Mail Order Josephine - A Historical Mail Order Bride Novel (Western Mail Order Brides) (12 page)

Back in their hotel room, both women flew around the room in a ferment of activity, but their commotion took a different tone from their preparations for their departure by train. Josephine immediately gave orders to the clerk at the desk for a certain trunk, painted forest green and marked clearly with labels, to be brought up from the barn to their room. As soon as it arrived, she untied its rope and unbuckled its buckles. Once she got the trunk open, she began removing all the garments and jewelry and accoutrements for her wedding. First, she laid her dress and veil out on the bed. She arranged her jewelry on the table in the order she wished to put them on, and she chose her undergarments with great care.

“But what will I do for a bouquet?” she complained to Aunt Agatha, who also bustled about choosing her outfit for the ceremony, changing her mind and choosing a different set of clothes, and then discarding the second outfit and going back to the first.

“Perhaps we can pick some wild flowers for you on the way out there tomorrow morning,” Aunt Agatha suggested. “I haven’t seen anything growing in town that will be suitable.”

“Mrs. Stockton has some beautiful roses growing behind the house,” Josephine remembered. “Have you seen them?”

Aunt Agatha stopped in mid-movement. “No, I haven’t. When did
you
see them?”

Josephine realized she’d seen those roses, winding around a trellis in the Stockton’s back garden, when she helped Mr. Stockton lay Andrew on the parlor couch after he’d been shot. She shook her head in flustered confusion, and struggled to formulate a sufficiently convincing cover story. “I can’t remember when I saw them. Anyway, I wonder if she’ll give me some for a bouquet and corsage.”

“You can only ask,” Aunt Agatha offered. “If we can’t find anything else, you might just have to go without. You have enough of everything else. That much is certain. In any case, there will only be me and Mrs. Stockton present to give it to at the end, and I don’t think either of us is likely to marry any time soon.” She dissolved in childish giggles.

“My dear Aunt Agatha!”
Josephine teased her. “I think you’re as happy about this wedding as I am!”

“I don’t deny it, dear,” Aunt Agatha confessed. “I’m delighted you’re marrying a man of your own choosing, and you seem so delighted with the turn of events that I can’t help but be happy for you. Anyone looking at you would be happy for you. You’re glowing! And your intended, Andrew, he was glowing, too, when we left. Did you notice? He could hardly keep a straight face. He looked as though he wanted to dance a jig right there. You should have seen his face when you agreed to his proposal. He really had to work hard to maintain his composure.”

“I
did
see his face,” Josephine remarked, “and I didn’t see anything as exaggerated as all that.”

“Then you weren’t looking very closely,” Aunt Agatha retorted. “He must have kept his true feelings about you quite secret from his parents for them to be as surprised as they were when you accepted their offer, because anyone could see as plain as day that he felt very strongly about you. I can only imagine he’s been planning to make you an offer virtually from the first moment he met you.”

The sequence of encounters between her and Andrew, from their first meeting at the blacksmith’s forge until today, paraded before her eyes. She remembered certain comments he made at each of these meetings, to the effect that he considered the possibility. “You may be right.”

“Why did he wait so long to ask you? That’s what I want to know,” Aunt Agatha prattled on. “They could have made you an offer at the same time they told you about Paul’s death.”

“Maybe he wanted to see for himself what I was made of,” Josephine mused, gazing out the window. “Maybe the thought never occurred to him until after he met me. I don’t know.”

“I would think he could see for himself what you were made of as soon as he laid eyes on you,” Aunt Agatha fulminated.

“Well, he didn’t see me until after we got here,” Josephine reminded her. “Maybe he didn’t want to offend his parents by moving in on Paul’s marriage arrangements so soon after he died. I don’t know. There could be thousand reasons. Personally, I’m glad he waited. I needed the extra time to understand my own feelings about this marriage. I probably wouldn’t have accepted his offer if he made it sooner.”

“But now he’s injured,” Aunt Agatha argued. “He’s hardly in a working condition.”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” Josephine’s eyes flew open, and then she chortled with glee.

