The Daring Ladies of Lowell (12 page)

“When she came to see me, Miss Cornell hoped what she suspected was untrue. But it was my unhappy duty to tell her she was wrong. I expected weeping and wailing, but she stayed under control. She even laughed, made a small joke. Strange.”

Not strange; that was Lovey. Give her hard news, and she would find a way to toss her head, to mock, to challenge. Yet how terrible it must have been for her to sit here and have her fears confirmed.

“I tried to counsel her,” Stanhope continued. “I told her the man who did this to her must be held accountable. That she needed to confront him and demand either marriage or money. She said that avenue was closed. Quite matter-of-factly.” He looked at Alice, as if waiting for a reaction. She said nothing.

“Well, then I urged her to demand money or threaten to expose him. God help me, I did that.” He paused, mopping his brow with a sturdy white handkerchief.

So all of this had burdened Lovey, all held inside, in the darkest places where secrets grow. Each secret demands more: another avoidance, another lie. The fact that she knew quite precisely how this worked was unnerving.

“Did she tell you who he was?”

“She said he was a prominent figure in the community.”

“Nothing more?”

“No.”

The face of that strangely mesmerizing man at the campground hovered in her memory. “Did she say he knew she was with child?”

Stanhope nodded. “He promised to help her. She was hoping he would give her money to go away and have the baby. She seemed determined to keep the child if she could.”

Alice flashed back to Lovey’s announcement that she was going to “learn about love.” Was this what she had meant? “But he didn’t.”

“No, no. Instead he gave her a medicine to induce miscarriage. She was a clever woman, and she brought it to me first, to ask what it was. When I saw what he gave her, I was absolutely appalled.” He stopped, took off his glasses, and pulled the same white handkerchief from his pocket, proceeding to scrub the spectacles vigorously.

“What was it?”

“I must be careful here, I’m not accusing anybody—”

He made her impatient. “Just tell me, please.”

“It was oil of tansy—a poison. In large doses, it dissolves the intestines. He urged her to take thirty drops.” He shook his head back and forth.

“That’s too much?”

“Four drops is considered a large dose. If she had taken it, her internal organs would rot. It would have killed both her and the baby.”

Alice drew her breath in sharply. “Was it in a small glass vial? A yellowish substance?”

“Yes,” he said. “You mean she kept it?”

“It was in her trunk with letters that were obviously from him. That man wanted to kill her.…” Now, certain as she was, she could hardly swallow.

Stanhope raised his hand in a flutterly, feathery gesture of caution. “He may have said
three
drops, of course.”

“Yes, well, the words do sound alike,” she said evenly, holding back her impatience. She briefly closed her eyes, imagining how such news would affect Lovey. Had she truly expected help from that false man of God?

“How did she react?”

“She just sat there, in the chair you are in now, stunned, I think. I waited for her to understand the obvious. But then she laughed.” He shook his head in disbelief. “She actually laughed. She said, ‘Well, that makes me something of a fool, I suppose.’ I know, that sounds strange.”

“Not to me. I knew her. What else did she say?”

“She said he wasn’t going to get away with it. She would expose him if he didn’t help her.”

They both fell silent.

“Why didn’t you tell us all this at the house?” Alice finally said.

Stanhope leaned forward slightly, spreading his large, tapered hands wide, planting one on each thigh. The clock chimed, a thin, brittle sound.

“Miss…Barrow…more important, why didn’t I stop her? I fear I sent her to her death.” He paused, slowly straightening his glasses, which had slipped down over his narrow, almost spindly nose. “I know you all see me as someone afraid of my own shadow. But I thought I was, at least, capable of taking care of my patients.”

She felt a need to offer something, but it could only be the half-truth that consoles or comforts and comes with a price. “You were trying to help,” she said.

He didn’t seem to hear her words.

“And I am left to wonder, what kind of doctor am I?” he said, staring now without focus.

She stood slowly. “I’m giving all the notes and the vial to the sheriff first thing in the morning,” she said. Surely there was enough evidence to charge Avery with murder. “I wish you had told all this to the coroner, but now you must come forward.”

