by Pamela Morsi
After her interesting and almost infamous outing of the morning, Gertrude had decided that what she needed was to concentrate all her thoughts and energies upon the new book. There were problems aplenty in her fiction, without having to deal with those in her real life.
With Tyler DuPree, the family patriarch, dead, his second wife Alexandria was nearly insane with grief. His handsome twin sons, Granville and Lafayette, were in dire straits due to their war records with the Confederacy. And his daughter, young Blessida, was mindlessly in love with the no-good Yankee colonel. It would have to be Weston Carlisle, the scorned interloper, who would save the DuPree fortune from the evil carpetbaggers.
Gertrude had created the DuPrees more than ten years earlier. Lying alone and sleepless in the polished cherrywood bed that had been her sixteenth birthday present, and staring through the darkness at the chubby cherubs in flight upon her bedposts, she had fancied a different family and a different world. It was a world of heroism and honor. One of passion and romance. In all ways, a world very different from the one in which she lived her life.
At first she had just walked around making up the story in her head. Inattention in the Barkley house did not go unnoticed. And distraction was not thought a minor annoyance. Her brother had called her scatterbrained. Her sister-in-law more kindly had said distracted. Her father had put his foot down.
"Spinsterhood is making your brain go soft!" he'd declared adamantly. "For the sake of your good sense, Gerty, accept the next man who walks across this threshold!"
She might have followed her father's advice, but the old fellow died shortly thereafter. He simply fell asleep in church one Sunday morning and never woke up.
After the appropriate year of mourning, Gertrude found herself to be on the wrong side of twenty and considered completely and irrevocably on-the-shelf. Gertrude Barkley, spinster.
But strangely, no longer having to worry about finding a proper husband was not heartbreaking. In fact, Gertrude found it to be a liberating experience. She no longer need concern herself about her behavior or her future. Spinsters were supposed to be eccentric and unconventional. It was this sense of being unshackled by social custom that had led her to begin writing.
She had been making up stories for her own entertainment since childhood and had tried her hand at putting them on paper when she was still in her teens. With the story of the DuPrees in the back of her mind, continuing to steal into her everyday thoughts, Gertrude decided that writing it down might be challenging and diverting. When she had put pen to paper she found, to her surprise, that she had a real knack for it. Although her first attempt at a novel was doomed for obscurity, among other things she had outgrown, she tried again. Her thousand-page multigenerational saga she entitled The DuPrees of Carlisle Place had happily found a home with a New York publisher. And her new poignant and passionate vision of the Old South had only whetted the appetite of the reading public. They had clamored for more and she had given them that in The DuPrees in Gray.
Now three years after the success of that novel, Gertrude was trying valiantly to properly end the family's troubles in the final volume of their story, Triumph of the DuPrees. It wasn't easy.
Gertrude leaned back in her chair and lightly tapped the top of her fountain pen against her teeth. The short locks that had shocked the good people of Venice were now unattractively tied up in curling rags. The style, or rather lack of it, gave her rather straight, pointed features even more severity than usual and only the absence of a wart on her nose kept it from being absolutely witchy. But she was writing, and in the privacy of her apartment she saw no reason to stand on ceremony. If a woman looked good all of the time, Gertrude postulated, she could never see any improvement.
Glancing down at what she had just written, she shook her head. Weston had been a villain practically since his birth in the tiny little backstreet house where Tye had kept his mistress. Mistress. It was such an intriguing, exciting term.
Son of the mistress, however, was not quite so. And turning him into the man of the hour would require a bit of doing, even for Gertrude. She was not sure what could possibly bring about such a transformation.
Staring thoughtfully at nothingness outside her window, Gertrude's attention was captured by the rowdy old mockingbird that lived in the hazel tree. Their hazel tree. He was loudly chasing away a bright red cardinal foolish enough to encroach upon his territory. As she watched, the stranger hurried off into the distance, beaten, and the mockingbird lit on his favorite spot near the topmost limb almost eye to eye with Gertrude.
