Tapestry Of Tamar

by Reece, Colleen L.

  Out of mourning, accompanied by Phillip, Tamar’s love of opera and drama lightened her spirits. No one was more sought after for soirees and teas, receptions and balls. Visiting dignitaries, who expected boredom, lost their ennui when Tamar sang. In fact, she often put to shame those who appeared in the various opera halls. Untrained though her voice was, it held the sweetness of youth and the clarity of a sun-filled sky. Even Phillip gradually put aside his disdain and swelled with pride when his fiancée captured hearts with her voice.

  Yet as days fled into weeks, weeks into months, Tamar grew weary of trying to plan her escape. Sometimes she wondered if she might better just give in and become Mrs. Phillip Carlin. Her choices offered little other hope. She could not earn her living at sewing or nursing, she drearily thought. What else was there for a respectable girl? She often wondered why God hadn’t allowed her to be on the train with her parents when they had died.

  two

  August sped like a racing horse. Tamar wondered how the days and nights could go so rapidly. Her periods of rebelliousness dwindled into a dull acceptance of the life Carlos and Lorraine had laid out for her. Ironically, her occasional spurts of rebellion often followed her fiancé’s repeated “Phillip-with-two-l’s” pretensions.

  “Why do you insist on saying that?” Tamar blurted out one day as, against Phillip’s wishes, they waited for a cable car. He scorned public transportation and preferred to be driven by private conveyance. Today, though, Tamar had expressed a desire to go by cable car as a change.

  “My dear girl.” His patronizing air set her teeth on edge. “If one doesn’t value oneself and insist that others do so, one will never be taken at one’s full value.”

  “You sound like a paragraph from The Book of Manners,” she muttered.

  He shrugged in the way she particularly detested. “I do have the experience and wisdom of a man five years older than you,” he silkily reminded her. “You must learn not to question me.”

  Tamar set her lips in a firm line and subsided. Picking an argument with Phillip was as useless as arguing with the tall bedposts in her ornate room. She changed tactics. “After we’re mar–married—” She stumbled over the word. “Where will we live? Can we have a house of our own?”

  He raised his eyebrows in distaste. “What common tastes you have. With the rather generous dowry you bring me, we will be able to live in one of the finer hotels, at least for a time.” He smoothed his sleek brown hair back over his forehead. His well-cared for hand had probably never done anything much more strenuous then lift a glass of fine liqueur.

  The thought made Tamar’s lips twitch, but she asked curiously, “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something with your life, Phillip? Most men, even rich ones, have duties. You never seem to.”

  “Why should I?” He sounded genuinely surprised, and his hazel eyes opened wider than usual. “That’s what managers and investments brokers and servants are for.”

  “And if they don’t serve you well?” Tamar thought of the gossip passed on by the parlor maid.

  He laughed uneasily. “Don’t bother your pretty head about such matters. Things have a way of straightening themselves out.”

  She silently gazed out over the bay, noting the whitecaps that rose and fell with the gathering wind. Such an attitude opposed everything Tamar believed. Her father had lost everything because of a careless attitude toward his possessions.

  Of course Carlos and Lorraine also lived lavishly. Carlos had been shrewd enough to take the money given to him on his twenty-first birthday, invest, and reap returns. Buying up land that once lay worthless, Carlos convinced businessmen to purchase it and expand with the growing city. He also kept several choice parcels on which important buildings stood, and from these he collected rich rentals. Yet time after time Tamar had heard her brother and his wife “talking poor mouth,” as Tamar privately called it, as if they were already knocking on the door of the poorhouse. Was there security anywhere?

  Once she had felt secure because of her parents and God. The long months after their death had shaken her faith in Him, even more violently than the quakes that shook the city.

  She thought of the sharp earthquakes that set the chandeliers to chattering and rattled windows. Perhaps the city should have paid the Japanese scientist Mr. Omori the two thousand dollars he asked for an instrument to predict quakes. But most people only laughed and shrugged off the shakes as inevitable and harmless. After all, they told themselves, fewer deaths had been recorded from earthquakes than from carriage accidents.

