The Bride's House (30 page)

Pearl turned around and stared at Frank. “I have never heard such a preposterous story. You were after my money. Papa gave you the fifty thousand dollars. Later, I found the receipt. I have often wondered if Papa arranged for me to find it.”

“How awful for you.” Frank bowed his head. “That’s not true, but I admit that without your father’s money, I could not have provided for you in the beginning, and I would not ask you to live in poverty. Over the years, I’ve wondered if that mattered, wondered if we should have married anyway even though we’d have had to live on a miner’s pay. Will Spaulding said I was a fool, that he himself had given up a woman he loved and regretted it the rest of his life.”

When Pearl did not respond, Frank said, “I could have come back with the money I made with Will in other ventures, but your father was quite insistent that the money had to be repaid from molybdenum, and I’d agreed.”

Confused, Pearl slowly pressed one key of the piano and then another. “Why would you take his money?”

“Why wouldn’t I take it? What was there to lose? I needed it to develop the claim. And I believed at the time that without it, there was no chance of our ever being together.”

Pearl felt weak and gripped the back of the love seat, clutching at it to steady herself as she made her way back to her chair and sat down. “It has been nearly twenty years.”

“Eighteen.”

“Seventeen years and seven months,” Pearl corrected.

Frank laughed. Then Pearl laughed, and of a sudden, her heart felt as light as the blossoms on the lilac bushes. The room seemed filled with sunshine. She heard the birds outside and again smelled the scent of lilacs carried by the breeze.

“Do you still care for me?” Frank asked.

Pearl looked down at her hands and did not reply, would not reply.

“This is not so easy,” he said. “We are middle-aged, and we both have changed a good deal over the years.” Pearl started to say something, but Frank held up his hand. “Oh, I know how you have changed. Mrs. Travers kept me informed. She wrote to me every year.”

“She’s gone,” Pearl said, and Frank nodded as if he already knew. Then Pearl asked, “Have
you
changed?”

“I’d like to believe I’m a better man.” He thought a moment before adding, “And I have more money.”

“Yes, there is that.” She played with a tack that had come loose on the chair, jabbing the edge of it into her finger. “Perhaps you will wonder then if
I
would be after
your
fortune? You must know that Papa’s wealth is gone, and we live like imposters in this house.”

“I know that, and if you choose to marry me for my money, then I am well satisfied.” He paused. “One thing for certain has not changed. We still love each other.”

Pearl pushed the tip of her finger so hard against the tack that it popped out and fell onto the carpet. “How do you know?”

“I know my own feelings, and I know that you are constant.”

“What are you saying, Frank?”

“That I hope to marry you.”

Pearl wanted to stand, to go to the window and look out across the town at the mountains, which had always steadied her, but she could not get up. She looked at her finger and rubbed the tiny indentation of the tack with the forefinger of her other hand. “Didn’t you ever marry? I would have thought you would.”

“I told you I’d always love you. Those were my last words to you. There was never anyone else. And I am bold enough to think there was never anyone else for you. After all, you promised you would marry me, and you never told me you took back that promise.”

Pearl stared at him.

Frank went to her then and slowly raised her from the chair, until she was standing in front of him. “Now, I’ll ask you a second time. Will you marry me, Pearl?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Today?”

“Today?” Pearl repeated.

“My automobile is outside. We can drive to Denver this minute and be married.”

“But I’m not ready. I have no wedding dress, no trousseau. You must ask Papa first.”

“No. I will not ask your father. I am asking only you. And you had a pink dress once. Do you still have it?”

“I never wore it again.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” Frank kissed her and held her a long time. “I have already reserved the bridal suite at the Brown Palace Hotel.”

“But what if I had said no? You’d have lost your money.”

“The risk was worth it.”

When he released her, Frank told Pearl, “Shuckle,” and she went upstairs into the storage room and took down the box with the pink dress. She packed a bag and wrote a note to her father, telling him that she had gone to Denver on an important matter and would be back the next day. Then Frank helped her into the automobile—a Packard, as it turned out—and they sped away.

The two were wed that afternoon in Denver in the Presbyterian church in sight of the capitol building. Pearl wore the pink dress, which was a little old-fashioned now, but what did that matter? And then the two retired to the Brown Palace Hotel.

Frank suggested they send Charlie a telegram, telling him that Pearl was now Mrs. Frank Curry. But Pearl thought that would be cruel. Besides, the shock might affect her father’s health. So the next afternoon, they motored back to Georgetown, drove slowly to enjoy each other’s company. At the Bride’s House, Frank helped Pearl from the car, then holding hands, the two climbed the steps and went inside. Although she was used to entering the study without knocking, Pearl tapped on the door nonetheless, and Charlie looked up. “You’re home. I was concerned—” He stopped when he saw Frank standing behind Pearl. Charlie did not rise but sat there, staring at Frank for a long time. “What does this mean?” he asked, although it was clear that he knew.

“Mr. Curry has repaid the loan you made him so long ago, and we were married yesterday.”

“Against my wishes?”

“It was my wish.”

“Mr. Dumas,” Frank started, but Charlie waved him away.

“You did not get my permission,” he told Pearl.

“No, Frank asked only me, as he should have done eighteen years ago.”

“You are leaving, then?”

“That’s up to you,” Pearl told him. Frank and Pearl exchanged a glance, and she continued, “We can live in Chicago where Frank’s business is located, or we can live here with you. But if we do, you must accept that I am married now and that my husband comes first. If I must choose between the two of you in any matter, I will choose my husband.”

Charlie glanced down at the papers strewn across his desk, then looked around the room, his gaze stopping on the portrait of Nealie. He looked at her a long time. He did not speak, but at last he turned to Pearl and nodded.

