The Furies (41 page)

She writhed on the carriage seat, cursing so floridly that the driver opened the sliding partition behind his feet to see what was wrong.

At her own hotel, Rose Ludwig brought Amanda up to her suite while she rid herself of the hated muslin petticoat with its four steel hoops sewn into the fabric. Amanda, who had thus far relied on stiff petticoat material to give her skirt the fashionable bell shape, inspected the hoops with interest. The style was coming into fashion.

End to end, the hoop at the top of the skirt measured about a yard and a quarter, she guessed. It was a complete circle of steel. The three lower hoops, increasingly longer, didn’t meet in front; there was an opening of about ten inches in each.

“No matter how carefully you walk,” Rose called from the bedroom, “they jab the hell out of your thighs. I’d be in a fix if I was young enough so a man would want to look at my thighs—”

She appeared in the doorway in a costume that brought a gasp to Amanda’s lips: a jacket and knee-length skirt in cerulean blue and, underneath, men’s trousers of the same material, gathered at the ankle.

“But I’m not supposed to say a word like thighs, am I? Women don’t have
thighs, breasts, stomachs
—or some other anatomical features I’d be ostracized for mentioning—Amanda my dear, why are you staring?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve never seen real bloomers before. Those
are
bloomers?”

“Copied after the very ones worn by Amelia Bloomer herself. I don’t dare put them on in New York as yet, though I predict they’ll be popular in less than a year, no matter how the churches howl about immodesty. I hope I won’t be barred from the dining room at the American House—”

She almost was. The head waiter frantically clenched his teeth and darted his eyes from the bloomers to the turned heads of scandalized guests. Amanda tipped the man heavily to overcome his moral scruples and, with Louis in tow, she and Rose sailed toward their table. They did grant the head waiter a little amnesty by permitting him to seat them in a corner. The position of the table hid the lower part of Rose’s costume from most of the room.

Rose Ludwig’s presence had one additional benefit. Louis was overwhelmed by his mother’s new friend. He was more polite and biddable than he’d been for several weeks.

As the three sat finishing their dessert ices, Amanda concluded her considerably censored account of the circumstances that had brought her to Boston. She had told Rose of her family connection with the printing firm, and won her promise of secrecy. But she implied the firm had first changed hands in a normal manner. Rose looked surprised.

“Theo’s always said there was some scandalous story about it being lost in a gambling game.”

“I don’t know how fictions like that get started,” Amanda replied, concentrating on her ice. She felt the other woman studying her. Did Rose believe her? If not, she didn’t make an issue.

“We certainly have a lot in common, Amanda. We both had rough beginnings. Fortunately, once I snared Adolph, my way was smoothed. Though it wasn’t all pie and roses! I immediately had entree to the best homes. You’ll be spared that tribulation.”

“What do you mean?”

“You won’t have to mingle with all those dreadfully self-important people. You
don’t
have any notions about cracking society, do you?”

“No. You heard what I told Theo Payne—I’m moving to New York because it’s the business center.”

“Good. Then you won’t be disappointed. Really, you’d be amazed at the number of Ohio widows who remove themselves to New York with a little capital, thinking they’ll soon be dining with the Rensselaers and the Belmonts and the Vanderbilts. Society has closed up like a clam in the last twenty or thirty years. Today you’re either born into it, you marry into it—or you wait a generation before you get your first invitation to tea with Mrs. Belmont. Some poor creatures foolishly try to shorten the wait—”

And she launched into an anecdote about one such parvenu, a young woman who learned that New York gentry frequently rode on a certain bridle path above Forty-second Street early in the morning. Though terrified of horses, the young woman contrived a system of straps to keep herself lashed to her saddle. She made herself visible on the bridle path, where she attempted to strike up conversations with affluent bachelors.

“Now God as my witness—this is true, Amanda. One morning a thundershower struck. The horse reared and the young lady was dumped on her ass—excuse me, Louis, derriere—with all her hidden straps, and her pretensions, exposed. She left the city a week later.”

Amanda laughed. “I don’t want to meet any bachelors, Rose. Or any society people, for that matter.”

Except one.

