Unfinished (Historical Fiction) (15 page)

My Rocky,

I shall call you Rocky from this point forward, for you cast aspersions – and stones – on my character. Ambitious? Yes. Foolish? No. Unless I am breaking into your father's home to kiss you. Then the label applies. So, Rocky, let me share that while I spend twenty hours a day in the mines now, the bad news is that we've found precious little mineral.

The good news is that I am here at all. My Spanish improves, slowly. I'm told I speak it with an Irish accent. I suppose you can take the boy out of Boston but not the Boston Irish out of the boy. I wish you could see what I see (not the mines, but rather the country). Chile is as foreign to me as is your world on Beacon Hill, but far lovelier. Less restrictive. My worry here is to succeed. All else, except for you, pales.

Your love,

James

“I can't believe you let him go, Lilith!” Esther carried yet another Mexican rat dog, this one a female wearing a pink sweater made of taffeta and some sort of silk. It looked as if a small child had vomited peppermint sticks all over the poor beast.

“I couldn't very well wrestle him to the ground and pin him down, Esther. He's the size of a tree!”

“Oh, I'm certain you could fell Goliath with one stone!” Esther made a teasing face and Lilith groaned.

“You've missed your calling, Esther. You should write for Punch.” Lilith's blush across her face belied her dry manner.

Esther gave the idea some thought, then shook her head. “They don't pay enough.” She wagged a playful finger at Lilith and continued.

“No need for blushes, Lilith. We're not in polite company, and I know what you did two months ago.” Esther glanced nervously at Lilith's belly. “You're certain you're not...”

“Oh, heavens, no!” Truth be told, Lilith hadn't considered pregnancy during her night with James. The pure pleasure of connection overrode all. While a child would complicate matters, she'd been a tad saddened when her monthly cycle began on time.

Just a tad.

“Thank goodness, then. It is one thing to be the woman who facilitated your tryst. It would be quite another to be the woman who facilitated your social destruction.”

“I can destroy myself socially just fine, without your help, Esther.”

Her friend made a face and re-read parts of James' letter. “Yes. I think you can.” Soulful eyes met Lilith's as she sipped a cup of chamomile tea. “And I think you should. He's the one for you, Lilith, if ever a man existed.”

Lilith laughed, a loose, mature sound that seemed to catch Esther off guard. “He exists and is fighting his own battles in the fields of Chile and Peru.”

“Saltpeter? Really, Lilith? Could he not have ambitions in a nicer field, like steel or banking? One that does not require an excursion worthy of Darwin's travels on
The Beagle
?”

“He is not going to Patagonia, for goodness sake!”

“He might as well be. He might as well seek out penguins to bring home to dance a jig before your father on Boston Common.” Esther paused and cocked her head.. “Now that is a scene I should like to witness.”

Lilith's chuckle was without mirth. “James wants too much. He demands too much of himself.”

“Then, indeed, he really is your match.”

Writing the telegram was proving more difficult than he had imagined. How do you propose from thousands of miles away, via an inadequate gathering of a handful of words transmitted through electric lines and machines?

Not the romantic gesture he'd dreamed of for nearly a year. But it would have to do.

He knew Lilith was closing in on her inheritance. Soon she would turn 25 and the millions would fall under her control. Impressing her was the least of his concerns, but impressing her father was another trick altogether.

No one would ever claim he married her for her money. Not when his fortune now surpassed hers. She would never doubt him again, never wonder if he used her for money, never hold a shred of suspicion of concern. The old gossips could choke on their own words, for Lilith and James would be free to marry and have children, creating a happy home in which he -- not John Stone -- determined the course of Lilith's life. His own, self-made fortune might not buy him happiness, but money certainly paid for a massive level of freedom.

And, hopefully, it would surpass that of John Stone one day.

Whoa there, boy
. Don't get too cocky. The difference between millions and a billion might as well be the difference between a man's single step and a rocket ship to the moon.

Proposing to Lilith made it all worthwhile. He jotted down two sentences and handed the slip to the telegraph operator. "
No leo Ingles
." Damn! He didn't read English. The clerk stood and motioned for James to follow him. A simple wave and point to a new clerk sufficed. James handed the note to the new clerk, who read it and smiled.

"Congratulations!" he said in strongly accented English.

"Not yet! She hasn't accepted." Both laughed, then the clerk sat and tapped out James' heart desire as two pieces of metal conveyed his soul's work.

Please say yes
. Those words weren't in his message but he hoped she could read between the lines. Hoped she understood his exhaustion, his ambition, his untethered desire and his need for her. Letters helped, but nothing filled the Lilith-shaped hole in him. She was the final piece of his life's puzzle, and without her no whole would ever be quite right.

