Janet Quin-Harkin (4 page)

He stormed out of the room, knocking the fringed lamp on the table beside the door to the carpet.

“Oh dear, now you’ve upset him,” Libby’s mother said, rushing to pick up the lamp as if that was the most important thing to do. “But don’t worry,” she added as she righted it and straightened its fringe. “When he’s calmed down we’ll be able to talk about it. We’ll find a way to get the whole thing straightened out . . . a nice summer at the Cape, as I was saying. That’s what we all need.”

Libby left her talking as she walked silently from the room. She ran upstairs, all the way up to the third floor, and looked in at the nursery. It was empty. Lace curtains, like those in her own room, were flapping in the breeze. Schoolbooks lay open and there was a doll on the floor, but no sign of the children. Irrational panic overtook Libby. Her father had somehow known what she had in mind and had spirited the children away to a safe place. She knew that this was completely illogical, but nevertheless, she ran down the stairs until she saw Mrs. O’Rourke, the housekeeper, coming out of one of the bedrooms on the floor below.

“Mrs. O’Rourke, do you know where the children might have gone?” Libby asked.

Mrs. O’Rourke looked up the staircase, surprise showing on her round, placid face. “Why, out for their morning walk with their governess, Mrs. Grenville, same as they always do at this time,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing, what could be wrong?” Libby said, gaining control of herself. Control was essential at this moment, she decided. She must think everything through carefully, not give herself away.

“Miss Hammersham still takes them to the park, I suppose,” she tried to say carelessly as she turned back up the stairs.

“I’m sure she does, Mrs. Grenville,” Mrs. O’Rourke said.

Libby nodded. “Oh, and Mrs. O’Rourke,” she called after the woman, “please tell my mother that I have a luncheon appointment today. I have a headache and I’m going to rest until it’s time to go out.”

She turned away, back up the stairs. Her heart was hammering, but she managed to give the impression of a normal conversation with a servant. Glancing around to make sure that the maids were occupied downstairs, she darted into her childrens’ bedroom, and started taking articles of clothing from drawers and stuffing them into a leather travel bag. A complete feeling of unreality overtook her. All she wanted to do was get away quickly, before her father could stop her. It was only when the bag was full and she fought to close the clasp that she began to come to her senses again. What am I doing? she asked herself. Can I possibly go through with this?

A
ROUND MIDNIGHT LIBBY
finally admitted that sleep was not going to come. She had lain sweating under her sheet in the small, stifling ship’s cabin, her mind racing through all the events of the past days until she heard a nearby church clock chime twelve. Silently, she slipped from her narrow bunk and pulled on her cotton wrap. In the top bunk Bliss moaned in her sleep. “It’s all right, darling, Mama’s here,” Libby whispered, stroking the child’s sweating face until she felt the small body relax.

Going over to the shutters she opened them in the hope of letting in more air. But the night air outside was heavy with the smell of the river. The slightest of breezes which came from the unseen land was not cooling but carried with it other odors; rotting vegetation mixed with spicy cooking and the heady, sickly scent of unseen flowers. Mosquitoes whined around her face. Libby sighed and leaned against the window frame, looking out across the black waters of the mighty Mississippi to the few dots of light glimmering on the opposite shore.

It was their first night out of New Orleans on the
Mississippi Belle
. The stern-wheeler had put into a little town before dark because the river was running low and too dangerous to navigate at night. Libby resented being held up like this. Now that she had started on her journey, she felt she had to get on and finish it as soon as possible. The blackness outside the cabin was full of strange noises; the plop and gurgle of the river waters as they flowed past the moored boat, the croak of frogs and the screech of millions of insects along the banks, the whine of the ever-present mosquitoes. Libby brushed back a damp curl from her face and idly slapped at a mosquito.

What am I doing here? she thought. How can I have embarked on such a senseless, dangerous journey?

It had seemed so simple when she rushed from the house in Boston some three weeks earlier. She would take the boat to New Orleans, go upstream to Missouri, then head out with one of the wagon trains to California. There she would find Hugh, help him make a fortune, return to Boston to see her parents’ faces, then sail to England triumphant.

