Bicycle Built for Two (28 page)

“Believe me, Kate, Alex and his father and
his father’s father worked from dawn to dark every day for years
and years. Decades. Even on Sundays, before we all went to church.
They did that for a little more than a century, actually. Thanks to
Alex’s abilities and business sense, the farm and his other
enterprises have prospered so greatly that he’s been able to hire
several men. We’ve got a foreman who oversees the cattle and dairy
businesses under Alex’s direction, and hired men who do most of the
plowing and planting, under Alex’s supervision.” Mrs. English gave
her son a doting look. “Alex has taken off some time in order to
work on the Columbian Exposition, but believe me, he works as hard
as any of the other men most of the time.”

Oh. Well, that was interesting. Kate gazed
at Alex, too, although probably not with as doting an expression as
his mother. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure about that, which
was worrisome all by itself. “I see.” Sensing danger in Alex’s
direction, Kate switched her attention to Alex’s mother. “This
chicken is delicious, Mrs. English.”

“It is, indeed,” agreed Mrs. Finney.

When Kate glanced at her mother’s plate, it
didn’t look to her as if Mrs. Finney had eaten enough of her meal
to form a judgment. Her mother caught her worried frown and stabbed
a couple of English peas. “It’s a delight to be here in the
country, Marguerite.” She delivered the peas to their intended
destination, and Kate decided she couldn’t very well fuss at her
mother while they were guests in the English home. Darn it, Ma
needed to eat more.

“It’s such a pleasure to have you here,” Mrs.
English countered sweetly.

Kate almost allowed herself to conclude that
Alex’s mother was a genuinely nice woman, although she didn’t dare
commit herself after so short an acquaintance, since she didn’t
think she could stand the disappointment of learning she’d been
mistaken. Still, there was no law that said Kate couldn’t treat her
as if she were nice until she proved herself otherwise. “This is
such a pleasant place, Mrs. English. I love your house. It’s so
homey and large and comfortable.”

“It’s old,” Mary Jo announced, wrinkling her
nose. “I want Alex to build a new house.”

“Why?” Kate stared at Mary Jo, unable to
credit the sentiment that had prompted her statement. “I think it
would be a crime to tear this house down. It’s—it’s—” She swept an
arm out as she dug around in her mind for the appropriate word.
Unable to find it, she said, “It’s absolutely perfect,” and thought
the two words fell short of the mark.

“Do you really think so?” Alex’s expression
fairly screamed gladness about Kate’s assessment of his home.

“Do you really think so?” Mary Jo, on the
other hand, seemed dumbfounded. She glanced around at the walls of
the room—they were taking supper in the breakfast room, since it
was smaller than the large dining room—and scowled.

Kate, too, glanced around. She took in the
shiny plates hanging on the walls, souvenirs from various places
members of the family had visited on business or pleasure trips.
She thought it was swell that people collected stuff like that. The
only thing her flat collected was dust. Her family wasn’t chock
full of heirlooms, unless you could count poverty and unhappiness.
“I do,” she said firmly. “I think you have a beautiful home, Mary
Jo, and you ought to appreciate it. Shoot, if you had to live where
I live, you’d appreciate it, believe me.” She smiled at the girl,
since she didn’t want Mary Jo feeling sorry for her. At the moment,
Kate was feeling sorry enough for herself; she didn’t need
company.

“Ah, Katie,” murmured Mrs. Finney.

Kate wished she’d kept her
fat mouth shut, a wish she entertained far too often. “It’s all
right, Ma. I’ve got a great life.”
Liar,
liar
. On the other hand, her life could be
worse, she guessed.

Mrs. Finney, seated next to her daughter,
gave her a sweet, sad smile. “If wishes were horses, Katie.”

It was one of her mother’s favorite sayings,
and Kate smiled back. “I know, Ma. I know.”

Alex cleared his throat. “We went out to the
west pasture today, Ma. The rhododendrons are going wild.”

“Yes. Kate was kind enough to bring me a
lovely bouquet,” Mrs. English said, smiling fondly at Kate, who
didn’t know what to do when strange ladies smiled fondly at her, so
she ate a bite of chicken as a cover up. “And she brought Hazel a
gorgeous bouquet, too. Mary Jo and Kate added some roses and Queen
Anne’s Lace, too. Isn’t the centerpiece beautiful?”

