Homecoming Girls (37 page)

Clara and Georgiana glanced at each other and both wore a puzzled frown. Then a small smile touched Georgiana’s lips.

‘Am I right in thinking that you’re speaking of Caitlin, Dan?’ she asked solemnly.

‘Why, aye,’ he said bluntly. ‘Who else is there that answers to that description, Mrs Dreumel? Thing is, I don’t know what to do about it.’

‘You should ask her to marry you, Dan.’ Jewel’s voice came from the doorway. Dan turned, open-mouthed in astonishment.

He went towards her and took her hand. ‘You know how I’ve cared about you, Jewel,’ he said softly. ‘Since we were just bairns. How can I love someone else so soon? It’s as if a thunderbolt’s struck me, or I’ve been run over by a team of hosses.’

‘I do know,’ she answered in a whisper. ‘But it wasn’t grownup love you felt for me. You were attracted to me because I was different.’ She smiled. ‘And I can tell you that Caitlin is
so
jealous because she thinks that you care for me and not for her. Go and tell her,’ she urged, ‘and put her out of her misery.’

He grinned and rushed out of the room. Clara and Jewel went to the window and watched him taking the hotel steps in one giant leap. He looked up and down the road and then as if shot from a spring ran down the road to where a rider was coming towards him. They both craned their necks and Jewel stood on tiptoe as they tried to see.

Caitlin looked down at him, but tossed her head and rode past him as if coming towards the hotel; but Dan about-turned
and grabbed the reins. They couldn’t hear what was said, but saw Dan reach up to Caitlin and her lifting her hand as if to slap him. He wasn’t deterred and grabbed her with both hands and physically lifted her down.

‘What’s happening?’ Georgiana asked from her chair. ‘Is it resolved?’

Jewel and Clara both glanced over their shoulders at her, smiling broadly, and then turned back to the window.

‘Yes,’ Clara said gleefully. ‘He’s swinging her round and kissing her.’

Jewel took a breath. ‘And she’s kissing him back.’ She laughed. ‘And what’s more, there seems to be half of Dreumel’s Creek watching them and cheering!’

‘She’s too young,’ Ted objected when Dan, with Caitlin by his side clasping his fingers, asked for her hand in marriage.

‘I’m not, Pa,’ Caitlin argued.

Her mother agreed. ‘She’s ’same age as I was when we wed,’ Kitty reminded him.

‘It’s not that I’ve any objections to you personally, Dan,’ Ted said. ‘But you’ve only just come to Yeller; we hardly know you. Besides which, Caitlin’s not met many young fellers and won’t know her own mind.’

‘Sure I do, Pa. There are all the young lads I was at school with. I’ve hung around with most of them.’ Caitlin linked her arm in Dan’s. ‘Kissed a few too,’ she added, blushing to her hair roots as Dan turned to look at her with his brows raised.

‘What!’ her father said, but Kitty only laughed.

‘Wish I’d done that before I met you!’

‘I’ll think on it,’ Ted said. ‘It’s not something I expected for a while. Caitlin’s still a bairn as far as I’m concerned.’

‘I’m almost nineteen, Pa.’ Caitlin left Dan’s side to stand by her father. ‘Jenny Mathews is married and expecting,’ she said, ‘and Katy Thompson’s getting wed in a fortnight. They’re both younger than me.’

Ted grunted. ‘Like I say, I’ll think on it. We don’t know if Dan intends staying in Yeller.’

‘I do, sir,’ Dan said earnestly. ‘Though I’ll want to go home
to see my ma and da at some time and tell them all about this place, and about Caitlin too!’

‘Oh!’ Caitlin took Ted’s arm. ‘And I’d be able to go with him!’ she said. ‘I’d love to do that. To go to England and see where you and Ma came from.’

Ted glanced at Kitty. ‘It’s nothing like here,’ he said. ‘That was a different life.’

‘It still is, Mr Allen,’ Dan told him. ‘You made ’right decision when you travelled to America. Some things don’t change. There are more opportunities for folk here than there’ll ever be in England.’

