The Daring Ladies of Lowell (26 page)

Y
es, it was Samuel, waiting at the top of the courthouse steps. She saw him standing there, quite still, from a distance down the road as she walked. There was a bite to the morning air, and she inhaled a lungful, quickening her step. There were few people around yet.

He had seen her now. She kept walking, but it wasn’t his gaze drawing her; it was her own resolve. If one of the few strengths available to her was pride, she had it. It was strong inside her, and none of them, not the judges sitting up there looking lofty, not the jurors scratching their heads and yawning, not the befuddled or malevolent witnesses, not the deacon’s wife stepping back from the contamination of a mill girl or Samuel himself, could destroy it.

She paused at the foot of the stairs, shoulders straight; then climbed.

“I can’t leave it where we were,” he said. His eyes were strained, lined in red, his skin pale. “It’s not enough.”

“It has to be,” she said. “You made it clear you were not willing to challenge your father for what you know is the right thing to do. You’ve confirmed the Fiskes will protect their own. There’s really nowhere to go after that.”

“I made it very clear my father runs the family like a corporation. Don’t dismiss me so quickly, Alice. I have things I need to say to you. You can march away from me, and I will respect that, but I’m not giving up without a fight.”

She looked at him warily. “What do you want?”

“I want common ground for us both. Honesty. At least a search for it.”

She seemed poised to run, chin up, eyes wide. It wasn’t fear that he saw, he realized. It was defense against all that would hold her back, all that diminished her. And it was that valor of spirit that had drawn him to her in the first place. He loved this woman; he knew he did. But he couldn’t say that to her, not yet. “Love” was too facile, too easy an emotion, and he would fight for more.

Common ground? What a strange concept. Alice gazed at him sadly. Perhaps she had seen more strength of character in this man than he possessed. Perhaps she had built a fantasy that few could live up to. She knew now her true loyalties. They had to be to her own kind.

“I don’t think we’ll find it, Samuel, that’s telling you true,” she said.

“Could we talk—on the bench by the bridge to the mill? Tonight?”

She took a deep breath, hesitating. This wasn’t just about the two of them anymore. And it wasn’t just about Lovey, either. It was about his family’s power to deny justice to all who worked for them, whenever they so chose.

“I can’t force a man to testify, whether it’s my brother or a chicken farmer,” Samuel said. “But I will do all I can to get a guilty verdict out of this trial.”

Words, just words. He would exert no power at all, not in defiance of his father. But she nodded. “Before dinner. I’ll be there,” she said, then turned away and hurried off, already troubled by her decision. She had bent his way; she was still attracted. She could not break free.

Just as Hattie had predicted.

I
t was another deliberate and tedious day. Mason set about the systematic process of casting doubt on the testimony of as many government witnesses as possible, putting people on the stand armed with often-laughable contradictions. They included half a dozen men of the cloth who attested to seeing the Reverend Avery in a small tent at a Methodist prayer meeting. Each reported seeing him at precisely the same time in precisely the same place, and therefore he could have been nowhere near the site of the murder. Even the jurors were grinning at about the sixth witness—everyone spoke from an identical script.

It didn’t matter anymore whether testimony hurt or helped the case against Avery; it was entertainment.

At one point, Greene threw up his hands in disgust. “Your Honor, my esteemed colleague for the defense is throwing in every fragment of half-truth he can find, doing his best to keep the focus off the basics of this trial. Ephraim Avery had the motive and opportunity to commit this crime, and
there are letters to prove he had a relationship with this woman and had tricked her into meeting him in an isolated spot in order to kill her.
”

“Objection!” yelled a furious Mason. “The prosecution has rested and cannot push again for new evidence!”

“You had your say, Mr. Greene,” the judge said wearily. “Court will convene tomorrow. We will move to closing arguments.” He looked as distracted as the members of the jury now pushing and stumbling their way out of the jury box, most probably in search of a pint or two before dinner.

I
t was growing late when Alice began trudging home, hurrying to make it to her meeting with Samuel. She felt more weary than on the days when she tended up to six looms for a full shift. Mostly, she felt sad.

Nothing was ever going to be fine. Tilda had asked if she loved Samuel, but there was no way to answer that, not given the impossibility of separating out her feelings for him from what he represented. If Lovey were here right now, they could talk about it. She would understand the contradictions. The truth of it suddenly twisted her stomach: losing her friend had meant nothing less than losing a bridge to her own heart.