Stanhope seemed to shrink in size as he looked away. “I can’t be sure of what she said; I may be wrong.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “You told me she said it was someone important in the community. Well, I think it was a revivalist preacher named Ephraim Avery. He had the opportunity and the motive.”

“The inquest will uphold the coroner. And then who am I, possibly implicating an innocent man?”

He was dodging the obvious truth of his own words. “Are you afraid of something?” she asked, bewildered.

He cleared his throat and refused to look directly at her. Instead of answering, he said, “It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“If this man Avery had anything to do with this, I’m sure he’s fled already.”

“And you would give up?” she sputtered.

“It’s too late, I said. As the Bible says, ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’”

“Then perhaps someone should pursueth.”

He smiled faintly and stood. “I wish I could help you, Miss Barrow. It is past midnight, and I have a full day tomorrow. I fear I have babbled on too much, and I regret that. Maybe your evidence will be useful to the authorities; I hope so.”

“I’m giving the note to the sheriff in the morning. You could go with me and tell your story.”

He shook his head vigorously. “I have a very busy day,” he repeated.

“Dr. Stanhope, let me know when you decide to stand up for what you believe is true,” she managed to say.

He replied with an unexpectedly strong voice. “Miss Barrow, you judge me quickly. Perhaps you at times feel uncertainty, but I will tell you only this—I am swallowed by it.”

“Perhaps you mean paralyzed by fear,” she said stiffly, and then turned to go.

I
t was mid-afternoon the next day when Hiram Fiske deposited his valise on the floor of the entrance hall of the family’s rooms at the Lowell Inn, his joints stiffer than usual from the hurried journey up from Boston. News of the mill girl’s death had moved through town after town with incredible speed, and Lowell was in turmoil. You could feel it pulsating out from the clusters of agitated people talking at street corners. One of the mill girls had brought a note to the sheriff she found in the dead woman’s trunk that implicated some itinerant preacher. So now the coroner was vacillating over his verdict of suicide. The old coot had better hurry and make up his mind, or the preacher would vanish, if he hadn’t already.

Hiram sat down abruptly, unbuttoning his jacket while he talked about all this with Samuel, who had followed him into the room.

“We’re not going to let this damage us,” Hiram said. “If it’s suicide, we’ll do plenty of handholding to calm things down. If it’s murder, we’ll hire the best lawyers in the state and get a conviction as fast as possible. Nothing is going to cast a shadow over how well we take care of those girls and keep them safe. I won’t allow it.” He rubbed one fist into the other, straightening up. His energy was coming back.

“We’ll have to do more than that,” Samuel said.

“Obviously you have something to say.”

“The agitators intend to turn this in their favor. If they can get people to believe the girls who work here aren’t properly protected, they strengthen their hand. We’ll face criticism on every front, especially safety.”

“Slander, stupidity.” Hiram slumped again, staring at nothing.

Samuel walked over to the sideboard in the dining room and picked up a crystal decanter filled with bourbon. He held a glass in the other hand and poured. Silently, he handed it to his father.

Hiram’s face wrinkled into something of a smile as he reached for the glass. “Thank you,” he said.

“I’m thinking of visiting the boardinghouse where the dead girl lived,” Samuel said.

“Good, that’s wise. Give them our regrets. Find out about her family so we can send condolences.” Hiram stopped and eyed his son shrewdly. “Does that pretty little girl we had to dinner live there?”

“Yes. She’s the one who found the note.”

“I see. Don’t get yourself too involved.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“I believe you do.”

S
amuel Fiske approached the porch of Boott Boardinghouse, number 52, with some diffidence. He noted its sturdy structure with an automatically calculating eye. Built decently and safely, the dormitories in Lowell were a matter of particular pride to his father. The mill workers had made small attempts here and there to give this one some distinction, such as lining up plants in clay pots along the railing. No sign of any blooms coming from them at the moment, but they looked well tended. There was a fresh coat of paint on the front door, something of an orange shade, brighter than he would have expected. He tried to concentrate on such small particulars as he ascended the steps but lost focus when he saw a slender hand pull back the lace curtains and a blurred face staring at him. The curtains were quickly closed again.

