The Shakespeare company left Boston on March 20, 1913, two days after Rose’s eighteenth birthday. Rose regarded the move with fear and trepidation, dreading their next stop—Philadelphia.
She hadn’t set foot in Philadelphia since she had fled her wedding the previous June, and she was terrified that Cal would find her. Some of the newspapers were using her name in their notices regarding the company, and she feared that Cal would once again show up.
Even if Cal didn’t read the notices, some of her old acquaintances might be present in the audience, and might recognize her. Rose had dyed her hair back to red in January, and now regretted doing so. Her old acquaintances might not recognize her with black hair.
Furthermore, Rose was still worried about her mother. Thinking of Cal’s words sent a chill through her, and although she knew that Nathan Hockley had a great deal of power, and could probably protect her mother against most threats, he might not understand just what his son was capable of. She wondered if Cal’s father really did consider himself in love with her mother, or if that was just a figment of Cal’s deranged imagination.
I could go and visit my mother, Rose acknowledged to herself. The hotel and the theater that they would be at were only three miles from her mother’s home. She was worried about Ruth, and wanted desperately to make sure that she was all right.
At the same time, Rose was afraid to approach her. She remembered Ruth’s shocked look when Rose had turned and run back down the aisle, leaving her bouquet on the floor. She also remembered her mother’s strident voice shouting after her, and the sound of her mother and Cal’s valet pursuing her through the house. Did her mother yet know Cal for what he was? Or would she try to once again arrange the match between the two?
I don’t have to actually pay Mother a call, Rose thought. Her mother had a telephone, which her father had insisted upon installing back in 1909. And there were telephones available in Philadelphia, as there were in most major cities. While they weren’t yet widespread, most of the wealthier people had them, as did many of the higher-class business establishments. Even some of the middle-class households had telephones, though very few of the poorer people could afford them.
Rose knew that she was still undoubtedly considered a member of the upper class, and could probably gain access to a telephone in some business establishment. There might even be one in the hotel where the company would be staying. But she was still afraid to contact her mother.
What if her mother found out where she was? Even if she didn’t wish to push the match with Cal, she might tell him where Rose was, or if she told one of her friends, word might get back to Cal. Of course, Rose acknowledged, she didn’t have to say where she was. She could say that she was still in New York, or Boston. But the telephone operator might say the name of the city, and then Ruth would have an idea of where to find her.
Rose also feared what she might learn if she attempted to contact her mother. What if Cal had harmed her? What if Cal had been wrong about his father’s support of her mother, and her mother was working in some horrible sweatshop somewhere? In that case, she would probably be better off with Rose, but how would Rose find her? What if things were even worse than that, and Ruth was on the streets, living off of garbage or selling herself to survive? The litany of possibilities ran through Rose’s mind as the train drew ever closer to Philadelphia.
The Shakespeare troupe arrived in Philadelphia late in the afternoon of March 20, 1913. Rose peered nervously out the window of the train, half-expecting to see Cal or her mother waiting for her, ready to drag her back. Her throat constricted as she stepped down from the train, reminding her frighteningly of that night in December when Cal had tried to kill her. But there was no sign of anyone she knew, except for her fellow actors.
Evelyn Wiseman, the teenager who had befriended Rose and taught her to bite her thumb at Richard, noticed and inquired as to what was going on. Rose just shrugged, unwilling to talk about her worries, or about Cal, or her mother, or about the events that had brought her there. Maybe someday she would be ready to talk about it, but not now, and certainly not with Cal so close by.
Evelyn persisted, so Rose finally told her that she had some old acquaintances in Philadelphia and was worried about what they would think of her performance. Evelyn just shrugged and told Rose that she was one of the best actresses she had seen, and she doubted that anyone would boo her off the stage.
Her own success also worried Rose. Everything seemed almost perfect—a little too perfect. Granted, Marietta still continued to bedevil her, but everyone else was friendly and supportive. She and Richard had even reached a truce of sorts, and although they still exchanged insults, their comments were more in a teasing fashion now, rather than the subtle animosity of earlier.
Her career had taken off faster than Rose had ever thought possible. She had learned enough Shakespeare to improvise if a problem came up, which it rarely did now that Richard was no longer trying to undermine her. The poxed son of a bitch comment had largely been forgotten, except by Marietta, who repeated it until it grew tiresome. Audiences cheered her, with some people returning to the theater more than once to see her. She had received flowers, gifts, and invitations, and had more admirers than she knew what to do with, especially young men who would have liked to escort an actress around town, and older, wealthier ones who would have liked her for a mistress.
