Pride's Folly

by Fiona Harrowe

  Though I had slept only in fits and starts for the past thirty hours and felt ill with exhaustion, I could not rest. I had to find Judah.

  “You poor dear,” said the matronly lady to whom I voiced my need. “So many separated families. But we are doing our best. Give me your husband’s name and we’ll pass it along.” As yet, she said, the dead had not been recovered.

  “But I feel there’s a very good chance Mr. Harrison is alive,” I assured her.

  “Of course, my dear. But why don’t you lie down for a while? You’ll need your strength.”

  Persuaded, resolved to take a short catnap, I fell into a deep slumber moments after my head touched the thin, hard pillow under my head. I slept all the day and most of the following night, as ashamed when I woke as if I had commited an act of cowardice.

  No word of Judah Harrison, I was told, but a morgue had been set up in an empty warehouse. The sensible thing would be to look there first. So the next afternoon, I donned the clothes the church ladies had given me to replace my sodden gown and went to the huge barnlike building of faded red brick. Literally thousands had preceded me, desperate weeping mothers, distraught husbands, worried brothers, sons, friends, a mob of the bereaved and the hopeful. The charred bodies, or fragments of bodies, were covered with blankets and laid out in neat rows. They presented a horrible sight, and the screaming and wailing of those who managed to identify their kin did not help.

  I stood inside the door, blinking in the gloom, breathing shallowly of the charnel-house stench. A diminutive man with a thin, pale face and pinched nostrils, apparently one of the officials, for he carried a ledger, came up to me.

  “Could I be of some help, ma’am?”

  “I’m looking for my husband, Judah Harrison.”

  “And where did you last see him, ma’am?”

  “At the Palmer House.”

  “I believe we found only one body there—let me see.”

  He consulted his ledger. “Yes. Judah Harrison. I remember now. Curious, his flesh was burned completely away except for the right hand.”

  I flinched, but he didn’t notice and went on: “Someone said a heavy marble column must have fallen over the hand before the fire consumed him. That in itself was strange. You see, the fire in most places was of such intensity that it melted everything it did not burn. Iron, bronze, brass, and marble dissolved into puddles—”

  “Please,” I broke in, feeling sick, “I would rather not hear the details.”

  “Very well.” He twitched his nostrils. “A card was found in that hand. I have it here.”

  He rummaged through the ledger and brought it out, charred and smelling of dead ashes.

  JUDAH HARRISON

  REAL ESTATE

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

  Why would he be clutching this bit of pasteboard? Was he conscious of a last moment? Perhaps he had reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to cover his face against the smoke and heat. Perhaps ... but I would never know.

  “Would you like to see him, Mrs. Harrison?”

  I hesitated for the briefest of moments. “Yes, please.”

  We threaded our way through the throng. Halfway down a row of covered corpses, he paused. A tag with Judah’s name on it was pinned to a gray army blanket. The official stooped and uncovered the skeletal face. I wanted to turn away, but shame forced me to look. I was the survivor, the one who by a quirk of fate, or God’s will, had been chosen to live. The least I could do was look upon death, no matter how ugly or grisly. But the “thing” there was not Judah. The Judah I remembered had a fringe of brown hair, brown eyes, a smile, a frown, a mouth, a nose. . . .

  Tears brimmed my eyes and I brushed them away.

  “He is still wearing his ring, Mrs. Harrison.” The official lowered his voice. “I’d advise you to take it. You’d be surprised at the ghouls who have tried to strip our corpses.”

  I bent down and slipped Judah’s signet from his charred finger.

  “If you wish to make funeral arrangements,” the man said, “may I suggest a mortuary?” He fished a card from his pocket.

  JACK AND OSCAR HIBBENS

  FUNERAL PARLOR

  10 WEST JACKSON STREET

  “At the risk of seeming immodest,” he said, beaming, “my brother and I operate the best establishment in the city.”

  “Thank you. I shall consider it. But I wonder . . . Was nothing found near Mr. Harrison’s body? A cash box, perhaps?”