She smiled at him. The two had a lot in common, she thought. Neither was exceptionally attractive or particularly talented. Both of them did a good deal of what they did best and fought like the very devil to be allowed to do it.
"I suppose you have a brother and sister-in-law somewhere yourself," she said to the bird.
The gray-and-white-feathered creature looked in her direction and raised its beak as if in disdain, then lowered it as if giving a cut direct. Gertrude laughed out loud and shook her head.
"Oh dear," she said to herself. "The situation in this town is getting pretty desperate when even the birds look down their noses at me."
In actuality, she was proud of the controversy she stirred up.
"You are an interesting woman," Mikolai Stefanski had said to her once. She smiled to herself and she thought of him that morning. He liked her hair. He thought she was interesting. It was little enough. Still, she wanted to hug herself.
The mockingbird flew away on some unknown errand, but Gertrude continued to stare at the hazel tree outside her window. It was almost impossible to believe that she had planted that tree and now it was nearly as tall as the house. Wryly she thought that it probably grew so tall because it never bothered to produce any hazelnuts. Still, time certainly did pass quickly. Seventeen years. She sighed heavily in disbelief. Seventeen years.
A smile came to her face as she thought back on that long-ago day, a spring day in her youth. That was the first day that she knew. She had suspected before, but that day she knew, for then and all time. Hastily she pushed the thought away. It was a childish fancy and it was high time she put all thoughts of it away for good.
It had started with Prudence and George. In those days everything started with Prudence and George, the two of them just recently wed and in a constant stir over something.
"Oh, I cannot bear it. I just cannot bear it." Gertrude had heard her sister-in-law's whining travail before she'd even come down the stairs. "It will block our view completely and be tantamount to an eyesore on our very own property."
Standing upon the imported Brussels carpet in the narrow foyer, Prudence Barkley, the new bride of Gertrude's younger brother George, was leaning heavily against her husband as she wrung her hands and cried plaintively. The mass of blond curls on the back of her head shook with the vibrations of her sobs.
"I can't bear it, George. I tell you, I can't bear it."
"For heaven's sake, whatever is she sniveling about now?" Gertrude asked.
They both looked up toward her on the stair landing. Gertrude folded her arms across her chest in disgust. At the sight. Prudence burst into full-blown tears and hurried from the room.
"Pru!" George called after her, but she was already gone.
He glared up at his sister. "Gerty, could you please be nice to her? You know how tender her feelings are."
Gertrude rolled her eyes. "I know that she's a watering pot, if that's what you mean. But I don't have to cater to her, George Barkley. She's your wife, you'll have to deal with her."
George's surprise marriage to Prudence Margrove was an event completely beyond Gertrude's understanding. Her brother at eighteen was far too young to take on the responsibilities of being a husband. And rather than the young blushing bride being joyous and fulfilled, Pru seemed childish, silly, and completely unhappy.
"I deal with Prudence just fine," her brother answered through clenched teeth. "All I'm
asking of you is that you try to get along with her."
"I thought new brides were supposed to be blushing and happy. From all the sobbing and misery I've seen from yours, I swear it's turning me off marriage completely."
"I don't exactly see fellows beating down the door to ask for your hand," her brother pointed out unkindly.
"It's a good thing," Gertrude shot back. "Because I don't know of any in this town that I would have."
"Have you ever heard that beggars can't be choosers?" he asked.
Gertrude stuck her tongue out at him in an infantile gesture of revenge.
George huffed pompously.
The two had never been the best of friends, but as a little brother, Gertrude thought George was not too bad. She actually didn't even mind Pru, except lately she seemed to be whining or crying nearly all the time. It was the change in the house that made things so difficult.
"So what's all the fuss about today?" Gertrude asked as she descended the stairs.
George made a gesture of frustration toward the west window. "Oh, the crazy German is building a wall around his castle."
