The Bride's House (5 page)

Nealie went into the kitchen and viewed herself in the mirror. “Why, I look as fine … as fine as frog’s hair.” She went back into the parlor, posing a little with her hand on the back of a chair, rehearsing what she’d say to Will when he arrived.

When she heard the knock on the door, she hesitated, however, for she knew she shouldn’t appear anxious. She waited until there was a second knock, and Mrs. Travers called from the kitchen, “Are you froze into a statue, or can you see to the door?”

Her chin held high, just like the highborn ladies she’d seen in Hannibal, Nealie opened the door, but the smile on her face quickly became a frown. “Mr. Dumas, what are you doing here? I told you I wasn’t going with you.”

“I am. He came for me,” Mrs. Travers said, nudging Nealie aside and motioning for Charlie to enter. “I wanted to see the contest myself, and Mr. Dumas offered to take me. I’ll just get my wrap.”

She left the room, and Nealie and Charlie stared at each other. At last, Nealie said, “That’s real nice of you to go with her.” She meant it, too, and felt not one bit of jealousy.

Charlie struggled for a reply but didn’t make one, because at that moment, Will stepped onto the porch. When he saw Charlie, he stopped, confused.

“Mr. Spaulding, come right in,” Nealie said quickly. “Mr. Dumas is taking Mrs. Travers to the contest.”

“I see,” Will replied, holding out his hand to Charlie, who shook it reluctantly.

“Come along, Charlie. We don’t want to be late,” Mrs. Travers said, returning to the room, where the two men stood awkwardly. “Nealie, there’s a shawl on a hook in my room for you.”

Nealie didn’t want to wear a shawl, because the day was fine, but she did not care to leave with Charlie and Mrs. Travers, either, so she went into the bedroom, waiting until she heard the couple go down the walk. Then she returned to Will and set the wrap on a chair. “I guess I won’t need this, after all. Besides, it will spoil my dress.” She ran her hands across the skirt. “I just made it. Do you like it?”

Will stood back and looked at her critically, taking in the bright green, the brass buttons. “I’ll never lose sight of you. That’s for sure. Neither will anyone else.”

Nealie smiled at the compliment, for surely it was a compliment. Who could help but admire such a pretty dress?

Will held out his elbow to Nealie as they walked to the street, and when Nealie took it, Will put his hand over hers. Although he worked in the mine, his hand was smooth—and clean, Nealie noticed. With a thrill of excitement, Nealie realized she felt like a lady instead of a hired girl.

Neither of them had ever seen a drilling contest, although Will knew all about mining and explained the drilling to her. “It takes skill and strength, and when you’re working with a partner, you surely do have to trust him.”

“What if he misses with the hammer and smashes his hand?” Nealie asked, as she watched the first single jacker pound the drill into the rock.

“He hardly ever does.”

“I guess he’d have to find another job of work if he did. Maybe be an engineer like you.”

Will chuckled. “I’m hoping it takes more than bad hands to be an engineer. Some miners think engineers have smashed brains.”

“No! You’ve got more brains than all the other boarders put together,” Nealie said, then looked away when she realized Will had been joking.

“There’s plenty about mining I don’t know. I might understand the theories of ore geneses, and I know how to raise capital, but I’m not much good with the practical workings underground yet. In a cave-in, the miners would rather be with your friend Charlie Dumas than they would with me. So would I.” He chuckled.

“Not me,” Nealie said, then turned away at having made such a forward statement. But Will tightened his hand on hers, and she decided she might have said the right thing.

They watched the drillers, Nealie so caught up in the rhythm of the hammering that she paid no attention to Charlie Dumas, who stood in the crowd across from her, staring. She picked out the men she wanted to win, and her choices had nothing to do with their drilling ability. They included a miner who had once said good morning and taken off his hat when she passed and a jacker she knew had come from Fort Madison. When Will said he wanted to place a bet and asked her to choose a team, Nealie picked the team that included the husband of the woman who’d helped her choose the green fabric. When they won, Nealie jumped up and down, clapping her hands in excitement, and Will said they’d celebrate with dinner at the Hotel de Paris.

