Blythewood (10 page)

And his sense of
entitlement
. He was acting as if he were the lord of the manner,
not an interloper. As he passed me on the stairs I heard him say,
low enough for only me to hear, “You should blush all the time;
it becomes you.”
Blushing all the more, I hurried up the stairs to Sarah and
Helen, who were too busy glaring at each other to notice my
discomfiture.
“Really, Helen, must you find the only male within a tenmile radius to throw yourself at? You’re as bad as your cousin
Sophronia.”
“I was not throwing myself at anyone, Lemon. It is not my
fault men find me attractive. Just because you’ll end up a
spinster—”
“I’d certainly rather be a spinster than married to a reprobate like Nathan Beckwith—”
“Gillie is male,” I interjected. Both girls stared as though
a piece of the furniture had spoken. “You said Mr. Beckwith
was the only male in a ten-mile radius,” I explained, “but there’s
Gilles Duffy.”
Helen tilted her head back, exposing a strong throat encircled by a pearl choker, and laughed. “I’m not even sure that Gillie is
human
, but your point is well taken. You must be Avaline.
We’re to share a room.” She extended a dainty gloved hand.
I hesitated. I could ignore what I’d heard Nathan Beckwith say, but then I’d always wonder. I’d already faced down
Georgiana Montmorency. If this girl was to be my roommate
I couldn’t start out by pretending I hadn’t heard what I’d heard.
“Avaline Hall,” I said, taking her hand. “It seems you’ve already
heard of my mother.”
Sarah made a strangled noise while Helen blushed. Her blue
eyes widened and she bit her lip. I was afraid I’d made another
enemy, but then she shook her head, blond curls trembling, and
grasped my hand in both of hers.
“I owe you an apology, Miss Hall. Nathan was passing on
a story he’d overheard from his mother. I should have told him
I wasn’t interested in gossip, but at least I can tell you that the
only thing he heard was that your mother disappeared once
while she was here.”
“Disappeared?” I repeated, my voice echoing shrilly in the
stairwell. Sarah put a finger to her lips to silence me and looked
anxiously around to see if anyone had overheard me. Then she
stepped closer to me and in a hushed voice said, “There have
been various disappearances over the years at Blythewood,
girls who have gone . . .
missing
. Now the stories have been revived because of this recent occurrence.”
“What recent occurrence?” I asked, recalling that it was the
same phrase Miss Sharp had used to Agnes after my interview.
“Do you mean a girl has gone missing?”
“Yes—,” Sarah began, but Helen interrupted.
“I’m sure she’s just run off. Who can blame her for fleeing
this place?” She shook her head, making the feathers on her
hat tremble like an agitated bird. “I’d rather disappear than be
trapped in this nunnery. Nor can you blame the poor inmates
here from making up stories to relieve the tedium. I would wager that most of the so-called missing girls are home enjoying
the season or on the grand tour.
“Anyway, I was just repeating what Nathan had asked me.
I answered him quite truthfully that I didn’t know anything
about your mother disappearing. So there, that’s the whole story.” She squared her slim shoulders as though she were facing
a firing squad. “You’ll find I have many”—she cast a sideways
glance at Sarah Lehman—“
many
faults, but flattery isn’t one
of them.”
Sarah made a strangled noise, as if she were repressing a
laugh. Helen was still looking at me, waiting for my reaction to
her confession.
“Thank you for telling me what he said,” I told her. “My
mother’s circumstances were difficult—” I caught a warning
look from Sarah and remembered what she had said about not
telling anyone about my background. I could well imagine what
Helen van Beek would say if I told her I had spent my youth
trimming hats like the one she was wearing or that I might very
well have stitched Sarah’s shirtwaist myself. “But she never told
me anything about disappearing from Blythewood.” Of course
there was a lot my mother never told me about her time at Blythewood, but I managed a reassuring smile to show Helen I forgave her for gossiping. Instantly her shoulders relaxed and her
face dimpled.
“Then you do forgive me!” she exclaimed. “Thank the Bells!
I’d hate to start the year out with an angry roommate. Come
along, we’ve got one more waiting upstairs for us.”
Helen gathered up her voluminous skirts and proceeded up
the next flight of stairs with Sarah and me trailing behind her,
staying far enough back not to trip over Helen’s skirts—or for
Helen to overhear Sarah’s comment.
“You did well to call Helen out on her gossiping. You
mustn’t let her get away with any untoward behavior. I knew
her cousin Sophronia when she was here. All the van Beeks are
impetuous, bull-headed, vain and lazy—and
they
all say that
Helen is spoiled rotten by her father. It will be a miracle if she
gets through her first term at Blythewood without getting herself—and her friends—in serious trouble. Especially with Nathan Beckwith in attendance.”
