Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) (15 page)

Upstairs, Sylvia and I sat up quite late, whispering as Anna breathed slowly, already deep in sleep.

“From the frying pan to the fire?” Sylvia said, pulling the blankets up to her chin, for the night had grown chill. “I left Boston to get away from Mother's persistent attempts at matchmaking, and here I am being matchmade by your Mrs. Tupper, I think.”

“You are rich, my dear, and her son is unwed.”

Anna stirred and mumbled in her sleep. I reached over and tucked her blankets in tighter.

“He seems an unsuitable choice for a husband. All that gin.” Sylvia yawned. “I'm going to sleep now, Louy. See you in the morning.” Her eyes closed and she began to snore, ever so gently.

I lay awake, thinking of what Sylvia had said. Clarence had the reputation of being “fast,” of being a flirt with the girls and a bit of a heartbreaker. Yet his behavior toward lovely Sylvia had indicated complete indifference. Why? Was it part of the general derangement I had noticed in him?

When my questions about Clarence began to fade under the softening of awareness that announces sleep is not far behind, I realized I was dizzy with joy. I couldn't remember the last time I had had all my loved ones, at one time, under the same roof. I smiled to myself and watched out the open window until Orion, that steadfast hunter, moved to a different part of the sky.

Once, I thought I saw a figure moving in Father's vegetable patch, but realized it was a shadow cast by the moon.

CHAPTER TEN

IDA TUPPER MISSED her next knitting lesson, and her maid acquired much leisure time, which she spent in Uncle Benjamin's kitchen, gossiping with Mrs. Fisher, which was how we learned that Ida was off to Manchester for shopping.

“I hope there will be no extravagant foolishness over this picnic.” Abba sighed. “May is at such an impressionable age, and if she comes home with a taste for caviar and sherbet packed in ice I will not be pleased.”

“Caviar is fish eggs,” Lizzie protested, making a hideous face.

We had all gathered as usual in the cottage kitchen for morning porridge, Father with his nose in a book, Abba with flour on her nose from rolling biscuits, May with her pet mole peeking out of her pocket, Lizzie with her curls loose on her shoulders and with a sheet of music stuck in her waistband, and Anna, dear Anna, dreamy-eyed and in a serene world of her own.

Llew came to the table in his shirtsleeves and dressing gown, his dark hair rumpled from sleep and his cheeks rosy. He looked young and boyish and not at all like the studious medical student. Sylvia sat next to him, for they were already close friends united by a common bond: the Alcotts, whom they loved and who loved them.

Sylvia looked a little strange, for she had pulled her blond ringlets into a stern bun at the base of her neck, and her morning gown had long bell sleeves and that strange, prim little collar. “It is Mandarin style,” she announced, when Abba asked if the new costume was Parisian. “Confucius was a Mandarin.”

Father looked up from his book. “Philosophy isn't adopted with a change of wardrobe. It goes deeper,” he warned.

“Oh, I know,” Sylvia said brightly. “I have decided to change my diet as well. No coffee, thank you, Abba. Tea, if you please. With no cream or sugar.”

Father sighed and returned to his reading, absentmindedly sticking his butter knife into his coffee cup and his spoon into the butter bowl.

“I, myself, am eager to try caviar,” offered May, reverting to our previous conversation.

“Then you had better find employment,” Abba said. “Our budget barely allows hen's eggs.”

After breakfast, Sylvia sat in the garden, meditating, and I spent several hours in my writing shed, working on my elf stories. When I wearied of elves and edifying endings, I returned to work on “The Lady and the Woman,” always keeping Abba as my inspiration.

“You have given your idol a heart, but no head. An affectionate or accomplished idiot is not my ideal of a woman,” I let Kate tell Mr. Windsor. I had much of the dialogue, but was still uncertain of the setting for this story. My tendency was to place them in Rome or other places of the sophisticated world to which I had traveled only in my imagination—so that, dear reader, at least my imagination could travel!—but this story, because it was inspired by Abba, should be set closer to home. Where?

 

 

LATER, WHEN THE sun was past its zenith and the heat began to dissipate somewhat, Sylvia and I took a walk to the river. First we stopped in front of Father's vegetable patch and pondered.

