by Jane Steen
“Another argument?” I asked. Professor Wale’s animosity toward Judah and the Calderwoods had reached such a pitch that I was surprised the Calderwoods didn’t give him notice. The other teachers had begun avoiding him.
“Cam Calderwood is a pompous windbag with no more faith in his black, rotten heart than a Mohammedan.” The professor ran his fingers through his hair, dislodging a wisp of chalk dust.
“Isn’t that unfair to the Mohammedans?” I countered, amused. I wiped my pen and laid it down. “I’m sure they’re quite as sincere in their beliefs as any Christian, however mistaken the preachers tell us they are.”
The professor looked sideways at me and barked a short laugh, the tension on his face easing. “A Mohammedan might sit down and hold a sensible discussion, come to that. Calderwood—blast the man—just gives you his teeth and hair while that ass Poulton looks on with his pretty nose in the air. Dam—dang it all, that pair will bring this place to ruination.”
“I thought we were prospering.”
“In monetary terms, we are.” Professor Wale fished his empty pipe out of his pocket and sucked on the end of it with a wet, smacking sound. The odor of stale tobacco mingled with the scents of dust and beeswax, old leather, and lavender. “Oh, we’re doing very well indeed. Not one poor son of a plainsman has been found suitable to study here for over a year, d’you know that?” He laid a finger by his nose. “Not that you can spread that around, you understand. I had to resort to—well, underhanded means to ascertain the fact.”
“What does the denomination have to say about that?” I asked. “Isn’t it written into the charter, or whatever you call it, that the school support a certain number of poor boys?” I folded my letter to Martin, seeing the name “Teddy Lombardi” in my large, untidy writing. It looked as though my fears were well-founded; the boy would find no place at the school under the Calderwoods’ rule.
A wet gust of screeching wind hit the library’s French doors, and I jumped—and so did the professor. “Damned wind,” he bellowed, twisting around in his chair and forgetting not to swear in a lady’s presence. “Howling and screeching and moaning till you can’t tell your grandfather from a jackass rabbit. I’m sick of this place.”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“Didn’t I ask you the same thing eighteen months ago?”
“Not exactly,” I laughed. “You interrogated me about what my priorities were, and then you counseled patience. Maybe you should take your own advice.”
“I didn’t need patience when Hendrik Adema was alive.” The professor sighed heavily. “I was content to sit at the feet of a great and noble man. If we had differences of opinion, I knew we could resolve them. If he was blind to the faults of some of those around him, well, that was just part of the tolerance he preached and lived by. Or the pragmatism.”
He shrugged. “The Calderwoods came with the land and the money to build the seminary, and I don’t doubt that Dr. Adema thought he could keep them under control. And so he could, when he lived. But now the serpents are in charge of the Garden of Eden.” His face darkened. “They should be rooted out. And they will be, by God. You ask if the denomination knows what they’re up to—well, do they? I should not be idle in that regard.”
“Don’t be foolish either.” I felt a sudden qualm, although I didn’t know why.
“I’ll be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.” The professor smiled. “And what about you, Mrs. Lillington? No thoughts of leaving this place and returning to Chicago?”
I looked down at the letter in my hand. “I’m no longer sure of my welcome, should I return,” I said. “And now I have my dressmaking.”
“And your two swains.”
I looked up, reddening, to find that the professor was gazing intently into my face. “Mr. Lehmann makes calf’s eyes at you, and even the popinjay doesn’t seem immune to your charms. Have they declared?”
I could feel the heat spreading through my body. “If you must know, Mr. Lehmann has proposed—and I have refused him. Mr. Poulton has been polite and friendly toward me—that is all.”
“That is much, coming from him.” The professor’s face was suddenly grave and drawn, as if he had aged in a moment. “I’m glad you’re not a rich woman,” he said, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him.
16
Unexpected
November 13, 1873
Dear Nell—
I felt my breath leave my body as I rose to my feet. The disregarded enclosure to the letter in my hand tumbled down my skirt and landed with a soft hiss as it skidded along the polished floorboards. The room around me darkened at the edges of my vision, my whole consciousness focused on Martin’s neat, slanted writing.
“Of course you did.” I heard my own voice, high and strangled. Of course he had. How had I not guessed before this?
“Here, you’re as white as the paper,” said a voice in my ear. I felt a hand at my elbow, steadying me, and another at my waist, steering me back into my chair. “Sit down,” the voice commanded.
I sat down mechanically.
“Have you received bad news? Should I fetch a glass of water?”
Why didn’t the importunate voice leave me alone? I’d been alone in the library just a minute ago, hadn’t I?
“Nell, look at me.” A hand cupped my chin and turned it. The disembodied voice resolved itself into Judah Poulton, bending over me with a puzzled look on his face. “Did someone you know die?”
I took a deep breath. “No, I’m all right. I had a surprise, that’s all.” I essayed a smile. “Surprising news. Very unexpected.”
With a lithe, easy movement, Judah grabbed a chair from a nearby table and swung it round so he could sit near me. He gently pried the letter from my fingers—I was clutching it with the grip of a climber clinging to a cliff—set it on my lap, and took both of my hands in his, chafing them with his palms.