“Good for you.” She leaned her elbows on the snowy tablecloth and pointed a finger at Amanda’s nose. “You did promise to tell me what you know about frontiersmen. I’m sure Theo loathes the idea, but I’m convinced the public’s ready for a rousing western tale.”

“I’ll tell you everything I can.”

“Wonderful! Why don’t we travel to New York together?”

“I’d love that. As soon as we arrive, I want you to show me where to buy a pair of bloomers.”

“Delighted. You’ll forgive an old lady for being sentimental, but I think we’re going to be the best of friends. Friendship’s a rare commodity—I have hundreds of acquaintances, but I’ll bet I’ve had no more than two real friends all my life. No, three—I considered Adolph a friend. It’s much more comfortable being married to a friend than to a lover, you know. I like you, Amanda—”

She reached across and touched Louis’ dark hair.

“And I like your son. My God, with those eyes, he’ll be breaking hearts in a few years. If I weren’t such a tottering wreck—oh, well.” A sigh. “Are you two finished? I’m about to perish for want of a cigar. Bad vice I picked up from Adolph. He smoked them even in the bath. Have you ever looked at a tub full of floating ash? Ugh!”

As they left the dining room, still drawing shocked stares and comments, Amanda was immensely pleased. At long last, it seemed that events were moving in response to her will, instead of at the random whim of chance. Before the year was out, she’d be well established in New York—

With Kent and Son in her possession.

Two mornings later, a grim Joshua Rothman called at Amanda’s suite in the American House. She was in the midst of packing, with trunks open everywhere.

“Mrs. de la Gura, what did you say when you visited the publishing company?”

She looked chagrined. “A little more than I should have, perhaps—”

“That became evident first thing this morning.”

Amanda set aside the skirt she’d been about to fold into one of the trunks. “What do you mean?”

Upset, Rothman stamped to the windows. “A banker can be of no use to you if you refuse to follow his suggestions!” He spun around. “You made some remarks about getting rid of a certain anti-Catholic title on the Kent list? Some other comments about wanting to publish an autobiography by a runaway slave—?”

“What if I did? I got angry at what I saw at Kent’s—the decay—the indifference—besides, I only spoke to the general manager, Mr. Payne. In private. He promised not to repeat a word.”

Rothman leaned across the top of a trunk. “Theo Payne is a notorious drunk! An excellent brain—but a loose tongue when he imbibes. And he imbibes constantly.”

A little knot of dread tightened in Amanda’s stomach. “I—I did catch some hint of that,” she admitted.

“Did you also meet a gentleman named Drew?”

“Briefly.”

“Mr. Stovall’s informant within the firm. After you left, Payne was so delighted, he spent all afternoon in an alehouse, celebrating. As I get the story, he returned late in the day, barely able to walk, and boasted to the entire staff about all the changes you intended to make. The
entire
staff—including Mr. Drew. You should have stayed away—I warned you. More important, you should have avoided political subjects at all costs—that, I didn’t warn you of specifically. So we’re both paying for it.”

“Get to the point, Joshua.”

“This morning, Stovall’s attorneys wired from New York. The negotiations have been broken off. Permanently.”

“Oh my God.”

“It’s my error for not telling you Stovall’s an active member of the Know-Nothings—”

“No, don’t blame yourself. I was aware of it.”

“Then how could you imagine he’d sell out to someone who plans to turn Kent and Son a hundred and eighty degrees politically?” Rothman sighed. “I’m sorry—it’s not my position to speak so frankly—it’s just that I know how much you want the company—”

“I didn’t stop to think about the danger in Payne’s drinking. The blame’s mine, Joshua. I accept it.”

“That won’t make Stovall relent, I’m afraid.”

“If we can’t buy the firm straightforwardly, we’ll have to get control some other way.”

Thunderstruck, he stared at her.

“Are you serious?”

“I am. This is a setback, nothing more—”

But she felt it much more deeply than the words suggested. She hadn’t been all that outspoken at the firm—yet she
had
realized she shouldn’t be speaking. Her anger had overcome caution.