The streets were muddy still, although they were not as bad as they had been when Nealie had first glimpsed Will in the Kaiser store, and they were easier to cross because the miners had placed boards across the muck. “It’s a good thing for that lumber. I’d hate to have to carry you,” Will said. “We’d both be in the soup.” Nealie laughed at that, although she would have liked to be ferried across the street in Will’s arms as she had been in Charlie’s. They went to the other side of the street, then walked along the wooden sidewalk, Will stopping to greet people, because it was known in town who he was now, and many were anxious to make his acquaintance, some of them women. Nealie knew one or two people herself, and nodded at them, hoping they noticed she was with Will, and they did. There was wonderment in Georgetown about Will Spaulding escorting a hired girl.

When she wasn’t looking at the crowd, Nealie stared into the shop windows. She admired a plum-colored bonnet, thinking how nice it would go with her new dress. And she lingered as she looked over a cameo that was pinned to a black ribbon. It was just what she needed to go around her neck. And there were shawls as fine as cobwebs. But she was too happy to pay much attention to adornments and quickly forgot about them.

“I must say those men are artists with the drill and hammer,” Will said, as Nealie paused to stare at a pair of red boots in a window. She dismissed them, because even she knew they were meant for a certain kind of woman. “I’ve never seen such work.”

“I never heard of a drilling contest before I came here,” Nealie told him.

“I never attended one, although I’ve seen plenty of drilling underground.”

“Can you do it?”

“I doubt it.” He cocked his head. “Could you?”

Nealie thought that over, not realizing Will had made another joke. “It can’t be much harder than pounding in a spike. I might could do it with a four-pound hammer but not an eight-pounder. And not fifty times in a minute. That’s certain.” As her parents’ only child, Nealie had helped her father construct some of the outbuildings on the farm. And she was used to lifting cast-iron pots and kettles in Mrs. Travers’s kitchen and chopping kindling. So she was strong.

“You are full of surprises, Miss Bent. I wouldn’t think a woman could do such a thing.”

“I can’t think of a woman who couldn’t.” Nealie realized then that her answer had been unladylike, but she did not know how to take it back. “I’d never work underground,” she said, knowing that wasn’t the right thing to say, either.

“Well, I certainly hope not. They say women underground are unlucky, but I never believed in all those superstitions.”

“You don’t believe in tommyknockers?”

Will frowned. “I don’t know tommyknockers.”

“They’re spirits that live in a mine and cause trouble, although you don’t ever see them. The miners say they make a big racket to warn you when there’s to be a cave-in.”

“Then I hope I never meet one,” he said.

“I believe in them. Mr. Dumas said he saw a miner rush out of a drift and quit the Bobcat, because a tommyknocker warned him with his little hammer. And not ten minutes later, the roof fell in. And another time, a miner’s candle went out three times, and the man quit the mine and went home and found his wife entertaining another man, just like the candles told. So you see, they’re true.”

“Superstitions are the beliefs of ignorant people,” Will insisted. “That’s not to say there isn’t a little truth to them, but it’s mostly common sense.”

Nealie didn’t agree. She believed in all kinds of signs. She knew for certain that if it rained into an open grave, there’d be another death in three days, and that a man who planted an evergreen would die before the tree cast a shadow his size. After all, her pa had refused to have evergreens on the farm, and he’d lived to be a cussed old man. But she held her tongue for fear Will would find
her
ignorant.

The pair turned in then at the Hotel de Paris, a fine two-story building whose exterior was scored to look like cut stone. Iron cresting decorated the exterior, and lace curtains hung in the windows. Nealie had seen traveling people come and go at the hotel, but she had never gone inside herself. “Have you been here?” she asked Will.

“I stayed in one of the rooms before my little cottage was ready,” he replied, leading her into the dining room.

