‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to send Tabitha back to her grandparents in England?’ he said after a few moments’ thought. ‘I know you have cared for her right from an infant, and that you love her, but she is going to be a terrible burden for you, my dear.’
‘But I promised Lily I would care for her,’ Matilda said indignantly. ‘You were there, you know that.’
‘So I was,’ he said. ‘But Lily hadn’t known Giles would die so soon after her, and she would want the best for her child.’
‘How can sending her back there to live with strangers be best for her?’ Matilda asked, her tone a little sharp. ‘Giles wrote to Lily’s parents when she died and in their reply they didn’t offer any help, not even any real sympathy. I met them before we left England and they struck me as cold, mean people, Lily wouldn’t want them to take Tabitha on sufferance.’
The doctor nodded. Lily had implied as much in conversation with his wife. ‘But from what little I know of Giles’s family they wouldn’t be the same, would they?’ he asked.
‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But they won’t have received my letter telling them about his death yet. It could be months, even a year before they reply. I have to make some provision for Tabitha now.’
Dr Treagar agreed this was so. ‘You can come and stay with us until then, Matty,’ he said. ‘We’d be very pleased to have you with us, I’m sure you know that both Mrs Treagar and I are very fond of you both.’
His kindness made Matilda’s eyes prickle. ‘That is so very kind of you, doctor,’ she said. ‘But I can’t even offer you any payment.’
‘Do you imagine we’d want any?’ he said, reaching to take her hand and squeezing it. ‘I would be a poor friend if I turned my back on you and Tabitha now when you most need a little help. So you just pack up all your belongings, and everything that was the Milsons’ we’ll store it somewhere for the time being.’
‘I am indebted to you,’ Matilda said in a low voice. ‘I promise you I will do everything I can to assist you and Mrs Treagar to help pay for our keep.’
The doctor smiled. He had always assumed Matilda had a similar background to Lily Milson, yet those few words had told him otherwise. Real ‘ladies’ didn’t concern themselves with paying their way, they took, and assumed this was their right.
‘I’ll write a letter to the Dean this afternoon,’ he said, now more determined than ever to get some help for this brave young woman. ‘You run along home and start packing.’
It was while packing up their belongings that Matilda found her diary from the previous year. She hadn’t touched it since 13 December, two days before she got the news Giles was dead. It made her cry again to read the last few happy entries. ‘Alice and the children left’ was underlined, she hadn’t dared even allude to what had occurred just after, but she had written that Giles prepared a celebration supper of fried chicken, and that they told Tabitha she was to become her new mama. She’d listed the items they bought at the store and drawn a little sketch of the dress she was going to marry him in, and mentioned her fears that Mrs Abernought wouldn’t be able to get it finished in time. Yet Mrs Abernought had worked night and day both on it and the dress for Tabitha, and they had been brought round just two days after Giles was buried. Matilda had never unwrapped the brown paper parcel, but paid the woman for her work and stuffed the parcel unchecked in the closet.
She leafed back through the diary at random, reading little snatches here and there. A bitter complaint about Alice’s oldest son Ruben breaking Lily’s china tea pot, further back her views on the scavengers who worked their way along the river bank just after the flood water subsided, stealing the remaining belongings of the victims.
Back in February, almost a whole year ago, she’d reported feeling the baby kicking in Lily’s belly. It was then that Giles began calling him Harry.
She read again her thoughts after Lily and the baby died. ‘I have never known such misery,’ she’d put. ‘How will I live without my dear friend? It seems like the sun has gone from the sky forever.’ She noted that her monthlies came on that day too, for she’d put the little squiggle by the date.
All at once she was jolted. She couldn’t remember when she last had a monthly and she began leafing through the diary looking for the tell-tale squiggles. July, August, September, October and November, twenty-eight or twenty-nine days apart each time, but after 21 November there were no more. It should have come again just before Christmas, but even though most of the events at that time were blurred, she knew that wasn’t something she would have forgotten, for the soaking and washing of the rags was always an unpleasant chore.
