, elaborately tiered and flounced, a black evening jacket, and a mantilla of filmy black lace over her jet-black hair. Her eyes were almost equally black, her lips redder than nature had endowed. She regarded them in turn with a bright gaze, her head tipped to one side like a bird.

  The whole company, with the exception of Hugh, stared at them, too shocked to utter a sound. “Here is our Iago,” he smugly announced, “and won’t she make a glorious Desdemona, though?”

  “Jason Whitney at your service, messieurs,” the man said, sweeping off his hat and bowing to show a head of dark hair. The scar became all but invisible when he smiled, a smile Roberta could only describe as sweet, though there was little else sweet about him. “And this is my wife, Carmelita.” She bobbed her head and gave a flashing smile.

  Hugh, disregarding the obvious curiosity of the troupe, rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “Beginning tomorrow, and until we leave, we’ll rehearse Othello and the pantomime Robbers’ Roost. Will, you’ll be Othello as usual, Mr. Whitney here will be Iago, Mrs. Whitney Desdemona, Roberta will be Emilia, and I’ll be Brabantio.”

  Roberta’s heart fell. She had thought that possibly when Laura left to be married to her earl she herself would step into all those lovely parts. Except for Gavin, the whole company treated her like a little sister, too small to take care of herself despite the fact that she towered over Hugh. People always looked disappointed when they met her in person after seeing her on the stage. In an age when petiteness and helplessness in women were treasured, Roberta was tall, within several inches of six feet, with large hands and feet that made her feel so self-conscious about them that she inevitably drew attention to those very features she did her best to hide. Her face was too bold for beauty, its best feature being her gray eyes, the light irises accentuated by their black otiter rings. Dark hair, not quite black, hung to her waist when she let it down to braid it at night. Well, now I know, she thought, Hugh doesn’t think I’ll ever be an actress. He could at least have tried me out.

  She looked up to find both Will and the newcomer Jason Whi
tney regarding her sympathetically. She realized that her disappointment had flowed across her face, and she blushed painfully.

  “There, there,” Will said gently, his hand warm on her arm. “Your turn will come soon enough.”

  If he hadn’t said anything, she could have carried it off all right, but his sympathy perversely made her eyes brim with tears, and she looked down and pretended to brush some lint from her dress so they wouldn’t see.

  “Where are we to meet tomorrow?” Whitney asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence. With relief everyone turned to Hugh.

  “We can have this stage in the mornings until Wednesday, when Henry George starts rehearsals on that new comedy I turned down.” He gave a gamin grin. “I hope I don’t kick myself for it. Anyway, the Granger will be dark by then and we can use it until we sail. I’ll see you all tomorrow at ten. And for God’s sake all be on time for once. Gavin, I’ll want you as well, of course. You’ll be Cassio, and I’m giving you the responsibility for the props and sound effects.” Gavin gave an unhappy grimace, though he soon discovered to his relief that they weren’t taking any of the sets.

  “We’ll use opera sets already there or play bare stage if necessary. I doubt that godforsaken places like Morelia and Guanajuato even know what a set looks like.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Whitney objected. “I know Guadalajara well. There’s a fair if grimy theater there, and even Zacatecas has a beautiful little theater for opera.”

  Roberta eyed him with interest. So he knew Mexico, did he? Well, his wife was probably Mexican, not Spanish at that. He said those exotic names as if he at least wouldn’t have to worry about his Spanish any more than she would.

  “I don’t like either one of them,” Gavin said earnestly later on as they had supper at Ernie’s Oyster Bar. White-aproned waiters brought platters of oysters on the half shell and a clam chowder rich with butter and cream, a meal in itself. “You should have had the Desdemona and Hugh should have been Iago. Anybody could be Brabantio. I can't think why Hugh brought them in.”

  Roberta laughed ruefully. “That isn't the way the world turns, Gavin. If I were good enough, I'd be Desdemona all right.”

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “Marry me, Robbie,” he pleaded, “and you won't even care about Desdemona.”

  Gavin was certainly conventionally more handsome than Will, besides having that bloom of youth. She thought of the times in the morning she had seen Will gray and shaky, a network of tiny red veins visible in his cheeks and nose, his hands trembling and sweaty. She looked into the clear blue eyes opposite her, wide-set, innocent. His nose was impossibly straight over a finely drawn yet sensuous mouth. A dusting of freckles trailed over his nose and across his cheeks, and his hair was a thatch of white gold that curled around the nape of his neck. He had the kind of looks that made women gasp and men bristle. What perversity was it in him that made him pursue an ugly duckling like her, and what perversity was it in her that his pursuit left her utterly unfeeling? She would gladly have given everything she had if it were only Will sitting across the table from her begging her to marry him. She sighed. “You promised you wouldn’t go on nagging me, Gavin. I think you only want me because you can't have me.”

  “What a beastly thing to say.” He looked a little desperate. “I can’t help it if I’m in love with you, Robbie.”

  She tried to lighten the conversation, even jokingly suggested that Whitney’s wife might take his mind off her. Finally, though, she spoke seriously. “I keep telling you to leave it alone for a while and who knows, perhaps a miracle will happen. Don't force it, Gavvy — leave it lie.”

  He picked up her hand and kissed it, holding it then in both of his. “All right, I’ll try again. I know what a bore it is to be loved when you feel little in return.”

