Authors: Clarissa Ross
“Perhaps,” he said. “But that death will forever be on my conscience. I did not understand. I was not kind. And so I shall always be haunted.”
“You must forget,” she said.
“And so must you,” he said, as their eyes met.
Fanny looked down quickly. “My case is rather different.”
“But you must not let David’s untimely death rule your life,” he insisted. “I know why you are insisting on star billing and pushing yourself to act again before you have truly recovered. You are obsessed with perpetuating his name in the theatre.”
She glanced up at him with a twisted smile. “Even if all you say is true, and I’m not sure it is, I think I’m strong enough to otherwise build myself a new life.”
“I want you to!” he told her shortly.
By working hard she kept the pain of David’s loss at a minimum. Her opening night in
The Rivals
drew a packed house. Her role of Lydia Languish was not a taxing one: she did it well. P.T. Barnum journeyed from Boston to be on hand and there was a gala party in a local restaurant following the show.
To find herself the toast of Philadelphia and seated next to the great Phineas T. Barnum at the table was her exciting experience. The big man was most attentive to her.
“When the company finishes in Philadelphia you go to Washington,” he said. “And then I’ll book you for a season in New York.”
“Washington!” she exclaimed. “The newspapers are full of the problems there. Especially since Mr. Lincoln has been elected president.”
“Abraham Lincoln is a strong man,” Barnum said. “If the country is to go through a crisis he is one for it. The slavery issue has become all important.”
She asked, “Do you think there could be a war between the North and South?”
“Many seem to think so,” the big man said gravely. “I hope not. It would be the cruelest kind of war. I have high hopes the South may think again before they secede.”
Fanny sighed. “So much trouble in the world. As I remember it that attractive, young actor John Wilkes Booth is very much involved in the problems of the South.”
“Because he has spent much of his career there,” the master showman said. “I fear he has hurt himself through his dabbling in politics.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think he is very talented.”
“So do many others,” P.T. Barnum agreed. “But they are afraid of him because of his hot-headedness.”
The talk at the table turned to other subjects but she later thought of her strange meeting with John Wilkes Booth in New York. He had abruptly announced his love for her and had seemingly been serious about it. She had found him exciting but as a happily married woman she had not taken any of it seriously. She wondered if he had heard of David’s death and where he might beat the moment. No doubt back in the South and even more deeply involved in politics.
Peter Cortez continued to gain stature as an actor. He requested that the company do
The Cardinal
so he might play Edwin Booth’s famous role of Richelieu. There was no truly good part in the play for her but she agreed. She wanted to keep the blond man interested in his career. He had so easily succumbed to drinking in the past she wished to take no chances with him.
Peter was delighted to play
The Cardinal
and the critics in Philadelphia wrote rave reviews of his work. It was now late in a hot summer and often the theatre was intolerably warm. Barnum had offered to cancel the season several times but they were still doing a paying business and she did not want to be idle. She did not trust herself. She still felt torment every time she thought of David. She had to keep busy.
One especially hot night Peter came to her dressing room after the performance and invited her to his suite in the nearby hotel. Because of his wealth he had accommodations in excess of herself or any others of the company.
Looking as dapper as usual in blue jacket, yellow trousers and carrying a cane, he told her, “I have arranged for iced champagne and lobster to be waiting for us. Perhaps it will allow us to forget this damned heat!”
She wanted to refuse his offer but hesitated, thinking that she might seem needlessly aloof. They were close friends and co-workers. She did not have the right to turn her back on him as she pleased. He had proven himself a good friend. But she did not want more than that between them. She valued what they had and feared if their friendship progressed to the stage where they became lovers it might spoil everything.
So against her better judgment, she smiled and said, “Your offer is tempting!”
“Then yield to temptation and come along with me,” he said. “I felt tonight would be a terror and I planned this all for you.”
“I cannot stay long,” she warned him.
“I shall see you to your small, hot hotel room as soon as you insist,” he said with a mocking smile.
“But I hope the iced champagne and lobster will encourage you to remain a little time with me. Not to mention that my suite is cooler than your room could possibly be.”
“We are all not California millionaires,” she told him.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Didn’t mean to throw my weight about. But I would like you to come.”
So she did. And he had been quite truthful in saying that his suite was more comfortable than her tiny room. Not to mention the delicious cold food and drink. They sat talking and forgetting the dreadful heat.
“I’m weary of Philadelphia,” he told her as he sat close to her in the candle-lit room. “I’m glad were going to Washington next month.”
“With all the war talk?”
“I still hope it won’t come,” Peter said. “I don’t know which side I’d favor. In any event I’d like to play in Washington before anything does happen. September should be cooler.”
She laughed. “Barnum says we’re the first theatrical company to play Philadelphia through the hot season.”
“Your idea,” he reminded her over his champagne glass.
“We’ve all gained from it,” she told him. And then she asked, “Did I tell you the monument was erected on David’s grave on Tuesday. It’s exactly as I wanted it. I’m glad I was here to supervise it all.”
“Is that why you made us suffer through the summer?” he asked, refilling her champagne glass.
She warned him, “I shouldn’t have any more. My head is reeling now.”
“Protection against the heat,” he told her.
“Perhaps the President will attend some of our performances when we go to Washington,” she said. “I hear Lincoln is fond of the theatre.”
