Summer of Dreams (9 page)

Romulus was still asleep, and she tried to be silent as she straightened her blouse and smoothed it back into her skirt. Clyde was awake, swigging from a carafe of cold coffee. She couldn’t help but smile at the way he didn’t even wince as he swallowed what surely must be a truly awful mouthful of coffee. He’d probably endured far worse during his training at West Point, but she loved the way he never complained. He simply rolled up his sleeves and tackled the chore at hand with good humor.

She’d bring him back a nice, steaming pot of coffee after she sent Aunt Bess the telegram. She was about to leave the room
when a terrible thought struck. Romulus was heading into his final weeks of college, but so was Clyde. She leaned in, whispering so as not to awaken Romulus.

“Don’t you have class on Monday?”

Clyde glanced away as he set down the flask of cold coffee. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Won’t you get penalized? Another round of demerits?”

“Maybe, but I can work them off, you know I can.”

She also knew it was hard to work off demerits once they’d been accumulated, but Clyde was an intelligent man and wouldn’t be careless with his entire academic career. “Do you want me to send a telegram on your behalf to campus? Alert them ahead of time?”

Clyde flashed her a quick smile. “It will be easier to apologize afterward, rather than let them know of an infraction in progress. I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure, then . . .”

She let the sentence dangle, but all he did was smile. Romulus was starting to groan and awaken, and the sooner she could be out of the room, the faster they could get some coffee into him and get back to work.

She sent the telegram to Aunt Bess from the local pharmacy. On her way back to Stoughton Hall, she stopped for coffee and a copy of the
Harvard Crimson
, the student-run newspaper that was produced every day. There wasn’t much for her to do while Clyde tutored Romulus, but over the coming days, she eagerly read each issue of the
Crimson
. She almost felt as if she was part of the college as she read gossip about various professors, the results of intramural athletic teams, and even complaints about food served in the meal hall.

A few times, Romulus lost hope. “I’ll never get there,” he muttered on Tuesday morning after Clyde had graded a sampling of trigonometry equations. He’d scored an eighty-one
percent on the test and was going to need at least a ninety-seven percent to pass the class.

“Nonsense,” Clyde said. “You just need a little more exposure to my brilliant tutoring.”

And as she watched Clyde patiently tutor her cousin, Evelyn understood the meaning of real love. Love wasn’t the dizzying rush she felt when she saw Clyde standing proud and handsome in his dress uniform. It wasn’t the thrill she felt when he kissed her, or the way he could make her explode in laughter at his jokes.

Real love was far more humble. It was hours spent together, drinking lukewarm coffee, tutoring a friend, and laughing over the silly comics in the daily newspaper. It was sharing aspirations for the future while working the mundane, workaday tasks required to make those dreams come true.

And she was grateful she’d had the wisdom to realize it before Clyde graduated and was lost to her forever. She had been selfish and narrow-minded when she’d insisted she would only settle for a man who could provide her with the comforts of a settled home. Perhaps it would be years before Clyde could do that for her, but she was no delicate flower powerless to adapt and bend. Clyde was a man whose honor and ambition was going to serve them both well, and if he asked her to marry him, she was going to do so, joyously.

Clyde had known there would be consequences for what he’d done. He just hadn’t expected them to arrive the moment he stepped off the train in West Point.

He and Evelyn had caught the last train back to West Point on Wednesday evening. Clyde was so tired and bleary-eyed from four straight days of staring at trigonometry equations that he’d let Evelyn read the train schedule to get them both home. Romulus would take the final exam on Thursday at noon.
Maybe he would pass, maybe not, but either way, Romulus had a fighting chance of graduating on time.

On the ride home, Clyde held Evelyn’s hand as she said a prayer for Romulus to face the next day’s test with honor and courage. Her voice was soft but confident as she spoke the prayer, and he was once again awed by her combination of gifts. Evelyn was the embodiment of faith and gentle compassion, but it hid a core of steel. She never raised her voice or lost her poise, she simply accomplished the task, whether it was building a habitat suitable for hummingbirds or helping prop up Romulus to face a difficult class.

He squeezed her hand harder and added a silent prayer for himself. Missing three days of classes was going to result in a steep penalty, but he had earned a lot of goodwill on campus over the past academic year. He hadn’t earned a single demerit and had worked off scores more. It was almost a month before graduation, and he would do whatever was necessary to repair the damage this trip would cost him.

He and Evelyn both jostled forward as the brakes began slowing the train as they approached the station. Faces of people awaiting the train’s arrival slid past the window as they drew near. Both he and Evelyn were jerked back into their seats at the final jarring stop. Steam hissed as gears clanged and the pressure valves released.

He stood, muscles stiff after the long train ride. “Shall we?” he asked. As difficult as these past few days had been, they were a memory he’d never forget. It was the hardest things in life he was most proud of having accomplished, and he was proud of how he’d stood by Romulus.

