Unseemly Ambition (7 page)

Miss Smedley started, involuntarily
looking down at her fashionable—and quite expensive—white kid
leather gloves trimmed in pearl buttons. “I’m not giving these to
that...freshie.”

The girls had stopped talking and
stared. Ruby looked on in interest.

Concordia leaned in close
to Alison Smedley. “You will give her your gloves, or find the
missing ones yourself. Right
now
.”

Miss Smedley stared at the stern-eyed
professor for a long moment, open-mouthed. She glanced around at
her fellow cottage occupants. They waited silently. She would get
no help from that quarter.

“
Now
,” Concordia repeated.

Miss Smedley ran up the
stairs.

The girls murmured among themselves as
they waited, but all listened to the sounds overhead in the room
Miss Smedley and Miss Lovelace shared: drawers being slammed, a
trunk lid flung open, a stool pushed aside. Then silence, before
they heard the young lady coming back down the stairs.

“
Well?” Concordia
said.

Wordlessly, Miss Smedley handed
Concordia a pair of plain gray cotton gloves. Concordia held them
up. “Are these yours, Miss Carey?”

“
No, they are
not
,” Miss Carey said,
glaring at Miss Smedley.

“
I couldn’t find them,”
Miss Smedley said in a subdued voice. She gave her roommate a sharp
look. Miss Lovelace raised an innocent eyebrow.

“
How unfortunate,”
Concordia said.

“
These are my spare pair,”
Miss Smedley said. “She can wear them.”

“
No. Take off your gloves,
Miss Smedley.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “But I just
said that she—”

“—
and
I say
that
you
will wear the cotton gloves, my
good miss, and Miss Carey will wear these nicer ones,” Concordia
interrupted. “That should afford you plenty of time to look further
for Miss Carey’s own gloves, and to reflect upon the ill-spirited
nature of your actions.”

Flushing an angry red, Miss Smedley
pulled off her gloves in short, jerky movements. Concordia passed
them to Miss Carey.

Ruby opened the door. “All right,
let’s go before we’re late to chapel. Come on now.”

As the girls filed through the door,
Concordia murmured to Ruby. “I’ll catch up in a few
minutes.”

Ruby gave an appreciative nod. “Nicely
done, miss.”

Once the door was closed behind them,
Concordia ran up the stairs to Miss Smedley’s room. She pulled Miss
Carey’s gloves out of her pocket and returned them to Miss
Smedley’s trunk, where Maisie Lovelace had said they’d been hidden.
With a sigh, she put on her coat and gloves and hurried to catch up
with the others.

After chapel and breakfast, Concordia
set off for a meeting with the lady principal to discuss the senior
play. She hoped it was good news. Directing the play was a
substantial drain on her time, and there were usually problems
aplenty. Concordia was a teacher, not a stage manager.

But perhaps this year would be better.
Miss Pomeroy had said that Lily Isley was indeed interested in
helping. Perhaps Mrs. Isley would take complete charge of it? After
all, the stage came naturally to that lady.

The lady principal’s office was a
familiar place to Concordia, as it was just down the hallway from
her own. She’d had many occasions to visit it for some college
business or other. Each lady principal had placed her own style and
stamp upon the quarters. In Miss Pomeroy’s case, it wasn’t so much
a stamp as a wading through of books, papers, and assorted
knick-knacks, as the lady principal was...well, rather
slovenly.

Miss Pomeroy glanced up briefly from
her work and waved Concordia into a chair. “Just a minute, dear.
Let me get this down while I’m thinking of it.”

Concordia found a chair
beneath a stack of translations of
La
Chanson de Roland
and sat with the pile in
her lap, for want of a better place to put it.

Besides serving as lady principal,
Gertrude Pomeroy had taught at the college as one of its foreign
languages professors for nearly twenty years. The lady was a
brilliant, well-respected scholar, fluent in six languages, with a
sharp memory of every text she had translated. The position of lady
principal had been unexpectedly thrust upon her last year, with the
unfortunate retreat of her predecessor.

