The Daring Ladies of Lowell (16 page)

His family. He was seeing them again tonight, even himself, through the eyes of this one young woman, this outsider. Except for Grandmother, at this moment they did not make him proud.

Enough. This girl took him to dark places. He rose from the table and excused himself, casting a quick glance at Alice before leaving the room. She did not look up.

F
or all her exhaustion, Alice couldn’t sleep that night. She walked out onto the second-floor landing, clad in a nightgown borrowed from Mary Beth, and listened, counting the strikes from the grandfather clock in the front entry. Midnight already. She walked down the hall from her room, stopping to gaze out the window at the sleeping city of Boston below. She stood there, hardly aware of the cold as she pulled the gown close around her. No moon tonight, just a milky sky of clouds and the lights of this alien town.

“Alice?”

She turned. Samuel was at the top of the stairs at the other end of the hall.

“Are you unable to sleep?” he asked with some diffidence.

“It’s been a strange day for me.”

“You did very well. May I ask—”

“What?”

“Are you comfortable here?”

Maybe it was because she was tired, but she didn’t feel surprised by his question. Or maybe it was because staring out at the calm sky, wondering about many things, she didn’t feel afraid of being honest. “It was a hard life, living on the farm,” she said slowly. “But the rules were simple. They aren’t so simple here.”

“I found myself at dinner wondering—”

“Mr. Fiske—”

“Don’t, please. I am Samuel.”

“Samuel.” She said it quietly, tasting the syllables. “How do I answer your question? And I wonder about—losing your interest if our goals do not coincide with yours.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” His voice was firm but tired. “This will sound forward, but could we talk a bit? I’ll stay here by the stairs.”

She thought fleetingly of her night clothing; it was not proper, of course not. But he was leaning against the banister; in the moonlight she could see the way he smiled—how his lips turned gentle around the edges. His eyes, set deep, were calm. He seemed almost to have shed his Fiske identity for the moment, dropping it like a tight-fitting jacket. The thought occurred to her, not for the first time, that perhaps even he could be locked into an identity. She felt a strange intimacy. She remembered the warmth of his hands.

“That will be all right, I think,” she said.

Samuel sat down heavily on the top landing, gazing at her. She looked ethereal, almost floating inside her nightgown, as if unanchored from flesh and bone. He wished he could put out his hands and lift her high, even float with her. He rubbed his forehead savagely. Such absurdity.

“I admire you for today,” he said.

“I thank you for your help. I couldn’t have done it without your support.” Perhaps it was where they were, the darkness, the quietness, but Alice found herself ready to risk asking questions. “You seem different from the rest of your family,” she ventured. “Are you?”

“If I am, it’s because of my grandmother,” he said. “She likes to talk about working in a saloon, but she had all these causes when I was a boy—everything from the need to build more almshouses for the poor to making sure all children could read and write. She would bundle me up and take me to rallies and meetings from the time I was nine years old.” He laughed quietly, shaking his head. “I remember one day in particular—we were down on the Common listening to a man named William Garrison firing up a crowd over abolition when a gang of thugs began beating people, including the women. She got me out of there fast, and even though Father was furious, I’ve never forgotten what I saw and what it taught me.”

“What was that?” she asked.

“If you want change, you have to push for it.”

“My mother taught me that.”

“How?”

“She faced down the county schoolmaster to make him let me attend school,” Alice said. “I was six. She dressed me in a pinafore, braided my hair tight, and demanded a seat in the classroom. Oh, she was fierce. She said poor people had rights, too. And I could read better than most of them, as it turned out. I went through secondary school, got my certificate of completion.” It felt important to add that.

“You should be proud,” he said.

“It’s not like going to college.”

“College isn’t everything. Those rallies with my grandmother balanced out the smugness of Harvard.”

“You went to Harvard?” she asked shyly.

“Yes.”

“Some of the other girls are saving to send their brothers to college.”

“That’s—quite ambitious, isn’t it?”

She had anticipated his question. “We all save money—well, many of us do. For different things.”

“You do, I know. For any particular reason?”

“Independence,” she said, curling her toes tight, hugging her bended knees, absorbed now in telling this quiet man something about herself. “I want to decide how to live my own life, and not have it all decided for me.”

“What would that life be like?” Samuel asked cautiously, thinking of his sister.

She smiled faintly. “I don’t know, but not knowing is what I relish.”

“That is most admirable,” he said. He wondered if his father had any idea of what his model for Lowell had opened up. Listening to this young woman, he saw no reason that they should not come true.

“Alice—” He hesitated. “How did you and Lovey become friends? You seem very different.”

“We understood each other,” she said. “From the very first night we sat on the steps and talked. I wish I could explain how brave she was. She would have been a reformer, maybe like your grandmother, with half a chance.” Her voice was wavering; her eyes tearing.

