Hank rubbed the back of his neck. “Probably just want me to get to know them and like them. I’m not likely to take the laborers’ side if I’m staying in the luxurious quarters of the management.”
“So, are you planning to stay with them?”
He put the letter down on a table. “I think I’ll decline their gracious offer. I need to do some extra work with a few students anyway, so I’ll stay here until just a few days before the workers are due to arrive to pick the hops.”
“Good!” Mrs. Soames said firmly. “Now you sit there and rest. I’ve fixed you a nice dinner.”
He watched her hurry out, then poured himself a large whiskey, removed his jacket and sat down to read the evening newspaper.
Mrs. Soames, in the kitchen, wasn’t nearly as calm as Hank was. She slammed pie dough down on the table and attacked it with a rolling pin. Too many people took advantage of her Dr. Hank. They seemed to think he could do everything at once. They thought he could teach those ungrateful students of his, be the Executive Secretary of whatever-his-title-was, race his cars—the only fun he had—and, in his spare time, prevent labor strikes. It was more than one man should be asked to do.
But Dr. Hank believed in helping people less fortunate than himself and he would risk his life to help them. And didn’t she know that to be true! Six years ago she was married and living in Maine with the odious man who had been her husband for nearly twenty years. He drank; he beat her. She bore scars from his abuse but no one would help her get away from him. Her family said she was his wife for better or worse and she just happened to get only the worse. They were sorry to see her wounds but there was nothing they could do to help her. The police wouldn’t help; the hospital where she spent a week once when he’d nearly killed her gave her back to him. She ran away from him three times, even managed to get two hundred miles away once, but he always found her again. She had almost given up hope until Dr. Montgomery, driving by in one of his motorcars, happened to see the old man strike Mrs. Soames.
Dr. Montgomery stopped his car, jumped out, hit her husband in the face and escorted Mrs. Soames to his car. Mrs. Soames was suspicious of the handsome young man at first, but then she asked herself, What could he possibly want from her?
He drove her home to his family, who lived in a long, sprawling house that his family had owned since before the American Revolution. Dr. Montgomery’s mother, a breathtakingly beautiful woman, had swept down the stairs and looked Mrs. Soames up and down. “Another stray, Hank?” she’d said, then gone on her way.
Mrs. Soames stayed with the lovely family for three months, making herself as useful as possible until Mrs. Montgomery began to say she couldn’t run the house without Mrs. Soames.
Dr. Hank obtained a divorce for Mrs. Soames and then, to make sure she wasn’t bothered again, he asked her to go with him when he went all the way across the country to California to accept a post as an economics professor. Mrs. Soames had readily accepted and these last five years had been the happiest of her life.
But the very trait in him that had made him save her was what also worried her. He cared about people less fortunate than he was. He cared about the man who delivered the coal and always had Mrs. Soames save a piece of pie for him. Yet there were several men Dr. Hank worked with, illustrious men, educated men, who he wasn’t particularly polite to.
Last year that book of his that had caused such a stir had been published. All she knew was that it was something about being on the side of the maids and delivery men of the world. Mrs. Soames was sure it was a good book but it certainly had caused trouble.
Union organizers, men who all seemed to be nervous, their eyes jumping around, came to see him. Mrs. Soames counted the silver when they left.
She put the pie in the oven then grabbed the potatoes to mash. And now these rich farmers wanted her Dr. Hank to come and stay with them. Corrupt him, that’s what they wanted to do. Give him wine with his every meal, feed him French sauces and give him indigestion.
And worst of all, she thought, as she slammed the masher against the innocent potatoes, they wanted to endanger her dear Dr. Hank’s life with that union riffraff. Her dear, saintly Dr. Hank needn’t risk his life for a bunch of people he didn’t know. He had enough to do at his college.
She put the massacred potatoes aside and went into the parlor. He was sitting quietly on the sofa, reading his paper and sipping his whiskey. The setting sun came in through the west window and made his hair glow like an angel’s. Like the angel he was, she thought, looking at his profile. Such a handsome man, she thought. Such a good, kind, lovely man.
She walked across the room to pull the curtains closed so the sun wouldn’t shine in his eyes and she saw a long white open-topped limousine pull up outside. A chauffeur in a spotless white uniform and cap sat in front and in back was a beautiful young woman wearing a white silk dress, an enormous-brimmed white hat with white ostrich plumes curling around it and softly framing the woman’s face. Her hair was a deep shade of red, the only color on her, the car or the chauffeur.
Mrs. Soames jerked the curtains shut and gave a glare at the back of Hank’s head. There was one area where her Dr. Hank wasn’t so innocent and that was when it came to women. She never asked, of course, exactly what he did on those automobile races of his, but twice he had returned with articles of ladies’ undergarments in his luggage. Once there had been a black silk stocking inside his trouser leg.
She turned to peep back out the curtain and saw the chauffeur helping the young woman out of the car. And in the woman’s hand was—oh no!—it looked to be a book of wallpaper samples.
Mrs. Soames closed the curtain and rolled her eyes skyward. He had done it again. She had tried to explain that it was all right to save fat old women like herself from unpleasant situations, but when he started saving young women they expected something from him—like marriage and a family, for instance.
She gave the back of his head a look of disgust. He was much too old to be getting himself into these predicaments.
She walked to the front of him and took the newspaper out of his hands and began folding it. “You have a guest coming,” she said sternly. “Tall, red hair, henna I would say, very pretty.”
Hank finished his whiskey and looked puzzled. “I don’t seem to remember…”
When men had flaws they had flaws. Were there so many women in his life that he didn’t remember this stunning woman? She narrowed her eyes at him and slipped his empty glass into her apron pocket. “She has a bosom like the prow of a ship.”
Hank grinned in memory. “Blythe Woodley.”
Mrs. Soames’s mouth made a disapproving little line. “She has a wallpaper sample book.”
Hank’s face lost its color. “She’s in front? I think I’ll go out the back. Tell her—”
“I will not!” Mrs. Soames said indignantly. “You have made that poor woman believe something that isn’t true and now you must face her like a man and not take the cowardly way out.” She started to say more but she didn’t as she turned on her heel and left him alone in the room.
Hank slowly slipped on his jacket and prepared to face what he knew was coming. Three years ago Blythe had been a student of his and he’d been impressed with her intelligence, her curiosity, the thought she put into her essays, her questions asked in class, and, not least of all, her magnificent bosom. Not that he ever was forward with her in the least. Even when she stayed after class and asked him questions and gave him every opportunity to make their relationship a more personal one, he had remained aloof from her. He didn’t touch his students.