No Ordinary Princess

by Pamela Morsi

  Once more Tom turned to face his teacher. "If Tom Walker had died in Cuba, and he should have, no one would have cared. Why should they? No one ever cared that Tom Walker lived."

  "Is that what you think?" the old man asked. "That your existence is important to no one."

  "That's exactly what I think. Who am I important to?"

  "Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that you are pretty important to that young woman that you just married."

  "Cessy?"

  "Is that what you call her?" the reverend smiled. "I rather like it. Much preferable over Miss Princess. Princess sounds more like the name of dog than a young lady."

  Tom shook his head and chuckled humorlessly. "I thought the very same thing when I first heard her name."

  The old man nodded. "You may not share my blood, young man, but I've made my mark on you all the same."

  Tom gave him a rueful glance. But his thoughts remained heavy.

  "If I could just know," he said. "If I could just know who they were and why . . . why I was of so little value to them that they could give me away and never look back."

  "I'm sure they thought they were doing what was best," Reverend McAfee said.

  "Why are you sure of that?" Tom asked, his tone almost angry. "What kind of evidence do we have to even suggest that? Don't you know that I spent years waiting for them to come get me, and then more years thinking up excuses for why they couldn't?"

  "Yes, of course I know that you've done that," he said. "All of the boys here do that. Even the ones who know their parents to be dead will lie awake at night imagining that it was all a mistake, and that dear mother and father will be coming to retrieve them the very next day."

  "You can't tell me anything about her?" Tom asked.

  "Nothing that I haven't already said," he an­swered. "She was a young white girl, not yet twenty I'd guess. She'd brought you in a fine cambric cloak. Much nicer than anything she wore herself, so per­haps she was only the nursemaid or the hired girl. She undressed you and took the cloak with her when she left."

  "She didn't even tell you my name," Tom said.

  The reverend shook his head. "I asked her what you were called and she said she only called you 'the baby'."

  Tom sighed.

  There was a long silence between them, both men alone with their thoughts.

  "I named you Thomas because that was my father's name. He was a fine man, as generous and kind as any that I ever knew. If I'd had a son of my own, I would have given him that name. I called you Thurs­day, because that's the day you came into my life. And Walker, well that was for Francis Amasa Walker."

  "Who?"

  "Francis Amasa Walker," Reverend McAfee an­swered with a slow smile. "He was an economist. Ask your wife about him."

  Tom mentally vowed to do just that.

  "Thomas Thursday Walker," Reverend McAfee said aloud. "Perhaps you never cared for the name, but I thought it the finest I could come up with."

  "I never said I didn't like it," Tom told him.

  The old man chuckled. "You never had to say it, the fact that you wouldn't use it spoke volumes." He shook his head reveling in his recollections. "I didn't mind so much when you called yourself Geronimo or Abraham Lincoln, although it worried me quite a bit when shortly thereafter you decided you preferred being John Wilkes Booth. But I thought that it was something that you would eventually outgrow. Ap­parently, Mr. Crane, I was quite mistaken."

  "It was a game," Tom said quietly. "It began as just a game."

  "Did Miss Calhoun realize that it was a game?"

  "No, I didn't mean it was a game with her," Tom said. "Being Gerald was a game. It was just some­thing I did to make the fellows laugh. The ladies always loved Gerald. He had so much more to offer them than Tom did."

  "So when you decided to offer for Princess, uh . . . Cessy, as you say, you thought to present yourself at your best. And you thought your best was Gerald."

  "Yes," Tom said, nodding slowly. "That is what I thought. But you know, I believe now that she would have loved me as Tom."

  "Why do you think so?"

  "Because the things that she loves about me . . . well, they are not Gerald's things. She isn't interested in Gerald's fancy heritage. In fact, it sort of worries her. And she's not impressed with his aristocratic ideals, she spends a good deal of time trying to talk him out of them. And if she is even vaguely interested in his money or social position, well, she has yet to ask questions about either."

  "I don't find any of this particularly surprising," Reverend McAfee said. "She is not at all the sort of young woman that would marry for any reason other than love."

  "Yes," Tom agreed. "She would only marry for love. And I really do believe that she would have loved Tom as easily as she loved Gerald."

  "Probably so," the reverend told him.

  "But can she now?" Tom asked. "Can she love Tom now, after discovering that she has been seduced by lies and married in deceit. Can she love Tom after learning that? After learning that he sought her out and willfully pursued her because he fell in love with her money?”

  The reverend shook his head and sighed sadly.

  "She is a fair and forgiving woman. But you are in great need of much forgiveness. I don't know that any woman could have enough."

  He looked exhausted. Worse than that, he looked beaten. Queenie couldn't remember a time when she'd seen him look worse. She refused to let it affect her even slightly.

  All around the room there were trunks and crates and stacks of household goods. Queenie was dili­gently sorting and packing.

  She was a hardbitten, determined woman who'd made her way in the world against all kinds of odds. She'd had no choice. In business she'd never failed to go after what she wanted. To push when other women would have been content to settle, and to carve out her own security in the best way she knew how. That was how she operated in business. It was only in her personal life that she'd held back, waited, and done without. That was at an end.

