Uprising (28 page)

“An answer?”

He nodded impatiently.

“She asked about whether the strikers had any legal recourse if the company violated the terms of the strike agreement.”

Jane didn't remember Yetta asking the question in quite those words.

“And?” she prompted.

“It was just a verbal agreement, as far as I can tell. Nothing was put in writing. So—there's nothing the strikers can do. Except go out on strike again of course.” He started to turn away again, such an odd boy. Then, as if remembering something else, he turned back. “But one of my professors did write to the city building department complaining about the safety conditions he'd seen at Triangle. So that's something at least.”

Safety conditions? Jane couldn't imagine the city building department caring. In the tenements she'd seen rusty pipes hanging out from the wall, children falling from half-demolished buildings, peddlers who scooped out food with the same hand they coughed into. And of course, the dead horse in the street. By comparison, Triangle was a marvel, a modern factory—that was something Bella and Yetta bragged about.

“What took you so long to answer Yetta's question?” she asked Charles.

“Well, last year I was just a first-year, so I was too scared of my professors to ask anything. And then I went to Europe over the summer—London, Paris, Rome, all the usual places. And then when I got back, they gave us so much homework right away that I was barely keeping up. But I'm a second-year now, so I'm getting better at figuring out what I really need to know.”

Jane barely listened after he said the word “Europe,” because it made her remember the trip Eleanor Kensington had been planning. If Jane hadn't run away from home, maybe right now she, too, would be slipping mention of the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum or the Elgin Marbles into casual conversation. For a moment she felt a pang, but then she noticed the reediness in Charles Livingston's voice.

Such a callow, inexperienced youth,
she thought.
And last November I was even worse. . . .

“Thank you for your help,” Jane said. “Yetta will appreciate your efforts.”

Though that probably wasn't true, Jane reflected. It was more likely that Yetta would storm and fret and fume that there must be something the Triangle workers could do. Maybe if they all wrote letters to the city ... ?

Jane smiled with fondness for her fervent friend as Charles Livingston nodded and reluctantly moved away. She leaned back against the building and idly watched the traffic. A year ago, she would have been thinking,
Is that car grander than ours? Is that chauffeur's uniform smarter than Mr. Corrigan's? How about that lady's hat—oh, dear, is that the latest fashion? Something new that I didn't know about? I must get a hat like that!
Now she didn't care about cars or chauffeur's uniforms, and she was wearing a hat that she and her friends had put together from bits and scraps and other women's cast-offs.

One of the cars in the street slowed down and pulled up to the curb. The chauffeur stepped out, shielding his eyes against the sunset. His car was unfamiliar, his uniform was unfamiliar, but there was something about the way he stood ... He turned, and Jane caught a glimpse of a bushy gray moustache.

It was Mr. Corrigan, her father's chauffeur.

Ever since she'd run away, ever since she'd taken the job as the Blancks' governess, Jane had feared that someone from her old life would spot her, report her, drag her back home. But even wealthy Jewish immigrants like the Blancks patronized few of the same stores and restaurants and ice cream parlors as Jane's former friends; they didn't go to any of the same resorts or tourist hotels or beaches. And Jane knew her old friends' routines. She didn't take Harriet and Millicent to Macy's in the mornings when her old friends did their shopping; she didn't go to Central Park in the afternoon when they might be out bicycling. She watched the newspapers and made sure she wasn't anywhere near the theater or the opera house when there were big performances. Even at the suffrage parade she'd kept an eye out, ready to duck behind a street light or a sign post if she saw Eleanor Kensington or any of that crowd.

She'd never thought to worry about being spotted near Triangle by her father's chauffeur.

Instantly she whipped around, hiding her face from the street. Had he seen her? She decided to slip inside the Triangle factory doors just in case, but the crowd was thick on the sidewalk around her. Maybe the other direction would work better. ... She turned around, and came face to face with Mr. Corrigan.

“Miss Wellington,” he whispered.

He put his hands on her shoulders, stopping just short of pulling her into a hug. He had tears in his eyes.

