The Bride's House (21 page)

Pearl straightened her skirt across her lap, afraid to look up. “I would like that,” she said at last. “I am always grateful for a discussion about metals.”

“And I should hope about other things, as well.”

“Yes.”

Frank rose. “Then I should call on Wednesdays, when I know I will have you to myself.”

Pearl felt faint, so she remained seated. “And you are welcome to call on Papa at any time, of course. He told me he likes you.”

“I’m glad for that. I hope you feel the same way.”

Pearl was uncomfortable flirting and replied, “I would be glad for a reason to put down my dust rag.”

“Then I am happy to be of some use.”

Frank went out then, and after he disappeared down the street, Mrs. Travers came from upstairs, because she had not been sewing at her machine but, instead, been sitting by the very window where Pearl had sat weeks before, watching Frank Curry depart. “He’s a seemly young man. Do you care for him?” When Pearl didn’t answer, she added, “I guess you want to tell me to mind my own taters.”

Pearl was afraid she had been rude and answered quickly, “I like him. I like him fine.” She turned to Mrs. Travers and took her hands. “He said he would call again, on Wednesdays, when Papa’s away. Do you think that’s right?”

“I don’t see it’s wrong.”

“Must I tell Papa?” Pearl wasn’t sure why she’d asked that, but she feared that Charlie would spoil things if he knew about Frank.

The older woman paused, looking past Pearl to the street, where a man in an old-fashioned buggy was passing by. The buggy was similar to the one she had ridden in with the doctor on that Independence Day some thirty years before, when she’d gone to tend the sick woman in Red Elephant. “No, not unless he asks.”

*   *   *

So Frank began calling at the Bride’s House on Wednesdays, not every Wednesday, of course, because he lived in Leadville and was busy with his molybdenite claim there. But he had a connection with a mine in Silver Plume, just above Georgetown, so there was reason for him to visit the area on a regular basis. On occasion, Frank called on Charlie during the week, and Charlie usually asked him to stay to supper. “I like the fellow,” he told Pearl and Mrs. Travers.

“That’s because he reminds you of yourself when you were younger. I never saw a man as bound to succeed as you were, Charlie,” Mrs. Travers said, while Pearl did not comment.

When Frank was a guest, the conversations at the supper table were mostly about mining. While Pearl had never told Frank to keep their Wednesdays quiet, the young man seemed to sense that what happened between the two of them was private and not to be shared with Charlie. So Pearl’s father had no idea what went on in his own home when he was away.

It was not as though the two young people did a thing that was improper. In fact, their companionship was quite innocent. Sometimes, Pearl played the piano while Frank sang. They sat on the porch or in the parlor and talked about mining and books. Some days, when the weather was nice, Pearl packed a basket, and the two ate dinner-on-the-ground high up in the mountains. Although she was a poor participant in sports, Pearl was surefooted and liked to hike and could outpace anyone in Georgetown when it came to mountain climbing. Sometimes, Frank brought along a pair of rackets and tried to teach Pearl to play tennis in the side yard, screened by the lilac bushes, but she was never very good at it. Frank had another effect on Pearl, one of which the young woman was not fully conscious. That summer, she put aside the stiff, somber dresses she had long favored and began wearing simpler, more flowing styles, some with touches of color. And she gave up high-button shoes for soft slippers. She did not cut her hair, which was so much like Nealie’s, because she knew that would displease Charlie. But she wore it looser, so that the curls escaped the knot at the nape of her neck and softened her face.

Charlie did know, of course, that Frank came to the house at times when he was not there. Pearl and Mrs. Travers would never lie to him. But the two women gave him the impression that the man asked for Charlie and they had only been polite in entertaining him. Since Pearl was courteous to all of Charlie’s business associates, Charlie seemed to accept the explanation. Pearl complained to him once that “I am getting rather tired of molybdenite.”

