Minnie's Mail Order Joy Page 2

  “Minnie,” Hazel shuddered. “You have not published our names in a magazine!”

  “Not our last names, certainly not,” Minnie said. “Only our first names. It’s quite all right. No one in Boston will know. Here, Hazel, what do you think of what this gentleman writes? His name is Harley Wyatt and see how evocatively he writes.”

  Hazel took the magazine from her sister and began to read.

  “Read it aloud,” Minnie commanded.

  Obediently, Hazel read, I own some of the finest grazing land anyone has ever seen. With cattle costing a dollar to raise, and bringing in twenty-three dollars when they’re driven to the railroads, I am confident that I will be able to build one of the cattle empires that flourish in the West. I work from sunup until sundown and I can do turn my hand to any task that is required of me. The cattle business is booming and our town is booming as well; we’ve built a school in the last year and next year we’ll be building a theatre so that traveling performers can come here and entertain us. The telegraph connects us to the east and the railroad does likewise. It’s honest labor but at the end of the day, a man wants someone to share it with. That’s the one thing lacking in Colorado, women. I am thirty years of age, a bachelor, a Christian and I can read and write. I am a temperate man. In height, I am what folks call a tall drink of water. If interested in learning more, I will oblige with a photograph. I am looking for a virtuous woman, no less than twenty and no more than twenty-eight, who is willing to travel to Colorado to marry me. If you are that woman, please address your correspondence to Harley Wyatt, Darby, Colorado.

  “It seems very vulgar to me,” Clara announced, “that he tells of his wealth before he proclaims himself a Christian.”

  “Read this one,” Minnie coaxed, taking another magazine from beneath her mattress and putting it in Clara’s hands.

  “I have no—“

  “Just read it,” Minnie said, pointing to the print on the page that she had circled in pencil.

  Clara glared at her sister before she continued reading. My name is Peter Edwards. I own the Silver Belle mine in Colorado. I live in Newton, Colorado, not far from Darby.

  “You see,” Minnie said. “He lives in a town near Mr. Wyatt.”

  “My folks have lived in Kansas for more than half a century and before that, they came across the ocean from England. I grew up in Kansas during the War Between the States and when I came of age, I enlisted in the army. I formerly served as an officer in the United States Army, stationed at Fort Laramie in Wyoming. From the turmoil of my native Kansas during the bloodshed of the war to the open spaces of the West, I have gained a new recognition of the opportunities that are available for a man who is willing to work hard. My prospecting has been profitable, thanks to the grace of God, and I am seeking a God-fearing wife who can leave her home, as Rebecca left hers, to come to Colorado and reap the fruits of our labors together. As to my looks, I can offer no opinion except to state that I am over six feet tall, my hair is reddish-brown and my eyes are brown. Silver is making Colorado rich, but I shall account myself a pauper if I cannot find a wife to share my life with. I am not particular as to looks, although I’ve long had a hankering to marry a red-headed woman.

  “There,” Minnie said triumphantly. “What do you think?”

  “If you think that I am going to travel across the country to marry a stranger, you have another thing coming!”

  “But Clara,” Hazel interposed, “he need not be a stranger if you write to him.”

  “Are you going to write to this—this cowboy?” Clara demanded.

  “Yes, I believe I shall.”

  “I have done that for each of you,” Minnie said, waiting for the outburst.

  “You have done what?”

  “Minnie, how could you?”

  “Because we do not have a lot of time,” Minnie replied, her words coming quickly from her lips so that speed could convince her sisters. “I started on this endeavor months ago, after Father sold the piano to pay for Mother’s care in the sanitorium.”

  As she had expected, her answer silenced her sisters. Mother loved music and had taught her daughters to play. In the evenings, when the family was together at home, she would play and the girls would sing, while Jonathan Ellis Jr sat in his chair and admired his lovely ladies, as he called them. But when Mother had become ill and it was obvious that no tonic or treatment would rouse her spirits, Father had found a sanitorium for her and he had sold the piano to pay for the treatment. After the piano had been taken out of the house, he had shut himself in his library for the rest of the night. The following day, he had taken Mother to the sanitorium. When he returned, he explained to the girls that Mother was quite worn out and was in a place in the country where she would regain her strength. He had offered no more detail than that; he encouraged the girls to write to her and to be cheerful in their messages, but he would mail the letters. Minnie had found the address of the facility when she saw an envelope from her father, addressed to a Doctor Volcker, in western Massachusetts.

  “You have written to these gentlemen?” Hazel asked.

  Again, Minnie reached beneath her mattress. Hazel and Clara shared a look that revealed their incredulity at their sister’s duplicity. She had proceeded on this idea without telling either of them, and she had received mail which they had not seen.

  But when she handed the unopened envelopes to her sisters, they realized that she had not intruded upon private correspondence which was not even of their initiation. That would be up to them.

  “Here,” Minnie said, “each gentleman responded. I was waiting for the right time to give these to you.”

  “Why is now the right time?” Clara asked, suspicion evident in her inflection.

  “Because I think that now, you will believe me when I say that we must move forward instead of looking back,” Minnie said. There could be no mistaking the urgency in her voice. “We must do what we can so that Mother will be well again.”