  Comfortable, convenient Queenie was about to make demands.

  "Well, it's all over, Queenie," King said sadly. "I did all I could do and it was for nothing. It's all over."

  "What's all over?"

  "The well. Royal Oil. King Calhoun," he shook his head. "I'm busted Queenie. Flat busted."

  She shrugged almost with complete unconcern.

  "Isn't that what you've always told me about the' oil business. Boom and bust, boom and bust. When things are going well, plan for the worst, and when life looks its blackest, there is a fortune to be made on the next hill."

  "That's mostly true, but for the life of me, I never saw a oil man go under while pumping 25,000 barrels a day," he said. "I swear, Queenie, I want it etched on my tombstone, IT WAS BANKS THAT DONE HIM IN."

  "So you still haven't found anyone to back you?"

  "No," he said. "And I've propositioned every bank from here to blazes. I offered a fifty-percent share at the last one. They couldn't even be bothered to hear me out."

  "What about Tom Walker?"

  "Tom Walker? I don't know a dang thing about any Tom Walker," he said. "I've asked in every bank and barbershop and even every church in Burford Cor­ners. Nobody ever heard of Tom Walker, nor this Prin family that he's supposed to be married into. None of it even exists."

  Queenie was thoughtful. "Well, Tom Walker exists because I talked to him day before yesterday."

  King looked up startled. "You talked to him! What did he say? Would he be willing to loan me the money?"

  "Well, truth to tell King, I didn't ask him for money," Queenie explained. "We had other things to talk about. I just told him that you were looking for him."

  "Was he going to find me then?" King asked. "Why the devil hasn't he?"

  "I don't know," she answered. "Honestly, he didn't seem to be particularly interested, but I men­tioned you just the same."

  "Dang it all, Queenie, why didn't you buttonhole the fellow?" King complained. "Y
ou know how im­portant this is to me."

  "Well, I have a few things on my mind, too, thank you very much!"

  Her tone was such that it startled King out of his lethargy and he looked up at her, wide-eyed with question. He appeared to notice the trunks and crates for the first time.

  "You going somewhere, Queenie?" he asked.

  "Why, yes, I am," she told him.

  He was silent for a long moment. "Are you going up to Denver to see that doctor I told you about?"

  "No indeed," she answered. "I don't need a doctor. I saw one this morning and my health is perfectly fine."

  King blanched. "You mean you've already ..."

  "No," she answered. "I mean that I am in fine health for a woman bearing a child at my age. He says that everything appears to be all right at this juncture. And if nothing untoward occurs, I should be giving birth in the latter part of February."

  She watched his face light up with pleasure and she knew that she was not wrong about him. He came to his feet and pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  "Queenie, I'm so glad about this," he said. "Truly, I think you will be a wonderful mother. And the Palace is not a bad place to grow up, he'll—"

  "My child," Queenie stated flatly as she jerked out of King's embrace, "will not be raised in a saloon."

  The adamant nature of her tone obviously took him off guard.

  "You're not raising him here?" King asked.

  "My child will grow up in a sweet little house with a big yard and a picket fence," she said. "He'll walk to school every day in clean broadcloth kneepants and a Saratoga cap from a nice neighborhood with all his young friends. He'll have a pony cart and a puppy. He'll play baseball and ride a bicycle."

  Inexplicably she burst into tears.

  "Darling, oh darling," he said, sitting her down upon the bed and taking his place beside her. "What is this all about? Why are you so unhappy?"

  "I'm not unhappy,” she sobbed. "I've never been happier in my life." Unfortunately, she punctuated this declaration with renewed tears.

  "Don't cry," he pleaded. "Please don't cry."

  "The doctor said that the crying is like the nausea," she told him, hiccuping. "It's just a symptom of being in the family way and it will pass."

  "Well, I certainly hope so."

  They sat together on the bed. He kept his arm around her, comforting her as she pulled herself together and regained her self-control.

  "I am very happy about the baby, actually," she said. "I don't mean to cry about it. I think it may well be the best thing that has ever happened to me."

  "And I am happy about the baby too, darling," King assured her. "I am, too."

  "I've sold the Palace," she said.

  "Sold it? To whom?"

  "Tommy Mathis," Queenie answered.

  "Tommy Mathis? That painter? Where did he get the money to buy this place?" King asked.

  "He's hasn't got it, but I've sold it to him just the same," she said. "Frenchie's going to run the place, but Mathis is going to count the money. He's going to pay me over ten years from a percent of the profits."

  "That's crazy, Queenie," he said.

  "Not as crazy as trying to simultaneously be a mother and the proprietor of a saloon," she said.

  "Where are you going to live?" he asked her.

  "In that house with the white picket fence," she said.

  "And where is it?"

  "Wherever you build it, King."

  "Wherever I build it? You want me to build you a house?" King was clearly surprised. Queenie never asked him for anything.

  "I want you to build us a house, King," she said. "All of us, you, me and the baby."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I want us to get married," Queenie told him. "No wait, let me say that over again. Because I've always wanted us to get married. Now I'm demanding that we do."