“It is a wonder,” Sylvia said. “Look, the Brussels sprouts must be an inch tall already. I did not know your father had a green thumb.”

“That's the wonder,” I said, crouching down and peering at the little green plants. “He does not have a green thumb. This must be wondrous fine soil.” I stood again rather quickly, since a passerby was also gawking at Father's garden, and it would not do for a lady to be seen crouching in the dirt like a child. Anna and Lizzie and May wished to be well thought of in town. (I had already promised never to whistle in public.)

“A fine patch,” said the straw-hatted gentleman. “I'll get his secret yet.”

“I assure you there is no secret but that the soil here is very fine,” I said.

He gave me a wink. “Of course,” he agreed. “Of course.” He walked on.

“I believe there is a mystery right here in the vegetable patch,” commented Sylvia.

“I wish the patch were on the other side of the house,” I admitted, “not the side facing the house of the missing Jonah Tupper. I have an uncomfortable feeling.”

We also stopped at Tupper's General Store to get some mending yarn for Abba. The store was empty of customers. Across the street, I saw some known town Republicans entering Hubert's, along with the Democrats.

“Business seems to have fallen off,” I couldn't help but comment to the counter girl.

“It's because of Ernst,” she whispered. “Lilli is telling everyone that Mr. Tupper was there when Ernst fell. That Mr. Tupper pushed—”

“Cease your useless chatter!” said Mr. Tupper, storming through the double doors of his back room. “Ah. It's Benjamin Willis's niece from Boston. Still here with us?”

“Might Sylvia and I again look at your box of sheet music?” I asked. He took the box out from under the counter and pushed it at me.

“Take your time,” he said, meaning just the opposite.

Sylvia, who read music with an amateurish but reliable expertise, hummed some of the songs for me. I rather liked a black spiritual called “Jacob's Ladder,” as the music was exciting and the lyrics contained many hidden references to the Underground Railroad. In Boston, the Alcott family was a secret part of that organization, helping fugitive slaves flee north to Canada and freedom.

Sylvia, much more a romantic than myself despite her habit of turning down marriage proposals, insisted that Lizzie would prefer “Darling Nelly Gray,” a love song. I agreed without pointing out that Nelly Gray was a black female slave sold away from her home.

When our purchases were complete and Abba's little marketing basket was full, I thanked Mr. Tupper for his assistance (he had done nothing) and added a cordial, “Uncle Benjamin sends his regards.” That was a lie, but I wanted to get to the bottom of the apparent hostility he felt for my uncle.

He glared even harder, his hazel eyes turning icy and narrow. “No, Mr. Willis don't send his regards, any more than I send him mine,” Mr. Tupper said. “There's ill will'tween us. You can tell him I said I'd just as soon dance on his grave as tip my hat to him.”

Sylvia and I, speechless with amazement, went back out into the daylight, only to see Lilli leaving Mr. Hubert's general store with a shopping basket over her arm.

“Lilli!” I called, and waved my free arm.

She looked up and crossed over to where we stood. “Morning, Miss Louisa. And Sylvia.” She looked down at her black skirts, her black shoes, waved a hand in its black lace mitten. “I needed to walk, to get out of my room.”

“Of course,” I said. “Even in mourning one should take care of one's own health. There is a bench under the tree just over there. Shall we sit for a while?” I took her arm and we walked to the shaded bench, away from the dust of the street.

“Is your uncle, Benjamin Willis, in good health?” she asked. “He sent me such a kind letter of sympathy.” She paused and took a deep breath. “It is good to have relatives near you. I wish . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Have you second thoughts about staying in Walpole?” I asked.

Sylvia opened a bag of cinnamon candies and passed it.

“No,” said Lilli, taking a cinnamon ball. “No. I stay.”

A squirrel chattered overhead in the elm tree and studied us, the intruders, with its little black eyes. Lilli had said, “I stay,” with such vehemence, and last week she had mentioned acquiring an American husband as one of her goals. Was there a secret beau? Oh, these horrible rules of conduct that forbade intimate questions for such a long time!

“Well,” Lilli said after a long while, “I return to my room. There is a living to earn and linen waiting to be hemmed.” She rose from the bench.

“Lilli, before you go, can you tell me something?”

