A Drowned Maiden's Hair (2 page)

“I am,” argued Maud. “Ask Miss Kitteridge.”

The lady drummed one set of gloved forefingers against the back of her other hand. “And what is your name?”

“Maud Mary Flynn,” said Maud, baffled by the way the lady flew from subject to subject.

“And you’re eleven years old?”

“I told you I was,” flashed back Maud.

The lady startled her by laughing. Her laughter had the same musical quality as her voice. Halfway through the laugh, one gloved hand pinched Maud’s chin, tilting her face upward. Maud flinched, though the touch was soft. She caught a whiff of violets.

“You sing very prettily, Maud Mary Flynn.”

“Thank you,” said Maud, with dignity. She had always suspected that her voice was good, though no one had told her so. She glanced over her shoulder at the schoolroom window. If Miss Clarke looked out and saw her, she would be in trouble.

“Poor child!” The strange lady had changed again; now her voice was tender, with only a faint hint of mockery. “Locked up in that nasty cold place without any coat! You ought to tell the teacher that the others locked you in.”

“She already knows,” said Maud. Once the words were out, she wished she could take them back.

“She knows and she didn’t stop them?”

Maud fished for a lie but was unable, on such short notice, to find one. “She was the one who locked me in.”

“Do you mean” — Hyacinth sounded indignant — “do you mean she locked you in there, with no coat, on purpose?”

Maud nodded.

“For what reason?”

Maud stole a glance at the lady’s face. “I was swinging my legs during class. My boots made a noise against the floor.”

“Is that all?” Hyacinth asked in disbelief. “How unjust! You poor little thing!”

Maud felt her eyes fill with tears. She knew that her bad behavior had not been limited to swinging her feet. She knew that she had all but forced Miss Clarke to punish her. And yet — under Hyacinth’s pitying eyes — she did feel like a poor little thing. It was an intensely pleasurable feeling — close to embarrassment, and yet agreeable. Speechless with surprise, she raised her face to the Hyacinth-lady, who reached out and stroked the salt water from her eyes. The gray gloves were soft as the skin of a peach.

“Maud Flynn!” Hyacinth bent down as if she were about to tell a secret. Her voice lowered to a thrilling whisper. “Maud Flynn, what if I were to take you away from this horrid place? What if you were to come home with me and my sister Judith and be our little girl?”

Maud’s eyes widened. “You’re Miss Hawthorne,” she exclaimed in a whisper. “You’re the ones —” She remembered in the nick of time that the Misses Hawthorne wanted a child of eight or nine years of age, and shut her mouth.

“Yes, I am Hyacinth Hawthorne,” agreed the stranger. “Would you like to come home with me? I promise Judith and I won’t shut you in the necessary-house. We haven’t one. Our house has all the modern improvements.”

Maud could not speak. She clutched the hand that was offered her and followed Hyacinth Hawthorne away from the outhouse.

T
he office of Miss Kitteridge, Superintendent of the Asylum, was a cramped room at the front of the brick building. Maud had been sent there whenever her behavior went beyond what Miss Clarke could tolerate, and she hated every inch of the room. She also hated Miss Kitteridge, who sat beneath an engraving of Jesus blessing the children of Judea. Under the picture was a woolen sampler, with the words “Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me” cross-stitched in red and black. When Maud was a little younger, she had thought that the caption referred to Miss Kitteridge: any child who came unto Miss Kitteridge, Maud figured, was bound to suffer.

Miss Kitteridge was a tall woman with a yellow pompadour and a deceptive air of fragility. Maud’s eyes darted over her and settled on the other woman in the room. The other Miss Hawthorne — her sister Judith, Maud supposed — appeared twenty years older than her sister. Her face was stern and her costume sober: a rich, red-brown silk — a good dress, Maud judged, but plain.

Miss Kitteridge sighed. Her sentences often began and ended with a sigh; she always spoke as if she were not quite strong enough to finish a whole thought. Maud was not misled by this. She knew Miss Kitteridge was not too weak to be cruel.

“A most respectable family,” said Miss Kitteridge, as if it were a complaint. She was speaking, then, of Polly Andrews. “I think you will find —”

“Judith,” interrupted Hyacinth, “I’ve found our little girl.”

She spoke serenely, as if she had no idea that she was breaking into the conversation. Maud felt the same peculiar weakness in her stomach that she felt when Hyacinth called her a poor little thing. She fitted one knee behind the other and curtsied to Judith Hawthorne. She knew her dress was wrinkled and her stockings were sagging. She wished she had thought to pull them up.

Judith Hawthorne turned to her sister. “Miss Kitteridge has been telling me that there are several little girls the right age for us —” she began, but Hyacinth interrupted a second time.

“But there is no need to see any of them,” she parried sweetly. “This is Maud, and she will do splendidly.”

Miss Kitteridge cleared her throat. “Maud is too old,” she said, fixing Maud with a baleful blue eye. “Maud is eleven. You specifically requested a child of eight.”

“Maud is perfect,” contradicted Hyacinth. “Look how tiny she is, Judith. And she has a lovely singing voice.”

Maud glanced anxiously at Judith. The older woman’s face was disapproving, though her disapproval was directed at Hyacinth rather than Maud. “Miss Kitteridge has gone to a considerable amount of trouble to prepare three other children —”

This time it was Miss Kitteridge who interrupted. “The other little girls are the right age,” she said plaintively. “You wanted a younger child.”

“That was before I met Maud,” countered Hyacinth.

“Of course, if you’ve taken one of your fancies to Maud, there is nothing more to be said,” stated Judith, who sounded, nevertheless, as if she thought a good deal more might be said.

