The Awakening (Montgomery/Taggert 11)

Again she felt anger. “Dancing is a waste of time, and as for the townspeople—” She was on the verge of telling him about her mother but she didn’t. She was not going to be rude merely because he was. “Dr. Montgomery, I would like to return home now. It is late and there are other things to do.”

“You go back, then,” he said angrily, thinking that he had to get away from her and the whole Caulden clan. The two cold fishes of Amanda and Taylor, the rude, belligerent J. Harker and the mother who was locked away somewhere and spoken of in mysterious half-sentences, was more than he could bear.

But as he looked at Amanda, standing there absolutely straight, her thin little shoulders thrown back, her eyes with just a spark of fire in them, he knew he couldn’t leave. Something was holding him.

“All right,” he said, “we’ll go back.”

Amanda could have cried with relief as they walked back to the waiting limousine. He didn’t speak to her on the drive back and she was grateful. She needed to gather her strength for the coming meeting with Taylor.

Once in the house, Taylor came to the hall to meet them, and Amanda could tell he was angry. He waited for Dr. Montgomery to go upstairs, then he called her into the library.

For a moment he stood with his back to her, then he turned on his heel and faced her, his dark eyes glittering, his cheeks pulled in in fury. “I am disappointed in you, Amanda. Very disappointed. You knew you were to be back here at noon, yet you were not. No! Do not give me excuses,

I will listen to none of them. Don’t you realize how important your assignment is? If unionists come here and make trouble, we could lose this year’s crop altogether. And all because you did not keep to the schedule.”

Amanda looked down at her hands. How could she keep Dr. Montgomery to the schedule? Somehow she had to. It seemed that everything—the whole future of the ranch—depended on her.

“Now, go to your room and think on what you have done. Do not come to dinner tonight, but later come to the parlor and read for Dr. Montgomery. Perhaps if you are here with me you can keep on schedule.” And I will not be worried about you, Taylor thought, frowning at her bowed head. “Go on, Amanda,” he said, controlling the anger in his voice.

Amanda went up the stairs slowly, feeling as if she had gained fifty pounds. Mrs. Gunston was waiting for her. Amanda was to go to the basement to do her exercises, then a bath, no dinner, and reading for Dr. Montgomery in the evening. She was beginning to despise that man!

Hank stayed in his room until dinner, trying his best to read a couple of his students’ essays. Sometimes when a student had done well, but not as well as he liked, Hank allowed him or her to raise his grade with a research paper. So, between terms, Hank sometimes had papers to grade. But he couldn’t keep his mind on the papers; all he could think about was Amanda. He wasn’t sure what about her infuriated him so much, but something did. He remembered the way she had looked at lunch, her eyes closed, that look of sublime happiness on her face. “I wish I could cause her to look like that,” he muttered and turned back to the essay.

Amanda didn’t come out of her room for dinner, and Hank was sure it was because she couldn’t bear his company. He sat in unnatural silence beside ol’ stiff-necked Taylor, eating veal cutlets while Taylor ate more boiled fish. Hank wondered what Amanda ate in her room when she was out of Taylor’s sight. Boiled fish or perhaps fried chicken?

After dinner, just as the clocks all over the house chimed 7:15, Amanda appeared in the parlor. Hank looked around his newspaper, nodded curtly to her, then hid behind his paper again. He wondered if she’d leave when she found her beloved Taylor wasn’t alone.

Taylor announced that Amanda was going to read for them.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Hank said from behind his paper, but he was aware of the heavy silence in the room and knew he was supposed to give proper attention to the show. Slowly, he folded his paper, put it aside, then sat primly with his hands folded in his lap like a proper young gentleman.

Amanda, wearing a prim little blue dress with a sedate lace collar, was standing perfectly straight before the two of them, holding her poetry book open. As he would have guessed, she read the most boring poems ever written: William Collins’s “Ode to Evening,” Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” He would have fallen asleep except that her reading gave him a chance to look at her: long, thick, lush lashes, a full mouth that moved enticingly as she talked. He listened to her voice, felt it caress the lovely words and wondered how it would sound if it were murmuring love words to him.

But any love words she said would be to Taylor. Hank looked at Taylor and saw the man wasn’t enjoying her reading so much as judging it. He looked like a teacher with a student—not like a man listening to the woman he loved.

Hank was aware that Amanda had stopped reading and he watched while she walked toward Taylor and handed him the book. She gave him a soft, tentative smile and said, “Please,” in almost a whisper. Hank felt a pang of jealousy as cold, unsmiling Taylor took the book from her. Hank thought that if Amanda had smiled and said please to him, he’d certainly smile back; in fact, he just might do anything she wanted. But Taylor just took the book, opened it and began to read John Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.”

While Taylor read in a monotonous voice, Hank watched Amanda, saw the way she looked at Taylor as if he were a god, as if he had the power of life and death, yet Taylor seemed to be oblivious to her adoration. It suddenly made Hank angry that Amanda should give so much and get so little in return. If she were his he’d give to her. He’d give all she could take and then some. If he were engaged to her he’d not spend his evenings reading poetry to her, he’d take her into the lanes where the jasmine grew and he’d kiss her while slipping that awful dress from her shoulders. He’d—

“Dr. Montgomery?”

He came out of his reverie to hear Amanda. She was holding out the book of poetry to him.

“Perhaps you’d read something for us?”

Hank was so deep in his thoughts that at first he didn’t understand what she was saying.

“Dr. Montgomery is an economist,” Taylor said in that brittle way of his. “I doubt if poetry interests him.”

Hank didn’t take the book but looked at Amanda, his eyes as hot as he was feeling, and he began to quote from William Butler Yeats.

“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.