Leon Uris (26 page)

Dearest Amanda,

I am sorry I was only able to get that short note to you, but a rapid fire of events overtook me.

I am settling in Newport at the Naval War College. It is a dream assignment and a great privilege to work under Major Boone.

The manner of our parting at Inverness has left me empty. I was able to bear it because I thought I would soon be aboard ship. Life does not seem to work at its fullest without you. Now that you will be in Newport soon and I will be within touch of the golden silk threads of your hair, I am overcome with joy.

I have never thought strongly about miracles, but surely some mysterious force is bringing us together for a resolution of our feelings.

My duty hours are quite flexible. Please let me hear from you. Tell me what your pleasure is.

With most affectionate regards,

Zachary

The special train was hitched up for its yearly run to Butcher’s Hill, to the siding in Inverness, where it was loaded for the annual trip to the Kerr family compound of Tobermory in Newport, Rhode Island.

Horace made it back from Dutchman’s Hook the evening before departure after seeing his brothers sailing off on the
Lochinvar.

He didn’t know if good news or bad news would be coming back with Amanda from her visit to Constable’s horse farm near Richmond. At breakfast she gave her father a wink and thumbs-up. All smiles, Horace said he’d catch up with her.

The train was nearly loaded, preened for her departure.

The first car carried senior household staff for the “big house” at Tobermory and several executives and their families from Dutchman’s Hook to activate the summer business office in Newport.

The second car was an armored number that hauled some of the valuables of Inverness with Pinkertons to guard it. A Rembrandt and a da Vinci led a collection of paintings to be rehung in the Tobermory salon. A safe held family jewelry, heirlooms, and several cases of contracts and business documents. There was a smattering of ancient vases, Greek statuary, Beauvais tapestries, and the like.

The third car was an opulent affair commissioned by Horace from the Pullman Company, containing his parlor, office, and bedroom. The next, a car of compartments for the family, including Emily’s retinue. There were extra seats for whatever leftover cousins had been swept up.

Next in line, a freight car carried their favorite saddle and carriage horses, in comfy padded stalls, with space for the handlers and tack.

This yearly maneuver took place before the summer’s heat smothered Inverness. The staff made the transition like flawless stagehands changing a set. The second butler and assistant house
keeper had already been dispatched to Newport to make certain that the big house at Tobermory was tuned to perfection.

The shift, this season, was particularly heavy for an extended stay of family. In a weak moment Horace agreed to a full clan gathering for Thanksgiving, with some coming from the old country.

Time dragged as Daisy inspected each car and gave an all clear to the engineer, then plopped in the parlor as Horace checked his pocket watch.

The whistle!

The train pulled out of Inverness, bang on time, cleared the industrial area, and was soon in the Maryland countryside. By late afternoon, it skirted Wilmington and transferred to the Jersey Shore Line Railroad, “the fruit and vegetable express.”

Horace cleared his desk of papers, which were bundled up by his executive manager and lawyer. Hugging close to the seaside, the train traversed endless vegetable farms and fruit orchards.

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 him thinking about the other time an epiphany had overcome him and he had freed his slaves nearly three decades earlier.

He took his daughter’s hands and held them. She was surprised because they rarely touched.

“What if I underwrote an Amanda Blanton Kerr women’s college?”

“Father,” she whispered, trying to gain her equilibrium. “Oh,
my dear God,” she said. Don’t get flooded with ideas, she told herself . . . but . . . girls learning medicine and science . . . girls learning whatever there was to learn!

“I can hardly speak,” she said.

“Frankly, I don’t like some of your strange friends and stranger ideas. You must carry it off with dignity for our family honor. I don’t want a women’s school in a constant state of anger. It is an advanced idea, but maybe its time has come.”

Amanda studied Horace Kerr curiously. Now calm, she said, “It is a powerful offer. Are we speaking quid pro quo?”

Horace was struck by the lightning speed of her mind. “I honestly don’t know,” he answered.

“There is a missing member of our cast,” she said.

“Lieutenant O’Hara?”

“Yes.”

“I cannot tell you what great happiness you gave me the night of the Constitution. Yes, I was shocked to learn of his transfer to the War College. You tell me, Amanda.”