A sick feeling welled up inside her. Today’s date was 20 January, it should have come again by now!
‘You can’t be!’ she said aloud. ‘It was only twice, God couldn’t be that cruel to let a baby start, then kill its father.’
She began to shiver with fear. She pulled a shawl around her and moved over to the stove, and sat hunched up by it, consumed with anxiety.
A month later, now living with the Treagars, Matilda knew for certain she was pregnant. Aside from the missing monthlies she felt sick in the mornings, she couldn’t abide the smell of coffee and her breasts were tender. She had worked out the baby would be due around 8 September, and she was terrified.
She couldn’t confide in anyone, not even the doctor, for a baby without marriage was a grievous sin and she would be thrown out of the town. She wasn’t so concerned about what would be said about her, but to sully people’s memory of Giles and Lily was unthinkable. Then there was Tabitha, she would be snatched from her, and if help didn’t arrive from her grandparents, she would be put in an orphanage.
Tabitha had adjusted to her father’s death. She was often pensive, she would still break into tears suddenly, but she did seem to have come to terms with it, and Matilda knew that was purely because of her. To Tabitha, life hadn’t changed so very much. She went to school each day as before, lived in a nice house, was well fed and cared for, cosseted in fact by the Treagars, but it was Matilda’s presence which gave her life stability. If that was snatched away it might be one blow too many. She couldn’t let that happen.
Cissie was the only person Matilda knew would help her, and the more she thought about her, and Oregon, the more she saw it was the only option open to her.
But could she survive that long, dangerous journey? What if the baby came before she got there? And if she didn’t make it, what would become of Tabitha? She couldn’t even write to Cissie because the mail only went out when the wagons left in spring. By the time the letter got to her, the baby would be ready to be born.
Yet as the weeks crawled past, and people began arriving in town to make the long journey in spring, Matilda became resolved. Land was free in Oregon, no one but Cissie knew her, and with her help she could pose as a widow and get some kind of work to bring up both the baby and Tabitha. She wasn’t going to think about the ‘what ifs’. She would make it there.
On 1 March, following a letter arriving from the Dean of St Louis that morning and enclosing a bank draft for fifty dollars – what he called a ‘distress payment’ – she resolved to tell the Treagars her plans at supper.
The Treagars’ home was one of the best in Independence, a white frame house like the minister’s, but larger and with beautiful colonial-style furniture which they’d had made for them while living in Virginia. The dining-room was very elegant, with a highly polished oak table big enough for ten people and velvet drapes such as Matilda had only ever seen in Lily’s parents’ home in Bristol.
Even though Matilda had insisted she worked while she stayed there, Mrs Treagar had never allowed her to do more than sewing, for she had two maids who did all the housework and a cook who wouldn’t allow anyone in her kitchen.
The supper that evening was a particularly good one of roast duck. The doctor’s poorer patients usually paid him in kind, the duck being payment for setting a broken leg earlier in the week, and good food always
made the doctor happy.
Once the duck had been carved and handed round, Matilda broke her news.
‘I’ve decided that Tabitha and I will take the next wagon train to Oregon to my good friends the Duncans,’ she said, hoping her firm tone would prevent either of the Treagars thinking she could be persuaded out of it.
Matilda had met Tabitha from school early in the afternoon and on the way home, stopping off to visit Giles and Lily’s grave, she’d put it to the child. Tabitha had become really excited, just the way she was when her parents first told her they were going to Missouri. She had liked Cissie and John very much, the whole idea of travelling in a covered wagon appealed to her. She even laughed when Matilda asked her to promise not to say anything if she heard Matilda telling the Treagars a few little white lies at dinner. She was an astute child, she knew Mrs Treagar was a worrier, and she understood Matilda had to make out the Duncans were richer than they really were, because otherwise she’d try to stop them going.
