Read Online Love's a Stage by Laura London - Free Book Online Page B

beggar may find himself the most envied man on the street, be he the possessor of a well-oiled umbrella, and Frances could only admire the perspicacity of those fellow citizens who had thought to equip themselves thus when they had ventured from their homes earlier that day. As she walked, Frances had to jockey constantly to stay in the middle of the pavement. The rain gutters on the roof overhung the walkway, sending a sheeting waterfall onto anyone walking too near the walls; near the street one risked stepping into the greasy rainbow-colored filth that was puddling up from the overflowing open sewers.
    By the time Frances had reached Aunt Sophie’s building, her pine velvet carriage dress was sticky wet and clung like a moist sheet, and the cardboard lining under her bonnet brim hung down, hound-ear style. Mme. Dominique had assured her that the bonnet’s plume was “genuine ostrich”; maybe so, but it stank like a damp chicken and its pink dye had bled a messy smear on the bonnet’s green satin trim.
    Stepping gratefully into the dry hallway, she was forced by a sneeze to take refuge in her soggy linen handkerchief. Not looking down, she almost tripped over a long braided rope that stretched from the stairfoot through the open door of Mr. Rivington’s apartment. An abrupt, friendly voice told Frances, “Watch yourself there!”
    The speaker of this kindly warning was crouched on the brown hall carpet beside a tangle of rope bigger than a bushel basket. He was a tall man with narrow shoulders and a bristle of wiry graying hair sprouting from his weather-beaten pate and, unfashionably, his upper lip. Swathed neck to top boots in a massive gray cape, he gave the appearance of a big barn spider hunched in exhaustion over a newly mummified fly.
    Concern that her nose might be running prevented Frances from immediately lowering her handkerchief so her voice was rather muffled, if perfectly civil, as she said:
    “Thank you, sir! I’m afraid I wasn’t watching where I stepped.”
    “And no wonder,” offered the barn spider, glaring at her with gruffly paternal solicitude, “with that hat dangling in your eyes.” He stood and bellowed toward the open door of Mr. Rivington’s apartment. “Richard! Have you got a blanket? There’s a poor lass here, and if she were any wetter, she’d have to have gills!”
    Rivington appeared in his doorway to look Frances over with astonished empathy. “My dear girl, you’re soaked to the skin! You don’t want to go upstairs; Henrietta left about half an hour ago to take a basket of old shoes to the cobbler for heel-piecing, and Mr. Pike, the landlord, is upstairs with a sweep doing the chimneys. There won’t be a fire in the place. Come into my parlor and warm up.”
    The disheartening prospect of changing her sodden garments in front of a cold hearth from which a chimney sweep might burst at any minute was enough to cause Frances to make only the most token protest as Richard Rivington propelled her into his parlor, established her in a winged armchair before the fire, and cocooned her in a blanket of Irish frizz. Loose snakes of steam began to rise from Frances’ hem as she apologetically pointed out to Mr. Rivington that she was dripping on his carpet.
    Rivington gave Frances an ironic grin and denied caring about the carpet, and indeed, its condition lent color to his assurance. The rug’s faded red-and-blue pattern bore the scars of being repeatedly hacked by someone who hadn’t troubled to remove his spurs after riding. The whole parlor, in fact, was in a state of cheerful disarray and more nearly resembled a tack room. A bureau against the inner wall was littered with and surrounded by knotted ropes, grapnels, telescopes, sextants, and a wonderful variety of brass tools. The opposite wall was covered with a vast bookcase stuffed with a library of volumes that reflected the eclectic taste of their owner. The History of Aerostation rubbed shoulders with a cheaply bound