  He consulted the ledger again. “No. Sorry. Looters, you know.”

  “I understand.”

  “You are short of ready money, Mrs. Harrison?” And when I did not answer, he said, “Perhaps you have a trinket or two that might be converted. My brother has a pawnshop on West Monroe. Tom Hibbens. One of the few honest pawnbrokers in Chicago.” He brought out another card.

  If I had thought I disliked him before, I was sure of it now. It seemed crass to promote the family business under such tragic circumstances.

  “I’ll keep it in mind. But in the meanwhile I’ll want my husband’s body readied for shipment. I’m taking him back to Virginia.”

  “We can arrange that, too, ma’am. But we will need a small deposit.”

  “Rest assured you will be paid for all services rendered,” I said haughtily.

  “Still, a token of your sincerity . . . ?” He gave me what I can only describe as a mortician’s smile, mournful, oozing with sympathy, and false as a counterfeit coin.

  I turned my back to him and withdrew my amethyst bracelet. “Will this do? The setting is gold. My husband paid several hundred for it.”

  He examined the bracelet with a critical eye. “Fifty is more like it.” I wondered then if he didn’t double as Tom Hibbens, the pawnbroker, also.

  “Very well. If you will remove my husband’s body and wait on my instructions? It might be several days.”

  I did not care to have any further dealings with Hibbens, but I was in no mood to search for another mortuary.

  A thin drizzle was falling when I came out of the building. The bleak horizon and leaden sky seemed to close down on me like a dull metal lid. Except for a line of carriages, the street was deserted of traffic. Under a nearby awning a group of somber-faced people stood talking in low tones. One of them, a woman, began to weep softly.

  I hitched up my collar and stepped out into the mist.

  “Mrs. Harrison!”

  I turned to see Ian Montgomery emerging from the building I had just left.

  “Mrs. Harrison, what an unfortunate way to meet again.”

  Chagrin, excitement, and a flutter of hope, in that order, went through me. Had his bride perished?

  “I had not expected to see you here, Mr. Montgomery,” I said, my voice more formal than intended, as if to counteract the surge of emotion inside.

  “Nor I you.”

  “But I thought you and your wife—”

  “Were in Niagara? We had barely started when we were called back. Mrs Wellington, my mother-in-law, is missing.”

  “The Wellington house . . . ?”

  “Not touched by the fire. But it seems Mrs. Wellington was worried about her sister on the near North Side. She went down to fetch her—expressly against Mr. Wellington’s orders— and did not come back. As you might know, that section of the city was devastated.”

  “And you found her here?”

  “No. It’s quite possible the two ladies got out in time. But then, I’m going on about Mrs. Wellington when I should be asking you the questions.”

  “My husband, Judah, he . . .”

  Earlier, as I had stood over Judah’s remains, I had managed my tears quite well, but now with Ian’s sympathetic blue gaze upon me, they came in a burning rush to my lashes.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmured.

  He waited in silence while I dabbed at my eyes with a handkerchief.

  “My carriage is here. May I give you a lift?” When I seemed to hesitate, he added, “It’s no inconvenience.”

&n
bsp; It had begun to rain in earnest. There seemed no purpose in refusing, and I let him take my arm.

  The carriage was new, the seats upholstered in pristine velvet, the mahogany trim gleaming with varnish.

  “You are staying where now?” Ian asked.

  “With friends on West Washington Street.”

  I was too proud to tell him that I had been reduced to refugeeing with hundreds in the Congregational Church, that I had no money, or that the people Judah had done business with were strangers to whom I could not appeal.

  “A terrible tragedy,” Ian remarked.

  “Yes.” He gave off the disturbing aroma of tobacco, bay rum, and wet wool. Droplets of rain clung to his thick tawny brows.

  “Scores of homeless,” Ian continued. “They say everything between the lake and river north of Congress Street is leveled. Two thousand five hundred and thirty-three acres on the North Side alone.”

  It was dim inside the carriage and his leg was pressed against my skirts just as it had been in a chaise one long-ago May morning as we rode under a canopy of greening trees.