How naive I was then, she thought, smiling at her own stupidity.

Those three weeks had made Boston seem a lifetime away. She was already amazed at how little thought she had given to such a huge undertaking. She realized now that if her father had not forbidden her so strongly, she probably would never have left. They could have talked it over like sane people and then hired someone like a private investigator to go after Hugh. It was her father’s bluster that had clinched everything. Her concern that her father would stop her before she could take the children had made her rush through a decision which should not have been taken lightly.

She had not paused for a second as she packed hastily, pawned all her available jewelry for the paltry sum of three hundred and twenty dollars, and snatched the children from their surprised governess in the park. She had then taken the first ship sailing from Boston Harbor. It was only when she unpacked in the ship’s cabin that she had a chance to examine the items she had packed for such a long journey. Many of them were unsuitable for travel—white muslins which creased, and no iron, three pairs of pantaloons for Bliss and none for Eden, and glaring omissions which would have to be purchased later with her precious cash. But all things considered, she was not unhappy as the ship sailed from Boston and put her out of her father’s grasp. She was still fired with the elation of having dared to do something so unthinkable and having got away with it. She almost believed that the hardest part was behind her.

The first voyage on the
S.S. Venture
had been smooth and simple. They had sailed with all speed southward, calling in at Charleston, South Carolina and then at St. Augustine, Florida before reaching New Orleans. She had spent her time sitting in the sun on deck while the children played beside her, had dined at the captain’s table with pleasant southern gentlemen who had fought to sit next to her and charmed her with their flattery. By the time she came ashore at New Orleans, she was convinced that the hardships of the journey were vastly exaggerated and that the next stage would be just as smooth sailing as the first.

She had enquired at the dockside and found that a paddle steamer would be sailing up river the next day. Unfortunately, every berth was already taken.

“But if you care to stick around,” the pleasant, soft-spoken young clerk informed her, “we might be able to squeeze y’all in a little bitty corner someplace.” He smiled encouragingly. “And cabins do open up,” he said, still smiling. “There’s plenty of travellers who never make it to the boat.”

“How come?” Libby asked naively.

The smile did not falter. “They get themselves in fights or they get themselves robbed or they get themselves in card games or they get themselves the cholera,” he said. “There’s a whole lot of cholera on the river this year. Comes with all these Yankees passing through on their way to the gold.”

“I’m sure the Yankees don’t bring cholera with them,” Libby said indignantly. “Our northern cities are very clean.”

“For sure, ma’am,” the clerk drawled pleasantly, “but wherever you gets a whole mess of people crowded in one place there’s sure enough going to be the cholera there with them.”

“I’ll be back in the morning, then,” Libby said stiffly and left the office.

“Come, children,” she said, picking up the bags, which seemed to have increased in weight since she set out. “Hold onto the handles and stay close to me. We’re going to find a hotel.”

“A hotel, Mama? I never went to a hotel,” Bliss sang excitedly.

They set off from the dockside, dodging loaded carts and barrows, taking in the unfamiliar sights and smells of the city. The odor of roasting coffee mingled with the heady sweet scent of unknown flowers and less pleasant smells rising from the open ditches and drains. In the first narrow side street washing hung from ironwork balconies and a black maid appeared, yelling down to a black man passing below in a language Libby could not understand. The man looked up and yelled back, showing big white teeth in a smile. The maid called something else, then threw down a bucket of waste water, splashing near Libby as it hit and ran into the open drain.

“It smells bad here, Mama,” Eden commented.

Bliss wrinkled her button of a nose. “It smells disgusting,” she said, making Libby laugh.

“I know,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’ll see a hotel soon. I don’t want to go too far from the harbor in case we lose our chance at a cabin on that boat.”

“Will we see Papa soon?” Bliss asked, tugging at the straps of the carryall.

“Not yet,” Libby said. “We must be patient.”

“I’ve been patient a long while,” Bliss said, stomping in a puddle.

“Bliss, don’t do that, you’re making your petticoat dirty and Mama can’t get it washed for you,” Eden scolded.

