The Daring Ladies of Lowell (31 page)

Alice shook her head. “No, and I don’t expect to.”

“Neither have I,” Daisy said with a sigh. “I do miss him. Father won’t allow his name to be spoken in the house.” Then, with a hint of disapproval, “You did cause quite a disruption, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He’s in Baltimore, he sent Grandma a postcard, by the way. Look at what he had to offer you. Weren’t you tempted?”

Yes, she thought.

“I think we both did what we had to do,” Alice said.

“Oh, well, probably,” Daisy said in a half-regretful tone.

Baltimore—he was in Baltimore. She had no clue as to how to imagine his life.

“My grandmother is very ill,” Daisy said abruptly.

“Oh, Daisy, I’m sorry,” said Alice. She felt a pang of sadness, remembering the spirited Gertrude Fiske.

“Samuel was always her favorite, but she loves me, too. And Jonathan. I do wish I hadn’t dismissed her so much.” Daisy’s eyes were filling.

“Is she dying?”

“I don’t know, but her face is as pale as milk.” Tears now were trickling slowly down her face. “Someone has to tell Samuel. Father is too proud to budge. We don’t know how to reach him. That’s why I asked.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”

“That’s all right,” sighed Daisy. “I’ll just have to ask that loathsome Lydia Corland. She loves to remind me now and then that she and Samuel keep in touch.”

Alice felt a sharp pang but said nothing.

“I
think Daisy still wonders if I’ve heard from her brother, even though I’ve told her I haven’t,” Alice said to Benjamin Stanhope one evening as she worked on the bust. It sat over a heavy wad of newspapers on the top of a packing box, a perfect place, easy to pull into a closet when a patient came by. Her fingernails were thick with clay as she pushed and shaped. She couldn’t get this man’s face—the features were all there but something was missing. He managed always to hold something back, which was irritating.

“It goes both ways, I imagine,” he said.

She looked at him, puzzled. “What does?”

“He hasn’t heard from you, either.”

“Oh no, not you, too?” she said with a twinge of impatience. “We have had no contact for a year.”

Stanhope answered slowly, barely moving a muscle. “I do wonder why not,” he said simply.

Alice pushed her thumb into the hollow crevice beneath the molded clay of the cheekbones, frowning, experimenting; gaining time in the silence that followed. “You’re wondering why I sent him away in the first place?” she asked.

“I know how shocked you were by the verdict.”

“It is some comfort knowing that Avery will never walk safely in Lowell again. People will not forget.”

“So we leave Avery to history. And I know you wanted to stand with the rest of us for reform. But after that?”

Her thumb dug deeper. “He didn’t fight hard enough to get his brother on the stand. He buckled under to his father.”

“From what I know, he did all he could.”

She looked up. “What are you talking about?”

“He tried to get Albert Greene to stand up to your father. He even hunted up the chicken farmer who saw them and tried to get him to come forward.”

“He never told me that.”

“Why would he? He failed.”

“But he tried.”

“Perhaps he didn’t think that would mean enough to you.”

There was a momentary silence.

“I’m supposed to be the timid one, Miss Barrow. Might you not share some of that trait?”

His directness jolted her. “Well, I couldn’t see myself living the kind of life Gertrude Fiske does,” she said quickly. “It’s so—caged.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t feel it’s a cage,” Stanhope said.

“But I think she knows it is, and I saw how she was tolerated, and she had the most wit and intelligence of them all.” She tried to explain, poking at the clay. The cheekbones were improperly aligned, threatening to ruin the shape.

“Do you think Samuel Fiske would have put you in a cage?”

She waited a long time before replying. “Not on purpose,” she said.

“A lack of trust, not a good thing.”

It was too hard to explain. Oh, she could still conjure up fantasies of what it would have been like to marry Samuel and live amid the luxuries of the Fiske mansion. She could place herself there, sleeping under the softest sheets, wearing silk, with Samuel next to her, the warmth of his arms around her. She could imagine telling him, from the depths of her heart, that she loved him. She could lie awake at night and wonder. But in the light of day, she knew the Fiske mansion would never have been a home for her. Those were not her ancestors lining the walls; that was not her world. Samuel would have finally realized the truth and drawn away.

