Louisa and the Missing Heiress (23 page)

“Maybe that fellow Digby will be free after they hang Wortham,” Mr. Mapp proposed a little too eagerly for good taste. “Oh. Sorry, Miss Sylvia. He is your cousin.”

“Yes,” said my friend somewhat weakly. “More and more distantly.”

“Well, speak to that Digby fellow,” he said, turning again to Abba. “I’ve never known anyone as capable as he. Smart, too. Speaks French and Italian almost as well as English. He was in Rome when I visited. Don’t know what family he was with, but I saw him at the Pantheon, gazing up in a kind of dull ecstasy. An old ruin, that’s what I call it. Especially the west wall, ready to topple down. I hear they’ve restored it.”

I bent down over the shirt and popped off another button.

“Yes, staffing is a problem,” I agreed thoughtfully. “Never know who you will end up with. By the by . . .” My expression changed to the same one of wide-eyed innocence I’d used with Katya Mendosa. “I know a young woman who will be an excellent kitchen helper for the cook, Mr. Mapp. Queenie Carter. She’s smart and quick and honest.”

Henry Mapp squinted at me and twirled his mustache. “Louisa, you’re pulling something. I can tell from your voice.”

“Well, Queenie has a daughter. A very young daughter. Newborn, in fact.” I peered intently at the shirt in my lap; Sylvia looked at the ceiling.

“And her husband? Can he work, too?” Mr. Mapp’s squint deepened.

I took a deep breath. “There is no husband.”

Henry Mapp wiped the crumbs off his hands and rose to leave. “Mrs. Alcott, if you would please ask Betty Donner and Brigid Connor to stop by, I’ll speak with them. They are honest and virtuous by reputation.”

My heart sank. If even an old friend of the family would not hire Queenie, how ever would I place her? There were houses on the docks where the sailors spent their money that took in young women like Queenie. Never, I thought, and saw the same resolve in Sylvia’s eyes. Those women lived lives of such misery and danger that inevitable early death was deemed a mercy. And what would become of her daughter?

“I thank you for your time, Mrs. Alcott. And for that excellent bread and jam. My regards to Mr. Alcott.” Mr. Mapp rose and reached for the coat and hat he’d put on the fourth table chair. He stopped and scratched his head. It was obvious he knew he had disappointed me, but, as I knew, the rules of society dictated that one did not bring such women into a decent household.

“Wouldn’t you know, I almost forgot my second reason for coming. I’ve had lunch with old Mr. Wallace—you know, of the Wallace and Wallace Mill Company—and he’d like to have Bronson come by next week some evening and give a parlor talk, a conversation. He’ll pay, of course. Do you think Mr. Alcott will be available?” His eyes went to the threadbare curtains and seemed to recognize that if household amenities were an indication, the Alcott household could use some extra income. Pleased with himself, Mr. Mapp rocked back and forth on his feet, smiling.

Abba threw her arms around him. The month’s groceries had just been paid for. “Of course, of course,” she exclaimed with delight. “Thank you, Mr. Mapp.” And because she was a woman who was both grateful and generous by nature, she looked for some way to repay the kindness. My box of French marzipan, still unopened, was on a shelf behind her. Abba reached for the box and gave it to Mr. Mapp.

“Why, thank you, ma’am. I admit to a fondness for sweets. Good day, then.” Mr. Mapp accepted the box and left.

“Louy, I hope you don’t mind . . .” Abba began when we were alone again.

“Of course not. It was the right thing to do, Abba. And so like you. I would rather Dorothy had brought me a book of Roman etchings than French sweets, if she insisted on bringing me a present at all. She did become forgetful, bringing me sweets when she knew I have no particular fondness for them.”

“Well, I must see to the linens.” And Abba disappeared into the back pantry, where the vat was boiling.

“Rome,” I said, when my mother was gone. “Back to Rome. All roads, especially Dorothy’s, seem to lead there.” I began clearing away the cups and saucers and pots of jam.

“And she was so very different when she came back,” Sylvia offered. “ I think it was more than that affair with Preston the summer before. I think she must have fallen in love with an Italian count. But maybe he was already married. Or unsuitable.”