  So many years had passed, so many things had happened, and yet I could recall with aching clarity the way he’d smiled at me, my laughter, the touch of his hand, and my heart brimming with foolish happiness.

  “You and your husband were in one of the downtown hotels?” Ian was asking.

  “At the Palmer House. We got out all right, but Judah went back, and ...” I paused, seeing once again the hungry flames spurting from the windows while I looked on helplessly. “Perhaps we’d best not speak of the fire?”

  “No. It’s quite all right.” I waited a moment. “There’s something that puzzles me, however. I saw very little smoke.”

  He leapt at my statement as if he were relieved to find a less personal topic. “One theory is that the flames were so hot they consumed the smoke.”

  “How interesting.”

  I swallowed the impulse to tell him of my horrendous night immersed in the cold waters of the lake while my face burned with heat. I didn’t want his pity. In fact, I was sorry now I’d told him about Judah. I wanted him to think I still had a loving husband, that I was going home to him, just as he, Ian, was going home in a velvet-cushioned coach to a pretty wife who would wind white arms about his neck, who—

  “You will be returning to Virginia, Mrs. Harrison?” he inquired, interrupting my painful thoughts.

  “Yes.”

  The rain drummed on the roof with a hollow cadence that recalled another rainy afternoon, the smell of sweet hay, kisses that burned, hands that stroked and caressed.

  “Are you happy?” I asked suddenly, jerking my mind back to the present. It was a bold, perhaps impertinent, question, but I couldn’t help asking it.

  “Very.” He didn’t look at me but out through the streaming window. “Marian is a remarkable girl.”

  Remarkable. That could mean anything. But in my present mood I felt that he, in some subtle way, was disparaging me. How else can I explain the impulsive demonic urge to wound by saying, “And, of course, she is exceedingly rich.”

  The moment I spoke I realized how petty it sounded. But it was too late to take the words back, for Ian had already turned to me, his eyes hard and cold.

  “Isn’t that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, Miss Deirdre? You don’t for a moment think I believed you married that balding old man—not to speak ill of the dead—because you were madly in love with him? Of course not. And he, I’ll wager, did not believe it either. ’ ’

  “How would you know what Judah believed?”

  “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “Just as I would stake mine on your being in love with Marian?”

  “You’re jealous,” he said. “You were jealous of Agnes, just as you are jealous of Marian.”

  “Jealous!" Touched off by the truth, my temper rose to meet his, even as one part of me ached at our quarreling. “Perfectly green-eyed,” he asserted with hard deliberation. If he had backed down, met me halfway, I might have apologized. But he wasn’t going to give an inch. Damn him!

  “Your precious Marian can have you, and good riddance!” I threw back at him. “You’re nothing more than a puppet in a Punch and Judy show, your Papa holding one set of strings and your wife the other. ’ ’

  He twisted round and pinned my shoulders to the back of the seat. I saw the storm raging in his eyes, the flicker of lightning, could almost hear the crash of thunder. A thrill of danger ran along my spine.

  “So, I’m a puppet!” He bent and his mouth fastened on to mine, his arms imprisoning me in a hold I could not—did not want to—break. The old hunger, the desire, leapt and pulsed, warm eager flesh pressing warm eager flesh, the taste of fiery brandy, the taste of Ian, of love. He rocked his head, moving his mouth back and forth. My knees turned to straw as my hands gripped his coat.

  Releasing me suddenly, he stared down into my face. I saw then how deeply I had hurt him. But his pride, and his anger, would never permit him to acknowledge it.

  “He bought you! And perhaps if I’d had the money I could have done the same. Without the wedding ring.”

  My hand flew up to hit him, but he caught it by the wrist. “Let me out, Ian! Stop this contraption! If you don’t let me go, I shall jump—I shall!” I had my free hand on the door handle.

  He signaled to the driver and the carriage came to a halt. I was out on the pavement before the driver could come down from the box.

  “Good-bye!” I hurled at Ian. I would never forgive him! Never!

