The Bride's House (26 page)

Pearl was taken aback. “But surely you don’t live that way.”

“Don’t I? Your father was right when he told you about my debts. I have spent a great deal of money keeping up appearances with mining investors. He’s right about the rest of it, too. My father was a thief. I was thrown out of school for fistfights with fellows who mocked me about it. My brother was no better. He stole money from a mine where we both worked and let others believe I did it.” Frank removed his hand from Pearl’s and sat down on the steps of the bandstand, looking out at the mountains. “I can deal with all that, Pearl, but you can’t. I won’t let you.”

“I can live with it, and I will. Besides, that’s my decision to make, not yours.”

“No, it’s mine.” Frank said. “It would kill me to see you live in poverty, and I believe in time, you would grow to hate me.”

Pearl didn’t protest. Her knees felt weak, and she sat down beside Frank. “Then Papa has talked you out of it.”

“No. He has made me realize how selfish I am to expect you to endure such hardship.”

“Couldn’t you get a job?”

“And abandon the molybdenum company?” He thought a minute. “Yes, I suppose I could find employment in one of the mines. We wouldn’t live well, and there would not be the chance to make a strike, because I couldn’t work the molybdenum claim. We would have to accept that we would never rise in the world.”

Pearl considered the words for a long time, and then she knew that while she might be able to live the life Frank had described, she could not ask him to make such a sacrifice. And perhaps she realized that if she did, she would cause
him
to hate
her
. “Then we must wait,” she said.

“No. That won’t do. That would give your father time to turn you against me. Besides, I would not ask you to do that. What if the molybdenum prospect never pays off? You could wait your whole life.” He sighed deeply and looked out at the mountains, which were blue in the dusk, the trees standing black against them, the clouds beginning to let go of their snow. “I must ask you to release me from our engagement.”

There it was, then. Her father had convinced Frank to abandon her. Pearl shivered under the worn shawl. Perhaps if she had been wiser in the ways of young lovers, she would have cried and begged, and Frank would have changed his mind. But she was not that kind of woman, and with great effort—for she did not approve of emotional demonstrations—she held back the tears and said, “Very well.” She would have said more, but she did not trust her voice.

“Will you remember I love you? No matter what your father says, I love you.”

Pearl nodded, not able to speak.

“And I will love you for the rest of my life.” When Pearl did not respond, Frank said, “You are like no other woman I know. You—”

Pearl touched his arm, and he stopped. “Go,” she said.

Frank stood and reached for Pearl’s hand, but she shook her head. “It’s starting to snow. I’ll walk you home.”

“No.” Without looking up at Frank, she dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“Pearl, I love you.”

“No, Frank,” she said, then added formally, “You are released.”

The young man looked at her for a long time, the snow falling on his bare head. Then he put on his hat and strode away. Pearl did not look up. Instead, she sat alone on the steps of the bandstand, much as her mother had once sat in a savage wind and wondered what would become of her. She stayed there for a long time, until her clothes were soaked through. Then she wrapped her wet shawl around herself and made her way back to the Bride’s House.

Mrs. Travers, who had been watching from the upstairs window, opened the door and said, “It’s pouring the snow down. You’ll catch pneumonia. I’ll get some ooze for you.”

But Pearl did not want medicine and shook her head.

“Hot tea, then?”

“No. I’m going to my room. I won’t be down for supper.” Pearl started for the stairs, but stopped then and added, “I am no longer engaged.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Travers said, her face wrinkled in sadness.

“Oh, Aunt Lidie,” Pearl said, longing to throw herself into the older woman’s arms as she had as a girl. But she was a grown woman who was responsible for her own poor decisions.

“Give it time,” Mrs. Travers advised. “The future will not be so dim when the sun comes out.”

“But I have no future,” the young woman said. “I have only the past.” She went upstairs to her bedroom in the house that from that moment on seemed to her a prison.

*   *   *

Pearl was ill for several days. Her head hurt, and her stomach churned, and she stayed in her room, drinking beef tea and eating nothing more than a little toast and boiled egg. There was no sign of pneumonia, and she was never in any great danger, but Charlie insisted that the doctor visit her twice a day. Once, when she was alone in the house, she got up and wrapped the pink dress from Daniels & Fisher in tissue, placing it in a box and putting it away on a high shelf in the storeroom.

When she finally emerged after several days, she was more haggard than ever. By then, Charlie Dumas had left for Denver, and so father and daughter did not see each other for some time. When he returned, Charlie did not remark on Pearl’s demeanor. Nor did she comment on his aged appearance. She hadn’t noticed before that he was growing older and wondered if he had aged since he had found out about Frank Curry. Charlie said nothing about the engagement, although Pearl was sure that Mrs. Travers had told him it had been called off. In fact, Charlie never again brought up the subject of Frank Curry. Instead, he told Pearl that he and Mrs. Travers had been worried about her health, and he hoped she was feeling better. He was glad to see her at the table again.

“I am quite well now, thank you,” the young woman replied.

The next day, Pearl went into Charlie’s study and resumed her duties as his secretary. There was much that had been left undone during her time in bed, and she set about writing the letters and filing the papers, making entries in the ledger, and over the next days, father and daughter fell into their old pattern of working together, although they said nothing to each other that did not concern business. And they no longer had tea together in the afternoons.

