Rumors (3 page)

And so Diana knew that as soon as it was appropriate—as soon as Henry’s mourning period for Elizabeth had ended—she would see him everywhere. At the opera and at the subscription balls and at all the little Christmas parties New York could hold. Soon enough, Henry would propose to her, and she already had permission to accept from the only person who mattered.

Then she would be forever free from those sympathetic frowns, as well as from the coarse implication that she should care about something like money. From these prearranged afternoons with the Percival Coddingtons of the world and the depressing eventuality of a long marriage to one of them.
For it was a lovely auxiliary fact that Henry Schoonmaker was not only very handsome and wickedly fun but also quite rich, and that meant that he could make all of this go away. Although she had to suppose that when she was with Henry her life would be so bright and exciting that she wouldn’t find much time for worries or troubles anyway.

T
HE GOLDEN GRASSY FIELD LAY AHEAD, PLAYING
tricks on the eye so that in one moment Elizabeth Holland thought she was nearly there and in the next knew herself to be miles away. She paused and gazed out from under the brim of her hat, which had done little to protect the alabaster complexion she was once known for. The skin of her heart-shaped face, with its subtle features and small round mouth, had turned a shade of brown she had never before seen on a woman, and her ash-blond hair had been streaked almost white by the sun. She looked behind her, in the direction of the little railroad town of San Pedro from whence she had come. It was impossible for her to tell how long she had been walking, or how close she was to home.

Though home was not the word for it. Home, for the entirety of her eighteen years, had been a stately town house on Gramercy Park. Three generations of Hollands had lived there, filling its wood-paneled rooms with all variety of knickknacks and objets d’art, with the soft sounds of polite social
intercourse, with the aroma of tea. It was the house where her father had lived all of his too-short life. Through the high bay windows of their parlor, one could see the enclosed and leafy park populated exclusively with well-dressed people of leisure. Home was very far away now.

But Elizabeth had been brought up a Holland, and she carried some of that with her, even in the wide-open expanse of California. She was wearing the same blue-and-white seersucker dress she’d worn the day she left New York, with its narrow waist and three-quarter sleeves and square collar. The white wasn’t pure white anymore, but even in this far-off place she did her best to keep it clean. She still walked with her spine straight and her shoulders back, and she clasped her hands girlishly as she moved. Elizabeth had followed her heart, and no one ever regrets that. But still she thought of her mother and sister and her aunt Edith, back on Gramercy Park, abandoned to their poverty. For Elizabeth was the one who was supposed to have saved them, by marrying wealthy Henry Schoonmaker, and instead she had simply slipped away.

But not simply—she knew it could not have been simple. She knew very little else about her family’s situation, because her sister, Diana, was a terrible correspondent, and it was much too dangerous for Elizabeth to be nudging her all the time. She had in fact allowed herself only two exchanges with her younger sister, to assure her that she was alive and to give her the address
of the Western Union office in San Pedro. Diana had mentioned, in one of her rare and cryptic letters, that their mother’s health had suffered. Ever mindful of this, Elizabeth walked all the way into town any day she could, although today there had again been no news from New York. Elizabeth had bought the Bakersfield paper instead, just in case there was a reference or two to doings back east, and begun her long walk back.

Before she arrived in California she had heard of only two cities in the far-off state, Los Angeles and San Francisco, both of which Will had spoken of. She had arrived in San Francisco, unsure of herself or how exactly she would find Will, but determined to do so. And then, there he was—waiting for the train as if he’d known she’d be on it. In truth, he told her later, he’d gone to the station every day, hoping that one afternoon he’d see his Lizzy emerging from a black railcar and stepping toward him through the arriving luggage. Soon after, they rode down through the Central Valley. They had passed towns with names like Merced and Modesto and San Joaquin, which looked as dusty as they sounded, with their sad little clapboard main streets and wooden sidewalks. They hadn’t yet gotten as far as Los Angeles.