“Things have been coming into focus,” she said. What she didn’t say was that an Amanda Kerr College could be her price. “It feels a bit like a conspiracy in the king’s palace.”

“Every house in Baltimore and every house beyond is a kingdom with a conspiracy. Put two human beings together and they’ll conspire. Glen Constable?”

“He’ll do,” she snapped abruptly.

“If indeed this young daughter of his—”

“Dixie.”

“If Dixie is at Tobermory, it would seem quite natural, and there is no hint of your past involvement with the Marine.”

“Yes,” she said crisply.

“Can we look forward to letting your mother know?” he asked.

“You mean, letting the world know.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Horace answered.

“It will take some time, Father,” Amanda said coldly. “I want to make certain he is properly housebroken.”

“Mistresses?” Horace said right on.

“Doxies.”

“Then you must be his doxie from the first night. You must quench—no, drench, his lust.”

“I can do that,” Amanda assured her father. “When we finally create our Kerr monopoly,” she continued, using unmistakable pronouns, “I should like to be familiar with Maryland’s banking laws, offshore shelters, the nuances of shipbuilding and boardrooms.”

“You are nothing short of brilliant. How you do play your cards! Amazing.”

“You must have been shattered when I wasn’t born a boy.”

“I was,” he said. “Truth. I wanted another son desperately, but I soon knew I would not have traded you for ten sons.”

They embraced, warmly, and, one could say, lovingly.

“You must hear me out,” Horace began. “Women have been pissed off since the beginning of time and not without some justification. A new era will dawn only when enough women with brains can come up to your measure. Physically, men never had much to fear, but it will be frightening to know that females may be our equal in matters of intelligence. Men are not going to stand by idly and say, ‘Come on in, girls, sorry for the past five thousand years.’ You will bash your head in trying to change the way boys and girls work.”

“We got rid of slavery, in a manner of speaking,” she answered. “You had Matthew Fancy.”

“He never argued a case in court.”

“We will see a woman architect, or doctor.”

“The Joan of Arcs and the Cleopatras and the Queen Elizabeths are aberrations and always seem to come to a tragic demise. Step into a boardroom, Amanda, and a wall of molten flame will rise up against you. The basic truth of man’s nature is that men will manage the world, fight its wars, and invent its inventions. I can leave you all my power and riches, but you will have to come to your own peace with your woman’s rage.”

Amanda heard her father as she had never heard him before.

“The occasional Jew may slip into the room with the long polished table. They can be uncommonly clever as well as having incredible money connections. Catholics? Stone-age Christians. In time a small portion of them will elbow their way in. But it will be
no
to a Matthew Fancy and
no
to an Indian, and oh, my God,
no
to a member of the female gender.”

Horace had never said these words aloud and it made him feel unburdened in many ways, with his daughter listening, mesmerized.

“I am not the enemy, Amanda, so don’t point your finger at me. When I was an immigrant boy, I had a number of your liberal ideas. I looked over the lay of the land, knew I wasn’t going to change things, so I got into step.”

Horace went on. “Our most thrilling declarations for freedom and our most noble documents notwithstanding, America belongs to white Protestants. The Civil War did not change things, it merely altered them with scar tissue. The true battle cry of freedom has not come to pass.”

He stood at the window and studied the fields outside. “Sugar beets on the Jersey Shore Line. The farmers in Europe are growing sugar beets as an answer to sugarcane just as they planted flax to try to replace cotton.”

He turned to his daughter and felt comfortable, probably for the fist time, in putting his hand on her shoulders.

“Do you believe that if we had known about sugar beets a hundred years ago it would have prevented slavery? The Constitution Ball affirmed that, did it not? A room filled with white Protestants.”

“Father, how can I make it?”

“Fulfill the plan we are hatching. You must have a husband of repute fronting you, carrying out your interests. Glen Constable is delicious, a pure white Virginian of the proper faith and a sharp businessman. Bear in mind, Amanda, you will always hold the purse strings.”

The freight train blew past them noisy and rumbling, setting off a blast of air that shook their car. In a moment it passed and the engine of the private train belched into motion.

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