Clara's Mail Order Joy (Home for Christmas Book 5)

by Natalie Dean

  “Think, Hazel. . . if Minnie is expecting a baby, Mother and Father will certainly want to stay for the birth,” Clara predicted excitedly. “And if, by that time, either you or I or both are with child, why, they could not possibly leave! Not with three grandchildren being born within months!”

  “Are you . . .” Hazel asked delicately.

  “Not yet,” Clara said. It was not for lack of trying. But thus far, despite ardent nights and Peter’s willingness to postpone his return to the mine after finishing lunch, she was not expecting a child. “Are you?”

  Hazel shook her head. “No.”

  She didn’t provide many details, but Clara had noticed that Hazel was always circumspect when the subject of her marriage arose. Clara couldn’t think why; Harley was quite generous and any man who was so willing to see that his wife was dressed in the latest fashions must certainly love her very much. Clara was quite aware that Peter loved her passionately, but his affections did not move in tandem with a goal of seeing that she was well dressed. Actually, her husband seemed to find her more impressive the less that she wore, Clara realized.

  She thought of the corset. If Mother came, she would certainly need to go back to wearing it. Mother would be scandalized at the thought that one of her daughters had dispensed with wearing such a necessary item. She sighed. It would be a quandary for sure.

  But she would deal with the matter when the time came. In the meantime, she found that her movements were much freer and less curtailed by the confinement of the corset. When she was finally carrying a child, she would not wear one. How splendid it would be, Clara thought as Hazel turned the pages of the music, if they all were expecting children at the same time. If the cousins could be as close as the sisters, their family would be blessed even more.

  When she told Peter the happy news, he was very nearly as delighted as she was. “When will they come?”

  “The letter didn’t say. Harley sent the money for the tickets, but we don’t know if they will come just for Christmas, or if they will move to Colorado. They’ll stay at the ranch during their visit and we shall all celebrate Christmas together.”

  “Then you and I had better get everything in place for this Christmas play of yours.”

  “It is not a play,” Clara corrected him. “There will be a pantomime and then my sisters and I will sing. Perhaps my mother will sing as well. She has a lovely voice.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Peter said, not letting himself get tangled in the choices of music that Clara preferred against the ones that Hazel thought more suitable, “we’ll go to the camp.”

  “Are you sure we should? I don’t want to take you away from the mine.”

  “Clara,” Peter began, “I’m not going to make you a rich woman in the time it takes for your folks to come to Colorado.”

  “That is not at all what I meant,” she told him.

  “Yes it is,” he said, amused by her vexation. “You want them to show up on the platform and you want to be able to hand them a chunk of silver.”

  “I would never do such a vulgar thing. Stop grinning like that; you look quite foolish.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a fool in love,” he said. “I’ll get back to the work of mining after we return from the camp. Here’s what we’re going to do at the camp: we’re going to find out how many children are in the camp, how many are boys, how many are girls. We’re going to ask their ages. We’re going to explain, as best we can, that a gentleman is going to buy presents for them.”

  “And you’re making wooden toys for them.”

  “We don’t need to go into that. Leave it that an unnamed gentleman is doing this. Then we’re going to let them know that we want to have a performance and we’d like their children to take part.”

  “But only suitable children,” Clara said. “They must be children who can maintain their decorum during the time when the story is being read. They must be able to stand there in costume—"

  “If there are going to be costumes, then you’ll need to know what sizes you’ll need to sew them for.”

  This was rapidly taking on a vastly more complicated structure than she had at first envisioned. She did not want to confess this to Peter.

  “We must be very careful in how we approach this,” she said.

  They were in the parlor, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the apple cake that Clara had made in keeping with her promise that dinner would make up for what lunch had lacked.

  “Just so we do approach it,” he said.

  “But you know it may become difficult. Naturally every mother is going to want her daughter to be Mary but that’s not possible. I don’t think there will be as much competition to be Joseph, though. Anyone can be a shepherd and a wise man, but we must use some discretion in choosing the angels.”

  “Why? What’s the requirement for being an angel?”

  “Never mind,” she said in strict tones. “You would never be able to be an angel.”

  Peter laughed aloud. “You’ve got that right,” he conceded. “I reckon I’ve got more devilish tendencies, now that you mention it. Well, we’ll take care of this business tomorrow so that this performance you’re planning can get moving. It won’t hurt for the miners and their families to have something to look forward to. It’s not an easy way to live for them.”

  “Peter,” Clara said, returning to a subject that had been on her mind. “How do the children learn? Is there a teacher in the camp?”

  “A teacher? Land sakes, no. Why, Newton just got a teacher last school year,” he said. “Then she upped and married the sheriff, so now they’re looking for a new one. The preacher’s wife, Mrs. Mains, is filling in; I reckon that she’s the best-educated female in town except for you and your sisters. But folks don’t like for schoolteachers to be married, so that won’t do for long.”

  “But no one teaches the mining camp children? How will they ever learn English if they don’t speak it?”