  “Deirdre, wait ...”

  “Shut up!” And with that I turned on my heel and hurried away into the gathering dusk.

  I wept that night as I had not wept for Judah, muffling my sobs in the pillow, miserable, despondent, filled with a sense of desolation.

  I found a pawnshop—not Tom Hibbens’s—and exchanged my ruby-and-pearl necklace for $150. It was a paltry sum compared to its real worth, but I did not haggle. I needed the money to get about the city, make the necessary arrangements for Judah’s body, and above all to move out of the overcrowded church.

  I did that in the evening, registering at Maria Hale’s Boarding House, a family hostel, “decent and inexpensive,” recommended by the church pastor. Then I went out and sent two wires: one to Agnes, informing her of her father’s death; and the other to Judah’s solicitor, Dexter Gibbs, asking him to forward a bank draft of $500.

  On Wednesday morning I received Agnes’s reply. It was not a message of shock, of grief, or even of banal condolence. Only seven cryptic words: am coming to Chicago will arrive MONDAY.

  I couldn’t imagine why she felt it necessary to make the long trip from Virginia. Perhaps she wanted to accompany her father’s body to its resting place as some sort of filial gesture.

  There was no word from Dexter Gibbs.

  Dipping into my reserve cash, I bought myself a presentable mourning dress: black bombazine, a tight basque buttoned up to the chin, confining sleeves down to the wrists. The color was not the most becoming, but it wasn’t meant to be. It struck me as I gazed at the white pallor of my face in the mirror that I had become a widow for the second time and that retribution for my failure to mourn Beasley had finally caught up with me.

  I received Agnes in the boarding house’s small, curtained-off parlor on the ground floor. To my surprise, Dexter Gibbs had accompanied her. Agnes, too, wore black. She had gotten even thinner, and her nose, never attractive, stood out like a beak, giving her the appearance of a rapacious crow. We did not embrace; the hard look on her face precluded it. And the sober one on Dexter’s warned me that our interview was not going to be pleasant.

  It wasn’t.

  “I’ve come,’’ Agnes said, “for several reasons. The first, of course, is to return my father’s remains to Virginia.”

  “But surely you realized I would do that?”

  “I take nothing for granted where you are concerned.”

  I let that pass. Dexter Gi
bbs was fussing with some papers he had drawn from a portfolio.

  “The second reason,” Agnes went on, “concerns my father’s will. I thought it best that you know the terms at once.”

  “But he’s not in his grave yet!” I protested. “Surely that could wait?”

  “I’m afraid not. Mr. Gibbs . . . ?”

  He cleared his throat, gave Agnes a tentative glance, and, avoiding my eyes, began to read:

  “I, Judah Alexander Harrison, being a resident of the County of Richmond in the State of Virginia and being of sound and disposing mind and memory and not acting under duress, menace, or fraud or undue influence, do hereby ...” He had left everything to Agnes. Everything! The only condition in the will that would have allowed me to share in his legacy required that I have his son. That condition unmet, I was left with nothing. Even my jewels now belonged to the estate.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, looking from Agnes to Gibbs. “I don’t belive Judah would have treated me so shabbily.”

  “You heard for yourself,” Agnes said coldly.

  Dexter Gibbs still hadn’t looked directly at me.

  “It’s a forgery,” I said. “How much did Miss Harrison pay you, Mr. Gibbs?”

  He lifted his eyes, pale-blue under bushy white brows, filled now with shocked pain. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harrison. Are you questioning my integrity?”

  “Yes. May I see the document?”

  “Certainly.”

  I don’t know what was gained by my perusing it. I wouldn’t have known if it was forged or not, but I read it through anyway, slowly, taking my time, wanting to rattle them, trying to think. It was dated a year earlier, soon after Judah had sent Agnes’s Louisiana suitor packing. Had he made this out to mollify her anger, planning to have a new one drawn up later? Or had he realized why I’d married him and used this will to revenge himself? But I couldn’t believe that. In my way I had been a good wife, and Judah was not a vindictive man.