*   *   *

Every year, Charlie left Georgetown for two or three weeks to visit the mines in which he invested. In past years, he’d invited Pearl to accompany him, and although the girl had dutifully gone with her father in her younger years, she now preferred to stay at home. In fact, the young woman actually looked forward to her father’s trips away, because at those times, she and Mrs. Travers tore apart the house for spring or fall cleaning. They put on their oldest clothes and covered them with big aprons and wore dust caps on their heads, and scrubbed the Bride’s House until it looked as new as the day that Nealie had moved in. It was also a time when they did not have to prepare the big meals Charlie preferred and instead dined on ham salad or lettuce and cream with a bit of sugar bread.

When Charlie announced he would go to New Mexico for two weeks to look into the copper mines there, he did not even ask Pearl if she wanted to go with him, knowing that unless he insisted, she would decline. The two women helped him prepare for the journey. They brushed his clothes and starched his shirts and collars and packed them in his valise, and on the day Charlie left, Pearl drove him to the station in the buggy. Charlie had only two horses, one for the buggy, the other for riding. Pearl did not like horses much, so she did not have one of her own. A boy came in daily to feed and water the animals, brush them and clean out the stalls, and Charlie asked him to remain in the stable until Pearl returned that day so that the young woman would not have to unhitch the buggy herself.

“What will you do while I’m away?” Charlie asked as the two sat in the conveyance at the depot, waiting for the train.

“There are the accounts to be gone over and letters to answer. Then Aunt Lidie and I will commence cleaning. I believe we will begin with the clothes presses, since I discovered when I packed your bag that a moth had been at your coat, and I had to mend it. I’ve already got out the turpentine to sprinkle in the presses to keep away those pesky things. The stable boy has promised to hang the carpets on the line outside so we can beat them.”

“You’ll work yourself into a frenzy,” Charlie interrupted, and Pearl believed he did not care to hear any more about house cleaning. Then he patted Pearl’s hand and said, “Perhaps when you’re finished, you should surprise your aunt Lidie with a trip to Denver as a reward. You could shop and take in a moving picture show and whatever else young ladies do. Stay at the Brown Palace, and put the charge on my bill. What would you think of that?”

“Oh, Papa!” Pearl exclaimed. “If we stayed the night, we wouldn’t have to take the late train home.” The girl had never cared to go on such an outing before, but she had changed in the past few months, something of which she was only vaguely aware and he not at all.

“Would you like it?” he asked, surprise in his voice, because he knew his daughter did not care to go about. “Stay two nights then, as many as you wish.”

“I should love it, although I would much prefer you were along.”

“You’ll have a better time with another woman, because I can’t abide shopping. Spare no expense. Take enough money to enjoy yourself.”

Pearl took her father’s hand and squeezed it, and Charlie might have wondered then at the reason for so much excitement at an adventure that Pearl in the past would have refused, but they heard the train whistle, and Charlie stepped down from the buggy. He kissed her cheek and said he would miss her.

Pearl sat in the buggy until her father boarded the cars and the train started up, and then she went home at a fast clip and turned the buggy over to the stable boy, hurrying into the house. “Aunt Lidie, what do you think?” she called as she went inside. “Papa wants us to go to Denver and see a picture show. We’ll spend the night at the Brown Palace Hotel, maybe two. Oh, won’t that be splendid?” She did not realize that she had picked up the word “splendid” from Frank.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Travers called, because she had her head inside the pie safe, the one she had brought from the Rose Street cottage. She had already removed the dishes and washed the shelves, and now she was rinsing out the cupboard with water that held a few sprigs of dried lavender to make the wood smell sweet.

“As soon as we’ve finished cleaning, Papa wants us to take the cars to Denver and stay in the Brown Palace Hotel.”

“Whatever for?”

“For our hard work. Papa says it’s our reward. We’re to shop and see the sights and have a good time.” Pearl all but danced around the kitchen, while Mrs. Travers put down her rag and looked at the young woman in wonder. Pearl had never shown the least interest in the two of them going off anywhere. The old woman smiled then. The changes in Pearl since Frank Curry had begun calling on her seemed to be obvious to the housekeeper, if not to her employer or the girl herself. “If we hurry with our work, we can leave on Friday morning. We’ll have Saturday to amuse ourselves and on Sunday, we can attend services at one of the great churches.”