At a crossroad Libby halted. To her right was a broad street of elegant homes, a glimpse of an open square with a statue and gardens in it, reminding her painfully of Boston and civilization. If only there was someone she knew in this strange city, someone of her own social class she could go to with an introduction and spend a comfortable night. But there wasn’t, and she didn’t want her parents to find out where she was.

“This way,” she said, steering the children away from that square, down another narrow street.

“It’s going to rain, Mama,” Eden said. “I felt a drop on my face.”

At that moment there was an ominous rumble of thunder and the skies opened. A solid sheet of rain fell, big fat drops bouncing off the cobbles and thundering on iron porch roofs. Libby dragged the girls under an overhanging balcony. In no time at all the water covered the whole street and the foul-smelling contents of the drains began to overflow to meet the flood water. Remembering what the clerk had said about cholera, Libby looked up and down the street. Two doors down, a small sign advertised Hotel St. Pierre. They ran across to it, getting drenched in the few yard’s sprint.

“I’d like a room for the night,” Libby told the large, sleepy-eyed woman who appeared when she rang the bell.

“A room? You?” the woman asked.

Libby wondered if the woman maybe didn’t understand English well.

“Yes, me, and my little girls. A room.
Une chambre
. You have one?”

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, as if undecided.

“This is a hotel?” Libby demanded, angry now.

“Oh, yes, but not for people like you,” the woman said. “They go to the St. Louis.”

“I don’t have the money for the St. Louis,” Libby said shortly, “and my little girls are very wet from this storm. They’ll catch cold if I don’t get them into dry clothes.”

The woman shrugged. “Very well, if you insist,” she said in a very French manner. “Follow me, please.”

She led the way up the stairs to a little room at the back, looking onto a small courtyard. “I put you out of the way,” she said. “It can get a little noisy at night That will be one dollar.”

“I don’t suppose you could send up some tea and maybe some bread and butter for the children?” Libby asked.

She saw amusement flicker in the woman’s eyes. “Down the street. Dubois Coffee House,” she said. She noticed Libby glance out at the rain. “Don’t worry. It will stop. This is afternoon rain,” she said. She waddled to the door, then thought to look back. “The door locks,” she said. “Turn the key.”

By the time Libby had changed the girls’ clothing and spread the wet things to dry over chairs, the rain had indeed stopped. They went down the stairs without meeting anybody and had soup with crusty bread at the coffeehouse.

Later that evening both girls slept soundly in the big double bed while Libby paced up and down by the window. From the street outside came the sound of shouts and laughter, a piano being played, voices joining in a song. She felt very alone and cut off from life. Carefully locking the door and taking the key with her, she made her way down the stairs. This time she passed two other guests, a man and a young woman, coming up.

To her “Good evening,” she got a muffled grunt from the man and a giggle from the girl.

The streets were still wet and littered with debris as Libby picked her way daintily across the puddles. The piano music was spilling out from a lighted room farther down the block and dark figures were going in and out. A lady’s voice started singing in French and soon male voices joined it. Libby was almost level with the lights when three men turned toward her.

“Hello,
chérie
,” one of them said. “Are you free for a little entertainment?” He leered at her, blowing drunken breath into her face.

“Certainly not,” Libby said in her most haughty Boston manner.

Another of the men grabbed her arm. “Whats-amatter, ain’t we good enough for you?” he asked belligerently. “We’ve got money, good as the next man. We’re just back from three weeks at sea. We’ll show you a good time.”

“Get your hand off me,” Libby demanded, trying to shake herself free.

“Don’t act so high-class with us,” the first man threatened. “We saw you come out of the St. Pierre. You’re not going to do better than us tonight. We’ve just been paid off. Come on,
chérie
, what do you say?”

He pulled her close to him and tried to plant a kiss on her cheek. Libby recoiled in horror. The other man came up from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I love ‘em when they play hard to get,” he said. “Feisty little baggage, ain’t she? But we’ll knock the stuffing out of her. Come on, doll, quit fooling around with us. We haven’t got all night.”