35
Dedicated to Change
We traveled in Europe, spent Christmas in Rome, my birthday in Venice, purchased pottery in Cortona. As old as Europe is, it’s been held up by the history of people more conquered than conquerors. But still it endures. I hoped Robert could see that perseverance as we traveled by train hither and yon in those walled cities. Whether the three railroads he so wanted to come to Spokane came or not, life would go on. We would go on. Europe and my faith gave me that.
December 1, 1902
It was indeed a grand trip and Robert did pay good attention to us as a married couple. He allowed me to plan, but during the first months he was like a buffalo in a wagon: confined, uncertain. It reminded me that he had left school young and was basically self-taught in the literary vein. His business instincts had put him into the realm of the very wealthy, but here, with no goal in sight but to vacation, he didn’t know what to do.
“Let me plan our schedule,” I told him. “You tell me what you’d like to see and I’ll make the arrangements.”
“I don’t really know.”
“Then practice spontaneity.”
“Last time I was spontaneous, you put me on a cowcatcher across the Dale Creek Canyon and I almost lost my lunch.”
“But you talk about it all the time. You loved it.”
“I loved having done it, not doing it.”
We laughed together at that. He was sweet and attentive and never strayed an eye at the young things in Spain whose dark eyes snapped at him when they danced, nor did he sleep on the ferry we took to Greece like I saw most men doing on the deck. He read and we talked and he asked how my memoir writing fared.
“Good. I write perhaps one thousand words a day, on the days that I write.”
“Will I get to read it before you send it to the publisher?”
“Would you want to?”
“I can correct your statistics and edit your long sentences.” He grinned.
“You, kind sir, are not one to talk about long sentences or, even worse, long titles. Remember that collection of articles for The New York World that New West Publishing wanted?”
He combed his mustache with his fingers, smiling. “Yes. My old Omaha publisher. The title is Gunnison and San Juan: A late and reliable description of the wonderful gold and silver belts and iron and coal fields of that newest and best land for prospector and capitalist, Southwestern Colorado: With facts on climate, soil, forests, scenery, game, fish, cities, towns, populations, development, routes, rates of fare, employment, wages, living expenses, etc.: as presented in a series of letters written to the ‘New York World.’ ”
“I can’t believe you can remember that whole thing.”
“They’re like children. Of course, I remember the title of each book.”
“They loved you or they’d have changed that title quick as a flick of a lamb’s tail. I’ve chosen a much simpler title for mine. Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage. Sounds adventurous and romantic, don’t you think?”
“Unless you’ve ridden on a stage.” He put his book down onto his lap. “How will you deal with, well, some of the incidents? Like the Boise-Caldwell battle or the Fairhaven disaster?”
“I won’t malign you, Robert, or your work, if that’s what you’re worried about. Nor our friends. If I must say something uncomplimentary, I’ll couch it in humor or not name anyone at all. I wrote ‘a minister did not support our efforts in Caldwell and both his daughter and son were helping with the Presbyterian Society.’ No need to call out his un-Christianlike attitude nor discuss a family wound.”
“What about our wounds, yours and mine?”
These words surprised. “They’ve healed up. No scars.”
“Would you tell me if they hadn’t?”
I considered those deep black eyes and felt my own begin to water. “I’ve had a struggle with the Bunting babies, and your subsequent comment that you didn’t want a child not of your own making.” I inhaled the sea air. “It’s one of those irreconcilable issues.”
“Important ones.”
“Yes. But I have learned, I hope, that the resolution isn’t in your doing what I want. Or my pressing you until you do it, resentfully most likely. But in taking responsibility for finding a way to meet that mothering need some other way. The Presbyterian church served that, I think. And now, the girls from the college. I’ll . . . like having them around. I have my bulldog.” He grinned. “I’ve grown new flesh around the deepest wounds. As I said, no scars.”
He patted my hand. “I do have a place I’d like to go, now that I think of it. To the archaeological site of Ephesus, in Turkey. It hasn’t been worked very long, but I’ve heard that tourists are already visiting there, imagining where Paul was imprisoned when he wrote those letters to the Ephesians. They hope to uncover the library this year.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugged. “I read the scientific journals. Ephesus is an intriguing mix of science and religion.”
“You are a remarkable man,” I said. “I’ll see what I can arrange.”
“If we build Union Station in Spokane, then you can call me remarkable. That’s what I’ll be focused on for the next few years. That and a short line for Central Oregon. I left them out when we pushed for the southern and the Columbia Gorge routes. Much to do.” He picked his book back up, read for a time, then said, “They can call me the Sphinx all they want, but if Harriman is outed as the backer, it’ll fall apart because Hill doesn’t know the UP is involved. And I don’t mind having people think I’m that flush. It’s our secret, Dell.” I nodded. “You and me. Can I get you a hot chocolate?”
I told him that would be nice and he left to find a steward. I was wrapped up in a blanket, a book on my lap. He trusted me. And I trusted him, though it didn’t mean he might not still take us back to that path of poverty with his investments. A railroad in Central Oregon, through those lava beds? I wouldn’t jump that rope before I saw it come to pass.
I did wonder, though, how I’d handle all the railroad business in the book. Or how much I’d really say about the ups and downs of our financial life. I decided to be elusive. I’ll round the facts rather than set them straight.
