Page 14 of Ellen Found
Did I say too much? Was I too impulsive? We’re working too hard, but we must. The electricians have created their magic. Ellen Found is also lovely by electric light. The plumbers are going to spoil us soon with indoor plumbing. I remember how nice it was when Clare scrubbed my back in the tub. I miss that. I miss a lot of things.
EVERYONE BUCKLED DOWN even more after Christmas. January saw the welcome addition of Mr. Colfitt, who set up his temporary forge and shop practically by the inn’s back door. He also brought with him more electric candlesticks and an amazing five-foot iron clock that Mr. Reamer had designed for the fireplace .
After surveying the situation and muttering to himself, Mr. Colfitt forged an iron ladder-bridge from the second floor landing out to the massive fireplace. Ellen watched two brave souls inch across, affix the massive clock to the fireplace, and set it ticking. “Someone has to wind that monster once a week,” Charles said over coffee the next morning. “Not me!”
Charles made no mention of their Christmas Eve conversation. He didn’t avoid her, but he remained his usual, quiet self. Ellen considered the matter as she grieved for Plato, wishing she could have... what? “He chose to stay with me for two years,” she told herself late one night. “He didn’t have to, but he did. I should let this rest.” She slept better after that.
Next came the inn’s electrification. Mr. Reamer called them artificers, those two fellows from Bozeman who, with Mr. Colfitt, wired the electric candlesticks throughout the lobby, down halls, and into guest rooms, where the carpenters hammered and sawed.
For a quiet man, Mr. Reamer had a dramatic flair. At nightfall in mid-February he announced over dinner that now was the time. “Gentlemen and ladies, join me in the lobby. ”
Everyone watched as the architect and his electricians moved to the wall behind the front desk and Mr. Reamer flicked the switch. Each electric candlestick seemed to light itself by magic. Gwen clapped her hands.
Ellen stared in wonder. She looked around at tired faces that didn’t seem so tired. Maybe it was a trick of light after all these months of gloom and snow. She decided it was pride in the work, a commitment to a unique building in the wilderness and its pinpoints of light.
These electric beauties couldn’t flicker like ordinary candles. Their steady light shone on lodgepole pine walls and oddly shaped, lacquered branches twisting under the handrails. She took a good look at the small landing near the pinnacle of the roof where Mr. Reamer said a string quartet would perform during dinner and dancing. The crew already called it the Crow’s Nest.
She knew Plato would have enjoyed such a perch. Lately, she could think calmly of him, sorrow replaced by good memories and gratitude without relentless grief. Maybe Charles Penrose was right .
“There is nothing like this anywhere,” the architect said, recalling her to the moment. “June first, my friends,” he told them. “We are making history.”
Plumbers came the next week, bundled up in freight wagons on skids. With electric lights, the carpenters worked even later hours on room after room. Ellen saw the toll it took on Charles Penrose, the man she enjoyed seeing every morning for coffee. Now he carried a drowsy Gwen into Ellen’s room, where she patted Ellen’s pillow and returned to slumber.
“Your face is too thin,” she told Charles one morning. Electric lights made it harder to hide exhaustion. “Being in charge can’t be easy.”
He smiled at that, which helped her heart, that odd organ that lately seemed to govern more than her wary brain. Why else did she want to tuck his muffler tighter into his overcoat?
“I’ll survive,” he assured her one morning. “Sit down. You’re too busy. Just sit with me.”
She sat, hoping he would say more. She pushed forward a plate of Mrs. Quincy’s doughnuts. He took one, nodding his appreciation. Say more , she thought, then thought the impossible: I want to know you better .
Maybe he was feeling expansive. Maybe more at ease. Maybe it was the doughnuts. He leaned back in his chair. “Clare would do that—bustle about until I grabbed her and sat her down. We didn’t usually say much. It was enough to just... just... be . Try it.”
One morning he asked her about Mrs. Quincy. “She seems different these days,” he said, then gave her a broad smile, as he used to before the work began to wear him out. “May I give the credit to Fred Wilson?”
She nodded, pleased that’d he noticed. “She doesn’t stare out the window so much,” Ellen confided. “She makes ever so many doughnuts. She won’t admit they’re for Mr. Wilson, but I know better.”
