Courting Carrie in Wonderland

by Carla Kelly

  Mrs. LaMarque looked as though she heard requests like this all the time. Carrie settled back next to Sergeant Major Stiles to enjoy the pleasure of a veteran songstress, not a Montana Ag girl with a tip jar. Mere moments later she was on her feet, terrified, and faced with the dread knowledge that Mrs. LaMarque, all sweetness to this assembly, was determined to make her earn every dollar of her wages.

  “I’ll be delighted to sing, but only if Carrie McKay sings with me,” Mrs. LaMarque said, and gave her a triumphant I-dare-you look.

  Carrie sucked in her breath and Ramsay started in surprise. “That old trot,” he murmured under his breath. “You can always say no.”

  “Don’t think I can,” she whispered back. “Wish me luck.”

  “You’ve got it. Tally-ho, Miss McKay.”

  She touched his shoulder to steady herself, and threaded her way through the chairs to stand next to the piano, and hoping her knees didn’t knock together.

  “How sweet of you to agree to this, Carrie,” Mrs. LaMarque said. She turned to Mrs. Chittenden. “Do you know ‘Nellie Gray’?”

  “We probably all do,” Nettie Chittenden said as she rose gracefully and went to the pianoforte. She seated herself and gave Carrie a “poor you” look so full of sympathy that Carrie felt her heart start beating again. Nettie ruffled through the stack of sheet music she had brought with her. “Here it is.”

  “Carrie will harmonize on the chorus,” Mrs. LaMarque announced. She cleared her throat. “Any time you’re ready, Mrs. Chittenden.”

  Tuition, books, fees, and living expenses, Carrie reminded herself as she looked over Mrs. Chittenden’s shoulder at the music of a song she didn’t know well.

  As terrified as she was, or maybe as irritated—the exact emotion eluded her—Carrie relaxed under the spell of a truly lovely voice, well trained and experienced. Mrs. LaMarque willed herself taller, as Carrie had seen her do earlier, and clasped her hands together in that tender-longing pose found on theatre bills throughout the musical world, up to and including Bozeman. The words poured out of her with impeccable grace and diction. If she was exacting revenge for Ramsay’s Turkish treatment, or Carrie insisting on two suitcases only, so be it, Carrie decided, as she listened to vocal yearning and longing for Nellie Gray.

  As Carrie joined her in the chorus, her fear left her. She sang for a future she might have, if she could stay in school. Halfway through the song, she realized she was singing for the sole pleasure of it. A glance at Ramsay Stiles, sitting there with his chair tipped back and a smile on his face, told her he understood.

  By the time Louise LaMarque hit the home stretch with, “ ‘Oh! I hear the angels calling, and I see my Nellie Gray. Farewell to the old Kentucky shore,’ ” the former Broadway star of America’s fledgling musical stage had her audience where she wanted them, the women sniffling and reaching for handkerchiefs, and their warrior-husbands taking surreptitious dabs at their eyes.

  If you can do it, I can do it, Carrie thought grimly. She clasped her hands too, and took that maudlin chorus home: “ ‘I’m a-coming-coming-coming, as the angels clear the way, farewell to the old Kentucky shore!’ ”

  “Charming, my dear Miss McKay,” Mrs. LaMarque said to her, as their audience applauded. She bowed gracefully, indicated her accompanist, who inclined her head, and then looked at Carrie with merriment in her eyes.

  While admirers circled Mrs. LaMarque, Mrs. Chittenden took Carrie aside under the guise of helping to organize the sheet music.

  “Why do I get the feeling you were shanghaied into that little musical tableau?” the engineer’s wife asked. “When she summoned you so imperiously from the back row, you had a look on your face like a sailor drugged and shanghaied.”

  “I was shanghaied,” Carrie said. “I think she wants to punish me for forcing her to put her Yellowstone Park touring clothes into two suitcases instead of a steamer trunk.”

  “You’re equal to it,” Mrs. Chittenden said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Ram … Sergeant Major Stiles bullied her out of an enormous sum of money for me to be her maid through the park,” Carrie whispered back. “It’s going to pay half my expenses for the whole year at Montana Ag.”