And, feeling the soft texture of the clay beneath her fingers, she took comfort in the fact that she was doing what she wanted to do. Later, there would be hot soup at Boott Hall, a blazing fireplace, a friend playing the piano—even here, at Stanhope’s surgery, there was a rhythm and peaceful continuity to work in a casing of gleaming white drawers and cupboards housing knives and needles and potions; grief and healing. All of this was her world, surely, where she could learn. She thought of her notebooks, filled with scribbled material from the Lyceum lectures she had attended this year. Fifty cents well spent, and she hadn’t missed a one. Learning, she decided, was a form of saving, too. Theologians, not just ranting preachers; philosophers and writers like Charles Dickens and even the famous frontiersman Davy Crockett. And musicians—which might surprise the elegant Miss Lydia Corland.

So why was she crying? She wiped at her eyes with a rag, leaving a smear of clay on her forehead.

“You miss him,” said Stanhope.

“I like my life now,” she said. “I don’t need it to change.”

“But it is changing,” Benjamin Stanhope said. “None of us can hold things where we want them to be. It is all slipping and changing, Alice.”

“Well, that’s quite profound.” She picked up another cloth and began to clean her tools. Maybe that was why she couldn’t quite capture this man’s face. She stole a glance. It wasn’t just that his eyelids were heavier and more weathered than before; it was a new sorrowing in his eyes. Or, perhaps, a stoic acceptance. Something, indeed, she had missed. A feeling of surprise—he was right. He was changing before her eyes, and she hadn’t noticed.

“I’m glad we are friends,” she said impulsively.

“So am I.”

That was all. She worked on, the two of them in complete and comfortable silence.

I
t was dark out by the time Alice returned to Boott Hall. She opened the door of the boardinghouse, stepping back in surprise.

“You are so brave!” Ellie shouted, jumping gleefully around the room.

Mary-o was laughing, rushing forward to hug her. “Oh, there’ll be trouble now, but who cares?”

“What are you talking about?” Then she saw—the girls had strung a clothesline across the parlor and, with clothespins, attached two pages torn out of
The Lowell Offering.

“Oh, my goodness, I forgot it came out today,” Alice said.

“Maybe we’ll all get fired,” Ellie said with a toss of her pigtails. “Then I can lead the turnout, right, Mother?”

Instead of paling and clutching her daughter, Delia tossed back her hair, fully grown out and once again a richly burnished red, and said, almost to herself, “I teach Ellie her lessons. Why couldn’t I teach in a school? That’s what I’m thinking.”

And through all the excitement and laughter, thrilled by the sight of her own words in print, her own name signed on the last page, Alice knew that—whatever else happened—she could not and would not live life in small spoonfuls. The pain had not disappeared; it was simply banked, and perhaps that wouldn’t change. But once in a while, she could dream of the man she had sent away.

A
few weeks later, Samuel leaned forward, peering out through the window of the carriage, catching his first glimpse of the Fiske home in more than a year. Looming high on the hill, it almost blocked the light. He had forgotten—or had never fully realized—how imposing it was. He wondered what Alice had felt the first time a carriage drew her up to the massive doors of this place, that day long past when she had entered his life.

“Your parents are not at home at the moment,” a servant whispered quickly, looking right and left. “Your grandmother is in her usual room.”

The tightly controlled atmosphere made him sad. He was used to the vibrant casualness of Baltimore, and quite absorbed in his small law practice, but to be treated as a visitor in what had long been home was to realize how distance could be measured by much more than miles.

He hurried up the plushly carpeted crimson stairs, barely seeing the oil paintings of the long-dead Fiske ancestors framed in gold that lined the staircase. As a child, he was told that they were the people of character he must emulate. But they had always seemed a brooding bunch. Once he had stared long and hard at the painting of his grandfather—imagining what it would be like to talk to him—and decided he didn’t like the coldly flat blue eyes that seemed to follow him up the stairs every day. Now they had no power.

It was Daisy who opened the door to Gertrude’s spacious room on the third floor. “You came,” his sister said, relieved. “I knew you would, she wants you. Oh, it is so good to see you.” Together they approached a huge four-poster bed sitting squarely in the center of the room, a grand piece of furniture that had set Gertrude laughing uncontrollably when it was first installed for her. “If I’ve disappeared some morning, send a posse to shake out the bed,” she had said. “I’ll be lost somewhere in the feathers.” Hiram had not been pleased.