“Faith and begorra, miss! I've been looking for you for months!”

“Really?” Jane said. “My father told you to—”

She saw the truth in Mr. Corrigan's eyes: Her father had had nothing to do with it. Jane started to turn away, but Mr. Corrigan tightened his grip on her shoulders.

“Now, don't be like that! Don't get lost again!”

“I haven't been lost,” Jane said coldly. “I know exactly where I am.”

Mr. Corrigan didn't even flinch. Ever the obedient servant, he wouldn't have flinched if she'd slapped him.

“I know your father's worried about you, because he has bags under his eyes and he's grumpier than ever,” he said apologetically. “But, see, he told everyone that you're off visiting your aunt in Chicago. So that when you came home, your reputation wouldn't be ruined, you know? But, having said that, he couldn't go around inquiring about where you were.”

Jane saw how it was, the intricacy of the lies that her father and society would consider necessary. That would
be
necessary. A girl who ran away from home would be ruined no matter where she went or what she did; everyone would assume that she'd surrendered her virtue, whether she actually had or not. So Jane's father had chosen to protect her reputation above all else.

Oh, yes—better to protect my reputation than to protect me,
she thought bitterly.
I was lying in the street on rotting horseflesh, set upon by pickpockets who might have killed me just for the ring on my finger! And my father wasn't even trying to find me!

Jane remembered that she hadn't needed protection. She'd escaped from the pickpockets all by herself. With Bella and Yetta's help, she'd managed to live on her own for the past nine months. She tossed her head haughtily.

“I've been quite all right without my father's concern,” she said.

Mr. Corrigan's eyes seemed to be taking in the cheap quality of her hat, the threadbare fingertips of her gloves. She wouldn't have suspected that he was a man who knew about fashion, but she wondered if he could see that the blue serge she was wearing again was last season's dress. She even wondered if he could tell that, like Yetta, she now had holes in the soles of her boots.

“I'm sure your father thought that you'd come back home quickly,” Mr. Corrigan said. “That a day or two would have been enough to—”

“What? Break my spirit?” Jane asked.

“Bring you to your senses,” Mr. Corrigan finished in an even tone. “And maybe he
did
hire detectives, privately, that I don't know about.”

“Not very good ones, obviously,” Jane sneered. Though, she reflected, who would have been able to predict that she'd go live in the slums? That she'd work as a servant for immigrants? That she'd be happy?

“Come home,” Mr. Corrigan said. “I'm sure your father will find it in his heart to forgive you.”

He bowed his head humbly, a servant presuming to speak for his master.

“Forgive me? Forgive
me?”
Jane felt a sudden surge of outrage, as powerful as the indignation that Yetta seemed to carry around all the time. “He's the one who should be begging my forgiveness, for using me and my well-being as an excuse for exploiting his workers, for hiring strikebreakers to beat up his own employees, for . . . for exploiting
you,
Mr.
Corrigan. Haven't you noticed that he's exploiting
you?
My father owes an apology to all of society, for what he is and what he does—”

“Now, listen here, young lady.” Mr. Corrigan's eyes flashed. “I would give my eyeteeth to get my daughters even a fraction of the advantages that you've had. Just to let them go to one of those fancy balls . . . They could live on that the rest of their lives. Maybe I would have even sold my soul to the devil to have them trade places with you, had the devil given me the opportunity, God protect my poor, weak soul from such temptation.” He crossed himself, as if he were afraid the devil was listening. “You don't know what it's like for your father, and you his only child . . .”

Jane broke her gaze away from Mr. Corrigan's and stared out into the street. She was beginning to feel just the slightest twinge of doubt. What if her father weren't quite as bad as she thought? What if she were wrong?

Her eyes fell on the shiny car Mr. Corrigan had left parked by the curb.

“My father couldn't be too heartbroken if he had time to go out and buy a new car,” Jane said, “and to outfit you in a new uniform . . . I'll warrant, he hasn't missed a single party since I've been gone, hasn't turned down a single social engagement!”

