by Natalie Dean
She had not always stayed in the basement of this run-down boarding house in Angelica, New York. Once, she’d lived in one of the nicer rooms upstairs with her mother.
But, that was before her mother had died. Before Agatha lost her job at the town’s textile factory. Before she’d fallen on the wrong side of the factory foreman, Luke Crenshaw.
Now, the owner of the boarding house, Mrs. Rankin, had allowed Agatha to stay on in exchange for housework. She’d made up the room in the basement for Agatha the day Agatha had been dismissed from the factory.
Agatha reached the basement and opened the door with a tired sigh. Every part of her body ached from the day’s work. But, she knew it would be no use complaining to anyone. Especially not Mrs. Rankin.
The old woman liked to remind Agatha as often as she could how lucky she was to have work at all.
“Most people in this town wouldn’t give you a second glance,” Mrs. Rankin said. “Not with the rumors running around about what you girls got up to at that factory.”
The rumors. Those rumors were what had ruined her reputation, her job, her life.
They were the reason she knew she had to get out of Angelica as fast as she could.
Agatha heaved another sigh as she slumped down on the grimy mattress in the basement corner. It took a moment before her tired eyes noticed the small mail envelope beside her bed.
Heart racing, she picked it up and moved it towards the lamp on the other side of her makeshift bed. Placing it under the light, she read the return address on the envelope.
It was from a man named Elijah Rhodes in Wyoming.
Immediately, Agatha knew what this meant.
Someone had answered her advertisement. The one she had placed in a booklet weeks before.
Just after she was thrown out of the factory, one of the girls she’d worked with had told her about such booklets. Young men out west would look through them to find girls back east willing to become brides.
Often, the men out west would place their own advertisements in the booklets. But, sometimes, women would as well.
“If I were you,” she said. “I would put an advertisement in as soon as possible. That way, it might only be a matter of months before you find someone who could pay for your passage west.”
Not knowing what else to do, Agatha had taken the girl’s advice. Of course, she knew that there was a possibility rumors could follow her even out west. Tales as persistent as the ones told about her and some other girls in the factory were not likely to disappear easily.
Taking no chances, she had given herself a false last name in the advertisement. Instead of Agatha McPherson, she became Agatha Thorne.
That was an easy enough decision and easier to remember. Thorne was her mother’s maiden name. Before she’d become ill, but after Da had died, Mama had sometimes used the name Thorne to find work.
There were still people in New York weary of last names that sounded too Irish. Thorne sounded more American and was a safer bet.
It had been weeks since the advertisement was placed and she had not heard any word yet. This would be the very first.
Hastily, Agatha opened the letter. As soon as she did, a blurry photograph fell into her lap. She picked it up and studied it.
It showed an impossibly tall man in a dark suit. Standing outside a whitewashed chapel. A Bible clutched in his hands.
A pastor.
Agatha could not help but smile. She remembered going to the church in town with her mother. Watching the pastor give his sermon.
He’d always sounded so sure of himself. Sure, of his faith and sure of God’s love.
Even when she was very young, she remembered thinking that one day, she wanted to marry a man like that. A man who was calm and confident. Sure of himself and of his God.
Agatha still went to Church each Sunday, even after her mother’s death. And, though the Pastor was still full of faith, Agatha had found her own faith wavering.
Aside from her mother’s illness and eventual death, other things had happened to make her question her faith. She never questioned whether God was real. She knew he was.
But, she questioned whether a good God would be able to forgive. God was perfect and, given the things she’d done, she most certainly was not.
She longed to feel as confident and sure of God’s love as that pastor seemed to be. Perhaps marriage to this cool, confident pastor in the photograph would give her that.
Slowly, she took her eyes away from the picture and looked at the letter in her hand.
“Dear Miss Thorne,” it read.
“I must tell you how intrigued I was by your advertisement. Specifically, that you promoted yourself as a woman of faith. As you can, no doubt see, I have a good deal of faith in our Lord myself. As a pastor, it is something of a requirement.”
Agatha could not help but smile at that. She realized suddenly that she had not smiled, truly, in a very long time.
The rest of the letter followed in a similar vein. The pastor told her about his work and a bit about the town in which he lived. All with the same dry, self-deprecating humor.
In the end, he asked her, if she was so inclined, to write back to him.
Agatha knew instantly that she was so inclined.
She also knew that this was the first man in a very long time who had spoken kindly to her. Even if his words were only written and not said aloud.
She was used to factory foremen barking orders or men who lived in the boarding house berating her for not cleaning their room well enough.
She could not remember the last time she had received a compliment or a kind word from a man. This pastor’s letter was filled with both.
Still smiling, her heart leaping in her chest, she reached over to the letter box beside the mattress, took out her pen and began to write.
Dear Mr. Rhodes…
Chapter 3
Agatha Thorne held the parchment in her hands, bending the corners backward and forward as she bumped along in the carriage.
She was the only one going to Laramie today. The other four passengers, two couples, had disembarked in the last town. In this small carriage, with nothing to distract her, she found herself becoming more and more anxious.
