THE WATERS

By Jo

Part Two:

Captain went up the stairs to the second floor of the clubhouse, following his parents down the long hallway.  They stopped by a doorway that opened onto a large room overlooking the back of the building and the woods beyond. "This is the room we always stay in, Son," his father explained.  "Gets noisy out front in the evenings and you know how your mother likes to go to sleep early."  He pointed further down the hall.  "Second door on the front side will be yours. Hope it's ok that it's on the lake side."

"It will be fine, I'm sure," Captain smiled, actually pleased.

"Sorry the rooms don't adjoin," his father added.

Captain's smile turned into a broad grin. "I know where to find you if I get scared."

Michael Stuart shook his head and chuckled. "You've been away so much for a lot of years now, Son, that I sometimes think of you as the boy you used to be."

"It's all right, Dad. I'm glad I'll have a view of the lake."  He looked down the hall toward his door. "Think I'll settle in and then go for a little walkabout, get myself acquainted with the place."

"Dinner's at seven, remember. You'll have to dress for it."

"Right," Captain nodded. "I'll see you in the dining room."

The clubhouse had a large staff whose sole purpose was to make life as comfortable as possible for the members who came to stay there. When Captain entered his room, he found his bags had already been brought up, the large window opened, the soft curtains blowing inward somewhat in a light breeze. He stood in the center of the room, looking around. The ceiling was high, even the big bed was high. A woman would have had to use the small wooden step set beside it just to
get up on it. A brightly-patterned rug covered most of the floor, clashing a little, in his opinion, with the wallpaper. He had a private bathroom with elegant porcelain. An easy chair, its thick wine-colored velvet deeply tufted, stood near the window with its matching ottoman. There was a large wardrobe for his clothes, a small writing desk with its chair, and a bureau with a gilt-framed mirror above it. Captain took all this in in a few seconds. It wasn't the room he cared about, but what lay outside the clubhouse.

Leaving most of his unpacking for later, he fished a casual pair of slacks, a flannel shirt, and a crush hat out of one valise, changed quickly, leaving his grey suit on the back of the desk chair, then he was down the steps, heading for the main door when his attention was arrested by...what was that? A diorama? The thing was on the wall behind glass, a brass rim encircling it with the words South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club engraved on it. He stopped in his tracks and stared at it, one eyebrow cocking. It had a painted backdrop that must be Lake Conemaugh from the distance. Real twigs and branches had been placed in front of it but what had made his brow go up was the centerpiece of the thing, a stuffed frog sitting on a toadstool.

"No accounting for taste," he remarked to himself with a low chuckle then continued on out to the wide veranda that ran the full length of the clubhouse. It was well-filled with wicker furniture, mostly rockers, some small tables, and several older club members occupied a number of the seats. He paused long enough to tip his hat and smile, then went down the side steps and onto the boardwalk that had been built as a little avenue for strollers.

Young people seemed to be everywhere.  He watched a small group playing tennis, always amazed at how women managed such things in the cumbersome skirts they wore.

At the edge of the lake a larger group was clustered around a small boat that had been brought up on land for some sort of repairs. He'd been spotted. "Cappy!" one of the young men yelled, taking off his crush hat and waving it.

"Oliver," Captain acknowledged. "Talk to you later, all right?"  He wanted to explore, not be swallowed into some mass of humanity. Oliver had been in the same school in Pittsburgh he'd gone to before leaving for college. He really had nothing in common with him beyond the fact that both of their families were wealthy and lived just down the block from each other.

At a brisk pace he headed along the boardwalk past the cottages on that side of the clubhouse. The cottages looked more like homes you might find back in the city, not out here in the midst of a forest.  He liked architecture and gave each of them a brief study as he passed.  He guessed that when rich folk left their huge mansions to come out to the country, they considered these cottages to be their personal form of 'roughing it'. 

The Stuarts, of course, were wealthy or they would not have been permitted to join the exclusive club. They had money and to spare but not on the level of  cousin Carnegie or the Fricks or the Mellons. There was wealthy and then there was...Wealthy.  His father had carefully explained that in the dining room, seating near the front windows was given to the wealthy with a capital 'W'. Even among the elite of the elite, there was a definitely prescribed pecking order.  That, too, was of no interest to him. In the United States, only the Rockefellers had more money than the Carnegies. The Stuarts had their money because of the Carnegies, because cousin Andrew was terribly fond of Michael and had brought him along as much as he could as his business dealings expanded, expanded more, and kept expanding.  Michael Stuart was not only an attorney, but a businessman of extreme acumen and Andrew's millions had greatly increased due to his efforts and advice.