‘If we stay here just waiting to hear from the Milsons in England it might be too late to join a train,’ Matilda went on. ‘And Tabby doesn’t want to go back to England anyway. My friends the Duncans have a successful lumber business and an extensive farm, Tabby will have the company of their children and the security of a family again.’
‘You can’t make that long journey without a man,’ Mrs Treagar said in horror. ‘It isn’t safe.’
Matilda had already prepared all her counter-arguments. ‘There are a great many women travelling without a man,’ she said calmly. ‘Most of them are going out to join their husbands who went last year. We shall team up with them. I have worked it all out, I have just about enough money to get a team of oxen, a wagon and provisions for the journey. Once settled out in Oregon I shall take up school teaching.’
Dr Treagar looked at Matilda sharply. He could see she was nowhere near as composed as she sounded, she had two bright red spots of colour on her cheeks and her eyes weren’t quite meeting his and this made him a little suspicious. Yet in the two years he’d known her, and from what the Milsons had said about her, he knew she was honest, practical and very hard-working. At the time of the flood he’d witnessed her compassion for others, and her ability to take command of those who might otherwise have just wrung their hands and wailed instead of helping.
But it was after Giles’s death that he’d seen the full extent of her courage and pride. Most women in her position, he felt, would have been hysterical, especially as she was clearly deeply in love with him. Yet she hadn’t burdened anyone with her troubles, she had cared for Tabitha in the same steady manner she always had, and had held herself with such quiet dignity. He wondered now if her decision to go to Oregon had been made because she was afraid the grandparents would insist on Tabitha being taken from her, and that thought touched his heart. Both Giles and Lily had voiced their affection and admiration for her. Matilda had always been the true mother to the whole family, they would undoubtedly prefer that their daughter stay in her capable hands and in the country they’d grown to love. He didn’t think it was his place to try to deter her.
‘I think Matty has made up her mind,’ he said, giving his wife a warning glance. ‘In my view it’s a good plan. A fresh start in a land of opportunity.’
He turned then to Tabitha. ‘And what do you think about it, Tabby?’
‘I want to go very much,’ she said earnestly. ‘Matty’s my mama now and I want to be with her.’
The doctor’s heart swelled up. Since Giles’s death he had considered suggesting that he and his wife took Tabitha and brought her up as their own, but there was no doubt who the child loved and Giles himself would have chosen love to be a greater priority for his daughter than comfort or wealth.
‘Then God go with you,’ he said, smiling at them both. ‘It’s a long, arduous journey, but I don’t doubt you will make something of yourselves out there. But my wife and I will miss you very much.’
Matilda offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving for their approval. She added a plea that her belly would stay flat until she was well away from Independence and that Tabitha would be able to cope with the news then that she was going to have a half-sister or brother come September.
Chapter Fourteen
‘I hope that isn’t what it looks like!’ Dr Treagar exclaimed as he looked down at the wooden box left in his hall. Matilda had packed it with provisions for her journey, but a long object wrapped in a piece of oiled rag was lying across the top.
‘It is,’ she said, giving him a defiant look. ‘And I’ve learnt how to shoot it.’
‘Matty!’ he exclaimed with a look of horror. ‘Giles would never have approved of firearms.’
‘Giles might have changed his mind if he’d known words were no protection against ruffians,’ she said tartly. ‘Besides, I’m not intending to kill any people with it, not unless they look like they might kill me or Tabby. A rabbit for the pot is all I’ve got in mind.’
The doctor looked at her sadly. ‘You’ve changed so much since he died, Matty,’ he sighed. ‘I suppose it was inevitable, but I worry that you are becoming a little – ‘He stopped suddenly, afraid of hurting her feelings.
‘Go on,’ she said, and gave a tight little laugh. ‘A little masculine, were you going to say?’
The doctor’s high colour became even higher. ‘No, tough was the word I intended,’ he said. ‘Even toting a gun you are far too pretty to be masculine.’
