The Awakening Read online

  Dr. Montgomery stopped his car, jumped out, hit her husband in the face and escorted Mrs. Soames to his car. Mrs. Soames was suspicious of the handsome young man at first, but then she asked herself, What could he possibly want from her?

  He drove her home to his family, who lived in a long, sprawling house that his family had owned since before the American Revolution. Dr. Montgomery’s mother, a breathtakingly beautiful woman, had swept down the stairs and looked Mrs. Soames up and down. “Another stray, Hank?” she’d said, then gone on her way.

  Mrs. Soames stayed with the lovely family for three months, making herself as useful as possible until Mrs. Montgomery began to say she couldn’t run the house without Mrs. Soames.

  Dr. Hank obtained a divorce for Mrs. Soames and then, to make sure she wasn’t bothered again, he asked her to go with him when he went all the way across the country to California to accept a post as an economics professor. Mrs. Soames had readily accepted and these last five years had been the happiest of her life.

  But the very trait in him that had made him save her was what also worried her. He cared about people less fortunate than he was. He cared about the man who delivered the coal and always had Mrs. Soames save a piece of pie for him. Yet there were several men Dr. Hank worked with, illustrious men, educated men, who he wasn’t particularly polite to.

  Last year that book of his that had caused such a stir had been published. All she knew was that it was something about being on the side of the maids and delivery men of the world. Mrs. Soames was sure it was a good book but it certainly had caused trouble.

  Union organizers, men who all seemed to be nervous, their eyes jumping around, came to see him. Mrs. Soames counted the silver when they left.

  She put the pie in the oven then grabbed the potatoes to mash. And now these rich farmers wanted her Dr. Hank to come and stay with them. Corrupt him, that’s what they wanted to do. Give him wine with his every meal, feed him French sauces and give him indigestion.

  And worst of all, she thought, as she slammed the masher against the innocent potatoes, they wanted to endanger her dear Dr. Hank’s life with that union riffraff. Her dear, saintly Dr. Hank needn’t risk his life for a bunch of people he didn’t know. He had enough to do at his college.

  She put the massacred potatoes aside and went into the parlor. He was sitting quietly on the sofa, reading his paper and sipping his whiskey. The setting sun came in through the west window and made his hair glow like an angel’s. Like the angel he was, she thought, looking at his profile. Such a handsome man, she thought. Such a good, kind, lovely man.

  She walked across the room to pull the curtains closed so the sun wouldn’t shine in his eyes and she saw a long white open-topped limousine pull up outside. A chauffeur in a spotless white uniform and cap sat in front and in back was a beautiful young woman wearing a white silk dress, an enormous-brimmed white hat with white ostrich plumes curling around it and softly framing the woman’s face. Her hair was a deep shade of red, the only color on her, the car or the chauffeur.

  Mrs. Soames jerked the curtains shut and gave a glare at the back of Hank’s head. There was one area where her Dr. Hank wasn’t so innocent and that was when it came to women. She never asked, of course, exactly what he did on those automobile races of his, but twice he had returned with articles of ladies’ undergarments in his luggage. Once there had been a black silk stocking inside his trouser leg.

  She turned to peep back out the curtain and saw the chauffeur helping the young woman out of the car. And in the woman’s hand was—oh no!—it looked to be a book of wallpaper samples.

  Mrs. Soames closed the curtain and rolled her eyes skyward. He had done it again. She had tried to explain that it was all right to save fat old women like herself from unpleasant situations, but when he started saving young women they expected something from him—like marriage and a family, for instance.

  She gave the back of his head a look of disgust. He was much too old to be getting himself into these predicaments.

  She walked to the front of him and took the newspaper out of his hands and began folding it. “You have a guest coming,” she said sternly. “Tall, red hair, henna I would say, very pretty.”

  Hank finished his whiskey and looked puzzled. “I don’t seem to remember…”

  When men had flaws they had flaws. Were there so many women in his life that he didn’t remember this stunning woman? She narrowed her eyes at him and slipped his empty glass into her apron pocket. “She has a bosom like the prow of a ship.”

  Hank grinned in memory. “Blythe Woodley.”

  Mrs. Soames’s mouth made a disapproving little line. “She has a wallpaper sample book.”

  Hank’s face lost its color. “She’s in front? I think I’ll go out the back. Tell her—”

  “I will not!” Mrs. Soames said indignantly. “You have made that poor woman believe something that isn’t true and now you must face her like a man and not take the cowardly way out.” She started to say more but she didn’t as she turned on her heel and left him alone in the room.

  Hank slowly slipped on his jacket and prepared to face what he knew was coming. Three years ago Blythe had been a student of his and he’d been impressed with her intelligence, her curiosity, the thought she put into her essays, her questions asked in class, and, not least of all, her magnificent bosom. Not that he ever was forward with her in the least. Even when she stayed after class and asked him questions and gave him every opportunity to make their relationship a more personal one, he had remained aloof from her. He didn’t touch his students.

