It was at that moment, listening to the two men spar, that Kristin knew for certain her husband could never beat this strange young man with the pale blue eyes.
“Everything ties together,” Rockefeller explained to Gustav, slowly, almost as if he were Gustav trying to explain monetary theory to little Haakon. “Everything in the process must be controlled. Everything,” he repeated, with fervent emphasis. “No one else must be allowed to control any part of an enterprise, from source to production to distribution to sale.”
Gustav appeared startled.
“Except you and me,” Rockefeller added.
“And what does this Benjamin Horace control?”
“Horace is a smart man. He has taken vast leases, on the mere chance that oil might be discovered Southern Pennsylvania is not as promising as the northern part has proven to be, but one never knows. I already have the Titusville field the railroads, the Great Lakes steamers, and we have the refinery. Now I need only a million and two hundred thousand dollars to secure rights to the leases that Benjamin Horace holds.”
“The agreement has been made?”
“In principle. I have spoken to Horace.”
“What is he like? Can you trust him?”
“No, and that’s encouraging. The only person not to trust is someone with an unshakable reputation for trustworthiness.”
“How did Horace get all these leases?”
“Much of the land has been homesteaded Horace was able to deal with the government before the homesteads were settled. Title to certain mineral rights, if any, that might generally have gone to the homesteader, was held in reserve. A congressman named Creedmore saw to the legal arrangements.”
“I see,” nodded Gustav, who knew quite a lot about theft of mineral rights. “And so Horace holds a theoretical right, shall we say?”
“It has never been tested in court. And when one is dealing with simple farmers…”
“I understand,” boomed Gustav, anxious to show that he, too, knew the fine moves of a prime businessman. “The farmers will never take the matter to court.”
Kristin was appalled. Those who strove to rule the earth seemed always ignoble, corrupt snickering among themselves in dark cabals, while the honest and the fine and the brave must ever fight for daily bread. But she remained silent, because she well knew by now that this knowledge being given her, given her unknowingly by two men who ignored her presence, might prove a great weapon one day.
“Horace wants a million two.”
“Why can’t you get up the money elsewhere?”
“Because I value your…cooperation.”
Gustav beamed. He tried to hold it back, but he beamed.
“Anything about Horace that can be used as leverage against him, if later we find oil, and if later he sees that he has been outdone?”
“He is close to invulnerable in Pittsburgh,” Rockefeller stated, “because of his money and the men he controls. He married, however”—he glanced toward Kristin—“a woman who was, and who still may be, the operator of the biggest house in Pittsburgh.”
“House?” Gustav asked. If this expression were idiomatic, he had not yet learned it.
“A house. The madam of a house, and very well connected in her own right”
“Ah,” Gustav said.
“She was a New Yorker once. Joan Leeds was her name,” Rockefeller said. “Quite attractive. Equally ambitious.”
“Well, sir. As you know, you are already indebted to me for a sizable sum. We must agree on terms, if I choose to.”
Rockefeller was prepared. “I need this money badly,” he said. “Everything that comes from this will be blessed a thousandfold. As you know, I agreed to pay back the amount outstanding in 1868, in order to claim the refinery.”
Gustav nodded, smug and secure.
“So now,” Rockefeller went on, “if you give me the extra money, the one-and-a-fifth millions, I agree to pay everything back one year earlier, by December 31, 1867.”
Gustav was dumbfounded. This strange young man was a dreamer and a fool. Appreciation for his own mercantile gifts blossomed again like a new flower in the spring.
“I’ll have to contact my English backer, of course,” he drawled, “but I’m sure there’ll be no problem.”
“Very wise of you, husband,” said Kristin, at dinner that evening, long after Rockefeller had departed.
He missed the thin cutting edge of her comment. “I knew I was secure all along,” Gustav gloated, stuffing his mouth with liver paté on toast, washing it down with Beaujolais. “When he misses the deadline he set, he set, the optimistic imbecile, I’ll take everything having to do with oil in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And that’s only the start.”
“Anthony Soames must first give you the money.”
“He will. He knows what these Americans call a ‘sucker’ when he sees one.”
“Of that, husband, there is no doubt,” Kristin said.
Lord Soames transferred the money from England to New York, whence it passed on to Rockefeller in Cleveland. But, for no fathomable reason, Benjamin Horace backed out of the deal. Another summer came. The Rolfsons and the Van Santens and their friends went north along the coast to vacation in Newport, Rhode Island.
“How are you managing?” Isabel Van Santen inquired.
“It is fortunate,” said Kristin, “that my younger life was arduous.”
“So it is that bad?”
“Haakon is too little now to know, but if he grows up with Gustav, I am afraid he will be ruined. He will become just like Gustav and his execrable old father.”
“Have you thought of anything you might do?”
“Yes,” replied Kristin, laughing ruefully, “I shall run away. But where shall I go? Gustav has power, money. He will hire men to track me down.”
That reminded Isabel of O’Keefe, the Pinkerton man she had hired to find Eric.
“Has there…has there been any further…news?” she asked tentatively, not wishing to bring up another distressing subject.