“There’s my Aunt Bess,” Evelyn said as she peered out the window.

His mouth went dry as he saw the stern-faced men standing beside her. One was the commandant of cadets, the officer
responsible for student conduct at West Point. And Clyde had just absconded with General White’s daughter for a four-day jaunt to Boston.

The railway car was crowded as passengers stood to disembark, and Clyde was momentarily tempted to stay on the train and simply keep traveling to the next town.

But there was no escape, and he knew it. He stood, making way for Evelyn to step into the aisle ahead of him.

“This doesn’t look good,” Evelyn said as they inched their way toward the exit door, but he was too nervous to respond. His heart thumped and he could barely breathe, but he tugged his uniform straight and held his head high. This was going to be bad, but he’d face it with dignity.

The stench of coal steam hung in the air as he stepped onto the platform. The commandant stepped forward. Two members of the military police were with him.

“Cadet Brixton, you are charged with being absent without leave and conduct unbecoming a cadet. It will be categorically impossible to expunge this conduct prior to graduation. You will be escorted to campus, where you will be restricted to your room and be held pending the disciplinary hearing.”

It felt like he’d just been kicked in the gut, but he couldn’t let it show. Evelyn was watching. He schooled his face into a calm mask and sent her a quick, reassuring gaze, the best he could muster. Her face was pale, hands twisting as she watched the two military police step into position on either side of him. At least he was spared the humiliation of handcuffs.

“It’s going to be all right, Evelyn.”

But it wasn’t. The commandant of cadets had just told him he was going to be expelled. The only thing left to be determined was what additional penalties, or even imprisonment, he would face.

As much as he loved Evelyn, that dream was probably over,
and all he could see on the ride back to campus was the image of his mother’s hands, cracked and careworn from years of laundry. There would be no quick end to his mother’s problem, or for Evelyn either. He needed to find a way to salvage this, but he didn’t have the first idea of how to do it.

Evelyn watched in disbelief as Clyde marched between the two officers to an awaiting carriage, torn between fear and outrage. How could Clyde have misled her so? She’d known he had a few demerits for the pranks he’d racked up in his early years, but she’d never imagined he was this close to expulsion.

She whirled on her aunt. “Did you do this?” she demanded.

“
He
did this,” Bess replied. “I don’t know what insane notion prompted you to go traipsing off to Romulus, but Clyde Brixton has responsibilities here and had no business accompanying you.”

Evelyn closed her eyes. How foolish she had been to accept his careless assurances that all would be well. Clyde had always been reckless. She should have known he might minimize the potential for trouble.

Her aunt’s hand encircled her elbow and propelled her toward the waiting wagon, but there was a telegraph window there in the train station, and Evelyn intended to contact her father immediately.

“I need to post a telegram,” she told Bess, pulling her arm away.

“I think you’ve had quite enough fun and excitement for now. You are going nowhere but home.”

She knew Aunt Bess referred to the white clapboard farmhouse on the outskirts of town, but Evelyn was not going to cooperate.

“I have no home,” she said quietly, but in a voice vibrating with conviction. “I have lived in houses and on trundle beds
and in guest bedrooms, but the closest I’ve ever come to a real home is wherever Romulus White is. And after this past year, I consider Clyde Brixton in the same category. I won’t abandon either of them in their hour of need, and right now I intend to contact my father for help. I hope you will wait for me to post that telegram, but if not, I am nineteen years old and of age to declare my own independence. Please don’t require me to do so.”

Aunt Bess backed down.

Evelyn was still shaking with anxiety as she waited in line to post the telegram to her father. She wasn’t quite sure what to say—the situation was far too complex to boil down to a few lines in a telegram—so she would simply have to plead for him to return home as soon as possible. He was currently posted in New York City, only a few hours away by train. Clyde was in over his head, and if she had to beg and plead with her father to intervene, she would not let pride stand in her way.

To her amazement, her father arrived at Aunt Bess’s house early the next morning. Although he usually arrived in town with the acclamation reserved for conquering generals returning to Rome, he pulled up to the farmhouse in a rented carriage and wearing civilian clothes. Instead of his typically fierce expression, his eyes were clouded with concern.

“What’s going on?” he asked the moment she opened the door. “Are you all right?”

The concern on his face caught her by surprise. She was usually so intimidated by her father that his concern undercut every one of her defenses, and her eyes flooded with tears. She lifted her chin to prevent them from spilling down her cheeks.

“Clyde is in trouble,” she whispered.

Her father tugged her outside and onto the wooden porch, closing the door on Aunt Bess’s inquiring face.

“Tell me,” he said once they were both seated on the bench.

She told him everything, including what Romulus had done to ruin his academic career. There was no way for her father to understand why Clyde had been so desperate to help Romulus without that insight.