  At the start of the next school year, he had expected to see her again but he hadn’t seen her on campus. Then one day he saw her walking across campus wearing some frothy sort of dress more suited for a dance than for study. He’d stopped her and asked her how she was. He didn’t like what she told him. Her family, which had a little money—nothing like Hank’s, though—had introduced her to the son of an old friend of her father’s. They’d spent all summer together and one thing led to another and at the end of the summer they’d become engaged. It was only after the engagement that Blythe found out that her fiancé didn’t want her to go to college. Under pressure from him, her family and his family, she’d left college and entered a cookery school.

  Hank hadn’t liked this idea; he hated the idea of someone else controlling another person’s life, but if it made Blythe happy, it wasn’t any of his concern.

  She said she was on her way to luncheon with her fiancé and, on impulse, she asked him to go with her.

  Also on impulse, Hank accepted her invitation. Maybe it was impulse but it might have been a tone in Blythe’s voice, a kind of urgency and pleading, or maybe it was the touch of sadness in her eyes.

  He went to lunch with them and it was worse than he feared. Blythe’s fiancé was obviously scared to death of a woman who might be as smart—or smarter—than he was. He condescendingly explained the items on the French menu to Blythe, yet Hank knew Blythe spoke and wrote French fluently. He asked Hank about his book, then, before Hank could answer, he patted Blythe’s hand and said they’d better not bore her with an intellectual conversation. And Blythe was the woman who’d last year missed only one question on the toughest final exam he’d ever given!

  He didn’t like what he saw but he wasn’t going to interfere. He’d already learned that when you stepped between a pretty woman and her fiancé or husband or father, pretty women expected you to marry them. Ugly women thanked you ever so much for freeing them and went on their way, but pretty women expected you to spend the rest of your life with them.

  So he’d walked away from that luncheon and done nothing, not so much as said one word to Blythe about how she was throwing her life away for this pompous young man.

  But then, the best-laid plans…

  He’d come in the winner of the Harriman Derby and he was exhilarated with winning and he didn’t remotely feel like a professor of economics. He was just a happy, health
y, energetic young man with a silver trophy in his arms and people cheering him, and there, on the sidelines, had stood Blythe Woodley wearing a white dress and all that red hair of hers hanging down her back with this cocky green feather curving around her head. He didn’t think. He just put his free arm out and she came to him, curving her body to his so well that she was like a second trophy he’d won.

  At the hotel, after the door was closed, for just a second he’d had a return to sanity and told her she’d better leave. But then she’d slowly raised her skirt above her knee and revealed a black silk stocking. He could resist most anything, but black silk stockings on long, slender legs was not one of them. He thought he might betray his country if a woman asked questions of him while revealing a pretty leg.

  They had spent the weekend together—a wonderful, exciting two days of champagne baths and, one morning, a wild ride across the Arizona desert in his newly cleaned racer, then a picnic and lovemaking beneath a saguaro cactus. On Monday he’d kissed her goodbye and had returned home and she, he assumed, had gone back to her fiancé.

  But now, a month later, she was at his doorstep bearing a wallpaper sample book, and he knew that wallpaper samples or fabric samples meant marriage.

  He glanced longingly at the whiskey decanter but a knock sounded at the door and there was no more time.

  Mrs. Soames found him later, sitting in the darkness, sipping more whiskey and, to her dismay, the decanter was half empty. She turned on a table lamp and, except for blinking his eyes, he didn’t move. Scattered about the room were torn pieces of wallpaper as if someone, in fury, had torn sheets and thrown them—which is probably just what happened, she thought with a grimace.

  She was not going to let him sit there and feel sorry for himself. “You deserved it, you know,” she said angrily. “You lead these young women on. You make them love you, then you refuse to marry them. And while we’re on that, why don’t you marry one of them? That young lady, Miss Woodley, looked perfectly respectable to me. You’re twenty-eight years old and it’s high time you thought about settling down and raising a family. Maybe then you’d stop this foolish racing of cars and stealing women away from other men.”

  She stopped her tirade when she saw how sad he looked. She sat down beside him and patted his hand. “There, dearie, you meant well.”

  “The funny thing is,” he said softly, “I would rather like to get married. It’s just that I haven’t found her yet. I can’t think of a thing wrong with Blythe. She’s really quite perfect. She’s smart and interesting, dazzling to look at, great in—well, good company, and she’s from a family good enough to please my grandmother.”

  “So marry her,” Mrs. Soames said. “Or at least court her. I don’t think it will take much to fall in love with her.”

  He sipped more whiskey. “I could never love her. I don’t know why, but I know she isn’t the one. I have this feeling that someday I’ll see her and I’ll know her.” He turned to grin at Mrs. Soames. “That sounds somewhat metaphysical, doesn’t it?”

  “It sounds to me like a man who’s had too much whiskey on an empty stomach.” She heaved herself up. “You come in and eat now.”

  Hank didn’t move but just stared blankly ahead. “I’m going to go to Caulden’s ranch,” he said. “I think I’d like a little vacation from this place.”

  Mrs. Soames sniffed. “You want to put some distance between you and that poor Miss Woodley is what you want.”

  Hank began to look sad again. “I never meant to insinuate marriage. She just—”

  “Come on and eat,” Mrs. Soames said, exasperated. “I just pray this Mr. Caulden doesn’t have a daughter who is oppressed or repressed or anything else, so that you feel like saving her.”