“Please, don’t cry.” He didn’t even realize he was standing and walking toward her, and then he was reaching out, touching her cheek, smoothing away the tears in her eyes.

Surprised, Alice twisted from his touch and pushed him away. “Would you be so eager to smear my reputation the same way it was done to Lovey?” she burst out.

She couldn’t see his face as he recoiled.

“I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, please forgive me,” he blurted, then turned and strode away, head down.

Her spirits sank. What was wrong with her? He had only meant to be kind, hadn’t he? But how dare he be so presumptuous; she, in a nightdress. She could only imagine how his family would react. She must be careful, she couldn’t
want,
certainly not the barely formed fairy tale in her head right now. But then, could she at least savor the remembered sound of his voice as he sat on the stairs, asking her questions and listening to her answers?

T
here was no true sleep; every now and then, a few seconds of dozing, then just hours of staring at the ceiling. No, she wouldn’t think of Samuel. Instead she tried in the stillness of the night to re-create the sound of Lovey’s laughter, the humor and fun that she produced so naturally. She couldn’t. The sound was gone.

Somewhere in the early morning Alice drifted into sleep. At seven o’clock, she awoke with a start; she never slept this late. She rose and dressed herself in her own clothes, which had mysteriously appeared, laid out over a chair at the end of the bed. Mary Beth must have somehow tiptoed in and left them there. She was probably already scrubbing the clothes Alice had contaminated by the simple act of wearing them.

She stared into the mirror by the side of the bed. Her eyes were glazed by lack of sleep, and her hair was hopelessly tangled. She feared Mrs. Holloway had not packed her a comb; her fingers would have to do. That wasn’t her main concern. What mattered was arranging her face in such a way as to erase as much expression as possible. Her feelings had hardened over the sleepless night. She was just a mill girl; he was a rich man who could have any woman he wanted, and she would let him know she was not going to be some kind of casual dalliance.

But her reflected image was too mobile, too revealing, even when she pulled her lips into a straight, firm line, tightening her jaw. Soon she had to descend those stairs again and make her way to the dining room. For him, probably, last night could be shrugged off. He would be at the spotlessly clad white linen table, dressed in his usual proper fashion, drinking coffee, talking soberly to his father. He would probably pull out that ponderous-looking watch of his, checking the time, eager to pack her into a coach for the trip back to Lowell.

It helped to fantasize such coldness from him. She felt entangled in the intimacy of their talk last night, still hearing the quiet reflectiveness in his voice, but she could not let herself be fooled. She had endangered herself by staying there, talking, in her nightdress; that was the fact of it. She would not think, could not think, about the gentleness with which he had touched her face.

She groped in her handbag, looking for her mother’s cameo, and slowly took in that it was not there. And in that sickening moment when one knows something is truly lost, she realized she had forgotten to remove it from her dress last night. She gasped aloud. How could she have done such an idiotic thing? Frantically, on her hands and knees, she searched the floor. It must have rolled under the bed surely. No, it wasn’t there. Had it gone into the washing tub with her dress? Had it been ruined or even stolen?

She was crying now. Just sitting on the floor, a stupid girl, out of her depth, wishing only to be somewhere else. But only for a minute or two. No more tears, she told herself, straightening her shoulders and pulling herself up to a standing position. She would find the cameo. She would search. Alice forced herself to breathe deeply.

T
he dining room, on first glance, seemed deserted. Where was the family? But there, at the end of the long table with a large silver coffee pot before her, sat Samuel’s grandmother. She had a wide linen napkin tucked under her chin. Her white hair had been shaped into small corkscrew curls, a fashion of another age, but it softened her face. She looked up at Alice with eyes both alert and strikingly blue.

“Good morning, my dear,” she said, smiling. “Have we been properly introduced?”

“I am Alice Barrow, I work in the mill—,” Alice began.

The older woman flapped her napkin impatiently. “No, no, I know who
you
are. But I’m quite sure you don’t know who I am, because none of my family ever bothers to call me by name. I’m just Grandma.”

“Well, may I ask—”

“Gertrude Fiske, that’s my name. Call me Gertrude; the one who needs the deference of being called Mrs. Fiske is my daughter-in-law. Hiram is my son. Sit down.”

Obediently, Alice sat down. There were no servants hovering, no one else but the two of them. The emptiness made the room feel less elegant today—actually rather drafty and hollow.

“I must ask—”

Gertrude held up a hand, silencing her. She took a healthy sip of coffee, white curls bobbing, patted her lips with the napkin, and leaned back. “There’s been a bad accident at the mill,” she said. “One of the workers unloading cotton, I’ve been told. He slipped and got caught in some machinery.”

“Oh, my goodness—” Alice knew none of those quiet, grunting men with bulging shoulders, but she had watched them heave the heavy bags of cotton out of the wagons and onto the loading dock of the mill.