  Roberta winced. Will must never find out what she felt for him. And Will? Whom did Will love? Surely not Jessica, that poor old drunken hag. There was something worse somehow in a drunken woman than in a drunken man. She often thought that surely Will would never drink so much himself except for being tied to such a burden. Privately she surmised that Jessica was more than five years older than he — nearer ten or fifteen, more likely. Such liaisons were not rare in the theater, for boys like Gavin, and Will, when he was young, were a dime a dozen, and a sure way to better one's roles was to attach oneself to an older successful actress who could insist on favors for her lovers. But Will and Jessica had lasted together longer than most, and there must have been something more than opportunism to bind them together. Guilt? Pity? Roberta had a momentary vision of how it would be if it was she who held him in her arms. She would give him back his youth, teach him to laugh again, and he wouldn't feel the need of the brandy anymore...

  “What are you thinking about?” Gavin demanded, stung that her attention had drifted away from him.

  She looked at him. “I was thinking of how it would be if things were different,” she answered truthfully.

  Taking it for granted that she meant if he and she loved one another, he was mollified and turned his attention to the oysters nestling in their iridescent shells.

  *

  The next morning Roberta waited impatiently for the readings to begin. There was always an excitement and curiosity in seeing how actors who were completely unknown quantities handled themselves in difficult parts. Guy Lavier had been cast as Roderigo, Gavin as Cassio, accused of being Desdemona’s lover, and Rosemary Hanna, one of the company’s workhorses who doubled as wardrobe mistress, as Bianca. Six bit players new to the company filled in the rest of the cast. With wigs and false face-hair they also doubled as incidental background characters.

  “All right,” Hugh called out. “We’ll start from the beginning and read right through. As we read, I’ll place you on the stage. Mark your positions and crosses on your scripts because I don’t want to have to go through it again.”

  Roger Ainsley, one of the new bit players, asked Roberta, “How can he do that all at once with no notes?”

  Roberta laughed. “When you’ve directed and played Othello as often as he has, you know by heart long since where you want everyone to go.”

  In the opening scene with Roderigo and Iago, the two men gave a usual first reading that was matter of fact, rapid. Jason Whitney was in his shirt sleeves, but Guy was his own dandy self, complete with cravat and cane, his only bow to informality being the removal of his elegant gray hat. Like many similarly afflicted, though he stuttered badly offstage there was never so much as a hesitation during his lines.

  As always with first readings of a well-known play, the acts and scenes followed one upon another quite tediously, with frequent stops to position one or another actor. However, as the action finally came to the scene in which Iago firmly implants jealous suspicion of Desdemona in Othello’s mind, Roberta became suddenly aware that something had changed. Both Whitney and Will stopped reading and spoke directly to each other, and there came a charge in the air as Iago’s voice grew richer, with a hint of slyness. Othello sounded bewildered, gullible, increasingly desperate. Whitney intoned unctuously:

  “O! Beware, my lord, of jealousy;

  It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock

  The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss

  Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;

  But O! what damned minutes tells he o'er

  Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves!”

  Will’s answering “O misery!” was a cry of despair, as of a dumb animal goaded into giving voice to pain.

  By this time the assembled actors were fastened on the two speakers. The play had come alive, and Hugh refrained from interrupting. When Roberta played her brief scene as Iago’s wife, she found herself responding to Whitney’s almost hypnotic presence, as if she were in truth Iago’s defiant spouse, unwilling to cross him and yet fierce in her defense of Desdemona. Will’s Moor, so determined to be stupid and foolish that always before she
had thought him merely exasperating, played his anguish better than he ever had, arid she found herself for the first time moved.

  Whitney’s wife, however, so full of life and fire in ordinary conversation, stumbled over her lines and acted as if she had never heard of Othello. Even Will could not bring her up from her woodenness.

  Twice more Whitney brought them up to heights of performance as the violent tale of Iago’s perfidy and Othello’s fatal gullibility unfolded. After she gave her death speech, Roberta realized that she was wringing wet. She could never remember throwing herself more into a character, and she had the wit to know that it was Whitney, not Will, who had raised her up into the part she had belittled so and made her see its possibilities.

  “So you see, poppet,” Hugh said afterward, “I wasn’t really robbing you after all. I could tell from the way you were sulking that you thought so at first. I’ve always considered that scene between Emilia and Iago the real gem of the play.”

  “Robbie, you were grand,” Will congratulated her, laying his arm carelessly across her shoulder. “I can’t help coming to the conclusion, you old fox,” he went on, turning to Hugh, “that you took Whitney’s wife in order to get him, didn’t you? She’s hopeless, but he’s a horse of a different color. Why haven’t I ever seen him before? Surely he didn’t spring full-blown from your fertile imagination?”

  “He’s been in England.”

  Hugh seemed indisposed to say anything further. When Will persisted, however, Hugh finally continued.

  “Jason Whitney in his middle twenties was one of the most promising young actors on the English stage despite being an American, and a Texan at that. His family must have had money because he was educated in England. Whitney chucked his acting career to go off soldiering in the Texas war for independence some seven or eight years ago and when he surfaced again recently he had that scar and the limp, transforming him into a character actor overnight, more’s the pity.”