  “He’s a good man,” the engineer’s wife said. “When your ordeal ends, stop by to visit. Hiram is going to be mucking about all summer on a bridge across the Yellowstone and a road through Sylvan Pass.”

  “I wish I could visit, but I’m heading right back to the kitchen at the Willow Park Wylie Camp when this is over,” Carrie said, with real regret.

  “Then duty calls,” Mrs. Chittenden told her as she gathered up the rest of the sheet music. “We army wives understand that better than anyone. And here is the aforementioned Hiram to escort me home. Goodnight, my dear. It’s a pleasure to know you.”

  “I am tired,” she heard behind her back, and sighed inwardly.

  “Walk me back to the hotel,” Mrs. LaMarque demanded. “I’m tired, and I suppose Sergeant Major Stiles will want to leave at some unheard of hour.”

  “We can change his mind,” Carrie said. “You and I should promenade on the Terraces, first thing after breakfast. I’ve never been there either. Mostly I just work at Yellowstone, and that doesn’t leave time to be a tourist.”

  “Go ask the tyrant,” she commanded.

  She found the tyrant in the dining room, talking to Major Pitcher, who gave him a thumbs up sign and then went into the kitchen calling his wife’s name.

  “A thumbs up for tolerating the dragon?” she asked, wondering why Ram’s face was so red, that curse of the strawberry blond she was personally well-acquainted with.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he said and turned even more red. “You sounded wonderful. You’re a game goer. Pardon the slang, but it’s true.”

  “Thank you.” Better to leave it at that.

  “Is the dragon talking to you?”

  “Yes. She wants to inform you that she will not leave here at the crack of dawn, and you will find us on the Terraces around ten o’clock.”

  “Fair enough. I have some paperwork in Admin calling my name. This means lunch at Willow Park, if you think Bonnie won’t mind interlopers encroaching on the Wylie Way.”

  “She’ll manage.”

  “If I distract the dragon with a visit to Apollinaris Springs, might there be time for you to make a pie?”

  “There is every chance, Sergeant Major Stiles.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Carrie and Mrs. LaMarque took the short walk in silence from Major Pitcher’s house down Officer’s Row to Mammoth Hot Springs’s National Hotel.

  Carrie decided to plunge ahead. “A little warning about what you expected would have been kind.”

  “I know,” the woman said, serene in her superiority. “You and that sergeant of yours have been ordering me about and I was tired of it.”

  “He’s not my sergeant,” Carrie said.

  “I rather think he is, whether you know it or not,” Mrs. LaMarque said.

  Might as well squash that one right away, or this week would be worse than unbearable. “Unlikely. I am returning to college in September, and I know he is more than a little frustrated learning new responsibilities,” Carrie said. “I’m happy to help him out, because you need a maid and I need tuition money.”

  “This is a business arrangement?” Mrs. LaMarque asked.

  Would anyone willingly work for you any other way? Carrie wanted to ask, but knew better. “I believe it is.”

  “Fair enough,” Mrs. LaMarque said, after a lengthy silence that took them up the stairs of the hotel and into the lobby. “In the morning, you will run me a bath in that regrettable tub down the hall, then lay out my clothing on the bed. Now, you will help me get out of this dratted corset and go in search of a cup of Earl Grey tea.“

  “I will hunt down Earl Grey and make him howl for mercy,” she assured the socialite.

  Mrs. LaMarque smiled at that, but just barely. Carrie wanted to continue feeling uncharit
able, but the lady did look tired.

  “Meanwhile, I will get into the one solitary nightgown you have allowed me, and read a chapter in one of the two books you let me cram in my luggage.”

  Feeling sorry for ourselves are we? Carrie thought. “Will that be To Have and to Hold, or The Battle-Ground?”

  “Not To Have and to Hold,” Mrs. LaMarque said. “I don’t know why I selected that one. Perhaps I did it because you were standing over me with a stopwatch!”

  Patience, patience, Carrie told herself. Think of a blissful fall semester with no lavatories to clean. She kept her mouth closed.

  “That’s how it is, Carrie? You’re just going to smile about everything?” Mrs. LaMarque said. “I’ll have you know Mary Johnston is a dreadful suffragette. I met her at a garden party once that lasted two years because she never stopped talking.”