If Mrs. Travers did not care about the church services, she said nothing, because she was delighted at the break in her routine and would have gone anywhere with Pearl. “We must shuckle if we want to finish so soon,” the old woman said.

That was Monday, and the two women spent all day at their work, barely stopping to eat a bite of dinner, and that evening they were too exhausted for a supper of anything but tea and toast. By Wednesday, the carpets had been rolled up, the floors scrubbed and waxed, the cupboards and windows cleaned, the brass chandeliers polished and the crystal drops washed with vinegar water, the banister rubbed down with buttermilk. When Pearl heard a knock on the door, she thought it was the stable boy come to carry out the carpets, and she called, “Go around to the back, please, and come inside,” because she and Mrs. Travers had carried the carpets to the back of the house.

“So, I’ve been relegated to the servants’ entrance,” Frank Curry said, as he walked into the kitchen and spotted Pearl kneeling on the dining room floor, hammer in hand, prying out a loose nail in a floorboard that had caught her cleaning rag.

“Oh!” Pearl nearly fell over, caught herself, and sat down on the floor. “Mr. Curry, I didn’t expect you.” She looked down at her dirty apron, then felt for her hair, which had escaped from the dust cap. “I am a fright.”

He reached for Pearl’s hand and helped her up, the young woman snatching the cap off her head and attempting to smooth her unruly hair. “Mrs. Travers and I are ‘shuckling,’ as she says, so that we can go to Denver on Friday.”

“On business?”

“For pleasure.”

“I’m sure your father will show you a fine time.”

“Oh, he isn’t going. Didn’t I say it?” Pearl asked, flustered. “Papa’s gone to New Mexico and won’t be back for, let’s see, twelve days. Mrs. Travers and I have been abandoned.”

“Well, not by me,” Frank said. He paused a moment, then added. “I shall be in Denver myself this weekend, and if you don’t think me too forward, you might consider letting me escort you and Mrs. Travers wherever you want to go. I do know something of the city, and I’d be honored to be seen with you.”

“Oh!” Pearl squeezed her hands together. Frank’s presence would make the outing more than pleasurable. “Aunt Lidie,” Pearl said as the older woman came through the room, her arms filled with cleaning rags. “Mr. Curry has asked to show us about Denver.”

Mrs. Travers started to reply but bit her lip instead. “Have you?” was her only response.

“I hope I’m not intruding. Miss Dumas seems so excited about the trip.”

“You’d as soon keep a squirrel on the ground as calm that one,” the woman said.

“Then you don’t mind?”

“I’m not the one you’re asking.” The woman frowned. Frank Curry calling on Wednesdays was one thing, but it was quite another that he would meet Pearl on an overnight trip to Denver. It was clear from the look on her face that the old woman was not sure about the propriety of such a thing. But Pearl ignored Mrs. Travers’s displeasure and accepted Frank’s offer.

*   *   *

Pearl grew so flustered after Frank’s visit, putting the hammer into the cutlery drawer and rinsing the clean woodwork with dirty wash water, that Mrs. Travers told her to go to her room and commence packing for the trip. The older woman would finish the housecleaning for the day, she said. Not one to shirk her duties, Pearl would have protested at any other time, but she did want a moment to herself to think about Mr. Curry. So she did as Mrs. Travers ordered.

Once in her room, Pearl went to the clothes press and removed her fall dresses, laying them out on her bed. It did not take long, since Pearl was not a spendthrift, and with little interest in clothes, she had a paltry wardrobe, especially for the daughter of a wealthy man. But she was sensitive enough to know that her dresses were all wrong. The black taffeta had rust spots and the brown bombazine was of a style that had gone out five years earlier. She inspected each dress, then discarded it, wishing for the first time in her life that she had cared a little more about fashion. “I haven’t a thing to wear,” she complained aloud.

Mrs. Travers, coming up the steps, only grunted.