Unseemly Ambition (9 page)

Concordia re-read the all-too-brief
entirety of Miss Smedley’s essay:

The most compelling
character in
Paradise Lost
is that of Satan, which I hardly think was
Milton’s intention. It’s as if the allure of evil was too great
even for the author himself. After Adam and Eve ate the apple and
Satan was banished, the story ceased to be interesting. I stopped
reading after that.

Miss Smedley had an
intriguing idea, but Concordia was disappointed that she simply
gave up and didn’t finish. If the girl only applied herself, she
would be a promising student. But Miss Smedley’s enthusiasm for the
pages of
Harper’s
fashion plates did not extend to the pages of Milton or
Chaucer.

Concordia took off her spectacles and
rubbed her eyes. Time for a tea break. She pulled out her pot and
headed to the kitchen.

The kitchen was empty. Where was Ruby?
Concordia frowned over the dirty cups and spoons in the sink. Ruby
could not abide unwashed dishes. Perhaps she wasn’t feeling
well?

Concordia pulled an apron from the
hook. At least she could wash up and tidy the kitchen, then check
on Ruby afterward.

She had just dried her hands when the
kitchen door opened and Ruby slipped in quietly.

“
Oh!” Ruby jumped. “You
scared me to death.”

“
I’m sorry,” Concordia
said, filling the kettle and putting it on the stove. “I thought
you were lying down.”

Ruby took off her coat and hung it up
behind the door. “Uh, well…I thought I heard a couple o’ tomcats
tussling outside.”

“
Oh?” Concordia hadn’t
heard anything. She’d been in the kitchen for at least ten minutes.
How long does it take to look outside?

But Concordia wasn’t responsible for
the matron, and had no right to pry. Instead, she reached for the
tea canister and said nothing more.

Ruby turned toward the sink. “Let me
jes’ finish these—oh! Did you wash the dishes?” She flushed. “Thank
you, miss.”

“
No trouble. I’d better get
back,” Concordia said, clutching her now-full teapot. “I have more
grading to do.”

As Concordia headed back to her rooms,
she wondered what the matron had really been up to.

Week 5, Instructor Calendar

March 1898

“
So will I turn her virtue
into pitch, and out of her own goodness make the net that shall
enmesh them all.”

“
Very good,” Concordia
said, reading along from her copy, “now, I want you to look at the
last eight lines of that speech, and recite them aloud. With
feeling.”

As the student performed the lines,
Concordia fumed. Where was Mrs. Isley? She was supposed to be in
charge of the play, particularly these time-consuming
auditions.

It seemed as if everyone wanted to be
Iago. There were a fair number of seniors to get through yet, and
Concordia didn’t want the decision to be hers alone. She had a
feeling that, although Mrs. Isley liked to be in charge, she wasn’t
over-fond of putting in the time involved.

They were nearly finished when Mrs.
Isley arrived.

“
My dears! Oh, how sorry I
am to be late!” Lily Isley sashayed in on a cloud of rose-water
scent that made Concordia sneeze.

“
Concordia, you’d better
mind that cold before it becomes something more serious,” Lily
advised, taking a step back, “we don’t want to infect the players,
now, do we?”

“
Certainly not,” Concordia
answered through gritted teeth.

“
So, how are these charming
young ladies faring? Have we found any dramatic prodigies yet?”
Mrs. Isley paced up and down the apron of the stage, looking over
the girls, who tittered nervously. “My, my, such fresh young faces!
We will have our work cut out for us with stage makeup, to make
them look battle-weary...or evil.”

Concordia motioned toward her
clipboard. “I’ve seen several promising students, Mrs.
Isley….”

“
Wonderful!” Lily came over
to look.

“
I was thinking that these
three—” Concordia pointed to several names and nodded toward the
girls “—would make good candidates for Iago.”

Lily clucked her tongue and
glanced over the assembled girls. “Oh, my dear, they simply do not
have
the look
! No,
no, they won’t do at all.”

“
We can adjust the
look
; isn’t it more
important that they can
act
?” Concordia said, working to keep
the sarcasm from her voice. How long had it been since Lily had
performed in the theater, anyway?

Lily gave Concordia a pitying glance,
and turned toward the door, where Millie Carver, one of the quieter
seniors, stood. Concordia hadn’t even auditioned Miss Carver, as
that young lady had made clear her contribution to the play would
be set design. She was merely waiting for her roommate to be
finished so they could join their study group at the library. Now
Lily was pulling the poor girl to the center of the stage and
thrusting a script in her hands.

“
Read this passage, dear; I
think you would be a perfect Iago,” Mrs. Isley cooed.

A bewildered Miss Carver gave
Concordia a pleading look. “M-m-miss....”

“
Mrs. Isley,” Concordia
said sharply. “This senior is already assigned. Pick one of the
young ladies who has auditioned
for the
part, if you please.”

Lily Isley pouted and waved a
dismissive hand. Concordia held out her clipboard, but Lily ignored
it. “You,” she said, pointing to a short, dark-browed girl in the
back, “read this passage aloud.”

When the young lady complied,
Concordia was astonished. How had she missed this girl? “I don’t
recall you signing up to audition for Iago.”

“
No miss,” came the soft
answer, “I saw how many girls wanted the part, so I wasn’t going to
try for it.”

Not exactly a go-getter in life,
Concordia thought, which was ironic for this particular character,
but the student certainly had something that carried from the
stage. Once it was coaxed out of her.

Mrs. Isley beamed.
“Congratulations...Miss Stephens, is it? You are our new Iago.” A
chorus of disappointed sighs followed this
pronouncement.