  “She might be a bore, but I cried all over her book,” Carrie said, unwilling to remain silent, and truth to tell, impressed at Mrs. LaMarque’s circle of acquaintances. “You actually met her?”

  “I actually did,” Mrs. LaMarque replied.

  Carrie laughed, even though she knew the dragon was mocking her. Mrs. LaMarque managed a smile.

  “Would you permit me to look in my steamer trunk for a different book? Here is the key,” Mrs. LaMarque said, still not over her pique.

  Carrie opened the trunk and pulled out the bottom drawer with its books. Mrs. LaMarque unbent enough to rummage through the selection. She pulled out a battered copy of The Virginian, and brandished it at Carrie like a trophy.

  “President Roosevelt’s personal copy,” she said in triumph. “What do you think of that?”

  “I am impressed,” Carrie said, and meant it. “Would you let me borrow To Have and to Hold and reread it?”

  “Not if you plan to cry all over it.”

  “Cross my heart I won’t.”

  “Read it, you silly girl,” Mrs. LaMarque said, her tone mild now. “About that tea?”

  “After I get you out of that corset,” Carrie said. “I know I hate to be uncomfortable.”

  “Do you even own a corset?” Mrs. LaMarque asked as she turned around so Carrie could unbutton her.

  “Certainly. I have one on now,” she said.

  “If you pulled the strings tighter, you would have a tidier figure.”

  “I’d rather breathe,” Carrie said. “There we are. A few more hooks …”

  She helped the dragon from her corset and petticoats and into her nightgown and robe, then went in search of tea. She had no trouble talking the night cook into hot water and Earl Grey, plus two macaroons on a small tray, to be charged to Room 25.

  Mrs. LaMarque was reading To Have and to Hold in bed when Carrie returned. She slammed the book shut and tried to push it away before Carrie saw her.

  “Aha! I caught you!” Carrie exclaimed and laughed.

  Something happened. Mrs. LaMarque’s expression settled into a deep, unnerving stare. “I told you I didn’t like this book,” she snapped and threw it across the room. “How dare you make fun of me.”

  “But I … I thought since you were looking at it, I could tease you a little,” Carrie stammered, wondering what had gone so strangely wrong. “It wasn’t malicious, I assure you.”

  “Set down that tray,” the woman demanded.

  Carrie’s mouth went dry. She wanted to do anything but continue under such cold-eyed scrutiny, because she was suddenly back in the kitchen of the Railroad Hotel, and George Thorne was coming toward her. She set down the tray and backed away from Mrs. LaMarque’s bed. Maybe the lady would drink her tea and feel better in the morning.

  “D … do you need anything else?”

  “No. Go away.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but where?”

  “Surely there was some sleeping arrangement made for you,” Mrs. LaMarque said, her eyes boring into Carrie.

  “Not unless you made it.”

  “I didn’t. Go away.”

  For the first time in the long day, Carrie had to swallow down tears. “Where would your maid have slept?” she asked when she had regained some measure of control.

  “Go away,” the socialite told her again. She tried to pick up the tea cup, but her hand shook so badly that she dropped it on the bed. “This is all your fault,” she said. “Get me a towel!”

  Carrie went into the dressing room and picked up a towel. Her fingers seemed to have no nerves and she dropped it, picked it up and dropped it again. She grabbed it with both hands and hurried to Mrs. LaMarque’s bed, where she pressed the towel against the damp spot. All she wanted was to leave as fast as she could.

  “Now what are you going to do to fix this mess you caused?”

  No, you don’t, Carrie thought, as her blood started to flow through her body again. All the hard work and the slights and the innuendos boiled in her brain. She forced them down and backed away from the bed.

  “I did nothing to cause any of this, Mrs. LaMarque,” she said, her voice steel.

  The woman gasped. “Don’t let me ever see you again!”

  “Very well,” Carrie said, calm now.

  Numb, Carrie found her carpetbag in the combination dressing room and closet, nearly out of sight as though it had crawled away in embarrassment. She picked it up and left the room without a backward glance at the woman in the bed. She wanted to keep walking all the way back to Willow Park but it was dark and no one traveled at night on Yellowstone roads unless it was an emergency.

