A Dream of Daring (7 page)

By the time he turned
twenty-three, the inventor had all but forgotten his rural life and friends in
Greenbriar. That was when his father wrote to tell him that their neighbor,
Rachel Barnwell, now a young lady of eighteen, was coming to Philadelphia to
attend a finishing school. Her parents had agreed to send their daughter for
formal instruction on the social graces and cultural subjects in preparation
for her future role as a plantation mistress. When Rachel arrived, Tom served
as her escort, showing her the town and helping her get settled. To his
surprise, the freckled child with the bouncy curls had blossomed into a
beautiful young woman. What had begun as a childhood friendship became a
romance.

The breathless year
following Rachel’s arrival was the happiest of his life. He began his days
before dawn, laboring on his new engine and then working at his regular job.
His evenings ended in the intoxicating world of Rachel and her newfound
passion—the theater. Almost immediately, the red-haired beauty discovered the
Philadelphia theater, and it discovered her.

Rachel auditioned and
soon received her first roles. She endured tedious rehearsals, abrasive
directors, and bit parts—all the indignities of the struggling artist. But she
cheerfully prevailed, embellishing her talent with acting instruction,
treasuring every role, proudly performing as if her character were the most
important person in the world.

She told Tom that when
she was acting, she felt more excitement than she ever had. “When I sang to the
neighbors as a child, I never dreamed I could perform for an actual audience
and feel such a thrill. I never dreamed I could be
onstage
!” She spoke
as if she had discovered a cathedral and was blessed to stand on its sacred
ground.

Rachel’s vitality onstage
was palpable to Tom. She was more exciting than any woman he had ever known.
Her trials reminded him of his own passionate struggle—of the failed attempts
at creating his new motor, the skepticism of critics, the scarcity of
encouragement, the continuous push forward fueled only by his belief in himself
and stubborn conviction that his idea would work. In Rachel he thought he saw a
mirror of his own essence.

After her initial success
at keeping her theater life hidden from school authorities, they discovered her
secret and wrote to her parents of her shocking behavior. She tried to explain
her newfound passion to them, but the innocence and joy with which she embraced
the theater were not understood by her family. They considered theaters uncouth
and actresses little more than prostitutes. By the code of conduct of
Greenbriar, theaters were no place for the daughter of a senator and major
planter.

Nevertheless, Rachel
seemed undeterred, and Tom admired her pluck. Women were expected to be
delicate, demure, and dependent first on a father, then on a husband, for their
support. But in her pursuit of the theater, Rachel was the opposite—bold,
daring, and strong-willed. She left school to throw herself into acting, and
Tom saw her as a free spirit, breaking the mold that society had cast for her.
He felt that she was buoyed by the same restlessness of the new age that lifted
him, the sultry breeze that swept them off together toward love and adventure.

The Southern beauty cast
off the conventional bonds of her upbringing not only for the lure of the
theater but also for the passion of his arms. He’d watch her perform, and then
they’d meet later for heady nights of laughter and love. To Tom, Rachel was a
lily in full bloom whose fragrance permeated his existence.

But then something
happened to blow the petals away. Charlotte Barnwell contracted a sudden
illness when she learned that Rachel had decided to stay in Philadelphia to
work in the theater. Rachel made what was supposed to be a brief trip home to
be at her mother’s side. But the recovery was long and the illness was vague,
and Rachel never did return to Philadelphia. Tom was crushed.

His own busy life healed
him. Yet he was left with a question that seemed unanswerable: Why? Why would
Rachel abandon a life she loved, a city she loved . . . and
him?

She wrote to him about
how happy she had become at home and beseeched him to return too. Her parents
had greeted her homecoming with extravagant gifts. They designated the services
of one of the plantation’s seamstresses as exclusively for her, and they set
aside a room at Ruby Manor just to house her expanding wardrobe. They also
provided trips to New Orleans for jewelry, perfumes, and imported fabrics, as
well as an apparently limitless allowance to keep her happy. Rachel described
in glowing terms the parties her parents had thrown for her, lavishing her with
attention fit for a princess. She seemed to fall into the gaiety of being a
Southern belle. She wrote of how terribly she missed him, but she wanted him to
give up the opportunities that Philadelphia offered in order to live in
Greenbriar with her. After a while, he stopped answering her letters.