When we returned to Spokane, leaving from Liverpool on April 20, 1903, I did set myself down to work on the memoir more diligently. After my mother’s death while I was staying to tend to her estate, I found all the letters I’d written to her. I had details I’d forgotten, about traveling to New Mexico and Alaska or the time Pard and I called a steamer purser to put the Caldwells, with whom we were traveling at the time, in the bridal suite but to not say anything to them about it, as they were “sensitive because of their age.” The purser told everyone else though, and people were so sweet to them, treating them as newlyweds. Pard never confessed to them, even though they commented on all the little extras that had shown up in their cabin each day, and how people smiled at them. “They must think we’re doddering old fools,” the senator opined, and even then, Pard never told him.
There were interruptions in my writing, of course, those next years. Robert’s North Coast Line was finished. He bought up rights-of-way to railroad depot access in Seattle and other cities, so when the main lines came in, he would benefit. These purchases he said were from our own pots of money. He started that Central Oregon line while he ran the electric and water companies he owned in Spokane. I couldn’t keep track. So I didn’t.
I had management concerns of my own. Keeping a good staff proved to be a full-time occupation. Our coachman left us in 1909 shortly after we hired him and trained him in the way we wanted, and we had to find another. Our gardener was still with us, the one we hired in 1909. I planned and executed lavish parties for up to four hundred people who walked the gardens, mingled in the ten rooms open to living (and not sleeping), played billiards in the basement and croquet on the lawns. My chef and I worked together on elaborate settings with agate-handled cutlery at one event, silver at another. I always placed individual crystal vases at each setting, made certain the centerpieces never rose above eye height. The chef’s sauces rivaled Paris.
I thought we had a schedule and could resume my writing.
Then my sister Hattie’s husband died and we insisted she come live with us. She would have the bedroom overlooking the gardens.
“Beautiful,” Hattie said. After we settled her in her room, we moved out onto the little patio each room had. Wrought-iron chairs and tables were designed to match each bedroom theme.
Hattie sighed as she gazed at the azaleas in bloom, the topiary, then sank into a chair. “He was there one minute and gone the next. What did I miss?” She closed her eyes, leaned her head back.
“I’m sure you missed nothing. You’re a doctor, not God. You looked after him better than anyone could have.”
“He wasn’t even fifty.” A couple of college girls lounged on the cast-iron benches below us, chattering. Our original three boarders had graduated and we’d had a party for them at The Pines. Each year we’d gained a few more whom I encouraged and helped support.
I held my sister’s hand, deciding that when people are grieving it’s best to say nothing but sit and listen. Let their sorrow find the words it needs to without any help from well-meaning chattering family or friends.
Hattie was good about turning the tables. “And how are you and Robert?”
“Good. We’re good. We have our parallel lives that intersect over dinner or when we have an evening at home. I’ve given up understanding all the financial matters, and it’s a kind of faith I have not in him but in the Divine. If I’m faithful with our tithes and I sing in the choir and look after the needy, well, then it’s my prayer that we’ll be alright. We were alright in Boston, eventually. And even if we lose it all, we’ll be alright.”
“God took care of you.”
“Yes, though Robert still seems to think it was Harriman.” We laughed.
Early in the morning, I began writing again while Robert slept or walked the gardens and we’d have breakfast together. I loved that alone time in the dark hours, that chunk of ore on my desk a reminder. I watched the sun come up and took my reverie back into the past as a kind of vacation. My mother’s letters that I’d kept and those I’d written to her and my articles all brought back memories.
And when Harriman died unexpectedly at age sixty-two . . . well, that set us on a course of stabilizing what Robert had worked so hard to put together. But his efforts paid off and Pard’s plan to bring those three railroads continued as though the giant of the railroad and financial world was still with us. I was pleased with myself that I hadn’t wasted worry on something God had already managed.
I finished my memoir in 1910, the year we hired additional staff, including a new chauffeur. Frank Weiss came with two children and without a wife. Five-year-old Oscar and one-year-old Willis arrived at the interview with him. All three had red hair, blue eyes, and a dimple on the left cheek only, just like their father. Those boys were Frank’s sons.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Strahorn. I had arrangements for the lads. A Norwegian girl will watch them, but she got sick today of all days. I couldn’t afford to miss this interview. Oscar, you come sit now. See, Willis is behaving.” The baby clung to his neck, sneaked looks at me, yawned.
“You’re . . . widowed?”
“No, ma’am, sorry to say. My wife up and left. Doctors said she never recovered from Willis’s arrival. We’ve done alright these past months. I have help. Sorry about today.”
I had checked his references, which were excellent. And I liked the look of him, the way he gentled Oscar to come sit beside him, patted little Willis while he talked to me. Before the interview was over, I knew I’d hire him and would be getting more than I’d pay for.
Oscar and Willis wheedled their way into our lives and shifted our world. If you must ask how they did so, then you’ve never been around children much . . . or dogs. My beloved bulldog Daisy had full rein through The Pines, her black-and-white body (a writer’s colors) chasing Oscar’s scampering feet and holding court when Willis took his first steps across the Italian tiles. We hired a nanny for them. It was a home. My home. Our home, peopled with family. The shortest path to home, I’ve learned, is with family and friends walking beside us. It was one of the happiest periods of my life.