More talk. More letters. Jean sent Forrest a telegram. “Please make arrangements to buy Helen and Don’s house for $6,000. Father is giving it to us as a wedding present.”
Jean told Icy. She wrote to Dody. She wrote to Sally Anne. She wrote to Elsa. She wrote to Miss Weaver. She told Lorraine. She told Tready. Tready said it was a courageous thing for her parents to do. “Oh, yes, you’re brave, too, Jean, for wanting to live so far from home, but you’re in love. It’s even braver for them. That’s love of the highest kind.”
Chapter Eighteen
Five days before the wedding, Forrest sat on the edge of his seat. In a few minutes he’d be with Jean. That’s all he could think about. He didn’t know how long a ride it was between Grand Central and Berlin, Connecticut, the stop where Jean, Chiang and Mr. Treadway would meet him. He only knew it was after New Haven. That had been a long stop with lots of people getting on and off.
He’d have to rely on hearing the stops called out, but he couldn’t understand the conductor because his words slurred together. To Forrest, the voice spoke of a lifetime of trains and stations. All the stops must be the same to the conductor. Some people got off. Others got on. It was the same yesterday. It would be the same tomorrow. No matter how many syllables they had, the names of the towns all sounded similar. To the conductor, nothing hung in the balance.
To Forrest, everything hung in the balance. If he couldn’t demonstrate to Mr. Treadway that he could get off at the right station, how could that man trust him with his daughter? The governor could still call off the wedding. Each time the train came into a station he leaned forward in his seat in the hope that his own alertness would compensate for the conductor’s boredom. His hands never left his bags, and his palms gripping the handles began to sweat. “Berlin,” he heard, and then the doors into the next compartment opened. There was a loud rumbling and screeching as the train slowed to a stop. His heartbeat quickened. He felt his way off the train and stood on the platform. There was nothing to do but wait for Mr. Treadway to find him among the talking, moving people. “Meriden,” he heard someone say in a snatch of conversation. Meriden? “Meriden? Where am I?” he asked in a loud voice to no one in particular, hoping someone would answer.
“Meriden,” a voice said on the run.
Forrest spun around what he thought was 180 degrees and took a few steps. “I need to get back on,” he shouted in a panic above the sound of the train whistle. He felt a hand grab his arm and he stumbled as he was pulled up the steps just before the train began to move.
He stood in the aisle the rest of the trip, his heart thumping hard, the skin of his neck and hands sticky. He tried to concentrate on listening to everything for a clue in order not to make a another mistake. “Berlin is next,” he heard. He trusted and got off again, stood still and listened.
“Are you Forrest Holly?” It was a man’s voice he heard.
He squared his shoulders, raised his head and grinned. “You betcha,” he announced, relieved. “Are you—?”
“Mr. Treadway.” The voice was businesslike.
“And I’m here too, Forrest, and so’s Chiang.”
Forrest set down his bag and reached toward her voice, his hug nervous and halting. Jean could wait. Right now the important thing was to take this man’s measure. “For a while there I thought I might never meet you,” Forrest said and smiled. He held out his hand. Mr. Treadway’s palm was smooth—he’d probably never really worked—though the grasp of the fingers was firm.
“Some things take a little time,” Mr. Treadway said. His voice had a resonance that conveyed power, but in the first moments of conversation there were a few short silences and a minute stutter, as if this man of money felt uneasy. Christ! He thinks he’s got worries? So this was the man who had kept him waiting, had kept his eagerness, his passion, for Jean at white heat for over a year. Yet in the euphoria of arrival and greeting, Forrest found nothing to criticize.
After introductions at Hickory Hill Jean took Forrest through the rooms he’d need to learn. She explained where the furniture was, and they walked around it. In the living room he ran his hand lightly over the curves of the two grand pianos. She walked him across the room to the fireplace. “This is where we’ll stand when we take our vows.”
“The whole cabin in Ramona can fit into half the living room here.” He chuckled. In the library he bumped into the bronze Nathan Hale and nearly knocked him over. Jean took him up the stairs. “The family’s bedrooms are on this floor.”
“Where’s yours?”