Kristin faced it. “No. And if Eric were alive, I am sure he would have contacted me by now. I fear I must accept…”
Her resolve failed. She broke down, sobbing quietly. Isabel held her. “It’s not for me so much anymore,” Kristin managed, between sobs. “I knew him and loved him. But Haakon never will—”
“There, dear. I’m here. I promised you my help once, for whatever it is worth, and that promise still stands. Gustav is insufferable. Even Hector thinks so, and he is a gentle man.”
There was nothing to do about it, just then. Kristin recovered, and proceeded stoically with her life. Haakon was a bright light for her, and she found delight and solace in him.
When summer ended and weather cooled along the coast, they returned to their New York home, Gustav to immerse himself once again in business, Kristin to manage the household, to wait, to endure. She enjoyed taking the little boy out in his carriage, but her portrait and the Brady photographs had made her face well known, and many people turned to watch her as she passed. How wonderful, she thought to herself, how far would I have to run in order not to be recognized?
Returning from a stroll one afternoon in early September, pushing Haakon’s carriage before her, she saw a tall, elegantly dressed stranger descending the steps in front of her house. He wore a high silk hat, and a meticulously trimmed Vandyke. Momentarily, she was reminded of President Lincoln, but this man’s features were more finely drawn. And he seemed to recognize her at once.
“Kristin!” he exclaimed, addressing her in a familiar but not offensive manner, as if he knew her. Perhaps he had seen the portrait, or the photograph, and learned her name. But what was he doing coming out of her house? Then she saw the reason for his oddly syncopated gait: the man had an artificial leg. She had seen them worn by some combat veterans, and they were always apparent, even when camouflaged by expensive trousers, as this one was.
“Yes, I am Kristin Rolfson,” she said.
“I ha
ve come to fulfill a promise. May I speak with you for a moment?”
“Certainly. Let us go inside.”
“No, I don’t wish to trouble you. Let me say my piece and depart. My name is Scott Randolph, Colonel Scott Randolph, of the Union army. I was the commanding officer of the New York Twenty-seventh, and one of my junior officers asked me to call on you in case—” He broke off that sentence, and began anew. “A man named Eric Gunnarson asked me to call on you when I came to New York.”
Eric! she thought trembling suddenly. But she had inured herself to the idea that he was dead, and now she held at bay a surge of hope that arose within her. Haakon was growing restless in his carriage, and Kristin did not wish the nurse to hear what Randolph had to say, so she bade the woman carry the child into the house. Randolph’s eye was caught by the sturdy healthy fairness of the child.
“A fine boy,” he said. “He favors you, I believe.”
“Not really,” she replied neutrally. “He favors his father.”
She looked at him, and he met her eyes. “You were speaking of a Mr. Gunnarson,” she said.
“This…is difficult to do…”
No, she thought. But she set her heart and her face, and did not give way.
“Lieutenant Gunnarson asked that I stop and see you when I came to New York. I had meant to do so sooner but”—he whacked his artificial limb with the heel of his hand—“I was in the Harrisburg hospital for longer than I anticipated.”
“Just tell me, please, Colonel Randolph.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Lieutenant Gunnarson was killed during the second day of the battle of Gettysburg, last summer.”
Eric Starbane, she heard her voice saying long ago, the words echoing down through time, I have your image in my hands. I want to have you forever. Will you give me that?
I grant your wish with joy and with all my heart, she heard him say, across the chasm of mortality.
Now I have your image, he was telling her, and with your image, you. May I take it inside me forever to keep?
“You are certain of this?” she asked.
“Yes. When the rolls were taken, he was not accounted for. I myself was with him when he was…hit.”
“His grave?” she persisted.
“I am afraid…” Randolph began. And Kristin recalled what the Pinkerton, O’Keefe, had said about bodies being blown away by explosions, by chained balls. “…but let me say this,” he decided to tell her, “I attended the dedication of the Gettysburg battleground last November. President Lincoln was there. His speech was brief and entirely inadequate to the occasion, as everyone agrees, but at least there was a consecration of the ground. And Eric Gunnarson’s name is on the roll of honor there, for all to see.”
His news troubled Kristin the more. Eric had died before he had had a chance to reclaim his ancestral name, Starbane. Somehow it did not seem fair.
“Mr. Randolph,” she said. “I appreciate your coming here to see me. I know it was not easy for you. Come inside now, and let me offer you some refreshment”
“No, thank you.”
“It is no trouble. I assure you. I owe you a debt for your trouble.”
“On the contrary, you owe me nothing. Gunnarson was a good officer and a fine man. We have both lost someone valuable and important to us, each in our own way. At any rate, I must be off to Boston. My military career is somewhat hindered now, by this leg.”
“What will you do?”
“Return to the family bank in Boston. When I was young, I swore I would never be tied down to a desk. Now it seems I have no where else to go. It ought to be interesting, however. Everyone believes there is much money to be made after the war. That is what Gunnarson and I planned to do. We were going to make great fortunes.”
“Perhaps you shall,” Kristin said. “It seems a pervasive American ambition.”
Randolph smiled, amused. “You are astute, as well as accurate. Perhaps we will meet again.”