That was why she had taken out his letter.
At first, she had thought of taking out the other pieces of paper in her bag. The ones she had taken from the factory. The ones she should not have in the first place.
But, she was afraid even now. Even thousands of miles away from New York, that someone would see them and know what they meant.
So, she kept the secret pages locked away in her bag and took out the letter instead.
The last letter Pastor Elijah Rhodes had sent to her before she left. Her hands ran over the parchment, but she did not move her eyes to read it. She had read it so many times that she now knew it by heart.
“My Dearest Agatha,” he’d written. “I cannot express to you how happy I am that you have accepted my proposal. Though I realize my life here is humble, I will make every effort to see to your comfort and happiness.”
It may not have sounded romantic to most women. But, after the men Agatha had known in New York, this Pastor’s simple, gentle promise to see to her happiness was, literally a God send.
Though she’d wondered about God and her own faith back home, through Elijah’s letters, she was slowly starting to believe again.
To believe that, perhaps, God did love her. That he was not punishing her for the crimes she had committed against him.
Though this hope was starting to spring in her chest, there was something that still held her back from completely believing it. Something in the back of her mind that whispered she was tainted. After what had happened in New York, after what she’d done, she would never be whole again. Not really.
Agatha tried to push these thoughts aside as best she could. Perhaps they would disappear when she reached Laramie.
The letter still crumpling in her hand, s
he glanced out the window and saw the makeshift wooden sign that marked the boundary for Laramie, Wyoming.
She expected to see buildings and people as soon as they entered the town. Instead, the plains and open fields continued to stretch until they stopped at a small group of buildings she had seen in the distance.
This, she knew, must be Laramie.
It was vastly different from the towns back home. In New York, there was hardly room anymore between one town or city and the next.
Here, there did not seem to be any towns or cities to speak of at all. And, when the occasional building did dot the horizon, it was nearly indistinguishable from the wild landscape in which it sat.
She could tell immediately that the buildings of Laramie were like that too. The small wooden dots stood like temporarily erected tents against a wild, mountain filled sky.
As they neared the town, Agatha put the letter as gently as she could back into her coin purse and looked out the window at her new home. They passed the church first.
Though, when she looked at the tiny, whitewashed building, she could not help but think that this could hardly be called a church. Back in New York, they might have called it a chapel.
A place for the factory workers to go and pray when the nearest parish was too far to walk after a long day working at the machines. But, here, she supposed, chapels were the only churches available.
A finer lady might have turned her nose up at it. But, Agatha could not help but smile as she passed the small building.
She could see her Mr. Elijah Rhodes preaching in a place like that. A small, simple building where the trappings and pretense of the world was gone. Only the word of God remained.
They passed the church and came to a bank and several store buildings which were shakily built and looked as though they had been erected in a hurry. The largest of these was a building with a weathered sign out front which named it The Watering Hole Saloon.
It was immediately clear that this was the newest building erected in the town. The wood was not weathered and was still shining with a fresh coat of paint.
Agatha blushed when she saw girls in various stages of undress leaning against the doorway or hanging out the windows attempting to entice passing men.
As she looked hastily away from the saloon, she felt the carriage pull abruptly to a stop. She turned to the opposite window and saw the weathered wooden building that was the hotel. This was where Elijah had promised to meet her.
Her heart began to beat quickly again in her chest as her hands absently moved to her pocket to touch the corners of his letter. As though brushing against the parchment he’d sent her would bring her luck.
Stepping out of the carriage, she was indeed met with a tall, thin male form that she vaguely recognized from the blurry photograph she had first received.
Elijah Rhodes was as tall as she imagined he would be. Nearly as tall as the steeple of the church in which he spoke. His face, though clearly still young was lined with wrinkles and strain. She supposed that came in the form of his job. Remembering the women outside of the saloon, she knew his work here could not be easy.
But, when his gray eyes locked onto hers, they lit up for half a moment before he smiled. That smile made the strain in his face nearly disappear. Agatha could not help but return it as he made his way towards her.
“Miss Thorne?” he asked almost hesitantly. Agatha winced imperceptibly at the last name she was not quite used to yet.
“Please, call me Agatha,” she said, hoping that the haste in her voice didn’t make him too suspicious. His smile remained in place, and her heart settled.
“Agatha then,” he said taking her hand. It was warmer than she had expected it to be. For the second time in as many minutes she felt her cheeks go warm.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally meet you,” he said. It was clear that he was every bit as nervous about this meeting as she was. For one reason or another, knowing that, put her more at ease.
“I am as well Mr. Rhodes.”
He chuckled and seemed to relax. Apparently, her nerves put him at ease too.
“If you’re to be Agatha to me,” he said. “I’ll be Elijah to you.”
“Elijah, then,” she said echoing his words. His smile widened and, for a moment, they simply looked at one another.
Their gaze was broken by a high-pitched and clearly excited voice coming from the doorway of the hotel.