He knocked firmly.

Mrs. Holloway opened the door. He could hear in the background the chatter and clatter of dishes that signified dinnertime. What he hadn’t prepared for was the utter devastation registered in this woman’s face.

“Yes, Mr. Fiske?” she asked. In other circumstances, she would have smiled and bobbed her head and invited him in with flustered courtesy. This was new to both of them.

“I understand this was the home of Sarah Cornell, and I’m here to convey my family’s condolences,” he began. The proper thing to say, and yet it rang sour in his ears.

“Sarah?” Mrs. Holloway blinked, gazing at him. A dawning recognition came. “We know her as Lovey.”

“May I come in?” he asked.

Mrs. Holloway seemed in some unexpected way to be thinking it over before she opened the door wider and nodded him in. “It’s not a happy time,” she said. She gestured back to the dining room, where he could see women sitting at the nearest table. A few of them had turned and registered his presence. Their talk diminished. A different sort of murmur threaded through the room; some faces were astonished; others just stared. He could smell fish chowder.

A familiar figure, seeing him, rose to her feet. Her face was drained and pale, her eyes slightly wild, her demeanor one of grief.

“Miss Barrow—,” he began.

“Mr. Fiske, thank you for coming, but I have a favor to ask,” she said without preamble. “Please do not allow Lovey to be dumped in the ground without a proper burial. It dishonors her, and we ask you to disallow it.”

The table went silent.

“I didn’t know that was being contemplated.”

“We have been told that is the plan. Please change it; can we count on you?” She worked to keep her voice strong, reminding herself: Stay resolute.

To Samuel, her voice rang so clearly, so calmly. Very different from the light, mannered hints and requests of the women he knew in Boston.

“I will make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said. He was rewarded with a collective sigh of relief from the crowded table.

“Will you join us for dinner, Mr. Fiske?”

Alice Barrow, to Samuel’s disappointment, did not offer the invitation; Mrs. Holloway did.

He cleared his throat, gazing again at Alice. “I would be delighted,” he said.

S
amuel sat at the table for the better part of an hour, tackling a bowl of fish chowder put in front of him, faintly surprised that it was tasty. It was awkward at first, but he was determined to coax out conversation.

“Tell me about Miss Cornell,” he said.

“She was a respectable woman,” Jane said in a strong voice, a pinched look on her perpetually worried face. “And you mustn’t believe anyone who says otherwise. She—she—I think she was, underneath it all, a believer in God.”

Alice reached out and gently touched her hand. “It’s all right, Jane, we don’t have to make her out to be someone she was not.” She turned to Samuel. “Lovey was no saint. But she was brave and lively and a good friend to us all. She made us laugh.”

“And sometimes cry,” Jane said, remembering the britches on her bed.

“She saved my child,” Delia volunteered. “I would have done anything for her.”

“She could do more looms at a time than I could,” Tilda said softly. “We had something of a game between us, a challenge. She made the long hours go by faster.”

“She never laughed at me,” Mary-o said, after a pause. “Some do, here. I may not be so quick or smart as others, but Lovey never made me feel she was laughing at me behind my back. She would sing when I played the piano. She had a lovely voice.”

“She was not the obedient type, if that’s what you want to know,” Alice said. “We’re not claiming that. She was clear-eyed about the compromises of working at the mill.”

“I should like to know more about those compromises.”

“They are the ones I told you and your family about in Boston.”

“You’re talking about health dangers in the mill, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” she said.

Samuel took time to place his spoon at a careful angle on the chowder bowl. “Your concerns will be addressed,” he said. “I promise that. And I keep my promises.” He stood, prepared to leave.

“Alice, would you be so kind as to walk Mr. Fiske out?” From somewhere, Mrs. Holloway had brought forth remembered grace notes of an earlier time.

Alice pushed back her chair and stood as Samuel donned his coat. She walked with him onto the porch, the door clicking closed behind them.

“I’m not just here as a representative of the Fiske family,” he said. “I am truly sorry that you lost your friend.”