  Others reassured themselves by remembering how the Indians of the area laughed at the Spaniards’ fears when Yerba Buena, later renamed San Francisco, was established in the spring of 1776. The Indians said that, yes, the earth shivered, but it did not harm. After all, the Indians had always lived there. Yet sometimes when the ground trembled beneath Tamar’s feet, her heart leaped with fear.

  “I’ve spoken to you three times.” Phillip’s petulant voice recalled her to the present. Tamar felt as if she had come back from a long journey. A journey—the word combined with the sight of the white wake of a distant ship to generate a wild scheme. What if she stowed away? She had heard of boys doing that. She could cut her hair, don boys’ clothing and. . . . The plan died a-borning. Phillip-with-two-l’s might be overbearing but she would be safer with him than aboard a ship. Yet how could she marry a man she didn’t respect, let alone love? She sighed.

  “You wanted to ride the cable car. The least you can do is act as if you’re enjoying it,” Phillip told her.

  She forced a trembling smile, but her mind churned. Somehow, in some way, she must come up with a plan to escape.

  Suddenly, September marked the end of summer, although flowers bloomed just as brightly and the warm sun poured over the city by the bay. With every passing day, Tamar withdrew more into herself. She refused to rise to Lorraine’s baiting, silently reproached Carlos with her dark eyes, and gave up trying to find any ambition in Phillip. Not until Lorraine announced the October tenth wedding would outshine the finest ever held in San Francisco did Tamar demur.

  “Isn’t it bad enough to be sold on the auction block like a slave, without forcing me to pretend to like it?” she demanded, her face white with anger.

  “Would you like it better if we asked Phillip to sneak away to some obscure place and marry you?” Lorraine’s narrow face set into an unpleasant mask. “He and we have a position to uphold. It’s going to be bad enough when Nob Hill learns the pitiful state of your parents’ holdings.”

  “Why is it any of their concern?” Tamar didn’t back down. Heartsick and desperate, she knew this might be her last protest. After October tenth, never again would she be able to call her soul her own. She would be Phillip’s possession, bought and paid for with his position in society. Her mouth twisted. If precious Nob Hill knew what a sham Phillip Carlin really was, they would draw aside in horror. But Lorraine’s rigid posture showed the futility of argument. Tamar left her muttering comments about the ungratefulness of those who should be thankful for their daily bread.

  Tamar stood passively for endless fittings, noting the gleam of approval Lorraine couldn’t hide. Had her sister-in-law always been the same—gloating over what she owned? Tamar could envision Lorraine as a child dressing an exquisite doll in French silk and satin, then displaying it to others with the same gloating pleasure she now showed. Tamar might just as well have been one more of Lorraine’s lovely possessions, for without conceit, the reluctant bride recognized her own attractiveness. She would far rather have been old and ugly; then perhaps Phillip wouldn’t have considered her, no matter how large her dowry.

  October storms blew in, no wilder than Tamar’s despair. Weeks of waiting melted into days. She had considered and rejected hundreds of escapes and at last admitted there was no way out. The God of her childhood had forgotten her or long before now He
would have answered when she pounded on heaven’s gates to be heard. Yet a tiny spark persisted and no amount of reason could drown it totally. It took a last, heartrending incident to fan the spark into a conflagration.

  Two days before the wedding date, Tamar trudged up the beautiful staircase to the borrowed sanctuary her room had become. She gasped when she stepped through the open door. “What is the meaning of this?’

  The parlor maid stopped her work and sent a pitying glance at the white-faced girl. Tamar ran to the shelves where she had kept her treasures, few in number but infinitely precious. A senorita doll named Rosa. The few “suitable” books Lorraine had allowed her to keep from her parents’ great library. A Mexican tapestry. “Where are they, my things?”