Aunt Agatha looked stern for a moment, but she quickly softened. “You know what I mean. I begin to think this family may be haunted by bad luck. First one son dies of typhus,
then the next son is shot. It doesn’t bode well.”

“No, they aren’t,” Josephine declared. “They’re a good family, and they haven’t had any more ill luck than anyone else. The fight with the rustlers was just part of the way of life out here on the frontier. I don’t think it represents anything out of the ordinary.”

“You should hope not!” Aunt Agatha snapped.

“Anyway, I refuse to let you dampen my enthusiasm in any way,” Josephine stated. “You may say whatever you wish about the family or Andrew or anything else. I won’t listen to you! You’ve been nothing but averse to this whole expedition from the beginning, and I won’t hear another word of it.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Aunt Agatha retreated. “I haven’t been averse to it, in spite of my remarks. I just don’t know how else to talk about it. You must forgive me, because I really am very happy about your marriage, and I’m sure your father will be happy, too. It’s too bad he and your family can’t be here to see you so happy.”

“I’m glad I have you here with me,” Josephine embraced her aunt heartily. “I’m glad that, of all my family, it’s you I have to accompany me to my wedding. After what you told me the other day, I wouldn’t want to get married without you there. I feel I’m accomplishing something for both our sakes.”

“You are, dear,” Aunt Agatha dried her eyes on her sleeve. “I feel it, too. You’re redeeming me somehow. I almost feel like I’m giving away my own daughter in marriage. It makes all the lonely years of my life worthwhile.”

The two women fell into each other’s arms in a flood of happy tears. When they finished weeping on one another’s necks, they returned to their project of preparing Josephine for her wedding. They brushed out Aunt Agatha’s fine Sunday dress and hat. They pressed out the wrinkles in Josephine’s wedding dress and straightened her veil. They hung up her heavy travelling coat to cover the dress on the ride out to the ranch from the hotel. And they checked and rechecked each piece of jewelry to make sure each stone remained in its proper place and the clasps and broach pins all worked the way they should.

After supper that night, Josephine packed up her traveling valise for the last time. She reserved her traveling costume to eat breakfast in the next morning as well as to wear after the wedding service while she awaited the arrival of the rest of her luggage. Everything else, with the exception of her wedding clothes, she carefully folded and put away with the finality of departing on a long and perilous journey. In later years when she looked back on her marriage, this moment stood out in her memory as the decisive turning point when she left her past behind her and embarked into the uncharted territory of her future. A breach existed in her memory, though the elapsed time between when she left the hotel and when she opened that valise again in her new home at the Stockton ranch house represented only a few brief hours. When she did eventually open it and take out her personal effects, many months seemed to have passed since she left the hotel. The divide between her stay at the hotel and her married life as Mrs. Andrew Stockton represented a more impassable rift than either her departure from New York or her journey to the West. This moment, when she packed her valise to proceed on the adventure of her wedding day, marked the exact instant when the breach occurred. She would not open that valise again until her world altered utterly and irrevocably. She would open it in a new home, a new family, a new name, a new Josephine.

That night, Josephine and Aunt Agatha curled one another’s hair, covered the curls with their night caps, crawled into bed, and put out the lamp. But neither Josephine nor Agatha could sleep. They snuggled up together under their blankets like two sisters and whispered conspiratorially about the wedding the next day, going over and over every detail, and about their family. Agatha told Josephine stories about her father as a young boy and about the adventures they had together as children. She told her tales of his misbehavior, and how their parents disciplined them, and how they considered him wild and troublesome as a young man. They sent him to Europe to calm him down, but he came back more worldly and self-determined than ever. Only his marriage to Josephine’s mother and the subsequent births of their children succeeded in tempering him into the sober, conservative man Josephine knew. All these old family secrets, kept carefully guarded by the elders of the family during her childhood, shattered Josephine’s delusions about her own waywardness. She began to understand herself in the context of family history, and to accept her own stubborn willful character as a natural product of growing up. Although she hoped she would not revert to such an extreme of conventionalism as her father, she entertained a guarded confidence that, in time and in her marriage into a family and a lifestyle which fired her imagination for unlimited possibilities, she would gain even greater degrees of contentment and fulfillment.