She’d accepted the change with good
grace; however, her absent-mindedness and indecisiveness were
qualities ill suited to an administrator. Concordia could see it
was a struggle for her to adjust.

Miss Pomeroy eventually set aside her
pencil and looked up at Concordia, her eyes china-doll-blue through
her wire-framed spectacles. “So glad you came, my dear, we need to
get this play underway...now where is my….”

“
Is Mrs. Isley joining us
today?” Concordia asked.

The lady principal leaned forward,
spectacles perilously close to the end of her nose. Concordia
resisted the impulse to push them up the lady’s face. “Indeed, yes!
Mrs. Isley wants to direct the play. We’ll still need you to help,
of course, since she’s new to the school...not really part of the
faculty, either….” Miss Pomeroy’s voice trailed off
again.

They were interrupted by a
knock.

“
Yes?” Miss Pomeroy called
out.

Mrs. Isley entered in a wake of
lavender fragrance.

“
A pleasure to see you
again, Miss Wells,” Mrs. Isley said, extending a delicate gloved
hand in Concordia’s direction.

The woman tugged upon her
double-breasted jacket of buffalo red melton and adjusted the fox
fur stole draped over her shoulders. Rather than sitting, she paced
the cluttered confines of the room – no easy feat, given the
obstacles in her path – turning with a self-conscious grace to face
one or the other occupant. “I am happy to be of help in my own
little way,” she added.

“
I’m sure it will be more
than ‘little,’ Mrs. Isley,” Concordia said. At least, she hoped so.
The more work the lady could take on, the better.

“
Oh, please, call me
Lily.”

“
Then you must call me
Concordia.”

“
Ah!
Concordia...
what a charming name.
After the Roman goddess of harmony, is it not?” Lily
inquired.

“
Few people are aware of
that,” Concordia answered, surprised.

“
I am conversant in all of
the mythologies and classical stories of our age, my dear
Concordia. As you know, I was a student of the stage
before I married. Classical theater was my
playground: Shakespeare, Cowper, Molière, the Greeks—they were all
my playfellows!”

Concordia could tell that, while Lily
may have left the stage, the stage had by no means left Lily. She
suppressed a smile. “Indeed?” she said.

“
Oh my, yes,” said the
lady. “I studied with some of the greats of our time: Irving,
Bernhardt…at the risk of seeming immodest, I must say that my
performances drew adoring crowds. Had I not retired early from the
stage, I would have had a marvelous career. Nothing could keep me
from my Barton, of course, although I do miss the footlights at
times.”

“
I can imagine,” Miss
Pomeroy put in absently, her glance straying to the stack of papers
in Concordia’s lap.

“
So you see, my dears,”
Lily continued—Concordia almost choked in laughter at the
my dears...
did all stage
people speak in such an extravagant fashion?—”I would be
privileged
to produce this
little college play. And I have so many ideas! But I was
wondering...perhaps there would even be a part for me?”

Concordia was willing to
give Lucifer himself a part in the play in exchange for less work
and aggravation. “Absolutely.” She turned to Miss Pomeroy. “The
play is
Othello
, is
it not?”

“
Hmm?” Miss Pomeroy came
out of her daydream. “Oh, yes, indeed—it’s
Othello
.”

“
Well, then, I’d imagine
you would be perfect as our Desdemona,” Concordia said recklessly.
Whatever senior had dreamt of having that part, a pity. Besides,
Desdemona gets smothered in the end, and Concordia couldn’t wait to
see their theater expert handle
that
.

“
Excellent!” Lily
exclaimed, clasping her hands together in excitement.

“
Well then, we are agreed,”
said Miss Pomeroy, who promptly reached for the stack of papers in
Concordia’s lap and shooed them out.