“It might be easier if you talked to someone.” The pressure on my hands increased as he looked into my eyes. “It’s a letter from Mr. Rutherford, isn’t it? Has he done something alarming?”
“He got married.” The words tumbled out before I knew I’d opened my mouth, and once I’d started, the rest was easy. “He got married to a woman named Lucetta Gambarelli—“
“Of the Gambarelli store, perchance? I see their advertisements in the Chicago papers.”
“The same.” My hands were starting to feel warm, and I pulled them out of Judah’s unprotesting grasp. “She came to see him—my goodness, yes! He wrote to me about it—she came to see him when he opened the store because he’d enticed away one of their best men to be his general manager.” No sudden coup de foudre, then—he’d known her for some time. Been courting her for a while, perhaps. And not a word to me.
Judah whistled, a soft, faint sound. “Quite a catch, the Gambarelli heiress, from what I’ve read. She must have brought a stupendous dowry with her. Not in the first flush of youth, from the sketches I’ve seen of her in the papers, but reputed a great beauty. How old is your Mr. Rutherford?”
“Thirty-one.”
“An excellent age for a man to marry, especially if he wishes to father heirs to his fortune. I’ve been reading about your Mr. Rutherford—he’s making money like King Midas himself, and the financial panic has made him all the richer because he has the reserves to buy at a low price. If Chicago had its own stock exchange, he’d be richer still.”
I stared at Judah. “I’m astonished you know so much about him.”
“The great moneymakers of our age are a study of mine. After all, they’re building this grand country of ours. Their shrewdness and application are good lessons to us all.” Judah’s face lit up with his dazzling smile. “Now, Nell, you must be happy for your friend. Did you find him such an old bachelor that the thought of his marriage shocks you? One-and-thirty really isn’t so old, Nell. I’m twenty-eight myself.”
“It’s not his age.” I felt my brow furrow as I tried to explain myself. “I j
ust never thought he would marry—anyone.” Except, perhaps, me. He’d offered that once, as an expedient to get me out of my stepfather’s clutches.
Judah’s brows rose. “Is he, perhaps, not the marrying kind?”
I knew what that euphemism meant—Martin had broken a man’s jaw for suggesting it. “No, not that either. I would say he’s extremely fond of women. But—well, I didn’t think he’d go in for marriage,” I finished lamely. I didn’t want to explain to Judah about Martin’s father, that dark, emaciated madman whose idea of a conjugal caress was a blow or tirade of abuse. And anyway, plenty of men hit their wives—not decent men, to be sure, but plenty of men nonetheless.
I folded the letter that lay in my lap. “I should return to work.”
I was halfway to the door when Judah called me back.
“Nell?”
He was standing near the chair I had occupied, reading a piece of paper with a look of disbelief on his face. As I drew nearer, he looked up.
“I’m terribly sorry—I think this is yours, and I shouldn’t have been reading it. I picked it up from the floor—“
“It is mine.” Belatedly, I remembered the enclosure. I took the piece of paper from Judah’s hand and folded it.
“But, Nell,” Judah’s tone was uncertain, but there was a gleam of what could have been suppressed excitement in his eyes. “I don’t wish to pry, but—have you read this?”
Puzzled, I unfolded the paper. Martin had sent me many such enclosures, which I would copy into my ledger. They typically began with the total from the last one, proceeded to an explanation of the investments Martin had recently made for me, and ended with a tally showing increases and decreases. Usually increases—Martin had a real genius for investment.
I always tried to study what he’d done, feeling I should at least try to understand, but truth be told, I generally began by looking at the starting and ending figures. I did so now, and my jaw dropped.
“I don’t understand.” For some reason, I was having trouble thinking straight.
“It all makes perfect sense.” Judah stood close to me, the mingled aromas of his hair, skin, and clothing in my nostrils. He gave off a faint scent of spun sugar, like a confectioner’s shop. One long, finely shaped finger traced the numbers on the page.
“He’s been quite cautious, hasn’t he, about risking your money in his own business? Never too much or for too long, and he quickly turns the excess into bonds in the five percents. It’s a wise man who knows to do that. And those private loans . . . Yes, I imagine quite a few Chicago businessmen have been a little overambitious about rebuilding since the fire. That name surprises me, in particular.” He tapped the paper.
“He’s tripled my capital.” The import of the figures was finally making its way into my dull brain.
“More than tripled.” Judah grinned. “It entertains me immensely that the seminary’s seamstress is a wealthy woman.” He looked around, as if fearing we’d be overheard. “I wouldn’t show this to the Calderwoods, if I were you.”
“I’m not in the habit of making the Calderwoods a party to my affairs.” A line of Scripture, half-remembered, was threading its way through my consciousness as I stared across the room at the scudding clouds beyond the window.
“Nell?” Judah tilted his head to one side and regarded me quizzically.
“Oh, nothing,” I replied, my mind still occupied with chasing the quotation. “Something about gaining the whole world.”
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Judah quoted promptly. “Sixteenth Matthew. You don’t feel you’ve lost your soul though, do you? You’ve done nothing wrong by acquiring this wealth, and Mr. Rutherford’s dealings are honest—he could have charged a lot more for those loans.”