“In the middle next to Lucy’s,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “When Mort and Bill were kids, they had their room at one end and my parents at the other so they wouldn’t hear the boys teasing each other.” She took him up another flight of stairs. “This is the maids’ floor. Their rooms are down the hall to the right. This big room we call the dormitory. When we were kids we played in it, but when we got older we used it for our friends when they stayed overnight. You’ll have it all to yourself. Be careful. The ceiling is sloped.”
He raised his hands over his head and followed the ceiling as it sloped lower. “Glad you told me or you’d be marrying a guy trying to grow a horn out of his forehead.” He stumbled into a bed, sat down on it and said, “Can ya come here, Jeanie?”
“Mmm, no.”
“I guess we don’t know who’s around, do we? Don’t want to set off the governor.”
Jean came toward him anyway and brushed against his leg. Quickly he drew her to him and she fell onto his chest as he leaned back. He kissed her deeply on her mouth, pressing her lips apart. The time had been too long. Chiang let out a sound halfway between a whine and a growl. “Oops,” Forrest whispered. “Any way to keep her quiet?”
“I have an idea.” Jean pulled away, then put Chiang on the harness and took Forrest by the arm. “Come on.”
“Where’re we going, Jeanie baby?”
“To the woods beyond the rose garden.”
In the privacy of the thick stand of hickory trees and with the coolness of the little creek nearby, he let go the pent up passions of months. All the fueling of hope though work, the postponement of desire, the anxiety of getting here, that all vanished in how she felt next to him. Chiang could whine all she wanted, he wasn’t going to let go.
Until the wedding there was a constant round of parties and luncheons. Forrest met dozens of people. He and Jean were rarely alone. It was the logistics problem all over again, only there was no Hermit House they could go to naturally, without comment, no cool barn for long talks twice a day during milking. The maids were always moving around and might be in a room without talking, so he could never be sure if he was alone with her. He tried to keep his hands to himself, but he didn’t try very hard.
The night before the wedding the Treadways gave a small party, and by the end of it he had begun to feel comfortable with the tinkle of crystal and the crisp feel of damask. Mort teased him in a brotherly way, saying, “Here, Forrest, have some olives. They’ll make you passionate.” Forrest ate 35 of them.
When the guests left, Forrest and Jean and Chiang walked up the stairs together. She paused at the landing. As usual, he didn’t know who else was around. Desire pulsed hard in him. His goodnight boomed loudly. He kissed her once and walked up the stairs, his feet landing heavily on each step to announce his departure. Publicly it was an honorable gesture, he thought, but that was all it was, a gesture.
Upstairs even after he slumped down on the bed he felt as if she were drawing him back down to the floor below. To be this close to her and yet to have her remain inaccessible was maddening. He took off his shoes and considered waiting until the sounds of the house had quieted and then working his way down the corridor to the maids’ stairway. It was at the opposite end of the hall, farthest from where he thought her parents’ room was. He could run his hand along the hallway wall to know where he was. Even though he didn’t know that stairway, he could feel along the handrail and then move quietly past the empty boys’ room, past Lucy’s room to get to Jean. He wasn’t quite sure where her parents’ room was, but he knew it was somewhere past Jean’s. There probably were other doors too, closets and such. If he miscalculated and ended up in a closet, there’d be no harm in that. If he opened a door too soon, it might be Lucy’s. If he missed Jean’s and went too far, he’d end up in her parents’ room. Disaster.
But if he made it—well. He went through the scene in his mind. He would open the door as quietly as he could. He wouldn’t knock. Too much noise. He wouldn’t say anything, either. He’d just walk in slowly, close the door behind him and reach until he found her. Gently he’d surround her and bend her down with him to the bed. His mind raced until it met one obstacle, the most formidable opponent: Chiang, the one-woman dog trained to protect Jean from all danger. Jean had told him that the relationship of Seeing Eye dog to mistress is indivisible. Chiang probably slept at the foot of her bed, or next to it. But which side? He hadn’t asked enough questions. Stationed somewhere by the bedside, Chiang would be sure to raise a ruckus. Even Chiang’s movement or Jean’s voice quieting her might be heard by Lucy or, worse, the old man.
Logistics ensured her chastity. Forrest lay back in bed, resigned to wait another night. He was torn between feelings of nobility, and tormented frustration at this most recent difficulty that lack of sight—and Chiang—posed. One thing was for sure. Chiang wouldn’t stop him the next night.
