Carla Kelly (50 page)

“Penny for your thoughts, lass.”

She looked up, surprised to see Richard and Martha Evans standing in the doorway.

“Do come in,” Della said. “If I'm here, the library is open. Martha, we have a stack of new magazines. Richard, did you miss your choir secretary these past two weeks?”

“Aye, miss,” Richard said. “ ’Twasn't much of a Christmas without your sharp tongue goading us on during practice!”

“I try to magnify every church calling I have!” Della teased.

They pulled up two chairs to her desk, settling in, their dark eyes kind.

“I'm making a muddle of things,” Della said, knowing better than to stand on ceremony with them. She hesitated, and Martha put her hand out to touch hers, giving her heart. “It seems I want what I cannot have.” Tears came to her eyes and she brushed them angrily aside. “I've cried enough for two women. I'm tired of tears.”

Richard and Martha looked at each other. In her starved heart, Della wished there would ever be a moment when a glance like that would pass between her and Owen.

“You or me,
m cara
?” Richard asked his wife.

“Me,” Martha said. “If it's any consolation, Owen doesn't know what to do either.” She smiled at Richard. “No, he does, but it's a hard step for a loyal man to take.”

“I never knew Gwyna, but she must have been someone special.”

“Aye, miss,” Richard said. “Do you know, not until you came to Pleasant Valley had anyone seen Owen laugh in years. And tease, and be so determined to have you in the choir that he would invent an unnecessary calling. He's fair amazing us, even though he is not moving fast enough for you, I fear.”

Della nodded. “I think you are preaching patience, Brother Evans.”

“I am.”

They seemed in no hurry to leave, patient with her too. Della told them about Billy Evans and the broom, and what Owen wanted for a reward, should Billy read. Martha laughed softly. “That is so much what Owen would do! He's a sly one, Della. I should warn you about Welshmen.”

“Too late,” she said, looking away again until she had some control. “Suggestions?”

“Patience and time,” Martha said. “Don't be in a pelter to leave us come summer.”

“I have a job waiting for me in Salt Lake.”

Martha shrugged. “Let it wait.”

“I'm thinking about teaching in Arizona Territory next year.”

“Arizona Territory will probably still be there in two years, things being what they are in the United States,” Richard told her.

“You're wearing me down,” Della said, with a smile.

“Good! That's why we stopped by, when we saw the light on,” Richard replied, then stood up. “Come,
m cara
. Let's go home.”

“What does
m cara
mean? Owen said it about Gwyna.”

“ ‘My love,’ ” Martha said. “If I know him, and I do, he's already thinking that about you.” She leaned across the desk and kissed Della on the forehead. “Ye can't rush a heart that's mending.”

“May I coax that heart a little?”

Richard held the outside door open for his wife. “Aye! And we'll pray that my scamp of a nephew Billy Evans decides to read before he is an old man. G'night now.”

Della was in her classroom on Monday afternoon of New Year's Day, preparing new 1900 bulletin boards and laughing at Israel Bowman, who loped in looking disconsolate and missing his fiancée. Trust Israel to roll in just the day before the start of school on Tuesday.

“Shall I ask my class to make you a paper chain, 150 links long?” Della teased. “That way, you can take off a link for every day between now and June.”

He at least had the good grace to laugh and waggle his finger at her. “Just wait until you fall in love and have three or four canyons between you and your fiancée!”

It'll take more than canyons
, she thought, after Israel returned to his classroom, looking remarkably put upon. She got out Owen's chest of wooden letters and hung “Happy New Year in this new century!” on the pegboard. She prepared to rearrange the desks to accommodate the smaller size of her class, now that Bessie and Will were living in Springville. Israel said he would take the desks downstairs to storage, along with David Grover's desk from his classroom.

Before she moved a desk, Della took out a piece of shirt cardboard and drew the two desks, empty in a row with students sitting in the other desks. She wrote on the picture: “Empty desks because a miner died and his children are no longer here in Winter Quarters School.” There was time to mail it to Auerbach's Department Store before school tomorrow.

When the desks were gone, Della looked at the rows, wondering who would be next. She sat at her desk, making lesson plans and idling away the afternoon, waiting for genius to strike. When it did, she thought she'd better give the credit to the Lord, since no one else probably knew what to do. She needed to enlist Lavinia Clayson's help, so she went to her classroom and rapped on the door.

No answer. She waited a while at the top of the stairs to the basement, still not sure of her reception in Miss Clayson's own quarters. Even though they were on far better terms, Miss Clayson had not invited her to her apartment in the basement. Timidly, she knocked on the door.

Lavinia opened it and stepped into the gymnasium, closing the door behind her. “What can I help you with, Della?” she asked, which Della considered a good start.

“I've been thinking about the challenge of exercise for the children, now that the playground is waist deep in snow. I'd like to teach my class the Virginia Reel. We could dance here in the gymnasium, and maybe your class and Israel's would want to join us.”

She knew well that six weeks ago, Miss Clayson would have vetoed her request immediately, on general principles. She gave Della a thoughtful look, neither yes nor no.

“We haven't a piano, and there's no caller.”

“I can ask the Evans brothers tomorrow night at choir practice.”

“They're the brothers that have a little orchestra?” Miss Clayson asked, more interested.

“Yes, two violins, a guitar, and Richard Evans can sing anything. So can Angharad Davis's father, and others,” Della explained. “As for a caller, Owen … Mr. Davis … tells me there is a miner in Number Four from Tennessee who calls. What do you think, Lavinia?”

Miss Clayson didn't rush her answer, but Della didn't expect her to.
Brother Evans tells me to learn patience
, she thought. Besides, at twenty-four, she was too old to hop from one foot to the other and pluck at Miss Clayson's sleeve.

