Hers the Kingdom (46 page)

     "Wing Soong alerted us to Pringle's treachery just in time. Had he known about our plans to build the railroad, Charles might have
been able to keep us from getting the equipment we needed. Our trestles are almost complete, now, and the engine house is in place. Joseph has a petition before the Interstate Commerce Commission to the effect that one railroad is sufficient to serve the needs of the Malibu—and that railroad is almost in place: the La Chusa, Malibu, and Southern! Isn't Owen clever?

     "The Santa Monica papers are full of news of the new railroad and the effect it will have on the people of this area. I do hope the good citizens of Santa Monica are not planning picnic excursions to our beaches. If they are, I am afraid they are going to be disappointed. Our railroad will serve the ranch—transport hides, move our workers about the ranch. I don't foresee our becoming railroad barons in the manner of the Emorys.

     "Does Sara hear from Charles? He has had the good sense to stay away from the ranch, and as I seldom go into town these days, I have not seen him at all. I understand that since his uncle's death, he has been close to the bereaved widow, offering consolation. Owen insists that we must continue to be civil to him. I do not know why, other than some rather complicated business dealings.

     "I have lived long enough to make grave errors in my own life. I try to remember, in order to grant others the right to make mistakes. I don't believe that one necessarily profits from mistakes. That is a rather silly notion. Just as the idea that one grows stronger through suffering seems to me not to be true. One must simply survive. But I do believe it is good to admit one's mistakes, if only to maintain honesty with oneself. That is what seems to me to be missing in Charles. He has no sense of his own fallibility. He seems to think himself above the rules. Dear Sara, poor Sara. (Do not under any circumstances let her know I said 'poor Sara.' She would despise me for it. Yet I do pity her, I cannot help it.) Owen says that Charles is truly a man of the American West—'flawed, but in a fascinating way.'"

When I repeated Owen's description of Charles to Sara, a curious smile came over her face. "I think they are more alike than Owen would like to admit," she said.

     I frowned. Sara, seeing my discomfort, quickly added, "I mean only that both know very much what they want, and in certain circumstances each is capable of doing whatever is necessary to get it. Neither is afraid to wield the power he has. Owen, of course, is a great deal more circumspect than Charles."

     I did not want to argue with Sara, did not want to plunge into a discussion of honor and ethics and essential good. "What, exactly, does Charles want?" I asked instead.

     Sara looked at me as if to measure the extent of my interest. "Charles wants to build a railroad through the Malibu," she began, slowly. "I don't know how much he wants it, but enough to alienate Owen, which strikes me as very much, given Owen's prominence and power. Owen may well be more than a match for Charles—he has won the first round with the La Chusa, Malibu, and Southern," she said, laughing without real mirth. "It's a bold stroke, and I'm sure Charles will appreciate it. But more important, now at least, and it may work in Willa and Owen's favor, is that Charles wants Helen. He wants her legally, so that he will at last be his uncle's true heir."

     "How can that be?" I asked. "You are his wife."

     "He'll find a way to challenge that," Sara said, with such calm that I knew she had thought it out long before.

     Two weeks later, two letters arrived on the same day. Mine, from Willa, announced with jubilation that the La Chusa, Malibu, and Southern Railroad had won, that Charles' petition to run a line of the Southern Pacific through the Malibu had been rejected on the basis that one railroad was sufficient to serve the area. Joseph Brennan had been brilliant, Willa said. Charles had been dispatched; forever, she hoped.

     The same post brought Sara a letter from Charles. It lay on the massive marble table in the foyer all morning long, though I knew that Sara had seen it. When it was still there in the afternoon, it
began to seem ominous. I had an appointment with a physician that afternoon, a well-known man of medicine who had made a specialty of treating those suffering from my malady. When I returned, the letter was gone. I found Sara in her small sitting room. It was gloomy, but she had not yet lit a lamp nor had she called a servant to light the fire. I did both, then sat down to wait.

     She shifted in her chair, as if to acknowledge my presence. Without preliminary, she said, "He wants an annulment."

     "Oh, no," was all I could think to say.

     Sara nodded. "He says we are cousins, and that he married me to set his uncle's mind at rest, knowing that my uncle felt I was too plain to attract anyone other than a fortune hunter. He says that he knew immediately after the ceremony that he could consider me no more than a relative, a friend. He says he hoped, of course, that it might be otherwise. All that he says is written for the lawyers, not for me."

     "He is despicable," I began.

     "That doesn't matter," Sara quickly put in, "what does matter is that the marriage was consummated. I am legally his wife."

     I wondered why it should matter to her, but said nothing. Finally I ventured, "What will you do?"

     There was something hard, or firm, in the way she answered my question. "First I will send a wire to Joseph."

     "Joseph Brennan?" I asked. "Arcadia's Joseph?"

     "Yes," she replied, "Joseph has been my adviser—and my friend as well, I think—for some time. I believe he is the only lawyer in southern California Charles can't control. There is real steel in Joseph. It isn't easy to see, but it is there. I've thought that this might happen, and Joseph and I made arrangements, in case Charles should act while I was in Italy."

     "Plans?" I wanted to know, understanding for the first time that Sara, too, might well be a match for Charles.

     "Plans for the exchange, the sale, as it were. I have something Charles wants. As a good businessman, he should know he is going
to have to pay for it. If he wants to be free of me—free to marry Helen—it is going to cost him a full third of the Emory fortune."

     I stared at Sara.

     "A full third?" I repeated. "Sara, that would mean you would have an equal amount . . ."