Less than a year after
Rachel had gone back to Greenbriar, Tom unexpectedly returned home also. The
reason wasn’t Rachel’s entreaties but the death of his father and the need for
him to take control of the family plantation and bank.

He found a subdued Rachel
back in Greenbriar. In Philadelphia, she had sung exhilarating songs that
stirred him. In Greenbriar, her taste had switched to quieter ballads that
lacked the fire of her previous preferences. Her headlong lust for him had
taken a cautionary step back also, so that she could discern his intentions
before bestowing too many of her favors. He found her belated propriety to be a
form of pressure on him to commit to something about which he now had growing
misgivings.

She seemed to want more
of his attention at a time when she was provoking more of his doubts. In Philadelphia,
she never had reason to question his love for her, but now she had. In
Philadelphia, she never viewed his invention as competing with her for his
time, but now she did. In Philadelphia, he never doubted that she was the kind
of woman who excited him, but now. . . . Something had
happened to the prized flower that blossomed that year in Philadelphia. Was
Rachel’s spirit like the roses of Ruby Manor, with deep roots and perennial
blooms, or was it more like the passing flowers that show their brilliance in
one glorious summer, then perish in the autumn wind?

As he stood with Rachel
in the parlor of Ruby Manor, he noted the one vestige of her former spunk: the
alluring dresses that displayed her beautiful figure and tortured him with
desire. He stroked such a dress now, feeling the pleasing curves of the body
beneath it. He held her close, and for one thrilling moment, he felt as if they
were back in Philadelphia. The tragic events of the past day seemed to
intensify his desire to recapture their former joy.

Rachel lifted her head
from their embrace and looked up at him. “You won’t be going away now, will
you? I mean, the invention . . . it’s over, isn’t it?”

He looked at her,
dumbfounded. Was she in a state of shock and not thinking clearly?

“You won’t be fixing to
find that machine now, after all that’s happened, will you?”

“I will.”

She pushed away from him.
“But hasn’t it caused enough trouble already?”

His head dropped at the
stinging remark.

“I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t
mean—”

“It’s okay.” He told
himself that she had a right to resent his invention—and him—after what had
happened.

“I only meant that now,
more than ever, I need you here with me and not roaming around the country.”
Her eyes flashed with a sudden idea. “Why, with Papa gone, there are new
opportunities for you right here, Tom.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You can go into
politics
.”

Tom raised his eyebrows,
repulsed by the prospect.

“Papa always said that to
get what you want in life, you need to be well connected. I mean, it would be
so wonderful, Tom, if you took Papa’s senate seat!”

The thought left him
speechless. He wanted to dispel her crazy notions immediately, because he had
no intention of entering politics. But surely now was not the time to discuss
his
future—or his astonishment at how little she seemed to understand of it.

“Why don’t you think
about it?” she said to his unsmiling face.

Her voluminous hoop skirt
brushed against the furniture as she walked around the parlor. The room had the
static neatness of a painting, with every item in place, rather than a living
space for active people who moved a chair, opened a book, tossed a hat on the
sofa, or otherwise left their mark.

“It’s lonely here.”
Rachel sounded pleading, as if Tom were to provide a solution. She paused to
stare dreamily through the glass doors of a cabinet that held family mementos.
“Aunt Polly’s gone. And now Papa’s gone.” She pointed to pictures of them in
the cabinet. Her eyes dropped to the bottom shelf, where a tattered old doll
was perched in the corner. “My doll Sis was just a fantasy.” She looked at him
sadly. “And now, with you busy all the time with those projects you make for
yourself—”

“In Philadelphia
you
were
busy too. Remember how I used to wait for you to finish your classes and
rehearsals and performances before you found time to look at me?”

She smiled at the memory.

His eyes brightened with
a sudden thought. “Say, let’s start a theater here! You and me. I’ll invest in
it, and you can run it—and star in it. I’ll bet you won’t be lonely then!”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t.”

