O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [76]
It pulled to a siding to give right-of-way to a freight train filled with late spring crops to be rushed to market.
“How long will we be held up?” Horace inquired of the train master.
“Could be a half hour or more, sir.”
Excellent, Horace thought. At last, the opportunity to see Amanda. He went to her car, knocked, and entered her compartment. Amanda’s feet were tucked under her, her face close to the page of a book.
“Father,” she said, smiling.
“At last,” he said. “This move simply wears me out.”
He took a seat as Amanda marked and closed her book. “How did old Lochinvar do?” she asked.
“Quite well, actually. We sailed her down to Hampton Roads. I wanted to run her through the rip at Cape Henry. The Butterfly shows signs of promise but is going to need a lot of fine tuning at Newport. To hell with Lochinvar. What about Richmond?”
“Everything went as well as I wished,” she said.
Horace wondered if this beautiful girl of his was playing cagey with him. Amanda had obviously worked a lot of things out. What were they?
“And you and Glen?”
“We enhanced our friendship. I was there for almost two weeks, you know.”
“Did you find Glen amusing?”
“He was good company. Glen is gentle, kind, and sophisticated.”
“The family?”
“Manageable, bearable.”
“The Constables are rather traditional. So one might conclude that things are going along warmly between you and Glen?”
Oh, put the man out of his misery, Amanda. “There is no raw, savage lust, Father. Everything is decently in bounds, but I was very, very taken by his daughter, Dixie Jane. She’s ten years old and an exciting little girl.”
Phew! That’s a way to Amanda’s heart.
“I have invited Dixie Jane to Tobermory for half of July and August. Her mother and Mom approve.”
“And I approve as well.”
“Thank you, Father. Glen will try to get up on weekends.”
“Well then . . .”
“Please do not rush things,” she warned.
Amanda untied her file and took out a number of letters and papers. “I’d like you to sign off on these,” she said.
He flipped through them and frowned. “Four thousand eight hundred and forty dollars for five tutors during the month of August! Who in the hell did you hire—Socrates?”
“It’s Dixie Jane. She is frightfully behind on her education. She can scarcely read and write, to say nothing of the fact that she has no idea who fought the Battle of Hastings, when and why it was fought, and less idea of how to find New Zealand on a map.”
“Well, it seems there’s no end to your generosity on my behalf.”
“Some of those bills are advances on my own tutoring at Inverness this winter.”
“What is this here? Greek?”
“Ancient Greek.”
“You are a connoisseur of art and classical music. You know Shakespeare better than most actors. Why the hell do you have to know about the Battle of Hastings, much less ancient Greek?”
“I wish to learn what is taught at Harvard.”
“I would be very happy to see you go to Wellesley if you so insist. There are women’s institutions, colleges of sorts, popping up. Reasonable tuition, fine room and board.”
“Boston is too far away, Father. Besides, those girls are so nasal. They look down on Baltimore as though we were a colony.”
“I can’t buy your argument, Amanda. What about Brown University? They are starting women’s classes and it’s only a stone’s throw from Newport.”
“The girls at Brown are quarantined in separate classrooms like rats with the plague.”
“Then Goucher! It’s right in Baltimore and it is a Methodist school.”
The thin list died out.
Horace Kerr was about to cop a poverty plea when a strange sensation arrived. Tragic, but every so often a woman arises from the ashes like a phoenix, a woman of extraordinary intelligence and courage, beyond the scope of a normal woman. What was she to do?
He stared from the window to fields of beets and a beehive of black stoop labor attending them. Matthew Fancy had arisen from the ashes. To what avail?
The sensation would not leave him. Remembering Matthew got