“He had to keep up appearances,” Mr. Corrigan said, but it was like he was begging again, like Jane had the upper hand despite her ragged clothes.

“You know how it is to be a father,” Jane said. “I'll tell you how it is to be a girl. I'm a servant now—me! A servant! All day long, I'm subject to the whims of a five-year-old and
a twelve-year-old and a woman who can barely speak English. I look at a bun in a bakery window and I think, ‘Can I afford to buy that? What else would I have to give up if I buy that bun?' But it's my decision whether I buy that bun or a piece of lace for my dress or a book that I can stay up all night to read, if I want to. It's my own money, and I'm beholden to nobody! I'm freer now than I was when I was going to all those fancy parties, and Miss Milhouse was telling me what to wear and how to do my hair and whom to be nice to and how to act and how to think—”

“Your father fired Miss Milhouse,” Mr. Corrigan said.

Jane felt a spurt of spiteful glee—
At least I accomplished something by running away!
But that was followed quickly by something like sympathy. It mattered so much to Miss Milhouse to serve a prominent family; she'd always managed to imply that the Wellingtons weren't quite up to her standards. Now, cast out like this, she'd be forced several rungs down on the social ladder. She had no family—maybe she was even destitute now.

“She'd been pining after your father for years,” Mr. Corrigan said quietly. “Though she knew he'd never actually marry someone in her position. And she found out that when your father was away last winter there was another woman. He proposed and . . . the woman turned him down. So they were both so unhappy last winter, neither of them could deal with you. . . .”

Jane took a step back. She didn't want to know any of this about the adults who'd ruled her life, that beneath their veneer of propriety they might have been concealing a turmoil of emotions too. Miss Milhouse—in love? Her father—spurned
and rejected and lovelorn? It was too much to comprehend.

“No matter what you tell me, I'm not coming home,” she said firmly.

“Can I at least tell your father that you're safe?” Mr. Corrigan said. “That I found you and you're still alive and healthy and as stubborn as ever?”

Jane considered this. She considered what a gift he was giving her, that he hadn't grabbed her and thrown her in the car and forced her to go home. That he was offering her a choice.

“No,” she said. “He'd make you tell him where I am— where I'm living, where I'm working.”

“I don't know any of that,” Mr. Corrigan said. “I just saw you when I happened to be driving by, on a whim, just because you used to come down here during the strike.”

Jane saw that Mr. Corrigan was as skilled as anyone at constructing intricate lies. Maybe she'd underestimated him all along.

“You've driven past here before, haven't you?” she asked.

“Many times,” he said. “Whenever I could without arousing suspicion. It was the only clue I had. Because the Kensingtons' chauffeur told me where he dropped you off.”

Tears stung at Jane's eyes, unexpectedly. Who would have guessed that the chauffeur would show more concern for her than her own father?

“I'll write my father a letter,” she decided. “So it won't make any problems for you. And I'll post it from a mailbox he could never trace.”

Already, she was having fun imagining which postal box she would choose. She should have written a letter months ago. She should have thought of it on her own.

“Miss Jane,” Mr. Corrigan said. “Winter's coming. Maybe . . . maybe you think it's a lark being poor when it's warm out. But when it's cold . . . poor people freeze. They die. They die of influenza, of consumption, of fevers that no one even bothers to name.”

“You don't have to worry about me,” Jane said, prickly again. “I'll be fine.”

“Let me bring you your winter clothes from last year,” Mr. Corrigan said. “They're just sitting in your room; nobody's touched them. There's a maid who would help me smuggle them out—nobody would ever know.”

So he had noticed the sad shape of her clothing. The Jane who'd stalked out of her father's house nine months ago would have sniffed and sneered and lectured him about tainted money and tainted clothes. But she was wearing the serge dress her father's money had purchased. Now it was something more like pride that prompted her to shake her head no.

“If nobody would know,” she said slowly, “take the clothes for your daughters. Give them just that fraction of the advantages that I've had. You wouldn't have to trade your eyeteeth—or your soul.”