“Perhaps,” replied Kristin. “And thank you once again.”
She bade him good-bye, went inside her big house, went up to her room and drew the blinds, telling the servants she wished to see no one. Gustav pushed his way in when he came home from his office, and wondered dully what was troubling her.
“Not you, this time,” she told him. “Leave me alone.”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Have you received some bad news?”
“That is not a proper description.”
“If you told me, perhaps I could do something.”
“You could leave me alone.”
So he did. Gustav shrugged and left the room. Kristin remained there for two days, recapitulating her past life. She examined her life, and where it had led her, and found she could not much longer endure the course on which she was, against her will, directed. She decided to alter that course somehow, very soon.
Two days later, when she came downstairs, perfectly groomed as always, bright and cheerful, no one could see any change in her.
But it was there, inside.
VIII
One year after being wounded on the Gettysburg battlefield, Eric Gunnarson hitched the late Wilbur Nesterling’s spotted mare to the charabanc, helped his pregnant wife, Elaine, into the vehicle, and took a drive from the farm over to the battlefield itself, at which he learned that he was dead. Among the great roll of the fallen, there was listed one Gunnarson, E., 2nd Lt. New York 27th.
Eric was astounded, and the distress showed on his face. “What’s wrong, darling?” asked Elaine, standing beside him, holding his arm. Her burden was quite heavy already, and she had almost three months remaining to carry it. She looked up at him, blinking against the sun, her eyes dazzled, too, by the new white crosses over the fresh graves that stretched away into the fields.
“How could my unit make such a mistake?” he complained, still incredulous. “I wrote them three times, and I was sure their lack of response meant the matter was at an end, especially when I resigned my commission in the last letter.”
Elaine’s eyes swung to the roster, on which she saw her husband’s name lettered. “Oh, my I” she cried, in a tone more of worry than of surprise.
He did not think much about her reaction at the time, and they spent several hours visiting the graves of men he had commanded in battle only a year earlier. Much had happened in that year. He was now married, expecting a child in the fall, and running the Nesterling farm. It gave him pleasure to be farming again, and he quickly recalled skills he had learned as a boy in Norway. But he wanted more; he wanted the great enterprises he and Colonel Randolph had discussed. He could not, however, seek them out now, nor leave Elaine alone just yet. The prospect of a child was doing her good, after her father’s shocking death in the January blizzard. A doctor, examining Wilbur Nesterling’s body, theorized that the man had stumbled or fallen, in the process setting off the hunting weapon he carried. The blizzard in which he had frozen had only finished the job that the gunshot wound in his chest had begun. For a long time after Wilbur’s funeral Elaine had blamed herself, connecting her father’s demise, in some process of guilt and retribution, with the afternoon of love she and Eric had spent upon the quilted bed. She had been, at first, immensely fearful that Eric would leave her, too, even after their marriage at the little white Gettysburg church. But over these past few months she had begun to relax.
Now, however, walking slowly with him among the cemetery markers, while Eric searched for the names of soldiers he had known, Elaine grew more and more nervous.
“And here’s Private Krantz’s grave,” said Eric sadly, sinking to one knee. “I wouldn’t say that he was a nobleman of nature, but he was one hell of a fighter.”
He stood up. “So far, so good. I’m hoping against hope, though. I haven’t found any indication that Scott Randolph died. So then why haven’t my letters been answered? Unless he’s grievously wounded…”
Elaine began to cry.
He tried to p
ut his arms around her, thinking that the sadness of the graveyard was disturbing her. She made pathetic attempts to push him away, as if she did not want his comforting.
“Elaine, what’s wrong?” he asked, holding her in spite of her efforts.
From the time he’d learned that she was pregnant, Eric knew he must marry her. One did not evade such a responsibility. Then, too, no response had ever come back in reply to his New York letter to Kristin. Besides which, she was the wife of another man. He and Kristin would always belong to each other, but now they were physically separated again, as they had been in the years after he’d left Norway. Some things are meant to be, but others are not. He rejoiced that he and Kristin had been able to consecrate their union by making love in the carriage in New York. And he married Elaine. She loved him utterly, with an intensity that sometimes startled him. But she was a good wife, and seemed to be recovering from the weight of her father’s death.
Perhaps, today, these graves were reminding her of another? Perhaps he ought to have come here alone?
“No, no, it’s not that,” she sobbed. “It’s…it’s your letters…”
“My letters? You mean, to the army? To New York?”
She nodded frantically, her head against his chest, biting her lip and crying.
“What about the letters?” he asked, with a sinking feeling.
“I never…I never gave them to the postman. I…Eric, I…tore them up. They were…”
“Never mailed?” he cried, leaning away to look in her face. He felt the astonishment of one who has gone through a part of his life, assuming the world is organized in a particular way, spinning easily upon its axis, only to awake one morning and discover that this presumably predictable earth has tom loose from its orbit and is hurtling directionless through the abyss.
The facts came one upon another.
His unit truly believed him dead.
So must Kristin.
If, at any time during his convalescence, Kristin or the army had contacted him, would he have stayed here in Gettysburg? Would he have married Elaine?
Wild Wind Westward Page 32