“It’s very pretty.” Alex smiled at Kate. She
didn’t know what to do when he smiled at her, either, so she ate
some more peas.

After she swallowed, she
asked, “Where’d all the plates come from?” Her nerves itched as if
a chorus of circus fleas were biting on them. All this fancy stuff
was alien to her, although she wished it wasn’t. As her mother
would say,
if wishes were
horses
.

“Oh, my, they come from all over the
place.”

“That one over there came all the way from
France.” Mary Jo, undoubtedly defying a lifetime’s worth of
training in polite manners, pointed at a plate on the wall over her
mother’s head.

Mrs. English said, “Mary Jo,” but she didn’t
scold.

“France.” Kate gazed at the plate pensively.
It was pretty, but no more so than many of the other ones. But it
had come from France. France, for Pete’s sake. Maybe even Paris.
“My goodness.”

“My father and I visited Europe several
years ago. It was a business trip, believe it or not. We were
looking at some new grain hybrids in France.”

“And don’t forget the English pigs,” Mary Jo
told her brother. She giggled.

“Grain and pigs? In France and England?
Somehow, when I think of France and England, I don’t necessarily
think of grain and pigs.” Kate and Mary Jo shared a grin.

Laughing, Mrs. English said, “Nor do I. I
think of fancy dresses and the queen and the guillotine.”

“Maybe we don’t, but Alex never thinks about
anything but the farm,” his sister informed their guests.

“Mary Jo,” muttered her mother again.

Kate got the feeling Mrs. English wasn’t
exactly a stern disciplinarian. That was perhaps the only thing she
had in common with Kate’s own mother.

“People the world over rely on farms and
farming techniques.” Alex frowned at his little sister to let her
know she oughtn’t be impertinent. “And people experiment with new
techniques and hybridizing in every place people are fortunate
enough to have developed agriculture. Some of the new hybrids, both
here and abroad, are much hardier than the older types. And the
Shropshire pigs we brought home are the best ever.”

Mary Jo, whose face was quite expressive of
her inner feelings, wrinkled her nose again. “They’re huge and
smelly, if you call that best.”

“I guess huge is a good quality if you want
lots of pork,” Kate said doubtfully.

“Exactly.” Alex bestowed another smile upon
her. She stuffed some potatoes and cream gravy into her mouth in a
hurry.

“We got that plate above Ma’s head in
France. The one over there . . .” Alex tilted his head to indicate
a rose-colored plate to the left of the French plate. “. . .we
brought home from Shropshire. In England.”

“My goodness. Developing
new sorts of pigs and grain never occurred to me.” Kate realized
the English plate had a pig on it, and would have laughed if she
were at home. An English pig. Imagine that. A
hybridized
English pig. Would
wonders never cease?

# # #

After supper, the English family and the
Finneys retired to the huge, screened-in front porch to sip tea and
watch the fireflies. Alex wasn’t sure, because he was unhappily
certain now that he was besotted with her, but he thought Kate
seemed softer and less brittle after her brief sojourn in the
country. And they still had another day to go. By Gad, she might
even turn human if this kept up.

Kate had darted upstairs to fetch a light
shawl for her mother. When she brought it out onto the porch, Alex
took it from her. “Let me do that, Kate. You sit there and enjoy
the country evening air.”

Softer or not, she meant to fight him for
possession of the shawl. She reminded him of Conky, but she was
nowhere near as good-natured as his failure of a dog. He leaned
over and hissed harshly in her ear. “Dash it, go sit by your
mother! How much longer do you think you’re going to be able to do
that?”

Her stricken look didn’t shame him much, and
he was glad she took his advice without launching a pitched battle.
As soon as she’d settled herself on the chair beside her mother, he
said, “Here, Mrs. Finney. Please let me drape this around your
shoulders. It’s not cold, but there’s a slight breeze tonight.”

“Thank you, Alex. You’re such a kind
man.”

“Nuts,” he said in unconscious imitation of
Kate. He used to think he was kind. Before he met Kate and her
mother, he’d have told anyone who asked that he was a nice man, and
a kind and generous one. Then Kate had smashed forever all of his
conceptions about himself. But he was learning. So far, he’d
learned that true charity doesn’t condescend. Nor is it blind. True
charity comes from the heart, and it respects its recipient.

