A Proper Pursuit (16 page)

“Was that you playing the piano a minute ago? You sounded really good.”

“Yes … Thank you.”

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we met on the train, Violet.”

For the first time in my life I was utterly speechless. I could tell by the soft look in his eyes that he was telling the truth. I seemed to have a hypnotic effect on him as well. We might have sat gazing at each other for an eternity if Aunt Birdie hadn’t returned to the parlor just then.

“Here’s the lemonade,” she sang sweetly. “I do hope it’s to your liking.” She handed Silas a glass, and he took a sip.

“Perfect!” he said, smacking his lips. “Not too sweet and not too sour.”

“Oh, how nice.” From the way Aunt Birdie beamed, he might have come to call on her instead of me.

Silas set his lemonade on the parlor table and focused all his attention on me again. “I’ve also been thinking about the question you asked me when we were on the train. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, in fact.”

“Which question was that?” My voice sounded strange to me, as if I had climbed up a very steep hill.

“You asked how I would prefer to die if given a choice: in a terrible cataclysm or from a long, slow death at home in my bed. I’ve decided that I would prefer to leave this world quickly, in a flaming accident.”

“Oh, how nice,” Aunt Birdie said. Silas glanced at her with a nervous smile.

“Why an accident?” I asked him.

“Well, we all have to die someday, right? And I would hate to reach the end of my life feeling as though I’d never really lived. Life is for living and for taking risks, regardless of the danger. I guess I’d prefer to live each day as if it were my last and go out with a bang.”

“Me too,” I said. “That’s exactly the way I feel about it.”

“Speaking of flames,” Aunt Birdie said. “Were you here in Chicago the night of the Great Fire, young man?”

“No, ma’am,” Silas said. “Were you?”

“Oh yes. And for a while we all believed that the end of the world had come. I feared I might truly lose my life. It was a dreadful experience.”

“You really lived through it?” Silas asked. “I would love to hear about it, Mrs. Casey.”

“Me too,” I added. “Didn’t you say that my parents met on the night of the fire?” But she didn’t seem to hear me.

“The fire started on a Sunday night,” Aunt Birdie began, as if reading the words from an invisible script above our heads. “I went to bed early, but I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone pounding on our front door. It turned out to be friends of ours. The entire family was running from the fire with a wagon full of their household goods. Oh my, you should have seen the sky! It was all lit up to the south of us, glowing like a furnace—orange and yellow and red. The wind was blowing very hard that night, which is why the flames spread so quickly.

“Well, of course we let our friends come inside—they had several small children, you see, and an aging grandmother. And their house stood right in the flames’ path. They lost everything that night but their lives and whatever they had managed to fit into their wagon. No one ever imagined that the fire would jump across the Chicago River, but it did.

“By dawn the streets were filled with refugees, and we started handing out sandwiches and glasses of water to the poor souls. Many of them were acquaintances of ours but we hardly recognized them with their faces blackened from smoke and soot. They told terrible tales of the damage and destruction—the entire city was burning! And thieves had come out as well, looting homes and businesses. One man told me he had loaded everything he could fit into his wagon and then he simply left his doors open so scavengers could take whatever they wanted—it was all going to burn up anyway.

“The fire raged all day Monday, and by Monday night it was so close to our house that we began to pack our own belongings, imagining the worst. But how does one decide what to pack and what to leave behind? We could hear the roar of the flames a few blocks away and feel the heat. Flaming cinders flew everywhere, blowing toward us on the wind, and we soaked blankets with water to protect ourselves in case we had to flee. Oh, it was a terrible, terrible time!”

“Did my mother and father come here for refuge that night?” I asked. “Grandmother said that Father rescued my mother from the fire.”

Aunt Birdie gazed at me for a long moment, and I immediately regretted interrupting her. I could see that she had lost the thread of her story. She gazed at Silas and me as if we were soot-covered refugees whom she didn’t recognize.

“Were you living in this house at the time of the fire?” Silas prompted.

“I-I don’t recall… . My husband, Gilbert, was … Where was Gilbert again? I don’t remember. I was here, I think … But why would I be here with Matilda and not in my own home?”

Oh no. The fire had occurred six years after Uncle Gilbert had died and the War Between the States had ended. Aunt Birdie was about to remember that her husband was dead. I needed to change the subject—fast!

“It must be hard on you to relive such a terrible night, Aunt Birdie. Let’s not talk about it any more. Isn’t it nice of Mr. McClure to pay us a visit? Tell us what brings you to the city today, Silas.”

“I came back to see you, and to ask if I could take you to the fair. Have you seen it yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I would love to show it to you.”

Silas McClure—thief or elixir salesman—was not a suitable escort to the fair or anywhere else. Yet of the three men who had offered to take me, Silas was the most unconventional one—and the one I longed to see it with the most.

“I would love to go with you, Mr. McClure, but we would need to be suitably chaperoned. My grandmother would never allow me to go otherwise.”

“I see. But … how does that work, exactly?”

“Well, couples are usually accompanied by another woman, often a family member. Chaperones protect a young lady’s reputation, you see. I’m afraid I would be unable to step out with you unless someone accompanied us.”

He looked crestfallen. “Could your aunt come with us?” he asked, gesturing to Birdie.

“I don’t think she could endure the excitement of the fair,” I said, then added softly, “She’s rather fragile.”

“It’s just that today is my day off, and I was hoping you would be free to go to the fair with me right now.”

“I’m sorry, Mister … I mean Silas.” And I truly was. “But as I said, I have another engagement this afternoon.”

“Gee, that’s too bad.”

I suddenly remembered that Mr. McClure knew how to find my mother’s address on LaSalle Street. He had offered to escort me there the day I came to Chicago before my grandmother arrived. If we went to the fair together, maybe I could ask him to take me to my mother’s place afterward.