Stovall’s immediate reaction to her comments spoke volumes about the sort of man he was, the sort her grandfather would have detested—

In a calm voice, she resumed. “I’m sorry you’ve labored so hard, only to have my carelessness undo your efforts.” She touched his arm. “I’ll see you’re well compensated when we finally get control.”

“Mrs. de la Gura, I really think you’d be wiser to abandon any hope of—”

“No,” she said, “I won’t.”

“I can see no open, legal means of—”

“Then we’ll do it secretly if we have to! Illegally! One way or another, Joshua, I
am going to own Kent’s.
”

S
OME SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER
—A Friday evening in February 1852—Amanda and Rose Ludwig were seated in a box at The Bowery Theatre, a structure already twenty-five years old but distinguished among New York’s playhouses because it had been the first to install gas.

The jets throughout most of the auditorium had been turned off for the meeting, which was being held in lieu of a performance of the Bowery’s current attraction. Together with the footlight candles, the gas fixtures flanking the proscenium opening illuminated the half dozen speakers seated behind the podium. The six were paying dutiful attention to the preacher addressing the three thousand people who had packed the main floor, the boxes and the galleries.

A few feet upstage from the half dozen chairs, a drop painted to represent a European drawing room added an incongruous note; the theatre management had declined to remove all the scenery for the comedy now playing six nights a week. But since the comedy was not particularly successful, the management had been happy to rent the theatre for an abolitionist rally.

The preacher, a Congregationalist, had been talking for twenty minutes. His function was the same as that of four of the men behind him—to lengthen the program and build anticipation for the featured address by Frederick Douglass. The guest of honor sat directly behind the podium, motionless and attentive.

Mr. Bryant, who was to introduce him, began consulting his note’s, conscious from the flow of adjectives that the cleric was reaching his conclusion. And so he did, with much arm waving and a shrill burst of oratory devoid of logic but long on heat. He called down divine damnation on the entire south—but drew only perfunctory applause from the restless crowd. They’d heard essentially the same message four times already.

An audible sigh ran through the dark theatre as the preacher sat down, mopping his forehead. William Cullen Bryant, the Massachusetts lawyer turned poet and journalist, straightened his two pages of notes and stood up. A hush settled on the hall. Amanda heard Rose murmur, “Finally! Old Horace has fallen asleep over there. So has my rear end.”

Gazing across the main floor to the front box on the far side, Amanda saw the publisher Greeley straighten up in his chair, roused by the applause that greeted Bryant’s arrival at the podium. She glanced to the box directly behind Greeley’s; it was still a puzzle. No one seemed to be occupying it, though every ticket for the meeting had been sold for weeks. If there were people in the box, they’d seated themselves quite far back, to avoid being seen.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Bryant began, “I shall be brief in my introduction—”

A raucous cry of approval rang down from the gallery. The audience laughed. Bryant smiled. He was in his late fifties, held the editor’s chair at the
New York Post
, and appeared tonight as one of the city’s most outspoken foes of slavery. In the national election of ’48, Bryant had been a member of the Barnburner faction that had split off from the Democratic Party, enraged because the party adopted a platform containing only one plank of substance: a vague endorsement of the conduct of the Mexican war. Out of the Barnburners—who had offered former president Van Buren to the electorate in ’48—had come the even more militant Free Soil party, ardent reformers unalterably opposed to the extension of slavery into any new United States territories.

But Bryant refrained from comments on the meeting’s theme, confining his remarks to a quick summary of the career of the man everyone had come to hear.

He touched on Douglass’ birth as a slave in Maryland, mentioned his early years in Baltimore, when, through the kindness of an enlightened master, Hugh Auld, he had been able to learn to read and write while serving as a houseboy and a laborer in Auld’s shipyard.

It was Auld’s death, Bryant reminded the audience, that had brought Douglass to St. Michaels, below Baltimore, and confrontation with another Auld, Thomas, who proved less liberal.

Douglass had already begun to feel resentment of his bondage. He was quarrelsome. Auld took steps to correct that. He hired out the young black to a noted slave breaker named Edward Covey.

Covey attempted to apply the whip once too often. Douglass turned on him, and fought. After the struggle, Covey, all but defeated, never again touched the Negro whose spirit he had been paid to destroy—