“
Not to worry, lambs!” Lily
called to the other girls. “We need everyone’s contribution to make
the play a success. Miss Wells here will find a meaningful job for
each of you.”

Miss Wells will find a job
for each of you?
Splendid. So much for a
lighter work load.

Concordia rummaged among the scripts.
She passed one to Miss Stephens. “It’s a significant part to
learn,” she warned. “You should get started on it right away.” The
girl nodded delightedly and left, clutching the script.

Lily wrapped herself in her fox fur
and picked up her reticule. “I must go; I have an appointment. Oh!
I almost forgot. I’m giving a dinner party in two weeks’ time. It’s
a small affair; no more than forty guests. It’s in honor of Mr.
Sanders—he’s the Republican candidate for the state senate seat,
you know. I was hoping you could come, my dear. And bring that
young man of yours...Mr. Bradley, isn’t it?”

Concordia nodded
stiffly.
That young man of yours,
indeed. She was hardly a debutante, but rather a
staid older woman of twenty-nine. Practically on the shelf, as they
say. Sometimes being “on the shelf” suited her just
fine.

“
I cannot speak for Mr.
Bradley, but I’ll ask him, if you’d like,” Concordia said. A
small
dinner party of
forty people?
Mercy.

“
Wonderful!” Lily beamed.
“I’ll have the invitations sent ’round to you.”

After Mrs. Isley left, Concordia made
short work of the remaining senior assignments, tidied the
auditorium, and locked the door behind her. The early March skyline
had long since faded to black, the cold making itself felt through
her wool coat. She shivered as the wind picked up around the
quadrangle. No one was out on the grounds at this hour. She’d
better hurry; there wasn’t much time before lights out. She pulled
her coat closer and started at a brisk pace for Willow Cottage, her
boot heels ringing upon the cold stones.

She was just about to step onto the
shrubbery-lined path to the cottages when she saw something move in
the distance. She turned. The bracketed lights of the Memorial
Chapel doors illuminated the outline of a slim man. Her breath
caught in her throat. It was the same youth she had seen last month
on Rook’s Hill.

Could one of the girls be involved
with the young man, setting up trysts after hours?

Concordia’s lips thinned in a stern
line. Not if she had anything to say about it. She hastened toward
the chapel, but by the time she reached it the man was
gone.

Concordia gritted her teeth in
frustration and turned toward the gatekeeper’s cottage. At least
she could inform Clyde of their unauthorized visitor.

Week 5, Instructor Calendar

March 1898

The next afternoon, Concordia stared
in dismay at the pile of mail taking over her desk. How long had it
been there—a week? She’d neglected it terribly.

Her thoughts returned to Eli as she
worked to clear her desk. Would they be able to find him and learn
the truth about Florence’s murder? She trusted Capshaw’s ability,
but each passing day without progress increased her
worry.

Concordia sifted through
the pile of envelopes, throwing away the advertising circulars
(“
Our 57-cent Princess Hair Tonic
Restorer!”
)
,
opening the department store bill (she was nearly
finished paying for those winter boots), and finally reaching the
bottom of the stack.

She picked up a plain white
envelope. The hand was unfamiliar, with no return direction upon
it. Concordia slit it open and glanced at the signature.
Florence Tooey
. Her heart
beat faster. Also within the envelope was a tiny, locket-sized
picture of what Concordia assumed to be the woman in her younger
days. As small as it was, she could make out Eli’s features in the
large, luminous eyes of the mother.

Settling herself in the chair,
Concordia started back at the beginning.

Dear Miss
Wells,

I hope you’ll pardon the
presumption of my engaging in a personal correspondence. I know
that you care about Eli, so I’m using this as an excuse for
imposing upon you. I hope I have been able to persuade you by this
point that I really am his mother, although I could see you didn’t
believe the tissue of lies I thought I was so clever in creating. I
will share some of the real story with you now, in hopes that you
will do something for me.

The child’s birth was
under less than ideal circumstances. I was very young, and
unmarried. I come from a respected family. My parents acted in the
best way they knew to protect me from ruin, sending me away to have
the baby and arranging to have him cared for by a former servant.
For a goodly sum, the woman and her mother were willing to raise
him and keep his parentage a secret.

I do not offer any excuse
for letting him go, except that I was young and frightened. Other
life events have intervened in the past eleven years, and I have
tired of the facade. I’ve secured enough money to leave the area
and live comfortably abroad.

As you know, I intended to
take Eli with me. But you made a persuasive argument for leaving
him here, where he can be raised by a loving family. I was appalled
when Miss Newcombe told me of what he had been through. His foster
mother must have been subjected to desperate circumstances. I never
knew.

There is another reason
why I’ve changed my mind about taking the boy. Certain unscrupulous
people with whom I’ve had dealings are tracking my movements. I may
expose Eli to danger if he accompanies me. I’ve already had one
near miss, in an alley near the settlement house. If a good
stranger had not come along, I would have been attacked. Thank
heaven I wasn’t followed to my lodging.

But before I leave for
good, I am resolved to spend a bit more time with the child. I
think he is coming to like me, but when I tell him goodbye, I know
he’ll be relieved to stay. I hope it won’t be too much of a risk to
remain for one more day, so we can spend it together. They haven’t
found me yet.

If you could do something
for me: when you judge the boy old enough, please tell him my
story. Perhaps he won’t look upon his mother too unkindly. I have
enclosed a photograph of myself that I hope he would like to keep
someday.

Please assure Eli’s new
parents that I will not trouble them in the future.

Regards,

Florence Tooey

P.S.— If something should
happen to me, ask Eli to show you the gift I gave him.
—F.T.