Rose had little interest in any of them. She was polite, and accepted gifts when she couldn’t get out of it, but her answer was always the same—no. She was already acquainted with several of the older men, who had been members of her old social circle. Many of them would have treated her well and kept her in style, but Rose had grown accustomed to working for herself and had little desire to be taken care of. She enjoyed her acting career, enjoyed traveling with the company. After Philadelphia, the troupe would be moving on to Pittsburgh, then to St. Louis, and finally into the west, making their way through such cities as Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco, and Rose wanted to go with them. She was truly heading for the horizon, and she didn’t want to be tied down by anyone—even if it was only as a mistress.
Occasionally, Rose allowed one of the young, unmarried men to escort her to dinner, but she always made it clear that dinner was all that was going to happen. She wasn’t about to enter into a cheap, one-night stand with anyone, or even a short-term relationship. If she entered into any kind of relationship with a man, she wanted it to be long-term and meaningful. Stage-door Johnnies didn’t appeal to her.
Evelyn teased her about this, unable to comprehend why Rose showed so little interest in her many admirers. Evelyn herself had a few admirers, though not so many as Rose, but she appreciated the attention and found it flattering. Rose also found the attention flattering, but she simply didn’t want a suitor.
Evelyn frequently allowed one of her admirers to escort her to dinner, or a moving picture, or even the theater, if he could afford it. She seldom saw any one of them more than a few times, but the partings were usually amiable. Superficially, Evelyn resembled Alice in her behavior, but only to a very limited extent. Evelyn was considerably more stable than Alice had been, and respected herself. On the occasions that Evelyn parted in a less than amicable fashion with one of her admirers, it was usually because he had taken offense at her refusal to sleep with him. After one of them had angrily left her at her hotel room door, Evelyn had sighed and confessed to Rose, who was sharing the room with her, that men like that didn’t appeal to her either, and she wasn’t sleeping with any of them until she had a ring on her finger and a marriage certificate on her wall. She had no intention of marrying until the right man came along, which was why, she told Rose, laughing, that she went out with so many men. How could she find the right one if she didn’t look?
Rose had been a little taken aback by Evelyn’s openness, although she had already discovered that many theater people were very open. The environment encouraged closeness, and there were few secrets that could be kept in such a close-knit group. Evelyn was open and friendly—most people liked her—but she was also discreet when need be, although Evelyn’s idea of appropriate and Rose’s were often very different because of their different upbringings.
Rose’s stiff, upper class upbringing had not encouraged openness. Unseemly thoughts were to be kept to oneself, and emotions were not to be shown openly, except for in a very limited fashion. A person could laugh and smile in the correct context, or show sorrow under appropriate circumstances, but most emotional displays were reserved for in private. If one’s home life was unhappy, or there were other difficulties, they were kept behind closed doors. The great wealth of members of the upper class brought privilege and opportunities that other members of American society didn’t have, but it also encouraged a certain amount of social isolation.
In stark contrast to Rose’s upbringing, Evelyn had grown up in the theater. Theater people, too, had sets of social rules and mores, but it was a more open, closely-knit society, especially in stable groups such as the Shakespeare company. It was difficult to keep secrets from people that one saw constantly, and if something happened, it was almost certain to be known about by everyone within a short time. Even in less closely-knit groups, or in the far less stable world of motion picture production, the greater openness persisted.
Evelyn had been on the stage since she was three years old. Her parents were both actors, and even after her mother had died when Evelyn was ten years old, her father had continued with his career, and encouraged Evelyn in hers. Evelyn had spent her life on the road, and now, at sixteen, considered the idea of settling down a romantic but far-fetched idea. She told Rose that maybe if she found a good man who wasn’t of the theater or any other sort of job that required traveling she might settle down, but she hadn’t found the right one yet, so she was content to keep moving. Her father encouraged her independence, stating, in an unusual display of respect for a man of his time, that Evelyn had a good head on her shoulders and would do well at whatever she put her mind to.
Rose was impressed; most of the men she had ever known treated women with a condescending air. She remembered how quickly Cal and Colonel Gracie had believed her story about looking at the propellers—as if a woman who had traveled on numerous ships in her life didn’t know better—and realized that such an attitude was rare indeed. Jack had shown respect for her intelligence, and so had Robert, but they were exceptions. Of course, she acknowledged, society taught people that women were inferior—it was why women were unable to vote in most states—and some women encouraged the idea. Unfortunately, since many men were already convinced of female inferiority, the actions of women who truly were dependent upon men, or who pretended to be, or simply thought that they were, convinced the men of their own prejudices.
Rose took to the stage in Philadelphia as well as she had taken to the stages in New York and Boston, in spite of her fears of being found by Cal. She wasn’t worried that the upper class men she had rejected would tell Cal about her—most of them didn’t want to admit to being rejected—but she still feared that other members of her old social circle would see her on stage and talk about her. Everything was going so well that Rose feared that something would happen to spoil it all, and in the end, she reluctantly decided against trying to contact her mother.