The Bride’s House

by Sandra Dallas

  “In Georgetown. What are you doing in Georgetown?”

  “I’m looking into an investment. My grandfather’s failing, and my father’s a wastrel, so there was nothing to it but for me to take over the firm. I haven’t been back to Colorado since the day … the day after you married Nealie. I was at the station in Denver when you arrived, you know. I saw her. I was on my way back East. But I had promised you.”

  “Nealie didn’t see you.”

  “No. I thought not.”

  “She believed you never came back.”

  The two men were silent, and then the visitor said, “I wasn’t sure I should return now, but there is a proposition I’m looking into. Since I’m here, I thought to pay my respects to Mrs. Travers for old times’ sake.”

  “And find out about Nealie?”

  “No … yes, I suppose that was the reason, too.”

  “Of course it was. You said you didn’t know we lived here, but you did. And you were curious about Pearl, too.”

  There was a silence, and Pearl thought her father might be pouring the man a glass of whiskey or offering him a cigar, the way Charlie usually did with visitors. In fact, his study smelled of bourbon and tobacco and leather. Mrs. Travers complained that as much as she cleaned and aired the room, she never could get rid of the smell. But Pearl liked it. When her father was away, she would sit in the swivel chair at his desk, playing with the pens and ink and pen wipes that she herself made for him, running her fingers over the papery cigars in the box, pretending she was her papa, negotiating mining agreements. Now, she pictured the visitor sitting on one of the chairs in front of the glass cases where her father kept his books and ore specimens and mining memorabilia, while her father twisted around in the chair, leaning back, his feet up on the desk.

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Travers you called. She works for me now,” Charlie said, “here, in my house.”

  “Your house.” The man laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. Then the two were silent, and Pearl wondered what they were doing, perhaps examining one of Charlie’s ore samples. Already, Pearl knew her father had a fine collection of specimens.

  Then the man said, “I don’t suppose you care, but I’ve paid for what I did. It’s not been an easy time for me these last years. My wife and I—she never knew, of course—we get on all right, but we lead separate lives. There aren’t any children. I’m sorry for that.” He cleared his throat and said, “I never heard from Nealie, so I didn’t know the baby was a girl.” He was silent for a moment before he said, “I was afraid of my grandfather back then, afraid to anger him. Only later I realized he needed me more than I did him. He would have forgiven me for anything. I made the wrong choice. If I were to do it again—”

  “But you can’t, and she’s dead,” Charlie interrupted, his voice hard.

  “No, I can’t. Please God, I could,” the man said, so softly that Pearl wondered if he was talking to himself. After a silence, he asked, “Where is she buried?”

  “The Alvarado Cemetery. I put up a stone with an angel on it and her name.”

  “Nealie Bent.”

  “Dumas. Mrs. Charles Dumas.”

  “Do you mind if I visit it?”

  Pearl thought her father might have nodded or shook his head, but she had no way of knowing. All he said was, “It’s a public place.”

  There was another long silence in the house, although from outside came the sounds of a mule-drawn wagon making its way down Taos Street, the crack of a whip, a profanity as the driver swore at the animals. In the distance, a stamp mill rumbled as it crushed ore. Then the man said, “You’ve done well. People in the East know of you. You’ve got their respect.” Pearl heard the creak of leather, and the man asked, “Was she happy with you?”

  Charlie’s chair squeaked, the way it did when he leaned forward to say something important. “What mine are you looking into?”

  There was another pause before the man answered, businesslike, “The Camp Robber. We have a chance to buy it and at a good price.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.” Charlie snorted, and the chair squeaked again. “It’s well named, all right. It’s a bust.”

  “We’ve assayed the ore.”

  “Salted, most likely. Go back farther in the adit. Take your own samples. There’s not much of value in Georgetown any longer, and I advise you to look elsewhere. I’m of the opinion silver’s days are done for, so I’m investing in gold mines. You ought to do the same.”

  “Thank you.” The man scraped his boots on the floor as he rose. “Will you let me say good-bye to the girl?”