Peter put his glass aside and gazing at her with great intensity in his blue eyes, he said in a low voice, “Forget about Washington and Lincoln. Let us talk about us.”
She hesitated. Then said, “What about us?”
He said, “I cannot pretend any longer, Fanny. I want you! I want you more than anything else!”
She raised a hand to silence him. “No,” she said. “Do not spoil things between us!”
“I want to make the bond stronger not ruin it,” he said leaning close, his tone urgent. “I cannot go on as we have been.”
“Why not’? You are my good friend! I need a friend!”
“I love you and you know it,” he said almost harshly. “You cannot go on being faithful to a dead man!”
“Peter!” she said in reproval and jumped up.
He swiftly got to his feet. “We must settle this!”
“No!” she said, ready to leave, but afraid to move as her head was whirling wildly. Her body was betraying her. She had taken far too much of the iced champagne!
“Fanny!” he said hoarsely and he swooped her up in his arms and carried her into the adjoining bedroom and placed her on the bed.
He swiftly disrobed her in the face of her protests and then quickly removed his own clothing and stretched out beside her on the bed. Nothing more was said between them as their bodies joined in passionate love-making. The love scenes they had played so many times together on stage paled in comparison to this frantic writhing.
Fanny moaned softly as his urgent thrusts lifted her to a level of passion which she had never expected. She found herself responding and all else was forgotten in their mutual ecstasy! After the moment of shattering climax Peter kissed her gently on the lips and murmured, “My darling!” They lay very still and motionless, their bodies close together.
She stared up into the shadows and realized what had happened. They had taken an irrevocable step. There would be no going back. Peter would henceforth think of himself as her lover. She now knew the pleasure of his body and would be apt to yield to it again. There would be new tensions, new jealousies and the perfect partnership they had known would be surely threatened.
Chapter 4
So she and Peter became lovers. In the weeks before leaving Philadelphia they met many times in his suite. Fanny would spend the night there and return to her own room in the morning. Some of the things she had feared did not happen. Peter seemed quite the same in his relationship with her at the theatre. He showed none of the possessiveness nor jealousy which had worried her. But she still felt the affair was a mistake and she told him so.
They were strolling along a walk in the small park opposite the theatre. She wore a white dress and straw hat and carried a purple parasol. He had on his blue jacket and yellow checked trousers.
She said, “What is going to happen when we get to Washington?”
“I shall see we have rooms in the same hotel and on the same floor,” he said.
She gave him a worried glance. “Peter, do you think we can go on as we are?”
“There’s an alternative,” he said cheerfully.
“What?”
“Marry me!”
She gave a startled gasp. “David has been dead only a short while. I’m not ready to think of marriage.”
“I say you are,” he told her. “We needn’t go through with it until a year has passed. Then we announce our engagement and marry quickly.”
She felt this too easy a solution. She said, “No. I suppose we must go along as we are.”
“You are bound to marry me eventually,” he said in his confident way.
Fanny gave him a searching glance. “I know you better than you know yourself, Peter. What makes you so certain you will want to marry me in a year? You have a roving eye and a reputation of moving from one female to another.”
He halted and gazed at her with a shocked expression on his handsome face. “You cannot think I entered into this affair lightly!”
She smiled sadly. “Confess it! Every female is a challenge to you! I have seen the ladies pressing around you when you leave the theatre after a matinee. You are always particularly attentive to the young and pretty ones.”
“That is different!”
“True,” she agreed. “But I do not see you as cut out to be a faithful husband.”
“Let me prove it,” he said.
“We’ll see,” she told him as they strolled on and she changed the subject to a discussion of the plays they would do in Washington.
So the summer season ended in Philadelphia. Fanny knew she would always remember the friendly, old city as it had been there that she had recovered from the death of David. She had matured and learned to depend on herself a good deal. Her acting had steadily improved and no one in the company, not even Peter, complained that Fanny Cornish was given star billing.
All her dedication and energies were not directed to her career. It was in her mind that somewhere David watched and every success she achieved was a victory for him. She looked forward to Washington but she knew that would not satisfy her. She wanted to have the ultimate success in New York. And then she would journey back to London and see the Cornish name have star billing in the city where David had first proven himself. Only when she had done all those things would she rest.
Peter condemned her for her ambition. He complained that it was a kind of morbidity on her part attached to David’s death. He felt she was living her life for a dead man. Part of his accusation was true, a good deal of it was fancy on his part. Or jealousy, for since he had become her lover, he disliked even her slightest mention of David. Also, he was beginning to complain if she gave the most casual attention to any of the many attractive, young men whom she met.
It was what she’d expected, only it had come about later than she looked for. But with the move to Washington they would be largely among strangers once again and she felt Peter would have less reason for his jealousy. She continued to worry that becoming his mistress had been a dreadful mistake.
Washington was a lovely city in a strange mood. The year before, Lincoln had been elected President and South Carolina had seceded from the Union. Now, Mississippi and six other states had seceded. They had formed the Confederate States of America with Mississippian Jefferson Davis as President. On April 12th, 1861, South Carolina troops fired on Fort Sumter forcing troops to evacuate. The Civil War had begun!
Peter Cortez had worried about the effect of the war on theatre patronage. He confided to her, “I think it is a poor time to continue playing here. Washington is going to become the headquarters for the Union Army. People will be too busy with the war effort to think about theatre.”