“He just now found out,” I said, putting the dishes in a bucket under the pump and thrusting my hands deep into my pockets.

“What?”

“Why, Edgar, if he killed his sister even accidentally—oh, how wicked the world can be—if he was capable of murdering Dorothy as a kind of honor killing, why would he wait so long? Because he just found out why Mrs. Brownly took Dorothy to Rome, and not he. He hadn’t known about that earlier summer, about Dorothy and Mr. Wortham. Somehow, something occurred immediately upon Dorothy’s arrival home. I think I shall have to speak with Edgar Brownly again.”

And with that conclusion, I stared unhappily at the ceiling.

“Are the buttons off, Louy?” Abba called from the pantry. “I’m ready for the next batch.”

“Coming, Abba,” I called back. I smiled at Sylvia. “I don’t suppose there will be any more surprise visitors, so now I must get back to the washing and mending of linens. It was good to see an old friend, though. Mr. Mapp hasn’t stopped by in a very long time. I hope he doesn’t disappear from our lives once again. He has done Father many kindnesses.”

“Carrying away the box of marzipans may not count as one,” Sylvia teased. “I happen to know that your father, unlike you, does have a sweet tooth.”

“Well, you know Father. He’ll have forgotten by now that Dorothy ever made a present of them to me, and what’s forgotten is not missed.”

“WERE YOU WARM enough last night, Abba?” It was morning, and because there had been a late-winter snowfall, my little schoolchildren had stayed home for the day. I was in the pantry with Mother, folding laundry and feeling a combination of bliss and regret, for there would be no children that day (They were sweet; they were messy. They were angels; they could also be demons.), but there would also be no sunshine. Winter grayness had returned with a vengeance, and those geese that had honked so merrily yesterday were probably heading back south, I reflected. A snowfall meant we would have to burn even more wood and coal simply to keep our little home livable, and at that time of the year, when piles were low, the prices were very high.

“Warm enough,” my mother answered stoically, clanking down one iron that had gone cold and picking up the second.

I folded the shirt into the basket and reached for the next one. Father had been away the night before, traveling and giving a conversation in Amherst, and Abba had trouble sleeping when her husband was gone. I suspected she had not even retired to her bed until after he had returned, on the first morning mail train, himself yawning and pale with fatigue.

“I do dislike it when your father is gone,” she admitted. “Do you think he remembered to eat any dinner, Louy?” Her eyes lifted from her laundry and sought the closed door of his study across the hall. He was already hard at work on his next lecture.

He was gone much of the time, I reflected, folding another shirt and inspecting the frayed cuff. His work—his calling, as he said—required frequent absences, sometimes for weeks, and the house, whatever house we were living in at the time, felt empty without him. The women, his women, would find themselves listening for his steps, for the crackle of the evening paper, the clearing of the throat that preceded his most thoughtful statements.

That name—Josephine, Jo—came into my thoughts again, that character waiting in the wings. Jo would miss her father, would experience that emptiness within the home.

Though the emptiness was not always unbearable. Father could be difficult, too, and even Abba’s step seemed a little lighter, freer, when the philosopher was gone.

Tenderly, Abba ran the iron over the collar of Bronson’s heavy muslin jacket. “I do miss woolen blankets,” she admitted.

Father, some years before as part of his vegetarian regime, had removed from the house almost all animal products, leaving us with cotton blankets and wooden shoes. Leather shoes had been allowed into use some weeks later, since wooden ones caused blisters, but we still were limited to linen and cotton blankets.

“Do you ever miss roast beef?” I asked, grinning.

“I choose not to answer that,” Abba said. “Instead, tell me about the story you are writing.”

“Well,” I said, hesitating, not wanting to reveal the blood-and-thunder I was writing, “I am thinking about a story set at Fruitlands. Something about wild oats.”

“Wild oats. A good title,” Abba agreed. I had vivid memories of Fruitlands, the utopian community Father had founded ten years before, where men might reach perfection through rustic labor and the study of philosophy. But while the men had studied, I remembered that Abba, Anna, and I had had to feed the group and work fifteen-hour days at the practicalities of life. It had been a hard time, and ultimately the community collapsed. Father’s ideals would not even allow the use of manure on the fields, protesting that we should retain the soil exactly as the Creator made it, and the crops were so sparse we almost starved that year.