Nealie looked around in wonder. The tables, which stood on a floor that was striped with alternating boards of walnut and pine, were set with crystal and sterling silver. A polished walnut sideboard dominated one wall, and looking in a large mirror set in a gilt frame, she caught sight of herself standing beside Will. She’d never seen her reflection in such a big mirror, and she stared, wishing she had a tintype of the two of them as they looked at that moment, framed in just such a solid gold frame. The girl did not know the difference between gilt and gold.

A gentleman speaking in an accent that Will told her was French greeted him by name and led them to a table, handing them menus. Nealie didn’t know what a menu was; she’d never eaten any place that had a choice of dishes. In fact, she’d never eaten in a restaurant at all, let alone one as fancy as the Hotel de Paris. Seeing her confusion, Will said, “Why don’t I order for both of us.”

“I can read,” Nealie said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I can read.”

“Of course you can, but can you read French?” Will looked contrite at the remark and added, “I’ve eaten here before and can recommend the best dishes.”

“Oh,” Nealie said. “Well, I don’t care what it is. I’m hungry enough to eat buzzard bait.”

“I don’t believe the Hotel de Paris serves buzzard bait, but there is fish and venison and ptarmigan.”

“Not ptarmigan. I couldn’t eat a ptarmigan. They’re such pretty birds, all white in the winter. I saw one when I first arrived. And they take care of their chicks real good,” she said.

“No ptarmigan,” Will told the waiter. “Venison, then.” He ordered other foods, and Nealie was glad he did, because she didn’t recognize their names and would have been shy about asking Will to explain every offering.

In a few minutes, the waiter brought them special plates with oysters on them. “I’m not acquainted with those. What are they?” Nealie whispered, after the man left.

“Raw oysters. You eat them like this.” Will picked up a tiny fork and speared an oyster and ate it.

Nealie imitated him, balancing an oyster on her fork and putting it into her mouth. She swallowed the oyster but didn’t like its taste and made a face. Then suddenly the oyster popped back up, and she spit it out into her hand. “He’s a slimy fellow,” she said, staring at the round white object.

“Put it back onto the plate then. You don’t have to eat them. Oysters are an acquired taste.”

“But that man won’t like it.”

Will reached over and patted her hand. “He won’t mind.”

Nealie looked doubtful, but in a few minutes, the waiter removed the plate without so much as a glance at her. He returned with a bottle of wine, removed the cork, and poured a small amount into Will’s glass. Will tasted it, nodded, and the waiter filled Nealie’s glass. “It’s a light wine, but you don’t have to drink that, either, if you don’t like it,” Will said.

Nealie did like it, however. In fact, she wanted to gulp it down at once as she would a glass of water. But she had glimpsed the other ladies in the restaurant sipping their wine and imitated them.

When the food arrived, Nealie gripped her fork as if it were a hammer. Then she noticed how Will held his fork, gracefully. She looked around the room and saw that other people ate the way Will did. So she held the fork between her fingers and she picked at a vegetable she didn’t recognize. She started to saw her meat into pieces, the way the miners did at the boardinghouse. But again, she watched Will, who cut off a single piece, then picked it up with his fork. Nealie thought about the way Charlie shoveled his food into his mouth and decided she would study Will to improve her manners.

“Where did you learn to read?” Will asked her. He picked up a salt shaker and offered it to her, but Nealie had salted her food when it arrived. She wondered now if she was supposed to taste it first.

“At school. I’m the only one in my family that can read. I guess my pa’s in a pickle now without me. He said a girl that could read was as useless as a dog that could count. Well, I can cipher, too, better’n most. I bet my pa misses me for that, too.”

“Do you miss them?”

Nealie shook her head. “Ma’s dead. I ran off.”

“Does he know where you are?”

“No, he does not.” Nealie looked up at Will. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

Will laughed. “Cross my heart. If you hadn’t run away, I never would have met you.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “And I’m awfully glad I met you, Miss Bent.” He leaned back, waiting for a response.