‘Mebbe so,’ Ted agreed. ‘But it doesn’t mean to say that it’s an easy life. You get nowhere without working hard and there’s as much poverty in America as there is in England. I saw it for myself when I first came.’ He pursed his mouth. ‘I realize now that without Edward Newmarch, Jewel’s father, I might not have made it. But that’s another story. I’ll give it some thought.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t think of my little girl getting wed.’

Caitlin reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll always be your little girl, Pa, no matter how old I am.’ He grinned and pushed her away.

Jewel and Clara walked with Georgiana every day along the side of the creek so that she might take her daily exercise, and then in the afternoon she went to her room for a rest, although she strongly objected, saying that she wasn’t an invalid and that childbirth was as natural as breathing.

‘But you know that it’s Papa who insists,’Jewel said, to which Georgiana laughed and said that she knew that it was a conspiracy between the three of them.

‘I’m so pleased that you’re here to take care of Georgiana,’ Wilhelm said to them both. ‘It means that I can concentrate at this very critical time on making sure all the early planning is in place at Yeller. We want to make it a city to be proud of.’

‘I hope the new Yeller won’t have very tall buildings like those in Sacramento or New York, Uncle Wilhelm,’ Clara said.
‘It won’t seem right somehow, not in the middle of the mountains.’

‘My view entirely,’ Wilhelm agreed. ‘We want a modern city, of course, and to be progressive, but in my opinion sky-high buildings would spoil the very nature of Yeller. It is after all a mountain valley and we want to attract people here who will appreciate its beauty.’ He paused. ‘New Yeller, you said. That’s a good name, Clara. I might put that to the committee. I think it will appeal; show the difference between the new and what went before.’

Clara was thrilled to think she had contributed to the project with her chance remark, but she hoped that the planning business wouldn’t take too long. Wilhelm had insisted that he would make the journey back to England with her, but that he couldn’t go until the planning was concluded.

No matter that she had said she could travel alone if he would take her as far as New York, and although Georgiana had looked at him wryly and shaken her head, he would brook no argument and said that in any case he had things to arrange in England.

‘You realize, don’t you,’ Georgiana said to Jewel and Clara one evening, as they sat in the small sitting room at the rear of the hotel which had been designated as their own private place, ‘that even after the birth we might not return to England for quite some time.’ She glanced from one to the other. ‘I don’t think that I can drag Wilhelm away from his beloved mountains.’ She paused for a moment and then added, ‘And I’m not sure that I want to. We both want our child to be brought up here.’

‘I know, Mama,’Jewel said. ‘I’ve thought that ever since you told me you were expecting a child. And Papa only stayed in England because of me; because of my father’s family.’

‘I didn’t know that!’ Clara exclaimed.

‘It’s true,’ Georgiana said. ‘When I brought Jewel to England we were very torn as to where she should be brought up, and we decided that it should be in England. Your grandmother welcomed her, as did your father and mother, and then her
cousins, you and Elizabeth. You were her family more than I was back then.’ She smiled. ‘We’ve no regrets about that, none; but now it’s time for Wilhelm to come home.’

‘But what about you, Aunt Gianna?’ Clara asked. ‘What do you want?’

Georgiana hesitated for only a moment. ‘I shall miss everyone in England, of course, and by that I mean you and your sister and your parents, but I want to stay.’

‘Jewel?’ Clara questioned.

‘It’s odd,’ Jewel said, ‘but when I began to consider that I’d like to come to America to uncover the facts of my birth, I hadn’t given thought to what I would do if I discovered nothing, or if by chance all the circumstances were revealed. I didn’t anticipate that my life might change because of either situation.’

She hesitated. ‘But it has, and I realize now that there is no going back to how things were, but only forward.’ She gazed wistfully at Clara, and said softly, ‘And so, my dearest friend and cousin, I too will stay.’

Ted relented and said that Caitlin and Dan could consider a courtship. It was Caitlin who did the persuading, but Kitty also told him that she knew their daughter had been attracted to Dan from the moment she’d met him. ‘She’s so contrary,’ she said. ‘I knew by her offhand manner with him that there was a spark there.’

‘It needs more than a spark to start a fire,’ he’d grumbled.

‘But we don’t want a conflagration,’ she’d warned. ‘Not afore they’re wed.’

