“I am. But what’s so pure about the unicorn?”
“Dashed if I know. Somehow it is connected with the Virgin Mary. Out of that came the legend that the invincible unicorn could be captured in only one way.” Rand looked over at me with that roguish glint in his eyes. “Guess?”
“I can’t imagine. By a valiant knight, perhaps?”
“Wrong. A virgin must be led into the forest and left alone there. Eventually a unicorn would find her and docilely lay his head in the virgin’s lap. Then he could be captured.” He smiled at me. “In the end, masculine strength will always docilely lay its head in the lap of beauty and virtue—contented, indeed delighted, to be captured.”
“I love it.”
“All women do.”
As we lingered over after-dinner coffee, with Rand in no hurry at all, finally I asked, “How far are we from the Farnsworths’?”
He shrugged. “Not too far. May be close to midnight before we get there. Doesn’t matter a bit. I’ve a key to the house and they consider it my home too. They will have retired long before we arrive. You’ll find your bed neatly turned down with a note of welcome on your pillow.”
Outside it was a starlit night with a little breeze springing up. Then we were in Rand’s coupe, ready to start. All at once he leaned over and kissed me lightly, very tenderly. When he started to draw away, scarcely realizing what I was doing, I reached up with my arms and drew him back. His lips sought mine fiercely this time. For several giddy moments, my senses spun and whirled and pinwheeled. Then slowly we pulled apart, shaken.
Rand placed the key in the ignition, but did not immediately start the engine. “That wasn’t in the plan, Julie.”
“Why not?”
Even in the darkness I could see his look of surprise. Then he grinned. “Why not? Indeed, why not?”
This time he turned the key, the engine roared to life, and we drove on through the night to Pittsburgh.
Soon after dawn I stirred sleepily. In the fog of my half-waking state, it took me a few moments to adjust to the strange bedroom.
Then I remembered. The Caledonian Inn . . . the drive with Rand . . . the Farnsworths. There would be no more sleep for me this morning. I was too excited, too much in love. Rand and I! Again I could feel the security of his arms around me, his lips on mine.
I lay there in the big four-poster canopied bed, enjoying the sheets, silky-soft on my skin, and knowing that there was no hurry about getting up.
That kiss in front of the Caledonian Inn changed everything, I mused. The difference in age was wiped out. All day long, two minds and two hearts had been reaching for each other. At that kiss, they merged.
During the drive to the Farnsworths’, Rand had pulled me close to him and had kept reaching for my hand. When we pulled up under the Farnsworths’ porte-cochere, it started all over. Tender kisses leading to the same wild, giddy heights.
Then we had walked up the porch stairs and on through the front door, which Rand opened with his key. I had a vague recollection of an entrance hall with floors of black-and-white marble squares and, shining through the dim light, an incongruous-looking suit of medieval knight’s armor, tall pikestaff in gauntleted hand. To my surprise, the curving stairs up which Rand led me were also marble. On the landing was a note giving directions to the rooms we were to occupy and advising us to sleep as late as we wished.
Rand had brought in my overnight case from the car, and after placing the bag on a chair, he kissed me once more, this time lightly on the forehead, and headed for his room.
I was in bed, light turned off, when there was a light tap on the door. Then it opened and Rand stepped in quietly, moving to the side of my bed.
“Everything all right?” he whispered.
I nodded, too tense to trust my voice.
Rand stood there uncertainly for a moment, then sat down on the side of the bed and began to stroke my hair. Faint rays of moonlight drifted across his face. I could not see his eyes and this bothered me.
He leaned down and gently kissed my forehead, then each eye, then the tip of my nose; finally his mouth pressed hard against mine. A series of conflicting emotions surged through my body.
“Rand, I’m scared.”
It came out as a gasp, louder than I intended. Rand straightened up, got to his feet, then reached for my hand, which he kissed lightly. “Good night, Julie,” he whispered and departed.
I was a long time getting to sleep. Lingering with me was the warmth of Rand’s breath, the faint scent of cologne, and the softness of his mouth; in my mind I kept fingering them over and over like beads of a rosary.
Rand had held off saying the words, but his love had enveloped me all day long through his tenderness, thoughtful gifts, and finally the ardor in his eyes. If he had slipped into my bed, I honestly don’t know what would have happened, for I loved him as I had never thought I could love anyone.
Now that the morning light was bringing the room’s details into sharper focus, I interrupted my reverie to look around. The high white ceiling above me was set off by a gracefully molded cornice; there were three tall windows with filmy curtains and draperies of the same heavy blue and white silk damask as on the four-poster bed with its massive pineapple posts. All of the furniture was dark and heavily carved.
Having satisfied my curiosity about the room, once again I let myself luxuriate in the thought: how suddenly one’s life can enter a completely new phase. Before yesterday there had been my girlhood—years of learning, growing, searching for an identity. The dates with high school boys and the embarrassment of their clumsy, groping hands seemed back in another era. Rand’s maturity was a true separation of man from boy.
Yesterday, with the flowering of my love for Rand, I felt as though I had entered a gate marked Womanhood.
