William Johnstone - Thunder of Eagles

“Falcon, Edwin and I are old…friends,” Rachael said, setting the word “friends” apart from the rest of the sentence. “We have performed together many times.”

“Well, by all means, have a seat, Mr. Mathias,” Falcon invited. “I’ll just get out of your way here. I’m sure you two have much to talk about.”

“You needn’t leave, Falcon,” Rachael said.

“I was about to leave anyway,” Falcon said. “I need to buy a new shirt for the dance tonight.”

“Then I will be seeing you again, sir?” Edwin said.

“Yes,” Falcon replied.

“Very good, I shall look forward to it.”

As Falcon left, he glanced back to see that Rachael and Edwin were already engaged in serious conversation. From the tone of their voices, and the way they behaved toward each other, he got the idea that their past acquaintance was more than just casual.

“I was afraid I would never see you again,” Edwin said after Falcon left.

“It might have been better if you hadn’t,” Rachael said.

“Rachael, please, don’t be that way. You have no idea what I went through when you left.”

“What you went through?” Rachael said. “Edwin, may I remind you that you did not come to my apartment and catch me with a man. It was I who caught you with a woman.”

“But she meant nothing to me, Rachael. Can’t you understand that? She—she came up to me after the performance that night—she was an outrageous flirt. At first I was just flattered by the attention. Then—”

“Please,” Rachael said, interrupting him. “I don’t want to hear all the details.”

“All right,” Edwin said. He sighed. “I wish you were as pleased to see me as I am to see you. I did read the reviews. Rachael, the critics loved us. We could have had it all, the season in New York, the European tour. It was there for us—and we just threw it away.”

“ We threw it away?”

“Well, all right, I threw it away,” Edwin said. “But if you had just been a tiny bit more tolerant. I would have made it up to you, Rachael. I swear to you, I would have made it up to you.”

“Your beer, sir,” Corey said, bringing the mug over to the table at that moment.

“Thank you, my good man,” Edwin said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Edwin, must you always be so pompous?” Rachael asked. “He isn’t your ‘good man.’ He is the owner of this establishment, and he is my boss.”

“I see,” Edwin said. He looked around the saloon. “You call this an establishment, do you? If you call it an establishment rather than a saloon, does that make it seem a bit more palatable for you to be playing piano in such a place?”

“If I ever wondered what happened to us, I need only to spend a few minutes with you,” Rachael said. “And who are you to criticize me? Here you are, playing for a square dance in a hotel, not performing in a concert theater.”

Rachael started to get up from the table, but Edwin reached out for her.

“Wait, please,” he said.

Rachael looked down at him.

“Please,” he said again. “Another moment?”

Rachael sat down again.

“I’m sorry,” Edwin said. “You are right, I am playing music for a square dance and I am a little pompous.”

“A little pompous?”

“A lot pompous,” Edwin corrected with a smile, and Rachael smiled with him.

“What a joy to see a smile on your beautiful face,” Edwin said.

“Don’t think that it means anything,” Rachael said. “Because it doesn’t.”

Edwin sighed. “Is it MacCallister?”

“What?”

“MacCallister, the man I just met. The brother to Andrew and Rosanna.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Of course you know what I’m talking about. Are you in love with this man MacCallister?”

Rachael hesitated.

“My God, you are, aren’t you?” Edwin ran his hand through his hair, then sighed. “Well, I should have known better than to think you would just still be out there somewhere unattached.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Rachael said. “I confess that I find him fascinating. Do you know that they actually write adventure novels about him?”

“Adventure novels?”

“He is quite a daring figure,” Rachael said. “They say he has faced death many, many times.”

“But you aren’t in love with him?”

Rachael shook her head. “No, I’m not in love with him. And it is for sure that he feels nothing more than friendship for me.”

“Good, good, then there is a chance,” Edwin said.

“No, Edwin. There is no chance.”

Edwin smiled. “I won’t take that as an answer.”

“Edwin, what are you doing out here anyway?” she asked. “The last I heard, you were going to Europe on a grand tour of the continent.”

Edwin shook his head. “I didn’t go,” he said.

“It’s obvious you didn’t go, because you are here. My question is, why didn’t you go?”

“The maestro thought it better that I not go.”

“But why would he think that? Edwin, you are generally acknowledged to be one of the best violinists in the business.”

“At the risk of being ‘pompous’ again, I agree with you,” Edwin said.

“Then what happened? I mean, what really happened?”

Edwin took a sip of his beer, then set the mug down. “The maestro’s wife,” he said.

“Lucinda?” Rachael gasped. “My God, Edwin, please tell me you were not being indiscreet with Lucinda.”

“It was more her doing than mine,” Edwin said quickly.

“Well, now, that I can believe. Lucinda is the biggest flirt in the business. Everyone knows that she has an eye for men. For any man,” Rachael said. “I just can’t believe that you were foolish enough to fall into her trap. No, wait, as I recall, you seem to have a problem in that department as well.”

“Rachael, you aren’t being fair,” Edwin said. “You had just left and I was feeling—”

“Oh, no, you aren’t going to blame that on me,” Rachael said, interrupting him.

Edwin shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. It’s just that I was depressed, and I wasn’t as smart, or diligent, as I should have been.” He sighed. “So now, instead of playing the violin in a concert orchestra, I’m playing…the fiddle for barn dances.” For the last five words he abandoned his normal cultured enunciation for a Western twang. He laughed. “Could you ever imagine me—a’playin’ the fiddle?”

Rachael laughed with him, then reached across the table to put her hand on his. “I don’t mean to laugh, Edwin. But I am glad that you can laugh at yourself. And I must confess that I think I could like the fiddle player more than I like the concert violinist.”

“If we couldn’t laugh, we would surely cry,” Edwin said. “I do not believe that it is mere coincidence that the symbol for thespians is two masks, one with a laughing face and the other with a crying face. When you think about it, we could be in the grandest theaters in Europe, performing before kings and queens, but circumstances”—he paused, then nodded—“of my own making, to be sure, have put us here in Higbee playing in a saloon and a hotel lobby—casting pearls before the swine, so to speak.”

“Or bringing culture to a grateful audience,” Rachael suggested.

“Oh, my, I was getting pompous again, wasn’t I?”

Rachael nodded.

“I must work on that,” Edwin said. He stood. “If you will excuse me, I have to meet with my—orchestra.”

“I will see you tonight,” Rachael said.

Chapter Sixteen

By dusk, the excitement that had been growing for the entire day was full blown. The sound of the practicing musicians could be heard all up and down Higbee Avenue. Children gathered around the glowing, yellow windows on the ground floor of the hotel and peered inside. The ballroom floor was cleared of all tables and chairs, and the musicians had been installed on the platform at the front of the room.