Softly Falling

by Carla Kelly

  Lily held her breath, wondering what she would do if Luella chose to ignore her. There was no need to feign indignation on her part. She drew herself up as tall as she could, which was tall enough, and kept her grip firm on Nick until she felt his shoulders sag and the tension leave his body.

  Luella held her peace, staring straight ahead, her lips still tight together. She raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, announcing with her body language that her father was going to hear of this massive injustice. Lily’s heart sank. Please, please let that eraser be at her house, she prayed, she who had never petitioned the Almighty because she didn’t think He played fair.

  “There now. We will continue with our letters this morning,” she said finally. “Luella, take a good look at home tonight. I will go through the classroom carefully.” And find what? she asked herself with some exasperation. We have so little in this room. Where could the eraser be? “There is probably a simple explanation for the disappearance of your eraser.”

  Chantal dried her tears. Nick sat down. Luella continued to stare straight ahead as though the sight of the Sansevers was abhorrent to her. Lily saw the fear in Amelie’s eyes as Luella’s threat sank home. Lily suspected that Mr. Buxton was entirely capable of doing what Luella said.

  The day seemed years long, especially the hour that Lily spent alone with Luella while the Sansevers hurried to help their mother. When Luella opened her mouth, her eyes still full of ill-use, Lily put up one finger. “Not a word about this,” she said. “You and I are here to study and that is all.”

  Luella glanced toward Chantal’s desk. “We could look . . .”

  “We will not. Now, let us see how many words you can create by adding letters to i-n-e.” With a hand that shook, Lily wrote the three letters on Luella’s slate. “You’re a bright child and you can read already. Surprise me with two-syllable words, if you can.”

  When Fothering came to fetch Luella for lunch, Lily whispered in his ear what had happened as Luella walked ahead. “I don’t know what to do. If she tells her father . . .”

  The butler patted her shoulder. “Miss Carteret, she may tell her father, but I can assure you he pays little attention to what anyone says.” He peered at her in such a kindly way that she wanted to burst into years like Chantal earlier and sob it out on his chest. “We’ll get through this.”

  She nodded, feeling her own ruin and disgrace as a teacher settling around her ankles like a petticoat with a broken gathering cord. Three days into teaching and she had already failed.

  Somehow they all struggled through that miserable day, Nick the portrait of gloom, and Chantal and Amelie with fear in their eyes. Luella was calm and superior, and the Pink Pearl was nowhere in sight. At the end of the day, Amelie approached Luella with her own eraser in hand. She held it out to Luella, who stomped out, muttering about a used eraser that wasn’t as good as her own.

  Lily held up through dinner in the dining hall. When Jack came to their shack for his reading lesson and a chapter of Ivanhoe, she nearly sent him away, pleading a headache, which was no lie. He took one long look at her, and that was all she needed. Horrified with herself, she burst into tears. Humiliated, she tried to turn away but he took her arm and pulled her close, his hand on her hair, much as he had probably comforted the Sansever girls when their father died.

  “What in the world is wrong?” he whispered into her ear. “Madeleine is looking nearly haunted, and the girls have been crying, even though they won’t admit it.” He handed her his handkerchief. “Blow your nose and tell me.”

  She did as he said. Jack had a way about him that demanded obedience without even exerting the dubious tool of a raised voice. He released her and she sat down. He sat close beside her but not touching. Her father retreated to his room.

  Between gulps, she told him about the whole, horrible day. “Jack, I know Chantal is disappointed that she doesn’t have an eraser, but she would never do that. I . . . I even thought maybe Nick might do something to sabotage the school, but . . .”

  “Oh no,” Jack said, his voice grim. “I made it perfectly plain to him that there would be school or I would not hire him. Did you look for the eraser?”

  “Everywhere,” she said, her nose deep in the handkerchief again. “After they left, I searched the little space under each desk where they can keep things. Luella’s pencil case was in hers, but the others don’t have anything.”

  Jack leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I’m at a loss,” he told her.