It was the fact of that that had sent Captain off to become an attorney himself. It was expected

of him, but was not where his heart was. That belonged to history, to architecture, and in his most secret place, he'd always dreamed of being an archaeologist.  So in the summers away from his studies, he explored ancient Roman and Etruscan sites, with jaunts over to Greece and even the Middle East.  His father, who genuinely adored him, did not understand, however.  He paid his way, let him go, because of that love, but considered it fairly much a waste of time.  For Michael, business, the law, was the beating heart of the universe, not some crumbling ruin.

Captain paused, looking back at the clubhouse. Everything here was so very new. None of it

had been here before 1881. Seven years ago. He found himself wondering just how sturdy, how permanent it all was. Only time would tell. It always did. He studied the construction of the clubhouse, odd with its two different rooflines. There was nothing remarkable about it at all.

For him its porch was its only redeeming feature.  Other than that it just seemed kind of...bulky. Yes, that was the word he wanted. It should have been built from logs, he decided. Maybe then it might look like it belonged up here in these green mountains.

His attention was diverted from the building to a young man with a camera who was busily taking a picture of it. That would be Louis Clarke, he knew. His father had told him how Louis was determined to capture the essence of life at the lake on film and to be prepared to find him everywhere, taking picture after picture. Captain hoped he could somehow avoid such a fate.

The fact that Louis was not all that far away and was so fully photographically armed and might, at any moment turn and set his lensed sights on his person, sent Captain off the boardwalk and up the closest path into the woods.  The well-mulched path was soft under his shoes. Even that had been taken care of. No comfort spared for the city dwellers. He followed it for a way around a curve until it came out on a rocky little stream. Two fisherman looked briefly at him and he nodded, cutting off the path and into the woods, finding his own unmulched way. 

"Might as well be in Pittsburgh's Market Square," he growled to himself. Were these people everywhere? These people. Yes, that had been his thought. These people. Were they not his people? He'd been brought up among them, trained from birth to be one of them, yet for him they remained 'these people'. He'd never let that thought percolate so vividly into conscious awareness. He looked like one of them, dressed like one of them, had manners and education as they did, but he'd never really felt like one of them.  An office somewhere in Pittsburgh, its outer walls darker every day from the smoke belching constantly into the air, his clothes, his lungs coming to match, that's what waited for him after these two weeks were done.  His purpose was to help the rich get richer, his family get richer, himself get richer. That's why he'd been sent off to study law and business. 

Finding a seat on a mossy stump, he lifted his head, looking up through the leaves of a maple toward the sunlight, toward the blue mountain sky. He inhaled deeply, then closed his eyes, his head still tipped far back.  Into his vision swam a house in Tuscany, perched on a smooth green hill, its peach stones warmed to a deep rose by a late afternoon sun. He'd found it in late June, had spent hours simply sitting in a field staring at it, his heart strangely stirred by feelings of
home, that this place, however ridiculous it would sound to anybody else, was somehow home. 

If there were some way, any way, he could lay aside all his responsibilities to his family, to the course they'd set before him, to what he owed them as son, as beneficiary of their finances for

his education, his very ability to be sitting in the field...if only.  Then he would come here and live, use it as his base for archaeological explorations.

He sighed, opening his green eyes. If only's didn't get one anywhere.  Getting up, he continued on through the pathless woods, enjoying the sounds of woodpeckers, of the rustling leaves, even the crunch of dried twigs under his feet.  It was only an hour later that he realized he'd been foolish in leaving the path, for now he didn't know where he was.  "A stream," he said calmly to himself.  "Any stream here will have to flow into the lake."  It was as simple as that. Find a stream, find the lake, and the clubhouse was on its shore.

He'd left his pocket watch back in his room, having changed out of his suit too quickly to think

of it.  From the height of the sun, he judged he still had plenty of time to get back, bathe and change for dinner well before seven.  So he didn't really hurry, just sort of ambled his way along, down a slope, figuring if there were a stream it would be down there. Before long he heard a distinct gurgle ahead and smiled. How nice it was when streams cooperated and were where they were supposed to be. 

This one was small. He could easily hop across it, but it splashed over little stones, hurrying toward the lake. Water always sought the lowest place. That was its nature, sometimes its fate, but always something you could count on.  He followed the stream as it got larger, fed by numerous springs on its way, heading for the lake that now filled the big valley. When he came out where he could see the lake spread out below him, he whistled at its size. From here he could see nearly the whole thing, all 450 acres of it. Twenty million tons of water his father had said.  And high. High up in the mountains where a lake had no business being. He was glad the dam had been so carefully overseen by men who knew about building large things, men who built giant factories, even more giant steel mills. They knew what building was all about. He had no way of knowing not one of them had even thought twice about how Ruff had rebuilt the dam.

ON TO PART 3

BACK TO PART 1

BACK TO INDEX PAGE FOR THE WATERS

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

*(Club pictures on this page and subsequent club pictures taken by Louis Clarke)