  “How will leaving Boston and traveling to the frontier make Mother better?” Hazel asked. “She would be devastated if we went so far away.

  “If we were to marry a British aristocrat, she would be even farther away,” Minnie said with ruthless and irrefutable logic. “There are railroads, you know. She could come to Colorado on the railroad to see us. She and Father. They would be glad to see us settled.”

  “Married to men whose parents they have never met?” Clara questioned skeptically. “Mother would never want that and Father would never permit it.”

  “Would they rather see us married to no one at all, too poor to be welcome in the fine families of Boston?” Minnie asked. “Shunned when we meet our neighbors in the street because we have fallen from our former positions in society? Do you not think that is what Mother fears? She and Father would endure any sort of ignominy and shame for their own sakes, but you know they could not stand to see us slighted by former friends. Indeed,” Minnie said, “I am not sure that any of us could endure it ourselves.”

  Chapter 3

  “What about you?” Clara demanded. “You have gone to great lengths to procure husbands for me and for Hazel, but have you spared yourself this humiliating foray into matrimony?”

  “I have not,” Minnie answered defiantly. “I would not do such a thing and you know that, Clara. Would I expect either of you to subject yourselves to an ordeal from which I spared myself?”

  “Of course you would not,” Hazel said quickly with a warning glance at Clara. “We know that you have done this with the best possible motives. But you must allow us to have some hesitation. You have known about this, from your own initiation, for some months while we are just finding out about it.”

  “Who are you planning to marry?” Clara asked. “If I am to be a miner’s wife and Hazel is to marry a rancher, what is left for you?”

  “Mineowner’s wife,” Minnie corrected.

  “Yes, well, a miner in any case. You have not answered me.”

  In choosing
potential husbands for her sisters, Minnie had taken care to select gentlemen of means who could not only pull themselves up by their own bootstraps but had prospects of acquiring a very handsome boots in the process, metaphorically speaking.

  She went to her mattress once again and took out an envelope which had been opened. “Here is my letter,” she said, placing the letter in her sister’s hand so that Clara could read it to them and they would know that she had not served herself first, but had put her sisters’ needs foremost.

  Dear Miss Ellis, Clara read aloud,

  It is with great joy that I receive your letter accepting my offer of marriage. I know that to leave Boston for the West is to leave the traditions and culture of America’s premier city for what may seem to you to be desolate frontier, very different from all that you know. But one day, Colorado will take its place among the other leading states of this great nation. Our citizens revere liberty, adhere to the law, and cherish those values which bind us together with our Eastern brethren, separated though we are by many miles and differences. I am not lazy; I own a small spread in Newton, which is a community not far from Darby—“

  “Newton!” Hazel interrupted. “That is where Mr. Edwards is from! We shall all be neighbors!”

  Minnie smiled at her sister’s enthusiasm before continuing. “-- in the vicinity of what are believed to be silver mines that will become very profitable. Alas, I am not a mine owner and I have no prospects of wealth in the ground. My land is fertile and it provides what I need. But I cannot promise that we will be rich. If you are willing to accept hands that are calloused from work, and a heart that is open to all that marriage can provide, I believe that we will be happy together, in good times and in bad.

  Yours in Christ,

  Gavin Clifford

  “He doesn’t sound very ambitious,” Clara said when her sister had folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. Although she was not at all persuaded that this mail-order bride lunacy was the proper way to resolve the dilemma which the family faced, she was somewhat consoled by the knowledge that the prospective husband to whom she was promised was a man who understood that one worked to aspire to something more.

  Her mind envisioned the prospect of marrying a man who owned a mine. With that kind of profit, she and Mr. Edwards would have a house that was the equal of those on Beacon Hill. There would be room for Mother and Father to come and stay. She could help her sisters; mining was unpredictable when the veins of gold and silver were played out, and as for Mr. Clifford, well, he didn’t sound as if expected to rise far above his current standing. Minnie would need help and if Hazel were married to a cattle baron, then she would be able to offer financial assistance to her loved ones.

  The Silver Belle. It was a pretty name, Clara thought as she re-read the letter from Mr. Edwards. A former officer in the military, so he was no coward. The Ellises always served with distinction in their nation’s wars and she could not tolerate a poltroon. A man who recognized the merit of wealth but was not subservient to it for meretricious motives. Silver is making Colorado rich, but I shall account myself a pauper if I cannot find a wife to share my life with.

  A gentleman. Not a Bostonian gentleman, but Minnie was brutally correct when she said that the Ellis sisters, though they were accounted beautiful and accomplished, would not be enticing to the Brahmins, who married with one eye on pedigree and the other on wealth. In the blueblooded Bay State, it was necessary to have ancestry and money. One didn’t speak of the latter, of course; that would be vulgar. But the refined matrons with their sharp, assessing eyes choose brides from a small and elite pool of suitable candidates. With Mother in a sanitorium and Father begging for a loan to keep his business afloat, the Ellis girls would be weighed in the balance and found sadly wanting.

