No Ordinary Princess

by Pamela Morsi

  "But that is only in the short term," Tom said. "These bankers are simply not looking far enough ahead."

  "They are looking at their pocketbooks today," Cessy told him. "And they have decided not to loan my father the money that he needs. My father must build a refinery to get the value out of the oil. And as each day goes by it becomes less and less likely that it will happen."

  Tom was silent, thoughtful for a long moment.

  "I'm sorry," he said finally.

  "Yes, I am too," she said. "When I told Daddy that you married me for my money, can you imagine what he said."

  "No, I can't."

  "He said that the joke was on you, because there is no money."

  Tom nodded slowly, as if deep in thought.

  Cessy raised her chin and kept her tone falsely bright. "I think that you should keep our current poverty clearly in mind when you make your deci­sion," Cessy said.

  "My decision?"

  "About whether you wish to continue our mar­riage," she said.

  Tom's mouth fell open in surprise. The sprig of broomsedge fell to the ground.

  "You said that you were going to divorce me," he pointed out.

  "I was very angry at the time," she admitted, swallowing no small amount of pride. "But I'm not sure that divorce at this time would be the best thing to do."

  "Are you saying that you still love me?" he asked softly.

  "No, I am not saying that at all," she assured him hastily. "I am not sure how I feel about you, or if I can ever care for you as I did."

  "But you want to stay married to me."

  She hesitated only a moment.

  "I . . . fear that I may be with child," she said.

  "Already?"

  "My . . . my courses were due this week," she said. "It is early, of course, to know. But it seems I am late. If it were true, if I were in a family way, then I would not wish to try to raise a child without a father, even if that father were a lesser man than I might wish him to be."

  She saw him blanch and knew her words had wounded him as sorely as she had intended.

  "We are both without sleep and just now learning the truth about each other," she continued. "I suggest we meet here at this time, one week from today. By then I shall know if I am with child and you will » know whether or not you are willing to take on a wife who not only cannot support you, but who will expect you to support her."

  Once the smoke and fumes had cleared, the oil camp was reestablished in its old location. It was amazing how much longer it took to set things back in order than to disorder them in the first place. The evacuation had taken hours. Most of the work week was spent getting everyone moved back into their campsites.

  And a changing neighborhood was also evident. As the wells came in, many of the men from the drilling crews were packing up and moving on. It was pumpers that were needed now. And they arrived, unwilling to spend anymore time than necessary in the camp. They would be living in Burford Corners for some time to come. They were ready to build shotgun shacks and foursquare houses.

  While the genteel society of Burford Corners, such as it was, did not welcome the pumper families with open arms, the merchants were as excited and enthu­siastic as if they, too, had struck oil on the crest of Topknot hill.

  All of this happiness and prosperity, however, hinged upon the Royal Oil Company and rumors about company troubles were beginning to surface.

  Where indeed was all this oil going to go? How much could be held in sumps for how long? Was there to be a refinery in Burford Corners or not?

  The man who could have answered those ques­tions boarded a train on Thursday with his new son-in-law, Toolie Tom, at his side. He was, more now than the hero. King Calhoun had clearly singled him out for better things. There was talk of letting the young man be driller on the next well or perhaps even making him a pusher. Whatever, it was quite an honor even if he was King's son-in-law, although how that was working out no one could really tell. Tom, it seemed, was back living with Ma and Cedarleg.

  The train was an express, but it still took a good while to make its way across half the country. They boarded,at dawn and were in Chicago past supper-time. In the darkness they slept through the corn­fields and cottages to awaken to a Pennsylvania dawn. It was midafternoon when they freshened up at the Elvira Hotel in downtown Bedlington.

  "Just let me do the talking," Tom suggested. "I know these people. I believe that I can trust them. And I hope that they will trust me."

  "Lord, I ain't going to say a word," King assured him. "The dang bellboy even looks down his nose at me."