Then came the morning when his guard must have been down. “The fellows tell me that Sergeant Reeves always seems to find something to do here when he isn’t on patrol.”
“He does,” she agreed, wondering what to make of this widower, this tentative man .
“He’s a good fellow with a promising future in the army,” he said. She listened for animosity but heard only words carefully chosen.
“He has plans,” she said, choosing carefully too, because she liked Dan Reeves.
“Do his plans include you?” he blurted out another morning.
“He hasn’t said so,” she replied, wanting to shake him a little, or maybe a lot, because she realized that somewhere between the envelope of seeds and iron fish, something had happened to her. And so she sat with the tentative widower who touched her mind and heart.
She taught Gwen to make biscuits, and how to French braid her own hair. “After all, when this project is done, you’ll be moving to another place with your father,” she said, which broke her heart in ways she hadn’t reckoned on.
Mr. Reamer asked her and Mrs. Quincy to increase their chores to include sweeping out the finished rooms and wiping them down. “That last freight sled brought in iron bedsteads and bedding,” he told her. “The chairs and bureaus are here too. Time to furnish the rooms. ”
Mrs. Quincy asked her to work with Gwen. “I work better alone,” she assured Ellen, who wasn’t even slightly fooled. Mr. Wilson always managed to show up to sweep and mop too. She heard them laughing together down the hall and felt a twinge of envy.
“Does he like Mrs. Quincy?” Gwen asked her once when it was almost warm enough to open a window. “She doesn’t seem to grumble as much.”
Ellen kissed the top of her head.
“I am observant,” Gwen told her. She plumped herself down on a bed. “Papa doesn’t write so much in his journal. He stares at the pages, then shakes his head and closes it.”
“Do you write in yours?” Ellen asked, powerfully wanting to have a look at Charles Penrose’s journal.
“Aye.” She leaned closer. “Papa is hoping to get another assignment here in the park. A place called Lake. Are you staying here?”
“I hope to.”
“Come with us to Lake,” Gwen said. “You’ll be too far away here. I... I asked my father if you could come with us.”
Ellen heard the urgency and sat down beside the little one. She held her close. “What did he say?”
“He kissed my cheek like you kissed my head. I am getting nowhere with him!”
I know the feeling , Ellen thought.
The days began to lengthen as snow moved from endless powder to wet, heavy flakes that signaled a change of season. Already some of the workers had left for other jobs. The only thing that made her happy about that were their bashful thanks to her for good food, something she never heard at the Mercury Street Café.
Sergeant Reeves came by more often after supper. The exhaustion of cold patrols on skis and frustrating searches for poachers who robbed Yellowstone for their own enrichment had left its mark. As worn down as he was, she knew he would show up after dishes were done to walk with her in the geyser basin.
The snow never stayed long there, vanquished by the everlasting warmth of fumaroles, hot pots, and geysers. As impressive as they were, none of them rivaled nearby Old Faithful, which showed itself at a regular fifty- five minutes, but life, she knew, was seldom spectacular.
“Think of the tourists coming in June,” Dan said one evening as they strolled. “They’ll ooh and aah, but for my money, I like this basin.”
They paused to watch Old Faithful erupt. Who wouldn’t? As they watched, she told the sergeant her plan. “I’ve applied for a position as front desk clerk here.”
“You’ll get it.” He turned to her. “You’re the kind of pretty girl Mr. Child wants to see in his hotel.”
“Thanks, Dan.” Goodness. Better make a joke. “I should have put my hair up months ago,” she told him. “Every girl likes a compliment.”
“It’s more than that, Ellen,” he said, more serious now than she had seen him. “You have kind eyes and a good heart, and it shows.”
He had kissed her before on the cheek, but this was different. This was a serious kiss on the lips, her first ever. “Been wanting to do that,” he whispered when his lips still nearly touched hers.
She strolled with him, shy and pleased. She knew Dan Reeves was a good man with honorable intentions, the sort of man she could never have found anywhere near the Mercury Street Café. In her short lifetime of wanting little because she had next to nothing, she had wanted more. That wanting had brought her to Old Faithful Inn.
To her chagrin, she still wanted more.