At first she had missed her home intensely. She had been literally homesick. In New York, Elizabeth had been a girl for whom perfection—of appearance and dress, of etiquette and reputation—had been a kind of habit. She had not let go of
these things easily. But now, after two months in the west, where neither dress nor manners were dictated by elaborate rules, she found herself in an almost dreamlike state. There was the great expanse of blue above her—a pure blue unlike any sky she had ever seen in New York—and the sound of warm wind in the ochre grass that she was marching through, and very little else.

She was still unused to hearing no carriage wheels, no far-off El, no rumblings of the laundresses or kitchen girls somewhere down in the house. As she walked, she held her wide-brimmed straw hat to her head, and focused on two things: the arc of blue, and the scarred yellow hills, undulating up and down as far as she could see. To Elizabeth, the noise her own feet made crunching against grass, scattering dirt and pebbles, was almost orchestral.

Suddenly the sound of horse hooves erupted behind her. There was the earthy smell of a large animal, and the loud pronunciation of her nickname.

“Lizzy!”

Her heart seized, but when she looked up she saw Will, her Will, trotting around her on the old dappled horse that he had bought in Lancaster. When she met his eyes, she saw that he was smiling.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The laughter was clear enough in his voice.

Elizabeth bit her lip, fighting the impulse to laugh with him. It was not lost on her, the irony that a girl who had been able to read any social situation, from its faintest laugh to its shortest pause, was still unable to read the wide-open country. She should have anticipated Will’s approach, and yet she hadn’t. “I was going…home.”

“I was wondering if you weren’t running away from me,” he went on with the same smile, “when I saw you pass about a hundred yards from camp and keep walking, heading west at a determined gait.”

Elizabeth turned around sharply, raising the folded newspaper to her face to keep the sun out of her eyes. She could see it clearly now, over on the bluff, the little makeshift canvas-and-wood cabin that Will had built. It was a ways back now, but perfectly clear.

“You must have moved it!” She looked back at him, shaking her head in mock accusation. “It wasn’t there twenty minutes ago! I’m sure of it.”

She waited for his reply, and it took her a long minute to realize that he wasn’t going to say anything. His pale blue eyes, set far apart in his tanned face, were gazing at her and his thick lips, twisted slightly at their edges, betrayed no sign of movement. He was watching her closely, thinking what, she couldn’t be sure, perhaps marveling at how much she’d changed. Before her father died Will Keller had been his valet, and his
sturdy features had always distinguished him from the Henry Schoonmakers of the world. But as they grew up, Elizabeth had found Will’s good looks surprising, and she considered the pleasant composition of his face her own precious secret.

“You just like me chasing after you, don’t you?” he said finally.

“Yes.” She smiled. He smiled. Then she took a breath and a step in his direction. “Are you going to take me home then?”

“No,” Will answered, swinging his leg over the horse’s broad back and landing on its other side. “I wanted to show you something first.”

He led the horse with one hand and reached for hers with the other, and together they walked north up a rise. She lagged slightly behind, still holding on tight, the top of her head just reaching his broad shoulder.

“I saw this the other day while I was out scouting,” he went on, though in fact Elizabeth needed no explanation. She had followed him across a vast country knowing only vaguely of his plan to seek his fortune out west, and she hardly needed more words to justify climbing to see the view of their rented acreage now. She looked down the gentle slope of the hill and saw a field covered in delicate orange poppies that was as brilliant as any Fifth Avenue chandelier, and clutched his hand tighter.

“So beautiful,” she whispered.

“Isn’t it?”

“There were always so many flowers at home, remember? But nothing like this.”

“That’s because these are wildflowers, and anyway, that’s not home anymore.”

Elizabeth could think of no answer to this, so she simply smiled back. She smiled until he took her face in his hands and kissed her. Then he drew her in, folding her small body into his arms, making her forget that there had ever been any other place.

