More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon Page B

her in the direction of the races until the
    Baptist minister’s wife, Mrs. Tull, climbed into the sleigh with her and
    asked her how she did. Danial called a small boy to come hold the horse
    and finally made his way to Claris.
    “Miss Osgood,” he said.
    “Mr. Haskell.” Claris bowed. It amused her when he got all formal.
    They looked at each other and became tongue-tied, two small figures on
    the edge of a gathering, in a vast white landscape of ice. They were both
    very conscious that half the town might be looking at them, since there
    is nowhere on a frozen bay to hide. Certainly the whole town knew they’d
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    M O R E
    T H A N
    Y O U
    K N O W
    been courting quite long enough to be calling it on at last, or calling it
    off. Danial hoped they were not watching and Claris rather hoped they
    were. Finally Danial reached into a pocket and drew out a small wooden
    box with tiny handmade hinges. She looked it over thoroughly, guessing,
    correctly, that he had made it himself. She glanced up at him. The gray
    winter sun made a bright disk behind a screen of haze, and all the coves
    inshore were full of sea smoke. This was it. This was the moment, she
    was sure.
    “Open it,” he said.
    After one more glance at him, both shy and excited, she opened
    the box. Inside, on a bed of soft silk, was a cat’s-eye marble.
    Claris was suddenly uncertain that this was the moment. Even poor
    gormless Byron Crocker had announced his intentions to Alice with a
    garbled speech, delivered on one knee, and an offered ring. She looked
    up at Danial, questioning.
    “We got but one diamond in the family, and it’s Mother’s,” he
    said. “But it will be yours in due time if you’ll consent to become Mrs.
    Haskell.” He said it stiffly, as if he were about to perish from embar-
    rassment.
    It was the moment. Well, thank heaven. Suddenly Claris would
    rather have had a marble in a handmade box than a ruby ring from the
    fanciest jeweler in Boston.
    “Danial,” she said, turning her face up to his. “My dear.” Smiling,
    she closed the box and kissed it, then slipped it into the pocket of her
    coat. Then she gave him her hands and he took them, and they looked
    at each other, both grinning as if they would burst.
    k
    There were tears and anger at the Osgood house in the night and
    day that followed. Claris had known her family didn’t like Danial as
    much as they had Jonathan Friend, or even cross-eyed Byron Crocker.
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    B E T H
    G U T C H E O N
    Danial was quiet. Her family liked people lively in company who told
    stories and sang. But through the courtship she had said she could read
    Danial’s silences as she could the animals’. He was strong and a hard
    worker; Simon and Leander said so. He was fiercely protective of his aged
    mother. Danial understood Claris; she knew he felt the same way she did
    about things.
    Claris had asked Danial to come to the house with her after the
    races, to ask her father for her hand, but he said he believed he ought to
    take his mother back home before it got dark. She said she understood.
    She spoke to her mother and father by herself after dinner, telling them
    Danial had asked her to marry him and she had accepted him. She ex-
    pected kisses and congratulations as there had been for Mary and for
    Alice; she expected her father would send word out to the Haskells, asking
    Danial and his mother and brother to come to Sunday dinner so they
    could make wedding plans. Instead, there was a silence. A glance passed
    between husband and wife. Then her mother came and hugged her and
    left the room. Her father watched Claris, standing in the middle of the
    room; she looked like a sunny day turning to squall.
    “What?” she said, staring hard at her father. “Do you know some-
    thing ill of Danial?”
    “No, I don’t,” said her father. “And what I’ve seen for myself, I
    respect.”
    “Then, what ? You have something against him. Or is it that you
    have something against me