  How satisfying it would be, Clara thought savagely, to go West and marry a man who, although lacking the polish of a Bostonian, made up for that dearth with charm and courtesy and a talent for profitable enterprise. Then, she could return to Boston to visit and the ladies who had snubbed her family would be envious at how well the Ellis sisters were doing.

  “What do we need to do?” she asked.

  Minnie and Hazel turned their heads in surprise at Clara’s apparent capitulation. “I still think this folly,” she said, “but I can think of no other option for us. At least, if we go to this place, we shall be neighbors and it shall be as if we are still together.”

  Minnie nodded, relieved that she did not have to make a further effort to persuade her strong-willed sister that this was the best choice for them. “I shall leave first,” she said. “I—I must go before Father returns from New York.”

  Her sisters immediately objected but Minnie was firm. “If I wait to say good-bye,” she said, “I shall not be able to leave. Once I am gone . . . and on my way, I shall leave it to the two of you to explain why we are doing this. Father will not want to hear it, he will try to convince each of you that our situation will improve. He will make it seem as though matters are not so bad as we know them to be. Father is . . . not practical. You, Clara, you must not succumb to his pleas.”

  “Then which of us is to leave after you go?” Hazel asked.

  “Hazel, you will go next. I will be in Colorado waiting for you.” She did not say that because Hazel was the fearful one, she would need one sister in Boston to prod her and the other in Colorado to welcome her. “I will have gone before you and I will send letters at each stopping point along the way, so that you will know exactly what to expect. There will be nothing unexpected and nothing to fear.”

  “I am to leave last.”

  “Yes,” Minnie said. She knew that Clara would see to it that Father was established in lodgings somewhere near Mother. Clara would make the journey with as much determination as if she were an explorer venturing into unknown territory. Which she would be doing. But Clara would not turn back once she had set her mind to a mission. “When you arrive, both Hazel and I will be there to welcome you at the train station, and we will fight over which of us you will stay with.”

  Clara managed a wan smile at this. She knew that her sister was right; as usual, Minnie’s planning was detailed and precise, taking into account the different personalities of the Ellis household and what each one would require in order for the operation to be a success.

  Was there ever a marriage planned with less romance, Clara wondered? But there was no use thinking of that, or thinking of Lanceton Bridges, the young man---

  No use at all.

  “How shall we do this?”

  Once again, Minnie reached beneath her mattress. “Here are our tickets,” she said, handing each sister an envelope.

  “Minnie, how did you get these?” Clara demanded.

  “I sold Grandmother’s bracelet,” Minnie said.

  “You didn’t!”

  The sapphire bracelet had been a gift from Grandmother upon the birth of her granddaughter Minerva, for Minnie to wear at her debut. She had done so. Therefore, she felt, the bracelet had served its purpose. There was no room for sentiment now.

  “However did you do it?” Hazel asked.

  It was not easy for a Beacon Hill young lady to go to a pawn shop and sell an heirloom. Minnie had worn a veiled bonnet and a plain cloak and she had hired a cab to take her into the city. Not the Boston that she knew well, the business district where her father and the other titans harvested their wealth in better years, but the section of the city where the swells did not venture and ladies never went. It had been a chilly day and she had placed a knife inside her fur-lined muff. The bracelet she had worn on her wrist, concealed by the draping sleeves of her cloak and her gloves.

  She did not know that, in these times of financial desperation, she was not the only veiled woman who had found her way to the pawnbrokers who were doing a brisk business off the wealthy Bostonians who had found themselves upon hard times. But she told the cab driver to wait for her; she did not expect to be long. She walked to the pawnbroker’s door
with a brisk stride and set-back shoulders as if she were entirely sure of what she was doing.

  The pawnbroker found that she was not like the others, timid and afraid. She refused his first price and his second. She knew what the bracelet was worth, she told him, and she was not going to give it to him for a present. The sapphires were priceless, the provenance of the bracelet impeccable. It belonged to a British member of the aristocracy, she told him, who had brought the jewels back from India.

  The pawnbroker argued and haggled, but Minnie remained firm and she got the amount she told him she would accept. When she left the shop, the money in her gloved hand and her hand in her muff, she did not breathe freely again until she was in the cab and on her way back to Beacon Hill.

  “I knew how much money we would need,” Minnie answered evasively. “I bought the tickets. We shall each have enough to take us to Colorado in turn. We must not falter in this, sisters. Are you agreed?”

  What choice did they have?

  Chapter 4

  Minnie would not let her sisters accompany her to the train station, although they wanted to do so, and Hazel wept at Minnie’s refusal.

  “It will be hard enough,” Minnie said, “to go. If you come with me, I may not have the courage to continue. Do not ask me again, I beg you.”

  And they did not. They kissed her, tears running down their cheeks as they embraced, then closed the door and watched as she got into the hired cab to go to the station, each sister wondering if she would display the same fortitude when it was her turn to leave. Minnie had dressed in a sturdy dark blue traveling outfit so that the dust of the train would not show as much. She had combed her black hair into an upsweep and fastened it with combs. Her hat was subdued, with a short veil to keep the smuts of dirt and dust out of her eyes.

  “She will write from every station,” Hazel said, repeating her sister’s promise.