The Awakening (Montgomery/Taggert 11)

The more she talked—lectured—the better Hank felt. This was the Amanda he despised. He could imagine this Amanda and Taylor together with ease. Maybe they’d give birth to a set of encyclopedias.

The waitress came back with two desserts of thick-crusted peach cobbler. Hank started to tell her to return Amanda’s portion but then Amanda grabbed the plate and began to eat it. She ate like no one else he’d ever seen: sensually, with pleasure in her eyes, almost as if she were making love.

“Is that all you know about the war?” he asked angrily.

Amanda was used to having her knowledge quizzed but it was difficult to think when flavors such as these peaches and this divine crust were in her mouth. “R…Russia is angry at Austria and Austria is…” She trailed off for a moment and closed her eyes.

“Austria is what?” Hank snapped.

“Angry,” she said at last. “Austria is angry at Russia.”

“Good,” he said. “Are you finished yet? We have to get back. The schedule, remember? Don’t you need to study something to improve your mind?”

“Yes,” Amanda said, coming back to reality. Tomorrow she was to have a test on the history and present consequences of the Panama Canal and she would need to study. She looked at the clean plate with regret. Taylor was right: unwholesome food was bad for one in more ways than one. The peach cobbler had just made her hungrier. “We should go.”

He drove back to the Caulden Ranch very slowly and Amanda arrived without a hair mussed. The first thing she knew she must do was find Taylor and tell him they had returned and perhaps he’d like to revise her schedule since she was back from Terrill City earlier than planned. But at least she’d get her studying done and not have to stay up late tonight doing it.

A servant told Amanda that Taylor was in the library.

Hank left his car in the garage and stayed outside while Amanda hurried inside. No doubt she couldn’t wait to see her beloved Taylor, he thought, and realized he was getting angry again. At the moment, he couldn’t bear to see them together.

With his hands in his pockets, he strolled to the side of the house, idly looking at the plants and the building. The door to the conservatory was open, and he went in. For a few moments he enjoyed the heavy fragrance of the jasmine, then he heard voices behind him in the library. He started to leave, but he knew it was Taylor and Amanda and he stayed where he was and listened.

“You have returned early, Amanda,” Taylor was saying in a cold voice. “You were to keep him out until evening.”

“I apologize, but he seemed to want to return.”

“What he wants is of no consequence. Or doesn’t the welfare of the ranch mean anything to yo

u? You are willing for all of us—me, your father, your mother, yourself—to be thrown out with no means of support merely because you cannot occupy one rather ordinary working-class man?”

“I am sorry,” Amanda whispered. “I don’t know what to talk to him about. We have nothing to say to one another.”

“Nothing to say!” Taylor exclaimed. “Do you forget everything you have learned when you’re with him?”

“No, I don’t, but he isn’t interested in scholarly pursuits, he…he goes to motion pictures.”

“But the man is a college professor,” Taylor said, his voice puzzled, then he changed. “You must be doing something wrong.”

“Should I…” Amanda said hesitantly, “…should I go to a motion picture with him? Or a dance? I believe he likes to dance.”

Taylor’s voice was cold enough to freeze the plants in the conservatory. “Is that the kind of woman you are, Amanda? Have I proposed marriage to a loose woman? Have you been hiding your true self from me all these years? Perhaps next you would like a bottle of gin sent to your room.”

“No, sir,” she said, slipping back to the time when he was just her tutor and not her tutor and her fiancé.

“Or perhaps you’d like to wear short dresses and take a typewriting job.”

“No, sir,” she said softly. “I want only what I have.”

“It doesn’t sound so to me. Amanda, you have no idea how fortunate you are. You have everything life has to offer. You’ll never have to beg for money or for an education, yet you are willing to throw everything away.” He paused a moment. “Or perhaps it is me alone who you wish to thwart. Perhaps you want me off the ranch. Is that it, Amanda? You do not want to marry me and this is your way of telling me so.”

“No,” Amanda said, and there were tears in her voice. “I want more than anything in the world to marry you, but I don’t understand this man. I don’t know how to please him.”

“Nor does it seem that you know how to please me, either.” There was another pause. “You may go to your room and you will stay there the rest of the day, through dinner, and you will devote yourself to your books and you will find a topic that will interest this man. If he leaves here and meets with his unionists it will be your fault and you will be”—he lowered his voice—“punished for your disobedience. Now go. I can no longer bear the sight of you.”

Hank heard Amanda’s steps leaving the library and his first impulse was to go to Taylor and hit him in the face, but Hank held up his hands and saw that they were trembling. What he had just heard made him sick to his stomach. He remembered being angry when he saw Blythe Woodley with her fiancé because the man was overbearing with Blythe, but Blythe’s intended had been nothing compared to Taylor Driscoll. Taylor had assumed absolute control over another human’s life.

Hank left the conservatory and walked outside, trying to get enough air to breathe, but there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen on earth. This is what he’d seen in Amanda’s eyes, this sadness, this look of a caged animal—not frightened but resigned. Taylor owned her mind, her thoughts, even her body. He controlled her as if she weren’t an autonomous human being—as if she were something he’d created.