Taking the chair closest to Kate, he took a
deep breath of fresh air. A hint of manure smell kissed his
nostrils, and he smiled to himself. “Wind’s blowing from the east,”
he observed. “I can smell the cows.”

“It smells good to me,” said Kate, breathing
deeply.

“You should smell it during the heat of the
summer,” Mary Jo chimed in. “It’s awful.”

“It’s the smell of money.” Mrs. English
laughed.

So did Mrs. Finney. Alex noticed Kate
staring at her mother as if she didn’t understand why she
considered the smell of money something to laugh about. There were
times—many of them, and one of them right this minute—when Alex
didn’t think he and Kate could ever find a common ground.

But the evening was a fine one, the
fireflies came out and blinked up a storm, thereby entertaining
Kate and her mother madly, Mary Jo behaved herself for the most
part, the two older ladies seemed content, and Alex decided not to
worry about common ground. There were other things to do this
weekend, the primary one being to give Hazel Finney a pleasant
memory to take with her to her grave.

Alex feared that time wasn’t far off and
decided on the spur of the moment to do some research. He aimed to
find a hospital or a group of doctors and scientists doing research
into tuberculosis and become a major contributor to the cause. If
someone could discover a cure for the white plague, the world would
be a much better place.

The night air seemed to stir Mrs. Finney’s
cough, unfortunately. After only a few minutes on the porch, it
became obvious that she was fighting hard for breath. Damnation. If
he’d met Kate two or three years ago, he might have been able to do
something substantial for her mother. Now, all he could do was
watch her die, try to make her last days on earth as comfortable as
possible, and feel helpless. He hated that. “Are you all right,
Mrs. Finney?”

After hacking into her handkerchief for
several seconds and then taking several desperate sips from the
flask in her pocket, she turned eyes filled with water upon Alex.
“I’m so sorry, Alex. I guess it’s the night air. It’s so beautiful
here, and I don’t want to go indoors, but . . .” She sighed,
thereby precipitating another paroxysm of coughs.

Alex’s insides tightened. Kate got up from
her chair. “Come on, Ma, let me help you upstairs. We can look at
the countryside from the window.”

“Good idea.” Alex got to his feet at once
and put a hand on Mrs. Finney’s arm. “Please, let me help you.” He
caught Kate’s eyes across her mother’s head, and the pain in them
made his own heart ache. Hoping a sympathetic—but not a
condescending—smile might help her cope, he gave her one. She
dropped her gaze instantly. Alex sighed.

“Thank you both.” Casting an apologetic
glance at Mrs. English and Mary Jo, who had also risen from their
chairs, Mrs. Finney said, “Please, you two, don’t bother with me.
I’ll be fine with these two helping me.”

“You bet,” said Kate, her voice a sprightly
contrast to the agony in her eyes.

“Absolutely,” confirmed Alex.

They walked slowly through the front door
and to the staircase. At the foot of the stairs, Alex took matters
into his own hands again. “I apologize for the presumption, Mrs.
Finney, but I’m going to carry you upstairs.” And, with a swoop, he
picked her up.

Mrs. Finney tried to laugh and ended up
coughing.

Kate said, “Alex!” She said no more, but
handed her mother her own handkerchief.

Alex wondered how many handkerchiefs Mrs.
Finney went through on the average day. He suspected the one she’d
carried outside was already damp and bloody. He took the stairs
slowly, being careful not to jostle his cargo. She weighed nothing
at all, and he recalled how little of her dinner she’d eaten. She’s
pushed her food around and made a gallant effort, but he knew she
hadn’t eaten much.

At the top of the stairs, Kate scooted past
him and opened her mother’s door. “Here, Ma. Lie down, and I’ll
open the curtains. You can watch the fireflies from the window, and
I’ll sit next to you.”

After setting his cargo on the bed, Alex
said, “I’ll get a couple of chairs, and we can join you.”

“You two are too good to me,” Mrs. Finney
gasped.

A duet of voices responded to this
declaration. “Nuts.” Alex and Kate glanced at each other, and Alex
suspected they might have smiled if circumstances had been
different. As it was, he could see tears standing in Kate’s eyes.
He knew she’d never shed them. Not Kate. Not in front of her
mother.