  “No.”

  At that, Pearl got out of the chair and went into the foyer, sitting down on the stairs, because she was curious about this man who’d known her mother, a man she guessed her father did not like. She concluded that because Charlie had not offered him refreshment and had cut short the interview. Usually her father was genial, even when the guest bored him, because he never knew what he might learn from gossip. The girl was seated on the steps, a book in her hands, when Charlie opened the study doors.

  The man did not see Pearl at first, because he was looking up the steep staircase, which clung to the wall, and at the polished banister, which curved gracefully at the top of the stairs. “I remember the house. I was in it once before it was finished,” he said. “She loved it. She always wanted to live here, but I guess you know that.”

  “Everybody calls it the Bride’s House. Mama was the bride,” Pearl said, rising from the step.

  “I know. Was she married in the green dress?” Will looked at Charlie.

  “Blue. Mrs. Travers loaned it to her. She told me so.” Pearl held out her hand. “Good-bye, sir.”

  “Good-bye, Miss Pearl,” he said, taking the hand and holding it longer than was necessary. “I hope I’ll see you again.”

  “No,” Charlie said. “You won’t.”

  Pearl thought that an odd remark, because her father was slow to anger and rarely rude. At the time, she considered the conversation she’d overheard to be strange, but she wasn’t sure just why. She never forgot it, although she forgot pieces of it that didn’t mean anything to her or that she didn’t understand. She’d missed the nuances, so that in later years, her memory of the visit was somewhat inaccurate. What’s more, she forgot what the man looked like, and she never learned his name, so if the two ever met again, she wouldn’t have known him. She remembered mostly that it was a meeting between two men who had both known her mother, two men who didn’t care much for each other.

  * * *

  That night at supper, the girl told Mrs. Travers, “A man came to see you today, Aunt Lidie.” If Pearl had been devious, she might have planned the announcement for its effect, might have looked at her father for his reaction, because she still did not understand what had passed between the two men. But she was not so inclined, and although she knew that her father had not liked the man, she hadn’t sensed his agitation. Nor had she thought the visit unusual, because her father discussed mining with many men. Besides, the stranger had explained that his reason for calling was to see Mrs. Travers.

  “Who was he?” Mrs. Travers asked. She had a large circle of friends, although most of them were women.

  Pearl shrugged. “He didn’t tell me his name. Papa knows him.”

  “No one of consequence,” Charlie said.

  Mrs. Travers looked up, curious, because the man had been her caller, not Charlie’s.

  “He knew my mother,” Pearl continued. “He said he boarded with you.”

  “I would like more water,” Charlie said, and Pearl jumped up and took his glass to the kitchen and pumped water into it. When Pearl was out of the other room, Charlie muttered, “Will Spaulding.”

  Mrs. Travers placed her napkin beside her plate, Nealie’s white Haviland with a design of roses on it. Some of the pieces had been broken, and Charlie had ordered replacements. “I haven’t thought of him in a long time. He wasn’t such a bad egg, but he was…” She paused. “I’
d forgotten there was hardness between you.”

  “Was there, Papa? Why didn’t you like the man?” Pearl asked. She set Charlie’s glass on the table.

  When Charlie didn’t answer, Mrs. Travers said, “Because both of them sparked your mother. I’m telling you right, your mama made the best choice marrying up with your papa. Oh, he was a nice enough man, but he was just a-spudding. Is that how you’d put it, Charlie? He was just ambling along, looking out for himself?”

  “I wouldn’t put it.”

  “You still don’t like him, then?” Mrs. Travers chuckled. “What did he want?”

  “To pay his respects. You didn’t miss much.”

  “Is he the bull goose of his grandfather’s company now? I remember the old man had him under his thumb.”

  “Says so.”

  “He didn’t know Mama was dead,” the girl interrupted, then clamped her mouth shut, because this bit of information was something she’d overheard the man talking about with her father in the study. But Charlie didn’t seem to catch that.

  “No, how would he?”