  He looked at her for a long moment and then grinning without much humor he began shaking his head.

  "Whoa now, let's slow this old horse down a bit," he said. "What's all this talk about marriage? Is this another one of those symptoms you get from eating for two?"

  "Maybe it is," Queenie said. "Maybe that's exactly what it is. But I'm determined to put my old life behind me and start over for the sake of this little child. And that means a husband and a home. I'll start with the husband first and worry about the home thereafter."

  "Queenie, darling, you can't be serious about this," he said.

  "I have never been more serious in all my life," she said with such solemnity it was sobering. "This is what I intend to happen and I won't settle for anything less."

  King's expression had changed from being sympa­thetic to being annoyed.

  "Queenie, now this is silly," he said. "I don't think it's even something to joke about."

  "That's good, because I am not joking. I intend for you to marry me, King Calhoun, and I intend for it to happen soon."

  "Queenie, darling," he cajoled. "Let's not talk about this right now. You're all het up and my life is falling around me like a house of cards. I couldn't possibly think of anything as serious as marriage in the middle of my business going bust."

  "Poor men get married every day,” Queenie said. "And since I know you are going broke, it should give you some reassurance to know that I won't be marrying you for your money."

  King swallowed hard and was struggling for the right words to say.

  "Marriage is a very momentous step, not done lightly," he told her. "It's the type of decision best entered into after long and thoughtful consideration. It is irrevocable, Queenie. You and me, we wouldn't want to make a mistake."

  "A mistake? King, the mistake has already been made," she told him, shaking her head with disbelief. "The mistake is my getting pregnant with no hus­band."

  "Now, we've talked about that, darling," he said. "I don't see how it follows that we should make matters worse by marrying up."

  "You are the father of this child, that's the simple fact," she said. "I fail to see how that truth makes anything better or worse, and I don't believe that there is anything much further that needs to be considered."

  "You know perfectly well that I am not a marrying kind of man," King said. "I'm undependable and I'm unfaithful."

  "That was with your first wife," Queenie said. "We have been quite exclusive for some years, I see no evidence that that is about to change."

  "But it would change, I'm sure of it," King said. "The minute I'd promise to keep myself only unto you, I'd be itching for the next pair of pretty ankles that came along."

  "Then I would just have to keep a very close eye on you. If a wife can't trust her husband out of her sight," Queenie said with confidence, "then the wife doesn't let him out of her sight."

  King was clearly flabbergasted at her words.

  "I just can't remarry. I simply can't do it, nor do I think I should. It was not something that I was ever good at."

  "Then I suppose that you will just have to change," she said.

  "I don't want to change," he insisted.

  "What you or I want is no longer important," she told him. "All that matters is what is best for the baby."

  King Calhoun was beginning to lose his temper.

  "Queenie McCurtain, I never, by any word or deed, ever suggested to you that I would marry you."

  "I'm not saying that you did, in truth I am very sure that you did not, but this is our child we are consider­ing now and that changes everything."

  "It doesn't change everything for me," King bel­lowed. "Queenie, you know I would never want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is, a man like me doesn't marry a woman like you."

  She raised her chin bravely, refusing to take of­fense. "You mean a man like you, who has clawed his way to the top of the heap by hard work and sheer determination, does not marry a woman who has done the same?" Queenie asked. "Perhaps that is why your first marriage was such a failure, King. You picked someone that you should marry over
someone truly suited to you."

  "You know that is not at all what I meant," he said. "A man just does not marry his . . . his . . ."

  "Are you having trouble finding a word for it?" Queenie asked. "Maybe because you are looking in the wrong direction. You are thinking whore or maybe mistress, but neither of those words are right. Both suggest that money has changed hands. That never happened. I did it with you for love from the very start. Where you were concerned I was as bad a businesswoman as Frenchie."

  King ran his hands over his face. And shook his head with regret.

  "I never asked you to fall in love with me,” he said.

  "We often don't ask for the things that can really change our lives," she said. "I do love you and I'm glad I do. And nothing you can say will convince me that you don't love me as well."

  "Queenie, I don't want to hear anymore about this," King said, firmly rising to his feet. "It doesn't matter who loves who or even what you think might be best for whom. I am not under any circumstances going to marry you. It is ridiculous of you even to suggest it."

  She looked up at him, willing him to change his mind. Willing him to reconsider.

  "I really hope that you don't mean that," she said. "Because if you do, then that is your loss, King. That is your loss of both of us."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I fully intend to get away from this life and to get my child away from it," she said. "If you do not marry me, if I can't be your wife, then I must pretend to be your widow."

  "My widow?" King laughed without humor. "What do you plan, Queenie? To murder me?"

  "In my heart you will be dead," she said. "I will raise this baby alone and I will tell him that his father is long dead. You will never see your child, you will never know him."

  Queenie's words were soft and thoughtful.

  "I'll be disappointed for him, because I already know you to be a fine father," she told King. "But that's the way it has to be. If you won't marry me, then that's the way it has to be. He will survive it, of that I'm sure."

  She looked King straight in the eye and spoke brutally.

  "I'm not so certain that you will. Good-bye, King."

  "What do you mean, good-bye?"