Free Sisters by Lynne Cheney

Mrs. Syms appeared in the doorway to announce that the
reporter from the 'Clarion' had arrived. By the time the housekeeper
showed him in, Esther had put all the pictures back on the
mantelpiece and slipped through the door into the dining room.
    The reporter seemed very
different from yesterday, Sophie thought. Could it just be that he
had taken off his hat? Although he was in his twenties, he was
balding, and having to reveal this fact make for the breach she
detected in his self-assurance? Or had he perhaps spoken with someone
about her? In any event, his annoying arrogance had tempered, and she
saw no harm in granting him an interview. "There were some
questions you wished to ask?" she said as soon as they were
seated.
    Plainly he had not thought
the interview would happen so easily. He hurried to get a stubby
pencil out, not very successfully hiding his surprise. He riffled the
pages of his lined tablet, looking for a sheet to write on, and tried
to cover his unpreparedness with conversation. "Will you be in
Cheyenne long?"
    "A few weeks, perhaps
a little more. I wanted to see my grandfather, who is ill, and I may
write one or two articles while I'm here. Perhaps one comparing
Cheyenne now to the way it was when I was here nine years ago."
    He felt obliged to record
what she had said, and there was a silence while he wrote. "You
grew up in Wyoming?" he said finally.
    "Yes, at Fort Martin."
    "Which is named for
your grandfather."
    "He founded it. He and
Emile Bellavance."
    "And my editor says
you're the head of Dymond Publications now?" There was a trace
of awe in his voice, and Sophie took a certain satisfaction from it,
particularly when she recalled his attitude at the depot.
    "That's correct."
    "Well, how...I mean,
it is a long way from Fort Martin to New York City and Dymond
Publications. I'm not sure I understand how it happened. My editor
said something about Adah Menken?" His expression was
bewildered, and Sophie wondered what he had thought at the depot.
That she was the fashionable widow of a prominent man who dabbled in
her dead husband's business? A well-dressed dilettante from
Publisher's Row? And now that he knew that she was Dymond
Publications, it was more than he could take in to learn she had also
spent time with Adah. Indeed, it had been more than many people could
accept when the story had first come out. Her enemies had been
gleeful, of course, at the reports in the gossip rags; but her
friends had refused to believe it. She had handled both groups with a
cool statement of the facts, which she repeated now. "Yes, I was
with Adah Menken's troupe for a short time. I joined them in San
Francisco, where I had been in school, then traveled back East with
them."
    "Were you an actress?"
    "I had some small
parts."
    "In 'Mazeppa' by any
chance?"
    "Yes."
    "So you saw her ride
that horse. I mean, not 'ride' exactly..."
    "She was tied on its
back in a supine position." Whenever Adah's name came up, it was
followed by questions about the spectacular finale to 'Mazeppa': a
huge stallion galloping on a specially built ramp, a maiden tied to
its back, looking very frightened--and quite bare. "Actually, it
was a very brave thing, letting herself be tied to a horse that way.
And I never saw an audience--not a single one--that failed to give
her a standing ovation."
    The reporter was leaning
forward, hoping she would say more. Sophie knew exactly what he
wanted her talk about. It was what everybody wanted to know. "I'd
like to add," she said, "that even though the character she
played was bound naked to a stallion as punishment, Mrs.
    Menken was dressed in
flesh-colored tights and tunic for all her performances."
    He was hanging onto her
words, a perfect example of that metaphor, but he managed to recover
himself sufficiently to write in his notebook. It took a very long
time to get it all down, and as he wrote, Sophie remembered how she
had come to know Adah. Sophie had been fifteen, a student at the
convent school, and