  “If he comes back, I don’t want to see him,” Charlie said, rising from the table. “And he’s not to see Pearl, either.” The two waited until Charlie went out—to a saloon or just tramping about, as he often did for an hour or so after supper. Mrs. Travers had wondered to a friend once—a remark that Pearl had overheard—whether Charlie would have stayed home of an evening if Nealie had been alive.

  “Did Mama like the man?” Pearl asked, as the two cleared the dishes from the table and carried them into the kitchen.

  Mrs. Travers picked up the teakettle from the range and poured hot water into a basin. “Yes, she did.”

  “But she liked Papa better?”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Travers answered, as she began washing the plates. “I was glad for it.”

  “That man’s very handsome.”

  “And generous. I believe he gave your mother that cameo you’re wearing.”

  The girl looked up in surprise, and Mrs. Travers frowned, as if she should not have disclosed the gift. “You mustn’t tell your father about that. You’d hurt his feelings. Most likely, he doesn’t know about the cameo, because if he did, he wouldn’t like you wearing it.” She dipped a plate into the basin of rinse water and handed it to Pearl to dry. “I’d have thought your father was over all his jealousy. After all, Nealie married him. But it appears he’s not. If I was you, I wouldn’t mention the man to your father again.”

  Pearl considered that as she set the plate in the cupboard. “I thought Papa gave the necklace to Mama or that maybe her own papa did.” The girl mulled over something for a minute. “Do you think he’s still alive—Mama’s father?” Pearl knew that Nealie had been raised on a farm and had left after her mother died, but nothing more, and she’d never asked about her grandfather.

  “Oh, I don’t suppose so,” Mrs. Travers replied quickly, as if she did not want the girl to inquire further. But Pearl had asked only out of momentary curiosity, and by the time she picked up the next plate, she had forgotten about her mother’s family.

  CHAPTER 8

  PEARL DUMAS WAS THIRTY YEARS old in 1912 when she met Frank Curry, and well on her way to becoming an old maid. The general view in Georgetown was that the girl had a rabbit’s chance of marriage. Some people found her attractive in an odd sort of way—distinctive, at any rate, with her strange coloring. But although she looked much like her mother, Pearl did not have those qualities that Nealie had possessed that had made men turn and stare at her. Of course, few compared Pearl with her mother, because except for Charlie and Mrs. Travers, Mr. Kaiser at the store and the minister at the Presbyterian church, nobody remembered Nealie. If they had, they might have been puzzled that this shy, reserved woman with the air of someone twice her age was the daughter of the vivacious young hired girl.

  Some wondered that Pearl had ever been a girl at all. Despite the easy days of her growing-up years, Pearl seemed never to have been young. While Charlie was blustery and outgoing, a man who made his views known to everyone, Pearl was her father’s shadow, a quiet, rather simple child who blended into the background. Few remarked that something she said was cunning or even memorable. As she grew into young womanhood, Pearl never blossomed but retained the retiring demeanor of her youth.

  Of course, the young woman had friends, many of them, in fact, because Pearl was well liked, kind, and self-effacing and given to charitable acts. She was active in church and might have played the piano there, since she was accomplished in that instrument, having learned on the square grand pianoforte her mother had bought for the parlor, but she was far too shy to perform before anyone but her father.

  She took part in quiltings with Mrs. Travers and her friends, sewing quietly and efficiently, never gossiping and only joining in the talk when it turned to serious subjects. And she participated in outdoor exercises such as sleigh rides and ice skating with those her own age, although she was not athletic, and sliding about on blades on the ice frightened her, as did other sporting activities, such as bicycling. She might have turned that fear to her advantage, pleading helplessness, but flirting was foreign to her. In that, she was like her mother, although Nealie’s lack of artifice was thought fresh while Pearl’s seemed dull.

  Pearl dressed tastefully but too plainly to suit. She had come of age in an era when women put aside their bustles and stays and glorified in their uncorseted bodies. Pearl, however, preferred the old-fashioned look favored by Mrs. Travers. In winter, she wore stiff mohair, gabardine, or taffeta, of a severe color, cinched against her bony form. In summer, she dressed in white, which gave her a washed-out appearance. And she eschewed the broad hats then fashionable, preferring bonnets that made her look even taller and thinner.