  Tom laughed and straightened his father-in-law's collar. "That's because you don't look like you are an oil baron," he said.

  "I'm the brokest oil baron you ever saw," King said.

  "You're not broke," Tom assured him. "You're merely lacking in financing."

  The two walked the length of Broad Street com­menting on both the quaintness of the hundred-year-old buildings and the cleanliness of the brick streets.

  Tom mentally prepared himself. He held his head high as he glanced around, nodding politely to a matron here, a businessman there. He was as good as any of them. He was a man of his own making.

  Dexter Savings Bank was on the corner of Philpott and Broad. The two stopped in front.

  "Are you ready?" King asked him?

  "I suppose I'm ready as I'll ever be," Tom told him.

  "Don't feel bad if they turn you down," King said. "They are bankers. Bankers and oil are just one of those combinations that never quite mix."

  Tom sighed heavily and cracked a grin. "I'm just hoping that a little gunpowder in the stew will make it blend a little more nicely."

  Inside they found fine marble floors, well-polished, dark walnut paneling, a chandelier overhead with real electric lighting.

  Tom walked directly up to the balding man at the front desk.

  "I am here to see Mr. Dexter," he said.

  "Which Mr. Dexter, sir," the man said. "There are two."

  "Mr. Ambrose Dexter," Tom replied.

  "Do you have an appointment, sir?"

  "No, I do not," he said.

  The man gave only a cursory glance toward the book beside him.

  "Then it will be absolutely impossible to see Mr. Dexter today," he said.

  Tom sighed, deliberately keeping his fear and dis­appointment in check.

  "Then I will speak to the elder Mr. Dexter, please," he said.

  The clerk gave a snort of annoyance and rolled his eyes. "Impossible, the elder Mr. Wheeling Dexter sees only a very select group of our bank's deposi­tors."

  "Perhaps I can make an appointment with Mr. Ambrose Dexter for sometime next week, sir."

  Beside him Tom heard King Calhoun sigh and from the corner of his eye he could see the older man's shoulders slump. He couldn't allow Calhoun to give up. He simply couldn't allow it. It was too important. They were much, much too close.

  "Do you know who I am?" Tom asked the question just a little bit too loudly.

  "I have never seen you before in my life," the balding man answered with the conceited self-assurance that anyone who it would be important for him to know he would recognize on sight.

  "I am, sir, for your information Ger—" He covered his gaff with a hasty cough. "I am Thomas T. Walker," he said.

  "Very nice," the clerk said, clearly unimpressed.

  "Go tell Mr. Ambrose Dexter that I am here," Tom said.

  "I told you that Mr. Dexter has no—"

  Tom slammed his fist down upon the clerk's desk. Every human in the bank jumped at the unexpected sound.

  Tom kept his voice soft, quiet, and extremely civil. "Apparently you did not hear me," he said. "I told you to tell Mr. Dexter that I am here. So do it."

  The clerk, now clearly rattled, hurried back to the glass-paned doors at the back of the bank.

  Inside Tom was shaking. So much depended upon this. So much was riding on the coattails of a long-ago war. But not everything
, he reminded himself. Cessy was still willing to marry him. She was willing to live with him, to be married to him even if he were only an out-of-work tool dresser. That's what really mattered. She and he. The rest of this was just ... it was just money.

  "Tom! My God, Tom!"

  Ambi came exploding out of his door. He stopped only an instant to open up the one beside his.

  "Father, Tom Walker is here," he said.

  Then Ambi was there, cranking his hand as if it were a pump handle and talking a mile a minute in that oh-so-clever and sophisticated tone that he had.

  His father was there, too, patting him on the back and expressing how glad they were to see him.

  "Come on back into the office," the older man said. "We have so much to catch up on."

  Tom was almost led away when he stopped and turned to the man behind him.

  "Mr. Dexter, Ambi, please allow me to introduce my father-in-law, Mr. King Calhoun of Royal Oil."