“Thank you.” She looked up at him, surprised at his directness. She had been wrong to assign him an attitude before letting him establish his own. “You were kind to come,” she managed.

“There will be a proper funeral, I promise,” he said. “It will be here in Lowell, her true home, from what I can see.”

“Thank you.” Where were her words?

“I will be there,” he said. “My entire family will be.” Was there anything he could do to extend this conversation? Samuel stood on the top step, taking as much time as possible to button his coat. But he could think of nothing that would give true voice to what he wanted to say.

“Good night, Miss Barrow,” he said.

“Good night, Mr. Fiske.” Alice turned and went back into the boardinghouse, but not without an unexpected and unexplainable quickening of her heart.

T
he funeral was to be at Saint Anne’s. With Hiram Fiske in town, the message was clear: all of Lowell’s respectable citizens were expected to present themselves. There were no murders in this peaceful part of the country; who could remember the last one? With so many reporters crawling through town, clustering around any shop clerk or mill employee with something to say, the violent death of this lowly mill girl had quickly become cause for horror and indignation.

Their fevered attention turned to the industrialists who had created the town. Wasn’t the cotton mill of Lowell supposed to be the shining example of how industrialism could benefit both owner and worker? Wasn’t protection of these farm girls flocking to Lowell of paramount importance?

Then more news. John Durfee, the man who had found the body of the poor girl, stepped forward and told reporters he was convinced now a murder had been committed. The coroner had made a terrible mistake.

“I’m not an educated man,” he said to a crowd clustered around the county courthouse. “But I know how to tell the difference between a hanging suicide and a hanging murder, and I’ll talk only to the sheriff.”

Well, some said, the governor was coming; maybe he would put pressure on the old coroner to change his hasty verdict. Surely, people murmured, it was just a matter of time.

“W
hat?” Alice could hardly believe her ears when the message was delivered to the boardinghouse.

“I’ll say it again. Foreman Briggs is not excusing anyone from her shift for the funeral.” It was Mrs. Holloway’s duty to deliver the news, and her voice went clipped and hard.

“How can he not let us go?” Alice was dumbfounded. “That’s so—”

“Cruel,” Tilda finished.

They were all sitting at the table, staring at one another and the platters of meat and cheese in front of them.

“Lovey was right. When they wanted to parade us around for the president, they gave us green parasols, and we marched for our supper.” Tilda, who was never resentful, was seething now. “The fact that she was one of us holds no weight with the Fiskes.”

Mrs. Holloway shook her head. “I don’t see how they can make Lovey’s funeral a lavish show of how they want to protect you if you aren’t there.”

Silence fell. One by one, the girls arose from the table and disappeared out the door, leaving the slabs of beef and mashed potatoes to grow cold and congeal. Alice was last, sitting there and staring at the uneaten food.

What had happened to that compassion she had sensed in Samuel Fiske? Surely he knew she and the others were being denied time to attend the funeral. If he did, he was no better than the rest of them.

O
n Wednesday morning the girls from Boott Boardinghouse 52 trudged across the bridge to the mill in almost-total silence. Mrs. Holloway had protested, but there was no appeal. The mill cannot afford to have so many looms shut down, this is a competitive business, and they should know it, the foreman said. If you want your money, you work.

There was little talk as the morning hours passed by. All Alice could think of was Lovey frowning and laughing as she memorized poems and read her Bible pages, working her looms more expertly than any of them. She couldn’t be dead; it left a hole in everything. Alice felt dead herself; right now all that was alive inside was her anger.

Her fingers flew across the looms, weaving the fibers deftly, hardly seeing the product of her work. Briggs knew he had no moral right to deny Lovey’s friends a chance to say good-bye. None at all. The mill girls weren’t slaves, they were free women, and that was what it came down to. But he was blustering about, pretending he hadn’t been pressured to keep them on the job.

So what finally moved her hand up to the controlling switch? A question Alice couldn’t answer, but there she was, reaching up and clicking it off. It was without prior thought, just a decision that seemed completely right. First one of her looms, then another. The bleak winter sun filtered through the closed windows as she wiped the sweat from her forehead and stood still.