Pretty was too weak a word really, he thought. Even in her plain black mourning dress she was beautiful, and in the past month it had become even more noticeable, despite the sadness in her eyes. Her blonde hair was so shiny, like sun on ripe corn, and her complexion had a new rosy bloom. She had put on a little weight too, maybe due to the good food and rest she’d been getting while she’d been staying here. He wished heartbreak could be cured as easily, he couldn’t count the number of times he’d heard her crying late at night.
‘Aw, shucks!’ she said, in a parody of how one of his maids from Louisiana spoke. ‘You sure do know how to make a girl feel better about herself, doctor.’
He laughed then. Matty always sounded so English, yet just lately, when anyone complimented her she always answered in that mocking Deep South voice.
‘So how good a shot are you?’ he asked.
She glanced over her shoulder as if to check Mrs Treagar was still out. ‘Come outside and I’ll show you,’ she said.
They went out into the back yard where Tabitha was playing with the puppy the doctor had given her as a going-away present. She’d called him Treacle because he was as black and shiny as the molasses she’d been given recently as a springtime purge.
‘Get Treacle out of the way and set up the rocks,’ Matilda ordered her. ‘I’m going to show the doctor what a crack shot I am.’
Tabitha obediently tied up the puppy and ran down the yard to set up six stones on an upturned pair, then stood aside to watch.
Matilda lifted the gun to her shoulder, squinted down the sights and pulled the trigger. One stone flew off. She reloaded and hit another. In six shots she hit six stones.
‘Who on earth taught you?’ the doctor asked in amazement. He wasn’t much of a shot himself, and he’d certainly never seen a woman handle a gun so well.
‘Solomon’ she grinned.
It was mid-April now and she’d spent a great deal of time in the last few weeks practising shooting and reading every pamphlet available on how to survive the trail to Oregon.
‘He’s also taught me to drive my oxen, and how to change a broken axle and repair a wheel, too. I won’t be able to do those things alone, but I know how.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘Ladies shouldn’t have to do that sort of thing.’
‘I was never a lady,’ she said dryly. ‘Just between ourselves, doctor, ‘cos I know you’ve always been curious about how I came to be with the Milsons, I started out as their nursemaid. Before that I used to sell flowers on the streets of
London and I was brought up in the slums. So don’t worry about me. The Milsons might have taught me genteel behaviour, but my childhood taught me survival.’
Although the doctor was surprised by such a revelation, it made sense of many puzzling inconsistencies about her that he’d noticed in the past weeks, and he admired her even more for her candour.
‘You’ll always be a lady to me,’ he replied, patting her shoulder with affection. ‘Now, shall we get that box of goods round to the wagon before Mrs Treagar sees the gun and has the vapours? Are you really sure you want to sleep in the wagon on your last night?’
‘Absolutely sure,’ she said with a grin. ‘You see, Cissie said I have to get a position right up the front, and if I’m not there tonight someone might just elbow me out.’
‘Just smile at Captain Russell and I’m sure you’ll get whatever position you want,’ he laughed. ‘So come on then, I’ll take you, Tabby, the dog and that infernal gun along to the square in my gig. I’ll bring Mrs Treagar down tomorrow morning to see you off and say goodbye.’
‘It’s real cosy, isn’t it?’ Tabitha whispered as they lay cuddled up close together in the wagon, Treacle lying at their feet. It had grown quiet outside, apart from the odd sound of horses neighing and dogs barking, yet there were thirty-five wagons and an average of six people to each one. ‘I like it better than a house.’
‘We might not like it so much when it rains or it’s scorching hot,’ Matilda said reflectively. It was a funny thing, but from the first moment Solomon showed her the wagon, she had liked the feel of it, perhaps because she’d never had a home that was only hers before. Solomon had bought it last year from a family who had only gone a couple of hundred miles, then returned to Independence thoroughly disenchanted with the idea of going West, and he asked Matilda for less than half what she would have been asked for a new one.