  "Mr. Calhoun, a pleasure," the elder Mr. Dexter said.

  Ambi repeated the greeting.

  They made their way into the corner office where Ambi's father still held sway, although it seemed most of the business had been turned over to his son.

  The clerk was sent for tea and the four were shortly enjoying an afternoon respite.

  "You're married, Tom?" Ambi said.

  "Yes," he answered. "Just recently."

  "It's been almost two years since I tied the knot," Ambi said.

  "You're married also? To anyone I know?"

  Young Dexter blushed vividly. "Why Diedre, of course."

  "Diedre Willingham?"

  Tom was shocked.

  "Why, yes, of course, who else," Ambi answered. "You must have known . . . well, I wore my heart on my sleeve for years. Surely you knew that I cared for her."

  "I had no idea."

  "Why else would I have made such a mess of our friendship," he said.

  Tom was dumbfounded.

  Ambi turned to a curious King Calhoun. "After the war, your son-in-law stayed with us to recover from his wound," Ambi explained. "He met many of our friends. He is such a cutup, as I'm sure you know. And we all loved him. My wife, who was just past her coming out at that time, became interested in him. He mentioned that he was thinking of marrying her. I had been waiting for her to grow up for a very long time."

  Ambi turned back to address the rest of his words tq, Tom.

  "I said some terrible things at that time," he admitted. "Things that I did not mean. And things that I would have taken back a hundred times. But then you were gone and no word all these years. I thought I would never see you again."

  "No need to worry about that," Tom said. "Like the bad penny, I always turn up."

  Chapter 22

  It was a riot of a party. The perfect send-off. Every loose-living oil man in Topknot was there. The other saloons had closed their doors. Only the Palace was open for Miss Queenie's good-bye.

  The chaos of the evacuation and then the headache of moving back in had delayed her departure consid­erably. She couldn't leave Frenchie and Mathis with­out trying to insure that they made a go of it. After all, it was their payments that she was counting on to live.

  They were not about to change the name. Oil field people knew Queenie's Palace. She had a reputation for fair dealing and unwatered alcohol. With her name upon the sign they would continue to flock to the place.

  Since Queenie herself would not be there, Mathis had taken it upon himself to paint a huge mural of her on the wall behind the bar.

  The likeness was a fairly good one. He'd given her more hair than she could actually ever grow. And the feminine silhouette he portrayed was so generously curvaceous that it must have been in the eye of the beholder.

  But all in all Queenie was proud of it. It did look like her and perhaps when King came in here, he would see it and remember her. Maybe he'd remem­ber her as she truly was and maybe he'd remember that he'd once loved her.

  "Where are you going to go?" one of her longtime customers asked her.

  "Someplace where they ain't heard of me, I guess," she answered, causing a general outpouring of laughter.

  "It's just time for me to retire," she explained. "I'll go to some little farming or ranching town where they've never heard of the oil business, let alone Queenie McCurtain."

  "Lord almighty, Miss Queenie," a bright-eyed rig builder with a southern accent commented. "Them farmers get a look at you they'll be leaving their wives faster than hot sugar turns to syrup."

  Queenie smiled at him, knowing he meant his words to be a compliment, but hoping full well that they would not come true.

  She was going out into a new world, but she wanted to hide from it, not be a part of it.

  The nausea that had plagued her early on was much improved. But the crying got worse and worse. She had thought that she could make King marry her. That he loved her enough that she could demand that he do it. Apparently he was determined to prove her wrong.

  This is what she was determined to do. She refused to feel sorry about it. Still the thought of never seeing him again, never holding him, never having him in her life, reduced her to tears at unexpected times.

  He hadn't darkened her door. And if the rumors were accurate, he wasn't even in town. Maybe that was for the best. Perhaps it would be easier to leave knowing he wasn't around than knowing he was there but didn't care enough to even say good-bye.

  Of course, King would probably say that she had made her feelings on that subject perfectly clear. Marry me or don't come back. He had simply chosen the latter course.