  “The madam ordered them to be taken away.” Resentment and compassion tinged the colorless voice, and the parlor maid pointed to an old sack. Rosa sat sprawled among the books, one arm up as though warding off a death blow. The gorgeous tapestry, woven in the red, green, and white national colors of Mexico, lay crumpled on the floor next to the sack.

  At that moment, Tamar knew she would never again live under the tyranny of brother, sister-in-law, or husband. She snatched the generous length of tapestry, the only thing she had from her mother, and held it close to her.

  The parlor maid furtively slipped to the door and closed it. Her pale eyes shone and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Miss Tamar, if you like, I’ll hide the books and doll in my room. You’ll want to take the tapestry with you, I’m sure.”

  “You’ll be in trouble if Lorraine finds out,” Tamar protested. Her fingers tightened on the tapestry.

  “The madam’s not likely to be poking under a parlor maid’s bed, ’specially when it’s in a dim attic.” The woman quickly grabbed the sack, straightened the books and laid Rosa on top. She opened the door, put her finger to her lips, and slipped through. Tamar’s heart pounded, but when Lorraine stepped inside a few minutes later and surveyed the room, Tamar flared at her. “You had no right.” She still clutched the tapestry.

  “I have every right in my own house,” Lorraine reminded. “Give me that dirty old rag.”

  “It’s not a dirty rag, and you know it. This tapestry is generations old and worth a great deal of money.” Tamar wished she’d held her tongue. Avarice filled Lorraine’s watching eyes.

  “Then it should be sold immediately.” She held out her hand. “After all, you owe me for your dowry.”

  All the heartache and misery Tamar had built up for the past year flooded through her. “Never!” She struck down the reaching hand, flung the tapestry over her head, and raced out.

  “Tamar Joyce O’Donnell, come back here this instant!”

  She heard Lorraine’s quick footsteps behind her. They only spurred her on. Down, down she ran. Whatever lay on the other side of the heavy front door couldn’t be worse than—

  She careened full speed into Carlos.

  “Let me go,” she panted, struggling against his iron grip.

  “Have you gone mad?” His icy composure didn’t keep him from pinioning her arms and preventing escape. “Lorraine, for the love of heaven, what brought this on?”

  Face livid, hand red where Tamar had struck it, she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Look at what this wildcat did!” She held out her shaking hand. “All because of that.” She pointed toward the tapestry that had slid from Tamar’s head to her shoulders.

  “She took it away, everything I love!” Tamar cried. “Rosa. My books. She ordered them taken away and destroyed.”

  Shock loosened Carlos’s grip for an instant, and his sister pulled free. Hope surged through her, even though he still blocked her path to the door and freedom. “Lorraine!” He stared at his wife. “That tapestry is almost priceless.”

  “Then let it be sold so your beggar of a sister can help repay some of the dowry we are giving,” she snapped.

  “Tamar is not a beggar, and the tapestry is hers.” His cold tones matched her own.

  “Does it excuse her striking your wife?” Lorraine played her best card.

  “Tamar, did you hit her?” Understanding vanished in rage.

  Words of defense rushed to her lips and died there.

  “See, she cannot deny it because it’s true.” Lorraine rubbed her hand. “I suggest locking her in her room until the wedding—unless you want a missing bride.”

  “All this fuss over nothing.” Carlos gritted his teeth and cast a gaze heavenward. “Tamar, you will go to your room and remain there. Your meals will be served to you and a servant will watch outside your locked door. Never have I been so glad for a wedding to take place. Don’t think Phillip won’t deal with you if you behave in such a reprehensible way once you’re his.”

  She mentally measured the distance to the front door, considered fleeing into the dining room and out through the kitchen, and thought better of it. Her last hope lay in passiveness. She turned and slowly mounted the staircase, making sure her shoulders slumped in pretended defeat.