“Oh! You must be Miss Thorne! Elijah has told us all so much about you, dear!”
Just as Agatha turned towards the sound, she found herself enveloped in a fervent embrace. She was squeezed so tightly that she could hardly register that the arms circling her belonged to an elderly and rather large woman.
When Agatha was finally released, she pulled back slightly to take in bright green eyes and the round face of the woman she assumed to be Mrs. Matthews, the owner of the hotel who Elijah had told her about in his letters.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for being so familiar, dear,” the older woman said. “But, Elijah’s talked of you so often I feel as though I know you already. Please come in! Oh, don’t worry about your bags, Robert will take them to your room for you. While he does that, both of you must sit down in the kitchen for some tea. I’m sure you’ll need it after the journey you’ve had.”
She said all this very quickly while nearly pulling both Agatha and Elijah over the threshold of the hotel. Eyes wide, more than a little overwhelmed, Agatha looked over her shoulder at Elijah. He gave her an understanding, humorous smile.
As soon as they were over the threshold, he took her arm as Mrs. Matthews moved quickly ahead of them.
“I’m sorry about Mrs. Matthews,” he said. “I realize she can be a bit overbearing at first.”
“I suppose you’re used to it,” Agatha said looking up to him again. He smiled down at her and, once more, she felt a little flipping sensation in her stomach.
His hand remained gently on her arm until they reached the kitchen where he pulled out a chair for her at the long wooden table. Again, Agatha smiled in thanks, her cheeks growing warm.
She was still very unused to such genteel behavior from a suitor. In the last five years, working at the factory back in New York, the only men she met were brash and coarse. Certainly, nothing like Elijah Rhodes.
“I’m certain you’ll enjoy living in Laramie,” Mrs. Matthews said in her quick, bright manner as she brought in a steaming pot of tea and set it on the table. “It really is a lovely community. Nothing like those horrid tales you might have heard about some of the other towns out west. Though with the new business in town, I do wonder if we’re not headed down that dark road.”
“New business?” Agatha asked looking from Mrs. Matthews to Elijah.
“Mrs. Matthews is speaking of the new saloon that opened only one month ago,” Elijah said. “She seems to feel that it will attract a certain…undesirable set to our community.”
Mrs. Matthews bright face darkened at the mention of the saloon. She set two cups down in front of Agatha and Elijah just a bit more forcefully than was necessary.
“It already has attracted an undesirable set,” Mrs. Matthews said. “Miss Thorne, I’m sure you saw those…women hanging out the windows of the place. Half-dressed for anyone to see. It was bad enough not having any eligible young women in Laramie to begin with. Now, our young men must be tempted day and night with those sorts of women. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.”
“I must admit it was quite a shocking sight,” Agatha said.
“More shocking for those in town, believe me,” Elijah said. “Most young men here are hardly used to seeing ladies at all. Seeing them all at once threw more than one into a sort of trance. Though I must admit, the church had never been so full of penitents the next morning.”
To Agatha’s surprise, the pastor chuckled a bit at the plight of the young men in his flock. Mrs. Matthews looked at him with her eyes narrowed.
“I must say, Pastor,”
she said. “I hardly thought that you, of all people, would take a house of ill repute in the town so lightly.”
Elijah shrugged, still smiling
“Worrying about the new business won’t cause it to close its doors,” he said. “The most I can do is show the people in my congregation through word and example what should and should not be done. From there, I can only pray that they make the right choices.”
Mrs. Matthews face relaxed at that, all the same, she heaved a sigh as she sat down, the chair creaking slightly beneath her weight.
“Well, I must say I am grateful to see you providing our young men with a good example of what a good Christian wife should be,” Mrs. Matthews said, raising her cup towards Agatha. “Though it is a shame that our decent young men are forced to look elsewhere for pure and virtuous girls. I must say, I would rather entertain a dozen nice, Christian girls from back east than see even one of our young men married to a woman like the sort you see outside the saloon. And certainly, girls like that would be no match for a pastor of all people.”
Agatha felt her face grow warm again. Though, this time, the sensation was much less pleasant. When she thought of her own past, she wondered if Mrs. Matthews would not lump her in with the same women she saw hanging about the saloon.
“I do not think you have much to fear there, Mrs. Matthews,” Elijah said taking a sip of his tea. “Women who have given up their virtue usually also give up all ideas of marriage.”
At his words, the knot in Agatha’s stomach tightened. The pain became so great that the cup in her hand began to shake. When she sat it down on the saucer, the loud clink caused Mrs. Matthews to jump and let out a small cry.
Elijah put a steady hand on her still shaking fingers.
“Agatha? Are you alright?”
Taking a deep breath, she did her best to smile at him, though she was sure she hadn’t entirely managed it.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounding thin and fragile. “I suppose I’m tired from the journey.”
“Well, no wonder, poor dear!” Mrs. Matthews exclaimed standing from her chair. “That carriage ride can shake even the strongest of nerves. I’ll show you to your room.”