The next afternoon was warm with the lingering heat of a New England Indian summer. Forrest could hear voices of guests spilling out from the living room below onto the terrace. In the dormitory he was methodical about getting dressed. A rented Prince Albert lay on the bed. His sisters Elizabeth and Mary had arrived and were upstairs to supervise his preparations.
“This place smells like a perfume factory,” he said. “Did you see the cop downstairs? Mort said there’s a cop down there guarding the second floor landing. Mr. Treadway’s wise to thieves masquerading as guests. Isn’t that enough to—”
“To what?”
He searched for something familiar. “To make a calf butt his ma?”
They laughed and then Mary helped with the shirt studs.
Forrest’s thoughts lurched forward and his words became disconnected. “All week whenever I took a shower, all I found were some skimpy little towels, no bigger than napkins. I thought, what kind of a place is this that the great Treadways of Hickory Hill couldn’t have decent towels? But I didn’t say anything.” He chuckled. “An hour ago I happened to reach under the towel rack for my shoe, and I found a stack of big thick fluffy ones. I can just guess what the maids have been thinking—that that no account cowman hasn’t taken a shower all the time he’s been here.”
Elizabeth laughed again. “I can’t believe how calm you are.”
“Don’t you know me?” He lowered his head toward her. “I realize what I’m entering into. Pretty big stuff. If there was, even today, an absolute message from on high not to go ahead, I’d pack my bags and hightail it home in a flash.” He tipped his ear to the ceiling. “But I don’t hear any.”
He put on the swallowtail coat and Elizabeth adjusted his bow tie. “Check me over good now. How do I look?”
“Dashing.”
“Debonair.”
He leaned down and aimed a light kiss at Elizabeth’s forehead and got her on the nose. Concentrating more, he turned to kiss Mary who put her face up to his. He squared his shoulders, turned toward the door and offered them both an arm. They walked out into the hall and down to the second floor. He paused outside what he thought was Jean’s door. “Jeanie?” He knocked on the hallway wall. “Let him in, Lucy,” he heard Jean say. A door opened farther down the hall.
“But the bride and groom aren’t supposed to see each other before the wedding,” Lucy protested.
“We won’t. I promise.” Forrest walked until he found the doorway. “Where are you?”
“Over here.”
He heard Lucy go out in the hall and close the door.
“How’s my thirteen-cow woman?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re my thirteen-cow woman, Jeanie. I sold thirteen cows in order to come here and marry you.”
Jean laughed.
“That’s nothing. I would have sold ’em all if I had to. Gonna work to earn them back, too.” Work at what he wasn’t quite sure, but he’d think about that later.
Jean touched him on the arm. “Do you want to see my dress?”
“Can I?”
“You sound like a little kid.” She put his hand on her shoulder. He felt down her arm to the sleeve edge and then beyond, down to her hand to touch her ring and then back up to her shoulder and neck. His hand touched the lace that dripped in loose folds from her neckline. He brushed it gently and followed the neckline as it dipped to a deep V. “The lace is from Mother’s wedding gown. It came from Belgium.”
With both hands he felt the satin smoothness down her bodice to her narrow waist where the cool fabric flowed in gores over her hips. He knelt down to feel the fullness of the gown, as if in supplication at a shrine. His hand stretched around the hemline and he moved to one side to follow the train.
“It’s long, Jean.”
“You have to watch where you’re stepping.”
“Oh, I won’t be behind you. I’ll be next to you. All day. Forever.”
He stood up slowly, his hands feeling again the folds of the skirt, up to the waist and the lace. Gently he took her in his arms and turned her face up to his and kissed her delicately, moving moment by moment into passion. Her lips opened to his, but he pulled away and let out a deep breath. This wasn’t the time, he told himself.
Downstairs, a string quartet began to play. “It’s a Strauss waltz,” Jean said. “It must be about time. Do you want to see my veil first?” She reached over to the bed and found the headpiece. “You have to remember to lift it up when you kiss me.” There was a knock at the door.
“Forrest, it’s time you went downstairs,” said Lucy. “It’s almost 4:30. The music’s started.” There was an urgency in her voice and a bustle of people in the hallway.
“See ya down there, Jeanie baby.” His voice was almost a whisper.