I stopped my happy, sensuous musings to face a fact. Marriage. A solemn thought indeed! Was I ready to face marriage at eighteen? A new procession of questions whirled through my head. College? That sounded impossible, considering our family finances. Career? Yes, but not the most important thing. Then what was all-important? My love for Rand. It was total, reached to the depth and height of me. Any kind of worldly success I could possibly achieve in any field faded into insignificance beside this.
I did not know whether Rand loved me in the same way, but this I did know: if he asked me, I would marry him right away.
My parents. Would they object? They would consider me too young, but Rand could persuade them. Since there was no money for college, what alternative could they press upon me?
Hearing voices outside, I slipped out of bed and peeked through the curtains. An elderly gentleman, must be Mr. Farnsworth, and Rand, looking a bit disheveled, were walking through the garden. A frowning Mr. Farnsworth was doing most of the talking. When Rand’s arm suddenly pointed to my room, I pulled away from the window. With a sinking feeling, I gathered they were talking about me—and it did not seem to be happy talk.
Yet shortly after that, when I put on my Sunday dress and slipped downstairs, the Farnsworths welcomed me warmly. Munro Farnsworth was a grandfatherly type with a mane of white hair, sideburns and glacial blue eyes.
His wife, Cynthia Wilkinson Farnsworth, was quiet and motherly with curly blonde hair and a warm smile. It would be easy to call her Auntie as Rand did. She led the way to a breakfast room. “Randolph will be here in a minute,” she purred.
My heart quickened when Rand walked into the room. What would I see in his eyes? His quick, warm smile reassured me. Now I could face the Farnsworths with some measure of confidence.
During the breakfast conversation I learned that Munro Farnsworth was one of many steel barons who had constructed mansions on this high bluff known as Sewickley Heights. As I asked questions about their Pittsburgh life, the old gentleman was studying me.
After breakfast Rand started to lead me out into the garden when his uncle intercepted us. “You’ll be with Julie for the rest of the day, Rand. Why don’t you talk to your
Auntie for a while and give this young lass and me a chance to get to know each other?”
As Munro Farnsworth led me to his den, I had the whimsical though not reassuring thought that there were unicorns, not lions, on the Wilkinson crest. The aging steel mogul ambled on ahead of me into a dark room paneled with mahogany. He nodded toward an overstuffed chair near the marble fireplace as he walked to a large paper-strewn desk and retrieved a black pipe resting on a sheaf of papers. Then he sat down in the chair opposite me.
As he carefully tamped tobacco into his pipe and then lit it, I noted the painting over the mantel, an immense English landscape with a wide gilt frame. To the left of the fireplace was a marble bust on a pedestal. A Roman god with a broken nose?
Mr. Farnsworth saw me looking at the bust. “Picked that up in Naples, A.D. 13, the experts think. Very valuable.”
He waved his pipe toward the landscape painting. “A genuine John Constable.”
“Lovely,” I murmured.
Pulling slowly on his pipe, he asked suddenly, “How old are you, my dear?”
“Eighteen.”
“I see. Just out of high school?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Planning on going to college, I suppose.”
“I want to. At the moment, I don’t see how we can afford it. Also I’m needed at the newspaper.”
“Of course. You’re a proofreader, are you not?”
“Yes. And I do research, write some poetry and—other things.” The line of questioning was making me increasingly uneasy.
“Your father’s taken on the Sentinel at a bad time. Small newspapers are struggling everywhere.”
“My father loves the challenge. Every member of our family is helping out.”
“Do you think your father was properly prepared to run that newspaper, being so new to Alderton?”
“He’s learned a great deal in a short time.”
“I understand he was a clergyman before he came here. Do you think that qualifies him to make judgments about business and political matters in Alderton?”
“I think he is qualified for this. Yes.”
Mr. Farnsworth relit his pipe while I tried to keep from squirming. “Randolph says you have a special interest in the problems of workers, that he joined you on some sort of cleanup venture for flood victims.”
“That’s right, Mr. Farnsworth. The people in the Lowlands are suffering from poor housing and undernourishment. They’re the victims of—” I stopped, realizing I was heading into deep water. “These working people need help and Alderton citizens have been just great in their response.”
“Randolph is a very warmhearted person,” the industrialist continued. “He likes people, which makes him good at his job. But sometimes he’s too softhearted. People then misread him and think he means something that he doesn’t.”
My mouth suddenly went dry and I did not answer.
“You see, my child, Randolph has a mission in life that in some ways prevents him from being in control of his own destiny.
“What kind of mission, Mr. Farnsworth?”
“It has to do with one word. Ancestry. The Wilkinsons have a long and important family history, as I see you’ve discovered, going back hundreds of years. Randolph is a very important link in that history for the future. That’s why he’s here. To learn. To meet the right people. Then to marry the right woman.”
“And who are these ‘right people’?” I asked, feeling the rebuff deep in the pit of my stomach.
Mr. Farnsworth fixed a steady, metallic gaze on me. The words that came out were cool, carefully thought out, numbing. “The Wilkinsons, my dear, are a class-conscious family. They consider that proper marriages are absolutely essential to the preservation of a strong family line. There is perhaps only one condition where the pure blood of the line might be diluted somewhat—”
“And that would be?”