“Do you remember the day you climbed the tree and wouldn’t come down?” Abba mused.

“Oh, yes. I hadn’t been able to keep my temper, as I had promised. And Mr. Lane had made me very cross. I know we are required to love all, but he strained my potential for goodness.”

Abba did not respond, for her own feelings for the extreme Mr. William Lane were even stronger. He had tried to convince Bronson to end his marriage to Abba, since individual contract destroyed community integrity. That had been a hard time, indeed, with the small, crowded rustic house filled with bad tempers, wounded feelings, and indecision. But Father had held true. “Till death do us part,” he finally told Abba, and they had kissed, and Mr. Lane had left. Even the philosopher of Concord was not quite ready for free love.

“Wild oats,” Abba repeated. “Yes. There will be some stories there worth telling.”

Abba and I finished the week’s worth of mending, bleaching, and ironing, then sat at the little table for our morning tea, wondering if Father would join us. That morning he was preparing his “conversation” for Mr. Wallace’s gathering. He had already decided to speak on the shallowness and uselessness of contemporary amusements, not being able to cleanse from his imagination the sight and sound of Miss Katya Mendosa warbling bad lyrics as fake Indians leapt about onstage and died over and over.

Sipping milky tea and waiting, we heard a sharp cry from his study. In unison, barely breathing, we jumped to our feet and rushed into the little book-lined room fearing the worst, for while Father was in excellent health, he was not young.

He stood behind his battered, paper-covered desk. The morning edition was spread out before him, and he pointed to a headline. There was a look of terrible remorse on his pale face.

“It’s Henry Mapp,” he said. “Dead. A complete surprise. Dear old Henry. Gone.”

“Oh, no, Bronson! Why, he looked healthy as could be yesterday!” Abba’s eyes were already wet.

“Our life’s a moment and less than a moment,” said Father, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders and rocking back and forth on his heels.

“Mr. Mapp?” I said, still wiping my hands on a dish towel. “Are you sure? Do they say how?”

“Yes, it is old Henry. And they think his heart gave out.”

I sat quickly in a chair, suddenly light-headed. “Something is very wrong. Not just his death, though that is a tragedy, of course. But how strange that he died the day after visiting us for the first time in years. I . . . I will go to visit his daughter.”

“Yes,” Abba agreed, also sitting. “We must extend our condolences.” She sounded absolutely shocked, barely able to put the words together.

“Sympathy calls are becoming a much too frequent pasttime,” Father observed, frowning.

 

 

MRS. HARRIET SIMPSON, née Mapp, was in residence in her father’s home on Boylston Street, and she opened the door herself when I called that afternoon. Mrs. Simpson was dressed in black, and her brown hair had been brushed vigorously into the confines of black netting. She looked much younger than her twenty-four years.

“Oh, Louisa.” She wept, touching a handkerchief to her wet and reddened eyes. “It’s so terrible!”

I embraced her tightly and then we moved as one into the house.

“The house is a mess. Father hadn’t even unpacked yet,” said Harriet. “Poor Father.” The handkerchief swept the eyes again and there were difficult moments of unrestrained sobbing. I searched her reticule for salts but, finding none, decided instead to pour a glass of water from a tray on a table.

Harriet sipped noisily. She took a deep breath and pointed the way through the chaos of unpacked boxes.

“Step over those packing crates, Louisa, and come into the front parlor. We can sit and chat. We can catch up on old times. Wasn’t it awful about poor Dorothy?” And the sobbing recommenced.

Mr. Mapp hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said the day before that he had just moved back to Boston and was still getting his house in order. The hall was barefloored and empty except for the boxes and packing crates. There was not even a coat tree on which to hang my cape, so I carried it over my arm and followed Harriet into the parlor. White sheets covered most of the furniture and the windows were blocked with black cloth to keep the sun from fading the wallpaper. Now the black gauze would have to remain in place for mourning.

Harriet was formally dressed, however, with her mother’s braided hair brooch pinned securely to the front of her bodice and her grandmother’s jet beads dangling from throat and ears. She had spent the morning with the minister, making funeral arrangements.