“Is it my Samuel? Lord, I’ve seen everyone else, it had better be you.” Gertrude Fiske’s voice was weak but clear.

“It is.” Samuel drew a chair up to the bed and grasped his grandmother’s hand.

“I’m not going to have a lot of deathbed instructions, and I don’t want to waste time on lamentations; the truth is, I’m dying, and it’s about time.”

Gertrude’s hair was covered in a lace cap, which—even though her corkscrew curls popped out here and there—made her appear smaller than she was. But the light in her eyes was the same as ever. “All right. No lamentations,” Samuel said, trying to keep his voice steady. “At least none in front of you.”

“All this fuss about where you’d go, isn’t it funny? I knew all along you would head for Baltimore, but Daisy was the first to ask me. That’s where I sang in the saloon.”

“Why do you think I chose it?” he said tenderly.

“What happened to Alice?”

She was clearly not wasting any time. “We said good-bye a year ago; we’ve had no contact. She told me she could never see me again. And I have been exchanging letters with Lydia Corland.” The words sat awkwardly on his tongue, even as his pulse quickened at the sound of Alice’s name.

“Yes, I’ve heard about Lydia. She’s had her eye on you for a long time. You do know she’ll try to pull you back under the Boston umbrella, don’t you?” Gertrude said. She lay quietly for a moment, her breathing labored. “Young people are such idiots,” she finally sighed. “Why in heaven’s name don’t you try again?”

Even his grandmother wouldn’t understand. “It’s just not—”

Gertrude cut him off. “Samuel, don’t continue to punish yourself.” She paused, out of breath, then continued, “Hiram should have let your brother testify; now the boy will live with the shame of that choice. And you are living with the unjustified blame.”

All these months gone by; a new life, breaking ties, a knitting of frayed edges, accepting losses. And here was his grandmother, tearing it open again.

Gertrude freed her hand and waved it in the direction of a desk by the window. “Daisy dear, get that magazine and show it to your brother.”

Daisy quickly picked it up and brought it to Samuel. He stared at it: the latest issue, it appeared, of
The Lowell Offering.

“Page thirty,” Daisy said, with a hint of excitement in her eyes.

He flipped quickly through the pages and stopped at the sight of Alice’s name. There was silence as he read.

“What’s your reaction, Samuel?” said Gertrude Fiske.

“I’m proud of her,” he said. More than that, he was fiercely, fully proud of her, so much so he ached inside.

“That’s what I was hoping you would say.”

“Father is angry,” ventured Daisy. “Says Alice is just stirring things up again.”

“He keeps thinking the fires are banked, but they won’t be for long. A few years, maybe,” Samuel said.

Gertrude sighed. “My poor Hiram has lost his way.” She grabbed Samuel’s hand. “But you haven’t,” she said. “And neither has she.”

Puzzled, Samuel glanced at Daisy.

“Alice was here to see her,” Daisy explained. She paused at the surprise in her brother’s eyes. “They are somewhat alike, you know,” she said.

T
wo nights later, the town was still in a fuss over her piece in
The Lowell Offering.
Alice, as was her habit now, walked by herself down to the playground after dark, enjoying the stillness. Swaying gently on the swing was peaceful. No voices, no clatter of machinery, no whispers around the mill, no glances—some hostile, some admiring—as news of her piece had spread about town. In the boardinghouses, she suspected, the talk would be a mix of fear and admiration, but, strangely, she didn’t care. Benjamin Stanhope had said only that it might have been wise to use a pseudonym, which was his automatic protective stance, and it would never change. His cautious heart always prevailed.

She pushed the swing higher, looking up at a brilliant display of stars, remembering the swing she had fashioned as a child with a piece of board and a rope. Swinging high and daringly over the lip of the cliff and back again. She felt she could almost reach those stars tonight—yet what she truly wanted was for one to come partway and reach for her.

A sound behind her. A footstep crunching over dry leaves. Alarmed, she swiftly turned around.

“Alice,” he said.

His face seemed thinner somehow, his cheekbones carved more sharply. A man so familiar, and yet a stranger. Changed. Their gazes caught and held, and everything between them hovered in the air, looking for ground. All that she was, all that he was—the pieces floated as he reached out his hand and stopped the swing. She stood, turning toward him. He was back, he was back.