I pray you, sir, go
forth,

And give us truth who ’tis
that is arrived.

Othello
, II.i

Week 5, Instructor Calendar

March 1898

At last the Capshaws returned from
their honeymoon. Although Martha had no doubt left them a message,
Concordia wasted no time. As soon as she finished with classes for
the day, she hopped a trolley and got off at Retreat Avenue,
walking the last few blocks to the Capshaws’ new residence on
Alden.

It was a working class neighborhood,
quite different from the nearby Governor’s Row section of wealthy
families in which Sophia had grown up. However, it wasn’t run-down
or crime-ridden, as some poorer neighborhoods could be. Here, a
mixture of children, languages, and walks of life were plentiful;
merchants ran small shops and kept their sidewalks well swept;
people smiled and greeted each other as they passed. Not a bad
neighborhood at all to start a life together, Concordia
thought.

Soon she found number fifty-nine and
rapped on the worn brass knocker. A young girl answered it
promptly. She was clean and presentable, but her apron was too
large for her thin frame, and her cap was crookedly perched on her
head. Concordia smiled when she recognized Sadie from the
settlement house.

Sadie’s eyes lit up when she saw
Concordia, but she maintained her role.

“
Yes?” the girl asked
politely.

“
Are the Capshaws at home?”
Concordia asked.

“
O’ course, Miss Wells,”
she said, opening the door wider and stepping aside. “Let me take
your coat for you.”

“
This way,” she said,
turning down the narrow corridor. Concordia followed, looking
around curiously as she passed. This was the first time she’d been
in Sophia’s new home. The bare hallway, cramped rooms and peeling
wallpaper were a stark contrast to her friend’s childhood house of
wealth and privilege. And yet the creaky wood floors had been
well-scrubbed, and not a cobweb or speck of dust was anywhere to be
seen.

The parlor had a good fire going, a
welcome sight after the chilled walk from the trolley stop.
Concordia sat and stretched out her hands.

Sophia came in soon after.
“Concordia!” she exclaimed. “It’s so good to see you.”

Sophia was naturally tall and angular
of figure, but her angles seemed to have softened. The new bride
wore her hair in a relaxed chignon at the nape, instead of her
usual no-nonsense topknot. Her face was glowing, her brow
relaxed.

“
Look at you,” Concordia
said with a smile, “you are simply beaming. Marriage suits
you.”

Sophia blushed as she joined Concordia
beside the fire and gave her a hug. “I’m so happy. I’d recommend it
to anyone.”

“
Where’s the lieutenant?”
Concordia asked.

Sophia smiled. “I think you
can call him
Aaron
now. You’re family to us.”

Concordia grimaced. “We’ll see. I’m
not sure I can get used to that. Is he home?”

Sophia nodded. “He’s finishing a staff
interview. Our funds are small, as you might imagine, but we’re
hiring a woman from the settlement house who’ll come in to clean
and cook. You saw that Sadie’s here already. It helps all of us
that way. They will develop a respectable work history and
references when they are ready to move on, and we get affordable
help from women we know.”

“
It sounds like a wonderful
arrangement, Sophie, but I’m actually here on an urgent matter,”
Concordia said. “You haven’t checked your correspondence since
you’ve returned? Talked with Martha?”

Sophia shook her head. “We were back
so late last night; there’s been no time. We haven’t even seen Eli
yet. But what is it that’s so urgent? You look worried.”

“
Something happened while
you were gone, but I’d rather wait until L—Aaron comes in, so I can
tell you both—”

“
Tell us what?” Capshaw
walked into the parlor. “It’s good to see you, M–Concordia.” He sat
beside Sophia. “What’s happened?”

Concordia perched on the edge of her
chair and told them about Florence Tooey, her claim to be Eli’s
mother, and her determination to take Eli with her.

“
She has reluctantly agreed
to wait until you were back from your trip.” Concordia turned to
Capshaw. “We need to find out more about her.”