No, she couldn’t erase Samuel from her mind, not instantly, but time would do it for her. And yet the very fact that she had agreed to this meeting proved he stirred her like no man ever had before. Maybe, she thought, I am the hypocrite Hattie Button thinks I am.

She approached the playground, pausing for a moment to watch the children in the soft spring twilight. The little rocking horse had been freshened with a coat of red paint, and a small boy, laughing, rocked away without a care. How short, that time of happy, uncomplicated joy. Children should have some warning, some way of knowing it was dangerous to look out at the world with unguarded pleasure. But who would want to tell them, to deprive them of those few moments of blissful ignorance that would have to last a lifetime?

Alice shrugged her shoulders, trying to shake off her gloom. What was she doing, inviting sadness every time she saw a happy child? She hurried past the playground, wincing slightly each time a small, sharp rock pushed too far into the thin soles of her aging shoes, pulling her shawl close as she walked. Her thoughts felt like fragments of a puzzle, pieces scattered everywhere.

She stopped. Coughing—she heard coughing.

She glanced over to a cluster of bushes just off the road and saw a seated woman crouched tight, head down, hand to mouth, trying to muffle the sound.

“Who are you?” she said, stepping closer.

The woman’s head lifted. “You,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Of all people, you.”

It was Hattie Button. Alice hurried over and dropped to her knees.

“Leave me alone,” Hattie panted.

“You’re sick.”

“No business of yours.”

Hattie began to cough again, heaving deeply. Alice tried to steady her, wincing at the feel of her narrow rib cage. The girl twisted and struggled, but they both knew what had to happen next. The cotton had to come up. Alice glanced back at the road; no one was there, and it was too far to the boardinghouse to shout for help.

Hattie began to weep. She coughed deeper, harder. Alice held on. Finally, it came. A large mass, but more. Alice shivered, trying to turn Hattie’s head so she wouldn’t see. A clot of blood as big as the cotton ball had followed.

Hattie went limp.

“What are you doing here?” Alice said. “You need help—why are you outside?”

Hattie nodded in the direction of her old bandbox—now with a broken handle—under the tree. “I’ve been trying to leave, but I can’t go far.”

“Where have you been since the funeral?”

Hattie tried to pull away. “I don’t have to tell you.”

“Well, you can’t stay out here. I’ll take you home for tonight.”

“No! Everybody there hates me. Just leave me alone.”

Alice looked at her with frustration. She couldn’t leave her here. “Hattie, where have you been staying?”

“I’m afraid I’ll get him in trouble,” Hattie said, crying again.

“Who?”

“Oh, what’s the use? Dr. Stanhope. Don’t tell the others.”

Alice stood, pulling Hattie up as gently as possible. “I’m taking you back to the surgery,” she said. Slowly, struggling under the unexpectedly heavy weight of the sick girl, Alice made her way back toward town.

B
enjamin Stanhope’s eyes showed instant relief as he opened the door and saw them both. “I didn’t think she’d get very far,” he murmured.

He took over the burden of carrying Hattie, leading her into an anteroom, where there was a cot with a pillow and a blanket folded at the foot of the bed.

“She’s been here since Tilda’s funeral?” Alice asked.

“They let her go, you know that. She had no money, and she was sick. What was I supposed to do? Leave her out in the woods to die?”

His tone was almost belligerent, and Alice was startled.

Hattie lay down and closed her eyes. “I saw the blood,” she said.

“I
can’t take this anymore,” Benjamin Stanhope said quietly after he and Alice walked out of the room, closing the door so Hattie could sleep. “Please stay for a moment. I’ve fixed some tea.”

She glanced out the window; shadows were lengthening.

“For a moment,” she said.

They were sitting down now, across from each other. He dropped his head into his hands. “There are too many girls getting sick,” he said.

“How did Hattie come to you?”

Only in desperation, he said. Her revivalist friends had shunned her, with some whispering that if she spied for one side, she’d probably spy for the other. And who needed a sick mill girl?

“You were good to help her,” Alice said.

“I have to ask you not to say anything. I’m not supposed to treat any but those who work for the Fiskes.” He raised his head. “She has a sister who is coming to take her tomorrow morning. She was determined to leave on her own. Now she knows she cannot.”

Alice stood, reaching out her hand. “I’ll say nothing,” she promised.

“I want those mill windows kept open; that’s what Samuel Fiske promised. All of them.” Stanhope’s voice was abruptly harsh.