  Hank smiled crookedly and got off the couch. “If he does have a daughter, I’ll stay away from her, I swear. I don’t care if she wears nothing but black silk stockings and walks into my room in the middle of the night, I’ll still stay away from her.”

  Mrs. Soames chose to ignore that remark.

  Chapter Three

  Amanda suppressed another yawn and tried not to look with dismay at the tall stack of books on her desk. For days she had done nothing but read books on economics in preparation for the professor’s visit. Both her father and Taylor had drilled her about the importance of this man’s visit and how Amanda was to be a gracious hostess. “And keep him away from here,” J. Harker had said. “I don’t want him snooping around my land.”

  Taylor had given her a list of museums and places of interest to visit. Perhaps she might go with him to Terrill City to visit the library there. He wanted Amanda to brush up on her local history so she could act as a knowledgeable tour guide.

  Amanda so wanted to please the two men in her life but it seemed to be almost impossible with this Dr. Montgomery coming. The fear that her father and Taylor shared—that Amanda might act like her mother—was beginning to worry Amanda too. She must not, under any circumstances, forget herself. She must make her father and Taylor proud of her. This professor was a man of great learning and she must not disgrace herself with him. Taylor said Amanda had a frivolous streak in her—no doubt inherited from her mother—that must be suppressed. And he said that the outcome of what happened with the union leaders depended on Amanda’s favorably impressing Dr. Montgomery. A great deal depended on the high caliber of Amanda’s intellectual stimulation of Dr. Montgomery.

  She returned to the books.

  Hank drove through the beautiful California countryside south of Sacramento, the little Mercer open all around and allowing him to smell the flowers and enjoy the fragrant breezes. It was a beautiful little summer car, no top, no doors, just a bright yellow body, yellow wheels, and black leather seats. It was a man’s car, low to the ground, very fast when pushed, the heavy steering improving the faster it went. The car did have a flaw in the fact that the brakes were next to useless, but its speed and torque (it could climb very steep hills in fourth gear) made up for the bad brakes.

  Hank was looking forward to a few weeks of rest on a hop farm. He imagined Caulden’s plump wife serving hot biscuits and gravy in the mornings. He imagined lying in a hammock and dozing in the sultry heat. It would be nice to get away for a while from books and students and papers to grade.

  North of Sacramento was Kingman, and he slowed down to look. It was a medium-sized town built around five railroad tracks, and from the hustle and bustle of the people, the place looked to be thriving. There was the Opera House that played motion pictures every Friday and Saturday night and matinees during the week. He passed a rich-looking residential area with big, well-kept houses.

  At a filling station on the west side of town, he asked where the Caulden ranch was. The attendant turned and pointed toward the horizon. All Hank saw across the flat land was another town in the distance.

  “It’s near that town?” Hank asked.

  “That ‘town’ is the ranch,” the attendant replied.

  Hank stood and stared at it for a while, looking at building after building spread along the horizon, and he began to understand why the ULW wanted to start at this place. Make a ruckus here and the world would hear the noise.

  He got back into the Mercer and started driving toward the Caulden Ranch. He passed several side roads that no doubt led into the ranch but turned when he came to a wide road bordered by palm trees and flowering shrubs. The road led half a mile to a two-story brick house with a wide, deep verandah around most of it.

  No one came out at the sound of his car and so he went to the door and knocked. A maid answered, an unsmiling, lusterless-looking little woman who politely took his straw hat, led him out of the dark panelled vestibule and into the big hall. To the left was a pair of french doors, and the maid politely knocked, then slid one door open.

  “They are waiting for you,” the maid murmured and Hank moved past her.

  In the library, directly before him was a fireplace flanked by two floor-to-ceiling windows that looked into th
e green lushness of a conservatory. He smiled slightly at the sight and thought he’d like to explore the place. To his right were two more doors, both shut.

  To his left, he could feel the eyes of people, so he turned slowly and saw two men. The older one had the belligerent look of a mean little kid who was being made to do something he didn’t want to do, while the other one looked as perfect as a store mannequin. He’s a cold fish, Hank thought, and immediately liked the older man better.

  “I’m J. Harker Caulden,” the older man said, as if daring Hank to challenge him. “And this is my son-in-law, Taylor Driscoll.”

  Hank held out his hand to shake, but Caulden ignored him, so he turned to Driscoll. Driscoll’s hand was as cool as his looks and his hand felt fragile in Hank’s.

  “You don’t look like a college teacher,” J. Harker said daringly.

  Before Hank could speak, Taylor stepped forward. “What Mr. Caulden means, Dr. Montgomery, is that we assumed you’d be older, a bit more mature.”

  Hank grinned. “I hope I’m not a disappointment.”

  “No, of course not,” Taylor said. “You are welcome. I imagine you’ll want to get settled before luncheon. Martha will show you to your room.”

  Hank knew he’d been dismissed. He nodded and left the room. You aren’t any more disappointed than I am, Mr. Iceberg, he thought, I was hoping for a pretty little farmhouse. Oh well, he could always leave in a day or two. He followed Martha up the stairs.