Thurston House Read online

  27

  Jonathan Thurston Harte was christened in Old Saint Mary’s Church on California Street when he was six months old, in January of 1915, when all of Europe was at war, and his parents had a small reception for their friends at Thurston House. The Crockers and Floods were there, the Tobins, the Devines. It was a small but select group that raised their glasses and toasted him with champagne, and that night his mother and father quietly toasted him in the room where he had been born, and John smiled down at his wife happily.

  “How lucky we are, little one.”

  “Indeed we are.” There was nothing else she wanted with her life. She had a husband she loved, a child she adored, their respective mines were doing well, although she had refused to merge them again. She insisted that they had separate identities and it might hurt them to change that now.

  “Everyone knows that we’re married and I run both mines. What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a difference to me.” She belonged to John, but the mines did not, and for some deep-seated reason she couldn’t explain, she wanted to keep it that way, although he ran the mine for her, and he did a stupendous job of it. She had no complaints, and in fact she wasn’t even interested in the mine now that she had tiny Jon. Even the continuing blight on her vines didn’t seem such a tragedy to her now. Nothing did. All she thought of were happy things, and she insisted that he looked like John. He had dark hair and great big violet eyes, but in truth, he didn’t look exactly like either of them. Hannah knew who he looked like. He was the spitting image of Camille, but she never said that to either of them.

  They stayed in Napa for most of that spring, and celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday by going to the Grange Dance, and that summer was the prettiest she remembered since her youth. John turned fifty-five years old, and the only sadness was a letter that Spring Moon had died in an accident, falling off a bridge. She had hit her head on the rocks and died instantly. Her brother had written to John, through someone he knew who could write. He felt that John ought to know, and he was touched. She had been good to him, and when Sabrina heard, she was saddened too. Spring Moon had saved her life six years before, or certainly her virginity. It was difficult to believe that it had already been six years. It seemed to have flown by, and yet at the same time she couldn’t imagine a life without John Harte now. It seemed as though she had spent her whole life with him.

  And her predictions had come true. On the day Jonathan was born, Europe went to war, but there was no sign of America entering into it, and even when Jonathan was two years old, there seemed no real threat that the United States would get involved, or so the politicians said, but once again Sabrina didn’t believe what they said.

  “How can we not, John? They’re dying by the thousands over there. Do you really think we won’t lend them a hand? And the trouble is that if we do, we’re fools, but if we don’t, we’re the most heartless creatures that ever walked. I don’t know what to think.”

  “You worry too much about politics. That’s the trouble with women who used to work, they don’t know what to do with themselves after that.” He loved to tease her about her inquiring mind. She had plenty to do with little Jon, so much so that although she wanted to go very much, she decided not to go to New York with John. He had business to do for both of them in Detroit, and some investments to see about in New York. “We could come back slowly through the South if you like.” He was tempting her, he hated to travel alone. He enjoyed her company so much, and they were inseparable most of the time.

  “How long would we be gone?” He thought about it for a minute.

  “Probably three weeks. Maybe four.” They lost two weeks just getting across the country and back, or almost, but Sabrina shook her head now.

  “I just can’t. Could we take Jon?”

  John thought about it and then shook his head sensibly. “Can you imagine ten days with him on the train?”

  She groaned and they both laughed. “I can, but I can’t imagine ever regaining my sanity.” He was two years old and into everything in sight. He was a lively, healthy, happy child, and Sabrina was sorry she hadn’t gotten pregnant again. She had hoped to ever since he was born, but it hadn’t happened again. But it seemed less important now that they had Jon. For some reason, and the doctor had no idea why, she didn’t get pregnant easily. But they were both happy with their only son. “I hate to let you go alone, sweetheart, and for so long.”

  “So do I.” He didn’t look pleased. “You sure you don’t want to leave Jon with Hannah here?”

  “I really don’t think I can. He’s too wild for her just now.” And there was no one at Thurston House that she would trust him with, although they were often there. “I just can’t this time.”

  “All right.” He went ahead and made his plans, and on September nineteenth, she went to the station with little Jon and they kissed him good-bye, and he waved from the private car he had availed himself of for the trip, and he headed east as Jon and Sabrina went back to Thurston House to wait for him there. She had some business to do in town, with her bank, and she wanted to order new curtains and some new upholstery and rugs for Thurston House since they were there so much. She had enough to keep her occupied while he was gone, but it seemed terribly lonely there after he left. She rattled around in the enormous house, anxious for news of him, and more anxious still for him to come home, but it would be weeks before he did. And she sat in the garden playing with little Jon, and went downtown to select some of the fabrics she needed the next day, and wondered where John was at that point in time. And she stopped on the street and watched the paper boy hand out the newspapers, and suddenly her heart stopped. TRAIN WRECK ON CENTRAL PACIFIC LINE. HUNDREDS DIE the headline read. She felt dizzy as she pushed her way through the crowd to see what the newspaper said, yanked it from the boy’s hand and pressed a dollar bill in it, and stood there trembling. There were no names, no list of casualties, but it was the train her husband had been on. The wreck had happened in Echo Canyon, east of Ogden, Utah. She stood in a numbed state, and without thinking, went to her bank, not even sure how she had arrived there, and stood numbly with tears of terror running down her face until someone realized who she was.