“I’ve lost—“ My eyes focused on Judah, some clarity returning to my thoughts. “I’ve lost a friend, I think. Or at least, a friendship as it was. How could it not change?”
“You’ll never lack for friends, Nell.” Judah’s smile was warm. “When one fades away, another is ready to take his place.”
Part III
1874
17
Pharisee
“Preposterous!”
Professor Wale slammed the heavy chapel door so hard I could have sworn the row of stained-glass windows behind me shivered. A dull echo of the noise boomed around me where I stood at the top of the grand staircase’s grandest sweep, my shawl clutched around my shoulders.
A dull December, whose leaden sky had matched my low mood, had given way to an icy January. Kansas was not as cold as northern Illinois, but the seminary’s hallway was frigid, seeming to gather into itself the shreds of icy wind that made their way in under door and casement.
I descended slowly, my eyes on the professor. Was he about to suffer an apoplexy? His face was suffused with color, his fists clenched, his eyes dark pools of rage. He had clearly just left the Monday meeting, at which the faculty crowded into Dr. Calderwood’s well-heated study to discuss I didn’t know what.
“What’s preposterous? Are you all right?”
I watched as the little man turned around several times, like a dog seeking the right place to lie down. His head jerked up at the sound of my voice, and he made a beckoning motion, crossing to the front door without looking back or waiting to see if I would follow.
I sighed and pulled my shawl tighter. The door’s huge iron ring froze my hands, yet that was nothing to the biting wind outside.
“It’s too cold out here.” I raised my voice against the gale, my teeth already chattering.
The professor whipped off his dusty academic gown and threw it over my shoulders, pulling it tight. The closely woven poplin was surprisingly effective against the wind. Nevertheless, I backed into the most sheltered corner I could find.
“For heaven’s sake, tell me what’s wrong be-before we both freeze.”
The professor shouted his reply out to the prairie, the wind seizing his words and carrying them off in gusts toward the sodden, half-frozen wilderness before us. “That popinjay, that—that conceited ass, that indescribable bag of wind, that—“ Professor Wale stamped hard on the flagstones of the porch and whirled to face me. “I should have known. I should have prevented this. I must act.”
I shook my head, uncomprehending, and the professor took a step toward me. A wet snowflake landed on his circlet of wiry hair, melting into the springy gray-black mass.
“Your friend Poulton is made head of the faculty. It’s—it’s outrageous. It’s unconscionable.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
“I didn’t know such a position existed. Who filled it before?” I didn’t see where the problem lay either, but I wouldn’t say so. Perhaps the little man was jealous, having coveted the post himself.
“Such a position has never existed before. But now it does.” He was beginning to shiver. “This is a tomfool notion of Calderwood’s to advance his favorite. It effectively makes him the second in charge of the entire school.”
“Do the other professors object?”
“No.” Professor Wale shoved his hands under his armpits. “They’re all congratulating the little—your friend on his excellent fortune. Don’t forget, Mrs. Lillington, that most of them are new men, and the rest old dodderers grateful to still have a place.”
That was true. The Calderwoods had hired a number of new teachers of late, and none of them seemed to have an opinion of his own.
“I must get inside.” I tugged at the door. “We can’t be found standing out here.” They’d wonder at our sanity rather than at our propriety—but I wasn’t taking the chance.
The hallway that seemed so cold a few minutes before was now a haven of warmth and calm. I shrugged off the professor’s gown and returned it to him, listening with one ear to the murmur of voices in the chapel that told me the meeting was over. The men would be clustered in a group, no doubt discussing Professor Wale’s abrupt departure.
“I sha
ll, of course, contact our denominational office.” Wale’s voice was a low hiss in my ear. “And I have another string to my bow, one that Poulton doesn’t know about. I have discovered that a friend of a correspondent of mine knew Poulton in Baltimore, and he has furnished me with some addresses. I am going to make inquiries about that—about him.”
“You’re chasing shadows,” I said shortly. Not for the first time, I doubted the man’s sanity. Was it possible that this whole Darwin nonsense had unbalanced him? I hadn’t personally heard an argument for a while, but Reiner had told me they still went on. Most of the faculty were now against Professor Wale’s position.
“You think I’m pursuing a chimera, eh?” His smile was strange. “You would, of course. I cannot blame a woman for wishing to leave well alone, especially when her own future may be involved. But the game is worth the candle, my dear.”
He grasped my arm, squeezing it hard so that I opened my mouth in a squeak of protest. “You will thank me, one day. I, and I alone, am left to defend our rational, God-given senses against Phariseeism and ignorance. And with the Almighty’s help, I will prevail.”
“And will you wear a pretty dress, Momma?” Sarah smoothed the hair of her rag doll, made of an improbably red yarn we had found in Hayward’s.
At three, Sarah had begun to take an interest in what I, and she, wore—not that she showed any sign of being fascinated by the dressmaking process. My earliest memories included hovering at Grandmama’s elbow, watching her cut or sew, but to Sarah, clothes were of value only in that they were pretty and involved as many flounces and bows as possible.