“Is Mr. Beckwith really such a bad influence?” I asked.
“Incorrigible!” Sarah declared. “He was expelled from half
a dozen boarding schools throughout the Northeast before being sent to Hawthorn. That’s our brother school in Scotland. I
have heard it’s a bit strict, but if you ask me that’s what Nathan
Beckwith needs after growing up without a father, surrounded
by women.”
I was about to ask what had happened to Nathan’s father,
but Sarah put her hand on my arm and leaned close to whisper into my ear. I thought she was going to tell me about Nathan Beckwith’s childhood, but instead she said, “If there’s
anything you need to talk about, don’t be afraid to seek me out.
I’m afraid Helen won’t be the most sympathetic confidante and
Blythewood can be . . .
overwhelming
. There are other ways to
disappear here than to go missing in the woods.”
Her words, although meant to be kind, conjured an image
of an empty impression in bloodstained snow that chilled me to
the bone. But surely that was not the kind of disappearing that
Sarah meant.
“Thank you,” I said, through chattering teeth. “I’ll do that.”
Sarah smiled and then turned to walk briskly to the end of
the hall. “At least you got one of the very nicest rooms,” she declared, sweeping into a large drafty irregularly shaped room.
“This was my room when I was a nestling.” Tucked under the
eaves of the roof, the room was made up of sharp angles and
cozy nooks and a large fireplace. Two narrow iron bedsteads
were pushed against the walls at either side.
Still chilled from that image of bloody snow, I moved into
a patch of sun at the far end of the room where a third bed was
fitted into an alcove. The window above the bed afforded a view
of the river that reminded me of the view from the apartment I
had shared with my mother on West Fourteenth Street. I stood
breathing in the warm air, trying to regain my composure.
Blythewood can be overwhelming,
Sarah had said. Suddenly even
the idea of sharing a room with two strangers made me feel
crowded.
“Oh, do you want this bed?” A flat, nasal voice interrupted
my thoughts.
Startled, I turned to find a slight girl with brown hair pulled
severely back from her pale oval face, standing in a shadowy
nook, her hands clasped tightly before her. She was wearing a
faded calico print dress that nearly blended in with the wallpaper, which must have been why I hadn’t noticed her.
“Oh no,” I said quickly. “You were here first, you should
have first choice.”
“ Technically
,” Helen interjected, coming up behind me,
“I was here first. I only went out because no one was here yet
and I felt lonely. This
is
the best bed. You’ve got privacy, a river
view—oh, and look, there are these darling built-in drawers!”
Helen was already moving her hands over the cabinets in a proprietary manner—as if she owned them. I suspected she was
used to getting whatever she took a fancy to.
“You should spin for it,” Sarah suggested. “That’s the fairest way. Here.” She reached into her hair and retrieved a long
arrow-shaped pin. “You sit in a circle and spin the arrow. Whoever it points to gets the bed. That is, if that’s all right with you,
Miss . . .” she added, looking to our third roommate.
“Moffat,” the girl replied. “Miss Daisy Moffat from Kansas
City, Kansas.”
Helen’s lip quirked and Sarah gave her a little kick. “Well,
then, Miss Daisy Moffat from Kansas City, Kansas, are you
agreeable to spinning for the bed? It’s really up to you since you
were here when we all arrived.”
“Oh!” Daisy squeaked, wringing her hands. “Really, I don’t
mind
where
I sleep. I’ve got seven sisters at home and I sleep in
the cupboard. It’s up to the other ladies.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow at Helen. “It’s fine by me,” Helen
said, “but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s just a bed, for
Bell’s sake, not a suite at the Plaza Hotel.”
“So Helen’s in.” Sarah turned to me. “And what about
you, Ava?”
“It seems fair,” I replied. I suppose I could have feigned indifference like Helen—or abject humility like Daisy—but the
truth was I really wanted the bed in the window alcove. Just five
minutes with my two new roommates had exhausted me. If I
didn’t have a little privacy I wasn’t sure I’d survive here at Blythewood.
There are other ways to disappear here.
I could already
feel myself fading into the shadows.
Sarah shoved aside Helen’s trunks—there were four of
them, all with marks from European cities—and instructed
the three of us to sit in a triangle an equal distance apart. Helen
insisted on dusting the floor with her handkerchief first and
complained that her skirts would be crushed.
“That’s why you should have changed into your school
clothes already,” Sarah chided.
When we were all seated, Sarah placed the arrow on the
floor between us. “We say a little rhyme when we do this at Blythewood:

Round and round the arrow goes,
where it stops nobody knows.
Now it points to she who wins,
but it may strike one who sins.