  “All I can do is carry on,” she said.

  “Luella wouldn’t . . .”

  “No, I am certain she would not,” Lily said with conviction. “She was genuinely upset.”

  He sighed. “I’ll ask the hands if they’re playing a prank.”

  Her heart dreary and weighed down, Lily turned for comfort to the alphabet. She had written out the alphabet—upper- and lowercase letters—on a piece of cardboard. She sounded out each letter, which only reminded her how frustrating English could be.

  “Sometimes C is hard, as in cat,” she said, pointing to the letter. “Sometimes it is soft, as in cease. Sometimes it has a ch sound, as in chaps.”

  “We pronounce’um shaps here.” He grinned at her. “What do you say in England?”

  She socked his arm. “We don’t say the word there. Don’t tease me.”

  “But it’s fun when you get all huffy,” he teased. “I recommend Sir Walter Scott now, because you’re getting cranky and I have a pranking streak.”

  “I am n . . .” She stopped. “I probably am.”

  He picked up Ivanhoe and opened to the bookmark. She moved from the table to sit beside him on the settee.

  He pointed at the page. “Huh. Chapter.” He nudged her shoulder. “I know it’s not shapter.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh, and maybe she had her own pranking streak. She never would have suspected such a thing before Wyoming. “Shapter Twelve.”

  He pointed at the heading. “Chapter,” he repeated “Ch, ch. Ta Waw.”

  “Put it together.”

  “Twa. Twelve.”

  “There’s hope for you. ‘Morning rose in unclouded splendor, and ere the sun was much above the horizon . . .’ ”

  In the morning over breakfast, Jack assured her that the cowhands weren’t playing tricks on the schoolmarm.

  “You believe them?” she asked, grasping at straws because she was at her wit’s end over the eraser.

  “Completely. They don’t lie,” he said. “Indian—you know, he likes Pierre now—wanted to know if anything else was missing.”

  She hadn’t considered that. “I . . . I don’t think so. I’ll take a good look today.” She sighed. “Provided anyone is in my classroom.”

  “I can’t vouch for Luella, but the Sansevers will be there. I talked to Madeleine about this, and she is worried.”

  “So am I,” Lily said simply.

  On their walk to the Buxtons, Lily told her father what had happened. “I don’t know what to do, Papa,” she said. He stopped and looked at the Buxton’s house as though it was the last place on earth he wanted to be.

  “You’ll think of something,” he said and gave her a wistful smile. “Your mother was resourceful and you do remind me of her.”

  I have enough worries, she thought. She kissed his cheek, and continued walking that improving half mile that Madame Buxton, the imaginary invalid, had decreed for good health.

  She was early, so she looked around the room she had already searched, hoping something would materialize and solve the dilemma of that dratted Pink Pearl eraser. She remembered what Pierre had asked Jack, so she changed her approach, trying to see if something else was missing.

  Nothing. She stared at her desk, bare as usual, because her own teachers had instilled in her the virtue of a tidy desk at the end of the day. Something was missing, but she couldn’t place it. “Bother it,” she said out loud and opened the long drawer in her desk. There they were. She had planned to tack up t
he papers on which her students had printed their names so carefully. She reached in the little box of thumbtacks and remembered that she had put four thumbtacks on her desk last night to remind her to put up the papers in the morning.

  She stared hard at her desk again, then looked under it, wondering if she had knocked off the little silvery tacks. Nothing again. With a sigh, she took out four more tacks and put up the papers. Amelie Lavinia, named after a favorite aunt. Chantal Celeste, named after another aunt. Nicholas only, because he was born on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, December 6. Luella Lorna, because her grandmamas were Louise and Ella, and Mama liked Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, a book she read “during her anticipation,” as Luella so primly put it.

  The day dragged on, and not because there were any accusations this time. Luella had made life immeasurably worse. She had come into the classroom head held high and flounced to her seat. Lily watched as Chantal and Amelie snuck worried glances in her direction as they wondered what had happened at the Buxton house last night.