  “I expect they’ll learn it, one way or the other,” he said. “But they won’t learn the other things that kids learn in school.”

  “Why doesn’t Newton have a schoolteacher for the mining camp children?”

  “Teachers need to be paid and they need a place to board,” he said. “What woman is going to consent to work in a mining camp and live there? It’s hard enough, I’m told, finding someone to come to Newton, which has a proper schoolhouse and folks like the Mains who can board the teacher.”

  It didn’t seem right. Mother and Father had regarded the education of their daughters as a matter of great importance. Boston abounded with places of learning, for girls, for youths, for adult men and women, for the immigrants and their children . . . how could Colorado possibly develop if education for the young was allowed to languish?

  Chapter 14

  The following day dawned cold with a light drizzle falling. Clara would gladly have abandoned the plan to go to the mining camp, but Peter was determined to take care of the task. It was just a light rain, he said; it was damper than this down in the Silver Belle.

  Such information did not make Clara more sanguine about the task before them, but she got into the wagon, a scarf tied over her hat and her coat over her dress so that she stayed warm and as dry as possible. Not for the first time, she wished they had a carriage, or at least a wagon with a covering.

  She brought this up to Peter as they rode to the mining camp.

  “I reckon I could put one on,” he said. “I doubt that Harley would mind.”

  “Why should Harley mind what you do with our wagon?”

  Peter glanced at her. “It’s not our wagon,” he said. “It’s Harley’s wagon. Harley’s horse, too. He loaned it to me before you came so there would be something you could ride in.” Peter grinned. “No one seemed to think you’d be very agreeable to riding Angel or my mule.”

  “The horse and wagon—they don’t belong to us?”

  “No. I never had need of them until we were married.”
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br />   “But—but everyone has a horse,” she protested. How humiliating that, all this time, she had been riding on a borrowed conveyance drawn by a borrowed horse.

  “Not everyone,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his lack of a horse and wagon was a serious drawback. “Harley has plenty and he doesn’t mind. He knows I’ll take good care of the horse and the wagon, too. And he knows that no harm will come to the furniture that he lent—"

  “The furniture? What furniture?”

  “Why, the furniture. The chairs, the table, the settee in the parlor,” he said.

  “The bed is ours.”

  “The bed belongs to Gavin,” Peter said.

  “You mean that nothing inside our home is ours?”

  “I brought some things from the camp,” he said, now a trifle defensively. “I didn’t have much. I was a bachelor then. I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “What would you have done if Harley and Gavin had not been willing to lend us these things?” she asked. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears; it belonged to someone who did not dare to express what she was feeling because once the words came forth, they would elicit such a cataclysm that there would be no way to turn back from them.

  “I had a straw tick for us to sleep on,” he said. “I had bedding. I had the Dutch oven that you use, and a couple of pots. The lanterns are mine.”

  “But no furniture?”

  “Clara, I put every cent I had into building the house. I wanted you to have a home to come to that you’d be proud to live in. Every time I had silver, even dust, I bought wood and nails and I worked on the house for you.”

  “And the outhouse? You squandered your silver on building an outhouse?”

  “I didn’t feel like I was squandering it,” he said, sounding hurt. “I wanting something that a lady like you would use without feeling like you were living in a flophouse. I thought it would be something to please you.”

  “It pleases the people of the mining camp,” she said. “They come to stare at it and gawk. Imagine how they would wonder to see the house if we had no furniture. It would be like a museum!”

  He was silent. Too silent. When she turned her head to see how he was reacting, she could tell that his face was tight with emotion. He didn’t seem angry. At least, she didn’t think so. But she’d never seen him in anger, and so she couldn’t be sure.

  “Peter?” she said his name hesitantly.

  “I’m sorry, Clara, that I couldn’t give you all that you wanted. It’s my intention to buy you what you want, and that includes furniture, when we have the money saved. I didn’t think that it would matter. Harley says he has plenty of things at the ranch that he’s not using. Gavin and Minnie aren’t using the bed; it was in the guest bedroom. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say.”

  “Perhaps it would be best for us to go to the camp another day,” Clara suggested.

  “No. We’ve started this and we’ll get it done,” he said curtly. “While we’re there, you can take a look around the camp and decide whether you made a mistake in coming West and marrying a miner.”

  “That is not at all what I meant!”

  He didn’t answer.

  Clara wasn’t quite sure what she had done wrong by bringing up her displeasure that she was sleeping on a borrowed bed and sitting on borrowed chairs, eating on a borrowed table. She did not intend to hurt Peter’s feelings and she certainly did not think that she was wrong for the way she felt. He was her husband. He ought to have provided better, that was all.

  The evenings when he sat carving toys for the children for Christmas could have been put to better use if he had used his talents to construct a wagon that would be their own. Or a table. Or a bed. Since he was skilled at carpentry work, and he had the tools necessary for the trade, it was quite obvious that he ought to have used the proper judgment. That he had not was a reason for him to apologize to her, she thought.

  He helped her out of the wagon as always, but she noticed that his eyes did not meet hers and there was no merry grin on his face when he released her.