"What? Mr. Stefanski?"
"Who else?"
"He's not German, he's Polish," she corrected.
"I don't care if he's the King of Spain. It's not enough that he builds a house as big as a church out of bright red brick, but now he's planning to surround it with an eight-foot wall. We won't even be able to see down the street except from the second floor."
Gertrude's brow furrowed. "Have you talked to him about it?"
George snorted unkindly. "Who can talk to him? The man doesn't even speak English."
"He understands if you speak slowly."
George's tone was haughty. "I suppose I just can't talk slowly enough."
"Oh, George, you're getting as bad as Papa. The lot was for sale and the man bought it. You certainly can't continue to hold that against him."
"I can if he turns the neighborhood into a brickyard."
"He just has one small kiln in the backyard that he's using to make the brick for his house. I'm sure he is not planning to expand his business on this street, it's simply not practical."
"And they do say that these Polish folks are practical," George acknowledged. "Of course, that's far from all they say about them."
Gertrude eyed her brother disdainfully. "I think, George, that you would do well to consider less what people say about the Polish and more about what Mr. Stefanski says about himself."
"If you think he's such a talker, you talk to him," George challenged.
"I certainly will."
Gertrude had traipsed outside, her nose in the air, leaving her brother standing in the foyer. She was not afraid of any man or woman living. And having grown up with the stubbornness of both her father and brother to contend with, she knew a great deal about negotiating with the masculine sex.
The wide plank front porch was swept neatly clean and the railing around it was pristine white. The Barkleys believed that houses should be white. The Barkleys held a lot of beliefs like that. Preferences indulged with such consistency that they had become convictions.
Gertrude made her way to the west side of the house. It was barren of trees or shrubs. For all twenty years of Gertrude's life this side of the house was a wide-open meadow that separated the Barkley home from the rest of the town of Venice. Although the Barkleys had never owned the land, they had always thought of the meadow as their buffer from the rest of the community, the moat around their castle that no foreign knight could ever assail.
Mikolai Stefanski couldn't have known that. He'd settled in Venice because he liked the composition of the clay. Gertrude assumed that he'd bought the meadow for a similar reason. He'd bought the land because it was for sale. Her father and her brother would never forgive him that transgression.
Gertrude, of course, had forgiven him. But then, she'd fallen in love with him. That day, that hour, that place, she had fallen in love with him. And there was just no help for it.
Determinedly she shook her head and stared down once more at the page of paper before her. She would not think about Mikolai Stefanski. She wouldn't think about him. It might show on her face, or someone might hear it in her voice. If she was not very careful, one of these days he might realize how she felt and she would lose him completely. It was painful to love from afar, but more so not to be able to love at all.
"Love," she said aloud. "He has to fall in love."
She tapped the pen against her teeth once more as she thought of it. If Weston Carlisle was to be a changed man, it would take love to change him. Yes, love could change Weston. Falling in love could change any man.
Chapter Five
Mikolai stepped out of the neat little square brick building near the gate of the Stefanski Brickyards. Dressed in his shirtsleeves, gleaming white, he was creased and wilted from a hard day's work. His broad shoulders and muscled physique gave the impression of a big and powerful man. His brow was thick and severe in a perpetual frown and his tawny blond hair was parted down the middle and slicked away from his face with J. B. Bristol's Healthy Hair Tonic. His aspect spoke neither of wealth nor prominence, but rather of distance, isolation, as if invisible boundaries yawned all around him.
He glanced down at his watch, noting that it was almost a full minute before six o'clock. Believing without question in the adage "A full day's work for a day's pay," he waited. He allowed his gaze to roam with pride along the dusty bustling distances of the yard. Everywhere he looked men and machines were busy and productive. This was his place of business. He had built it himself with nothing but the sweat of his brow and the desperation to prove that he could succeed. And it was exactly what he had always wanted it to be. Stacks of perfect, finished brick, trademark bright red, lay waiting for distribution near the fancy arched gateway to the property. So far, 1915 had been a very good year for brick, despite the increased popularity of concrete and steel building materials. And Stefanski Brick was the most popular brick in the state of Missouri.