Let me love you enough.

And love me back.

My Dearest Rocky,

It is time to send for you, my dear, and for all my silly promises to come to truth. My work here has been hard. Much harder than anticipated. My men have dug more dirt than any man should have to, and moved more machines than ten locomotives, but at last we have done it. I have the mineral rights here and we tapped into a large saltpeter vein, so large that we will change the future of the market even as far as where the King of Siam lives, or where Captain Scott makes his journeys.

Rocky, it's true this time. I've made my fortune, and it's time for you to come and join me. I've secured a ticket for you on a steamer that will bring you into the port here. Please send telegram to confirm.

All my love,

James

No amount of re-reading made the words change. Lilith couldn't believe it. He'd done it. By God, he'd really done it. Like some sad story out of the racing papers, conjured up as pabulum for the masses to read and delude themselves, James' story read like a cheap serial. The poor boy from Southie had slept his way to capital investment, gone off to South America, and now he was worth millions.

Her Southie boy.

Marry him for his money? Deep-throated laughter burst from her, the sound incongruously strong and jolly, coming from a bony, slight-framed woman standing in the hallway of a Beacon Hill home. Servants trickled in as Lilith whooped with laughter, the sound increasingly joyful and hysterical, a balance both comforting and alarming for those witnessing the Miss in rare form.

Happy.

Skipping -- skipping! -- down the marble-lined hall, Lilith flitted into her father's office, nearly taunting him with the tan sheet that gave her freedom from his control. Her trust was all she'd had until now. James gave her more.

John Stone sat behind his desk, looking up only to pinpoint the source of the commotion. Lilith's eyes lighted on his with great satisfaction. These were words she never thought she would utter before her father:

"I am getting married." She spoke slowly, with great deliberation, careful to make certain he heard her the first time, savoring the impact she knew her words would have.

His eyes widened and brow lifted. "Married?"

"Yes."

"To whom?"

His composure unsettled her; surely an announcement that his spinster daughter would finally wed deserved more? "James Hillman."

He jumped to his feet. "Oh, surely you joke, Lilith!" A desperation in his eyes gave her what she sought.

Control.

"I am laughing, but I assure you this is no joke." She waved the telegram before him, letting it settle on a stack of papers he'd just been signing. "His proposal."

Stone read the message quickly, then shook his head. "Hillman and his crazy ideas. What was Escola thinking, funding his mining expedition?"

"Likely thinking -- now -- that he made one hell of an investment."

Her father frowned at the profanity, pursing his lips in distaste. "You would marry a clerk, of all people, and forfeit your trust?"

The denouement. "Yes. The money can revert back to the government of Canada for all I care. James has made his mark. He does not need my money. I leave for Chile tomorrow."

"To the government!" Ah, there was the emotion she'd expected sooner. Of course he reserved it for money. Not her.

Laughter from Lilith was his only answer as she scampered down the hall, rushing off to the telegram office to accept James' proposal. She was halfway down the first block when she realized she'd left the telegram, and James' return address, in her father's office. A quick reversal and she found her way up the steps and down the hall, passing several maids and kitchen girls with heads together, whispering feverishly.

Jack Reed stood next to her father, bent over and reading the telegram.

“Jack! When did you return?” Chortling, she reached for the paper. "I'll have that, thank you," she said, snatching it from her father's hand. The two men exchanged a glance she didn't understand, followed by a more perplexing nod from Stone to Reed.

“Good to see you, too, Lilith,” Reed answered in measured tones.

“Oh, I never said it was good to see you, Jack,” she chided. “I was just noting that father must have something really evil cooked up if he's hired you back.”

“Lilith,” her father growled, the thin membrane that held his temper at bay as fragile as a spider web. Irritating him amused her, yet he refused to look her in the eye.

"Enjoy your meeting, gentlemen. And you, Mr. Reed -- no need to bill my father any longer for your research into disinheriting me." Giggles of pure joy tapered off as she ran out into the bright sunshine, headed toward her future, to be tapped out in Morse Code.

"
Señor! Señor!
" Marcos screamed up to James' window, the sun shining in thin rays through tattered curtains. He groaned and reached for his watch, a luxury he'd indulged in when the first payment had arrived. It read 7:39 a.m.

"What?" he shouted back.

"
Telegrafo!
"

James leaped to his feet. Three days of agony. Three days of waiting and guessing and yearning and hoping, assuming and pining and cursing.

Now it would all end, and the hope and joy that coursed through his veins made the actual slip of paper an afterthought.