Ruth Axtell Morren - The Healing Season

Breaths held, they watched as, after an interminable few seconds, she threw the dart.

It arced, then descended and, with a soft thud, landed firmly within the bull’s-eye. The children erupted in shouts of triumph.

She paid them no attention, as her hands once again toyed with the remaining darts.

“Beginner’s luck! Beginner’s luck!” the owner of the booth chanted. “Let’s try for two in a row. Can’t make two in a row.”

Other patrons, waiting for their turn, took up the chant. The noise brought more people to the booth.

Mrs. Neville ignored them as she took aim again. The crowd fell silent as if collectively holding its breath.

Another tense few seconds went by, before whoosh and bull’s-eye.

The cheers were louder this time. Some of the children couldn’t contain their excitement, but jumped higher, clutching at the railing of the booth. Ian glanced at the owner of the stand, who was the only one not looking pleased at the victory.

“Here, now, you watch it,” warned the owner sternly to the boisterous children. “I don’t want my stand comin’ to pieces.”

Ian gently held them back from the railing and told them to be still for the last turn.

Mrs. Neville moistened her lips briefly, the only sign that she was feeling anything other than perfectly calm. The last dart was held lightly in her fingertips. Slowly, it rose to eye level.

It flew through the empty space and landed at dead center, right between the other two darts.

The crowd shouted and applauded.

“I never seen such an aim. And a lady, too!”

“That’s the actress, Eleanor Neville.”

“She’s a wonder.”

“Amazing.”

As if oblivious of the compliments being thrown around her, she bent down to the three children and asked them to tell her which toys they wanted. They pointed to the desired objects. She turned to the stern-faced proprietor, who had taken out the darts and held them in his hand, and calmly told him her choice of prizes.

With a jerk, he took the toys off the shelf and slammed them on the counter, a Bartholomew baby doll for the girl, a wooden dog covered with patches of fur for one of the boys, and a yo-yo for the other.

The children grabbed them and chattered happily as they were led away by the adults.

“You’ve made a few children happy for the day,” Ian remarked as they continued down the street.

“You say they hang about the dispensary.”

“Yes. The whole neighborhood is full of children.” She made no reply. “Mrs. Neville, where did you learn such an accurate aim?”

She smiled. “Oh, I’ve thrown a lot of darts in my life. I told you I started out my career at street fairs.” She nodded up ahead. “See the acrobats? I was cutting capers and walking on ropes since I was fourteen. We traveled from village to village and town to town. There was ample time to play darts at taverns or just nail the board to a tree when we had to camp out on a meadow.”

He listened, finding it hard to imagine such a fashionably dressed young lady up on a makeshift stage doing acrobatic tricks.

They ambled down the street, stopping frequently. The children watched in awe a juggler tossing balls in the air. Another player balanced a ball at the end of a stick.

“I’ve done it all. Even equestrian feats. That’s how I started at the Surrey.”

“And now?”

“Now? I have lead roles in the melodramas, only we mustn’t call them melodramas, only burlettas, or we might lose our license. The royal theaters at Drury Lane and Covent Garden are the only ones permitted to put on straight dramatic works.”

“I didn’t think there was much difference,” he said drily. He knew enough of the theater to know that in recent years the Drury Lane and Covent Garden were known to put on bigger and bigger extravaganzas instead of pure classical dramas.

“Strictly speaking, anything the minor theaters put on must be set to music, with no spoken lines permitted. But you’re right, there is less and less distinction between the majors and minors. Still, we must watch how we bill our performances or we could be shut down.”

A pastry vendor came by, swinging the tray suspended from his neck back and forth. “Tasty hot pasties. A ha’pence each, penny for two. Come and have a meat pasty!”

Ian stopped the man and bought the children each a bulging meat pastry. He turned to Mrs. Neville. “Would you care for one?”

“No, thank you. I eat very little before a performance.”

He eyed her critically. She seemed much too fragile to him. “You can’t mean to say you starve yourself during the day.”

“I have been recently following a regimen of only fruit and vegetables on a performance day and tea laced with honey and lemon for my throat. I only dine after the show.”

“You certainly don’t look as if you needed to follow such a strict regimen.” He offered her his pastry.

“I shall only take a bite since it looks so tempting.” She broke off a corner of the warm pastry he held out to her.

“Thank you, it’s delicious,” she told him after she’d swallowed it and daintily wiped her mouth with her lace-edged handkerchief. As she looked up at him, he was struck afresh by the color of her eyes. It was the clear gray of the mist hanging over the sea at dawn.

He cleared his throat, too dazed by his reaction to her to formulate any more complicated response than “You’re welcome.”

They stopped at another booth, this one selling all sorts of trinkets. After Jem had bought a pair of fans for the two ladies, he turned to present one to Mrs. Neville.

“I c-can’t believe I’m really h-here walking with a famous actress. How do you do such amazing things on the stage, from pretending you—you’re a pirate to a princess—”

She laughed as she took the fan and opened it with a flourish. “Haven’t you heard that ‘all the world’s a stage’? You live in one. Look around you. There are all kinds of dramas taking place right under your nose.

“Take that couple for instance.” She motioned with her fan to a stout couple standing at the next booth. “You can tell by their gestures alone that he missed his target and now she is berating him for wasting his money and not getting her a prize.”

“You’re right,” Jem told her in amazement. He burst out laughing when the colorfully dressed woman turned to the man and scolded him for his clumsiness. “How did you notice them?”

She shrugged. “I take those things I see and use them on the stage—the irate wife, the distressed husband, the lost, frightened child.” She stopped talking and, fixing her eyes on Ian, stared hard at him for a few seconds.

“Wot? Don’t you see the draggle-tailed duck in front o’ yous? Can’t you ’it the bleatin’ target? I didn’t come to the fair so you could lose all our brass. What kind of a big looby are you?” She turned to Jem and the actress with a nod. “Gor, if it’d been my first ’usband, Alf, never a better man, if ’e’d ha been ’ere, ’e’d ha’ knocked down a dozen ducks already.”

Jem and the children were doubled over in laughter, and the younger actress was clapping her hands in glee. Ian couldn’t help but smile. He was as captivated as Jem by Mrs. Neville’s ability to capture the scene they’d witnessed only briefly at the next booth.

It struck him that this beautiful woman was as close an observer of human drama as he was of a sick body in order to diagnose it properly.

“Come, we’d better keep moving before they notice us,” she said, once more in her natural tone. She placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, and Ian looked down at the kid glove, wondering at how natural it felt to have it resting there.

They walked along, following Jem and the children. Mrs. Neville’s young friend had attached herself to Jem, and Ian watched in amusement as Jem blushed and stammered his replies to her.