  Now what? she asked herself, unwilling to cry right there in the hall. She started down the stairs, wishing she hadn’t left her fifty dollars in Mr. Wylie’s safe in Gardiner, confident she would be taken care of on what had changed from a five-day ordeal into a heavier burden than she chose to shoulder. She tried not to remember her horrible night spent between two ash cans in an alley in Bozeman, but suddenly she was there again, in all its terror.

  She sank down in the middle of the stairs, unmindful of curious stares from two guests heading upstairs, followed by a bellboy struggling with their luggage. What did I do to cause this? she asked herself in amazement.

  “You can’t sit there.”

  She opened her eyes and saw the manager staring at her.

  Carrie leaped to her feet and clutched her carpetbag. “I am Mrs. LaMarque’s maid,” she stammered. “She seems to have neglected to make any arrangements for my lodging.”

  The man threw up his hands. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Just go to the kitchen. What’s the matter with people? And so early in the season!” He shook his head and went back into the lobby. She heard a door close.

  “This won’t do, Caroline,” she said out loud, and drew a small measure of comfort using Ramsay’s name for her. She would have to tell him some day that her real name was just Carrie, because Mam liked it. She touched the collar of her dress and pretended the Medal of Honor ribbon was still pinned there.

  Ramsay Stiles hadn’t quit in that awful cave and she couldn’t quit now. Dazed, she walked back to the kitchen where the nice chef’s helper had found her hot water and tea. She explained that Mrs. LaMarque had made no sleeping arrangements for her, and was there a room off the kitchen?

  “I cook in the Willow Park Wylie Camp and I am filling in for Mrs. LaMarque’s maid,” Carrie explained. “Are you on duty all night in case a guest asks for something?”

  “That’s my job,” the woman said. She sighed and Carrie saw sympathy on her dark face. “People with money can be mean.” She pointed to a door next to the kitchen range. “Two cots in there. I try to lie down on one, but you can take the other. Mind you, a bell rings in there if someone wants something, but it’s all I have.”

  Carrie sighed with relief. “I can make this up to you after I get paid,” she said.

  The woman shrugged. “It’s happened to me too, dearie, and in a not-so-nice place as this one. Don’t worry.”

  They looked at each other, blue eyes into brown eyes, and found the sisterhood. Carrie held out her ha
nd and the assistant shook it.

  To Carrie’s gratification, the woman opened a jar and handed her two macaroons. “They’re pretty good. Better still, sit down. Time to take a load off.”

  The cook brought over two glasses of milk and a plate with more macaroons. She was right; they were more than good. They ate all the macaroons, drank milk, and talked about cooking until Carrie felt her eyes growing heavy, no matter how much she blinked them.

  “Go to bed, child,” the cook said finally. “You’ll figure out what to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The bell rang three times in the night. Carrie woke up, thought about what she would do in the morning, and went back to sleep each time. The first bell found her calling down great Scottish maledictions on the head of the spoiled, self-absorbed, complicated woman it was her misfortune to tend. The second bell had her walking away in the morning and thumbing a ride back to Willow Park. Sergeant Major Stiles could find someone else and not bother to stop by the camp for cherry pie again. That scenario brought her close to tears. By the third bell, she reminded herself that Ram had no idea what was going on. By morning, she resolved to earn the rest of that one hundred dollars, if only to spite Louise LaMarque.

  Early morning kitchen sounds and fragrances woke her. She dressed quickly, thinking about a pompadour, but decided on one braid down her back. Mrs. LaMarque would probably have something cutting to say about that, but since Carrie knew she might be fired, what did it matter? She liked to wear her hair that way. The sleepy-eyed assistant pointed her toward the employees’ lavatory, where she finished her morning preparation.

  When Carrie returned to the kitchen, a bowl of oatmeal and toast waited for her. A simple thanks was all she could manage, when she really wanted to put her arms around the cook’s kindness. She ate with gratitude in her heart.

  “Thank you,” she said simply, and left the kitchen.

  She would have made it out the side door, but Ramsay stood in the lobby, slapping his cavalry gauntlets from one hand to the other, a frown on his face. When he saw her, she felt his relief as a living, breathing entity. He was so tall and comforting and she wanted to throw herself into his arms and sob.