Pearl went into the kitchen then and returned carrying a tray with three of Nealie’s crystal goblets and a bottle of champagne that Frank had purchased in Denver. Frank opened the champagne, poured it into the glasses, then handed them around.

“Mr. Dumas,” he said, waiting for Charlie to make a toast.

Charlie raised his glass slowly. “To the Bride’s House.” The three of them sipped the champagne.

Then Frank turned to Pearl and lifted his goblet. “To the bride.”

“And the groom,” Pearl added.

Charlie stared at Frank and then at Pearl. And then he drank.

PART III

Susan

CHAPTER 13

S
USAN LOVED THE MOUNTAINS BEST
at their blue time, when twilight touched the valley that lay between the steep peaks, that soft gloom between daylight and the indigo black of a starlit night. In the dusk, the evening was comforting, like one of the Bride’s House’s worn quilts whose fibers had broken down from many washings, and it seemed to welcome her after all the months she had been away.

Bert Joy turned off the highway onto the dirt street in his old Ford truck with the stick shift in the floor. Susan had had to ride all the way from Denver with her legs pushed over to the side to accommodate it, but she was too excited to be aware of the way her back ached from that unnatural position. They drove along the rutted street, Susan listening to the shouts of mothers calling their children home from play: “Jimmm-may! Come and get your supper or I’ll throw it out.” And “Betty ’n’ Billl-eee.” Then there was the shrill sound of a whistle, one mother’s signal for her children to hurry to the table. Mothers in Chicago didn’t summon their little ones that way, at least not in the Curry neighborhood of aging mansions, where Susan lived the rest of the year. A nursemaid collected the younger children for dinner in the nursery or the older ones to dress for dinner with the adults.

The sounds of Georgetown came back to Susan, not just the mothers calling but the trucks gearing down as they climbed toward Silver Plume, the wind in the jackpines, and she thought she could even hear the crashing of Clear Creek. The sounds had been dormant for her since fall, and they, too, seemed to welcome her back. As a child, she had heard those noises as she arrived in Georgetown and knew they meant she had the whole summer ahead of her, a summer to run free, to stay out until dinnertime, exploring the mines and the creeks, the mountains, to collect ore samples and gather wild raspberries and currants, to roam the barn and the secret places of the Bride’s House. She could forget about dancing school and music lessons, about deportment and all the other things she must learn as a young heiress, and be just another Georgetown kid. She loved that more than anything in the world and hoped that although she was eighteen now, she could still run barefoot in the Georgetown streets, still climb to the high meadows and lie in the sun.

“Jo-eee.” The sound came from behind, and without thinking, Susan turned to the truck’s back window, although she knew the woman was not calling
that
Joe. After all, Joe Bullock was twenty, too old for his mother to yell for him at suppertime. Still, Susan looked out the window, stretching her neck so that she could see across lots to Rose Street where Joe lived. Just hearing the name made her glad. Joe Bullock was another of the reasons she loved the summers in Georgetown, maybe the main one. She thought about Joe and squeezed her arms against her sides. It wouldn’t be long until she’d see him.

Bert Joy geared down with a scraping noise and stopped his truck in front of the Bride’s House, honking the horn in a series of taps. Susan’s mother, Pearl, opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the running board, Susan behind her, squirming a little to get out the kinks from being crammed behind the gearshift. She stared at the big white house for a moment, at the two pine trees that rose nearly a hundred feet in front of it, and the lilacs. Even from the truck, she could smell the lilacs.

Although she spent only her summers in Georgetown, Susan loved the house as fiercely as her mother did. When she was a girl, she had dreamed of living there, of being the first bride married in the parlor, of walking down the staircase in a white silk dress, holding on to her father’s arm, a veil covering her face, a white orchid bouquet in her hand. There would be candlelight and the smell of lilacs, a harp playing in the study. And Joe Bullock would be standing in front of the fireplace waiting for her. It had been a little girl’s silly fantasy, inspired no doubt because the place was called the Bride’s House, but now as she stood on the running board of the old truck, Susan thought of it again and knew she had never stopped dreaming of marrying Joe Bullock there.

As she stepped onto the sidewalk, Susan glanced down at her wrinkled skirt, her scuffed saddle shoes, and nearly laughed to think she looked as much like a bride as Bert Joy did in his overalls and motoring cap. She was tall and thin like her mother, but she had failed to inherit her mother’s and grandmother’s red hair and pale blue eyes. Her eyes and hair were a nondescript brown, and she had as many curves as one of the porch posts. Still, although she was not aware of it, Susan had a certain vibrancy, a joy in living, a purpose that was reminiscent of her grandmother Nealie—although except for her grandfather Charlie Dumas, there were few in Georgetown who remembered the hired girl. Those qualities that Susan had inherited from her grandmother were not ones the girl appreciated, however. She would have preferred blond hair and curves. After all, this was 1950, and those were the attributes young women prized.

The door of the house opened, and Charlie Dumas came out onto the porch, walked slowly, because he was very old now and needed a cane. “Papa,” Pearl called, and rushed to him, and the old man put his arms around her, patting her back.

Susan waited, and in a moment, her grandfather gestured to her, and she went up onto the porch and let him hug her. He smelled of cigar smoke and wool, but like the lilacs, those were summer smells, too, and gave Susan a feeling of welcome. “Our miracle baby,” he called her, because it was rare that a woman Pearl’s age could have a child. The pregnancy had both stunned and delighted Pearl and Frank—Charlie, too. It had helped alleviate Charlie’s bitterness over his daughter’s marriage and her move to Chicago.

“It’s about time the two of you got here.” His voice was still firm, and there was a trace of excitement in it. He called to Bert, “That worthless machine of yours break down, did it, Joy? My auto goes faster, even if it is up on blocks.”