Excerpt 2 continued...
Suite 2, Mov. 4 - Andante Cantabile, The Inland Harbor
Her father’s study was a carefully constructed fortress, the air flavoured with the slight metallic tang of a multitude of cyanotype blueprints spread across the deeply grained oak desk. To her eyes, it was all as majestic as he; she loved to enter it when it was full of the energy he naturally exuded when constructing the future. For in this space, while he was yet among his family in their home, he was also far away, removed to a vision of their future that was, in truth, his present.
The clouds of earlier had mostly cleared but the sun’s last edge was dipping below the curve of the earth, casting its last orange and red hues through the West-facing windows, painting the wisps of cloud visible over the water through the North-facing bay window. The orange glow warmed the odds and ends of his refuge, tobacco tins, a spyglass, and the ship models he studied in between reading factory plans and mansion blueprints. Amid this glow, Gordon Dunbar was hunched over a drawing of a brick and granite turret, his spectacles perched on the very tip of his nose. He looked every bit the man who had forged an empire out of fire and glass – robustly broad-shouldered, with hands that looked as though they were accustomed to hauling iron rather than annotating architectural plans, much less to signing contracts. When Megan entered, he didn’t look up immediately, his finger tracing a line on the blue-papered design with a reverence one might expect to be reserved more appropriately for scripture.
“Windyside grows another foot every day, Father,” Megan said, her voice melodic and composed. She leaned against the heavy doorframe, observing the room—the leather-bound ledgers, the smell of woodsmoke, and the unyielding force of her father’s ambition that grounded it all through the floorboards and into the stony outcrop that defined the bluff.
“It’s more than inches and feet, Meg,” Gordon grunted, finally looking up. His eyes crinkled with immediate warmth, a light of pride reflecting in the glass of his spectacles. He gestured to the blueprints. “And while I have you here, before the thing is constructed and is literally locked in stone, what of the name Windymere?”
“Instead of Windyside? I quite like the name as is,” she replied, almost brusquely, as if he were taking away a favored doll and she did not know why.
“Hmm. Windymere seems to speak of my people’s roots.”
“Your people wouldn’t have named where they lived Windymere, as somebody else would have named it for them!” she blurted out, continuing her defense against his assault on her suddenly tenacious grip on the old name they had used informally as a family for the two years they had been here in the cottage.
“Alright then, for you it is Windyside, and may those winds ever blow!”
“They already are,” she replied, aware that she was moving too fast into the conversation she had hoped could emerge slowly, carefully.
He paused, though whether to reflect on the name or the implication of her words, it wasn’t clear. Thankfully, he returned to his visions and plans. “That’s all very well. For this Windyside will serve as a tribute to our family now and for the next hundred years, rather than a monument to the last hundred.” He returned his glance to the papers before him. “Or at least it will be if I can figure out how to strengthen it against the salt and sea of this windy ledge,” he conceded, revealing the humility behind the strength, that combination which made him such a force in his business affairs.
He leaned back, his chair groaning under his weight, and reached for his pipe. “Coming here... it was for your mother’s breath, first and foremost. But it was for me, too. I spent forty years living inland, looking at vistas choked with smoke. Now, I’m looking at the horizon,” turning to her more fully, “and I can see a lot further.” His gaze fixed on her as he lit his pipe and drew a deep breath. She understood he was seeing the future again. Her future.
Redirecting the intent of his glance, she offered, “Your vision is quite full already, with the yacht you’ve ordered.” This reference made his face split wide into a brilliant grin.
“Yes, well, one must learn the ways of one’s peers,” he said, somewhat stuffily, before returning to his normal self, Pittsburgh man born and bred. “But one is also duty-bound to better them!” That racing sloop will hold its own against anything the New York set brings to the line next summer.”
“Master of the forge, master of the wheel,” she intoned almost reverently, though teasing at the same instant. “Is there anything you dare not master in your dash forward?” she asked, strolling through the final rays of violet light before the glow of the now-set sun would favor them no more, leaving them in the artificial light of his office gasolier.
Amused, he guessed at her reference, “It seems you have been to the carriage house to see the Winton?”
Now it was her turn to break into a grin and she let out a delighted guffaw, “Yes! It’s an absolute dream of a machine, a mechanical marvel! I rather expect Apollo himself to appear and command it.”
“It’s the future, Meg,” Father said, his rugged face somehow soft and determined in the same view. “That Winton will be doing twenty miles an hour while the rest of the world is still checking their horses’ shoes. I’m entering the new century with the engine running.”
“Quite literally!” she beamed, basking in the sustaining glow of their mutual admiration. With him, she knew herself to be completely cared for and safe. And soon she would leave the safety of the harbor he so carefully maintained for her, and for them all.
The energy of the moment subsided, the gas-electric chandelier above them happily conquering the lingering glow from the now-extinguished sun. It shone above them, casting its own shadows now, leaving one to rest on his face as he turned to face her, setting aside his pipe, and turning more serious of a sudden. “But the future I care most about, the one I want to see in vision and bring to reality most of all... it isn’t the Winton or even Windyside. It’s the horizon that lies ahead of my fine daughters as they must chart their courses.”