“They're all in Number Four?”

Della nodded, hopeful. “They're on the afternoon shift this week.”

“If they could come after lunch, that would give them time to sleep in the morning, and make that shift. Let's do it. You'll make the arrangements?”

“Consider it done. There's something else.”

Miss Clayson gave her a measuring look, but there was no malice in it. “Miss Anders, I have noted with you that there is always ‘something else.’ ”

“I suppose there is,” Della said, cheerful. “Mari Luoma—you remember, the lady in my classroom—well, she is expecting.”

“I'm not surprised,” the principal said, sounding as amused as she ever sounded. “I know what you are going to ask, and the answer is no.”

“All I want is her to be allowed to stay in my class until she begins to show,” Della said.

Miss Clayson thought a moment. “Why not? It's 1900 and we have entered the modern age.”

Della walked home that afternoon happier than she had felt all week, accompanied by Mari Luoma, who was coming up from the Wasatch Store. Della took Mari's arm and told her that Miss Clayson said she could stay in the classroom until she started to show.

“I will have a … a plethora of English by then,” Mari said.

Della clapped her hands. “My goodness! What a wonderful word, Mari!”

Mari blushed. “Heikki gave me dictionary for Christmas.”

For choir practice Tuesday night, Della took her courage in hand and handed out an agenda with one item on it: teaching the Virginia Reel to the Winter Quarters School. “I need some musicians and maybe singers. One of you told me about a miner in Number Four who calls. I need him too. What about it?”

Tamris Powell and Martha Evans volunteered immediately.

“Richard, you and Owen can come too, since everyone's on the same shift. Dance with your daughters,” Martha said. “Your brothers can play their violins.”

“I
could
use more fathers, since I have more girls than boys in my class,” Della said. “What a good idea, Martha.”

“I don't know …” Owen said with a frown.

“Brother Davis,
who
railroaded me into the choir?” Della asked in her sweetest voice, which made Martha and the other ladies smile.

“I did, but …”

“I knew you would want to do this for Angharad,” Della told him, pushing back like the coal train in the canyon. “Richard, can you enlist your brothers for our music?”

“Aye, miss, with pleasure,” he told her with an amused glance at his wife. “I'm certain Martha can fill me in.”

“Possibly,” his wife said with a straight face.

Owen didn't walk home with Della that night after choir practice but went his own way, head down. Della watched him and spent a long time on her knees that night beside her bed, giving the Lord all the good reasons she could think of why this was a good idea. Her reward was a peaceful night's sleep, even if she doubted that Owen slept well.

Since he was on the afternoon shift, Della wasn't surprised that Owen didn't stop by the library on Wednesday night. Angharad came in with Myfanwy Jones and her parents and went straight to Maria Nesbitt's
Darling Daughters
collection, Angharad's newest obsession.

She brought two of the
Darling Daughters
books to Della to check out, which meant Della let her stamp the book herself. Angharad leaned close, and Della got a whiff of the rose talcum she had given Owen's own darling daughter for Christmas. “Miss Anders, my father told me about the Virginia Reel this Friday,” she whispered. “He's going to do it!”

It's just a gentle coaxing, Owen
, she told herself as she smiled at Angharad. “You'll have fun.”

She spent longer in sauna on Thursday night, uncon cerned now about sitting bare in a room with bare ladies. To her delight, the subject was the Virginia Reel. “We like to dance too,” Eeva Koski said, tapping one bare foot. “May we all come?”

“Please do,” Della told her and sat up. “Oh my, it's time for me to roll in the snow. Will I
ever
graduate to the upper bench?”

“Not unless you marry a Finn and you want to sit by him in sauna, just the two of you!” Mari teased gently.

“Mari, Heikki sits by you, way down there now! He must be in love,” Eeva joked in turn. She leaned forward and playfully switched her vasta on Della's shoulders. “I think Della has someone else in mind besides a Finn. She'd rather sing than sit bare in a sauna.”

Della dressed with special care Friday morning, confining her uncooperative hair into a single braid down her back. She knew anything that required more hairpins would never survive a reel. She tied the end with a red bow, took it out, and then put it back in.

The morning dragged, everyone anticipating the afternoon. When her students kept staring at the clock, Della gave up, took it down, and presented a lesson on telling time. During lunch, she sat with her students that brought their lunches and watched the others come back with fathers and mothers.

To her delight, she noticed that the Welsh and Scottish wore their native dress. The Finns were equally splendid, which made Miss Clayson smile and nod to Della.

While the violins, guitar, and banjo tuned up with each other and worked through one reel, Della enlisted Israel Bowman to help her teach the simple steps. Eyes bright, Angharad stood with her father, holding his hand. Della wasn't brave enough to look at his face.
If he never speaks to me again, I won't be any worse off that I am right now
, she reasoned, as Israel swung her around, a grin on his face.

“One line of four couples, facing each other,” Della said, when David Evans gave her the high sign that the impromptu orchestra was ready. “Let's start small, while the rest of you watch. Mr. Bowman and I are here at the head. Just listen to Mr. Brock and do what he says. Let's start with Richard and Martha, Tilda Koski and her father, and Will Pugh and his mother.” She nodded to the miner from Tennessee, then gave Israel her best curtsy to begin the reel.

Ten minutes later, Mr. Brock gave one last call and a final flourish. Out of breath, everyone stopped and clapped. Mr. Brock gave a rebel yell, which made Miss Clayson jump and glare at him.

“Well?” Della asked, when she caught her breath. “How about four lines of eight each now?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Angharad lead her father onto the gymnasium floor.
Please, please, Lord, make this right
, she prayed. She noticed that the Evanses had joined him.