     "That is correct. It would make me the equal of Charles and Helen. There was a time, and not so very long ago, when I would have been happy to settle for the amount of my own father's investment in Phineas Emory's early business. But neither Uncle Phineas nor Husband Charles"—she repeated the titles with thick sarcasm—"could bear to part with even that small amount. It would have been enough to support myself, to give me the freedom to paint—without the humiliation of pretending to be a married woman. They used me badly, those two. I won't be used further."

     "But what if he won't . . . what if he says 'no'?"

     "He wants more than the fortune, you see," Sara explained with a stoic patience, "He wants to
be
the new Phineas Emory. By marrying Helen, he will be keeping the inheritance together. Two-thirds is better than one-half."

     "For Charles, yes," I said, "but what about Helen?"

     Sara nodded. "Yes, I've thought about that. What I am counting on is that Helen needs Charles to maintain her illusion of being superior. Without him, she is simply a very wealthy woman who was once a strumpet. Charles has the power to make others fear him. As his wife, she would be feared too."

     "What do we do, then?" I asked, feeling exceptionally sad and weary.

     "I must sail for home at once," she said, "my actions in the coming months will tell the tale. Charles must believe that I find the idea of divorce impossible. He must think that I want to continue to be known as his wife, otherwise he will never consent to so large a settlement. And I have no intention of consenting to any less."

     "I'll go with you," I told her. She smiled and touched my cheek. "Thank you," she said. "I had hoped you would feel strong enough to go back with me, to help me get the Emorys out of my life forever."

     We sailed for London a fortnight later, and that same week boarded the steamship for the voyage home. We had been away five months. I was not sorry to leave, nor did I look forward to docking in New York. I was most content, I believe, standing on the deck mid-point in the ocean voyage, with no land in sight, where the world was a simple choice of blues.

THE FIRST RAYS of the first sunrise of the twentieth century found them on the beach at Malibu Point, perched on a flat rock at the base of which the tide whirled, wrapped in a blanket Owen had thought to bring along. It was Owen's idea that they should see the sunrise together. He had engineered this part of the celebration as carefully as he had engineered the whole grand extravaganza—which had been going on for two days, and would last two more.

     "Think of it," he said, "the dawn of a new century."

     She had never seen Owen so caught up with an occasion as he was with the turning of the century. Feeling him shiver, she pulled closer and slipped her arm around his waist.

     "I think this is the place I would most want to be to welcome the next one hundred years," she said, then changing subjects asked, "aren't you terribly tired?"

     "No," he answered, "But I will be soon, I suppose." He had never been as strong as he liked to appear. In the past year, she had noted that his reserves seemed to be waning. He would, she knew,
pay for having exerted himself so these past weeks. When the last guest left, he would need to spend several days in the hammock they had hung in the solarium.

     "I hope our guests are all in bed," Willa laughed, softly, "I doubt this place will ever see another party like this one again." She said it to please him, as much as anything. Owen took such pleasure in giving a good party, and this had been the most ambitious ever, with several hundred people, including two senators and a governor. "We'd better get some sleep before the afternoon beach party," Willa said then, but neither made a move to go. They sat together until the sun was high enough to transform the vast, smooth Pacific into a mirror of silver and pink. The edges of the waves as they broke were an impossible shade of cerese. "I can't remember such an exquisite sunrise," she went on, "but maybe I'm just seeing it for the first time with my twentieth-century eyes."

     She stood and shook the sand from her blanket. She was wearing the gray silk emblazoned with crystal bugle beads, and the morning light flashed on them. The dress was from Worth's, a gift from Owen's recent trip to Paris. He pulled her to him and brushed the wisps of hair the breeze had blown over her face.

     "Have I said how very handsome you looked last night?" he asked, kissing the top of her head. She felt tired, a gray spot was lodged behind her eyes and the champagne had caused a low churning in her stomach. But she also felt strangely peaceful as she rested her face against him, and relaxed into his body.

     "Do you know it has been thirteen years?" he said, and for a moment she couldn't think what he meant. "I want you to know," he went on, and Willa realized that it was one of Owen's prepared speeches, "that there is never a day that I don't congratulate myself on having had the wonderful good luck to have found you." She pulled back to study his face.

     "They
have
been good years," she said slowly, "most of them, not all. But the last months have been best I think . . . sometimes I think that our life together is really just beginning, I think . . ."

     He stopped her by kissing her lightly on the lips. "I'm content now," he said, and it was not part of the speech, she knew. "I'm happy with what we have had. Whatever more is to come will be a gift from God." He pulled her close to him, then, so she could not see his face.
A gift from God.
She shivered, and held him. She was thirty-five, he but forty. Their lives would span the two centuries, she thought, and so liked the idea that she wanted to tell him; that was when she first heard someone hailing them.

     "Hallo!" Joseph called out, "we've found you out, the two of you—and it was just as I deduced. Unhand that lady, sir!" He was weaving and laughing, with Arcadia on his arm. They drew unsteadily closer.

     Owen waved at the pair. Had anyone else intruded on them, he would have been annoyed. But Arcadia and Joseph were part of the circle.

     "Joseph said you would arrange to see the first sunrise of the new century," Arcadia laughed. "He said he knows how your mind works, Owen."

     "She doesn't believe you're such a romantic dog, old boy," Joseph said, clapping Owen on the back with one hand while he waved a bottle of champagne in the other.

     "We've come to toast the sunrise," he went on, "with your very best vintage, which I commandeered from the wine cellar quite without permission.

     "A clear case of trespass . . . not to mention grand theft; I shall call my solicitor," Owen laughed.