Miss Kitteridge looked baffled. Maud could read her thoughts: it was beyond her wildest imaginings that anyone might take a fancy to Maud Flynn. Maud was not pretty; her manners were pert and displeasing; even her posture suggested what Miss Clarke called “sauce.” Maud almost sympathized with Miss Kitteridge: she was baffled herself.

“Maud Flynn is not suitable,” Miss Kitteridge said. Her nostrils twitched as if she were smelling something nasty. “Even if you wanted an older child, I would not recommend her.”

“Why not?” demanded Hyacinth.

Maud’s heart sank.

Miss Kitteridge did not answer at once. She straightened the papers that lay before her. Then she glanced at Maud, and the corners of her lips tightened maliciously. “Maud Flynn is a troublemaker,” she said. “She has no respect for her elders. She is conceited and untruthful.” She tapped the edges of the paper together. “She makes up boastful stories and tells them to the other girls. She shirks her share of the chores. I would like” — her voice changed from disapproving to mournful — “to state that every child in the Barbary Asylum is a credit to the institution, but I cannot speak well of Maud Flynn.”

Maud clenched her teeth and lifted her head. She had never hated Miss Kitteridge more. She stared at the sampler, willing herself not to cry. The black crosses turned to blots.

“You seem very certain.” It was Judith Hawthorne who spoke, and her voice was dry. Maud pricked up her ears. Something in the way those four words were spoken gave her hope. Judith Hawthorne did not like Miss Kitteridge telling her what to do.

“Poor Maud!” said Hyacinth. She sounded amused, as if none of what Miss Kitteridge said was of any importance. “Are you really such a wicked little thing?”

Maud looked at her bleakly. All at once she found her tongue. “If you took me,” she said desperately, “I wouldn’t be. I’d be different. I’d do anything you told me. I’d be grateful.”

Judith Hawthorne made an odd noise. Her hand went out as if to brush aside Maud’s promise.

“Did you hear that, Miss Kitteridge?” said Hyacinth. “Maud has promised to be a good girl. I believe her, don’t you, Judith?”

“Hyacinth,” said Judith warningly.

“We’ll take her,” announced Hyacinth. “Won’t we, Judith?”

The elder Miss Hawthorne turned to Miss Kitteridge. “Draw up the papers,” she commanded. “We appreciate your advice, but we prefer to be guided by our own judgment.”

“What a dreadful woman!” exclaimed Hyacinth as the carriage from the livery stable drew away from the Asylum.

Maud was so startled that she burst out laughing. Her laughter sounded overloud, and she clapped her hands over her mouth. Her heart was singing. She was going away. She was going home. And Hyacinth Hawthorne was taking her: Hyacinth, who was unlike anyone Maud had ever met. What other grown-up would criticize the Superintendent in front of a child? One of the most detestable things about grown-ups, Maud felt, was the way they took up for one another. Even the nicer ones did it — as if a child, any child, required a whole army of grown-ups to subdue it.

“Hyacinth,” said Judith repressively.

“But she is,” insisted Hyacinth. Her voice was still tremulous with laughter. “All that tatty crocheted lace.”

Greatly to Maud’s amazement, Judith nodded.

“A tiresome woman,” she conceded, “but all the same —” She jerked her head toward Maud.

Maud picked up the cue. “I ought to respect her.” She fished in her memory for a moral sentiment and found one. “The Asylum gave me a roof over my head and clothes to wear.” The words had been drummed into her so many times that she could parrot them exactly.

“But such frightful clothes!” Hyacinth shook her head at Maud’s houndstooth check. “I never saw such an ugly dress in my life. She simply must have new ones, Judith.”

“We’ll stop in town and buy her ready-made ones,” said Judith, “and perhaps stop at a tearoom. It’s past noon. No doubt the child is hungry.”

“She’d like an ice-cream soda, I imagine,” suggested Hyacinth.

Maud felt a surge of rapture. An ice-cream soda. Ready-made dresses. A home with modern improvements. She saw herself as a new person: a blissful, pampered, graceful little girl, the sort of child whom adults petted and adored. She would be good. She would be very good; she would say yes ma’am and no ma’am, and while she was being good, she would wear pink and white dresses and drink ice-cream sodas. She was so happy she wanted to jump up and down and drum her heels against the floor of the carriage. She contented herself with sitting up very straight, linking her fingers, and turning her hands inside out. It was the best day of her life. The carriage was taking her away. And all at once, as it turned from the drive to the road, Maud felt an unwelcome and wholly genuine pang of sorrow for Polly, Millicent, and Irma.

T
wo hours later, Maud stood before the mirror of a department store.

She could scarcely believe her good fortune. On the counter beside her was a mounting pile of clothes: new stockings and petticoats and drawers and nightgowns. A saleslady in a starched shirtwaist was wrapping them up in tissue paper so that they could be sent to Maud’s new home. Ladies like the Hawthorne sisters did not walk through the streets carrying armfuls of packages.

“That green suits her,” pronounced Hyacinth. “Then the rosebud print and perhaps the yellow stripe?”

“She ought to have something warmer,” argued the elder Miss Hawthorne. “It’s drafty on the third floor, and it’ll be chilly for some weeks yet.”

Maud gazed into the mirror. Her reflection startled her. The bright glass reflected the splendid carnival of goods around her: the transparent countertops, the dazzling lights, the cabinets full of linens and cottons and silks. The green sailor suit, with its sharp pleats and crisp tie, belonged to that fascinating world. Only Maud looked out of place. Her bootlaces had been knotted together in three places, and her red flannel petticoat sagged on one side. Even her face was wrong. Maud had made up her mind that this was the best day of her life, but the girl in the mirror had a queer strained look on her face: a look divided between a grin and the grimace that comes before tears.