“If the other family has wealth.”
I stared at the tall industrialist—first in amazement, then in a slow-burning anger. Forgotten now was my resolve to be soft-spoken, careful and even a bit demure. His arrogance touched a fuse inside me. “That’s the most awful description of ancestry I’ve ever heard, Mr. Farnsworth.”
His head jerked up in amazement. “How’s that?”
“You are saying, aren’t you, that inner values like integrity and courage mean nothing to you? What’s important is that your family members make money and marry people of social prominence.”
Now he was glaring at me. “Young lady, you’re putting words into my mouth that I never said.”
I was trembling so hard I could barely speak. “I’m sorry, sir, but your meaning was clear. And it certainly doesn’t sound like America, with its freedom of opportunity where a poor boy can grow up to be President.”
His cold eyes bored into me for a long moment. There was a certain hesitancy in the words that followed. “You are right about America being a land of opportunity. Our free enterprise system is basic to our way of life.”
I fought down a frantic desire to flee the man and battled the tears now just under the surface. I forced myself to rise to my feet slowly and look directly into those flinty blue eyes. “I don’t know why I’m such a threat to you, Mr. Farnsworth. Randolph and I have never talked about marriage, but if we had, I would certainly stand all the Wallace ancestors right up against all the Wilkinsons and Farnsworths and feel not one bit inferior.”
Taken aback, Mr. Farnsworth stood and glowered at me. Then he dropped his eyes and spoke more softly. “What I said is no reflection on your family. Perhaps I was too blunt.” He plowed on. “But that’s the way I’m accustomed to handling things. Sentimentality is a poor way to run a business—or to build a family line.”
When we rejoined Randolph and Mrs. Farnsworth on the patio, I hoped that someone would suggest we go to church. Something deep inside me yearned to share this experience with Rand. It was not to be. Conversation was so strained for the rest of the morning that I did not relax until Rand and I were alone in his roadster on the way back to Alderton. He was making a valiant effort to be lighthearted, but underneath I could sense that his spirit was as heavy as mine.
“I can tell, Julie, that your talk with Uncle Munro was not very pleasant.”
“I’m afraid not.”
He sighed deeply. “He’s as hard as whinstone. Something of a snob as well. In that respect he’s not very different from generations of Pittsburgh steel millionaires. The trouble with most of them is that they pretend to be what they are not.”
“How do you mean?”
“Some were crude characters, straight off the raw American frontier. So when they made money fast—astronomical fortunes—they pretended they had culture and knowledge that simply wasn’t there. So they were forever pulling bloopers.”
“Such as?” I prodded.
“Such as, when one steel man was building his mansion, the architect asked him if he wanted a porte-cochere. His reply was ‘Hell, yeah! Better put in six of ’em. And see to it that the flush don’t sound loud, will ya?’”
We laughed together, relieved to ease the tension. “And I suppose they were picking their teeth with gold toothpicks?”
“You have the idea,” came Rand’s answer. “Only you can’t imagine the lengths to which some of these new millionaires go. One tycoon built an Ivanhoe stronghold with turrets, moat, and drawbridge. Few know anything about art, yet they’ve bought Renoirs and Gainsboroughs and Turners, even the Renaissance masters, by the truckload. They sport private cars on rails with liveried butlers, keep $500,000 yachts. Or they try to buy up Balkan princelings or English dukes and earls for their daughters.” Rand’s contempt for his uncle’s philosophy soothed me somewhat. As if reading my thoughts, he said more seriously, “But for Auntie’s levelheadedness, my uncle would have been as bad as some of the rest. With her help, somehow they’ve at least managed to stay on the fringes of that kind of nonsense. But deep down my uncle is a snob.”
&nbs
p; “He grilled me mighty hard,” I admitted.
“About what?”
I stared out the window at the passing scenery and wondered how honest I should be. “About my goals in life.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I wanted to join the Bolsheviks and destroy capitalism in America.”
Rand laughed so uproariously that for a moment I thought he was going to swerve off the road. “How I should like to have seen the expression on his face!”
“Well, I might just as well have said that. He thinks I’m some kind of flaming radical. What did you tell him about me, anyway?”
“Too much, probably. Uncle Munro is very conservative about women. I think he’s still living back in the last century.”
“It isn’t funny, really. Your uncle is on the boards of both Yoder Steel and the Hunting and Fishing Club. While talking to him, I realized that he knew a lot about my family—our concern about the dam, our support of the Community Center in the Lowlands—and for some reason, all of this makes me his enemy.”
Rand pondered this a moment. “Well, you and your father have probably been overzealous about the dam.”
“You think it’s safe then?”
“Yes, I do. There are probably thousands of earthen dams throughout the world that are not as strong as this one.”
“What about that missing engineer’s report?”
“What report?”
“The one done by an engineer just before the railroad sold it to your Club. It was supposed to have been attached to the sales contract. It just disappeared. No one seems to know anything about it.”
Rand was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know anything about it. Engineers’ reports can be strikingly different, I’ve heard. I’m sure no two engineers would agree on this dam.”
Something inside me was ebbing away as we became silent for what seemed like a long time.
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