With pride he turned his attention toward the tempering shed. The rhythmic grind of the soft-mud pug mill was like music to his ears. Tons of the raw materials of Stefanski Brick, clay and slate and sand, were being blended and stirred in the large, mechanically operated vat.
A vacuum-operated plunger then pushed the mixed clay product into oiled brick molds that were struck, tapped, and dumped onto drying pallets.
As Stefanski watched, a pallet was filled and Jimmy Terrell, a young off-bearer, hoisted it up on a two-wheel cart and headed toward the drying house. After a week or so in that building, which utilized both the drying agent of the ancients, sunshine, and the preferred method of the moderns, a coal-fired furnace, the green bricks would be ready for the kiln.
The brickyards were a maze of modern industrial activity. These were workingmen at work. A thing, Stefanski believed, that was as much to be reverenced as anything seen in a church. A man's worth, his nature, even his soul, was irrevocably tied to his purpose. And excepting those few intended for life in prayer or contemplating philosophy, a man's purpose was his work.
In the distance Stefanski gazed at the four beehive-style downdraft kilns smoldering like redbrick igloos. They turned the best clay in Missouri into the finest brick west of the Mississippi.
Once more he pulled his watch from his pocket and glanced down at it. Six o'clock exactly. He reached up to clang the bell beside the door. It was quitting time at the brickyards.
Work did not stop immediately, but rather speeded up perceptibly as the men hurried to finish their current tasks before heading home. Stefanski was no wrathful industrial overlord, but brickyard jobs were hard to come by and well compensated. The workers believed that despite the hard, backbreaking work, hundreds of other men coveted their livelihood.
Within a couple of minutes the men were gathering up their lunch buckets for the trip home. Making their way through the gates, they were tired and hungry and eager to go to comfortabl
e homes with happy well-fed children and the woman of
their choice. Some of them may have envied the brickyard's owner. But some days, he envied them.
Retrieving his coat from the office, Stefanski walked out of the yard. Only a small night crew was left to stoke the furnaces. He securely locked the tall, wrought-iron gate that bore his name in fancy script of twisted metal and hurried to catch the cable car.
Truthfully, he was entirely willing to wait fifteen minutes for another car. But he knew his men, and they would hold the trolley until he got there. The riders at this first stop being all his brickyard employees, and as the owner of the trolley service itself, it was unlikely that anyone would dare to leave Mikolai Stefanski stranded. It was therefore almost a favor to the workers and the trolley master that he quickened his step.
Just as he had expected, the Venice Interurban sat patiently at the end of the line waiting for him to board.
He nodded his thanks to the trolley master as he stepped on and dropped his nickel in the slot. An empty seat was waiting for him, but, as always, he did not take it. The deference paid to him by his employees was an embarrassment. And truly he preferred to stand. In America all men were equal. He knew what it felt to be less than other men. He would never allow himself the vanity to feel better than them.
The cable car chugged off at a breezy twenty miles per hour pace. All around him the men he knew, the men whose livelihoods depended upon him, laughed and talked together in casual camaraderie. Stefanski listened, but did not join in. He rode the trolley to be part of them. It would have been quicker and easier for him to drive his new Packard to the brickyards. But he needed these men, their talk, their lives. Even if he was, of necessity, upon the edges of the world around him, he needed the human connection no matter how tenuous.
With some exceptions the men around him were near his own age, thirty-eight. Pete Wilson was probably closer to fifty than he cared to admit and Jimmy Terrell was barely in his twenties though he was a father of four. They were the sons of miners and tenant farmers and hired hands who sought a better life for themselves and their children in town. Stefanski understood that better than they knew. He too had come to this place to create something better for his son, something better than he had ever had for himself.