  “Stay close to me,” he said.

  “What about the horse? What if someone steals the wagon?”

  “No one will steal it,” he said. “They know me. I used to live in the camp, remember?”

  He began first going to the tents. The men were at the mines, working, so it was easy to find the ones occupied by women and children. Some remembered him from when he had been their neighbor and they greeted him with pleasure. Others, new to the camp, were shy in front of him, perhaps because he was a stranger, perhaps because they did not speak English.

  Long Sally Cartwright appeared to be a friend. She spoke English with a Midwest accent and she was able to tell Peter what he needed. There were about 20 children in the camp, she said; they ranged in age from babies to those who were not old enough to go work in the mines on their own but were past school age, assuming that there would have been a school.

  Peter explained that his wife wanted to include the children in a Christmas performance. They would act out the roles of the people from the Bible story of the birth of Jesus Christ. After that, there would be singing and after that, food. Long Sally thought it was a capital idea; she knew that her brood would want to be part of it, but she didn’t know if they’d quite understand what they were to do. They couldn’t read, so they couldn’t learn to speak their parts.

  “They wouldn’t need to speak,” Clara said. “There will be a narrator who will read the story.”

  “A what?”

  “A narrator. Someone who will read all the parts.”

  “What are the children doing while this narrator is reading?”

  “The children are standing in place,” Clara explained.

  “Just standing?”

  “Yes. They are acting the parts of Mary and Joseph and the shepherd . . . the Wise Men . . . the narrator will tell the tale.”

  “How long will they be standing there?”

  “Long enough for the story to be told.”

  “They’re just standing there, not doing nothing, while someone reads?”

  “Yes. It’s . . . they won’t be standing long.”

  “They’ll be in costume?”

  “Oh, yes,” Clara said eagerly. “We’ll be sewing the costumes once we know the sizes of the children.”

  “They’ll have to get baths?”

  “Yes, they---should be clean,” Clara faltered. “To play the parts of Mary and Joseph and the others, they should be clean.”

  Long Sally shook her head doubtfully. “I can’t see my kids, nor any of the others neither, wanting to get all gussied up and put on fancy dresses just to stand around for a bit of time,” she said.

  “Children might get restless if they had to stand for too long,” Clara said.

  “They might,” Long Sally agreed, “but then again, they might want it to be worth their while. I’ll find you the ages that you need, if you tell me the parts that you’ll need for them to fill.”

  “Let’s see, there is Joseph of course and Mary; King Herod; the three Wise Men; the innkeeper; the angels, the shepherds.”

  “So all the kids will have a part?”

  “Not if there are twenty children,” Clara said.

  “Some are babies; they won’t need a part. The others, well, this all sounds a mite strange to me, standing on a stage with a costume on and nobody saying nothing, but the kids will all want to be part of it. It won’t be fair for some to have a part and others not.”

  “I . . . will have to make the costumes,” Clara said faintly. She would need fabric for that and how could she ask Hazel for help when Harley was already buying toys for the children? When he had already loaned his furniture to Peter and Clara?

  “Shoot, I can help with the sewing,” said Long Sally. “I’ve sewed every stitch of clothing that my children and my man wear now.”

  “I—that would be very kind of you,” Clara said hesitantly. She would need
help from someone, she could not possibly sew that number of costumes in the amount of time that remained. Especially when she had to practice herself for the songs that would be sung.

  Long Sally said that she’d get back to them with the details they needed about the camp children’s ages and sizes and gender.

  “It’ll give me a chance to take a look-see for myself at that fancy privy I’ve heard so much about,” she said. “I’ll be by tomorrow. I’ll likely have a couple of my children with me.”

  “Thank you,” Clara said. She had been very polite; Mother had always said that manners were an excellent defense when one’s emotions were in disarray and Clara’s were certainly that.

  There wasn’t much to talk about on the way back home. When they got to the house, Peter helped her out. But when she moved to return to the house, Peter put his hand on her shoulder.

  “We’re married now,” he said, “so we’ll have to work our way through this. I reckon you’re mad at me and I’m not so happy with you either.”

  “With me—"

  “Stop, Clara,” he told her. “Give some thought to what you’ve said today, and whether there might have been a better way to say it. I love you and I won’t pretend that just because I’m mad at you, I’m not still crazy in love with you. But what happened today won’t be gone without some fixing getting done, and it’s as much your task to do the fixing as it is mine. That’s what marriage is, I reckon. We’re pledged to one another now.”

  He made it sound like a death sentence, Clara thought as she returned to the house, her head high. But once she got inside, she took off her hat and coat and, instead of neatly putting them away as was her habit, she tossed them to the floor and ran upstairs to their bedroom. She flung herself on the bed and sobbed into the pillows.

  Something terrible had happened today. She knew it. Peter had thought she was the ideal woman and now he had decided that she was not that woman. But it was his own fault, she decided. She had thought she was marrying a man who could provide for a wife’s needs and to find out that he had borrowed the furniture in their home from her sister’s husband was a violation of the trust she had in him.