  “You shouldn’t have taken the child’s treasures.” Carlos’s low voice reached her when she had performed her little trick of door slamming, then crouching on the rug just around the corner of the upper hall.

  “Taking her part is inexcusable,” Lorraine’s voice was coming closer. The listener stood and stole to her room. Once inside her prison, she locked the door herself. Her sister-in-law rattled the door and called, but Tamar did not open it. Not until the parlor maid knocked and said she had a dinner tray did Tamar budge from the bed where she’d thrown herself. She started to say she wasn’t hungry and would never eat another bite in Carlos’s house, but she decided that would only make things worse. Besides, what little money she had been able to hoard wouldn’t take her far. Better to stuff herself and hope it wouldn’t choke her.

  After the first few bites it got easier. Even grief and fear couldn’t compete with a healthy young appetite. Tray emptied, she settled down to think. Day after tomorrow she would be eighteen—and married if she didn’t get away. It must not happen. She crept to the window and looked out. What a long way down! She shivered. At least the second-story windows were not barred like the lower ones. Would the sturdy vines hold her and offer footholds? God, this is it. You’d better help me when I climb out this window—or I’ll break a leg. She stifled a giggle. A broken leg would postpone the wedding but not cancel it.

  While Carlos and Lorraine slept, Tamar tore and knotted her sheets into the semblance of a rope, coolly planning her departure. Tomorrow she would act as normal as a jailed criminal could. She would never tell Lorraine she was sorry for striking her, though. Tamar hated a liar. Sometime after midnight of the next evening, she’d go—where? She refused to think about it. Time enough for that once she got away from Lorraine and Carlos. Besides, being eighteen should make a difference, for at last she would be entitled to her small inheritance.

  In the long, dark hours, she prayed for fog the following night and rejoiced when she awakened from an uneasy sleep to find a soft, gray day instead of the sunny weather they’d been having. Perhaps God had heard her after all. When night finally came, her love of pretty dresses caused her to first don a crisp pale green voile before putting on the black. She stuffed underclothing and stockings into a large, striped, woven Mexican bag with the tapestry hidden at the very bottom. She still had room for a long dark skirt and a plain white waist. Finished with her meager packing, Tamar sat in a chair by the window until the toll of the harbor bell and the twelve strikes of a hall clock announced a new day—her eighteenth birthday.

  Trembling fingers slid the long bed sheet rope through the bag’s handle. She gently lowered the bag and gasped when it swung against the house with a gentle thud. She waited, holding her breath. When the silence continued, she let down the rope and released one end. The heavily packed bag fell the rest of the way and landed i
n a clump of bushes. Again she held her breath. Surely someone must have heard the solid thump when it hit!

  “Thank You, God,” she whispered a few moments later. With a backward glance at the room, Tamar flung a heavy black shawl over her shoulders. Her lightning check of the room showed the heavy chest of drawers she had moved inch by cautious inch from its usual spot to block the door. Her rope was knotted securely around a bed-post.

  A pang of regret filled her. Not for leaving this house but for the loving abode her brother’s home should have been. A moonbeam pierced the fog just long enough to show the floating white wedding dress ready for the morrow and a bride who would never wear it. What if Phillip had been a different kind of man, one she loved and trusted? A man who loved his Lord and her? Instead of endangering her life by escaping out a window, she would be peacefully sleeping now, or joyously lying awake anticipating a new life.

  Close to tears, she put aside such thoughts. She needed all her concentration to do what she must. She swung one booted foot out the window to test the rope. It held. Slowly, more frightened than she’d been since they told her of the train wreck that took her parents’ lives, Tamar descended. At last, after what seemed like hours, she dangled a few feet above the ground. Just below lay the bush that held her possessions. Out from it, smooth lawn wet with mist offered a safe landing. She pushed off with her feet waited until she swung out from the house, and let go. The grass welcomed her with its coolness, but she scrambled to her feet. If she were discovered now, nothing on earth could save her from tomorrow’s judgment.