“Or wander their cart paths,” she muttered, attempting to postpone the gravity of what she knew must be said.
He stood up, walking around the desk to stand before her. He looked at her with a piercing, paternal intensity, his voice dropping into a rougher, more soulful register. “There will be no cart paths for you, my darling daughter, only broad highways to beautiful, ever-brightening vistas.” Presently he broke the gaze as well as his words and took her in a deep embrace, breathing deeply if somewhat raggedly of her essence, clinging to the moment, she presumed, in precisely the way she did.
“You, my love, the first fledgling to test the air. You are forever my beloved daughter.” Now breaking their embrace, he stepped back while holding both her hands firmly enough to be constant, gently enough to spare her the power his large hands could convey. “You stayed here, with us, these two years now, because of your mother.” His eyes moistened as he held back his words and, presumably, his tears. “You spent these important years of your life here for her, and I’ll never forget it. You know I love you girls but my love for your mother surpasses all the energy of my soul to convey.” He paused again. “Thank you.”
Tears now falling from her eyes, she rushed back into his chest to reclaim the embrace she knew she would soon have to leave for a time.
“It would have been harder to leave Pittsburgh society had Mr. Henderson proved to be the young man we all imagined he was.”
“That’s a name I never want to hear in this house again, nor in Windymere,” Father said without apparent malice.
“Besides, there are greater names for you to become acquainted with.”
“And if a great name isn’t what I want?” she tendered on her own behalf.
She felt his chuckle, pressed as she was against his chest, before she heard it. “Meg, you will have the privilege to choose what ‘great’ means to you. Whatever great thing you see in the man whom you accept to be your husband, that is what great will mean to me forever more.”
Megan pressed her wet eyes against his wool morning coat. “And I believe you when you say that. This is why no one will ever doubt that Gordon Dunbar’s daughters will honor him until the day they die.”
He finally broke their embrace, and she hoped he was as filled of her as she was of him, for they would both need the memory of it to sustain them. Had there ever been a father and daughter with so much mutual fondness and respect? If there had, she hadn’t seen it. Even her sisters had not yet learned how they could enter the bosom affections of this grand-hearted bear of a man. Hopefully they would yet. She knew to cherish it.
“You have packed your trunks?” he inquired, innocently enough that she felt he might be scheming something but could not apprehend what.
“Nearly so, I shall have just the two of them and there are so many petticoats to be reckoned with, but I will emerge victorious.”
“Then my apologies if I burden you with an additional load,” he began, her interest piquing further. “For I am afraid you will need to take a third trunk.”
“There’s no need, Father, I’m sure the two–”
“No protest will be necessary, nor welcome,” he beamed at her, knowing he held her curiosity in his spell. He took her by the hand and led her to the ornate wardrobe that sat against the East wall. With a simple motion, the mother-of-pearl handle opened its interior, or what little of it could be perceived, full to overflowing as it was with silk and gauze.
Overflowing with cautious pride, he reached in and carefully retrieved the gown from its hook. Looking alternately at it and at her, he seemed more a child than an aged industrialist. “I hope you will indulge a proud father.”
She did not hear him because she could not. Her senses were completely overwhelmed by the majesty of what emerged from the pressed confines of the admittedly large wardrobe. The silk gave a soft, rhythmic hiss as it spilled from the wardrobe, a cascading waterfall of Elephant’s Breath grey that appeared to swallow the light from the room. It seemed to never cease emerging, revealing itself first to her eyes, then her mind, and finally her heart. Her hands, in their turn, could not help but rise to her mouth.
“Father, it is the most exquisite gown I have ever seen!”
Megan stepped forward, fingers hesitating as they hovered over the bodice. Beneath a top layer of silk gauze, so fine it looked like woven mist, lay the heavy poult-de-soie. When her skin finally met the fabric, she was startled by its duality – it possessed the cool, substantial weight of mills and factories, yet it was surfaced with a shimmering, metallic thread that danced like salt spray in the sun.
She traced the asymmetrical drape of the gauze across the bust, her thumb catching on the intricate, silver-threaded embroidery that bordered the hem. It wasn’t merely a dress, it was a feat of engineering, a pigeon breast silhouette designed to command the space and air around its wearer, around her. And she would be expected to don it in just one week’s time! Gordon watched her, his face transformed. The firm lines of the man who commanded vast manufacture and export operations across the industrializing world softened into a look of pure, boyish rapture.
“Then you’ll accept it?” he whispered, his voice thick with satisfaction. She nodded raptly.
Clearing his throat gently but retaining the emotion plain on this face, he declared, “I want those great men and women of that ballroom to see you as I do – which they never can or will because to learn all that I see in you would take a lifetime – but I will be content if they see you in this and are compelled to surmise the rest.” He laughed, a deep, resonant sound, as he held the gown aloft, the smoke-grey train flaring like a trumpet. He may have had to depart Carnegie’s Pittsburgh, but here, in this moment, seeing the glow the shimmering silk cast upon his daughter’s equally radiant face, he looked as though he had already conquered every drawing room from Boston to Newport.