In New York the time that she had spent with Will, and the affection that they had shown each other, had been secret, stolen from the hours late in the night or early in the morning. Now, in the West, with no one to watch them but the vast sky and the old horse now bending toward the ground, Elizabeth felt drawn to Will with an intensity that was almost frightening. It was a hunger for lost time, she supposed. Already he was hoisting her up, carrying her as he moved toward the horse and opened the saddlebag to remove a piece of canvas.

“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, looking up at her with sincere, watchful eyes. He still called her that even though she’d begged him not to. It was a habit he found difficult to let go of. She was still aloft, her body propped against his arms, her own grasp tight around his neck, and as she waited for him to continue he shook out the piece of rough, off-white cloth and
let it fall behind her on the ground. Then he bent to lay her down on top of it.

“What were you going to say?” she asked as he came down beside her. She pushed herself halfway up, so that she was lying on her side and facing him.

Will reached over and took off her hat, and began to play with her hair thoughtfully. “Just that I’ll build you a real house someday,” he said quietly. “With a room to dine in and a room to receive, and enough vases so you can pick all the poppies you want and put them everywhere.”

“Oh, I know you will!” She bent her head and laughed, and then gave his arm a pull so that he rose over her, his body blocking out the sky. She lay back, feeling the flowers cushioning her head underneath the canvas, her hair fanning out around her, and smiled up at the serious expression that had come over Will’s face. His hair had grown so long that it had to be tucked into the collar of his shirt. The formerly dark color had become almost reddish in the sun. It was as though the city had always been wrong for him, and here, far away, where the land was open, he had arrived at his full strength. He brought his lips to hers with exquisite pressure, and when he drew back again to look at her she couldn’t stop the flush that had come across her cheeks and down her neck.

She felt so pleasantly light and empty, and almost overwhelmed by the events that had brought her to this place.
The silence that followed was strangely long, and at first she wondered if he didn’t have another surprise. But she had been studying Will’s silences for a long time. She knew in a few passing moments that there was something he’d been meaning to tell her.

“It wasn’t just luck that we ended up here,” he said with the steadfast seriousness that had first endeared him to her. He had pulled away from her and pushed himself up to sitting.

“Oh no?” she answered lightly.

“No. I knew about this place already. Your father told me about this place.”

Elizabeth’s breath slowed and she felt a momentary dampness along the lower lids of her eyes. The memory of her father was always confused and strong. He had embodied the familial sensibility, its particular grace, but he had never been any good with money. He had made poor decisions about his inheritance and lived largely in a world of his own. She pushed herself up on her elbow to dismiss the emotion. “But how is that…?”

“Back when I drove him everywhere and we would talk”—Will was saying each word carefully, and his speech was terse, as it always was when he had thought something through several times—“he would tell me about the places he had been. He told me about many places that I might want to
see, but this was the one he told me to find if I wanted to get rich. He described it exactly. He said that it would be—”

“Oh, Will.” Elizabeth felt something like cold in the wind at the bare spot on the back of her neck, just below where her hair rose. “Father said lots of pretty things, but he was a dreamer. You
know
that.”

Will continued looking in the direction of the cabin and didn’t say anything.

“I just don’t want you to hope for something so wild. I was reading in the paper just this morning how difficult it is to find oil, how many men came out from Pennsylvania and fell flat. And those were the ones with experience. They couldn’t compete against the big companies; they’re the only ones who succeed.”

“I’m going to give you just as good a life as the one you gave up.” He turned to look at her and then rested his large hand on the curve at the base of her neck. “It was your father who told me how.”

Elizabeth never wanted to kiss Will so much as at moments like these. “Oh, I don’t need money, Will,” she whispered. Then she moved into his warm body and kissed him again.

Later, when they walked back as wrapped up in each other as was possible while still moving forward, she again felt perfectly content. The contented feeling was so overpowering that for a moment she even stopped wondering if that last thing she’d said, about not needing money, could really be true.