“I’m sorry to tell you this so bluntly, dear, but I’m afraid it has affected your travel plans home. The messenger got here very early this morning with the news, and Hiram and Samuel left for Lowell many hours ago. They asked you to wait another day until things calm down.”

“Calm down?”

“There was a bit of an uproar last night after the accident. An unruly crowd. Samuel convinced Hiram they should go there to show their concern and make sure the man had adequate treatment.” Gertrude looked at her kindly. “Not a good environment for the moment, but I am delighted to have your company for a little longer.”

“But the other girls will have to work my looms another day, and that is a burden on them. I have to get back,” Alice protested. “I can’t stay here. And what if they were harmed—”

Gertrude calmly picked away at a small dish of stewed apples. “Samuel said to tell you he would make sure they are safe,” she said. “He is a man of his word. And he promised to be back this evening. Truly, that new train service between here and Lowell is going to change everything.”

Suddenly, confusingly, Alice felt relieved, then alarmed. “Still, I—”

“Can we talk facts, my dear? My grandson can’t look at you without dissolving; you realize that, don’t you?” Gertrude Fiske’s spoon paused, suspended halfway between the dish of apples and her mouth. She put it down. “He’s a good man. I’ve known him since he stomped around as a little boy and complained that the servants shouldn’t have to eat downstairs.”

“I—”

“Oh, never mind. I can’t put you in a position where you have to answer that. But don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s like the rest of them just because Daisy wants to take borrowed clothes off your back as fast as she can. Except for Samuel, none of them wants to remember that I sang in my father’s saloon when I met their grandfather.” Her tone turning more reflective. “Perhaps you’re too young yet to see how the tides go in and out. For all the wealth and luxury in this house, there’s nothing magical about it. One generation toils away so they can wear fine clothes and eat off silver dishes. The next drifts along, barely bothering to paddle the boat. And then it is up or down. My dear Samuel has responsibility, but not much relish.… I don’t know what comes next.” Gertrude dipped her spoon again into the apple dish. “Well,
that
was an excessively long speech,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not saying I don’t love them all, but I see them with a clear eye. Would you pass that nice corn mush, please?” She swallowed a sip of coffee and pointed to a silver bowl farther down the long table.

Silently Alice passed the steaming bowl of hominy, then regained her voice. “You are a singer?” she ventured.

“Not on the respectable stage, I assure you.” The older woman chuckled deep in her throat. “I love the expression on poor Hiram’s face when I drop it into a conversation every now and then. He’s a dutiful son, but somewhere he lost his sense of humor.” She sighed. “Actually, they all have.”

“Samuel said you were a social reformer,” Alice said shyly. “That was very brave of you.”

A shadow fell over Gertrude Fiske’s face. “Not really, my dear. I made noise and all, but I didn’t follow through. Too comfortable to make the effort, I suppose.”

“Your grandson is very proud of you,” Alice ventured.

“He sees more than is there. I wish I had tried harder,” she said.

She seemed to be fading, so Alice spoke with haste. “Mrs. Fiske—”

“Gertrude.”

“I have lost my mother’s cameo. It was on my dress yesterday, I must find it. It’s not valuable, but it matters greatly—”

“Well, you already have.”

Alice whirled around at the new voice. Daisy stood behind her, holding out her hand. She was dressed in a fine-textured cream linen dress; in her palm was the cameo.

“Mary Beth gave it to me this morning,” she said, gazing at it critically. “Quite acceptable work, I must say. For using clay, of course.”

Alice resisted snatching it from her hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“My dear Daisy, how can you be so good at making a compliment sound like a criticism?” Again, that chuckle from Gertrude.

Daisy flushed. Quickly she handed the cameo to Alice, walked around the table, and sat down a few seats away from her grandmother. She frowned down at some invisible wrinkles in her skirt, taking time to smooth them out. Her hands, Alice noted, were of such thin bone they looked as if they could snap.

“I heard all the fuss this morning,” she said finally. “I hope Father and Samuel are careful. I don’t see why they had to rush up to Lowell anyway.”

“Even though someone who works for them was badly injured?” Alice said. She tightened her fingers, cradling the cameo under the edge of the tablecloth.

Daisy looked at her as if she were a child who had spoken up inappropriately. “That’s rather a rude thing to say,” she said. She swiveled slightly as a servant hurried in, carrying a glass of cider, which he put in front of her. “I want toast this morning, lightly buttered,” she ordered. The servant nodded, then disappeared.

“Daisy, where are your manners? What about coffee and toast for Miss Barrow?” Gertrude picked up a tiny bell from the table and jingled it. Immediately the servant reappeared and began pouring coffee for Alice. She declined the novelty of toasted bread.

Daisy stared at her grandmother and blinked. “I assumed she was leaving soon,” she said.

“Well, she isn’t; your father’s orders. So dismount from your high horse and be polite.”