“Ew,” Helen mewed. “What a sordid little rhyme! Let’s get
this over with. Shall I spin?”
Without waiting for an answer Helen reached into the
middle of the circle and grasped the shaft of the arrow with her
long, elegant, be-ringed fingers. What pretty hands Helen had,
I thought with a pang of jealousy as the arrow spun in a golden
blur and we all said the strange little rhyme. Those hands had
never sewn hats late into the night or slaved over a machine at
a factory. Even Daisy’s tightly clasped hands did not look as if
they had seen much work. Would I really fit in with either of
these girls—or any of the girls at Blythewood? It had taken
Georgiana Montmorency not more than three minutes to see
that I didn’t belong here. How long would it take others?
The arrow was slowing to a stop. I saw it was going to
come to rest pointing at Helen. Of course, I thought, she was
the sort of girl—pretty and rich—who would always be noticed
by boys like Nathan Beckwith, who would always get the best
of everything, who would never disappear. The anger I’d felt at
Georgiana before was back and with it the bass bell. I deliberately made it slow in my head, and as I did the arrow abruptly
jerked and stuttered to a stop, pointing at me. Three sets of eyes
also fastened on me.
“That was odd,” Helen remarked. “It seemed to move on its
own there at the end.”
“We could do it over,” I suggested.
“No,” Sarah said, retrieving the arrow and getting to her
feet. “The bed belongs to Ava, fair and square. Now you’d better
unpack and change for dinner. Six sharp—lateness for meals is
not tolerated. You’ll hear the bells.”
She tilted her head, looking at me. “That’s one bit about
Blythewood you’ll have to get used to—all the bells. They can
drive you mad sometimes. They say there was girl a few years
back who fell from the belfry while trying to muffle the bells.”
Then she smiled and hurried away, leaving me with the thought
that the bells inside my head were already driving me mad.

“DON’T MIND SOUR Lemon,” Helen said after Sarah had
gone and we had all started to unpack our trunks. “My cousin
Sophronia says the scholarship girls only take all those jobs so
they can lord it over us.”

“I imagine they take the jobs for the money,” I said, still
chilled by the thought of the girl who died trying to silence the
bells. “And I didn’t think she seemed sour. I like her very much.”

“Do you think that story is true?” Daisy asked, her eyes wide.
“Nathan says that Blythewood is full of such stories—girls
going mad, going missing, or just suddenly going  .  .  .” Helen
blushed, no doubt recalling that Nathan had been asking about
my own mother’s disappearance.

“How do you know Nathan Beckwith so well when you
only just got here?” I blurted out.
“Oh!” Helen looked up from folding a stack of pristine
white shirtwaists. “The Beckwiths and the van Beeks have
known each other for generations. Our townhouse is around
the corner from theirs in Washington Square and our summerhouse is just south of here in Hyde Park. Our fathers were
friends before Mr. Beckwith died. And of course the van Beek
women have always gone to Blythewood. Daddy says we give

“At any rate, Nathan and his mother have come for tea
since I was little. We children would be sent outside while our
mothers reminisced about their school days. Nathan always
wanted to explore the woods or the riverside. Once he talked
me into playing pirates with Daddy’s dinghy and we tipped
over in the middle of the river! I couldn’t swim so Nate had to
rescue me.”

Helen’s dainty hands idly stroked the polished cotton of her
shirtwaists, her blue eyes gazing out the window toward the
river as she spoke. Looking at the crisp white blouses, I thought
of the girls who had sewn them for a few dollars a week. Then
I thought of those girls burning . . . and saw smoke rising from
the stack of shirts. I looked away quickly, toward the river, but
the pretty view was now smeared over by smoke. Smoke was
rising from the river and curling over its bank, stealing across
the lawn, heading toward the castle.