  “Mrs. Harte … may we help you?…” She was ushered into the office of the president and handed the paper to him with a look of terror on her face.

  “John left on that train yesterday. Is there any way to find out …” She didn’t even dare say the words. It was possible that he was unharmed, or that he was among the casualties they talked about. And if he was, she would go to him at once. Jonathan would have to stay with the help until she returned, there was no question about that now. Her mind was already racing ahead, as she looked imploringly at the bank president. “Can’t you find out?” He nodded worriedly.

  “We’ll cable our corresponding bank in Ogden, and have them get the information for us.” The train had stopped there and had not gone on. It was too disabled to continue the trip, and an empty train had gone out from San Francisco that afternoon, to pick up the survivors of the wreck.

  “What if we call the railroad line? They must have a list of casualties.”

  The bank president nodded again. “We’ll do everything we can, Mrs. Harte. Where will you be?”

  “I’ll wait to hear from you at home, or should I stay here?”

  “No, I’ll have one of my men drive you home, and I’ll let you know the moment we hear something.” He was terribly upset. The Hartes were their biggest customers, as had been Mrs. Harte’s father before that, and he only hoped that Mr. Harte had been unharmed in the wreck. He helped her into the car of his vice-president, saw to it that she was taken home, and hurried back to issue frantic orders to everyone. Cables were sent to the Central Pacific with a request for an immediate response, he sent a messenger to the head of the railroad office, and waited himself for the news, and when it came it wasn’t good. John Harte was on the list of casualties. He had died in one of the six
cars that had been totally crushed when the train jackknifed on the tracks, and fell hundreds of feet into a ravine below. His body had been recovered from the canyon only hours before and his identity had been unknown at first, but it was evident now who he was, and the corresponding bank answered the inquiry with regret and sympathy extended to the family. It did nothing to sooth the bank president’s nerves as he drove through the gates of Thurston House late that afternoon, and sounded the knocker somberly. A maid answered the door, and he asked to see Mrs. Harte, if possible. She came instantly, the moment she was told who it was, leaving Jon with one of the maids upstairs, and hurrying downstairs with a hopeful look on her face. Surely they had discovered that John was helping everyone. He was so accustomed to disasters at the mines over the years, that he was marvelous in times such as those. Sabrina looked down the broad staircase with a nervous smile, but the look on the man’s face stopped her where she stood.

  “John?…” It was barely a whisper beneath the great dome. “He … he’s all right, isn’t he?” She walked a few more steps and then stopped as the man shook his head, and then she ran to him. “He’s not …” He had wanted to tell her differently, wanted her to be sitting down so she wouldn’t faint in his arms. And for nothing in this world did he want to be the one to tell her the news, but he had no choice. The task had fallen to him, and he looked at her now with a stricken face. It shouldn’t happen to people such as these, people who loved each other so much, who led such decent lives, who had found each other after so long. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Harte. We just got word …” He took an enormous gulp of air and went on. It wouldn’t get any easier, it could only get worse now, for her anyway. “He was killed last night in the wreck. They recovered his body”—he hated to tell her this but there was no turning back now—“from a ravine just this afternoon.” There was an almost animal moan of pain from her, as when she had given birth to Jon, but this was so much worse than that, and there was no baby at the end of it. And now there was no more John. She looked up at the bank president with more pain in her eyes than he had ever seen before, and he had no idea what to say to her as they stood on the stairs of Thurston House, beneath the dome her father had built, and that she had replaced after it was destroyed in 1906. But neither of them saw it now. They saw nothing but each other’s eyes, and he saw hers fill with tears, and then she walked him slowly to the door. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she didn’t faint, or have hysterics in his arms. She simply walked him to the front door and looked as though the world had just come to an end. And for Sabrina Harte, it had.