“When you were
performing, you weren’t lonely. The theater made you glow, Rachel.”

She gazed out the window,
reminiscing. “I don’t know where I got the energy I had then. Why, I was
downright delirious. You can’t stay feverish like that for long. You have to
come back down to earth.”

“Why is earth a place
where you’re bored?”

“
Philadelphia
.”
She pronounced the word affectionately. “My life there seems so distant now,
like a dream.”

“You were happy then.
We
were happy.”

She nodded wistfully.

“Then you went home and
somehow things changed. Why didn’t you come back?”

“At first, I intended to.
I was angry with Mother when she said she would have Papa cut off my money if I
continued in the theater—”

“What? You never told me
you were threatened.”

“I was
not
threatened,” she said indignantly. “They were trying to help me.”

“You could’ve come back
to me. I would’ve helped you get by.”

“I didn’t want to just
get by. Life in the theater was so . . . grueling. No
sooner did I get back home then my friend Margie Gainsworth read me an article
about how actors got nervous conditions and ruined their digestion after years
of those horrid auditions with all the rude directors. Then if you get the
part, there are the nasty critics. The struggle and grind of it all, well, my
goodness, it changed the actors. They weren’t themselves anymore. They were ill
and . . . unhappy. And Lord knows, the odds they’d ever get
the leading roles they wanted were unbelievably slim.” She sighed. “As I
listened to Margie reading, I thought that being an actor was like climbing a
mountain . . . barefoot.” She gazed out the window
introspectively. “I was afraid I’d slip and fall. After all, what was so
special about
me
? Golly, Tom, there were so many other actors to compete
with.”

“But you were good,
really
good
. It’s no disgrace to slip and fall, but you stood out from the
crowd. I think you would’ve reached the top.”

“But I
have
reached the top. I’m a star
right here
!” He wondered if the forced
cheerfulness in her voice was to convince him—or herself. “I still sing. I just
performed at the Harringtons’ barbecue.”

He listened, confused.
His mind wandered to the day that the talented figure before him had performed
patriotic songs in a public square at an Independence Day gathering of
thousands, with her soaring voice and magnetic presence moving many to tears.

“And I also sang at Mrs.
Kipling’s pumpkin-pie contest.”

He had no reply.

“You don’t understand,
Tom. When I came back, the people in Greenbriar gossiped about me, with their
nasty tongues wagging all the time. I couldn’t stand it!”

“Maybe they were jealous
of you.”

“That shriveled old witch
Mrs. Garner whispered about the
senator’s daughter
living wild and loose
in Philadelphia. And Mrs. Jeffreys asked me to please assure her that what
she’d heard about me wasn’t true. I had such a fright!” Rachel lowered her
voice to a whisper. “I thought she had found out about
us
!”

“Just how would that be
her business?”

“Turns out, that wasn’t
it. She said she’d heard that I joined a
theater
. That was worse than an
affair. She made it sound as if I’d joined a brothel. You see, the folks here
have a different view of things than we did.”

“A very close-minded
view.”

“Now, Tom!”

“We don’t have to walk
down the same dusty old roads people walked in the past. The world is changing,
Rachel.”

“Not here it isn’t.”

He stared at her
silently, at a loss to find the magic words that would make her the person she
used to be.

“So I left the theater.”
She glared at him. “Tell me, Tom, what’s so wrong with that?”

“By all means, leave it.
But not out of
fear
.”

“You make it sound as if
I committed treason.”

“Only to yourself. I
mean, you shouldn’t betray yourself.”

“I was causing Mother to
fall ill, and I was an outright embarrassment to Papa in the senate. And what
was I doing to
myself
? My friend Abby, bless her heart for trying to
help me . . . well . . . she told me
terrible stories about what happened to a woman she knew in the theater in New
Orleans. Her parents downright cut her off for her wayward life. Then crooked
managers robbed her and fickle audiences deserted her for a newer star. She was
pushed out to walk the streets, penniless.” Her eyes looked dark and troubled.
“It was a steep climb and a hard fall. So you see, when my parents offered me
anything I wanted to stay in Greenbriar, I realized it was for the best.”