The Awakening (Montgomery/Taggert 11)

Hank began to understand things that had happened since he’d arrived: the rigid timetable of Amanda’s. Of course she knew that she had three and a half minutes left in the bathroom because that was how much time Taylor had allotted her. Her dresses were of somber colors and cut, and her hair was pulled back tightly. Taylor wanted her that way. She spoke only of things she’d learned in books because Taylor didn’t allow her to take her nose out of them.

Hank thought back to the times he’d seen Amanda sitting at her desk late at night. She had to entertain him all day yet keep up with her studies at night. This was a woman who was old enough to have graduated from college yet she was still being sent to bed without supper if she didn’t obey her master.

Master! Hank thought. How he hated the word. Each man was master of his own fate, but some men, because of their wealth or ancestors, set themselves up as better than others. Taylor had said that Hank was working class, as if there were classes in America. And he’d told Amanda that if unions were brought in, their ranch would be taken away from them. The union was the boogy-man of the owners.

Hank closed his eyes for a moment and thought of all Taylor was doing to subjugate Amanda, to keep her in line, to deny her her God-given freedoms: the freedom to choose, the freedom to love, to like or dislike, the freedom to laugh or frown or cry. He had taken all that away from her, holding over her head threats of bankruptcy and of withdrawing from a marriage.

Hank walked to the front of the house and looked up at Amanda’s window. He understood now, understood why he had first been drawn to her. It was his hatred of oppression and injustice. Some part of him had recognized it in her and knew he needed to help her. He would help her realize that she had just as many rights as another person had and that she didn’t have to eat, sleep and breathe according to a schedule made by someone else. He would teach her these things, and when he was finished, she’d be able to tell Taylor Driscoll to go to hell.

He smiled up at Amanda’s window. “Sleeping Beauty,” he said, “I’m going to wake you up.”

He turned away from the house and started toward the garage. He needed to get away and make plans—plans about how to bring Miss Amanda Caulden to life.

Hank stood in his room on the second floor of the Caulden house and put the canvas rucksack he’d just bought on his back. He left his jacket in the closet and wore only his shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, his trousers held up by suspenders. He walked out on the balcony and stood there a moment looking up at the starlight. To his left he could see a light behind the curtains of Amanda’s bedroom and just the faintest shadow of her bent over her desk.

Making as little noise as possible, he threw a leg over the balcony railing and stepped onto the porch roof which ran just under Amanda’s open windows. The roof was steeper than it looked and his shoes slipped, but he caught Amanda’s windowsill with one hand and the frame with the other. He was halfway inside the room before she looked up and saw him. She was as primly dressed as always, every button fastened, every hair in place, in spite of the fact that it was ten o’clock at night and she was alone in her room.

Amanda looked up from her book on economic history to see Dr. Montgomery coming through her window. Shocked was not the word for what she felt. Her first thought was, Taylor will not like this.

She stood, her body stiff with disbelief, and, again, that rising feeling of anger. “Dr. Montgomery,” she said, “you cannot possibly come into my room.”

“Sssh,” he said as he stepped inside. “You’ll wake everybody.” He nodded toward the bare floor in the center of the room. “That looks like a good place. Here, take this.” He removed the canvas bag from his back and handed it to her.

To Amanda’s utter disbelief, he went to the bed and removed the spread. “Dr. Montgomery!” she gasped. “You cannot—”

“You really are going to wake everyone.” He lifted the cover, let it billow in the air, spread it on the floor, then sat on it. He reached up for her to hand him the rucksack and, as Amanda watched, he began to pull food from it.

There was a salad of lettuce and what looked to be lobster or crab meat, another salad of chopped chicken with peas, little sandwiches, olives, stuffed celery, pickles, strawberries and pretty little white cakes.

Dr. Montgomery held up a bottle of a thick, red liquid. “Strawberry sauce for strawberry shortcake.”

Amanda just stood where she was, looking down on the food in wonder.

“You aren’t hungry? I missed dinner and I thought you did too, so I hoped we could share this. I don’t really see any difference between eating here together or in the dining room, do you? If you do, we could go downstairs and wake the servants and they could boil something white for you. Maybe we could wake up Taylor and he’d join us.”

“No,” Amanda said quickly, and blanched at the thought of waking Taylor. The smells of the food were drifting up to her and making her knees weak. She sank down to kneel on the spread as a general might kneel when surrendering his sword to an enemy.

“Sandwich?” he asked, holding out the plate full of tiny crustless sandwiches to her. “They’re minced ham with just a hint of mustard.”

Amanda took the sandwich and made a nibbling bite, then the whole thing disappeared into her mouth. The flavor of it, tart and salty, was delicious.

Hank, smiling, handed her a pretty little porcelain plate. “Help yourself. It’s not much but it’s the best I could do on such short notice. I hope you like lobster.”

“Yes, anything,” she murmured, reaching for food and eating too fast, but everything tasted so divine and she had this feeling that it was all going to be taken away from her.

“You were studying?” he asked.

“Economic history,” she mumbled, mouth full of chicken salad made with a rich, creamy mayonnaise.

“Ah, yes, I guess that’s because I’m here. Or have you always studied economics?”

“I thought it would be something to converse on. I didn’t realize you—” She stopped because she meant to say that she hadn’t realized he would be more interested in fast cars, motion pictures and women from the wrong side of the tracks.

“But we haven’t spent much time talking of economics, have we?” he said. “Or speaking of anything else, for that matter. I have been terribly rude to you, Miss Caulden, I do hope you’ll forgive me. More lobster salad?”

“Yes, please,” she said. She was beginning to relax somewhat. It was, of course, outrageous for this man to be in her bedroom late at night, but he certainly didn’t seem dangerous and he did seem genuinely contrite over his past behavior.

“You like economics so much you miss meals to study it?”