Josephine wondered if they would ever get to sleep, but Aunt Agatha eventually succumbed to the demands of age, and Josephine, after lying awake for another hour, likewise slipped into slumber. They both woke up with a sudden start as soon as the first streaks of grey dawn lightened the windows of their room. After arranging one another’s hair, they dressed themselves in their ordinary traveling clothes to go down to the dining room for breakfast. Josephine barely ate, though Aunt Agatha admonished her through the meal about the importance of keeping up her strength.

“It’s only for a little while,” Josephine grumbled. “The whole thing will be finished in a few hours. Then I can eat something out at the Stockton’s. I’m sure Mrs. Stockton will have some lunch arranged for after the ceremony.”

“That’s not the point, Josephine,” Aunt Agatha chided. “It would never do for you to fall over in a faint during the ceremony.”

“I won’t fall over,” Josephine shot back.

“You will if you don’t eat something,” Aunt Agatha assured her.

Josephine let the argument die there, but to mollify her aunt, she ate a few strips of bacon, some bites of toast, and drank a cup of tea. After breakfast, they retreated to their room, and Josephine concentrated on the important business of dressing for her wedding. She put on her dress and her jewelry, checking her hair repeatedly in the looking glass to make sure it didn’t become disheveled. She wrapped her traveling costume into a bundle to take along. Finally, Aunt Agatha looked at her pocket watch and announced the arrival of nine o’clock. As if on cue, the Stockton family gig rumbled up to the front step of the hotel below their window, driven by Timothy Stockton in a formal black suit and bow tie. Josephine threw the heavy coat around her shoulders. Aunt Agatha gathered the veil and Josephine’s bundled traveling dress in her hands, and the two women bustled down the stairs to meet Tim at the front door. He helped Josephine into the gig as best he could, but Aunt Agatha shoved him out of the way with a firm hand and arranged Josephine’s skirts on the seat herself before taking her place next to her niece. Tim gladly left the management of the bride to her dutiful aunt, and he only took his own seat after both women rested satisfactorily on the cushions, ready to travel. Then he whipped the reins on the horses’ back and they trotted out of town.

Mrs. Stockton met them at the house in a flutter of anxious excitement. “Andrew is in the parlor with his father and the parson,” she informed them. “They’re waiting for you. Come with me. We’ll take you into the library to get you ready.” She ushered them into a quiet room, lined on all four walls with knotty pine and smelling strongly of tobacco.

Josephine removed her coat and smoothed the skirts of her dress. Aunt Agatha and Mrs. Stockton drifted around her like butterflies, fussing with the curls of her hair and laying out the train of her dress behind her. Finally, Aunt Agatha positioned herself in front of Josephine. “If you’re ready, we’ll put your veil on. You can go into the parlor and we can start the ceremony. Are you ready?”

“What about the bouquet?” Josephine reminded her.

“Oh! I completely forgot about that!” Aunt Agatha exclaimed. She turned to Mrs. Stockton. “Do you mind if we use some of the roses from your garden for a bouquet? Josephine particularly admired them when she saw them growing there, and we haven’t had any opportunity to get anything else since yesterday.”

“Of course!” Mrs. Stockton agreed. “How thoughtless of me! I’ll fetch them right away!”

She vanished, and Josephine and Aunt Agatha fidgeted uncomfortably while they waited for her to come back. But she didn’t come back. They waited and waited, longer and longer, until despair began to rise in Josephine’s breast at the thought that something must have gone wrong. All of a sudden, the door flew open and Mrs. Stockton burst into the room, a bunch of roses in her hand. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting! I went to find some ribbon to tie around their stems, and I couldn’t find any, and it took much longer than I anticipated. Please forgive me! Here’s the bouquet. I hope it will be satisfactory. I tried to find the flowers with the same colors as your jewelry. If you aren’t happy with these, I can bring in some others for you to choose. I also have some other colors of ribbon. I didn’t know what you wanted.”