*   *   *

Charlie’s desk was cluttered with ore samples that he had collected, and one afternoon when he was out, Pearl labeled them in her neat handwriting and set them in the cabinet on the far side of Charlie’s desk. As she closed the glass door, she glanced down and saw that the wallpaper beside the cabinet had been cut away and something inserted in the wall, something she might not have seen if she had not been on her father’s side of the desk. She knelt and examined the wall, discovering that the lath had been cut away to accommodate a strongbox. There were hidden drawers in the cabinet, Pearl knew. Charlie kept stock certificates and negotiable securities and sometimes large amounts of cash in them, because they were so cleverly concealed that nobody but Charlie and Pearl knew they were there. Why, then, would Charlie need a hidden strongbox? And why had he gone to the trouble to take it out just then? The wall would have to be repapered with one of the rolls left in the storeroom.

So Pearl was more than curious, and she lifted the heavy container out of its hiding place and placed it on her father’s desk. The box was not locked, and she lifted the lid. Inside were a letter, certificates, what appeared to be a deed, rolled up and tied with a ribbon, and odds and ends of paper. It was a paper on top that caught her attention, a receipt. She picked it up, turning it around to read it, but then her hands shook so that she dropped it and slumped down in her father’s chair, her head in her hands.

She calmed herself a little, thinking it could not be so, that her eyes had betrayed her, and when her hands were still, she picked up the paper again, smoothing it with her hand, and slowly focused on it. The paper was a receipt, written in her father’s hand, a receipt dated the day she had broken her engagement. The amount was $50,000, and it was signed “Frank Curry.” Pearl slowly placed it back into the box, too stunned to wonder about the papers under it, and swiveled around in Charlie’s chair to stare out at the mountains. They had always given her solace, just like the Bride’s House, but no longer. Nothing in that brooding house could comfort her. If there had been a tiny bit of hope that she and Frank would be together one day, it was gone.

The house was as quiet as death. Her father and Mrs. Travers were not at home. Outside the air was as chill as Pearl’s heart, and she listened as the wind rattled the windows, blowing so hard that the front door slammed open. At first, Pearl thought her father had returned, and she didn’t care. He could come in and discover her there with the strongbox, know she had looked into it, that she now understood Frank had been a fortune seeker and that her father had saved her by buying him off. Then she wondered if her father had left the strongbox displayed on purpose, thinking she would find it and read the receipt, discovering for herself Frank’s perfidy. But she could not bear to admit to Charlie that he had been right. After a time, she returned the box to its hiding place and picked up the bits of plaster that had fallen onto the floor when she’d removed it.

She went to her room then and later told Mrs. Travers that she was unwell and would not be down for supper. The bedroom that had once been her refuge seemed now like a cell. The next day, when she went into the office, she found the wall had been patched so cleverly that no one would ever suspect that something was hidden behind the paper.

*   *   *

The knowledge of Frank’s faithlessness gnawed at Pearl, but as much as she blamed him, she blamed her father even more. She loved Frank, and she believed that he cared for her a little. Would it have been so wrong if Charlie had given the couple the money, underwritten the marriage? Frank would have made her happy. Did her father care at all about her happiness? Perhaps Frank was only a little weak and would have married her anyway, and that was why Charlie had given him the money, to buy him off. The questions ate at her until Pearl could not stand it, and one day when she and her father were in the office, she remarked, “You are not what you seem.”

Charlie looked up from the report he was reading and frowned. “What’s that, Pearl?”

“I believe you are a different man than I had supposed.” She kept her hands in her lap so that her father would not see that they were shaking.

“And why do you say that?”

“I have learned a great deal about you.” Pearl stood and went into the parlor, where she picked up a marble egg and held it in both hands to calm herself. Perhaps she should have kept quiet. But she couldn’t. The thing hurt her so.

Charlie said, “Come back. Have you something to say?”

“I believe it is you who should say something, Papa. To me.” Pearl went as far as the doors separating the two rooms.

“I keep nothing from you, Pearl, except what is for your own good.”

“And was it for my own good that you gave Mr. Curry a great sum of money?”

Charlie raised his hands dismissively. “Not so much.”

“It was fifty thousand dollars, was it not? That was the amount on the receipt. I consider that a very great deal of money.” She did not wait for him to respond but went on. “Did you leave off a zero? I should feel ever so much better if you bought me for five hundred thousand. Or perhaps you added an extra zero by mistake, and my price is only five thousand dollars. Surely that is cheap.”

“Pearl, you should not have looked in there. Did you read the other—”

Pearl cut him off. “I suppose I ought to enter the amount in the ledger, but do I put it under ‘household expenses’ or ‘bad debts’? Perhaps I should start a column for poor investments.”

“Don’t,” Charlie said, his voice sad. He picked up a chunk of ore that he used as a paperweight and turned it over and over.

“You bought him off for fifty thousand dollars?” Pearl could not look at her father. Instead she gazed through the lace curtain at the snow that was falling again, falling sideways, because the wind was strong. She heard the wintry blasts and tightened the shawl that was over her shoulders.

“I invested in his molybdenum company.”

“Then I would call that a very poor investment. You yourself have told me the metal is worthless.” She took a deep breath. “Forgive me, Papa, but I don’t believe you. I think you paid Frank Curry the money to break off the engagement.”

“And what if I did? It’s a small amount to show you he was only after your money, a bargain to me. But as I told you, the money went for stock in the company. If you like, I’ll tear up the stock certificate.”

“No, you mustn’t do that. I would like you to sign it over to me.” The young woman felt the chill as the wind came through a crack beside the window. “After all, you don’t pay me wages for my work. You have made it plain to Mr. Curry if not to me that all the money in this house belongs to you, so I should like to get a little something for my labor. The worthless stock will do.”

Charlie stared at his daughter, who slowly lifted her face and stared back at him. “I don’t pay you, because you know I will give you anything you want. But if you care to have the stock, I’ll sign it over to you.” He studied a vein of color in the ore sample and did not look up as he asked, “Are you very sure?”