Little Town — Called Inception — on the Prairie (Inception)
The schoolhouse Eames is helping to build is without an owner: gleaming blond planks of good, clean pine laying out the floor and well-chinked walls Eames split himself, a month ago when Matthew Framer and his brother, Worth, had tallied up the spoils of months of dime sociables and church roasts and fundraisers. Inception, when Eames had first arrived, had been just an awkward huddle of ugly buildings about a mile away from a gleaming, glassy lake, wild grapes and huckleberries banking in the water and razor-sharp weeds fringing the bank: a few homesteaders and a saloon, the ugly clapboard church Reverend Brooke had set up and abandoned when he'd gone back East. Now, the town stretches out in a half-moon shape around the lake, storefronts lining the clean, tamped-dirt streets; there are two saloons, dozens of schoolchildren, and now a school, too, with lavish wrought-iron desks bolted to the ground and a desk Eames had sanded down himself until it was smooth like silk. There are slates and a crate of readers and a fat, pot-bellied stove in the back near a rack of utilitarian hooks for cloaks and windows with actual glass — everything except a teacher.
"Well, that's soon mended," says Mrs. Cresswater, who is wrapping up a month's worth of salt pork and cornmeal and dried beans and things in neat, brown-paper packages for Eames at the counter of the general store. "You have heard, haven't you?"
Eames hears everything, but he likes to hear it from multiple sources, so he says, "No?"
She parcels out brown sacks of dark brown sugar, salt and coffee. "Well," she says, and her hands are flying, tying the packages tight with twine, "Mr. Cresswater's just been to the post office and heard we'll have a teacher by the end of the week."
"The end of the week?" Eames says, and loads the salt pork, the cornmeal, the flour and salt and sugar and coffee and things into his arms, Mrs. Cresswater stacking up bits and bobs over top, arranging it carefully. "That's soon."
"Not soon enough," Mrs. Cresswater says, because she has three boys under 10 who are universally loathed, but mostly by their own parents. "I'll be glad to have her — and a minister again, thank goodness."
Before Eames can even ask for it, Mrs. Cresswater spins around, her hoop skirts swinging busily, and turns back with a generous tin of tobacco, slipping it into the pocket of Eames's dark coat as she says, "And before you ask: yes, we're getting a minister. He's coming in on the train along with Miss Arthur."
***
By the next day, the gossip has gone from a low-level roar to relentless as the homesteaders are all dispatched by their wives to town to collect information, and Eames settles himself in at the post office to knit together all the pieces that seem reliable.
Their soon-to-be minister is a Reverend Cobb, who is coming westward from New York with the intention of saving souls, everyone says; with two children and no mention of a wife, Eames imagines more likely, Cobb is trying to save his own. Miss Arthur is only known as Miss Arthur at the moment, possesses a first grade certificate, and has taught at least two other schools. She is not merely sharing a train with Cobb, she was recommended by him, a family friend, Framer says, offhand, and Eames starts spinning out the possibilities in that.
"She rotating through the homesteaders?" Garson asks, and slides a look over to Eames. "Lucky you haven't got any brats of your own, then."
Eames, who has hardly been whoring at all since he fled England, rolls his eyes. "Like any spinster schoolmistress is going to catch my eye, Garson, when I haven't yet conquered the issues of your wife and daughters."
Garson sputters and everybody else roars. Eames is used to being the curiosity of Inception, with the easy polish of his accent and his disinterest in explanations. He's a mystery to the town and he prefers to keep it that way; besides, Americans are possibly even more Victorian about horse thieves than the English.
Framer, a man without a single humorous bone in his body, frowns and says, "As she'll be staying with Reverend Cobb, I highly doubt it." He favors Eames with a solemn look. "And I hope sincerely you will comport yourself appropriately, Eames."
"I always comport myself perfectly," Eames says, because Jesus Christ, a spinster schoolteacher staying with the town minister. He can't think of anybody less worthy of his interest.
***
Eames doesn't think he'll be interested, but that doesn't mean he's not curious, all the same, and he keeps an ear to the ground for further developments. The Reverend Cobb's star grows brighter and brighter, and the subject of Miss Arthur — and more importantly — how she knows the reverend, are a subject of constant debate. After two more days of this, it's fairly clear any legitimate information has long been abandoned in favor of wild speculation, of which Eames is a fan, but not when there's a real mystery at hand, and so he tells Framer he'd be free to drive with him to the station and fetch Inception's newest residents, the night before the train.
It's a clear, cold day, the last fingers of summer heat slipping off in the night's breeze into the dry gold coolness of fall. Eames has a garden full of overgrown cabbages and potatoes and pumpkins and beans to harvest, chores to do and repairs to make around the house and a few last things to sort out at the schoolhouse, but at 8 a.m. in the crisp, cold morning, he is at the train station instead, in his cleanest shirt and with his sharpest gaze.
Reverend Cobb, when he steps off the train, is immediately evident in the weight on his shoulders, his dark and practical clothes, the day's growth of beard and the tired look on his face. The porter follows, and trunks and bags and hatboxes are unloaded, and Eames watches Cobb's careful hands, how he inspects the luggage, how he speaks to the porter, and thinks Inception may have found themselves a good minister after all.
And then Cobb looks up, back into the doorway of the train, extending a hand to meet another — narrow fingers in a fawn-colored glove — that touches his wrist.
Eames sees the dress first, before anything else: pale gray poplin, a sweeping gown, lush heaps of fabric at the back of a narrow waist, dark gray bands of silk at the hem, the high neckline, the tight-fitting wrists. The bustle and the gathers of fabric, the spidery lace at the throat, a mother-of-pearl pin, the gray silk ribbon and the neat straw bonnet, a lavish spray of ostrich feathers tucked into the band.
Framer, to his left, clears his throat, shifts, looks nervous and hot in the cheeks, and Eames blinks and sees everything else.
Miss Arthur — it must be her — is thin like a willow, with black hair pulled severely away from her slender face, where she has a pair of wide, night-dark eyes that gleam like river stones. The thick coils of her hair are nestled at the back of her neck, tucked underneath the hat brim, and Eames stares at stares: at the pink, sweet shell of her ear, the soft line of her chin, her mouth, a pink and curious bow. The suggestion of the white, white skin of her throat makes the inside of Eames's mouth wet, makes him want to close the two meters between them.
"Reverend Cobb?" Framer asks, finally, breaking the silence, and when Cobb looks up at them, Miss Arthur does, too, her fingers tightening where they rest on Cobb's arm.
Cobb narrows his eyes at them a moment, and Eames tries not to stare at the tips of Miss Arthur's fingers as Cobb closes his own over them — protective.
"Yes?" Cobb asks, polite. Miss Arthur just levels them both a placid look, easy in Cobb's hold, and Eames has to tamp down the way something in his gut twists at that.
Framer takes off his hat, bobbing a little as he says, "And I guess this is Miss Arthur."
She favors them both with a benign smile. "Pleased to meet you," she tells them, and where Eames had imagined her voice might be as slight as she looks, it's clear and sweet and Eames wants to know, immediately, what it sounds like when she laughs, what it might sound like if she's whispering something secret to a lover.
"And you must be Matthew Framer," Cobb says, extending a hand to take Framer's in a solid shake. When he turns to Eames, he says, "And you?"
Eames takes Cobb's hand, but he's still staring at Miss Arthur, who stares back, unashamed and unafraid, and something shivers up his spine at that as he says, distracted, "Eames — just call me Eames."