“I don’t suppose you have a female relative or other acquaintance here in town who could accompany us to the fair on another day?”

“Hmm … I’ll have to think about that.” He was gazing into my eyes again. If I didn’t look away soon, he would hypnotize me into following him anywhere. I picked up my lemonade and took a long drink. I wanted to hold the glass to my burning cheeks to cool them. Silas emptied his glass in a few gulps and set it on the table again.

“Suppose I came back for you the next time I’m in town—with a chaperone. Would that work? Would you come with me?”

“Yes, that would be acceptable.”

“Good. Well, I guess I’d better be going, then.” He rose to his feet and offered me his hand to help me up. I took it without a thought for propriety. His palm was hot, his grip strong—and his touch so shocking it was like shaking hands with the wrong side of a flatiron.

“Thanks for the lemonade, Mrs. Casey,” he said on his way to the door.

Aunt Birdie hugged him good-bye. “Please, come again.”

“I will. I’m looking forward to it, Mrs. Casey.”

Silas wouldn’t need to pick the lock in order to break in with his cohorts—Birdie would throw open the door and embrace the entire gang of thieves.

Aunt Agnes’ lavish carriage pulled to a halt in front of our house just as Silas was leaving. He let out an appreciative whistle when he saw it.

“Wow! That’s quite a rig. With a matched team of horses, no less. Someone’s got plenty of dough.”

“That’s my aunt’s carriage. But she doesn’t live here with us. She lives … Oh, never mind. Good day, Mr. McClure.”

I quickly closed the door behind him, leaning against it for support. I needed to collect my hat and gloves and calling cards—not to mention my scattered wits. Why had he had rattled me so?

“What a nice young man,” Aunt Birdie said with a sigh. “He’s very sweet on you, you know.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Why, he could hardly take his eyes off you the entire time he was here.”

That was when I realized how quickly my pulse was racing—and that it had been racing for the entire time that Silas McClure had visited us. My heart might not survive an afternoon at the fair with him.

“I think you must be sweet on him too, Violet.”

“No, I can’t be sweet on him, Aunt Birdie. He’s … he’s dangerous!”

“Well, come here and look.” She took my arm and pulled me over to the mirror that hung in the front hall. “Just look how pink your cheeks are.”

“But … I-I think he might be a thief.”

“Oh, how nice. Has he stolen your heart?”

“No, not that kind of thief, a
real
thief—a criminal.”

Aunt Birdie gasped. “He didn’t take our silver tray, did he?” Her eyes grew wide as she clutched her heart.

“No. It’s still here.” I held it up to show her, and she sagged with relief.

“Well, then,” she said, smiling once again. “That says it all, doesn’t it.”

Chapter

11

Friday, June 16, 1893

I
didn’t have a chance to accompany my grandmother to the settlement house until Friday. Mrs. Riggs arrived for the final fitting of my dress on Thursday, and we arranged to have it delivered in time for the party on Saturday night. I couldn’t imagine how much the dress had cost, but as Aunt Agnes had said, if we wanted to catch a big fish, we needed to use extravagant bait.

I wore old clothes to the settlement house. Judging by the simple way that my grandmother lived and dressed, fashion didn’t matter where we were going. We rode on streetcars, switching lines twice until we finally disembarked in a section of Chicago that seemed worlds away from the gracious mansions and elegant townhouses that Aunt Agnes and I had visited.

The smell of the neighborhood assaulted me first, hitting me hard enough to make me gag the moment I stepped off the streetcar. The stench smelled like a combination of rotting garbage, urine, and the decaying remains of scores of rats. Everywhere I looked I saw a dead one—and I saw a few living ones as well, scurrying away into the shadows as we approached.

The warm, humid June morning intensified the odors.We passed the open door of a butcher shop, and the stink of blood and raw meat made me gag again. Then I saw a cow tongue hanging in the smeared window by a giant hook and I nearly left my breakfast in one of the overflowing gutters.

“Careful! Watch your step, Violet,” Grandmother warned as I stumbled from nausea. She seemed indifferent to the stench.

“This place smells terrible! How can you stand it?” My words came out muffled. I had covered my mouth and nose with my hand.

“I suppose I’m used to it.”

I walked the entire length of the busy, overcrowded street with my nose and mouth covered, trying not to retch. Hundreds of people, the poorest I’d ever seen, went about the business of buying and selling, visiting and arguing as if the neighborhood smelled of perfume and roses. Children swarmed everywhere. Every immigrant mother had at least four or five dirty-faced urchins buzzing around her skirts like flies on a horse’s rump. The men we passed stank so strongly of sweat that I doubted if they ever had taken a bath in their lives.

“Try not to step in any puddles if you can help it,” my grandmother said. “This neighborhood had a cholera outbreak not too long ago.” I was beginning to understand why she always walked so briskly. I also knew that I had lived a very sheltered life.

The noise of the neighborhood overpowered me nearly as much as the smell. Most of the talking and bartering and shouting were in languages I couldn’t understand. Pedestrians haggled with pushcart owners and shopkeepers for their goods—everything from cabbages and soup bones to squares of brown soap and bolts of cheaply made cloth.

I glanced down a side lane as we crossed at an intersection and saw dozens of drooping clotheslines strung across the alley from one rickety tenement to the other. Flapping diapers, undergarments, bed sheets, and work clothes, all in the same dingy shade of gray, dripped down on a gang of youths playing stickball in the dirt below.

I wanted to turn around and run home. I had uncovered my mouth to say so when my grandmother reached for my hand.

“We’re nearly there, dear. That’s Miss Addams’ house on the next block.”

She pointed to a large two-story brick home, the only decent house in this overcrowded immigrant neighborhood. It was a little run-down, but it stood out like a swan in a flock of circling buzzards.