“I will try,” she said, “if it is something I know.”

“Is there a reason for Mr. Tupper's antipathy”—she frowned in confusion—“for his extreme dislike of my uncle?”

“Ah!” she exclaimed with a knowing nod. “That I do know. It was your uncle, Mr. Willis, who introduced Mr. Tupper's son, Jonah, to Ida, who was soon Ida Tupper.”

“That would explain it,” I agreed.

Lilli said farewell and turned east. Mrs. Roder's boardinghouse was in the opposite direction. She was taking the long way back, it seemed.

 

 

“I HAVE HAD a telegram,” Llew said with great excitement when we returned home. “My friend Charles asked his friend Alwyn, who is studying for the ministry in Detroit. He says a new Catholic parish, the Immaculate Conception, might be needing a bell for its new church. The priest in charge is Father O'Connor.” Llew looked pleased with himself, for he knew his acquired information was valuable.

“Are you tired, Sylvia?” I asked.

“No. What do you have in mind?” asked my friend.

“Another walk. To send a telegram to the parish of the Immaculate Conception, and then a visit to the bell foundry. I have always wanted to see a bell cast. Haven't you?”

Sylvia's eyes twinkled.

“Indeed I have,” she said.

“I would enjoy the exercise,” Llew said regretfully. “But I am having a devil of a time memorizing the symptoms of breakbone fever and malaria. Which produces albuminous urine?” He scratched his head. “I'll go back to my studies.”

Another telegram was quickly dispatched to Father O'Connor, asking if he had additional thoughts or suggestions about the bell. Another dime came out of my purse. I sighed.

O'Rourke's Foundry on the southern outskirts of town, as might be deduced from the name, was owned and managed by one Michael O'Rourke, a stocky Irishman with carrot-red hair and thick boiled-wool overalls decorated with myriad little black burns, where sparks had leaped at him. Mr. O'Rourke showed us about his premises with great enthusiasm, having, as he pointed out, few visitors, and fewer of those being of the female persuasion.

The redbrick foundry was smallish, as such establishments go, he admitted, with a single storage room where the bronze bricks and used bronze fittings, purchased from the ragman, were kept; one furnace room with a huge oven, in front of which was a large box on wheels in which the sand mold was held and the molten metal was poured; a tiny, untidy office; and a many-windowed finishing room, where the bells were engraved and polished.

“But we make the best bells in the East,” O'Rourke boasted.

Three men sat before bells of various sizes in the finishing room, working with engravers and chisels. I admired the delicate vines and bellflowers of one, the neatly engraved Latin script of another. We paused longest in the pouring room, where he was preparing the mold for a new bell. I could hear the strange bubbling of boiling metal in the cauldron, and the air was heavy with heat.

“Nice weather today!” he shouted above the roar of the furnace and the clang of the finishers and the bells being tested. “That's important. Changeable weather can ruin a bell. Sometimes they bring in the schoolroom children for an outing, but I hate that day, for fear one of the little 'uns will topple against the furnace or fall into the mold!”

“Have any ever?” Sylvia shouted back. “Fallen in, that is?”

“Not in my time! T'ank the holy angels! How long till pouring?” O'Rourke shouted to another man in even thicker overalls who was inspecting the boxed mold wheeled to the side of the cauldron.

The laborer held up one finger, indicating, I believe, a single hour. Sweat flowed down his face in rivulets.

I tugged at Mr. O'Rourke's sleeve and pointed to the door, sensing that he might have a moment of freedom.

We sat under an umbrella, for no trees grew close to the O'Rourke Foundry. Sylvia complained about the lack of shade.

“Ever seen the Czar Kolokol?” O'Rourke asked somewhat testily.

“I have not been to Saint Petersburg,” Sylvia replied. “Nor do I think the czar would receive me. I could not even get admittance to Miss Jenny Lind's dressing room when she was in Boston.”

O'Rourke chuckled. “Czar Kolokol is a bell.” He rolled down the suspenders of his overalls and unbuttoned his shirt collar to let off some of the heat that had accumulated in his work suit. “The largest bell ever cast, some two hundred and twenty tons. And never been rung. A bell that's never been rung is worse than a pretty girl that never—”