  Luella knew what they were thinking, not so much because she was devious, but because she was smart and understood how the world worked. “I didn’t say a word to anyone last night,” she announced, without looking around. “Maybe I will tonight.”

  And that was all: the beginning of a thick, ugly silence that weighed them down. After lunch, Lily attempted some relief by instituting what had always been the best part of her day at Miss Tilton’s.

  She took a book from her top drawer, a much-read book, if the wear was any indication, that Stretch had given to her. The cover was of thick cardboard that he must have taped to keep the pages together. She held it up.

  “Luella, since you have a little more skill with words, what is the title?”

  Luella smiled and smoothed her tightly braided hair, preening with her superiority. She opened her mouth, then frowned. “I can read some of the words.”

  “Excellent! Read the ones you can read.”

  She squinted, and Lily made a mental note to try to convince her to sit on the front row.

  “ ‘Street Life in New York,’ ” she read.

  “Very good. It is Ragged Dick: Or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks,” Lily said.

  “I am dubious,” Luella said. “Is this an improving work?”

  “I doubt it,” Lily replied. “I think it will be fun. Listen, my dears.”

  She read one chapter, then two, and the atmosphere in the classroom relaxed. They wanted to protest when she put Stretch’s bookmark with the Indian beads on a rawhide string in place. “More tomorrow. Now it’s time for ciphering. I’ll write these on the board and you copy them on your slates.”

  She wrote rapidly, beginning simply, because everyone knew so little about numbers, including Luella. When she finished, sat down, and said “Begin,” the students applied themselves diligently. “Five minutes,” she said, then unpinned her watch and set it on the desk, resolving to ask around tonight at supper for an alarm clock.

  She stopped them at five minutes, pleased with the results. Luella had finished all but three, and Anna and Amelie followed with all but four. She looked at Nick’s slate, pleased to see he had finished them all, and they were correct.

  Encouraged, she wrote more numbers on the board, with the same results. Nick raised his hand. “Can you put three numbers instead of two numbers?”

  She did. After a few minutes, Luella put down her slate pencil, her expression put-upon and abused. The Sansever girls shook their heads. Nick held up his slate with a flourish and she saw the pride in his eyes.

  “Well done, Nick,” she said quietly. “How did you do this?”

  “I lined up some knives and forks from the kitchen last night and figured it out.”

  She told Jack and her father that night about Nick’s accomplishment. Jack nodded, pride in his eyes as if Nick were his own boy. Her father smiled. “Train him well, Lily, and I’ll let him tote the numbers for Mr. Buxton,” he said. It was the gentlest of teases, but it touched her heart.

  “While I set the girls to working on their letters, I put up more numbers and timed him,” she said as her own enthusiasm grew. “They were just small numbers, you know, just one plus three plus eight, but he finished in less than two minutes.”

  She touched the place on her shirtwaist where she pinned her watch and looked down in dismay. “I left my watch in the classroom,” she said. She sucked in her breath. “I’ve got to run.”

  The night air was chilly, and she could see her breath, but Lily didn’t bother with her shawl. She ran from the house, and Jack followed.

  “Slow down. Ground’s uneven,” he said as a preliminary to taking her hand.

  Please, please, please let it be there, she thought as she hurried the healthy half mile to the empty school.

  She knew she should have grabbed the table lamp before she ran from her house, but there was enough moonlight to show her a bare desk. Even Ragged Dick was gone. No. She dropped to her knees as Jack watched and found the book on the floor in front of her desk. She sat back, dismayed. The little bead bookmark was nowhere in sight.

  She could barely keep back the tears, but she had cried all over the foreman last night, and she didn’t intend to do that again in her lifetime. Deep breath. “Jack, ask your hands again. Someone is giving us grief and I don’t know why.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Jack went even further at breakfast. He stood up in the dining hall and announced to his hands, the Sansevers, Lily, and her father that someone was playing a mean trick on the schoolmarm and it had to stop.