  Book III

  Sabrina: The Later Years

  28

  There was no way to explain to two-year-old Jonathan Harte that his daddy had died. He could barely talk, and there was no way to make him understand. But everyone else knew, and when John’s body was returned to town, there was a memorial service in Old Saint Mary’s Church, and a funeral in Napa, where they buried him. And Sabrina felt as though she had died beside John. She had them open the casket when his body arrived, and she sat alone in the library of Thurston House, looking at him, the bruises, the broken neck, there was still sand on his face from the ravine, and she sat there, brushing it off for him, waiting for him to wake up at her touch, to tell her that it was all a mistake. But there was no mistake. John Harte didn’t stir, and her brief life with him had come to an end. They had been married for seven years, and she couldn’t begin to imagine how she would go on. She was more devastated than she had ever been by anything in her life, and she would sit for hours on her front porch, staring into space, and finally Hannah would come to tap her arm and remind her of some chore she had to do, or that Jonathan needed her. But it was as though her mind had gone blank when he died. She felt nothing, saw nothing, said nothing to anyone, and could even give nothing to her child.

  She had already been told several times that there was a stack of things she had to look at, at both mines, and she couldn’t bring herself to go to either one, neither his nor her own, and she couldn’t imagine now why she had fought so hard against the merger he had sought for so long. What reason had she had? What point had she wanted to make? She could no longer remember it, nor could she muster the desire to tend to their businesses now.

  “Mrs. Harte, you have to come,” her own foreman begged her half a dozen times, stopping by at the St. Helena house, and she would nod at him, but the next day and the day after that, she still didn’t go. A month rolled by, and finally, in desperation both foremen came, and this time she knew that she couldn’t avoid it anymore. She got in John’s car with them, and drove to her own mine first, but as she walked into the office that had been hers so long ago, it was suddenly as though she had gone back in time. She could remember the first day she had gone there after her father had died, the brave speech she had made with the bullhorn, and the men leaving her in droves … the ugly scene with Dan … and suddenly she felt as deserted as she had then, it was as though the pain were that of yesterday, not a decade before, and as she looked at the two men who had brought her there, her face melted like sand and she began to cry until she sobbed openly, and her own foreman took her awkwardly in his arms.

  “Mrs. Harte … I know it’s painful for you to come here now … but …”

  “No, no.” She shook her head, looking desperately at him. “You don’t understand. I can’t do it again … I just can’t … I just don’t have the strength I had then.…” He didn’t understand what she meant, and she sighed and tried to regain control of herself, and then finally she sat down in the chair John had sat in so often when he worked at her mine. “I can’t run this mine again. I have a son to think of now.” They both knew that she once had, and considered it remarkable, what’s more they had heard that she had done a damn fine job, but no one expected her to now.

  “We didn’t think you would, Mrs. Harte.” She looked surprised and relieved at their words, and suddenly realized that it was one of the things she had feared in the past month, that, and the loneliness of seeing the mines where John had worked so hard. They would be so empty without him now. She couldn’t bear the thought, and she stood up with a broken sigh.

  “I want you both to run things as you have been. I will consult with you regularly, and I want to know everything that goes on. And,” she took them both by surprise, “I want to merge all of our mines.” She knew she should have done it while John was alive, and she felt guilty at having resisted him for so long, as though she didn’t trust him with her mines. She still felt sick when she thought of it, but she was going to do it now. “Everyone knows the two are run as one. I want them called the Thurston-Harte Mines.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” They all knew that it would take a while for the papers to be drawn up, but at least they could start doing that, and there was a faint hint of her old self, as she wrote down a series of things on a memo pad and handed it to each of them.

  “Other than that, I want the mines run as they have been up until now. Continue everything my husband did. I want nothing changed in either mine.” But what she discovered in the ensuing months was that there were problems in both mines, and particularly his. The profits of his mine had been going down radically for the past several years, but he had never complained to her, and he had been honest to a fault about how he ran the Thurston mines for her, never applying her profits to his loss. She had even more reason to be grateful to him than she had known then, and she was sorry for the worry he must have had over his own mine. And he had never said anything to her. But those worries of what had been the Harte mines altered radically when the United States entered the Great War in 1917, and suddenly the need for bullets and war machines created an enormous need for cinnabar, and business at all of their mines boomed. They were known as the Thurston-Harte Mines by then, and Sabrina was making money hand over fist, not that she really cared. All she cared about was her son Jon, and she still hadn’t gotten over the loss of the man she had so greatly loved. And now, as though seeki
ng some lost part of him, she began working again several days a week at the mines. It took her mind off all else, and once Jonathan was in school, it kept her busy while he was gone, but eventually, with increased demands put on both mines, she began to stay longer and longer each day, and she began to work as she once had, staying late into the night, and often when she came home at night, too tired to eat or do anything, it was too late to see her son.