  Tommy shouted for quiet until he had everyone's attention and offered up a toast.

  "To Miss Queenie," he said. "A woman who has stirred lots of whiskey, served lots of beer, and put smiles on a lot of men's faces."

  Hoots of laughter came from all over the room.

  "You tell it, Tommy!" one fellow encouraged.

  He turned to face her. "May you find happiness where you will and smile to yourself in secret when you think of your old friends."

  "I will," she promised.

  "Cheers!"

  "Cheers!"

  "Wahoo!" someone shouted.

  The piano player picked up the tune again and within a half minute the room was loud and noisy and boisterous once more.

  Frenchie was leading a young fellow to the stair­way. Mathis hurried over to get his money in ad­vance.

  Queenie sat down at the bar and plastered a smile upon her face. She smiled and smiled and smiled interminably. She was drinking spring water with a touch of mint and learning a fact that many before her had discovered. A party of drinkers is pretty boring unless one is suitably drunk.

  She wondered how rrmch longer she would have to stay. It was her good-bye party. How quickly could she go upstairs, lay down in her sleepless bed, and wait for the morning train.

  It was then that she noticed a sudden strange change in the volume of noise in the place. People were quieting and hushing others to do the same. There was an expectation that was growing and Queenie looked around to see that everyone was silent and watching her. As the crowd parted be­tween herself and the doorway, she saw him.

  Her heart began to pound. It was all she could do not to run toward him and throw herself in his arms.

  King Calhoun stood there. Still dressed in his traveling clothes, a candy box tucked under his arm.

  Smiling and nodding to those around him, he stepped forward.

  "'Evening Queenie," he said. "Is this a party going on?"

  "Yes," she answered, her voice cracking. "Yes, it's my good-bye party. I'm leaving on the morning train."

  "Just come in on a train myself," he said. "Been back East all week."

  She nodded noncommittally.

  "If you're leaving in the morning, then it's a good thing I came by here tonight," he said. "I brought you a present."

  He set the box down beside her on the bar.

  "It's those chocolates tha
t you like," he said. "Brought them all the way from Pennsylvania."

  "Thank you, King," she said. "It was very nice of you to come and say good-bye."

  "Aren't you going to open them?" he said.

  "I'm not really hungry right now."

  "Open them up anyway," he said. "There's a surprise inside."

  She looked at him askance. "You mean like in the Cracker Jacks."

  King smiled. "Yes, ma'am, just like in the Cracker Jacks."

  Carefully she untied the ribbons and opened the box. There among the sweet cremes and nougats was a small paper box that said on the top of it: TIFFANY'S NEW YORK-CHICAGO.

  Queenie's hands were trembling as she picked it up. She removed the top to find a slim, single gold band lying in a puff of tissue.

  She raised her eyes to the man beside her. Her voice was soft as a whisper. "It's a wedding ring."

  For fifty years thereafter old timers in the oil field would still laugh and wonder and shake their heads as they told the tale. The day big, proud, King Calhoun dropped to one knee in the middle of a Topknot saloon to ask Queenie McCurtain to marry him.

  He had not come. She had waited at their special place near Shemmy Creek for over an hour, until darkness was almost upon her and then she'd re­turned to the surrey and asked Howard to drive her home.

  She had to bite back the tears of hurt and disap­pointment. He had not met her at the appointed hour.

  "Have you heard anything of Tom Walker?" she asked finally.

  She heard the hesitation in Howard's voice. "They say he took a train on Thursday, Miss Princess," he answered.

  Thursday. He'd been out of her life since Thursday and she hadn't even known it.

  She did cry then. She made no attempt to hold back the tears. And she didn't even care if Howard heard them. Her pride was gone. Her man was gone. Her heart was broken.

  Howard wordlessly handed her his handkerchief and she cried into it copiously. She could not recall ever allowing herself to lose such control. It was important always to stay in command of oneself and of everything else around.