  “She’s lost her watch now, and that little beaded bookmark of yours, Stretch,” he said.

  Stretch shook his head in disgust. “I paid a whole dollar for that cuz somebody told me it belonged to Sitting Bull.”

  Pierre laughed. “The Lakota will tell a white man anything.”

  Stretch glared at him.

  “And four thumbtacks yesterday,” Lily added, remembering. “I can’t have this. How can I know when we should change from reading to ciphering, or learning our letters? I need my watch. Oh, please.”

  All she saw were puzzled looks. Almost all. Pierre was regarding her with a frown, his lips pursed.

  “Do you know something?” she asked point-blank.

  “I might,” he told her. He glanced at Jack, and the two men nodded.

  In her anxiety, Lily wanted to pluck at his sleeve and hop up and down, but she was twenty-five years old and that would never do. She hated that her distress showed on her face, but she could see her one road off the Bar Dot dribbling away. Mr. Buxton would fire Madeleine over an eraser and the Sansevers would go heaven knows where. Luella would reign supreme, and Mrs. Buxton would probably veto the teacher. She had thought to make something of herself in Wyoming Territory, but all she was making of herself was a fool.

  Pierre must have seen it all on her face because he patted her shoulder. “You worry too much. Do something for me.”

  “Anything, if you can help me,” she pleaded.

  “Leave some more thumbtacks on your desk tonight.”

  “What?” she asked, mystified.

  “And maybe a dime, if you have one.”

  That was about all the money she had. Lily nodded, past even wondering what on earth the Indian was going to do.

  “Don’t take too much of her money,” Jack said, his voice lighthearted. Drat the man, but he was impervious to her upcoming ruin. “If you do, she won’t even be able to buy half a plate of chop suey from Wing Li.”

  The two men chuckled. She tried to scrunch up her eyes, but it was too late. Lily felt the tears slide down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if she cried from fear or anger or helplessness or even sorrow that nothing was going to go right for her. She was her father’s daughter.

  She turned away, but they had seen her tears. She stood there in silence, listening to the clatter of crockery in the kitchen, where Madeleine was hard at work, even though her world might be crumb
ling around her too. I am giving up too soon, Lily thought, embarrassed, as she listened to the sound of a woman with everything to lose, working. Pierre Fontaine is trying to help me and I am giving up. Shame on me.

  She took a deep breath and left the dining hall, not stopping for her father. She walked in silence up the hill, determined to teach.

  “We shouldn’t have laughed at her, boss,” Pierre said.

  “No. She’s a little finely drawn right now,” Jack agreed.

  “Do you think she’ll leave out them tacks and maybe a dime? Gotta have bait.”

  “She’ll do it.” Jack felt the heat rise from his neck and wished he had the Indian’s dark complexion. “I should have said something. She’s going to worry all day.”

  Pierre shook his head. “Nah, she isn’t. I think she’s mostly just angry at us now. That’ll keep her going.” He pointed with his lips toward the kitchen. “That’s the worried one. Maybe I should tell her what I’m going to do.”

  “You just want more coffee with a half pound of sugar in it. It beats all how much sugar you Indians crave.”

  “That too.” He tipped his hat to Jack. “See ya on the range. Same place?”

  “Yep. Too many LC beeves hanging around. Time to move’um back, if McMurdy and his boys won’t come get them.”

  Lily did look angry, Jack decided as he watched her walk up the slope, her shoulders set and her stride more purposeful than usual. She had a pleasant sway to her hips that he probably could have watched a little longer, except that the boys were getting ready to ride, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of standing there mooning over a pretty lady who probably would have thrashed him into next Thursday because he had laughed at her predicament. Time to toughen up, missy, he thought. Tears won’t cut it.

  They would have cut it, he decided a few hours later as they chivvied LC cows away from Bar Dot land. If he had been alone, he would have tried to soothe her agitation. Still, Lily Carteret could use a heavy dose of patience. When nothing was going right was the time to hunker down like a prairie chicken and ride out the storm.