  Charlie had no criticisms of his daughter, perhaps because he preferred that his precious child stay by his side. He wanted her home in the evenings where the two often sat on the horsehair furniture in the parlor and read to each other or discussed the mining business.

  Charlie had more than a fatherly devotion to Pearl. He had come to depend on the girl professionally. During Pearl’s growing-up time, Mrs. Travers suggested that Pearl go on to one of the universities in Denver or at Boulder. The girl was bright and serious, and Charlie could afford the tuition. Pearl herself hoped to do that, because she wanted to learn more than she had been taught in the Georgetown schools. And since she was not interested in any of the eligible young men in Georgetown, she thought that she might meet her future husband at a university. It had never occurred to Pearl that she would do anything in her life but marry—marry and bring her husband home to live in the Bride’s House, because she could not imagine leaving her father.

  “I’ll ask Papa to send me,” Pearl told Mrs. Travers when the two discussed her going on to school. Charlie had never denied her anything, so Pearl believed she had good reason to expect he would agree to her going to a university.

  “We’ll have to think how to appeal to him,” Mrs. Travers said, because she was not so sure Charlie would give up his daughter.

  “It might help,” Pearl said, “if I told him I would study geology so that I could better understand his mining investments.” She would go to a school only fifty miles away and promise to come home every weekend so that he would not miss her.

  Mrs. Travers broached the subject of college one evening at the supper table. “It’s a shame to end Pearl’s education here, smart like she is.” Charlie didn’t respond, and Mrs. Travers added, “She has her father’s blood.” When Charlie frowned at that, Mrs. Travers added quickly, “That is to say, she’s smart like you, Charlie, clever.”

  “Clever and smart mean the same thing as hardworking,” he replied.

  “I never heard of a body hurt by learning.”

  “I went to school a little, but I didn’t learn much,” Charlie said. “I’ve found teachers to be about as wise as rabbits. They don’t know good ore from Deuteronomy.”

 
“Oh, now that might have been true in our day, but it’s not any longer. The girl could study geology, but who knows what else she might learn.”

  “Learn to strip her shoulders and bare her legs, that’s what.”

  “Papa!” Pearl interjected.

  Charlie reddened a little and cleared his throat. “Now, I’m not saying you’d do that, Pearl, but I don’t care to have you associate with that kind of person.”

  “I believe you can trust me,” Pearl said in a rare display of defiance. Then she added, “Perhaps I would find someone there who would be a suitable husband.” She assumed that her father, like her, believed she would marry one day and that he would want her to choose a man as ambitious and hardworking as Charlie.

  “I wouldn’t have you marry now.”

  “I’m Mama’s age when you married her.”

  “She’s right,” Mrs. Travers put in, and Charlie glared at her.

  “You’re much too foolish to choose a husband,” Charlie said, to the two women’s distress. Pearl might lack some qualities, but she had never been foolish.

  “It’s what I want, college, that is,” Pearl said at last. “I am asking you to send me, Papa.”

  Charlie tossed his napkin onto the table. “Lidie, you’ve forgotten the hereafter. Has your mind gone soft?”

  “Oh, I’ll get it, Papa,” Pearl said, jumping up. “We made a Charlotte pudding.”

  “Your aunt Lidie can fetch it,” Charlie said, and Mrs. Travers rose and went into the kitchen to dish up the dessert. She took her time after the obvious dismissal.

  When father and daughter were alone, Charlie asked, “And what about what I want, Pearl? Would you push me aside just to attend classes on subjects of no value to you and to cavort with young men? Have you no feeling for your papa, for how lonely I would be?”

  “You would have Aunt Lidie,” Pearl replied in a soft voice, a last attempt to convince Charlie of the rightness of her plea. “I will be home every weekend and on vacations. Why, you yourself are gone as much as I would be.” Then she added, “Couldn’t we try it for two years, even one?”