But Caitlin was impatient. She wanted Dan to build them their own little house in the new town and wandered around the valley looking for the best sites before they were all snatched up. Dan soon caught her enthusiasm, though tempered by the fact that he had no money.

‘Not enough to build a house,’ he explained. ‘I need to get on my feet first.’

She’d pouted at that and then cajoled her father. ‘It makes
sense,’ she said, ‘to buy a site now, even if we don’t build on it straight away.’ And Ted’s instincts told him that his self-willed daughter was also level-headed, just like her mother, and was probably right.

‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘The pair of you look for a site, which I’ll want to approve,’ he warned them, ‘and I’ll loan the money to Dan until such time as he can earn enough to pay me back.’

Dan demurred. ‘My da allus told me
neither a lender nor a borrower be
,’ he said. ‘And I never have been.’ He’d scratched his stubble. ‘Reckon I’ll have to think on that afore I tek up your offer, Mr Allen.’

On which, Ted Allen, mighty pleased with his circumspect response and with some prompting from Kitty, decided that a gift of land would be a suitable wedding present, now that without his actually realizing it he appeared to have given his consent.

Another week went by and then another. Clara was becoming more and more restless. There had been a slight scattering of snow, the air was fresher and cooler and fires were built up for the darker evenings. Householders were beginning to bring out their warmer shawls and winter bedding; Georgiana wrapped herself up in furs and sat on the hotel porch watching the people of Dreumel walk by.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Clara. ‘I know that you want to be going home. I’ll do my best to persuade Wilhelm that the matter is pressing and you need to be on your journey before the weather closes in.’

‘I don’t like to bother him,’ Clara said. ‘I know how important this project is to him; if only he would agree that I’m perfectly able to travel alone.’

Georgiana shook her head. ‘He won’t,’ she said wryly. ‘He knows how anxious your father would be if you were travelling by yourself.’ She mentioned the problem to Kitty during their conversations. Kitty’s hotel was quiet because of the fire and the subsequent building work in Yeller, so she came most days to chat with her friend.

Caitlin had asked Clara if she was going to stay until the spring. ‘You could be a bridesmaid,’ she said eagerly. ‘And I want Jewel too.’

Clara replied that although she would be sorry to miss Caitlin and Dan’s wedding, above all else she wanted to go home to be with her twin sister, who, she told her, was expecting a child.

‘Oh, of course you must go,’ Caitlin exclaimed and promptly told Dan, who came to see Clara to proclaim his enthusiasm at the news.

‘Elizabeth going to be a mother!’ he declared. ‘If onny Caitlin and I were already wed, I’d be happy for us to escort you. Caitlin longs to see our home town. But it’s a question o’ money. Work is slowing down; Jason says it allus does this time of year. Everybody finishes off all ’big projects afore ’winter sets in and then do all ’indoor jobs. Da and Thomas and me allus had plenty of work over ’winter. That’s when we did all our big orders. Rocking horses and dolls’ houses, trains and waggons and furniture for ’bairns. All that sort o’ thing.’

Caitlin laughed. ‘You sound just like my ma and pa.
Bairns,’
she mimicked, and then said, ‘You could do that here. We don’t have a toy store in Yeller or Dreumel.’

Dan had told her about the toyshop in the Land of Green Ginger and she was enchanted by the name, not really believing it until her mother had confirmed that it was true.

He looked at her and she gazed back at him. ‘Why not?’ she gasped. ‘Why not? A winter project! And I could run a store, just like your ma.’

He stared at her. ‘Thomas is ’one with ideas,’ he said. ‘I’m not much good with design but I can follow his plans. He’s a wizard is our Thomas. He’s got such an eye for detail.’

‘He has,’ Clara agreed. ‘Years ago he made me a small wooden box for my birthday and carved such an intricate design on the lid.’ She fell silent with her thoughts. How I long to see him again.

Caitlin and Dan were still arguing. He was telling her that special tools were needed for toymaking.

‘You can’t use ’same tools for toys as you would for building a house,’ he said. ‘We’ve allus used Hirsch chisels and planes; they’re made in Germany and ’best you can buy. I’d need a whole selection of them. It’s not possible just to tek a piece o’ wood and start carving without ’right equipment.’